Michelson-Morley Experiments Revisited and the Cosmic Background Radiation Preferred Frame

Abstract

We report a simple re-analysis of the old results (1887) from the Michelson-Morley interferometer experiment that was designed to detect absolute motion. We build upon a recent (1998) re-analysis of the original data by Munera, which revealed a small but significant effect after allowing for several systematic errors in the original analysis. The further re-analysis here reveals that a genuine effect of absolute motion is expected, in what is essentially a quantum interference experiment, but only if the photons travel in the interferometer at speeds V< c. This is the case if the interferometer operates in a dielectric, such as air, as was the case, incidently, of the Michelson-Morley experiment. The re-analysis here of the Michelson-Morley experimental data, correcting for the refractive index effect of the air, reveals an absolute speed of the Earth of v=359+/-54 km/s, which is in excellent agreement with the speed of v=365+/-18 km/s determined from the dipole fit, in 1991, to the NASA COBE satellite Cosmic Background Radiation (CBR) observations. Other experiments where the interferometers operated in air (Miller 1925,1933) or helium (Illingworth 1927) give similar results when re-analysed. These experimental results refute Einstein's assertion that absolute motion through space has no meaning.

8 pages, latex, 1 eps figure file

References in corpus (4)

• Self-Referential Noise and the Synthesis of Three-Dimensional Space
• Process Physics: Modelling Reality as Self-Organising Information
• Process Physics: From Quantum Foam to General Relativity
• Quantum measurement breaks Lorentz symmetry

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• The Dynamical Velocity Superposition Effect in the Quantum-Foam In-Flow Theory of Gravity
• Quantum-Foam In-Flow Theory of Gravity and the Global Positioning System (GPS)
• The Einstein Postulates: 1905-2005 A Critical Review of the Evidence
• Gravity as Quantum Foam In-Flow
• Michelson-Morley experiment, Doppler effect, aberration of light and the aether concept
• A Criticism of "Gas Mode" Reinterpretations of the Michelson-Morley and Similar Experiments