Michelson-Morley

Experiment

Matt Hartshorn
January 22, 2007
Presentation
 A little different

 Pretend that:
 I am Albert Michelson
 It is 1887, and I am presenting on the
experiment that later became known as the
Michelson-Morley experiment
 They had PowerPoint in 1887
On the relative motion of
Earth and the Luminous
Aether

Albert Michelson
November 30, 1887
Motion of Light
 Attempting to explain the nature of light
 Important field in physics
 Explanations include
 Emission Theory
 Wave nature of light
 Aether
 Some Phenomena
 Aberration of light
 Chromatic
 Spherical
Aberration of Light
 Light does not deflect perfectly through a
lens.
 Impossible to get perfect focus
 This is called “Spherical Aberration”
 Different than “Chromatic Aberration”

 Explained by relative motion of earth and light

Problems
 If placed in water, then the aberration is not
consistent with this theory (the aberration
does not change)

 Also inconsistent with the wave nature of light

that was proposed
Fresnel
 Assume the aether
 Properties:
 First postulate:
 In vacuum, the aether is at rest
 Second postulate:
 In a material, the aether moves with a velocity less
than the velocity of the medium at a ratio of (n*n-
1)/n*n
Aether makes sense
 Waves propagate through a medium
 Sound waves in air
 Water waves in water
 Vibrational waves in metals, other solids
 Light as a wave must therefore have a medium

 Assuming these two postulates are true, then we

have a sufficient explanation for all phenomena
described above, including the wave nature
explanation of light.
Proof of second postulate
 Proved the second sufficiently, though it
seems implausible, it must be true as far as
experiment is concerned
 Some proof done by my earlier works
 Mostly done by Fizeau
 Measured the speed of light in various
substances
Fizeau–Foucault apparatus
 Can measure the speed of light

 Looks at a stationary mirror through a rotating

mirror far away

 Can thus measure the speed of light in

transparent objects
Fizeau–Foucault apparatus
Morley and I
 We wish to test the first hypothesis

 In a vacuum, in theory, the aether is at rest

 Earth moves relative to this vacuum

Morley and I
 In theory, motion measured at perpendicular
angles will yield different results
 Due to the “Aether wind”
 Aether is at rest relative to space, not earth
 We measure the difference in the speed of
light at right angles.
Earth moves relative to the aether
Fizeau test insufficient
 Could measure the speed of light

 Only to an accuracy of 5% (assuming 35 km

arm is used)

 Not sufficient to test motion of earth relative to

aether
Our Test
Our Test
 If object is at rest, and
ab, bc are equal, there
will be interference
along ad. (Figure 1)

 If object moves along

sc, light is deflected
according to Figure 2
By how much?
Turn it
 If we turn the apparatus 90 degrees, the
interference is in the opposite direction, so
the difference in fringes will be twice this, or

Which Is 2D x 10^-8 (assuming that the velocity of earth

is the only thing we care about).
Setup
Features
 Reduce vibrations
 Floating on Mercury
 Done underground
 Reflections 10 times to increase the path
length D, to thus increase the fringe motion

 Name: Morley Interferometer?

Experimental setup
Setup
 Adjust the mirrors to be the same length apart
as each other, with a measuring tape.
 Check that light in both direction passes into
the eyepiece
 Look through the lens, and see where the
interference fringes are. Alter the mirrors to
make it as clear as possible (three fine
adjustments per mirror)
Data Acquisition
 Rotate the apparatus at one revolution in 6
minutes
 Adjust crosshairs until they are pointing at the
closest fringe, and note the reading on the
adjustment screw.
 Done at regular time intervals
Interference Fringes
Data
Notes on Data
 Taken at noon, and then at midnight

 Rotate the block in opposite directions at

noon and at night

 These readings are the readings on the

screw, taken at regular intervals

 Data taken with the apparatus moving at a

constant velocity
 Results

Dotted line is one eighth the theoretical prediction, solid line is observations
Conclusions
 We expected the displacement of the fringes
to be 2Dx10^-8, where D was 10 meters, or
about 2x10^7 wavelengths of light. This
means that there should be an offset of about
0.4 fringes. We saw a movement of less than
.09 fringes.

 The earth’s movement relative to the aether

is thus less than ¼ of the orbital velocity of
the earth.
Explanations
 This only takes into account the motion of earth
relative to the sun

 Sun moves around galaxy

 Galaxy moves

 Both of these are unknown velocities, and they could

come out to be a total velocity equivalent and
opposite compared with that of the earth around the
sun.
 That’s unlikely
More likely
 Earth “drags” the aether, so that it is at rest
relative to the earth (entrainment)

 There was an error with the experimental

setup

 Walls and other objects block out the aether

wind
Another explanation
 Fitzgerald–Lorentz contraction
 An object moving through the aether contracts
in length
 Though the object passes through the moving
aether, the contraction causes a shorter
distance the light must travel, and thus this
just cancels the drift, explaining the theory
 Impossible to test if this is true
Directions for the Future
 Do the experiment on the top of a mountain
 perhaps less entrainment is visible there
 Though gravity is still close to g that high, it is
possible that there is enough distance from
the earth’s surface to allow less entrainment
 Actually a way to measure the entrainment
Directions for the Future
 Do the experiment in space
 Same concept, but better
 Difficulty getting into space
 Could use stellar mirrors (if such objects exist)
 Should reduce entrainment to 0
Directions for the Future
 Do the experiment with lead blocks
 If there is entrainment, lead blocks placed
around the apparatus should produce a visible
effect, as they are very massive. Could scale
them such that their gravity is quite large, and
then repeat the test without them
Directions for the Future
 Do the experiment out in the open, or use
some object that permits the aether to pass
through it (like glass)
 Negative effect: more vibrations
 Would cause the random error to increase
dramatically
Directions for the Future
 Repeat the experiment in six months
 I plan to do this
 Would cause the movement of the earth
relative to the sun to be in the opposite
direction
 Causes different motion relative to the aether
More on six months
A little more on six months
 If we saw the no effect again
 We eliminate the possibility that the earth was
stationary relative to the spatial aether during
the experiment
 Would mean entrainment is the most likely
cause
Closing
 Results of experiment
 Aether wind is very minimal given the conditions
 Measured in the basement

 During the time of year that we took the data

 Given our experimental error

 Explanations
 Entrainment
 Earth’s actual movement
 Lorentz contraction
 Future
 More detailed and clever Experiments
 Repeat the experiment
 End of Slide Show
Since then
 Many experiments have been done to supplement
this experiment
 Accuracy increasing with each one
 Today, accuracy measured the movement of the
aether to be less than 2x10^-13 m/s relative to the
earth
 We don’t put much value in aether theory
 Theory of relativity eliminates the need for the aether
 This experiment helped greatly in its acceptance

 Michelson did not reject the aether for a long time

 Aether phased out
References
 Albert A. Michelson and Edward W Morley, “On the Relative motion of the Earth and the
Luminiferous Aether”, The American Journal of Science, Volume CXXXIV, no 203,
November 1887, <http://www.aip.org/history/gap/PDF/michelson.pdf>
 Michelson-Morley Experiment, Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson-
Morley_experiment>
 Fizeau–Foucault apparatus, Wikipedia,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fizeau%E2%80%93Foucault_apparatus>