You haven't done your homework on the subject of ether drift.
But you are here to learn.
You cannot use Hammar's experiment as proof of anything.
http://vixra.org/pdf/1411.0040v1.pdfYou cannot use T. Roberts' analysis of Dayton Miller's ether drift results.
T. Roberts is a relativity theory fundamentalist, he says for instance: Relativity is well established in its domain of applicability...
James DeMeo did have a chance to respond to his statistical analysis, here it is:
http://sci.physics.relativity.narkive.com/PudLfhbR/dayton-miller-s-data-have-no-real-signal#post1 (scroll down to DeMeo's responses, I included only some brief passages)
Galaev's ether-drift experiments used both visible light and
radiowaves, and "confirmed Miller down to the details". And from
there, as I show, the sidereal-hour variations in Miller's
determinations match very precisely to Bernabei's determinations on
seasonal variations in "dark matter wind" -- another word for
ether-drift, in my view. So only from a superficial knowledge of this
issue, it appears there are quite a few scientists making nearly
identicial "systematic errors". It is one thing to claim, a guy with a
compass in his shaking hand can hardly tell where the needle is
pointing, but if he and a half-dozen others all point to the same
general location, in spite of shaking hands, it might pay to do more
than simply dismiss the issue. But there's other good reason to
dismiss your arguments, and retain clarity about Miller's work.
You evaluated Miller's August 1927 data set, but this is hardly
mentioned in his 1933 paper which you cited, and which is among his
most important ones on the subject. The 1933 paper covered a short
history of the ether-drift determinations, but primarily focused upon
his significant 1925-1926 experiments undertaken atop Mt. Wilson. The
Mt. Wilson experiments are what you should be discussing, not the
insignificant tests in Cleveland either before or after Mt. Wilson.
You proclaim, without evidence firstly that the direction of
ether-drift and velocity determinations were "not significantly better
than any other" direction or velocity -- this might be true for the
1927 data you examined. I have not seen it so cannot say. But it is
most definitely NOT the case for the 1925 and 1926 Mt. Wilson data,
which is what is presented in Miller's 1933 paper.
Shankland, et al, did their best to bury Miller's work forever. They
failed, as their approach was sloppy and showed an ignorance of how the
ether-drift experiments were undertaken. Both they and you ignored the
central issue of the needs for doing these experiments over different
times of year. Yes, you can point to one seasonal epoch and try to
argue that the systematic pattern in Miller's data is due to this or
that. Shankland dismissed the patterns as due to "temperature", but
without any proof as such. You say it is some kind of systematic
error. But firstly you don't look at Miller's most important data
sets, from Mt. Wilson. Even Shankland at least reviewed the correct
data sets, though he "cherry picked" only those data sheets by which he
could compose a verbal argument. Secondly, and more importantly,
neither the Shankland critique, nor your critique, addressed the
SYSTEMATIC SIDEREAL-DAY VARIATION IN THE AXIS OF ETHER-DRIFT, APPARENT
DURING ALL FOUR SEASONAL EPOCHS. The pattern was systematic, as MIller
noted repeatedly, as I show in my papers on Miller as well. When the
data are organized by civil-clock time, no pattern exists. When
organized by sidereal-clock (galactic) time, the pattern appears, and
is the same for all four epochs. There's simply no way you can use
math-arguments to overthrow such a pattern, especially since it has
already been confirmed by others.
How long will modern physics refuse to look at this
issue with open eyes and intelligent, fair-minded critique? Sorry to
say, Tom, your analysis is faulty on a number of levels, and does not
touch Miller's findings and conclusions anymore than the Shankland
hit-article did. It is a pity you did not consult with the advocates
of ether-drift prior to undertaking your analysis, as it could have
saved you a lot of time, and perhaps guided you to analyze the proper
set of data, from Mt. Wilson. But I still don't see how your method
can do more than point out the obvious, that the signal is often buried
in the noise. Lots of scientific problems suffer from this difficulty,
but progress nevertheless towards deeper understandings.
And there is more...
