Christos: I took a look. Einstein is said to have disproved the existence of the aether when he did special relativity, but when he did general relativity, he reintroduced it in a different form. Check out his 1920 Leyden Address. The title of it is Ether and the theory of general relativity. Here's a snippet: "Recapitulating, we may say that according to the general theory of relativity space is endowed with physical qualities; in this sense, therefore, there exists an ether. " Also see wikipedia. Note this comment by Robert B Loughlin: "It is ironic that Einstein's most creative work, the general theory of relativity, should boil down to conceptualizing space as a medium when his original premise [in special relativity] was that no such medium existed" Relativity isn't wrong, Christos. Just misunderstood.
This is often thrown out as an interpretation of Einstein's 1905 paper, but it is only an interpretation. All Einstein really did when he introduced special relativity, is demonstrate that, "the ether", is not necessisary to explain experience. Einstein reference the ether only twice in the 1905 paper. "...unsuccessful attempts to discover any motion of the earth relatively to the "light medium,'' and "The introduction of a "luminiferous ether'' will prove to be superfluous in as much as the view here to be developed will not require an "absolutely stationary space'' provided with special properties, ...". We can be reasonably certain that the luminiferous ether, as a fixed Newtonian medium, does not exist, but that was not the purpose or intent of Einstein's work. Instead it is the result of an accumulation of observation, experiment and experience, over the last 100 years. Keep in mind that we are talking here about an ether fixed in space, in a way consistent with a Newtonian world view. I am not sure that there is any evidence that precludes the existence of a relativistic ether, associated with space or even within space.., though the concept is not entirely consistent with much of currently accepted theory.
Hi everyone. The trouble with 'reading' Einstein or any other quotes is that, being only human, the 'readers' bring their own particular interpretation according to their perspective (orthodox or otherwise) on the subject of the quotations. For example, OnlyMe, I interpret your quoted Einsteinian comments/excerpts somewhat differently than the orthodox way: 1. "...unsuccessful attempts to discover any motion of the earth relatively to the "light medium,'' and Perhaps it is because the 'experiments' are based on incorrect assumptions to begin with when DESIGNING and ANALYSING the observational construct/results? In other words, the limited/biased assumptions built into the experimental construct is SELF-SELECTING for the 'negative result'? So naturally "unsuccessful attempts to discover" may have BEEN unsuccessful due to wrong experimental assumptions/designs which incorrectly believed that such an entity would BE discoverable by the method/analysis used if that entity WAS there? Like looking for an atom with an astronomical telescope. Wrong observational construct for the 'target' observable being sought. Then there is..... 2. "The introduction of a "luminiferous ether'' will prove to be superfluous in as much as the view here to be developed will not require an "absolutely stationary space'' provided with special properties, ...". Perhaps he is just saying that the 'SR view' is BY DESIGN MUTE EITHER WAY on the 'luminiferous aether'? That is, it is NOT meant to make any claim either way about such a thing, because the SR view is purely a BARE BONES ABSTRACTION from the OVERALL 'GR view', and that's ALL it is? Just like someone interested only in the SKELETAL view of the human body does not pretend to make any claim either way about the OVERAL 'FLESH and bone view'? Or like someone looking at a Picasso in the purely 'geometric view' and saying nothing about the OVERALL 'geometric PLUS COLOUR/SHADES and CANVAS TEXTURE view' of the painting? See? We must ALL be on our 'reading bias' guard whenever we 'accept' some particular interpretation of quotes from ANYBODY, including Einstein, when we are reviewing the meaning of what is being done or said about the subject matter/concepts under discussion now in the light of further discoveries which are more and more finding that spacetime is not just a 'geometric abstraction', but a symbolic name for A REAL ENERGY-SPACE context form where and back to where all phenomena arise, interact/evolve and eventually subside depending on the local dynamics of a global system which INCLUDES the OVERALL background that the early scientists suspected existed but could not YET 'identify empirically' then. That's all I want to comment on at this time, guys. Carry on and enjoy your discussion, everyone. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
The quotes I included were direct from Einstein's 1905 paper (English translation). They were included only to demonstrate that, in including them in the paper Einstein was making no direct statement about the ether, other than experience could be explained without, relying on its existence. It sounds like you are suggesting that the Michaleson-Morley experiments were poorly designed. I think that is naive. The experiments have been repeated many times and with some variations and have always returned null results. Keep in mind that these experiements were designed to detect an ether which is fixed in space in a ridged Newtonian way. They detected no motion of the earth relative to the ether....! That is what they were designed to do and the results have been confirmed many times over. I think the validity and null results have been shown over time to accurately describe, that portion of experience they were designed to examine. A lot of words to say nothing! What part of, "The introduction of a "luminiferous ether'' will prove to be superfluous", (unnecessary). Do you not understand? Second saying that SR is an abstraction of the overall GR view is misplaced. SR predated GR by near 10 years. Further just think about the names, "the special theory of relativiy" and "the general theory of relativity". The names specifically identify these theories as special and general. You would be well served to take your own advice. Re-read and think before drawing your own biased conclusions.
