Is there an ether?

[Silvertiger]

Does particle-wave theory do a better job? Is it preposterous to accept a large medium of unenergized fields that we cannot see until they become energized? They only came up with it to explain the photoelectric effect, except that there are no such things as particles...only fields, and all fields are simple toroids. Nothing really touches anything...fields merely repel or attract. So...what made Nikola Tesla wrong, and Einstein right? One phenomenon is observable; the other is not. Every single thing is a field. Light is a perturbation of higher heat energy through a medium of unenergized fields. An electron is not a particle that gets bumped...it is a field (deBroglie) that gets electromagnetically interacted with by other fields, such as light.

Like I said, if light really were a "Particle," Faraday cages would never be required for anything.

I also cannot see how "Physicists Say They've Manipulated 'Pure Nothingness' And Observed The Fallout." An interesting article, to say the least.

[ovyyus]

Is it preposterous to accept a large medium of unenergized fields that we cannot see until they become energized?

If the concept isn't required in order to explain an interaction (like the magnet and tv experiment) then it isn't preposterous, just unnecessary.

[Silvertiger]

Well...consider the ocean. Imagine that we couldn't see it or feel it when it isn't "moving," but could only see it when it is violent. Now imagine that we viewed the ocean as a particle and a wave, thereby making anything that floats on its surface a particle, such as a ship. Based on that assumption, now we are committed to saying that the ship is also the waves on the ocean, since we've never actually been able to see it when it is "calm," that is, "unenergized."

Then we eliminate the ocean. And then we say that the ship cannot move forward unless it is also a wave...even though we know that those types of waves move things, "particles", only up and down - not forwards or backwards. and Then based on those assumptions, we also eliminate the things that cause the waves, such as wind and earthquakes. Now we just eliminated two thirds of reality and removed any possibility of further research, discovery, invention, and insights into other areas that this reality affects in the grand scheme of interactions.

How far do we take a fiction before that fiction becomes only a hindrance, and the truth actually becomes necessary for the advancement of science, technology, and invention?

[agor95]

What I am getting from this thread is a need for light to propagate through something.

Then we seem to spend time on what is the nature of light, particles and this something.

On other places there is references why scientists have to name ether (aether) something else before stating their conjecture.

Of cause the apparent different speed of light in space, glass, air and water.

All good stuff

Well when I went off to figure this out. I created a conjecture that resolved a few things.

However it's more weird than this one and because of this new conjecture one ends up with a medium that allows light too propagate.

Now I am not going to call it ether, aether or anything else because each has it's historic baggage and tribal affiliations.

I have put forward the absorption and re-transmission.
That is the effect used in lasers. As one approach to the speed differences.

[MrTim]

Maybe light isn't visible (in it's travels) until it interacts with other matter. After all, it can't be seen in a total vacuum, right?

(That's a rhetorical question. I'm being more facetious than argumentative... ;-)

[agor95]

Hi MrTim

I am glad your question was rhetorical and not allegorical.

Think on a photon traveling from one end of the universe to the other.
Never ages put takes all the time there is too achieve it.
It starts and ends in an instant.

Regards