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[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.
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.
Complete aether dragging can explain the negative outcome of all aether drift experiments (like the Michelson–Morley experiment). However, this theory is considered to be wrong for the following reasons: [1] [11] The Fizeau experiment (1851) indicated only a partial entrainment of light.
To explain the negative outcome of the Michelson–Morley experiment, George FitzGerald (1889) and Hendrik Lorentz (1892) introduced the contraction hypothesis, according to which a body is contracted during its motion through the stationary aether.
In 1904 and 1905, Hendrik Lorentz and Henri Poincaré proposed a theory which explained the negative result of the Michelson-Morley experiment as being due to the effect of motion through the aether on the lengths of physical objects and the speed at which clocks ran. Due to motion through the aether objects would shrink along the direction of ...
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 ...
The negative outcome of the Michelson–Morley experiment (1887) suggested that the aether did not exist, a finding that was confirmed in subsequent experiments through the 1920s. This led to considerable theoretical work to explain the propagation of light without an aether.
In order to explain the negative result of the Michelson–Morley experiment, he (1892b) [R 9] introduced the additional hypothesis that also intermolecular forces are affected in a similar way and introduced length contraction in his theory (without proof as he admitted).