THE MICHELSON-MORLEY EXPERIMENT

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22431, 18 June 1938, Page 20

THE MICHELSON-MORLEY EXPERIMENT

To irks EDrjoa or tbb pre3B. Sir,— Surely "Barley-Almond" deserved more of your space. I shall find it difficult to reply to his concise but masterly criticism. Perhaps the great scientists will help me in my task. From them I have learnt to look upon millions of miles and thousands of years as mere trifles. The axioms of dear old Euclid are now —some of them, at least—discredited. They have been replaced by the axioms of the scientists. One of the new axioms of science is to this effect:. If you yourself and ■ everything . around were to contract in due proportion, you would not be able to detect the change. • Measure yourself when lying south and north and find perhaps that you measure 69 inches. Then measure yourself when lying east and west and find, naturally, that you still measure 69 inches. But from this you cannot conclude that your actual length did not vary, because, if it had varied, your measuring rod would h&ve varied lalso in exactly the same ratio. All this is very consoling. I like to think that when I wake up in the morning the good old universe has its homely dimensions, but that when I go to bed it will have shrunk to the size of an atom and that I shall have failed, as assumed by Eddington, to notice any difference. The real atom and the real proton of the atom will have become so very, very small that they will hardly be worth splitting up. Sj> perhaps "Barley-Almond" will not find that a million miles a second exceeds his powers of belief. He will rather insist On a much higher speed for a million atom-lengths would not amount to a tenth of an inch.—Yours etc., J. P. DAKIN. Invercargill, June 13, 1938.