The Michelson–Morley experiment was performed in 1887 by Albert Michelson and Edward Morley

Edward Morley

Edward Williams Morley was an American scientist famous for the Michelson–Morley experiment.-Biography:...

 at what is now Case Western Reserve University

Case Western Reserve University

Case Western Reserve University is a private research university located in Cleveland, Ohio, USA...

 in Cleveland, Ohio

Cleveland, Ohio

Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The city is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately west of the Pennsylvania border...

. Its results are generally considered to be the first strong evidence against the theory of a luminiferous ether and in favor of special relativity

Special relativity

Special relativity is the physical theory of measurement in an inertial frame of reference proposed in 1905 by Albert Einstein in the paper "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies".It generalizes Galileo's...

. The most immediate effect at the time was to put an end to Lord Kelvin's Vortex theory, which said that atoms were vortices in the ether. The experiment has also been referred to as "the moving-off point for the theoretical aspects of the Second Scientific Revolution".