Linear Interferometers

Presentation:
From the 1600’s to the late 1800’s a large number of experiments informed people about the earth and its position in the universe.
Rømer’s measurement of the difference in eclipse timings of Jupiter’s moon Io varying annually
James Bradley measuring aberration which varying based on the position of the star in the celestial sphere
Vogel and Schneier change in the color of light from fixed stars varying annually
Friedrich Bessel measuring stellar parallax varying annually
These experiments had all been replicated and were well understood in the late 1800’s when the ether hypothesis was being tested. The tests used the known movement of the earth through the hypothesized ether and tried to identify differences in the behavior of light based on this movement.
George Biddel Airy
“Klinkerfues…inferred that the angle of refraction would be influenced by the motion of the earth, and he attempted to detect the inferred effect.”
Conclusion: “I think myself justified in concluding that the hypothesis of Professor Klinkerfues is untenable.”
Michelson Morley tested for aether by using the earth’s orbit around the sun, the conclusion of the experiment is that they didn’t find the predicted effect based on the orbit of the earth through the hypothesized aether.
Repeats over several years, Michelson, Kennedy, Thordike, Illingworth
The disagreement in the predictions of the aether hypothesis caused what Thomas Kuhn calls a “crisis in the model”. This is where newly found information contradicts an established model. A model must incorporate all observations. When there are a large number of disagreements that are unresolved, this is a problem.
As the disagreements add up it prompts what Kuhn calls a scientific revolution.
Einstein’s 1905 paper on special relativity started that scientific revolution.
Some people did not agree with special relativity, being good scientists they did more experiments.
Dayton Miller got the same apparatus as Michelson and Morley, enhanced it and did tests for several years. He concluded that he did measure an ether wind. He did extensive geometrical analysis based on the locations of the measurements, Cleveland, Kansas City and Mt. Wilson, their 3 dimensional location on the globe, the time of day to apply the position of the rotation of the earth, and the time of the year to apply the position of the earth around the sun.
[ Show diagram ]
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 233-234 “This is the final solution for the cosmic component of the motion of the earth and is the absolute motion of the solar system as a whole; this cosmic motion of the earth has a velocity of 208 kilometers per second and is directed to the apex having a right ascension of 4 hours and 54 minutes and a declination of -70° 33′.
Jumping forward to Héctor Múnera’s paper in 2004 where he claims that all previous interferometer measurements were invalid because they did not count the fill fringe shifts between individual measurements. Instead only including the fractional fringe shift. He says that measurements should be constantly taken so full fringe shifts are not missed. He calls this Adialeiptometric measurements. It just means continuous.
Basically, if you only record the fractional part of a measurement, ignoring the whole part, you will get random data. Taking Hector’s position, all previous measurements, including Dayton Miller, must be rejected.
Hector used an apparatus similar to MM. He set up a camera to take photos of the fringe patterns every minute and wrote software to read the magnitude of the fringe shift.
Similar to Dayton Miller, Hector used the position of the experiment on the surface of the globe, the position based on daily rotation and the position of the earth orbiting the sun to do his analysis to reach his conclusion.
The conclusion: Page 87 “From the previous qualitative analysis it may be said that the solar motion consistent with our observations may be in the range 300 to 360 km/s, with right ascension from 170° to 190° and declination between -45° and -55°.
Compared to Dayton Miller: 208 kilometers per second right ascension of 73.5° and a declination of -70° 33′.
These two observations are in disagreement. If you take Hector’s claim about previous recordings of fringe shift, then Hector’s observation stands alone without any repetition.
Hector makes some good points in the analysis of the measurements from the early 1900’s and before. But he doesn’t directly address some of the more recent and higher quality MM experiments. Most importantly, I cannot find anything from Hector on the Ligo and Virgo interferometers. These are Adialeiptometric so satisfy Hector’s requirement. Yet, these measurements do not find any ether wind. I emailed Hector asking if he has addressed Ligo, he hasn’t responded yet.
Dayton Miller, Héctor Múnera and others are interesting but conflict with each other and disagree completely with more recent higher precision measurements like Holger Muller’s “Modern Michelson-Morley experiment using cryogenic optical resonators” from 2008 that found no ether wind at the 10-15 level, or Eisele’s Laboratory Test of the Isotropy of Light Propagation at the 10−17 Level from 2009. Or Ligo that continuously measures the fringe shift and also hasn’t discovered any ether wind.
There is no need to rely on the initial MM experiment alone, the findings have been repeated many times with higher and higher precision. A small number of experiments that disagree with each other does not give any reason to discard the large number of experiments that are in agreement.