Lorentz aether theory

What is now often called Lorentz ether theory (LET) has its roots in Hendrik Lorentz's "theory of electrons", which was the final point in the development of the classical aether theories at the end of the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century.

Lorentz's initial theory was created between 1892 and 1895 and was based on a completely motionless aether. It explained the failure of the negative aether drift experiments to first order in v/c by introducing an auxiliary variable called "local time" for connecting systems at rest and in motion in the aether. In addition, the negative result of the Michelson–Morley experiment led to the introduction of the hypothesis of length contraction in 1892. However, other experiments also produced negative results and (guided by Henri Poincaré's principle of relativity) Lorentz tried in 1899 and 1904 to expand his theory to all orders in v/c by introducing the Lorentz transformation. In addition, he assumed that also non-electromagnetic forces (if they exist) transform like electric forces. However, Lorentz's expression for charge density and current were incorrect, so his theory did not fully exclude the possibility of detecting the aether. Eventually, it was Henri Poincaré who in 1905 corrected the errors in Lorentz's paper and actually incorporated non-electromagnetic forces (including gravitation) within the theory, which he called "The New Mechanics". Many aspects of Lorentz's theory were incorporated into special relativity (SR) with the works of Albert Einstein and Hermann Minkowski.

Today LET is often treated as some sort of "Lorentzian" or "neo-Lorentzian" interpretation of special relativity. The introduction of length contraction and time dilation for all phenomena in a "preferred" frame of reference, which plays the role of Lorentz's immobile aether, leads to the complete Lorentz transformation (see the Robertson–Mansouri–Sexl test theory as an example). Because the same mathematical formalism occurs in both, it is not possible to distinguish between LET and SR by experiment. However, in LET the existence of an undetectable aether is assumed and the validity of the relativity principle seems to be only coincidental, which is one reason why SR is commonly preferred over LET.

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