Aether and Earth’s Motion

Prior to Michelsen and Morleys experiments in 1881-1887 a common hypothesis for the transmission of light waves was a backgroud Aether that was a medium for the light to pass through like waves on the surface of water or sound waves through the air.

The experiment tested changes in the speed of light as the earth orbited the sun, but found no change in the speed of light. This put the Aether hypothesis into question. In 1905 Einstein published what was eventually called Special Relativity” with proposed a different hypothesis: the speed of light is the same regardless of motion. This was the beginning of a Scientific Revolution as Thomas Khun describes.

However, not everyone agreed and several people have continued to support the Aether hypothesis. Everything in science is open to be questions, falsified, improved so disagreement is invited. People have continued to examine prior experiments and perform new ones in support of the Aether hypothesis.

Below are some of these experiments and analyses.

The Ether-Drift Experiment and the Determination of the Absolute Motion of the Earth

Dayton Miller, 1933, https://doi.org/10.1103/RevModPhys.5.203

This paper describes measurements using the same apparatus as Michelson and Morley used in 1887. The work was done in Cleveland, Kansas City, and Mt. Wilson between 1904 and 1926. Miller claims to have measured earth’s motion through space at about 200km per second moving toward a specific location in the celestial sphere.

Initial findings suggest the solar system is traveling toward a point in the north celestial hemisphere. Page 231: “The conclusion stated that there is a positive, systematic ether-drift effect, corresponding to a constant relative motion of the earth and the ether, which at Mount Wilson has an apparent velocity of ten kilometers per second; and that the variations in the direction and magnitude of indicated motion are exactly such as would be produced by a constant motion of the solar system in space towards an apex, near the north pole of the ecliptic, having a right ascension of 17 hours and a declination of +65°.”

Further analysis reversed this to a point in the south celestial hemisphere.

Page 232: “This gives for the first time a quantitative determination of the absolute motion of the solar system and a positive detection of the effect of the orbital motion of the earth, by means of the ether drift interferometer.”

Page 233: “This aberration orbit is the projection of the earth’s orbit on the celestial sphere and, since the center is only 7° from the pole of the ecliptic, the projection, for the purposes of this study, is a circle.”

Miller, 1922, Page 234

Page 233: “By means of the triangle law it is now possible to make an approximate solution for the velocity of the earth’s cosmic motion. The explanation will be facilitated by means of the model, Fig. 24, which shows the relative positions of the earth in its orbit for the four epochs; above each of the four globes is a wire parallelogram, approximately to scale, which illustrates the relations of the orbital and cosmic components of motion and their resultant; the cosmical component has a downward direction. The direction and magnitude of the orbital component are known, the direction of the resultant motion is given by the observations (its magnitude is not required), the direction of the cosmic component is towards the center of the aberration orbit as just found; thus there are given the directions of the three sides of a triangle, and the magnitude of one side, which determines the magnitudes of the other sides. In this manner, a first approximation to the velocity of the cosmic component of motion was found to be 200 kilometers per second.”

Observation During 2004 of Periodic Fringe-Shifts in an Adialeiptometric Stationary Michelson-Morley Experiment

Héctor A Múnera

Ran a continuous Michelson-Morley interferometer from the end of 2003 to June 2005. “The solar motion that explains our observations is similar to other modern estimates of solar velocity.”

Héctor A Múnera, 2017