Thread: Contorted Aether

I'm wondering, what if we allow an Aether, but consider gravity, and graveto-magnetism to change the properties of the Aether, making it more or less stiff as a medium. I mean, what if light actually travels faster/slower when the Aether is under different kinds of stress?

Maybe near a gravitational body, the Aether is under different amounts of stress along different directions of motion, so light might actually travel faster in one direction than another? Maybe near the surface of the Earth, the Aether is affected not only by gravity itself, but by a kind of graveto magnetism associated with the motion of the matter near it as well?

So, instead of explaining Michelson-Morley by talking about dragging the Aether, we could try to build a model that involves different stresses on the Aether, which result in light behaving in a way consistent with the results. (Then afterwards, we'd need to test it against something else before it is seen as credible, of course.)

Originally Posted by kojax

I'm wondering, what if we allow an Aether, but consider gravity, and graveto-magnetism to change the properties of the Aether, making it more or less stiff as a medium. I mean, what if light actually travels faster/slower when the Aether is under different kinds of stress?

Maybe near a gravitational body, the Aether is under different amounts of stress along different directions of motion, so light might actually travel faster in one direction than another? Maybe near the surface of the Earth, the Aether is affected not only by gravity itself, but by a kind of graveto magnetism associated with the motion of the matter near it as well?

So, instead of explaining Michelson-Morley by talking about dragging the Aether, we could try to build a model that involves different stresses on the Aether, which result in light behaving in a way consistent with the results. (Then afterwards, we'd need to test it against something else before it is seen as credible, of course.)

You still run up against the problem of being inconsistent with astronomical observations, to be exact stellar aberration. If the Aether was altered by a moving object in any way to cause the measured M-M results, it would also effect light coming from distant stars and alter the stellar aberration we measure.

what if this aether was everywhere? what if this aether was the substance that causes gravity because it is pushing on everything else? what if this aether is the fabric of space itself?

and yes janus, it does distort lights path. it just takes a distortion on the scale of the sun to do it. distorting aether would make it more dense around the mass pushing it aside.

and yes kojax, it would. but again it takes the distortion of aether because the mass is stretching it aside like your finger poked through a rubber band. the bigger your finger the tighter the rubberband is stretched. the tighter the rubberband is stretched the closer the atoms are sitting that make up the rubberband. so if the aether is more dense the more it is distorted than something on the size of the sun distorting aether is the amount of energy needed to significantly alter light. light also travels slower through our atmosphere and it travels even slower through water. as to whether it is traveling faster or slower in the vacuum of space i would say that the change would be so minute you wouldnt see the difference. especially if you have light that's traveling from the same source and some of the light slows down you wouldnt notice because its the same light traveling behind and in front of it. you may see a picture of far off suns but the light might have been emitted at different times. it would still look like a burning fireball.

I think we're thinking alike in this, then. As the aether contorts, its index of refraction changes. So the area of space around a star could act like a lens in some ways, because light is traveling across areas with different refractive indexes.

For the MM experiment, the direction of the Earth's gravitational orbit around the sun would come close to coinciding with the direction across with the Aether either is or isn't stretched because of the Sun's gravity. The only thing left unexplained, then is the velocity of the Earth's spin, which is somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 km/hour. I don't know the exact speed, and especially I don't know what the speed is at the latitude where the experiment was being done, since it varies with latitude.

Originally Posted by kojax

I think we're thinking alike in this, then. As the aether contorts, its index of refraction changes. So the area of space around a star could act like a lens in some ways, because light is traveling across areas with different refractive indexes.

So unlike every other substance with a refractive index, the aether's in independent of frequency (otherwise we would see chromatic aberration with gravitational lensing.) yet another unusual property to add to its list.

For the MM experiment, the direction of the Earth's gravitational orbit around the sun would come close to coinciding with the direction across with the Aether either is or isn't stretched because of the Sun's gravity.

Why the direction of Earth's orbit and not an orbit at some other inclination? And why just the amount needed to give a null result for the M-M experiment?.