I am always uneasy when you start telling people what physicists supposedly did or didn't do or what the prevailing views supposedly are. This is because you don't seem to get your information 'from the horse's mouth' but rather through people summaries of the science. For example, SR does not disprove an aether, let's be very clear about that. It rather, as has been said, shows you can explain the relevant phenomena without needing an aether. You cannot disprove such a thing, no matter how much you experiment because no amount of experiments can prove it's impossible to construct some model which is aether based and explains the experiments. All 'Model X disproves model Y' statements are implicitly dependent on some assumptions. Such assumptions are often not discussed in pop science summaries. Physics is awash with 'no go theorems'. They are 'proofs' that it is impossible to explain something using some model or concept. However, all papers proving no go theorems will state the assumptions they start with. For example, one of the most famous no go theorems of theoretical physics is the Coleman-Mandula theorem about symmetries of quantum field theories, which was the motivation for people looking into supersymmetry. It states you cannot non-trivially mix the Lorentz symmetries of the field theory's space-time with the gauge symmetries of the (unsurprisingly) gauge fields using Lie algebras (which form the mathematical structures associated to such symmetries). However, one of the assumptions of the theorem is that you're considering Lie algebras. Supersymmetry is a graded Lie algebra, a fundamentally different construct, and thus it 'evades' the theorem. Similarly, any local Lorentz-covariant quantum theory will have CPT symmetry by the CPT theorem. If a theory isn't Lorentz covariant the CPT theorem doesn't apply, so it wouldn't apply to a model which doesn't have Lorentz symmetry. If the theory isn't local then it wouldn't apply either. So while some literature might talk about the CPT theorem as 'fact' it is contingent upon the assumptions of the theorem, as with any logical deduction. This is a subtly which competent physicists are well aware of and which may not be said explicitly in literature but is implicit and something one physicist will assume a fellow physicist is aware of. This is something you have missed in your superficial skimming of the literature, yet another example of how your failure to go 'direct to the source' is hindering your understanding of mainstream physics on even a qualitative level! For these reasons special relativity cannot disprove an aether. In fact we have an explicit example of this because Lorentz aether theory has the same predictions as special relativity in its domain of applicability. This is an example of why explaining phenomena using one model doesn't preclude explanations of a different sort from another model. Aether is not considered of interest because it requires additional assumptions, thus falling foul of Occam's Razor, it doesn't extend to a more general gravitational model, unlike special relativity, and no one has presented any additional experimental evidence to believe an aether exists, hence Occam's razor again. Special relativity, when it was published, 'killed' aether models not by disproving them, it didn't, but rather providing a more mathematically structured, extendible model which used the least assumptions. Until someone can provide an aether model which can do all that relativity (special and general) can do with similar levels of accuracy and similarly low numbers of assumptions aether is 'intellectually dead' to the physics community at large, not as you claim 'disproven'. Just as Dirac thought an aether exists. However, that was in an age of very sparse experimental data compared to today and very little was understand about the nature of general relativity, even by Einstein. Einstein gave the foundations of general relativity but it was others which explored the implications and discovered black hole solutions, possible compact dimensions, unification with classical electromagnetism, inflationary universe models and how to put quantum field theory into a general space-time. As such Einstein really knew very little about what he'd helped create. Besides, I'm sure you wouldn't accept it if one of us quoted a famous physicist as our only means of presenting our case, as it would be an argument from authority and quote mining. You can always find a quote by some at least vaguely well known physicist/mathematician who will agree with whatever case you wish to make. Newton thought gravity travelled instantaneously, Einstein didn't. Newton thought the Bible was full of prophetic codes, pretty much no one else in physics did/does. Penrose thinks our minds are beyond the ability of any Turing machine to describe, others do not. Rather than simply saying "Professor A says something which aligns with my views" and someone else saying "But Professor B says the opposite!" it's important to consider the specific details of why they said those things, to discuss the reasons not the conclusions. That's the way to understand and discuss such things and it's why it's important to understand the quantitative details of physics, not just superficial qualitative stuff. 