Requiem for Relativity

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">You have your facts and/or numbers wrong for some reason. Stellar aberration is a function of speed relative to the local gravity field, and rarely exceeds 0.01 degrees in the solar system. And nothing special happens at 53 au, which is also not any kind of limit. -|Tom|-
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Thanks for checking, but I think my facts were approximately right. I refer not to the absolute value of stellar aberration ( 20.5" = 0.0057 deg ) but to a hypothetical error, of about 0.3 degrees, in the direction of that aberration (I'd estimated 0.2 but it's really 0.3 so I had to correct that above). That would amount to 0.0052 radians x 20.5" = 0.107". The hypothesis is, that we might be observing the aberration due to what Earth's velocity vector was 53 AU * 8.3 min/AU = 440 min ago.

If many data points on a sinusoid are known, the phase of that sinusoid can be determined to surprisingly high precision. Perhaps Bradley's, or some subsequent, demonstration of stellar aberration would reveal, on careful statistical analysis, that the aberration circle is 0.3 degrees out of phase with expected.

The second point is debatable (see my 2002 article in "Aircraft Engineering & Aerospace Technology" a journal which is unrefereed but does have an editorial board comprised mostly of college professors; and also the article by JD Anderson of Cal Tech cited as a reference therein). Anderson's article shows dramatic apparent speed fluctuations in Pioneer 10 occurring at about 53 AU but hardly anywhere else. I recall that others have suggested somewhat hesitantly that the probe encountered a cluster of comets there, however my estimate of the required number, large mass, and small distance between these alleged comets argued against that. Furthermore, Anderson's article shows that the probe began to have apparent sinusoidal fluctuations in speed, of period one year, then and thereafter. So indeed there is, or at least was, something there at 53 AU, and no one knows what.

My (2nd) Sept. 26 post above: "Anomaly #2, 'spreading', remains mysterious. It could be physical or physiological." (See: Vol. 2, 1826, of the Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society: Ramage, Ross, & Comfield, No. IX in the volume, pp. 87-91, "read Dec. 10, 1824"; followup report in the same volume by Comfield & Wallis, No. XXVIII, pp. 457-458, "read Nov. 11, 1825".)

The *spreading phenomenon* drawn and described in the 1826 Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society, for an occultation of Jupiter by the dark side of Luna, *has been photographed*, for an occultation of Mars by the dark side of Luna, July 2003. The (digitally processed) photo is in Bonnell & Nemiroff, "Astronomy / 365 Days, the best of the 'Astronomy Picture of the Day' website", page "July 24" (it has dates instead of page numbers). I think this book is on the shelf at many large bookstores; also, the Iowa State Univ. library has a copy.

In the next-to-last Mars photo on the right, the radius of curvature of the bright (left) edge of Mars shows decreasing curvature near the edge of Luna. In the last photo, not only does the curvature decrease, but there is an inflection point (i.e., the curvature becomes negative as in the "bell curve"). The authors of the 1826 article said that their drawing was somewhat exaggerated and that the phenomenon was barely perceptible. I think this is consistent with what is seen in the photo (credited to Ron Dantowitz, Clay Center Observatory at Dexter & Southfield Schools).

I found this with a quick google search, I just gave it a quick read, so it might not be what we want but it does question the transmitter mismatch. home.netcom.com/~sbyers11/litespd_vs_sr.htm

The error, 0.107", which my "53 AU barrier" theory predicts, was discovered in 1902: it is "Kimura's phenomenon" (H Kimura, The Astronomical Journal 22(517):107-108 (1902); SC Chandler, AJ 23(530):12-14 (1903)). Chandler could not explain Kimura's phenomenon; apparently, it remained unexplained until now (see above).

Kimura statistically analyzed extant determinations of the aberration constant. Most had been made by measuring the declination of stars as they crossed the highest meridian at different seasons (Struve's method). Ideally the star observed would have declination equal to the latitude of the arctic circle, and its RA would be 18h. Then if aberration were determined, by Earth's velocity when the starlight crossed the barrier at 53 AU, the observed declination would be 0.107" higher than predicted, at the winter solstice, and 0.107" too low, at the summer solstice.

Choosing a star at RA 6h instead, would reduce this amplitude to 0.107 * cos (23.45 * 2) = 0.073" with opposite phase. The articles in the Astronomical Journal show that researchers used stars of all RAs, but they favored 18h vs. 6h, I suppose so that the aberration would be somewhat larger, and the daytime observations would be the winter ones with a low sun. Kimura cites compilations of Th. Albrecht, Astronomische Nachrichten 3734, and again 1898 & 1900 articles by Albrecht, but my library doesn't have that journal, print or online. In the articles I found in the Astronomical Journal vols. 5-19, 1856-1899, the RAs of the 46 stars (including repeated studies) used (there might be a few errors in my tabulation) were such that the average amplitude of the Kimura phenomenon would have been * 0.027" *, if they were all on the arctic circle, which to a good approximation they were. (I excluded a few stars that were used for determinations using Loewy's pair&prism method or the RA method; those I used seemed all to have been used for Struve's declination method described above.)

Kimura's amplitude was "almost" * 0.03" +/- 0.01" *. Furthermore Kimura found this first-order periodic term to be positive near the winter solstice, negative near the summer solstice, and zero near the equinoxes.

I get an ether energy density, of the Sun at 53 au, of about a two hundredth of what it is at the Earth. Can you explain why you chose that particular number?

(Edited) I get 4.19821189643E 04 Joules / cubic metre at 1 au, and 8.0495163309E 02 Joules / cubic metre at 53 au.

Apropos of nothing, i've just come across an ether theory that suggests the ether is a Bose-Einstein condensate of neutrino / anti neutrino pairs, rather like Cooper pairs.

Stoat - please double check your calculations and/or your description of them. The joule is a unit of energy, not a unit of energy density. And if I am following Joe correctly, someone else chose the 53 AU distance, based on observational evidence that can be interpreted as something like a refraction event at that distance.