" The space is endowed with physical properties, in this sense therefore there exists an ether( aether) . The space without ether is unthinkable " . - source : Lecture " Ether and theory of relativity" by Albert Einstein at leiden University (1920,publushed in 1922)

After watching, and listening, to this talk more than 4 times back to back, he never explains "how" einstein abolished aether.

I can watch these videos for hours on end.. they never cease to fascinate.. thank you for putting these online!

Just yesterday I learned that Faraday made a prophetic remark about the nature of vibrating electricity being accountable for all we see (light). And today I get to see it in text. I'm so happy to see these lectures. I love the history because I remember distinctly that Maxwell was the first the measure the speed of light. I remember he arranged spinning disks with mirrors around them. These were spaced by 1.5 km or just a crazy distance to aim mirrors so accuratly, by yourself, without a motorbike. He spun the one at home base, if you will, and the pulsing light would locknphase when it completed this circuit and then he did the math and came really close. Today, I see that so many people measured it long before. I'm astounded. I had assumed that the speed of light was suspected to be a constant for a long time but then with Maxwell doing all the math for everyone, there isn't a lot left for Einstein to do, right? e= mc^2. It's like I=mv^2. Einstein got way too much fame for so little. Oh well, he didn't stop there. Great lectures !!! I wish I had paid more attention to my high school calculus book. It had a biography of the mathematicians in the margin. Like Laplace and etc. I'd be so fascinated now but in high school, I just had too much to do as it was. I wish there was a thorough history of mathematics from geometry through calculus and beyond. I mentioned Laplace because Newton gets the credit for calculus but that's not true. Laplace came up with a solution to the very same problems independently and simultaneously. I used Laplace transforms and more in calculus. Laplace's method is very popular for many types of problems because it's easier. Newton's is just different. I think that alone is extraordinary. There should be a show on just that neck and neck between Newton and Laplace. I can't remember much because I wasn't interested in high school. When you get old, you really appreciate how much work these men did to advance something they really didn't know would become so useful in the distant future. There is a LOT of math that had no use at the time, but later became fundamental in describing electricity in capacitors and filter circuits and so many things the mathematicians couldn't dream of. That's fascinating to me. Why'd they work so hard? Like imaginary numbers. The sq rt of -1. It can't exist and yet it's used in electrical engineering constantly. Makes you wonder if ordinary electronics does employ a 5th dimension where the (sq rt -1) is an ordinary thing in that universe. You go there and someone picks up one and says "of course there's a sq rt of -1, here, catch." Anyway it's amazing that match and the external objective reality match up at all. Is there any reason why they have to? No. But we've come a long way with that assumption. That's the history I'd like to see. Plus Laplace getting the proper respect as one of 2 people who invented calculus. In the case of calculus, by the way, there was simply not a way to express something that describes the conditions at an instant of time, if it weren't infinitesimally small in duration. It was math to fix math. That's not so much a math with unknown uses in the future. The uses were what we needed to express. We knew the need for it before we had it. That's different than those that worked on math that had no practical application and wouldn't for centuries, which is mind blowing, in my opinion. These things seem, like Faradays' intuition, to have a prophetic note to it. "I know it's weird but I got to solve it, useful or not. I can't explain it." I can't find the drive to clear the floor I walk on. So... I'm in awe of their dedication to math, back then. And it'd make another interesting show to see the types of "useless" math people are working on today that may drive how we understand something we may not discover for yet another 200 years or more. right?

"Hippolyte Fizeau used a rotating comb and a mirror and measured the speed of light, only being off by 5%." That's seriously impressive.

I'm listening to this again a year later. Whoa! This talk is fantastic. Thank you!

