My Problems With Relativity

Factual Questions
301

You must hve read all my postings by now. Are they the postings of someone who doesn’t know both Newton’s and Einstein’s work (while disagreeing with the latter)?

Trinopus posted "The fact that we are all in agreement might be some kind of nasty conspiracy…or we might simply happen to be right here. We beseech you, by the bowels of Christ, consider that you might be wrong.

The trouble is, Trinopus, that you are not in agreement. Posted by TAMOP (These Are My Own Pants) :- “…not that it would be a problem for special relativty if it’s coordinate velcoity in a non-inetial frame were to exceed c as special relativyt only says that objects with real, non-zero mass must always travel at below c in inertial frames.”

While Trinopus thinks it is valid, BunnyTVS asked a pertinant question about the last paragraph of my last posting, would anybody care to answer him?

I have posted a few questions on this forum which have gone unanswered. The latest being why is a stick half in half out of water not really bent, while the distortions of SRT are supposedly real?
Because nobody has done so, I will venture to answer myself. The stick is not really bent because photons and atoms do not follow the same rules (physical laws). Photons, from the instant they are created, travel at c, not a hair under or over, unless slightly modified by the index of refraction of the medium they are passing through. In the case under discussion, this refraction causes an apparent bending of the stick at the junction of the water and the air. The stick is not really bent, as atoms, which is what the stick is made of, do not refract when changing from one medium to another. In other words, they do not follow the same laws. Another law they do not follow is the minimum speed of photons.
As is self evident, material objects can and do travel much slower than c. They are not macro photons. They do not obey the minimum speed law, so why should they obey the maximum speed law?
Super-fast electrons in the moderating baths of nuclear reactors which produce blue Cerenkov radiation clearly have broken the local light barrier, and it is hard to rationalize the existence of a second barrier there at the free-space speed of light.

302

If you declare that a paragraph in which I explain that it is impossible for something to accelerate itself acting only on itself – a notion which you have used repeatedly to argue for faster than light travel – is ‘wrong, and designed to be misleading’, then there’s either something you missed about Newton’s work, or you’re just being dishonest.

303

Have you come up with an alternative to E[sub]k[/sub] = (gamma - 1)*mc^2 yet? This formula, which is derived from Einstein’s relativity, which is experimentally verified, gives infinite kinetic energy to matter traveling at the speed of light.

Do you see how this, if correct, poses a barrier to matter exceeding the speed of light? Do you have a decent alternative to this formula and idea? If you don’t I’ll keep believing modern physics over you.

Your previous attempt failed to take even newtonian relativity into account by the way.

304

[quote=“tomh4040, post:301, topic:388750”]

You must hve read all my postings by now. Are they the postings of someone who doesn’t know both Newton’s and Einstein’s work (while disagreeing with the latter)?

[quote]

Honest answer? No I don’t think you have a particualry good grasp of either Newtonian or relativistic physics.

You’ve read Einstein’s pop-sci book on the subject (of relativity), but yoyu’ve clearly not understood a lot of the basic concepts in it. We’re not having a high level debate on the subject here, we’re discussing your misconceptions about the most basic (as in the easiest to understand and most important postulates/results) concepts in relativity.

At the moment I just see you trying to take various potshots at relativity. If you had a good grasp of the subject you might be able to put together something approaching a critque or at least your pot shots would be of better quality.

I don’t think you’ve particularly demonstarted you’ve got a real understanding of Newtonian physics and by your own admission you do not understand calculus. Given the importance of calculus in Newtonian physics I would say it’s essential to have a good grasp on the subject (e.g. how can you truly understand Newton’s definition of force without calculus).

My point was in order to demonstrate taht soemthign travelling faster than c is in conflict with relativity, you need to demonstrate it is travelling faster than c in an inertial frame. The problem is that spatially extended non-inertial reference frames in special relativity are fairly arbitary can lead to all sorts of frame effects.

I’m guessing what HMHW meant is that the local speed of light remains c in non-inertial reference frames, which is true.

What’s “really” happening is called ontology and is independent of the empircal aspects of the theory. The particualr ontology we choose for relativty the effects represent real distortions of length, etc. The reason we choose this ontology is because experimentally what relativity predicts is empircally equivalent to these distortions being “real”. And note relativity ditinguishes between purely visual effects such as Terrell rotation from effects like length contraction.