Why try to resurrect the aether? It was an imperfect solution even when it was in favor. A substance that was rigid enough to propagate light at the speed it does, yet has zero viscosity so that it imposes no drag on the planet's, Etc.

And now you want to compound improbable property upon improbable property?

the speed of a wave is determined by the square root of the modulus of elasticity divided by the mass. this equation came from calculating the speed of sound. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_sound
so, two questions. how do we calculate the modulus of elasticity for space/time(eaether)?
and how do we calculate the mass of space/time(aether)?
if we find one we can calculate the other. this could give us some good insight as to why matter exists. and how gravity might work because gravity is supposed to be caused by the distortion of space/time(aether)

Originally Posted by Janus

Originally Posted by kojax

I think we're thinking alike in this, then. As the aether contorts, its index of refraction changes. So the area of space around a star could act like a lens in some ways, because light is traveling across areas with different refractive indexes.

So unlike every other substance with a refractive index, the aether's in independent of frequency (otherwise we would see chromatic aberration with gravitational lensing.) yet another unusual property to add to its list.

The reason chromatic dispersion occurs between say, glass and air, is because they not only have different refractive indexes in general, but they also have different dispersion rates. That is, the degree to which color affects the rate of travel inside each media is different.

When light travels between two areas of aether that are under different amounts of stress, the index of refraction would be different between the two mediums, but the dispersion rate would be the same for both. Remember, only the ratio between the two refractive indexes determines how much the light is refracted. Since dispersion is a function of wavelength for most mediums, any two mediums that have the same dispersion rate would have a ratio of refractive indexes between them that was the same for all colors.

Also, if we go off the information presented in this discussion from the physics forum, it appears that the vacuum of space has only a very small (but detectable) dispersion rate:

http://www.thescienceforum.com/Is-it...ght-20256t.php

For the MM experiment, the direction of the Earth's gravitational orbit around the sun would come close to coinciding with the direction across with the Aether either is or isn't stretched because of the Sun's gravity.

Why the direction of Earth's orbit and not an orbit at some other inclination? And why just the amount needed to give a null result for the M-M experiment?.

What I'm trying to suggest is that, if the Earth had a perfectly spherical orbit, then the contortions of the Aether would perfectly coincide with it.

An extension of my hypothesis, which I haven't suggested yet, but I might as well suggest for later, is that the very force of gravity is caused by the change in direction of EM radiation as it moves through the basic medium of space. I mean this in the same way as how one might describe the perception of time slowing down in SR as being caused by the EM radiation taking longer to make round trips between objects. It may not be quite so cut and dried as that, but it's generally an accurate depiction.

Somehow, if light changes its behavior, it's kind of like all matter changes its behavior correspondingly. So it would be no coincidence for the two values to match. Not if the one effect is causing the other. However: I don't want to stretch this hypothesis too far too fast. It's better to try and support things one step at a time, rather than get ahead of myself.

Why try to resurrect the aether? It was an imperfect solution even when it was in favor. A substance that was rigid enough to propagate light at the speed it does, yet has zero viscosity so that it imposes no drag on the planet's, Etc.

And now you want to compound improbable property upon improbable property?

Personally, I find the aether to be a much more elegant model than most of the others. It proposes a mechanism for things, whereas most of the other theories don't propose any mechanism at all. They match observation, but they do it only in a purely descriptive sense. The absence of a clear mechanism makes it very difficult to unify diverse phenomena.

The drag/rigidity makes perfect sense if we assume all matter is composed of waves moving through the aether. Most of the basic objections to its having ideal wave properties were proposed at a time when the wave/particle duality of matter was not yet known. Once you include wave/particle duality, it becomes apparent that, glass for example, is acting as a proxy between light and the aether, effectively a middleman, and that would explain the slowing.

keep in mind that light does not travel through glass. it is absorbed and then re-emmitted. i just learned this. ive always been under the impression that light moved through the empty spaces in between the atoms of the glass. but thats not so. refraction happens because different wave lengths take a different amount of time to re-emmit.

