Michelson–Morley Experiment and Velocity of Light

Reflection of Light as a Mechanical Phenomenon Applied to a Particular Michelson Interferometer

10.20944/preprints202009.0032.v1 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Filip Dambi

Keyword(s):

Binary Stars ◽

Inertial Frame ◽

Beam Splitter ◽

Michelson Interferometer ◽

Fringe Shift ◽

Speed Of Light ◽

Fixed Frame ◽

Velocity Of Light ◽

Reflection Of Light ◽

Morley Experiment

Derivation of light paths in the Michelson interferometer is based on the hypothesis that the speed of light does not change after reflection by a mirror in motion. The Michelson-Morley experiment predicts a fringe shift of 0.40. The same fringe shift is predicted for a particular Michelson interferometer in which the beam splitter of the interferometer makes an angle of 45° with the direction of light from the source. Light behaves like a wave and also as a particle. Thus, it is reasonable to consider the reflection of light as a mechanical phenomenon. With this hypothesis, the speed of light changes after reflection, and the predicted fringe shift for the particular Michelson interferometer is zero which is in accordance with the result of the Michelson-Morley experiment. Apparently, light travels in any inertial frame as if this particular interferometer belongs to a fixed frame. The velocity of light is considered independent of the velocity of its source, which is in accordance with astronomers’ observations of the binary stars, and the experiment performed at CERN, Geneva, in 1964.

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The effect of the fitzgerald-lorentz contraction on the frequency of longitudinal vibration of a rod

Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series A - Mathematical and Physical Sciences ◽

10.1098/rspa.1937.0044 ◽

1937 ◽

Vol 158 (895) ◽

pp. 606-633 ◽

Cited By ~ 11

Keyword(s):

Orbital Motion ◽

Longitudinal Vibration ◽

The Body ◽

Lorentz Contraction ◽

Velocity Of Light ◽

The Earth ◽

Moving Body ◽

Lorentz Theory ◽

Morley Experiment

The failure of the Michelson-Morley experiment to detect ether-drift led Fitzgerald in 1892 to suggest that the framework which supported the interferometer mirrors was distorted by its motion through the ether in such a way that the expected ether-drift effect was exactly neutralized. Later experiments by Morley and Miller, in 1903, using different materials for the framework led substantially to the same result. Fitzgerald’s hypothesis received the support of Lorentz in 1895, and as recently as 1921 the latter remarks “ There can be no question about the reality of this change of length Lorentz considered that the change of length produced by motion was just as real as that produced by change of temperature. * According to the Fitzgerald-Lorentz theory, a moving body contracts in the direction of motion in the ratio 1 to(1- v 2 / c 2 ) 1/2 , where v is the velocity of translation of the body and c is the velocity of light. The velocity of the earth’s orbital motion is approximately 30 km./sec., and the velocity of light is 300,000 km./sec. A body carried by the earth is therefore subject to a contraction of 5 parts in 109 of its length as it is oriented from a direction at right angles to a direction along the line of the earth’s orbital motion.

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The Velocity of Light in Air and Refracting Media

Scientific American ◽

10.1038/scientificamerican03121887-9330csupp ◽

1887 ◽

Vol 23 (584supp) ◽

pp. 9330-9331

Keyword(s):

Velocity Of Light

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VELOCITY OF LIGHT

A-to-Z Guide to Thermodynamics Heat and Mass Transfer and Fluids Engineering ◽

10.1615/atoz.v.veloflig ◽

2006 ◽

Vol v ◽

Keyword(s):

Velocity Of Light

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Hunting for the Luminiferous Ether

10.1093/oso/9780198797258.003.0009 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Roberto Lalli

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Special Relativity ◽

Early Twentieth Century ◽

Null Result ◽

Morley Experiment

This chapter re-examines the view widely held by physicists that the luminiferous ether became an outdated concept in the early twentieth century and that Albert Einstein’s special relativity killed it. A second common narrative is that the null result of the 1887 Michelson–Morley ether-drift experiment led to Einstein’s theory and the demise of the ether. On the basis of these two simplified narratives, it has become part of the physicists’ ‘imagined past’ that the Michelson–Morley experiment provided the key evidence decreeing the end of the ether. Using scientometrics, this chapter argues that the first part of this idealised narrative is misleading and that the two parts of this narrative are deeply intertwined, as both had historical roots in the reception of Einstein’s relativity theories. In this perspective, the well-known episode of Dayton C. Miller’s repetition of the Michelson–Morley experiment in the 1920s appears in a new light.

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