John S Bolton

That was amusing; how you mocked those people. I will not join in, and make fun of those who beleve that relativity is a license for mysticism. After all, if the subject is cosmic, this will draw in such types preferentially, so to speak. If I am not mistaken, the implied suggestion above is that a non-relativistic ether theory is itself a sign of mental defect or ignorance. Regarding the perihelion advance of Mercury, Harihar Behera and others report disagreement with the predictions of relativity. Ronald Hatch, in his ether gauge theory, gives a divergent explanation of this orbit variation. Hatch says that Einstein used an illicit method of getting a suitable result, which had been previously obtained by other means. More generally, isn't it true that an absolute reference frame has been discovered? By this, I mean the cosmic background radiation features that spaceflight and global positioning depend on today. If we do have an absolute universal reference for triangulation, doesn't this annihilate special and general relativity? The results of Emory F. Bunn and others indicate that the cosmic background, and the universe likewise, are not rotating ( as reported in Discover 7-03, p. 30).Therefore one might ask, what remains of a basis for 20th century relativity, unless one were to speak of Lorentz's relativity, as the remainder?

Ronald Hatch, a leading Global Positioning System expert, informs us that space agencies have necessarily been long proceeding as if (special and general) relativity were false;that the speed of light is not constant as to direction in space, and that they rely on an absolute reference frame (via the cosmic microwave background radiation). Cahill and Kitto report detection of absolute motion through the ether by peer-reviewed data of interferometers , operating in gas-mode (not high-vacuum). Roland De Witte has coaxial cable observations which detect absolute motion, contradicting special and general relativity. Wang and Lu have published data from the Ives-Stilwell experiment to show absolute motion in the ether. Van Flandern gives several refutations of relativity( special and general) in the "Speed of Gravity". Regarding the infinite speed of the propagation of a shift in gravitational influence; if the gravitation between two bodies is the ether pressure on them, being weaker in the area between them, than on the sides facing clear space, this would be a shadowing effect, which could have any finite speed.

It would be the implication that, if modern physics can better account for a finite speed of the propagation of gravitational influence, the reason for this would be that Newton's theory presumes a vacuum. A good number of ether theories could perhaps hold planets to their orbits, if Einstein's ether theory can do this, and long enough for the gravitational influence's shift to propagate at a speed which is lawful and in agreement with the best experimental results of today. I do not doubt the necessity of some ether theory; only that Einstein's is the correct one. Doubting this, and being challenged to find counter-evidence, of course one finds the anti-relativists and experiments and observations which yield anti-relativity results. The psychology could be not unlike that of Thomas Jefferson saying:" I would rather believe that two Yankee professors would lie, than that stones fall from the sky". They may have found real meteorites, of course. In the context of cultural affairs being long contaminated by official discretion and money, trusting the marketplace of ideas to generate truth, is ill-advised. Maurice Allais says that Shankland and his group disregarded most of Dayton Miller's data. When a theory has been cast into doubt, as relativity has by Allais and others, it is not enough to try to diagnose the doubters. I. Mihaile, Shu-Wen Zhou and others have made observations confirming the findings of Allais. These include recent eclipse data. Allais says that recent interferometric observations have not been of sufficient duration to demonstrate the earth's motion in the ether, but those of Dayton Miller's class do prove this. Allais claims that recent eclipse data confirm the ether of Fresnel. Several of these scientists publications showed under Maurice Allais, titled : Gravitation Einstein.

Correction: Maurice Allais, Nobel prize-winner and asassinator of relativity, or so it is claimed, has performed and reviewed certain experiments. He says that his results indicate that the speed of light is not a constant in the same way as had been stated. Apparently, the latest results indicate the ether has been confirmed, and relativity is riddled with bullets.

Onward to history of physics education! I just found information on the experiments of Dayton Miller, the eminent American physicist, and more recent observations, which yield positive results for the ether drift. I found several sources by searching google under Dayton miller ether experiments. These results, including some recent experiments with more modern equipment, would seem to completely overthrow relativity. The fact that such experiments have continued into the present also indicates that relativity is not generally accepted in experimental physics.

