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[Jan]
Why did we accept the second postulate in the first place?
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Because we couldn't detect an aether wind. Which implied no absolute frame of reference. The notion of a prefered - but still not absolute - frame of reference is fairly new, IIRC. At the time SR seemed the only way out. Now it permeates so much of science that it is hard to get trained technical people to even consider thinking about alternatives. But hard is not the same as impossible. I hope.
There is a debate going on right now on sci.astro about whether or not a theory has to be testable in order to be scientific. Like most of these debates it has begun to wander off-topic, so I haven't been following it closely of late. But to me the answer is obvious.
Of course, you do have to say what you mean by "testable". Like Nixon and pornography, we may have trouble defining it but we know it when we see it.
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[tvf]
One signal would be traveling upstream against an aether, and the other would be traveling downstream.
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Right. But I thought the aether (in MM, alias the elysium or the gravitational potential field) was supposed to be locally entrained and therefore stationary relative to massive objects. This is why we don't detect an aether wind with an MMX. Which, now that I think about it, is the functional equivalent of a one-clock SOL experiment. (?)
No aether wind, no upstream/downstream effects. And my one-clock-two-detector rig is back in business.
??
Regards,
LB