Zero point energy requires aether😎

Yesterday, I was taking a stroll in a local library. Found a fascinating book The Odyssey by Homer in modern English. I previously had the Illiad, but in the old English, the king's english as one would speak. However, now as I watch this presentation, I am reminded that knowledge is massive and we cannot preserve it all if knowledge is stored in diverse forms. Surely, if put on paper and on some digital storage it must be preserved, but that is not what I mean. It is only truly preserved if commanded to memory. If only to keep the human element of experimentation for permanent recollection, that would give us the future generation a sense of continuity. The world we live in is a form of causality. Knowledge is a propagation of thought. The idea that we relinquish some of our previous knowledge from earlier innocent existence is foreboding. I will bookmark this video. It holds a sentimental value.

Did he really abolish the aether? I think he merely re-labled it 'space-time".

41:09 That's one of the sweetest things i've ever heard.

Awesome lecture. I have a pretty solid understanding of the discussed math and theory, but also know how important it is to make this stuff approachable. This lecture has a huge amount of information, while never requiring an advanced understanding of the principles. The stories and history of the experimental procedures that went into providing evidence or proving these theories was fantastic, most of which I had never heard before. Math and physics stories were always my favorite part of school, when I had talented instructors.

"History abundantly shows that people's views of the universe are bound up with their views of themselves and of their society. The debate in cosmology has implications far beyond the realm of science, for it is a question of how truth is known. How these questions are answered will shape not only the history of science, but the history of humanity." (Eric Lerner, 1992) spaceandmotion

His book Light Speed is super easy to understand. I bought the hard cover. I never buy books except for Feynman. Such a confusing puzzle this defunct business of the aether. A great story about Bradley and David Hughes. Fascinating read and what could be better than to see the author at RI. Mahalo again RI.

7:30 "Maxwell got the *correct* equations..." no he didn't; that's a folklore myth that's bandied about in the Physics community, but it is totally wrong. His equations differed *substantially* from what we now call Maxwell's equations -- and one of the biggest differences is that they had a fixed frame for light propagation (called the "stationary frame"); and that *only* in this frame would the constitutive relations 𝗗 = κ 𝗘, 𝗕 = μ 𝗛 be isotropic. (So "stationary frame" is more properly denoted "frame of isotropy"). In addition, he also stated incorrect relations (and transformation laws) for 𝗕 because he failed to distinguish it from 𝗛, always writing it as μ𝗛 ... until he started calling it its own name 𝗕 by the time he wrote the Treatise. But even then he *still* got the transformation properties of 𝗕 wrong (it's a pseudo-vector & 2-form, while 𝗛 is a vector & 1-form) and consequently wrote down the wrong constitutive law for 𝗕, which Thomson had to correct. The equations, when made consistent with Relativity, are the Maxwell-Minkowski equations, which could be written as (1) {𝗕 = ∇×𝗔, 𝗘 = -∇φ - ∂𝗔/∂t}, {∇·𝗕 = 0, ∇×𝗘 + ∂𝗕/∂t = 0} for the magnetic potential 𝗔, electric potential φ, electric force 𝗘 and magnetic induction 𝗕, (2) {∇·𝗗 = ρ, ∇×𝗛 + ∂𝗗/∂t = 𝗝}, {∂ρ/∂t + ∇·𝗝 = 0} for the electric induction 𝗗, magnetic force 𝗛, current density 𝗝 and charge density ρ, (3) The constitutive relations {𝗗 + α 𝗚×𝗛 = κ (𝗘 + 𝗚×𝗕), 𝗕 - α 𝗚×𝗘 = μ (𝗛 - 𝗚×𝗗)}, with permeability μ, dielectric coefficient κ and a velocity 𝗚 that references the frame of isotropy. The equations Maxwell wrote correspond to the case α = 0, while for Relativity, one needs α > 0. In addition, he failed to include the - 𝗚×𝗗 term because he was still confusing 𝗕 and 𝗛 -- its inclusion was a correction made later by Thomson (and verified experimentally c. 1900 by a husband and wife team). The "stationary frame" referred to in late 1800's papers and in the opening part of Einstein's paper is 𝗚 = 0. Einstein's objection (stated therein) is that there would continue to be a 𝗚-dependence for (3) even in a vacuum, when there ought not to be; and that there should be nothing to single out any specific speed 𝗚 in a vacuum, so that the stationary case 𝗚 = 0 should hold for the vacuum in all inertial frames of reference. In contrast, the Maxwell-Minkowski equations (which are the ones required by Relativity) - have α > 0 and single out a unique speed c ≡ √(1/α) - which is the invariant speed postulated by Relativity. And it just so happens that in the case where κμ = α (i.e. the vacuum), equations (3) for *all* cases of 𝗚 become *almost* *equivalent* to the equations for the "stationary case"; i.e. the isotropic relations 𝗗 = κ 𝗘, 𝗕 = μ 𝗛. And that's where the comment he made in his 1905 paper that 𝗚 becomes "superfluous" comes from. Note the " *almost* " by the way. The equations are *not* equivalent to the isotropic relations if the medium is rarefied to a vacuum κμ > α → κμ = α and κμG² → 1 in such a way that (κμ-α)/(1-κμG²) approaches a finite non-zero limit; i.e. if the frame of isotropy is at light speed. The irony of this, of course, is that it corresponds to the very case alluded to in the very question (and the answer to it) that sparked Einstein's foray into relativity "what it is like to travel alongside a light beam?" A residual dependence on G² remains in the limit in that case. As a result, there continues to be a lingering vestige of an "aether frame" *even* in Relativity. An experiment to verify this, given the high speed of the medium required, would probably be something involving plasma physics.

