Page:The theory of relativity and its influence on scientific thought.djvu/11

Rh light does not travel exactly the double length of the arm; starting at one end it has to go to the turning-mark at the other end which has moved on a little in the meantime; then it returns to the place which the starting-mark has travelled to whilst the race is in progress. That does not add up to exactly the double-length of the arm. Making the calculations we easily find that, although the two arms are equal, the two light-journeys are unequal; the competitor whose track lies in the line of the earth's motion has the longer journey, and is at a disadvantage. And yet according to the experiment he does not suffer the expected delay. From our standpoint on the sun, the experiment seems to have gone wrong; Copernicus has met with a rebuff, and Ptolemy is triumphant.

But that is because we have not admitted the full consequences of transferring our standpoint to the sun. We have all the while been keeping one foot on earth. Of course, the whole experiment turns on the two arms having been first adjusted to perfect equality. This could only be ascertained by experiment; and the test applied was to rotate the apparatus through a right angle, so that if, for example, the journey in the line of the earth's motion had had the advantage of the shorter arm on one occasion, the transverse journey would have had it on the repetition. That is a perfectly satisfactory test for a terrestrial observer; to turn a rod from one direction to another is the simple and direct way of marking out equal lengths. But the test is not satisfactory to an observer on the sun; he would not think of attempting to partition equal lengths of space by means of rods travelling at 20 miles a second. His frame of space—the space not only of refined measurement, but also of the cruder measurements made with the sense-organs of his body which determine his perception of