• Re-establishing the medium and rejecting ether-less predictions now makes all aspects of relativity comprehensible. Systems (atoms/molecules) contract in time and space (time slows and space shrinks) passing through the medium. Gravity compresses the medium both time and space. Moving observers relatively expand the medium both time and space, with the ability of reducing gravity (creating an optical equivalence principle).
• Time travel is no longer possible. Causally, one can visit the past but not to interfere, it has already happened. One can perhaps view a broken cup reassemble itself or a supernova implode. But it is not possible to visit the future, it is non causal, it has not yet occurred. Time can be slowed through high speed motion or resident in a high gravity field, but this is not time travel, it is just slowing down time.
• Regarding space travel, galactic colonization now seems possible. Assuming the speed of light cannot be exceeded in the propagation medium, it can be spectacularly exceeded across hybrid frames. What would normally take millions of years to cross our galaxy could be achieved in a life time. For the theorist the medium is the reference distance and the time is measured in the moving frame.
GRAVITATIONAL ENTRAINMENT MODEL ( GEM )
A vacuum medium, having no mass (no atomic structure), but having an electrical inertia and stiffness, behaves as an electrical fluid medium. Although it has unity refractive index (cannot convect light), it can refract light through medium compressions and velocity gradients created around moving gravitational bodies. Here the medium moves with the light source and gravitational mass, there is no relative motion. This is not to be confused with convected light where the medium moves relative to the light source. The medium is attracted to, compressed and moves with large gravitational bodies (planets), Schwarzschild (1916)
ELECTRO-GRAVITATIONAL BOUNDARY LAYER ( EGBL )
The extent of the ‘stationary’ medium around planets appears to be controlled by the planet’s Gravitational Field of Dominance (GFOD), in the presence of its sun’s gravitational field. If the planet rotates, the medium close to its surface tends to rotate with the surface relative to the surrounding ‘stationary’ medium. This creates an Electro-gravitational Boundary Layer (EGBL) immediately above the surface. The ‘stationary’ medium surrounding the planet, in its GFOD, then orbits with the planet through the ‘stationary’ medium in its sun’s GFOD and solar system. The medium around the sun and solar system then presumably moves with the galaxy relative to the medium at rest in space.
EM MOTIONAL ANALYSIS ( EMMA )
Einstein’s medium based theory although causal it is not complete, it cannot distinguish between source and observer motion. A general solution of the wave equation is developed by extending Lorentz’s medium based motional theory. This is implemented for source and observer motion relative to the medium, using three sets of time and space scales, source, observer and medium, rather than the two unspecified used in SR. As a result, measured differences between source and observer event times, propagation distances and motional angles are predicted.
NEW SPACE-TIME
Distinguishing between source and observer motion allows for the first time, both source and observer flight paths to be chartered on the same rectangular axes space-time diagram. Inter-changing the source and observer for the same flight path gives different observations. This again negates Einstein’s concept of relativity, which cannot distinguish between source and observer motion, claiming only relative motion between systems is detectable. Relativistic time and structural contraction, besides making aging slower and things heavier, make (i) propagation time invariant perpendicular to direction of motion (reflection from carriage window is invariant, but reflections in the direction of motion from a mirror perpendicular to motion is variant), (ii) Doppler effects for constant source and observer motion identical, whereas classical effects are different, and (iii) a moving more dense electrical medium than a vacuum partially convects light.
TIME TRAVEL
If the speed of light could be exceeded in the medium, or bypassed, perhaps a traveler could go back to the past, see a broken cup reassemble itself or see an exploding supernova imploding. It is possible (causal) to travel visually to the past, but not to interfere or change the past, as it has already happened. It is not possible (non causal) to visually travel to the future as it has not yet occurred. Neither is it possible to materially (physically) travel into the future or past. But it is possible to slow one’s time down through material transport, by physically moving at a high speed relative to the medium, or visiting a gravitational body where the medium’s time and space is compressed. However, again this is not reversible time travel, it is just relatively changing the rate of aging between situations.
HYBRID FRAMES
Accepting the reality of the propagation medium, and presuming that the speed of light cannot be exceeded in the medium, M (or β)=v/c<1. Where M is the Mach number (1887), system speed ‘v’ compared to the speed of light ‘c’ in the medium. It appears that the speed can be exceeded across frames, M*>1. Where M=v*/c=v/αc=M/α. The speed and distance capability is much greater across the hybrid frame by α-1, where α is the Lorentzian contraction factor.
