A Mechanism for the effects of Relativity

This paper seeks to investigate the questions of: How does the constancy of the speed of light come about? Why does time dilation and length contraction occur? Are they physical effects with a mechanism? Does mass have a role is in these effects? Is Relativity an emergent phenomenon? The enquiry is along a different tact than the standard Lorentzian invariance canon but in the realm of readily known experimental facts or analogies and theory in the domain of wave propagation and solid state physics. These analogies, to almost prosaic physics, have a small following and are called Ether Theories, which modern physics has implicitly reinstated by General Relativity and Quantum Field Theories. In the category of Ether Theories based on analogies to solid state physics, this presentation is unique in not being Lorentz invariant; it is based on earlier papers by the author enquiring into the speed of coincidence counting of the Bell Inequality and a communication protocol. It is believed that Lorentz invariance emerges from the Ether and all Relativistic Mechanics can be built from the bottom up. The conclusion is that space-time is not really curved but the effects are all ascribable to mass gain.

Thomas–Wigner rotation and Thomas precession in covariant ether theories: novel approach to experimental verification of special relativity

We continue the analysis of Thomas–Wigner rotation (TWR) and Thomas precession (TP) initiated in (Kholmetskii and Yarman. Can. J. Phys. 92, 1232 (2014). doi:10.1139/cjp-2014-0015 ; Kholmetskii et al. Can. J. Phys. 92, 1380 (2014). doi:10.1139/cjp-2014-0140 ), where a number of points of serious inconsistency have been found in the relativistic explanation of these effects. These findings motivated us to address covariant ether theories (CET), as suggested by the first author (Kholmetskii. Phys. Scr. 67, 381 (2003)) and to show that both TWR and TP find a perfect explanation in CET. We briefly reproduce the main points of CET, which are constructed on the basis of general symmetries of empty space–time, general relativity principles, and classical causality, instead of Einstein’s postulates of the special theory of relativity (STR). We demonstrate that with respect to all known relativistic experiments performed to date in all areas of physics, both theories, STR and CET, yield identical results. We further show that the only effect that differentiates STR and CET is the measurement of time-dependent TWR of two inertial frames, K1 and K2, related by the rotation-free Lorentz transformation with a third inertial frame, K0, in the situation, where the relative velocity between K1 and K2 remains fixed. We discuss the results obtained and suggest a novel experiment, which can be classified as a new crucial test of STR.

Space-time Transformations in Ether Theories

By assuming the validity of the principle of inertia and the existence of a privileged frame, the transformation laws (TL) between inertial frames are investigated in ether theories. For onedimensional space the TL's are fixed up to two undetermined functions of absolute velocity, Δ (v) and E(v). If the principle of relativity is finally assumed, these functions acquire their well known Lorentzian expressions ΔL and EL. It is concluded that special relativity theory is "unstable", in the sense that any shift, however small, of Δ away from ΔL and/or of E away from EL leads to an ether theory. In Earth-based experiments one can expect deviations from c of the two-way and one-way velocity of light of the order of 10-12 and 10 -9 respectively