OMG GREAT LECTURE!!! Learned so much!

Important!, maybe it was already highlighted by someone down the comments but on the second 40 of the presentation it is a wrong link of the equator with LONGITUDE, I guess he intended to say meridian instead.

Aether...Einstein also stated it is totally necessary...he did this after relativity.

6:18 - Yep, this is what Quantized space looks like. With it being created by quanta at the sub-Planck scale, which are denser where mass is higher, and which behave like a superfluid, offering practically no resistance at solar system distances, but they have an effect on EM radiation as it travels between stars and galaxies. It also easily explains orbital mechanics without trying to bend space, and why there's no such thing as a graviton.

Thank You Everyone who commented with this grade of commitment. The point is the discussion between people , wich a video cannot perform in these terms. I regret not having watched the video YET ,but it will stay there,while comments can be easily turned off . .

He then reaccepted it 15 years later cuz it made more realistic sense, at the theory of relativity was introduced in 1905. "In 1920 Einstein accepting the ether theory Albert Einstein said: “Recapitulating, we may say that according to the general theory of relativity space is endowed with physical qualities; in this sense, therefore, there exists an ether." I mean, Einstein and Tesla were smart enough to realize there is a difference between space and a substance. Space is just distance/absence, such a thing has no properties as it's not a form of existence, it's a fancy word for nothing ! Also, if we see the behavior of a substance in all cosmic space, then it's not space it's a substance.

In 1849 the hz value for the note "A" was not equal to 440hz. It was actually A= 432hz. If you tune your instruments to A=432 you tend to get better harmonics and depth because the instruments were designed with that frequency in mind. A=440 was not made the standard until sometime around WWII. Can not remember the exact date.

“Newton’s bucket “ remains an effective thought experiment to justify looking for an aether of some sort. Imagine observing a bucket in space with absolutely nothing except the bucket itself. You observe that water in the bucket is being drawn toward the walls uniformly. The force pushing the water remains a mystery until you realize you must be spinning in sync with the bucket. Centrifugal force causing the effect. Yet with rotation being a relative motion, how could you possibly ever know you were spinning since you can’t see anything around you? Because nothing else remains, we can conclude that something else must still exist. The rotation is relative to space itself.

i was very happy when i saw that the tilted angle calculated by bradley (12.46) .... that is velocity of earth / c .. because just 2 days ago one of my frnd gave me the same problem.. and i calculated the angle also.. ovio by STR ...

RI just keeps publishing great lectures. Yet another hour wel spend.

