Monthly Archives: March 2014

Ether to Relativity: The journey from light to darkness

March 31, 2014 – 3:43 am

We know that for waves to travel in space they need a medium. As a wave travels in a medium, the particles of the medium oscillate to and fro or up and down depending upon the type of the wave. For example as sound waves travel in air medium, the particles of air move to and fro, and this movement of particles results in alternate compressions and rarefactions in the medium. We know that sound waves also travel in liquid media (e.g. water) and some solid media. The particles of all these media also execute a similar to and fro waving motion when sound waves propagate through them. And we know that as water waves (or ripples) propagate in a pond, the particles of the medium (which is obviously water) oscillate up and down. So we consider water waves as transverse waves in contrast to sound waves which are longitudinal waves.

Then what about light? First of all, to the physicists of the pre-modern era, it was not clear whether light is composed of particles or waves. After centuries of debate on the nature of light, Young’s double slit experiment (1803) had confirmed that light behaves like waves. Half a century later, Maxwell, building upon the equations of electromagnetism, had calculated the speed of light waves as 3×108m/sec (referred to as ‘c’ by the physicists). These two developments posed two very difficult questions to the physicists of those days:

1) If light is a wave, then what is the thing which does the ‘waving’ or oscillation? In other words what is the medium for light waves? As far as scientists knew, there wasn’t any medium in the outer space. But if there isn’t really any medium in the outer space, then how could light, which behaves like waves, reach us from the Sun and other stars?

2) The next question that bothered physicists was that, if light travels at speed ‘c’, it is with reference to whom? Whenever we mention the speed of an object, there is always a reference frame to it whether explicit or implicit. For example when we say that a car moves at 100kmph, we mean that the car moves at 100kmph speed with reference to the road (or to a stationary observer on the road). Obviously the said speed is not with reference to someone who is inside the car or to someone who is following the car on a bike. Similarly the propagation speed of a wave is always mentioned with reference to the medium in which the wave travels. When we say that sound waves travel at speed of 330m/sec, the said speed, though not explicit, is always with reference to the medium in which the waves travel. So, when Maxwell calculated the speed of light as ‘c’, it implied that this speed must be with reference to the medium in which light waves should be travelling. But as just been mentioned, there isn’t any medium in the outer space as far as scientists know. But if there is no medium in the outer space, the speed of light that Maxwell calculated is with reference to whom?

Before the advent of modern physics with all its weird theories, scientists believed in the existence of an ever pervading medium called Ether. Everything in this universe including planets, stars etc were thought to remain suspended and move about in this stationary universal medium. And this putative Ether medium was thought to act as the medium for light waves (hence the name ‘lumiferous Ether’). Though there was no proof of its existence, the Ether hypothesis had enjoyed good support from the physicists of the pre-modern era as that was able to explain how light waves from outer space could reach us on Earth and also was able to provide the answer for the reference frame problem. But over a relatively short span of time, the above Ether hypothesis gave way to the weird theories of the modern physics. And we must talk about three things here which made physics ‘advance’ in the wrong direction.

Michelson- Morley experiment: Michelson presumed that when Earth moved through the stationary Ether medium, it would result in what is called as Ether wind. So he predicted that light beams made to travel to and fro in perpendicular directions i.e. one light beam passed parallel to the Ether wind direction and another beam passed across the wind, would take different times to cover the same distance. But to the astonishment of the scientific community, Michelson’s famous experiment failed to detect any difference in the times taken by the two light beams and thus ruled out any such thing called Ether wind. From this and other observations (aberration of star light), scientists concluded that there isn’t anything like Ether in our universe. (We will discuss later why scientists are wrong to assume so and will expose the misconceptions upon which this famous experiment was devised).

