Aw, man. I was just one out-of-context, non-technical quote from 1920s physicists away from believing in a luminiferous aether. Oh well.
(Also, I don’t know why so many people on the Internet have a angry hard-on for relativity or quantum mechanics. You never see anyone writing screeds against optics, geology, the weak interaction, etc.)
Is it, “The modern concept of the vacuum of space, confirmed every day by experiment, is a relativistic ether” that you think is being taken out of context?
Is it, “any particle, even isolated, has to be imagined as in continuous “energetic contact” with a hidden medium” that you think is being taken out of context?
Is it, “According to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable” that you think is being take out of context?
And of course, you can’t explain what the “new dark force” is or why there is an offset between the light lensing through the space neighboring galaxy clusters and the galaxy clusters themselves.
How is it that people who consider themselves knowledgeable about mainstream physics can’t think for themselves?
You are at the beach. You see two boats pass by each other very closely. You see their bow waves pile up. Do you insist on not understanding what occurred physically in nature to understand what caused the bow waves to pile up? Is it beyond your abilities of comprehension to understand what causes the water associated with the bow waves to pile up?
The same physical phenomenon is occurring physically in nature as galaxy clusters pass by one another.
‘Galactic Pile-Up May Point to Mysterious New Dark Force in the Universe - Wired Science’
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/01/musket-ball-dark-force/
“The reason this is strange is that dark matter is thought to barely interact with itself. The dark matter should just coast through itself and move at the same speed as the hardly interacting galaxies. Instead, it looks like the dark matter is crashing into something — perhaps itself – and slowing down faster than the galaxies are. But this would require the dark matter to be able to interact with itself in a completely new an unexpected way, a “dark force” that affects only dark matter.”
The galaxy clusters are moving through and displacing the mass of ‘empty’ space, analogous to the bow waves of two boats which pass by each other very closely.
It is the mass of ‘empty’ space which piles up.
‘Offset between dark matter and ordinary matter: evidence from a sample of 38 lensing clusters of galaxies’
“Our data strongly support the idea that the gravitational potential in clusters is mainly due to a non-baryonic fluid, and any exotic field in gravitational theory must resemble that of CDM fields very closely.”
The offset is due to the galaxy clusters moving through the aether. The analogy is a submarine moving through the water. You are under water. Two miles away from you are many lights. Moving between you and the lights one mile away is a submarine. The submarine displaces the water. The state of displacement of the water causes the center of the lensing of the light propagating through the water to be offset from the center of the submarine itself. The offset between the center of the lensing of the light propagating through the water displaced by the submarine and the center of the submarine itself is going to remain the same as the submarine moves through the water. The submarine continually displaces different regions of the water. The state of the water connected to and neighboring the submarine remains the same as the submarine moves through the water even though it is not the same water the submarine continually displaces. This is what is occurring physically in nature as the galaxy clusters move through and displace the aether.
You have to be trying to not understand what occurs physically in nature to not understand ‘empty’ space has mass.
Why are you insisting on not understanding what occurs physically in nature? What are you afraid of? What is it about ‘you’ which causes you to be unable to understand galaxy clusters move through and displace the mass of ‘empty’ space.
Are you talking to me?
The ‘you’ I am referring to is anyone who can’t understand the pile-up is caused by the galaxy clusters moving through and displacing the mass of ‘empty’ space, analogous to the bow waves of two boats which pass by each other very closely.
‘Galactic Pile-Up May Point to Mysterious New Dark Force in the Universe - Wired Science’
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/01/musket-ball-dark-force/
“The reason this is strange is that dark matter is thought to barely interact with itself. The dark matter should just coast through itself and move at the same speed as the hardly interacting galaxies. Instead, it looks like the dark matter is crashing into something — perhaps itself – and slowing down faster than the galaxies are. But this would require the dark matter to be able to interact with itself in a completely new an unexpected way, a “dark force” that affects only dark matter.”
The galaxy clusters are moving through and displacing the mass of ‘empty’ space, analogous to the bow waves of two boats which pass by each other very closely.
It is the mass of ‘empty’ space which piles up.
Are you able to understand the water associated with the bow waves of two boats which pass by each other very closely piles-up?
The same physical phenomenon is occurring for the galaxies.
Okay, let’s go through the statements one by one and see what they mean:
1.
McLaughlin is referring to the vacuum state in quantum field theory. What he is saying is that quantum fields endow the vacuum with properties that we would classically associate with matter as opposed to empty space. The comparison with the aether could only be made in the most vaguest and pedagogic sense.
2.
de Broglie is referring to the “sub-quantum medium”, the supposed cause of the quantum potential. What de Broglie is saying is that there is a real pseudo-classical fluid which is hidden from observation, but manifests itself by its effects on small scales which cause the perceived randomness and corrections to classical physics in quantum mechanics. The comparison with the aether is obvious as presumably that would’ve been a classical fluid. Of course de Broglie’s ideas amount only to an interpretation of quantum mechanics.
3.
