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Rh appear as rather startling assumptions; but it is only in this manner that present observational facts can be reconciled with a quiescent ether. With each advance in experimental refinement, theory has had to adapt itself by the adoption of new hypotheses. This has now been done up to second order phenomena for a quiescent ether. Thus far, however, no hypothesis has been brought forward to adapt specifically the theory of a quiescent ether to observations which have already been carried up to the third order of the aberration constant.

The first second order experiment was carried out by Michelson and Morley, and was an optical test in which the method of interference of two rays passing over paths mutually at right angles to one another was used. The apparent intent of the originators of this experiment was initially to look for a first order change in the aberration factor by means of a second order interference effect. The difficulty in reconciling the negative results of this test has, however, given rise to hypotheses involving second order dimensional factors, so that from this point of view it becomes a second order experiment. It could not, however, show a first order change in the velocity of the moving system, which latter, referred to the velocity of light, is taken as a magnitude of the first order, and hence the former change would count as a second order magnitude. In this experiment the entire system was mounted on a float so that the optical system could be rotated consecutively through all quadrants of the circle while the interference bands were being continuously observed. If now the difference in time of passage of one of the rays, say along the line of drift, and the other at right angles to it, is calculated on the basis of a moving ether, we find it to be equivalent to the time of passage over a length corresponding to a diminution of this length, in the direction of drift, proportional to the square of the aberration. Their results show that had there been an effect, it must have been probably sixteen times, certainly eight times, less than that calculated. It is understood that Morley and Miller will soon report as the result of a repetition, during the present year, of this experiment on a much larger scale, that, if there is any effect, it must be one hundred times less than the calculated value. This result is entirely consistent with a moving ether, but seemingly contradictory to a quiescent ether, as proposed by Fresnel. Apparently, then, either some condition in the fundamental hypothesis of such a medium has been overlooked, or a supplementary hypothesis must be imagined. Similar hypotheses were conceived of by both Lorentz and Fitzgerald independently, shortly after the publication of the experiments of Michelson and Morley in 1887. They assume that a contraction in the direction of motion takes place in a system moving through the ether, so that this dimension is reduced by a fraction of itself equal to one half the square of the constant of aberration. This of course, as an assumption,