Caroline H Thompson
Updated 18:12: 05
My own ideas:
The aether is staging a come-back! (Do have a look at my Forgotten History file for justification.) My December 2000 paper, Phi-waves and forces, introducing my "Phi-Wave Aether (PWA)" theory, is now (December 2005) complemented by an essay submitted to Galilean Elecatrodynamics (see full ref in my bibliography file). My idea on the nature of forces is that they are all based on the same mechanism: "wave centres" drift towards the position in which they can most efficiently resonate with "phi-waves".
Earlier essays: Lorentz, Relativity and the Propagation of E-M Waves gives my ideas of about 1994. I have since learned more about the experimental evidence for "aether drag" - enough to know that the situation is not clear-cut. My ideas on light of February, 1999 can be found in The Nature of Light . The latter has received some criticism on the grounds that there is no need to reject Maxwell theory. I am not sure how far I am rejecting it, but I do know that I think Maxwell's ideas on the propagation of light in "open space" were unnecessarily complicated.
My aether is simpler than most. It has no need for complicated particles that carry rotation because I (and a growing number of others) think radiation is carried by longitudinal waves. The polarisation we sometimes observe is due to transverse patterns carried by sets of these waves. [See beautiful animations in Gabriel LaFrenière's pages on light.] In fact, I don't have particles at all -- just a continuous medium.
Real progress is (I hope!) being made in discovering its properties. The Wave-Structure-Matter group, with which my ideas have a few points in common, has (January 2004) produced some brilliant analogies for the wave-centre to wave interaction. At one point its members included Ray Tomes (see my People and Places file), though it has now (2005) deteriorated and I no longer recommend it.
James DeMeo continues to come up with novel contributions in the Gravitational Anomalies Yahoo group. Again and again we find the key to progress lies in challenging the supposed "facts". His latest challenge (23 March, 2005) is to suggest that the red/blue shift of the CMBR is not, after all, evidence of our motion through the cosmos but merely just what it looks like: evidence of a temperature variation.
Other People's Models:
If you're prepared to devote serious time to the subject, and realise that what he's talking about is just a model, Steven Rado has worked out the details of a mechanical model based on the kinetic theory of gases. Don't worry, Rado will teach you what this is all about, by means of careful analogies and beautiful pictures. Could this (or rather, a similar presentation of my own PWA model) be how we shall be taught physics in the next century? Even if, as I do, you disagree with his model, there is a lot of good stuff here, analysing the supposed evidence for quantisation and other matters. (December, 2005: The group discussing Rado's work is still going strong.)
Another place where you can find an idea that I think is related to some of Rado's - that of gravity as a pressure effect - is Stan Byers' paper on Radiant Pressure.
The Status of Einstein's theories, Quantum Theory and the Big Bang:
Clarence Dulaney dulaneyc@flash.net has some bold criticisms of the "experimental evidence". So much of accepted theory is just historical accident! If phenomena had been discovered in a different order, a different interpretation would have been made. I am putting his introductory paper here. He is happy to send you more, though I fear I can't recommend his ideas on spin or his neutrino-based atom.
A glance at Harold Aspden's lectures tells us very clearly that there is no scientific justification for the dominant position of Einstein's theories of relativity. Of course I don't agree with quite everything, but the point is that alternative ideas are just as likely to be true as the official ones. As with my experience of quantum optics, experimental evidence is weak to say the least!
For more on relativity and on the parlous state of science, including some straight talking about how journals such as Physical Review Letters operate in practice (c.f. my "suppression" document above!), Brian Wallace (sadly now dead) has a book available: The Farce of Physics. I haven't had time to look at the rest of this site.
I'm not sure about the content of Eric Baird's site, but it can't be denied that he has put a lot of work into it, including translating some of Einstein's writing, and his analogies are often fun! My doubts are just that he seems more prepared than I am to try and live with "accepted theory". He perhaps does not appreciate, for example, the impossibility of making QT into a "hidden variable" theory, which, to my mind, condemns it out of hand.
If it's the Big Bang you're interested in (or rather, the non-existence of) you could start here, with Bill Mitchell's paper, or his book, The Cult of the Big Bang, at the amazon.com site, or read a New York Times article of 1998 that roundly condemned the idea. Why it has not yet died I do not know, since evidence of phenomena that it finds it hard to explain are reported every few weeks. For instance, New Scientist had an article on January 17, 2004 (page 14, Stephen Battersby) entitled “Why galaxy cluster is too grown-up for early universe”. Theory had predicted that early galaxies should be spread out evenly. They don't seem to be. The same kind of clustering occurs as far out as we can see.
If Special Relativity is your pet hate, you could do worse than go to the NPA (Natural Philosophy Alliance) site. I belong to this (had a really exciting week at their conference, June 2000), but must say that I do not have much interest in SR: I think it's wrong, but that's all there is to say about it! It's just maths. I'm much more interested in constructive ideas about what "force" and "charge" and "mass" really "are" - and so are some of the other members. David Bergman, for instance, who has created "Common Sense Science". I think he is placing a little too much confidence in Charles Lucas' ring model of the electron (which presupposes that the electron really can exist on its own!), and I'd like to see him going a little deeper, rather than starting from force and charge, but basically he's got the right feeling for things such as inertia.
For more links, see my file on interesting people with whom I have corresponded and relevant sites.