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NorU1 Star* Polaris
Plane of the Ecliptic

The Dynamic Ether of Cosmic Space

Correcting a Major Error in Modern Science

North Star* Polaris

Draco ♦

James DeMeo, PhD
..

The Dynamic Ether of Cosmic Space
Correcting a Major Error in Modern Science
by
James DeMeo
2019 Natural Energy Works Ashland, Oregon, USA www.naturalenergyworks.net

Publication and worldwide distribution rights:
Natural Energy Works PO Box 1148 Ashland, Oregon 97520 United States ofAmerica http://www.naturalenergyworks.net Email: info@naturalenergyworks.net
TH~ DYN~IC ETHER OF COSMIC SPACE: Correcting a MaJor Error m Modem Science. Copyright© 2019 by James DeMeo. All Rights Reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part ofthis book, in the text, figures, images or cover materials, may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the author, except in the case of "fair use" quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews, with proper attribution. Send inquiries to the address above. There are no authorized PDF or electronic copies of this work.
ISBN: 978-0-9974057-1-2
First Edition, 2019
190918
All photos and images have been identified as to their sources to the best extent humanly possible. Many are created by the author, and retain copyrights with this book. In a few cases where an item is misattributed or unattributed, when so informed ofmore exact sources or an error in permissions, we will be happy to either add the credits or remove the item from subsequent printings.
Front Cover: Author's graphic ofEarth's spiral-form trajectory around the Sun, as the solar system moves towards the star Vega. Inset photo is Dayton Miller's light-beam interferometer, situated at Mount Wilson. Rear Cover: Authors graphic of17 different independently determined axes of Earth's cosmic motion in space. Cover Background: A portion of the blue-glowing halo of cosmic ether, surrounding Andromeda galaxy.
Vil

The Dynamic Ether ofCosmic Space

CONTENTS

£age

Table of Figures ......................................................... x

Table of Tables .......................................................... xn

Acknowledgments ..................................................... x111

Author's Introduction ................................................ 1

Part I: Cosmic Ether as Theory and

Experimentally Confirmed Fact

23

The Matter of Space, Light Waves and Motion ..... ... 25 Positive Results ofMichelson-Morley ...................... 45 FitzGerald, Lorentz and Morley-Miller ................. .... 57 Millers Positive Ether Experiments, 1921-1926 ....... 79 Which Way Drifting? Miller's Mis-Step ................... 115 Sagnac and Michelson-Gale ...................................... 131 Michelson Returns to the Ether ................................. 141 Recent Confirmations of Ether ................................. 167

viii

Part II: The Empire Strikes Back: Erasure, Mystification and Falsification of History

:e.age
191

Einstein Rising ......................................................... 193 The Shankland, et al. Hatchet Job on Miller ........... 213

Part III: Into New Territory: Additional Evidence

for a Material, Motional and Dynamic Ether

227

Ether and Cosmic Life-Energy................................ 229 Direct Evidence for the Dynamic Ether ................... 265 Implications and Consequences of Ether ................. 297 Conclusions .............................................................. 337

Appendix 1. Model to View Earth-Ether Motions... 347 Appendix 2. Newton's Letter to Boyle 1687 ........... 349 References ................................................................ 361 Web References...................................................... 375 Newspaper Clippings ............................................... 376 Glossary ................................................................... 378 Index........................................................................ 381 About the Author...................................................... 389

ix

The Dynamic Ether ofCosmic Space

Table of Figures I. Newtonian Static Ether "Absolute Space" 2. A Static but Dragged Ether 3. Competing Theories of a Material Cosmic Ether 4. A Motional-Material Dynamic Ether 5. Earth's Net Motion Through the Galaxy? 6. The Earth's Spiral Path Through the Cosmos 7. Young's Double-Slit Experiment 8. Fizeau & Foucault's Experiments 9. The Michelson 1881 Interferometer 10. Michelson's Two-Swimmer Analogy

~ 11 12 14
16 17 18 38 43 47 48

11. Light Paths of the M-M 1887 Interferometer

51

12. The Michelson-Morley 1887 Interferometer

52

13. Miller's Review of the Michelson-Morley Data

55

14. Morley-Miller Magnetic Experiment

62

15. The Morley-Miller Wood Interferometer

65

16. The Morley-Miller 64-meter Steel Interferometer

67

17. Morley-Miller 1905 Error in Computations

70

18. Miller's 1933 Graph of Ether Drift Measures

75

19. Light Paths of Morley-Miller Steel Interferometer

83

20. Light-Interference Fringes

83

21. The Mt. Wilson Observatory

84

22. Miller's Ether Rocks Interferometer House, Mt. Wilson 85

23. Miller's Rebuilt Interferometer, 1921 Ether Rocks

86

24. Miller's Concrete Interferometer, 1921 Ether Rocks 87

25. Miller's Interferometer, 1922 Case School Physics Lab 90

26. Rockefeller Physics Building

91

27 Miller's Interferometer, Grass Knoll, 1924 Mt. Wilson 93

28. Miller's Interferometer House, 1924, Grass Knoll

94

29. Miller's Calculations ofAzimuth vs Velocity

95

30. Miller's Preliminary Computation

97

31. A Typical Interferometer Data Sheet

102

32: Velocities and Azimuths of Ether-Drift

105

33: Shifting Global Ether-Drift Azimuths

106

34: Average Velocity and Azimuth of Ether Drift

107

35. Miller's Determination for a Northerly Axis

111

36. Miller's Interferometer Orientations

112

37. A Conventional View of Solar System Motions

126

38. Northern Orbital Plane Poles of the Planets and Sun 128

39. Sagnac's Rotating Interferometer

132

X

40. Sagnac Interferometer & Optical Gyroscope

134

41 . The Michelson-Gale Experiment

137

42. Variability in the Michelson-Gale Results

138

43. Dayton Miller and Albert Michelson

141

44. The Michelson-Pease-Pearson lnvar Interferometer 143

45. Michelson-Pease-Pearson Mount Wilson Experiment 147

46. Concrete Base of the Mt. Wilson Observatory

148

47. Michelson-Pease-Pearson Experiment at Irvine Ranch 156

48. The Irvine Ranch Experiment

157

49. The Joos-Zeiss Interferometer

160

50. The Kennedy-Thorndike Experiment

163

51. Galaev's Radiowave Antenna

169

52. Galaev's Radiowave Experimental Diagram

169

53. Galaev's Radiolink Interference Variations

170

54. Diagram of Galaev's Optical Interferometer

172

55. Galaev's Optical Interferometer

173

56. The Galaev Interferometer on a Rooftop

175

57. Galaev's Ether-Wind Velocity Determinations

177

58. Galaev's Sidereal Azimuth Determinations

178

59. Ether-Wind Velocity Versus Altitude

179

60. The Munera Team's Stationary Interferometer

181

61. The Munera Interferometer, in Bogota

182

62. Ether-Wind Velocity versus Altitude

186

63. Mercury's Orbital Perihelion Advance

202

64. Eddington's Eclipse Observations, Principe

204

65. The 1919 Eclipse Expeditions

205

66. Exaggerated Starlight Bending

206

67. The Solar Corona at Larger Distances

207

68. The Orgone Energy Accumulator

233

69. Orgone Accumulator Thermal Anomaly (To-T)

234

70. Biological Effects of the Orgone Accumulator

235

71 . Kreiselwelle and Cosmic Superimposition

241

72. The Orgone Anti-Nuclear Radiation Effect

242

73. Planetary Motions and Gravitational Superimposition 245

74. The Kreiselwe//e or Spinning Wave

246

75. Kepler Incongruent with Spiral Ether-Wind Velocities 248

76. Miller's Ether-Drift and Reich's Spiral Motions

250

77. The Earth's Spiral Path Through the Cosmos

253

78. Polar Map of Cosmic Vectors, Update 1

254

79. Piccardi's Helicoidal Earth-Orbit Diagram

259

xi

The Dynamic Ether ofCosmic Space

80. Piccardi's Animated Model of Helicoidal Motion

260

81. Sidereal-Hour Variations in Biological Clock

261

82. Seasonal Cosmic Variations in Biological Clocks

262

83. Kuiper Belt Planetoids & "Planet 9"

271

84. Direction of"Planet 9" Gravitational Anomaly

271

85. Andromeda Galaxy: Tilting of the Core Mass

273

86. Satellite Images of Earth's Plasmasphere

275

87. UV-Glowing Charged Clouds of Interstellar Medium 278

88. The Super-Kamiokande Neutrino Detector

282

89. Galactic Rotation Anomaly for M33

284

90. Seasonal Variations in Dark Matter Wind

286

91. 17 Independent Vectors of Cosmic Motion

289

92. Spectroscopic Changes in ORAC-Charged Water

291

93. The Two LIGO Experiments

299

94. Massive Mirror Ends of the LIGO Light-Paths

301

95. One LIGO Event, 18 August 2017

303

96. Variation in Raw GPS Signal Data

308

97. Unit-Elements ofFilm Emulsions and CCDs

311

98. Low-Intensity Lightwaves through a Double Slit

311

99. Galaxies in Hubble Extreme Deep Field Image

316

100. Structure of Galaxy Distribution in the Universe

317

101. Close-up Center of the Milky Way Galaxy

325

102. The M87 "Black Hole" Image

328

103. Is This the Unprocessed M87 "Black Hole" Image? 328

104. Superlurninal Motion in the M87 Jet

332

105. Vortex-Spiral Motion Yields Apparent Straight Lines 336

I06. Apparent Straight Line Motion is Curved in Space 336

Table of Tables I. Summary of the Morley-Miller Experiments 2. Miller's 1921 Results at Mount Wilson 3. Miller's 4-Epoch Ether Drift Determinations 4. The Epoch-Average Daily Swing of Ether Wind 5. Miller's 1928 versus 1933 Determinations

£age 72 88 102 105 109

6. Miller's 1931 Table on the Absolute Motion of the Earth 121

7. Miller's Ether Velocity "k-Factor"

123

8. Velocities of Post-Miller Ether Drift Experiments

164

9. Summary ofSuccessful Ether-Drift Experiments

187

10. Orbital Properties ofthe Planets and Solar Surface 203

11. Miller's 4-Epoch Averages of Ether Wind Velocity 248

XII

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A work such as this could not have developed without the encouragements and assistance I received over a long period of my adult life. I wish to thank Professors Robert Nunley and Robert Haralick at the University of Kansas, who allowed and even encouraged me to think "outside the box". A thanks goes to John Chappell, who as a fellow KU PhD, went on to form the Natural Philosophy Alliance, and invited me to present my early findings on the ether-drift experiments to various NPA/AAAS conferences. My gratitude also to physicist Carolyn Thompson who, in many private discussions and along with Chappell, opened my eyes to serious problems in modern physics and astrophysics. I thank William Fickinger and the Archivists at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, who granted access to their materials on Michelson-Morley and Dayton Miller. Likewise a thanks to the Archivists at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, who granted access to their Albert Einstein collections relevant to the ether question.
I am also grateful to Yuri Galaev and Hector Munera, for their ether-drift research and permissions to use their photos and graphs in this book. A thank-you goes to David Marett, Thanassis Mandafounis, Tom DiFerdinando and Gary Douglass, friends and colleagues already familiar with this line of research, for their helpful pre-publication proofreading and critique ofthis book. My deepest thanks and appreciations to my wife Daniela Bruckner, who made numerous reviewreadings and helpful suggestions for this book, going back several years. She also translated several German-language documents revealing Einstein's views on the ether subject. My appreciations to all who participated in long discussions and endured my many questions on ether-drift and astrophysical issues.
Finally, my profound gratitude to Dayton Miller and Wilhelm Reich, for their lifelong work on these subjects. When their discoveries are eventually taken seriously by the general public and scientific community, it will bring in a badly needed dose ofrealism, and change our small troubled world for the better.
James DeMeo, PhD 8 August 2019
xiii

The Dynamic Ether ofCosmic Space
"I believe that I have really found the relationship between gravitation and electricity, assuming that the Miller experiments are based on a fundamental error. Otherwise, the whole relativity theory collapses like a house of cards."
- Albert Einstein, letter to Robert Millikan June 1921
"My opinion about Miller's experiments is the following.... Should the positive result be confirmed, then the special theory of relativity and with it the general theory ofrelativity, in its current form, would be invalid. Experimentum surnmus judex. Only the equivalence of inertia and gravitation would remain, however, they would have to lead to a significantly different theory."
- Albert Einstein, letter to Edwin Slosson, 8 July 1925, Hebrew Univ. Archive Jerusalem.
"The effect [ofether-drift] has persisted throughout. After considering all the possible sources of error, there always remained a positive effect."
-Dayton Miller, 1928, p.399
"You imagine that I look back on my life's work with calm satisfaction. But from nearby it looks quite different. There is not a single concept ofwhich I am convinced that it will stand firm, and I feel uncertain whether I am in general on the right track."
- Albert Einstein, on his 70th birthday, letter to Maurice Solovine, 28 March 1949
xiv

Author's Introduction
Intergalactic Medium! Interstellar Medium/ Interstellar Wind! Neutrino Sea! Neutrino Wind! Dark Matter! Dark Matter Willdl
Gravitational Waves/ Higgs "God" Field! Cosmic Strings! Cosmic Ray Anisotropy! CMBR Anisotropy/
Zero-Point Vacuum Fluctuation! Torsion Fields! Solito11s/
Modern astrophysics and astronomy describe the cosmic space between the planets, stars and galaxies as an empty void, a hard vacuum lacking in inherent properties or substance. And yet, scientists working in these disciplines continue to discover "empty space" to be saturated with energy and particles, with turbulence and motion, as with the above concepts. Each is considered, by convention, to be a completely separate phenomenon from all the others, in spite of numerous points of similarities and agreement. Each term stands for its own presumed "soup" of discrete mystery particles. No matter how fantastically abundant, the space between them remains an empty void, save for scatterings of light and other electromagnetic waves. The scientists have identified all these specific "trees", but deny the existence ofany "forest", whereby their basic nature could be more logically understood. As with the example of10 blind men in a room with an elephant, each describes in exceedingly precise detail what they have individually grasped- the trunk, tusk, body, tail, legs- but the word "elephant" has become taboo. Like the proverbial naked emperor, nobody dares speak about a possible single ocean of cosmic energy, which offers a more unified and simpler understanding ofall the diverse particles and "winds".
In a related manner, a casual look at images of deep space shows us billowing clouds ofnebulae, ofobjects pushing through an unknown fluid and leaving behind a trail within a resisting transparent medium, all frozen in time. They appear more like something seen in the depths of the oceans or lakes. In some areas, a surrounding cosmic substance glows brilliantly with luminating stars, while elsewhere, everything appears darkened and dirty, as if smoke blanketed a patch of space.
1

The Dynamic Ether ofCosmic Space
There is a great amount of unexpected structure in these images. But only artists and poets, and not scientists, are permitted to speak about it in such a manner. Never mentioned is how a billowing cloud forms only within a resisting medium, as is the case with cumulus clouds in the atmosphere, orthat an excitable medium is necessary to produce the sharply de.fined dark blue halos surrounding many galaxies, thousands oflight years in thickness. Our lifetimes are but a pinpoint in time, so we do not get to see these vast cosmic events in motion, as they unfold.
Open cosmic space is nevertheless officially certified as empty and dead, in spite of the multiplicity of separate "particle winds" in a claimed metaphysical universe of never-observed big-bang explosions, black-hole myths, multi-universe unrealities, and relativistic space-time warps. While empirical astronomy struggles to keep on the path of observation and documentation, theoretical astrophysics increasingly appears more like the complex epicycles of the Ptolemaic astrologers. All the textbooks demand obedience from students and nonconforming professors, who risk expulsion and professional ruination if they stray from the orthodox catechism. Space is empty and dead. There is no cosmic medium for light waves. Nothing moves unless something else makes it move. The ultimate source ofuniversal motion was a gigantic creation-event explosion 14 billion years ago. Before that, nothing existed whatsoever. Or so we are told to believe.
In this work, I will put forth the argument, with considerable evidence, that the open reaches ofcosmic space are not empty, and the universe not so dead. There existed a robust theory of unitary cosmic functions, from planetary motions to light transmission, but prematurely discarded around 100years ago. Then, open space was filled with a cosmic fluidic medium, somewhat similar to the above-mentioned modern "mediums", but lacking in any notions of an "empty space". There was movement, power and motion within cosmic space, much like an ocean of surging and swirling water. Something of an exceedingly thin and rarified nature, like a dynamic gas, but much less dense, filled all space. That theoretical cosmic ocean was called the /uminiferous ether, 1the word"luminiferous" meaning, the capacity to transmit or produce light. It was a potent theory developed over hundreds of years of sound logic, critical argument and optical experiments.
I. Throughout this book, the tcnn ether will be used, as was the manner ofscience in the English-speaking world ofthe late 19th and early 20th Century. The context easily separates it from ether-gas as used by surgeons. This also removes it from the category ofarchaic irrelevancy, as with the "aether" spelling.
2

Author's Introduction
The cosmic luminiferous ether also provided a straightforward common-sense understanding which united the phenomenon of light waves with the similar wave-behavior of water and sound. The wave theory of light demanded a medium for transmission, just as sound waves required the air, and water waves the water. For light waves, the luminiferous cosmic ether provided the necessary medium. It was substantive and yet could penetrate matter such as crystals or glass, to allow light waves their passage. The cosmic ether was also deemed necessary for diverse physical phenomena, such as electrostatics, magnetism and gravitation. Rational debates proceeded as to how dense or material the ether was, how it moved, or if it had no material or motional properties whatsoever. New experiments were proposed and undertaken, not merely to better understand light waves, but to detect our planetary motion through the ether medium in which light waved.
The earliest of those efforts was the famous 1887 MichelsonMorley experiment. It is described in every physics textbook, but always with one important, staggering error and falsification of science history: That their experiment produced a negative result, thereby "disproving the ether". However, this is not true. MichelsonMorley infact did detect an ether windmovingpast their inte,ferometer instrument at a velocity approaching 5 to 7.5 km/sec (kilometers per second). Additional ether-wind, or ether-drift experiments were undertaken in later years by Morley in association with Dayton Miller, and by Miller independently, using much better instrumentation and a far more ambitious and lengthy program ofinvestigation. Their resultsfar outpaced the significance ofthe Michelson-Morley experiment, with a consistently detected ether wind ofaround 9-11 km/sec. And yet, most scientists either don't know about these later experiments, or ifthey do, have been badly misinformed about their results and significance.
An accurate presentation of these facts is the primary goal of this book, along with a thorough discussion of similar evidence, and the profound implications which logically follow. Twentieth-Century science was erroneously steered into a dead end cul-de-sac over the period of two major world wars, which took an immense toll on the human psyche, from which scientists and university professors were not immune. Science and medicine also adopted a combative and absolutist tone not seen since the times ofGalileo and Copernicus. It is past time that old problems in science be exposed and reviewed with fresh eyes.
3

The Dynamic Ether ofCosmic Space
Background of My Interest in the Ether
During my undergraduate years, as a student ofAerospace and later Environmental Science in the early 1970s, I began exploring the various unorthodox ideas about cosmic energy, and similar concepts of biological energy, or life-energy. Foremost among the researchers I studied was Wilhelm Reich, a heretic whose findings from c.1930 through 1957 were so threatening to established institutions ofpower, that he was imprisoned and had his books burned by government decree. Aside from his writings on the origins of human violence, on how totalitarian governments developed, and about natural love and sexuality, Reich also clinically and experimentally documented the existence ofa real cosmic life energy. He argued that the same energy of life was found in a free form in the atmosphere, and in the hard vacuumofspace. Hisubiquitous cosmic energyhad ether-like properties, but of a far more dynamic nature than any of his predecessors. Reich called it the orgone energy, and wrote about its similarities with and differences from traditional concepts ofcosmic ether.
I also came upon various studies of cosmic energy by other scientists, who gave it different names. Such was the case with chemist Giorgio Piccardi, who discovered a cosmic energy signature in his chemical-reaction studies; or biologist Frank Brown, who found a similar cosmic-energy phenomenon in his study ofbiological rhythms and cycles; also the Dean ofAmerican astronomy, Halton Arp, whose studies refuted redshifts as cosmological distance indicators, thereby demolishing the big-bang theory. Arp was treated miserably for his findings, and was banished from using the big American observatory telescopes he had helped to build. Then there were the many "free energy" investigators, and those experimenting with high vacuum and the "zero point" vacuum fluctuation. I identified a long list of such unorthodox 20th Century experimental findings, all ofwhich appeared to identify the same basic phenomenon, of a singular cosmic energy.
By 1979, I was finishing a Master's degree in Geography with an Earth and Atmospheric Science specialization, at the University of Kansas (KU). By that time I had already read the research papers of Michelson-Morley, Morley-Miller and Dayton Miller, as well as the major writings and experimental protocols of Reich, Piccardi, Brown and others. Also informative was the 1972 bookby ether-skeptic Lloyd Swenson, The EtherealAether. Itwas an educating work, except for the
4

