This is going to be a long read, but for those in search of the truth of what exactly happened that led to the fraudulent preservation of the Copernican Principle, then look no further, for EVERY SINGLE scientist mentioned here was a devout heliocentrist, vehemently opposed to any evidence to the contrary - there are NO geocentrists here whatsoever.
This was all in the light of Einstein, as he was surrounded by it, but does anyone know who he really was? Without question, no one has influenced physics and cosmology more than Albert Einstein (1879-1955). Most people know very little beyond the image of the wacky hair, disheveled, absent-minded professor or the famous formula E=mc2 they see in backgrounds of movies and media. They know very little concerning how Einstein’s famous theory of Relativity originated or what it means...or what it actually stands for. Often the extent of their knowledge is the well-overused cliché “everything is relative.� And it is these people represent the vast majority. Go figure.
In reality, Einstein in every way preceded the likes of Hubble, Hawking, Sagan and every other icon in modern science who have done their best to preserve the Copernican Principle in the face of a vast plethora of evidence that said it was incredibly flawed, and by no stretch of the imagination to boot.
With remarkable similarity to what Hubble stated about how an Earth-centered cosmos would be “intolerable� and “must be avoided at all costs,� so Einstein invented Relativity for precisely the same reason, only his biographer used the word “unthinkable� rather than "intolerable." In the massive wake following the famous Michelson-Morley experiment of 1887, Ronald W. Clark describes what came next:
- Einstein: The Life and Times, 1984, p. 57In the United States Albert Michelson and Edward Morley had performed an experiment which confronted scientists with an appalling choice. Designed to show the existence of the ether…it had yielded a null result, leaving science with the alternatives of tossing aside the key which had helped to explain the phenomena of electricity, magnetism, and light or of deciding that the earth was not in fact moving at all.
- Einstein: The Life and Times, 1984, pp. 109-110The problem which now faced science was considerable. For there seemed to be only three alternatives. The first was that the Earth was standing still, which meant scuttling the whole Copernican theory and was unthinkable.
One scientist even drew the following conclusion of the result of such data if it had been discovered in the infancy of the Copernican Principle:
- G. J. Whitrow, The Structure and Evolution of the Universe, 1949, 1959, p. 79It is both amusing and instructive to speculate on what might have happened if such an experiment could have been performed in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries when men were debating the rival merits of the Copernican and Ptolemaic systems. The result would surely have been interpreted as conclusive evidence for the immobility of the Earth, and therefore as a triumphant vindication of the Ptolemaic system and irrefutable falsification of the Copernican hypothesis. The moral of this historical fantasy is that it is often dangerous to believe in the absolute verification or falsification of a scientific hypothesis. All judgments of this type are necessarily made in some historical context which may be drastically modified by the changing perspective of human knowledge.
And so, for 500 years, the theory of Copernicus was taught, leading the advance of science into the realm of philosophy in order to avoid the unthinkable: a mighty God who created all things. For, according to the results of the experiment, science would have to hand the reins of power and influence, and even science, back to the Church, whose teachings of a motionless Earth never wavered. In short, after the Michelson-Morley experiment the entire future of mankind’s existence hung in the balance.
Most people don’t realize Einstein's intent, and those who knew of it would not admit it, but Relativity was created for one reason: so that mankind would not be forced to admit that the Earth was standing still in space. This was Einstein's defense against any evidence that proved a divine creation.
Enter the Michelson-Morley experiment. The purpose of the interferometer experiment was straight-forward: if the earth moves around the sun at 67,000 mph, and this movement is conducted through a medium that fills all of space through which light propagates (known as "luminiferous ether"), then a light beam discharged into the forward-westward direction of the earth's supposed motion would have its speed impeded to a degree that is proportional to the speed of the earth.
In other words, the speed of the earth could be subtracted from the speed of light, and the final measurement of the light beam would reflect that difference. Light, even though it seems to be without substance, can be and is impeded by any medium through which it travels. That is an undisputed fact of science - and hence it was a dependent variable in the experiment. By that rule, the second dependent variable was this: a beam of light pointed in either the northward or southward direction of the earth (either direction could be chosen) would experience no change in speed since the earth does not move in a straight-line path either toward the sun, nor away from it, for the those directions are perpendicular to its supposed path of movement, and thus not against the ether.
Albert Michelson and Edward Morley were anticipating being able to measure the difference in speed because of their previous success in repeating Armand Fizeau’s experiment with light in moving water. With their new interferential refractometer, as it was originally called, they would be able to determine effects of the second order with an accuracy that was previously unobtainable. Thus Morley wrote to his father that the purpose of the experiment was “to see if light travels with the same velocity in all directions."
