Ether (physics)

“ Further, in contemplating the immediate future of theoretical physics we ought not unconditionally to reject the possibility that the facts comprised in the quantum theory may set bounds to the field theory beyond which it cannot pass.
Recapitulating, we may say that according to the general theory of relativity space is endowed with physical qualities; in this sense, therefore, there exists an ether. According to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable ”

“ Since light can also propagate through empty space, one had to imagine a strange substance, an ether, that mediated the propagation of light waves. Since light also propagates in material objects, one had to assume that this ether was also present in material objects, and was chiefly responsible for the propagation of light in material objects. The existence of the ether seemed beyond doubt. In the first volume of Chwolson's excellent physics textbook, he states in the introduction to ether, "The hypothesis of this one agent's existence is extraordinarily close to certainty." ”

“ The ether has two hundred or more elementary substances, each atom of our eighty or ninety "elements" being the chemical union of great masses of two or more of the etheric elements or their combinations. These etheric elementary substances combine and unite; our elementary substances simply following in their combinations the law which they inherit from their parents. They take form and shape. They vibrate through one octave, and take solid liquid or gaseous form in ether, as their types here in our world take it in prakriti, as their vibrations are increased or diminished. ”

“ Each and every physical atom is the centre of an etheric molecule made up of many atoms of the ether.
This duality of matter was a wonderful discovery, revolutionizing every department of science. It placed man in actual touch with the whole visible universe. The ether in a man's eye (and in his whole body) reaches in one unbroken line—like a telegraph wire —from him to the sun, or the outermost planet. He is not separate and apart from "space," but a part of it. Each physical atom of his physical body is the centre of an etheric molecule, and he has two bodies, as St. ”

“ The line of ether from the sun is vibrating faster than the ether in the body, but the higher impels the lower, the greater controls the lesser, and soon both ethers are in unison. The physical atoms must coincide in vibration with their etheric envelopes, and the "note" is "heat." Step into the shade, where the ocean of ether is vibrating more slowly, and the ether of the body reduces its vibration. "The ether is the origin of all force and of all phenomena." ”

“ Not yet do we fully realise what we are doing. Not yet have we any dynamical theory of electric currents, of static charges, and of magnetism. Not yet, indeed, have we any dynamical theory of light. In fact, the ether has not yet been brought under the domain of simple mechanics—it has not yet been reduced to motion and force: and that probably because the force aspect of it has been so singularly elusive that it is a question whether we ought to think of it as material at all. ”

“ The mode of connection between the particles and the ether is not known: it is earnestly being sought: but the fact that therein a connection has been known a long time. We know it, because a particle cannot quiver, or inner, without disturbing the medium in which it is. A boat cannot oscillate on the surface of water without sending off waves; a bell cannot vibrate in air without sending out waves of sound; a particle cannot vibrate in ether without sending out waves of light.
So the second thing to learn about the ether is its property of conveying light. ”

“ The particles embedded in the ether are not independent of it, they are closely connected with it, it is probable that they are formed out of it : they are not like grains of sand suspended in water; they seem more like minute crystals in a mother liquor. ”

“ CHAPTER IX STRENGTH OF THE ETHER To show that the ether cannot be the slight and rarefied substance which at one time, and indeed until quite lately, it was thought to be, it is useful to remember that not only has it to be the vehicle of light and the medium of all electric and magnetic influence, but also that it has to transmit the tremendous forces of gravitation. ”

“ If we take this as the true explanation for the Physical Universe, we are met with something quite beyond our powers of comprehension, when we try to form a conception of the all-pervading Ether; unless we may look upon [Pg 103] it as actually a presentation of the Reality itself. If we wave our hand, we can feel the obstruction of the air, but we cannot feel the Ether. We think our earth very solid, and we know it is rushing round the sun at the enormous rate of 60,000 miles per hour, but it finds no obstruction in the Ether, there is no retardation of its velocity ”

“ Why the whole of a rod should follow, when one end is pulled, is a matter requiring explanation; and the only explanation that can be given involves, in some form or other, a continuous medium connecting the discrete and separated particles or atoms of matter.
When a steel spring is bent or distorted, what is it that is really strained? Not the atoms—the atoms are only displaced; it is the connecting links that are strained—the connecting medium—the ether. Distortion of a spring is really distortion of the ether. All stress exists in the ether. Matter can only be moved. ”

“ If matter conceivably drags the ether with it in proportion to its mass, an ordinary lump of matter can hardly be expected to cope with the heart and to shift it in opposition to that body; nevertheless, since nothing is known on the subject one way or the other, it was thought well to give a more massive body a chance, by rotating a solid piece of iron about three-quarters of a ton in weight, and with a much narrower groove or channel cut in it for the passage of the light. ”

“ Electrical and optical effects depend upon e. Mechanical or inertia effects depend upon e2. Electric charges can load the ether optically, quite appreciably; but as regards mechanical loading, the densest matter known is trivial and gossamer-like compared with the unmodified ether in the same space.
Massiveness of the Ether deduced from Electrical
Principles.
Each electron, moving like a sphere through a fluid, has a certain mass associated with it; dependent on its size, and, at very high speeds, on its velocity also. ”

