View source for Potier's Principle: A Trap for Unwary Etherists and Others

{{Infobox paper
| title = Potier's Principle: A Trap for Unwary Etherists and Others
| author = [[Thomas E Phipps]]
| keywords = [[Poiter's principle]], [[light-speed constancy]], [[Fermat's principle]], [[convecture velocity]], [[ether]], [[first-order effect]]
| published = 1992
| journal = [[Galilean Electrodynamics]]
| volume = 3
| number = 3
| pages = 56-57
}}

==Abstract==

A national way to express an hypothesized first-order departure from light-speed constancy is by addition to <em>c </em>of a scalar product of some convective velocity and the normalized light propagation vector. This is the form proposed in a recent paper by Hill [4] in this journal. It is shown here that a principle discovered by Potier [2] during the last century, based on Fermat's principle, denies the theoretical possibility of any simple optical testing (proof and disproof) of such a presumed first-order effect. It was Potier's principle, joined to physical interpretation of the convective velocity as ether velocity, that established motional "relativity" as a first-order empirical fact before the advent of either Michelson-Morley (second-order empiricism) or Poincare-Einstein (higher-order theory).

[[Category:Scientific Paper|potier 's principle trap unwary etherists]]

[[Category:Aether|potier 's principle trap unwary etherists]]
[[Category:Relativity|potier 's principle trap unwary etherists]]