Everyone, since the Dawn of Man, has been able to see.
What do we see with? Our eyes. This thing called "light" is produced somewhere (most often "The Sun", and this "light" bounces off stuff and zaps right into our eyes, hitting the back of the eye to produce electrical signals which the brain interprets as "pictures".
But just what IS it that causes all this?
It has long been known that light exhibits wave properties, like ripples on a pond. Einstein showed that sometimes it can behave like a stream of particles. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his explanation of the photoelectric effect in 1921.
However, let's backtrack a bit, to the early 1800's. Light was thought to be well-known, but thinkers thunked about it a little more. IF it was a wave and it was passing through empty space from the Sun to the Earth, what was it that was "waving"?
Waves in water need water, waves in air (sound) need air. What does light need?
Light is part of a bigger picture called "The Electromagnetic Spectrum", which includes infrared, ultraviolet, superradio and megaTV. All of the same thing except wavelength.
But what was waving? A-Ha! It must be something that permeates all space that only light can wave in! Of course! Let's give it a name - "The Ether"! So in 1896, Mr Michelson and Mr Morley decided to try and track the flow of "The Ether" as the Earth passed through it. The method was simple - have a beam of light interfere with itself and the passage of the Earth through "The Ether" would show itself as a change in the pattern. So they set up a scenario of two perpendicular interference patterns from the same light source, with the idea that they should differ in the same way that a boat has to be pointed differently when crossing a fast-flowing river, (partially upstream), as opposed to straight when there is no current.
They stood, the waited, and waited.
...and waited, and waited....
There was no difference. Either the Ether didn't exist, or we did not understand light.
It might be of help here to mention that in 1865 a man named James Clark Maxwell actually predicted that light did not actually need anything to "wave" in, from electricity calculations alone, but that didn't deter Mr Michelson nor Mr Morley.
To this day, this experiment is the most successful failure (or should that be "unsuccessful success"?) of all time, and because of this, Einstein went on to prove that light indeed did not need anything to "wave" in, leading him to prove that black IS actually white, turning his hair color appropriately , and subsequently being run over on a zebra crossing.
The salient facts are: Light is no more nor less than a moving electric and magnetic field, which of course, when static, need nothing to wave in because they are not waving. (DOH)
The premise is simple: A growing magnetic field, such as the one when you switch on an electromagnet, just grows into empty space at the speed of light and then stays there. However, under the right conditions, This "growing" magnetic field, because of the well-known laws of induction, gives rise to a growing electric field, which generates another magnetic field, and so on. Eventually, these fields shrink down to nothing (distant stars ARE fainter, after all) because the fields expand into an ever increasingly large sphere, and as the source has the same power, there is less of it to spread across the whole sphere.
In short, because light is actually "electric", there is no need for an "Ether", neither was there a need for either Mr Michelson, or Mr Morley.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Either the Ether is Wrong, or the Light is Right
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2 comments:
Since my last attempt to post a comment, I will briefly state that on the Michelson-Morley experiment, respected scientist and their fellow Case-Western Reserve collegue Dayton C. Miller repeated their famous experiment many times and claimed to have gotten a slightly positive result.
Although I don't think what he found would have disproven Relativity, as it was believed by Einstein at the time, which led to a need to debunk Miller's results, I think it is possible that Miller may have been detecting the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation; even perhspas Dark Energy or Dark Matter. This would have made him worthy of his own Nobel at the time.
I once e-mailed scientist and writer Robert P. Crease on Miller and he seemed to think Miller's work was worthy of review by a good scientific writer / biographer. I hope I am properly stating what he told me in his reply, which I am quoting indirectly here.
I also believe the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation or Dark Energy might qualify by definition as an Ether. In his book "The Lightness of Being" Frank Wilczek, a Nobel Prize winner, and greater authority than I will ever be, seems to say the same about the Ether idea.
I think Miller's work should be reviewed by someone, perhaps an older scientist with nothing to lose or a very young scientist, who could do a thorough job without impacting their future too much. That is why I am posting this comment here. I know people at both end of that spectrum may visit here. Thank you.
I have discovered through a long night's worth of research that someone in 2006 did review the work of Dayton C. Miller and claims to have explained his work as leading to errors not possible for him to detect, foresee or discover in the 1930s, which was when the last of his experiments were done. I can only assume this review of his work in 2006 was accurate. If so, it only took around 75 years for someone to finally discover what Miller's errors were. Even at that, Miller's volume of details was what made a definitive solution possible. What if others had gotten his results? Relativity might have been held up for 75 years and our modern world would be quite different. Well, possibly. Most people no longer realize that Einstein had any worthy adversaries in those days, but he did and they might have affected history, had Einstein been a lesser genius.
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