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The timeline of luminiferous aether (light-bearing aether) or ether as a medium for propagating electromagnetic radiation begins in the 18th century. The aether was assumed to exist for much of the 19th century—until the Michelson–Morley experiment returned its famous null result.
Luminiferous aether or ether [1] (luminiferous meaning 'light-bearing') was the postulated medium for the propagation of light. [2] It was invoked to explain the ability of the apparently wave -based light to propagate through empty space (a vacuum ), something that waves should not be able to do.
This timeline describes the major developments, both experimental and theoretical, of: Einstein’s special theory of relativity (SR), its predecessors like the theories of luminiferous aether, its early competitors, i.e.: Ritz’s ballistic theory of light,
The failure of any experiment to detect motion through the aether led Hendrik Lorentz, starting in 1892, to develop a theory of electrodynamics based on an immobile luminiferous aether (about whose material constitution Lorentz did not speculate), physical length contraction, and a "local time" in which Maxwell's equations retain their form in ...
1887 – The Michelson–Morley experiment, intended to measure the relative motion of Earth through the (assumed) stationary luminiferous aether, got no results. This put an end to the centuries-old idea of the aether, dating back to Aristotle, and with it all the contemporary aether theories. [152]
In the 19th century, luminiferous aether (or ether), meaning light-bearing aether, was a theorized medium for the propagation of light. James Clerk Maxwell developed a model to explain electric and magnetic phenomena using the aether, a model that led to what are now called Maxwell's equations and the understanding that light is an ...
He theorized that there was an electrical fluid (which he proposed could be the luminiferous ether, which was used by others before and after him, to explain the wave theory of light) that was part of all material and all intervening space. The charge of any object would be neutral if the concentration of this fluid were the same both inside ...
1887 – The Michelson–Morley experiment, intended to measure the relative motion of Earth through the (assumed) stationary luminiferous aether, got no results. This put an end to the centuries-old idea of the aether, dating back to Aristotle, and with it all the contemporary aether theories. [81]