Abstract

Miller's paper, "The Ether-Drift Experiment ... ", was criticized by Shankland in 1955. Shankland's criticism is flawed, and I attempt to refute it. I also explain Miller's cosmic model and his data reduction methods. I discovered two minor arithmetic errors in Miller's Figure 8. Shankland found no errors.

There is no question that the effect observed by Miller is real because two independent sets of observations, (1) the fringe displacement amplitudes and (2) the azimuth of the maximum effect for each tum of the interferometer, produce two independent solutions to the position of the ether wind apex. Those two independent solutions are within ?3? of the mean solution in each of four epochs (February 8, April 1, August 1, and September 15). The observed apexes are within ?1.9? of the calculated apexes.

The only weaknesses in Miller's paper are that the following effects are unexplained: (1) the reduced velocity effect, (2) the displaced azimuth effect, (3) the secular negative fringe displacement in proportion to time, and (4) Miller's apex is about 850 away from the hot pole of the cosmic microwave background radiation anisotropy dipole, as observed by the COBE satellite. I offer some speculative explanations for each of these effects.