[Physics] Aether theory discussion

[Ilja Schmelzer]

2016-12-19 22:38 GMT+01:00, Arend Lammertink <lamare at gmail.com>:
> How about the idea: I start with the current theory, and work my way
> back to it's root hypothesis and how these came to be.
> And then start DEBUGGING from scratch!

There is no such thing as a "root hypothesis" in the SM.

It is essentially a phenomenological theory.  They start with
a general mathematical apparatus developed for quantum fields
in general.  They guess what are all the fields, simply with the
only aim to fit their empirical data.  They choose all their parameters
with the only aim to fit their empirical data.  Nothing else, no
philosophical ideas what these fields describe, nothing.

So, the SM describe some fields, quantum fields, with no idea
what these fields describe.

The situation similar to classical thermodynamics.  It described an
abstract field T, named temperature,  which described something
observable in reality.  But without any idea of what this function
describes.

Thinking about "it's root hypothesis and how these came to be"
therefore simply gives nothing.  Simply because there is no such
"root  hypothesis".

A "root hypothesis" is what the ether theoretician has to invent.
Similar to the atomic theorists, who have invented the idea that
temperature describes the average energy of atoms in a gas.

> I think we can probably have "piggy bag" "listening along" time on a
> very nice instrument:
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwingeloo_Radio_Observatory
>
> I suggested them to look specifically at 70 cm to see if there is any
> correlation between the signals we receive at both the 70 and the 21
> cm bands, from pulsars, one of which *could* be a weak distortion
> caused by a longitudinal "fast" wave associated with the 1420 MHz
> Hydrogen line emitted by the pulsar, considered to be a "Neutron
> Star".
>
> What if they find something odd?

Then, in the best case, you have found something odd.

Odd things are nothing but a good starting point for future research.
And, note, every mainstream experimenter would be very happy to
find something odd.

> Let me put it this way: *IF* there is something "out there" at 70 cm,
> Pieter-Tjerk *will* find it, and hopefully publish about it.
> Or: If Pieter-Tjerk can't find it, it's almost certainly not there!

Which does not make a big difference between  Pieter-Tjerk and
a good mainstream experimenter/astronomer.

> But, what if he does find something odd, which my model can predict?
> I think that would put some "power" behind the theory. :)

What would be the point of hoping that something odd, yet unknown,
will be found by some Pieter-Tjerk in some undefined future, and that
this odd observation would somehow support your theory?

It does not even give you a hint for the development of your theory.

What I propose gives, instead, very strong hints:  Develop the theory
in such a way that it recovers what is already known and well-tested,
namely GR + SM, starting from some ether model.

That the SM is a mess is, btw, an advantage.  If you have only
a single field, like the EM field with a single electron, there may
be a lot of very different constructions which allow to recover,
in a large distance limit, this simple field configuration.
But in the standard model you have 24 fields similar to the electron
and 12 fields similar to the EM field, and they are all connected
with each other by their charges, which have numbers which do
not seem to make sense.

So, if you find a model which explains the whole mess, it is
much less probable that a completely different ether model
results in the same mess.  Thus, wrong guesses about the
ether are much less plausible.

Note only that it was impossible for me to find such a model
without adding a lot of additional scalar fields.  Some of them
closely connected with the gauge fields, like the Higgs particle,
others have to be simply like dark matter.

So, the complexity of the mess the ether would have to explain
makes the job of finding an ether model even simpler.