Did Michelson or Morley know of Einstein's theory of relatively?

Question

Did Michelson or Morley know of Einstein's theory of relatively? They almost certainly must have ... is there any proof of it and what did they think of it?

Answer 1

The Michelson-Morley experiment was published in 1887.

Einstein's big year of publication -- the year where he proposed (a) special relativity, (b) that matter is made up of atoms, and (c) that light is also made up of particles, was 1905.

No, I don't think Michelson and Morley were time travelers.

Answer 2

Other than the famous experiments conducted by Mickelson and Morley on the existence of the aether wind, there is no mention or account whether they were engaged in anything related to Einstein's relativity. The first interferometer experiment was done by Mickelson in 1881. Then Mickelson and Morley jointly performed an experiment on the subject in 1887. Mickelson and other experimenters did another one in 1927. There were also other experimenters who delved with the subject like Miller, Tomascheck and Joos.

Answer 3

The Michelson–Morley experiment, one of the most important and famous experiments in the history of physics, was performed in 1887 by Albert Michelson and Edward Morley at what is now Case Western Reserve University.

In 1892, with the attempt to explain the Michelson-Morley experiment, Lorentz proposed that moving bodies contract in the direction of motion. He derived the transformation equations subsequently used by Albert Einstein to describe space and time.

Einstein published his theory of relativity in 1905. The Michelson-Morley experiment led to the formulation of the theory if relativity. They most certainly didn't know about it beforehand.

Answer 4

Go look at the date of the MM experiment.  Now look at the date of einstein's paper, "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies".  Do you think M&M knew about it?

M&M were ernestly looking for the speed of the ether.  I don't believe they expected to get a null result.

Or are you asking what did they think 20 or 30 years later when they read Einstein's paper?  It wasn't a coincidence that Michelson got the Nobel prize a couple years after relativity was discovered.  So I guess he must have thought it was pretty great.

Answer 5

No, their experiment was carried out almost two decades earlier, but Einstein deduced that the experiment reavealed time dilation, and he was motivated to finish his work.