What killed the theory of the luminiferous aether?

Sound waves propagate through a medium. They travel through matter. But light doesn't - it can travel through a vacuum. Back in the day, scientists theorized that the universe was composed of an aether through which light traveled, but today, that is generally regarded as debunked. So I'm investigating - what put the nail in the coffin for the luminiferous aether? I figured, why do boring research on my own, when I can make a thrilling thread on ATS?

Let's do this.

The Luminiferous Aether was shot dead.
Einstein reigned,
Science went Quantum! Einstein's work was subsumed.
The Zero Point Background Energy was instituted.


So now instead of Luminiferous Aether we have ZPE.

I really fail to see the difference.

To those that say that space is vacuum and empty I say this, what are all those glowing chunks and dark lumps in your vacuum? If it's empty, how does the radiation get from a star to the earth. Isn't if full of radiation, and chunks, and particles, and gasses.

Here is a question for you, what is the difference between a solid and a gas? At a particle kind of level.

So if I release just a little of that gas into space, how does it turn into vacuum daddy?

What you might be interested in is whether or not the Michelson-Morley Experiment yielded a null result. That would be a good place to start.....

Double post

[edit on 15-7-2008 by DevolutionEvolvd]

I am pretty sure you gave the correct answer, Devo.

The Michelson-Morely experiment was an ingenious setup that measured the speed of light reflected off of mirrors, so as to detect the density of an "ethereal wind". It showed that no such wind existed, and opened the door to thinking about the speed of light. This took place around 1880. The original experimental setup is supposedly preserved in the basement of the California Institute of Technology.

Not sure about ZPE -- I've heard about it and I'm going to take a look.

pretty much the same thing as zpe...some ancient stuff too...

if you practice, you can control it with your brain...you have to get to level 7 tho...
metaphorically speaking...

This is some awesome information, a bridge of hot gas between two galxies. Who knows what other strings connected the galactic dots so to speak.
Also if we are looking to detect radio waves and such from distant galaxies could such mediums of these hot gases and other unkowns destroy the waves or alter them in such a way we would have trouble recieving them?

Opey

I posted a anonymous reply without providing the link I wanted to lol so I had to sign up......otherwise you need to wait 12 hours to post another as an unregistered user

www.aanda.org...

Now, more recently, when I think of the aether, I think of plasma. Considering that it makes up 99.9% of the universe, I don't think it's such a far fetched idea. Einstein did not deny the existence of an aether. In fact, he thought it to be something of significance in his writings.

If those official NASA videos on YouTube, are now acknowledged to be showing something- "stuff, of some sort that follows us around from time to time", say the astronauts on the tether UFO segment, -then the videos may not say 'these are UFOs'. But they are saying, at the very least, that "stuff" is in the so-called empty vacuum of space, and we merely all disagree about what it is!

reply to post by Buck Division

---

Did it really yield a null result?

www.orgonelab.org...
allais.maurice.free.fr...

These two researchers, Dayton Miller and Maurice Allais have claimed to have replicated the experiment and have claimed that there is an ether drift.

So generally, we have the Michelson-Morely experiment and subsequent experiments by Miller and Allais.

Those links, Bandit, are very interesting - could the Miller experiments have been dismissed prematurely? I'm dismayed by my complete lack of scientific background in this, and thus, my complete inability to analyze even the remaining scientific data (whatever of Miller's papers didn't disappear under the care of Shankland. I guess I'll have a ball once I take classical and modern physics.

The question is, though: With all the other scientific evidence, and whatever you can take from Miller's experiment, what would the implications of the revival of aether theory be? Is it incompatible with current theory?

It really did. Before being accepted, it was checked independently by quite a few researchers and has been checked (indirectly) since then.



May I point out that Allis is an economist, not a physicist, and his math tools may not be the same and his instruments of observation may not be as good as those available to astronomers and physicists at universities and research facilities? He analyzed Dayton Miller's data... but Miller's data was collected in the late 1800's/early 1900's.

We've got better technology and better instruments of measurement since then.

