Talk:Aether theories

space whale

Untitled
Where the existing aether page sets out a particular historical view of aether theory (with some parts that seem to be stirring up some heated disagreement and claims of subjectivity), I put up this page as a more basic, hopefully neutral listing and jumping-off page to different aether theories.

The list is rather short at the moment. I know that there were loads of these things being suggested and shot down over the centuries, so if you can think of any noteworthy theories not listed here, please add them as a one-or two line bulletted entry, if you need more than that to describe it, give it its own page and leave a bulletted link to that page here. I did think of also doing an "aether theories" category, but at the moment there don't seem to be enough relevant wiki pages to justify it. ErkDemon 01:43, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Makes some real sense
May I suggest you have a look at an interesting concept with respect to a Fixed Frame of Reference in a book entitled "Einstein's Predicament: a new approach to the speed of light" by Clifford Denton, Twoedged Sword Publications 2005.

Leaving a place for discovery - protecting against Salsb and pseudoscience
Re-adding the "Further readings" section after an accidental delete, I've left out the "obsolete theories" category tag because of the recent interest given to a modified verson of an ether theory. Namely, there is some talk that vacuum quantum flux has fluid-like properties, which may be simialr to those of a perfect fluid. I know I should dig up the articles on arXiv.org before saying something like this, but for the moment I want to enter it into the discussion. Shpoffo 06:31, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Arxiv is not the proper source for references. Please give references to acceptable sources per WP:ARB/PS, though if you want to link to arxiv for those references, that is acceptable. Arxiv is not, in itself, a reliable source. --Philosophus T 06:45, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Hello, I ended up here from Related Changes through the Aetherometry article. I noticed Salsb did a sneaky recat - to psuedoscience (sic). I don't want to start another revert war over that category, but really -- no-one seemed to think that it was appropriate for six months, so if no-one else does it in due time, I'll revert that change. The Pseudoscience category is unfortunately being used as a cudgel by some editors on Wikipedia, Salsb among them.Pgio 08:21, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Hating on wikipedia
I thought this was amazing. Apparently, the Aetherometry article (which currently links here) influenced these people to write a book on the ignorant fascism that is wikipedia. It seems they are constituents of the theory, and felt NPOV violated. These paranoids became so enfuriated by their inability to contaminate the encyclopedia, they actually wrote a book about that seems to present wikipedia as some sort of conspiracy. Regardless, it seems the article was portected over all, and you should all be proud. Shaggorama 10:54, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

They do not "hate" wikipedians, they just found here the same armored behaviors that lead to what we call "fashism" ... you should read before to depreciate people so stupidely. They are not "paranoid" nor "enfuriated"... looks at your own words and see how they could feel before so much agressive comments. Wikipedia is not described as a "conspiracy" like you would say, but more like a total failure of "civilisation". You talk like a proud soldier or a fantasmed paladin of knowledge, encouraging your pair in the fight... this is a proof of your character illness at some point, and another exemple of what is wikipedia's failure.- A silent observer. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Innermake (talk • contribs) 13:34, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Fuzzy intro
I removed the following text:


 * In its original and fundamental form the aether is both the medium of space, and the fundamental building blocks of all material substances. Its properties therefore include all that is observed.  In this context there exist no physical process or theory that would be considered as aether-free.  In more modern theories this stuff of space are designated as field theories. These dispense with the concept of a medium and assign or designate the properties of the medium as fields which are then considered fundamental.

I'm not sure this is entirely accurate. It would be easier to untangle if references were made to particular versions of the theory. For now, I've replaced it with something shorter that mainly lets the various individual sections speak for themselves. Perhaps a better overview will re-grow from scratch, or someone will fix this one. -- Beland 19:40, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Speculation is Not Proper in an Encylopedia Article
Articles are no place for introducing or speculating on fanciful topics of over-unity/Free-energy or goverment conspiracies. See Wiki's policies on NPOV, use reliable sources, and avoid unverifiable claims - User:LeSagian