If nothing is nothing, then nothing does not exist. Therefore there is always something in empty space, but it has no name yet if it is not called aether .

Actually, Einstein did NOT abolish the aether--he himself returned to it after eleven years of rejecting it.

At min 46:22 Point 5 is correct: Aether is dragged by the Earth since the Earth carries its own gravitational field with it in space and the gravitational field is in the aether. Point 4 must be reconsidered: Aether is fixed to Bradley's remote star and you can have Bradley's effect of telecope titling even with aether being carried by the Earth in its own gravitational field. Point 3 Michelson's experiment proves that the aether is carried along by the Earth together with its own gravitational field. Conclusion: Michelson's experiment will yield a positive result with an interferometer moving at great speeds in regions of space away from gravitational fields.

Thanks again for another beautiful video.

He never abolished the ether it ended up with different name.

Mrs Richards: "I paid for a room with a view !" Basil: (pointing to the lovely view) "That is Torquay, Madam ." Mrs Richards: "It's not good enough!" Basil: "May I ask what you were expecting to see out of a Torquay hotel bedroom window? Sydney Opera House, perhaps? the Hanging Gardens of Babylon? Herds of wildebeest sweeping majestically past?..." Mrs Richards: "Don't be silly! I expect to be able to see the sea !" Basil: "You can see the sea, it's over there between the land and the sky." Mrs Richards: "I'm not satisfied. But I shall stay. But I expect a reduction." Basil: "Why?! Because Krakatoa's not erupting at the moment ?"

48:10 Okay, let's assume that all motion is relative. Relative to any frame of reference, light is measured to be approx. 300,000 km/s. Now since it is said that all motion is relative, that means that relative to the photons of light, all objects, in all possible frames of reference, are travelling at the speed of light. Hmmmm??? On top of that, we can be in motion through space, but we also are in motion across the dimension of time. So George says to Frank, my spaceship is at rest, and it is your spaceship that is in motion. The Frank says, no no no. It is my spaceship that is at rest and it is your spaceship that is in motion. But what about George and Frank and motion across the dimension of time ? George says, it is my clock that is at rest and thus is not ticking, and it is your clock that is ticking. But then Frank says, no no no. It is my clock that is at rest and thus is not ticking, and it is your clock that is ticking. Hmmmm??? But of course this is not what would occur.

Thank you for another wonderful lecture!

very Entertaining, I recommend watching this.

Beware of the use of metaphors, for they are but illusions of human design. Whatever 'it' is requires no words from us to be as it is.

The Shoulders of Giants. I am in awe of the intellects of these people. I do not have a grasp of mathematics so even though I am fascinated I can never fully understand. Still, it is wonderful stuff. Well done human brains.

I did enjoy this video!

How does one acquire tickets/seats to these lectures?

Good historical overview about the nature of light, it’s speed determination and independence of frames of reference. Though I do think the Einstein portion was rushed. The title in the thumbnail isn’t quite correct as he did not really explore the quantum nature of light

Wonderful. Thanks you for joining the dots! I'm smiling imagining the distance we have come from Michelson's Interferometer in 1881 to LIGO today.

I had no idea Bobby Robson was such an expert on the history of physics.

This will age well

Thank you science

When u look stars at night we r looking back in time

The Royal Institute is the pinnacle of free online education.

I sometimes feel that censorship and all this garbage on the internet is burying the true knowledge

Just because light has the same speed in all directions doesn't prove there are no ether. Empty space is filled with all kinds of quantum fields and speed of light isn't impeded by any of these, that doesn't prove the quantum fields doesn't exist. Wigner's '"unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in physics' is matched by Penrose's 'mathematics is based of faith', makes a deeper METAPHYSICAL impression.

49:50, How things have changed in just a hundred years

15:22 "James Young" should be "Thomas Young"

It occurs to me that the idea of a textured universal substrate covers all those postulated Aetheric properties nicely. Nature abhors a vacuum, and all that. That energy substrate/potential aids some propagation of phenomena and hinders that of others.

