The Ether of Space

by Sir Oliver Lodge

Stellar aberration exists, but it depends on motion of observer, and on motion of observer only. Etherial motion has no effect upon it; and when the observer is stationary with respect to object, as he is when using a terrestrial telescope, there is no aberration at all.

Surveying operations are not rendered the least inaccurate by the existence of a universal etherial drift; and they therefore afford no means of detecting it.

But observe that everything depends on the ether's motion being uniform everywhere, inside as well as outside the telescope, and along the whole path of the ray. If stationary anywhere it must be stationary altogether: there must be no boundary between stationary and moving ether, no plane of slip, no quicker motion even in some regions than in others. For (referring back to the remarks preceding Fig. [4]) if the ether in receiver is stagnant while outside it is moving, a wave which has advanced and drifted as far as the telescope will cease to drift as soon as it gets inside, but will advance simply along the wave-normal. And in general, at the boundary of any such change of motion a ray will be bent, and an observer looking along the ray will see the source not in its true position, not even in the apparent position appropriate to his own motion, but lagging behind that position.

Such an aberration as this, a lag or negative aberration, has never yet been observed; but if there is any slip between layers of ether, if the earth carries any ether with it, or if the ether, being in motion at all, is not equally in motion everywhere throughout every transparent substance, then such a lag or negative aberration must occur, in precise proportion to the amount of the carriage of ether by moving bodies (cf. p. [61]).

On the other hand, if the ether behaves as a perfectly frictionless inviscid fluid, or if for any other reason there is no rub between it and moving matter, so that the earth carries no ether with it at all, then all rays will be straight, aberration will have its simple and well-known value, and we shall be living in a virtual ether stream of nineteen miles a second, by reason of the orbital motion of the earth.

It may be difficult to imagine that a great mass like the earth can rush at this tremendous pace through a medium without disturbing it. It is not possible for an ordinary sphere in an ordinary fluid. At the surface of such a sphere there is a viscous drag, and a spinning motion diffuses out thence through the fluid, so that the energy of the moving body is gradually dissipated. The persistence of terrestrial and planetary motions shows that etherial viscosity, if existent, is small; or at least that the amount of energy thus got rid of is a very small fraction of the whole. But there is nothing to show that an appreciable layer of ether may not adhere to the earth and travel with it, even though the force acting on it be but small.

This, then, is the question before us:—

Does the earth drag some ether with it? or does it slip through the ether with perfect freedom? (Never mind the earth's atmosphere; the part it plays is known and not important.)

In other words, is the ether wholly or partially stagnant near the earth, or is it streaming past us with the opposite of the full terrestrial velocity of nineteen miles a second? Surely if we are living in an ether stream of this rapidity we ought to be able to detect some evidence of its existence.[4]