Too Busy For Words - the PaulWay Blog

Mon 15th May, 2006

Ether? Nyet!

Sorry, Leon, but that page on the existence of the ether and questioning the Michelson-Morley Experiment is pure bunkum.

Far from there being "Few attempts [...] made to replicate the experiment itself", this is one of the most re-tested and re-checked experiments there is. Far from "several of them [also finding] experimental evidence for an ether", no observable effect has been found. Indeed, the Hills and Hall paper published in 1990 put the maximum speed of the ether at only 2x10-13 metres per second. You should expect at least that the speed of the ether is at least the speed of the earth's orbit around the sun (30000 metres per second)!

But, more than the factual inaccuracies, the style of the whole page gives itself away as the work of wishful thinking at best. Phrases such as "The real facts were given", "These are the notes taken by generations of students", and so forth - the sound of the voice of authority. Quoting the "Director of the Orgone Biophysical Research Lab", which is basically another branch of quackery dressed up to sound impressive. Claiming that this kind of knowledge is being suppressed by the establishment because it's too radical or breaks too many rules. It pegs my conspiracy-theory and mad-science cliche-ometers.

And it turns out that Richard Milton (the site's author) already has his own page on skepdic.com. That's good enough proof to me that it's junk.

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