Just because you don’t understand why there exists a light speed barrier does not mean that there isn’t one and tbh I can’t be bothered too explain why as you’re not going to listen.

305

I see nobody has bothered to answer your question. I will therefore answer it, but before I do, let me go back to previous postings, when I was arguing against the equivalence principle, and used H Zweig’s thought experiment. I was lambasted for this as it was “obviously” wrong. One of the arguments along the line was very similar to your question above. Of course you are absolutely correct. The gravity from this body will affect the man - in fact it will affect everything. He will not feel a jerk forward as everything is being affected by the gravity of the body. Is there anybody on this forum who disagrees?

I changed the grammar and the wording in the following paragraph which I posted. Here it is again :-

“A man in a train travelling along an embankment watches the embankment apparently move backward. He then experiences a jerk forward (WRT the train), and the speed of the embankment passing by reduces. He assumes it was caused by the brakes being applied. This is not bound to be the case however. It could be that the train was at rest, with the embankment moving backward, and then a gravitating body appeared in front of the train. The gravity from this body then caused the embankment to behave so that its backward velocity is reduced.”

And here is the original :-
"It is certainly true that the observer in the railway carriage experiences a jerk forwards as a result of the application of the brake, and that he recognises in this the non-uniformity of motion (retardation) of the carriage. But he is compelled by nobody to refer this jerk to a “real” acceleration (retardation) of the carriage. He might also interpret his experience thus : “My body of reference (the carriage) remains permanently at rest. With reference to it however, there exists (during the period of application of the brakes) a gravitational field which is directed forward and which is variable with respect to time. Under the influence of this field, the embankment together with the earth moves non-uniformly in such a manner that their original velocity in the backwards direction is continuously reduced.”
Quote from A Einstein.
As BunnyTVS pointed out, the gravity would affect everything (including the carriage) equally.

306

I think you may be reading too much into that Einstein quote. It’s an analogy, and an analogy doesn’t have 100% equivalence to the thing you’re comparing to. In the analogy, it’s assumed that the train remains fixed somehow, attached to this gravitational mass that suddenly appeared. It doesn’t matter how this happens, because the analogy is focusing on the person. Nit-picking the analogy doesn’t prove Einstein wrong, it merely points out the obvious shortcomings of using an analogy as a total description of the physics.

The equivalence principle is more easily seen with elevators. When you first step into an elevator, you feel a 9.8 m/s^2 acceleration, the default acceleration from just standing on Earth. If the elevator goes down, you feel 9.8 minus some value, and so for a moment you feel a little lighter. If the elevator goes up, you feel 9.8 plus some value. What the equivalence principle says is that when you’re in the elevator, there’s no way to tell that the 9.8 acceleration that you’re feeling is due to being on Earth, or the elevator is literally accelerating at that rate through empty space. So the feeling you get when the elevator goes down is exactly how it would feel to step onto a planet with lower gravity. You’d feel like you were standing in an elevator constantly accelerating downward, because our bodies are used to the standard 9.8 m/s^2.

307

Yes, it’s explicitly specified that the carriage remains permanently at rest. Leaving this out breaks the analogy.

308

And as you should now see, one of your problems is that you are re-interpreting the original thought experiment to accommodate your conception of relativity. You completely ignored the fact that the carriage “remains completely at rest” in the second interpretation only. By being in such a state the carriage becomes an independent frame of reference.

It may help to think of the situation, not as a man in a train but as a plane on a treadmill :smiley:

309

We have certainly gone full circle with this argument/discussion. I can thank (most of) you for keeping it impersonal, with all arguments to the point of the discussion and not the person.

I was once a relativist, and now have changed sides (as you can see from my postings). If I have caused any of you to doubt the validity of Einstein’s SRT, even in a small way, I will consider that my time spent on this forum was not wasted. I realise that some people may not want to acknowledge such a change of heart publicly on this or any forum, so if any of you want to email me or send a private message, please do so. It will be treated in strict confidence. I want you on my side, so divulging the name, email address or screen name of anybody who does contact me would be very counter productive.
My email address is :- carmam"at"tiscali.co.uk

310

Seriously? That’s what you got from this thread?

