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From: cjh@petsd.UUCP (Chris Henrich)
Newsgroups: net.physics
Subject: Re: Parascience
Message-ID: <547@petsd.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 18-Jun-85 12:55:40 EDT
Article-I.D.: petsd.547
Posted: Tue Jun 18 12:55:40 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 19-Jun-85 05:23:32 EDT
References: <272@sri-arpa.ARPA>
Reply-To: cjh@petsd.UUCP (PUT YOUR NAME HERE)
Organization: Perkin-Elmer DSG, Tinton Falls, N.J.
Lines: 28
Summary: 

[]
	In a discussion of Uri Geller, Stephen R. Walton
writes:
>                                                              In his 
>introduction to a book criticizing these experiments, Martin Gardner
>tells the story of a physicist who went to his deathbed believing
>that he had measured an ether drift, and had thus disproven special
>relativity.  As he was the only person in the world who could
>reproduce this result, it seems justifiable to reject them as the
>product of some unknown prejudice.

	I think the cause is known (with a moderately high
probability).  If this is the case I remember being told of,
his laboratory was in Colorado, where the temperature change
between day and night can be great.  The building was
expanding in the sunlight and contracting in the dark, and
this change in the dimensions and position of his equipment 
was enough to account for the daily variation that he
interpreted as "ether drift."

Regards,
Chris

--
Full-Name:  Christopher J. Henrich
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