The Ether of Space Part 4

And once more, perhaps the laws of reflection and refraction in a moving medium are not the same as they are if it be at rest. Then, moreover, there is double refraction, colours of thin plates and thick plates, polarisation angle, rotation of the plane of polarisation; all sorts of optical phenomena that need consideration.

It may have to be admitted, perhaps, that in empty s.p.a.ce the effect of an ether drift is difficult to detect, but will not the presence of dense matter--especially the pa.s.sage through dense transparent matter--make the detection easier? So a great number of questions arise, all of which have been, from time to time, seriously discussed.

_Interference._

As an instance of such discussion, consider No. 3 of the phenomena tabulated above. I expect that every reader understands interference, but I may just briefly say that two similar sets of waves "interfere"

whenever and wherever the crests of one set coincide with and obliterate the troughs of the other set. Light advances in any given direction when crests in that direction are able to remain crests, and troughs to remain troughs. But if we contrive to split a beam of light into two halves, to send them round by different paths, and make them meet again, there is no guarantee that crest will meet crest and trough trough; it may be just the other way in some places, and wherever that opposition of phase occurs there, there will be local obliteration or "interference." Two reunited half-beams of light may thus produce local stripes of darkness, and these stripes are called interference bands.

It is not to be supposed that there is any _destruction_ of light, or any dissipation of energy: it is merely a case of redistribution.

The bright parts are brighter just in proportion as the dark parts are darker. The screen is illuminated in stripes and no longer uniformly, but its total illumination is the same as if there were no interference.

PROJECTION OF INTERFERENCE BANDS.

It is not easy to project these interference bands on a screen so as to make them visible to an audience,--partly because the bands or stripes of darkness are exceedingly narrow; indeed I had not previously seen the experiment attempted. But by means of what I call an interference kaleidoscope, consisting of two mirrors set at an angle with a third semi-transparent mirror between them, it is possible to get the bands remarkably clear and bright, so that they can readily be projected: and I showed these at a lecture to the Royal Inst.i.tution of Great Britain in 1892.

Each mirror is mounted on a tripod with adjustable screw feet, which stand on a thick iron slab, which again rests on hollow india-rubber b.a.l.l.s. Looking down on the mirrors the plan is as in the diagram Fig.

7, which indicates sufficiently the geometry of the arrangement, and shows that the two half-beams, into which the semi-transparent plate divides the light, will each travel round the same contour A B C in opposite directions, and will then reunite and travel together towards the point of the arrow. A parallel beam from an electric lantern, when thus treated, depicts bright and broad interference bands on a screen.

And the arrangement is very little sensitive to disturbance, because the paths of the two halves of the beam are identical, and because of the mounting. A piece of good gla.s.s can be interposed without disturbance, and the table can be struck a heavy blow without confusing the bands.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 7. Plan of Interference Kaleidoscope with three mirrors. The arrow-feather ray is bifurcated at A by a semi-transparent mirror of thinly-silvered gla.s.s; and the two halves reunite along the arrow-head after traversing a triangular contour A B C in opposite directions. The simple geometrical relations which permit this are sufficiently indicated in the figure. The arrangement would suit Fizeau's experiment.]

The only regular and orderly way of causing a shift of the bands is to accelerate one half of the beam and to r.e.t.a.r.d the other half, by moving a transparent substance along the contour. For instance, let the sides of the triangle A B C, or one of them, consist of a tube of water in which a rapid stream is maintained; then the stream has a chance of accelerating one half the beam, and r.e.t.a.r.ding the other half, thereby shifting the fringes from their normal position by a measurable amount. This is the experiment made in 1859 by Fizeau.

(Appendix 3.)

Now that most interesting and important, and I think now well-known, experiment of Fizeau proves quite simply and definitely that if light be sent along a stream of water, travelling inside the water as a transparent medium, it will go quicker with the current than against it.

