Waiting for Hinckle

A Theater of Important Ideas

Name of The Play: Waiting for Hinckle

From Oscar Wilde to Stalking The Wild Foucault Pendulum! :-)

"I've many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse."
Major General, Pirates of Penzance

Two Characters Abbott (AKA Z) & Costello (AKA J)

Both sitting in a dumpster outside Caffe Trieste in San Francisco's North Beach before an audience of aging hippies on SSI (as well as wannabe hippies with a lot of money slumming) sitting at the tables on the sidewalk drinking wine, smoking and playing guitars - badly!

Overture

http://stardrive.org/cartoon/MagicBean.html

In the Flying Grail Castle of Lubos Motl ET Harvard String Theorist
http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~motl/
back in the good old days of The Da Vinci Code somewhere above Troyes, France 1000 years ago.

Curtain rises:

On Feb 9, 2005, at 1:16 PM, iksnileiz@earthlink.net wrote:

Jack Sarfatti wrote:

The Neck of God

On Feb 8, 2005, at 12:56 PM, iksnileiz@earthlink.net wrote:

Jack Sarfatti wrote:


On Feb 8, 2005, at 11:36 AM, iksnileiz@earthlink.net wrote:

"You simply cannot have Einstein special relativity and also have a preferred inertial frame that is empirically
detectable."

J: That is wrong Paul. The SR dynamics remain unchanged even when there is a preferred frame.

Z: But the *physical reasons* for this invariance of the dynamics are then totally different.

J: So what?

Z: Very revealing.

J: Vague polemics again. The Jesuits are much more focused. The "physical reasons" are not that important here. You give too much weight to the verbal of the informal language. The difference between Einstein's interpretation and Lorentz's is precise. Einstein's space of frames is affine. Lorentz's is vector space i.e. affine space + preferred "point of origin". This is an empirical distinction that leaves the kinematics and the dynamics essentially unchanged for ALL predictions other than those of the Cahill and Consoli type. Note they differ from each other in important details BTW. Einstein would say no fringe shift on rotation of the apparatus when n =/= 1, Lorentz says there is a shift. Consoli argues that ~ 10 km/sec shift actually seen is consistent with Earth's motion relative to Hubble flow once the index of refraction n =/= 1 correction is made.

Z: This goes to the heuristic core of Einstein's 1905 theory and its differences with respect to the Lorentzian model.

J: Too vague.

Z: I am alluding to the well-known contents of Einstein's 1905 paper. Have you ever studied it carefully? Observer-observed reciprocity of the Lorentz-Einstein transformations is dictated by the Einsteinian principle of *strict* relativity of *all* uniform motion through space. Without such reciprocity you do not get physically equivalent Lorentz transformations for moving *observers*.

J: I fail to see the connection of what you just wrote to the problem. Are you saying you cannot argue for O(1,3) if there is a preferred frame? If so, you are wrong. Einstein BTW had no conception of vacuum symmetry breakdown in 1905!

Z: Einstein's definitions of light speed and simultaneity are the result of adopting a *convention*. So Einstein's actual reasons for this reciprocity go deeper -- in Einstein's 1905 approach, such reciprocity is based on an *a priori* principle of *strict* physical relativity of *all* uniform motion, which "principle" is clearly
incompatible with the existence of an empirically detectable preferred inertial frame of reference.

J: Show how to connect these words to the math. As they stand they are too ambiguous. My response is "So what?" You must to better that that. You are hand-waving again Paul.

Z: Of course you can still say that all known dynamics exhibited by systems moving *with respect to the preferred frame* is subject to the Lorentz transformations -- which is the Lorentzian model -- but this does not give you substantive reciprocity and thus does not give you Einsteinian special relativity with the Lorentz transformations built into the kinematics and even into the structure of spacetime itself.

J: You are quibbling again. This is excess verbal baggage. What significant difference do your words make either mathematically or physically - beyond the detection of a preferred frame that I have characterized completely?

Z: So what you seem to be doing here, from my POV, is something half-way between Einstein and Lorentz. You have dynamical universality(Lorentz invariance of the field Lagrangian) without fundamental observer-observed reciprocity of the Lorentz transformations.

