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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.
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 ...
4th-century BC – Aristotle publishes Physics, in which the aether is briefly described as being an element lighter than air that surrounds celestial bodies. He describes the aether in relation to other elements – aether is lighter than air and is located above it, whereas air is lighter than water, and water is lighter than earth. In ...
Luminiferous aether or ether ("luminiferous", meaning "light-bearing"), was the postulated medium for the propagation of light. It was invoked to explain the ability of the apparently wave-based light to propagate through empty space, something that waves should not be able to do. The assumption of a spatial plenum of luminiferous aether ...
This theory of luminiferous aether would influence the wave theory of light proposed by Christiaan Huygens, in which light traveled in the form of longitudinal waves via an "omnipresent, perfectly elastic medium having zero density, called aether". At the time, it was thought that in order for light to travel through a vacuum, there must have ...
The aether was considered as a yet undetected medium and responsible agent for conducting the force. In a letter to Robert Boyle in 1679 Newton proposed an "aethereal substance" to explain gravity. [4] Later in his work Opticks of 1717 he considered the aether to be made of impenetrable corpuscules. [4] [8] Newtonian aether was very dilute and ...
The word derives from the Medieval Latin empyreus, an adaptation of the Ancient Greek empyros (ἔμπυρος), meaning "in or on the fire (pyr)". [ 1 ] In Christian religious cosmologies, the Empyrean was "the source of light" and where God and saved souls resided, [ 1 ] and in medieval Christianity, the Empyrean was the third heaven and ...
The experiment compared the speed of light in perpendicular directions in an attempt to detect the relative motion of matter, including their laboratory, through the luminiferous aether, or "aether wind" as it was sometimes called. The result was negative, in that Michelson and Morley found no significant difference between the speed of light ...