Michelson-Morley experiment interpretation and relativity

Hi,

I don't believe Occam's razor applies in comparing LET and special relativity, SP appears like a simpler explanation but at the same time it is less descriptive of the underlying explanation.

cheers, Jamie

You can rephrase as often as you like, but nature will not listen to you.

It has been seen in any experiment, that for a given material the photoelectric effect _only_ depend on the energy/frequency of the light not on its intensity. This is not consistent with the assumption that light behaves as a wave in this case. If you lower the intensity only the probability of an electron being emitted decreases. It is also not accumulation of energy as electron are emitted directly when light reaches the surface.

Hi,

You say the photoelectric effect only depends on the frequency, and then next you say the probability of electrons being emitted is proportional to the amplitude. I think the first statement is false, as shown by your second statement, the amplitude can also be used to trigger from 0 to a high number of electron releases assuming the frequency is high enough as well.

cheers, Jamie

Hi,

I think your statement is correct if you rephrased it to this:

"It has been seen in any experiment, that for a given material the [energy of electrons released by the] photoelectric effect _only_ depend on the energy/frequency of the light not on its intensity.

cheers, Jamie

You have it backwards!!! With the particle theory you *don't* need a minimum amplitude, each particle can dislodge an electron IF the frequency is high enough. Why do you keep getting this backwards?

Yes, if it were waves you would *not* be able to dislodge electrons with a weak signal. With the particle model you can always integrate over a longer period.

You really like to make stuff up don't you?

You aren't getting it. In the wave model only the amplitude matters. In the particle model only the frequency matters.

I'm done. Continue without me.

Of course, but some models can be proven wrong.

Teaching your granny to suck eggs here.....

Kevin Aylward B.Sc.

Err..., that is what it is. So, you agree with the convention.

The cosmological term, lambda, was inserted into GR right at the start around 1915, so it was not a "missing" term. Einstein then removed it as "the biggest blunder of his life". Instead of assigning it its original equivalent to positive mass (energy), it is now assigned to an equivalent negative mass, i.e. as an anti gravity energy term.

Anti gravity is nice. It gives one the option of Warp Drive.

Depends on your definition of explaining.

Sure.

Oh....

Then explain why running into light makes no difference to the measurement of its speed?

The point of an aether postulate is that it gives a physical explanation as to how light has its properties, in much the same way as an infinite number of, unobservable, universes are postulated in the MWI of Quantum Mechanics. Apparently, that does not violate Occam's razor, according to its many supporters.

Kevin Aylward B.Sc.

I think we all know about the same in regards to dark energy/matter. (next to nothing) So this discussion is just for fun. (for me.)

But as I understand it, Dark energy in it's simplest is just the zero point energy of everything. (googleing zero point motion and dark energy I got this,)

I figure we'll just fix that error in software :^)

George H.

Hi,

You are making an assumption that light doesn't exist with an amplitude below the threshold required to dislodge an electron, however it is just as valid to assume light can exist at an intensity below this threshold and still get the correct results in the photoelectric experiment.

This works out to the same statistical rate of emission in either case.

It's not my idea it is just the interpretation of the photoelectric effect with classical light.

Incorrect, there is also the classical wave and quantum matter model where both amplitude and frequency matter.

cheers, Jamie

I believe you can calculate the speed of light from Maxwell's equations, no? Does Maxwell's equations explain what the reference is? No. That is the point. There *is no single reference*. Once you understand that, you can follow Einstein in understanding relativity.

Sure it does. You "explain" the reason for light's properties (that can't explain *all* of it's properties) and then have to make up a correction for why you can't verify the existence of this "reason". So you have added complexity with a self justifying, unverifiable explanation.

How does the Ether explain the particle properties of EM radiation?

The comment was about the "real"ness of an explanation, not the accuracy.

Obviously one of those UK expressions... the meaning is lost on others. The rudeness is not.

