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Michelson-Morley experiment, an attempt to detect the velocity of Earth with respect to the hypothetical luminiferous ether, a medium in space proposed to carry light waves. No such velocity was detected, and this result seriously discredited ether theories.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
The Michelson–Morley experiment was an attempt to measure the motion of the Earth relative to the luminiferous aether, a supposed medium permeating space that was thought to be the carrier of light waves.
The idea is that early experiments on relativity, such as the famous Michelson-Morley experiment, only measured the total travel time of light not the travel time in a single direction....
- How It Was Supposed to Work
- The Results
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By the end of the 1800s, the dominant theory of how light worked was that it was a wave of electromagnetic energy, because of experiments such as Young's double slit experiment. The problem is that a wave had to move through some sort of medium. Something has to be there to do the waving. Light was known to travel through outer space (which scienti...
The result was disappointing because they found absolutely no evidence of the relative motion bias they were looking for. No matter which path the beam took, light seemed to be moving at precisely the same speed. These results were published in 1887. One other way to interpret the results at the time was to assume that the ether was somehow connect...
Find the full text of their paper published in the 1887 edition of the American Journal of Science, archived online at the AIP website.
The goal of the Michelson–Morley experiment was to compare the speed of light in perpendicular horizontal directions at various times of the day, in an attempt to detect the relative motion of matter through the stationary luminiferous aether by using the earth's motion around the sun to create interference bands of light for the study.
Michelson-Morley collected 6 hours of data, with 36 turns of the interferometer (and still found a slight positive result). Dayton Miller had over 200,000 readings, from 12,000 turns of the interferometer.
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May 9, 2020 · The Michelson-Morley experiment was performed by American scientists Albert Michelson and Edward Morley between April and July 1887. The purpose of this experiment is to prove the existence of ether. This hypothetical medium permeating space was thought to be the carrier of light waves.
