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 As if it possessed the substance of an invention or a battle, the negative result took its place in the history of Cleveland, as another of the revealed mysteries of light.

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"history of Cleveland"
I just read* the Wikipedia page "History of Cleveland" and didn't find a single mention of the Michelson-Morley experiment which only proves that Thomas Pynchon knows more about everything important than anybody else in space and time.

* Pressed CTRL-F and searched for the number of times "Michelson" appeared in the text. It was 0.

"revealed mysteries of light"
Illumination reveals what has previously not been seen. So this is kind of a joke, I think. It might not be as funny a joke as "the history of Cleveland", but I thought it was pretty good.

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 The mood in the saloons frequented by Ætherists grew sombre.

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Those who most believed now grieve as we all grieve the constant changes of our lives, as we all try to process the loss of a long-held belief in the face of changing evidence, of new experience, of a growing and ever-evolving world. I may not have ever felt a belief so deeply that I wasn't sure how to go on after learning something different (you know, like when Inspector Javert learns that maybe he was wrong all those decades in projecting evil and chaos on a man who simply committed a crime out of hunger and desperation but he can't cope with that realization so he, logically, throws himself off of a bridge) but I have had a deli close down where I loved to go and eat their meatball subs while drinking Mr. Pibb out of their soda fountain and skimming the Willamette Week for rock shows at local venues. That's pretty similar, right? Heck, we all mourn the loss of locations we've grown fond of visiting because change is constant. And that may as well be like losing religion was to people in the 19th Century. Right?

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 If the Æther was there, in motion or at rest, it was having no effect on the light it carried.

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At first you might think this statement was a bit redundant, after all that was said before. But it's crucial to the idea that the Michelson-Morley experiment did not prove that Æther doesn't exist; it just proved that it had no effect and, thus, it struck the blow that would eventually lead to its demise, at least in the eyes of all but the most religiously devoted to Æther.
    This declaration that Æther isn't needed to understand the speed of light or how it travels was foreshadowed by Merle Rideout and Heino Vanderjuice's earlier discussion about how Æther had become a matter of faith among many scientists, some being so devoted to the idea of it that they will try to keep it alive throughout the early half of the 20th Century, long after most scientists had put it in the bin. But most scientists decided, after this experiment, that even if it existed (again, it was not proven not to exist here), it simply wasn't a variable that mattered to the study of light. Thus it was subsequently disregarded. And, as such, in the universe of Against the Day, it suddenly ceased to be. It previously existed in the consciousness of the world, thus it was scene by aeronauts and others, affecting their travels in the sky, but would no longer be an issue. Disbelief causes a physical change in the phenomena of the universe.

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 For word was circulating that Michelson and Morley had found no difference in the speed of light coming, going, or sideways relative to the Earth speeding along in its orbit.

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This is one of those nice "Science Without Math" statements that we can all use from time to most-of-the-time. It simply sums up the experiment without getting in the weeds of the details (although the details are what make this whole Blinky Morgan and Edward Morley are the same person theory interesting). What was the experiment about? It was about measuring the speed of light in several different directions to see if the movement of the Earth changed the speed. A change would indicate that the light was moving through something which was also traveling at those speeds. It should be faster going in the direction of the Earth while slowing down going perpendicular to that direction (or against it, obvs!). Who needs to know how it's done? How the light from one source is split into different beams and bounced in different directions to eventually arrive at the same destination? And how arriving at the same destination in phase (since light was suspected to be simply a wave as sound (which is why is was suspected that it needed a medium to travel through)) would indicate that direction didn't hamper its speed. Only if each beam arrived out of phase would there be an indication that the movement and inertia of the Earth would be affecting it. And that out-of-phase bit was what made Merle's theory into a lengthy philosophical sidebar that Pynchon has spent an awful lot of time on. Which he doesn't do with all of his strange little tales so it must have been especially important to the overall themes of the novel. I suspect it backs up the idea that Lew has been split from another Earth to find himself on one where he has become a pariah among those he once knew and loved. But then I could be biased because that was my initial impression of my first reading of the Lew Basnight sections.

