Michelson-Morley Experiment - The Luminiferous Ether, The Michelson Interferometer, The Null Result

In 1887 two American scientists, physicist Albert Michelson and physical chemist Edward Morley, performed an experiment that was designed to detect the motion of Earth through a hypothetical medium known as the luminiferous ether, which was thought to be present throughout space. They made their measurements with a very sensitive optical instrument now called a Michelson interferometer. Their observations showed no indication of movement through the predicted ether. This outcome was unexpected and has become one of the fundamental experimental results in support of the theory of special relativity, developed by Albert Einstein in 1905.