Thomas-Wigner rotation and Thomas precession in covariant ether theories: novel approach to experimental verification of special relativity

Abstract

We continue the analysis of Thomas-Wigner rotation (TWR) and Thomas precession (TP) initiated in (Kholmetskii and Yarman. Can. J. Phys. 92, 1232 (2014). doi: 10.1139/cjp-2014-0015; Kholmetskii et al. Can. J. Phys. 92, 1380 (2014). doi: 10.1139/cjp-2014-0140), where a number of points of serious inconsistency have been found in the relativistic explanation of these effects. These findings motivated us to address covariant ether theories (CET), as suggested by the first author (Kholmetskii. Phys. Scr. 67, 381 (2003)) and to show that both TWR and TP find a perfect explanation in CET. We briefly reproduce the main points of CET, which are constructed on the basis of general symmetries of empty space-time, general relativity principles, and classical causality, instead of Einstein's postulates of the special theory of relativity (STR). We demonstrate that with respect to all known relativistic experiments performed to date in all areas of physics, both theories, STR and CET, yield identical results. We further show that the only effect that differentiates STR and CET is the measurement of time-dependent TWR of two inertial frames, K-1 and K-2, related by the rotation-free Lorentz transformation with a third inertial frame, K-0, in the situation, where the relative velocity between K-1 and K-2 remains fixed. We discuss the results obtained and suggest a novel experiment, which can be classified as a new crucial test of STR.