I do know enough to criticize what doesn't make sense. I did make a misstatement which you have pointed out. I should have said uniform speed, with absolutely no acceleration or deceleration, in regard to special relativity. That sort of motion is never going to be any observer's point of observation. The Newtonian immobile reference point was the fixed stars, if ignorance of history has not misled me. Today, the reference frame could be the plenum, which is not capable of shifting its position into non-existence. Unlike special relativity, this reference backdrop requires no implausible preconditions for what was claimed to be an unbiased and unprivileged vantage point for observation. The ether was not disproved; it was the constant character of the speed of light which was proved. This could be taken as another piece of evidence for the existence of a material ether; since a vacuum has no properties which could slow anything down,but the ether should be expected to have such properties. Just because we use abstract standards of measurement successfully, does not imply that items like absolute points or planes actually exist. The idealized accounts are perfect as concepts, and are perfectly meaningful, unless we take them too literally, and expect to find something like absolutely transverse vibrations, or a dimensionless point in the world. The 19th century fixed frame of reference can still be out there, or, if it couldn't, then the void and non-existence would exist. The Newtonian gravity operates instantaneously, because it has no medium through which to act (in outer space). If there is a material medium, this imposes a speed limit on the velocity of the force's operation. Positing a material medium throughout all space should eliminate the Newtonian infinities mentioned.

Here is a bullet towards special relativity: uniform acceleration is not capable of ever occurring, we'll never have a capacity to observe uniform acceleration. Therefore it is not an unbiased view, but a fictitious one. Yet this was the platform of observation, invented also in order to get rid of the ether, from which it was imagined that some observations could be made. As I interpret the relevant history here; the older ether was rejected in order to make a place for Einstein's ether( the space-time manifold). Regarding Newtonian infinities: If the ether which is said to cause the gravitational effects, is present in sufficient degree everywhere, then there is not a problem of gravitation propagating at infinite speed. Newtonian forces of gravitation, operating across a void, would presumably suffer that problem, of being rated as infinitely fast-moving. I didn't answer the question of time-slowing, as in general relativity, unless it were by implication, in denying the Hubble expansion as being other than the compression of matter increasing over time in a gravitational field. If time is an abstraction, independent of the particular things which may pulsate in equal measure, and which remain at the same altitude, then time in this sense can't speed up or slow down, by definition it is fixed. But if time means these objects and their activity, and if this activity is changed according to their altitude in a gravitational field, then time in this sense can be slowed down by the greater compression and frictionality towards the center of the gravitational field. In the opposite case, there should be a speed-up of these actions as a mechanism is moved far out into clear space, where the medium is frictionless. Again, these are not the physical theories of objectivism or any school or movement, but my own speculations (and not necessarily original ones either).

I do not speak for Objectivism, when I make certain objections to modern physics. I assume that objectivists do not have a problem with the list of particles and fields. I have seen objectivist writers praise Einstein, but I have not seen them deducing that 20th century physical theories must be wrong, from first principles. Physicists should be ready to answer objections from all quarters, which proceed on rational grounds. That is, not every one of them; but some should. My motivation is that I would like (myself and others) not to be told to believe in theories which raise serious doubts as to whether they are compatible with our observations of the world.

I am sorry that I have failed to convey the sensible and non-contradictory quality which I believe to be present in the above account. I admit that I don't know all the facts of physical processes, or enough of them to say that none of these facts is being contradicted. But I do know that modern physics contains many gross contradictions, such as the appearance of infinities in basic equations, not to mention the wave-particle contradiction. This spurs me on to think of what alternatives could be better, and I am hoping that someone will before long break out of the theoretical impasse of modern physics, and move on to a more rational approach. Do you agree, or are you a staunch upholder of relativity and our current table of particles and fields?

Regarding general relativity: is it incorrect to say that the ether was discredited by Einstein at one point, and then brought back by him with what he called ether theory (in German), but which is called general relativity today? Would the reason for this turn of events, have been that the earlier theory, assuming a void , did not explain the additional light deflection mentioned above, because it assumed a void? The general relativity theory is not generally accepted, yet the experimental results (or light-deflection observations) are verification of some ether theory, or not? I do not claim that they prove what I say; but it has been suggested that they are incompatible with my speculations.

