I agree. To paraphrase a line from the movie Notting Hill (1999), "Today's first principles (newspapers) will be lining tomorrow's wastepaper bin."
For example, from what I have read, Newton's 2nd Law (F=ma) can be derived from symmetries. So, I guess that would make Newton's 2nd Law a second...
Agreed. The purpose of my question was not to find anything wrong or contradictory with any theory. I was just trying to show how I thought prediction (muon behavior) and first principles (principle of relativity) play a different role in theory.
Originally, I was trying to ask if quantum...
I probably didn't set up and ask my question properly.
Predictions are important to a theory, and I know that quantum theory is exquisitely accurate and all-encompassing in its predictive power. However, predictions are not the same thing as first principles. If I use Einstein as a model, the...
I was surprised recently to learn that one of the reasons both Newton and Einstein were so revolutionary was that they performed a neat mathematical trick. For Newton, it was the mathematical derivation of Kepler's laws from Newton's laws of gravitation and motion. For Einstein, it was the...
I am not sure what you are asking. However, if I were to design the experiment (which is a scary thought), I would shorten the arms to reduce the effect of the gravitational red-shift. I would think there might be a sweet spot where the effects of the gravitational red-shift would be negligible...
Adding an extra arm was just my naive way to reduce the amount of movement that would be required to complete the experiment. I am guessing that the more movement there is (rotation or re-positioning), the more error that would be introduced that would have to be accounted for. I didn't have any...
Just one more post of thinking out loud, and then I am done.
In thinking about SlowThinker's experiment, I was coming up with ways to make it less Jello-like. If a horizontal arm was added to the top, would it be possible to sync it up with the horizontal arm at the bottom, so they are to a...
In theory, would the experiment SlowThinker proposed several posts back, get around the "Jello" effect and still validate (or invalidate) the calculated difference DrGreg's diagram above illustrates? Not that the experiment would ever get beyond a thought experiment stage.
I did a little searching around and may have gotten lucky. Here is a paper with a bunch of precision tables in it that relate to SME. It is a little old (2010), but better than nothing. The article is titled "Data Tables for Lorentz and CPT Violation" by V. Alan Kosteleck and Neil Russell. Here...
Thanks for trying. The SME (standard model extension) parameters are a little too esoteric for me anyways. I tried to read an introductory paper on SME, but got lost after the first paragraph. The only thing I understand is the difference in velocity. I did some quick math to get a feeling for...
Boy, am I glad I asked my question. I thought it would be a trivial "no" and that you were pulling my leg. I will have to re-read your comments and the others to see if I can understand what is going on.
I hope you don't think that I believe in Earth centered theories. Any planet would do (that is poor attempt at a joke). My expectation would be that a Michelson-Morley experiment rotated on the vertical would not show a differential. I was just wondering if any more precise experiments have been...
Let me get this straight. Are you saying that a Michelson Morley experiment rotated in the vertical plane will show a difference in the speed of light (the interference fringe will move if lasers are used) even in a low precision case?
Quote from SlowThinker:
"1. The precision would be better viewed as 10−12. Also it does not really measure the speed of light. It measures the difference in speed between 2 directions - and finds that they are the same to at least 12 decimal places."
That is what I figured. So if the factor is...