Another Way of Looking at the Michelson-Morley Experimental Results

About 40 years ago I wrote and article that I entitled “Logical Reanalysis of the Michelson-Morley Experimental Results to Establish the Correlation Between Gravity and Electromagnetism”. After I’d written it, I filed it. I just ran across it a few weeks ago. After re-reading it, I realized that I’d been full of myself in those days. But, it does answer some of the questions about why I should think the way I do today.The article is too long to copy here as a thread. I haven’t been too lucky in that department either. It’s either too long, too controversial, too crazy, etc. What the heck, lets strike a happy ”medium’ and write a condensed version here.The experiment was run time and time again with the same result. No discernable ether or medium for our light-wave propagation. There were sad wave theorists and happy corpuscular theorists in those days. I, for one, could not junk the medium. I had to redefine it to explain the apparently negative result. The original idea is that the medium or ether had to be a fixed or a non-moving medium, and had to be completely permeable so that matter could pass directly through it without creating even a ripple. I contended that the experimental results had to mean that the medium’s original specifications were faulty.Our medium has only one requirement. It must be so constructed so that it permits electromagnetic intercourse between each and every body in the universe. This medium must be perfectly elastic, that is, it must allow itself to be dragged about in each and every direction at the exact velocity of each body in the universe. Such a medium would produce negative results in the experiment no matter which of the bodies or combination of bodies were used for the experiment.If we look around, we find that there is something that fits the requirements of this perfectly elastic medium. What does every body in the universe drag about with it that is related to every other body in such a manner. Why not gravitation itself. Why couldn’t light be propagated in or on the gravitational force that interrelates each and every body in the universe. Why not? It wouldn’t be the only force field that does so. The electrostatic field between the plates of a capacitor acts as a medium for the conduction of signal intelligence.The stretching and compression in the gravitational force as bodies move relative to each other would cause the frequency changes we know as the Doppler effect. The corpuscular nature of light is still maintained because light is produced and propagated in pulses which appear corpuscular when they strike an object.This is one of the basic reasons why my thinking could seem a little strange to you. Isn’t it amazing that a man like Einstein could arrive at relativity by completely bypassing the one step that was absolutely necessary to its logical deduction and paradoxically that this step (the unified field theory) was the one he tried to take after he had already unconsciously taken it? The logical progression for his determination could have be: (1) the establishment of gravity as the ether which provides a unified field theory, and (2) deduction of the side effects of this unified field theory which includes relativistic phenomena.

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baloneydetector#zero

All I can say is "Is It Science"?

The opening message of this thread was already posted as Message 98 of the No Big Bang--Just gentle whisper thread. Cavediver posted a positive response there, so I don't see any problem promoting this to either [forum=-11] or [forum=-2].

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

Thanks Percy. Is that somthing I do or somthing that is done for me?I did not know how to respond to the previous admininstrative comment. I felt like I had just declaimed one of my poems in front of an audience wearing only socks.

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

Wouldn't that mean light is gravitational waves, since you are discribing light as being wave-like disturbances in the gravitational field?
Which wouldn't really make much sense.Edited by Son Goku, : No reason given.

{Given that BD#Z has opened a new thread with this post, I'll include my original reply here as well...}Hey, some great thoughts there! And very close to reality. The gravitational field isn't the electromagnetic aether but it is remarkably similar.
Each of the forces we know has its own "aether-like" field - gravitation, eletromagnetism , weak nuclear, and strong nuclear. The search for the unified field theory (that dominated Einstein's later life) has already met with great success. The EM and Weak fields have been shown to be aspects of one field: the electro-weak field. We have the unproven but highly-suggested Grand Unified Theory (GUT) which brings EM, weak and strong together as one Grand field.The problem has always been getting Gravitation and the other fields to work together. The problem is quantum mechanics. We have no complete quantum theory of gravitation yet, and there are no classical theories of Weak and Strong. However, we can look at the Maxwell's classical (original) theory of EM and combine that with Gravitation. This was done the best part of a century ago, though it was little noticed at the time.What you do is imagine space-time as being five dimensional, not four. There is an extra space dimension. And we look at the theory of General Relativity (gravitation) in this five dimensional universe. We then roll up the extra dimension, so that it appears as a little loop (by little I mean as far below the atomic scale as the atomic scale is from us). So the universe looks four dimensional (3 space plus time) but each point is not a point but actually a little loop, and you have to specify where on the loop you are looking, and this extra positional number is the fifth dimension. Ok, the universe looks just like ours with normal gravitation. BUT there is something extra! There is also electromagnetism. It wasn't there in the 5d theory before we rolled up that extra dimension, but the bit of gravitation that got rolled up now appears in our effective 4d theory as electromagnetism!!! So electromagnetism IS gravitation.Now this is far from proved, but this principle lies at the heart of some of our advanced theoretical ideas about the universe: String Theory, M Theory and SuperGravity. It is also key to why we LIKE extra dimensions in our theories, rather than viewing them as problems. Extra dimensions are one way of getting unification.

