birth
"What is the world made of?" A student asked.
"There are four elements that make up our world, namely water, fire, air, and earth, and there is a very magical element called the aether, which is above our heads, running in the universe, and the stars are all moving harmoniously in the universe." This is Aristotle teaching. The aether was officially born as the carrier of the Western philosophers' understanding of the universe.
In the infancy of science, the aether, as a very pure and noble being, helped Western scientists understand our universe and has dominated the scientific community for more than 2,000 years, but the truth will always come out one day.
Absolute status
From theology to philosophy to science, the aether has an absolute status. In the 17th century, when human beings began to study "what is the nature of light", scientists divided into two factions, one faction represented by Descartes and Newton, who believed that light was composed of tiny particles, and the other faction, represented by Hooke and Huygens, believed that light was a beam of waves, thus creating a dispute between the particle theory of light and the wave theory. Although these two schools of thought are very hotly debated, they both absolutely believe in the existence of the aether, and particle science believes that there is no over-range action between the interactions between objects, and there must be a medium to propagate the force. Wave theory believes that light waves should be like water waves, but also need a medium to transmit, the light in the universe can no longer be propagated in a vacuum, there must be ether as a medium for light transmission. The ether at this time is also called "light ether" or "luminous ether". Although the two factions quarreled, the position of the aether was as stable as Mount Tai, and it was not known that the real crisis was quietly approaching.
crisis
By the 18th century, the scientific community also began to be irrational, showing the characteristics of love house and U, because Descartes fans opposed the law of inverse square, Newton's fans also began to oppose Descartes, along with Descartes advocated the aether as opposed, do not know that the grandfather Newton also supported the aether. The successful application of Newton's gravitational theorem in astronomy gave the hypermetry view the upper hand. Until the late 18th century, with the discovery of the law of inverse square ratio between charges, the hypercliminal view dominated, and the position of the aether was threatened as never before.
The status is unprecedented
Fast forward to the beginning of the 19th century, Thomas Young's double-slit interference experiment successfully proved that light time is a wave, and since light is a wave, it needs a medium to transmit, then this medium must be ether. Scientists also have times when they fall into empiricism. Thomas Young's experiments explained both the propagation of light along straight lines and Newtonian rings, the diffraction and scattering of light phenomena, and the wave theory of light with great success. The discovery of electromagnetic waves in the late 19th century made scientists feel more confirmed by the existence of the aether. At this time, the consensus on the existence of the ether has reached an unprecedented height.
At this time, scientists believed that whoever found the aether would become famous in the First World War. So many people are committed to the search for the ether, the most famous of which is the Michelson-Morey experiment, the earth in the aether at a speed of thirty kilometers per second around the sun, will inevitably usher in thirty kilometers per second of the etheric wind, so the speed of light measured in different directions on the earth is different, but the experiment has been done for more than 50 years, no matter how to improve the device, the result is that the speed of light is the same regardless of which direction, scientists are confused. But at this time, everyone is willing to believe that there is a problem with the measurement method or device, and no one has ever doubted whether the theory is wrong.
The Great Reversal
By the beginning of the 20th century, Einstein boldly abandoned the aether theory on the basis of his predecessors and created the special theory of relativity, which proved that the speed of light is the same in different directions, thus denying the existence of the aether.
The aether, which has ruled the scientific community for more than 2,000 years, has fallen to the altar, and the ether has been hunted down and killed by only Ethernet, which seems to be the meaning of scientists, and now Ethernet has penetrated into all corners of our lives. Is the story of the ether really over? Some people say that our dark matter today may be the ether we are looking for, and maybe one day it will come back.