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LUMINIFEROUS ETHER  January 3, 2006

ALPHABETICAL INDEX

    Once the wave nature of light was elucidated by scientist such as Fresnel and Huygens, and upon the discovery by astronomers that light coming from stars seemed to bend as it approached a high speed moving earth (about 30 km per second) and undergo a change in focal length in telescopes, science began to speculate that this might only happen within a medium of propagation, then termed as luminiferous ether.  Had scientists realized the possibility that this ether might react in advance to an approaching earth, or any other large body, by moving towards the earth prior to its arrival, they would have instantly understood why any attempt to measure a difference in the passage of light through a right angle interferometer would require far greater precision than  otherwise be expected, which, in the case of the Michelson-Morley interferometer, was than 30 meters per second.

With the work of Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695, point source defraction), Thomas Young (1802, multiple slit interference), and James Clerk Maxwell (1873, electromagnetic theory), et. al., explaining the propagation of light as being of a wave nature, quite naturally the propagation of starlight would be the same.   This of course would require the presence of some kind of medium supporting light propagation throughout space.  Shortly after the advancement of this construct, astronomers noticed an aberration of starlight always in correspondence to the earth's motion around the sun.  This discovery proved rather intriguing since with it was the suggestion that the earth was moving directly through this medium - then to be called luminiferous ether.
 
 

This proposition of draggable  ether was advanced further by Fresnel and others only to be shown that such a drag would produce exactly the opposite effect, that instead of starlight curving towards the earth from ahead, it would tend to curl in from behind, giving the appearance of retardation in the star's position.  Clearly, draggable ether was not the answer, leading to a classical dilemma in classical physics, and causing a flurry of exciting experimentation.

Though the principal paradox was whether or not light required a wave medium, the theorization and detection of this wave medium seemed even more crucial to the scientist.  Accordingly, attempts were made to measure the ether with sensitive devices.  However, already the assumption had been made that ether was not draggable, or draggable at least in a fashion similar to fluid.  This assumption was based upon the assumed premise that if there was any ether, it should demonstrate familiar fluid behavior.  However, since nothing was really known about ether (other than by definition being an all pervading substance necessary to the propagation of light), to assume characteristics similar to familiar substance would seem a bit reckless - at least in light of cautious scientific inquiry.  Nevertheless the assumption was made, with ether being fully ordained as not being draggable in any way.

During this time, Fizeau performed a number of experiments dealing with light;  one in particular, his water stream experiment.  In this experiment, light was clocked first upstream and then downstream through swiftly moving water.  It was assumed that the swiftly moving water would drag the ether along with it, thus producing a differential in transit time fore light.  Surprisingly, no differential was detected, and the draggability of ether was discarded.

This of course meant that since ether was not draggable, the earth, in its motion around the sun, the sun, in its motion around the galaxy, and the galaxy, in its motion around the universe, must at some time yield other other than rest motion through the ether.  Accordingly, the ether-wind drift experiment was set up first in Potsdam, Germany, and then several years later in Cleveland, Ohio, by Michelson.  The most sensitive and last of the line of apparatuses designed to measure an ether-wind was called the Michelson-Morely interferometer, and had a sensitivity fine enough to measure and ether-wind drift of only 30 meters per second.  Results of this experiment unequivocally showed that there was no ether wind!

With all experimental results now in, the scientific community found itself directly confronted with one of the greatest paradoxes ever to face science or philosophy.  Since the results of Fizzeau's water stream experiment, and by the scientific consensus ether was not draggable, and, since by the Michelson-Morley experiment the earth is not moving through ether, ether clearly could not exist.  But since light behaved like a wave, how might it reach earth without ether?   But even more important, as being a matter of direct confrontation of reason, if light consistently underwent stellar aberration, how could it possibly arrive earth side with always the same constant velocity (c)?

To answer this paradox, a number of theories were advanced - such as the Fitzgerald-Contraction hypothesis, yet none could reasonably satisfy the problem.  With the demise of ether, classical science found itself occulted by a paradoxical vacuum, a vacuum which would someday bear the logic and reason of relativity.

If ether is draggable, is it draggable in the ordinary sense of the word, or is it virtually draggable?  (Virtual draggability is though something is draggable, but not draggable as a fluid.)  And, if ether is virtually draggable, then would it cause the proper aberration of starlight as the earth passed through it?  And lastly, if ether is virtually draggable, would Fizeau's water stream experiment yield negative results?