J: No Paul you have made an ERROR. There is still observer-observed reciprocity. You have confused "preferred frame" with "reciprocity". Just look at Alice, Bob and Eve who is in the preferred frame. There is complete reciprocity between Alice and Bob. Even will not see a fringe shift. Alice and Bob will. So what? In some frames magnetic fields are seen, in others (rest frame of charge) not while looking at the same charge from different frames. Until you look at concrete examples your meta-theoretics is not touching the ground of experience.

Z: I'm not even saying that this is wrong; I'm just trying to point out an important difference between what you are doing with Lorentz invariance and what Einstein was doing in 1905. What's missing from your picture is reciprocity.

J: I AM saying that what you are saying is not even wrong. Show a calculation in a concrete example where I violate reciprocity? Certainly Alice and Bob will see Cahill-Consoli fringe/frequency shifts when n =/= 1 while Eve will not in the Lorentz interpretation i.e. Vector Space of Frames. In contrast, in Einstein's interpretation no one will see these shifts. So far, it appears Einstein wrong and Lorentz right, but you make too much of it! Your judgment is WAY OFF like Howard Dean's "scream" that lost him the nomination. It's a MINOR POINT! Important philosophically but having no impact at all on previous tests of special relativity. It will not change much. It will make some new technology for space exploration, that's true.

Z: In a consistent Lorentzian model, you would back the Lorentz transformations out of the kinematics and and attribute them to the dynamics.

J: Meaningless. Show an example. I don't get what you are trying to say in the above sentence.

Z: Whether the dynamical laws do or do not have the same form in different inertial frames is then optional..It comes down to a pragmatic decisions about how to design the formalism.

J: False. Show me exactly what you mean with an example. You are making wild inferences with no evidence at all.

J: Paul give brief explanations of your understandings of the Lorentzian and Einsteinian different interpretations (informal language of Bohm) of the same equations, so we get the nuance of what you are talking about.

Z: See above. The key here, as I understand Einstein's 1905 model, is "reciprocity" of the transformations, without which you simply do not have 1905 Einstein relativity; and such reciprocity -- even if you can contrive it formally -- is no longer fundamental when there is a preferred inertial frame, which sets up a physical distinction between uniform motion of an object with respect to the vacuum, and uniform motion of an object with respect to an observer. There is no such distinction in 1905 Einstein relativity.

J: You are completely wrong about this Paul.

v(Alice) & v(Bob) are ABSOLUTE relative to Eve who is in the preferred Lorentz inertial frame of absolute rest from a local spontaneous breakdown of O(1,3) symmetry in a finite vacuum region that selects Eve's frame as the preferred "point" in the space of frames. This is exactly like what happens in a ferromagnet in the space of O(3) frames of differing space orientations (say for z-axis that will be the direction of the ferromagnetic order parameter).

The RECIPROCITY-PRESERVING relative velocity (in 1+1 to keep it simple) between Alice and Bob is

v(Alice - Bob) = [v(Alice) - v(Bob)]/[1 - v(Alice)v(Bob)/c^2] = - v(Bob - Alice)

There is no problem with reciprocity at all!

Alice and Bob use [1 - (v(Alice - Bob)/c)^2]^-1/2

among themselves. Where is the problem Paul? I see no problem here.

The only way Alice and Bob can know about Eve's preferred frame is to do Cahill/Consoli type of measurements! They use O(1,3) in all of their data processing. There is no problem! For example, Bob keeps his rockets off in free space and Eve fires rockets to different velocities relative to Bob and in different directions and looks for a null reading on the Cahill/Consoli meters when n =/= 1, BTW both of them only consider the case that n^2 - 1 << 1, what happens in an atomic BEC where n ~ 10^7?

J earlier: ONLY A TRIVIAL INTERPRETATIONAL INFORMAL LANGUAGE PROVISO CHANGES. YOU ARE FOCUSED ON THE TRIVIAL!

Z: But I would say that *you* are focussing on the trivial, since you only seem to be concerned with formal O(1,3) symmetry of the field dynamics at the micro-level.

J: What else is important? Physics is an empirical science.

Z: True, but the physical model adopted -- and not just the empirical facts -- determines the physical meaning of things like O(1,3) dynamical invariance.

J: I don't think so. Show exactly what you mean with an example.

