"On a Possible Mode of Detecting a Motion of the Solar System through the Luminiferous Ether." By the late Prof. J. Clerk Maxwell. In a letter to Mr. D. P. Todd, Director of the Nautical Almanac Office, Washington, U.S. Communicated by Prof. Stone, Sec. R.S.
Mr. Todd has been so good as to communicate to me a copy of the subjoined letter, and has kindly permitted me to make any use of it.
As the notice referred to by Maxwell in the Encyclopadia Britannica is very brief, being confined to a single sentence, and as the subject is one of great interest, I have thought it best to communicate the letter to the Royal Society.
From the researches of Mr. Huggins on the radial component of the relative velocity of our sun and certain stars, the coefficient of the inequality which we might expect as not unlikely, would be only something comparable with half a second of time. This, no doubt, would be a very delicate matter to determine. Still, for anything we know à priori to the contrary, the motion might be very much greater than what would correspond to this; and the idea has a value of its own, irrespective of the possibility of actually making the determination.
In his letter to me Mr. Todd remarks, "I regard the communication as one of extraordinary importance, although (as you will notice if you have access to the reply which I made) it is likely to be a long time before we shall have tables of the satellites of Jupiter sufficiently accurate to put the matter to a practical test."
