Horace Heffner wrote: > > On Nov 17, 2008, at 10:00 AM, Jed Rothwell wrote: > >> >> I am well aware of the fact that the MM experiments were not fully >> convincing, and some smart people still think there may be variations >> in the speed of light from ether, but from an empiricist point of >> view, it is true for now, true as anything, and true enough to act >> upon -- and there is no better or more solid definition of truth. > > Such a limited view of things! It is as limited as the notion that man > will never fly.
The MM experiment was designed to test a prediction made by a particular aether theory which was widely accepted at that time. The prediction was contradicted by the results of the experiment. The predicted behavior was well within the "domain of applicability" of the aether theory from which the prediction was made, and the result was different from the prediction by much more than the size of the error bars. Consequently that particular aether theory may be said to have been disproved, and may be safely considered to be a false theory. The MM experiment showed nothing about any other (different) aether theory which might be conceived with behavior which happens to match the results (nor did it say anything about the possibility of occasional "miraculous" results caused by intervention by the hyper-scientist who is running the simulation which we perceive as Our Universe). If we assume for the moment that classical relativity is Absolutely True and the intrinsic curvature of spacetime is the One True Cause of stuff like gravity, then we can add that neither the MM experiment nor any other experiment done to date has any bearing on the question of whether the universe has *extrinsic* curvature, such as the curvature of the surface of a cylinder, or the curvature of a piece of pleated fabric. If spacetime is "embedded" in some higher space, and if it has *extrinsic* curvature in that space, then that extrinsic curvature could provide "shortcuts" which would allow objects and information to get from one place to another faster than C, with no contradictions and no conflict with relativity theory.