Every lecture on this platform gives me goosebumps ❤️❤️

I love hearing about theories being confronted and re-adjusted. A perfect representation of the tenacity of the human experience.

FYI: Aether-drag has been detected, so.......... -Michelson/Morely failed to consider the Lorentz contraction of the instrument -Lorentz used the same calculations as 'Relativity' including the gamma factor... -Einstein hated his professor Herr Hertz, who later kept him from getting a job/ assistantship at a University -Thus The M/M xpmt reveals that the speed of light appears (remember, it's all 'relative' now) the same for all - a 'postulate' of Poincare's Relativity, (later plagiarized)

. Thank you for the internet information and diagrams. 23:56 so i forget if time is made out of concrete or rubber. .

If Space and the Aether are in some way the same thing, then the1919 Eddington eclipse expedition performed for Einstein proved that a large enough mass curves Space. And if a "total void" is in some way is meant to mean "nothing," then curving a void/Space is not possible. It has been shown many times, and in many ways that Space is not a nothing or void. The reason it takes light about 8 minutes to reach the Earth is that it has to traverse a distance. If that distance is not an attribute of Space, then why is the time needed to traverse it different when the Earth is at different distances to the Sun? If anything, Einstein proved that Space can have a shape, and dimensionality/location is a property of Space.

Excellent lecture, in fact the best I have seen in years. Brilliantly delivered and absolutely fascinating.

Nice work on summary in video. Comment on summary in Page 46:00 1. Aether speed is an averaged value defined by 1/r speed wrt all matter in the universe (which it isn’t) may be regarded as a rest frame. 2. Galician transform accounts for mechanical but wave speed. 3. Aether adheres to all mater moves in equal speed in the near field and lag in the far field by a factor of 1/r apart from the nearest object. Michelson mistaken that Aether is solid and not fluid. 4. Bradley mistaken that Aether is solid and not fluid. Actually Aether fluid adhere to the atmosphere (near field effect) and not in space (far field effect) these effect does not contradicts aberration effect. 5. Fresnel is the only one I am aware who is brilliant out think the rest. 6. We need open minded researcher on Newtonian physics, remember that wave is energy but matter. Why should energy propagation be governed or relate to by Galilean speed of matter? Fixing? There is nothing we need to fix besides the quality of our education and the hidden agenda lies underneath. Once that is fixed the subject conflicts will be resolved on its own.

Nice video and presentation. For a wave to be transmitted and received, we need a wave medium which is not the only thing that matters but most importantly a condition that medium to adhere with the surface of the emitter and or the receiver. Air molecules must adhere to the loudspeaker surface in order to sustain “push and pull” action in the process of sound wave transmission. We also know that wind (around the loudspeaker) and speaker sound coexists. The first boundary layer of air (fluid) on wing are attached to wing surface (near field) by electric force, while the ambient air (far field) is free flow around it, in order to support lift. That brings us to the property of Aether. Michelson and Morley were educated that - Aether wind blows through (and not around) all matter at a speed differ from earth in orbit. Subsequently Michelson went ahead and designed his interferometer n thinking of that. We all know the result by now. There were no appreciable velocity difference in all directions. Why? Not because of - light need no medium - light exists in absence of Aether But because of - light need a medium, Aether - light emitter/receivers must adhere with Aether for light. - interferometer only work in presence of Aether. Caveat? - Aether drag in the near field is responsible for no fringe activities. - Aether drag diminishing by 1/r at the nearest object. - by near and far field effect that Aether and star aberration coexist. - Aether speed in deep space diminishes to a total average of all planets, galaxies by specific 1/r, which may be taken as a rest frame. TSR is unnecessary. It only add convolutions and obstructions in our understanding of this universe.

Huh? If you cool the transducer to zero and the hiss goes away does that not mean the CMB is an illusion? By the way wonderful lecture!

