Abstract

A new information-theoretic physics has given rise to a quantum-foam description of space relative to which absolute motion is meaningful and measurable. In this new physics Michelson interferometers operating in gas mode are capable of revealing absolute motion. We analyse the old results from gas-mode Michelson interferometer experiments which always showed small but significant effects. Analysis of the Illingworth (1927) experimental data, after correcting for the refractive index effect of the helium used, reveals an absolute speed of the Earth of v = 369 ? 123 km/s, while the Miller experiment (1933), after correcting for the refractive index effect of the air, now gives a speed of v = 335 ? 57 km/s, which are in agreement with the speed of v = 365 ? 18 km/s determined from the dipole fit, in 1991, to the NASA COBE satellite Cosmic Background Radiation (CBR) observations. The new physics also implies that vacuum interferometers will give null results, as has been observed many times. These experimental results imply that absolute motion is observable and that there is a preferred foliation of spacetime coinciding with the CBR frame.