Michelson (Mi) and Morley (Mo) go to a large planet and build two trains that are 186,000 miles apart on tracks going East and West. Mi and Mo set the trains exactly parallel with each other and perpendicular to a line connecting them. Imagine one train on the South 20-degree latitude line and the other train on the North 20-degree latitude line. When the trains are not moving, Mi shines a bright plasma light (this is like a large light bulb only much brighter) to Mo who has a mirror that reflects the light back to Mi. Mi has an atomic stopwatch and finds it takes 2 seconds for him to see the reflected light. "Ah, good ", says Mi, "186,000 miles per second". Then Mi and Mo get the trains moving parallel with each other at a high velocity and try their experiment again.

Does the round trip of the light take 2 seconds as in the first case?

Now the boys substitute a narrow focus laser light (2-inch circular diameter beam) and with the trains stopped conduct the experiment. "Ah, 2 seconds again for the round trip of the light pulse". They used a 1/2-second pulse of laser light. The mirror is exactly perpendicular to the light pulse. They then get the trains moving parallel and do the experiment again: 1/2-sec pulse and the mirror perpendicular.

Does Mi see the light return? The reflecting mirror is 1 foot by 1 foot in size and the trains are moving 1,200 miles per hour.

The above schematic represents the two trains 186,000 miles apart and the laser light going up from Mi to Mo and returning in 2 seconds round trip.
When the trains do move they move at the same velocity and remain perpendicular to a line drawn between them.

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