Abstract

Physics textbooks assert that in the famous 1887 interferometer experiment to detect absolute motion Michelson and Morley saw no rotation-induced fringe shifts; it was a null experiment. However this is incorrect. Their published data revealed to them the expected fringe shifts, but that data gave a speed of some 8km/s using a Newtonian theory for the operation of the interferometer, and so was rejected by them solely because it was less than the 30km/s orbital speed of the earth. A 2002 post relativistic-effects analysis for the operation of this device however gives a speed > 300km/s. So this experiment detected both absolute motion and the breakdown of Newtonian physics. So far another six experiments, four using a Michelson interferometer in gas-mode and two coaxial cable 1st order v/c experiments, have confirmed this first detection of absolute motion in 1887. These experiments imply that the 1905 Einstein pos-tulate for the observer-invariance of the speed of light is invalid, and that the spacetime ontology is experimentally falsified. A new first order experiment is being constructed here in 2005 to measure with greater accuracy not only the velocity of absolute motion, but also to study the wave phenomena already seen in earlier experiments.