The Effect of the Earth's Rotation on the Velocity of Light

Abstract

PROF. MICHELSON has now relieved his Newtonian mind by carrying through his heroic experiment, reported in NATURE of April 18, p. 566. He finds, as he anticipated, that the ether around the earth is not disturbed into a whirl by the earth's rotation. This was to be expected, has seemed in fact inevitable, if the ether is the universal medium in which matter subsists as independent small atomic structures, each with its field of main activity purely local, in the manner vividly illustrated in less abstract days by the vortex atoms of Lord Kelvin. Like the aberration of light, the effect under notice is of the first order (v/e), and so is conspicuous far above the very refined modern relativity so called, which is founded on second order (v²/c²) experiments and theory.