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.
The Michelson interferometer (among other interferometer configurations) is employed in many scientific experiments and became well known for its use by Michelson and Edward Morley in the famous Michelson–Morley experiment (1887) [1] in a configuration which would have detected the Earth's motion through the supposed luminiferous aether that ...
The Michelson–Morley experiment was conducted in 1887 by physicist Albert A. Michelson of Case School of Applied Science and chemist Edward W. Morley of Western Reserve University. This experiment proved the non-existence of the luminiferous ether and was later cited as circumstantial evidence in support of special relativity as proposed by ...
The aether was assumed to exist for much of the 19th century—until the Michelson–Morley experiment returned its famous null result. Further experiments were in general agreement with Michelson and Morley's result. By the 1920s, most scientists rejected the aether's existence.
In the 1920s, a series of Michelson–Morley type experiments were conducted, confirming relativity to even higher precision than the original experiment. Another type of interferometer experiment was the Kennedy–Thorndike experiment in 1932, by which the independence of the speed of light from the velocity of the apparatus was confirmed.
In this theory, the reason that the Michelson–Morley experiment "failed" was that the apparatus contracted in length in the direction of travel. That is, the light was being affected in the "natural" manner by its travel through the aether as predicted, but so was the apparatus itself, cancelling out any difference when measured.
It was the negative result of a famous experiment, that required the introduction of length contraction: the Michelson–Morley experiment (and later also the Kennedy–Thorndike experiment). In special relativity its explanation is as follows: In its rest frame the interferometer can be regarded as at rest in accordance with the relativity ...
It explained the failure of the negative aether drift experiments to first order in v/c by introducing an auxiliary variable called "local time" for connecting systems at rest and in motion in the aether. In addition, the negative result of the Michelson–Morley experiment led to the introduction of the hypothesis of length contraction in 1892