Don writes:
> My question is this: Does the apparent existence of the privileged subset B
> have physical consequences other than the dipole moment in the black body
> radiation background?
Generally the principle of relativity only applies to a small enough
region of space-time as to be effectively flat. If you do have a very
large region you could detect cosmological curvature. This curvature
would be at right angles to a preferred time axis, which would imply a
preferred reference frame, the one where the curvature is not "bent".
Your privileged subset would be the people who were in this preferred
frame.
This is not really a violation of the principle of relativity though
because you just used too large a spacetime region. Detecting the
curvature of space near a gravitating body would be much easier and
also provides a way to distinguish one inertial frame from another.
Hal
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