2026-10-04 conspiracyoflight.com: D. Marett, "A Replication of the Silvertooth Experiment" (2012)

URL: http://www.conspiracyoflight.com/Silvertooth/Silvertooth.html (read in Chrome; a PDF version is linked there). Reached from Google: Silvertooth "Experimental Detection of the Ether" 1986 standing wave 378 km/s. Other hits: rexresearch1 PDF of Silvertooth 1986 (w.rexresearch1.com, Books, Silvertooth); Forbes 2018 "The Tale Of A 1986 Experiment That Proved Einstein Wrong"; Chappell Natural Philosophy Society wiki page on Wilbur Silvertooth; viXra papers using the 378 km/s figure; Springer book citing Silvertooth & Whitney, Physics Essays 1992.

Findings [web]

• Silvertooth's papers: "Experimental Detection of the Ether", Spec. Sci. Tech. 10(1), 3-11 (1986) (the essay's ref 10); "Motion Through the Ether", Electronics and Wireless World (1989); with C. K. Whitney, "A New Michelson-Morley Experiment", Physics Essays 5(1), 82-89 (1992). He reported "378 km/s towards the constellation Leo", close to the CMB dipole direction. Marett notes "no data graphs were provided in any of the three papers ... simply a verbal description".
• Criticism on record: C. W. Sherwin, "An Analysis of the Silvertooth Experiment", Physics Essays 2(2), 125-127 (1989), on beam-twist path differences of about a quarter wavelength.
• Replication (Marett, Toronto, June 2011 - Dec 2012), using a thin-film standing-wave sensor from the Jülich Research Centre:
• Confirmed: a 12-hour diurnal pattern in the apparent wavelength difference, lined up with sidereal directions; after normalisation, velocities near the CMB motion.
• Not confirmed: a zero difference when the apparatus is perpendicular to the motion; the expected sign (the standing-wave detector wavelength was longer, not shorter, when Leo was on the eastern horizon); uniqueness to sidereal time (the same pattern appears in local time); day-to-day stability.
• Cause identified by Marett: room-temperature changes alter the HeNe laser beam exit angle and the beam crossing angles. A second laser pointing N-S showed the same pattern in its lock voltage. Conclusion: "it is in fact only a very elaborate thermometer".
• Marett also notes the Tyapkin (1973) argument that a one-way wavelength test is no more possible than a one-way speed test, and that both special relativity and Lorentz ether theory predict a null result here.

Bearing on the claims

Claim 4 (ether drift: Miller, Kehr, Silvertooth). This is a documented replication attempt by an independent experimenter who openly hoped for a positive result. He reproduced the reported pattern and traced it to a thermal artifact. It is evidence against the Silvertooth reading, from one published web report; no second replication was found this run. Silvertooth's own description of his results is kept beside it.