Michelson-Morley experiment Luminiferous aether The experiment Commentary

Albert A. Michelson, Edward W. Morley physics

Michelson-Morley experiment

• Michelson and Morley
• showed either the aether
• was rotated by the rotating earth
• or there was no aether there.

Luminiferous aether

• It was easy enough to believe
• that light, being a wave, had to be
• a vibration of something,
• even though we cannot see it,
• we cannot feel it, nor smell it,
• nor taste it, nor hear it,
• but everyone thought so.
• Augustin-Jean Fresnel thought
• it was dragged along by the earth
• so that the expected interference
• of light traveling with the aether
• with light traveling across it
• would be smaller than
• their instruments could measure.
• Experiments designed to measure
• the cross-flow of aether
• couldn’t find any flow
• which convinced everyone
• except for Albert Einstein
• that Fresnel was right,
• but of course he was wrong.

The experiment

• The reason scientists
• do experiments is to show
• their theories are wrong.
• I know you want to find
• examples of experiments
• that show I’m wrong.