Author's Introduction
biased dismissal of Miller's positive ether-drift experiments, with unconvincing reasons being offered. This was quite strange, as Miller's original published papers showed confirming results verifying light speed variations and a real cosmic ether. I dug deeper for the facts.
While at KU working towards a doctorate, I attended a 1980 lecture by Arno Penzias, co-winner of a Nobel Prize in physics for discovery ofthe 3-degree K Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR), the so-called "smoke left over from the big bang", or residual thermal energy. Penzias lectured on his findings and theory in the Physics Department lecture hall. Afterhis presentation was concluded, questions were entertained from those attending. One of the students asked, "What existed before the big bang?" Penzias went silent for a few seconds, pondering, before delivering his reply: "Weaskedthat question ourselves, and as best as we can determine, space, time, matter and energy simply did not exist. " Another long period ofsilence followed, upon which I broke out into a loud belly laugh, thinking he had made a bigjoke. The room then quickly filled with animated whispering, and heads swivelled around as if searching for the blasphemer in the darkened lecture hall who had dared to laugh at sacrament. I slunk down into my seat, to avoid being identified.
Penzias' response was exactly what the big-bang theory demands. Before the big bang, absolutely nothing existed. Nothing, including space and time itself! Modem empty-space physics had, by some cosmic comical tragedy, come full circle back to the sentiments of the Catholic priests at the time of Galileo. Their conclusions were hardly different from the Book of Genesis, except the timeline was now 14 billion years, rather than seven days. I found that disturbing, and also that the professors and other students were not disturbed about it. At a later KU physics lecture about Einstein's theory ofrelativity, under my questioning, the speaker admitted that, in the face ofsolid evidence for a cosmic ether andvariable light speed, Einstein's theory would be fully invalidated. An honest physicist.
My graduate research at KU included experimental field trials ofa truly heretical device, the Reich cloudbuster. It is a passive antenna used for stimulating cloud growth and rains during droughts or in deserts, where humidity is already very low, and at times when clouds and rains should not develop. That device posed as big a puzzle for modem atmospheric science as Galileo's telescope had been for astronomy in the 1600s. It required an ether-like and water-reactive energy substrate to function. My professors atKU, particularlyProfessors
5

The Dynamic Ether ofCosmic Space
Robert Haralick and Robert Nunley, showed considerable openmindedness to allow that study to proceed. In spite of the controversy and headaches my work and ideas surely gave to the KU faculty, my research was honestly peer reviewed, advised and corrected where needed, and finally accepted. Reich's most controversial claim and invention, the cloudbuster, was shown to function just as he described. The theoretical implications were profound.
Even more controversial for physics, however, was my separate research paper, "Evidencefor the Existence ofa Principle ofAtmospheric Continuity". That paper included a section on "The Luminiferous Cosmic Ether and Relativity", where I wrote about the MichelsonMorley and Miller experiments. I argued they really had measured the cosmic ether, and that it was probably the same phenomenon Reich, Brown, Piccardi and others had discovered in their independentresearch. . I further elaborated on Halton Arp's findings, demonstrating that cosmological redshifts were not distance indicators, and therefore the big-bang theory ofcreation could not be correct. Also included was a discussion on solar-terrestrial influences, and other heresies of the 1970s which are still taboo today (ie., modern climate changes find a much better explanation in solarvariability, rather than the mechanistic and flawed CO2 theory). That controversial paper was updated and included as an appendix to my KU Thesis on the cloudbuster. Later I learnedithad caused heads to explode within the KUPhysics Department.
Nevertheless, at one time I was named as the top student within the Geography Department, where I worked as research and teaching assistant. Later I was appointed as a KU Instructor, proposed my own courses, and found grant money for the Department. I relate this as prelude to what happened thereafter, when my research into concepts of cosmic energy, or life-energy, became more widely known.
Some years later, one or more of the KU Physics Department professors unethically tried to derail the 1986 awarding of my PhD degree. My doctoral research was a 7-year project entitled Saharasia, on the role of severe global climate change at around 4000-3500 BC, wreaking havoc upon emerging human societies. KU Physics failed to block my PhD, fortunately, but similar intolerant reactions came from other conformity-demanding academics in universities where I subsequently served as professor, alongside a decade ofslander attacks from the "skeptic clubs". Such irrational attacks always blocked my attaining oftenure, forcing a nomadic existence. After serving for a few years in short term contracts at universities in Illinois, Florida and Iowa,
6

Author's Introduction
I finally had a belly-full of academic intolerance, and began working independently towards building up my own private non-profit research institute. Nevertheless, for many years thereafter, the malicious and destructive attacks continued.
For example, in 1990 I was invited to present my findings on cosmic energy to the Piccardi Group, at the 12th Conference of the International Society for Biometeorology (ISB), in Vienna, Austria. That group was named after Giorgio Piccardi, professor of Chemistry at the University ofFlorence, Italy, an ISB founder along with geologist Solco Tromp, known internationally for his research affirming water dowsing. Piccardi identified a cosmic energy signature in his controlled chemical tests, and documented his findings over a lifetime of investigations. I write more about Piccardi in Part III ofthis book. The ISB Piccardi lecture sessions were organized by Eric Wedler, professor of Environmental Science at the Freie Universitat Berlin.
AfterPiccardi's death in 1972, theISB drifted away from acceptance of anything so controversial as a cosmic energy. For the Vienna Conference, the new dogmatic ISB leadership orderedthe "cleansing" and removal ofthe entire Piccardi Group ofscholars, 20 international scientists, myself included, from that conference. Wedler, who had devoted his life to the subject of cosmic energy phenomena, was devastated by this scandalous anti-scientific attack upon new research and discovery. Nobody in the censored group had been contacted or consulted beforehand. While attending the Vienna ISB conference, Wedler collapsed and died shortly thereafter in the hospital, a result of the ISB's new dictatorial arrogance, and Wedler's already aged and fragile condition. Upon learning of all this, which happened in quick sequence, I wrote a strong letter of protest to the top ISB leaders and resigned from the organization. I never got a reply back from anyone, which is all-too typical on how modem academic science frequently behaves. Over the years, I learned first-hand how this kind ofacademic censorship and back-stabbing is rather commonplace. Today, the subject of cosmic energy, even when articulated within conventional physics and chemistry, or using the theories and language ofquantum physics, is still a hotly "taboo" subject.
Moving to California, and later to Oregon where my institute2 now resides, I continued my research and wrotepapers for different scientific conferences and journals on such subjects as cosmic ether and Reich's life-energy. In California I came into contact with John Chappell, a
2. The Orgone Biophysical Research Laboratory, www.orgonelab.org
7

The Dynamic Ether ofCosmic Space
fellow KU Geography PhD who, like myself, had become critical of conventional cosmology, and suffered professionally because ofit. He had organized the Natural Philosophy Alliance (NPA), which included nwnerous physicists, engineers and astronomers, many of them wellknown within top mainstream institutions. Chappell encouraged me to speak at his organized conferences. I also became an advisor to the NPA, meeting and learning from an amazing variety of brilliant scientists who dissented from modern astrophysical theory.
In 1994 I presented a paper on "Energy in Space: Empirical Evidence and Implications for Orthodox Theory" to a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement ofScience (AAAS), for a special session on Challenges to Contemporary Views in Physics and Astro110111y held at San Francisco State University. The works ofMiller, Piccardi, Burr, Reich and a few others were discussed as refuting the concept of"empty space". In 1996, I presented two similar papers, on ''Dayton Miller's Discovery ofthe Dynamic EtherDrift" and "Discovery ofa Dynamic Bio-Cosmic Energy in Space and in the Atmosphere", to an AAAS conference held at Northern Arizona University. Both of these events had been organized by Chappell and the NPA, with cooperation of the AAAS. By 2000 I had further investigated the historical ether-drift experiments, finding evidence ofserious academic bias and erasure of their positive evidence. This was presented to a Califomia NPA conference in Berkeley, a "Critical Review of the Shankland, ct al, Analysis ofDayton Miller' s Ether-Drift Experiments". This paper is revised and included in this book as a chapter in Part II.
In 2001 , I visited the Case Western Reserve University (CWRU), where many ofthe original ether-drift experiments were undertaken. At the CWRU Archive, I reviewed the original documents and publications by thecentral figures ofthe historical ether-drift experiments, including the correspondence of Michelson-Morley, Dayton Mill~r, Robert Shank.land and others. I was given a tour ofCWRU Physics and campus by William Fickinger, who was most gracious and helpful, even though he and I fully disagreed on Einstein's relativity theory, and about cosmic ether. At my urging, he later located a long-lost set of Dayton Miller's original data sheets and notebooks, where Miller recorded the results of his various experiments. Additional archive materials were obtained from other universities, on Michelson-Morley, Miller, and Einstein, now preserved in my own institute's archive.
From that background came a major article written a few years later on Dayton Miller's work, which achieved widespread review on
8

Author's Introduction
internet, "Dayton Miller's Ether-Drift Experiments: A Fresh Look". Versions of that paper were also published in the Journal ofScientific Exploration, and as a chapter in the book Should the Laws ofGravitation Be Reconsidered? (Munera 2011), recognizing the research of Nobel Prize winner Maurice Allais. Allais graciously permitted reproduction of one of his articles in my institute's research journal, Pulse of the Planet, discussing his finding ofnewly uncovered patterns in Miller's ether-research data (Allais 2002). Those articles further stimulated a correspondence with other serious ether theorists and experimenters around the world. These included Yuri Galaev, who made independent ether-drift experiments in his position as engineer at the Institute of Radiophysics and Electronics, in Kharkiv, Ukraine. I encouraged him to come and lecture on his findings in the USA, but as often happens, funding for such an event was never obtained. We lost contact in 2014, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
From the above accounts, one will gain an appreciation for both the open-mindedness and support that exists for unorthodox research in some parts of the academic world, along with the regrettably ruthless reactions in other parts. This schizophrenic situation continues.
For example, one ofmy professional associates in Europe had his aspirations for the PhD in physics crushed, when he dared to write critically of Einstein's theory of relativity, including a discussion of Dayton Miller's work, and citing my publications supporting Miller. After a disturbing battle with one horrible professor acting like a Grand Inquisitor, he was allowed to finish the MS degree by redrafting his work to be more in line with conventional thinking. However, the PhD was then out of the question. He'd get no letters of recommendation, case closed, a better future denied. In another sim1lar European case, an undergraduate university student, having what he thought was an openminded discussion with hlsprofessor, mentioned my name in association with criticisms of Einstein's theory, after which he was promptly expelled from the university! Similar things have happened in the American universities, and it is not uncommon for young students and even professors without tenure, to write on such subjects under pseudonym.
In running my own private laboratory and institute, I no longer have a university position to protect, and so am free to speak and write openly. However, the university students interested in these subjects must carefully pick and choose the professors who might have command or control over their graduate research efforts. Freedom of inquiry, as
9

The Dynamic Ether ofCosmic Space
well as freedom of speech, has been even more severely corroded in recent years, by the rise of politically motivated junk-science and intellectual intolerance. Fact and truth are today frequently defined by how "agreeable" they are with "politically correct" scientism, as aggressively promoted by "activists". A new form of group-think Lysenkoism threatens society and the Academy, across the disciplines, infecting all the professions. In this process, fact, truth and authentic science have not been well served.
A Preliminary Outline of the Major Theories of Cosmic Ether
Let's briefly review the various motions of Earth in space, as determined by conventional astronomy, and for which the ether-drift experiments were aiming to measure. There is the rotational velocity ofthe Earth on its axis, which at the equator is around 0.5 km/sec. Then there is the orbit ofEarth around the Sun, producing an average 30 km/ sec velocity. Then the velocity ofthe Sun and solar system towards the star Vega, within the local cluster ofstars at around 20 km/sec. Add to that, another ~230 km/sec velocity of the local cluster of stars aiming towards the center ofthe Milky Way Galaxy. Further to this there are motions of the Milky Way within the local cluster of galaxies, and of that cluster of galaxies towards other directions, and then the claimed expansion of the universe as a consequence of the big-bang theory. These lattermotions range from manyhundreds to hundreds ofthousands ofkilometers per second. Ifa scientist wanted to determine the Earth's absolute velocity through space, using the methods of light-beam interferometry, what exact motion would they look for? What would they expect to find? Would motion towards some distant galactic cluster be just as easily detected as the Earth's motion rotating on its axis, or orbiting the Sun?
Newtonian Static Ether. or "Absolute Space"
Some scientists, starting with Newton, visualized the ether as a fully static, immobilized and immaterial thing, lacking in substance and only playing a role in the transmission oflight waves or particles. Such a static etherwas granted the properties ofa stiffgel, like the commercial Jello, by which it could vibrate as the carrier of light waves, but otherwise had no other motions or identifiable properties. This is the Newtonian "absolute space" static ether, through which the Earth and Sun moved without any resistance whatsoever.

Author's Introduction
,
)\:<:) /·</>•,
. • •'!~ ..: .. , ·: : .,.• · ·.,
Figure 1. Newtonian Static Ether or "Absolute Space". Ether exists throughout space as a static, unmoving substrate. Only subtle vibrations may occur, in association with lightwave transmission through the static ether. Planets and stars can move through this non-material ether with frictionless ease, never interacting or slowing down. The relative velocity between Earth and such a static ether is expected to be many hundreds or even thousands of kilometers per second.
Newton's static and immobilized cosmic ether was predicted to show a very high ether wind in any experiments designed to detect it, as a product of the Earth's and solar-system's higher-speed motions through it. Such a Newtonian static ether would blow straight through the Earth, down through the crust and through the planetary core, without any interaction orreduction in Earth's velocity. The ether wind created by Earth's motion would be the same at the surface of Earth as it was in nearby open space, at hundreds or thousands ofkm/sec. Figure 1 conceptualizes such an ether, of an exceedingly fine but immobile "something" which permeates everything, but has no role other than allowing for the transmission of light.
Newton is rightly credited for numerous important discoveries in physics, mathematics and optics. His ideas on the cosmic ether are not to be counted among them. While his ideas of a static and immobile cosmicetherwere embraced by many scientists ofhis day and thereafter,, others rejected it. I will provide details about the sources ofNewton's ideas on the static ether, and those of other astronomers and optical scientists investigating the subject, in the next chapter.
11

The Dynamic Ether ofCosmic Space
A Static Ether with Material Entrainable Pm•nerties
Newton's immobilized and static ether persisted into the late 19th and early 20th centuries, along with competing concepts ofa material or motional ether, which interacted with the Earth's mass. Evidence for light waves also persisted alongside Newton's corpuscular orparticle theo,y of light. Aside from being the accepted medium for light-wave transmission, many embraced the ether as having substance and matteraffecting properties. It was invoked as a causal agent for many physical phenomena, such as electrostatics and magnetism, which were described as strains or tensions within the ether, or due to motions of the ether. Such an active-dynamic ether was conceptualized as having sufficient material substance by which it could "touch" and interact with matter and energy, to affect and be affected by the material bodies ofstars and planets which moved through it. And this being so, then it was quite logical that a layer ofslowed-down or entrained ether might develop and adhere close to the Earth 's surface, much as a viscous fluid clings to the vessel in which it is stored, or as water flowing in a pipe is frictionally slowed along the inside walls of the pipe.
Figure 2. A Static but Dragged Ether of Slight Material Substance, slowed down by interaction with matter as the Earth pushes through it. The static-dragged material ether concept postulates the Earth moving through a motionless ether at high velocity, creating an ether flow opposite to the Earth's motion in the universe. An ether-entrainment effect would also occur (below), to slowdown ether-velocity at lower altitudes. The speed ofa material ether wind was thereby partly dependent upon altitude. Ether velocity can also be blocked by dense material obstructions such as stone buildings, basement locations, or dense wood or metal shields surrounding the interferometer devices used to measure it.
12

Author's Introduction
The theory of a slightly material ether layer of increased density, adhering to the rotating Earth, came into discussion, along with the expectation that, would the ether eventually be measured, its velocity would beconsiderablyslowerthan Newtonian expectations. The slowest ether velocity was thereby expected at the lowest altitudes, close to sea level, and in basement locations or deep in mines. The highest ether velocities would then be anticipated at higher altitudes. A slightly material and entrained ether, still fixed in the universe as per Newton's static concept, but with some unknown amount of velocity related to Earth's orbital motion of ~30 km/sec, is what the late 19th and early 20th Century optical scientists initially set out to investigate.
A material ether could cling to stars and planets as they moved through the cosmos, forming a substantial layer of compressed and slowed-down ether around them. This became an early dominant theory of how starlight could be bent and refracted to create such phenomena as stellar aberration. Before the appropriate experiments were·undertaken, however, they could not definitively decide between a partially-dragged, or a fully-dragged and stagnant ether layer. Such determinations had to wait for the invention ofnew optical instruments, specifically the Michelson interferometer, to be described in a forthcoming chapter on The Positive Results ofthe Michelson-Morley Experiment. In the end, a partially-dragged ether, moving faster at higher altitudes, slowed down by heavy stone buildings or in basement locations, _was in fact detected by nearly everyone who paid attention to these factors. Those who did not mostly got negative results, as I will detail. The diagram in Figure 2 gives an impression of such a fast cosmic ether being slowed and compressed at lower altitudes.
While the interferometer experiments did not detect the higher velocities ofNewton's static ether theory, for reasons to be discussed, the experiments verifying a slower but definitive cosmic ether velocity of from 5 to 10 km/sec were ignored, due to a growing anti-ether bias.
Also in the background was a serious philosophical dilemma. Ifthe Earth and all the other planets were moving through a tangible ether with slight substance, sufficient to create a dragged layer of ether at their surfaces, this would apply a subtle braking force against all cosmic motion. We must ask, if the ether was material, how could planetary motions get started against its resistance in the first instance, or later to be sustained over aeons of time? The solution offered by modem physics and astronomy, ofa gigantic "big bang" explosion, was unconvincing in that regard. This is discussed in Part III.
13

The Dynamic Ether ofCosmic Space
Figure 3. Competing Theories of a Material Cosmic Ether: Static and Dragged? Or Dynamic and Motional?

The static-dragged ether concept postulated the Earth moving through a motionless ether, much like a cannon ball (above) or bullet moving at high velocity through a frictionally dragging atmosphere. Such an ether would interact with the Earth's atmosphere and crustal material, reducing ether velocity at lower altitudes. However, this implied an eventual slowing down ofall planetary motions, unless there was a separate prime mover to keep the universe going. An Earth-entrained dynamic and motional ether (below) provides such a prime mover, with gravitational effects that push or float the planets and their suns along in orderly and lawful motions. The ether wind moves in the same

direction as the Earth, planets and Sun, dynamically moving and pushing orfloating them along 011 their pathways (Reich 1949, 1951 a). Ether velocity could nevertheless be slowed and blocked by dense material obstructions such as stone buildings, basement locations, or dense wood or metal shields surrounding the interferometer devices. Both the static and dynamic ether theories imply variation in the velocity oflight depending upon direction, buton/ya dynamic movingandsubstantive ethersolves the riddle ofwhere cosmic motions come from, and what sustains them.

~~........~ ....

Plane of i' I·

:\ ,\
•..'.,\I

\

j

',,'

.;

,:!,:. ------~ .~:
.tf<,J:;tNt;.i0

the Ecliptic

Ether in motion, moves and carries the planets on their paths like balls floating on ocean waves or currents.

