Rotating Spheres - Background

Background

Newton was concerned to address the problem of how it is that we can experimentally determine the true motions of bodies in light of the fact that absolute space is not something that can be perceived. Such determination, he says, can be accomplished by observing the causes of motion (that is, forces) and not simply the apparent motions of bodies relative to one another (as in the bucket argument). As an example where causes can be observed, if two globes, floating in space, are connected by a cord, measuring the amount of tension in the cord, with no other clues to assess the situation, alone suffices to indicate how fast the two objects are revolving around the common center of mass. (This experiment involves observation of a force, the tension). Also, the sense of the rotation —whether it is in the clockwise or the counter-clockwise direction— can be discovered by applying forces to opposite faces of the globes and ascertaining whether this leads to an increase or a decrease in the tension of the cord (again involving a force). Alternatively, the sense of the rotation can be determined by measuring the apparent motion of the globes with respect to a background system of bodies that, according to the preceding methods, have been established already as not in a state of rotation, as an example from Newton's time, the fixed stars.

In the 1846 Andrew Motte translation of Newton's words:

We have some arguments to guide us, partly from the apparent motions, which are the differences of the true motions; partly from the forces, which are the causes and effects of the true motions. For instance, if two globes kept at a given distance one from the other, by means of a cord that connects them, were revolved about their common center of gravity; we might, from the tension of the cord, discover the endeavor of the globes to recede from the axis of their motion. ... And thus we might find both the quantity and the determination of this circular motion, even in an immense vacuum, where there was nothing external or sensible with which the globes could be compared.

— Isaac Newton, Principia, Book 1, Scholium

To summarize this proposal, here is a quote from Born:

If the earth were at rest, and if, instead, the whole stellar system were to rotate in the opposite sense once around the earth in twenty-four hours, then, according to Newton, the centrifugal forces would not occur.

— Max Born: Einstein's Theory of Relativity, pp. 81-82

Mach took some issue with the argument, pointing out that the rotating sphere experiment could never be done in an empty universe, where possibly Newton's laws do not apply, so the experiment really only shows what happens when the spheres rotate in our universe, and therefore, for example, may indicate only rotation relative to the entire mass of the universe.

For me, only relative motions exist…When a body rotates relatively to the fixed stars, centrifugal forces are produced; when it rotates relatively to some different body and not relative to the fixed stars, no centrifugal forces are produced.

— Ernst Mach; as quoted by Ciufolini and Wheeler: Gravitation and Inertia, p. 387

An interpretation that avoids this conflict is to say that the rotating spheres experiment does not really define rotation relative to anything in particular (for example, absolute space or fixed stars); rather the experiment is an operational definition of what is meant by the motion called absolute rotation.