THE MICHELSON-MORLEY EXPERIMENT

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22419, 4 June 1938, Page 22

THE MICHELSON-MORLEY EXPERIMENT

TO THE EDITOR OF THB PRESS. Sir, —A clever lunatic, whose brain had been crazed by much study, was seen to go into his garden, pick up a pinch of earth and return with it to his study, where he began to-exam-ine it with his microscope. When asked why he did this, he replied that he was looking for Mount Everest and had begun to have serious doubts as to the existence of that mountain, because he could never find evidence for its existence. . To compare our scientists with that lunatic seems almost like sacrilege. Our earth, they tell us, moves round the sun. The sun and the whole solar system are travelling through space. In our milky-way nebula the scientists detect a movement of the stars which compose it. No doubt our nebula itself is moving rapidly through space, and, in addition, no one could be surprised if informed that a greater aggregation, consisting of all the visible nebulae and others, was also in movement round some central giant star. The absolute motion of our earth through space might then easily exceed 1,000,0000 miles a second. This famous experiment was expected to detect a movement of a few miles a second. But was that famous experiment likely to detect a velocity of 1,000,000 miles a second? And what right have Einstein and company to talk of a conspiracy of Nature to prevent ua from ever determining any absolute motion? There, is no such conspiracy; but our scientists put stypid questions to Nature and get snubbed for their pains. They have been looking for Mount Everest under a microscope. Let them cease their foolish efforts.. Let them design an experiment to test for velocities up to millions of miles a second.—Yours, etc., J. P. DAKIN. Invercargill, May 30, 1038. . ..