311

Well, it’s just the typical behavior of those who can’t afford to question their beliefs because they’ve invested too much into them, like conspiracy theorists, religious fundamentalists, or crackpots of all kinds: in the face of contradictory evidence, they have to invent auxiliary hypotheses to explain the discord away. To the conspiracy theorist, everyone’s in on it, so every contradiction only serves to bolster the confidence in their hermetic system of lies and deception; the religious fundamentalist might see themselves faced with a test of faith; alternative-science crackpots see ‘the establishment’ repressing the truth, and dissenters being forced to publicly toe the party line, afraid to voice their ‘true’ convictions – an ingenious reversal, projecting their own closed-mindedness onto those they see as their ‘opponents’.

Ultimately, it’s all an exercise in identity-building: we find ourselves, define who we are, by associating us with those we judge ‘like’ ourselves, and dissociating us from those that are ‘different’ – ‘I’m like this, and not like that’ ultimately defines ‘I’ in relation to ‘everything else’. The sharper the divide, the stronger the identity built from it; this is the appeal of fringe groups: associating with them dissociates yourself from a majority of the population, and more sharply delineates ‘yourself’ than if you were ‘like everyone else’. But this comes at the price of viewing every dissent with the beliefs entailed by the membership to some fringe group as an attack on the most personal level, that on which you have built your own identity – and thus, it must be opposed vigorously, since if it should ‘succeed’, then the whole construct of your identity is no longer tenable.

Anyway, so much for the pop-psych… I guess I’m now just about ready for the thread to die a well-earned death.

312

Relativity meets Relativism!

(Friendly grin; I agree with everything Half Man Half Wit said.)

The ultimate key to distinguishing “post modernism” from “real science” is that real science is independently reproducible. This isn’t a case of “big endians” vs. “little endians,” or whether or not lima beans taste good. The seminal Michelson-Morley experiment has been repeated tens of thousands of times, including in space. And yet there is a brand of “relativity skeptic” that still insists, “They didn’t do it right.”

As was observed in another thread…there’re still Flat Earthers, too…

313

But what you have conveniently forgotten is that I can and did afford to question my beliefs. I was once on your side. I saw the light! Your paragraph above can just as well describe you and your beliefs.

Quote from Trinopus
“The ultimate key to distinguishing “post modernism” from “real science” is that real science is independently reproducible. This isn’t a case of “big endians” vs. “little endians,” or whether or not lima beans taste good. The seminal Michelson-Morley experiment has been repeated tens of thousands of times, including in space. And yet there is a brand of “relativity skeptic” that still insists, “They didn’t do it right.”.”

Please tell me how the seminal Michelson and Morley experiment can distinguish between a speed of light referenced to the local gravitational field, and the distortions of SR with a constant speed of light according to every observer.

