Michelson-Morley-Miller Coverup

"21st Century Science and Technology" magazine devoted much of its Spring 1998 issue to the "Michelson-Morley-Miller Coverup" This is significant to Theosophy because it relates directly to the ether that Blavatsky asserts and science today rejects.

Background: In 1887 Michelson and Morley performed what has been called "the most famous experiment that failed". It attempted to detect the ether by measuring the speed of light in different directions. Almost absolutely universally today it is said that the experiment failed to detect a difference in the speed of light in different directions - that is that the experiment produced a null result. However it isn't so. Reading Michaelson's words exactly he did not say it produced a null result. He said the result must be smaller than a given amount.

Enter Miller:

Michelson's and Morley's work was superceded by the work of Dayton C. Miller. He earned a doctorate in science from Princeton University in 1890, was president of the American Physical Society during 1925-1926, chairman of the National Research Council's Division of Physical Sciences from 1927 to 1930, and president of the Acoustical Society of America from 1913 to 1933. From 1902 to 1933 Miller performed very many experiments along the lines of Michaelson Morley but with equipment producing more accurate measurements. His results were distincly not null. It is not clear how to explain them away by systematic errors such as due to temperature changes. Patterns and meaningful measurements definitely do emerge from his work. He presented his calculations for the velocity of the earth through the ether.

Back to Einstein and the Ether

It was Einstein who postulated away the ether in 1905 and who included the "postulates" in his reasoning that the speed of light is constant. The non null result of all these experiments is contrary to the postulates underlying Einstein's relativity theory. If Miller's results are valid, as they appear to be, then the theory of relativity as constructed is not valid. Some measurements may remain correct but they must be based on another theory - and as seems necessary - based on a theory that includes an ether. Einstein himself was quite open to this possibility and encouraged Miller in his experiments.

Where it stands

The established science, however, has dismissed all these matters. Maurice Allais, a Noble prize winner himself, in Economic Science, and who has done much research in related physics, says in his "Should the Laws of Gravitation Be Reconsidered?" p. 55:

"It is startling that the findings published in Miller's paper in 1933 should have been ignored for 25 years. The outright pigeonholing of Miller's paper strikes me as one of the scandals of contemporary physics."

Personally speaking, we have encountered this material before. However, this magazine's issue presents the material in a useful way for the public to begin to access the information. For Theosophists we note first that Blavatsky predicted that the ether would "soon" be overthrown (and it was) but she still asserted it to be a reality. This magazine issue presents the data to which a Theosophist may point as evidence that standard science has, in the words of Nobel Prize winner Allais, a "scandal" on its hands to some day be uncovered.

Reed Carson, 1998