Pentcho, According to sources like Jammer, Stachel, and Phipps, Maxwell, who died already in 1879, was skeptical about Michelson's attempt to measure the velocity of earth re aether. Nonetheless, Maxwell's equations clearly described waves, and Hertz managed to exploit this approach.
Well, Newton in contrast to Huygens had already imagined light as particles. Einstein in 1905 only reinvented that wheel.
However, as far as I know, the word emission theory was first used as to describe unsuccessful attempts by the early Einstein and later Ritz to cope with the problem that Maxwell's equation are not exactly Galilei invariant unless - as argued by Jammer - one drops Faraday's induction term. In this sense, a developed emission theory never existed. Hertz "Electric Waves" 1892 already tried to obey the interpretation of the MMX null result of 1887. You certainly know that Michelson in 1887 did not mention a trifle: When he in 1881 reported an earlier experiment, he assumed an outcome twice as large that they expected in 1887. The corrected expectation was suggested by Potier and then elaborated by Lorentz. Since then it was perhaps very rarely questioned for many decades.
I agree with Marmet on that much effort was spend in order to disprove the null result while almost no attention was devoted to the possibility that the expectation of something else was unrealistic. Until now, the defender of SR tend to confirm SR by only demonstrating that emission theory is untenable.
I see at least four views:
- SR with Lorentz covariance, block time, length contraction, relativity of time
- emission theories including extinction theory (Dowdye)
- neo-Lorentzian interpretation of relativity (e.g. Selleri, van Flandern)
- Hertzians: preferred frame of reference, simultaneity, c refers to space
Presumably they are mutually excluding each other. Then at best one out of them can be correct.
Eckard