Maybe as Mark Z. Danielewski says in his new novel, Tom's Crossing, in the section where the mortician does the autopsy on Russell's body, I need to uninstall my initial bias of Lew's possible dimension hopping. Or, if I want to remain loyal to Thomas Pynchon here, I need to get beyond the zero to rid myself of not just the bias but the idea of the bias too. I think. Remember how not smart I am? I still have trouble with the idea of "Beyond the Zero"!

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 "Because Blinky emerged from invisibility, and the moment he reentered the world that contained Michelson and Morley, the experiment was fated to have a negative outcome, the Æther was doomed. . . ."

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I think somewhere along the way, I got Merle's theory a bit twisted. I was speculating that Æther would be dead if the experiment were a success and the beams were in phase. But, of course, Merle's theory was that Blinky being captured was tied to the discovery that Æther wasn't a concern in measuring the speed of light. But I have to allow for slight missteps being that I don't understand nearly enough of the minute details of this experiment. As a whole, I get what they're doing. But when I break it down into parts (like reading the Wikipedia entry on the Michelson interferometer), I simply come to a thorough understanding of the limits of my intelligence.
    That being said, we're back to Merle's simple theory: in some way, Blinky being captured is connected to the non-detection, and subsequent demise, of Æther. I don't understand it and probably never will which doesn't bode well for my understanding of the rest of the science and math of this novel. I'm already dreading the possible revelation that a reader must understand Quaternions to interpret the novel.

I think the main point here is this: Merle Rideout expressly states my theory of Lew Basnight (and possibly my theory that the world physically changes based on the discoveries made by science). If Blinky has returned to a world with Michelson and Morley, that must mean he was previously in a world without them or there experiment. A world where Æther continued to be the driving force behind the movement of light through space. Possibly an Earth with a hollow center. Or a universe where Martians lived on the moon. A place where boy angels fly about the world in a balloon with a perpetual energy machine.  A place where a man can live without any knowledge of the sin he committed in another dimension.

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 In late June, just about when Michelson and Morley were making their final observations, Blinky Morgan was apprehended in Alpena, Michigan, a resort town built on the site of an Indian graveyard.

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Even while Pynchon is finishing up the conclusion of Merle's theory with the knowledge that as the experiment was concluding and Æther was taking the first wound that would prove fatal, Blinky was captured (possibly proving that theory correct), he takes the time to remind everybody that one of the main themes of this novel is the rampant imperialism of white Europeans (and by obvious extension, being that they're a subclass of "white European", Americans). What better way to point out how shitty the Americans treated the indigenous population than by focusing on this one single aspect of the "resort town": it was previously an Indian graveyard.
    I think this is where my college professors would write a little note on my paper saying "EXPAND" but how much more can I say? Do I have to point out how a town based on vacation and luxury and relaxation is nearly the exact spiritual opposite of sacred burial grounds? That Pynchon has evoked an image of tourists walking around carefree without an important thought in their heads atop the corpses of the native Americans? Am I to assume that people reading whatever I write are dunderheaded nincompoops?! Hmm, I do that every day when I'm out and about in society, why shouldn't I do it while I'm writing?! Maybe my teachers had a point!

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 "Yes yes but suppose, suppose when they split that light beam, that one half of it is Michelson's and the other is his partner Morley's, which turns out to be the half that comes back with the phases perfectly matched up—but under slightly different conditions, alternative axioms, there could be another pair that don't match up, see, in fact millions of pairs, that sometimes you could blame it on the Æther, sure, but other cases maybe the light goes someplace else, takes a detour and that's why it shows up late and out of phase, because it went where Blinky was when he was invisible, and—"

* * * * * * * * * *

When I signed up for Philosophy of Science my first year at Portland State University in 1989, this was the kind of shit I thought we would be discussing. I had yet to realize that I was more into literature than science so you'd have to forgive the naïve moron I was at seventeen. Instead, I was introduced to the world of "guys who think they're way fucking smarter than they really are". I met Cynical Dude Who Doesn't Trust Any Information Because He's Too Smart To Be Fooled and Devil's Advocate Dude Who Doesn't Need Evidence To Bolster His Anti-Arguments Against Everybody Else's Obviously Poorly Thought Out Conclusions and Smirking Asshat Who's Barely Capable Of An Intelligent Thought But Speaks As If His Words Should Be Worshiped and Philosophy Boils Down To Nothing Is Real So Why Even Bother Man. My contribution to the class was dropping it two weeks later. The moment that probably broke me was when Cynical Dude (or was it Why Even Bother Man?) pointed out we can't even believe that what we see on the other side of the window of our class on the third floor is real and I did not say, and it took a great effort to not say this, "Why don't you jump out the window and find out?"

