Cosmology Old and New

SR No.: 006547
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: G R Jain
Publisher: Bharatiya Gyanpith
Publication Year: 1991
Total Pages: 232
Language: English
Classification: Book_English & Philosophy
File Size: 12 MB

Page 52

COSMOLOGY OLD AND NEW
of its own.... .non-material ocean of aether."
9957
Although the scientists have firmly come to believe aether as non-material, their attempts to defect it are not yet over. The most ingenious and well-known experiment devised to detect aether was performed some fifty-five years ago and is known as the Michelson-Morley Experiment.
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The idea of the experiment is this: if all material bodies are really swimming through a limitless ocean of aether, it is quite easy to find how fast they are moving through it. The following analogy will make the point clear: The time taken to row a boat a certain distance up a swift river and down again is always greater than the time taken to row the same distance across the river and back. 58 Even if water were invisible one could calculate how fast it was flowing by measuring the time either way. In the same way it was argued that if earth were really moving through aether a ray of light would take a longer time to go to a mirror and return a certain distance along the earth's motion than across it.
If aether were a material medium for the earth to move through, this seemed bound to be so. The experiment was performed in America by means of the most delicate apparatus and, to the great disappointment of the workers, it was found that both journeys of the ray of light took exactly the same time. In the words of Richard Hughes: "It showed that to try seriously to find out facts about the aether, as if it were a real thing, would be almost as absurd as to try and find out what wood the Good Shepherd's crook is made of!"
The above experiment was performed in 1881 and in 1905 the experiment was repeated with better precautions. The result was published in the Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the result again being zero. During the period 1921-25 a series of more exhaustive and elaborate experiments were carried out by Prof. D. Miller on Mount Wilson, California. Five thousand observations were recorded for full periods of 24 hours and extending over ten days. 59 The final conclusions were that there was a relative motion of the earth and the aet her.
57. Nature of the Physical World by A.S. Eddington, p. 31.
58. This fact can be proved mathematically.
59. It is well to note from this the great zeal and assiduity which these western workers evince in the search after truth. Read carefully their attempts to detect by experiments the dharma dravya.