The origins of length contraction: I. The FitzGerald-Lorentz deformation hypothesis

Details The origins of length contraction: I. The FitzGerald-Lorentz deformation hypothesis The origins of length contraction: I. The FitzGerald-Lorentz deformation hypothesis

2001-04-12

arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0104032v1

Am.J.Phys. 69 (2001) 1044-1054

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

29 pages; accepted April 2001 for publication in American Journal of Physics

Scientific paper

10.1119/1.1379733

One of the widespread confusions concerning the history of the 1887 Michelson-Morley experiment has to do with the initial explanation of this celebrated null result due independently to FitzGerald and Lorentz. In neither case was a strict, longitudinal length contraction hypothesis invoked, as is commonly supposed. Lorentz postulated, particularly in 1895, any one of a certain family of possible deformation effects for rigid bodies in motion, including purely transverse alteration, and expansion as well as contraction; FitzGerald may well have had the same family in mind. A careful analysis of the Michelson-Morley experiment (which reveals a number of serious inadequacies in many text-book treatments) indeed shows that strict contraction is not required.

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