I have been enjoying reading material from places like 16pi2.com for a couple of years now. Theres a number of other places where I read about Tesla's stuff and then thought to come to wiki and read whatever interesting articles it has. I can't find them. So... I typed Aether Physics Model and was surprised to find nothing I but don't see any material here relating either. Is there no articles yet for this type of thing? Maybe I am too early. -jrey

typography
I haven't been able to find out what the Wikipedia policy is on ligatures (Æ, æ) - are they even standard English spelling? Would someone who knows please unify spelling in the article, it's an awful mess. (I'd say it should be without the ligatures, as in the lemma.) And also decide whether aether should be capitalized or not throughout the article.--87.162.24.186 17:59, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree. It is awful. Non-English letters or characters should not be used, unless within quotations or references. 26 July 2007, Rughede

Gravitational aether
The additional comment I have given about the thermodynamic theory and physics of the aether with reference to a published paper is a matter of fact for the readers of this article to appreciate or refute. Discussions are invited in ordinary form within the scientific community, but not as violations of freedom and principles of contribution to Wikipedia articles, such as elsewhere given:

"The original group should not block further change on grounds that they already have made a decision. No one person, and no (limited) group of people, can unilaterally declare that community consensus has changed, or that it is fixed and determined". Rughede

Aether Wave Theory (AWT)
The recent approach to Luminiferous Aether concept is based on idea of inertial environment composed of scale invariant particles (so called unparticles), which are of infinite high matter and energy density. Such idea comes from Oliver Lodge and his Electric Theory of Matter from 1904. The AWT is currently subject of private research.

The AWT concept is consistent with idea, the Universe is formed by interior of black hole and it's surprisingly effective in explanation of nature of strings, protosimplex and spin foam, considered by string, Heim's and LQG theories, which can be considered as a density fluctuations of Aether. The vacuum foam is considered as a scaled down version of dark matter structure. Because in such environment most of energy spreads in transversal waves, it's consistent with Lorentz invariance approach of relativity theory. Because the foam gets more dense under vibrations, the mass density of foam is proportional to energy density, from this the quantization of energy density follows.

By such way, the AWT appears to be conceptually capable to reconcile most existing physical theories together with unparticle, constructal and process physics. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.213.42.170 (talk) 16:43, 4 March 2008 (UTC)


 * The above comment has been contributed by the user of the fake account "Zephyr" and many more sock-puppet accounts on Phys.org, "AWT" is an entirely imaginary theory. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.243.52.115 (talk) 22:13, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Cleanup
Most of the content of this page is already in the article on luminiferous aether, therefore I've shortened the corresponding sections. --D.H (talk) 08:47, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Aether and general relativity
"Aether and the theory of relativity" was a title used by Einstein in a lecture on general relativity and aether theory. Einstein said that general relativity's gravitational field parameters could be said to have all the usual properties of an aether except one: it was not composed of particulate bodies that could be tracked over time, and so it could not be said to have the property of motion. The general attitude to this amongst physicists today seems to be that Einstein's comments don't count because they stretch the idea of aether theory too far: it is argued that a "non-particulate" aether theory is not really an aether theory, or at least, it doesn't correspond to the idea of "historical" aether theory that is currently taught.

Such a view, however, contradicts the continuum concept of space-time and fields and Einstein's statements in "Aether and the Theory of Relativity", May 5th, 1920:]

"More careful reflection teaches us, however, that the special theory of relativity does not compel us to deny ether." and "To deny the ether is ultimately to assume that empty space has no physical qualities whatever".


 * That just seems like an issue with nomenclature. - 17-May-2014 03:42 UTC — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.77.220.29 (talk) 03:44, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

2006 Rebirth
I think we should include this article. JDCAce (talk) 17:53, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Propose a merge
Can we just merge the Aether classical element, luminferious aether and this article? Faro0485 (talk) 22:36, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Did we really throw out the idea of the Aether after all?
There is something that a (now dead) self-style historian on the developement of Physics point out to me when I was a student is that conventional history has it that we abandoned the idea of the Aether to explain the propagation of light waves in favor of the vacuum defined according to relativity. But did we really? The vacuum isn't a "nothing". E.g. just from a non-quantum mechanical perspective the impedance of free space is about 377 ohms. This value is not zero. Also the Dirac sea which came later in quantum mechanics and becomes the ancestor of quantum field theory is filled with energy levels. This historian contended that we really did not give up on the idea of the Aether after all but simply attributed different properties to it. (unsigned)


 * That is right. We also have dark energy and other aether-like concepts. It is just different from what people might have expected in 1900. Roger (talk) 09:51, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, add to that the Casimir effect which can be measured in the lab and again demonstrates that the vacuum isn't a "nothing". They are now looking to see if they can isolate a repulsive Casimir effect. If they are successful, then the zero-point energy drive is more than a science-fiction notion, it starts having true substance.