Light and Electromagnetic radiation: From the work of great physicists like Faraday and Maxwell, scientific community had learnt more about electro-magnetism and electromagnetic radiation. It became known that electromagnetic waves get generated from relative motion between electric and magnetic fields. And the scientific community had realised that light is a form of electromagnetic radiation and that visible light comprises only a small part of the total spectrum of electromagnetic radiation. And having discarded the Ether medium, the intelligent physicists had ‘understood’ electromagnetic waves as ‘self propagating’ transverse waves with electric and magnetic fields oscillating at right angles to the direction of propagation. While we the ordinary minds may not correctly grasp the physicists’ imagination of these ‘mythical’ waves of transversely oscillating electric and magnetic fields, the point to note here is that, according to the intelligent physicists, electromagnetic waves (i.e. light waves) do not require any medium to propagate in space unlike mechanical waves (e.g. sound waves).

Emitter theory: But the above ‘understanding’ of the scientific crowd on EM waves had made the second question even tougher to answer i.e. if EM waves are self propagating and if they don’t require any medium , then Maxwell’s calculated speed of electromagnetic waves is with reference to whom?

At this juncture, some scientists believed that the calculated speed of EM waves must be with reference to the source that generated them (Emitter theory). But observations on neutral pion decay didn’t seem to support the ‘emitter theory’. Scientists observed that light photons (EM waves) travelled at the same speed ‘c’ whether they were emitted by fast moving particles (neutral pions) or slow moving particles. In other words, light photons’ velocity didn’t vary with the velocity of the source unlike the case with projectiles in our everyday world!

Another argument against the emitter theory was that Electromagnetic waves get generated when there is relative motion between a magnet and a conductor (e.g. copper wire). In other words, a source of EM waves contains two basic components (a magnet and a conductor) both of which move relative to each other. So if we assume that Maxwell’s calculated speed of EM waves is with reference to the source, which one of the two components of the source shall we consider as representing the source? I.e. shall we swear upon the magnet’s frame or the conductor’s frame as representing the reference frame of the source as a whole?

Imagine that we kept a magnet at rest and moved a copper wire with speed ‘v’ with respect to the magnet and generated EM waves. Here we may assume that the so generated EM waves travel at speed ‘c’ with reference to the magnet because this was the one at rest. In that case obviously the speed of the same EM waves becomes ‘c+v’ in the reference frame of the copper wire. But because motion is relative we can argue that it was actually the copper wire that was at rest and hence the Maxwell’s calculated speed ‘c’ must refer to the copper wire’s reference frame and not to the magnet.

But how can the generated EM waves travel at the same speed with reference to both the magnet and the conductor which are moving relative to each other? In other words, how can a light beam travel with the same speed ‘c’ with reference to two different objects in two different reference frames?

Emitter theory thus failed to solve the reference frame issue and the scientific turmoil continued. Amidst this scientific turmoil came Einstein with his weird and ‘wonderful’ theory of special relativity which mesmerised the confused scientific folk and ‘solved’ the reference frame issue. He said that the speed of light waves (i.e. electromagnetic waves) remains the same to every observer irrespective of one’s state of motion or reference frame. Special theory of relativity woven upon this weird law of constant speed of light then lead to the weird propositions of time dilation, space contraction etc and later paved the way for another weird theory called general relativity.

Now we will analyse each of the above things that mislead the scientific crowd and allowed the weird theories to sprout and flourish in the realm of science masquerading as modern physics.

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By Dr Srinivasa Rao Gonuguntla | Posted in Science with Sense | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (14)

Ether wind and Ether drag

March 31, 2014 – 3:21 am

Michelson-Morley experiment (MMX) was devised on the premise that as Earth moved through the stationary Ether medium, it would result in what is called as the Ether wind. And it was proposed that light beams passed in different directions i.e. one beam passed perpendicular to the direction of the Ether wind and another passed along the direction of the Ether wind would take different times to travel the same distance. Michelson apparently used swimmers analogy to illustrate the logic behind this proposition – When two swimmers with equal competence are asked to swim to and fro for equal distance in a flowing river, the swimmer who swims straight across the river apparently will take a shorter time for the round trip than the one who swims first down the stream and then against the stream. So it was predicted that the light beam which travels perpendicular to the Ether wind would take shorter time than the beam which travels down the Ether wind in the first half and then against the wind in the second half of its journey. So scientists predicted that the two returning beams would be out of phase when they meet finally and hence would result in interference on the detector screen. Further they thought that the time delay and hence the degree of interference would vary depending upon the orientation of the interferometer arms with respect to the direction of the Ether wind.

