The Æther and Absolute Motion

Abstract

THE particular objection to identifying magnetic force with velocity of the æther, which has been discussed recently in the columns of NATURE by Prof. O. W. Richardson, Sir Oliver Lodge and Prof. W. M. Hicks, Dr. C. V. Burton and Mr. E. Cunningham, must depend on some point of view which is foreign to my ways of thinking. Such a hypothesis involves, of course, that the all-pervading æther shall be at rest under normal conditions; the effect of any local disturbance due to matter must thus be a local effect, and the distant regions of æther will remain unmoved. There can be no question of ascribing a uniform motion to the whole of the æther, extending to the remotest infinity, because there is no conceivable means of producing or altering such a motion. In other words, an infinitely extended æther postulates absolute motion as a fact, in the only real sense of that term, namely, motion relative to the remote quiescent regions of the æther; and once that determination is made, arguments from relativity of motion must lapse.