----- Original Message ----- From: "Stephen A. Lawrence" <[email protected]> Date: Friday, September 11, 2009 2:32 pm Subject: Re: [Vo]:Michelson-Morley Interferometer experiment finally done correctly?
> > Which is irrelevant because they have been replicated, with > variations,many times over. It's a very difficult experiment but > that doesn't keep > people from replicating it, because it's also a very important > experiment. (Note that the difficulty stems in large part from the > factthat the effect being tested for is *second* *order*. To first > order,emission theory, relativity, and aether theory all agree, and > predict no > shift. Consequently a sloppily done MMX is of no value, because the > looked for effects will be swamped in the noise, or, if the apparatus > isn't sufficiently rigid and there is a systematic flex, the effects > will be overwhelmed by a false "signal". In general, amateurs need > notapply -- a version of this done in your basement won't be > precise enough > to prove anything.) That may have been true when the experiment was first performed, but haven't lasers made it much easier to observe a second order effect? Harry
