Extraído do livro Logos Rising: A History of Ultimate Reality, E. Michael Jones.

Chapter 12 – Heisenberg and the Collapse of Atomism (pages 556-558)

Between April and July 1887, Albert A. Michelson and Edward W. Morley, professors of what is
now Case University in Cleveland, Ohio, performed a series of experiments comparing the speed of light
in perpendicular directions in an attempt to detect the relative motion of matter through space, which
they claimed was made up of a stationary substance which they referred to as ether or “aether wind.”25

The result was negative. That left modern physics with two equally repugnant alternatives: either
the earth is not moving around the sun or the earth is moving but its motion is undetectable. Einstein
chose the latter option, thereby providing “redemption” from the “serious embarrassment” the
Michelson-Morley experiments had caused for Galilean and Newtonian physics. As Lincoln Barnett
pointed out, the Michelson-Morley experiments posed a challenge to the entire history of physics from
the time of Galileo:
The Michelson-Morley experiment confronted scientists with an embarrassing alternative. On the
one hand they could scrap the ether theory which had explained so many things about electricity,
magnetism, and light. Or if they insisted on retaining the ether they had to abandon the still more
venerable Copernican theory that the earth is in motion. To many physicists it seemed almost
easier to believe that the earth stood still than that waves – light waves, electromagnetic waves –
could exist without a medium to sustain them. It was a serious dilemma and one that split scientific
thought for a quarter century. Many new hypotheses were advanced and rejected. The experiment
was tried again by Morley and by others, with the same conclusion; the apparent velocity of the
earth through the ether was zero.27

Einstein rose to the challenge by proposing his theory of Special Relativity. But to claim that the
earth’s movement couldn’t be detected, Einstein also had to claim there was no ether, and that the
relative motion between space and the earth as it revolved around the sun made the earth, and
Michelson’s apparatus, contract in length just enough to make it look as if the earth weren’t moving
around the sun. This is the essence of the 1905 theory of special relativity (e.g., length contraction, time
dilation, and no ether). It was invented to keep the earth moving even though the 1887 Michelson-Morley
experiment, prima facie, showed it wasn’t.28

Einstein’s solution brought problems in its wake. To preserve a moving earth, Einstein claimed
that the Michelson-Morley experiments could not detect ether because ether did not exist. This meant
that Einstein remained true to the materialist inspiration of modern science by claiming that there was
nothing but atoms and the void, the atoms representing the planets and the void representing what
separated the planets from each other. After the void became the metaphor for space, space became
synonymous with nothing, which meant that there was nothing between the earth and the sun, in which
case they would have to be touching , which was clearly impossible. That meant that the other alternative
– the earth does not move – had to be accepted by default as the only rationally coherent option. This,
however, was the source of an even more acute crisis because it meant rejection of the claim that the
earth revolved around the sun, which would have meant that the Catholic Church was right and Galileo
wrong, which would have discredited the foundations of modern science.
 When Einstein rescued modern physics with his theory of special relativity, a huge sigh of relief
went up from the scientific community. At this point, Heisenberg sided with Einstein’s theory of special
relativity because it “showed in a conclusive way that the concept of the ether as a substance, to which
Maxwell’s equations refer, had to be abandoned.”29 The substance of ether could safely be abolished:
Since all systems of reference that are in uniform translational motion with respect to each other
are equivalent for the description of nature, there is no meaning to the statement that there is a
substance, the ether, which is at rest in one of these systems. Such a substance is in fact not needed
and it is much simpler to say that light waves are propagated through empty space and that
electromagnetic fields are a reality of their own and can exist in empty space.30

Unfortunately for the relativity physicists, the same experiments were repeated in 1904 and 1925
with results that confirmed the first set of experiments with an even higher degree of accuracy:
when Michelson did a second experiment in 1925 with Henry Gale to measure for the daily sidereal
rotation between earth and the stars, and did so by using the same principle of ether causing light
wave interference as he had used in 1887, he found the ether to the tune of 98 percent of what
was expected for a daily rotation. In other words, he found 98 percent of the ether drift against
the earth and thus 98 percent of the daily sidereal rotation rate of 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4.1
seconds, which is the daily rate of rotation between earth and the stars.31

25. “Michelson-Morley Experiment,” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%E2%80%93Morley_experiment

27. Lincoln Barnett, The Universe and Dr. Einstein (New York: New American Library, 1962),
p. 44.

28. Robert Sungenis, private correspondence.

29. Heisenberg, Philosophy, p. 109.

30. Heisenberg, Philosophy, p. 114.

31. Robert Sungenis, private correspondence.