Either Ether or Aether

Greek Mythological History

• "of the Highest or Superior Heaven" (1) - Heisiod (c. 700 B.C. (2))
• Element of the realm of the gods, defined as "the clear upper air of the sky" (3)
• Supernatural, invisible, and immatereal
• Not easily falsifiable

Fifth Element

• Viewed as a type of air by Plato (4)
• Added to the list of the classical elements by Aristotle c. 350 B.C. (5)
• Supported by "the principle that nature abhorred a vacuum or nothingness" (1)
• "Proof" was that alternative was unreasonable

Greek Authority

• Aether, said to be ubiquitous and non-material by Plotinus (3rd century)(1)
• "The raw essence of the Universe" (6)
• Argument from Greek Authority
• Horizontal consistency

Luminiferous Aether

• "Mechanical, jelly-like (Aether)" (1)
• Reconciled Isaac Newton's mechanics (physics) and James Clerk Maxwell's electromagnetic (light wave) theory (1)
• Light, if existing in a wave form, would need a medium, otherwise would "die" in vacuum of space (1)

Failure to Discover

• Michelson-Morley experiment (1887)
• Looked for differing relative velocities due to the presence of luminiferous aether creating aether drag(7)
• Evidence did not support aether, though results interpreted as aether "crushing" the light
• Experiment gave aether theory falsifiability

Albert Einstein

• Theory of special relativity gave a reasonable alternative soltion
• Space believed to contain fields that, though "devoid of ordinary matter" (1), are capable of acting as a medium for light

Possible Fields

• Electromagnetic
• Gravitational
• Supermassive
• Quantum
• Zero-point
• "The Dark Energy of the missing Higgs particles" (1)

Current Complaints

• "null hypothesis with the null result obtained by the Michelson-Morley experiment, and its extrapolation that free cosmic space is vacuum" (8)
• “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” - Carl Sagan as quoted in citation 8

Possible Aether Alternatives

• Michelson-Morley experiment operated from "the assumption that luminiferous aether is a static medium" (8)
• What if there was "vortical motion of luminiferous aether" (8)
• Is it worth it to even investigate if our current theory is useable for space travel?

Modern Alternatives

• Aetherometry - Dr. Paulo Correa and Alexandra Correa, 1999 (1)
• Model of an imponderable dynamic Aether (1)
• Dynamic - "null result of the Michelson-Morley experiment, the lack of Aether drag, (is accepted and then explained) by the properties of a massless or massfree Aether" (1)

The Issue is Vacuums

• Aether was first brought into being by the notion "that nature abhorred a vacuum or nothingness" (1)
• It is now hanging on by a thread of that same logic
• “... space without ether is unthinkable;” - Albert Einstein, on May 5th, 1920 (9)

Its not Aether, but...

• The Aether theory has been falsified and replaced even though our alternative is not completely understood
• The truth is out there, we just need to understand it

The Progression

• Aether was debated from Aristotle's addition of it to the classical elements (5) until soon after Einstein's findings (1905) (10)
• Aether in some form was believed by majority until Einstein's theory of special realativity
• Modern fringes of physics

Work Cited

• (1)http://www.encyclopedianomadica.org/English/aether.php
• (2)http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/264059/Hesiod
• (3)http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/aether

Work Cited

• (4)http://perseus.uchicago.edu/perseus-cgi/citequery3.pl?dbname=GreekFeb2011&g...
• (5)http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/physics.4.iv.html
• (6)http://www.cellularuniverse.org/AA3AetherHistory.htm

Work Cited

• (7)http://copilot.caltech.edu/classes/aph24/APh_24_2006_07/Expt_4_2006_07/AO_B...
• (8)http://www.uvs-model.com/UVS%20on%20MM_experiment.htm
• (9http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Extras/Einstein_ether.html

Work Cited

• (10)http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/history/einstein.html