'May' is not 'must'. Personally I don't view GR as saying qualitative stuff much beyond what SR says qualitatively, given the fact the qualitative things SR has to say about space-time from a geometric point of view are basically the same as GR. But hey, I'm sure my opinion is less worthy than Einstein's or someone on Wikipedia, let's just listen to them and not bother to form opinions of our own by developing working understanding of what we're talking about, right? And you, someone with such poor mathematics skills you are functionally innumerate and couldn't even get onto a physics university course, never mind work your way through to the GR course and blitz it, are the person who understands GR with some insight most do not have? You are only able to 'understand' GR by reading other people's wordy explanations, relying on the metaphors and analogies they make in order to convert abstract heavily mathematical formalisms into something close to being within your qualitative grasp. You're unable to explore the specifics of what GR says, to see the structures and logical deductions for yourself, to do them for yourself, so you're hardly in a position to be claiming you understand GR with some kind of insight beyond people who do. This is the same as your claims about understanding electromagnetism better than Dirac and being a 'world expert' in it. It's easy to make superficial qualitative assertions, it's another thing to show they are actually implications of the models by doing the details, that they lead to statements about the real world which can be investigated. As yet you have failed to show any of your 'understanding' in any area of physics, including areas you believe yourself worthy of 4 Nobel Prizes, can say anything quantitative at all, never mind provide derivations of such quantitative conclusions. Even string theory has you beat on that front!
HI OnlyMe. First, please accept my apologies if it seemed I was criticizing you in any way by using yourquoted examples in my general urging for interpretive caution of anything from anybody. No direct criticism of your post/take intended. Yes, that is what I also meant to AGREE with you on that interpretation: that the statement is MUTE on whether there is or is not an aether. I merely wanted to help stress that MUTE stance rather than the other possible interpretations put on it by some. Again, I am agreeing with your take there; which is why it is then wrong for some people to read it as somehow 'ruling out' an aether. Sorry if what I posted came across in any other way. Agreed again. That is why I pointed out that initial/design assumptions will produce different 'results' if these assumptions/designs differ drastically/fundamentally. The point I also wished to make was that until we can have such a fundamentally different way of 'looking' at the matter, we are by default constrained to work with the same current assumptions and observational designs based on them, such that these may be, like I said, self-selecting and limited for the purpose of detecting ANY aether entity at all. Only different approaches can 'compare' the observation/result to definitively say yay or nay. This is what the current investigations at LHC and theoretical review of past assumptions is intended to assist us in checking orthodoxy beyond the same michelson-morley etc experimental constructs/assumptions. That's all I meant there. "...that portion of the experience they were designed to examine." That bit is replete with its own assumptions/perspectives. This is the kind of thing I wished to caution about. Both the 'experience' and the 'designs' which were 'intended' to 'examine' etc etc may not in actual fact BE what is happening in such attempts as made/designed/intended. If that possibility exists, then the 'results' and the 'experience' etc they purport to 'accurately describe' may not actually be as interpreted from those approaches/experiments. It may be that the exercises are missing the target one way or the other, so that we have yet to actually have a way of saying anything