To the shock of everyone who followed the doctrine of Einstein, Albert Michelson and Edward Morley found that a light beam discharged in the direction of the Earth’s assumed motion showed virtually no difference in speed from a light beam discharged north to south or south to north. In other words, the experiment failed to detect ANY motion of the earth in or against space, nor against anything that space might happen to consist of. This result was of immense concern to Einstein, and I'm sure it kept him up many a night, since it wasn't the only experiment with which he had to contend, as he was well aware of previous experiments with the same results.
Previous Experiments:
Interviews with Einstein show he was just as concerned with the results of experiments performed 10-50 years earlier. Robert Shankland’s interview with Einstein had this to say:
- Robert S. Shankland, “Conversations with Albert Einstein,� American Journal of Physics, 31:47-57, 1963Prof. Einstein volunteered a rather strong statement that he had been more influenced by the Fizeau experiment on the effect of moving water on the speed of light, and by astronomical aberration, especially Airy’s observations with a water-filled telescope, than by the Michelson-Morley experiment.
Why would the “Fizeau experiment� and “especially Airy’s observations with a water-filled telescope,� cause such concern for Einstein? Well to put it simply, Armand Fizeau and George Biddell Airy’s experiments are two of the foremost evidences of a motionless Earth ever produced, and according to Einstein's buddy Hendrik Lorentz, these experiments put unbridled fear into the whole establishment of science, in the light of which he made the following, albeit very difficult, admission: “Briefly, everything occurs as if the Earth were at rest…� (From Lorentz’s 1886 paper, “On the Influence of the Earth’s Motion of Luminiferous Phenomena,� as quoted in Arthur Miller’s Albert Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity, p. 20)
Eventually, it would take the full force of Relativity theory and its attendant Lorentzian-derived “transform equations� to even begin to make an attempt at explaining the amazing results of Fizeau, Airy and various stellar aberration experiments. Here is what is even more amazing: the Michelson-Morley experiment was actually a desperate attempt, using more sophisticated equipment, to overturn Fizeau and Airy’s findings...but it failed to do so!
Relativity theory, by its very nature, is highly vulnerable to anti-copernican interpretations, for everything that Relativity claims for itself by a moving Earth in a fixed universe can easily be “relativized� for a fixed Earth in a rotating universe. In point of fact, stellar aberration was a rather large pebble in Einstein’s shoe for that very reason, causing him great concern and worry, since Relativity theory, in principle, demands equal viability for both perspectives.
Of course, Einstein’s concern was justified, since Airy’s experiment threw a wrench into the reciprocity of Relativity, for it demonstrated that it makes absolutely NO difference whether the Earth is moving or at rest in regards to how light from a star travels through a telescope mounted on the Earth. In addition, Einstein could not make “relative� the results of Airy’s experiment, since stellar aberration provided a distinction he could by no means overcome. And thus, as a direct consequence of that fact, Einstein was FORCED to resort to the ad-hoc “field transformation� equations of Hendrick Lorentz to provide an answer to Airy’s results; and although others would not let their opinions be known due to the fear of ostracizement, everyone knew that Einstein’s efforts were just mathematical fudge. There was one inescapable fact that Airy’s telescope was revealing: barring any mathematical fudging, Earth was in glaring fact standing still, and the stars were revolving around it - not vice-versa. Hence, the importance of the Michelson-Morley experiment was that it confirmed, by a significantly different kind of experiment, the same results that Airy found in his water-filled telescope sixteen years earlier.
So what EXACLTY did the likes of people like Fizeau, and Airy all do? Here we dive into the history of experiments leading up to Michelson-Morley, from greats like Fresnel to Arago to Fizeau and Airy.
The “Fizeau experiment� and “Airy’s observations� that Einstein revealed in the Shankland interview receive their impetus for concern a few years prior in the work of man named Dominique François Arago (1786-1853). To this day, Arago is one of France’s most celebrated scientists. He was involved in many fields of interest, but it was pointedly his unique work with light that set the pace for many years to come. Of particular note are two things higlighted in his discoveries between the years 1810 to 1818. To start off, Arago observed one star through a telescope for the whole course of an entire year. In the heliocentric system, the Earth will move towards the star, but then will move away. Thus, Arago reasoned that, in order to observe the phenomenon clearly in his telescope, the focal length would need to change when viewing the star since the limited speed of light must be compensated to accommodate both a receding Earth and an advancing Earth at six-month intervals.
Makes sense, right?
But alas, to his utter astonishment, Arago did not need to adjust the focus AT ALL to see the star clearly. If one were predisposed to heliocentrism, one might interpret this phenomenon as an indication that the stars were far enough away that, regardless of whether the Earth is moving toward or away from the star, the star light is unaffected. If one were a geocentrist, one would be inclined to conclude that there is no need to adjust the focus simply because the star is, in reality, actually WHERE it appears to be, and thus there would be very little relative movement between the Earth and the star on an annual basis, regardless of position and direction of movement.