Your comment: Wouldn't that mean light is gravitational waves, since you are discribing light as being wave-like disturbances in the gravitational field?I haven't figured out how to put quotes in boxes yet. Anyway, light waves would not be considered gravitational waves because they occur on a gravitational medium. They would be considered as modulations on that medium. Light waves themselves can be modulated by many other electromagnetic waves and we do not classify them as light waves.

Can you explain explicitly what you mean by "Occur on" and "Modulations".

why would you be dressed only in socks? If you're already that naked, why not all the way?now to the serious matter. making quote boxes can be done in two ways. is formatted like this:[qs]this is a quote box[/qs]

quote:

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this is a quote box

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is formatted like this:[quote]this is a quote box[/quote]you need to keep the same bracket type. I changed it so you could see how the format is set up w/o having to hit peek, but I'm beginning to regret my kindness--all the damn frustration. This is my fourth edit thanks to whatever hellish software decides what I'm thinking, when it has no such clue.also, hit the peek button, right next to the reply button on the bottom right hand corner of a post, to see how people have formatted their posts.forget it, just hit the peek button.Edited by kuresu, : of course, it helps to get your own formatting right. damn laptops.Edited by kuresu, : okay, it's not the damn laptop, its the damn software on the website doing things for me that I don't want it to do. urghg!!Edited by kuresu, : damn thing's just evil.Edited by kuresu, : No reason given.Edited by kuresu, : No reason given.Edited by Admin, : Use HTML literals in examples.

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Son Goku. You wrote: Can you explain explicitly what you mean by "Occur on" and "Modulations".Modulation is a term for a very common process that can occur naturally or can be made to occur by man's intervention. The process is the imposition of a waveform (piggy-backing)on a medium which can tranmit that waveform. The simplest is what we do when we talk. Here we are vibrating our vocal cords which then modulate or vibrate the air's (our medium) molecules. The molulated air then carries this transverse wave which then can cause a diaphram to vibrate (another form of modulation). This vibrating diaphram in a microphone can be used to modulate another medium that converts this waveform to an electromagnetic waeform. This new waveform can then be used to modulate a carrier frequency (any fixed frequency in the spectrum) which now acts as our medium. These combined frequencies can now be transmitted where they now modulate the gravitational force that can now carry our information anywhere's in the universe. Edited by baloneydetector#zero, : correct typo

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baloneydetector#zero

Gravity has only one known type of "modulation"-like behaviour though and that is gravitational waves. In the sense you are speaking of light would have to be a gravitational wave, which it is not.Light isn't really coupled to gravity in the way you describe.

I cannot even imagine such a thing as a gravitational wave. Such a wave would require a ultra-massive oscillating mass. Even in deep space where massive bodies are found that are moving fast enough to tend to produce such a wave signal. These phenomenae include binary star systems, supernovae, pulsars, and black holes, among many others. The only problem here is that these bodies do not really oscillate. Binary star system revolutions would produce an unimaginably long wavelength years long. Supernovae would produce a weakening of the gravitational force equal to the amount of matter converted to energy. Pulsars rotate which would produce no oscillations. Black holes don’t do anything except increase in mass which would tend to increase the gravitational force. Where are the waves?There is a possibility of gravitational waves when we go down to very small bodies such as molecules, atoms and subatomic particles whose oscillations become more frenzied as temperature increases. The problem here is that gravitation is such a weak force and the masses of the particles are so small, that, at this level, gravitational waves would be all but undetectable.Why look for something that you can’t possibly find. I’m quite happy using gravitation as a medium for our electromagnetic waves.

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baloneydetector#zero

As a medium it doesn't have the required properties to carry light though. I can go into why if you want.What in particular do you find faulty with the explanation that light is oscillating electric and magnetic fields?**I'm going to keep this discussion at the classical level as it seems the most pertinent.

You wrote: As a medium it doesn't have the required properties to carry light though. I can go into why if you want.Yes, I would like to know why you think that gravity cannot act as a medium. Please make your explanation simple enough for the geriatric set.You also wrote: What in particular do you find faulty with the explanation that light is oscillating electric and magnetic fields?*I have no trouble with that at all. It’s as natural as apple pie (is apple pie natural in Ireland?)..What I have trouble swallowing is it’s supposed ability to travel unsupported by anything. It’s a crime against nature.