Compelling evidence for in vacuo light speed anisotrophy
in [Relativity]
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From: Dono on 13 Apr 2008 19:08 On Apr 13, 3:38 pm, Jerry <Cephalobus_alie...(a)comcast.net> wrote: o, please answer the following: > > 5) Do you believe that light in free space propagates according > to ballistic rules, or do you believe that it propagates at a > fixed speed with respect to an "aether" or "quantum foam" or > other such background? > > Jerry He's going to say "ballistic" because this is what Cahill uses in paragraph 2 in order to get eq(7) :-)
From: Tom Roberts on 13 Apr 2008 19:14 Surfer wrote: > In some cases I think its valid to distinguish between data of "the > form expected" and data not of "the form expected". No. Your expectations do not dictate to Nature. If you can find some INDEPENDENT reason why certain runs were "smudged", than that's OK, but not meeting "the form expected" is not sufficient to reject certain runs. Rejecting 21 out of 22 runs is CONCLUSIVE that the entire experiment is flawed, and that one run cannot possibly be trusted. And, of course, one should use a chisq or other fit to the data, which must have appropriate errorbars. Cahill's figure 4 (of your earlier ref) shows quite clearly that he does not understand either fitting or errorbars. A flat line fits those data about as well as his "form expected". Note that his Fig 4 is of CAHILL'S ANALYSIS OF MILLER'S DATA (not data related to this flyby anomaly), and we know for sure that Miller's "non-zero result" was generated by his lack of knowledge of errorbars, and use of an INVALID analysis technique that FORCED his data to appear to have a sinusoidal form (Cahill's Fig. 4 is a composite in which each point has this problem). No competent or sensible experimentalist would cite Cahill's Figure 4 as evidence of anything, just on the face of it -- the scatter is simply too large to make any conclusion; the data clearly do not distinguish Cahill's curve from a flat line. But we KNOW where the scatter comes from, and we KNOW that figure is bogus: http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0608238 See Fig. 11 for a correct display of what Cahill tried to show in his Figure 4. Cahill's Fig 4 should have every point plotted at speed zero, with errorbars about 6 km/s -- VASTLY smaller than the scale of his plot! Miller can be excused, as the knowledge involved was developed long after his death. There is no excuse for Cahill. I have no comment on the FLYBY data themselves, or how "compelling" they might be for an anisotropy in the speed of light. This is new to me and will take time. But I can say that Cahill's paper is completely useless. Tom Roberts
From: Surfer on 13 Apr 2008 19:29 On Sun, 13 Apr 2008 13:12:37 -0700 (PDT), Jerry <Cephalobus_alienus(a)comcast.net> wrote: > >The VERY PURPOSE of the experiment was to determine, "What is the >form to be expected?" > That may have been the purpose of the original experimenters. But if Cahill knew the form to be expected, I don't see why that would be relevant to him. > >Cahill's highly selective use of one single revolution of data, >throwing out twenty-one revolutions that disagree with his >prejudices, is an atrocity. > I think it depends to what use he put the data. If he just used it to bolster his argument, that would seem harmless. On the other hand, if Cahill selected data and didn't know the difference between good data and bad data, he would not have been able to calculate a useful value for 3-space velocity. But in the same paper you refer to, he wrote (Page 74): "Note that the above corrected Miller projected absolute speed of approximately vp =415km/s is completely consistent with the corrected projected absolute speed of some 330km/s from the Michelson-Morley experiment,though neither Michelson nor Miller were able to apply this correction." That was back in January 2004. Now lets skip forward to April 2008 and compare the above value of 415km/s with the values in Table 1 and Figure 3 in the just released: Resolving Spacecraft Earth-Flyby Anomalies with Measured Light Speed Anisotropy Cahill R.T. http://arxiv.org/abs/0804.0039 We see that all anomalies except one are resolved with speeds of 420km/s. The exception requires a speed of 450km/s but the dynamical 3-space theory predicts fluctuations of velocity, so that is not unreasonable. I think this concordance is evidence that his analysis of the experiments was essentially correct.
