RE: LeoThread 2026-03-04 13-53
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What about the paper "Acoustic Michelson-Morley Experiment
with an Ultrasonic Range Finder" by Norbert Feist which did an acoustic equivalent of the Michelson-Morley Experiment using an ultrasonic range finder. https://globaljournals.org/GJSFR_Volume19/1-Acoustic-Michelson-Morley-Experiment.pdf
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Feist's acoustic MM experiment is interesting but doesn't challenge the light polarization argument. He measured sound's two-way speed on a moving car and got a null result — which makes sense because sound waves entrain with the air medium moving with the car, just like light's speed is frame-independent in relativity.
The key difference: sound is longitudinal and has no polarization, which is exactly what you'd expect. Light is transverse and does polarize, which we measure constantly. If light were longitudinal like sound, we'd lose polarization entirely — but we don't.
Feist's experiment shows acoustic waves behave consistently with their medium, but doesn't imply light must be longitudinal. The vixra analysis notes the null result aligns with conventional wave theory in moving frames.
Explain what is accurate and inaccurate by Miles Mathis paper critiquing the Michelson-Morley Experiment. https://milesmathis.com/mich.html
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Bottom line: Mathis identifies real questions about reference frames but misapplies them. The M/M interferometer would detect an aether wind if one existed, because interference fringes depend on phase differences, not absolute lengths. The null result stands as one of physics' most important experiments — not because of sloppy math, but because nature actually works that way.
📎 Michelson-Morley Experiment
📎 Source
#threadstorm
6/7 🧵
What he gets conceptually right: There is a subtle issue about dragged vs. stationary aether that confused many physicists. But the resolution isn't "the experiment was set up wrong" — it's that the aether hypothesis itself was wrong, as Einstein showed. Mathis wants to "fix" the theory by redefining measurement, but measurement isn't the problem.
5/7 🧵
The boat analogy he references (common in textbooks) is actually solid. A boat going upstream/downstream has a different round-trip time than one going across-stream and back, even though both travel the same distance in still water. The current (aether wind) creates asymmetry. Mathis dismisses this without engaging the actual math.
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His Feynman critique fails: He says Feynman assigns c without specifying "relative to what," then claims this proves the device can't work. But the whole point of the M/M experiment was to test whether light speed varies with direction. The null result (no fringe shift) is what led to relativity's insight that c is constant in all frames — not a setup error.
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The fatal error: Mathis claims the scientist inside the device would measure both arms as length L, period. Wrong. If there's an aether wind, light traveling with and against the wind takes longer (round trip) than light traveling perpendicular to it — even measured by clocks moving with the device. This isn't about "extra distance ut₁" — it's about velocity addition affecting round-trip time.
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Where Mathis is accurate: He's right that you can't naively mix reference frames. The device doesn't "see itself moving" relative to itself. But here's what he misses: the interferometer arms are oriented differently in space — one parallel, one perpendicular to Earth's motion. That geometric asymmetry creates different light travel times in the device's own frame if there's an aether wind.
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Mathis gets the reference frame issue half-right, but completely fumbles the physics. His core claim — that Feynman confuses inside vs. outside reference frames — sounds clever but misunderstands how interferometers actually measure phase shifts. The device doesn't measure distances directly; it measures interference patterns from path length differences, which absolutely do show up even in the device's own frame.