Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
[A 2] Of this experiment, Albert Einstein wrote, "If the Michelson–Morley experiment had not brought us into serious embarrassment, no one would have regarded the relativity theory as a (halfway) redemption." [A 3]: 219 Michelson–Morley type experiments have been repeated many times with steadily increasing sensitivity.
As an example in physics, the results of the Michelson–Morley experiment were of this type, as it did not detect the expected velocity relative to the postulated luminiferous aether. This experiment's famous failed detection, commonly referred to as the null result, contributed to the development of special relativity.
The sample maximum and minimum are the least robust statistics: they are maximally sensitive to outliers.. This can either be an advantage or a drawback: if extreme values are real (not measurement errors), and of real consequence, as in applications of extreme value theory such as building dikes or financial loss, then outliers (as reflected in sample extrema) are important.
Also, Lorentz–Fitzgerald contraction of the apparatus is enough to make Michelson–Morley produce a null result, you don't also need time dilation. This experiment didn't singlehandedly overthrow Galileo—it needs to be considered together with other experiments that ruled out the other possibilities.
To clarify the situation, Michelson and Morley (1887) repeated Michelson's 1881 experiment, and they substantially increased the accuracy of the measurement. However, this now famous Michelson–Morley experiment again yielded a negative result, i.e., no motion of the apparatus through the aether was detected (although the Earth's velocity is ...
In the 1887 Michelson–Morley experiment, the round trip distance that the two beams traveled down the precisely equal arms was expected to be made unequal because of the, now deprecated, idea that light is constrained to travel as a mechanical wave at the speed C only in the rest frame of the luminiferous aether.
Box plot of data from the Michelson–Morley experiment displaying four outliers in the middle column, as well as one outlier in the first column. In statistics, an outlier is a data point that differs significantly from other observations.
A big challenge for the Lorentz ether theory was the Michelson–Morley experiment in 1887. According to the theories of Fresnel and Lorentz, a relative motion to an immobile aether had to be determined by this experiment; however, the result was negative.