Michelson’s Announcement on Speed of Light Startles Scientists

(Jewish Daily Bulletin)

Prof. Albert A. Michelson, American Jewish physicist of the University of Chicago, today announced discoveries concerning the speed of light that already promise to create almost as much of a furore in the scientific and lay worlds as the announcement several years ago by his friend, Prof. Albert Einstein, of the theory of relativity.

Speaking before the convention of the National Academy of Sciences, of which he is president, the small, shy physicist said he had determined that light rushes through space at the rate of 299,796 kilometers a second, or a decrease of about 36 miles a second over the figure of 186,000 miles a second that every school boy has been taught to learn.

This deviation from the old figure may cause a reshaping of the Einstein theory, as the Jewish mathematician in Berlin (who, incidentally, bears a striking resemblance to Prof. Michelson) based his theory on formerly accepted figures concerning the speed of light.

But Dr. Einstein will not be the only scientist to be vitally interested in Prof. Michelson’s discovery. Mathematicians, philosophers, astronomers, and physicists throughout the world will have to overhaul their theories, their beliefs and their experiments.

Prof. Michelson has spent forty years investigating the speed of light, but the result announced today was the outcome of experiments conducted particularly during the last year with light beams that were shot from Mt. Wilson, California to Mt. San Antonio, a distance of 44 miles and back again.

“The results of five series of observations with revolving mirrors having 8, 12, and 16 facets,” said Prof. Michelson, “showed a remarkable agreement, and gave us a final result for the velocity of light between the two points of 299,796 kilometers per second.”

Prof. Michelson’s discovery may lead to uncovering the secret of the velocity with which the earth rotates and like-wise the speed of the entire solar system.

One of the principle features of the Michelson experiments is the discovery that the speed of light never varies, which leaves light velocity as one of the few, if not the sole, constant left to the world of science. Natural phenomena that only a few years ago were thought to be constant, have been discovered to change, but Prof. Michelson’s statement about light is expected to remain.

Prof. Michelson’s discovery was made possible by a machine of his own invention, the interferometer, and enabled him to obtain his figures with greater precision than has hitherto been possible. He described the instrument years ago as follows:

“It was devised for the purpose of solving a very ambitious problem that of measuring the speed of the earth, and, with it, the whole solar system, through space. In order to solve this problem it was necessary to devise a piece of apparatus in which a single wave train of light is separated into trains, or pencils, of light, moving at right angles to each other.

“Reflecting beams of light through a vacuum, and marking in, innumerable times and under all conditions, the return home of the divided rays, it was found that it makes no difference whether the light is traveling with the earth or against the earth’s speed, it always traverses a given distance in the same length of time.”