Z: For Einstein 1905, the physical meaning of O(1,3) invariance was the strict kinematical relativity of all uniform motion, which automatically forces itself onto all dynamics. For Lorentz, this would be interpreted as a contingent feature of
the dynamics.

J: No Paul. You are technically wrong. You are out of your depth here. You still obviously have no understanding of what spontaneous symmetry breakdown in the lowest energy state of the dynamics + initial + boundary conditions means. You cannot correctly apply it to this problem. Remember Brian Josephson wrote that C.N.Yang had trouble with it. PW Anderson wrote that Eugene Wigner even got it wrong at first. You are still getting it wrong. The kinematics and the dynamics are not at all affected. They are the same whether the space of inertial frames is an affine space without a preferred origin, or a vector space with a preferred origin. And, YES that IS CONTINGENT, but it is not a contingent feature of the dynamics, it is a contingent feature of the local vacuum structure analogous to a ferromagnetic domain!

Z: Einstein later seemed to equivocate on this point, and even wrote as if there is a contingent physical contraction of moving rods.

J: No Paul, you got this wrong. In no case, either Lorentzian or Einsteinian is there any issue of contingency of length contraction and time dilation. There may be another kind of theory like Volovik's where O(1,3) emerges at a fixed point of a renormalization group flow of a Galilean sub-stratum. The quasi-particles and collective modes have O(1,3) at the fixed point whilst the particles they come from obey Galilean relativity. But even there once the O(1,3) emerges there is no contingency of length contraction and time dilation. Where did you get that bad idea from? -- the Sea of Confusion in Dante's Inferno? :-)

Z: But that is certainly not what he was talking about in 1905, when he was still under the spell of Ernst Mach.

J: Einstein had no inkling of vacuum symmetry breakdown in 1905 - unless he thought about ferromagnets back then? I think he did later on. So that's an interesting historical problem.

J: We are interested in elegance of formulation of course - the Zen (Dirac) Ideal of More Empirics with Less Excess Verbal and Mathematical Baggage.

Z: Which as far as it goes is fine with me.

J: Then practice what I preach! :-)

J: Not math for math's sake,

Z: OK.

J: or long-winded reconstructionist post-modern verbosities that are neither here nor there,

Z: Jack, this just indicates to me that you haven't actually studied Einstein's 1905 paper in any depth. What I am talking about is all in the paper. I'm not making it up.

J: Paul you are making it up. I mean you are pulling Einstein's words out of context to fit your Hobby Horse. Also, we are now engaged in a post-modern reconstruction. Or should I say deconstruction? We've come a long way since 1905 Paul. I don't really care at all HOW Einstein argued PHILOSOPHICALLY back in 1905 to reach his equations. You know Einstein himself would agree with me because of what he told Heisenberg in 1925 or so! Einstein admitted to being an opportunist. All theoretical physicists must be. When new concepts come along we shed the old ones like a snake its skin! Einstein never liked Cartan tetrads and he had little feeling for the principle of local gauge invariance. Einstein did not think of his theory of general relativity as the local gauging of the T4 part of his special relativity for example. Or maybe he did as he lay dying because Yang and Mills only came out with the idea in ~ early 50's and Einstein died in 1955. Still less did he have the idea of spontaneous vacuum symmetry breakdown that Brian Josephson traces to ~ 1961 at the earliest in a PW Anderson paper!


Z: Why do you think Einstein's theory was considered to have superseded Lorentz's?

J: It's not important!

Z: Do you even distinguish between the two approaches? If you do, then what exactly is the difference in your view?

J: How many times do I have to repeat myself for you to get it?
Once more with feeling! In post-modern language based on Roger Penrose's "The Road to Reality"

Einsteinian hypothesis on the physical meaning of the formalism of O(1,3) covariant dynamics and O(1,3) inertial frame shifts:

The space of inertial frames is affine with no "preferred" origin.

Lorentzian-Fitzgerald-Poincare hypothesis on the physical meaning of the formalism of O(1,3) covariant dynamics and O(1,3) inertial frame shifts:

The space of inertial frames is a vector space with a "preferred" origin.