about any aether of any type one way or the other. In other words, the experiments as designed/executed to date are self-determining and producing what the assumptions which went into the design/execution/analysis are self-constrained to produce....ie, 'null' detection results/analysis. Exactly. Agreed. That is because SR is MUTE BY DESIGN on whether or not an aether of any king exists or not. I stress that interpretation rather than the usual interpretation (not by you but by some others) that SR somehow 'proves' that no aether exists. There is a vast difference in interpretation of the same quoted excerpt. That is all I tried to highlight for those who interpret SR as 'proving' anything either way about aether possibilities. The SR view JUST IGNORES any aether aspects, by reduction to purely relative geometries/symmetries as per its SR construct/mathematics/geometry treat as abstract non-real frames etc to present the abstract view ONLY, irrespective of wider GR view/concepts like possible aether etc as 'space-time'. A 'chicken and egg' type chronology argument is not valid criticism of what I pointed out. Irrepeective of which came first, the actual relationship between them was always that which I pointed out. Just because a 'paint by numbers' picture had the 'numbers' printed onto the canvas first, the FULLER picture when 'painted in over the numbers' with the wider context of colour/shade, boundary limits etc etc, makes the initial 'numbers only' view IN EFFECT a PARTIAL 'abstract view' of the later 'wider' view. That's what I meant. No 'chronology' of abstract/fuller views was invoked for what I meant. My apologies if it came across otherwise. Again, my apologies if it came across as it did. I trust my clarification above shows my agreement with your takes, and removes any misunderstandings I was responsible for that gave you a different impression than intended. Cheers.
Hi AlphaNumeric, Farsight, everyone. Just observing that you (AN) and I agree that SR can prove/say nothing about aether existing or not. As for this from you, AN... ...I and many other scientists (both professional and amateur) are taking note of the LHC/other recent results, and the evolving theories therefrom, which increasingly indicate some fundamental 'energy-space' field (or sets of fields) or whatever that underlies all the Quantum/SR/GR phenomena/theory concepts/descriptions. Any reasonable person, both scientist and educated layman, seems to be coming round to the possibility that there is some/set of aether/fields which in effect would be counterparts of the various 'aethers' suspected/hypothesized back when, as you say AN, neither Dirac, Einstein or anyone else had the information we have now. And that is the point: the information we had (even a few years ago) was insufficient to design and define ways of looking at these aspects. But now, with the LHC and associated recent results/observations of various 'fundamental plasma' states and fields etc etc, it appears that SOMETHING is the common denominator for the phenomena at all levels, irrespective of the quantum/SR/GR views/treatments of these phenomena within the bounds of their theoretical construct. So, I maintain that it is no longer a valid argument to say that Dirac/Einstein et al didn't know what we know now....because what we seem to be knowing now as time goes on, is that what they 'suspected' may actually BE 'there' in some slightly theoretically describable form/action which we might EVENTUALLY design experiments with NEW assumptions than the old theories/experiments had available to them. Those guys were probably on the right track; just the terminology/assumptions wwre what they could have been given what we ARE getting to know now more and more about the underlying 'fabric' as a 'rea' and not just a 'co-ordinate' abstract like 'spacetime' which is a mathematical perspective only? Well, that's all I wanted to observe. Cheers guys, everyone; and do enjoy your discussion of these exciting 'resurrected' aspects which are now 'front line' research/theory subjects/review FOR GOOD REASON, given the relevant LHC etc observations coming thick and fast!
I said "Einstein is said to have disproved the existence of the aether when he did special relativity". I'm not asserting that he did, merely reporting what people say. A couple of years back I heard Jocelyn Bell-Burnell say that to Melvyn Bragg on radio 4. Have a look on google for examples. It isn't. Search arXiv on aether and ether. You know I've got an A-level in maths along with a BSc Honours in Computer Science, and I've tutored schoolkids. I'm not at all innumerate. Do try to resist the urge to launch into diatribes.