Tom Van Flandern :- “The dissident physicists I have mentioned disagree about various things, but they are beginning to unite behind this proposition: There really is an ether, in which electromagnetic waves travel, but it is not the all-encompassing, uniform ether proposed by Maxwell. Instead, it corresponds to the gravitational field that all celestial bodies carry about with them. Close to the surface (of sun, planet, or star) the field, or ether, is relatively more dense. As you move out into space it becomes more attenuated. Beckmann’s Einstein Plus Two introduces this hypothesis, I believe for the first time, and he told me it was first suggested to him in the 1950’s by one of his graduate students, Jiri Pokorny, at the Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics in Prague. Pokorny later joined the department of physics at Prague’s Charles University, and today is retired. I believe that all the facts that seem to require special or general relativity can be more simply explained by assuming an ether that corresponds to the local gravitational field. Michelson found no “ether wind,” or fringe shift, because of course the Earth’s gravitational field moves forward with the Earth. As for the bending of starlight near the Sun, the confirmation of general relativity that made Einstein world-famous, it is easily explained given a non-uniform light medium. It is a well known law of physics that wave fronts do change direction when they enter a denser medium. According to Howard Hayden, refracted starlight can be derived this way “with a few lines of high school algebra.” And derived exactly. The tensor calculus and Riemannian geometry of general relativity gives only an approximation. Likewise the “Shapiro Time-Delay,” observed when radar beams pass close to the Sun and bounce back from Mercury. Some may prefer to try to understand all this in terms of the “curvature of space-time,” to use the Einstein formulation (unintelligible to laymen, I believe). But they should know that a far simpler alternative exists.”
“The advance of the perihelion of Mercury’s orbit, another famous confirmation of general relativity, is worth a closer look. (The perihelion is the point in the orbit closest to a sun.) Graduate theses may one day be written about this peculiar episode in the history of science. In his book, Subtle Is the Lord, Abraham Pais reports that when Einstein saw that his calculations agreed with Mercury’s orbit, “he had the feeling that something actually snapped in him… This experience was, I believe, by far the strongest emotional experience in Einstein’s scientific life, perhaps in all his life. Nature had spoken to him.” Fact: The equation that accounted for Mercury’s orbit had been published 17 years earlier, before relativity was invented. The author, Paul Gerber, used the assumption that gravity is not instantaneous, but propagates with the speed of light. After Einstein published his general-relativity derivation, arriving at the same equation, Gerber’s article was reprinted in Annalen der Physik (the journal that had published Einstein’s relativity papers). The editors felt that Einstein should have acknowledged Gerber’s priority. Although Einstein said he had been in the dark, it was pointed out that Gerber’s formula had been published in Mach’s Science of Mechanics, a book that Einstein was known to have studied. So how did they both arrive at the same formula?”
Petr Beckman :- "So how did Einstein get the same formula? Van Flandern went through his calculations, and found to his amazement that they had “three separate contributions to the perihelion; two of which add, and one of which cancels part of the other two; and you wind up with just the right multiplier.” So he asked a colleague at the University of Maryland, who as a young man had overlapped with Einstein at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, how in his opinion Einstein had arrived at the correct multiplier. This man said it was his impression that, “knowing the answer,” Einstein had “jiggered the arguments until they came out with the right value.”
“If the general relativity method is correct, it ought to apply everywhere, not just in the solar system. But Van Flandern points to a conflict outside it: binary stars with highly unequal masses. Their orbits behave in ways that the Einstein formula did not predict. “Physicists know about it and shrug their shoulders,” Van Flandern says. They say there must be “something peculiar about these stars, such as an oblateness, or tidal effects.” Another possibility is that Einstein saw to it that he got the result needed to “explain” Mercury’s orbit, but that it doesn’t apply elsewhere.”

314

From your Van Flandern quote.

“I believe that”, not “I have shown”, or “it’s been shown”. Show us the math. Show us a theory of localized ether that fits all timing observations for celestial motion. Show us an actual theory without relativity that explains the observed relationships between particle speed and particle decay time. Show us an actual theory that explains E = (gamma - 1) * m * c^2

These physicists that Van Flandern say “are beginning to unite behind this proposition”, where is their work, where is the math?

A competing theory has to explain everything that relativity explains, and it has to explain it better. Where are those explanations? You’ve based your disbelief in relativity, and it’s disbelief rather than disproof as you’ve shown again and again that basic physics, including newtonian relativity, is beyond you, on an hodgepodge of references to outdated and at times incompatible attempts to come up with coherent alternatives to Einstein, and the only reason you accept this collections of musings over the coherent and sound theories of relativity is that you don’t comprehend the latter.

315

Problems with Relativity. Our friend Tom’s beliefs about relativity. I’m not sure how current it is, but I note that the section on “Three clocks in motion” is “under review.” Apparently we’ve managed to do some fighting against ignorance.

316

When I am wrong, I admit it. It would appear that not everybody is as moral.
I was wrong here as well :- But what you have conveniently forgotten is that I can and did afford to question my beliefs. I was once on your side. I saw the light! Your paragraph above can just as well describe you and your beliefs.
I was wrong here as well :- “But what you have conveniently forgotten is that I can and did afford to question my beliefs. I was once on your side. I saw the light! Your paragraph above can just as well describe you and your beliefs.” Amend the last sentence to read “Your paragraph above describes you and your beliefs, not mine.”."

No answer from Trinopus about the MMX?

From naita :- “…the only reason you accept this collections of musings over the coherent and sound theories of relativity is that you don’t comprehend the latter.”
Don’t confuse comprehension with disagreement. There are plenty of eminent physicists who disagree with SR. Do they not comprehend the theory either?
All theories begin with a belief, then work on that to form the theory. That includes Einstein. “coherent and sound”? If you call the universe shrinking and expanding according to what I do (and everybody else at the same time), and being physically different for each and every one of us, then I am sure one name for it could be coherent and sound. I would call it a collection of musings, and if you accept that collections of musings over the much simpler theory of an ether that corresponds to the local gravitational field, then you don’t comprehend the latter.

