Dayton C. Miller's ether-drift experiments

• Autores: Roberto Lalli
• Localización: The Circulation of Science and Technology: Proceedings of the 4th International Conference of the European Society for the History of Science. Barcelona, 18-20 November 2010 / coord. por Antoni M. Roca Rosell, 2012, ISBN 978-84-9965-108-8, págs. 1093-1100
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • One of the most important cases of circulation of a physical idea in first half of the 20th Century concerns the relativity theory. Miller’s experiments and their international reception are an example of how the circulation of relativity theory and some physicists changed the scientific research programmes.

    Between 1902 and 1926, Miller made several ether-drift experiments similar to the well-known 1887 MichelsonMorley one. The 1920s Miller’s experiments, on the contrary to Michelson-Morley’s ones, showed a periodic second-order effect that he interpreted as a proof of the absolute motion of the Earth. Since the fringes shift he measured corresponded to a velocity of the Earth lower than the one expected in a fixed-ether theory, he developed a theory of absolute motion of the Solar System and published it in 1933.

    He thought that his results disproved the theory of relativity, but most of the international scientific community did not believe him and preferred a different explanation, like temperature variations, wrong data analysis, experimental errors, etc. After Miller’s claims, the Michelson-Morley experiment was repeated many times from 1926 to 1930 by other experimenters with different instruments. All these experiments gave a null result.

    In 1955, Shankland and his co-workers explained Miller’s data as depending on temperature variations, in the context of the relativistic research program.

    My study has the aim to broaden the understanding of what happened between 1925 and 1955:

    1) Knowledge and interpretation of Miller’s data inside the international physics community;

    2) If there was a controversy inside American or European scientific communities;

    3) The relation between Dayton C. Miller and other American or European physicists.

    The themes I am willing to analyze are important in developing the history of relativity, in particular the history of the reception and circulation of relativity in the American scientific community.