Aether v Timespace

[Stripe]

With the announcement of gravity waves having been detected, it raises an interesting question: What is the medium that these waves travel through? The answer is: spacetime.

But the standard idea is that relativity theory, which introduced spacetime, eliminated the need for an aether — which was a medium for light and gravity to travel through.

So I asked a few questions and Spike Psarris pointed me toward this article:

Ether and the Theory of Relativity by Albert Einstein​ ...the endeavour toward a unified view of the nature of forces leads to the hypothesis of an ether. This hypothesis, to be sure, did not at first bring with it any advance in the theory of gravitation or in physics generally, so that it became customary to treat Newton's law of force as an axiom not further reducible. But the ether hypothesis was bound always to play some part in physical science, even if at first only a latent part... This theory - also called the theory of the stationary luminiferous ether - moreover found a strong support in an experiment which is also of fundamental importance in the special theory of relativity, the experiment of Fizeau, from which one was obliged to infer that the luminiferous ether does not take part in the movements of bodies. The phenomenon of aberration also favoured the theory of the quasi-rigid ether.

http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Extras/Einstein_ether.html

 

[Nick M]

So gravity affects the medium it is moving through.

 

[Stripe]

So gravity affects the medium it is moving through.

That seems likely.

However, it is wonderfully difficult to imagine how we're ever going to properly conceptualize all this.

 

[Clete]

There are lots of people, really smart people, that still believe in one form or another of an ether.

Here's a link that discusses it at some length. The author is a bombastic jerk who thinks anyone who disagrees with his ideas is an idiot and who cannot resist talking down to most of his audience but the point is that the idea of an ether is still quite alive and well...

https://thepiratebay.se/torrent/110...ing_Secrets_of_Magnetism_3rd_edition_[9-2014]

That link is to a torrent of a free ebook. You'll have to have a torrent client to download it. Something like BitComet.

Incidentally, the author does not address the Michelson/Morley experiment at all. He simply emphatically states in a youtube video that its equivalent to fish proving they aren't swimming in water. He accused me of being stupid for making the argument that his water analogy would imply that the earth is stationary relative to the ether. So, just bare in mind that he's not the most intellectually honest guy.

 

[patrick jane]

ethernet

 

[Stripe]

:mock: Stuu