From: Edward Green on 13 Apr 2008 19:37 On Apr 13, 2:42 pm, Surfer <n...(a)spam.please.net> wrote: > On Sun, 13 Apr 2008 09:38:23 -0700 (PDT), Jerry > > > > > > <Cephalobus_alie...(a)comcast.net> wrote: > >On Apr 13, 9:56 am, Surfer <n...(a)spam.please.net> wrote: > >> On Sun, 13 Apr 2008 06:43:03 -0700 (PDT), Jerry > >> <Cephalobus_alie...(a)comcast.net> wrote: > > >> >[Cahill] thinks nothing of throwing away multiple experimental > >> >runs disagreeing with his prejudices, instead focusing on the single > >> >run that seems to show some sort of sinusoidal modulation (you do > >> >know the reference, I presume? > > >> The situation is not so simple. He has been able to derive consistent > >> values for 3-space velocity from a number of experiments. > > >I found the reference that I was referring to. > >http://redshift.vif.com/JournalFiles/V11NO1PDF/V11N1CA2.pdf > > >In discussing the Joos experiment, Cahill writes: > > The data for 22 rotations throughout the day of May 30, 1930 > > are shown in Fig.15, and are reproduced from Fig.11 of [15]. > > From that data Joos concluded, using an analysis that did not > > take account of the special relativistic length contraction > > effect, that the fringe shifts corresponded to a speed of only > > 1.5 km/s. However as previously noted such an analysis is > > completely flawed. As well the data in Fig.15 shows that for > > all but one of the rotations the fringe shifts were poorly > > recorded. Only in the one rotation, at 11 23 58, does the data > > actually look like the form expected. This is probably not > > accidental as the maximum fringe shift was expected at that > > time, based on the Miller direction of absolute motion, and > > the sensitivity of the device was ±1 thousandth of a fringe > > shift. In Fig.16 that one rotation data are compared with the > > form expected for Jena on May 30 using the Miller speed and > > direction together with the new refractive index effect,and > > using the refractive index of helium. The agreement is quite > > remarkable. So again, contrary the Joos paper and to > > subsequent commentators, Joos did in fact detect a very large > > velocity of absolute motion. > > >In other words, out of 22 rotations performed that day, 21 of the > >rotations showed nothing remotely resembling a sinusoidal signal. > >Cahill throws away data from these 21 rotations and focuses on > >the single outlier, even ignoring data from the immediately > >preceding and following rotations that were separated from the > >11:23 rotation by only a few minutes. > > >This is biased data analysis at its most vicious. > > You have a point. However, if police found 22 finger prints at a crime > scene of which 21 were smudged and one was clear, would you accuse > them of "biased data analysis at the most vicious" if they used the > clear one to identify a suspect? > > In some cases I think its valid to distinguish between data of "the > form expected" and data not of "the form expected". Kuhn: the reigning paradigm determines what we can see. > Of course such a single item of data is only a clue. It wouldn't prove > anything in isolation.
From: Edward Green on 13 Apr 2008 19:39
On Apr 13, 5:06 pm, Surfer <n...(a)spam.please.net> wrote: > The test theory may allow the possiblity of light speed anisotropy. > But an additional problem for experimenters is that interatomic > spacing is controlled by the speed of light. If the speed of light > varies, interatomic spacing will vary in proportion. Which is way local lightspeed anisotropy will probably be invisible locally. > So if experimenters attempt to use normal equipment to directly detect > variations of speed of light in a vacuum, they should always get a > null result, because their equipment will expand and contract in > proportion. > > But here is my hypothesis (not necessarily correct) about detection of > lightspeed anisotropy by analysing spacecraft earth flyby doppler > radar results. > > The speeds of the spacecraft are not controlled by any kind of > equipment with interatomic spacing, but rather by the laws of > Newtonian dynamics. What's needed is a careful detailed analysis, rather than broad strokes. |