Page:Science and the Modern World.djvu/179

 of the screens. These differences in length will be affected by the motion of the earth. For it is the lengths of the paths in the ether which count. Thus, since the apparatus is moving with the earth, the path of one half-ray will be disturbed by the motion in a different manner from the path of the other half-ray. Think of yourself as moving in a railway carriage, first along the train and then across the train; and mark out your paths on the railway track which in this analogy corresponds to the ether. Now the motion of the earth is very slow compared to that of light. Thus in the analogy you must think of the train almost at a standstill, and of yourself as moving very quickly.

In the experiment this effect of the earth’s motion would affect the positions on the screen of the interference bands. Also if you turn the apparatus round, through a right-angle, the effect of the earth's motion on the two half-rays will be interchanged, and the positions of the interference bands would be shifted. We can calculate the small shift which should result owing to the earth’s motion round the sun. Also to this effect, we have to add that due to the sun’s motion through the ether. The delicacy of the instrument can be tested, and it can be proved that these effects of shifting are large enough to be observed by it. Now the point is, that nothing was observed. There was no shifting as you turned the instrument round.

The conclusion is either that the earth is always stationary in the ether, or that there is something wrong with the fundamental principles on which the interpretation of the experiment relies. It is obvious