Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: > > Stephen A. Lawrence wrote: > >> In the case of the HK experiment, there's so little doubt as to the >> result which would obtain with a correctly done experiment that nobody's >> bothered to try to replicate it, AFAIK. (Note that if physics >> researchers in general were in much doubt about the results there would >> have been replications, whether or not the original experiment was dubious!) > > Contrast this with the Michelson-Morley experiment. There was a *LOT* > of doubt, or even consternation, over the MM results, and consequently > that experiment has been replicated many, many times, with many > variations, with vacuum in the tubes, with air in the tubes, with > various wavelengths, with various distances.
Ah, come to think of it ... in fact the HK experiment's big result, which is that the clocks flying in a circle (around the Earth) run slower, and that airplanes going in opposite directions will end up with clocks out of sync, is due to the Sagnac effect. And the Sagnac effect is demonstrated thousands of times a day, because IFOG inertial navigation devices depend on it for their operation. So there's no pressing need to redo the HK experiment to show that aspect of the result. The other effect was the GR effect, which would have resulted in the clocks running at different rates depending on altitude (which, IIRC, they tried to calculate into the results, using altitude data gathered during the flights). But the GPS system does a nice job of demonstrating that, so I don't think anyone in the physics community feels a strong need to rerun the experiment just to confirm the effect on commercial airliners. > > >
