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The only aether which has survived is that which was invented by Huygens to explain the propagation of light. By the early 20th century, aether theory was in trouble. A series of increasingly complex experiments had been carried out in the late 19th century to try to detect the motion of the Earth through the aether, and had failed to do so. A ...
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 ...
And referring to the Fizeau experiment, he even wrote: "The aether is all but in our grasp." He also said the aether is necessary to harmonize Lorentz's theory with Newton's third law. Even in 1912 in a paper called "The Quantum Theory", Poincaré ten times used the word "aether", and described light as "luminous vibrations of the aether". [A 19]
According to ancient and medieval science, aether (/ ˈ iː θ ər /, alternative spellings include æther, aither, and ether), also known as the fifth element or quintessence, is the material that fills the region of the universe beyond the terrestrial sphere. [1]
If the Earth is traveling through an aether medium, a light beam traveling parallel to the flow of that aether will take longer to reflect back and forth than would a beam traveling perpendicular to the aether, because the increase in elapsed time from traveling against the aether wind is more than the time saved by traveling with the aether wind.
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.
Aberration is related to two other phenomena, light-time correction, which is due to the motion of an observed object during the time taken by its light to reach an observer, and relativistic beaming, which is an angling of the light emitted by a moving light source. It can be considered equivalent to them but in a different inertial frame of ...
According to the Stokes' hypothesis, the speed of light should be increased or decreased when "dragged" along by the water through the aether frame, dependent upon the direction. [ S 5 ] : 33 The overall speed of a beam of light should be a simple additive sum of its speed through the water plus the speed of the water.