Cosmic Background Radiation and `ether-drift' experiments

TL;DR

This paper suggests that small anisotropies observed in early ether-drift experiments may be caused by Earth's motion through the Cosmic Background Radiation, proposing modern tests to confirm this hypothesis.

Contribution

It introduces a novel interpretation linking ether-drift anisotropies to thermal gradients from Earth's movement in the CBR, proposing new experimental verification.

Findings

Historical experiments show small anisotropy in gaseous systems.

Interpretation of anisotropy as thermal gradient effect due to Earth's motion.

Potential implications for energy flow and self-organization in matter.

Abstract

`Ether-drift' experiments have played a crucial role for the origin of relativity. Though, a recent re-analysis shows that those original measurements where light was still propagating in gaseous systems, differently from the modern experiments in vacuum and in solid dielectrics, indicate a small universal anisotropy which is naturally interpreted in terms of a non-local thermal gradient. We argue that this could possibly be the effect, on weakly bound gaseous matter, of the temperature gradient due to the Earth's motion within the Cosmic Background Radiation (CBR). Therefore, a check with modern laser interferometers is needed to reproduce the conditions of those early measurements with today's much greater accuracy. We emphasize that an unambiguous confirmation of our interpretation would have far reaching consequences. For instance, it would also imply that all physical systems on the moving Earth are exposed to a tiny energy flow, an effect that, in principle, could induce forms of self-organization in matter.