As for the bending of starlight near the Sun, the confirmation of general relativity that made Einstein world-famous, it is easily explained given a non-uniform light medium. It is a well known law of physics that wave fronts do change direction when they enter a denser medium. According to Howard Hayden, refracted starlight can be derived this way “with a few lines of high school algebra.” And derived exactly. The tensor calculus and Riemannian geometry of general relativity gives only an approximation. Likewise the “Shapiro Time-Delay,” observed when radar beams pass close to the Sun and bounce back from Mercury. Some may prefer to try to understand all this in terms of the “curvature of space-time,” to use the Einstein formulation (unintelligible to laymen, I believe). But they should know that a far simpler alternative exists."

The ring laser is very easily and simply explained without recourse to the distortions of SR.

The life time of muons, being short and not expected to reach the Earth, are extended due to the accelerations they undergo. The distortions of SR do not enter into this.

The physicists work which TVF mentions are available on the web. Which maths do you want me to show you? The maths which is in accord with reality, or the maths which is not? How do you know which is which?

317

Scientific truth is not decided on a moral basis.

You asked, “Please tell me how the seminal Michelson and Morley experiment can distinguish between a speed of light referenced to the local gravitational field, and the distortions of SR with a constant speed of light according to every observer.”

I don’t understand your question.

The experiment has been performed in space, and thus the “local gravitational field” can be eliminated from consideration. I don’t know what “the distortions of SR” means.

The Michelson/Morley experiment showed that the speed of light is the same in all directions, and thus strongly suggests that the speed of light is the same for all observers. If that is true, then other consequences would follow, including most of the ideas in Einstein’s work. Since most of these ideas have been shown to be true, the entire collection of ideas seems to be valid.

318

Well, as I said:

Right after you realized that those in your fringe group would not follow you on this path, and were thus faced with isolation, you immediately returned back into your comfort zone. Nevertheless, this – you admitting being in error – was the main reason I kept replying.

You can only meaningfully disagree with a position you comprehend; otherwise, you’re just voicing preconceptions. As others have said, just judging from what you posted here, you don’t seem to have received much of a higher education in physics, which is of course not a bad thing, a flaw or a fault in any way – we all start out in a position of ignorance. But to believe that nevertheless, one’s opinion supersedes that of those who’ve spent a lifetime studying this stuff just strikes me as more than a little arrogant. You should at least consider the possibility of being a victim of the Dunning-Kruger effect, or, as I believe Trinopus already hinted at, take into account Cromwell’s rule.

That’s got it backwards. Typically, theories are formed to explain observations (or perhaps, in many modern cases, to create consistency between conflicting, already existing theories); in Einstein’s case, one could for example point to the experiments supporting Maxwell’s electrodynamics, because essentially, special relativity is already built into those – Einstein just took that seriously. (Hence, the seminal paper ‘On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies’.)

And nevertheless, it’s an experimentally confirmed effect: heavy ions, accelerated to near the speed of light, assume an oblong shape; i.e. their usually spherical shape gets length contracted to a sort of ‘pancake’ form. Besides, even aether theories must incorporate length contraction to be consistent with the Michelson-Morley experiment.

As I said before, if you accept general relativistic effects, then you must accept special relativistic ones, as well, as SR is just GR in the absence of a gravitational field. So this argument would serve to bolster confidence in SR.

Experiments. Which so far come out in favor of SR/GR by far. In fact, since you’re the one propagating a new theory, you should be able to give me quantitative explanations for the following effects by a consistent theory, which either supersede those given by GR/SR, or lead to novel explanations of hitherto unexplained phenomena.

[ul]
[li]A big one is all the experiments of modern particle physics, which are described by relativistic theories (quantum field theories). In particular, the equivalence of mass and energy is routinely demonstrated in particle accelerators. (Indeed, the existence of particle spin and antiparticles is a direct consequence of merging special relativity and quantum theory in the Dirac equation; I’ve yet to see any ‘alternative’ theory even attempting to tackle this issue…)[/li][li]Also, as mentioned before, both length contraction and time dilation (I don’t care if you consider that a GR or SR effect) are seen in the lifetimes and interactions of particles in accelerators [/li][li]Experiments which show the speed of light to be constant independently of the gravitational field or any local effects of Earth, such as the de Sitter double star experiment, where light from a rotating, distant pair of stars is shown to travel at the same speed independently of the motion of the stars[/li][li]Orbital decay of binary pulsars: two pulsars orbiting one another emit gravitational waves, and thus, loose energy and spiral towards one another[/li][li]The Gravity Probe B tests of frame dragging and the geodetic effect[/li][/ul]

