Proper Lorentzian chronology

[chornedsnorkack]

In the absence of FTL, Lorentzian physics explains all STL phenomena just as well as Einsteinian special relativity. The thing is, Lorentzian physics is more complex and therefore by Occam´s razor the Einsteinian relativity is the preferred one, skipping the presumption of ether because it has no STL observability whatsoever.

The thing is, the moment you allow FTL, you are necessarily observing ether - ether wind, universal ether time etc. For example if you have FTL connection between Earth and Alpha Centauri, the relative speed is 40 km/s. By FTL communications, you must observe a small difference between the flow of time on Earth and Alpha Centauri. And by comparing the synchronization of events in FTL and light, you will observe the ether wind relative to both Earth and Alpha Centauri.

Do any science fiction stories mention these Lorentzian effects, and do so correctly?
And exactly how does Lorentzian ether behave in general relativity in presence of gravity?

[NecronLord]

EE "Doc" Smith's Lensman books, having been written before the ether totally fell out of favour (actually only the first one or two, but he didn't change to the new physics halfway through the series) and thus mention it a fair bit.

[Simon_Jester]

Nitpick: Dr. Smith didn't begin writing his first novel, Skylark of Space, until 1919- roughly the year that general relativity was first confirmed by experiment. Einstein published the general theory of relativity in 1916, and the special theory in 1905.

The Lensman novels, he didn't start until the mid-30s.

However, at that time, knowledge of relativity was still fairly rare and narrow. Smith had enough mathematical background to have understood special relativity if it were presented to him, and probably general relativity, but he may not have known much about them.

References to "ether" at that time were a very common thing in all of science fiction, because "ether" was an accepted poetic kenning for both outer space and what we today would call "the fabric of space." Thus a phrase like "blown out of the ether" is a direct parallel to "blown out of the water," and so on.

My question to chornedsnorkack is, what on Earth is Lorentzian physics?

[NecronLord]

For the record, that edit was concurrent with the above post. Wasn't aiming to cheat you out of relevance there.

He means what is better known as Lorentz Ether Theory which is like special relativity, but with Aether!

[Simon_Jester]

The tricky question is whether "Lorentz ether theory" can explain phenomena predicted by general relativity as well as special.