Dear Tom Roberts,
If I could summarize again:
1) You analyzed an apparently unpublished set of data from one of
Miller's tests in Cleveland, when the most serious data which requires
attention is from his Mt. Wilson experiments. I'm sure one could find
unpublished data from Michelson as well, or from Einstein's work -- it
may have historical significance, but is not the point of discussion if
you wish to refute what provides a foundation for much of new interest
in ether and ether-drift. I have no idea why Glen Deen gave you this
data set, instead of something from the Mt. Wilson experiments. Maybe
he can clarify this.
2) The tests in Cleveland would very likely have produced a signal far
below that of the Mt. Wilson experiments, given the effect of altitude
-- higher altitudes produce higher ether-drift velocities, as
documented by Galaev. Therefore, whatever your critique of the
Cleveland 1927 experiments were, they would not apply, or apply only
less-so to the Mt. Wilson experiments of 1925-26. You cannot presume
to assert the "signal to noise" levels were the same for both sets of
experiments. That's an unproven assumption.
3) Even if we assume, the variance within the measurements for any one
of the four seasonal epochs at Mt. Wilson was large, to rest upon that
observation and go no farther is to miss the forest for the trees.
Larger patterns in data sets often are not apparent or ammenable to
analysis via statistical methodology, but rather require dynamical
methods of analysis, or sometimes graphical or
geographical-astrocartographical methods. For example:
4) I did not mean to imply that low-altitude ether-drift experiments
would yield "no signal" at all. They do, but apparently of a reduced
intensity. Consequently, we might ask if the August 1927 data which
you analyzed yielded a variation over sidereal-clock coordinates? And
if so, is this variation along the same sidereal hour axis as what
Miller noted for the Mt. Wilson experiments, even if the velocity
determination would be at a lower level? If so, that would be in
keeping with his overall theory and findings. Miller's pre-Mt.Wilson
tests in Cleveland DID occasionally show similar vectors, as did the
Morley-Miller and even the Michelson-Morley experiment. Yes, he did a
lot of testing and control experiments, as Einstein was at the time
proclaiming (without evidence) that Miller's work was the consequence
of "thermal artifacts". So he did a lot of work to show, exactly, how
the interferometer would react to both small and large external heating
effects, and precautions were undertaken, such as shielding the
interferometer arms with insulation, and so on. NONE of those
experiments -- Michelson-Morley, Morley-Miller, or Miller in Cleveland
ever produced a fully "null" or "zero" result, which by itself is
significant. But the data was best at Mt. Wilson, and likewise
Michelson-Pease-Pearson also got their best result at Mt. Wilson.
Miller addressed this consideration in the 1933 paper, and
Michelson-Morley were also aware of their own slight positive result,
stating in the 1887 paper the need to perform the experiment over other
seasonal periods -- which they never did. Only Miller did so. The
fact that all four seasonal epochs of the Mt. Wilson experiments
yielded similar sidereal-hour vectors for the axis of drift, and that
this also was the same (though reduced) axis which could be extracted
from the original Michelson-Morley experiment, is THE significant
consideration, even if the velocity determinations were slightly
variable. This is what we call a highly-structured pattern in the
data. The fact that Galaev later found a similar axis of drift in his
work, and the seasonal variations in "dark matter wind" also show a
similar pattern, is "icing on the cake" so to speak.
5) High "signal to noise" ratios plague other data sets from natural
phenomena, such as climate patterns. Daily precipitation is a function
of solar heating and shifting of wind and pressure patterns. But if we
look for variations in precipitation as an indicator of solar heating,
it requires a lot of years of data before we get a climatic curve which
approximates the smooth latitudinal shifting of the sun's location, and
hence, solar heating of the lower atmosphere. Over shorter periods,
rainfall quantities may be extremely variable with large quantities one
day or week, nothing the next day or week, and so on over the years,
with some years very wet, others in drought. If we presume ignorance
of how solar heating works to stimulate rains, we would be hard pressed
to find this pattern in all the "noise" of daily precipitation
variation. We would in fact only find the pattern by recording
precipitation over the year, and then averaging the data by week or
month. Only then, you get a pattern which is valuable, and allows some
degree of confidence and prediction of when a "rainy season" or "dry
season" will occur. Likewise also, I would imagine, with the
determinations of anisotropy in 3-deg.K. in open space -- a lot of
variation, no way to make "statistical analysis" but when it is plotted
on a map -- or along a simple graphical ordination representing
sidereal hour -- it makes a pattern which is important to consider.
