LVIII. On the Relative Motion of the Earth and the Luminiferous Æther.

By ALBERT A. MICHELSON and EDWARD W. MORLEY [1].

The discovery of the aberration of light was soon followed by an explanation according to the emission theory. The effect was attributed to a simple composition of the velocity of light with the velocity of the earth in its orbit. The difficulties in this apparently sufficient explanation were overlooked until after an explanation on the undulatory theory of light was proposed. This new explanation was at first almost as simple as the former. But it failed to account for the fact proved by experiment that the aberration was unchanged when observations were made with a telescope filled with water. For if the tangent of the angle of aberration is the ratio of the velocity of the earth to the velocity of light, then, since the latter velocity in water is three-fourths its velocity in a vacuum, the aberration observed with a water telescope should be four-thirds of its true value.[2]

On the undulatory theory, according to Fresnel, first, the æther is supposed to be at rest except in the interior of transparent media, in which secondly, it is supposed to move with a velocity less than the velocity of the medium in the ratio