Second, Arago had previously experimented with light beams traveling through glass. He showed that light traveled slower in denser mediums, such as glass or water, which supported the wave theory of light and contradicted the particle theory). Arago assumed the light waves had a uniform speed through the ether. If the earth was moving against the ether (as would be the case if it were revolving around the sun) then the ether should impede the speed of light, just as it had been impeded through glass and water.
However, in stark contrast, Arago’s experiment showed that, whether the light beam going through the glass was pointed in the direction of the Earth’s supposed movement or opposite that movement, there was no more effect on its speed going through the glass than if he had just shone it through glass alone. Moreover, he showed that a light beam pointed toward or away from the Earth’s supposed orbit had the EXACT SAME refraction in glass as the refraction of starlight in glass. And so it didn't even matter what way he tested the incidence of light, for it always revealed the Earth to be at rest in the ether. As E. T. Whittaker put it:
- E. T. Whittaker, A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity, Dublin University Press, Longmans, Green and Co., 1910, p. 116Arago submitted the matter to the test of experiment, and concluded that the light coming from any star behaves in all cases of reflexion and refraction precisely as it would if the star were situated in the place which it appears to occupy in consequence of aberration, and the earth were at rest; so that the apparent refraction in a moving prism is equal to the absolute refraction in a fixed prism.
So then, this guy named Augustin Jean Fresnel (1788-1827) comes along, who had already worked with Arago on many occasions. Being the more famous of the two, it sort of fell as a mantle upon him from the scientific community to explain Arago’s results by retaining the moving Earth model. And here we go, philosophy at its finest: starting with a conclusion and working backwards through the scientific method.
Arago asked Fresnel if it would be possible to explain the results of his starlight experiment by the wave theory of light. Fresnel came up with an ingenious answer and explained it to Arago in a letter dated 1818. Now, pay VERY CLOSE ATTENTION, for what follows will change its form and be virtually repeated as a different lie at a later date: he postulated that there was no effect on the incidence of starlight because the ether through which the light traveled was being “dragged,� at least partially, by the magnifying glass of the telescope.
And here was the reasoning: because ether was understood to permeate all substances, Fresnel hypothesized that there was a certain amount of ether trapped within the glass, and that as such it would be denser than, and independent from, the ether in the surrounding air. The key to understanding this theory is that Fresnel maintained that the ether outside the glass was immobile. As the glass moved with the Earth’s assumed movement and against the immobile ether outside, the glass would “drag� the ether trapped inside along with it.
And so, with that notion in his head, Fresnel, rather conveniently, concluded that Arago couldn’t detect any difference in the speed of light because the glass in his experiment was dragging the ether just enough in the opposite direction to the Earth’s movement so as to mask the Earth’s speed of 30 km/sec through the immobile ether. Oh my...how very convenient indeed!
To understand the rationalization of Fresnel’s “drag� to explain Arago’s results, here is an example. There are two telescopes, one hollow and one filled with glass. Both telescopes are viewing the same star. Will each telescope measure the same aberration (bending) of the starlight? One would decidedly think not, since due to the fact that the glass telescope would refract considerably more than the hollow one.
But that in fact did not happen in Arago's experiment. Rather, all such telescopic views of stars will show no more bending of starlight in the glass telescope than in the hollow telescope.
The least complicated answer for this phenomenon is that Earth is not moving, and since the stars, although moving, are so very far away, the angle of incidence will be virtually identical on one side of the Earth as on the other. It will always be straight overhead and thus produce no refraction or diffraction through air telescopes as opposed to glass telescopes.
Thus, Fresel had NO choice but to say the ether was trapped and dragged in such a way that it only APPEARED that the earth wasn't moving, since the trapped ether equalized the difference, rendering it undetectable. By this clever manipulation of something he couldn’t even detect (the ether) and a nature of light he hadn’t even proven (waves), Fresnel helped science avoid the reality of being forced to accept a non-moving Earth as the most likely answer to Arago’s puzzling findings. Oh, glorious day for philoso...er...I mean...science!
Of course what was blatantly obvious to any reasonable observers was that Fresnel’s explanation appeared to be decidedly TOO convenient, especially since he arrived at his solution without any physical experimentation whatsoever! Fresnel even wrote an equation for his model, and remember it, for we will see it rear its ugly unproven head again in a different format. Mathematically, Fresnel claimed that ether “dragsâ€� the light in the glass telescope in accord with the equation: c = (1 - 1/η^2)ν, where c is the speed of light, η is the refractive index of the medium, and v is the velocity of 30 km/sec of Earth’s supposed orbit; or more simply f = 1 – 1/η^2, where f is the “Fresnel dragâ€� and η is the refractive index of the medium. This is described in his paper, Ann. De Chimie, 17:180 that he wrote in 1821.
