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Abstract
This paper aims at demonstrating that: 1/ Assuming the equality of the two-way transit
time of light in vacuo, along the two perpendicular arms of Michelson's interferometers
(modern versions of Michelson's experiment), and the anisotropy of the one-way speed
of light in the Earth frame, two facts supported today by strong experimental arguments,
length contraction (in Lorentz and FitzGerald's approach) should no longer be regarded
as an ad hoc hypothesis, it appears necessary and can be easily deduced. 2/ Builder
and Prokhovnik had the great merit of having shown that, as a result of to length
contraction, the two-way transit time of light along a rod is the same in all directions
in space (and not only in two privileged directions). We agree with these authors
up to this point, but, contrary to what is often believed, their approach failed to
reconcile aether theory with the invariance of the apparent (measured) two-way speed
of light. Yet, as we shall show, due to the systematic measurement distortions entailed
by length contraction and clock retardation assumed by aether theory, the two-way
speed of light, although anisotropic and dependent on the absolute speed of the frame
where it is measured, is always found equal to C. The reasons of this paradoxical
but important result will be developed here. They confirm Lorentz-Fitzgerald's contraction
and lend support of the existence of a preferred aether frame.
Journal reference Physical interpretations of relativity theory VII, 15-18 september
2000, Late papers p 175
Comments 12 pages, 5 figures. This essay appeared for the first time in the
Late papers of the PIRT meeting VII, University of London, 15-18 September
2000. A first updated version (v1) was published in ArXiv, 31 March 2006.
This version (v2) deals in more detail