EXPERIMENTS ON THE ETHER Theory of Michelson Experiment. The theory of the Michelazon experiment can be expressed thus: its optical diagram being the same as is expressed geometrically in Fig. 6. If a relatively fixed source and receiver move through the ether with velocity #, such that u/v=a the aberration constant; then the time of any to-and-fro journey S M, inclined at angle @ to the direction of the drift, is increased, above what it would be if there were no drift, in the ratio w (1 - asin") l=-«' This follows from merely geometrical consider- ations. Hence if a ray is split, and half sent so that 6=o while the other half is sent so that @=go (as in Fig. ro), the one will lag behind the other by a distance 4a? times the distance travelled; which, though very small, may be a perceptible fraction of a wave-length, and therefore may cause a perceptible shift of the bands. But when the experiment is properly per- formed, no such shift is observed. The experiment thus seems to prove that there‘is no motion through the ether at all, that there is no etherial drift past the earth, that the ether immediately in contact with the earth is 67