Now, enter Armand Fizeau (1821-1896), one the people whose experiment Einstein cites as causing great concern for his brand new Relativity theory. Since Fresnel never did it, Fizeau needed to prove Fresnel’s “drag� theory so as to have a physical, not merely theoretical or mathematical, answer for Arago’s results. The implications of Arago’s experimental results were so undesirable, that counter-experiments, such as Fizeau's which set a precedent of more to come, were described as desperate attempts to “find the ether� or “discover the nature of the ether� rather than what was truly at stake – finding out experimentally whether the Earth actually moved at all.
It only gets more ridiculous from here. So Fizeau's initial experiments found that the speed of light through glass varied with the color of the light, something for which neither Arago nor Fresnel tested. This meant, of course, that the ether would have to be reacting differently with various colors of light; or there was a different amount of ether trapped in the glass for each particular color - two options which seemed far-fetched. Fizeau proposed the hypothesis that the ether possessed elasticity, and varying degrees of elasticity would cause various reactions with light.
So then, Fizeau reasoned that he needed to test the very constitution of the ether, and so in 1851, he sent two parallel rays of light in opposing directions through tubes of water in which the water was made to flow rapidly, set up in such a way that one light ray would be traveling with the flow of water, and the other against it...which was stupid. Naturally, due to the refractive index of water, the light moving against the water moved more slowly, no different that a swimmer against the current, since more light was refracted due to it coming into contact with more volume of water than the light that was moving with the direction of the water. The speed of light was not a sum of the velocity of the light added to the velocity of the Earth. Rather, the only effect Fizeau found on the speed of light was that which was induced by the water’s refractive index. Duh.
But he tried to "make" it fit anyway. In order to escape this problem, Fizeau postulated that as the water flowed, it would only drag SOME of the ether with it, which would cause the light to move against only SOME of the ether, which would then appear as an alteration in the speed of the light in the water, and which, coincidentally, would THEN magically equal the refractive index of the water, and which would also equal the Fresnel “drag� coefficient...naturally. And so, without any proof whatsoever, they were already discounting a fixed-Earth as a viable solution to the unexpected results of their experiments.
Despite this clearly fraudulent “solution,� there was still an open question: would Fizeau’s use of water to drag ether and impede the speed of light prove to be true for starlight, since everyone knew the difference between its immense distance from earth compared to laboratory light?
Not to worry. Along comes James Bradley and George Airy. Twenty years after Fizeau’s experiment, George Biddell Airy conducted his own water-tube experiment, which, to his utter surprise, also confirmed Arago’s results – that Earth was standing still in space. Why is it that these people are ALWAYS astonished? I don't get it. I really don't. Being a member of the prestigious Astronomer Royal of England, he was thus well-respected, and of course held tightly to a heliocentric view of the universe, just as Einstein did.
Hm. It's funny that Airy was quite certain, at least before he did his experiment, that his water-filled telescope would prove the Earth revolved around the sun. Hence, he was quite surprised at his “failure.� It's funny because he and so many others would not believe the experimental results of so many others that yielded the same results, and yet they thought that THEY would be the one to do the same experiments and get different results. Ironically, this was Einstein's definition of insanity...ironic because according to that, Einstein himself was insane. LOL. Consequentially, this experiment became widely known as "Airy's Failure," and is perhaps the best experiment that disproves the "notion of the motion" of earth in space.
So what exactly went down in Airy's experiment? Well, Airy knew from Arago that the speed of light was slower in a solid transparent medium than in air, that any apparent movement of the earth did not affect the speed of light, and that Fresnel’s explanation of Arago’s experiment was that the glass plate “dragged� the ether and acted independently of ether in the air. Airy, by merely enhancing the procedures of those before him, decided to use a source of light outside Earth, namely starlight, and direct it through different mediums to see if the light was affected.
So what is so significant about starlight, as opposed to light here on earth? Well let's see. In 1640, astronomer Giovanni Pieroni observed that various stars shifted their position in the sky during the year. Now, Francesco Rinuccini had brought this to Galileo’s attention in 1641, but Galileo was not impressed by it. But in 1669, a guy named Robert Hooke noticed the same kind of shift taking place for one star in particular: Gamma Draconis. Hooke actually thought he had discovered the first case ever of stellar parallax as proof of motion. Almost another three decades later in 1694, John Flamsteed observed the same shift in Polaris. And then, yet another thirty years later, James Bradley tested whether Hooke’s observations of the parallax of Gamma Draconis were correct, and from the year 1725 to 1728 he found that throughout the course of a year, the star traced a small ellipse in its path, almost the same as a parallax would make. In the heliocentric system, parallax is understood as a one-to-one correspondence between Earth’s annual revolution and the star’s annual ellipse, but Bradley noticed that the star’s ellipse was NOT following this particular pattern.