One test no matter how clever, yielding a negative result, does not a cosmic truth prove.

My doctor tests for cancer by stinkin his finger up yer bum! How reliable is that? I think they do it for entertainment, if you know what I mean!

*Ahem*

Google Scholar Search sorted by most recent result

Results 1 - 10 of about 883 for Michelson-Morley Experiment. (0.10 seconds) Since 2003

Results 1 - 10 of about 3,960 for Michelson-Morley Experiment. (0.09 seconds) Alltime

Most recent - Physical Review Letters, 2007 - APS

Why is hard science so boring to some people that they want to buy into "fringe" theories?

[edit on 15-7-2008 by sardion2000]

reply to post by sardion2000

---

I did not say that the test was not repeated. However proving a negative is a tad more difficult than you seem to give credit!

Perhaps I should have been more precise about what I was indicating.

I do not dispute the results of the test, but any single test concept can be flawed. The general methodology can be flawed. The execution can be repeatably flawed. I usually like to see a negative proven a tad more rigorously than saying that Dr. Renound did the experiment and said it proves it, and we replicated it! So it must settle the matter. That is a cult of personality.

I hope this helps your logic.

[edit on 15-7-2008 by Cyberbian]

You're referring to Zero Point Energy I assume?

I'm interested... how do you believe it's being used as a medium for propagation?

Do you believe there is energy existent without a measurable waveform, and that it becomes usable when a fluctuation is passed through it?

I'm not mocking, I really want to hear your take on it.

ZPE is not background radiation. The zero-point energy is the lowest possible energy that a quantum mechanical physical system may possess and is the energy of the ground state of the system.

The "vacuum" is part of the quantum mechanical system. It is therefore believed to be in the ground state. However the first section above is an abstraction.

Remember we are talking about statistical systems here. Much like the entropic state of molecules where not all molecules have the same temperature, hence Maxwell's demon.

Not all ZPE has the same frequency, for evidence of this conjecture I refer you to the Casimer effect. If it were not for the difference between statistically averaged uniformity and actual uniformity the ZPE would be truly uniform and therefore no better than trying to run your electric razor off of an electrical ground with no power source. No matter how energized the earth itself might be.

I have read that the energy potential in a teacup sized area of Vacuum ZPE could destroy the earth, I do not know how that estimate was derived. There are multituendous frequencys believed to be in the ZPE soup.

There is new hope in at least some of the physics community that the difference may be tapped by using the casimere effect as Maxwell's demon for ZPE.

I refer you to an experiment with casimer plates and a femtosecond laser to try and excite the ZPE and extract and measure energy from it.

physics.units.it...

You might also look into negative resistors and negative resistance synthetic materials, there have been a few highly credible and a multitude more less than credible references to the existence of such materials recently.

Since subatomic particles come in and out of existence, I believe the assumption is they fall back into the soup and rise back out.
I may be mistaken here.

Obviously not everything in the universe is part of the homogenous mix, it is that which is above the threshold of statistical mean which we observe as energetic.

Please note the discrepancy between the statement that ZPE which the last letter stands for Energy, and the Zero Point which is a state of homogenous frequencys, but not categorized as background radiation. Frequency of what might well be asked. I believe the answer is the frequency of vibration of subatomic particles not instantiated as part of the material universe which we perceive.

I welcome your comments and criticisms, more welcome would be any insights you might have. As you see I like to keep track of my open questions, I think it is a critical part of the effort to understand any complex issue.

[edit on 16-7-2008 by Cyberbian]

[edit on 16-7-2008 by Cyberbian]

Its alive in the Tesla man made UFO arena if to step in.

Unless the lead people have changed but I think the dis info has started.

If you assume radio waves need a medium like sound, you take the
ratio of the velocities and take the square and you have the
ratio of the air to ether medium densities.

Its 8 x 10 to the eleventh power, coming the square of 900,000 the
ratio of the velocities.

Velocities are proportional to the square root of the densities.
See wave equation solutions in Whittaker for instance.

So in between air atoms the ether particles lie.
How ether supports the UFO we can only guess at.