Did Michelson-Morley experiment prove there was no Aether or that there was no "Aether-wind"

[swansont]

4 hours ago, neuerwind said:

Why are you deleting my messages? People here firmly believe that star abberation is the ultimate proof against aether... while it is not

!

Moderator Note

No messages of yours were deleted. Stop with the off-topic posts.

 

[neuerwind]

1 hour ago, John Cuthber said:

How big should the effect of our orbit round the galaxy be...

So, you are observing a huge effect of 30 km/s movement... and fail to see the supposedly feeble effect of 220 km/s movement?

[swansont]

10 minutes ago, neuerwind said:

So, you are observing a huge effect of 30 km/s movement... and fail to see the supposedly feeble effect of 220 km/s movement?

It's not feeble. But it is almost constant, and the relevant measurement is a differential one.

[John Cuthber]

1 hour ago, neuerwind said:

So, you are observing a huge effect of 30 km/s movement... and fail to see the supposedly feeble effect of 220 km/s movement?

Are you deliberately missing the point?

You only see the effect when you change direction (say Winter to Summer).
We don't have any 100 million year old pictures of the sky to compare to the current pictures- so we won't see the change.

[neuerwind]

59 minutes ago, John Cuthber said:

Are you deliberately missing the point?

You only see the effect when you change direction (say Winter to Summer).

 

2 hours ago, swansont said:

It's not feeble. But it is almost constant, and the relevant measurement is a differential one.

Let me explain this as simple as possible.

The Earth's gravity field is contained in the Sun's gravity field. These two fields do not intersect or overlap. When the ray of light is coming from the 'outside' world, it has to travel through the Sun's gravity field first and only then it reaches an observer, residing within the gravity field of the Earth.

What we actually observe as star abberation is the movement of the Earth's gravity field within the gravity field of the Sun. That's why abberation is fully dependent on the Earth's orbital speed and does not take into account how fast the Sun moves through the galaxy.

P.S. Did someone say 'ether'?

 

[John Cuthber]

10 minutes ago, neuerwind said:

Let me explain this as simple as possible.

No, let me explain it correctly.

You are wrong. There is just one gravitational field. If you drop a small object it falls "down".

That field is the sum of all the fields of all the things in the universe, the Sun, the moon, my pet goldfish, everything.

[Strange]

32 minutes ago, neuerwind said:

The Earth's gravity field is contained in the Sun's gravity field. These two fields do not intersect or overlap.

Nonsense. The orbits of the planets, for example, are affected by the mass of the other planets in the solar system. It is a very small effect but it is measurable in their deviations from the orbits they would have if they only orbited the Sun.

34 minutes ago, neuerwind said:

P.S. Did someone say 'ether'?

Why do so many people appear to be obsessed with this idea? It never had any evidence for it; it was just an assumption (it seemed "logical" in the language of crackpots). There is now (a) no need for it and (b) evidence against it. I don't understand why so many people cling to this idea. Even if it were shown to be true, it would bring no practical benefits.

[studiot]

34 minutes ago, Strange said:

 

Why do so many people appear to be obsessed with this idea? It never had any evidence for it; it was just an assumption (it seemed "logical" in the language of crackpots). There is now (a) no need for it and (b) evidence against it. I don't understand why so many people cling to this idea. Even if it were shown to be true, it would bring no practical benefits.

Be fair, it was once considered necessary.

Don't forget the aether was conceived in the days when Young's theory of light as a classical wave ruled supreme, having displaced Newton's corpuscular theory.

In those days (early 1800's) all known waves required a medium of transmission and since no obvious one was on offer the (lumeniferous) aether was proposed.
This was half a century before Maxwell, Hertz, Marconi et al.

 

Of course, some people (other than actors) still ride in hansom cabs and wear fancy hats today.

Edited August 27, 2018 by studiot

[swansont]

16 hours ago, neuerwind said:

 

Let me explain this as simple as possible.

The Earth's gravity field is contained in the Sun's gravity field. These two fields do not intersect or overlap. When the ray of light is coming from the 'outside' world, it has to travel through the Sun's gravity field first and only then it reaches an observer, residing within the gravity field of the Earth.

What we actually observe as star abberation is the movement of the Earth's gravity field within the gravity field of the Sun. That's why abberation is fully dependent on the Earth's orbital speed and does not take into account how fast the Sun moves through the galaxy.

