The Flat Earth Society
Flat Earth Discussion Boards => Flat Earth Theory => Topic started by: TheMatrix on October 19, 2019, 09:10:16 PM
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The Michelson Morley experiment was first performed in 1887. As is well known the purpose of the experiment was to measure the speed of light at various times during a year long period in order to try and detect subtle changes in the speed of light that could be caused by changes in the Earths orbital speed due to resistance caused by the 'ether'. The result of the experiment was negative. That could be explained either if the Earth was stationary or if the ether didn't actually exist. The experiment has been retried several times since with equipment of increasing sensitivity. Each time the result has been consistent with the first. This remains the case down to an order of magnitude of 10^-17.
By 1840, some 47 years prior to the Michelson and Morley carrying out their first experiment, measurement of the parallax of three stars, Alpha Centuri (1.26"), 61 Cygni (0.31") and Vega (0.2619") had been confirmed. These stars were chosen because they were pleasingly bright in the case of Vega and Alpha Centuri and 61 Cygni showed a large proper motion. The measurement of the parallax provided direct observational evidence that the Earth was not stationary in space. It also allowed astronomers to determine with unprecedented accuracy the distances of each of these three stars.
FE theorists will insist that the ether does exist and so they will also claim that the lack of any detectable change in the speed of light during the course of the year (caused by the ether creating a 'drag' effect on the speed of the Earth) is explained by their belief that the Earth is stationary. However the measurement and confirmation of stellar parallax as described proves that it isn't. So that means the MM experiment equally provides evidence that the ether does not exist. Why? because based on mainstream physics and Maxwells field equations, the ether is not needed.
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See the following pages:
https://wiki.tfes.org/Stellar_Parallax -- Often Stellar Parallax is negative. Astronomers call them "errors" or "illusions" or whatever. How does the movement of stars prove the movement of earth?
https://wiki.tfes.org/Sagnac_Experiment -- The Sagnac and Wang experiments are laboratory experiments which shows that light does indeed changes velocity when the detector is in motion, in both rotational and straight line paths. The speed of light is c +/- v, exactly as predicted by the old ether theory. The experiments directly contradict the second postulate of special relativity which claims that the speed of light is constant for all observers and which was made up the explain the Michelson-Morley experiment and similar motionless earth experiments which showed no change in velocity. How is it, then proven, that the earth is in motion and that there is an illusion which makes light constant to all observers?
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You know how science is based around making predictions? Well even as I was writing my post I was thinking 'I bet Tom replies to this and mentions something along the lines of negative parallax'. The three stars I mentioned are quite near by, near enough at any rate for the parallax angles to be measured accurately with the equipment available at the time.
I can tell from reading through the FE Wiki that it is not unusual for FE believers to dismiss this sort of evidence as 'illusion' or 'errors' or whatever and I would expect that. You would naturally try to find alterative explanations for scientific experiments or observations which seemed to place any element of doubt on their accuracy. FE theorists say the Earth is stationary (and central) in the Universe and of course they would wouldn't they. They also say the stars are fixed in some heavenly dome above that flat Earth. So how would you account for a tiny but measurable, repeating change in the position of some stars which coincides with the length of the year without resorting to the older and long since discarded idea of epicycles and such like? I know you will find one, of course you will but that has got to be backed up with directly observed evidence.
So the parallaxes of Alpha Centauri and 61 Cygni are large enough to be measured accurately and have always been positive since they were first measured in the 1830s. Alpha Centurus is only 4.3 lightyears away, hence its parallax is a tad over 1 arc second and 61 Cyg is 11.4 lightyears away so its parallax is a little under 0.3 arc seconds.
As for the Sagnac and Wang experiments, perhaps you would like to compare the description given in your FE Wiki page with that given in the mainstream wiki page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagnac_effect
While Laue's explanation is based on inertial frames, Paul Langevin (1921, 1937) and others described the same effect when viewed from rotating reference frames (in both special and general relativity, see Born coordinates). So when the Sagnac effect should be described from the viewpoint of a corotating frame, one can use ordinary rotating cylindrical coordinates and apply them to the Minkowski metric, which results into the so-called Born metric or Langevin metric.[12][13][14] From these coordinates, one can derive the different arrival times of counter-propagating rays, an effect which was shown by Paul Langevin (1921).[15] Or when these coordinates are used to compute the global speed of light in rotating frames, different apparent light speeds are derived depending on the orientation, an effect which was shown by Langevin in another paper (1937).[16]
This does not contradict special relativity and the above explanation by von Laue that the speed of light is not affected by accelerations. Because this apparent variable light speed in rotating frames only arises if rotating coordinates are used, whereas if the Sagnac effect is described from the viewpoint of an external inertial coordinate frame the speed of light of course remains constant – so the Sagnac effect arises no matter whether one uses inertial coordinates (see the formulas in section § Theories below) or rotating coordinates (see the formulas in section § Reference frames below).
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On Stellar Parallax:
An argument of "Negative Parallax COULD be an error or an illusion" is not a very strong one if stellar parallax was supposed to be the proof that the earth is in motion.
On Sagnac:
https://wiki.tfes.org/Sagnac_Experiment#Wang_Experiment -- See this section. The claim that Special Relativity does not apply to the Sagnac Experiment because of the rotational acceleration in the experiment is contradicted by Dr. Wang's Sagnac Linear Interferometer, which shows that the same effect happens in straight line constant velocity.
Relativity's explanation for experiments which indicate a motionless earth is directly contradicted by experiment.
The truth is that Einstein and buddies really thought that, since the Earth was in motion, that the Michelson-Morley experiment proved Special Relativity. They believed this because of a scientific and philosophical paradigm in which all things must be interpreted under the prevailing heliocentric model, even if it requires a change to the nature of space and time to do it, and even if it requires one to ignore contradicting experimental evidence. It is all pretty desperate, to be honest.
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A parallax is an angular measurement. It would be hard to visualise a situation where you can have an angle which is negative. Over the course of a year, a close by star will show a change in position which plots out a circle. The angular diameter on the sky of that circle becomes the parallax. Unless you take one direction as positive and one direction as negative. A logical explanation for the cause of this pattern of movement, and its cycle length is that the orbiting Earth causes a slight shift in the stars apparent position.
As regards negative parallaxes, the parallaxes of many, many stars have now been measured (to accuracies of just a few milliarc seconds) and so a few negative numbers will arise from analysis of the results when the margins of error are taken into consideration. That does not mean that the actual angles are negative. None of the nearest stars have ever given negative results as I'm sure you know.
It goes against the grain of FE theory which asserts that the Earth is motionless and marks the centre of the Universe. If the Earth is stationary and it is not the orbiting Earth around the Sun that causes the parallax shift, then what does? Illusion or error does not come into it.