"Lorentz's new theory not only accounted for the negative results of the Michelson-Morley experiment; it also accounted for any conceivable experiment designed to detect changes in the speed of light as a result of an ether wind. Its equations for variations in length and time were worked out in such a way that every possible method of measuring the speed of light, from any frame of reference, would always give the same result. It is easy to understand why physicists were unhappy with this theory. It was ad hoc in the full sense of the word. It seemed little more than a weird effort to patch up the rents that had developed in the ether theory."
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Sources
Martin Gardner, Relativity Simply Explained (1997)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Lorentz_ether_theory
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Lorentz ether theory
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