The difference between the two hypotheses is strictly empirical and contingent on how a finite space-time region of vacuum might spontaneously break its O(1,3) symmetry just like a material may break its O(3) symmetry to form a ferromagnetic domain with a preferred spatial orientation.

The preferred frame of the alleged Cahill/Consoli classes of experiments show a preferred "rapidity" instead of a preferred space orientation. That is, for ferromagnets we are breaking space-space rotational symmetry, and for "preferred Lorentz frames we are breaking space-time rotational symmetry. It's only a difference of i (i^2 = -1) in the dangle of the angle i.e. cosx -> cosix = coshx

cosx trig for O(3)

coshx for boost part of O(1,3)

It's all pretty simple and can be taught in high school trigonometry courses!

and that dull the mind with little contact with observation and experiment.

Z: The direct contact is provided by Cahill's papers in which he revisits the MM experiments: there are residual fringe shifts that allow you to detect a preferred inertial frame.

J: Nice of you to repeat my aria with a chorus.

Z: There's your "contact". That's where the rubber hits the road.

J: That's what I have been telling you!

Z: I thought that this is what we have been talking about?

J: Yes, that is what we are talking about, but you completely misperceive it. You distort its meaning like Hunter Thompson on LSD in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", or like Cheech and Chong on The Bong, or like the stoned yuppies in that new novel by Tom Wolfe that President Bush likes so much and is telling all his friends to read!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/story/0,13918,1340525,00.html
BTW Tom Wolfe's old amour Rasa Gustaitus wrote "Faster Than The Speeding Photon" about us in Francis Ford Coppola's CITY MAGAZINE back in 1976 where I first met Warren Hinckle and Stephen Schwartz.

Curtain Falls on Act I

Overture to Act II

http://stardrive.org/cartoon/coffee.html

Curtain Rises.

J & Z, now much plumper resembling SS, are now arguing inside the flying saucer buzzing around Washington Square in North Beach piloted by Harvard String Theorist Lubos Motl http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~motl/

Z: However, since the empirical predictions of the two models, Lorentz and Einstein, are the same,

J: No they are not! But the damage is contained and isolated ONLY in the Cahill/Consoli type of detectors. And it may not be so every where in the universe! The preferred point in the space of frames is also a kind of harmless isolated singularity in Einstein's informal interpretation - his philosophical "black hole" as it were.

Z: and both feature the Lorentz transformation formulas, the only way to decide between them is to engage in what you call "post-modern" critical discussion.

J: Not the only way, but certainly the chic fashionable way.

J: We are not interested in beautiful rigorous mathematical proofs unless they are directly relevant to the proper understanding of some important phenomenon - or better yet unify seemingly different phenomena under one insight.

Z: OK.

J: Let a thousand flowers bloom, but there are too many mathematical weeds in The Garden of Theoretical Physics that has grown decadent with the advent of string theory. Quite a tangled wood.

Z: Yes, exactly. We need a "razor". But please, not a Machian razor!

J: Tell that to James Woodward and Carlos Castro.

J earlier: The laws of nature either classical or quantum do not change their form, nor do they change their transformations under O(1,3). There are no explicit dynamical terms in any of the laws of nature that violate O(1,3) (not talking GR, if GR then I mean local O(1,3)).

Z: Would you say that this is also true in Lorentz's theory? If not, why not?


J: Of course it is! But I am not sure what YOU mean by "Lorentz's theory"? Spell out exactly what you mean as best you can and as concretely as you can.

Z: Measuring rods that physically contract due to objective uniform motion through a physical vacuum; clocks that physically slow down due to objective uniform motion through a physical vacuum. This is all to be distinguished, in Lorentz's theory, from the artifacts resulting from uniform observer motion relative to the object that appear in the rest frame of the observer. This is basically what distinguishes Lorentz's 1904 theory from Einstein's 1905 theory.

J: No Paul, there is no way to tell the difference between Einstein and Lorentz with the above. I think you even quoted Kip Thorne to this effect? The distinction you make above is NOT scientific. What is scientific is the claim of Cahill and also Consoli that have no impact on the above.

Z: From Lorentz's POV, Einstein 1905 simply *contrived* formal-empirical reciprocity of the Lorentz transformations by the adoption of a convention regarding the definition of simultaneity, but this is not physically the same as the actual physical distortions of objects in uniform motion through the vacuum.

