Mass and energy in the light of aether theory
| Scientific Paper | |
|---|---|
| Title | Mass and energy in the light of aether theory |
| Read in full | Link to paper |
| Author(s) | Joseph Levy |
| Keywords | aether, energy, mass, speed of light, Special Relativity |
| Published | 2009 |
| No. of pages | 45 |
Read the full paper here
Abstract
The laws of physics dealing with mass and energy are reviewed in the light of the assumption of a fundamental aether frame, relative to which clocks slow down and meter sticks contract, as a function of their speed with respect to this frame. The existence of such a privileged aether frame and of an aether non-entrained by the motion of celestial bodies rely today on weighty theoretical and experimental arguments [1A,1B,1F,1G] and [14-17]. The real physical processes affecting rods and clocks are supported by their ability to rationally account for the apparent isotropy of the speed of light. However, the dimension of the rods and the ticking of the clocks being dependent on their absolute velocity, give a distorted view of reality: the physical data are subjected to alterations and need to be corrected. As a result of these corrections, they assume a different mathematical form, which reflects their real value. In the text which follows we propose to highlight the corrected form of the basic laws dealing with mass and energy. This concerns the mass-energy equivalence law and the variation of mass with speed. The real proper mass of moving bodies is shown to vary as a function of their absolute speed, and the kinetic energy is shown not to be observer dependent. The compatibility of special relativity with mass-energy conservation is discussed, and the mass, is shown not to be an intrinsic property of matter, it depends on the presence of the aether. In the appendices, we show by which mechanisms the standard measurement procedures alter the physical data
Overview
This is a revised and extended version of an article Levy published in Ether space-time & cosmology, volume 3 (Apeiron, Montreal, 2009). It applies his "non-entrained aether theory" — the position that a fundamental aether frame exists, that the aether is not dragged along by the motion of celestial bodies, and that rods and clocks are physically altered by absolute motion through it — to the two laws that most define modern dynamics: the equivalence of mass and energy, and the variation of mass with speed.
Levy's central move is a distinction between real and measured (or "apparent") quantities. Because our meter sticks are contracted and our clocks retarded by the same absolute velocity as the object being measured, and because clocks are synchronized by an arbitrary convention using light signals, the numbers we obtain "give a distorted view of reality" and "need to be corrected." Once corrected, he argues, the laws take a mathematical form different from the relativistic one. The departure from the mainstream account is therefore not empirical in the first instance — Levy freely grants that the apparent laws take the conventional Lorentz–Poincaré form, and that this is exactly why experiment appears to confirm relativity. The dispute is over what lies behind the measurements. From this he draws two strong conclusions: that a body possesses a single real mass fixed by its absolute speed rather than an infinity of frame-dependent masses; and that inertial mass is not intrinsic to matter at all but arises from matter's interaction with the aether.
The argument
Mass-energy equivalence derived without relativity
Levy opens by rederiving E = mc2 by a photon-emission argument adapted from Rohrlich, but with the emitting body at rest in the fundamental frame S0 rather than in an arbitrary inertial frame. A body in S0 emits N identical photons simultaneously in the +x and −x directions. Viewed from a system S moving at speed v, the Doppler-shifted photon momenta require the body to lose momentum Δ(mv) = (Nhν/C2)v, while energy conservation gives ΔE = 2Nhν; together these yield ΔE = ΔmC2. He stresses that the relation p = E/C was known before relativity and can be obtained from classical electrodynamics, so the equivalence law does not depend on relativistic postulates. The role of the aether is legitimately ignored here only because in S0 the speed of light is genuinely isotropic in both directions.
Variation of mass with speed
A second classical derivation (modified from Selleri, after Lewis) integrates dEC = F dl = v d(mv) together with dE = C2dm to obtain m = m0/(1 − v2/C2)1/2. Levy accepts this formula but restricts its domain: it holds "as such" only when the body is carried from the fundamental frame to another frame (his "case 1"), because m0 is the rest mass in the aether frame specifically. For transfer between two frames neither of which is the aether frame ("case 2") the law takes a different form,
m2/m1 = (1 − v012/C2)1/2 / (1 − v022/C2)1/2,
so that to low order the mass gained by a body moved from S1 to S2 is (m0/2)(v022 − v012) / C2 rather than the relativistic (m0/2)v122 / C2. The extra term depending on v01 vanishes only when S1 is itself at rest in the aether, and its presence is "incompatible with the relativity principle." Levy notes that for laboratory particles the two approaches are practically equivalent, since the Earth's absolute speed is estimated at only about 400 km/s.
The hierarchy of rest masses
Because a body must be given kinetic energy EC to leave S0, its rest mass in the new frame is m0 + EC/C2: there exists "a hierarchy of rest masses, each a function of the absolute speed of the body." This real mass cannot be measured locally, because a standard mass transported alongside it changes in the same ratio, so the local observer always recovers m0. Levy uses three collinear frames S0, S1, S2 to argue that relativity's frame-relative masses lead to a contradiction: the kinetic energy that S1 attributes to body b2 and the value S0 attributes to the same transfer differ, "although, obviously, it should be the same."
