Commentary on “Does a Cosmic Ether Exist? Evidence from Dayton Miller and Others”

Abstract

As a former researcher in relativistic rotation (see, for examples, Klauber 2002 and Klauber 2007), I was greatly intrigued by James DeMeo’s (2014) well-written and highly informative JSE Historical Perspective article on the Miller and other experiments that effectively repeated, and refined, the Michelson–Morley experiment. I had been aware of Miller’s controversial findings, as well as those of Múnera, Deckers, Arenas, and Alfonso (2006), which seemed to show non-isotropic light speed, but I had not studied them extensively and had essentially been seduced by the arguments of Shankland and others. I was not aware of the other similar research mentioned in the article, nor of the interactions between Miller, Einstein, Shankland, and others on the subject, and I thank Dr. DeMeo for recounting them.
Having read a large number of articles by those purporting to have found holes in Einstein’s relativity theory, I, frankly, have found the vast majority to be cases of simple misunderstanding of fundamental concepts within that theory. My own position has long been that relativity theory is correct, but that it has been misinterpreted and misapplied for the particular case of relativistic rotation (see my above-cited articles for details).