So Bradley, reasoning that Gamma Draconis was too far away to register a parallax, found another explanation, and it was a rather ingenious one. He theorized that the star’s annual ellipse was being formed because the speed of light was finite, which is to say that the star wasn't really moving in the sky at all. Rather, its light, moving at a finite speed, was hitting a moving Earth, an Earth that for six months was moving toward the star, and in the next six months was moving away from it. While the Earth moved toward the star, the star’s light would hit the Earth sooner, but while the Earth moved away, the light would hit it later. Bradley reasoned that, if light’s speed was infinite, there would be no such effect, but since it is finite, these back-and-forth movements of the Earth would translate into seeing the star move in an ellipse over the course of a year. My, what a welcome relief to heliocentrism this was!
But, too bad, for it was all for nought with the results of "Airy's Failure." Whereas Bradley had used only one kind of telescope, Airy came up with the idea of using a second telescope standing right next to the first telescope, but filled with water instead of air. He needed a shot-by-shot comparison.
Since the Arago/Fresnel/Fizeau love triangle had already shown that the speed of light was retarded in glass or water, Airy assumed that if a telescope was filled with water, then the starlight coming through the water should be slower than it would be in air, and thus refract the starlight outward toward the side of the telescope and away from the eyepiece (just as light "bends" when you put a pencil in water). In order to compensate for the outward bending of the starlight, Airy assumed he would need to tilt his water-filled telescope just a little more toward the lower end of the star so that its light would hit his eyepiece directly rather than hitting the side of the telescope.
But...wait for it...to his utter ASTONISHEMENT (there it is again), Airy found that he did not have to adjust the tilt of his water-filled telescope at all, any more so than the tilt of the air-filled one! And why was he, like so many others, astonished and stymied? Well, again, results indicated that Earth wasn’t moving, since if there is no additional adjustment necessary for a water-filled telescope toward the direction of the starlight, this meant that the starlight was entering both telescopes at the same angle and speed.
You've read THIS far...should I stop?
Now, let's go back to Bradley's experiment and bear this note in mind: Bradley’s appeal to an arc in the movement of Gamma Draconis, which was measured to be 20.5", as being due to a 30 km/sec revolution of the Earth around the sun, assumes that the sun is a fixed object. Without taking the sun as fixed, Bradley would not have been able to detect any aberration in the star. But according to modern cosmology, no object in the sky is fixed, and thus Bradley’s theory is nullified on that count alone. Otherwise, the sun is at rest or Relativity is wrong. Dig it.
So here we are. Unless Airy’s experiment could be answered, the world was about to stand still in space, both literally and figuratively. Three years prior to Airy, Martinus Hoek, an astronomer at Utrecht, performed another type of experiment, but one that had demonstrated the same results as Airy: that the Earth was not moving. In 1868, he devised a variation of Fizeau’s experiment in order to test the nature of light. Why? Remember, the use of laboratory light by Fresnel and Fizeau had yet to be satisfied with an answer.
He did pretty much the same thing with the light beams going in opposite directions in water, but this time was different. He turned his apparatus into the direction of earth's supposed movement around the sun, and then turned it perpendicular to that direction. In theory, he should have detected a noticeable fringe difference (a fringe gap is the distance measured between two peaks or two troughs of two light waves as they hit a receptor.) The westward movement alignment of the apparatus should have measured a greater difference than the north-south alignment.
But, and this is the part I just LOVE, to his ASTONISHMENT, Hoek noticed no significant difference in the fringes, at least not in accordance with an Earth moving 30 km/sec. Once again, yet another experiment proved that the earth does not move in space. And, in the fashion of Airy, this experiment was thus dubbed "Hoek's Failure."
Keep in mind that all these guys are trying their hardest to get just ONE experiment that proves the earth's motion. That's why they are called failures.
Oh but wait, there's more. These people are just too stubborn to throw in the towel. Along comes yet another dude, Eleuthère Elie Nicolas Mascart, who in 1872 devised an experiment which he believed would allow him to detect the motion of the Earth through ether by measuring the rotation of the plane of polarization of light propagated along the axis of a quartz crystal. Boy that's a mouthful...but if he could do it, it would make him a god among men!
