love_444 (Mariana V.I.P): And (it goes without saying…) light waves in the aether obeyed the Galilean transformation for moving frames. *
26-12-07 - 20:26:02

love_444 (Mariana V.I.P): Michelson-Morley experiment :- Michelson and Morley realized that the earth could not always be stationary with respect to the ether. And light would have a different path length and phase shift depending on whether it propagated parallel and anti-parallel or perpendicular to the aether *
26-12-07 - 20:29:43

love_444 (Mariana V.I.P): In several repeats and refinements with assistance from Edward Morley, he always saw a null result. He concluded that the hypothesis of the stationary ether must be incorrect. Thus, ether seems not to exist! *
26-12-07 - 21:59:29

love_444 (Mariana V.I.P): Many explanations were proposed, but the most popular was the ether drag hypothesis. This hypothesis suggested that the Earth somehow “dragged” the aether along as it rotates on its axis and revolves about the sun. This was contradicted by stellar abberation wherein telescopes had to be tilted to observe starlight due to the Earth’s motion. If ether were dragged along, this tilting would not occur. *
26-12-07 - 22:02:19

love_444 (Mariana V.I.P): Einstein’s Postulates :- Albert Einstein was only two years old when Michelson and Morley reported their results. At age 16 Einstein began thinking about Maxwell’s equations in moving inertial systems. In 1905, at the age of 26, he published his startling proposal: the Principle of Relativity. It nicely resolved the Michelson and Morley experiment (although this wasn’t his intention and he maintained that in 1905 he wasn’t aware of MM’s work…) *
26-12-07 - 22:06:05