A website by Mountain Man Graphics lists quite a number of summaries of theories about the cosmic aether.
Xenocrates On the life of Plato
“Thus he then classified living creatures into genera and species, and divided them in every way until he came to their elements, which he called the five shapes and bodies – aether, fire, water, earth and air.”
Article 0 – Historical Background of the Aether
This document commences by examining the record of the ancient Greek philosophers, and in particular Pythagoras. The work of Pythagoras (570-490BC) is still to be seen at the axiomatic level of the derivation of most modern theories of matter, space and time – inclusive of Quantum Theory and the Theory of Relativity. It is evident that Pythagoras also believed in “the fifth element” – which he called the aether or the aither. This article examines the emergence of thought in the ancient western civilisation concerning the aether, and then that of the ancient eastern civilisation which used the term “Akasha”
Article 4 – The Painted Pony and other publications … Glird
” It is our thesis that a continuum of substance fills all space in the known cosmos; that it is an amorphous fluid; that it is everywhere and always the conducting medium for energies; that this material is subject to changes of volume hence is intrinsically compressible; that pressure changes alter the degree of compression of this material; that under the influence of such pressure-density patterning, self persisting units of material occur; and that such units, always contiguous either to each other or to material in unorganized free form, are the things out of which ponderable matter is made.” – Glird
Article 7 – Michaelson-Morley Misinterpretation
“Now that Einstein has convinced us that the speed of light is a constant, the basic concept of the experiment seems naive at best. But at the time, it was enough to disprove the existence of the aether. Later, the photoelectric effect showed that light had properties similar to a particle, and if it could move around as a particle, it certainly didn’t need a medium. The question is, did the baby go out with the bath water. Although the experiment had a significant impact historically, its impact was in a negative result. It tells us nothing about a medium, and according to our current understanding, it had no chance of providing any information ….. If Light is a Wave, What is Waving?“.
(Comment: How does one prove that something is not?)
Article 27 – Metaphysics, Metamath … Ray DeBiase
The observational writings of Ray DeBiase cover a wide subject area and are a pleasure to read. It was difficult to ascertain therefore a suitable introductory quotation to his work
Imaging your standing on a balcony overlooking the ocean. You can see individual waves on the surface and you can note their position at any point in time. You can tell they have momentum by the way they crash against the shore. Now it occurs to you that while an individual wave moves towards shore, it follows a relatively straight line and remains in tack as if it had an existence of its own. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to describe it as a particle, you could call it a surfiton. It would behave the same way an electron does when it goes through a double slit, so it should be possible to develop a set of mathematical laws to describe its behavior. The main problem with this model is that as you move closer and closer to the surfiton, it will be hard to tell where its borders are, and if you look closely enough, eventually you’ll just be soaking your head.
(Comment: A dose of realism?)
RAJA ARASA RATNAM 