The Newtonian theory may only be able to account for half the observed deflection of light waves, in the stronger gravitational fields, because it assumes a void. When the plenum is credited, we have matter filling the entire path of the deflected light ray. The ray curves towards the area closer to the sun, which is shielded from the long reach and build-up of the vibrations in the plenum, by the mass of the sun, which absorbs or reflects these( or such is the speculation, as, for example with the theory of C. Colden). The ray-normal crosses into a denser shadow of the sun; shaded from the superior force of the vibrations crossing the plenum unobstructed. As previously suggested, the ether might, through being continous and non-frictional (non-granular), be so much more efficient at transmitting vibrational energy, that the area closer to the sun is shielded from this, and the ray-normal turns sunward, rather as waves turn in around a headland, and in such degree as to always face the shore. There is, then, net pressure on the side facing clear space relative to the side facing the sun. The closer to a larger aggregation of frictional matter, the ray approaches, the greater this shielding effect will become. I am supposing that Newton's theory is applied assuming light waves in a vacuum; but here we are positing a plenum. Presumably additional deflection is expected in this case. Further, I assume that all light rays will spread out, given sufficient space, and that this may contradict the classification of light rays as (absolutely) transverse. For compression vibrations to turn readily is not such a conundrum, as it would be for the absolutely transverse radiation, which, in principle, cannot reduce to longitudinal vibration, regardless of how it is subdivided or allowed to extend.

If the subject is:'what are the morals of being an illegal alien in America today'; this would imply a high relevance to the consideration of whether they are on net public subsidy or not. Likewise, the question of whether they have hostile intentions or not, is of great relevance. Absolutely free immigration is untenable in any conceivable country, since they could be aggressors or invaders arriving in armed groups, with hostile intentions. Therefore, some standards of discrimination are required, not blind pacifism. U.S. statistics, under the heading 'median personal income of foreign-born', show 80's and 90's immigrants to be 30% below the median personal income of the total population. This implies very widespread net public subsidy of these immigrants, in this alternative welfare society. The NYT reported that there are around 11 million children of immigrants in public schools today. At $8,500 per year, this approximates $100 billion a year. Combine these two factors, below-average income with above-average likelihood of having children in public school, and the expectation should be net public subsidy, to an overwhelming majority of the immigrants in their first decades here. It's not right to say ,they can't help it , they're poor; that would justify all manner of aggression, if committed by someone of low income, who tried to relieve his need that way.

Replying to S. Speicher: I realize that I have been dismissed, and I accept that. Yet I don't think you should say "disconnected from reality", when I have given what I consider to be perfectly sensible speculations, aimed at rationality. They may not have been stated with utmost clarity. I would rather you say that you think I am speculating on the basis of ignorance, and you have no further time for it. I thank you for your time and consideration.

These speculations are given in order to suggest alternative accounts, which might turn out to be more rational than the 20th century physics, or that part of it which is continually cited in support of the most outlandish mysticism. The bending of light rays, as they pass close by the sun, might be explained also as waves showing the deflection of their ray-normals in the gravitational field extending out from the sun. That is; if light is all waves, and not particles at all, it is perhaps not problematical for waves to suffer deflection in such a field. Tension and torsion could be secondary effects arising from the basic force of compression on frictional matter. The source of the differential force is stated to be the non-frictional ether being thus able to carry vibrations further, while the frictional matter gathers like froth at the center of the surface of a liquid, which is being agitated in a container. The ether would be buoyant in the plenum, and capable of penetrating all matter, since it would be continous, while all other matter is granular. Frictional matter is like grit in the gears of the ether, and so much so that, an aggregation of this matter in the ether, pushes one such spheroid towards a neighboring one. The ether could carry vibrations more efficiently, if there were nothing else around, therefore superior force impinges on the sides where it hits a spheroid from clear space, in comparison to what may propagate in the belt of ether between two spheroids, which are close together. The system would be eternal, if the source of energy for setting the ether into vibration, is also the explosions caused by frictional and granular matter, being compressed beyond its natural limits.

One addition: Sometimes matter is driven to an excessively dense configuration, and such that an explosion ensues. This allows for an endless cycling of the known matter; out into space after an explosion, then back into dense concentrations under the pressure of gravity.