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Just Chat! / Re: What to do if your question is too long to fit in the title bar?
« on: Today at 14:31:57 »
Is this now the topic? The title is all wrong.
To answer the title question, perhaps "What empirical evidence led to Einstein's choice of postulates for SR?"
On another note, I don't know how you are using the word 'impinge' in your posts above.
The postulate says light moves at c relative to any inertial frame, and the object is said to be moving, meaning we're using a different inertial frame than the one in which the object would be stationary.
LET does not accept any of the above. It is an absolutist theory, so light moves at c period, relative to the one and only preferred frame, and not relative to any other non-preferred frame. Velocities are still additive under LET. This doesn't make LET wrong.
I'm pretty sure that Maxwell's work was a heavy influence on the choice, but it's frame invariance does not prove the absence of a preferred frame.
To answer the title question, perhaps "What empirical evidence led to Einstein's choice of postulates for SR?"
What I want to know is, in the early developmental stages of relativity(ie the work of Lorentz), when and how it was determined that in the case of light hitting a moving object the speeds would no longer be additive/subtractive.That was derived from the postulates. It is only true under Einstein's postulates, and not under say LET, a form of absolutism which does not accept either of Einstein's premises.
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(1) does not, in my opinion, require any postulate from relativity: once emitted the speed of the radiation will be determined solely by μ and ε.Einstein could have instead just accepted Maxwell's equations as a postulate instead (Maxwell's work conflicts with Newton's) of the frame invariance of light speed since the latter can be derived from the first, but the theory wasn't about electromagnetism, so it was simpler to cut to the chase.
On another note, I don't know how you are using the word 'impinge' in your posts above.
The speed of light,(1) radiating from a moving objectLight does not radiate away from a moving object at c. If an object is moving at say 0.5c east, then light that is at the object (coming from it or not) moving west will be 1.5 light seconds away one second later.
The postulate says light moves at c relative to any inertial frame, and the object is said to be moving, meaning we're using a different inertial frame than the one in which the object would be stationary.
LET does not accept any of the above. It is an absolutist theory, so light moves at c period, relative to the one and only preferred frame, and not relative to any other non-preferred frame. Velocities are still additive under LET. This doesn't make LET wrong.
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What experiments/theory led to the conclusion that light impinging on a moving object at any arbitrary speed( <c) would always arrive at c? I have struggled with the wording of this question and am still not satisfied with it.It's a postulate. If there was hard evidence behind it, it wouldn't need to be a postulate. So it is merely an assumption, and one that not all competing theories accept.
I'm pretty sure that Maxwell's work was a heavy influence on the choice, but it's frame invariance does not prove the absence of a preferred frame.
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