Exploring Aether and Einstein's Theories: Insights and Controversies

[kcodon]

Hi all,

In my last thread on phonons and aether, I was prompted to look up some stuff of modern aether. I will leave it up to you to interpret as i know little of this, but basically, there are a few guys out there there that firstly think Einstein and others are wrong with relativity etc, and secondly believe in the aether. Here are the links...

This is the first site i found, http://www.esotericscience.com/Aether.aspx
Admittedly the name seems a bit uppity, but some of the ideas are interesting. It contains an interesting link about Harold Aspens energy rotation experiment (http://www.aspden.org/papers/bib/1995f.htm ), and this i find very interesting. It lead me to the following site...

http://www.aspden.org/2006index.html
This contains a whole lot of Aspen's papers in pdf form, and he wrote a book "Physics Without Einstein" which there is a summary of down the page..."Physics Without Einstein, A Centenary review". I only read the first few pages, but the ideas on aether and Einstein are very interesting. There's a whole lot more there as well.

I hope people have a quick peek at this information, as it is very controversial and interesting. Have fun and tell me what you think...

Kcodon

 

[malawi_glenn]

I still don't get it? You are a scientist, or?

Here you can find articles written by REAL physicists:

http://prola.aps.org/

Search for aether

 

[kcodon]

Oh no I'm a high school student...whether that loses me any credit for that I'm not sure. Ouch I think that's a low blow for Harold Aspen, but fair enough, they could be considered outside the norm yes. However I'm not worried about the physicists but the physics. I'm interested to know what everyone else thinks about some of these ideas...For example I remember one experiment they did about aether entrainment...if you have another explanation I'd love to hear it. They started a magnet spinning (in form of motor) and it took 300J to get to operating speed. They left it running for a while, and then stopped the magnet spinning. They then started it straight up again...but this time it only took 30J to reach operating speed. There was no noticeable change in temperature of bearings etc...kind of hints aether entrainment.

However I realize that these guys could be just making up the whole thing, and have no physical evidence to back it up, but hey, why not challenge conventional theory? It should at least be considered until proven against beyond reasonable doubt. As for MM experiment, didn't read too much on that but believe Earth entrained aether so should be no noticeable change (there was something about some guy doing it atop a mountain where aether was less entrained and getting different results). However I also remember reading somewhere after the MM experiment, he did same thing with massive lead block attached, to simulate entrainment, and did not discover any aether effects, so proved that wrong. However from the magnetic thing previously, it is possibly entrained by eletric/magnetic fields which would make sense as is aether is said to be composed of charged particles...which is why EM radiation can travel in it obviously.

I'm just open to the idea of aether

 

[malawi_glenn]

Okay than I and the others know more about you and your quest for the aehter ;)

I did not say that the guys you reffered to are not physicists, I just showed you prola, science approved scientists that are connected to a University is publishing their work. I don't know either of all the articels on prola are against the aether, but just wanted to show you were to find "real" stuff.

If the aether consists of charged particles, then we can do millions of experiemnts to confirm it. Also the ones that belives in the aether must come up with a consistennt theory that can be tested and proven, if they have not done that yet. Not just make ad hoc explanations to experiments that show some analomies.

Now this magnet experiment you are telling me about, it would be fun if you had the sources and so on. I mean if the aether can effect a the magnet that much, we should be able to measure the aether all the time. And I don't think that experiments such as Chashmir effect can work together with that aether-electric charge theory of yours.

And Harold Aspen; I found articles written about him on "Plasma and healing". Many of these guys are in this new-spirituality movement, with tarots, astrology and so on. I was in disscussion with one of these a couple of years ago, and he would fight til death to defend aether, and he had not even read phyics in high school..

The aether is disproven to a reasonble level.

 

[Doc Al]

Be aware that we do not allow posting of crank/crackpot links such as "esotericscience" and links to the crank pseudoscientist Aspden. (Check our posting rules, now conveniently linked at the top of every page.)

I realize that it's not easy for the inexperienced to distinguish crackpottery from real science, but listen to malawi_glenn here.

 

[kcodon]

Ok Doc Al I did not realize that Aspen was not a reputable physicist...his work looked less crack pot than others, but sorry for getting into that. Also I did not realize I wasn't allowed to put links on like that.

And to malawi_glenn thanks for the prola link and I tried looking at the site but don't have a subscription or whatever it asked for so couldn't venture down that path. On the search page there was some results for aether, though I could not read into them.

And that's a fairly obvious point about the charged particles isn't it, my mistake I shoul have realized that one lol. Also another excellent point about the magnet experiment, and presumably one would have noticed this before. Hmmm maybe I could try it myself sometime...