For those who are laymen, polarization is a phenomenon of white light, which propagates along the axis of forward movement at many different angles but is reduced to just one angle. Polarizers are filters containing long-chain polymer molecules that are oriented in one specific position. As such, the incident light vibrating in the same plane as the polymer molecules is the only light absorbed, while light vibrating at right angles to the plane is passed through the polarizer. Mascart set up the experiment so that if the Earth were passing through the ether at the expected speed of 30 km/sec, then the light’s plane of polarization would be affected. Mascart found no such results. His experiment was just another indication that Earth was not moving.
Hopefully now one has a better understanding of the circumstances and failure after failure that led to the ultimate failure: the Michelson-Morley Experiment. It was a lot like Fizeau's experiment, but far more sensitive. Where Fizeau had sent light beams along parallel paths through water, the interferometer sent them in numerous perpendicular paths through air on a rotating table, which allowed a more comprehensive and accurate test.
Aside from this ultimate failure in regards to the earth's supposed movement in space, the procedure could not be faulted, for many do not know that it was first James Clerk Maxwell who proposed to use the interference of light waves to determine whether the earth was moving or not! Maxwell is world-famous for his electromagnetic equations for light travel which are still taught and used to this day.
From Fizeau's experimental data, Michelson had come to expect a fringe of 0.4 on the interferometer. But, instead, it only showed 0.02, which was only 5% of the speed of the expected speed of movement. Michelson said the following in an 1881 issue of the American Journal of Science:
As all of his predecessors, Michelson did not want to believe his own results, and so he did the experiment again, this time making it even more sensitive, and also safeguarding it against any possible outside disturbances may have affected his first experiment. Alexander Graham Bell funded the project, and it was then that Michelson partnered with Edward Morley, as he had done the first experiment alone. The experimented was conducted in 1887...but the results were even worse for them and all other heliocentrists than the first (this was NO different than Planck versus WMAP...same concept basically, different format. Make it more sensitive. Make it better. Make it more comprehensive.) Once again, only a 0.02 fringe gap was measured versus the expected 0.4. The conclusion was devastating: the earth did not move.This conclusion directly contradicts the explanation...which presupposes that the Earth moves.
In Michelson's own words:
- A. A. Michelson and E. W. Morley, “On the Relative Motion of the Earth and the Luminiferous Ether,� Art. xxxvi, The American Journal of Science, eds. James D and Edward S. Dana, No. 203, vol. xxxiv, November 1887, p. 341...the displacement to be expected was 0.4 fringe. The actual displacement was certainly less than the twentieth part of this, and probably less than the fortieth part. But since the displacement is proportional to the square of the velocity, the relative velocity of the Earth and the ether is probably less than one-sixth the Earth’s orbital velocity, and certainly less than one fourth.
Once the results were released, the whole of the scientific community was in an uproar, and thus the TOP physicists in the world at the time were contacted in desperation to QUICKLY come up with an explanation for the astounding and unbelievable results of the experiment. One of them was none other than Dutch physicist Hendrick Lorentz (1853-1928). A January 7th, 1981 correspondence between Michelson and Lorentz reveals that Lorentz had communicated with Michelson and had studied both his 1881 and 1887 experiments.
Micehelson wrote:
So Michelson couldn't offer Lorentz much help in explaining the results of the experiment, since he was just as confounded as everyone else. A YEAR after the correspondence with Michelson. Lorentz wrote to English physicist Lord Rayleigh on August 8th, 1892, expressing his exasperation over Michelson's experiment:My dear Professor Lorentz, I am sorry I cannot give more satisfactory replies to your questions - but perhaps you will make more proper allowances when you know that while the American Association honored me by calling on me to preside over the physical section - this as well as all other appointments of the important aims of the association - I forward with this a copy of the Proceedings for 1881 and I hope you may be able to form from it a better estimate than by my imperfect description.
With great respect,
I remain your servant,
Albert A. Michelson
You see, although Fresnel's ether-drag theory was used to explain why Arago could not detect the earth moving, Lorentz admitted that the theory could not be used to explain the MM experiment, for it simply yields too large of a result. But at the same time, Lorentz is afraid to abandon the theory altogether, since THEN he would no longer be able to use it to explain neither Arago's experiment, nor stellar aberration. Desperate for an answer, Lorentz asks if somehow Michelson could have made a mistake in his experiment. Prior to getting any answer from Lord Rayleigh, Lorentz temporarily posited a new theory to explain it.I have read this note with much interest, and I gather from it that you agree completely as to the position of the case. Fresnel's hypothesis, taken conjointly with his coefficient (1-1/n^2), would serve admirably to account for all the observed phenomena, were it not for the interferential experiment of Mr. Michelson, which has, as you know, been repeated after I published some remarks on its original form, and which seems decidedly to contradict Fresnel's view. I am totally at a loss how to solve the contradiction, and yet I believe that if F's [Fresnel's] wave theory is abandoned, we should have no adequate aberration theory at all for the conditions imposed by Mr. Stokes on the movement of the ether being irreconcilable to each other. Can there be some point in the theory of Mr. Michelson's experiment which has as yet been overseen? In the meantime I have endeavored to apply the electromagnetic theory to a body which moves through the ether without dragging the medium along with it...
