Part of Stephen's discussion which I inlcuded in my reply was lost to the vortex. ;-)
Hopefully this second attempt does not mutilate his post.
harry
--- Begin Message --->Stephen A. Lawrence
>Sun, 14 Sep 2008 13:21:16 -0700
>
>The patchup for emission theory is far worse: It consists of adding
>knobs" to the theory which can be tweaked arbitrarily to make it agree
>with whatever result you come up with.
>
>The problem is that as long as the propagation velocity is equal to the
>emitter's velocity *plus* C, there should be no wavelength redshift, and
>spectroscopes tell us that there certainly is. So, somehow, we must get
>the propagation velocity "adjusted" to match C by the time the receiver
>gets the signal.
>
>To start with, this problem came up with regard to stellar redshifts
>measured by Earth-based spectroscopes. The initial "fix" was made by
>assuming that the signal took on the velocity of C relative to any
>*medium* it traversed. Since the light rays passed through the
>atmosphere before getting to the spe! ctroscopeI reviewed the sagnac experiment here:
http://www.mathpages.com/rr/s2-07/2-07.htm
I might be wrong about this, but doesn't any experiment, let alone sagnac's experiment, which yields an intereference-like effect is inconsistent with a ballistic theory of light?
However, as I stressed in my earlier post, the quality of being a particle and the property of inertia do not necessarily have to go hand in hand, although the term ballistic suggests they must. Light may be a particle without necessarily being a ballistic particle. In that regard, the ballistic theory of light might be called a _naive_ particle theory of light.
Harry
--- End Message ---