Luminiferous Aether Exists!

I doesn't appear that you know what the word medium means.:bugeye:

 

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Origin.

Then perhaps you can tell him all about it; and how what he posted there is way off the mark as you imply with that 'personal opinion' without substantiation?

 

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And to put it bluntly you might be off your rocker.

As sure as the sun will shine, I didn't miss that at all.

That's absurd.

And that's as good as it gets.

No, you're really asking why is it finite. The reason for its magnitude is a question of scale which is purely arbitrary.

Which why? Why it's finite, or why we can abitrarily scale it?

There is a certain logic to this.

How is the Higgs field a medium? And how does the quantum world even accommodate the notion of a medium from the scale of the real world?

I consider that to be a serious disadvantage from the plausibility POV.

I think you've done away with quite a bit indeed.

Like: "because"?

Because.

 

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The image I have of how matter exists is something I could spend weeks on discussing, but on the topic of a medium, it is possible I don't know the scientific meaning, so my illustration is this, a lake of water, and on its surface waves, that give off light. The light represents matter and the water the medium. Anything that appears above that water is matter, like our new friend Higgsy and his cousins which will eventually be found.

Only the water is not water, and neither does it have location, yet wherever matter exists, that is the face or surface of it, a surface which cannot be found or put in one locality. In fact if and when matter disappears, as some elements do, they become part of the energy of the medium, and can appear somewhere else, at any locality in the universe at an instant. But what complicates it is that there are two characteristics of this medium, and I have just tried to explain the one that relates to space.

I call one the space factor and the other the time factor.

If you (by thought experiement) put matter into a supposed saturation of the space factor, the material explodes in an instance and fills all space in the universe, even the heat is gone. So matter disappears.

If you place matter into the other extreme, the time factor, it implodes into nothing, but maintains its position in space, a tiny black hole that does not move.

All the physical properties of matter are variations and combinations of these two basic forces.

At the same time, naturally occuring variations of the medium, cause things like gravity wells, and weird phenomenon like tornadoes, and ships suddenly loosing their boyancy.

Your world of virtual photons I picture with Higgsy as lying just on the surface of the medium.

 

What a tremendous load of GARBAGE!! :bugeye: You make it clear that you know absolutely nothing about even the most basic parts of science in general and physics in specific.

The world - and this place - would see an increase in intelligence if you simply went back to your sandpile and played with your little buckets and shovels and left the adults alone who have REAL knowledge. :shrug:

 

The physics community has not detected an aether; nevertheless, the aether exists. Some might argue that light and particles don't need an aether because they obey mathematics. But this argument is hollow. Mathematics does not cause anything to exist; it merely describes the behavior of things that do exist. Aether is defined as a "light bearing substance". By that very argument, anything that causes light to exists can be referred to as an aether or an aether medium. The rest follows logically. Does light exist? Yes, light exists. If light exists, then something has to cause it to exist. Mathematics cannot cause anything to exists. Mathematics only describes things. So mathematics does not cause light to exist. So what causes light to exist? Answer: aether.

 

I was responding to Quant.

 

It doesn't matter who you were responding to, it was all nonsense!

 

"logically." You keep saying that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

 

The luminiferous aether is defined as a light bearing medium. The scientific community has failed to detect it. Then they made a mistake. They assumed that it doesn't exist. Why? Because they replaced the aether (a causation) with SR (a mathematical description). Light exists because something causes it to exist. Light exists because something supports the properties of light (wave length, frequency, permittivity, permeability, velocity, etc). "Light bearing" means exactly that. You have a medium that bears light by supporting the properties of light. That's how the luminiferous aether "bears light". A description of light (special relativity) can give you clues as to what causes light to exist; but a description cannot cause anything to exist.

So either logic can be nonlinear or the laws of physics are not logical. Which is it?

