Asri-unix.506 net.space utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!menlo70!sri-unix!REM@MIT-MC Thu Jan 14 08:42:26 1982 Question on Michelson-Morley experiment From: Robert Elton Maas Analog has a long history of making absolutely matter of fact statements which are totally false, to support their latest big hoax. -- Remember the "Dean Drive"? Campbell, then editor, made a flat statement in a reply to a letter to the editor that a Dean Drive hanging from the ceiling on a rope and aimed sideways will rise up at an angle, thus refuting the claim that all thrust was really just nonlinear vibrational effects on the bathroom scale they had been using. I actually started believing in the Dean Drive after that letter-reply, for a few years, sigh. -- Remember the crystal that dissolved about 1 second before it struck water, so they hooked up a chain of them with each dissolving of a crystal causing water to drop on the next? They went pretty matter-of-fact on that, although I was smart enough not to believe them. -- I don't believe this stuff about Michaelson-Morley experiment showing a positive result. More likely the velocity reported was the experimental error, the claim being that an upper bound on our motion thru the "ether" was found, and Analog distorted the truth to make their hoax. (If experimental error is 8, and you measure 0, then it's possible the correct value is anywhere from -8 to +8, you can't say it's zero for sure, but Analog has no right to say it isn't zero either. Probably the measured value was not zero, but close enough to zero to be within the range of experimental error. The best (simplest) conclusion to make is that it's probably exactly zero but that more accurate equipment will be needed to either bracket it closer to zero or actually bracket it away from zero.) Now if Science had made the same claim, I'd be more willing to look into the matter instead of just dismissing it. ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.