From:
c.h.thompson <c.h.thompson@newscientist.net>
To: Tom Van
Flandern <tomvf@metaresearch.org>
Cc: GravitationalAnomalies@yahoogroups.com;
forcefieldpropulsionphysics@egroups.com
and others
Subject:
Re: Cosmological drag?
Date:
Friday, May 18, 2001 8:58 PM
Dear Tom
I've been
doing some hard thinking today, possibly related to a subject that
Henry
Lindner and I were discussing a few months ago when you had to go off
on some
other expedition.
There are
several points, and I'm not sure where to start. The thing is
that
"forces", especially "pull forces", may be quite unlike
light. Light
itself may
have ambiguities: it may exhibit aberration when detected in one
way, and
not when its direction is assessed by a different method. What
with one
thing and another, there is no experimental evidence that does not
need to be
re-assessed!
First,
let's consider whether or not it is reasonable to contemplate the
idea that
the motion of the Earth in the Sun's gravitational field could
cause a
FORWARDS acceleration. I say NO! Think of motion of an aircraft in
the Earth's
gravitational field. Is there any
remote possibility that its
motion
might cause gravity to have a forwards component, thus tending to
suck the
aircraft along? If we want an example
with higher speeds, think of
a proton in
a particle accelerator. Is this sucked
along by gravity? No,
quite the
reverse: its momentum appears to INCREASE as its speed increases,
so that the
rate of acceleration for the same applied force decreases.
In other
words, if there is any aberration then it produces a RETARDING
force, not
an acceleration!
In other
words, the pull of gravity MUST be regarded as a push from the rest
of space,
and if there is aberration this push comes from slightly ahead!
Thus there
is no possibility of the mere fact that the Earth is in motion
relative to
the Sun causing an accelerating force to appear, though my
original
idea still stands. The fact that the
Sun itself moves a little
WILL cause
the direction of gravity to be towards the retarded position,
which will
on average cause a little acceleration.
But will
there be aberration at all?
When we
detect light, it is evident that we use systems that are sensitive
to
aberration, but are ALL systems sensitive?
If you could detect the
orientation
of the wave front, would this show the same aberration?
Think of a
large cloud emitting rain, but emitting it in neat periodic
bursts,
vertically downwards. Think of yourself
in an open car, travelling
fairly
fast. The rain will hit you from the
front, aberrated as per text
books. The waves of rain, though, will form fronts
that remain horizontal.
This can be
seen from the fact that the waves will wet front and back and
you in the
middle all at the same time.
To return
to gravity:
(a) I think
it is a balance of push and pull forces, all carried in the
aether,
probably at speed c.
(b)
Possibly when we react to gravity it is the direction of the wave fronts
that
matter, so that there is NO aberration.
I have had
one other bright idea today, and had better put it in writing
before I
forget: re possible aether drag. I
gather that Pioneer spacecraft
are not
behaving quite according to plan, and one possible explanation is
that they
suffer from a tiny aether drag force.
The planets, on the other
hand, do
not seem to experience any such force.
Suppose the
planets are shielded by their magnetospheres from the waves that
would cause
drag? In my phi-wave theory (see web
site), the waves are
basically
any arrangement of phi-waves and they are blue-shifted ahead of
any moving
body. If a blue-shifted wave hits a
suitable medium it can be
converted
into electrons instead of causing a push.
This may sound
far-fetched,
but I think I can find experimental evidence to support the
general
idea.
I'm sorry I
haven't answered your specific points, but I feel that the above
upsets the
whole applecart!
Re Miller's
work, I remain to be convinced by the GPS experiment (I have
just read
Wolf, Peter and Gérard Petit, "Satellite test of special
relativity
using the global positioning system", Physical Review A 56, 4405
(1997)). Despite all their care, it is possible that
adjustments made
cancelled
the effects they were looking for. I
wonder, incidentally, why
they were
looking mainly for the effect of the Earth's orbital motion and
not the
greater motion approximately orthogonal to this? Whilst on the
subject,
the remark I made above about what happens at the magnetosphere may
also be
relevant to Miller's observations: it may explain why the drift he
detected
was more than an order of magnitude smaller than expected.