In the case of Fizeau's water stream experiment, not only would ether be draggable, it would have to be shearable as well, since the container walls holding the water would also contain their own ether - which would not be moving.  This is of course the assumption that ether behaves much like a fluid.

Rather than behaving like a fluid, why not allow that it behaves as though it consisted of a series of flexible membranes criss-crossing through one another?     True, such a composition as this may seem radically different from conventional substance, but making such an allowance is neither unreasonable nor logically invalid.  In dealing with something which portends to be radically different, what's wrong with devising radically different supportive mechanisms?  After all, neither logic nor reason can mandate adherence to conventional forms or mechanisms.

One rather nice outcome of this type of membranous ether is, that in the case of Fizeau's experiment, the ether would become stretched, so-to-speak, between the molecules of moving water and the molecules in the retaining walls of the vessel holding the water.  This may be conceived by postulating that the membranes tend to adhere to nuclear particles, or vice versa; and accordingly reflect the mass behavior of such particles.  Thus the movement of one body of mass (the water) against the other (the vessel's walls) would tend to stretch the membranes joining the two.  Because the membranes tend to resist geometrical deformation, a drifting of membranes through the molecular structure occurs, thereby preventing excessive stretching and convoluting as the water circulates around the stream.

Since the ether knows no difference between the apparatus itself and the air around it, added to the mean mass of the apparatus is the mass of the surrounding air.  Further, since no difference between the air and the earth can be ascribed, this mass is further enhanced by the earth's.

What this all means is that the mass and the motion of the container's walls more closely correspond to the mass and motion of its immediate surroundings than does the water, hence, there is a greater differential between the mean motion of the ether and water, than between the ether and the container's walls.

It is for this reason Fizeau was unable to detect any differential in light propagating through ether in water - either upstream or downstream.
As far as the draggability of membranous ether, it does not necessarily have to behave like a fluid.  Thus, despite an object's shape or speed moving through it, eddy currents will not be generated.  The draggability of membranous ether is similar to a fluid only in that the differential in speed between an object and the ether, diminishes as the separation between them diminishes.  Unlike fluid flow, membranous ether passes through the object at a greatly diminished speed (later to be denoted as V_r), that at an objects surface, a relative motion still exists between object and ether.  Ostensibly, the speed of this relative motion would have to be less than the sensitivity of any ether-wind measuring devices to date, which would be, in the case of the Michelson-Morley interferometer, less than 30 meters per second.
 
 
 
 

This means that any starlight approaching from a radial direction to the earth's axis of motion around the sun would have to penetrate successive gradients of ether moving at progressively closer speeds with the earth.

From this point-of-view, starlight would arrive at progressively faster moving gradients sweeping it ahead faster and faster, causing it to swing in behind the earth into its lee side;  in itself, being in direct contradiction to observed behavior.

The principal error in the establishment of this point-of-view is the premise that ether is fixed, and that the objects themselves are moving.  Quite to the contrary, being that there is no way to support such a premise, one must view the observer's motion as corresponding to his frame of reference since no other reference can be made.  That is, to assume any rest motion of the observer to correspond to the rest motion of ether would be not only unreasonable, but impossible to demonstrate.

In viewing ether from the observer's frame of reference, the difference in velocity between the earth and ether nearby would be less than ether far away.  This means that starlight would penetrate progressively slower moving layers of ether as it approaches the earth, causing it to bend against the earth's motion.