There’s more of course, but these are a few not that often mentioned in such discussions that I can come up with right now…

319

There are a lot more eminent physicists who agree with SR and GR, but that doesn’t matter. It’s not how science ultimately works. It doesn’t matter if it’s a “simpler” theory if it doesn’t explain all the observations of the more complex one. Where are the works of these plenty and eminent physicists who disagree with SR where they explain all our observations within this alternative framework to relativity? All you’re posting are vague quotes, no actual physics. A prime example right here:

Someone working with a theory of light refracting in an ether has the benefit of inventing whatever refractive index and ether density distributions they want. If Howard Hayden has derived this using a few lines of high school algebra, why don’t you show us this math?

I know the math that is in accord with reality, it’s called GR and SR. I know this because I actually understand the equations and the reason for their existence. If you show me the alternative math I can look at that and judge it.

What, for instance, is the equation for the relation between particle acceleration and particle life time? How was it derived? Does it fit with other parts of this alternative to GR and SR?

Your references to various claimed simpler explanations mean nothing unless these simpler explanations can be fitted together into a coherent whole. Even in your prefered medium of loosely collected quotes you haven’t even shown a hint of such a whole.

Since you don’t understand basic physics, and this is not based on your “disagreement” with relativity, you have shown you don’t understand newtonian relativity either, why should we accept as reasonable your opinion on what appears to anyone knowledgable as a collection of fringe theories with only “isn’t relativity” in common?

320

I have been asked to summarise what I have put on this forum. Here it is in approximately the order of the postings.

The Equivalence Principle. Einstein’s Gedankenexperimente with the man in the chest. If the chest is being accelerated (at 1G) by the hypothetical being, the piece of wood and the lead will fall at exactly 9.8m/s^2 (we assume that for the sake of argument, 1G = 9.8m/s^2 exactly) and hit the floor of the chest together. They are quite simply left behind as the chest accelerates away. If the chest is in a gravitational field of 1G (standing on the Earth’s surface), the lead will hit the floor of the chest before the wood. This was discussed earlier, and I was castigated for using a miniature black hole in the experiment instead of the lead. The use of the black hole was just a device to point out that if a black hole hits the floor before the wood, then something half the mass of the black hole will hit before the wood, as will a mass of a quarter or a tenth or a hundredth etc. In a previous posting I did the maths to show exactly what that difference was. I admit it is a tiny difference, but it is there, and it is relevant. The man in the chest can tell if he is being accelerated or is in a gravitational field.

Read Einstein’s speech to the Prussian Academy of Science in 1921, where he admitted he was wrong and Lorentz and Poincare were correct. Go to :-http://www.relativitycalculator.com/pdfs/einstein_geometry_and_experience_1921.pdf

A stick half in and half out of water is not really bent, even though it appears to be. The distortions of SR are not real. The real world can always be described by mathematics, but mathematics cannot always describe the real world. This leads to a question which I have yet to receive an answer to. Which is the maths which does apply to the real world, and which is the maths which does not apply?

“How do your ideas deal with the results of Michelson-Morley?”
All the facts that seem to require special or general relativity can be more simply explained by assuming an ether that corresponds to the local gravitational field. Michelson found no “ether wind,” or fringe shift, because of course the Earth’s gravitational field moves forward with the Earth. As for the bending of starlight near the Sun, the confirmation of general relativity that made Einstein world-famous, it is easily explained given a non-uniform light medium.
The MMX never did prove SRT. Let’s take some scenarios and analyse them.

  1. The speed of light is WRT the source. There would yeild a null result.
  2. The speed of light is WRT the medium (the air in the apparatus in this case). Null result.
  3. The speed of light is WRT the local gravitational field. Null result.
  4. Einstein is correct. The speed of light is WRT the receiver and length and time change according to velocity. Null result.
  5. The speed of light is WRT some arbitrary star system or galaxy. This would yield a positive result.
    Points 1 and 5 can be discounted, but are included just for comparison. Points 2 to 4 all yield a null result, so the MMX does not prove SRT.