14

Author's Introduction
. A Motional and Substantive Dvnamic Ether Open questions remain with us today, for which a motional and dynamic cosmic ether provides a solution. lfNewton's laws ofmotion are universal, that nothing moves unless something else "makes it move", then what is the "prime mover" that got the universe "going" and kept it moving in the first instance? How could any planetary or stellar motion get started against the braking force ofa ubiquitous static and material, dragged ether, and keep moving in such a lawful manner? And how could ether be merely a "dragged" phenomenon, without ultimately slowing down the entire universe to a standstill? And what was the essence of gravitational force? How does matter emerge and build up to heavier-weight elements? Are they really created in the interior furnace of the stars, given how extreme temperatures tend to break matter down and apart into its basic elements and ionic components, and not build things up to greater complexity? And where does all the energy go from light and other electromagnetic frequencies, and from radioactivity, as emitted by all the stars and planets since the beginning of time, assuming time and the universe had a beginning?
Over my entire professional life, contemporary science has emphasized the principle of Occam's Razor, that simple explanations with fewer assumptions are most likely to be the more correct ones. But scientists generally ignore this important principle except for historical examples as with the Heliocentrism of Copernicus and Galileo's confirming observations. Instead, ever since the premature rejection of the cosmic ether, there has been an historical and psychological imperative to formulate non-intuitive and mystical theories with more, and not less complication, with more, and not fewer unproven assumptions. The most popular theories embrace convoluted mathematical "proofs" which lack empirical, real-world foundations towards which the maths are being applied. "Artist's renditions" have thereby increased in sciencejournalsand media, to "show" hypothetical things that nobody has ever seen or photographed.
A breakthrough out of this stagnant condition is summarized herein, firstly from an historical reappraisal, secondly from various heretic astronomers, and thirdly from unexpected sources, outside of astronomy or astrophysics. Scientists, physicians and naturalists as diverse as Wilhelm Reich, Harold Burr, Frank Brown and Giorgio Piccardi, discovered an ether-similar cosmic energetic force affecting the Earth's life and weather, as well as the properties and motions ofthe
15

The Dynamic Ether ofCosmic Space . :..',· . :

. -: . --

-~-:-· :·..-:

. .. .~.- ~-· . .I

.- ·-

. ..

Figure 4. A Motional-Material Dynamic and Gravitational Ether, moving in a spiral vortex manner, propels the planets around the Sun. Separate vortices fonn around the planets. Slight variations in the cosmic ether wind are averaged out over time, due to the great mass of the Sun and planets. The inward sweeping ofcosmic ether towards the Sun and around planets is gravitational, counter-balanced by centrifugal forces. The two forces together set the planets into regular lawful orbits, and likewise the moons into orbits around planets. (not to scale)
planets and stars. Among this notable group, Reich provided the most exacting clarifications on planetary motions, in a new theory he called cosmic superimposition, where his objectively demonstrated cosmic life-energy was attracted to matter, creating a negative entropy, to form and to coalesce matter into larger and more complex fonns, as well as
to put matter into dynamic, vortexing and spiral-form motions. I will
detail these new contributions to the question ofcosmic ether in Part III of this book.
16

Author's Introduction
By these new and often biologically-based determinations, some of the older theories of a vortex ether, first postulated by Descartes but ignored by nearly everyone else, find affirmation. The cosmic ether is not merely a passive medium through which planets race andpush, but is in motion, moving in large cosmic vortices ofether energy with a slight materialproperty. It is a dynamicforce in nature, which propels the planets on their paths around the Sun, captured in its swirling and merging motions. Figure 4 gives a graphical representation of such a large vortex moving the planets of our solar system. Moons orbit around planets in similar but smaller vortices of cosmic energy, while the many stars and solar systems are swept along in even larger galactic vortices. Stable orbits then appear as a balance between the outwardpressing centrifugal forces, and the inward-pressing ether vortex forces. These are not "curved Einstein space-time" vortices, which were declared into existence by a theory which demands no cosmic ether of
Vega
~230 km/sec
Figure 5. Earth's Net Motion Through the Galaxy? Above is a simplified and half-accurate diagram, typical ofwhat might be found in astronomy textbooks today. The Earth moves around the Sun, while the Sun moves towards the star Vega. However, the off-center spiral motion is generally misrepresented and not considered ofany importance, given how modem astrophysical theory demands that space be empty, without anything like a substantive and motional cosmic ether.
17

The Dynamic Ether ofCosmic Space

North Star* Polaris

Draco ♦

* Vega fl) ~:, SJ :~:

Configuration for June 21st Solstice

,---.......
December- ' • Janua,y Lowest
Velocities

June-July Highest Velocities

Dorado
Figure 6. The Earth's Spiral Path Through the Cosmos. Neither a flat circle nor an ellipse, nor even a symmetrical spiral as in a screw thread, the solar system's motion is a cambered, off-center spiral, which imparts variable velocities to the Earth and other planets over their annual orbits around the Sun. The northern pole ofthe ecliptic plane is identified at the•~• mark at the top-right center, while the Earth moves more closely towards the star Vega. The diagram shows the Earth at the June solstice position, a time ofmaximal spiral velocity through the cosmos. Actual ether velocity determinations are given in Part III, as well as in the chapter on Dayton Miller' s work.
18

Author's Introduction
substance, andno variations in light speed. The ether-driftexperiments provided clear evidence for light-speed variation, and should have shattered Einstein's theory of relativity even before it was written. I respect Einstein as a humanitarian, and for his E=mc2 formula as an approximation, but not his relativity theory. More on this in Part II.
In Part III, and occasionally in hints elsewhere, I will present evidence that the cosmic ether vortex is, more exactly, an open-ended elongated spiral. Modern astronomy acknowledges the solar system's motion through the Milky Way Galaxy is a spiral. But the implications are ignored, as the current definitions give "outer space" no tangible substance or properties whereby such motions would be important to consider. Figure 5 presents such a half-accurate diagram, while Figure 6 shows a more precise image ofthe actual motions and vectors, which will be gradually introduced as we proceed.
The dynamic ether also has specific materialproperties asdetermined by new experiments, with influences upon the atmosphere and biology, in ways "empty-space" theory neverpredicted. The ether has a variable density that can range from a mass-free condition, condensing towards a material quality around planetary and stellar objects. This process also appears to form new particulate matter as a precipitate from its own concentrating primordial substance. It is also excitable, by which streaming motions are induced, and it can expand and contract in pulsation-a factor that may explain our own Sun's ~5 minute pulsation ofexpansion-contraction. This and other amazing solarphenomena (ie. solar flares following magnetic lines rather than ballistic trajectories) have no solution within Newtonian or Einsteinian theory, given their violations of physical laws governing mass and inertia.
From Reich we anticipatecosmic energetic streamingandpulsation, and together with ether theory, a better understanding has emerged. The dynamic ether is excitable and can flow and gather to higher potentials in the atmosphere and in living matter. It is luminiferous, not only as the carrier of light, but able to glow when sufficiently excited. Ether also becomes a motional gravitational force, with life-energetic and negatively-entropic properties. Thedynamic etherconcept as enhanced by Reich's findings, provides a satisfactory solution to the long-sought self-organizing principle in the universe. The ether is not something static or stagnant, dead and immobilized, through which the planets somehow push themselves, requiring a second mystery cosmic force to put the universe into motion. A simpler and more comprehensive understanding is possible. This book will present that evidence.
19

The Dynamic Ether ofCosmic Space
A motional vortexing gravitational ether was originally proposed by Descartes. This idea horrified Newton, as detailed in the next chapter. Michelson once mentioned such a cosmic ether vortex in passing, as a young man. Walter Russell and a few others did likewise in a philosophical context. However, the best scientific discussion favoring a dynamic theory ofcosmic energy with spiral-form motions belongs to the 20th Century's most heretical scientist, Wilhelm Reich.
Public Slander and Destruction of New Discovery
Beyond the examples of unethical lapses in the universities as
mentioned above, I must expose what is perhaps the most egregious
example ofmedical and academic crushing down ofunorthodox ideas in modem history: the public slandering and destruction of Wilhelm Reich, with government-ordered banning and burning ofhis books and researchjournals, and his death in a federal prison. My book In Defense ofWilhelm Reich covers that episode in detail, exposing the slander, lies and legal terrorism directed at him on two continents, along with a biographical sketch, and references to his medical and scientific discoveries, which were successfully reproduced andverifiedby others, myself included. (DeMeo 2013, Greenfield 1974, Martin 1999)
Reich's experimental work and discoveries are hardly known today, at least not in accurate presentations. The public slandering and lying about him began in Nazi and Communist newspapers in Europe of the 1930s, and followed him to America as he fled their terrorism. The lies have persisted into modem times, spread mostly by Marxist and Catholic writers, some ofwhich has also spread, all too gleefully, into the mainstream of science and medicine. Having personally investigated Reich's biography and scientific claims, in depth, and having successfully replicated his most central experimental proofs, I find his work to be sound, good science, with amazing new inventions. His publishedexperimental results with the orgoneenergyaccumulator, for one example, are not merely important and eye-opening for science and the public health, but are replicable andfalsifiable in the Popperian sense (see Part Ill, WebRef. l), assuming his protocols are followed.
More specific to astronomy, Reich's theory of cosmic superimposition is ofparamount importance. He was the first, so far as I know, to have identified and emphasized the theoretical importance ofEarth's open-endedspiral-fonn motion around the moving Sun. He reasoned how Kepler's equations for orbital velocities, which work fine
20

Author's Introduction
for planetary motions along a flat 2-dimensional plane, become inexact and incomplete when applied to planetary spiral-form motions. When planetary motions are viewed as an open-ended spiral, moving in 3dimensions, Keplerfails, while Reich andether-scientist Dayton Miller together provide a prooffor cosmic ether of central importance. Reich's books Cosmic Superimposition and Ether, GodandDevil were so revolutionary and threatening, they were among those condemned to government flames in the 1950s. Today, they are reprinted. (Reich 1949, 195 la)
The censorship, hatred and violence directed towards him by nearly all the mainstream media, and by top leaders in European and American science and medicine, is stunning in its scope and viciousness. His research evidence is routinely erased, or distorted to create a better target for ridicule. My own experimental investigations nearly always confirmed Reich's claims and findings, often with new discovery in the process. (DeMeo 2011, 2014). For doing so, some of the same professionally-destructive slander, threats and hate-mail were, and continue to be hurled in my direction. The supporting studies undertaken in more recent years by scientific and medical professionals, my work included, is regularly erased in the falsified media and academic narratives. This trend of spreading lies and erasing evidence has continued today in just about all of the "top" science journals, in poppsychology books, and now on internet. When alive, Reich wrote much about these attacks, and he appealed the legal persecutions all the way up to the US Supreme Court, whose judges basically rubber-stamped the book-burning and imprisonment. (Baker 1972, 1973, Blasband 1972, DeMeo 1989, 2013, Greenfield 1973, Martin 1999)
If the history ofscience tells us anything, it is that only important books get burned, only important scientists get hysterically slandered in public media, and are then sent offto die in prison for technical violations ofobscure laws. Reich's mistreatment was worse than what Galileo was subjected to, but for similar reasons of being a threat to powerful institutions. He made significant new scientific discoveries that both the lay-public and professionals were ill-prepared to consider, discoveries which threaten to up-turn nearly every major scientific theory ofour time. Reich's scientific works and findings are ofGalilean stature and importance. He got it right, and was destroyed for it.
While copies of his books and research journals survive for a modem reconsideration, the distortions and slanders have continued. The so-called "skeptic clubs", Wikipedia and mainstream news
21

The Dynamic Ether ofCosmic Space
organizations have been central in this process of public lying and falsification ofhistory. (DeMeo 2013, WebRef.2) Added to this distortion of Reich's findings, is the new destructive mini-industry of eBay and internet hawkers selling all kinds of pendants, pyramids and gizmos, abusing Reich's name and orgone energy terms to sell trinkets with wildly exaggerated claims. This latter trend further muddies the water.
I make the above extended notation as a preventive, to counter the prevailing trends of deliberate media and skeptic-club scientificmedical lyi11g. The widespread misinformation and distortions about Reich have no validity for him whatsoever, no more than modem physics would wish to be defined by "quantum vitamin pills", or modern astronomy by "neo-geocentrism", or modem geology by the "flat earth society". (DeMeo et al. 2012, 2013, WebRef.3)
That having been said, in this work I will present the reader with evidence on the historical ether-drift experiments that most will not know, that will utterly refute the falsified opinions which today litter the textbooks. A review of this evidence has a powerful clarifying effect, sweeping aside mystically-inclined astrophysical confusions. It also leaves us with a calmer, more common-sense view of the cosmos. Mystic "black holes", relativistic "space-time distortions", "quantum magic","multipleuniverses", "cosmicstrings", "big-bang creationism" and similar mysticisms all came into being only after early 20th Century science prematurely discarded the ubiquitous and interconnecting cosmic ether.
Also included in this book are some ofmy own scientific findings, further supporting and clarifying cosmic ether and cosmic life-energy. An entirely different experimentally-developed, empirical and nonmystical way of viewing and understanding the universe is presented. Only minimal maths are included or necessary for this new understanding. The book is written in ordinary language, for the educated layperson and young student, as well as for the professionals, in hopes that a new generation will get the facts prior to being subjected to dogmatic indoctrination by the modem priesthood, worshiping "empty space" and a "dead universe", which "sprang into existence, from nothing".
- James DeMeo, PhD, August 2019 Greensprings, Ashland, Oregon
22

Part I: Cosmic Ether as Theory
and Experimentally Confirmed Fact
23

The Matter of Space, Light Waves and Motion
" ...when primordia are being carried downwards straight through the void by their own weight, at times quite undetermined and at undetermined spots they push a little from their path, but only just so much as you could call a change of trend. But if they were not used to swerve, all things would fall downwards through the deep void like drops of rain, nor could collision come to be, nor a blow brought to pass for the primordia. So nature would never have brought anything into existence."
-Lucretius, Roman Poet, c.75 BC De Rerum Natura, Book II
Lucretius' primordial "swerve", quoted above, was a reference to curved or circular motion in the Great Void of the Cosmic Heavens, an early concept of creation in motion, resting upon ideas that ranged back to Greek philosophers such as Aristotle, and the Roman Epicureans. For those ancient philosophers, creation was a role played out by the gods, but they also put reasoned explanations to the physical world they could touch and see. The nature of cosmic motions, the passage ofthe Sun, Moon, stars and "wandering" planets, was always a central human interest, but only dimly understood, and set apart from the confined material existence of humankind on the Earth's surface.
Aristotle divided the material world into four elements, of fire, air, water and earth, but the heavens were composed of a fifth element, a
25

The Dynamic Ether ofCosmic Space

weightless, unchanging and boundless"quin-

tessence", which also was given the name of
r: ~:~~~!r~~s~~~~: !b: "Aether". Greek theology conceived of
:t::e:;,1~:r:.
the gods breathed, "heavenly air", as opposed to normal air, breathed bymortals. By his thinking, the cosmos was put into motion , by a prime mover, related to the aether concept, which was also the godly "stuff'

/~._•·.,--·. •t :· 1
T.!\·; f,~·~. :.·,~
~-¥ <,, <f \
? : '·\'.-. ·p,.y-·1. jt/ • ']. l
\ -~f~~d/,,' ,•
~ ~71.jj, ,.

from which the planetary and stellar spheres

Aristotle

were formed.

(384-322 BC)

Aristotle's philosophy, on matters of logic and the cosmos, capti-

v~ted Western thinking and was even incorporated into the hierarchical

astronomy as dictated by the Church of Rome, remaining so for

centuries until new discoveries began to force their changes.

As more was learned about nature and the sky above, the mysteries

ofthe gods were challenged. Aether came down to Earth as well, in the

concept ofa less theological and more physical cosmic ether, filling all

the empty spaces ofthe Great Void. Slowly butsurely, humanity limped

towards a betterunderstanding ofthe universe. Later still, in the modem

era, the cosmic ether was firstly documented as a real thing, but later

banished, prematurely discarded as the facts of science history show.

Waves in the Cosmic Ether of Space

The luminiferous ether, able to transmit and also to produce light, rose to dominance especially after the wave theory of light became more widely accepted in the 17th Century. Iflightexpressed such easily demonstrated wave actions, and could even travel from the Sun, Moon, planets and stars down to the Earth, itmust have a medium in the cosmos which fills all of space, and is present throughout the atmosphere and water, by which lightwaves could freely move through them. And since this cosmic ether could allow for passage oflight waves through solid glass and other transparent materials, as well as through vacuum, air and water, then ether surely must be something of an exceedingly fine material density. It was thereby considered by early natural philosophy as a fourth phase of matter, of lesser density than solids, liquids or gasses.

26

The Matter ofSpace, Waves and Motion

Nicolaus Copernicus developed the heliocentric theory of the solar system, published in 1532, thereby eliminating the need for complex epicycle motions ofthe planets as required by geocentrism. His models also abandoned the old Aristotelian view ofplanetary spheres composed of ether, as the Earth was also a planet, but not composed of ether. He nevertheless retained aspects of both the spheres and ether in other contexts, merely placing the Sun in the centerposition of the solar system.
Giordano Bruno incorporated the concepts ofan ether medium (also termed Spiritus) into his philosophy and astronomy. He viewed the planets as independently moving, not fixed to celestial spheres, and abandoned the hierarchal astronomy embraced by the Church, which burned him alive in 1600 for multiple heresies.
Galileo Galilei mentioned the ether of space several times in his Sidereal Messenger (1610):

" ...there is round the body of the Moon, just as round the Earth, an envelope of some substance denser than the rest ofthe ether..." -Galileo, Sidereal Messenger, p.26.

