The Overlooked Phenomena in the Michelson-Morley Experiment

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Scientific Paper
Title The Overlooked Phenomena in the Michelson-Morley Experiment
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Author(s) Paul Marmet
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Published 2006
Journal Galilean Electrodynamics
Volume 17
Number 4
No. of pages 12
Pages 63-71

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Abstract

We show here that Michelson and Morley used an over simplified description and failed to notice that their calculation is not compatible with their own hypothesis that light is traveling at a constant velocity with respect to a rest frame. During the last century, mathematicians uselessly solved the Michelson-Morley equations in numerous ways without realizing that two essential fundamental phenomena are missing in the Michelson-Morley equations. We see that the law of reflection of light on mirrors must be corrected when the mirror is moving. Also, due to the transverse direction of the moving frame, light does not enter in the instrument at 90o as assumed in the Michelson-Morley experiment. We acknowledge that, the basic Michelson-Morley idea, to test for non-isotropy of space-time by comparing times taken by light to travel in parallel directions vs. transverse directions, is very attractive. However, we show here that this test is not valid, because of those two classical secondary phenomena, which have not been taken into account. When these overlooked phenomena are taken into account, we see that a null result, in the Michelson-Morley experiment, is the natural consequence resulting from the assumption of an absolute frame of reference and classical physics. On the contrary, a drift of the interference fringes must be observed in order to support Einstein's relativity. Therefore, for the last century, relativity theory has been based on a misleading experiment.