H.A. Lorentz
Working with George F. Fitgerald (1851-1901), Lorentz came up with a creative explanation at long last to explain the nil results of MM. Two years after writing his letter to Lord Rayleigh, Lorentz had developed the solution he had hinted at in the letter: "...I have endeavored to apply the electromagnetic theory to a body which moves through the ether without dragging the medium along with it..."
Lorentz theorized that a material body somehow changes as it travels through space and against the ether, and shared this theory in a letter to Irish physicist George Fitzgerald. The letter, written November 10th, 1894, states:
On November 14th, 1894, Fitzgerald replied:My dear Sir, in his "Aberration Problems" Prof. Oliver Lodge mentions a hypothesis which you have imagined in order to account for the negative results of Mr. Michelson's experiment. Two years ago I arrived at the same view as you may see from the number of Proceedings of the Dutch Academy of Sciences which I have the honour to send you at the same time with this letter. A memoir in which I consider the whole subject of Aberration in connexion with the electromagnetic theory of light being now of course in publication - it will in fact appear in a week - you would oblige me very much by telling me, if your hypothesis has already been published. I have been unable to find it and yet I should wish to refer to it.
Most respectfully yours,
H.A. Lorentz
According to Lorentz's 1895 paper, titled Attempt of a Theory of Electrical and Optical Phenomena in Moving Bodies, Lorentz admitted that:My dear Sir, I have been for years preaching and lecturing on the doctrine that Michelson's experiment proves, and is one of the only ways of proving, that the length of a body depends on how it is moving through the ether... I am particularly delighted to hear that you agree with me, for I have been rather laughed at for my view over here. I could not even persuade my own pupil W. Preston to introduce this criticism into his book on light published in 1890 although I pressed upon him to do so and it was only after reiterated positiveness that I induced Dr. Lodge to mention it in his paper; but now that I have you as an advocate and authority I shall begin to jeer at others for holding any other view...
Geo. Fra. Fitzgerald
Thus, the displacement was 95% less than what was expected if one were to use Fresnel's drag-theory (1-1/n^2) to explain why it appeared as if the earth were not moving. This translated to Fresnel's equation being useless to heliocentrists in trying to explain the MM experiment. Obviously another solution had to be found, naturally....by Fresnel's theory...a displacement of 0.4 of the fringe-distance was to be expected. Nevertheless, during the rotation only displacements of at most 0.02 of the fringe-distance were obtained...
Here is where stupid got even "stupider."
Stuck for an answer and feeling the pressure, Fitzgerald hypothesized that the west wave of Michelson's interferometer returned "about" the same time as the north wave because the ether through which the earth was moving at 67,000 mph exerted significant pressure on the westward arm of the interferometer, which thereby physically SHORTENED it just enough so that the two waves coincided upon their mutual return!
See...I told you that Fresnel's work would be repeated in a different format later on - albeit much later. Remember his explanation of ether being dragged along JUST ENOUGH? Well, here it was again to rear its ugly head in a different form!
This "shortening" of the arm of interferometer was later dubbed the "Lorentz-Fitzgerald Contraction (of length)" or the "Fitzgerald Contraction." Lorentz's theory posited that the electrons in the object were "flattened" when the object moved in space against the ether. Many scientists naturally were not pleased with this new level of stupid, since the contraction theory was blatantly an ad-hoc fix to replace the discredited Fresnel ether-drag theory, since it was now safe for Lorentz to abandon it in favor up the "upgrade."
But, since no one had a better explanation to offer that would explain the MM results to be in favor of heliocentrism so that the earth could finally move again, Lorentz's hypothesis went unchallenged...even though it was retarded, and everyone knew it. It seemed that philosophy masquerading as science was now in a bit of a quandary. The American writer explains this confused perplexity in his biography of Einstein:
- Einstein: The Life and Times, 1984, p. 57In the United States Albert Michelson and Edward Morley had performed an experiment which confronted scientists with an appalling choice. Designed to show the existence of the ether, at that time considered essential, it had yielded a null result, leaving science with the alternatives of tossing aside the key which had helped to explain the phenomena of electricity, magnetism, and light or of deciding that the earth was not in fact moving at all.
- Einstein: The Life and Times, 1984, pp. 109,110The problem which now faced science was considerable. For there seemed to be only three alternatives. The first was that the Earth was standing still, which meant scuttling the whole Copernican theory and was unthinkable.
