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Builder-G: central claims

Source gap: The only document is Ether-And-Relativity-1957.pdf (G. Builder, Australian Journal of Physics 11, 279-297, 1958; received 20 Nov 1957). The PDF has no embedded text; Step 0 OCR'd all 19 pages (prose good, equations garbled). Step 1 read all 19 pages as images, and a deep read covers pp.5-8 (equations checked). Not in the folder and not read: Dingle's 1957 Nature letter that Builder answers, and Builder's earlier papers (1957a, 1957b, Aust. J. Phys. 10:246 and 10:424). Statements about Dingle's position or those papers rest on Builder's own paraphrase or on [memory] unless checked on the web. Page numbers below are PDF pages (journal page = PDF page + 278).

  1. Special relativity's clock retardation depends on each clock's individual speed in an inertial frame (not on relative velocity or acceleration), so it demands a causal role for velocity relative to a unique absolute inertial system. (pp.2-5)
  2. Such an absolute system (the universe as a whole, i.e. an ether) is compatible with and sufficient for special relativity, because absolute velocities cannot be measured by dynamical or electrodynamical experiments, so the principle of relativity is not violated. Builder backs this with Poincare/Lorentz, Eddington 1920, and Einstein's 1920 "ether" (whose state, Builder notes, differs from Lorentz's). (pp.4, 9-10, 14-15)
  3. Relativistic electrodynamics itself depends on individual (absolute) velocities: for the same relative velocity the force on a charge differs between cases (6a vs 6b, 7a vs 7b), Newton's third law fails for moving charges (7, 8), and Einstein's 1905 "relative motion only" reading of magnet and conductor must be rejected as fundamental. The deep read found the formulas correct to O(v^2/c^2) but the inference doubtful, since the cases are one system in two frames and the third-law gap is field momentum. (pp.5-8)
  4. Absolute acceleration implies an absolute inertial system and hence absolute velocity; Mach's instantaneous-interaction hypothesis must be rejected (Mach himself, 1883, thought a space-filling medium admissible), leaving the ether, and absolute velocity may in principle be kinematically measurable (e.g. Doppler asymmetry of starlight). (pp.10-15)
  5. A clock moving through the ether at v0 slows by (1-v0^2/c^2)^(1/2) as a consequence of Lorentz-FitzGerald contraction (light-clock footnote, p.16), so one hypothesis, not two as Broad (1923) claimed, accounts for Michelson-Morley. (pp.16-17)
  6. The ether presentation of relativity is pedagogically and heuristically superior: with the impossibility of one-way light-speed measurement, it explains relativity of simultaneity, constancy of c and reciprocity of length/clock changes, and makes the length and clock changes "really observable" effects of motion through the ether. (pp.16, 18)