Just skimmed the paper.
The key positive control is missing.
He could hang a 100kg led pendelum nearby and detect nice gravitational waves (led and rope are cheap and experiment would not take long to do). Or at least wait for 18-wheeler truck to pass nearby.
He mentioned further experiments with similar 3-d devices in several locations.
Let's wait...
Its been a while since I read it through I must admit, but as far as I recall he runs it in two modes - rather like differential and common-mode (using an electronics analogy). In the 'common mode' configuration he gets nothing - so how would 'stretching of fibres' or 'temperature gradient changes' (which would presumably be the same in both) give a null result?
As far as I recall, he has no idea of the sensitivity of the device. So how could you know that say, a 100kg pendulum would have a measurable effect?
That's the problem with these kind of "experiments"
Estimation of the sensitivity and the measurement error MUST be the integral part of the experimental design. Approach "lets make and see" is faulty (and costly) both in science and engineering.
I just don't see it - I use that approach all the time in my DIYing. If I went for your suggestion I'd never build any new amplifier or DAC before knowing exactly how much it would distort... Takes all the fun away. Building and seeing trumps prediction from modelling any day.
I should read it again: I assumed he measured noise of the device using the single fiber, no?
"Amateurs look for patterns, professionals look for error bars."
Big difference between doing stuff for fun and doing stuff for real research.
No, actually I'm talking about others as well, I have attached a screenshot.
As you can see in all subsequent experiments the drift is much much lower than expected. What does that tell you?
Attachments
Many years ago, I was working with a system that measured photon absorption spectra by passing a laser across a sample surface, hitting the surface normally with a light beam at the frequency of interest, then measuring the deflection of the laser due sample heating from the photon absorption and the consequent refraction from the air boundary layer. We used some cool devices called PSDs.
In any case, one particular sample kept giving us odd results, very high absorption (apparently) with a really strange heating/cooling curve having about a 1Hz periodicity. We brainstormed this for hours, the experiment was repeated, and we found that the absorption weirdness changed frequencies from run to run, but always at that same 1Hz periodicity. The electronics were torn apart and rebuilt. Same issue. Detectors replaced, same result. We were quite excited- when scientists find stuff that's unexpected or outside what they THINK is going to happen, well, that's the stuff you live for.
Punch line: most of the measurements were done at 2 am for reasons of quiet and grad student schedules; the guy doing this particular sample was always running the stuff at more or less the same time. It turns out that there was a VERY large professor (I'm talking 400 pounds) who liked to work at night and would walk by our lab every few minutes to make a run to the candy machine.
Ooops.
I wonder why none of the "aehterists" have replied on my comments about the Copernican Paradigm.
Copernicus said that the laws of physics* are equal to all in uniform motion.
Meaning that there is no "special" frame of reference where the laws of physics work and others where they don't.
*(then mechanics, but that's because they hadn't really discovered electromagnetism yet)
If you are in a inertial frame that is uniform, i.e. not accelerating, changing direction or whatever, then the laws of physics apply the same way they would to someone else's frame of reference, irregardless of how fast these frames may be moving relative to one another.
Now consider the following:
We are on earth, our frame of reference is not 100% uniform but very very closely. Of course we move around the sun, and the solar system moves around the center of the galaxy, but mostly it's uniform.
If there was an aether then it should not move too much with respect to our frame of reference, or else Maxwells equations would not work and physics in general would behave very strangely! So it should not be moving too much relatively to us, right?
MMX tried to determine the difference in aether wind experienced by the 40 mile/sec difference in speed and direction of the earth. So far so good right? (apart from the null result)
(BTW: The "aether drag" was found to be incorrect by abberation of starlight, look it up if you're interested)
Now, assuming for the sake of argument that there had been a speed difference and the existence of the aether had been proven. Does that mean that we are pretty much at rest in relation to the aether compared to the speed of light? It must be since psysics would behave strangely if it wouldn't right?
Now, we now know that there are systems that move away from us at .8c, that is, one eight the speed of light. So they are also moving with .8c with respect to the ether!
That would mean that the whole of physics would NOT work the same as it does here on earth and it would imply that there is something very special about earth, being one of the few places in the universe where the laws of physics actually work.
THAT is a big problem IMO, it implies we are the center of the known universe, instead of the speck of dust that we really are. The universe does not revolve around us, I refuse to believe that!
Copernicus said that the laws of physics* are equal to all in uniform motion.
Meaning that there is no "special" frame of reference where the laws of physics work and others where they don't.
*(then mechanics, but that's because they hadn't really discovered electromagnetism yet)
If you are in a inertial frame that is uniform, i.e. not accelerating, changing direction or whatever, then the laws of physics apply the same way they would to someone else's frame of reference, irregardless of how fast these frames may be moving relative to one another.
Now consider the following:
We are on earth, our frame of reference is not 100% uniform but very very closely. Of course we move around the sun, and the solar system moves around the center of the galaxy, but mostly it's uniform.
If there was an aether then it should not move too much with respect to our frame of reference, or else Maxwells equations would not work and physics in general would behave very strangely! So it should not be moving too much relatively to us, right?
MMX tried to determine the difference in aether wind experienced by the 40 mile/sec difference in speed and direction of the earth. So far so good right? (apart from the null result)
(BTW: The "aether drag" was found to be incorrect by abberation of starlight, look it up if you're interested)
Now, assuming for the sake of argument that there had been a speed difference and the existence of the aether had been proven. Does that mean that we are pretty much at rest in relation to the aether compared to the speed of light? It must be since psysics would behave strangely if it wouldn't right?
Now, we now know that there are systems that move away from us at .8c, that is, one eight the speed of light. So they are also moving with .8c with respect to the ether!
That would mean that the whole of physics would NOT work the same as it does here on earth and it would imply that there is something very special about earth, being one of the few places in the universe where the laws of physics actually work.
THAT is a big problem IMO, it implies we are the center of the known universe, instead of the speck of dust that we really are. The universe does not revolve around us, I refuse to believe that!
Cahill's aether is moving jolly quickly relative to us if I remember rightly, so no. I think his figure's in the hundreds of km per second range.
Allright, but hundreds of km/s is very slow compared to the 300-odd thousand km/sec of light.
That is exactly it!
We have a set of laws that work everywhere! Only without the aether.
If you include the aether then the laws stop working everywhere. Do you see that?
We imagine they do, but how could we know for sure?
Well apparently they don't work without 'dark matter' for which there's no evidence to date. And they don't work accurately in boreholes. Seems they also might well not work at the edge of the solar system (Pioneer anomaly) and on radar measurements of Venus. Just a handful of examples to whet your appetite. So no, I disagree here.
No, ISTM you've got it the wrong way around. With the aether ( at least in Cahill's formulation to the extent I understand it, which admittedly is highly limited) things get a lot simpler. Ever heard of Occam's Razor?
- Status
- This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.