Continuing the hijack…
Sitting on mercury
twickster - thank you for moving this; obviously I considered GQ but since I wasn’t sure how folks would come at my question and there’ve been world-of-physics updates in MPSIMS, I started there.
njtt and HMHW - thanks, that’s the type of context I was looking for. I very much respect how a Higgs Field is really nothing like the ether concepts of old except at the most abstract, conceptual level. But, per njtt’s history, it is interesting at that conceptual level. Kinda like going back to early Greek definitions of atoms - interesting to look back at conceptually as we peer deeper into the quantum level. What goes around comes around!
Interesting conversation. I’m not sure what other fields permeate all of space-time; if there are any, I humbly apologize to the Higgs Boson. What I gather from this is the Higgs Field is like the ether in that physicists needed something that pervaded all of space to make up for explanatory gaps, but those gaps are/were quite different. The ether stopped being a useful concept (for the explanation of light propagation) when the need for a universal absolute frame of reference disappeared in favor of Special Relativity. The Higgs Field was/is the best explanation available for mass and we have experimental evidence for the Higgs Boson. Now, on to dark matter and gravity.
All fields pervade all of space-time. That’s what a field is. Some of them might have zero value, or nearly zero value, in some places, but the field is still there.
If you insist on pointing to something in modern physics and saying “Look, physicists still believe in ether!”, then point to dark energy. One name for dark energy (or rather, for one relatively common model for dark energy) is “quintessence”, which literally means “fifth element”, a reference to ether (or alternately, to Mila Jovovich, who looks a lot better with her shirt off than ether does).
But the concept of “ether” has changed dramatically throughout history, with so far as I can tell the only common thread being “stuff that we don’t know much about”. By the time of Maxwell, the defining feature of “ether” was its stillness: It was the stationary reference frame that the speed of light was measured relative to. But in the original Greek notion, its defining feature was its lack of stillness: Ether was the ever-moving, which made up the stars, and accounted for their perpetual motion through the sky.
Now, if you do decide to latch onto that common historical thread and define “ether” as “that which we don’t understand very well”, then there will of course always be ether, but it won’t always be the same stuff. I’m not sure that’s a very useful definition, though.
I think this is an important point. Mathless discussions of physics tend to devolve into metaphors and semantics. Any discussion of underlying reality will wind up using words like pervasive and invisible (both implied in the OP). In discussions using words, there’s a natural tendency to assume that if the words and metaphors are similar than the concepts being encircled are therefore also similar. That’s common sense, and the use of common sense is the sticking point in any discussion of physics. I’m tempted to say that any discussion of math or physics that starts with common sense assumptions will invariably be wrong and that as a corollary, that the person making the assumptions will never be able to understand why. Of course, I’m biased by the type of poster we get here who has a need to prove that relativity is wrong and 0.9999~ is not 1. Still, it’s easy to understand why a discussion of the Higgs field using similar terms to a discussion of the ether will provoke this confusion.
As a tribute to this time of year, I am forced to post the following:
Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Ether.
Ether who?
Ether bunny.
Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Ether.
Ether who?
Ether bunny.
Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Ether.
Ether who?
Ether bunny.
Knock knock
Who’s there?
Orange.
Orange who?
Orange you glad it’s not another ether bunny?
The concept of “ether” was replaced by the concept of “fields”. So yes, the Higgs field is “kinda like” ether. But so are EM fields, gravity, and the strong and weak nuclear force fields.
The difference is that ether was an unmoving substrate in which everything existed, but that wasn’t otherwise affected by physical things, whereas fields behave relativistically and interact with the world in quite different ways than ether was supposed to. Fields are active participants in physics, rather than just the stage the rest of physics played on, basically.
Yeah, I see this a lot. I even do it myself from time to time. This especially applies to ancient philosophers.
I’ve been traveling today, but want to thank folks for posting and adding more info and context. Helpful.
I like to think of it this way:
They’re sort of the same, but different.
The math works out different.
For most of its long history there wasn’t much math at all associated with the aether. It was all about explanation at the qualitative level (even in the hands of master mathematicians like Descartes and Newton). You do get some serious math coming into aether theory with Maxwell, but his equations are still widely used, so I hear.
I find it interesting that there’s a bit of…sarcasm?..in some of the responses. I have no defense, nor do I see value in trying to provide one. The Higgs Field is different from ether - I get it, and I got it prior to the OP. The overlap of the conceptual models was interesting, as has been the sharing of historical context and the science involved in the Higgs Field. Thanks for that.
