aether in the laboratory shares the earth's motion. But other phenomena, especially stellar aberration, favour the opposite theory of a stationary aether. The difficulty thus arising has been met by the at first sight startling hypothesis of FitzGerald and Lorentz that solid bodies, such as the stone platform of Michelson's apparatus, alter their relative dimensions, when rotated, in such a way as to compensate the optical change that might naturally be looked for. Larmor ('Æther and Matter,' Cambridge, 1900) has shown that a good case may be made out for this view.
It occurred to me that such a deformation of matter when moving through the rather might be accompanied by a sensible double refraction; and as the beginning of double refraction can be tested with extraordinary delicacy, I thought that even a small chance of arriving at a positive result justified a careful experiment. Whether the result were positive or negative, it might at least afford further guidance for speculation upon this important and delicate subject.
So far as liquids are concerned, the experiment is of no great difficulty, and the conclusion may be stated that there is no double refraction of the order to be expected, that is comparable with 10-8 of the single refraction.[1] But the question arises whether experiments upon liquids really settle the matter. Probably no complete answer can be given, unless in the light of some particular theory of these relations. But it may be remarked that the liquid condition is no obstacle to the development of double refraction under electric stress, as is shown in Dr. Kerr's experiments.
The apparatus was mounted upon the same revolving board as was employed for somewhat analogous experiments upon the rotation in quartz (Phil. Mag. vol. iv. p. 215, 1902). Light, at first from the electric arc but later and preferably from lime heated by an oxyhydrogen jet, after passing a spectacle-lens so held as to form an image; of the source upon the analysing nicol, was polarized by the first nicol in a plane inclined to the horizontal at 45°. The liquid, held in a horizontal tube closed at the ends by plates of thin glass, was placed, of course, between the nicols. When at 12 o'clock the board stands north and south, the earth's motion is transverse and the situation is such as to exhibit any double refraction which may ensue. It might be supposed, for instance, that luminous vibrations parallel to the earth's motion, i. e. east and west, are propagated a little differently from those whose direction is transverse to the earth's motion, i. e. vertical. But if the
- ↑ , where 10-4 is the ratio of the velocity of the earth in its orbit to the velocity of light.
