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:
Saturday, May 19, 2001 11:44 PM
Dear Tom
> >
The thing is that "forces", especially "pull forces",
> >
may be quite unlike light.
I've done
more thinking, and stand by this. Do
have another look at my car
and rain
idea.
BTW, the
car is a 2-D one: I'm only interested in what happens to the top
surface,
which is flat.
First, the
original idea, with rain falling in definite waves. It is
falling
vertically. Each wave hits the whole
ground and the car all at
once,
regardless of how fast the car is travelling.
This is what I mean by
the
wavefronts remaining horizontal, unaffected by speed, unaffected by
aberration. But, of course, the individual drops of rain
arrive at an angle
relative to
the car. They appear to have come from
a point somewhere
ahead.
Incidentally,
though the calculation for the direction in which a projectile
needs to be
aimed and "aberration" are the same, they are logically
different.
To return
to the car. Forget now about the rain
coming in waves. Let it
simply rain
cats and dogs, but let's now erect a gigantic umbrella over part
of our
route. We suddenly drive into a dry
zone. What do we see? Do the
walls of
rain to front and rear look vertical or sloping? Answer: vertical!
We look up
and see the umbrella in its true position.
There is now no rain
in the
problem, so no speed to enter into our aberration formula even if we
thought
there should be some!
This is
very relevant to the matter of whether gravity could ever cause
forwards
acceleration. I'm afraid your argument
doesn't work: the "photons"
that are
not there are like the effect of the umbrella.
The "shadow" of the
sun comes
from it true position, not the aberrated one.
Go back to the car
and rain
model if you're not sure -- or let me know if I'm really wrong, as
it's
getting late ...
> How
can it be possible for something that propagates to
> fail
to exhibit aberration?
The rain
falls vertically, but the drops come from ahead, so there is a
discrepancy
between the orientation of the wave front and the direction of
impact. I can imagine situations in which this leads
to experimental
ambiguities
with light. For instance we have a
coherent laser beam with
good
lateral coherence, falling on a moving surface. Although the radiation
pressure is
increased because the speed of arrival is increased, the
frequency
should remain the same (?) Hmm ...
> As for
forces being different from light in regard to
>
aberration, experiments say otherwise. The radiation
>
pressure force of sunlight (as it affects the orbits of
>
balloon satellites of the Earth, for example) has the same
>
aberration as the observed photons themselves. But how could
> it be
otherwise? The photons carry the force.
Yes, but I
argue that the absent photons that represent gravity don't get
aberrated.
> ...
failing to counter a push is the
>
equivalent of a pull,
Not quite,
not when it comes to aberration! Suppose
the car received rain
from both
above and below, and think now about what happens as it drives
into the
half-dry area under the umbrella. The
rain from below produced a
retarding
force, but there is now no force at all from above.
> Or
not. Allow me to prove that the waves
> suffer
aberration too, and therefore do not wet
> the
whole car equally. ...
Sorry. I should have specified that this was a 2-D
car!
> > 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.
>
>
Neither do moons, comets, asteroids, or many spacecraft
> experience
any such force. Only four spacecraft, two inside
> or
near Jupiter's orbit and two far from the Sun, all having
> waste
heat dump problems, show this so-called "anomaly".
You could
be right, Tom. I concede this point.
> >
I'm sorry I haven't answered your specific points,
> >
but I feel that the above upsets the whole applecart!
>
>
However, as you see, nothing was upset.
I think it
was, ruling out any argument concerned with aberration.
> >
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.
>
> If one
experiment is ambiguous and another is not,
> you
are not free to cite just the ambiguous one to
> claim
that the result is ambiguous.
I'm sorry,
Tom. I did not know about your own
analysis. Where can I find
details?
> The
analysis by Alley and myself used two-way Air
> Force
monitor station data with atomic clocks at both
> ends,
not GPS receiver data (where the only clocks
> are
aboard the satellites). Our data shows without
>
ambiguity that the one-way transit speed of signals
> from
ground to satellite, and also from satellite to
>
ground, for all satellites and all ground stations at
> all
times of day and seasons of the year, is the same
> to
within 12 meters/second, which is 1000
> times
better accuracy than the effect Miller thought
> he saw
in relatively crude experiments of 70 years ago.
[skip]
> I
understand the general concern about overlooked ways to
> hide a
signal. But this experiment is as sharp and clean as
> one
could hope to devise. Distance traveled divided by time
>
interval elapsed during travel equals speed of travel. Where
> is the
wiggle room in that? -|Tom|-
It may be
as you say, but it is hard to believe that you know the distance
that
accurately. If you really do know times
for both directions
independently
then this may compensate, but I cannot tell without details.