Treating the ether as consisting of a gradient of variable motion decreasing in magnitude to a minimal residual value (V_r) at the earth's surface, as well as inside the earth, an interesting mathematical relationship may be determined leading to a precise statement concerning the angel of stellar aberration.
      As light moves in a rectilinear passage, it will encounter surfaces which are oriented in all manner of direction. Each time a simple wave encounters a surface, it has a fifty-fifty chance of reacting to that surface, providing the surface is situated orthogonal to the photon's direction; the more canted, the less of a chance of reaction. Each reaction forces the simple wave to take off on an orthogonal tack; hence the photon follows a microscopically zig-zagged course through the field, as it encounters surfaces oriented in all manner of direction. Any surfaces encountered by the photon, if too steeply canted in the direction of motion, will generally not interact with the photon.
Whether it is realized or not, the level of this hypothesis; totally foreign to you, exceeds that of Newton's basic understanding of space, such as inertia and momentum; Liebniz's proposition, that monads, under control of the divine maker, can only alone explain Newton's discoveries, and Einstein's postulation of space-time and its relationship to observed conditions.
     Essentially what happens, is that any ponderable mass moving through space, sweeps the field ahead into it; causing field compression in proximity to the mass, while at the same time, the field leaving the proximity of any mass, accelerates behind and away from the mass, regaining normal density within approximately ten radii behind it.
     If one were to measure the field density, both a great distance ahead and behind the moving mass, its density would be normal; directly ahead and behind the mass, it would be lower than normal; and very close to the mass, both ahead and behind it, and within the mass, it would be higher than normal. It is within this region, scientists tried to measure the change in the speed of light relative to the observer, in their attempt to measure the ether wind. Unfortunately, they did not think it possible for the ether (field) to slow down so greatly, more than 1/10 the orbital speed of the earth, because of this advanced compression of the field; all experiments at the time attempting to measure this variance, around 1883+/- 40 years, being far too insensitive.
     Actually, some ether wind experiments performed well into the twentieth century, did show some positive results, but were discounted by the scientific establishment; especially upon the subsequent introduction and acceptance of relativity. Arguably the rejection of ether seemed justified by the development of relativity and because a fluid ether seemed to have too many problems. Combined, with Einstein's notoriety in winning the Nobel Prize for the photoelectric effect, his eccentric behavior, image and ethnic support by Jewish scientists, overwhelmed any possible refutation at the time. Be reminded, science was engaged in a fertile period of discovery, and Einstein's discovery of the photoelectric effect was historically inevitable, and not a matter of genius; giving its discoverer and his views, an unfair, unfortunate and disproportionate advantage over opposing views.
    When I say Jewish scientists, there lies a great distinction between they and non-Jewish scientists (Gentile scientists for example who tend not to religiously convene as an extracurricular activity since the gentile scientists belong to numerous sect who might disagree about these sorts of matters.), in that they could not possibly be to their root, deists, but rather inexorably married to their religion, in contrast to the greater body of religious free scientists.  Unlike the brilliance of Newton, with a great rabble of detractors, Einstein basked in ethnic Jewish support...who (they) ultimately at the end of the century, proclaimed him Man of the Century through the Jewish control of the media.
     It is inconceivable to think that under the scientific method, scholars would allow the dismantling of classical physics with such haste, without compelling recourse and without thorough investigation. In specific reference to ether, postulated by Rene Descartes two hundred years earlier, the aberration of starlight should have inspired scientists to collectively pursue all possibilities, which they did not; the same being true of Hubble law by astronomers, in which case, all possibilities of a contracting universe, as the reverse impression of an expanding universe, were not pursued.
     Popularization, recognition and vanity were the motivating elements in science's great rush to enlightenment, with curiosity relegated to nothing more than monkeys solving a puzzle; just like our children do today playing computer games. We are nothing more than primates with a brain, whose cause and objective can be distilled into the base behavior, to believe what we want to believe or what we need to believe.
     Unequivocally, just as we should seek the truth, we instead seek acceptance and recognition by the group; each person living in their own balance. Many times, the quest of discovery distracts us from the important step of hypothesis, either through vanity, or simply because it takes too long.
    Thus in hypothesis, which you are about to encounter, starlight moving through a surface field would not be subject to laminar shearing, as in fluid flow, though the field itself would have gradients of motion. In extreme simplification, where one might imagine surfaces arranged both orthogonal to the earth's velocity and parallel to the earth's velocity, starlight approaching directly from the side would only interact with the latter, but not those surfaces orthogonal to the earth's velocity, though it would be the former interacting with the earth's passage, thus contributing to this gradient of motion of which I speak.

     Starlight approaching the earth from the side, would undergo the following deflective process. As the photons move through the field, they will encounter successive gradients of field motion, much like a small boat moving through faster moving water as it crosses a river. In the case of the boat, its resultant speed increases as the vector sum of its forward progress and the side wards motion caused by the flowing water. But in the case of the photons, they cannot be affected by any side ward moment since there is no mechanism which might cause this moment, thus their resultant scalar magnitude of motion remains unchanged, despite a change in direction of this same vector. Putting it another way, a boat can be pushed sideways by water, but a field comprising surfaces cannot push photons laterally, though their speed is measured against the field, resulting in a change of direction without a change in speed. In contrast to relativity, which must embrace a four dimensional time-space relationship, this is a far simpler and hence a more elegant solution to the enigma of aberration of starlight.
    Treating the field as consisting of a gradient of variable motion decreasing in magnitude to a minimal residual value (V_r ) at the earth's surface, as well as inside the earth, light will follow a curved path consistent to the aberration of starlight which reaches a maximum of 20.47 seconds of arc; what is called the constant of aberration. Since this ratiocination ideally should be taking place in mankind's history, we can assume light to travel at a constant speed (c); considered to be true prior to Einstein's work. In the corresponding illustration, a triangle is formed between the constant leg c, representing to the speed of light, and another leg (DV_k) corresponding to the difference in the speed of the field, in the time it takes light to move between successive gradients of the field as it approaches earth. The symbol D (delta), represents  a change in value. Angles o_k and o_k+1 represent the angle of the approach of light corresponding to gradients d_k and d_k+1. Both angles are measured from reference lines which are always parallel to the original vector directionDV_k.
     The leg DV_k is always parallel to the orbital motion of the earth, represented by vector V_e and directed opposite V_e.

