Trouton–Noble experiment

The Trouton–Noble experiment was an attempt to detect motion of the Earth through the luminiferous aether, and was conducted in 1901–1903 by Frederick Thomas Trouton and H. R. Noble. It was based on a suggestion by George FitzGerald that a charged parallel-plate capacitor moving through the aether should orient itself perpendicular to the motion. Like the earlier Michelson–Morley experiment, Trouton and Noble obtained a null result: no motion relative to the aether could be detected. This null result was reproduced, with increasing sensitivity, by Rudolf Tomaschek (1925, 1926), Chase (1926, 1927) and Hayden in 1994. Such experimental results are now seen, consistent with special relativity, to reflect the validity of the principle of relativity and the absence of any absolute rest frame (or aether). The experiment is a test of special relativity.

The Trouton–Noble experiment is also related to thought experiments such as the "Trouton–Noble paradox," and the "right-angle lever" or "Lewis–Tolman paradox". Several solutions have been proposed to solve this kind of paradox, all of them in agreement with special relativity.