 * The problem is that using a word that used to mean one thing to mean a multiplicity of new things is pointlessly confusing. Informal use of the word 'aether' to mean 'space and its attendant properties' is fine but as a scientific term in needs to convey something more specific. In current scientific usage 'aether' has no meaning. Martin Hogbin (talk) 16:43, 2 April 2011 (UTC)


 * You have it backwards. "Aether" used to mean a multiplicity of things but now, because popular science sources told the same story over and over again until all nuance and context was lost, the term is treated as a monolith by non-experts and Wikipedia editors.74.140.199.156 (talk) 14:16, 15 June 2021 (UTC)


 * It can be defined as whatever transmits electromagnetic waves, and the aether has the same meaning it has always had. The term is not confusing. Roger (talk) 07:01, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
 * It could, but as we know that nothing is required to transmit electromagnetic waves this is rather pointless. Martin Hogbin (talk) 08:14, 3 April 2011 (UTC)


 * You can call it "nothing", and say that it is nothing more than the vacuum, as long as you agree to say that this thing you call the vacuum really has all of the properties of quantum electrodynamics. Roger (talk) 14:28, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

You are conflating classical and quantum ideas. Electromagnetic waves are classical, and are therefore not transmitted in the quantum vacuum. These waves are self-propagating in the (classical) vacuum, as the equations of Maxwell show. The definition of aether as "whatever transmits electromagnetic waves" is vacuous, as e.g. peanut butter then qualifies as a manifestation of the aether. Now it's true that some people consider everything as a manifestation of the aether, but this is really a semantic rather than a physical pronouncement. Regardless, the article should be based on the opinions from reliable sources, so it's not worth pursuing our own personal lines of argumetation. Tim Shuba (talk) 23:04, 3 April 2011 (UTC)


 * The thing you refer to as "classical vacuum" does not exist and there is no way of knowing if or how EM waves would propagate in such a vacuum, if it did exist. It is a cute idea that has been debunked for a hundred years. Wikipedia is not a place for fringe theories. If you want to refer to such theories, please provide credible sources.74.140.199.156 (talk) 14:16, 15 June 2021 (UTC)


 * I am not conflating anything. I follow standard textbook concepts. They all accept the aether, although some of them call it something different. Roger (talk) 01:50, 4 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Perhaps you could give us a reference from a current text book that uses 'aether' with a well-defined non-historical meaning. Martin Hogbin (talk) 08:05, 4 April 2011 (UTC)


 * He said they accept aether theory, not that they use the term "aether". Sometimes a concept goes by more than one name. It happens all the time in the sciences. You have to understand the concept itself to identify this phenomenon. Otherwise you fall into the trap of demanding only those sources that use the particular word you're familiar with.74.140.199.156 (talk) 14:16, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

Well done Tim
For cutting out the crazy stuff. Martin Hogbin (talk) 16:43, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

New section added
This relates also to "Did we really throw out the idea of the Aether after all?" above.

I added a quote from Robert B. Laughlin on the situation of ether in contemporary theoretical physics and why physicists don't call it 'ether'. I think it goes far in explaining why sources about post special relativity ether are so fuzzy about it.

I would also suggest removing the first sentence in the following section "Modern analogies", "In physics there is no concept considered exactly analogous to the aether." It is at least apparently contradictory to what I added and has no source or citation. It seems to me that what Laughlin says goes beyond mere analogy, in any case, rendering the sentence superfluous.

Moose — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dreammoose (talk • contribs) 04:11, 8 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, that sentence is false and should be removed. Roger (talk) 17:53, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Harold Aspden
I think that someone should analyze Harold Aspden's work (see http://www.haroldaspden.com/) and summarize it very briefly in this article.

