Natural Science Forum / Physics / Relativity / December 2008

I have recently been reading about experiments designed to observe
"terrestrial aberration".  The idea as I understand it is to observe a
relative motion of space-time with respect to the laboratory (some
authors call such motion 'absolute' for reasons unclear to me).
However unlike the usual spectroscopic or speed measurements designed
for this purpose, here only an angular displacement is desired.

My literature search thus far revealed a series of two correspondances
on this topic:

"Bradley aberration proposed to measure absolute velocity of closed
laboratory", J.P. Wesley, Foundations of Physics Letters 1989

with self reply / correction:

"Terrestrial Bradley aberration cannot be observed", J.P.Wesley, F. of
Phys. Lett., 1990

It appears to me his correction is based on experimental factors, and
not on any fundamental flaw in the technique.

Again more recently:

"Measure of absolute speed through the Bradley aberration of light
beams on a three-axis frame", Georges Sardin, Europhysics Letters 53
(3) 310-316 (2001).

with reply and measurement:

"Comment on „Measure of absolute speed through the Bradley aberration
of light beams on a three-axis frame", Kwiek Piotr, Sikorski Jerzy,
Europhysics Letters 2002r. no. 58; 312-313

Here an attempt was made to measure the affect, though no maximum
possible shift in position of light arrival was observed.

Any comments or other literature you can suggest about this idea would
be greatly appreciated!