Experimental Evidence for Heaviside's Ellipsoid?

This is not an effect that can be observed. If you are travelling along with the particle, your measuring apparatus is subject to the same Lorenz contraction, you see the field as a perfect sphere,, further if you could look outside and see other spheres that were "at rest", they would appear flattened, but you don't know really know who's moving,,, blast! It's all relative... One cannot really say if there is in reality a "flattening", it depends on your frame of reference. It is really a construct that is useful in predicting a number of phenomena. The flattening is there for the observer at rest, but not for the observer at motion, does it exist? Theory says yes, and no, sounds like a Quantum Mechanics thing,, it is, it isn't, it's both, till you look. Now if you are accelerating,, well you are getting into General Theory and I really do not have the maths to understand it.

Cheers, Martin

Martin--thanks!

I may continue to skim the Heaviside book--I guess for my purposes it is just as good that Lorentz had access to this, so he had some clue that there might be something like a length contraction.

I did find reference to some journal articles that presumably address the subject. One is:

The origins of length contraction: I. The FitzGerald?Lorentz deformation hypothesis]]; American Journal of Physics -- October 2001 -- Volume 69, Issue 10, pp. 1044-1054

The only problem is that most of those articles (all that I've found so far) require payment for access (on the order of $30 US). So, I'll make a list of the articles I'd like to look at, then contact one or more of the local colleges / universities and see if they subscribe to those journals (and if I can get free access, which I have done before).

Adelante ¡¡¡

Best wishes,

ARTURO

Heaviside derived from Maxwell Equations the mathematically
correct deformation of electrostatic fields in motion.
But the concept of "motion" was wrong. Galilean Relativity
admitted only relative motion of inertial referentials,
each referential appearing to itself as stationary. But
Heaviside, with all physicists of his time, considered
intrinsical, proper motion with repect to the absolutely
immovible aether, which entirely corrupted Galilean
Relativity. Thus he saw the deformation as an intrinsical
modification of the structure of the moving field affected
by the dynamic interaction with aether. In the light
of the Special Relativity we see this deformatiion as
false, not altering the intrinsically "real" structure,
but only apparent, when seen from another, relatively
moving referential.

It was a rather harmless error, easy to correct
and above all, inavoidable in the pre-MM context,
but none the less an error.

And upon this error Lorentz with FitzGerald constructed
a barefaced trickery destined to save at any price the
aether falsified by the MM experiment.

By analogy with Heaviside they posited that the (totaly
unknown, hypothetical) forces holding the molecules of
rigid bodies in equilibrium undergo the similar dynamic
interaction with aether resulting in contracting the
molecular interspaces and the body itself. Lorentz
derived his contraction formula and to fully account
for the MM disaster, completed it ad hoc with the time
dilation without a slightest attempt to underpin it in
any way. Thus he arrived at his famous Transformation,
often misrepresented in the literature as anticipation
of the Special Relativity adopted by it as it stands.

In fact both transformations have strictly nothing in
common, else than the final algebraic formula. The
original Lorentz Transformation posits a real intrinsical
contraction of molecular structure plus a deus ex machina
time dilation.

SR's Transformation defines apparent distance contraction
and time dilation when observed from an external relatively
moving referential without affecting in any way the
intrinsical dimensions of the observed referential.

And last, but not least, SR did not take over the 3D+T
original Lorentz Transformation, but derived it anew
as the hyperbolic pseudo-rotation around imaginary angle
in the 4D Minkowski SPACE. It should be called Einstein-
Minkowski Transformation, but as it finishes with the
same algebraic formula, Einstein with his painstaking
disposition to give credit for a slightest shade of a
reason, incorporated it in the SR under the name of
Lorentz Transformation.

Thus, the same mathematical formula masks diametrical
physical disparity.

Georges