It seems we move relative to the medium that propagates light
(This might sound abstract. Please bear with me. I promise it’s super easy to understand (don’t click on the links if you don’t feel ready :) - This is the intro to people that might think that talking about the nature of reality is “complicated” or “nor worth their time”; it is not complicated…, it is as easy as buying a loaf of bread).
Please bear with me.
A big deal
I would be making a disservice if today I didn’t write about our latest experiment where daily variations of the amplitude of the fringe shifts (were) observed when an air-glass Mach-Zehnder type interferometer is rotated.
In my opinion, this is a big deal and please let me explain why:
Plot of the daily variations measured
What does this mean
Put simply, I haven’t been able to find any current-physics explanation for:
fringe shifts upon rotation in a fixed in-lab interferometer that slowly rotates,
daily, periodic variation of the amplitude of such fringe shifts
What could it be
My current explanation is that we are measuring a Doppler frequency shift while we move relative to the medium that propagates light.
I haven’t yet made the mathematical fit to the data in Matlab (I’ve been fixing this blog so I could write), but it seems to me that a Doppler fit to the data is much more appropriate than any dragging effect.
I have a couple of explanations. So stay tuned.