Einstein is referring to the geometric field that describes gravity. What he is saying is that the gravitational field is a property of spacetime itself and sets the background for the rest of physics. I have to do mental gymnastics here to get any kind of comparison to the aether, Einstein even infers in the rest of the quote that this idea of the aether as would normally be understood.
So the concepts in 1), 2) and 3) are quite different from each other and it is a catergory error to think of them as describing the same things. The only obvious link is that quotes 1) and 3) draw strained comparisons to the disproven luminiferous aether theory (and in 2) the comparison is obvious).
Now there may be an unknown underlying connection between the quantum vacuum, the proposed sub-quantum medium and the general theory of relativity, but beyond irrelevant cut-and-paste odysseys, you haven’t made any coherent argument as to why they are connected. The main barrier to you making such arguments is that your not able to discuss the subjects knowledgeably. Do you think that saying the “mass of space piles up” for example is particularly meaningful?
If you do reply, please do not cut and paste what you’ve pasted before, I’ve read it already. Please also try to engage and address what has been said. For example do you have any better argument to connect the idea of the sub-quantum medium and gravitational field in general relativity than they’re both a bit “aether-y”?
It’s Laughlin, not McLaughlin.
“It turns out that such matter exists. … Subsequent studies with large particle accelerators have now led us to understand that space is more like a piece of window glass than ideal Newtonian emptiness. It is filled with ‘stuff’ …”
Matter, a piece of window glass and ‘stuff’ have mass. Mass defined as that which physically occupies three dimensional space.
“any particle, even isolated, has to be imagined as in continuous “energetic contact” with a hidden medium”
The “energetic contact” with a hidden medium is the state of displacement of the aether. A particle moves through and displaces the aether. The displacement wave in the aether is the physical wave of wave-particle duality in de Broglie wave mechanics.
‘Albert Einstein’s ‘First Paper’; a letter to his Uncle’
http://www.straco.ch/papers/Einstein%20First%20Paper.pdf
*"The velocity of a wave is proportional to the square root of the elastic forces which cause [its] propagation, and inversely proportional to the **mass of the aether *moved by these forces."
Are you having to do mental gymnastics to understand Einstein’s own words when you refers to the “mass of the aether”?
Einstein is referring to the state of displacement of the aether.
The velocity of a wave is proportional to the square root of the elastic forces which cause its propagation, and inversely proportional to the mass of the aether moved by these forces.
‘Ether and the Theory of Relativity by Albert Einstein’
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Extras/Einstein_ether.html
“Think of waves on the surface of water. Here we can describe two entirely different things. Either we may observe how the undulatory surface forming the boundary between water and air alters in the course of time; or else-with the help of small floats, for instance - we can observe how the position of the separate particles of water alters in the course of time. If the existence of such floats for tracking the motion of the particles of a fluid were a fundamental impossibility in physics - if, in fact nothing else whatever were observable than the shape of the space occupied by the water as it varies in time, we should have no ground for the assumption that water consists of movable particles. But all the same we could characterise it as a medium.”
if, in fact nothing else whatever were observable than the shape of the space occupied by the aether as it varies in time, we should have no ground for the assumption that aether consists of movable particles. But all the same we could characterise it as a medium having mass which is displaced by the particles of matter which exist in it and move through it.
You must have missed this part by Laughlin:
“The modern concept of the vacuum of space, confirmed every day by experiment, is a relativistic ether”
Is it the “confirmed every day by experiment” that you are unable to understand?
What the Michelson-Morley experiment is evidence of is the aether is not an absolutely stationary space. The aether is displaced by the particles of matter which exist in it and move through it.
Are you able to understand the water associated with the bow waves of two boats which pass by each other very closely piles-up?
If no then you probably shouldn’t be responding to this thread.
If yes then you should be able to understand that that is the same physical phenomenon which is occurring as two galaxy clusters pass by each other.
‘Galactic Pile-Up May Point to Mysterious New Dark Force in the Universe - Wired Science’
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/01/musket-ball-dark-force/
“The reason this is strange is that dark matter is thought to barely interact with itself. The dark matter should just coast through itself and move at the same speed as the hardly interacting galaxies. Instead, it looks like the dark matter is crashing into something — perhaps itself – and slowing down faster than the galaxies are. But this would require the dark matter to be able to interact with itself in a completely new an unexpected way, a “dark force” that affects only dark matter.”
The galaxy clusters are moving through and displacing the mass of ‘empty’ space, analogous to the bow waves of two boats which pass by each other very closely.
It is the mass of ‘empty’ space which piles up.
Aether has mass, physically occupies three dimensional space and is physically displaced by the particles of matter which exist in it and move through it.
‘Comment on higher derivative Lagrangians in relativistic theory’
*“The relativistic theory of an Aether was discussed several time, see for e.g. [8], [9]. In this paper, our hypothesis is different and gives a relativistic theory of the deformation of continuous media (for which the geometry is described by the metric field).” *
The Milky Way’s halo is the deformation of continuous media.
The Milky Way’s halo is the state of displacement of the aether.
What is referred to as the curvature of spacetime physically exists in nature as the state of displacement of the aether.
The pseudo-force associated with curved spacetime is the force associated with the displaced aether.
