Balder Ex-Libris

Author : Velikovsky Immanuel
Title : The Velocity of Light in Relation to Moving Bodies
Year : 1973

Link download : Velikovsky_Immanuel_-_The_Velocity_of_Light_in_Relation_to_Moving_Bodies.zip

A proposal for an experiment. This paper remains in the form in which it was written over a decade ago. Ed. The Michelson-Morley experiment performed in 1886 demonstrated that a beam of light that issues from a terrestrial source and travels in the direction of terrestrial motion, East-West-East or West-East-West, needs the same time to traverse a laboratory distance as a beam that travels at right angles to that motion (North-South-North or South-North-South). The undulatory theory of light transmitted by waves in the ether anticipated detection of a difference in the velocities of the two beams due to the orbital velocity of the earth through absolute ether-filled space. Half a year later, when the earth was on the opposite side of its orbit, the same experiment again disclosed no difference in the velocities of the beams; any possible compensatory motion on the part of the solar system or the entire galaxy thus was excluded. The explanation first offered was the supposition that any material object (also a measuring rod) traveling through the ether is shortened by a very small amount; the East-West distance in the laboratory apparatus (interferometer), being shorter, is traversed by a beam of light traveling a little slower in the same time that the longer North-South distance is crossed by a swifter beam (1). Einstein, however, generalized this idea by assuming that the velocity of light in vacuum is constant in relation to all bodies, whether in motion or at rest. The ether was discarded in the Special Theory of Relativity, and Einstein embraced the quanta theory of light. Both space and time lost the attribute of constancy, and light (its velocity) acquired it. ...