Talk:Aether drag hypothesis

message: SR cannot easily be 'wrong', being a theorem in differential geometry. loxley 08:38, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, but it seems both SR AND Ether Drag may be possible, rather like wave particle duality but with a physical explanation. See the DFM.  In any case I've added a reference tag, some much needed reference citations and links.Docjudith (talk) 12:48, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  I'm not sure that it's geometrically possible to support both light-dragging effects and Lorentz/Minkowski. Minkowski spacetime depends critically on the assumption that spacetime (as defined by the geometry of lightbeams) is flat and that its properties remain totally unaffected when we throw masses through the region at arbitrarily-high fractions of the speed of light. Light-dragging (as demonstrated by Fizeau, and others since) shows that there is a physical, identifiable distortion of lightbeam geometry in the proximity of moving clusters of particles (water-molecules in the Fizeau experiment). ErkDemon (talk) 14:37, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
replies: text:  As additional data-points we have the fact that general relativity's "relativity of rotation" requires moving masses to have a velocity-dragging component (the receding side of a star pulls more strongly than the approaching side), and that the relativity of acceleration requires accelerated bodies to exert a dragging effect on nearby masses (Einstein 1921). Einstein's acceleration-dragging effect represents an intrinsic curvature of spacetime, which cannot exist unless there is also an underlying velocity-dependent dragging effect. Since acceleration can be "mocked up" using multiple velocity stages, if the relative velocity of masses is inherently a flat-spacetime problem (SR description), then an accelerated body must mark out a curved path in flat spacetime. But GR requires it to mark out a path in intrinsically curved spacetime, so Einstein's 1921 result demonstrates that if general relativity is correct, special relativity must have the wrong geometry, and therefore also the wrong equations. ErkDemon (talk) 14:37, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

text: General relativity doesn't mesh geometrically with special relativity. We can have one or the other, but we can't have both (at least, not as exact solutions). ErkDemon (talk) 14:37, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

text:  A further data-point is that under GR, a moving mass must drag light due to gravitomagnetism, and the gravitomagnetic dragging effect must be total for a moving horizon - this is represented in spacetime diagrams by drawing in little Minkowski light-cones, and showing them being increasingly tipped over in the vicinity of a rotating or moving black hole. If we treat fundamental massed particles as little pointlike masses enclosed by horizons, and we identify the effective particle interaction surface with the horizon surface, then those particles ought to drag light totally when they move. ErkDemon (talk) 14:37, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Flat spacetime as the absence of physics? 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Airey is supposed to have proved that the moving Earth's influence does not drag light.
However, according to the extinction theorem (which seems to be tailored to fit known phenomena), 
 The characteristic "extinction length" of a medium is the distance after which the original wave can be said to have been completely replaced. For visible light, traveling in air at sea level, this distance is approximately 1 mm.
This suggests that ... even ignoring gravitational dragging and aether dragging and whatnot ... light approaching Airey's telescope ought to have been completely dragged along with the Earth, if only because of the dragging effect of the Earth's surrounding envelope of atmosphere! So how did he manage to prove the absence of dragging? I'm assuming that he didn't build an airtight wall around his telescope 100km high and and pump out all the air! This all seems a bit dubious. ErkDemon (talk) 15:25, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: Problems with Airey's disproof?