No doubt Cahill has and will continue to be confronted by indignation among his peers for questioning via his "process physics" the very successful postulate of four dimensional space/time.
The four dimensional space/time continuum is deeply rooted in Newtonian physics, carried over as a postulate in Relativity and subjected to many falsification attempts over the years. That the speed of light is a universal constant, the same in any inertial frame, is also a postulate of Relativity and has been subjected to many challenges over the years.
The following link summarizes the history of experiments questioning Special Relativity and its postulates, e.g. the speed of light. Both Marinov's and Cahill's experiments are mentioned and critiqued.
Evidently both models seek to integrate information theory with physics and cosmology.
Thanks, AG.
From what I can gather about this scientific controversy, one of the approaches that was supposed to settle it was the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory being used as a gravity wave detector. Has it found gravity waves? If not, would that indicate an upper bound of how energetic they would be?
Gravity wave detector all set
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/sci_tech/2003/denver_2003/2774163.stm
The Suppression of Inconvenient Facts in Physics http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2266921/posts
Hatch’s proposed alternative to special and general relativity theory, Modified Lorentz Aether Gauge Theory (MLET), agrees with General Relativity at first order but corrects many astronomical anomalies that GRT cannot account for without ad-hoc assumptions, such as the anomalous rotation of galaxies and certain anomalies in planetary orbits. In addition, the force of gravity is self-limiting in MLET, which eliminates point singularities (black holes), one of the major shortcomings of GRT. One of the testable predictions of Hatch’s theory is that LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory, will fail to detect gravity waves. As of July 2007, this prediction stands. (30)
http://www2b.abc.net.au/science/k2/stn/archives/archive51/newposts/347/topic347102.shtm
BTW, Roberts is mentioned in post #5 above. At this point the discussion appears to be logjammed with scientific gobbledegook. Can you make heads or tails of it to a layman?
Response to Tom Roberts, “What is the experimental basis of Special Relativity?” http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/experiments.html
• Tom presents statements that are biased in favour of SR. He says:
3.2 One-Way Tests of Light-Speed Isotropy
Note that while these experiments clearly use a one-way light path and find isotropy, they are inherently unable to rule out a large class of theories in which the one-way speed of light is anisotropic. These theories share the property that the round-trip speed of light is isotropic in any inertial frame, but the one-way speed is isotropic only in an aether frame. In all of these theories the effect of slow clock transport exactly offset the effects of the anisotropic one-way speed of light (in any inertial frame), and all are experimentally indistinguishable from SR. All of these theories predict null results for these experiments. See Test Theories above, especially Zhang (in which these theories are called “Edwards frames”).
My response to the following comments is in italics.
[Note that while these experiments clearly use a one-way light path and find isotropy, they are inherently unable to rule out a large class of theories in which the one-way speed of light is anisotropic.]
“The oneway experiments he then lists are based on Einstein’s clock synchronization method (which we know is rigged to fix the speed of light to be constant). The “large class” refers to ether theories. Tom believes that experiments that are inconsistent with SR are not acceptable, and his criticism of them shows personal bias”.
[These theories share the property that the round-trip speed of light is isotropic in any inertial frame, but the one-way speed is isotropic only in an aether frame.]
“The fact that SR rigs the result to give a constant speed of light is not mentioned. And even if an observer moving through the ether detected anisotropy, relativity would reject it”.
[In all of these theories the effect of slow clock transport exactly offset the effects of the anisotropic one-way speed of light (in any inertial frame), and all are experimentally indistinguishable from SR.]
“This is not true. The time dilation effects due to slow clock transport are negligible and can be ignored. But, there is no experimental evidence to back up his claim. If slow clock transport experiments are done they will show up sidereal time variations due to ether flow, which are predicted by ether theories but inconsistent with SR. See Wisp’s one-way speed of light experiments”.
All of these theories predict null results for these experiments. See Test Theories above, especially Zhang (in which these theories are called “Edwards frames”).]
“This is not true. Wisp theory predicts clocks on the equator suffer sidereal period variations of +/- 0.7nS, which cannot be accounted for with SR. There is one important thing that Tom fails to mention about SR: the constancy of the speed of light result is fixed (rigged), and such SR should be wholly rejected”.