In a way, Maxwell’s equations are the first that specifically deny ether. Maxwell came up these equations the describe electromagnetism very well, but aren’t invariant under Galilei transforms. In particular they describe electromagnetic waves that travel at some speed “c” – Not “c relative to some reference frame”, just “c”.
The conservative thing to say was “well, Maxwell’s equations must only be right in some reference frame (at rest relative to the ether)” and start looking to figure out what that reference frame was. As we know, that search failed, and with relativity we essentially said, “Maxwell’s equations are even better than expected, because they are true in all reference frames, not just some preferred one”.
Maxwell’s equations were made at a time when ether seemed sensible, but got better thereafter.
Aether has mass and is physically displaced by the particles of matter which exist in it and move through it.
Displaced aether pushing back and exerting inward pressure toward matter is gravity.
What is referred to geometrically as curved spacetime physically exists in nature as the state of displacement of the aether.
The state of displacement of the aether is gravity.
A moving particle has an associated aether displacement wave. In a double slit experiment the particle travels through a single slit and the associated wave in the aether passes through both.
What ripples when galaxy clusters collide is what waves in a double slit experiment; the aether.
Einstein’s gravitational wave is de Broglie’s wave of wave-particle duality; both are aether displacement waves.
Aether displaced by matter is what relates general relativity and quantum mechanics.
Particles of matter are condensations of the aether.
Particles of matter evaporate into aether.
When a nuclear bomb explodes matter evaporates into aether. The evaporation is energy. Mass is conserved.
mpc755, unfortunately, none of that is true. While I appreciate that you wish to advance the frontiers of science, you would do much better at that goal if you first took the time to learn the current state of science. This, unfortunately, is not a brief process, and requires years of formal study at the college and graduate-school level: There’s rather a lot of science.
Chronos, unfortunately, Robert Laughlin disagrees with you.
“The word ‘ether’ has extremely negative connotations in theoretical physics because of its past association with opposition to relativity. This is unfortunate because, stripped of these connotations, it rather nicely captures the way most physicists actually think about the vacuum. . . . Relativity actually says nothing about the existence or nonexistence of matter pervading the universe, only that any such matter must have relativistic symmetry. […] It turns out that such matter exists. About the time relativity was becoming accepted, studies of radioactivity began showing that the empty vacuum of space had spectroscopic structure similar to that of ordinary quantum solids and fluids. 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’ that is normally transparent but can be made visible by hitting it sufficiently hard to knock out a part. The modern concept of the vacuum of space, confirmed every day by experiment, is a relativistic ether. But we do not call it this because it is taboo.” - Robert B. Laughlin, Nobel Laureate in Physics, endowed chair in physics, Stanford University
Matter, fluids, solids, a piece of window glass and ‘stuff’ have mass and so does the aether.
People here should note that mpc755 posted similar comments in the Does Space Have Mass thread along with multiple other quotes on the subject, none of which were bought for a second by our resident physicists.
Yes, ‘empty’ space has mass.
‘Cosmologists at Penn Weigh Cosmic Filaments and Voids’
http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/news/cosmologists-penn-weigh-cosmic-filaments-and-voids
“Dark matter … permeate[s] all the way to the center of the voids.”
Title says it all in the following.
‘“No Empty Space in the Universe” --Dark Matter Discovered to Fill Intergalactic Space’
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/02/no-empty-space-in-the-universe-dark-matter-discovered-to-fill-intergalactic-space-.html
OK, good, you’ve found one paragraph of actual physics. Now you just need about ten thousand more. What you quoted there from Dr. Laughlin is true, but is also completely unrelated to what you were saying.
Witnessing and crusading for your own pet crackpot physics/cosmological “theories” makes you seem like some old naked guy on the corner of Broadway wearing only a sandwichboard proclaiming “THE END IS NEAR!”
Especially if you’re a layman.
Watch the following video starting at 0:45 to see a visual representation of the state of the aether. What is referred to as a twist in spacetime is the state of displacement of the aether.
“Imagine the Earth as if it were immersed in honey,” says Francis Everitt of Stanford University in California, the mission’s chief scientist. “As the planet rotates, the honey around it would swirl, and it’s the same with space and time.”
Honey has mass and so does the aether. The ‘swirl’ is more correctly described as the state of displacement of the aether.