The Sagnac effect. This manifests itself in a setup called ring interferometry. A beam of light is split and the two beams are made to follow a trajectory in opposite directions. To act as a ring the trajectory must enclose an area. On return to the point of entry the light is allowed to exit the apparatus in such a way that an interference pattern is obtained. The position of the interference fringes is dependent on the angular velocity of the setup. This arrangement is also called a Sagnac interferometer.
Usually several mirrors are used, so that the light beams follow a triangular or square trajectory. Fibre optics can also be employed to guide the light. The ring interferometer is located on a platform that can rotate. When the platform is rotating the lines of the interference pattern are displaced as compared to the position of the interference pattern when the platform is not rotating. The amount of displacement is proportional to the angular velocity of the rotating platform. The axis of rotation does not have to be inside the enclosed area. When the platform is rotating, the point of entry/exit moves during the transit time of the light. So one beam has covered less distance than the other beam. This creates the shift in the interference pattern. Therefore, the interference pattern obtained at each angular velocity of the platform features a different phase-shift particular to that angular velocity.
In the above discussion, the rotation mentioned is rotation with respect to an inertial reference frame. This is a very simple and straightforward explanation. No SR effects here. The speed of light is WRT the local gravitational field, not to the receiver (observer). If WRT the receiver, the two beams would arrive at the receiver at the same time, and cause no interference shift. This does not happen.
Let us analyse some scenarios.
1 The speed of light is WRT the source. No interference pattern shift.
2 The speed of light is WRT the medium (glass in a Fibre optic system, air in a mirror system). No interference pattern shift.
3 The speed of light is WRT the local gravitational field. An interference pattern fringe shift.
4 Einstein is correct. The speed of light is WRT the receiver, and length and time change according to velocity. An interference pattern shift. This interpretation of the result is disputed - see below.
5 The speed of light is WRT some arbitrary star system or galaxy. An interference pattern shift.
Points 1 and 5 can be discounted, but are included just for comparison. That leaves one point (3) for, and one point (4) against SRT. This does not prove SRT.

“Also known as the Sagnac effect, the results are an uncontested fact, the interpretation is far from it. This experiment was formulated to prove the existence of Aether and though the results are positive, relativists just try to make it fit into relativity. Once again, the problem is that relativists will throw in a universal frame of reference any time it’s convenient but patently deny its existence when questioned. The explanations are actually correct but incompatible with relativity
If you split a laser to travel opposite directions around a square of mirrors, the beam will arrive back at the same point at precisely the same time correct? If light travels the same speed in all frames of reference then will spinning the whole room -changing the speed of the emitter or listener- do anything to the arrival time of the two beams? No, right?
Unfortunately for relativity, experiments show that it does… (Though the tests are not set up to compare the arrival of the first wave, the results and the explanations bear out that there is a difference.)
The Aether based explanation of this effect and the Relativity explanation are suspiciously similar:
Relativity: Though we know there is no universal frame of reference and therefore never any need for more than two frames of reference for an experiment, for the explanation of this experiment, we’re going to add a third frame of reference outside of the emitter and receiver and call it “proper time”. In regard to this third frame of reference the light beam is traveling a different distance so that is why it is out of sync.
Aether: Because the light traveled further in one direction than the other in regard to an absolute reference frame(the medium through which it traveled), the two signals are out of sync.”

A rocket with its own internal (reaction) motor can carry on accelerating as long as the fuel lasts. There is no motion between motor and rocket – ie they are both in the same FR, so there is no mass increase, and no other relativistic effects. To the contributor who said I did not understand Newton, look back at the postings using snowballs as an analogy, and the mass of the ejectant in a rocket motor. You will see that I do understand action and reaction. This brings up the point of relativistic addition of velocities between FR1, FR2, and FR3 etc (as in the snowball throwing experiment). This has never been experimentally proved.
All experiments, without exception, which have been done to “prove” a limiting velocity of c, have been done in a particle accelerator. The PA and the particle itself consist of two separate FRs, and the power source is electro magnetic. The PA is pushing (from eg FR1) the particle (in eg FR2) using a force which is itself constrained to c, so cannot possibly push anything faster than that speed, hence the illusion of a limiting speed and mass increase.