Unfortunately, I have no computer-readable data files for Miller. My
role was mostly historical, basically finished after the data sets were
finally obtained, and others set out on that task. I cannot speak to
what Glen Deen and others are doing with the data. My larger interest
today is in the work of Galaev, who developed an elegant and very
simple interferometer using parallel light beams, and seems
potentially easier to use, less afflicted by vibrations, and possibly
could be rendered far more sensitive given current technology. My push
has been, for more experiments to be undertaken, rather than merely to
analyze Miller over and over. I must disagree that your DSP method
will ever critically undermine Miller's findings, if only because my
points above cannot be overcome by purely statistical arguments. If
Miller's four different seasonal epochs had yielded four different
points in the heavens, four different axes of ether-drift, then surely
a rejection of his work would be fully in order and legitimate. But I
encourage you to look again at Figure 2 in my Miller paper.
http://www.orgonelab.org/miller.htmThis shows Miller's data organized firstly by sidereal hour, and
secondly by civil clock time. By sidereal hour, there is a distinct
pattern in the data, one which appears to be robust enough even to
survive your argument about the need for error-bars. However, when the
same data is organized by civil clock time, the pattern vanishes. This
is the issue which you need to address, and it will not be defeated
with DSP methods.
As noted, I do have copies of all of Miller's data sheets, being the
guy who stimilated their re-discovery from dusty storage rooms. You
mention only the one data sheet of Figure 8 from his 1933 paper, which
showed the results of 19 turns of the interferometer over about a
15-minute period. This is like, extracting rainfall records for one
month of one year, exclaiming there is "no solar-related pattern" and
ignoring all the rainfall data from many other months and years. Sure,
look at only one data sheet, and clear determinations may be
insufficient. But really, your DSP analysis was not of that data
sheet, nor of the hundreds of other data sheets from Mt. Wilson.
I have no interests to second-guess Miller's methods, and your claims
really don't suggest any serious reason why one should be concerned.
Nobody including Michelson had any problem with Miller's methods or
findings at the time when he was doing his work, other than Einstein,
who was no expert in the ether-drift methods. In fact Miller was the
student of Morley, and learned the methods as handed down from
Michelson and Michelson-Morley. You presume to have us believe you
know more about it than they did, even though you haven't undertaken an
analysis of the very same published data from which Miller's
conclusions were derived. And all the other validating experiments,
you simply ignore. Sorry to say, this is simply insufficient.
Regards,
James DeMeo
And here are Yuri Galaev's ether drift results, which cannot be ignored either:
http://www.mountainman.com.au/aether_6.htmHere is Shankland's catastrophic analysis of Miller's results.
Shankland became Chairman of the Physics Department at Case following Miller's retirement and death, building his professional career upon publications misrepresenting the Michelson-Morley experiments as the most solid evidence on the question, and publishing widely-read interviews with Einstein (Shankland 1963, 1964, 1973a, 1973b). Shankland later took up administrative positions within government agencies developing nuclear energy — he rarely discussed Miller's positive ether-drift measurements in any of these papers except in the 1955 paper under discussion here. In this sense, it is legitimate to view Shankland, and other members of his team (all Einstein advocates from Case) as very biased reviewers of Miller's work.
The very first sentence in the Shankland team's 1955 paper began with the falsehood, now widely parroted in nearly every physics textbook, that the Michelson-Morley experiments had a "null" result. The third sentence in the Shankland paper was similarly false, claiming that "All trials of this experiment except those carried out at Mount Wilson by Dayton C. Miller yielded a null result within the accuracy of the observations." This kind of chronic misrepresentation of the slight positive results of many interferometer experimenters, including Michelson-Morley, Morley-Miller, Sagnac, Michelson-Gale, and Michelson-Pease-Pearson, suggests an extreme bias and deliberate misrepresentation. The fact that this is a very popular bias does not excuse it. By redefining all the positive results observed by what may in fact have been the majority of ether-drift researchers, as mere expressions of "observational inaccuracy", Shankland narrowed his task considerably.
