Middle Ground: Untold Story of Cosmology - Episode 05 (Airy's Failure or Success?) | Austin Whitsitt

Often overlooked yet profoundly significant, Airy’s Failure stands as one of the most important experiments in the history of cosmology. Designed to test the assumption that stellar aberration was caused by Earth’s orbital motion, this experiment introduced water into a telescope to slow the speed of light. The hypothesis was that this would increase the deflection of starlight as Earth moved further under the light before it passed through the telescope. But what were the results, and do they align with the expected outcomes of a heliocentric model? In this episode, we uncover the implications of this pivotal observation and its relevance to our understanding of cosmology.