Caroline
c.h.thompson@newscientist.net
http://www.aber.ac.uk/~cat
Original
message, TVF to list, 18:05:01:
> This
appears to be an ad hoc list that has drafted
> a
number of involuntary recipients. I trust we will
> all
respect the wishes of anyone who asks to be
> left
off. That will shortly include me, because I am
> facing
way too many short term deadlines and a
> major
expedition to continue for more than a
> round
or two.
>
>
Caroline Thompson writes:
>
> > I
think the hypothesis of cosmological drag is very
> >
much more "natural" than the assumption of an almost
> >
infinite speed to gravity.
>
>
Hypothetical cosmological drag forces are a function of the
> mass
(or at least the cross-sectional area) of the orbiting
> body,
whereas acceleration due to propagation delay is not.
> There
is therefore no possibility of such forces
>
"canceling".
>
> The
speed of gravity is experimentally determined to be
> very
much faster than light, but is still infinitely far
> from
being "almost infinite". A very fast speed for
>
gravitation raises eyebrows only for those who accept the
> Big
Bang's finite universe as a reasonable model of reality.
> Given
all the evidence against the Big Bang, including
>
evidence that the universe is not even expanding (see
>
<metaresearch.org>, "Cosmology" tab), I do not share such an
>
opinion. And in the most reasonable alternative, an infinite
>
universe, a high speed for gravity does not stretch
>
plausibility in the least.
>
> >
As I see it, Tom Van Flandern made a couple of
> >
mistakes (copied from others?) in his treatment of
> >
the solar system. I have not checked properly
> >
but suspect that he used the assumption of Special
> >
Relativity that implies that the aberration due to the
> >
relative motion of the Sun and Earth is the one
> >
expected if the Sun really did move across the sky
> >
at its apparent speed.
>
> IMO,
special relativity is now falsified in favor of
>
Lorentzian relativity. See "The speed of gravity - Repeal of
> the
speed limit", preprint at <http://metaresearch.org>,
>
"cosmology" tab, "gravity" sub-tab. See also "What the
> Global
Positioning System tells us about relativity", in
>
"Open Questions in Relativistic Physics", F. Selleri, ed.,
>
Apeiron, Montreal, pp. 81-90 (1998); also available at
>
<http://metaresearch.org>, "cosmology" tab, "gravity"
>
sub-tab. The Lorentzian preferred frame can be identified
> with
the local gravity field for every experiment to date.
>
> The
"aberration" of the Sun as seen from Earth is
>
proportional to the propagation delay of light (or gravity,
> or
arrows, or anything) traveling from Sun to Earth.
>
Aberration in radians is just the ratio of Earth's orbital
> speed
to the speed of propagation of light (or gravity, or
>
arrows, etc.). As such, it is a theory-independent quantity.
> So the
above "suspicion" is not possible without redefining
> the
meaning of the words used.
>
> The
concept of aberration most definitely requires no
>
assumption that the Sun is moving. And only four of the
> eight
experiments setting faster-than-light bounds on the
> speed
of gravity have anything to do with aberration anyway.
>
> >
This does not allow for the existence of a preferred
> frame.
>
>
Because aberration is just geometry, it is theory
>
independent, and the claim just quoted is false. So it is
>
irrelevant here to note that, IMO, observations do support
>
preferred-frame models over SR's "all inertial frames are
>
equivalent". So I would hardly fail to allow for that if it
> did
matter. But it doesn't.
>
> >
Anyway, the result is that the only aberration that
> >
need be taken into account is the small one due to
> >
the Sun's real motion.
>
> Only
Earth's orbital motion relative to the Sun matters for
> the
aberration we observe. Or else, what exactly does cause
> the
large aberration of the Sun's light that we so easily
>
observe?
>
> > I
see no problem in assuming that this small
> >
forwards component to gravity can be balanced
> >
by a small cosmological drag.
>
> Again,
one depends on the mass of the Earth and the other
> does
not. Moreover, the motion of the Sun around the solar
> system
barycenter is large enough to produce observable
>
aberration, but not large enough to produce observable
>
cosmological drag. Those two effects therefore cannot
>
cancel, whatever the motion of the Sun relative to the
>
"aether". The wish expressed in the above statement
>
therefore cannot be fulfilled.
>
> >
There is no knowing how small, as we don't know
> >
if the aether is moving. It could be
tending to circle
> >
the Sun.
>
> If the
aether circles with the planets, there would be no
> drag
on those planets. But we observe aberration. Also, what
> about
asteroids on highly elliptical orbits that show
>
aberration but no drag? There is no way to make this work.
