An Etymological Dictionary of Astronomy and Astrophysics

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فرهنگ ریشه‌شناختی اخترشناسی-اخترفیزیک

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Michelson-Morley experiment
  آزمایش ِ مایکلسون-مورلی  
âzmâyeš-e Michelson-Morley (#)
Fr.: expérience de Michelson-Morley  

An experiment performed in 1887 to establish the presence or absence of an → ether, a medium through which light was supposed to travel. The experiment aimed to measure the speed of light coming from different directions. However no → ether drift was found. The null results obtained showed that the ether hypothesis was incorrect.
Consequently, the theory of → special relativity, with its hypothesis that the speed of light is the same in all → inertial frames, reconciled the results of the Michelson-Morley experiment with the rest of physics.

See also: → Michelson interferometer; Michelson received the Nobel Prize in 1907 for his work, the first American to receive the Prize in science. Edward Williams Morley (1838-1923), an American chemist; → experiment.