Aether and Gravitation

by William George Hooper

Let us consider the analogy from the standpoint of experience, and see what that analogy teaches us. From experience we learn that the air is gravitative, but we also learn that it is possible to be moved from place to place as winds, and that as such it can move freely between the trees of the forest, causing their boughs and leaves to tremble and bend beneath its energy and power.

I have yet to learn, however, that while it moves between the trees as separate and distinct objects, such a movement militates or destroys its gravitating properties.

Does the air cease to be any less gravitative, or subject to the Law of Gravity, when it is subject to certain movements, which give rise to certain currents as winds? Such an assumption is altogether opposed to philosophical reasoning.

Whether the air is stationary or in motion, it is ever subject to the great Law of Gravitation, and accepting that as an analogy, the apparent contradiction between the oft-quoted simile of Young and his fourth hypothesis is at once removed, and from analogy we learn that it is quite possible for Aether to move between bodies because of certain currents which may be originated by heat, light or electricity, yet at the same time the existence of such currents does not violate its gravitating tendency.

Young's fourth hypothesis is therefore in perfect harmony with his oft-quoted simile, that the Aether flows through the interstices of bodies as the wind flows through a group of trees, but like the air-currents it does not so flow unless the currents are generated by some form of energy, as heat or light, electricity or magnetism.

From these considerations therefore we are compelled to come to the conclusion that Aether, like all other matter, is subject to the same universal Law of Gravitation. If further evidence of the gravitating tendency of the Aether were required, I would refer the reader to Lord Kelvin's utterance on this subject.

Lord Kelvin, Phil. Mag., November 1899, in relation to the Aether writes: “We are accustomed to call Aether imponderable. How do we know that it is imponderable? If we had never dealt with air except by our senses, air would be imponderable to us, but we know by experiment that a vacuum glass tube shows an increased weight when air is allowed to flow into it. We have not the slightest reason to believe that Aether is imponderable. It is just as likely to be attracted by the sun as air is. At all events the onus of proof rests with those who assert it is imponderable. I think we shall have to modify our ideas of what Gravitation is, if we have a mass spreading through space with mutual attraction between its parts, without being attracted by other bodies.”

We have already seen in the previous article that Faraday was of opinion that the Law of Gravitation extended throughout the whole of the solar system, and as Aether fills the solar system, then obviously Aether must also be subject to the Law of Gravitation.

Art. 46. Aether possesses Density.--That matter possesses density has already been shown in [Art. 38], and on the hypothesis that Aether is matter, Aether must possess density also. This property has already been postulated for the Aether, in order to account for certain phenomena in connection with the reflection and refraction of light. Young assumed different densities for the Aether near bodies owing to its being attracted by those bodies ([Art. 45]). Reflection and refraction of light are produced by a change of density of the Aether. It is now generally accepted that the optical difference of bodies depends mainly on the different densities of Aether in association with those bodies. Professor Tyndall, in his Lectures on Light, writes on the density of the Aether as follows: “The density of the Aether is greater in liquids and solids than in gases, and greater in gases than in vacuo. A compressing force seems to be exerted on the Aether by the molecules of these bodies.”

Apart, however, from the atomicity and gravitative properties of the Aether, it is difficult to understand how there can be density of the medium, and still more difficult to give a satisfactory explanation of different degrees of density for the same medium, which some scientists assume it to have.