Special relativity beat out Lorentzian Ether Theory even though they are empirically equivalent. Obviously if you have two theories that predict different outcomes of some feasible experiment you can run that experiment and resolve the difference.
These two theories are not equivalent at all; they predict different outcomes for the Michelson-Morley experiment, unless you patch up the ether by requiring it to be at rest relative to the Earth at all times.
Would the person or persons down voting my comments here mind at least explaining this one? Afaict I’m just correcting someone on a factual error and providing a citation. If wikipedia is wrong on this matter I’d like to know.
The problem with that solution is that you end up with a theory that makes the same predictions as SR, but contains an extra concept that plays no role in making predictions: a distinguished but unobservable reference frame of absolute rest, with respect to which all the other reference frames involve time dilations and length contractions. When you cut off that useless spinning cog you are left with SR.
These two theories are not equivalent at all; they predict different outcomes for the Michelson-Morley experiment, unless you patch up the ether by requiring it to be at rest relative to the Earth at all times.
Could you be missing the “Lorentzian” there?
What FAWS said. The problem is solved with length contraction.
Would the person or persons down voting my comments here mind at least explaining this one? Afaict I’m just correcting someone on a factual error and providing a citation. If wikipedia is wrong on this matter I’d like to know.
The problem with that solution is that you end up with a theory that makes the same predictions as SR, but contains an extra concept that plays no role in making predictions: a distinguished but unobservable reference frame of absolute rest, with respect to which all the other reference frames involve time dilations and length contractions. When you cut off that useless spinning cog you are left with SR.