     By the Law of Sines,

(I)    c / sin o_k = DV_k / sin (o_k+1 - o_k).

Since, DV_k = V_k+1 - V_k , and Do_k = o_k+1 - o_k,

giving, c / sin o_k =DV_k / sin Do_k.

This may be restated in general form corresponding to any d_k layer:

c / sin o = DV / sin Do.

Re-arranging terms:

(II) sin Do / sin o = DV / c.

For very small values of o,

sin Do / sin o = DV / Do / o,

equation II becomes:

(III) Do / o = DV / c.

Because field layers may be treated as discrete variations of a motion gradient, Equation III may be written as a differential, giving,

Do / o = dV / c .

Integrating and solving for o,

(IV)    o = e _v/c between the limits L₁ and L₂, where o represents the total angular change (aberration) of light propagating from L₁ and L₂, where V represents the motion of the field at any given distance between L₁ and L₂.
    Whether one considers the field at rest or moving relative to the earth does not matter, since all motion is relative. In this evaluation, the observer is considered at rest, as is the earth, and the field passing by; at great distances away, the field moving with the exact opposite motion of the earth in orbit around the sun (V_E), where V_E is about 18.5 miles per second). The sun is also moving much more rapidly around the galaxy, but this motion is not considered. Inside the earth, the field passes by with a small residual motion (V_R) at about 1/10th its orbital motion, or even less.
     With this in mind, a purely abstract relationship may be expressed for the motion of the field (V) at any distance from the earth's center (d), where:

(V)  V = V_R / A_d + V_E - V_E / Bd,

where A and B serve as constants, where d is the distance from the earth's center, and where V_R and V_E are variable parameters already explained.
     Since starlight comes from immense distance, the value for d may be considered infinite, yielding,

V_MAX = V_E.

Conversely, the nearest approach of starlight would be at the earth's surface, which in reference to celestial distances is pragmatically the same as the earth's center, in which case d would be zero, giving:

V_MIN = V_R.

     Such simplification as this is not essential in the evaluation of expression V, however, in doing so, little loss of significance or accuracy is suffered.
     Substituting these limiting parameters into Equation IV gives the following:

(VI)   o = e_VE/c - e_VR/c,
      where e is the natural number e = 2.71828....

     In this expression, o represents the angle of stellar aberration, V_E and V_R respectively represent the maximum velocity between the mean velocity of the field and the earth, and the residual velocity of the field within the earth.
     Evaluating this expression, where,

      V_E = 2.98 x 10⁴ (meters per second)
      V_R = 30 (meters per second)
      c = 2.997 x 10⁸ (meters per second)

yields: o = .000099335 ^r, or, 20.48934".
     Unlike vector addition typical in the analysis of basic fluid flow conditions, such as a boat crossing a stream or a sailboat in the wind, there is no addition of vectors; logically not permitted because the resultant vector must remain constant and equivalent to the speed of light. Remarkably, despite this variance from conventional mathematics, the sum of all vector change approaches the constant of aberration.
Hopefully, from this discussion, a better assessment can be made of the theory of membranous ether;  that rather than having too many basic assumptions, its opposing theory (relativity) has too few, as well as some inherent paradoxes.

I think it can be agreed, that a workable alternative for ether clearly lacks a definitive statement of its fundamental assumptions, and for this reason alone, cannot outweigh the validity of ether through either reason or logic.  Indeed, both formats work.  In the case of ether, a more definitive mechanism is established.  In the case of relativity, a broader mathematical scope is achieved, which, in the short run, appears far more advantageous.  But knowing WHY nature is, undoubtedly will have greater value in the run long.

In closing, a comparative summation of these two theories deserves presentation:

ETHER  vs. RELATIVITY