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The Michelson-Morley result did not falsify 'the ether' as a single entity — it only ruled out some of many competing ether theories, and how scientists responded to that ambiguous result was far messier than a clean falsification story.

Nielsen argues the textbook story that Michelson-Morley 'disproved the ether' and thereby triggered relativity is a misleading oversimplification — there were many rival ether theories, and Einstein himself said the experiment wasn't decisive for his thinking. ✦ AI generated

Michael Nielsen · Dwarkesh Podcast · 2026-04-07 · original ↗

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Even just the word 'the' there is a misnomer. You actually had a ton of different theories and a couple of leading contenders. So yes, there's some version of falsification going on, but how you respond to this new experiment is very complicated.

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0:00– How scientific progress outpaces its verification loops

0:00– How scientific progress outpaces its verification loops

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