Re: Relativity & Maxwell's EM Theory
- From: "Karl Uppiano" <karl.uppiano@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 03 Sep 2007 09:28:04 GMT
"Benj" <bjacoby@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1188793593.913534.280740@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
maxwell wrote:
The idea of the aether is
no longer respectable amongst physicists today but was almost
universally accepted by physicists around 1900 (e.g. Michelson believed
in it until the day he died - 1931: I don't).
Actually I do have a more serious comment about this. And this has to
do with what I consider attitudes unbecoming a scientist. I refer to
your statement which is so common in modern physics about a "belief"
in the aether. Couching physics in terms of "belief" takes science
and turns it into religion. Does one "believe" in ESP? Does one
"believe" in UFOs? Does one believe in evolution? Does one "believe"
in the luminiferous aether? Its all a very bad attitude and is
nothing but a political setup for the "debunking" slam-dunk to arrive
later. Religions are systems of belief based on faith. Faith arrives
from confidence in the source of the revelations. But different people
have different confidence levels in various sources. Religions are NOT
based on experiments or scientific observations although they may be
adjusted to account for same.
The difference between science and religion can be shown in the
difference between an auto user's manual and an automotive design
textbook. The user's manual demands that you take everything on faith
alone. Always keep the engine filled with fresh oil it intones. The
reasons for this advice are never explained to the owner. The owner
is simply required to take the advice on faith based on confidence in
the engineers at the car company. An automotive design textbook on the
other hand will explain it all, but the level of technical expertise
required to understand it is much greater. Such understanding may take
years of preparation before it begins to make sense.
The point here is that when things like the theory of an aether turn
into something which is "believed" rather than simply "understood" it
is no longer viable as science. And that I believe is a calculated
political move to preserve a status quo. I personally find the theory
of an aether quite fascinating. I have never heard any reasonable
alternatives to Maxwell's declaration that energy can only be
transferred from place to place in two ways. One is by a transfer of
mass and the other is by the transmission of waves. If there is no
mass transfer, then waves are the ONLY alternative. Then one must
ask, if there are waves, then just WHAT is doing the waving? "Modern"
science provides only hand-waving and no answers or models. Hand-
waving and assertions of mysterious "action at a distance" theories
are not science. It is asking you to believe!
In so many ways the theory of a medium in space has become like a
denying of the holocaust. I suspect that if physicists could, they
would pass laws like those that in so many countries prevent ANY
historical study of the camps of WWII and provide jail time for
"holocaust deniers". Only the physics "hate laws" would be for
"relativity deniers". If you "believe" in an aether you go to jail.
After all, "everybody knows" that aether theory has long ago been
discredited... or has it?
If you are going to propose the possibility of an aether, I think it would
be worthwhile to propose properties for the aether to provide a way for EM
behavior to be the same for all observers in uniform motion, regardless of
their frame of reference, as it is for the laws of motion (i.e., motion was
understood to be relativistic since the time of Galileo). Einstein extended
relativity to EM with his theory of Special Relativity, thereby eliminating
a very troublesome aether as it was conceived at the turn of the 20th
century.
Granted, some of the implications of SR are conceptually challenging, but
probably only because we humans don't live in the extremes of near light
speed (we are in extreme relative motion to many objects in the universe,
although we don't experience it directly). SR is one of the most rigorously
tested theories in the history of physics. I am not aware of any SR
predictions that have been proven inaccurate enough to render SR useless.
There may be other solutions -- such as an aether -- but I suspect that it
would end up looking suspiciously similar to SR if it meets the criteria of
universal EM behavior regardless of the observer's frame of reference.
There is a very serious asymmetry if the laws of motion are relativistic and
EM is not. Without relativity, EM becomes a morass of special cases for
observers in different frames of reference in uniform motion (General
Relativity addresses the "uniform motion" constraint).
.
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