Dayton Miller's Data have no Real Signal

In the 1920's and 30's Dayton Miller made an enormous number of
measurements using several versions of his Michelson interferometer. In
1933 he published a review article, "The Ether-Drift Experiment and the
Determination of the Absolute Motion of the Earth" [1]. If valid, the
results of that paper would refute SR and GR. Since its publication, no
convincing refutation of that paper has been given, though Shankland et
al tried to do so [2]. Since then numerous people have proclaimed
Miller's data are correct, and have built castles in the air based on
that assumption.

This article explains why Miller, and modern advocates of his anomalous
result, are wrong: there is no real signal in his data at all; his data
and results are completely explained by a large systematic error that
masquerades as a "signal".

The full article is posted to the newsgroup sci.physics.relativity, and
all discussion will take place there.


Tom Roberts

In article , Tom Roberts
wrote:
In the 1920's and 30's Dayton Miller made an enormous number of
measurements using several versions of his Michelson interferometer. In
1933 he published a review article, "The Ether-Drift Experiment and the
Determination of the Absolute Motion of the Earth" [1]. If valid, the
results of that paper would refute SR and GR. Since its publication, no
convincing refutation of that paper has been given, though Shankland et
al tried to do so [2]


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dayton_Miller appears to give a concise
description of this matter, which to be honest, I'd never heard of
before.

There's a meta-issue in this - the parody of science portrayed by
many religious fundamentalists and internet kooks has it that scientific
orthodoxy is handed down from professor to student, graven into slabs of
Unobtanium, and woe betide the heretic who dares question the Law! (I
typed that doing my worst Judge Dredd impersonation G) So perhaps
there's grounds to encourage wider knowledge of this sort of
disagreement.


[Posted for the information of s.a.r readers, not followed up to s.p.r
since I'm quite sure that there will be flame wars licking the ceiling
there before long.]
--
Aidan Karley,
Aberdeen, Scotland,
Location: +57d10' , -02d09' (sub-tropical Aberdeen), 0.021233
Written at Fri, 09 Dec 2005 13:21 GMT