Originally Posted by gravityguru

keep in mind that light does not travel through glass. it is absorbed and then re-emmitted. i just learned this. ive always been under the impression that light moved through the empty spaces in between the atoms of the glass. but thats not so. refraction happens because different wave lengths take a different amount of time to re-emmit.

So basically, if the aether is not absorbing and re-emitting, then all the different wavelengths should behave identically.

I'm getting to be more and more in love with this hypothesis, even though I'm not sure it explains the M&M experiment anymore.

i pretty much look at aether as the fabric of space. only until you called it aether is when ive actually have a name for it now. einsteins solar eclipse experiment proved that there is something there. we cant deny that space is actually not empty. another thing ive kept very strong in my head is that there are two things that make up everything. there are the things themselves, and there is movement of these things. nothing else exists. everything has to be explained by some sort of kinetic movement. no matter what. its impossible for there to be any other form of energy besides movement. that is why i have landed at the conclusion that gravity is caused by the Visco-elastic property of aether. i think that is why einstein himself decided that gravity was caused by the distortion of aether. here is a video of how i see it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsL7uOZOwiI

Sorry to spend so long on this. I've been thinking about it and I think your link is a really good analogy. Glad to know some others have been thinking the same thing. At least I'm not crazy, or if I am, then we're all crazy together. Do you have any more of those kind of links, or does this particular scientific view have a name that can be googled?


I like to think of matter waves as bouncing around/oscillating around in all directions, but tending to move toward one direction more than another. That's similar to how the movement of electrons through a copper wire has been described to me. They sort of jumble into each other, but ultimately move in one direction down the wire. If one side is moving slower than the other, then I would expect the whole mass to kind of migrate in that direction over time.

my question is how do electrons carry energy? do they slow down to give energy? if so how do they make it back to the beginning of the circuit to get reenergized if they take longer to get back then to get to the place your using the energy. or do they spin faster and we are taking the spin off of them. what kinetic motion do electrons have that gives them there energy?

Originally Posted by gravityguru

my question is how do electrons carry energy? do they slow down to give energy?

Basically they transfer it to each other. The transfer between them is basically kinetic in nature. Remember that electrons are repelled away from each other. Imagine putting a bunch of magnets in a row end to end with the repulsive ends facing each other (so they push each other away instead of pulling together). If push on the first one, it repels the second one, and the second one repels the third, ... etc until the last one is pushed on, and last one does the work.

Usually, the energy is used indirectly. Whenever an electron moves, it creates a magnetic field in a sideways direction to the direction it's moving in. That's why if you wrap a coil of copper wire around a stick, and run an electric current through it, you can create an electro-magnet. When the electromagnet does work, it will indirectly cause the electrons to slow down.

if so how do they make it back to the beginning of the circuit to get reenergized if they take longer to get back then to get to the place your using the energy.

In DC electric circuits, the electrons never go back to where they began unless the end of the circuit is physically located in the same place as the beginning of the circuit (like with a DC generator). Most batteries are chemical in nature. One chemical has an excess of electrons, and the other is short on electrons, so electricity is produced by allowing the electrons from the first chemical to flow into the second chemical. The electrons only return back to where they started when you recharge the battery.


AC electricity is more interesting. Remember the magnets? In AC electricity, each magnet moves a short distance forward to push on the next, and then immediately snaps back to where it was. There's no net motion of the electrons.

I hope that helps.

Alright. Contorted Aether is starting to take shape.

We explain the expansion of light waves as they move away from a gravity source as being caused by the fact the back of the wave is always moving slower than the front of the wave. The wave contracts when moving toward a gravity source for the opposite reason: the front is moving slower than the back.

We explain the curvature of light as being caused by refraction as the light moves between areas of Aether where it has a higher/lower speed.

Michelson-Morley is really the killer of it. If we allow that all matter is made of waves of light of some kind or another, we *might* be able to use that fact in the explanation somehow. Or... maybe that's just where everything dies. I'm totally going to keep working on this for a while. It's lots of fun.