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Originally Posted by noahfor
Another thing is this: The professor is always making it seem that the failure of the michelson-morely experiment to prove the existence of the ether is the foundation for relativity theory.
Am I incorrect in thinking that if the speed of light was constant for all observers, even if the ether was proven to exist, that relativity theory would still hold.
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The "ether" at the time was the frame of reference against which the speed of light was to be measured -- the medium in which light propogates.
The michelson-morely experiment attempted to determine the velocity of the Earth through the ether. It failed.
The experiment assumed that the speed of light was not uniform for every observer, but it was uniform with respect to "the ether", the medium in which light travelled. But when they ran it, the results where inconsistent with their assumptions.
If there was no universal frame of reference against which light's speed was measured... it sort of led to relativity.
While something called "the ether" and the theory of relativity could both exist at the same time, the "ether" that the m-m experiment was looking for is inconsistent with the theory of relativity.