Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
In physics the Einstein-aether theory, also called aetheory, is the name coined in 2004 for a modification of general relativity that has a preferred reference frame and hence violates Lorentz invariance. These generally covariant theories describes a spacetime endowed with both a metric and a unit timelike vector field named the aether.
The results of various experiments, including the Michelson–Morley experiment in 1887 (subsequently verified with more accurate and innovative experiments), led to the theory of special relativity, by showing that the aether did not exist. [20] Einstein's solution was to discard the notion of an aether and the absolute state of rest.
As historians such as John Stachel argue, Einstein's views on the "new aether" are not in conflict with his abandonment of the aether in 1905. As Einstein himself pointed out, no "substance" and no state of motion can be attributed to that new aether. [10] Einstein's use of the word "aether" found little support in the scientific community, and ...
A 1933 portrait of E. T. Whittaker by Arthur Trevor Haddon. The book was originally written in the period immediately following the publication of Einstein's Annus Mirabilis papers and several years following the early work of Max Planck; it was a transitional period for physics, where special relativity and old quantum theory were gaining traction.
1903 – Olinto De Pretto presents his aether theory with some form of mass–energy equivalence. [15] It was described by a formula looking like Einstein’s E = mc 2, but with different meanings of the terms. 1903 – Frederick Thomas Trouton and H.R. Noble publish the results of their experiment with capacitors, showing no aether drift. [16 ...
An aether theorist would have regarded "...nor according to Maxwell's equations" as simply representing a misunderstanding on Einstein's part. Unfettered by any notion that the speed of light represents a cosmic limit, the aether theorist would simply have set velocity equal to c , noted that yes indeed, the light would appear to be frozen, and ...
Einstein showed how the velocity of light in a moving medium is calculated, in the velocity-addition formula of special relativity. Einstein's theory of general relativity provides the solution to the other light-dragging effects, whereby the velocity of light is modified by the motion or the rotation of nearby masses.
The existence of the aberration of light was inconsistent with aether drag hypothesis. The assumption that aether drag is proportional to mass and thus only occurs with respect to Earth as a whole was refuted by the Michelson–Gale–Pearson experiment, which demonstrated the Sagnac effect through Earth's motion.