Rocket ships do not follow the same rules which govern photons, and are not accelerated by an external force, as in a PA. Solid bodies can and do travel slower than c. So as they are not constrained to a lower limit, why should they be constrained to an upper limit?
A rocket ship is not a macro photon, it is made of atoms - not photons, and does not present the same velocity profile to all observers as photons do - a crucial difference. “Photons cannot exceed the speed of light therefore c is the fastest that anything can travel, including information”. Yes, photons are restricted to c; it is both an upper and a lower limit, but the rules which govern solid bodies are demonstrably different, a distinction which makes all the difference. The speed of a rocket ship depends on who measures it: the speed of a photon does not.

“You are not at liberty to disagree with Einstein’s theories, because they have passed every experimental test, and you have offered none that might falsify it. In particular regarding objects that would, if it [were] not for SR, surpass the speed of light (think particle accelerators, for one).” Particle accelerators are the only one!
Einstein’s theories have not passed every test, but they have never been disproved. The fact that something has not been disproved does not mean it has been proved. The MMX is another oft quoted example of Einstein being correct, cited as proof of SRT: it is no such thing – see above.

When the GPS was designed, the satellite clocks were synchronised to the ECI, which became the preferred FR, and LET was used, not SRT. This was aired on this forum a short while ago, and I was directed towards a web page which would prove me wrong. It did no such thing, as although it insisted on calling the relativity corrections Einsteinian, the Earth was still the preferred FR, with all clocks being synchronised to it. The speed of light is therefore constant in this frame, and not in the satellites’ frames. In other words LET correction was used, where the speed of light is not a constant, and there is no restriction on faster than light travel.

Tom Van Flandern “Of critical importance to choosing the model that best represents nature, none of the eleven independent experiments testing SR verify frame reciprocity or distinguish SR from LR. In fact, historically, de Sitter, Sagnac, Michelson, and Ives concluded from their respective experiments that SR was falsified in favor of the Lorentz theory. Indeed, the GPS itself is a practical realization of Lorentz’s “universal time”, wherein all clocks remain synchronized despite being in many different frames with high relative speeds.”

. . If I travel at close to the speed of light towards Proxima Centauri, the distance between the Earth and Proxima Centauri is no longer 4 light years, it is 2 light years. This is not a visual effect, it is real.
My brother Tim set off at the same time as I did towards Proxima Centauri in a less powerful rocket, so he travels slower than I do. The distance between the Earth and Proxima Centauri is no longer 4 light years, it is 3 light years. This is not a visual effect, it is real. . . .
Hamster King and Trinopus both said :- So what’s the problem? You see your brother moving at a certain speed that is less than c. Your brother sees you moving at a certain speed that is less than c. We, back on earth, see both of you moving at speeds that are less than c.
(Note the terminology here, “you see”: “your brother sees”: “we see”, not it actually happens. I have no problem with “seeing”, because that is apparent, not real (anything traveling faster than light cannot be seen, and anything traveling faster than sound cannot be heard). Relativists however, say that it is real.
My problem is that the universe has contracted by 50pc for me, and by 25pc for my brother. How does the universe know what speed I am doing to contract the correct amount? For every single person in the universe, it contracts the correct amount which of course is potentially different for every person in the universe. This is supposed to be a real occurrence according to Einstein. So this effect is real, and yet a stick half in water is not really bent, it is only visual - please explain the difference. I am sure that a mathematician could come up with a formula which will show that the stick is really bent, and we cannot tell because when somebody puts their hand into the water to touch the stick, their hand undergoes the same transformation that the stick does, all molecules bending at the same rate and at the same time to render the process undetectable to our feelings.

At the end of chapter XX in his book Einstein says "It is certainly true that the observer in the railway carriage experiences a jerk forwards as a result of the application of the brake, and that he recognises in this the non-uniformity of motion (retardation) of the carriage. But he is compelled by nobody to refer this jerk to a “real” acceleration (retardation) of the carriage. He might also interpret his experience thus : “My body of reference (the carriage) remains permanently at rest. With reference to it however, there exists (during the period of application of the brakes) a gravitational field which is directed forward and which is variable with respect to time. Under the influence of this field, the embankment together with the earth moves non-uniformly in such a manner that their original velocity in the backwards direction is continuously reduced.”
Note the error in this. Gravity would not cause a jerk forward as acceleration (deceleration) does. Einstein was plainly wrong in this one.

Some GR effects have been “proved”. Atomic clocks run slower in increased gravity for instance. But pendulum clocks run faster in increased gravity, so which clock is correct? Is gravity having an effect on time, or only on the clocks?