Famous First Words is a recurring feature in which we have a gander at the opening of an historic scientific article
Light is both wave and particle, so contemporary physics tells us. But in the 19th century, and stretching all the way back to Newton and Huygens before then, light was just a wave. A wave in what? everyone was asking. The ether, of course. No, not the kind you huff to get your tonsils out or join the fraternity. Rather, the luminiferous ether -- the stuff that permeates empty space and wiggles as light passes through. How could it be otherwise? There are waves in water, right? No water, no waves. No waves, no surf. No surf, no surfing. Why even bother looking for the stuff?
Well, Albert Michelson and Edward Morley went looking for it and found that it didn't exist (oops). Thus did they get the physics community in a lather, and you know what happens when the physics community gets in a lather: the textbooks get thicker. A direct result of the M/M experiment was Einstein's Theory of Relativity, which upset Newton's apple cart (yay!) and eventually led to 80-pound books on Gravitation (boo!). While M/M may look like a bunch of smoke-and-mirrors (literally - they used an interferometer doodle thingy; you can look it up on WillyPete), the importance of their discovery cannot be overstated. As Einstein himself said: If Michelson-Morley is wrong, then relativity is wrong (albeit in German).
Here's the opening of the paper in which Michelson and Morley announced their results:
Light is both wave and particle, so contemporary physics tells us. But in the 19th century, and stretching all the way back to Newton and Huygens before then, light was just a wave. A wave in what? everyone was asking. The ether, of course. No, not the kind you huff to get your tonsils out or join the fraternity. Rather, the luminiferous ether -- the stuff that permeates empty space and wiggles as light passes through. How could it be otherwise? There are waves in water, right? No water, no waves. No waves, no surf. No surf, no surfing. Why even bother looking for the stuff?
Well, Albert Michelson and Edward Morley went looking for it and found that it didn't exist (oops). Thus did they get the physics community in a lather, and you know what happens when the physics community gets in a lather: the textbooks get thicker. A direct result of the M/M experiment was Einstein's Theory of Relativity, which upset Newton's apple cart (yay!) and eventually led to 80-pound books on Gravitation (boo!). While M/M may look like a bunch of smoke-and-mirrors (literally - they used an interferometer doodle thingy; you can look it up on WillyPete), the importance of their discovery cannot be overstated. As Einstein himself said: If Michelson-Morley is wrong, then relativity is wrong (albeit in German).
Here's the opening of the paper in which Michelson and Morley announced their results:
The Relative Motion of the Earth
and the Luminiferous Ether
Albert A. Michelson and Edward W. Morley
Am. J. Sci. 22:120 (1881)
and the Luminiferous Ether
Albert A. Michelson and Edward W. Morley
Am. J. Sci. 22:120 (1881)
The undulatory theory of light assumes the existence of a medium called the ether, whose vibrations produce the phenomena of heat and light, and which is supposed to fill all space.
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