The following article describes the aether as that which produces resistance to acceleration and is responsible for the increase in mass of an object with velocity and describes the “space-time ideal fluid approach from general relativity.”
‘Fluidic Electrodynamics: On parallels between electromagnetic and fluidic inertia’
“It is shown that the force exerted on a particle by an ideal fluid produces two effects: i) resistance to acceleration and, ii) an increase of mass with velocity. … The interaction between the particle and the entrained space flow gives rise to the observed properties of inertia and the relativistic increase of mass. … Accordingly, in this framework the non resistance of a particle in uniform motion through an ideal fluid (D’Alembert’s paradox) corresponds to Newton’s first law. The law of inertia suggests that the physical vacuum can be modeled as an ideal fluid, agreeing with the space-time ideal fluid approach from general relativity.”
The relativistic mass of an object is the mass of the object and the mass of the aether connected to and neighboring the object which is displaced by the object. The faster an object moves with respect to the state of the aether in which it exists the greater the displacement of the aether by the object the greater the relativistic mass of the object.
The incompressible fluid described in the following article is the gravitational aether which* “the theory reduces to GR coupled to an incompressible fluid.”*
‘Empty Black Holes, Firewalls, and the Origin of Bekenstein-Hawking Entropy’
*"But why an incompressible fluid? The reason comes from an attempt to solve the (old) cosmological constant problem, which is arguably the most puzzling aspect of coupling gravity to relativistic quantum mechanics [13]. Given that the natural expectation value for the vacuum of the standard model of particle physics is ∼ 60 orders of magnitude heavier than the gravitational measurements of vacuum density, it is reasonable to entertain an alternative theory of gravity where the standard model vacuum decouples from gravity. Such a theory could be realized by coupling gravity to the traceless part of the quantum mechanical energy-momentum tensor. However, the consistency/covariance of gravitational field equations then requires introducing an auxiliary fluid, the so-called gravitational aether [14]. The simplest model for gravitational aether is an incompressible fluid (with vanishing energy density, but non-vanishing pressure), which is currently consistent with all cosmological, astrophysical, and precision tests of gravity [15, 16]:
3
32πGN Gμν = Tμν − Tα gμν + Tμν ,
Tμν = p (uμ uν + gμν ), T μν;ν = 0,
where GN is Newton’s constant, Tμν is the matter energy momentum tensor and Tμν is the incompressible gravitational aether fluid. In vacuum, the theory reduces to GR coupled to an incompressible fluid."*
The aether is, or behaves similar to, a supersolid, which is described in the following article as the ‘fluidic’ nature of space itself. The article describes a ‘back reaction’ associated with the ‘fluidic’ nature of space itself. This is the displaced aether ‘displacing back’.
‘An Extended Dynamical Equation of Motion, Phase Dependency and Inertial Backreaction’
“We hypothesize that space itself resists such surges according to a kind of induction law (related to inertia); additionally, we provide further evidence of the “fluidic” nature of space itself. This “back-reaction” is quantified by the tendency of angular momentum flux threading across a surface.”
The state of displacement of the aether is gravity.
It appears that Laughlin is referring to the vacuum state in QFT. Fields have creation (and annihilation) operators attached to them that act on the vacuum state and pop out particles in a complicated but explainable way. I suppose you can think of it metaphorically as quantum waves propagating through and interacting with a vacuum state, but this has absolutely nothing with relativity.
For the rest of it, meh, I really don’t care, and Asymptotically Fat did a better job covering them all earlier. Feel free to keep ranting about how no one in mainstream physics can think for themselves, how broad analogies to classical physics without any math or physics in them vindicates your ideas, and how some random papers you found by searching on the arxiv yet obviously don’t understand totally prove your theory. But if you want anyone here or anywhere else— and I do mean anyone— to take you seriously, then:
a) Write up a coherent explanation of why you think there’s an aether. Don’t simply quote from physicists, especially long-dead ones; just explain, without any appeals to authority or condescension towards people who disagree with you, what problem you have with the mainstream thought.
b) Present your ideas using physics and math instead of broad analogies. Those of us who are familiar with special and general relativity have seen all of this before. The trick is that the non-classical world (quantum too, for that matter), just does not work as expected from classical intuition and analogies. If your only argument is that various physicists did actually believe in an aether, then you’ll have to explain why we should believe them over all the experiment and theory we’ve collected over the last century.
c) Again, the reason we believe these things is that they’re supported both by experiment and a large body of theory. If you want to claim that an aether exists, you’ll have to explain why everything from the Michelson-Morley experiment to GPS devices to hundreds of well-known results about relativistics particles are all wrong.
d) Read the papers you’re quoting, familiarize yourself with the context of the quotes you’ve present, and generally try to know more about the subject you’re claiming to be an overlooked expert in. You’re listing descriptive quotes from scientists, without any additional context. You’re not listing experiments, physical data, mathematical theory, or anything else that would be useful if you want us to draw a conclusion besides, “Oh, physicist X apparently believes in an aether. I guess I was wrong about everything ever.” That’s not going to happen.