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Physical causes of the observed constant speed of light (c)
Michelson and others believed it would be possible to detect
differences in the speed of light relative to Earth that would occur if Earth moved through a
light propagating medium. In reference frame B of Fig. 1 it takes longer for a light
signal from the origin of B to make a round trip to a mirror 1 LS (not 1 ls)
away on the x axis than for a round trip to a mirror 1 LS away on the z axis. In 1887
Michelson constructed an apparatus capable of detecting differences in travel time for light
signals moving at right angles to one another. When no differences in travel time were
detected, people began to conclude that the speed of light is constant relative to experimental
apparatus and that light might not be propagated through a medium.
In 1892 George Fitzgerald and Hendrik Lorentz suggested
that Michelson's apparatus might be foreshortened due to its motion through the ether, but
there seemed to be no plausible reason for a foreshortening. Michelson wrote as follows in his
1927, Studies in Optics (p.156).
Lorentz and Fitzgerald have proposed a possible solution of the
null effect of the Michelson-Morley experiment by assuming a contraction in the material of the
support for the interferometer just sufficient to compensate for the theoretical difference in
path. Such a hypothesis seems rather artificial, and it of course implies that such
contractions are independent of the elastic properties of the material. |
In the quantum medium view, the physical cause of the contraction
of Michelson's apparatus is that the spatial relationships between atoms and between the
constituents of atoms depend on the rates of energy exchange between atoms and between
constituents. In reference frame B of Fig. 1, the observers are located in a foreshortened
spatial relationship which balances the rates of energy exchange in all directions. The
observers in B detect that they are in a uniform spatial relationship where the light-second
marks, clocks, and observers are spaced the same distance apart along x, y, and z axes, just
as detected in A. Similarly, the equilibrium condition for the atomic constituents of the
people and clocks in B is a foreshortened spatial relationship which balances the rates of
energy exchange between the constituents.
Therefore, regardless of the orientation of Michelson's apparatus
relative to Earth's absolute velocity, the atomic structure of the apparatus was always
foreshortened in the direction of motion through the qm. This foreshortening is independent of
the kind of material comprising the apparatus. The foreshortening is just sufficient to
compensate for the increase in travel time for a round-trip light signal in the direction of
absolute motion because the cause of the foreshortening is the same as the cause of the
increase in signal travel time.
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