BurtJordaan » July 20th, 2017, 11:25 am wrote:Hi Inch: absolute (historical) LET implies absolute time with physical length contraction. This means that it passed the MM test, but fails any form of time dilatation test.
Cooper's simulation of MMx shows why contraction is needed, but it also shows how light would take more time between the mirrors, a two way time which can be considered as the tics of a light clock, so it also shows how time dilation would happen, and it is done with a background ether which is absolute, so I really can't see how it could not pass the time dilation test.
Modern LET includes time dilation and length contraction caused by motion relative to an undetectable ether and hence it passes all time dilation tests.
As far as logic is concerned, it doesn't matter wether ether is detectable or not. With ether, we can imagine how things generally work, and we cannot with SR. I asked you one example where absolute LET wouldn't work, and you didn't provide it, so I suspect it is because you cannot find any.
Inertial motion relative to the 'ether' cancels out everywhere in LET's equations and the result is the same as SR's. The only motion that is left in the equations is the relative motion between two objects of interest.
That's always the kind of ether that I have in mind.
One lecturer (of which I forgot the name) once said something like: "thinking about an unobservable aether to explain relativity is somewhat like thinking of unobservable angels pushing the planets around to move exactly like relativity predicts them to move."
Relativity has its own angels producing the unobservable gravity.
So from a practical p.o.v., the difference is only philosophical, because SR ignores an 'ether' from the start.
It's only a viewpoint difference, the same as the difference between a stationary earth and a stationary sun, but who knows if we would have discovered relativity without changing viewpoints.