So now, we have a stupid ad-hoc theory by Lorentz and Fitzy, and then Lorentz writes a stupid equation for it, second in the line of fame only to Newton's f = ma. It became known as the Lorentz Transform, or the Lorentz Transformation, and here it is: New Length = Old Length x sqrt(1-v^2/c^2). Wow...not much has changed since Fresnel - the value achieved can ONLY BE less than the original. Amazing!
And now, for every experiment ever conducted that gave a negative result, not to worry, the Lorentz Transform can now swoop in and quite literally "transform" the negative result into a positive one. I gotta tell ya I'm amazed...aren't YOU?
Essentially, to avoid the possibility of a motionless earth "at all costs" as a viable solution to the MM experiments, Lorentz's equation was henceforth employed to magically "transform" any such experiment that showed that the earth was not moving into a result that showed that it WAS. And despite the fact that all of the experiments performed in the 1800's had never shown evidence that the earth moved, it was nevertheless maintained the ENTIRE time as undisputable scientific dogma that the earth revolved around the sun. As such, any experimental results that indicated that the earth was not moving were "transformed" into a moving earth by Lorentz"s equation.
Did you notice that I wrote the same thing three different ways? They say that if you repeat something three times that it is easier to remember and understand.
It didn't matter that the equation was based on an ad-hoc theory that was never observed or demonstrated. In fact, prior to the "contraction of stupid" hypothesis, ether was understood as a "perfect" fluid that produced NO pressure or friction against matter. So they actually had to rewrite THEIR OWN scientific laws and contradict themselves ON the fly in order to make room for the earth TO fly.
Physicist Arthur Eddington, a contemporary of Michelson and Lorentz, stated in his 1929 book, The Nature of the Physical World, that there were only two alternatives for modern science after the MM experiment: either they accept that the earth isn't moving, or they had to accept Lorentz's and Fitzy's hypothesis that the length of an object contracted when it moved. Of course, being a heliocentrist, Eddington did everything in his power to make people accept the hypothesis as scientific fact.
His referral to "six months later" refers to the earth moving now on the other side of the sun, in its supposed reverse-direction for the year in the heliocentric model. So there you have it. Eddington FIRST makes his argument by presuming that the earth is moving around the sun, which THEN leads him to the conclusion that Lorentz's contraction of matter was proven by the MM experiment. You see, he fell into the logical fallacy known as "begging the question," that is, using as proof (the earth orbiting the sun) the very thing he was TRYING to prove (the earth orbiting the sun).There was just one alternative; the earth's true velocity through space might happen to have been nil. This was ruled out by repeating the experiment six months later, since the earth's motion could not be nil on both occasions. Thus the contraction was demonstrated and its law of dependence on velocity verified.
The fact is - no "contraction" of matter was ever demonstrated, for no one had ever measured one.
In looking back on the MM experiment, it is worthwhile to note that it came as close to confirming the medieval world view of a motionless earth as any experiment that CURRENT modern times has to offer. Isn't that astounding?
In 1901, Henri Poincare wrote in his book Science and Hypotheses:
- Stated in 1901 in La science et l’hypothèse, Paris, Flammarion, 1968, p. 182A great deal of research has been carried out concerning the influence of the earth's movement. The results were always negative.
And in 1905, commenting on what he called the "indubitable results of the experiment of Michelson," Poincare then stated:
- Henri Poincaré, “The Principles of Mathematical Physics,� The Monist, vol. XV, January 1905, pp. 6, 20Are we about to enter now upon the eve of a second crisis? These principles on which we have built all, are they about to crumble away in their turn?
In 1958, referring to the negative results of the MM experiment, and the DOZENS of other similar experiments conducted throughout the 1930's, that yielded the SAME results as MM's, the famous physicist Wolfgang Pauli admitted to what he called...
In the late 1950's historian Bernard Jaffe stated in his book:The failure of the many attempts to measure terrestrially any effects of the earth’s motion…
- Bernard Jaffe, Michelson and the Speed of Light, 1960, p. 76.“The data were almost unbelievable… There was only one other possible conclusion to draw — that the Earth was at rest. This, of course, was preposterous.
It's most interesting that, in the face of admitting that the evidence for a static earth was there, he would stubbornly say that it was preposterous.
And there are many more, such as John D. Bernal, Adolf Baker, James Coleman, and G.J. Whitrow, who all say the same thing: that the earth is at the center. It was Whitrow who said that if this evidence had come to light in the early days when the rival merits of Copernicus and Ptolemy were being debated, that such evidence would have refuted the Copernican Principle, stopping the madness then and there, and thus we would be learning geocentrism today.
