The Ether of Space

In Chapter III the subject of Aberration was treated in a simple and geometrical manner, but it is now time to deal with it more generally. And to do this compactly I must be co...

We have arrived at this: that a uniform ether stream all through space causes no aberration, no error in fixing direction. It blows the waves along, but it does not disturb the...

In this chapter I propose to summarise in simple and consecutive form most of the arguments already used. Thirty years ago Clerk Maxwell gave to the Royal Institution of Great B...

So far I have given a general idea of the present condition of the wave theory of light, both from its theoretical and from its experimental sides. The waves of light are not an...

Notwithstanding its genuine physical nature and properties, the ether is singularly intangible and inaccessible to our senses, and accordingly is a subject on which it is extrem...

The balance of evidence at this stage seems to incline in the sense that there is no ether drift, that the ether near the earth is stagnant, that the earth carries all or the gr...

A reader may suppose that in speaking of the immense density or massiveness of ether, and the absurdly small density or specific gravity of gross matter by comparison, I intend...

The oldest and best known function for an ether is the conveyance of light, and hence the name "luminiferous" was applied to it; though at the present day many more functions ar...

To show that the ether cannot be the slight and rarefied substance which at one time, and indeed until quite lately, it was thought to be, it is useful to remember that not only...

This leads us to enter upon the question of whether it is possible to determine with any approach to accuracy the actual density or massiveness of the ether of space, compared w...