This experiment is taken straight from Gregg Braden’s Book titled “Divine Matrix, Bridging Time, Space, Miracles and Belief”. This is the world’s greatest Failed experiment.

This experiment was preformed more than 100 years ago and was named after the two scientists who designed it, Albert Michelson and Edward Morley. The purpose of this experiment was to determine whether or not the mysterious ether of the universe did in fact exist. This experiment was conducted at the now Case Western Reserve University in 1887.

The thinking behind the experiment was innovative to be sure. If ether really exists, Michelson and Morley reasoned, then it must be an energy that is everywhere, quiet and still. And if this is true, then the earth’s passage through this field in space should create a movement that can be measured. Just as we’re able to detect the air as it ripples through the vast fields of golden wheat on the plains of Kansas, we should be able to detect the ether’s “breeze”. Michelson and Morley named this hypothetical phenomenon the ether wind.

The pilot of any plane will agree that when an aircraft is flying with the currents of the atmosphere, the time to get from one place to another can be much shorter. However, when the plane is flying against the flow, it endures a rough ride, and wind resistance can add hours to the flight. Michelson and Morley reasoned that I they could shoot a ray of light in two directions simultaneously, the difference in the amount of time it took for each beam to reach its destination should allow for experimenters to detect the presence and flow of the ether wind. While the experiment was a good idea, the results surprised everyone.

The bottom line was that Michelson and Morley’s experiment detected no ether wind. Finding what looked like the absence of the wind, both the 1881 and 1887 experiments seemed to lead to he same conclusion: No ether exists. Michelson interpreted the results of what has been called “the most successful failed experiment” in history in the prestigious American Journal of Science: “The result of the hypothesis of a stationary ether field is thus shown to be incorrect, and the necessary conclusion follows that the hypothesis is erroneous.” ¹¹ [Authors Reference]

While the experiment may be described as a “failure” with regard to proving the existence of ether, it actually demonstrated that the ether field just might not behave in the way scientists originally expected. Just because no movement was detected doesn’t mean that ether wasn’t there. An analogy for this would be to hold your finger above your head to test for wind: To conclude that no air existed because you felt no breeze during the test would be a rough equivalent of the thinking behind the conclusion of the 1887 experiment.

Endnotes

     11.  A.A. Michelson and Edward W. Morley, “On the Relative Motion of the Earth and the Luminiferous Ether,” American Journal of Science, vol 34. (1887): pp. 333-345.

Reference

Braden,G., 2007. The Divine Matrix, Bridging Time, Space, Miracles and Belief. 9^th   Edition. United States: Hayhouse: pp.18-20.