J: Show me operationally how to empirically decide one or the other above - at least in principle as a gedankenexperiment? Well I am waiting -- for Godot, or, rather for Hinckle!


J earlier: The detection of the preferred frame is strictly in that isolated class of measurements like Cahill alleges. There is no contamination of other battle-tested effects.

Z: You are ignoring or discarding the classic Machian basis for Einstein's classic 1905 treatment. Which is OK, as long as you acknowledge it.


J: What are you talking about? Spell it out. I do not want to argue over undefined buzz words. Spell out what you mean here? Operationalism? Mach's idea that distant matter there makes inertia here? What?

Z: Maybe you should re-read Einstein's 1905 paper, and then re-read Bell.

J: You will have to wait for Hell to freeze over if you cannot explain what you mean clearly in your own words.

Z: It's all in there.

J: Prove it. You are hiding under Mileva's skirts.

J earlier: Paul, you still do not understand the difference between dynamics and the vacuum.

Z: Of course I do. Your field dynamics at the micro-level (as determined by a field Lagrangian) is Lorentz-invariant, while your physical vacuum ground state solution at the macro-level has less than full O(1,3) symmetry, and thus admits a preferred
inertial frame.

J: OK, so that is the end of the story! There is nothing more of interest there. You are chasing Phantoms like WMD in Iraq.

Z: If that's as far as you want to go with this, then OK.

J: I have gone where no human has gone before.

J earlier: Your remark is amateurish,

Z: It seems that anything that addresses the deep interpretation of formal dynamical invariance at the micro-level will be considered "amateurish" according to the current professional standards of modern physics.

J: Nice in a court room perhaps. But what are you talking about? You are much too "deep" for me.

Z: You are definitely in line with the dominant conventions and critical standards of theoretical physics as it is currently practiced.

J: Because we are results-oriented and in a hurry. The problem with your philofawzy Paul is that it remains stuck in the same place and leads nowhere. You act like you are immortal. The Earth is Ending, or haven't you noticed. Runaway Global Warming is an increasing probability whilst King George II fiddles as Rome burns. Have you been having your morning coffee in Berserkley?

Z: I'm trying to approach these issues from a very different neo-classical angle.


J: For Art stopped short in the cultivated Court of The Empress Josephine. (Patience G&S) Pardon me while I straighten my glasses. Neo-classical? Who ordered that?

Z: When you allow a Lorentzian distinction between objective uniform motion of an object with respect to the physical vacuum, and the *apparent* motion of an object as seen by a moving observer with co-moving measuring instruments, the whole Machian-Poincarean foundation of Einstein's 1905 relativity physics simply unravels, and you are then effectively in a neo-classical domain.

J: A delicate distinction, an undecidable proposition we have here that calls for all our wit.

Z: Remember that 1905 relativity was an important model for the development of quantum mechanics.

J: How? You mean Heisenberg talking to Einstein about operationalism?

Z: If Machism unravels in spacetime physics, then it also unravels in quantum physics.

J: What are you talking about? You are making a blind leap of faith through The Looking Glass right into a charging 70 ton tank on Iraqi Road.

J: BTW I hope you understand by now that the "classical world" "neo" or not is a fiction. It's a delusion like Our Man of La Rancha charging The Windmill thinking it was WMD and that Iraq was Iran. What a difference the "M" and the "n" make. We do not live in the classical world.

Z: I am not advocating a return to actual content of 19th century physics. For me this is primarily an epistemological and methodological issue. The question is, can you revert to an approach where the activity of the observer is disentangled from the behavior of the observed? I think this is definitively possible in spacetime and gravitational physics; so perhaps it's also past time for a fresh look at quantum mechanics.

J: This is not interesting because it is much too vague.

Z: So I agree with Bohm's general approach. Bohm's theory is definitely "neo-classical", according to my definition.

J: Yeah but Bohm had equations and was not as vague as you.

J: Bohr was wrong!

Z: OK.

J: We live in the MACRO-QUANTUM WORLD on spontaneous broken vacuum symmetry. The local smooth Einsteinian warped geometrodynamics, the rumpled twisted inelegant fabric of space-time emerges from the MACRO-QUANTUM "multi-layered multi-colored" Coat of Jacob the Cosmic Super Conducting Vacuum Field from the partial cohering of the virtual ZPF "PV" electron-positron plasma.

