Dr Faustus of Modern Physics - Department of Speech, Music and ...

10.3. CONTRADICTION OF ZERO DRAG IN POTENTIAL FLOW 51
concerned the physical significance of the chosen coordinate system. Was it
some form of luminiferos aether analogous to to air for sound propagation,
an invisible “lightbearing medium” through which Maxwell’s electromagnetic
waves could propagate? The experimental physicists Michelson and Morley
measured the speed of light in different directions to determine the speed
of Earth through the aether on its path around the Sun, but could not
detect any speed, as if the Earth all the time dragged the aether along. The
observation was thus that the following statement was wrong:
• There is a unique aether through which the Earth plows on its lonely
path around the Sun.
It seemed as if there was no “preferred coordinate system” representing Newtonian
“absolute space”, but instead many equally possible coordinates systems,
compare with [?]
10.3 Contradiction of Zero Drag in Potential
Flow
D’Alembert formulated his paradox of zero drag in potential flow of vanishingly
small viscosity in 1755, which already at the birth of mathematical
physics with Euler and Lagrange in the first half of the 18th century separated
fluid mechanics into a theoretical fluid mechanics explaining phenomena
which could be observed (zero drag) from experimental fluid mechanics
or hydraulics observing phenomena which could not be observed. In other
other words, fluid mechanics as a mathematical science was a joke from start,
which in the early 19th century with modern physics waiting to be born no
longer could be tolerated.
10.4 Cover Up by Statistics
With the rising aspirations of European nationalism and science, the two
German physicists Ludwig Boltzmann and Max Planck bravely took on the
task of removing the reversibility contradiction and thus open to progress
into modernity.
But the problem seemed unsurmountable requiring major surrender of
scientific conscience, Boltzmann followed by Planck in a Faustian drama