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DAYTON C. MILLER
means of a motion-picture camera were tried. Various sources of light were employed, including sunlight and the electric arc. Finally an arrangement was perfected for making observations with an astronomical telescope having an objective of five inches aperture and a magnification of fifty diameters. The source of light adopted was a large acetylene lamp of the kind commonly used for automobile headlights. An extended series of experiments was made to determine the influence of inequality of temperature and of radiant heat, and various insulating covers were'provided for the base of the interferometer and for the light-path. These experiments proved that under the conditions of actual observation the periodic displacement could not possibly be produced by temperature effects. An extended investigation in the laboratory demonstrated that the full-period effect mentioned in the preliminary report of the Mount Wilson observations is a necessary geometrical consequence of the adjustment of mirrors when fringes of finite width are used and that the effect vanishes only for fringes of infinite width, as is presumed in the simple theory of the experiment. .
In July, 1924, the interferometer was taken again to Mount Wilson and mounted on a new site where the temperature conditions were more favorable than those of 1921. The interferometer house was also mounted with a different orientation. Again the observations showed a real periodic displacement of the fringes, as in all the observations previously made at Mount Wilson and at Cleveland.
In spite of long-continued efforts, it was impossible to account for these effects as being due to terrestrial causes or to experimental errors. Very extended calculations were made in the effort to reconcile the observed effects with the accepted theories of the ether and of the presumed motions of the earth in space. The observations were repeated at certain epochs to test, one after another, the hypotheses which were suggested. At the end of the year 1924, when a solution seemed impossible, a complete calculation of the then-expected effects, for each month of the year, was made for the first time. This indicated that the effect should be a maximum about April i, and further, that the direction of the effect should, in the course of the twenty-four hours of the day, rotate completely around the horizon. Observations were made for verifying these predictions
CONFERENCE ON MICHELSON-MORLEY EXPERIMENT 357
in March and April, 1925. The effect was equal in magnitude to the largest so far observed; but it did not point successively to all points of the compass, that is, it did not point in directions 90° apart at intervals of six hours. Instead of this, the direction merely oscillated back and forth through an angle of about 6o°, having, in general, a northwesterly direction.
Previous to 1925, the Michelson-Morley experiment has always been applied to test a specific hypothesis. The only theory of the ether which has been put to the test is that of the absolutely stationary ether through which the earth moves without in any way disturbing it. To this hypo thesis the experiment gave a negative answer. The experiment was applied to test the question only in connection with specific assumed motions of the earth, namely, the axial and orbital motions combined with a constant motion of the solar system toward the constellation Hercules with the velocity of about 19 km/sec. The results of the experiment did not agree with these presumed motions. The experiment was applied to test the Lorentz-FitzGerald hypothesis that the dimensions of bodies are changed by their motions through the ether; it was applied to test the effects of magneto-striction, of radiant heat, and of gravitational deformation of the frame of the interferometer. Throughout all these observations, extending over a period of years, while the answers to the various questions have been “no,” there has persisted a constant and consistent small effect which has not been explained.
The ether-drift interferometer is an instrument which is generally admitted to be suitable for determining the relative motion of the earth and the ether; that is, it is capable of indicating the direction and the magnitude of the absolute motion of the earth and the solar system in space. If observations were made for the determination of such an absolute motion, what would be the result, independent of any “expected” result? For the purpose of answering this general question, it was decided to make more extended observations at other epochs in 1925, and this was done in the months of July, August, and September.
It may be asked: Why was not such a procedure adopted before? The answer is, in part, that we were concerned with the verification of certain predictions of the so-called “classical” theories,