Z: The Copenhagenists argued that it is "scientifically meaningless" to enquire into the hidden machinery of the vacuum and hr matter-vacuum interaction, due to the mere fact of the quantum of action.

J: You have gone too far. Also, no one really believes that stuff anymore.

Z: This is one pseudo- positivist dogma that is rejected in a neo-classical approach.
A good example, of course, would be the explanation of atomic ground-state stability in terms of zero-point vacuum fluctuations.

J: That's in text books from 50 years ago. I think it's in Bohm's classic "Quantum Theory".

Z: But I can see that you are simply concerned with developing a workable Andersonian ODLRO formalism that gives sensible results at the macro level, while preserving Lorentz invariance of the field dynamics at the micro-level -- which is fine as far as it goes.

J: That's right. No need to go further than that! No excess verbal baggage allowed. Keep it as simple as possible, but not simpler than is possible. Puthoff makes that mistake. His "PV without PV" is simpler than is possible and your "meta-theoretics" is more complex than is desirable as is most of the disembodied theories today most likely.

Z: OK.

J earlier: the equivalent statement would be that the existence of ferromagnetism requires an explicit breaking of O(3) in the Hamiltonian of the ferromagnet. These phenomena are NOT like the Zeeman and Stark effects in atomic physics, nor is it like the Stern-Gerlach. This is a subtle idea that escapes your comprehension.

Z: Of course I'm not saying anything of the kind. Of course I understand that you are talking about a macro-solution of the micro- field equations that has less than the full O(1,3) symmetry of the underlying dynamics. I am not saying that there is a formal mathematical problem with this.

J: Your point has completely evaporated with a whimper like the pop of a tiny black hole at The End of Ordinary History.

Z: Lost on you. :-)

J: Paradise Lost.

Z: I guess what I am concerned with here is simply not within the scope of your project specification.

J: OK.

On Feb 8, 2005, at 3:57 PM, Jack Sarfatti wrote:

Thanks Brian. I think Anderson's paper is in "A Career in Theoretical Physics". I will look when I get back to my office. Anderson writes that even Eugene Wigner did not get this same idea at first.

On Feb 8, 2005, at 2:01 PM, Brian Josephson wrote:

--On Tuesday, February 8, 2005 12:24 PM -0800 Jack Sarfatti wrote:


On Feb 8, 2005, at 11:36 AM, iksnileiz@earthlink.net wrote:

"You simply cannot have Einstein special relativity and also have a preferred inertial frame that is empirically detectable."


That is wrong Paul. The SR dynamics remain unchanged even when there is a preferred frame. ..


Paul is in good company, as C.N. Yang, co-discoverer of parity violation in the weak interaction, was in 1966 completely unable to understand my explanation of weakly superconductors in terms of states where phase invariance is broken even though the underlying symmetry is not. He maintained if the dynamics is symmetrical the states have to be also, which is of course wrong.

The description of this dates actually back to a paper by Anderson in Phys. Rev. in 1961 or 1962 (try vol. 112, p 1900), where he explained his pseudospin model for superconductivity. Possibly this can be seen on Google scholar, which has some classic papers on it.

Brian

* * * * * * * Prof. Brian D. Josephson :::::::: bdj10@cam.ac.uk
* Mind-Matter * Cavendish Lab., Madingley Rd, Cambridge CB3 0HE, U.K.
* Unification * voice: +44(0)1223 337260 fax: +44(0)1223 337356
* Project * WWW: http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~bdj10
* * * * * * *



Intermission

http://qedcorp.com/book/psi/hitweapon.html

Curtain rises on Act III

Appendix: The Meaning of Special Relativity: Einstein vs Lorentz

Z: This is conceptually orthogonal to the question of *universality* of the contraction/dilatation phenomena, i.e., the hypothesis that all physical objects are affected in exactly the same way when they are in relative uniform motion.

J: I think Lorentz and Einstein both would say they are universal. No significant difference there and no evidence to suggest otherwise. Why dig up this Red Herring?

J previously: I don't know what this means operationally or mathematically. What are you talking about?

Z: What am I talking about?

