In contrast with the earth’s velocity, the speed of our most rapid means of transport is only a small fraction of a kilometre a second. An aeroplane going at 360 kilometres an hour has a speed of only 100 metres a second. Hence the maximum Fitzgerald-Lorentz contraction of our speediest machines can only be such an infinitesimal fraction of an inch that it is entirely imperceptible to us. That is why—that is the only reason why—the solid objects with which we are familiar seem to keep a constant shape, at whatever speed they pass before our eyes. It would be quite otherwise if their speed were hundreds of thousands of times greater. All this is very strange, very surprising, very fantastic, very difficult to admit. Yet it is a fact, if there really is this Fitzgerald-Lorentz contraction, which has so far proved the only possible explanation of the Michelson experiment. But we have already seen some of the difficulties that we find in entertaining the existence of this contraction. There are others. If all that we have just said is true, only objects which are stationary in the ether would retain their true shapes, for the shape is altered as soon as there is movement through the ether. Hence, amongst the objects which we think spherical in the material world (planets, stars, projectiles, drops of water, and so on), there would be some that really are spheres, whilst others would, on account of the speed or slowness of their movements, be merely elongated or flattened ellipsoids, altered in shape by their velocity. Amongst the various square objects, some would be really square, while others, travelling at different speeds relatively to the ether, would be rather rectangles, shortened on their longer sides owing to their velocity. And it is supposed that we would have no means of knowing which of these objects moving at different speeds are really shaped as we think and which are shaped otherwise, because, as the Michelson experiment proves, we cannot detect a velocity relatively to the ether. This we utterly decline to believe, say the Relativists. There are too many difficulties about the matter. Why speak persistently, as Lorentz does, of velocities in relation to the ether, when no experiment can detect such a velocity, yet experiment is the sole source of scientific truth? Why, on the other hand, admit that some of the objects we perceive have the privilege of appearing to us in their real shape, without alteration, while others do not? Why admit such a thing when it is, of its very nature, repugnant to the spirit of science, which is always opposed to exceptions in nature—science deals only with general laws—especially when the exceptions are imperceptible? That was the state of affairs—very advanced from the point of view of the mathematical expression of phenomena, but very confused, deceptive, contradictory, and troublesome from the physical point of view—when “at length Malherbe arrived” ... I mean Einstein. CHAPTER III