Summit Clock Experiment 2.0: Time is Absolute

[JudgeRightly]

A thought occurred to me as I was writing a reply to my post just now, and its more important, so...

My suggestion would be to have a similar setup, but instead of it being one mirror (and in a garage, no less), you would have a laser at one end, and a series of mirrors set at intervals that reflect towards the camera sensor (all within a vacuum). The mirrors cut the light (similar to how a Schlieren system works), and are arranged in such a way that the light beam is divided more and more by each mirror.

The goal would be to see if each mirror reflects the laser beam simultaneously, or if it reflects it in sequence, and if so, how long does it take for the light to go from laser to the first mirror versus from laser to the next mirror. The camera could be repositioned towards or away from the laser side to see if it makes a difference. You could also test different distances between camera and the row of mirrors.

Sorry! Forgot to ping you, @Clete

 

[Clete]

Sorry! Forgot to ping you, @Clete

It can't work.

It would look simultaneous whether the one way speed of light is the same in both directions or not. The variation of one direction is perfectly offset by the speed in the other direction.

The very nature of the speed of light and the fact that it is identical to the speed of information means that it is fundamentally impossible to measure the one way speed of light. There isn't any reason to think it's different in different directions but it's still just a presupposition and will always remain that so long as the laws of physics remain what they are.

 

[JudgeRightly]

It can't work.

It would look simultaneous whether the one way speed of light is the same in both directions or not. The variation of one direction is perfectly offset by the speed in the other direction.

Even if the distance through vacuum is different, but the distance through a medium (or simply just reflected) is the same?

It would only look simultaneous if the speed of light in a vacuum is in fact instantaneous wouldn't it? Which is what we're trying to determine.

You would only need two mirrors in the setup, positioned equidistant from the camera, but at different distances from the laser.

The idea is to isolate the second-half of the trip that light takes (vis a vis "two-way" speed of light).

You have two paths.
A is the laser.
B and C are mirrors along the path of the laser, with one cutting the laser beam in half.
D is the camera/sensor.
A -> B -> D
A -> C -> D

Both B -> D and C -> D are the same distance, but A -> B is not the same distance as A -> C.

If the one-way speed of light is c, and not instantaneous, then there should be a measurable delay from the camera picking up the light from ABD to the camera picking up the light from ACD, no?

On the other hand, if the one way speed of light IS instantaneous (and thus the bounced light travels slower), then there should be no measurable difference, and the light reflected off the mirrors should be detected by the camera from both mirrors at the same time.

The very nature of the speed of light and the fact that it is identical to the speed of information means that it is fundamentally impossible to measure the one way speed of light. There isn't any reason to think it's different in different directions but it's still just a presupposition and will always remain that so long as the laws of physics remain what they are.

I'm not trying to measure a single path though.

The test is to see if there is a difference between two different paths that have the same source and endpoint.