Indications for a preferred reference frame from an ether-drift experiment

Abstract

We present a fully model-independent analysis of the extensive observations reported by a recent ether-drift experiment in Berlin. No a priori assumption is made on the nature of a hypothetical preferred frame. We find a remarkable consistency with an Earth's cosmic motion exhibiting an average declination angle |\gamma|\sim 43^o and with values of the RMS anisotropy parameter (1/2-\beta+\delta) that are one order of magnitude larger than the presently quoted ones. This might represent the first modern indication for a preferred frame and for a non-zero anisotropy of the speed of light.