You may say that is only natural; a wind a.s.sists sound one way and r.e.t.a.r.ds it the opposite way. Yes, but then sound travels in air; and wind is a bodily transfer of air; hence, of course, it gives the sound a ride. Whereas light does not really travel in water, but always in ether; and it is by no means obvious whether a stream of water can help or hinder it. Experiment decides, however, and answers in the affirmative. It helps it along with just about half the speed of the water; not with the whole speed, which is curious and important, and really means that the moving water has no effect whatever on the ether of s.p.a.ce, though we must defer explaining how this comes about.

Suffice for present purposes the fact that the velocity of light inside moving water, and therefore presumably inside all transparent matter, is altered to some extent by motion of that matter.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 8. Hoek's arrangement.

The light from source S is reflected so as to travel half through stagnant water and half through air on its direct journey, the path being inverted on the return journey, after which it enters the eye.]

Does not this fact afford an easy way of detecting a motion of the earth through the ether? Every vessel of stagnant water is really travelling along through the ether at the rate of nineteen miles a second. Send a beam of light through it one way, and it will be hurried; its velocity, instead of being 140,000 miles a second, will be 140,009 miles. Send a beam of light the other way, and its velocity will be 139,991; just as much less. Bring these two beams together; surely some of their wave-lengths will interfere. M. Hoek, Astronomer at Utrecht, tried the experiment in this very form; here is a diagram of his apparatus (Fig. 8). Babinet had tried another form of the experiment previously. Hoek expected to see interference bands, from the two half-beams which had traversed the water, one in the direction of the earth's motion and the other against it. But no interference bands were seen. The experiment gave a negative result.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 9. Arrangement of Mascart and Jamin.

A modification of Fig. 8, with the beam split definitely into two halves by reflexion from a thick gla.s.s plate and reunited before observation. The two half-beams go through stagnant water in opposite directions.]

An experiment, however, in which nothing is seen is never a very satisfactory form of a negative experiment; it is, as Mascart calls it, "doubly negative," and we require some guarantee that the conditions were right for seeing what might really have been in some sort there. Hence Mascart and Jamin's modification of the experiment is preferable (Fig. 9). The thing now looked for is a shift of already existing interference bands, when the above apparatus is turned so as to have different aspects with respect to the earth's motion; but no shift was seen.

Interference methods all fail to display any trace of relative motion between earth and ether.

Try other phenomena then. Try refraction. The index of refraction of gla.s.s is known to depend on the ratio of the speed of light outside, to the speed inside, the gla.s.s. If then the ether be streaming through gla.s.s, the velocity of light will be different inside according as it travels with the stream or against it, and so the index of refraction may be different. Arago was the first to try this experiment by placing an achromatic prism in front of a telescope on a mural circle, and observing the deviation it produced on stars.

Observe that it was an _achromatic_ prism, treating all wave-lengths alike; he looked at the _deviated_ image of a star, not at its _dispersed_ image or spectrum,--else he might have detected the change-of-frequency-effect due to motion of source or receiver first actually seen by Sir W. Huggins. I do not think Arago would have seen it, because I do not suppose his arrangements were delicate enough for that very small effect; but there is no error in the conception of his experiment, as Prof. Mascart has inadvertently suggested there was.

Then Maxwell repeated the attempt in a much more powerful manner, a method which could have detected a very minute effect indeed, and Mascart has also repeated it in a simple form. All are absolutely negative.

Well, then, what about aberration? If one looks through a moving stratum, say a spinning gla.s.s disk, there ought to be a shift caused by the motion (see Fig. 4). That particular experiment has not been tried, but I entertain no doubt about its result, though a high speed and considerable thickness of gla.s.s or other medium would be necessary to produce even a microscopic apparent displacement of objects seen through it.

But the speed of the earth is available, and the whole length of a telescope tube may be filled with water; surely that is enough to displace rays of light appreciably.

Sir George Airy tried it at Greenwich on a star, with an appropriate zenith-sector full of water. Stars were seen through the water-telescope precisely as through an air telescope. A negative result again! (The theory is fully dealt with in Chapter X and Appendix 3.)