Distance is measured in the stationary propagation medium and the slower time in the moving system frame. As M→1, a→0 and M*→∞, allowing the hybrid speed of light to dramatically exceed the speed of light in the medium, resulting in spectacular distances to be achieved in space travel in a human life time. Space contracts only in the direction of motion, therefore astronauts and the space ship would need to rotate regularly to avoid permanent flattening in one direction, although it could be a painless way of slimming.
GRAVITY AND ACCELERATION
The propagation medium is central to both gravity and motion. According to Schwarzschild (1916), gravity attracts and compresses the medium around gravitational bodies (time and space contract). According to Lorentz, motion of systems passing through the propagation medium causes their time and space to contract. Source contraction slows time, observer contraction relatively expands the observed medium and its contents. Time quickens and space effectively expands, reducing gravity and creating a time Equivalence Principle. Gravity, observer acceleration and the LT are all related through an equivalent velocity relative to the medium.
GRAVITATIONAL FIELD
Although point atoms and molecules with equal numbers of positive and negative charges are neutral, a finite distribution of dissimilar charges (non point) creates an Atomic Residual Difference Field (ARDF), which does not quite cancel, leaving a very weak but finite attractive field. This field has similar properties to gravity, it has an attractive field, it requires a propagation medium, it has a retarded propagation time and an inverse square law decay with distance.
All electric fields appear to use the same electric medium to transmit their steady state values and disturbances. Steady electrical fields are electrostatic, unsteady electrical fields create EM waves, difference electric fields cause gravity, and the residual gravity field from all the gravitational mass in the universe creates the inertial field, similar to that of Higgs (1964). Field disturbances can be represented by waves or non massive particles: light waves as photons, gravity waves as gravitons and inertial field disturbances by bosons.
INERTIAL FIELD
The ARDF from all the gravitational matter in the universe, propagating in the medium, summed over all space, will produce at any point a Universal Gravitational Reference Field (UGRF). This field has zero electrical intensity from the gravitational forces from all directions in space. However, it will create a finite energy field in the propagation medium through expansion against gravitational attraction. The total mass distributed evenly on an expanding annulus (4πr2dr), contributing to any point in space, is proportional to the square of the distance. As the field will decay according to the inverse of the square of the distance, the field will be at least maintained throughout space.
MANY FIELDS
This attractive ‘dark’ energy, stored in the UGRF, is available to create the inertia for mass in motion, and though gravitational attraction impede the expanding universe. Whereas, the propagation medium provides a mechanism for possibly creating the medium’s repulsive ‘dark’ energy, through its repulsive expansion, overcoming the gravitational attraction. Thus a vacuum is not empty space, it has its electrical medium with its electrical permeability (inertia) μ and permittivity (stiffness) ę, supporting an attractive gravitational field, and possibly a repulsive medium field. The medium also propagates EM fields (light) and the cosmic microwave background field pervading over all space.
INERTIAL AND GRAVITATIONAL MASS
As Einstein kept reminding us, energy is equivalent to inertial mass. The inertial mass of subatomic particles, complete atoms and molecules is the binding energy of the system, the energy required to create and hold the structure together. Inertia is the force required to accelerate binding mass (energy) relative to the inertial energy field (UGRF). It appears that it is not the inertia or binding mass mb, that causes gravity, it has no attractive capability. The attraction appears to come from the ARDF from atoms and molecules having an attractive gravitational mass mg. Usually mg=mb, but mb can exist without m¬g, as for example the electron has inertial mass but no bipolar gravitational attraction.
UNIFICATION
The electrical propagation medium is shown to exist. It provides the common thread that unifies electromagnetism and gravity. The electrical medium transmits steady electric fields, unsteady electric fields (light), steady difference electric fields (gravity) and a universal residual difference field (creating inertia). Gravity is explained through a weak difference electric field from finite distributions of dipoles (dissimilar charges from protons and electrons) within atoms and molecules throughout the universe, explaining gravity in terms of a difference electrical field. The new theory re-establishes a preferred frame of reference and restores the bridge between classical and modern physics. It links Lorentz, accelerating fields and gravity and distinguishes between source and observer motion, providing a basis for the unification theory of the universe.