Lightspeed: The Ghostly Aether and the Race to Measure the Speed of LightThe Ghostly Aether and the Race to Measure the Speed of Light
Abstract
This book tells the human story of one of mankind’s greatest intellectual adventures—how we understood that light travels at a finite speed, so that when we look up at the stars we are looking back in time. And how the search for an absolute frame of reference in the universe led inexorably to Einstein’s famous equation E = mc ² for the energy released by nuclear weapons which also powers our sun and the stars. From the ancient Greeks measuring the distance to the Sun, to today’s satellite navigation and Einstein’s theories, the book takes the reader on a gripping historical journey. How Galileo with his telescope discovered the moons of Jupiter and used their eclipses as a global clock, allowing travellers to find their longitude. How Roemer, noticing that the eclipses were sometimes late, used this delay to obtain the first measurement of the speed of light, which takes eight minutes to get to us from the Sun. From the international collaborations to observe the transits of Venus, including Cook’s voyage to Australia, to the extraordinary achievements of Young and Fresnel, whose discoveries eventually taught us that light travels as a wave but arrives as a particle, and the quantum weirdness which follows. In the nineteenth century we find Faraday and Maxwell, struggling to understand how light can propagate through the vacuum of space unless it is filled with a ghostly vortex Aether foam. We follow the brilliantly gifted experimentalists Hertz, discoverer of radio, Michelson with his search for the Aether wind, and Foucault and Fizeau with their spinning mirrors and lightbeams across the rooftops of Paris. The difficulties of sending messages faster than light, using quantum entanglement, and the reality of the quantum world conclude this saga.
... The five vertical dashed lines show the direction of the starlight when we assume that the Aether is stationary relative to the star. This value has a very good agreement with the observed value namely 20.47 [4], [17]. ...
The result of Michelson-Morley observations, namely non-displacement of interference fringes after 90 degrees rotation of interferometer, was explained by various theories like Einstein’s theory, namely the theory of independence of light velocity from observer velocity and source velocity without necessity of the presence of Luminiferous Aether. However, it seems that, apart from these theories, there is another way to explain Michelson-Morley null observations. In this article we propose the theory of "Aether Attached to Earth" or abbreviated AATE. In this theory Luminiferous Aether is a fact and is a transparent continuous medium that has filled the entire universe and is attached and is locked to the center of Earth and whole of it, just like an integrated rigid object, is moved along with Earth in Space. It’s clear, in AATE theory, the velocity of Earth relative to Aether is zero; Therefore, the null displacement of the fringes can be explained. Here you will see that the AATE theory does not experience the failures of previous Aether theories.
... The five vertical dashed lines show the direction of the starlight when we assume that the Aether is stationary relative to the star. This value has a very good agreement with the observed value namely 20.47 [4], [17]. ...
The result of Michelson-Morley observations, namely non-displacement of interference fringes after 90 degrees rotation of interferometer, was explained by various theories like Einstein’s theory, namely the theory of independence of light velocity from observer velocity and source velocity without necessity of the presence of Luminiferous Aether. However, it seems that, apart from these theories, there is another way to explain Michelson-Morley null observations. In this article we propose the theory of "Aether Attached to Earth" or abbreviated AATE. In this theory Luminiferous Aether is a fact and is a transparent continuous medium that has filled the entire universe and is attached and is locked to the center of Earth and whole of it, just like an integrated rigid object, is moved along with Earth in Space. It’s clear, in AATE theory, the velocity of Earth relative to Aether is zero; Therefore, the null displacement of the fringes can be explained. Here you will see that the AATE theory does not experience the failures of previous Aether theories.
... Greek astronomy, radio, Hughes, entangled states and Bell's theorem are discussed in more detail in Spence (2019). ...
Ancient notions of light, the origin of vision, and the nature of “rays” of light are described including examples from ancient Greek and early Islamic philosophers. Alongside the theories for the nature of light are questions about light’s speed and mechanism of transmission, including the notion of the “aether” for propagation of light. The first efforts to measure the speed of light, beginning with Roemer, Galileo, and culminating in the sophisticated experiments in the nineteenth century by Fizeau and Michelson are described. New measurements of the astronomical unit, made possible from the Venus transit of 1769, enabled the larger scale distances of the solar system to be measured accurately for the first time, along with increasing precision for the speed of light. Early theories of the nature of light from Newton, Faraday and Maxwell are described, including prevailing explanations for how light travelled through space. The nature of light and the corresponding predicted properties of the “aether” needed to transmit light are described, along with the efforts of Albert Michelson to detect the presence of aether from the famous Michelson-Morley experiment.KeywordsNewtonFaradayMaxwellElectromagnetic wavesAetherMichelson-Morley experimentMaxwell equationsSpeed of light
Obituary for John C. H. Spence.
The chapter traces the origin of Cultural Studies as a scholarly field that conjoins, centrally, anthropology, sociology, feminism, and philosophy. It is characterised by its opposition to scientism, its explicit epistemological relativism, its rejection of the Enlightenment project, and, in places, its ontological idealism and distrust of science. From the early 1990s cultural studies has become institutionalised in science education with the establishment of a journal and creation of strands in major research conferences. Its links to the philosophy and pedagogy of constructivism are explicit, so too its links to Critical Theory. Arguments against the radical idealism of cultural studies are advanced. The contrast is made with the ontological realism of the physicist/philosopher Mario Bunge whose arguments for the symbiosis philosophy and physics, for a realist interpretation of quantum physics, for the Enlightenment project, and for informed scientism are outlined.
Science is, and always has been, engaged with cultural worldviews. The worldviews of cultures shape science, and the practice and findings of science shape worldviews. Five dimensions of worldviews are delineated. Illustrations of the interaction of science and worldviews are given from the mechanical worldview of the Scientific Revolution and the evolutionary naturalism of Darwinian theory. Arguments for both methodological and ontological naturalism as presuppositions of science are given; the question of the existence of good (angels) and bad (devils) spirits is elaborated; ways of dealing with real and imagined conflicts between science and cultural worldviews are explicated. Joseph Priestley’s scientific, political, and religious commitments are outlined as an example of the consistent working through of worldviews and science. This is seen in his seminal investigation of photosynthesis, an investigation that can be repeated in classrooms. Feng shui belief and practice are elaborated, especially its central commitment to the existence of chi, an ethereal, all-pervasive life force. It is argued that a distinction can be made between sciences and pseudosciences and that feng shui belongs to the latter.
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