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AnnaSalamon comments on Were atoms real? - Less Wrong
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I don't know anything about old ideas about aether, but I've wondered why it was wrong, and whether the aether-idea is really conclusively wrong or whether someday science could return to that idea.
Does "aether" necessarily mean that the observed speed of light may vary? In particular, what is packed into the word "aether" that demands this?
...I'm wondering if a different "aether" that doesn't require observer-dependent light speeds may be no less weird than current assumptions we have about how light propagates?
Well, I specified "luminiferous" (light-bearing) aether in the title, although I abbreviated this as simply "aether" in the rest of the section.
In the above, please consider "aether" replaced by "luminiferous aether". I suppose 'aether' could be vague enough to mean anything, and in that sense may be real, but I am curious about what aether needed to be in that particular theory in the 1800s.
Done.