In a word, no. Aberration is the result of movement. It depends on speed and direction, i.e. velocity. So the difference in two measurements will depend on the difference in velocity. The reason the solar system's velocity does not affect our measurements is that it does not noticeably change over the time of any set of observations. It gives a constant offset.

[madmac]

On 8/26/2018 at 3:02 AM, neuerwind said:

One cannot measure the speed of the wind while flying on a balloon. And no, you cannot prove that ether drag does not exist. You don’t even feel the Earth accelerating and deceleration in its motion.

The thread is -- Did MMX prove no aether or no aetherwind?

Miller's MMXs all proved an aetherwind, & hencely all proved an aether. As did Michelson's MMX.

But i notice a lot of talk here about aetherdrag. Michelson's 1887 MMX was of course partly looking for zero drag or a little drag or a lot of drag (they thort that they found partial drag). Likewise Michelson's & Gale's 1932 MGX (a giant rectangular pipeline circuit) was looking for aetherdrag (they found none). And Hammar's X was looking for aetherdrag (he found none).

From an aetherist viewpoint i wish to advise that aetherdrag does exist, & the value of this drag is probly 100%. However this drag has nought to do with the drags in the MMXs & MGX & the HX, these three Xs relate to a velocity based drag, & we know that the velocity based aetherdrag is 00%.

The aetherdrag that does exist is an acceleration based drag, & this drag gives us freefall, gravity, inertia, mass etc. The aether does not like it when an object accelerates, the aether resists, & hencely u need to exert a force to obtain the wanted acceleration. Actually the aether doesnt resist, because the aether is subquantum & has no mass --  the aether merely transfers that-there inertial force tween a pushed quantum object & a nearby quantum object (ie tween quantum masses), the transfer being by gravitational pulses (reverberating back & forth at a speed of in excess of 20 billion c)(Van Flandern).

Aether is annihilated in mass, & aether flows in to replace the lost, & the acceleration of the inflow gives us what we call freefall, & the inertial force needed to stop freefall gives us what we call mass & gravity etc. The acceleration field is in effect the gravity field.  Earth's aether inflow (probly 11.2 kmps)(ie the escape velocity) adds to the background aetherwind (blowing south to north throo Earth at 500 kmps at 20 deg off Earth's spin-axis, Right Ascension 4:30 hrs).

Or u might prefer to believe in Einstein's SR & GR & bending of spacetime & zero-aether (but a nice sort of fabric of some sort).

[swansont]

5 hours ago, madmac said:

The thread is -- Did MMX prove no aether or no aetherwind?

Miller's MMXs all proved an aetherwind, & hencely all proved an aether. As did Michelson's MMX.

As has already been pointed out, the motion MM expected to measure was our 30 km/s speed around the sun, and varying as they rotated the device. They did not measure this. They measured a value consistent with zero, and the precision of their device could not exclude zero. Thus it is not valid to claim they measured the effects of an aether (and it would be laughable to claim they measure that the predicted/expected aether was confirmed)

 

5 hours ago, madmac said:

 From an aetherist viewpoint i wish to advise that aetherdrag does exist, & the value of this drag is probly 100%. However this drag has nought to do with the drags in the MMXs & MGX & the HX, these three Xs relate to a velocity based drag, & we know that the velocity based aetherdrag is 00%.

!

Moderator Note

This is off-topic. As you pointed out, the thread is about MM measuring the aether.

 

[Conjurer]

I guess the discovery of gravitational rotational frame dragging never really received that much attention, or they never bothered to explain to everybody how this affects the MM experiment either?

I thought the discovery was supposed to disprove the discovery of the MM experiment.  I don't think the MM experiment could be done with a cannonball to show up with this result either.  I don't think Newton had to account for this when developing the laws of motion.  We are always accelerating as we move on the surface of the Earth, but no one ever had to calculate for that in any physical experiment to show how it was different in one place or another.  Therefore, I think that proves that there is an aether, since any frame of reference that is accelerating with the surface of the Earth can be considered to be at rest.  Then the Earth isn't even perfectly round, so the aether seems to be moving with the Earth's center of mass.  Then it starts dragging the further out away from the Earth you are, hence the discovery of gravitational rotation dragging.  

Edited November 3, 2018 by Conjurer

[Strange]

3 hours ago, Conjurer said:

I guess the discovery of gravitational rotational frame dragging never really received that much attention, or they never bothered to explain to everybody how this affects the MM experiment either?

Can you show, mathematically, how much effect this would have?

It has no effect at all on the MM experiment. Apart from the fact the effect is small, I am fairly sure it could not be measured by something rotating with the Earth  

However, a satellite was sent to space to measure the effect using high precision gyroscopes (Gravity Probe B).

