From Current Literature

Attempts to Detect Electrodynamic Effects of the Earth’s Motion at High Altitudes1

S. I. Vavilov.

Michelson’s attempt to detect the influence of the Earth’s annual revolution around the Sun on optical phenomena at the Earth’s surface led, as is well known, to a negative result. On the other hand, as Michelson has shown recently (1925), the Earth’s diurnal rotation affects optical phenomena in the way that would follow from the assumption of a stationary ether. In the general theory of relativity the negative results of the first experiment and the positive results of the second are fully consistent with the basic propositions of the theory. Reconciling both experiments in the ether theory is in any case a very difficult problem. It is necessary to assume that, in the translational motion of the Earth, the nearest layers of the ether are carried along by the motion (the Earth’s rotation about the axis of the ether is not carried along, just as the Moon is not carried along by the Earth’s rotational motion, but follows the Earth in the latter’s motion around the Sun). From this point of view the Earth is surrounded by a thin ether atmosphere which, however, unlike the air atmosphere, does not take part in the diurnal rotational motion. Theories of this kind have long been discussed (Stokes, Lorentz, Planck, Lenard, Silberstein) and recently have, it would seem, received confirmation in the experiments of D. Miller2. Miller believes that he has succeeded in detecting the relative motion of the Earth on the summit of Mount Wilson (1800 m), amounting to approximately 30 percent of the motion that would be expected on the basis of the hypothesis of a stationary ether. Detailed reports on these experiments have not yet appeared, but in any case they contradict at least the fact of the identity of the aberration constants obtained at mountain and lowland observatories.

If the results of Miller’s experiments are correct, then analogous results may also be expected for the electrodynamic effects of the Earth’s motion. Röntgen’s experiments (1888) showed that a charged condenser at rest on the Earth’s surface does not produce noticeable magnetic effects. On the other hand, if there exists a motion of the Earth relative to the ether, then in a suspended condenser, oriented in the appropriate way, a noticeable torque should appear. The experiment of Trouton and Noble (1904), carried out on the Earth’s surface, gave a negative result.

The author of the paper under review, Tomaschek, in order to test the consequences of Miller’s experiment, repeated the experiments of Röntgen and of Trouton and Noble at various altitudes: 1) the Radiological Institute in Heidelberg (120 m), 2) the Königs-

schtyul (570 m), 3) the summit of the Jungfrau (3457 m). A number of substantial changes were introduced into the apparatus, which very greatly increased its sensitivity. In the experiments with the magnetic field of the condenser, the sensitivity was such that the speed of the Earth, \(100 \frac{m}{sec}\) (the full speed \(\sim 30\,000 \frac{m}{sec}\)), could quite well have been detected. Within the limits of observational error, the result proved negative at all the indicated altitudes.

When Trouton and Noble repeated the experiment, such sensitivity was attained that the full speed of the Earth \(\left(30 \frac{km}{sec}\right)\) would have produced a deflection of 900 mm on a scale at a distance of 1 m; in fact, at all altitudes no deflections were observed exceeding one-hundredth of the indicated value.

Thus Tomaschek’s experiments contradict Miller’s experiments in the most decisive manner1.

1. At the present time Tomaschek is working on repeating Miller’s experiments on the summit of the Jungfrau. ↩↩

2. Cf. D. Miller. Ether drift. Uspekhi Fizicheskikh Nauk, vol. V. ↩