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Michelson-Morely Experiment - Implications

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• It should have worked.
• Desperate measures were tried.
• The established picture was wrong.

Michelson-Morely Experiment

Michelson & Morely used a half-silvered mirror to split a light beam.

(click on picture)
Implications --- Example: --- Question:

Michelson & Morely used a half-silvered mirror to split a light beam.
Each half of the beam reflected
off a different mirror and
returned to the splitter
where it was reunited.

(click on picture)
Implications --- Example: --- Question:

Michelson & Morely used a half-silvered mirror to split a light beam.
The aether wind should have
delayed the "up-wind" beam
more than the "cross-wind
beam".

Rotating the device by 90
degrees would reverse the
up-wind and down-wind legs
and change the pattern.

It had to work but it did not.

(click on picture)
Implications --- Example: --- Question:

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Lorentz suggested that the aether-wind caused the up-wind arm to contract just enough to make the two time delays equal.

That suggestion fixed one measurement at the expense of leaving Newton's theory of space and time measurements in shreds.

A more comprehensive answer was needed.

Implications --- Example: --- Question:

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It was no longer possible to avoid the full implications of Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism.

Light really does travel through nothing and the speed of light really is the same in all inertial frames.

Implications --- Example: --- Question: