Comments on: Ripples in the Aether

By: TRUTH IN THE ERA OF POSTSCIENTISM | hilpers

TRUTH IN THE ERA OF POSTSCIENTISM | hilpers — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 20:18:04 +0000

[...] camouflage: post-scientists now add an aether fog to it and the effect is incomparably greater: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/co…in-the-aether/ DISCOVER: "Instead of a light-carrying medium, we are interested in the possibility of a [...]

By: Ondas en el éter | laiguana.com.mx

Ondas en el éter | laiguana.com.mx — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 02:05:42 +0000

[...] solucionarse y hacerse respetables. Autor: Sean M. Carroll Fecha Original: 8 de diciembre de 2008 Enlace Original Articulos [...]

By: JCAtom

JCAtom — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 18:03:02 +0000

Since c is a constant, and has come to be our way of measuring time…and the Planck length is the smallest observable space and, therefore, our base for measuring distance, how is our system of measuring (d/t) not fundamentally scale-invariant?

By: Ciencia Kanija » Ondas en el éter

Ciencia Kanija » Ondas en el éter — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 11:08:00 +0000

[...] Sean M. Carroll Fecha Original: 8 de diciembre de 2008 Enlace Original Articulos RelacionadosDetectadas misteriosas ondas solaresUnas misteriosas ondas que ayudan a [...]

By: Chris W.

Chris W. — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 02:15:25 +0000

Chewing… Thanks, Sili, those were tasty.

By: Sili

Sili — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 18:52:41 +0000

I move that we start referring to Dark Energy as ‘it’. The Universe has ‘it’. Just like an ‘it’ girl.

Here, have a coupla ligatures: Æ & æ.

By: Lawrence Crowell

Lawrence Crowell — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 04:11:18 +0000

A Lorentz violation would seem to imply something very strange about the Higgs field. It seems to me that if you have a wave equation then in general a Klein-Gordon or similar wave equation is going to give you something of the form

k_ak^a = m^2 + A(k_5)^2, a = 1, 2, 3, 4,

where the k_5 is the bit that propagates into some additional dimension which involves the ether. I am thinking that the Lorentz invariance is violated because this additional dimension under a symmetry breaking acts as a mass-like term. This might then be an ether if k_5 = k_5(k_a) which gives a preferred coordinate condition in the universe or spacetime. The A term above might be some term from a Higgs type of field.

If this sort of thing happened to my mind there is some preferred frame for the Higgs field to give mass to particles and it would appear to give a preferred direction for the propagation of light as well. I have not thought enough about this, but this would seem to imply a different type of Higgs field than what we are familiar with.

Lawrence B. Crowell

By: Neil B

Neil B — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 03:21:35 +0000

Well, maybe this is suitable: a preferred direction in space doesn’t equate to a preferred reference frame per velocity – maybe some further clarification would help for middle brows here as to what the implications are of this field.

By: Sean

Sean — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 23:36:46 +0000

Originally it was one long paper, but it eventually became clear that there were two different sets of results: one about the instabilities of aether theories generally, the other about the phenomenological consequences of one specific model. It’s very easy to imagine a reader being interested in one thing but not the other, so splitting into two papers was a no-brainer. Whatever makes the reader’s life easiest should determine that kind of thing.

By: Lab Lemming

Lab Lemming — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 22:47:50 +0000

Dear Sean,
What led your group to decide to present this research as two related papers, instead of one big paper? Can that choice to provide hints on the age-old lumping vs splitting debate for unrelated areas of academia?