All Questions
Tagged with aether special-relativity
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Understanding the math of the Michelson-Morley experiment
I'm having some conceptual misunderstandings of the Michelson-Morley experiment. The time for the beam going perpendicular ($t_{across}$) of the aether wind I am getting:
$$(ct)^{2}=d^{2}+(vt)^{2}\\
(...
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3
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What exactly is weird about waves propagating without a medium? What does it violate? [closed]
I can not seem to grasp, why exactly does light travelling through space without the need of any medium was baffling for the scientists of 1800's.
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Speed of light in Michelson-Morley experiment
The (failed) goal of the Michelson-Morley experiment was to detect the motion of the Earth with respect to the hypothetical ether. As far as I understand (e.g. from the exposition in Feynman’s ...
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What would happen if the aether did exist and there was no such thing as relativity? [closed]
I'm curious as to the purpose of relativity and why the universe would function this way as opposed to a universe with an aether. So what would be different if we had an aether?
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Help with understanding Einstein's thought experiment of the train [closed]
My understanding is that Einstein claimed that the aether model of light is inconsistent with the principle of relativity (that you cannot tell the difference between constant velocity and being ...
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Why does light (supposedly) move diagonally in Michelson-Morley Experiment? [closed]
(Im specifically referring to this video at 12:30)
In Michelson-Morley experiment, one light beam goes perpendicular to the velocity of earth, and other goes parallel to the velocity of earth.
Im ...
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2
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Can transverse waves be both mechanical and non-mechanical?
Transverse waves need a medium for particles to propagate perpendicular to the wave right? Then how can transverse waves be non mechanical which do not require any medium?
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What impetus would Einstein have had to believe the speed of light, of all things, should remain constant for all reference frames? [duplicate]
If I was in the 1900's, and had to choose between
something as "obvious" as time and space behaving "normally"
The speed of light staying constant in all reference frames
I ...
- 1,090
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Logistics of Recreating the Michaelson-Morley Experiment
I want to recreate the Michaelson-Morley Experiment and am wondering how technically challenging it would be. I'm not looking for it to be super precise, just good enough to provide reasonable ...
- 31
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1
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What does light travel through or why it is independent of a medium? [duplicate]
According to my research and understanding I cant get over the fact that light needs no media to travel, or is it scientifically or mathematically proven?
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Where/ how does light propagate? [duplicate]
The Michelson–Morley experiment proved there is no aether, but we (used to) know that a wave needs a medium in order to propagate. Einstein showed the invariance of speed but assigned no properties to ...
- 691
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3
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Explanation for invariance of $c$ / Lorentz transformations? [closed]
First of all, I want to make it clear that I'm not proposing here that I have "discovered" something(I'm just trying to save myself here from accusations about being a relativity denier or ...
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1
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Doesn't Lorentz transformation disprove aether?
I am struggling to understand the reason behind why lorentz still believe in the aether theory after developing his transformation.
The aether frame is the frame by which all velocities should be ...
- 6,636
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1
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Why does the universality of the speed of light prove there is no ether?
So I definitely don’t think there is an ether for starters. I am reading electrodynamics by Griffith and he states that Einstein’s second postulate which says “The speed of light in vacuum is the same ...
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Is Michelson-Morley experiment useless? [closed]
Do you agree that any experiment with two-way there-and-back journeys will never show any discrepancy? Aren't all differences going to be counterbalanced, levelled in the journey back?.
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