I told that story to avoid actually thinking about Merle's conclusion. But if this One Line at a Time project is going to make any headway, I guess I have to just start diving in and burning out my brain stem.

"suppose when they split that light beam"
The experiment hasn't happened yet. This is Merle speculating on what will happen when they conduct it.

"one half of it is Michelson's and the other is his partner Morley's"
We're barely a fifth of the way through Merle's thought and he's already beginning to lose me. Why did he bring Michelson into it? I thought the split beam was part Morley and part Blinky? But now Merle's telling us the two halves of the split beam each represent a different experimenter? According to Merle's theory, Morley's beam comes back with the phases perfectly lined up. But perfectly lined up with what? Wouldn't that be Michelson's half of the beam? Am I missing that aside from the light splitting into two different beams, the source light also continues as a third beam? I've been staring at the diagram of the Michelson Interferometer and reading the text describing how it works for three times as long as the amount of time it took me to realize I wasn't going to comprehend it.
    But fine. We'll try to understand this as best we can, like a kid in a Science Without Math class. I mean, why bother at all if you have to leave the understanding of the basic foundation of it out? is what I always thought. But here I am, the dumb kid trying his best at partial comprehension!
    Merle's theory then: the bifurcated beam will match up perfectly at the destination. Then it's proved Æther doesn't exist. That would make it Michelson's beam. But, of course, since the experiment has yet to be run, there's the other possibility.

"but under slightly different conditions, alternative axioms, there could be another pair that don't match up"
Okay, sure. The conditions of the experiment might wind up proving the existence of Æther. The beams will not match up. This is Morley's beam. This is the beam that suggests one possibility can result in two outcomes. This becomes a philosophical discussion now on destiny versus divided timelines, free will versus predestination. A stable, ordered universe versus an unstable and chaotic one.

"in fact millions of pairs, that sometimes you could blame it on the Æther, sure"
See? This is sounding like the choices one makes across their lifetime. Millions of choices. Free will versus predestination. Æther versus non-Æther. But is there another possible and strangely paranormal idea rattling around in Merle's mind? If the beams go out of phase by the time they reach their destination, perhaps it isn't just because of the Æther? Perhaps the other reason is something we've seen earlier with Lew Basnight?

"other cases maybe the light goes someplace else, takes a detour and that's why it shows up late and out of phase"
In other words, the light doesn't get slowed down by the Æther and the Earth's movement and all that other stuff that the experiment is trying to prove. Perhaps the light has actually taken a detour through some other dimension, only to wind up late and out of phase and uncertain as to what sin has caused it to become a pariah? Or the light has begun as a scientist, gone out of reality, and come back as a fur thief, allowing for the scientist to remain being that the beam of light was split?

"it went where Blinky was when he was invisible"
In other words, Blinky hasn't constantly existed because Morley is the true self of the duo. Blinky is the split that goes in and out of reality based on the light's trajectory when sent through crystal. Of course, Blinky hasn't actually ever been invisible. That's just Merle's theory to explain why the cops have yet to catch him coming and going from his girl's brothel even though bribery explains the matter much easier.

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 "No, no couldn't be, Blinky's a natty dresser, whereas Professor Morley's attire is said to exhibit a certain tendency to the informal. . . ."

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Ed Addle's on the right track trying to disprove Merle's theory which lacks any evidence other than two guys have bushy mustaches. But to attack their difference on the way they dress? Is he getting at yet another aspect that resonates between the two figures? How does one come to terms with these divergent theories, one which states they're, according to Merle, so obviously the same person and the other, according to Ed, that they differ in so many (or just one: the way they dress) ways? Could this be a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde allusion? The scientist and the violent criminal are one and the same, the two halves of the human condition, one light ray split into two parallel beams. Ed's argument that they can't be separate people because they dress so differently could hardly be said to be a literal argument that would hold any scientific water. So it must be figurative: they dress differently only because they represent different halves of the whole. Blinky's vulgar nature must be hidden behind fancy dress while the scientist cannot be bothered with appearance, too focused within the workings of the mind.