“ The power of the ether in the rapid transmission of undulations seems to attain its limit in the propagation of light and heat and electricity at the rate of nearly 200,000 miles per second. How the ether can act so as to serve as a medium of communication between bodies at all distances, transmitting impressions 10,000,000 times faster, at least, than light travels, nothing at present known to us enables us to say. I have, in a lecture which I gave in America upon the mysteries of the universe, indicated a way in which gravity may be conceived to be generated and transmitted ”

“ But how are we to spin the ether? Matter alone seems to have no grip of it. As already described, I have spun steel disks, a yard in diameter, 4000 times a minute, have sent light round and round between them, and tested carefully for the slightest effect on the ether. Not the slightest effect was perceptible. We cannot spin ether mechanically.
But we can vibrate it electrically; and every source of radiation does that. An electrical charge, in sufficiently rapid vibration, is the only source of ether-waves that we know ”

“ It is to be observed, that since a motion of the disks relatively to the observer and the light causes no effect, the ether being stationary, it follows that a motion of the light and observer would produce an effect, since they would be moving relatively to the ether. Hence if, instead of spinning only the disks, the whole apparatus, lantern, optical frame, telescope, observer and all were mounted on a turntable and caused to rotate, a reversible shift of the bands should be seen. ”

“ In the light of Larmor's electron theory, we know now that acceleration of atoms, or rather of a charge upon an atom, necessarily generates radiation, proportional in amount to the square of the acceleration—whether that be tangential or normal. There is no theoretical reason for assuming any influence on uniform velocity. And even the influence on acceleration is exceedingly small under ordinary circumstances. Only during the violence of collision are ether waves freely excited. The present experiment, however, has nothing to do with acceleration: it is a test of viscosity. ”

“ It is true that Mach tried to avoid having to accept as real something which is not observable by endeavouring to substitute in mechanics a mean acceleration with reference to the totality of the masses in the universe in place of an acceleration with reference to absolute space. But inertial resistance opposed to relative acceleration of distant masses presupposes action at a distance; and as the modern physicist does not believe that he may accept this action at a distance, he comes back once more, if he follows Mach, to the ether, which has to serve as medium for the effects of inertia. ”

“ The ether does not exist at all. The electromagnetic fields are not states of a medium, and are not bound down to any bearer, but they are independent realities which are not reducible to anything else, exactly like the atoms of ponderable matter. ”

“ I do not believe the ether moves. It does not move at a five-hundredth part of the speed of the steel disks. Further experience confirms and strengthens this estimate, and my conclusion is that such things as circular saws, flywheels, railway trains, and all ordinary masses of matter do not appreciably carry the ether with them. Their motion does not seem to disturb it in the least.
The presumption is that the same is true for the earth; but the earth is a big body,—it is conceivable that so great a mass may be able to act when a small mass would fail. ”

“ The effect was always zero, however, when spurious results were eliminated; and it is clear that at no practicable speed does either electrification or magnetisation confer upon matter any appreciable viscous grip upon the ether. Atoms must be able to throw it into vibration, if they are oscillating or revolving at sufficient speed; otherwise they would not emit light or any kind of radiation; but in no case do they appear to drag it along, or to meet with resistance in any uniform motion through it. Only their acceleration is effectual. ”

“ From the present state of theory it looks as if the electromagnetic field, as opposed to the gravitational field, rests upon an entirely new formal motif, as though nature might just as well have endowed the gravitational ether with fields of quite another type, for example, with fields of a scalar potential, instead of fields of the electromagnetic type.
Since according to our present conceptions the elementary particles of matter are also, in their essence, nothing else than condensations of the electromagnetic field, our present view of the universe presents two realities which are completely separated from each other conceptually, although connected causally, namely, gravitational ether and electromagnetic field, or — as they might also be called — space and matter. ”

“ All that is required, therefore, to explain gravity, is a diminution of pressure, or increase of tension, caused by the formation of a matter unit—that is to say of an electron or corpuscle. And although we do not yet know what an electron is—whether it be a strain centre, or what kind of singularity in the ether it may be—there is no difficulty in supposing that a slight, almost infinitesimal, strain or attempted rarefaction should be produced in the ether whenever an electron comes into being—to be relaxed again only on its resolution and destruction. ”

“ If ever the tension rose to equal the constitutional elasticity or intrinsic kinetic energy of the ether,—which we have seen is 1033 dynes per square centimetre (or ergs per c.c.) or 1022 tons weight per square millimetre,—it seems likely that something would give way. But no known mass of matter is able to cause anything like such a tension.
A smaller aggregate of matter would be able to generate the velocity of light in bodies falling towards it from a great distance; and it may be doubted whether any mass so great as to be able to do even that can exist in one lump. ”

“ Although the Ether, as we have seen, is a purely theoretical substance, yet Science has found it reasonable to conclude that it must be possessed of certain attributes in order to account for certain known facts. Thus, it is said to be frictionless, else the worlds, suns and planets could not pass freely through it, nor could the light and heat waves travel at such a tremendous rate. It also is thought to have something like Inertia, because Motion once started in it persists until stopped; because it is at a state of rest until Motion is imparted to it ”

“ Not speed, but sudden change of speed, is the necessary condition for generating waves in the ether by electricity.
We can also infer some kind of rotary motion in the ether; though we have no such obvious means of detecting the spin as is furnished by vision for detecting some kinds of vibration. Rotation is supposed to exist whenever we put a charge into the neighbourhood of a magnetic pole. Round the line [112] joining the two, the ether is spinning like a top. I do not say it is spinning fast: that is a question of its density ”