"...it seems to be by no means an untenable opinion to place round Jupiter also an atmosphere denser than the rest of the ether..." - Galileo, Sidereal Messenger, p.71

For Galileo, the ether not only existed, but condensed into an ether-layer surrounding the Moon and Jupiter, more dense than the ether found in open cosmic space. Gali-

Galileo (1564-1642)

27

The Dynamic Ether ofCosmic Space
leo also made, by modem standards, a crude attempt to measure the speed of light, where he and an assistant stood on two separate hills some distance from each other. Galileo held a lantern which would be opened to be seen by his assistant, who would then open his own lantern, allowing Galileo to approximate the time-lag. He computed the speed of light was something at least ten times the speed of sound.
Johannes Kepler, to whom we owe the mathematical laws of elliptical planetary motions, mentioned the cosmic ether in his work supporting Galileo, Commentary on the Starry Messenger (1610), wherein he referenced the Earth orbiting "among the planets through the ethereal plains", crossing the "free fields of ether", and of "Mercury crossing the liquid ether" of space. Kepler's Dioptrice (1611) and Epitome ofthe Copernican Astronomy (1617), also mention the ether. Reflecting the theology of his day, he viewed ether as the Holy Ghost and divine prime mover, a cosmic essence that brought light down from the heavens, and moved the Kepler (1571-1630)
planets in their orbits. Wave phenomena preoccupied the emerging sciences ofastronomy
and physics, which relied upon analogies to observation of moving nature. Water waves, sound waves, light waves, and much later electromagnetic waves were studied and identified in their specific properties. Waves were a dominant characteristic ofmatter and energy, whereby influences could be transmitted over distances ofspace, often by invisible methods. An ocean wave moving through water could be seen, and its effects immediately understood as it crashed against a shoreline or seawall. Cause and effect were clear. The wave was not the same thing as the water, which moved only slightly as the waves passed through it, and water could also lay completely still at times without waves being present. Individual water waves could be additive or subtractive with other waves to yield standing waves, or oscillating waves at specific locations, such as where rivers poured out into the oceans, or during changes in tides, where current met countercurrent.
Sound and light waves had properties similar to water waves, in that they spread out and diminished over distance, could reflect against walls and diffuse through small openings. Sound waves also could bounce offwalls, or be amplified by cupping the hand behind the ear. Just as with water waves, sound required a set time to travel from one
28

The Matter ofSpace, Waves and Motion
hill to another, and the air was not observably moved by the sound passing through it.
The refraction oflight, a more complicated matter, was also apparent to everyone who rowed a boat, seeing how their oar, when placed into the water, gained an angular distortion. It was also known to every successful spear-orbow-fisherman, who learned to compensate for this distortion by aiming below where a fish appeared to be in the water. Light would reflect off shiny or mirror surfaces, and like water waves and sound waves, light could bend around comers, further suggesting they all shared a wave nature.
Rocks thrown into a pond, or a loud crash ofhands or metals clearly indicated simple forces that could create waves in the water or air. Sound and light were also episodic, and they had distant influences, as with the Sun's warming rays. A musical bow, composed ofanimal hair or hide, could create vibrational wave patterns on drumheads with a scattering of sand, and similar wave patterns in bowls of water.
However, in all these examples and unlike water waves, the waves of sound and light could not be seen directly, and no clarity existed as to how exactly they were transmitted. How could they move from here to there? Proofs were a long time in coming.
It was not until 1612 that Martin Mersenne measured the speed of sound in the open air. By the mid-l 600s, further investigations by many others demonstrated that sound waves would diminish and eventually fail to transmit within an increasing vacuum, thereby confirming the role of air as the necessary medium for sound.
Light wave behaviors when reflected or refracted were generally described as early as the Second Century AD by Claudius Ptolemy. More than a thousand years would pass, however, before they were clarified more exactly by Rene Descartes, the "father of modern philosophy", who computed their first accurate geometry and maths.
Francesco Grimaldi described the diffraction oflight, which clearly showed the relationship between water, sound and light waves. They all spread outwards in a circular wave-front, moving away from their point of creation, and they all could bend around comers, to regain a new circular wave-front, as when passing through a narrow opening.
Such observations on the wave nature of light led to new questions ofjusthow light waves could be transmitted over the greatest distances, especially from the Sun, stars and planets down to the Earth's surface. A vacuum might block sound waves, but not light waves. That, and the identified decrease ofatmospheric pressure with increasing altitude, as
29

The Dynamic Ether ofCosmic Space

Grimaldi (1618-1663) Light Difraction Light waves bend around corners and present a circular wave-front after passing through a narrow opening.
demonstrated when traversing from sea-level to high mountain tops where sunlight intensity increased, firmly indicated that air itself played little role in light transmission. Light intensity could be diminished by constituents in the air, such as colored vapors or particulate smokes or fogs, and the border between air and water created variations in its angle ofrefraction, but air was not the medium of light waves.
Transparent solids such as glass objects or panes, invented by the Alexandrian Romans around 100 AD, or transparent natural amber and mineral crystals, could also transmit light, and change light into a splay of colors. But, how exactly did the Sun and stars transmit their light through cosmic space, down through the atmosphere, and how, even with the humble candle, could light beams penetrate into and through

Descartes ( 1596-1650) 30

Descartes' Water Refraction

The Matter ofSpace, Waves and Motion
transparent solids? While charged with mystery, such questions continued to be generally answered in the postulate ofa cosmic ether, not only as the medium for light waves, but also as the causal factor for gravity and planetary motions.
Descartes in his Principles ofPhilosophy (1644) proposed a continuous ether-fluid constituting a "second matter" which filled all space. His ether transmitted light, but also was divided up into large cosmic cells, each with whirlpools of ether motion providing the gravitational force that brought matter together, to create and put into motion the various stars, planets and moons. Sun and Earth were captured in one such vortex ofmotional ether, as was the Earth and the Moon. His theory in part developed from simple observations, such as how small pebbles in a stirred vessel would accumulate at the bottom center of the vortex.
Rene Descartes' Vortex-Whirlpool Ether Theory The universe was filled with an ether-fluid divided up into large cosmic cells, each of which contained a whirlpool of ether, of variable orientation. Ether whirlpools gathered matter together in their cores, creating and putting into motion the various stars, planets and moons.
31

The Dynamic Ether ofCosmic Space
While Descartes' spiral vortex theory was never fully carried forward by other scientists of his day, neither was it forgotten. His concepts ofa spiral cosmic prime mover forming whirlpools and ether vortexes made a comeback some 130 years later, when astronomer Charles Messier listed over 100 "spiral nebulae" in his 1771 Catalogue des Nebuleuses. Messier's "nebulae" were in the 1920s identified as independent spiral galaxies by the astronomer Edwin Hubble, who measured the great distance ofAndromeda and other "spiral nebulae", placing them well outside the region of closer stars forming our own Milky Way Galaxy. Albert Michelson, of earlier Michelson-Morley fame, also postulated a similar ether-vortex theory in his 1899 lecture series at the University ofChicago, later published in a 1903 book Light Waves and Their Uses (p.163). The newerdiscoveries ofspiral nebulae, or galaxies, and ideas such as those of Michelson, provided Descartes some vindication, albeit several centuries after his death.
Astronomers today still puzzle over just how spiral galaxies form and maintain themselves, but rarely consider there might be some tangible "prime mover" cosmic ether with sufficient material composition to create a spiral-turning gravitational force acting ("swerving") over extremely large distances to produce such motions. While Descartes' name has nearly been forgotten in this context, the later discoveries ofspiral nebulae/galaxies gave rise to another notable, but almost equally forgotten 20th Century scientist-heretic. In the 1950s, the physician and scientist Will1elm Reich advocated a spiral theory of cosmic superimposition, ofa matter-creating, gravitating, light-transmitting and luminating cosmic energy, at work in living and non-living matter, to be discussed later on.
Newton Kills the Motional Ether, Empties Space, and Diminishes Light Waves
Isaac Newton also embraced the lurniniferous ether, asking the important question, "What is there in places empty ofmatter?" In 1679, at age 37, Newton wrote a letter to Robert Boyle (see Appendix 2), demonstrating agreement with ether concepts. He embraced a ponderable, moving and luminiferous ether, which was dynamically attracted to and penetrated into matter, exerting a "gravitational pressure" based upon variable etherdensity. He also argued for a residual denserblanket ofether surrounding planets, the Sun and smaller objects, by which the refractory effects of light could be understood. Newton wrote:
32

The Matter ofSpace, Waves and Motion
"... there is diffused through all places an aetherial substance, capable ofcontraction and dilatation, strongly elastic, and, in a word, much like air in all respects, but far more subtile. I suppose this aether pervades all gross bodies, but yet so as to stand rarer in their pores than in free spaces, and so much the rarer, as their pores are less; and this I suppose (with others) to be the cause why light inci- Newton (1643-1727) dent on those bodies is refracted towards the perpendicular; why two well-polished metals cohere in a receiver exhausted ofair; why mercury stands sometimes up to the top ofa glass pipe, though much higher than thirty inches; and one of the main causes why the parts of all bodies cohere; also the cause of filtration, and of the rising of water in small glass pipes above the surface of the stagnating water they are dipped into; for I suspect the aether may stand rarer, not only in the insensible pores of bodies; but even in the very sensible cavities of those pipes; and the same principle may cause menstruums [solvents] to pervade with violence the pores of the bodies they dissolve, the surrounding aether, as well as the atmosphere, pressing them together." (Newton to Boyle, 1679. in Appendix 2)
This letter demonstrates the young Newton had a firm belief and working grasp ofthe ether ofspace as a thing ofenergy, substance and "ponderability". He embraced cosmic ether as a working force in optics, chemistry, electricity, magnetism, and gravitation, including in the gravitational motions of the planets. In this, the young Newton echoed in some measure the conceptual ideas ofDescartes, Galileo and Kepler, all ofwhom had been an irritant to the Vatican bishops, who in the end would tolerate no possibility of a motional or gravitational "prime moving" force in nature other than God. The idea that ether and God might be identical in philosophical descriptions for some kind of creative self-organizing natural force, or even a "Holy Ghost ether'' as Kepler proposed, or as a "cosmic prime mover", were equally intolerable to the Church. By their dictates, one could scientifically investigate and know the ether, but one could not measure or know "the divine". That was the purview ofthe Church.
33

The Dynamic Ether ofCosmic Space
However, 25 years later, Newton presented a different concept ofthe ether. In the 1704 edition ofhis Opticks, he listed 31 different "Queries" or Questions, wherein he noted established facts about light, heat, fire, optical perception and othersubjects. He then expressed a changedview ofthe ether medium as decidedly immaterial, lacking in properties he previously granted to it:
"Query 22: May not Planets and Comets, and all gross Bodies, perform their Motions more freely, and with less resistance in this Aethereal Medium than in any Fluid, which fills all Space adequately without leaving any Pores...? And may not its resistance be so small, as to be inconsiderable? ... And so small a resistance would scarce make any sensible alteration in the Motions ofthe Planets in ten thousand years." (Opticks 1704)
"Query 28: ...against filling the Heavens with fluid Mediums, unless they be exceedingly rare, a great Objection arises from the regular and very lasting Motions ofthe Planets and Comets in all manner ofCourses through the Heavens. For thence it is manifest, that the Heavens are void ofall sensible Resistance, and by consequence ofall sensible Matter. ... it's necessa,y to empty theHeavens ofa/lMatter...A dense Fluid can beofno use for explaining the Phaenomena ofNature, the Motions ofthe Planets and Comets being better explain 'd without it. It serves only to disturb and retard the Motions of those great Bodies... there is no evidence for its Existence and therefore it ought to be rejected. And if it be rejected, the Hypotheses that Light consists in Pression or Motion, propagated through such a Mediwn, are rejected with it." (Opticks 1704. Emphasis added)
From such statements one can see how the olderNewton rejected the idea ofa cosmic "ether-fluid" with any kind ofslight mass able to push or retard the motions ofthe planets or stars. And from that he deduced wave theory was equally problematic. But there was another reason behind these particular Queries. After expressing his wonderment at the great order and beauty in the world, the marvel of the eye and the ear, and of animal instinct and senses, he turned to theology for explanations. He ended his Queries by making theological arguments that only God could be the prime mover, warding off any competition from a motional material ether, as if it would constitute heresy:
34

The Matter ofSpace, Waves and Motion
"Query 28: ...does it not appear from Phaenomena that there is a Being incorporeal, living, intelligent, omnipresent, who in infinite Space, as it were in his Sensory, sees the things themselves intimately, and thoroughly perceives them, and comprehends them wholly by their immediate presence to himself." (Opticks 1704)
Query 31: "Now by the help of these Principles, all material Things seem to have been composed of the hard and solid Particles, above-mention'd, variously associated in the first Creation by the Counsel ofan intelligent Agent. For it became him who created them to set them in order. And ifhe did so, it's unphilosophical to seek for any other Origin ofthe World, or to pretend that it might arise out of a Chaos by the mere Laws of Nature; though being once formed, it may continue by those Laws for many ages..." (Opticks 1704)
While the older Newton's Queries were filled with good observations and brilliant insights, when grappling with the question oforiginal causation, and specifically a cosmic ether which acted as the medium for the transmission of light waves, or motions of the planets, he expressed serious contradictions. He alternatively viewed ether as exceedingly rarified and unable to affect planetary matter moving through it, while at the same time positing a denser cosmic ether far away from the planets, out in open space, which could exert a serious _gravitational pressure to push those same planets around. This was an effort to put a mechanism to his earlier Jaw of gravitation, which was mathematically accurate, but in the end rested upon contradictory premises. Cosmic ether as a lawful motional force was theologically objectionable, and so he rendered it, ad-hoc, into a static or dead thing. His static ether, however, contained numerous contradictions which remained imbedded within naturalphilosophy and science all the way up into the modern era. Unable to go any farther in his conceptions, in the end he deferred to the Church. Scientific inquiry into the first origins oforderly cosmic motions, and by extension the origins ofthe universe, nature, life, etc., were considered "unphilosophical," or "taboo".
The older Newton further negated the possibility that the universe might have primary "laws of nature" that opposed "chaos", as with a cosmic self-organizing principle of some discoverable nature which might be scientifically identified. He did so, even while granting that
35

The Dynamic Ether ofCosmic Space
"once fonned" matter and the universe "may continue by those laws for many ages." For Newton, God was a cosmic clock-maker who created the universe and set everything into motion, but then went on extended vacation. And it was "unphilosophical" to inquire further about it.
From that foundational conception, it is important to point out that Newton's laws ofmotion applied only to existing motional conditions, not to any primal cause in the sense ofa first origin, and not to anything that might exert continuous, on-going motional influences, such as a cosmic ether with both slight mass and orderly motional properties. Even while Newton's equations for gravitation still provide the bedrock guide for our rockets to land on the Moon and Mars, he reduced the universe into a giant game of billiard-balls within a hard vacuum, colliding with each other as they moved around in a frictionless static ether, ad-infinitum.
Newton's answer to how gravitation, magnetism or electricity could affect objects at a distance was likewise abstracted. With erasure ofan ether with more than static properties, one could assert the fact that actions took place over distances, but this gave no clarity as to how such actions were transmitted from one place to another. The mystical "action at a distance" non-explanation is today deeply imbedded within 1odernphysics, which also forbids the taboo concept ofa cosmic ether. lewton's redefined cosmic ether allowed for no such role in "actions", Jther than by contradictory ad-hoc speculations which never obtained a larger support, even among those who embraced the cosmic ether.
Newton also mostly abandoned the wave-theory oflight in favor of a mechanistic "shower of particles" or "particle-rays", and described the luminiferous ether as somewhat identical to the stillness of a hard vacuum, except that it was sufficiently elastic to be vibrated as particles oflight passed through it. This was completely different from the more fluid ether of earlier centuries, which transmitted light waves with minimal or no friction, but also interacted with matter sufficiently to produce cosmic motions.
Newton's ether of his later years was a dramatic departure from the motional and gravitational cosmic medium articulated by Galileo and Descartes. The cosmic ether of the elder Newton was rendered static, stationalJ' and generally immobilized. All the planets, Sun, stars and comets could race through it without the slightest inhibition. The motion of the universe was the domain ofthe divine Hand of God, not ofany motional ether with substance. Newtonian static ether could not even play a subordinated role within his theology, as with the deeply
36

The Matter ofSpace, Waves and Motion
religious Kepler's "Holy Ghost" ether. The static ether could vibrate when shot through by light particles, but that was all. While Newton's theory oflight particles was quickly dropped by most astronomers after his death, his conception of the cosmic ether as something static, immobile and dead would persist. A Newtonian static immobilized ether dominated subsequent scientific discussions, ultimately to be taken up by most of the scientists seeking to measure an ether drift, including Michelson and Morley some 200 years later.
Return to Light Waves, but the Ether Remains Dead, Static
While Newton was alive, he was strongly challenged by astronomer Christiaan Huygens, who successfully persuaded much of the science of his day in favor of light waves. After Newton's death in 1727, additional discoveries were made that fully resurrected the wave theory of light, primarily due to better measuring instruments and telescopes.
James Bradley discovered stellar aberration in 1728, whereby a star's location appears to be slightly different from it's actual location, based upon the changing direction of observation-angles of stars, as made at different times of year. It was then considered a proof ofthe ether, and later a result of wave-refraction according to increased optical density of an entrained or condensed layer of ether close to the Earth's surface.
The wave theory of light, along with the role of ether in its transmission, was further established by physician Thomas Young, who had earlier clarified how the human eye worked to focus light onto the retina. Young presented clear evidence for the interference of light waves when passing through two pinholes, which were then projected on a screen. Only light waves could produce such an effect, which was already known from the study of interfering water waves passing through two separate openings. He also at- Bradley (1693-1762)
37

The Dynamic Ether ofCosmic Space

Figure 7. Young's Double-Slit Experiment: Light waves moving from left to right, pass through two small slits and independently diffuse outwards to interfere with each other, yielding a series of light and dark lines or "interference fringes" when projected on a screen.

tributed the different colors oflight to differ-

ent wavelengths, and argued for a gaseous

type of cosmic ether.

August-Jean Fresnel continued investi-

gations on light waves, discovering methods

for lightpolarization and the transverse wave

properties of light, vibrating at right-angles

to the direction of its motion. His work

further reinforced the reality oflight waves, Young (1773-1829)
basically ending serious discussion on the

Newtonian "shower ofparticles" corpuscu-

lar theory. Fresnel also advocated for a static

but partially entrained ether, as necessary

for light wave propagation and stellar aber-

ration, but through whichplanets could move with ease and without significant obstruc-

·,, ~. ........

~..#
: .

tion. In the process, however, planets, stars ~ I \.
and comets would drag along a layer of entrained ether-stuff, close to their surfaces, as they moved along in their orbits. From this he postulated an ether-drag coefficient

·. ,_•
..~...,-~
•. .d
. ..-~~
,, , 'r.1 ;.:t:
.. \ 1, ~ ·-~~·-- (l

based upon the index ofrefraction of trans- Fresnel(1788-1827)

38

The Matter ofSpace, Waves and Motion

parent media, such as air or water. In later years, experiments would

be undertaken to generally confirm Fresnel's ideas ofa matter-dragged

ether.

George Stokes went farther than Fresnel,

arguing for a more significantlyentrained or

dragged ether, where the Earth carried a

layer of fully stagnated ether along with it,

much like a ship whose hull is coated with

barnacles and weed drags a layer of water.

Stoke's idea was significant in how the re-

sults oflater ether-drift experiments would

be interpreted, or misinterpreted. By his

ideas, one could never detect such a fully-

dragged etherat the Earth's surface, as there

would be no motion within it to measure.

Stokes (1819-1903)

James Clerk Maxwell also embraced the

cosmic ether, stating "It is inconceivable • •: -~~e:-_-:·:......j,,_:

that a wave motion should propagate in empty space". He viewed ether as a necessary cosmic medium with dielectric properties, and considered his magnetic and elec-

';·<J.,,,1/l'

-"
f -. ) . .

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tric "lines offorce" as rotating tubes ofether .. :·; -~ ~;;-:tf.
:~~i:t;,~~~:::~!:~:i:.::~~:~i::ii'Pi~ ', ttk,;:':til •

discussion about a possible Galilean-Keple- '- '\ ·;/}(1'(:,_~--:.#~- ·r. ,;,

rian-Descartes ether-in-motion, streaming ~ ~-• .::- • )~~. , . ,

or vortexing within the cosmos, had ended. 11&1i~~~~ , ~..• ••

0
-,

1

Such were the major ideas of the scien- Maxwell( 1831-1879)

tists of that period, who invoked cosmic

ether as a primary causal factor in the world oflight waves, even though

at that time it remained invisible, lacking in direct evidence for its

existence. Its reality and properties were inferred by observations of

stellar aberration and other wave properties and behaviors of light, as

previously noted. New experiments were being proposed and carried

out in the 1800s, however, which would answer many open questions,

while leaving others unanswered. Increasingly elaborate instruments

were soon to be devised, using greatly improved optical-mechanical

apparatus.