>
> >
Tom produces some other arguments in favour of an
> >
infinite speed. The one I have thought
about a little
> >
is the one about timing of optical and gravitational
> >
eclipses. I belong to the Gravitational Anomalies
> > egroup,
and within this group information
> >
circulating suggests that there is great uncertainty.
> >
We do not know how to define the gravitational
> >
maximum unambiguously.
>
> We
have a complete analytic theory for the orbital motions
> of
Earth, Moon, and planets. It is easy to remove the small
>
effects of the planets and other minor perturbations, and to
> arrive
at a pure test of gravitational alignment of the same
> type
that is used in the development of those analytical
>
theories. I gave some details of that development in my
>
original "speed of gravity" paper.
>
> In
reality, we can calculate the time of gravitational
>
maximum to within a small fraction of a second, but observe
> the
time of maximum alignment to within +/- 2 seconds. That
> is
still good enough for a 20 sigma experiment that the
> speed
of gravity must exceed the speed of light.
>
> >
The main argument I have against an infinite
> >
speed, though, is simply that I believe ALL
> >
forces to be essentially the same. We
have an
> >
aether and only one kind of wave propagates in it.
> >
Different patterns built of a basic wave
> >
carry all forces, all radiation, all information, which
> >
are merely different intensities and degrees of
> >
organisation of the same general phenomenon.
>
> I
continue to think that the greatest challenge we all face
> is to
subordinate our most strongly held beliefs to
>
experimental and observational evidence. In my book "Dark
>
Matter, Missing Planets and New Comets", I gave some reasons
> why
the gravitational medium and the light-carrying medium
> cannot
possibly be one and the same medium.
>
>
Consider that sound waves travel through air (not the
>
co-located aether) because the "light-carrying" aether must
>
consist of much, much tinier entities than air molecules.
>
Analogously, the gravitational medium no doubt co-exists
> with
the optical one, but consists of much, much tinier and
> faster
entities. That is a statement based on experimental
> bounds
for the behavior of the respective phenomena, not on
> faith
or belief about how the universe must be.
>
> In a
nutshell, the problem Caroline must face is that, if a
>
graviton, a photon, and an arrow start out from the Sun at
> the
same instant, heading toward the Earth's orbit along
> identical
paths, and traveling with identical speeds, then
> they
must all arrive simultaneously. That means identical
>
propagation delays (e.g., 500 seconds for light), and
>
therefore identical aberration (ratio of Earth speed to
>
propagation speed). Conversely, the fact that the arrow's
>
observed aberration will be much larger than the photon's
>
implies that the arrow's propagation speed must be much
>
smaller than the photon's. (Nothing else can vary in this
> simple
example.)
>
> And
finally, the fact that gravity's aberration is much
>
smaller than a photon's implies that gravity propagates much
> faster
than photons -- again because there is nothing else
> in the
example that can vary to explain the difference in
>
observed behavior for entities starting out together and
>
traveling the same path, except their respective speeds.
>
> >
If the speed were indeed infinite, one would
> >
sacrifice causality. Is this
acceptable?
>
> Here
we have a point where we are in complete agreement.
>
Infinite speed is not acceptable because it would violate
>
causality. But surely we are not going to repeat the mistake
> made
so many times before when something newly measured is
>
"unimaginably large"? When the first stellar parallax was
> measured,
it implied that the nearest stars were
>
"unimaginably far". When Galileo and his assistant on a
>
mountain 26 miles away exchanged light signals, and they
>
appeared to arrive instantly, that implied that the speed of
> light
must be "unimaginably fast". The universe is
>
"unimaginably huge", and the number of stars in it
>
"unimaginably numerous". Nonetheless, in each case, it was
> the
humans who had to recalibrate their imaginations because
> nature
knew no such bounds.
>
> I
suggest that gravity may at first appear "unimaginably
>
fast", but only until we recalibrate again.
>
> >
Incidentally, are other members of this list aware of
> >
the work of Dayton Miller? This, to my
mind,
> >
established the existence of an aether.
>
> Miller's
results are contradicted by Global Positioning
> System
results that have 1000 times greater precision. (See
> my GPS
paper cited above.) Miller very likely was the victim
> of an
atmospheric pressure effect, for which he had no
>
controls. I'm sure the man would prefer if we let him rest
> in
peace. Best wishes. -|Tom|-
>