Does an ethosphere of stagnant ether drifting with the Earth survive the Michelson-Gale experiment?
A viewer asks how to respond to the claim that an ethosphere, a bubble of stagnant ether drifting with the Earth, would explain the Airy and Michelson-Morley results, and whether such a stagnant ethosphere is disproved by Michelson-Gale.
Answer
Yes, that would be the answer, because what did Michelson and Gale find? They found the ether was not stagnant; it is moving at the equator at 1,054 miles an hour. That is the cool thing about Michelson-Gale: they used the same exact apparatus as Michelson and Morley in 1887, light interference based on the ether impeding the light beam, and it did not even matter how much it impeded it, as long as it did a little bit. You really cannot understand Michelson-Morley unless you incorporate Michelson-Gale, because otherwise the Copernicans will try to find holes, such as an ethosphere moving with the Earth, or special relativity, since if only the speed of light is constant it distorts everything else. Michelson-Morley was repeated about two dozen times between 1881 and 1930 and never found the Earth moving around the sun, and then Michelson-Gale measured a full sidereal rotation of 23 hours and 56 minutes, and it was never repeated again, which amazes me; maybe they did not want the same result. The geocentrist just sits back and says: guys, the reason you can get a full rotation but never a revolution is that there is no revolution, it is not the Earth rotating, it is the whole universe rotating, and that answers both experiments.