My main objection to your continuing comments is to refer to preferred frame physics as a hidden variable theory of GR. Whatever I think is irrelevant to any analysis of your preferred frame theory by your peers. I can't find any. If I was you I'd forget about using terms like 'hidden variable' for physics that's been empirically falsified. Such as absolute time and absolute space. It seems to imply that those hidden variables actually exist as natural phenomena. I must be intellectually honest and realize that the object Gravastar would be very difficult to distinguish from a Schwarzschild black hole when observed from remote coordinates.
Sorry, but why do you think that absolute time and absolute space are empirically falsified?
My theory contains absolute space and time, but what is measured with rulers and clocks is not absolute distance or absolute time, but something different, which depends on the velocity of the measurement instruments and the gravitational field around their actual position. So, there is no experiment with clocks and rulers which allows to make direct conclusions about absolute space and time. Once the theory does not contain a direct measurement of absolute space and time, which experiment can falsify them empirically?
There was, initially, a quite strong and impressive argument, namely that the rules for clock time dilation and length contraction seem to require a strange conspiracy to make absolute space and time unobservable. But it was not that strong even initially, because already Lorentz has found a simple explanation: If rulers and clocks consist of point particles hold together is the EM field, then clocks and rulers have to be Lorentz-covariant objects, because EM theory is Lorentz-covariant. The same holds even in the more general case if there is yet another field, but this other field follows a similar equation. In my theory there is even a derivation of the EEP from first principles. What hides the background is that matter fields are fields of properties of the ether.
So, the only thing which is empirically falsified is the trivial theory that 1.) there exists absolute space and time, together with 2.) rulers measure absolute distances, and clocks measure absolute time. But (1) alone is not falsified.
String theory isn't going to settle for an effective field theory that is based on a preferred frame and determinism.
I'm quite optimistic that a theory which does not reach what it promises will sooner or later be thrown away. And will be replaced by a theory which delivers what it promises.
Feel free to think that string theory will deliver, and to doubt that the theory discussed here does not, despite the fact that it essentially predicts the fermions and gauge fields of the standard model.
And none of your peers cite your work. There's a reason for this. Preferred frame physics is unnecessary. When you claim that your preferred frame theory is equivalent empirically to GR and QM your confirming it's unnecessary.
That there is a reason for this I do not doubt. But it does not seem to be a physical reason, else somebody would have used the possibility of a published paper to get a refutation of this paper published. And the explanation that one better should not refer to ether theories in a positive way if one wants to get published is very plausible. It is 1.) in agreement with my own experience with peer review, 2.) with comparison of what results I have finally got published - an already complete theory, without any intermediate results published before - with the content of the average string theory paper, where even all string papers taken together do not claim a comparable result, 3.) with my own publications in other domains of physics, where I have published several papers during a quite short time, in a domain which is also not exactly mainstream, but much closer to mainstream than ether theory, and 4.) with a lot of explicit recommendation to avoid the e-word in my papers to get published, which I have received from different physicists.
The physical reason you mention - that it is unnecessary - does not fit. Because the theory gives something additional: 1.) A way to quantize gravity. My theory has GR as the limit as a classical theory. Not as a quantum theory, because there is no quantum GR, and to quantize GR is impossible without a preferred frame. 2.) A way to explain the SM, to predict its particle content. There is no explanation for the choice of the particles and fields of the SM, so, this is not, and cannot be, covered by any limit. Above things - the necessity of a quantum theory of gravity, and of an explanation for the SM - are well accepted as open scientific problems, in particular by string theorists.
He's been a bit disingenuous. He mentions the 'atomic ether distance' so I asked what atomic means in this context. Through several layers of obfuscation I got the distinct impression that he is actually referring to the undetectable Lorentz ether. Now he tells you it is detectable. Science spent 50 years preparing to test the theoretical prediction for the geodetic effect. Measure local spacetime curvature at the experiment. 'Atomic ether distance'?
What is disingenuous with an atomic ether? It is a name for a more fundamental ether theory, which becomes relevant below a critical distance. I could have used, as well, a more accurate but much longer phrase, like "the ether theory which replaces the ether theory given here, which is a long distance effective theory, below a critical distance". Would this have been helpful?
In the model proposed here this "theory below the critical distance" is a lattice of elementary cells. So, it is not really an "atomic" theory if one interprets "atoms" as small indivisible and otherwise structureless entities - they have a structure, which is that of a deformable cell.
Then, what is unobservable in the large distance approximation may be observable, at least in principle, in the microscopic theory. Similarly, there is also a difference between what is observable in the GR limit of the continuous ether theory, and what is observable in the continuous ether theory itself. In the GR limit, we have the SEP, in the continuous ether theory we have only the EEP. and this makes the background spacetime observable, but its subdivision into space and time remains unobservable. It becomes observable only in the microscopic theory.
Last but not least, what is "local spactime curvature" in GR is observable in ether theory too, and an expression which describes inner stresses of the ether and how they change. So, "measuring" this "curvature" does not falsify my ether theory too.
