All these experiments together with those of Blondlot and Wilson made it
clear that the electromagnetic effect due to a moving dielectric was
proportional to K - 1, and not to K as required by Hertz’s theory. Thus
the above group of experiments with moving dielectrics directly
contradicted the Hertz-Heaviside theory. The internal discrepancies
inherent in the classic ether theory had now become too prominent. It
was clear that the ether concept had finally outgrown its usefulness.
The observed facts had become too contradictory and too heterogeneous to
be reduced to an organised whole with the help of the ether concept
alone. Radical departures from the classical theory had become
absolutely necessary.
There were several outstanding difficulties in connection with anomalous
dispersion, selective reflection and selective absorption which could
not be satisfactory explained in the classic electromagnetic theory. It
was evident that the assumption of some kind of discreteness in the
optical medium had become inevitable. Such an assumption naturally gave
rise to an atomic theory of electricity, namely, the modern electron
theory. Lorentz had postulated the existence of electrons so early as
1878, but it was not until some years later that the electron theory
became firmly established on a satisfactory basis.
Lorentz assumed that a moving dielectric merely carried away its own
“polarisation doublets,” which on his theory gave rise to the induced
field proportional to K - 1. The field near a moving dielectric is
naturally proportional to K - 1 and not to K. Lorentz’s theory thus gave
a satisfactory explanation of all those experiments with moving
dielectrics which required effects proportional to K - 1. Lorentz
further succeeded in obtaining a value for the Fresnelian convection
coefficient equal to 1 - 1/μ^2, the exact value required by all optical
experiments of the moving type.
We must now go back to Michelson and Morley’s experiment. We have seen
that both parts of the beam are situated in free ether; no material
medium is involved in any portion of the paths actually traversed by the
beam. Consequently no compensation due to Fresnelian convection of ether
by moving medium is possible. Thus Fresnelian convection compensation
can have no possible application in this case. Yet some marvellous
compensation has evidently taken place which has completely masked the
“absolute” velocity of the earth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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