39

The Dynamic Ether ofCosmic Space
Ether Experiments and Theory Prior to the Michelson-Morley Experiment
By the mid to late 1800s, the concept oflight waves within a cosmic ether was widely accepted, but a static or stagnant ether theory dominated discussions. The idea ofa material ether wind, in motion as a force to push the planets around, had receded. Arguments focused upon to whatextent the ether was static and immobilized, and how the Earth and planets could pass through it without obstruction, even while ether was carrying light waves across great distances. Did the ether have some kind of mass or other interaction with matter, to create a dragged ether layer or atmosphere surrounding the planets, as Fresnel and Stokes had argued? Or, was the ether fully static and lacking in properties by which "ponderable substance" might be affected, merely being the medium for propagation of light waves? So the discussions went.
The wave-nature of light was well-demonstrated in numerous experiments, but the ether was only inferred to exist, and had yet to be experimentally proven by more direct evidence, with its properties firmly determined. Over a period of five years, however, new optical experiments allowed determinations of the speed of light, as well as detections oflight-speed variations as it passed through air, water, and eventually through the cosmic ether itself.
In 1848, Hippolyte Fizeau undertook experiments to evaluate the speed of light over an 8.6 kilometer distance between two hills near Paris, for a total 17 kilometers of light path. He was testing out, with much betterequipment, the hilltop lantern experiment firstly carried out by Galileo more than 200 years earlier. Fizeau constructed a rapidly rotating 720-tooth gearwheel driven to high rotational speed by clockworks. With his apparatus set upon one hill, a beam of light was projected through the rotating gear teeth, which sequentially allowed or blocked the light beam towards the second, distant hill. A large mirror on the second hill reflected the light beam back to his apparatus on the first hill. The projected light beam went out and returned with such rapidity that it passed through the same gap in the gear teeth through which it was origi- Fizeau (1819- 1896)
40

The Matter ofSpace, Waves and Motion
nally projected. By increasing the speed ofrotation ofthe gear, the light beam would eventually be blocked by the subsequent gear tooth. By knowing the distance and rate of rotation of the gear wheel, Fizeau computed the time required for the light beam's travel out and back. His detenrunation of 312,000 km/sec (kilometers per second) was within about 5% of the accepted modern determinations of 299,792 km/sec.
In 1850, Leon Foucault made independent experiments using an improved design employing rapidly rotating mirrors to accomplish the same task, with greater accuracy. The rotating mirror would send out and then receive back a light beam reflected off a distant mirror. Over the time of its outward and return transmission, the rotating mirror would turn a slight bit. The returning beam was then reflected on a screen by which its angle of deflection allowed a calculation of the elapsed time over a known distance, and hence the light Foucault(1819-1868)
speed. Foucault's measures were even more precise, registering at 299,796 km/sec, about 0.001% off from the modem determination, a truly remarkable feat with what today would still be considered an excellent apparatus.
This method was the subject ofgreat interest for optical science, and was later taken up with refinements by Albert Michelson in the first two decades of the 1900s, for making even more precise light speed determinations. Michelson's measurements, discussed in the next chapters, remained the most accurate available through the 1930s though with puzzling and rarely-mentioned variations in those lightspeed measures. Allofthese determinations oflight's absolute velocity were averages computedfrom a wide range ofvariable readings.
A further 1851 experiment by Fizeau was notable in its return to ether-theory measures, proving that light speed would vary according to the velocity ofthe medium through which it was transmitted. Using two pipes filled with water, and with glass end windows, water was forced to flow at a high speed, but in opposing directions within the two pipes. A unidirectional light beamwas shone through them. In one case, water flowed in the same direction as the light waves, in the other case, water flowed against the light waves. The result of this experiment proved that light speed was variable, depending upon the direction of
41

The Dynamic Ether ofCosmic Space
motion ofthe medium through which it's waves were travelling. The velocity of the water was additive to light waves moving in the same direction, and subtractive when moving against the water. When the water was still inside the pipes, the light-beam velocities were identical.
In 1853, Foucault made further proofofthe changed velocity oflight waves as they traversed through two different media, of water as compared to the open air. Both of these important experiments, by Fizeau and Foucault, using novel designs, added experimental proof not merely for the wave theory of light, but also that light speed was variable according to the density and velocity ofthe medium through which it travelled. From such experiments, ether was embraced by the world ofscience as a real thing, absolutely necessary to understand the transmission of light waves, and later electromagnetic waves.
In all these new experiments, however, the cosmic ether was variously described as a static and immobilized medium through which the Earth raced like a missile moving through a hard vacuum, or as a dragged phenomenon, implying the ether made intimate contact with planetary and stellar matter. Such touching contact with matter was necessary ifentrainment ofether could occur, to form an ether layer of variable density around the planets, Earth and Sun. Newton's point about planets racing through a static ether with " ...so small a resistance would scarce make any sensible alteration in the Motions ofthe Planets in ten thousand years" was for him an absolute theological necessity, to rid the ether of motional and material properties by which it could actually influence celestial motions, and thereby compete with his vision of deity as prime mover. And yet, as seen in the pre- and postNewtonian era, ether was posited to touch and interact with matter, by which an entrained refractive layer might develop. Entrainment demanded a material, tangible ether, able to come into contact with and be moved by matter. Or, it required going back to the pre-Newtonian ideas of Descartes, of ether as prime mover, streaming and flowing in whirlpool vortex motions, carrying the planets and stars along with it as it moved. Either the ether had motional properties and pushed the planets and stars into motion, or it was contradictorily lacking in material properties, but nonetheless could be entrained into a layer of various density around the objects moving through it. And if the latter was true, then how could planetary and stellar matter move through and drag such an ether without consequences to their own fonvard momentum, over billions ofyears?
42

The Matter ofSpace, Waves and Motion

Figure 8.

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2

.ti.-. I

L-•

: :

-

l //,, · >_Too:~,t'd--.......

, -e1

•

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,

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.' / ¥' °_':£,,,~i,-j' .G,1,C;\\•\1\ ""' ,., d ft :.

_.,

Fizeau's 1848 Speed of Light Experiment: A light beam was

sent out to a distant hill near Paris, bouncing off a mirror,

whereupon the light returned to cover an 8.6 kilometer distance.

A toothed gear wheel was set to alternatively block or allow passage of the beam. When the wheel was unmoving, the beam

of light made the trip out and back without interruption. When the wheel was rotated to a fast speed, however, at some point the

light was blocked by the subsequent gear tooth, allowing calcu-

lation of light velocity over the distance.

L'

A, 4--

C n~ - ~ A., --+

E

~ 10.
I

~

L

.G
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lo2

S' ·s

Fizeau's 1851 Moving Water Ether-Drag Experiment: Using two tubes ofwater with transparent end-glass, Fizeau proved that light speed was different when the water traveled with the direction oflight than when moving against the direction oflight.

Foucault's 1853 Ether-Drag Experiment: Foucault proved that the speed of light was different in open air versus when directed through a glass-ended tube filled with water.
43

The Positive Results of the
Michelson-Morley Experiment
The history ofscience records the July 8-12, 1887 ether-drift experiment of Albert Michelson and Edward Morley as a pivotal turning point, after which the energetic ether, filling all of cosmic space, was discarded by mainstream physics and astronomy. Thereafter, the postulate of "empty space" devoid of ether was embraced, along with related concepts which demanded constancy of light speed in all directions, in harmony with Albert Einstein's relativity theory. The now famous Michelson-Morley experiment continues to be widely cited today, in nearly every physics textbook, for its claimed "null", "zero", or "negative" results. These claims, however, are not true, something easily determined by a careful reading of the original MichelsonMorley paper, which appeared in the American Journal ofScience in November 1887. In fact, their experiment reported a slight positive result, later to be independently replicated by others, including by both Michelson and Morley, working separately from each other, with different research associates. Twentieth Century science nevertheless ignored all such positive evidence for the cosmic ether, as if psychologically compelled to make a wrong tum.

Albert Michelson (1852-1931)

Edward Morley (1838-1923)
45

The Dynamic Ether ofCosmic Space
Michelson's Initial 1881 Experiment
In 1873, the young Albert Michelson graduated from the US Naval Academy, pursuing further study of optics in 1880 with Hennann von Helmholtz at the University ofBerlin in Gennany. While in Germany, and with a grant from the American inventorofthe telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, Michelson invented what came to be the most widely applied method for investigations of the properties of light, and for ether detection, a highly sensitive device known as the "interferential refractometer". This was later shortened to the inte,ferometer. With it, one could measure light-speed variations down to the width of an individual wavelength. His first experimental use ofit, aiming to detect the cosmic ether, was undertaken in late 1880 at the Astrophysikalische Observatorium at Potsdam.
Michelson's interferometer used two light beams directed at right angles to each other, fonning an "X" pattern on a turnable platfonn, bouncing back and forth between mirrors along two equal lengths of light path. Figures 9 and 10 show the setup.
As the platform is turned, one ofthe light-beam paths will eventually be aimed parallel to the presumed ether wind, while the other lightbeam path would simultaneously be directed perpendicular to that ether wind. By turning the whole interferometer, depending upon how directly the instrument was aimed into the ether wind, or perpendicular to it, the two light beams would develop different speeds oftransit time out and back along the interferometer arms. This would be apparent after the two light beams were reunited to form inte,ference patterns. The interference bands oflight and dark stripes, orfringes oflight, were visible through a magnifying optical eyepiece or telescope set on one of the interferometer arms, where a few or even a single light-fringe could be observed.
Any speed differential between the two perpendicular beams would be revealed when the apparatus was rotated, leading to a shifting ofthe interference fringes to the left or right of a central index pointer. This allowed the experimenter to count the amount oflight-fringe shifting, which could then be computed to reveal a given speed ofether velocity. Any changes in the velocity oflight impinging differentially upon the two light beams, one oriented directly into a presumed ether wind and another oriented at a 90° angle to that wind, could be determined. With enough turns of the instrument, over many days, the compass direc-
46

The Positive Results ofMichelson-Morley
Figure 9. The Michelson 1881 Interferometer. A thin pencil-width light beam is split into two beams by a halfsilvered glass mirror. The two beams then are directed along two perpendicular arms, at the end of which is fixed a full mirror, which reflects the beams back to the half-silvered mirror for recombining into a single beam once again. The two light beams create interference bands or fringes, and an magnifying viewer then allows visual inspection ofa few or merely oneofthe fringes. In a condition ofno ether wind or drift, or no ether at all, as the interferometer is rotated on its base, the interference fringes would not move or shift their positions. With an ether wind, however, light speed becomes different along the two interferometer arms, depending upon the relative orientation of the arms as the interferometer is turned. By directing the apparatus into or out ofthe ether wind, the optical fringes shift to the left or right, indicating the presence and magnitude of that wind, revealing a change in light velocity along specific directions. This early effort by Michelson proved to be a failure, primarily due to vibration problems and also a too-short light path to detect any significant ether-drift signal. (Michelson 1881)
tional azimuth orientation ofthe interferometerat the times ofmaximal and minimal fringe shifting could be determined. Ofcourse, ifthe ether did not exist, or ifthe ether was fully stagnant at the surface ofthe Earth, without any motional wind, then the two light beams would not show any changes in light velocity nor shifting ofthe light fringes when the apparatus was rotated. It was an ingenious instrument and experiment.
47

The Dynamic Ether ofCosmic Space

B I I I I
I
I
tl~ I

No Et/rer Motion: Transit Times A-B-A and A-C-A are Identical

C

Figure 10. Michelson's Two-Swimmer Analogy for the Ether Drift

..
(

Experiments. With 110 ether flow (above) two swimmers of equal

strength or two light beams, going out and returning along the two arms

A-B-A and A-C-A, take the same amount of time to make their

respective trips. With an etherjlow (below) moving from right to left,

the swimmer on transit A-8-A takes less time than the swimmer of

A-C-A. While swimmer A-8-A must compensate for a slight side-

current in both directions, the swimmer on A-C-A must struggle against

the full current for A-C, and does not fully regain that lost time on

C-A. As described in the text, the overall transit time of A-B-A is

therefore less than A-C-A This is true for light waves moving through

or within any cosmic ether motion, be it a static ether, an ether wind, or

a partially dragged ether. See the text for explanation of the triangle.

B
b /
I a I
/C
I I
A

Wit/r Et/rer Wind: Transit Time A-B-A is less than A-C-A

48

The Positive Results ofMichelson-Morley
As Michelson wrote in his published 1881 account, those first efforts in Germany were plagued by instrumental errors, and the original instrument lacked sufficient light path to achieve adequate sensitivity. It was nevertheless a sound methodology that, with improvements over the years, eventually led to detections of ether drift by MichelsonMorley, and by others such as Morley-Miller, and independently by Dayton Miller, Michelson, Galaev, Munera and others, to be discussed.
The determinations ofether velocity are straightforward geometry, as shown in Figure 10, to which I can add the following simple maths. The top part ofFigure 10 presumes no ether flow. Ifthe two arms ofthe instrument represent identical distances that two identical-strength swimmers must travel, and with no water motion, they both take an equal amount of time to make their respective trips. If distances A-B and A-Care each 100 meters, and the swimmers can swim veryfast, at 5 meters/sec, then they require 20 seconds to swim out, and 20 to swim back, for a total of40 seconds each. With no ether-flow, or water flow as in this analogy, the times are identical.
With water (or ether) motion as in the lower part of Figure 10, swimmer A-B-A will take less time to make their trip out and back than swimmer A-C-A. Assuming a water flow of3 meters per second from right to left in that diagram, swimmer A-C who swims at 5 meters per second but now facing into a 3 meters/sec current, will make headway towards point C only at 2 meters per second, slowed down considerably. It will now require 50 seconds to cover that 100 meter distance going out. On the return 100 meters, however, their net velocity increases when moving with the current, to 8 meters/sec. The return requires only 12.5 seconds. So their total transit time is 50 + 12.5 seconds, or 62.5 seconds.
Regarding swimmer A-B-A moving at 5 meters/sec, but with a cross-current of 3 meters/sec, we must apply the formula for a righttriangle to obtain the length of the hypotenuse, representing the actual distance A-B-A must travel, in both directions. Regarding the triangle
inset in Figure 10, the formula is: a2 + b2 = c2 . We know the distance
of triangle side a is 100 meters. Side b distance is also known, as follows. It originally took 20 seconds for swimmer A-B to cover that one-way distance. But now with a cross-current of 3 meters/sec, over that 20 seconds the swimmerwould be pushed offcourse by 60 meters, each time going out and returning. We can then insert the values of length into the above equation:
1002 + 602 = 10,000 + 3600 = 13600
49

The Dynamic Ether ofCosmic Space
By solving for c, the hypotenuse (deriving the square root of 13,600), we know the one-way distance the swimmer must travel, compensating for the cross-current, of116.6 meters. While swimming at 5 meters/sec, it requires 23.3 seconds for goingout the 116.6 meters, and another 23.3 seconds for returning, a total of46.6 seconds for A-B-A. The swimmer A-C-A at 62.5 seconds therefore takes more time to make their voyage than A-B-A. This math is true for boats, swimmers, or light waves.
While the values for light speed are much faster, at~300,000 km/sec, and a Michelson-Morley interferometer light path ofonly 22 meters in length, the ether velocity values calculated by them rested upon similar assumptions and methods of calculation. Other factors such as light frequency and the refractive index of glass and mirrors had to be considered, but overall the basics of the experiment were relatively simple and straightforward, even while requiring great skills in optics.
The Michelson-Morley 1887 Experiment
After his 1881 effort, Michelson returned to the USA and received an appointment at the Case School of Applied Science in Cleveland. There he continued with the ether-drift experiments, partnering in 1887 with Edward Morley from nearby Western Reserve University. As in the 1881 experiment, the basic principle was the same, to split a light beam into two parts using a half-silvered mirror, and send the two light beams down two different pathways, at right angles to each other. The relative velocities ofthe two light beams, afterbeing recombined, could again be computed based upon the shifting of interference fringes.
The primary difference between the 1881 and 1887 interferometer was the length of the light path, the latter having a light path of 22 meters. The various optical apparatus ofthe 1887 Michelson-Morley interferometer - light source, mirrors, beam-splitters and focusing telescope - were mounted on a thick slab of sandstone measuring 1.5 meters square, which was then floated in a shallow tank ofdense liquid mercury. This allowed for a relatively smooth and frictionless, vibration-free rotation of the apparatus. During rotation, at specified compass markings on the base, the fringe shifts observed through a small magnifying telescope would be recorded. From those readings offringe shifts, changes in light velocity associated with specific compass orientations of the apparatus were identified.
Other precautions were taken during the measures, which later turned out to be counterproductive to the goal of the experiment,
50

The Positive Results ofMichelson-Morley
actually blocking some percentage of ether flow and reducing the sensitivity of the instrument. For example, to keep out stray light, a heavy wooden cover was placed over the apparatus. To shield it from vibrations and thermal variations, the experiment was conducted in the cornerbasement ofthe massivestone Pierce Hall building, in which the old Case School Physics Department was located.
These physical obstructions-the brick-stone basement location and wood cover, as well as the low altitude of Case School in Cleveland Ohio (199 meters altitude)-would later prove to be critical inhibiting factors in the small but significant results of their 1887 experiment.
Figure 11. Light Paths ofthe Michelson-Morley 1887 lnterferometer, viewed from above. Source (a) generates light which passes through a focussing lens and is then split by a halfsilvered mirror (b). Beams then reflect back and forth over sets of mirrors at the ends of the two cross arms (d) before finally being recombined by the original half-silvered mirror (b) and reflected to a magnifying telescope (t) where one or a few interference fringes are observed. One of the mirrors has an adjustment for initial set-up (e). The light path of this instrument was 22 meters in length, as compared to Michelson's original one-meter interferometer.
51

The Dynamic Ether ofCosmic Space

\ ·--- ..

.' .. ..
>. " ' - ~-~: ~4-::;~.,!>_ _ . ' ..1,L•• _••-. ~4• •--Le~,\, - '•• .

Figure 12. The Michelson-Morley 1887 Interferometer with an approximate 22-meter round-trip light-beam path, mounted on a concrete platform in the basement of the old Case School Physics building (today, Case-Western Reserve University). This interferometer was 22 times more sensitive than the original one-meter Michelson interferometer used in 1881, as previously shown in Figure 9. The 1887 experiment was undertaken over four days only, on July 8, 9, 11 and 12, in a brick-stone basement with a protective wood cover placed over the light-beam paths, which was removed for this photograph and diagram. Such dense material shielding, as Miller showed, slowed down the movement of the ether. Even so, Michelson-Morley reported in their published results an ethervelocity approaching 5 to 7.5 km/sec, and not a "null" or "zero"

52

The Positive Results ofMichelson-Morley
Their overall procedures were somewhat like trying to detect the existence of atmospheric wind by floating a small sailboat within an indoor swimming pool, located in a basement. Whatever ether wind mightbe present, itwas reduced in velocity by the very precautions they took to control for presumably complicating factors.
While secondhand reports on the Michelson-Morley 1887 experiment repeatedly claimed it produced "no results", or a "null" or "zero" effect, this was neverthe case! In their final report on the results oftheir experiment, titled "On the Relative Motion of the Earth and the Luminiferous Ether" and published in the 1887 issue of the American Journal ofScience, Michelson-Morley stated:
"...the displacement [of interference fringes] to be expected was 0.4 fringe. The actual displacement was certainly less than a twentieth part ofthis [0.02 fringe], and probably less than the fortieth part [0.01 fringe]. ...the relative velocity of the earth and the ether is probably less than one-sixth the earth's orbital velocity, and certainly less than one-fourth". (MichelsonMorley 1887 p.281 . Brackets added)
With the Earth's orbital velocity at around 30 km/sec, that one-sixth or one-fourth fraction, of what was "to be expected", would place the measured ether wind maximum at something approaching, or between 5 to 7.5 /an/sec. This was low by the standards of the static-ether expectations of 30 km/sec for Earth's orbital velocity, and even less than the several hundred km/sec anticipated from the Earth-Sun system's motion in a presumed static-ether galaxy. However, it was not "zero", "null", or "no result", especially ifconsidered as an expression ofa partially Earth-entrained cosmic ether, or an active dynamic ether, which moves closer to the Earth's own solar orbital and interstellar velocity. Michelson-Morley also considered that, for reasons ofspatial geometry ofEarth as it orbits the Sun, the measures made by them might have occurred at a seasonal period when the relative velocities between the Earth and ether were at a very low ebb. And so they stated:
"...only the orbital motion of the earth is considered. If this is combined with the motion of the solar system, concerning which but little is known with certainty, the result would have to be modified; and it isjustpossible that the resultant velocity at the time ofthe observations was small though the chances
53

The Dynamic Ether ofCosmic Space
are much against it. The experiment will therefore be repeated at intervals ofthree months, and thus all uncertainty will be avoided. " (Michelson-Morley 1887, p.281. Emphasis added)
Being aware ofthe Foucault and Stokes arguments about a partially or fully entrained ether, or ether-drag effect, they also stated:
"It is obvious from what has gone before that it would be hopeless to attempt to solve the question of the motion of the solar system by observations of optical phenomena at the surface of the earth. But it is not impossible that at even moderate distances above the level ofthe sea, at the top ofan isolatedmountainpeak.for instance, the relative motion might be perceptible in an apparatus like that used in these experiments. Perhaps ifthe experiment should ever be tried in these circumstances, the cover should be of glass, or should be removed." (Michelson-Morley 1887 p.281. Emphasis added)
Unfortunately, the Michelson-Morley team never undertook any further experiments, neither on mountain-tops nor at other seasonal intervals. It is also important to realize that the amount of data they collected in 1887 was quite small, involving only six hours of data collection overfourdays, on July 8, 9, 11 and 12 of 1887, with a grand total of only 36 turns oftheir interferometer.
They conducted the experiment in a dense stone basement location with a wood cover over the apparatus, both ofwhich would slow down the velocity ofany tangible ether ofslight material composition. Their notation about undertaking the experiment again at a higher altitude on a mountain peak and with a glass cover was in fact an admission ofthis possibility, that they might be dealing with a material, matter-interactive and Earth-entrained cosmic ether moving more slowly at lower altitudes.
These facts reveal how the 1887 experiment was preliminary in nature, and hardly what one expects as the foundation for such a major pivotal turning point in the history ofscience. Michelson-Morley knew this, as otherwise, why write so clearly on the necessity ofrepeating the experiment at other seasons, at higher altitudes, and with glass covers?
From our present perspective, these problems in the MichelsonMorley 1887 experimental protocols, along with the relatively short light path ofthe interferometerbeing used, guaranteed only a small (but
54

The Positive Results ofMichelson-Morley

Figure 13. Miller's Review of the Michelson-Morley Data.

