Questions tagged [aether]
Aether (or ether) relates to the material which supposedly fills the entire universe. It is a concept used to understand action at a distance. Aether was described by Huygens as an "omnipresent, perfectly elastic medium having zero density", to support his wave theory of light.
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We know there is no aether, so what is being dragged in frame dragging?
I have read this question:
In stellar frame dragging what is the 'frame'?
There are several questions on this site about frame dragging, all of them take the frame that is being dragged as an ...
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Does aether not exist or is it simply superfluous?
My question is motivated from studying the null result of the Michelson Morley experiment.
Does the experiment prove that the aether does not exist? Wikipedia says that it was more broadly ...
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Understanding the math of the Michelson-Morley experiment
I'm having some conceptual misunderstandings of the Michelson-Morley experiment. The time for the beam going perpendicular ($t_{across}$) of the aether wind I am getting:
$$(ct)^{2}=d^{2}+(vt)^{2}\\
(...
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Why are the Michelson-Morley experimental results interpreted more broadly than the scope of the tested medium?
My understanding of the experimental design is that they tested for a stationary, luminiferous, light propagating, non-interacting with mass, uniform, ubiquitous medium.
This is but one possible ...
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What exactly is weird about waves propagating without a medium? What does it violate? [closed]
I can not seem to grasp, why exactly does light travelling through space without the need of any medium was baffling for the scientists of 1800's.
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Einstein's return to aether
So it seems like that Einstein returned to the concept of aether, but from the point of view of a general relativistic framework.
https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Extras/Einstein_ether/
This is ...
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Are Lorentz aether theory and special relativity fully equivalent?
Following up on this question on whether it's possible to construct a physical theory with invariant space-time and variable speed of light.
I am looking for a authoritative and more definitive ...
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Why didn't Michelson and Morley assume or conclude that aether is homogenous and permeate all of space?
In the Michelson-Morley experiment, why didn't they assume or conclude that ether is homogeneous and permeate all of space instead of coming from an unspecified source or direction dubbed the ether ...
CommunityBot
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Speed of light in Michelson-Morley experiment
The (failed) goal of the Michelson-Morley experiment was to detect the motion of the Earth with respect to the hypothetical ether. As far as I understand (e.g. from the exposition in Feynman’s ...
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Why don't electromagnetic waves require a medium?
As I understand it, electromagnetic waves have two components which are the result of each other, i.e., when a moving electric charge creates a changing magnetic field at point X then a changing ...
Buzz♦
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Why Maxwell thought that aether was needed?
The present knowledge of electromagnetism says that a time-varying electric field generates a time-varying magnetic field and vice versa; this would result in an electromagnetic wave. Maxwell was one ...
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Was the Michelson & Morely experiment ever valid? [closed]
One of the key predecessors to Einstein's Relativity was another theory having to do with an "Aether" material. This substance was supposed to be the substrate that the universe is built ...
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What would happen if the aether did exist and there was no such thing as relativity? [closed]
I'm curious as to the purpose of relativity and why the universe would function this way as opposed to a universe with an aether. So what would be different if we had an aether?
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All Michelson-Morley experiments have only been done in non-inertial conditions. Does special relativity apply or not?
As far as I know not a single Michelson-Morley experiment has been done in non-inertial conditions. Shouldn't it be general relativity that applies to Michelson-Morley experiments done so far?
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Help with understanding Einstein's thought experiment of the train [closed]
My understanding is that Einstein claimed that the aether model of light is inconsistent with the principle of relativity (that you cannot tell the difference between constant velocity and being ...
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