Peter Higgs was declared a crackpot and his theory pseudoscience
pseudoscience is a pejorative term and assumes the person declaring something pseudoscience has all knowledge and understanding. This is certainly never true. In my life time I have see many bad and impossible theories proven. HHMI once fired a scientist for idiocy who later won a Nobel prize for his pseudoscience. Who knows haw many dies without the benefit of the medical implications of that theory. When research is in an area we do not understand it is impossible to determine something is "pseudoscience" until we have valid science to explore it with. One day Quantum Theory May be Science, for now it is a very useful and poorly understood theory. All doctrines produced from it could be false but they are the best we have to work with now. Scottprovost (talk) 04:40, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Changing the name of the page
Since this page is supposed to be scientific shouldn't the title align more towards scientific nomenclature? I think it should be changed from "Aether theories" to "Aether Hypotheses" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.77.220.29 (talk) 02:20, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Dark energy as aether
This section already has a tag saying that it relies on one source (which seems to be a polular science magazine). It also seemd to overstate the position somewhat, in favour of the aether. It needs toning down and some new mainstream science adding. Martin Hogbin (talk) 13:41, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

I have now removed it. Martin Hogbin (talk) 11:01, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Ilja Schmelzer
Ilja Schmelzer produced a aether based theory of gravitation that was compatible with GR. Should we have something on that here? [signed later) Martin Hogbin (talk) 10:08, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Where are the references to Nikola Tesla?...
Nicola Tesla (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla) considered Aether as a main element in the universe, so why is this fact not mentioned in the article?... 77.127.248.242 (talk) 17:47, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

Lorentz ether theory
This theory, from 1904, which is mathematically and experimentally equivalent to special relativity, should be in here somewhere. Martin Hogbin (talk) 10:09, 17 February 2016 (UTC)


 * See the last paragraph under "Luminiferous aether". Should something be added? Roger (talk) 22:13, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

EM of Nikola Tesla
Nikola Tesla advocated that all physics in the space is of EM origin. Including gravity, but the frequency could be very-low. (hours for one period). If we have aether as a medium and EM propagating through this "substance" then there must be more dense parts of space and less dense parts of space. Otherwise propagation of a "wave" is not possible. The space must have variable density. Where the speed of wave is high, the density is low and vice versa. And there seems to be nothing affecting this density as much as gravity, because its frequency (would be) is so very low. It would also imply that speed of light is not absolute. It is 300.000 km/s only for the "normal density" of space.

Another interesting idea is that, the aether must have a dampening factor affecting EM, which is very low for high frequency (light) and gets to be much more low frequency (gravity), because we know that force of gravity drops of quickly, but light appears to be traveling without obstruction. Even for low frequency audio you need very high energy and for high frequency (MHz) comparably much less energy is needed to travel the same distance.

If stars are very far, is there some expected reduction factor due to distance used to account for loss of energy due to distance of the star when looking at its light?

This could actually be proven and measured, because the speed of light at reasonable distance from earth in space in area of lower gravity should be more than if measured close to some object like earth, where the gravity is more (and space is denser).

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A00:EE2:2500:900:DCBE:E26D:5BB1:BDB9 (talk) 18:34, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

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Non-standard interpretations in modern physics
The section is largely false and unrelated to aether theories and should be removed entirely.

The section Quantum vacuum is false, QFT doesn't describe the vacuum as non empty. It has zero particles but non zero energy. The quote of Laughlin is irrelevant to that claim. QFT vacuum doesn't share properties of an aether either. It's invariant. This has beside, being simply wrong as a claim, no place in an article about aether theories because it is unrelated.

It is false to suggest that general relativity does anything to reintroduce an aether into physics. General relativity adds nothing to special relativity that could be interpreted as a medium of light ("aether") - if anything it adds even more invariance than SR does (getting rid of absolute background). The section is false.

Pilot waves have also nothing to do with a medium of light / absolute background the way the aether was meant. This part is just random. It appears some people have added anything and everything that's defined in every point and think that's sufficient to call it an aether, that's not the case.

Is there anyone here who has actually studied physics who can argue against these points in any way and why the section should be kept? 77.3.233.209 (talk) 12:12, 21 March 2021 (UTC)


 * So the sections in question have been added by crackpots in 2008. People are saying that these unsubstantiated sections cannot be removed just like that without a source that directly says they are wrong. Even though there is no source whatsoever that would back up the three sections in question. Way to promote pseudoscience, wikipedia. Good luck. 77.8.230.201 (talk) 16:08, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, it looks like the removals were warranted. Footnotes != automatically good. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 18:38, 2 May 2021 (UTC)


 * I do not agree with removing this section. Roger (talk) 01:37, 4 May 2021 (UTC)


