| Show Ether Drift Exper Experiment Repeated With Success Washington The The ether drift experiment experiment ex ex- whose failure more than 40 years ago started Einstein on on the investigations that led to the tile relativity relativity rela rein theory has at last been repeated repeated repeated re re- re- re in modified form with successful successful suc sue results which were reported report report- ed here before the tile meeting of the National Academy of Sciences by Dr Herbert E. E Ives of the Bell Telephone Telephone Tele Tele- phone laboratories Secret of Dr Ives' Ives success was his use of streams of positively charged particles or ions known as canal rays instead l of the beams of light originally tried in the classic Michel Michel- son-Morley son experiment in 1887 This experiment undertook to find out to what extent light would be deflected from its its straight path through the theether theether theether ether when it was made to take a course at right angles to the direction direction direction I tion of the earths earth's motion through space Light treated In this way might be considered scientifically as asa asa a n lock and the expectation was that a clock in motion should run slower than one at rest I ISo So slight is the slowing down that no speeds available to experimenters experiment experIment- ers when the theory was announced were adequate for a a. a crucial a-crucial test But by using as a clock the light- light giving oscillation of a hydrogen ion which can be shot down a vacuum tube at a thousand miles a second itis Itis it itis is possible to measure a definite change ge in the color of ot the light That of course means a change in inthe inthe inthe the rate of ot vibration of ot the atom |