These and other sentences in the Shankland paper revealed its bias from the get-go, and gave it the spirit of an autopsy, where Miller was dissected without careful concern, and certainly where no advocate of ether theory appeared to be involved in the process. It is possible, by the 1950s, there was nobody left who could fill Miller's shoes to make an adequate defense. Ether-theory was then being compared to "the search for perpetual-motion machines" (Swenson 1972, p.239), and such ridicule surely must have had a silencing effect upon the entire fields of physics and astronomy. Swenson also suggests that, during his later years, Miller was largely ignored and isolated. This appears to be correct, as according to an interview with Shankland made in 1981, shortly before Miller died he gave all of his interferometer data sheets — hundreds of pages of measurements —to his one-time student Shankland, with the somewhat bitter statement that he should "either analyze the data, or burn it" (Kimball 1981, p.2). In that same interview, Shankland also blamed Miller for having blocked the awarding of a Nobel Prize to Einstein for his relativity theory — clearly, Miller's work was a major obstacle to the Einstein theory of relativity, and for that reason may have given Einstein and his followers sleepless nights.
The title of the Shankland paper, and its overall representation suggests the authors had made a serious review of "the interferometer observations" of Miller, to include some kind of comprehensive and inclusive evaluation — but this was not the case. There were two basic approaches to the Shankland team's analysis: 1) a search for random errors or statistical fluctuations in Miller's data, and 2) a review of selected data sets which they claimed demonstrated significant thermal artifacts in the data. We can review these claims.
Shankland Team's Evaluation for Random-Statistical variations
The Shankland paper did present a statistical analysis of a portion of Miller's published 1925-1926 Mt. Wilson data, concluding that his observations "...cannot be attributed entirely to random effects, but that systematic effects are present to an appreciable degree" and that "the periodic effects observed by Miller cannot be accounted for entirely by random statistical fluctuations in the basic data". (p.170) Also, the Shankland team admitted they "...did not embark on a statistically sound recomputation of the cosmic solution, but rather [looked for]...local disturbances such as may be caused by mechanical effects or by nonuniform temperature distributions in the observational hut." (p.172) In short, they admitted the harmonic patterns in Miller's data could not be due to any systematic measurement error, nor result from any mechanical flaws in the interferometer apparatus itself — while simultaneously admitting a disinterest in computation of any potentially validating ether-drift axis ("cosmic solution") from his data. These were important admissions, as the suggestion is, unless they could find some other fatal flaw in his data, Miller had really got it right, and measured a real Earth-entrained ether drift.
Of interest from the perspective of the politics of science, is the fact that this statistical analysis was not undertaken by any of the four members of the Shankland team listed as authors of the paper! The analysis was in fact undertaken by Case physics student Robert L. Stearns, for his Master's Thesis (Stearns 1952) — Stearns was given only a footnote credit in the Shankland paper.
Stearns, who performed the analysis, informs us about the large amount of data gathered by Miller. He mentions (Stearns 1952, p.15-17) the existence of "316 sets of data...by Miller in 1925-26" for the centrally-important Mt. Wilson experiments. Each data set was composed of 20 turns of the interferometer, with sixteen data points per turn (a total of 320 data points per data set). Miller noted his work at Mt. Wilson was undertaken at four different seasonal "epochs", each of which encompassed a period of around ten days, centered on the following dates: April 1st, August 1st, and September 15th, 1925 and February 8th 1926 (Miller 1926, 1933). It must be kept in mind, that these Mt. Wilson data from 1925 and 1926 provided the most conclusive and foundational observations for Miller's ether-drift calculations and conclusions, as presented most clearly in his 1933 paper. As detailed below, the Shankland team mentions these Mt. Wilson data, but in a manner which confuses them with his earlier and less significant efforts, including various control experiments conducted at Case School. The significance of this confusion of dates will be highlighted momentarily.