THE AETHER

The Aether. According to ancient and medieval science aether, also spelled æther or ether, is the material that fills the region of the universe above the terrestrial sphere. When Isaac Newton was formulating his laws of motion, mechanics, and gravity, he needed a medium for them to operate within. He adopted a modified form of the Luminiferous aether, although he did write, "I do not know what this Aether is", but that, "if it consists of particles" they will be "exceedingly smaller than those of Air, or even than those of Light". Once again, Newton may have been well ahead of this time. From about 1600 until the late 1800's various Aether Theories held sway on the Physics landscape. The ubiquitous aether has always had irritating problems; then the 1887 Michelson-Morley experiment really rocked the boat, and we haven't quite recovered yet.

HOW TO EXAMINE THE LUMINIFEROUS AETHER

The concept of a medium to occupy space is still a very attractive one. Otherwise, you would be forced to explain what it is that does occupy empty space, is it a construct?, a geometry? Falling back on emptiness or lack of matter fails to explain how the separation came to be in the first place. Einstein favored the construct of a space-time continuum to provide fabric of space. Mathematically it is a manifold consisting of "events" which are described by a coordinate system. Spacetime can be complicated, but if you just apply a little Dr. Seuss juice it makes it all a little simpler, "From there to here, and here to there, funny things are everywhere." In spacetime, a point is here, or it is there, and the two points are separated by a construction of time and energy (or mass). It is interesting to note that the light-like formulation of the spacetime interval seems to imply that light speed is not a speed, but a resting spot (zero speed).

HERE TO THERE AND BACK AGAIN

 
Modern theories are proposing a Higgs boson sea of elemental particles held in a low energy state field.  I must admit, I don't get how the Higgs boson works, but it sounds cool.  Are the field lines round?  How will they fit together?

FITTING THE HIGGS IN A SMALL ROOM

Another form of the space/time geometry model that I particularly am attracted to is the 'holodeck model'.

ENTROPY (TIME) EVENT HORIZON

This theory holds that what we see around us is merely a projection on the entropy (time) event horizon.  The omniverse is naturally in a very high state of entropy, but something occurred to cause a singularity.  The singularity was completely ordered, with every possible elemental particle in line and entangled.  This was highly unstable and reacted by creating an entropy wave (time in our universe).  The entangled particles waves interacted and collapsed.  This process was very rapid at the beginning of the universe (inflationary period), but began to stabilize as the event horizon enlarged and fewer and fewer interactions were required.  Entropy carries us along on a sequential Lumiere ride through time.  This cosmological event horizon can be modeled similar to a black hole's event horizon, ie, that entropy is proportional to the area of its event horizon divided by the Planck area.  The metric expansion of space, modeled mathematically by FLRW, is an exact solution of Einstein's field equations of general relativity, and observed and measured by Edwin Hubble.