8/12/2019 Motion Through the Ether Silvertooth, E. W.

1/2

Motion through the etherUsing a novel interferometer the author claims to havedemonstrated the existence ofthe etherand to have disproved theprinciple of Relativity.

E.W. SILVERTOOTHThis article presents an accountof a new electronic device thathas proved conclusively that ourmotion at speeds of some 400kmls or so in space can bemeasured in the confines of alaboratory. The experiment proves thatthere is an ether and disproves the principleof Relativity.t does so because it measures thespeed atwhich the laboratory is moving in a fixeddirection in space and that means thatsomething is flowing through the laboratoryat that speed. That something is the ether.The famous Michelson Morley experi-ment failed to detect our translational mo-tion through the ether. t did not establishthat the speed of light was referred to theobserver moving with the apparatus. What itdid was to prove that the average velocity oflight for a round trip between a beam splitterand a mirror was independent of motionthrough space. The author supposed that theone way speed of light or more specificallyits wavelength did depend upon that mo-tion but in away that satisfied the exact nullcondition of the Michelson Morley result.However the Sagnac experiment asembodied in the ring laser gyros now used in

Rg.l. Beam from a HeNe laser is dividedinto two portions which then pass through01 in opposite directions By this means astandingwave is set up in the region of 01Piezo actuators PZM 1 and PZM2 are fedfrom a common AC source at a frequencyof a few hundred hertz Apart of the beamimpinging upon the beam spUtter BS2passesthrough andfeeds the conventionalMichelson interferometer PZM2 BS3 Mand detector O2 In operation 01 and M on

navigational applications showed that if alight ray travels one way around a circuitand its travel time is compared with that of alight ray going the other way around thecircuit the rotation of the apparatus isdetectable by optical interferometry. Herethe result is justasif there is an etherand thespeed of light is referred to that ether.Readers will have great difficulty finding abook on Relativity that even discusses theSagnac experiment or the later experimentby Michelson and Gale that detected theEarth s rotation.In the modern version of the Sagnacexperiment a single laser divides its lightrays and sends them around a loop inopposite directions but the resulting stand-ing waves are not locked to the mirrorsurfaces as they are in the Michelson Morleyexperiment.t was my assumption that the differentwavelengths presented by rays moving inopposite directions along that path wouldallow a detector to sense a modulation ordisplacement of the standing wave systemalong the common ray path. The secret wasto move the detector or the optical systemalong a linear path rather than rotate theoptical apparatus as in the Sagnac experi

a common mount are moved to get amaximum signal f rom O2 Then phase-shifter PS is rotated to get a maximumsignal from Ob and in the same phase asO2 The assembly 1M4 is then moved adistance such that the signals from 01and O2 are again at a maximum but now1800 out of phase with respect to eachother Note thatthe round trip path BS3M4is independent of v the velocity of ourmotion through space

May 1989 ELECTRONICS WIRELESSWORLD 437

8/12/2019 Motion Through the Ether Silvertooth, E. W.

2/2

Fig.2.ln (a) Al=A2.ln (b) Al=FA2 When the dotted curve is jittered in phase withrespect to the solid curve, it is seen that there is a phase reversal between (a) and(b) in thevicinity ofCandC . (The intensitiesadd.)ment. A little analysis showed that sucheffects would exhibit a linear first-orderdependence on vlc and that the detectorwould need to scan through a distance thatwas inversely proportional to vlc in order tocycle through a sequence of that standingwave pattern.This was exactly what I found when theexperimentwas performed.THE STANDING-WAVESENSOR

The one-beam interferometer or standingwave sensor consists of a photomultipliertube conlprising two optically flat windows,with a semitransparent photocathode of50nm thickness deposited on the innersurface of one window. The tube also contains a six-stage annular dynode assemblysuch that a collimated laser beam can passthrough the tube.In theapplication described in reference 1the beam was reflected back on itself by amirror to set up standing waves. The performance of the wave sensor was tested byincorporating a tiltable phase-shifter between the sensor and the mirror. Thisprovided an adjustable displacement of thestandingwave relative to the sensor.The object of the test was to measure theeffective thickness of the photosensitivesurface, to estimate the precision availablefrom the sensor for making measurementson standingwaves.Signal-to-noise ratio for the photocathodewhen positioned at an antinode comparedwith thatat a node was measured as approximately 20 000 to 1. This was shown tocorrespond to detection of photoelectrons inthe 50nm thickness of the photocathode,which assured us that position measurementwithin a standingwave could be madetowithin1 of the laserwavelength.Three such wave sensors were fabricatedat Syracuse, New York, by the GeneralElectric Company of the USA from standardparts of image orthicons. For this experiment, the sensorwas connected as shown inthearrangementofFig.I.

438

Ifwewrite the wavelength of lightmovingone way as Al and the wavelength of lightmoving the opposite way as A2 then(AI - A2 /A=Al4

where A is the nominal wavelength of thelaser output and 4 is the displacementdistance that was measured as corresponding to a phase reversal in the standing waveoscillations. In a typical measurement 4 asdefined in the equation above was 0.025cmat its minimum; and since the nominal laserwavelength A was 0.63f.Lm, and thewavelengths depending upon the spatialorientation were Al = ACI v/c andA2=A I-v/c), it is clear that the maximumvalue of v is given by v c (0.000063)/(0.025) = 0.00252.Since c is 300 OOOkmls this gives v as378kmls on the daywhen thisparticular testwas performed. The axis of the photodetectormaking the linear scan through thestanding wave was directed towards theconstellation Leowhen this maximum valueof v was registered. Six hours before andafter this event the displacement of thedetector revealed 110 phase changes, meaning that the photodetector was then beingdisplaced perpendicular to its motion relative to theether.The experiment has been repeated in avariety of configurations over the past several years. Values of 4 measured have allranged within 5 of the cited value. Themicrometer is graduated in increments of0.0025 millimetres. However, amicrometerdrive is too coarse to set the interferometeron a fringe peak. This is accomplished bymeans of a third piezo actuator suppliedfrom a DC source through a ten-turn potentiometer which provides conveniently thefinesse for settingon a fringe peak.Since the author first disclosed thisdiscoverr.3 there has been a great deal ofeffort by a number of individuals in differentcountries, including USA, West Germany,UK, Italy, France and Austria, all aimed attheorizing as to why the experiment worksorwhy itshould notwork4

The author, however, declines in thisarticle to go into the mathematical argument that underlies the theory involved,simply because that itself becomes a topic ofdebate and it tends to detract from the basicexperimental fact that appears in themeasurement.Furtherreading1. E.W. Silvertooth and S.F. Jacobs, AppliedOptics vol.22, 1274, 1983.2. E.W.Silvertooth,Nature vot. 322,590, 1986.3. E.W. Silvertooth, Speculations in Science andTechnolt::;jy vol.l0, 3,1987.4. B.A.l-ianning, Physics Essaysval. 1N04, 1988.5. E.W. Silvertooth, Letters, Electronics Wire-lessWorld June 1988 p.542.6. L. Essen, Electronics and Wireless WorldFebruary 1988, p.126.7. L. Essen,Wireless World October 1978, p.44.ELECTRONICSWIRELESSWORLD May 1989