Two particular forms of absolute space-time theories are examined. There follows a derivation of their predictions for measurements that are within present-day detection limits.

In this paper we describe a propagation experiment to measure the one-way velocity of electromagnetic radiation. The experiment utilizes the rotation of the earth to interchange the positions of two rubidium vapor frequency standards over12 h, thereby canceling initial clock phase differences. It is demonstrated that although the drift characteristics of modern rubidium atomic clocks may be large for long-term absolute timing requirements, the short-term random fluctuations are small. It is found that over a24-h period, the long-term drift can be (...) accurately parameterized in retrospect and removed, thereby permitting the detection of temporal variations less than1 nsec in magnitude. With coherent summing techniques this value may be significantly reduced, and it becomes realistic to consider an experiment where the clocks are separated by distances of the order of several hundreds of meters in order to detect velocities of the order of that of the solar system with respect to the center of the galaxy(≈10 5 m sec −1 ), thus ensuring that the rotational motion of the earth has a negligible effect in altering the relative inertial characteristics of the reference frames of each clock. It is demonstrated that under such conditions the measurement of the one-way speed of propagation of electromagnetic radiation is not only meaningful, but can be simply implemented with commercially available instrumentation. (shrink)

Two recently proposed experiments by Kolen and Torr (K-T), designed to detect possible failures of Einstein's special relativity (SR) are analyzed. Imprecisions in these papers are pointed out. Computation in Lorentz aether theory (LAT), with the K-T violation of SR, of the theoretical prediction for the proposed K-T clock experiment prove their results to be incorrect. Analytical computation of the proposed K-T rotor Doppler experiment using LAT confirms the order of magnitude of their prediction by numerical computation. For LAT in (...) the K-T form, this experiment, using a turntable, is shown to give results which could be detected with the technology of 20 years ago. Another LAT model is considered which leads to deviations of SR smaller than in the K-T model. The central point of the approach adopted in this paper is the use of Einstein's coordinates in the comoving frame, even when SR is violated, leading always to isotropic propagation of light in vacuum; the anisotropy usually obtained in LAT is only a coordinate effect. (shrink)