MICHELSON's RECENT RESEARCHES ON LIGHT.*
By Joseph Lovering, President.
For many generations it was assumed that no sensible time was taken by light in moving over the largest distances. The velocity of sound was found by noting the time which elapsed between seeing the flash and hearing the report of an explosion. It was only in the vast spaces of astronomy that distances existed large enough to unmask the finite velocity of light, and, in extreme cases, to make it seem even to loiter on its way.
The satellites of Jupiter were discovered by Galileo in 1610; and the eclipses of these satellites by the shadow of Jupiter became an interesting subject of observation. It was soon noticed that the interval between successive eclipses of the same satellite was shorter when the earth was approaching Jupiter, and longer when the earth was receding from Jupiter. The change of pitch in the whistle of a locomotive, under similar motions, would suggest to the modern mind an easy explanation. A Danish astronomer, Römer, without the help of this analogy, deciphered the problem in astronomy. The eclipse was telegraphed to the observer by a ray of light, and the news was hastened or delayed in proportion to the distance from which it came. In this way it was discovered that light took about eighteen minutes to run over the diameter of the earth’s orbit. This discovery was published by Römer in the Memoirs of the French Academy in 1675. The mathematical astronomer Delambre, from a discussion of one thousand of these eclipses observed between 1662 and 1802, found for the velocity of light 193,350 miles a second.
Meanwhile Römer’s method, after fifty years of waiting, had been substantially confirmed in an unexpected quarter. Dr. Bradley, of the Greenwich Observatory, the greatest astronomical observer of his day, was perplexed by certain periodical fluctuations, of small amount, in the position of the stars. Suddenly the explanation was flashed upon him by something he observed while yachting on the River Thames. He noticed that, whenever the boat turned about, the direction of the
*An address delivered before the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, at the meeting of April 10, 1889, when the Rumford medals were presented to Prof. A. A. Michelson. (From the Proceedings of the American Academy; vol. xxiv (n. s. xvi pp. 380-401.)
vane altered. He asked the sailors, Why? All they could say was, that it always did. Reflecting upon the matter, Bradley concluded that the motion of the boat was compounded with the velocity of the wind, and that the vane represented the resultant direction. He was not slow in seeing the application of this homely illustration of the parallelogram of motion to his astronomical puzzle. The velocity of light was compounded with the velocity of the earth in its orbit, so that its apparent direction differed by a small angle from its true direction, and the difference was called aberration. In spearing a fish or shooting a bird, the sportsman does not aim at them, but ahead of them. This inclination from the true direction is similar, in angular measure, to what the astronomer calls aberration. Struve’s measurement of aberration combined with the velocity of the earth in its orbit gave for the velocity of light 191,513 miles a second. Both of the two methods described for obtaining the velocity of light depend for their accuracy upon the assumed distance of the earth from the sun. The distance adopted was the one found by the transits of Venus in 1761 and 1769, viz. 95,360,000 miles.
During the last forty years, the opinion has been gaining ground among astronomers that the distance of the sun, as deduced from the transits of Venus in 1761 and 1769, was too large by 3 per cent. Expeditions have been sent to remote parts of the earth for observing the planet Mars in opposition. The ablest mathematical astronomers, as Laplace, Pontecoulant, Leverrier, Hansen, Lubbock, Airy, and Delaunay, have applied profound mathematical analysis to the numerous perturbations in planetary motions, and proved that the sun’s distance must be diminished about 2,000,000 miles in order to reconcile observations with the law of gravitation. Airy reduced the distance of the sun by more than 2,000,000 miles, to satisfy the observations on the transit of Venus in 1874. Glasenapp derived from observed eclipses of Jupiter’s satellites a distance for the sun of only 92,500,000 miles. From these and similar data, Delaunay concluded that the velocity of light is about 186,420 miles a second.
These triumphs of astronomical theory recall the witty remark of Fontenelle, that Newton, without getting out of his arm chair, calculated the figure of the earth more accurately than others had done by travelling and measuring to the ends of it. And Laplace, in contemplation of similar mathematical achievements, says: "It is wonderful that an astronomer, without going out of his observatory, should be able to determine exactly the size and figure of the earth, and its distance from the sun and moon, simply by comparing his observations with analysis; the knowledge of which formerly demanded long and laborious voyages into both hemispheres.”
The ancients supposed that light came instantaneously from the stars; a consolation for those who believed that the heavens revolved around the earth in twenty-four hours. Galileo and the academicians of Florence obtained even negative results,