The author is one of the world’s foremost experts on the Global Positioning System and a former president of the Institute of Navigation. His book discusses GPS satellite data that contradicts Einstein’s relativity theories and proposes his own Modified Lorentz Ether Gauge Theory (MLET) as a replacement for Einstein’s relativity. It agrees at first order with relativity but corrects for certain astronomical anomalies not explained by relativity theory.
It’s worth noting that the Michelson-Morley experiment—designed in 1887 specifically to test the idea of light traveling through an ether (the prevailing theory before relativity), which would cause some sort of ether drift—came up essentially null. It placed an upper limit of 30 km/s on the speed of an ether, far lower than it would need to be if it truly existed. Each subsequent experiment that was performed using more accurate equipment has lowered this upper limit. The current upper limit of anisotropy in a single direction (that is, the most the speed of light can vary between two observers) based on an M-M style experiment is 0.9 m/s, and bidirectional anisotropy is 2x10^-13 m/s. More recent alternative experimental procedures have reduced these figures even further.
Unentrained ether (i.e. doesn’t interact with matter or gravity) should have an ether drift exactly matching the speed of the earth’s rotation around the sun, or 108,000 km/s. M-M style experiments and many others have conclusively proven this idea false. While an entrained or partially entrained ether (matter and/or gravity drag the ether along to some degree) can have a drift considerably lower, one still expects there to be a significant difference in the observed speed of light for two different observers. Also, it has it’s own problems that an unentrained ether does not have—namely that light must slow down over time in an entrained ether, even when traveling through a vacuum. This is clearly not observed.
In other words, Hatch’s theory was proven false a century before he proposed it, and further experiments on the subject (motivated by the search for a quantum theory of gravity) have only served to drive ever larger nails in its coffin.
This was actually very present in my mind when I read about Hatch’s idea, because I’m currently reading Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time”, and he goes into the proof against ether. Of course I’d heard of it before, but since nobody else mentioned it and I had been thinking about it already, I simply had to.
It’s amazing what people who haven’t learned their physics think about physics! It reminds me of another new version of an old theory of physics I read about on one of these posts—a new expansion theory of physics, which would require us to throw away everything since Newton. Pretty arrogant, and the explanations for it amounted to declarations by fiat that it was so—there was no evidence for it at all, and in fact require great convoluted maths in order to explain our observations. The author of that particular theory was apparently unaware of Newton’s inverse-square law of gravity, nor Einstein’s more accurate formula for the same, and the extensive experiments demonstrating it over the last couple hundred years.
Note that I’m not saying I have learned my physics even as well as these misguided would-be physicists have, I’m just saying I would never propose a new theory of physics without be certain it hadn’t already been conclusively disproven!
The clocks on GPS satellites must be corrected for relativistic time dilation.
There is some controversy in this respect:
http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Einstein-Ronald-R-Hatch/product-reviews/0963211307/
It’s worth noting that the Michelson-Morley experiment—designed in 1887 specifically to test the idea of light traveling through an ether (the prevailing theory before relativity), which would cause some sort of ether drift—came up essentially null. It placed an upper limit of 30 km/s on the speed of an ether, far lower than it would need to be if it truly existed. Each subsequent experiment that was performed using more accurate equipment has lowered this upper limit. The current upper limit of anisotropy in a single direction (that is, the most the speed of light can vary between two observers) based on an M-M style experiment is 0.9 m/s, and bidirectional anisotropy is 2x10^-13 m/s. More recent alternative experimental procedures have reduced these figures even further.
Unentrained ether (i.e. doesn’t interact with matter or gravity) should have an ether drift exactly matching the speed of the earth’s rotation around the sun, or 108,000 km/s. M-M style experiments and many others have conclusively proven this idea false. While an entrained or partially entrained ether (matter and/or gravity drag the ether along to some degree) can have a drift considerably lower, one still expects there to be a significant difference in the observed speed of light for two different observers. Also, it has it’s own problems that an unentrained ether does not have—namely that light must slow down over time in an entrained ether, even when traveling through a vacuum. This is clearly not observed.
In other words, Hatch’s theory was proven false a century before he proposed it, and further experiments on the subject (motivated by the search for a quantum theory of gravity) have only served to drive ever larger nails in its coffin.
Proven false a century before he proposed it? That’s… well, not exactly surprising but definitely embarrassing!
It certainly is!
This was actually very present in my mind when I read about Hatch’s idea, because I’m currently reading Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time”, and he goes into the proof against ether. Of course I’d heard of it before, but since nobody else mentioned it and I had been thinking about it already, I simply had to.
It’s amazing what people who haven’t learned their physics think about physics! It reminds me of another new version of an old theory of physics I read about on one of these posts—a new expansion theory of physics, which would require us to throw away everything since Newton. Pretty arrogant, and the explanations for it amounted to declarations by fiat that it was so—there was no evidence for it at all, and in fact require great convoluted maths in order to explain our observations. The author of that particular theory was apparently unaware of Newton’s inverse-square law of gravity, nor Einstein’s more accurate formula for the same, and the extensive experiments demonstrating it over the last couple hundred years.
Note that I’m not saying I have learned my physics even as well as these misguided would-be physicists have, I’m just saying I would never propose a new theory of physics without be certain it hadn’t already been conclusively disproven!
Ether does some crazy things to the minds of its users… both the theory, and the substance. Ha! Ha!
I think you should probably pick a different example—a book published by a guy in 1992 that has one review on Amazon?
ETA: And the review is by some guy who tends to positively review books that discuss that special relativity is incorrect?
Well if you google the author he seems to be quite an authority on GPS:
http://www.spoke.com/info/p6ecb1w/RonaldHatch
My point was that flaws in Eddington’s experiments are infinitesimally weak evidence of flaws in GR. I have no opinion on successors to the theory.
Ooops, you are violating the conservation of expected evidence.