Martin Grusenick
Martin Grusenick | |
|---|---|
| Nationality | German |
| Known for | A vertical Michelson–Morley interferometer experiment |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Physics |
Martin Grusenick is a German experimenter known on this wiki for a home-built Michelson–Morley interferometer experiment, documented in a 2009 online video, in which he reports that rotating the apparatus in a vertical plane produces a large fringe shift that he interprets as evidence of an aether wind directed downward into the Earth.
Biography
Little biographical detail about Grusenick is publicly available beyond his experimental work. He is described as a German experimenter who built and operated a laser interferometer in his own workshop. He came to attention within alternative-physics circles in 2009, when he published a video of his interferometer results online; the surrounding discussion took place largely on independent blogs and physics forums rather than in the academic literature.
Scientific work
Grusenick's contribution is a variation on the classic Michelson–Morley interferometer. Using a laser-based Michelson interferometer, he reports that rotating the apparatus in the horizontal plane, as in the original 1887 experiment, produces no observable shift in the interference fringes — consistent with the conventional null result.
His innovation was to mount the interferometer so that it could be rotated in a vertical plane (perpendicular to the Earth's surface). Grusenick reports that under vertical rotation a definite fringe shift becomes visible, moving in one direction and then the other over a full 360-degree rotation, with two positions (near a 45-degree angle) where the fringes appear stationary. He reports fringe shifts on the order of several to roughly eleven fringes depending on the apparatus and the time of day, and notes day–night variation in the magnitude.
Grusenick interprets this vertical-plane shift as evidence for an aether and, specifically, for an aether or "ether wind" oriented vertically and flowing downward into the Earth. Some commentators sympathetic to the result have connected it to models in which a downward flux toward the Earth is the mechanism of gravity — for example framing it within Paul LaViolette's Subquantum Kinetics as an inflow of gravitational "G-ons," and drawing parallels to earlier aether-inflow ideas associated with Newton and Tesla.
The result has been contested even within the dissident community. Critics, including experimenter Frank Pearce, report that repeating the setup yields only a very small movement of the interference pattern during vertical rotation — nothing comparable to Grusenick's — and argue the effect is probably an artifact caused by mechanical strain or stress in the interferometer's base or central mirror as its orientation changes relative to gravity. It has been noted that a comparable fringe motion can be induced simply by introducing a small amount of strain at the base of the instrument. Mainstream physics regards the Michelson–Morley null result and special relativity as well established, and treats the reported vertical-rotation effect as a mechanical-flexure artifact rather than evidence of an aether.
Media
- Martin Grusenick, Michelson-Morley experiment improved. Ether/Aether evidence (YouTube video, 14 August 2009).