 

Just as sound waves require a medium to transport them, it is logical that light also needs a medium to transport it. With Maxwell's theory of Electromagnetic radiation, it was asssumed that light did not need such a medium because it was thought that the electric and magnetic fields were self sustaining, but here is what Maxwell himself had to say on the subject:

"The question is that of the transmission of force. We see that two bodies at a distance from each other exert a mutual influence on each other's motion. Does this mutual action depend on the existence of some third thing, some medium of communication, occupying the space between the bodies, or do the bodies act on each other immediately, without the intervention of anything else ? "

Maxwell himself seemed to support an aether type of medium that filled every space in the Universe:

"The vast interplanetary and interstellar regions will no longer be regarded as waste places in the universe, which the Creator has not seen fit to fill with the symbols of the manifold order of His kingdom. We shall find them to be already full of this wonderful medium; so full, that no human power can remove it from the smallest portion of space, or produce the slightest flaw in its infinite continuity. It extends unbroken from star to star; and when a molecule of hydrogen vibrates in the dog-star, the medium receives the impulses of these vibrations; and after carrying them in its immense bosom for three years, delivers them in due course, regular order, and full tale into the spectroscope of Mr Huggins, at Tulse Hill."

and again:

"But if the luminiferous and the electro-magnetic media occupy the same place, and transmit disturbances with the same velocity, what reason have we to distinguish the one from the other? By considering them as the same, we avoid at least the reproach of filling space twice over with different kinds of aether."

The truly troubling aspect of the rejection of an aether type of medium by physicists, is that it was illogical to invent an esoteric solution , such as wave/particle duality when there existed perfectly logical solutions , involving the aether, that explained phenomena like the double slit experiment. The 'complementarity' theory , that states that light can possess either wave like or particle like properties but never possess both properties simultaneously,turns a perfectly reasonable statement, 'light can be a particle and a wave' into something from the twilight zone. Further to QM 'complementarity' is something like the Ten Commandments. (i.e., wisdom received direct from the mouth of God.) It is quite ridiculous.

 

Particle wave duality is a clue to the nature, to the characteristics, of the luminiferous aether. The luminiferous aether is made of waves. But these waves can have localized behavior that is observed to be particulate in nature.

 

Sure, an electric field is not a medium. The exchange of virtual photons is not a medium. The Higgs field is not a medium. It is not really that difficult. Do you know what a medium is?

 

A medium is someone who claims they can talk with spirits or the dead.

P.S. It could also be a means through which something is communicated or exchanged, which could include an EM field.

Part of the problem is not defining what one means by the word "medium". In a literal sense, space can be thought of as the "medium" of propagation of all EM radiation. Being careful, this in itself is not equivalent to classical mediums like water and air, through which sound waves propagate.

 

But if this "Luminiferous Aether" is right in front of us?

A working assumption: there is no vacuum.
Light always propagates in a medium.

So what is vacuum ?

 

Emil, just using the whole name, "luminiferous aether", assumes the 18th century definition, which more recent experience has proven to be a fiction.

 

That's why I put in quotes.

 

...to include a number of physicists who preceded Michelson and Morely in death

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"We know that the aether transmits transverse vibrations to very great distances without sensible loss of energy by dissipation. A molecular medium, moving under such conditions that a group of molecules once near together remain near each other during the whole motion, may be capable of transmitting vibrations without much dissipation of energy, but if the motion is such that the groups of molecules are not merely slightly altered in configuration but entirely broken up, so that their component molecules pass into new types of grouping, then in the passage from one type of grouping to another the energy of regular vibrations will be frittered away into that of the irregular agitation which we call heat."​

with doubts:

"No theory of the constitution of the aether has yet been invented which will account for such a system of molecular vortices being maintained for an indefinite time without their energy being gradually dissipated into that irregular agitation of the medium which, in ordinary media, is called heat."​

and reservations:

"Whether this vast homogeneous expanse of isotropic matter is fitted not only to be a medium of physical interaction between distant bodies, and to fulfil other physical functions of which, perhaps, we have as yet no conception, but also, as the authors of the Unseen Universe seem to suggest, to constitute the material organism of beings exercising functions of life and mind as high or higher than ours are at present, is a question far transcending the limits of physical speculation."​

"It appears, from all that precedes, reasonably certain that if there be any relative motion between the earth and the luminiferous ether, it must be small; quite small enough entirely to refute Fresnel's explanation of aberration." —Michelson & Morely​

"Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it." —Niels Bohr​

and as long as I'm quote mining, just for fun (and from someone who should know):

"There is nothing more helpless and irresponsible than a man in the depths of an ether binge." —Hunter S. Thompson ​

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The absence of aether.

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Therein lies the rub.