The overlooked phenomena in the Michelson-Morley experiment

Paul Marmet

2401 Ogilvie Rd. Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, K1J7N4

We show here that Michelson and Morley used an over simplified description and failed to notice that their calculation is not compatible with their own hypothesis that light is traveling at a constant velocity with respect to a rest frame. During the last century, mathematicians uselessly solved the Michelson-Morley equations in numerous ways without realizing that two essential fundamental phenomena are missing in the Michelson-Morley equations. We see that the law of reflection of light on mirrors must be corrected when the mirror is moving. Also, due to the transverse direction of the moving frame, light does not enter in the instrument at 90 degrees as assumed in the Michelson-Morley experiment. We acknowledge that, the basic idea suggested by Michelson-Morley to test the variance of space-time, using a comparison between the times taken by light to travel in the parallel direction with respect to a transverse direction is very attractive.

However, we show here that this test is not valid, because of those two classical secondary phenomena, which have not been taken into account. When these overlooked phenomena are taken into account, we see that a null result, in the Michelson-Morley experiment, is the natural consequence resulting from the assumption of an absolute frame of reference and classical physics. On the contrary, a drift of the interference fringes must be observed in order to support Einstein's relativity. Therefore, for the last century, the relativity theory has been based on a misleading experiment.

We have shown here that, in the Michelson-Morley experiment, using classical physics, the time for light to travel between any pair of mirrors, in any direction, is always the same, independently of the direction of the moving frame and also independently of having light moving either parallel or transverse to the frame velocity.

According to classical physics, the rotation of the Michelson-Morley apparatus in space should never show any drift of interference lines. A positive shift of interference fringes with the amplitude compatible with the Michelson-Morley predictions is required in order to be compatible with Einstein's relativity. Such a shift of interference fringes due to a rotation has never been observed. The absence of an observed drift of interference fringes invalidates Einstein's relativity.

We have seen above that the prediction presented by Michelson and Morley are based on a model which ignores two important fundamental phenomena. These disregarded phenomena are the law of reflection of light on the moving mirror and also the deviation of the observed direction of light coming from a moving system.

Relativity theory, astrophysics, and most of modern physics in the 20-th century have been based on the belief that a null result in the Michelson-Morley experiment is an argument in favor of relativity theory. We see now that the contrary is true. An enormous amount of human effort and an unbelievable amount of money for research has been based on that erroneous prediction published in 1887. It is inconceivable that the original demonstration has never been seriously reconsidered. This is the result of an extremely dogmatic attitude of the physics establishment against a few scientists whose status were threatened and even ruined because they dared to reconsider some fundamental principles of physics.

It is also important to mention that the non-zero result observed in the Michelson-Morley experiment does not provide any proof of existence of ether. The presence of ether appears totally useless, when an appropriate model is used. Without matter nor radiation, space is nothing. Other experiments have already shown that everything in physics can be explained using classical physics without the ether hypothesis.

We acknowledge that, the basic idea suggested by Michelson-Morley to test the variance of space-time, using a comparison between the times taken by light to travel in the parallel direction with respect to a transverse direction is very attractive. However, this test is not valid, because there are two classical secondary phenomena, which have not been taken into account. At present, in year of the commemoration of the 1905 Einstein's paper, we must realize that the relativity theory relies on a ghost experiment.

The calculations above do not include all the possible physical mechanisms that can possibly perturb the light path in the Michelson-Morley apparatus. However, we strongly suspect that all other mechanisms produce effects, which are enormously smaller than the phenomena overlooked by Michelson and Morley. Of course, we have seen in this paper that there exists a fourth order term (v⁴/c⁴), that has been neglected here. This high order term is much too small to be observed. We can also mention the Fizeau effect, which is known to drag light traveling in a moving medium as a function of the index of refraction. The empirical equation of the Fizeau effect is known in the case of a medium moving parallel to the direction of light. We have verified that these other phenomena also make a negligible contribution to an assumed drift of fringes. However, that Fizeau drag phenomenon seems to be totally unknown when the medium moves perpendicular to light velocity. Finally, the misalignment of the mirrors of the interferometer might also have some effect of the fringes observed in the Michelson-Morley experiment.

It is important to recall that the overlooked phenomena described here also have important implications in other fundamental experiments in relativity. For example, in the Lorentz transformation, which usually predicts length contraction along the velocity axis of moving matter with respect to the transverse axis, it has been shown that the predictions are also in error, due to a secondary phenomenon explained in this present paper. We know also that the Brillet and Hall experiment is also a test for the anisotropy of space. The Brillet and Hall experiment has also been carefully studied and similarly, it has been shown that a corresponding phenomenon is changing the light path inside a Fabry-Pérot etalon. Consequently, in that case again, the null change of frequency observed experimentally, corresponds to the an absolute frame of reference, while an anisotropic relativist space would require an observed shift of frequency.