At min 46:34 Analogy with beltway at the airport in flawed because we are discussing waves. Sound produced by a traveller on a beltway will travel with the speed of sound in air no matter how fast the beltway or the traveller move. In the same way, the light from the headlights of a car will travel at the speed of light no matter how fast the car moves towards or away from you and no matter how fast you move towards or away from the car - what changes is the frequency of the wave you detect.

The problem with the theories of aether is that the researchers assumed the properties of atomic matter for the characteristics of aether. If you use the properties of, for example, the neutrino flux as aether, there is no headwind, nor any of the other characteristics that are disproven. In the absence of a neutrino or some other particle flux, electromagnetic waves probably do not propagate. This explains how the early universe expanded faster than the speed of light. Thereafter, the neutrino flux (or the axion flux or another flux ) allowed the propagation of electromagnetic waves. Electromagnetic waves slow in more dense media, slowest in dense metals, where electromagnetic radiation continues to propagate, though with greatt attenuation.

Einstein would probably have been shocked to learn that he himself was a patent attorney.

Many awesome comments, more and more people are becoming aware. I just wanted to add one thing. Please go and read the actual Michaelson and Morley paper. It is description of apparatus. Then a bunch of numbers and arithmetics. adding subtracting and mulyiplying the numbers. The measurements he got at the end for two different directions are actually very different. Then suddenly, without any discussion or explanation there is only one sentence added to the end of the paper saying that " therefore we didn't observe any difference". What am I missing here?

Great talk, a bit of marketing though. And dissappointed about not hearing Tesla's name in all of these great scientist, especially when the title contains aether.

BRAVO!

So Maxwell derived c from an equation that assumes a longitudinal wave through a medium. And this supports relativity?

17:20 what happened we were talking about an equation and ;;;;;;;;;;;;((,??????

Just to mention here that Lorentz’s Aether Theory that is as powerful as the special relativity in terms of the predictions it makes has completely been ignored on this lecture not sure why. Also the only thing we know is constant is the two way speed of light! We always forget this important detail which seems to change everything

What a great presenter.

8:40 about using shadows of a stick to measure the earth's size: the standard version of this story says the two locations were about 500 miles apart, not 2000.

I thought Michelson and Morley disproved the aether, not Einstein. Enjoyable lecture.

Einstein abolished the aether, and physicists have brought it back and call it QFT. Heh

This guy and every scientist should take a look at Alfred Korzybski's "Science and Sanity". With reference to general semantics. No one has ever "abolished the Aether". The Aether is what we now know as The Field, The Quantum Field, etc. It's the medium of reality itself. Just call it what it is: The Aether. Post-materialist science continues to advance our understanding of reality where consciousness is primary...

The aether pushes the planets around the sun. Same old mistakes as Michelson and Morley of thinking that the aether is a non-moving static medium. lol. Head wind indeed! lol.

Aether is all around. This is what Cathédrales are, you see. Tech for the gathering and distribution of energy. Einstein helped usher in a period of brutality by dismissing what everyone already knew.....afterall, they built these stations. Now, we pay.

Royal Institution lectures/talks are amazing, and i'm simply fascinated by the amount and quality of wisdom and intelligence i get presented in a digestible way

The ether has been disproved by the Michelson-Morley experiment. However, absolute motion does exist. Nature is so elusive.

This is one of the best places to find what you always wanted to know. Love it.

In Truth General Relativistic Physics is an alternative reconceptualisation of Aether, or Superconduction related communication. Depending on POV, Einsteinian Relativity or Bergson time duration timing in Maldecena AdS/CFT Holographic Principle Imagery projection-drawing.