" Inthe original account of their experiment,

NOON

Michelson and Morley

give the actual read-

ings for the position of 0.01.

the interference fringes

in the six sets ofobser- OOI
I vations. The upper one ,..0
ofthe two long curves oo,

\ 4<~---

[at right, no arrows],

shows the average of

the three sets of read-

ings taken at noon, and

the lower long curve is

the average for the

three sets taken in the

""P-7 evening. These curves
show the fringe dis- '-0 placements for a full o.o,

r " - _ ......~

turn of the interferom- F1t:. J . Frin1te displacements or the original Mk h~loon•

eter, while the ether-

Morley experiments or 1111<7.

drift effect being sought is periodic in each halftum. To find the

latter effect, the second half of the long curve is superimposed

on the first halfby addition, which cancels the full-period effect

and all odd harmonics, giving the shorter curve which is the

desired half-period effect ... these curves are not of zero value,

nor are the observed points scattered at random; there is a

positive, systematic effect. These full-period curves have been

analyzed by the mechanical harmonic analyzer, which deter-

mines the true value of the half-period effect; this, being

converted into its corresponding value for the velocity of rela-

tive motion of the earth and ether, gives a velocity of 8.8

kilometers per second for the noon observations, and 8.0 kilo-

meters per second for the evening observations." (Miller 1933a,

p.206-207. Most importantly, the lower parts of the two above

graphs, with added identifying arrows, are in close agreement.)

55

The Dynamic Ether ofCosmic Space
never "null") measured result. The result of~5 to 7.5 km/sec was later reviewed and recalculated by Dayton Miller - another Case School professor and associate ofMorley-and found to yield an average etherdrift velocity ofaround 8.4 km/sec. Miller's recalculated velocity was in close agreement with the~I0-11 km/sec maximum ether velocity he would systematically document some 30 years later, using a more robust experimental protocol and a more sensitive interferometer with an even longer light path. Miller also took his instrument high up on Mount Wilson, and ran the experiment over four seasonal epochs, in a small hut with open windows and glass covers at the level of the light path, just as Michelson-Morley had stated as necessary in their 1887 paper. Miller detected an ether-drift signal more clearly and definitively than anyone before or since.
As the history of science records, the original Michelson-Morley 1887 experiment was inaccurately heralded in most every scientific publication and newspaper ofthose days as a "null" or "zero" result. A host of speculations were thereafter stimulated, as to why the ether "could not be detected", in spite ofthefact that it was detected. Their velocity deten11 inations approaching 5 to 7.5 km/sec (18,000 to 27,000 km per how), is a considerable percentage of the general escape velocity ofspace rockets (~1I km/sec), as needed to reach full Earth orbit! That itself is quite a fantastic speed, an order of magnitude greater than the Earth 's speed ofaxial rotation, and about 20% ofthe Earth's orbital velocity around the Sun. Using Miller's 1933 revised analysis for the Michelson-Morley data, his average of 8.4 km/sec works out to be an even greater velocity.
The ether velocity detected by Michelson-Morley was never "null" nor inconsequential.
Michelson-Morley admitted their 1887 experiment to be only a first step of investigating the ether subject with the new method of lightbeam interferometry. It was nevertheless greeted as a "defining negative result" in many quarters, with a chronic misrepresentation of"nullzero". How was it that only six hours ofdata collection on four days in 1887 was considered sufficiently robust for the majority ofscientistsparticularly the physics Mandarins in Europe-to push for and embrace the subsequent radical shifts in theory which dominated later 20th and early 21st Century conceptions of the universe?
56

The FitzGerald-Lorentz Theory and Morley-Miller Experiments
"Strictly speaking, the condensation [ofether] must be still more considerable than the value we have found to be necessary. Ifthe ether be attracted by the earth, it is natural to suppose that it is acted on likewise by the sun; thus the earth will describe its orbit in a space in which the ether is already condensed. In this dense ether, the earth must produce a new condensation." - Heinrik Lorentz 1899, p.446.
The years before the Michelson-Morley experiment of 1887 were characterized by a scientific discourse on the nature and properties of the ether, and its role in the properties oflight and space. Nearly all had accepted the ether theory for most of their professional lives, and also accepted the wave theory oflight, which demanded such a medium for light-wave transmission. Disagreements persisted onjust what kind of ether might actually exist. Into that discussion came the 1887 result, variously described as "null" or "zero", but which as pointed out in the last chapter was a substantial quantity. A significant ether-wind velocity was recorded, ofup to 5 to 7.5 km/sec by Michelson-Morley's own statements, or an average of ~8.4 km/sec as their data was later recalculated by Miller in 1933, using a new theory and understanding about Earth's net motion in space. The Michelson-Morley result was too small to accommodate the static ether of Newton, but it was significant and sufficient enough to warrant further investigation along the lines ofa partially entrained ether-drag effect. Such an ether drag would by definition reduce the conventionally (at that time) "expected" velocity close to the surface of the Earth.
A trend was also set into motion following a new theory of"matter contraction", to dismiss the Michelson-Morley result as purely "null", and to explain away the cosmic ether itself, as ifit were a nuisance. And
57

The Dynamic Ether ofCosmic Space

ifone could find a way to reject the ether, then the wave-theory oflight could also be more easily rejected. The claimed but factually nonexistent "null result" led even those physicists and astronomers who embraced the wave-theory of light, and the luminiferous ether, towards self-doubt, and into rather ad-hoc mystical postulates.

FitzGerald and Lorentz Ignore the Positive Results of Michelson-Morley, and Postulate "Ether-Matter Compression"

In 1889, the Scottish physicist George

FitzGerald published a letter in Sciencejournal,

asserting the "absence" ofa positive result from

the Michelson-Morley experiment, speculating

that molecular forces within matter might be

influenced by a current of moving ether. He

postulated a tiny but significant shortening or

compression of matter in the same direction as

the ether wind, in proportion to its velocity.

FitzGerald retained the ether concept, but argued for a theoretical "matter-compression", rendering the etherundetectablebyMichelson's

FitzGerald (1851-1901)

interferometric methods. This compression could, he imagined, con-

tract the interferometer arm aiming into the ether wind, just enough to

reduce and equalize the light velocity variance between it and the

perpendicular arm of the instrument. His rejection of any small result

from Michelson-Morley was partly founded upon Newtonian static-

ether concepts, and also upon the proposition that the cosmic ether had

certain electrical properties which could interact with matter at the

atomic level. The electrical postulate was reasonable, but rejection of

the actual results of Michelson-Morley was not.

In an 1889 article in Science, "The Ether and the Earth's Atmo-

sphere", FitzGerald wrote:

"I haveread with much interest Messrs Michelson andMorley's wonderfully delicate experiment attempting to decide the important question as to how far the ether is carriedalong by the Earth. Their result seems opposed to other experiments showing that the ether in the air can be carried along only to an inappreciable extent. I would suggest that almost the only hypothesis that could reconcile this opposition is that the

58

FitzGerald-Lorentz and Morley-Miller

lengths of material bodies changes, according as they are moving through the ether or across it, by an amount depending on the square of the ratio of their velocities to that of light." (FitzGerald, Science, 1889)

FitzGerald frequently lectured on this sub-

ject, which was also considered in a March 1892

lecture by SirOIiver Lodge to the Royal Society

("Aberration Problems and New Ether Experi-

ments"), laterpublished in PhilosophicalMaga-

zine in 1894. However, neither man provided or

even suggested new experiments by which to

test out the "ether-matter compression" postu-

late. No arguments or evidence was provided as

to why the slight positive results actually mea- Oliver Lodge

sured by Michelson-Morley should be so casu-

(1851-1940)

ally ignored. FitzGerald's ideas nevertheless

attracted attention in how a (wrongly) presumed negative result from

the Michelson-Morley experiment could be understood within the

context of static-ether theory. Somehow, motion through the ether

would compress matterexactly (and conveniently) enough to render the

ether undetectable. FitzGerald was rewarded for his efforts with an

appointment to the Royal Society in the following year.

John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh,

better known as Lord Rayleigh, a decorated

British member ofthe Royal Society since 1873

(and later President of it), weighed into this

discussion in an 1892 article in Nature. He

expressed reservations about the Michelson-

Morley results, and concerns about how a fully

stagnant entrained cosmic ether of the Stokes

variety-which predicted a stagnant, unmoving

ether at the Earth's surface-would affect cur-

rent theories of stellar aberration. However, Rayleigh disagreed with FitzGerald, and argued for continued ether experimentation with

Rayleigh (1842-1919)

the interferometer, much as Michelson-Morley

stated in 1887 as necessary:

59

The Dynamic Ether ofCosmic Space
" ...Michelson's results can hardly be regarded as weighing heavily in the scale. It is much to be wished that the experiments should be repeated with such improvements as experience suggests. In observations spread over a year, the effects, ifany, due to earth's motion in its orbit, and to that of the solar system through space, would be separated." (Rayleigh 1892)

In 1893, Stokes published a pamphlet, The Luminiferous Aether,

reiterating his fully-dragged theory of a stagnant ether as the best

explanation for the claimed poor results ofMichelson-Morley. He also

indicated the cosmic ether theory would retain validity if it could be

considered as something more material and substantive in nature.

However, in nearly every case, the small positive results of the Mich-

elson-Morley experiment were being erased or misrepresented as

"null" and insignificant. Starting in 1895, the Dutch physicist Heinrik
Antoon Lorentz also lectured and published papers addressing the claimed "negative result" ofthe Michelson-Morley experiment, and exploring the issue ofether-matter contraction.

t l+l. ;" .tl'¾ifR.tftXt ~ ~ ~

;'·: .•f

~. ~ -I

·: i'

~ • ~?.· -~ .".f\. 1/ '. .

•• "\ J -~-·'-t·-.

- _....., ,..., 'l

-:;--~

Nevertheless, in his 1899 publication on the

subject, "Stoke's Theory of Aberration in the
Suppositionofa Variable Density ofthe Aether",

-~

.

• •

'

Lorentz wrote in full support of a substantive

cosmic ether, clearly contradicting the ether- ~ ~ ~ ~ - - '<( •'.,, ·

contraction theory. He postulated a gaseous

Lorentz

material ether that obeyed Boyle's law, and

(1853-1928)

Newton's early ideas on ether condensation

around matter. He contrasted the Stokes theory of a fully-entrained

ether carried along at the same velocity as the rotating Earth's surface,

to the Fresnel theory of a variable-density and partly entrained ether.

Lorentz's thinking of this period were fully supporting of the cosmic

ether, with open questions remaining only about its properties, and the

extent to which it permeated and surrounded matter- as with the quote

at the top of this chapter.

Lorentz pointed out how Stoke's version ofan ether, which would

become entrained as it moved down to the Earth's and the Sun's

surface, must slowly condense and increase in density, eventually to be

carried along at the same velocity as their surfaces. From Stokes, one

could anticipate a zero result from any interferometer experiment

60

FitzGerald-Lorentz and Morley-Miller
undertaken at the Earth's sea-level. In the end, Lorentz came down on the side of Fresnel, for a partially entrained ether, which would allow for its variable condensation and detection, with a higher ether velocity at higher altitudes. Lorentz' discussion suggested a dynamic ether in motion towards the planets and Sun, condensing around them into distinct layers, which suggests a vortex motion surrounding planets and the Sun, as already argued in Figure 4, given in the Introduction.
Nevertheless, Lorentz would neither accept nor even mention the actual result obtained in the Michelson-Morley experiment, the ~5 to 7.5 km/sec ether drift, as anything other than a fully "null" result. He could not let go of his static-ether bias, that their lesser positive result was meaningful. In the end, Lorentz also embraced the mystified "solution", of a never-demonstrated ether-matter contraction, similar to that of FitzGerald.
1898: Morley and Miller, Investigation of Matter Contraction and Ether Drift.
From the time of their original 1887 experiment to the turn of the new century, Michelson and Morley published nothing of "· significance on the ether-drift question. In t!;,1888 Michelson published"A Plea for LightWaves" in the Proceedings of the AAAS, wherein the "luminiferous ether" was mentioned, but nothing was said about his 1887 ether-drift experiment. By contrast, Morley Dayton Miller, c.1900 teamed up with the younger Dayton Miller in a series of new optical and ether experiments. While these new experiments would eventually yield positive ether-drift detections, their own published papers ofthe period relied upon a-priori assumptions about the Earth's net motion in space which proved to be inaccurate, but which were corrected only some years later by Miller. This led them to initially reportpessimistically on their own results. The delay in the more accurate reporting of their measured results was historically critical, given how the advocates of the ether-matter contraction theory continued to advance their formularies to the point of dogmatic entrenchment, leading everyone, including the young Einstein, to further wrongly assume the ether had not been detected.
61

The Dynamic Ether ofCosmic Space
Figure 14. The Morley-Miller 1898 Experiment for Magnetic Influence upon Light Speed, set in a basement room of Pierce Hall at Case School. This was the same location where the 1887 Michelson-Morley experiment had been conducted. Large batteries are seen on the right-side table, with connecting wires to an electromagnetic coil on the left-side table, through which one of two light beams passed, en route towards an optical interferometer. No differences were observed when the electromagnet around one light beam was activated, versus when it was off. It was a failed effort to detect variation in light speed due to strong magnetism. The team ofMorley-Miller would eventually build the largest, most sensitive light-beam interferometer ever constructed, and make significant detection of both ether wind and light-speed variations. In their early efforts, however, they mostly confined their investigation towards detection ofthe postulated FitzGerald-Lorentz contraction, ofa slight compression ofmatter along its axis of motion. In 1889, for their first joint endeavor, Morley-Miller constructed a stationary interferometer, using some of the original optical components from the 1887 Michelson-Morley experiment, to evaluate the effects ofstrong magnetism on lightvelocity. Their experiment was set up in the same basement-comer room where the Michelson-Morley experiment had been undertaken, in Pierce Hall at Case School, at 199 meters above sea level. This experiment indicated no significant 62

FitzGerald-Lorentz and Morley-Miller
changes due to a light beam's passing through the static field ofa strong electromagnet. They published their results in two 1898 reports, in both Physical Review and the Proceedings ofthe American Associationfor the Advancement ofScience (AAAS), "On the Velocity ofLight in the Magnetic Field".
Three years later in 1902, Lord Rayleigh tried but failed to detect ether-matter contraction in crystals, by changes in their refractive and polarization properties: "Does Motion through the Aether cause Double Refraction?" Another effort was undertaken by D. B. Brace in 1904, "On Double Refraction in Matter moving through the Aether". Like Rayleigh, Brace also did not detect any ether-matter contraction.
A related experiment was undertaken in 1903 by Fredrick Trouton and H.R. Noble, seeking to identify a preferred direction of ether flow in the rotational orientation of a 3000-volt charged parallel-plate capacitor, as suspended in a glass tube. Theirpaper "The Forces Acting on a Charged Condenser moving through Space" was published in the Proceedings ofthe RoyalSociety ofLondon the following year, wherein they reported a negative result. By theory, the capacitor was anticipated to rotate in perpendicular alignment to the ether flow.
A few years later, Trouton and A.O. Rankine sought to detect a change in electrical resistance within a conductor oriented parallel versus perpendicular to the ether flow, as a function of its presumed change in length. To evaluate for such an influence, they constructed an ordinary Wheatstone bridge circuit, where four wire-coils were laid out in perpendicular pairs, forming a box-shape. By rotating the Wheatstone bridge circuit, two of the coils would theoretically be brought into parallel alignment with the ether flow, while the other two would automatically be perpendicular to that flow. Rotating the coil by another 90° would then reverse whatever small current might be detected. This experiment, published as "On the Electrical Resistance of Moving Matter", in the February 1908 issue of the Proceedings, Royal Society ofLondon, also produced a negative result.
Both of the Trouton papers were brilliant in conception, but by modem standards lacked in proper electronics by which to detect or respond to the effects anticipated. And in both experiments, it would not have proven out an ether-flowcontraction, but only that a moving ether had some dielectrical, electrical and/or magnetic properties. That was certainly a reasonable speculation. Two other problems afflicted their experiments. Firstly, in both cases of Trouton-Noble and TroutonRankine, their apparatus was enclosed in a metallic or wood container,
63

The Dynamic Ether ofCosmic Space
and apparently placed within a structure in low-elevation London. So whatever the velocity ofether flow was at that location, it would have been predictably low, and additionally blocked by buildings and experimental enclosures.
All these and other experiment had a direct bearing upon the postulated FitzGerald-Lorentz contraction, as none had so far shown any kind of matter-contraction effect. And none ever would.
1900-1906: Morley-Miller Reproduce Michelson-Morley, with Positive Results
While all these failed experiments for detection of a FitzGeraldLorentz "matter contraction" were underway, Morley and Miller again took up the subject of the basic ether-drift measurements. They had been persuaded to undertake a repetition of the Michelson-Morley experiment by Lord Kelvin, then leader ofthe influential British Royal Society, while attending the Paris International Exposition of 1900.
Their new experimental efforts began with construction ofa rotating cross-arm interferometer similar to the original one used by MichelsonMorley, laid out in the manner ofan "X", but in this case on a wooden foundation ofwhite-pine planks. Flat iron plates were then bolted to the top center and ends oftbe wood planks for securing mirrors and other optical components. A round wooden float was added to the bottom center of the wood "X", by which the entire apparatus could float in a round tub filled with dense liquid mercury. This would allow for a smooth slow rotation. A light source and magnifying telescope to view the interference fringes were also mounted on the platform.
Figure 15 shows a top view ofthe setup, identical in function to the original 1887 experiment, but much larger, measuring 4.3 meters across. This would allow a bouncing ofthe light beams back and forth 16 times (8 times out, 8 times back) using clusters offour mirrors at the end of each interferometer arm. The two-way round-trip light beam path in the new instrument, of64 meters, exceeded by nearly three times the original Michelson-Morley 1.5 meter platform with a 22-meter round-trip light path. The wood platform was chosen as a contrast to the original sandstone platform of the Michelson-Morley 1887 experiment, on the premise that ifan ether-mattercontraction existed, it might show up more clearly in soft pine wood than in sandstone.
With this new and more sensitive interferometer, they set out to investigate two major issues. Firstly they would try to improve upon the
64

FitzGerald-Lorentz and Morley-Miller
original ether-drift experiment of Michelson-Morley. Secondly they would try once more to detect a FitzGerald-Lorentz matter contraction, The experiments of Morley-Miller and their results were initially described in two publications from 1905, "Report ofan Experiment to Detect the FitzGerald-Lorentz Effect", published in ProceedingsAAAS, and "On the Theory ofExperiments to detect Aberrations ofthe Second Degree", appearing in Philosophical Magazine. They wrote:
"Such a [FitzGerald-Lorentz] contraction can be imagined in two ways. It may be thought to be independent ofthe physical properties of the solid and governed only by geometrical conditions; so that sandstone and pine, if of the same form, should be affected in the same ratio. On the other hand, the contraction may depend upon the physical properties of the solid; so that pine-timber would doubtless suffer a greater compression than sandstone." (Morley-Miller, May 1905, p.66)
Figure 15. The Morley-Miller Wood Interferometer, composed ofmultiple cross-planks ofsoftpine wood, measuring4.3 meters in length. No photo of this early wood interferometer was found, and it had to be abandoned within a month ofuse due to warping from steam-heat in the basement location. A steel base was substituted thereafter, as seen in the Figure 16 photos.
65

The Dynamic Ether ofCosmic Space
Proceeding from that theory, the new interferometer was set up in the same comer basement location where the original MichelsonMorley experiment, and their own prior magnetic-field investigation had been undertaken. Some of the same optics, such as mirrors, were recycled from the Michelson-Morley apparatus, as was the wood float and tank ofmercury. Construction ofthe new interferometerand setting it up for stable measurements required more than a year, with experiments starting in August 1902.
While their initial results with the pine beam platform in August of that year provided for "good observations", the steam heat used in the basement location warped the wooden optical platform, requiring a rebuilding ofthe apparatus before further testing could proceed. For the rebuild, they used steel beam cross-arm supports. The steel beams, once constructed, were independently tested for any kind oflength variation due to the Earth's magnetic field; none could be detected.
The rebuilt optical platform was ofthe same light-path length as the prior wood apparatus. Pre-dried pine-wood boards were laid down on top of the steel beams, with a brass tube/truss framework mounted on top ofthe wood boards. Four pine-wood rods were then placed inside the four long brass tubes forming each truss, whereupon the protruding ends of the pine rods were attached to the mirror supports. By this arrangement, any change in the length ofthe pine rods would determine the spacing between the groups of interferometer mirrors, of which there were four at each end of the cross-arm beams. Photographs accompanying their 1905 article in the Proceedings AAAS show the setup, including one where a pine-wood cover was temporarily placed around the light path, in agreement with the original Michelson-Morley experiment. By this method, the problem ofwood warping was eliminated. Figure 16 presents these photos.
The total light path of the 64-meter interferometer yielded ~112
million independent light waves, which in turn produced interference fringes easily visible in the interferometer telescope, with a fine resolution down to tenths or hundredths of an individual fringe's motion against a fixed marker in the telescope field.
Their experiment resumed in June 1903, using the same basement location in Pierce Hall at Case School, close to the same monthly period as Michelson-Morley had been undertaken, with a new set of optical mirrors added to their instrument. Once again they could compare the results of their rebuilt pine-rod interferometer to the results from the 1887 sandstone-base interferometer of Michelson-Morley. They ran
66

FitzGerald-Lorentz and Morley-Miller

.-

-

-

-

.