 * I cannot see any justification for retaining any part of this section. Tangential similarity or incidental use of the name "aether" does not qualify something as an "aether theory" without due support from references, and such referencing is needed in the encyclopaedic context.  —Quondum 02:39, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

Rayleigh paper
A recent edit claims that a 1902 Rayleigh paper found a way to experimentally distinguish Lorentz ether theory from Einstein's. The web site taking this view is I am skeptical that this Rayleigh paper has anything to do with differences between the Lorentz and Einstein theories. Neither Lorentz nor Einstein make any mention of it, as far as I know. Everyone else says that Lorentz and Einstein make the same predictions. I suggest removing the change. Roger (talk) 01:37, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't think that this is an entirely accurate characterization. The experiment appears to have been aimed at detecting a hypothesized effect expected from the Lorentz aether theory.  Had the result been positive, it would have distinguished it from the Einstein theory.  The negative result failed to distinguish them: Einstein's theory made a definite prediction, whereas the Lorentz theory would not give definitive predictions on refractive properties, but would lead to expected effects.  Thus, it would not be valid to say that the Rayleigh experiment was unrelated.  It may be reasonable to tone down the claim to "Lorentz theory led to an expectation that ...".  —Quondum 02:27, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
 * The claim is not sourced to a blog post, but to an article in Applied Optics which lays out the situation pretty clearly, and to Weyl's 1922 book. (Looking into it, however, the author of the blog post is a wiki-notable OSA Fellow, so that blog post would be an acceptable source per WP:SPS.) Whether or not Einstein or Lorentz themselves said anything about it is beside the point. (As it happens, Lorentz did, in 1904, and tried tweaking his electron theory to explain the null result.) I'd get more into debating the details of possible phrasings, but as I said over at WT:PHYS, I'm not entirely sure this article should exist. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 02:46, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
 * We have the article Experiments of Rayleigh and Brace. These type of experiments refuted the initial contraction hypothesis of Fitzgerald (1889) and Lorentz (1892, 1895), related to Lorentz' 1895 electron theory that accounts for all first order aether drift experiments. As later shown by Lorentz (1904) and Larmor (1904), the full Lorentz transformation explains the null result, which conceptually can be much easier understood in terms of Einstein's special relativity. --D.H (talk) 06:43, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm with XOR&#39;easter on this, only I'd put it more strongly: this article should not exist as a topic (it should go to WP:AfD IMO), and its content is covered better by other articles. So debating the nuances of the content seems like a waste of time.  —Quondum 13:31, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I have to agree, this article is (or at least was) largely pseudoscientific nonsense. Though I have to ask, why not submit it to AfD yourself? 78.152.252.48 (talk) 07:59, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

Misquoting Maxwell
The following passage is from the section on the Luminiferous aether:

"In 'A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field" Maxwell showed that using a model similar to EM the medium would have 'an enormous intrinsic energy' and would necessarily have to be diminished in areas of mass. He could not 'understand in what way a medium can possess such properties' so he did not pursue it further."

This wording implies Maxwell was talking about E&M, more specifically the Aether. It seems to me that he wasn't; the link suggests he was discussing gravity. I don't know how this should be edited, does anyone have advice?

NathanRApf (talk) 03:55, 15 January 2024 (UTC)


 * I read the text and you are correct. I fixed it by moving the content in to the gravity section. thanks. Johnjbarton (talk) 17:31, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Einstien E=Mc^2
I was wondering if anyone would please head over to the Samuel Tolver Preston article and after reading please give me a Reliable source explaining how the cook Einstein is credited as the genius who discovered the relationship between mass and energy when he clearly stole it.

K00la1dx (talk) 04:05, 1 June 2024 (UTC)


 * If you wish to claim than any of the 91 references on the page Mass–energy equivalence are not reliable, head on over to Talk:Mass–energy equivalence and provide your evidence. Preston's speculation about aether particles seems to be simply that the kinetic energy of mass at the speed of light would be extremely large. That is not at all what Einstein said. On the contrary, only massless particles can travel at the speed of light. Johnjbarton (talk) 04:56, 1 June 2024 (UTC)


 * This is off-topic on this article talk page. I have put a final warning for talk page abuse on your user talk page. Wikipedia is not a place for this. I recommend finding another venue to vent your grievances. - DVdm (talk) 15:12, 1 June 2024 (UTC)