I got tired of history lessons before he managed to explain how Einstein kille aether

Great ... I wish someday I will be like him ... great videos ... and its amazing

The lecture is great and very interesting, however, Einstein did not abolish the aether, on the contrary, Einstein thought that the aether must exist according to general relativity! In 1920 he gave a lecture about the ether and the relativity theory and for example here is how he summarized his lecture: “Recapitulating, we may say that according to the general theory of relativity space is endowed with physical qualities; in this sense, therefore, there exists an ether. According to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable; for in such space there not only would be no propagation of light, but also no possibility of existence for standards of space and time (measuring-rods and clocks), nor therefore any space-time intervals in the physical sense. But this ether may not be thought of as endowed with the quality characteristic of ponderable media, as consisting of parts which may be tracked through time. The idea of motion may not be applied to it.“

Don't overlook the speed and constancy of thought...

Of course Maxwell is correct about the Aether. And so are Tesla, Heaviside and CP Steinmetz. Those gentlemen invented the modern world.

I have a simple way to show we move faster than the speed of light. Go outside at night look up at the stars look at one star and then look at the one next to it. How many miles do you think is in between each star? Your eyesight just move faster than the speed of light by doing that.

Computer simulations that include length contraction show the existence of the ether is entirely possible.

Venice has free health for all in the 13th century.

We can vacuum out all mater in a jar but Aether. There will be no electric or magnetic fields if not because of Aether, consequently absent of light and cellphones. Aether has no mechanical but electrical properties. That e0 permittivity and u0 permeability are attributes of Aether, those are real and measurable.

Watched all of it

Would the aether not equate to dark matter or dark energy?

What if quantised spacetime consituted that aether and all particles were just different patterns of flows of quantised spacetime so that forces and particles are just translations and transformations of quanta of space ?

RE: Greeks measuring the size of the earth. How could they tell in one location (sun angle slanted) that at the same time the sun was directly overhead 2,000 miles away?

Wow…what a journey…

What of Ernst Mach? He was a pivotal figure between Newton and Einstein.

Lovely, hope it doesn't get cancelled by the cancel culture brigade.

48:11 It does get glossed over a bit, but the point is that by following the evidence (by saying what if Newton's theories aren't quite right, but many recent observations are) then relativity is the logical result and the aether is no longer relevant. Relativity predicted a lot of later results--successful theory :-)

ERIC DOLLARD is the present engineering authority on the electrical aspects of all this, not the fuddy-duddies in TRS, a group which actively subdues all independent thought.

We quantise to measure. If I pinch finger and thumb in running stream do I catch a stream particle? 🙃

Redefined perhaps...

Physicist Robert B. Laughlin wrote: It is ironic that Einstein's most creative work, the general theory of relativity, should boil down to conceptualizing space as a medium when his original premise [in special relativity] was that no such medium existed [..] The word 'ether' has extremely negative connotations in theoretical physics because of its past association with opposition to relativity. This is unfortunate because, stripped of these connotations, it rather nicely captures the way most physicists actually think about the vacuum. . . . Relativity actually says nothing about the existence or nonexistence of matter pervading the universe, only that any such matter must have relativistic symmetry. [..] It turns out that such matter exists. About the time relativity was becoming accepted, studies of radioactivity began showing that the empty vacuum of space had spectroscopic structure similar to that of ordinary quantum solids and fluids. Subsequent studies with large particle accelerators have now led us to understand that space is more like a piece of window glass than ideal Newtonian emptiness. It is filled with 'stuff' that is normally transparent but can be made visible by hitting it sufficiently hard to knock out a part. The modern concept of the vacuum of space, confirmed every day by relativistic ether. But we do not call it this because it is taboo. Main articles: Pilot wave and De Broglie-Bohm theory Louis de Broglie stated, "Any particle, ever isolated, has to be imagined as in continuous "energetic contact" with a hidden medium." However, as de Broglie pointed out, this medium "could not serve as a universal reference medium, as this would be contrary to relativity theory."

I do not understand why Looking at starts are even galaxies is like looking back in time , all the effects from them are present. Only if we travelled from lets say from 1 galaxy to another in an instant we could say that there presents are different .Would be pretty cool looking back like that tho , seeing yourself do actions that you did in past. That raises a question how can your past self have quantum effects on you in present . An atom absorbing same photon that it emitted , that is spooky action at a distance Guess its how you define things