In the spirit of Xmas...

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pellis - 26 Dec 2007 19:41 GMT

If Moderator allows it for the festive season, you might be amused by
this link, from the Boing Boing blog 25/12/07, apparently concerning
an ether-drift-detecting machine from 1932 (sic).

http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2007/12/24/queer-machine-checks-up-on-ether-drift/

Presumably this was a 1932 attempt to undermine relativity theory, for
non-scientific reasons...

P
(I'm unable to verify this, but it the print image looks about right
for the period)

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Oh No - 29 Dec 2007 11:48 GMT

Thus spake pellis <pellis@london.edu>

>If Moderator allows it for the festive season, you might be amused by
>this link, from the Boing Boing blog 25/12/07, apparently concerning
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
>Presumably this was a 1932 attempt to undermine relativity theory, for
>non-scientific reasons...

Dunno. Is the gravity probe B experiment an attempt to undermine
relativity theory for non-scientific reasons?

Actually it looks like it was probably a genuine test, which discredited
less rigorous measurements, of which I believe there were many.

>(I'm unable to verify this, but it the print image looks about right
>for the period)

Regards

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Charles Francis
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Tom Roberts - 29 Dec 2007 18:22 GMT

> If Moderator allows it for the festive season, you might be amused by
> this link, from the Boing Boing blog 25/12/07, apparently concerning
> an ether-drift-detecting machine from 1932 (sic).
> http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2007/12/24/queer-machine-checks-up-on-ether-drift/
> Presumably this was a 1932 attempt to undermine relativity theory, for
> non-scientific reasons...

That is the Michelson interferometer constructed by Joos. It is so
unwieldly looking because of the vacuum cans surrounding the light
paths. He obtained a value consistent with zero, the prediction of
relativity.

His effort was in part inspired by the results of Dayton Miller, who
claimed to see a non-zero "ether drift" of 11 km/s (mentioned in that
article without naming him). Miller's result was puzzling in his day,
because there was no good argument for why it was invalid. We have since
learned a lot about data analysis and digital signal processing, and
there is a solid argument for rejecting Miller's result:
http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0608238 .

(That webpage has not accepted my comment.)

Tom Roberts

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Natural Science Forum / Physics / Research / December 2007

In the spirit of Xmas...