I am also in no way saying the aether is a correct theory, however to me it makes more...elegant...sense I suppose than QM, probably because I know so little of QM and relativity. The idea of an aether of "charged particles" (though not convential charge) that light travels through is appealing, though as Einstein put it I believe, gravitational and EM fields can be called the aether. I also know its pretty much 100% guaranteed to be wrong...as how could a hundred years of physics be wrong. Its just interesting...I will endeavor to find someone to talk to this about.

Kcodon

 

[malawi_glenn]

Okay try using this web page a bit

http://www.ub.uu.se/linne/ang/

This give me the acess to Prola.

And I cite Bohr: "Whoever doesent become upset by the quantum theory of physics, as not grasped it"

Quantum physics and Special Relativity contradics our daily life experience, and they best way to describe those things are by mathematics. Our usual language are developed over thousands of years, and is not "made" to describe physics. Mathematics on the other side (calculus) are just approx 300years old, and was developed by people who were also physicists, therefore it is quite natural that mathematics can describe physical phenomena.

The idea "Aether is charged particles (altough not convential charge)" well have you seen a mathematical description of that? What charge are we talking about? If its not EM, weak, Strong, or gravitational, then it should be the fifth fundamental force.

 

[kcodon]

Haha I like that quote of Bohr's. However have you ever wondered if relativity and quantum mechanics is an effective model that simply provides the maths to describe things, not actually the explanation. The maths for the Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle explains it quite well I expect, but it does not explain the "why" behind it all (I'm not sure if that's true but you get the idea)...it is maths to suit an observation, not really to explain it. I don't know if I'm making any sense here, but to be honest I don't think any theory can be physically correct, unless it can be explained both with the math and without...in layman's terms.

As for the aether business of charged particles etc here's the description off a website, that I won't link to as of my new found knowledge of the rules...

"...Aether (a fabric of quantum rotating magnetic field) is equally as important as the matter that resides within it. From here, we can derive a single force that gives birth to the Aether and maintains the existence of subatomic particles [I'll just put in here that there is a lot of mention of angular momentum and how that makes subatomic particles]. The theory implies the Aether has the qualities of reciprocal mass and charge in addition to the dimensions of length and time. Aether is also the source of curved geometry as expressed by Albert Einstein in his General Relativity Theory..."

I've also attached a little image of their perceptions of a quanta of aether...I'm not sure it looks like they just mashed a whole lot of stuff together so they can explain everything.

There is so much information out there on the aether, and much of it claims to be a unified theory and provide explanations for otherwise inexplainable events. However I simply don't have the time at the moment to read through it all and make any sense of it, but when I do I think I'll read it for myself, and then summarize all the key ideas and evidence, and maybe make a thread.

And yes I am also aware that aether could just be another model that may or may not be more effective than QM and GR.

 

[malawi_glenn]

Why do we have to be able to explain the theory in laymans terms?

Also, why do we have to have the answer to all "whys" ? Then I can ask you a question: "Why does the Aether have this apperance?", then you must find a theory that explains why aether looks like it does, and so on, for all eternity.

And I am impressed, some nice sentances and a picture, that does not make any sense.

I tell you this; Quantum Field theory of electrodynamics (QED) can and have been verified by experiments to a precission of the order 10^-10. What have this aether "theoty" contributed with? I tell you: Nothing; I don't think a single University in the world has a faculty that do Aether research. They must put out equations etc that can be verified to a higher precission. Now if this "book" is correct, why is not the whole physic-world exited about it? You can't even buy it at Amazon etc. And from the summaries, all I see is words words words, that is not physics.

And the only instutite that do research is founded by the guys that wrote the book LOL

I tell you the truth: They only want your(our) money, mankind has for very long time searched for TOE, this is not the first attempt done by laymen and not-accepted scientists.

I mean they also have this disscussion about God, that this aether theory provides evidence for the existence of God. My self is Christian, but I know how to separate from physics and metaphysics. Evidence for God should be presented in philosophy, not by science. So there is a hidden agenda behind this "book" and these "scientists".

Now my advice for you is to study real physics, at a good university.

I will not write here more, I have a lot to study now.

 

[Mentz114]

The maths for the Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle explains it quite well I expect, but it does not explain the "why" behind it all (I'm not sure if that's true but you get the idea)...it is maths to suit an observation, not really to explain it. I don't know if I'm making any sense here, but to be honest I don't think any theory can be physically correct, unless it can be explained both with the math and without...in layman's terms.

You are making sense but you're wrong. Physics is not about explaining things in laymans terms. The equations are everything, and must be tested by experimentation. It is easy to come up with a 'theory' that explains everything and predicts nothing.

Unless a theory makes predictions that can be tested experimentally it is not an advance.

[edit]Malawi-glenn - we overlapped. Well said.

 

[Doc Al]

It's time to close this thread. kcodon, please review our posting guidelines (see "rules" link at top of page), especially the section regarding overly speculative posts.

Thanks!