This possibility being excluded, the only satisfactory explanation of the Michelson-Morley experiment which has been offered is due to Lorentz,[1] who assumed that all bodies in motion are shortened in the line of their motion by an amount which is a simple function of the velocity. This shortening would produce a compensation just sufficient to offset the predicted positive effect in the Michelson-Morley experiment, and would also account for the result obtained by Trouton and Noble. It would not, however, prevent the determination of absolute motion by other analogous experiments which have not yet been tried.
Einstein[2] has gone one step farther. Because of the experiments that we have cited, and because of the failure of every other attempt that has ever been made to determine absolute velocity through space, he concludes that further similar attempts will also fail. In fact he states as a law of nature that absolute uniform translatory motion can be neither measured nor detected.
The second fundamental generalization made by Einstein he calls "the law of the constancy of light velocity." It states that the velocity of light in free space appears the same to all observers, regardless of the motion of the source of light or of the observer.
These two laws taken together constitute the principle of relativity. They generalize a number of experimental facts and are inconsistent with none. In so far as these generalizations go beyond existing facts they require further verification. To such verification, however, we may look forward with reasonable confidence, for Einstein has deduced from the principle of relativity, together with the electromagnetic theory, a number of striking consequences which are remarkably self-consistent. Moreover the system of mechanics which he obtains is identical with the non-Newtonian Mechanics developed from entirely different premises by one of the present authors.[3] Finally, one of the most important equations of this non -Newtonian mechanics has within the past year been quantitatively verified by the experiments of Bucherer[4] on the mass of a β particle, to which we shall refer later.
Therefore, in as far as present knowledge goes, we may consider the principle of relativity established on a pretty firm basis of experimental fact. Therefore, accepting this principle, we shall accept the conse-
- ↑ Abhandlungen über Theoretische Physik, Leipzig, 1907, 443.
- ↑ An excellent summary of the conclusions drawn from the principle of relativity, by Einstein, Planck, and others, is given by Einstein in the Jahrbuch der Radioaktivität, 4, 411 (1907). An interesting treatment of certain phases of this problem is given by Bumstead, Amer. Jour. Sci., 26, 493 (1908).
- ↑ Lewis, Phil. Mag., 16, 705 (1908).
- ↑ Ber. Phys. Ges., 6, 688 (1908); Ann. Physik, 28, 513 (1909).
