Michelson–Morley experiment

The Michelson-Morley experiment was a physics experiment carried out in Cleveland, Ohio, by Albert Michelson and Edward Morley, who used a sensitive interferometer to look for the motion of the Earth through the luminiferous aether, the invisible medium that was then believed to carry light waves. If the aether existed, light travelling in different directions relative to the Earth's motion should have taken slightly different times. They found no significant difference, in what has been called the most famous failed experiment in history. The result was puzzling for classical physics, and it prompted attempts to explain it, such as the Lorentz-FitzGerald contraction. It later became an important background to Einstein's special theory of relativity, and Michelson received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1907.

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