Kinetic energy and the fuel paradox
The most sustained objection concerns reciprocity. A spaceship burns a definite quantity of fuel to move from S1 to S2. For an observer in S1 that chemical energy increased the ship's kinetic energy; for an observer in S2 the same fuel decreased it. Levy holds this to be incoherent: "if it is used to construct something, it cannot be seen as constructive for an observer and destructive for another." He examines both ways a relativist might respond — that the two observers' energy budgets simply cannot be added, or that Q = K + h is consumed in each direction — and argues the first makes the heat released to the environment observer-dependent by 2K, while the second breaks mass-energy conservation over a round trip. With an aether frame the paradox dissolves: kinetic energy is measured from S0, has a definite absolute value, and every observer agrees on it.
Mass as an effect of the aether
The paper's boldest step is section V.3.2. If the relativity principle applied exactly and no aether drift existed, the kinetic energy gained in going from S1 to S2 would have to be unchanged, forcing m0C2[(1 − v2/c2)−1/2 − 1] = 0 with v ≠ 0, hence m0 = 0. Since bodies do have mass, Levy infers that "the mass-energy is not an intrinsic property of bodies, it results from their interaction with the aether." Mass is minimum in the fundamental frame and grows with absolute velocity as the drift increases. He places this alongside the Higgs field and the Puthoff–Haisch–Rueda stochastic-electrodynamics proposal as three accounts that all make mass relational, quoting Lederman's description of the Higgs field as a "new aether," while insisting that his own argument needs no hypothesis about the substratum's nature.
Inertia, momentum and the appendices
Consistently with a real drift, Levy accepts that Galileo's principle of inertia is only approximate: a body sliding frictionlessly still experiences a gradual slowdown, imperceptible at low absolute speed but significant at a large fraction of C. Likewise total momentum in a collision is not exactly conserved unless the impulse transferred to the aether is counted. He quantifies the smallness: even at 104 km/s the contraction ratio l/l0 is still 0.9995, and only above 105 km/s does it fall below 0.95. Appendix 1 reconstructs, after Builder and Prokhovnik, why Lorentz–FitzGerald contraction is a necessary condition for the two-way light transit time along a rod to be independent of the rod's orientation, obtaining 2T = 2l0/[C(1 − v2/C2)] and showing that a contracted measuring stick plus a retarded clock makes the measured round-trip speed come out at C in every direction. He explicitly corrects Prokhovnik here, arguing that Prokhovnik misidentified this real transit time as the clock-measured one. Appendix 2 treats clock synchronization, arguing that both the light-signal and slow-transport procedures introduce systematic errors that hide the one-way anisotropy.
Assessment
The paper is at its strongest where it is doing conceptual bookkeeping rather than physics. The observation that a locally transported standard changes in the same ratio as the object being measured, and therefore cannot reveal a change in absolute mass, is correct and is the honest reason a Lorentzian aether is empirically hard to distinguish from special relativity. Levy is admirably explicit that his theory reproduces the Lorentz–Poincaré transformations and hence the whole tested body of relativistic results; he is not predicting a failed experiment, he is claiming that the successful ones are consistent with a hidden preferred frame. That is a defensible position with a long pedigree, and the appendices' demonstration that contraction plus retardation forces an isotropic measured light speed is a clean piece of work.
The difficulties are also real. The energy paradoxes that carry the argument turn on treating energy as if it were an observer-independent substance, which is precisely what relativity denies; kinetic energy is frame-dependent in Newtonian mechanics too, and the same "fuel paradox" can be posed with Galilean transformations, where nobody regards it as fatal. Levy's insistence that "the energy which is provided by the consumption of fuel cannot give rise to a decrease of kinetic energy" is asserted rather than demonstrated — the exhaust carries momentum, and a frame-by-frame accounting that includes it closes the books without contradiction. Similarly, the derivation of m0 = 0 in section V.3.2 assumes that "kinetic energy has remained unchanged during the transfer," which is a restatement of the conclusion rather than an independent premise, and the whole chain rests on it. The claimed contradiction between the S0 and S1 accounting of b2's kinetic energy likewise dissolves once the energies are transformed rather than compared directly.
Empirically, the theory's key quantity — the absolute velocity — is taken from the dipole anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background measured by Smoot and co-workers, about 400 km/s for the solar system. Using that dipole as an aether wind is an interpretation the measurement itself does not supply. More seriously, the drift-induced slowdown of moving bodies that Levy needs for his account of inertia has no observational support: no anomalous secular deceleration is seen in binary pulsars, whose orbital decay matches gravitational-radiation predictions to better than a part in a thousand, nor in accelerator storage rings where particles circulate at v/C > 0.999 for hours. The paper's own reply — that at present speeds the effect is negligible — is fair for terrestrial cases but sits awkwardly with the claim that the effect should be "appreciable" at cosmological velocities.
Section VI's excursion into cosmology is the weakest part and is largely detachable from the main argument. The suggestion that redshifts may not be velocity shifts, supported by Hubble's 1937 caution and by the Humphreys–Mohler pressure shift, is offered without engaging the strongest counter-evidence: the (1 + z) stretching of Type Ia supernova light curves, which is a direct kinematic time-dilation signature that a static, pressure-shift or interaction interpretation must explain away. Nothing in the mass-energy analysis depends on that section, and the paper would be tighter without it. Read for what it principally is — a careful Lorentzian re-reading of mass and energy that accepts every measurement while rejecting the relativist's interpretation of it — the paper is internally consistent and clearly argued, and its conclusion that mass is relational rather than intrinsic is one modern physics has independently arrived at by a different route.