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One of the key predecessors to Einstein's Relativity was another theory having to do with an "Aether" material. This substance was supposed to be the substrate that the universe is built upon. It was theorized to be nearly mass-less and occupy the entire volume of "empty" space.

So back in the 1800's before rocketry and space exploration were possible, why did they think they would be able to detect this substance? If the substance was supposed to have a lower density than that of hydrogen gas, wouldn't it immediately be buoyed up and out of the atmosphere the moment it was released? Is it even possible to detect a material like that while you are inside of a higher density medium...? From my perspective it seems like they were attempting the equivalent of measuring wind resistance while standing at the bottom of the ocean....so was this experiment ever valid in the first place?

If this experiment was not valid then does that put the Aether back on the table as a possible standard model theory?

david.cowan
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Your intuition about the properties of the aether is flawed. In the luminiferous aether model the aether was not affected by gravity. It was simply hypothesised as a medium for the propagation of light and other electromagnetic waves. It was supposed to fill all of space, thus explaining how light can travel through a vacuum. If it had interacted with gravity then the images that we saw of the stars and the planets would have been displaced. And if it had been somehow ejected from the Earth's atmosphere then, without aether to carry light waves, the surface of the Earth would be totally dark.

gandalf61
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