Nothing rude about it. Being able to suck an egg - consume a raw egg by suc king the contents out of a hole at one end of the eggs, after you've opened a second hole at the other - is a skill the average grandmother can be as sumed to have mastered before she had children, let alone grandchildren.

Telling Kevin Alyward what is or isn't science is definitely in that catego ry.

Just found a paper on a NASA website from 1969 analysing the photoelectric effect without requiring photons:

"The photoelectric effect without photons."

abstract: "Photoelectric effect without photons, discussing classical field falling on quantized atomic electron.."

I guess it is an old (and valid) idea, just hasn't caught on, but it shows that the photoelectric effect doesn't prove light is quantized!!

cheers, Jamie

It is really an accident of history that light was first recognised as a wave, but electrons, protons etc. were first recognised as particles.

With the arrival of quantum mechanics came the realisation that the situation was rather more complicated. If you suppose that light needs a medium in which its waves can travel, then you really have the same problem with electrons, protons, etc.

If you were lucky enough to avoid the historical trap, and instead start out with quantum mechanics, which, as far as we can tell, correctly describes the behaviour of all of these entities, then you'd have done experiments that confirmed both the wave-like and particle-like behaviour of all of them. There would then have been no reason to latch onto light as needing a medium, but the others not.

There would still have been the constancy of the speed of light to address, and experiments like Michelson-Morley might still have been done, but they'd have been looking for the absolute, or preferred frame, rather than for the aether. The ultimate conclusion would have been the same, of course; there is no absolute or preferred frame. The aether would never have existed, even in the minds of physicists.

Sylvia.

"same, of course; there is no absolute or preferred frame. The aether would never have existed, even in the minds of physicists.

Sylvia. "

-Yes, they would never have been "under the ether."

jb

Correct, its a no.

At the time of Michelson-Morley experiment, the method to calculate how the velocity of light might change with observer and source velocity changes would be to use the Galilean Transformation on Maxwell's Equations. When this is done, terms appear that show that the velocity of light should change.

This was somewhat of a problem, and contradicted some ideas of how light should behave. A transformation was therefore seeked that left Maxwell's Equations invariant, i.e the same form for any motion of f(x-vt). That transformation turned out to be the Lorentz Transformation. This transformation then "predicts", after the fact, that the speed of light is the same for all reference frames. However, according to classical theory, Maxwell's Equations predict changes in velocity. It is *only* the Lorentz Transformation that allows Maxwell's Equations to "predict" invariant speed of light. Prior to this, there was no physics reason to not use the Galilean Transformations to discover how entities changed with relative motion.

Many explanations of SR misunderstand the above points.

Oh .... ?

Feel free to point out where I made the minus sign error in the Riemann curvature tensor derivation, just before the Bianchi Identity bit in:

Indeed, maybe your understanding of Einstein's Relativity will turn out to be closer than mine.

QM or SR?

I don't explain anything by an aether. I pointed out that the aether is a proposed explanation for some of lights properties.

The aether serves a purpose, it would give a physical mechanism as to why running into light does not change its speed.

SR simply ignores the issue completely. It simply states that the speed of light is independent of any uniform motion. Period. It sticks its head in the sand, effectively saying that there isn't a problem at all. That's the just the way it is. This may well be true, but it doesn't make LET a volition of Occam's Razor.

I have no idea whatsoever, I never claimed it did. I did propose that the concept of a reference background field is dependant of an aether though.

I am certainly convinced that light is not a disturbance in an aether. I only believe in particles.

Kevin Aylward B.Sc.

Many seem to assume that because someone is pointing out the arguments for a particular point of view, that the pointer outer also believes the argument or the consequence of those arguments are true.

Kevin Aylward B.Sc.

And my point was that false models must be false physically, i.e. *not* real. That is, a model that works says something that is true about reality, that a false model can not. I think "just" a descriptive model, does not do the model complete justice.

I don't claim, and have never claimed any particular model is provably real. Indeed, the point I am making about SR and LET is that these models are based on contradictory assumptions, yet are experimentally indistinguishable form each other. They have identical equations.

Kevin Aylward B.Sc.