;
~

I

Figure 16. The Morley-Miller 64-meter Steel Interferometer, in a basement room ofPierce Hall at Case School, c.1904. Top: A brass-tube and wood-rod truss framework connects the opposing mirrors, used for both ether-drift and FitzGerald-Lorentz contraction tests. Below: The light paths are covered in wood, as in the original 1887 Michelson-Morley experiment.

67

The Dynamic Ether ofCosmic Space
the experiment twice per day, around noontime and midnight, similar to the original Michelson-Morley experiment, but with many more turns of their new interferometer. Any persisting ether-drift signal, even at a similar low velocity as obtained by Michelson-Morley, would refute the Fitzgerald-Lorentz ether-matter contraction theory and confirm a real ether drift.
After completion ofseveral years ofexperiments in the basement of Pierce Hall, Morley-Miller gave a lecture summarizing their work up through 1904 to a New York meeting of the National Academy of Sciences: "Report of an Experiment to Detect the FitzGerald-Lorentz Effect". This report was published a year later in the Proceedings ofthe American Academy ofArts and Sciences .They reported no evidence of ether-matter contraction, but a slight positive result for an ether-drift.
"Ifpine is affected at all, it is affected to the same amount as is sandstone. If the ether near the apparatus did not move with it, the difference in velocity was less than 3.5 kilometers a second, unless the [ether-matter contraction] effect on the materials annulled the effect sought. Some have thought that the former experiment only proved that the ether in a certain basementroom was carried along with it. We desire to place the apparatus on a hill, covered only with a transparent covering, to see if an effect could be there detected." (Morley-Miller Proc.AAAS, 1905, p.685. Emphasis in original)
Here, Morley-Miller reported similar but slightly lower results than the Michelson-Morley 1887 experiment, a positive ether-drift result which refuted the FitzGerald-Lorentz contraction the01y. That theory onlymadesense in the context ofa truly null orzero ether-drift velocity, which was not the case in either the Michelson-Morley or MorleyMiller experiments. In the last part of the above quote, Morley-Miller also repeated the basic problem known since 1887, that running the ether-drift experiments at low elevations or in the basement room ofa stone building, was likely to block any significant flow of a cosmic ether with material properties, and thereby give very reduced results. Nevertheless, these early experiments by Morley-Miller produced light-speed variations approaching ~3.5 Ion/sec.
68

FitzGerald-Lorentz and Morley-Miller
Euclid Heights: Significant Success but Computational Error
Morley-Miller resumed working through summer and fall of 1905, when the steel and wood-rod interferometerwas moved into an octagonal hut on nearby Euclid Heights in Cleveland, at an altitude of 285 meters. This was about 100 meters higher than the prior efforts in the Pierce Hall basement, and away from all the stone buildings ofthe Case School campus. Glass panels were placed over the light-beam paths, which previously had been covered with opaque wood covers for temperature stability, much in the manner of the original MichelsonMorley experiment. Transparent eisenglass windows were also constructed in the hut, at the level ofthe interferometer light beams, so as to avoid any possible blockage ofether motion, on the assumption that ether would move more easily through transparent than opaque materials. A total of230 turns ofthe interferometer were made at Euclid Heights in 1905, yielding an 8. 7 Ian/sec result.
Miller's major paper of1933 (p.215-217) gives the best account of the Morley-Miller experiments from August of 1902 through November of 1905. Over this period they conducted 995 turns of the interferometer, nearly 28 times as many as the 36 turns Michelson-Morley undertook. And like Michelson-Morley, a slight ether-drift signal was obtained, but ofa highervelocity. In his 1933 review ofthe entire range of Morley-Miller experiments, Miller reported an average ether drift signal of ~9.2 km/sec, a positive confirmation for ether drift effects upon light speed. By contrast, the Morley-Miller efforts produced no confirmationfor an ether-matter contraction, on the theory ofFitzGerald-Lorentz. That was not surprising, given how the entire "contraction theory" was based upon the false assumption of a "null" result.
One ofthe problems exposed in the Morley-Miller experiments was the absence ofa systematic method for data collection, often restricting their observations to a twice-daily routine, based upon theoretical expectations of a maximal ether-wind at those times. This led to a significant computational error. When data were correlated, relatively strong signals often occurred, but of opposing sign, plus or minus, which when averaged would cancel each other out to yield a much lower average value. (Miller 1933a, p.217) Figure 17, below, shows Miller's graph on this early method, about which he wrote in 1933 as "considerederroneous". Forsuch reasons, including the early problems with the wood-base interferometer, the original 1905 reports published
69

The Dynamic Ether ofCosmic Space
by Morley-Miller revealed primarily very small ether velocity values, or their results were reported in purely negative terms. Their 1905 publications were mostly devoted to the failure to identify the elusive "matter contraction" of FitzGerald-Lorentz. They also wrote many pages in 1905 in rebuttal to W.M. Hicks, who in 1902 had raised criticisms against the overall Michelson interferometer methodology, rejecting the Michelson-Morley results. After being rebutted, Hicks retracted his paper. However, as an advocate ofan ether-vortex theory, he correctly pointed out how the vertical components ofa presumably gravitational ether might not fully register on a horizontal interferometer. That issue remained important, nevertheless.
As Miller later explained it, the Morley-Miller experiments had been founded upon certain a priori assumptions which had not previously been questioned. In 1928 and 1933, he explained it thus:
"On the dates chosen for the observations there were two times of the day when the resultant ofthese motions would lie in the plane of the interferometer, about 11 :30 A.M. and 9:00 P.M. The calculated azimuths of the motion would be different for these two times. The observations at these two times were,
o.o~ A.M.
Figure 17. Morley-Miller 1905 Error in Computations, showing how a real ether-drift signal was being recorded (top), but cancelled out to near zero in the data computations (Bottom). This error was corrected by Miller with a reanalysis of ether velocities, but published only in 1933a. (p.217)
70

FitzGerald-Lorentz and Morley-Miller
therefore, combined in such a way that the presumed azimuth for the morning observations coincided with that for the evening. The observations for the two times ofday gave results having positive magnitudes but nearly opposite phases; when these were combined, the result was nearly zero. The result, therefore, was opposed to the theory then underconsideration... itnow seems thatthe superposition ofthe two setsofobservations of different phases was based upon an erroneous hypothesis and that the positive results then obtained are in accordance with a new hypothesis as to the solar motion." (Miller 1928 p.353)
"Previous to 1925, the Michelson-Morley experiment had always been applied to test a specific hypothesis. The only theory of the ether which had been put to the test is that of the absolutely stationary ether through which the earth moves without in any way disturbing it. To this hypothesis the experiment gave a negative answer. The experiment was applied to test the question only in connection with specific assumed motions of the earth, namely, the axial and orbital motions combined with a constant motion of the solar system towards the constellation Hercules with the velocity of about nineteen kilometers per second. The results ofthe experiments did not agree with these presumed motions. The attention was given almost wholly to this velocity of the ether drift, and no attempt was ever made to determine the apex ofany indicated motion. The experiment was applied to test the LorentzFitzGerald hypothesis that the dimensions ofbodies are changed by their motions through the ether; it was applied to test the effects ofmagnetostriction, ofradiant heat and ofgravitational deformation ofthe frame ofthe interferometer. Throughout all these observations extending over a period ofyears, while the answers to the various questions have been "no," there has persisted a constant and consistent small effect which has not been explained." (Miller 1933a p.222)
The revisions reported by Miller in 1928 and 1933, included in Table 1, are in association with the new theoretical understanding. Unfortunately, Miller's recalculations didn't become public until those later dates. Miller seems to have been the more persistent member of the
71

The Dynamic Ether ofCosmic Space
Morley-Miller team. As the senior scientist of the pair, Morley might have been the one who wrote the more pessimistic reports of 1905, and applied the wrong theory ofcalculation in the first place. This remains
unclear. However, it was certain that Miller was the one who caught
and corrected the errors, and later went on over many years to investigate the ether-drift question in a more robust experimental effort, with a more systematic method of data collection.
Regarding theircalculation error, we can visualize the problem they faced by comparing the horizontal interferometer to a wind-speed anemometer. It can detect atmospheric wind velocity best when exposed to a horizontal wind. When an ether wind blew horizontally across the cross-arms of the ether-wind detector (the interferometer), strong interference fringes would appear in line with its highest velocity. But unlike a person holding an anemometer, who can feel the atmospheric wind, one could not feel or otherwise determine the direction the ether wind was blowing. In another example, if the ether wind blew down on our heads from directly above, downwards and penetrating into the Earth, our horizontal interferometer would measurenothing, no ether wind, a big zero or null, even ifthat vertical etherwind was "blowing" at 100,000 km/sec. It also follows, as a third example, that ifa 10 km/sec ether-wind descended downwards at a 45° angle, obliquely from above, then the horizontal "anemometer interferometer" would measure a slower velocity, around 7 km/sec as com-

Table 1: Summary of the Morley-Miller Experiments

(Data recomputed by Miller in 1933a)

Experimenters

Number Measured

and Dates

ofTums Ether Velocity

Michelson-Morley

July 1887

36 ~5-7.5 km/sec

Morley-Miller

- Pierce Hall

Aug.1902 &

June-Sept.1903 505 ~ 10 km/sec

July 1904

260 ~ 7.5 km/sec

Morley-Miller

- Euclid Heights

Jul.Oct.Nov.1905 230 ~ 8.7 km/sec

Totals and Averages

for Morley-Miller:

995 ~9.2 km/sec

72

FitzGerald-Lorentz and Morley-Miller

pared to a fully horizontal 10 km/sec ether-wind.3 That being the case,

how could the net velocity and true axis of that ether wind be deter-

mined, ifyou did not already have a reasonable idea of its direction, to

determine the best times for measuring?

A simple solution was found and applied by Miller in his later work

on the ether-drift question, by running experiments every hour over the

full 24 hours of many sequential days, repeating this procedure at

several other times ofthe year. One could then know the orientation of

the interferometer for getting both the strongest and the weakest ether-

wind. As Miller stated, all preconceptions had to be abandoned. Only much later, after 1920, did Miller independently take such a systematic

jJ

approach. Those later systematic observations allowed for a better

~

determination and theory ofthe Earth's net motion in the cosmos. And from that, he was able to reconsider, analyze and recompute the ether

~,

velocities for the older Morley-Miller experiments. Clearly, a positive

~

result for a real ether drift or wind was detected by Morley-Miller.

Figures 17 and 18, and Table 1 give a summary of the various ether

velocities and azimuths, as compared to Miller's independent post-

1920 results, to be presented in the next chapter.

The Morley-Miller 1905 experiments endedwhen the Euclid Heights

research location had to be abandoned. The property had been sold, and

the new land owner asked for the interferometer and its house to be

moved away. The large interferometer was then placed in storage, and

the octagonal interferometer hut became a hot dog stand at football

games, for the students at Case School.

Morley retired from Western Reserve University in 1906, moving to

Connecticut, leaving Miller to pursue the question of cosmic ether

independently. Nevertheless, had no further ether drift detections been

made, the Morley-Miller experiments by themselves incorporated 995

turns of an increasingly sensitive interferometer design, with a cor-

rected average ether velocity of around 9.2 km/sec. This result clearly

confirmed light-speed variations, andalso in theprocessfailed to show

any indications/or the never-demonstrated FitzGerald-Lorentz "con-

traction". It also laid a foundation by which one of Einstein's central

assumptions, of light-speed constancy, was proven incorrect.

Nevertheless, the computational error in the Morley-Miller data as

published in 1905 left them vulnerable to criticism by their opposition,

who also continued to misrepresent the slightpositive results ofboth the

3. An ether wind of 10 km/sec divided by v2, based upon the formula for a righttriangle hypotenuse.

73

The Dynamic Ether ofCosmic Space
Michelson-Morley and Morley-Miller experiments. In a 1904 paper, Lorentz persisted with the untrue "null" interpretation of MichelsonMorley. He wrote, for example:
''Michelson's well-known interference-experiment, the negative result of which has led Fitz Gerald and myself to the conclusion that the dimensions of solid bodies are slightly altered by their motion through the aether." (Lorentz 1904)
Lacking restraint of a real-world mechanism for transmission of light, and logical understandings of light-speed variation, Lorentz' 1904 publication went further into ad-hoc mysticism, conjuring up new properties for light and ether which also had no basis in experimental or empirical fact. He artificially separated light and ether into different "frames of reference", something possible only as a "thought experiment", happening inside his head, butnot in the real world. He invented "time dilation" and other imaginings out of thin air, supported merely by mathematical formulations and theoretical necessities. Lorentz also split apart the once unified optical, gravitational and temporal functions as they occurred within the real natural world in ordinary Galilean/ Cartesian space and time. Gone were his prior references to the Stokes-Fresnel debate, about a fully or partially dragged ether. Gone were discussions about ether condensation and increased density around the planets and Sun, giving rise to aberration, refraction and gravitational effects. Lorentz offered no new experiments to confirm or test his post-1904 conclusions of an ether-compressed matter, nor for the other surreal add-ons to the original FitzGerald theory. Cosmic ether and ether-motion were forbidden entry into such a nether-world, as were light waves.
All those components ofLorentz' imaginary universe would later appear in Albert Einstein's 1905 equally imaginary special theory of relativity, to be discussed in a later chapter. Both Lorentz and Einstein continued to ignore what was actually stated in the 1887 MichelsonMorleypaper, which clearly identified an ether-drift velocity and lightspeed variance approaching 5 to 7.5 km/sec, as well as the initial Morley-Miller miscalculated low estimate ofa 3.5 km/sec velocity.
The originally reported 1905 Morley-Miller small and miscalculated results were surely disappointing, but one must compare the utter and complete rejection ofthat result, along with the Michelson-Morley result, to the laterquick and easy-happy embrace ofve,y tiny quantities
74

FitzGerald-Lorentz and Morley-Miller

t Sidereal Time - Hours

0

6

12

••

24

0 MtCHt.LSON AND HOQL.f'Y 1807 B MOfn.tY ANO MILLUl 1tOl

11), MOQUY AMO ,.._La I ~
a. ~ y NC) MLI.U · ~

Figure 18. Miller's 1933 Graph of Ether Drift Measures (1933a, p.207), ofMichelson-Morley 1887 and Morley-Miller from 1902 through 1905, compared to the curved line of Miller's later and more exact detenninations of 1925 (discussed in the next chapter).

Miller's 1905 Interferometer Hut on Cleveland Heights Obstructions were removed at the level of the light beams.
75

The Dynamic Ether ofCosmic Space
ofobserved starlight bending during solar eclipses, and ofshifts in the perihelion ofMercury, which were subjected to immense international media hype, in support of the Einstein theory. That will be discussed more thoroughly in the chapter on Einstein Rising.
Miller's recomputed determination ofthe Morley-Miller results was actually better than Michelson-Morley, with a 9.2 km/sec ether velocity, more than 33,120 km per hour (20,580 mph). That is even closer to the general escape velocity ofspace rockets to achieve Earth orbit (~11 km/sec), and about a third ofthe Earth's orbital velocity around the Sun. These understandings came too late for influence upon the scientific world of l 905, but certainly the obfuscation and discarding of Miller's results after the 1920s was not so easy to excuse or explain, except as a dogmatic insistence by Einstein and his followers, favoring mystical theory over empirical experimental determinations.
Miller's recomputations of 1928 and 1933 would also be accompanied by even more powerful direct and highly significant observational data from Mount Wilson. And yet, in those later years, the interest in those findings by Lorentz and Einstein continued to be "null". With the exceptions of a few worried statements from Einstein, the growing evidence for a real ether drift and variable light speed continued to be ignored and erased from mention in their published papers.
Another factor: As I reviewed their publications and biographies, after 1905 Michelson, Morley and Miller all appeared somewhat intimidated by how so much of the "Royal Society" of European highbrow physics ignored or down-put their findings. There was a strong emotional component to the growing scientific embrace of the never-proven mystic postulates of FitzGerald-Lorentz and Einstein. Within a few years after 1905, physics on both sides of the Atlantic would engage in an "emotional-drift" towards the speculative mystical Einstein theory of relativity, ultimately to become a stampede. Even Michelson occasionallybegan to use the "null" term to describe his own 1887 experimental results and to ignore some ofhis own newer data on light-speed variance, discussed in the following chapters. The 1905 publications of Morley-Miller also lapsed into such depressive "null" language, though I continue to wonder if the senior scientist of that team, Morley, had steered their published statements in that direction. Were they yielding to peer-pressure? It appears so.
Another fact: The Morley-Miller and later Miller experiments proceeded rather slowly and carefully, often understating their results in a cautious scientific attitude. Perhaps too cautiously. This contrasted
76

FitzGerald-Lorentz and Morley-Miller
sharply with the European quick and simplistic flights of fancy about unseen and never-demonstrated "matter contractions" and "space-time warps", which remained purely theoretical. Their mystic and entirely speculative theories were quickly published in top research journals controlled by their colleagues, where their quasi-Royal status appeared to outweigh any demands for experimental proof, or slow-going caution. Their ideas were widely discussed in serious tones, with "elegant maths" that always balanced out, even though experimental proofor evidence was rarely offered to give substance to their postulates. Meanwhile the ether wind or drift experiments were simply brushed aside and gradually subjected to erasure and silent treatment. MorleyMiller did make computational errors, which Miller corrected, but for which history discarded their work like road trash. Bycontrast, Einstein also made errors needing significant public correction, but afterwards gained even greater applause. A battle between the experimentalists and the theoreticians was shaping up.
The next chapter will present Miller's substantial and more definitive, independent work on the ether-drift question, notably as carried out atop Mount Wilson. Part II will provide details on Einstein's work, along with contrary evidence about the claimed "experimental proofs" offered in support of his theory of relativity. As I will show, those experiments are not unequivocal, and are just as easily, or more easily understood as the product ofa partially entrained and variable density, motional-gravitational cosmic ether.
At this point in history, a centrally-important question originally raised by Michelson-Morley in their 1887 report, reiterated by Lord Kelvin in 1900, remained unanswered and untested. What would the result be if such a sensitive interferometer was taken high up on a mountain, where ether-drag effects would be minimized, and ether wind maximized, and with data gathered over different seasons ofthe year?
After the ending ofthe Morley-Miller investigations in 1905, Miller lacked funds and support to undertake more ambitious projects, as bad been planned. He instead turned to other research, mostly in acoustical science. World War 1 also intervened and disrupted cross-Atlantic scientific debates. The ether-drift questions were put aside. A master ofacoustical theory, and expert on the flute, with a growing collection offlutes from around the world, Miller investigated the subject oftone quality, and invented the phonodeik, the first apparatus to convert sound waves into visual images. He also developed a special hannonic
77

The Dynamic Ether ofCosmic Space
analyzer to extract individual oscillating signals from apparently chaotic "noise". Additionally he contributed to development ofthe microphone and loud speaker, consulting with private manufacturers. During the war years, Miller worked with the military on the problem ofshellshock. Some 16 years would elapse before he would resume work on the ether-drift question, in 1921.
During that period of Miller's other activities, Michelson and Georges Sagnac independently made new discoveries in optics and ether science. Einstein also attained celebrity status over this same period, with alleged experimental support in 1919 from the Eddington eclipse photographs. All these matters will be reviewed with open and objectively critical eyes.
78

Dayton Miller's Positive Ether Drift Experiments, 1921-1926

"I believe that I have really found the relationship between gravitation and electricity, assuming that the Miller experiments are based on a fundamental error. Otherwise, the whole relativity theory collapses like a house of cards." - Albert Einstein, letter to Robert Millikan
June 1921 (in Clark 1971, p.328)

In the decades following the Michelson-

Morley experiment of 1887, the worlds of

physics and astronomy were thrown into

confusion, given how the cosmic ether had

been a foundational theory for understand-

ing the wave-theory of light, as well as a

variety of astronomical and physical phe-

nomena. While the Michelson-Morley ex-

periment obtained a slight positive result, as

already discussed, the phrase "null result"

and similar misrepresentations came into

widespread use when referencing their experiment. Conference lectures and published papers of that period, as by FitzGerald and

Dayton Miller ( 1866-1941)

Lorentz, also previously described, carried forward with an increas-

ingly mystified matter-contraction postulate, as a means to "explain"

why the cosmic ether was not, orcould never be detected- even though

it had already been detected, repeatedly. Astrophysics thereby retreated

away from real, tangible results on a critical experiment, in what

psychologists might call emotional denial, substituting in its place a

new metaphysics, which had its historical foundation in Newton's

metaphysically-demanded static ether concepts.

