Einstein Was Right: The Science and History of Gravitational Waves by Alessandra Buonanno

Author:Alessandra Buonanno [Buonanno, Alessandra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2020-08-05T00:00:00+00:00

Since Einstein planned to travel in 1925 on a promised lecture tour to South America, he could only come to Pasadena the following year at the earliest: “I thank you very much for your friendly letter and hope that I can come and visit you in 1926 together with Lorentz. If it should not be possible for me to travel in 1926, I would definitely come 1927. I already am very much looking forward to it. I would also very much like to speak with the gentlemen in Washington about the problems of terrestrial magnetism. But my thoughts in this direction are still quite indefinite at the moment.” To Epstein, who reiterated the invitation, he stated he “would definitely come in 1927 at the latest.”15 But eventually he would not travel for five years after his return from South America in 1925.

A few months later, Einstein again received news of scientific work done in the United States, in particular new work by Dayton C. Miller of Case Western University, who was performing thousands of measurements that purported to prove the existence of an ether. Einstein had encountered Miller’s previous experiments during his first visit to America in 1921 and had expressed serious reservations about their soundness. This time he was asked to comment on the proofs of Miller’s latest papers. He replied that if Miller’s results should be confirmed, “then the special relativity theory, and with the general theory in its present form, falls. Experiment is the supreme judge.”16

Most physicists were equally skeptical. Epstein wrote to Einstein that “our circle accepts Miller’s somewhat daring statements under great reserve; we hope we will be in the position to check his measurements with other kinds of instrument.”17 When asked, Einstein commented to colleagues that he disbelieved Miller’s results but that he would keep quiet until the matter was resolved in the court of experiment. “At the bottom of my dark soul I don’t place much weight on Miller’s experiment, but I can’t say it aloud,” he wrote to Ehrenfest. “It is less a matter of blind confidence” in the theory of relativity “but rather because of the conviction that the difference between Cleveland and Mount Wilson cannot be that significant, considering the grand scale on which the Old One has created the world.”18 To Millikan, Einstein wrote that he was very curious to find out further details about the “counterattack” that had been launched both on the heights of Mount Wilson and at the lower altitude of the Caltech laboratories. He again confessed that he did not make much of Miller’s data, which must rest “on sources of error. Otherwise the entire theory of relativity collapses like a house of cards.”19

In January 1926, even though new data had not yet become available, Einstein was pressed by a European correspondent of the Hearst Universal Service to state publicly that he was ready to bet that Miller’s experiments were in error:

If the results of Prof. Miller’s experiments should be confirmed the theory of relativity could no longer be maintained.

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