And frame dragging wasn't "discovered", it is a prediction from the theory of general relativity.

3 hours ago, Conjurer said:

I thought the discovery was supposed to disprove the discovery of the MM experiment.  I don't think the MM experiment could be done with a cannonball to show up with this result either.  I don't think Newton had to account for this when developing the laws of motion.  We are always accelerating as we move on the surface of the Earth, but no one ever had to calculate for that in any physical experiment to show how it was different in one place or another.  Therefore, I think that proves that there is an aether, since any frame of reference that is accelerating with the surface of the Earth can be considered to be at rest.  Then the Earth isn't even perfectly round, so the aether seems to be moving with the Earth's center of mass.  Then it starts dragging the further out away from the Earth you are, hence the discovery of gravitational rotation dragging.  

This doesn't make much sense. 

!

Moderator Note

Please don't hijack other people's threads with your own speculative ideas. If you want to discuss your own idea, start a new thread.

 

[swansont]

4 hours ago, Strange said:

 It has no effect at all on the MM experiment. Apart from the fact the effect is small, I am fairly sure it could not be measured by something rotating with the Earth  

Indeed. If it could have been measured on earth, there would have been no need to launch an expensive satellite to confirm it. (To improve on the result, perhaps, but not to do the first confirmation)

[Conjurer]

21 hours ago, Strange said:

Can you show, mathematically, how much effect this would have?

I don't see why that would be necessary.  I am not trying to use the theory to make any type of predictions the theory doesn't already make.

21 hours ago, Strange said:

It has no effect at all on the MM experiment. Apart from the fact the effect is small, I am fairly sure it could not be measured by something rotating with the Earth  

I meant to say how the theory affects the interpretation of the MM experiment, but I fully agree; It would have no affect on the MM experiment at all, whatsoever.  Then I am not sure that there has been any Newtonian experiment throughout all of history that has had to account for the movement of the Earth.  If anyone gave me one example of a case where this did happen, then I would surely be wrong about what I am saying, and I would be done with it.

21 hours ago, Strange said:

And frame dragging wasn't "discovered", it is a prediction from the theory of general relativity.

They discovered "evidence" to support the theory.  The theory of general relativity assumes that the aether is a relativistic spacetime.  Spacetime was made into one word to be used this way to show this.  It is a noun because it describes an object...

21 hours ago, Strange said:

This doesn't make much sense. 

!

Moderator Note

Please don't hijack other people's threads with your own speculative ideas. If you want to discuss your own idea, start a new thread.

 

I am just saying that there is no evidence to support the idea that planetary accelerations has any influence on Newtonian physics on the surface of the Earth.  It doesn't have to be accounted for in any physical experiment, like what would be needed to, if the same experiment was done on an airplane or whatever.  Then the laws of physics become dependent on if the experiment is done on Earth or just some other accelerating object.  To answer the question of the OP, I am saying that there is just no aether wind on the surface of the Earth, period, for any experiment.  It hasn't been detected, for as far as I know, by any means with any physical object.

Edited November 4, 2018 by Conjurer

[Strange]

4 hours ago, Conjurer said:

I don't see why that would be necessary.  I am not trying to use the theory to make any type of predictions the theory doesn't already make.

You said: "I guess the discovery of gravitational rotational frame dragging never really received that much attention, or they never bothered to explain to everybody how this affects the MM experiment either?"

If frame dragging has an effect on the MM experiment, then you should be able to calculate how large this effect is. Or admit it has no effect at all.

4 hours ago, Conjurer said:

I meant to say how the theory affects the interpretation of the MM experiment, but I fully agree; It would have no affect on the MM experiment at all, whatsoever. 

Then why mention it?

4 hours ago, Conjurer said:

Then I am not sure that there has been any Newtonian experiment throughout all of history that has had to account for the movement of the Earth. If anyone gave me one example of a case where this did happen, then I would surely be wrong about what I am saying, and I would be done with it.

Not sure what you mean by "Newtonian". But the Coriolis force is a classical and pre-relativity effect (and therefore Newtonian) that has been tested on Earth.

4 hours ago, Conjurer said:

They discovered "evidence" to support the theory.  The theory of general relativity assumes that the aether is a relativistic spacetime.  Spacetime was made into one word to be used this way to show this.  It is a noun because it describes an object...

Spacetime is not an object in any normal sense of the word. It is just a set of measurements. Is "length" an object?