What is the Michelson-Morley Experiment?
Conducted in 1887, the Michelson-Morley experiment has been called “the most successful failed experiment in science.” It has also been called “the kicking-off point for the theoretical aspects of the Second Scientific Revolution.” The Michelson-Morley experiment provided strong evidence against the idea of a luminiferous (light-bearing) ether, much in vogue among physicists at the time. Consider how both physical and audio waves travel through mediums; a liquid or gas such as water or air. Since James Clerk Maxwell’s work in 1861, it was known that light was an electromagnetic wave. Physicists began to postulate that this wave moved through a medium, made of particles much smaller than those within air, and much less dense. They called this substance the aether. Maxwell himself helped popularize the notion of the aether, and soon it became taken for granted that the aether existed. The idea of the aether had numerous problems, as some physicists of the time noted. To serve as a medium