Stellar observations, however, are unnecessarily difficult. Fresnel had pointed out that a terrestrial source of light would do just as well. He had also (being a man of exceeding genius) predicted that nothing would happen. Hoek has now tried it in a perfect manner and nothing did happen.

But these facts are not at all disconcerting; they are just what ought to be antic.i.p.ated, in the light of true theory. The absence of all effect caused by stagnant dense matter inserted in the path of a beam of light, that is of dense transparent matter not artificially moved with reference to the earth--or rather with reference to source and receiver--is explicable on Fresnel's theory concerning the behaviour of ether inside matter.

If the index of refraction of the matter is called , that means that the speed of light inside it is 1/th of the speed outside or in vacuo. And that is only another way of saying that the virtual etherial density inside it is represented by , since the velocity of waves is inversely as the square root of the density of the medium which conveys them;--the elasticity being reckoned as constant, and the same inside as out.

But then if the ether is incompressible its density must really be constant,--so how can it be denser inside matter than it is outside?

The answer is that presumably the ether is not really extra dense, but is, as it were, _loaded_ by the matter. The atoms of matter, or the const.i.tuent electrons, must be presumed to be shaken by the pa.s.sage of the waves of light, as they obviously are in fluorescent substances; and accordingly the speed of propagation will be lessened by the extra loading which the waves encounter. It is not a real increase of density, but a virtual increase, which is really due to the addition of a certain fraction of material inertia to the inertia of the ether itself. The density of ether outside being 1, and that of the loaded ether inside being , the effect of the load is expressible as -1, while the free ether is the same inside as out.

Suppose now that the matter is moved along. The extra loading, being part of the matter, of course travels with it, and thereby affects the speed of light to the extent of the load,--that is to say, by an amount proportional to -1 as contrasted with .

This is Fresnel's predicted ratio (-1): , or 1-1/; and in Fizeau's experiment with running water--especially as repeated later, with modern accuracy, by Michelson--this represents exactly the amount of observed effect upon the light.

But if, instead of running water, stagnant water is used--that is stationary with respect to the earth, though still moving violently through the ether--then the (-1) effect of the load will be fixed to the matter, and can produce no extra or motile effect. The only part that could produce an effect of that kind would be the free ether, of density 1. But then this--on the above view--is absolutely stationary, not being carried along by the earth at all; hence this can give no effect either. Consequently the whole effect of an ether-drift past the earth is zero, on optical experiments, according to the theory of Fresnel; and that is exactly what all the experiments just described have confirmed.

Since then Prof. Mascart, with great pertinacity, has attacked the phenomena of thick plates, Newton's rings, double refraction, and the rotatory phenomenon of quartz; but he has found absolutely nothing attributable to a stream of ether past the earth.

The only positive result ever supposed to be attained was in a very difficult polarisation observation by Fizeau in 1859. Unless this has been repeated, it is safest to ignore it; but I believe that Lord Rayleigh has repeated it, and obtained a negative result.

Fizeau also suggested, but did not attempt, what seems an easier experiment, with fore and aft thermopiles and a source between them, to observe the drift of a medium by its convection of energy; but arguments based on the law of exchanges[5] tend to show, and do show as I think, that a probable alteration of radiating power due to motion through a medium would just compensate the effect otherwise to be expected.

We may summarise most of these statements as follows:--

_Summary._

{ A real and apparent change of wave-length.

{ Source alone { A real but not apparent error in direction.

moving produces { { No lag of phase or change of intensity, { except that appropriate { to altered wave-length.

{ No change of frequency.

Medium alone { No error in direction.

moving, or { A real lag of phase, but undetectable source and receiver { without control over the moving { medium.

together, produces { A change of intensity corresponding { to different distance, { but compensated by change { of radiating power.

{ An apparent change of wave-length.

{ An apparent error in direction.

Receiver alone { No change of phase or of intensity, moving produces { except that appropriate { to different virtual { velocity of light.

I may say, then, that not a single optical phenomenon is able to show the existence of an ether stream near the earth. All optics go on precisely as if the ether were stagnant with respect to the earth.