"chris cunningham" <chrislee at neo.rr.com> writes: > From: "David Dyer-Bennet" <dd-b at dd-b.net> > > Damien Sullivan <phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu> writes: > > > Einstein went the other way with the luminiferous aether: if something's > there > > > but makes absolutely no difference, we might as well ignore it. > > > > Now wait a minute; the ether was ruled out by experiment in 1887 by > > the Michelson-Morley experiment. Einstein was 8 years old at that > > point. > > there were, iirc, during einstein's time, those who posited that the earth > might drag the local ether with it, thus explaining the results of the > michelson-morley experiment with the ether intact but undetectable. Ah, were there? Then "makes absolutely no difference" isn't a useful argument; it's only hard to experiment on locally. -- David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b at dd-b.net / http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/ John Dyer-Bennet 1915-2002 Memorial Site http://john.dyer-bennet.net Dragaera mailing lists, see http://dragaera.info