interpret the results of the michelson-morley eperiment?

Answer 1

The experiment was to investigate the motion of the Earth through the "Aether", a mysterious medium which light was thought to travel through.
Michelson's interferometer consisted of a coherent beam of light which was directed at an angled half-silvered mirror. This type of mirror reflects some light, and transmits some light. The two beams produced were directed along paths which were at 90 degrees to each other.
The beams were then recombined and their interference patterns studied.
The results showed that there was no difference in the return time for light, regardless of the direction the beams travelled.
This led to the conclusion that the aether does not exist, and the EMR can travel through empty space without a medium.

Answer 2

The m-m experiment was intended to show the velocity of the earth through the "aether", the supposed medium in which light propagated. The experiment did not detect any "aether drift" velocity, which could lead to only two conclusions:

there is no aether, or

earth is always stationary in the aether.

It was considered unlikely that the aether would follow the earth in its multiple orbits and rotation (rotation about its axis, orbiting the sun that orbits the galaxy, etc) so the result was that there is no aether.

Answer 3

Obviously the electromagnetic ether must be getting dragged along with the earth somehow.

;)

Or else there's no such thing as ether and the speed of light is just always constant. That seems kind of nonsensical at first glance, so it took a genius like Einstein to realize it and work out the consequences.

Answer 4

if you time a steamboat chugging up a river, then time it over the same distance chugging down the river, you can calculate how fast the river is moving.

in the M-M experiment, they were looking at light moving with the "luminiferous aether," and against it.

Surprise. Light pretty much always moves at the same speed in a vacuum... leading us to 1) dibelieve in the aether and 2) set up a young German Patent worker named Einstein