J: Yeah Dude, what are you talking about?

Z: I'm talking about 1905 special relativity, as argued by Einstein. That's what.

J: How can you decide this? Give a procedure.

Z: Since the immediate empirical predictions of Lorentz's and Einstein's theories are identical, the choice between them is to that extent empirically undecidable.

J: If that were really true, then the problem would be of no interest to a blue collated metric engineer like me. Crank 'er up and see why she don't fly Hal! But, in fact, you contradict what you say below.

Z: It looks like you don't acknowledge how Einstein's 1905 paper fundamentally differs from Lorentz's theory. After all, both involve the same "Lorentz" transformation formulas, but obviously those formulas have very different physical meanings in the two theories.

J: What is the meaning of "physical meanings"?

Z: Einstein's rationale for building the Lorentz transformations into the kinematics -- thus forcing the formal expression of the dynamical laws to be Lorentz invariant -- was the supposed universality of the contraction and dilatation effects, which was in turn supported by Einstein's version of the relativity principle according to which the physical distinction between the apparent uniform motion of a system resulting from observer motion, and objective uniform motion of the system, was erased.

J: You are too vague here Paul. Give an example what you mean. In Einstein's picture, only the relative velocity between Alice and Bob (both inertial frame observers) matters.

Z: It's stronger than that. The distinction *has no scientific meaning* in Einstein's 1905 theory. It is one thing that within a certain class of measurements, the difference has no empirical consequences; it is another to say that the distinction is physically meaningless. The point is that the 1905 theory was riddled with a number of Machian prejudices that I would argue are no longer rationally supportable.

J: You lost me. The Cahill/Consoli allegations clearly allow us to decide between Einstein and Lorentz at least in the immediate neighborhood of Earth realizing that the empirical distinction is contingent on local vacuum conditions.

J: From Alice's POV Bob moves at v and from Bob's PV Alice moves at -v. But suppose Cahill and the Catanians are correct. Suppose the O(1,3) Lorentz group is spontaneously broken in the "empty" space that Earth moves in. Let Eve's inertial frame, be the preferred frame of not so "empty" space in the Earth's neighborhood. "There goes the neighborhood!" says Einstein. v(Alice) and v(Bob) are Alice's and Bob's absolute velocities relative to Eve's preferred inertial frame of rest that is like the preferred direction of the ferromagnetic pseudo-vector H (H3 = F12, H1 = F23, H2 = F13, F is the 4D curl of the A connection field from locally gauging U(1)) in a finite domain (permeability)H = B where the rotation group O(3) is spontaneously broken in the ferromagnetic ground state that is the analog of the vacuum for the spontaneous breaking of the Lorentz group O(1,3) connecting Alice, to Bob, to Eve etc.

Then, the relative velocity between Alice and Bob, from Einstein's kinematics that is identical in mathematical form to Lorentz's, is

v(Alice - Bob) = [v(Alice) - v(Bob)]/[1 - v(Alice)v(Bob)/c^2]

Note there is no change in rest energy measured locally, i.e. if Alice is a detector and Bob is an electron, then when v(Alice) - v(Bob) = 0, v(Alice - Bob) = 0.

Z: Clearly, the existence of an empirically detectable preferred frame in a vacuum breaks this Einsteinian conceit.

J: It is an inconsequential conceit that you blow out of all proportion.

Z: Inconsequential? It's the difference between Einstein and Lorentz!

J: Not a big deal Paul. You keep making this small claims case into a sham White Water!

Z: If these two theories are the essentially the same, then Lorentz gets priority since he published in 1904! All he had to do was put local time on the same mathematical footing as actual time.

J: Did Lorentz write E = mc^2? Was he explicit on time dilation? Did he show Maxwell's equations O(1,3) covariant in writing prior to Einstein in 1905?

It is a small mound that you make into a mountain. A tiny pimple, not the huge goiter on the Neck of God that you make it out to be!

Z: Jack, admit it -- you are adopting a Lorentzian model for the vacuum, and are clearly headed in a neo-classical (or at least neo-realist) direction.

J: Yes, of course, but it's not the BIG DEAL ON STOCKTON STREET you make it out to be.

Curtain Falls http://stardrive.org/cartoon/Saturn.html