Subject: Re: [Phys-l] Does COBE data contradict relativty?
On Wed 5/2/2007 7:57 AM Folkerts, Timothy J wrote:
"I guess I'm not trying to say that relativity is wrong - specifically
I'm not trying to say that the laws of physics are somehow different in
the CMBR rest frame. However the CMBR frame DOES seem to provide an
unambiguous "absolute" rest frame, which flies in the face of popular,
basic descriptions of relativity which say there is no way to determine
absolute motion."
According to SR, all inertial reference frames are equivalent with respect to the laws of nature, not with respect to the boundary conditions. As far as we know today, the rest-frame of the CBR is singled out only by the external boundary conditions. In this respect, the known experimental data do not contradict SR.
"P.S. As for John D's tinfoil-covered experiment, the tinfoil on the
blue-shifted side will be slightly warmer than the tinfoil on the
red-shifted side, so I could STILL tell the "upstream" side even in a
tinfoil covered room."
John Denker's tinfoil-covered experiemnt makes perfect sense because it could potentially eliminate the effect of boundary conditions. I think this is the matter of accuracy of measurements, not the matter of principle. We could in principle use a cavity enclosed by a multi-layered shell consisting of alternating layers of perfect heat conductors and perfect thermal insulators. At sufficiently high number of layers the temperature gradient within the cavity can be made totally negligible, so one could NOT be able to tell the "upstream" side by any known procedure for detection of temperature gradient. If and only if some experiment within such a cavity could find any abnormalities in known phenomena, or discover some new ones, we could say that CBR constitutes a priviledged RF.