Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Let's do the time warp again



This is fabulous! Check it out before it gets fixed.

The Wikipedia article on Edward Morley (1838-1923), of the famous Michelson-Morley experiment, seems to be taken primarily from a (presumably now public-domain) biographical brief written during Morley's lifetime. From examining the article's history, it looks like the reference to 1895 at the bottom was a later addition. Otherwise, the article seems to have been written before 1887, so that it makes no mention of Morley's most notable contribution! (The 1884 collaboration with Michelson mentioned in the article was a different experiment.)

Highlights:
  • "...and more recently they have experimented with a view of testing Fresnel's explanation of astronomical aberration. Their most recent work in this direction has been..."
  • "At present he is engaged in redetermining the atomic weight of oxygen."
  • "Professor Morley has collected a unique chemical library, and has the most complete files of chemical journals in the United States."
UPDATE: Tee hee! Someone (perhaps inspired by this post) has added the line: "It is anticipated that his studies in collaboration with Albert A. Michelson (completed in 1887) will lead to important conclusions regarding the luminiferous aether and its effects upon the velocity of light."

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