Jason Kendall

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Michelson, Morely and the Aether Wind

In this short, I discuss the Michelson-Morely Experiment and how it disproved the existence of the Luminiferous Aether: the now-known-to-be-fictitious medium for light to travel. • Luminiferous Ether: The widely accepted belief in the 19th century that space was filled with a medium called the “luminiferous ether” through which light waves propagated. • Galilean Relativity Challenge: The existence of the ether contradicted Galilean relativity, which posited that there was no absolute reference frame for measuring motion. • AEther Wind: The concept that the Earth’s motion through the stationary ether would create an “ether wind” affecting the propagation of light. • AEther Wind Detection: Michelson aimed to detect the hypothetical ether wind by measuring the speed of light in different directions. • Michelson’s Contribution to Light Speed Measurement: Michelson, fascinated by light, contributed to the effort of measuring the speed of light, achieving a measurement of 299,999 km/s in 1879. • Michelson Interferometer: Michelson invented the interferometer in 1881, a device that uses the interference pattern of light waves to measure small differences in distance. • Michelson-Morley Experiment: Conducted in 1887 to detect the presence of ether wind, the experiment yielded a null result, challenging the existence of ether. • Subsequent Experiments: Numerous experiments conducted from the 1880s to the 1970s, using increasingly sensitive interferometers, consistently failed to detect ether wind. • Conclusion: The consistent null results from various experiments, spanning over a century, led to the conclusion that Aether does not exist. • AEther Existence: Modern experiments, including those in 2015, have shown no evidence of the ether, leading to the conclusion that it does not exist. • Light Propagation: Light does not require a medium to travel through space. • Historical Context: Despite numerous attempts to detect the Aether, all have failed, leaving scientists to grapple with the implications of its non-existence.