79

The Dynamic Ether ofCosmic Space
In this chapter, Dayton Miller's exceptional work on the subject of ether detection will be detailed. After a hiatus which lasted from 1906 through the period of World War l until 1921, MiIler returned to the ether-drift experiments with renewed vigor. Together with his work with Morley, his entire period of ether-drift investigations would eventually include a total of over 200,000 individual readings, from over 12,000 turns of the new and highly-sensitive interferometer, ending in 1926 with completion ofhis most important Mount Wilson experiments.

Revisiting the Morley-Miller Experiments, 1902-1906

Dayton Miller was the younger man, by nearly30years,oftheMorley-Millerteam. He obtained his physics doctorate at Prin-

BU 11 et in Of f he
Cleveland med ical library .
~-

ceton University in 1890, and by 1893 had

been appointed as Chairman ofthe Physics Department at Case School of Applied

.. .

. ..

'
_..,...:..

L Science in Cleveland, Ohio. Morley was
then a professor of Chemistry at the adja-

cent Western Reserve University. Today,

·-- ......-,.~ '" = ·

these institutions are unified and share the same campus, as the Case-

Western Reserve University (CWRU). Miller also later served as

President of the American Physical Society and the American Acous-

tical Society, and was inducted into the National Academy ofSciences

in 1921. Like Michelson and Morley, he was no outsider to the

mainstream ofAmerican science. He approached the new experimental

tasks with enthusiasm and a history of solid experimental work in

acoustics, optics, astronomy, mathematics and x-ray investigations.

Miller gained a small bit ofearly fame by making the first American

x-ray photo, ofhis wife's hand. Mrs. Miller in turn made the first-ever

full-body x-rayphoto, ofherhusband. Miller also x-rayed broken bones

of patients in cooperation with a local hospital. Within the Morley-

Miller team, Miller attended primarily to the interferometer optics and

measurements, while Morley focused upon the mathematical calcula-

tions. Together they produced a more extended and significant work

than Michelson-Morley ever did, but not as important as the work

Miller would later accomplish independently.

80

Dayton Miller's Experiments
Miller's 64-Meter Steel Interferometer
Miller's interferometer was a refinement ofthe same 4.3 meter (14 foot) diameter instrument he first developed in cooperation with Morley. The round-trip light path was an overall 64 meters (208 feet), about three times the light path and sensitivity as the original 22-meter (72 foot) interferometer used by Michelson-Morley in 1887. These differences in total light path are just as important to the question of light-beam interferometry as are the differences in the size of optical lenses in large telescopes, where the diameter determines the light gathering capacity and sharpness of the images.
Foursets ofmirrors were mounted on the end ofeach interferometer cross-arm, to reflect light beams - or narrow "pencils oflight" as was the phrase often used in those days. The light beams, about the diameter ofa pencil, were reflected back and forth 16 times horizontally to yield the round-trip light path of 64 meters. The basic operation of such a light-beam interferometer has already been explained over the last two chapters. While refinements were made to this large interferometer in the years after Morley's retirement, itremained true to the original basic concepts of the Michelson instrument.
Movements ofa few fringes (in tenths to hundredths ofa fringe, plus or minus in direction) were observed by one person who walked around with the apparatus while it was turned, starting and ending with cardinal compass points. The observer would speak out the readings at the ring of a new electric bell system, which automatically sounded when electrodes made contact at 16 equidistant intervals. An assistant then wrote down the readings on paper. That same walking-around observer also kept the interferometer turning by a gentle pull on an attached ribbon, though once it was set into motion, its mass and nearly frictionless rotation, floating in the tank ofliquidmercury, would allow it to continue turning for an hour or more.
With an ether wind blowing steadily from one compass direction, the interferometer cross-arms would orient parallel and perpendicular with the ether wind two times each per full rotation, creating thefullperiodeffect. The dual maxima and minima for each full rotation would then be divided in half, and overlapped, to create the more telling halfperiod effect. The interferometer could thus determine the maximum and minimum vectors of ether wind. With enough turns of the instrument, the axis of net ether and Earth motion, but not the absolute
81

The Dynamic Ether ofCosmic Space
direction ofmotion along that axis, could be determined. Multiple sets of readings could then be taken at different times of day and year, organized to locate an ether-drift signal oriented to an identifiable set of sidereal-hour cosmic-galactic coordinates. Out of that procedure, with consideration ofother astronomical findings, came more exacting determinations of cosmic ether wind and ether drift direction, or azimuth, in sidereal time.
The standard solar day, or civil clock day is almost exactly 24 hours, following the location ofthe Sun in the sky. The nighttime view ofthe heavens at anyparticularcivil-clock hourchanges over the course ofthe year, so what you see at midnight tonight is not what you would see at midnight 6 months previously, or hence. The sidereal day, by comparison, is fixed to the cosmic background of stars and constellations. A sidereal day lasts 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds, being 3 minutes and 56 seconds shorter than the civil clock or solar day. Each sidereal year is one day shorter than the solar year. This accounts for the slow changing progression ofthe star constellations and Milky Way Galaxy as seen overhead at night for the different months. At the start of any given month, a specific star or constellation will rise about 2 hours earlier than on the first day of the prior month. The sidereal cosmic clock is therefore a method of marking time by cosmic-celestial coordinates, and not by the "time of day" position ofthe Sun. Cosmic signals, such as ether drift, are anticipated to come from the background ofcosmic-celestial space, and so the ether-drift data has to be organized in such a sidereal manner to be meaningful.
As noted above, the procedures oflight-beam interferometry could identify the axis ofether drift, but not the absolute direction ofether motion alongthat axis. Forthat, one needs to logically compare the axis of ether-drift determinations against other astronomical observations related to Earth's seasonal position around the Sun, the Earth's movements relative to nearby stars, and other cosmic phenomena such as stellar aberration and parallax. So far, none of the ether-drift experiments had aimed at an independent "cosmic solution" without making apriori assumptions about the expected direction ofether wind or drift. By static ether expectations, for example, a 30 km/sec ether velocity was anticipated along Earth's orbital plane around the Sun, with a higher velocity of some unknown quantity, perhaps 200-300 km/sec from the solar system's motion through the Milky Way Galaxy. Miller would be the first to undertake extended ether measurements without significant reference to such assumptions.
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Figure 19. Light Paths of the Rebuilt Morley-Miller Steel Interferometer, as seen from above, constructed in the same manner as Michelson-Morley, but ofnearly three times the light path. Source (S) generated light which passed through lens (L) and was then split by half-silvered mirror (D). Light rays then reflected back and forth along beams (I and Il) to mirrors (numbered 1-8) before finally being recombined by a halfsilvered mirror (D) and reflected to small telescope eyepiece (T) where interference fringes were observed.
Figure 20. Light-Interference Fringes as seen in the steel interferometer telescope. Magnified by an eyepiece with precise graduated markings, one could observe the lateral movement or shifting of fringes as the instrument was rotated. Miller's larger apparatus used a 50x telescope, allowing individual fringes to be magnified more than what is shown above, sufficient for determinations down to tenths or hundredths of a single fringe.
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Miller's 1921 Mount Wilson Results: Breakthrough In 1919, the Einstein theory of relativity received its first strong
scientific support in the solar eclipse measurements of Eddington and Cottingham. Their photographs of the eclipsed sun against the background of distant stars provided proof of the Sun's ability to bend starlight, changing the apparent positions of those stars. This was claimed to confirm Einstein's predictions, in yet another international media and scientific love affair. I cover this with full citations and analysis in the subsequent chapter, Einstein Rising.
The Eddington-Cottingham results and Einstein's claims brought Miller's attention back to the ether-drift question, if only because an entrained layer ofcosmic ether around the Sun was an equally valid, but rarely mentioned explanation for the bent starlight identified in the eclipse photographs. With an invitation from astronomer George Hale, who founded the Mount Wilson Observatory in 1904, and with funding from the Carnegie Institute, Miller dusted offthe 64-meter interferometer previously used in the Morley-Millerexperiments. It was moved up the mountain and placed near to the domed observatory building at an altitude of 1750 meters (5740 feet). This was the highest altitude that anyone had so far operated a Michelson interferometer, and would ultimately be a major test for both ether drift and light speed variability, both of which severely challenged Einstein's theory of relativity.
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The exact location ofMiller's new experimental building was close to Rock Crusher Knoll, so named for its role in the construction ofthe Mount Wilson Observatory, later dubbed "Ether Rocks". A concrete pad was poured at an unobstructed high spot, and a small house was erected in which the experiments would proceed. Four concrete piers were added to support the heavy steel interferometer and its tank of liquid mercury. The house itself had windows around the entire structure, from four to seven feet above the floor, at the level of the interferometer light beams. The house was also constructed with airgaps in the rudimentary floor boards, wall panels, and eaves, to allow for natural air circulation and temperature stabilization. Removable canvas shields covered each window opening, to eliminate direct and diffuse sunlight, with black paper shields added over the canvas and open gaps to eliminate sun glare during daytime measuring. A canvas tent structure was lateradded to aid in this purpose. Precision thermometers were hung within the interior along with a barograph and thermograph, to record those variables and assist in thermal stabilization.
Figure22. Miller's Interferometer House on Mt. Wilson (at arrow) perched optimally at nearly 6000 foot elevation, to catch the ether wind from all directions, and known in Miller's time as "Ether Rocks". Today, I am informed, there is no record at Mt. Wilson of Miller's extensive work, only a memorial plaque dedicated to Michelson and Einstein.
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Miller's preliminary measurements in April 1921 included 350 turns of the interferometer, yielding once again a positive result for a real ether wind ofaround 10 km/sec. Before announcing these results, additional control procedures were implemented. A one inch thick layer of cork insulation was laid upon all the steel components of the interferometer cross-arms. An additional 273 turns ofthe interferometer were then made, also in April, described years later by Miller as "a periodic displacement of the fringes, as in the first observations, showing that radiant heat is not the cause of the observed effect". (Miller 1933a, 1933b)
Figure 23. Miller's Rebuilt Light-Beam Interferometer, Mount Wilson, Ether Rocks 1921, measuring 4.3 meters across and 1.5 meters tall, was the largest and most sensitive of this type ofapparatus ever constructed, with a mirror-reflected round-trip light-beam path of 64 meters. It was used in a definitive set of ether-drift experiments on Mt. Wilson from 1921 to 1926. Shown here fitted with 1 inch insulating cork panels covering the metal support structure, and glass coverings along the light-beam path. These insulation safeguards eliminated all measurable influences of ambient temperature differences upon the apparatus and the air within the light-beam path, but still allowed for detection of a real ether drift. 86

Dayton Miller's Experiments
Miller returned back to Case School shortly after his April experiments, having recently been appointed to the National Academy of Sciences. Then on 25 May, he was visited by Albert Einstein. The two men apparently got along well, though Einstein could not then speak English. Miller was fluent in German, however, and so the two went on at some length discussing the various ether experiments aufdeutsch.
According to Swenson, Miller felt "...that Einstein's visit was most pleasant and that the great theoretician was 'not at all insistent upon the theory of relativity'." (Swenson 1972, p.195) Given Einstein's prior ignoring of the positive results of Michelson-Morley and lack of curiosity regarding the Morley-Miller experiments, and his conduct as I shall describe later, I find Miller's statement that Einstein was "not insistent" about his theory ofrelativity to be rather naive, even though it appears the two men superficially got along well at the time.
After the very good preliminary results ofApril 1921, and Einstein's visit, and perhaps being stimulated by Einstein, Miller ventured to test materials with lower thermal and magnetic susceptibility than his steel interferometer. He removed the steel base platform and substituted another composed of concrete, reinforced with brass rods. All the connecting optical components were made of aluminum or brass, creating the first fully nonmagnetic interferometer, which also had a lower thermal expansion by comparison to the steel version. An
Figure 24. Miller's Concrete Interferometer, Mount Wilson, Ether Rocks 1921. Light beam paths are covered with glass.
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additional 422 turns were made with this modified interferometer in December, with results "entirely consistent with the observations of April, I921." [Dates of April 9-12 and Dec. 4-11, 1921.]
After his meeting and correspondence with Miller, and upon his return to Berlin, Einstein expressed alarm about Miller's April results, as recorded in a letter he wrote to Robert Millikan in June of 1921.

"I believe that I have really found the relationship between gravitation and electricity, assuming that the Miller experiments are based on a fundamental error. Otherwise, the whole relativity theory collapses like a house of cards." {Albert Einstein, in a letter to Robert Millikan, June 1921. Reported in Clark 1971, p.328. Emphasis added.)

And Miller's early Mount Wilson results, summarized in the table below, were indeed nothing less than spectacular:

Table 2. Miller's 1921 Results at Mount Wilson

Number

Measured

Dates

of Tums Ether Velocity

April 1921

350

~10 km/sec

April 1921 (insulated) 273

~10 km/sec

Dec 1921

422

~10 km/sec

Totals & Averages 1045

~10 km/sec

It is interesting to note, just these three 1921 experimental runs by Miller, of 1045 turns ofthe interferometer in total, were nearly 30 times as many turns as the original 36 turns of the Michelson-Morley experiment. Miller also undertook additional improvements and control experiments during that time at Mount Wilson. As he wrote in 1933:

"Many variations of incidental conditions were tried at this epoch. Observations were made with the centering pin tight in its socket and then loose; with rotation of the interferometer clockwise and counterclockwise; with a rapid rotation of one turn in 40 seconds and a slow rotation ofone tum in 85 seconds; with a heavy weight added first to the telescope arm ofthe main frame and then to the lamp arm; with the float extremely out of level because loaded first in one quadrant and then in the next quadrant; with the recording assistant walking round in differ-

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ent quadrants and standing in different portions of the house, near to and far from the apparatus. The results of the observations were not affected by any of these changes.
It was demonstrated that the use ofthe concrete base did not change the effectobservedwith the steel base either in magnitude or azimuth. The concrete base was less affected than the steel by change ofdimensions due to changes oftemperature; but this slight advantage was counterbalanced by the fact that it accommodated itself more slowly to a change of temperature. In spite of the fact that the concrete was considerably heavier than the steel parts which it displaced, it was much less rigid. Tests showed that a weight of30 grams placed on the end ofthe arm of the [concrete] interferometer would produce a displacement ofthe fringes ofone fringe width, while nearly ten times as much weight is required to produce the same effect with the steel base. The concrete base was abandoned and the original steel base hasbeenused in all subsequentobservations." (Miller 1933a, p.219)
Back to Cleveland, Miller's Additional Control Experiments at Case School 1922 - 1924
After completing his initial experiments at Mount Wilson, Miller had the large interferometer packed up and moved back to Case School in Cleveland for additional testing and improvement, in a new aboveground laboratory space in the Rockefeller Physics Laboratory building. As Chairman ofCase Physics Department, Miller had personally planned that building, which was largely completed in 1904. He had travelled to Europe to purchase various new laboratory equipment used in research and lecture demonstrations.
Having results in hand from the first of what eventually became many Mount Wilson experiments, he gave his first lecture on the subject since the years working with Morley. He presented his "EtherDrift Experiments at Mount Wilson Observatory" to a meeting of the American Physical Society in Toronto, in December of 1921. A published report also appeared in Physical Review in the following year, along with an April lecture to the National Academy ofSciences in Washington DC, plus a short note in Science.
For the next two years, Miller would occupy himself in a new program oftesting and making refinements to the steel interferometer.
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This included removal of the concrete, wood-rod and brass truss structure and restoring the original insulated steel beam system. He tried out new locations for the light source and viewing telescope, including removing them completely from the apparatus; the light beam was projected from a distance through a cleverly developed system of mirrors and prisms mounted above the centerpoint of its rotation. Those new methods were eventually abandoned, however, due to complications in keeping the system ofcomplex optical components in proper alignment.
A still camera and motion picture method ofrecording the interference fringes was attempted, but the light ofthe interference fringes was too dim to register on available films of Miller's day. Electric arc, incandescent bulbs, mercury arc and acetylene lamps, and sunlight were all tried as light sources. In the end, Miller settled upon a small acetylene lamp, fixed to one ofthe interferometer cross-beams, close to its center of rotation. The fringe-viewing method evolved into use of separate objective and eyepiece lenses, without the telescope tube, mounted on another ofthe interferometer arms, allowing a magnification of 50 diameters.
Figure 25. Miller's Steel Interferometer at Case School Physics Lab, 1922. The light source is mounted on a stand at the left side, with ceiling-suspended mirrors over central pivot, to reflect the light down into the interferometer.
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The issue of possible thermal changes on the structure of the interferometer was always addressed with extensive control testing, from the very first days of the early Michelson interferometer, and Miller's work in this direction was intensive and precise. Parabolic electrical radiant heaters were used to heat up the room air, and also to focus heat upon one oranother ofthe interferometer arms, whereby the exact effects upon the instrument and its fringe shifts, if any, could be identified. Such intense and focused air heating showed a slow but steady drifting of the interferometer fringes to one side, but no additional changes were observed from air heating during its rotation. Heating of the air in the light paths only resulted in fringe shifts when unequally distributed, as when one arm of the light path was covered with opaque cardboard while the other three arms were left uncovered. As Miller stated,
"These experiments proved that under the conditions ofactual observation, the periodic displacements could not possibly be produced by temperature effects." (Miller 1933a) Miller nevertheless took exceptional precautions against temperature fluctuations when using the interferometer out in the field, such as covering the steel components with I-inch cork insulation panels, and
Figure 26. Rockefeller Physics Building at Case School for Applied Science, completed in c.1904.
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