Special Relativity Foundamentals Revision
Michelson & Morley Experiment
Overlooked issues
If the light is a wave, then one can assume the existence of a medium called ether, whose vibrations allow light waves to displace, just as ocean waves do.
Many scientists from past times had those thoughts about light –including Michelson and Morley–. Thus, they tried to measure the earth’s speed referenced to the Ether, which was supposed to be at rest and serve as an absolute reference system. Therefore, when the Earth moves through the ether, the time required for a light ray to pass any given distance on the Earth’s surface and return to the light source –that moves along with the Earth– would depend on the direction in which it travels.
They launched two beams of light in perpendicular directions, using an interferometer to measure the dark fringes that both rays of light would produce when arriving at the same spot due to the difference in the traveled distances and the wave phase shift.
Michelson and Morley failed in their first experiment in 1881 because of an error by which they overlooked the effect of the earth’s motion through the ether on the ray’s path at 90°.
Later, they rearranged the experiment and published the results in a paper entitled: ‘On the Relative Motion of the Earth and the Luminiferous Ether”, The American Journal of Science. They used multiple mirrors to extend the distance the two light beams traveled. The mirrors and receptor device that they used are shown in the following plan view:
The Issue:
They started their explanation with a simple theoretical scheme of a light beam partly reflected at 90° and partly transmitted in the original direction. Both rays returned to point: d using mirrors located at points: b and c.
Next, they described the case when the equipment moved along with the Earth and included the following image as a simplified representation of the theory of the experiment.
The main issue here is that they included the image shown below and stated:
“Suppose now, the ether being at rest, that the whole apparatus moves in the direction sc, with the velocity of the earth on its orbit, the directions, and distances traversed by the rays will be altered thus: Let ‘sa’ be a ray of light which is partly reflected in ‘ab’, and partly transmitted…[cut]”.
They draw an inclined path: ‘ab’, which is not the actual path of the reflected ray of light.
The scheme that they used is as follows:
From the point of view of an observer located at the point: ‘a’, and moving along with the equipment and the earth, the actual representation of the paths traveled by the photons is as depicted in the image shown below.
Notice that for clarity, the initial positions of the mirrors and other parts of the equipment are not included in the scheme.
This is just the image when the first photon arrives at the receptor device. Also, notice that from this particular point of view, the ether would have an apparent motion, that is, an “ether wind”, though the ether is assumed immobile:
The light beam reflected at 90° finally arrives at the spot denoted:’d’. On the other hand, the photons that are not reflected but transmitted through the semi-transparent mirror arrive at a different point: d’.
However, the distance d-d’ depends on the ratio (Earth speed)/(Light speed), which is too small and does not represent a problem for the superposition of both rays and the fringe pattern measurements.
Now, in the case of the observer located at a frame of reference fixed to the immobile Ether, the paths of the light rays are as follows. For the sake of clarity and simplicity, this image only includes the initial positions of the center mirror and the receptor device:
To summarize, the image that Michelson and Morley showed in their paper caused a lot of confusion among many people through many decades, and it is hard to comprehend the reasons why many scholars have not clarified this point as they should have done from the very moment the whole story on Lorentz equations and SRT started, worst, when considering that some scholars from re-known institutions continue by showing in their classes the M&M skewed path for the light ray at 90° and teaching all that tale on time dilation and space contraction.
Special Relativity Theory
overlooked issues
And the interest of the Elite to impose these absurd ideas:
From the explanation shown to the left, it is pretty clear that the thought experiment on the moving clock is wrong and should not be used to support all the elucubrations on the Special relativity theory.
The theoretical experiment on the moving clock uses two mirrors and photons oscillating between them. It inexplicably includes the skewed path shown by M&M to demonstrate time dilation:
In that image, and from the point of view of a stationary observer, when the equipment is at rest, the distance traveled by the photons in one cycle is: 2d, and the total time required is 2d/c. However, when the imaginary clock moves to the right, the light follows the inclined path that M&M showed in their paper, and the light travels at the same speed ‘c’ –according to Einstein’s postulate–. Thus, the time required for a photon to hit the same mirror twice is:
and there comes out the “time dilation” as seen by the stationary observer referring to another observer that would be traveling along with the clock because the former perceives that the photon requires more time to complete the same cycle between the mirrors:
However, that image is wrong because it unjustifiably brings a lateral momentum to the photons due to the device’s lateral speed v. In the same way, the speed of light does not get affected by the source speed, so the lateral velocity of the photons is always zero and cannot be changed at all by the clock’s movement.
Conclusion: From the point of view of a stationary observer, the light beam does not follow an inclined path but is vertical. Both observers, one at rest and another moving along with the clock, perceive the same amount of time when the photon hits the same mirror twice.
Without any proof of such lateral momentum, many scholars decided to impose this absurdity into the minds of people of good faith.
In the book: ‘Aulos. La Otra Luz. El Haz en Fuga’, I included a theoretical experiment to test if such lateral momentum could ever exist. In the non-distant future, an animation of such an experiment will be shown on this website.
Such a bad image of the displacement of photons following an inclined path due to a lateral momentum negligently opened the doors to all kinds of elucubrations and false statements during so many decades, and it came just now that some people from academic institutions started reacting against the absurdity of the special relativity theory.
Now that we have seen that the lateral momentum in the imaginary clock is nonsense, then as a direct consequence, Einstein’s postulate on the impossibility of detecting the simultaneity of events is also nonsense because precisely the imaginary clock arranged as shown in the above images is certainly a way to detect the simultaneity of events by two observers that are located at different frames of references. Thus, Einstein’s postulate on the simultaneity of events and the crude tale on the special relativity theory is just nonsense.
All this gets worse because, consequently, there is a way to know if one is moving in an inertial frame of reference.
In the book, all this explanation is fully detailed. It includes a critical revision on other topics like non-Euclidean geometries, dimensions higher than 3D, and the hypercube, among other stuff.
There have been so many years since the M&M experiment, enough time, so this is the moment to spread this message to young students all over the world, so they can be aware that all the stuff on the special and general relativity theory is nothing more than just a tale, that they should always have a critical view from what they have been taught and never rely on the Appeal-to-Authority fallacy.