But to the astonishment of the scientific minds, the experiment yielded no interference between the returning beams. It implied that both the returning beams have arrived at the half silvered mirror at the same time contrary to their expectation that the ‘perpendicular beam’ would take longer for the return trip than the ‘parallel beam’.

To the scientists, the null result i.e. the lack interference between the two beams implied two possibilities. Either there wasn’t anything called Ether or Earth must be dragging a blob of Ether around it in which case there wouldn’t be any Ether wind to detect. Apparently evidence from other observations (aberration of star light, Fizeau exp, Sagnac effect etc) had disproved the possibility of Ether drag, and so the scientific community was forced to interpret the null result in MM experiment as disproof of existence of Ether medium.

To understand why MMX is based upon a wrong premise and hence incapable of drawing any valid conclusions about Ether, first we will have to answer two important questions.

1) What is actually the basis of the so called Ether wind?

2) Can Ether wind exist without Ether being dragged?

We all know that, even when the climate is quiet and the air is motionless, we experience air winds if we go on a bike ride. Similarly a ball moving inside a pond of still water also experiences what may be called as water wind. But how do we explain this phenomenon of wind? In other words what is the physical basis of this experience of wind? Irrespective of who moves and who is still, it is obviously collisions that our body receives from the air particles which makes us experience the so called air wind. And same is the case with the ball. As the ball moves through the still water, it receives collisions from the water particles and it is these collisions which make the ball feel the ‘water wind’.

And what happens to the water particles? As the ball hits the water particles, they obviously move in the direction of the force. In other words the particles get dragged by the ball. And the ball drags not only the particles which come in direct contact with it but also the farther away particles by way of indirect collisions.

In summary, whenever a body moves through a stationary fluid medium, the body drags the surrounding fluid particles with it. And the scenario of a body (Earth) experiencing a fluid wind (Ether wind) but not drag the fluid doesn’t simply exist. And so is the scenario of a body dragging the fluid medium but not experience the fluid wind. The wind effect and the drag effect are inseparable and result from the same fundamental mechanism i.e collisions between the body and the medium’s particles. It may be true to say that while it is the moving body which experiences the wind effect; the medium’s particles experience the drag effect.

So if someone blames Ether drag for his experiment’s failure to detect Ether wind, that only exposes one’s poor logic because the experimenter must have already realised and incorporated the drag effect while devising the experiment to detect the Ether wind. And if someone looks for Ether drag to explain the lack of Ether winds, that obviously shows one’s lack understanding about both Ether drag and Ether wind.

If someone without any idea of how and why Ether drag occurs and who is wrongly convinced that there are no Ether winds claims to disprove the phenomenon of Ether drag, we can imagine how much reliance we can place on those claims.

As explained elsewhere, double slit experiment and the phenomenon of gravity provide clear proofs for the existence of photon Ether and differential Ether drag respectively.

Basically MMX is incapable of detecting the Ether wind. If it were, we could devise a similar experiment with sound waves and water waves to detect air winds and water winds. The reason is the motion of a source affects the velocity and direction of propagation of the waves that it generates. For example imagine a stationary oscillator generating water waves which propagate towards East. Now imagine the oscillator moving in the northward direction. The water waves that it generates now propagate mainly in the north-east direction instead of in the eastward direction. We all know that this is what happens in our everyday life with projectiles or particles. As I have discussed elsewhere, at the most fundamental level, what underlies wave motion is nothing but to and fro motion of particles and the various phenomena of wave motion (e.g. interference) can be explained purely by particle model. So why should we expect waves to behave differently from particles?

By Dr Srinivasa Rao Gonuguntla | Posted in Faculty of Ridiculous Science | Tagged , , | Comments (0)