Aether and Gravitation

by William George Hooper

In the opening words of that paper he writes as follows: “We cannot help thinking that in every place where we find these lines of force, some physical state or action must exist in sufficient energy to produce the actual phenomena.” Maxwell then went on to show what these physical actions were, which took place in the dielectric--that is, the medium surrounding the electrified body which we now know to be the Aether.

This electric field, he pointed out, was “in a state of stress, which consisted of pressures or tensions different in different directions at the same part of the medium. The relation of these forces were threefold, and consisted in the most general type of stress of three pressures or tensions in directions at right angles to each other.”

Thus, in Maxwell's opinion, the existence of a medium, which by its physical character was able to exert energy on material bodies, was one of the fundamental hypotheses of his theory as to the physical character of Faraday's Lines of Force.

This physical medium was to be capable of certain motions, and both electric and magnetic forces were produced by its motions and its stresses. Maxwell's conception, however, of the physical lines of force was more or less hypothetical, and up to the present, as far as I can learn, has not received that authority from science that such a hypothesis requires to make it an accepted theory in science.

But what I venture to point out is, that with the view of the aetherial medium that is submitted in this work, Maxwell's hypothesis remains a hypothesis no longer, and that the hypothetical character of his theory ceases to exist. For, by our conception of an atomic and gravitative Aether, we are able to see that his physical lines of force are indeed physical, and that his brilliant hypothesis now receives a true physical foundation which otherwise it would not receive from a frictionless Aether.

There is nothing, I venture to predict, in Maxwell's hypothesis which cannot be accounted for on a truly physical basis, by the conception of the Aether as given in this work. So that when Faraday saw in his mind's eye lines of force traversing space, he saw by his imagination that which was actually the real state of affairs, and when Maxwell enlarged the conception by giving to those lines of force a definite atomic and cellular structure, he, too, but anticipated the real nature and character of the Aether as given in Chapter [IV]., which theory is the direct outcome of Newton's philosophical rules, and the result of discarding everything that is not in accordance with experience and observation. Thus the lines of force which exist and surround a magnetic or electrified body are as real as ocean currents, or the waves of the sea, in that they are the manifestations of the motions of the universal Aether, which is as truly matter as air or water.

Let us look at the analogy which exists between the lines of force and the gravitative Aether, and we shall see that a gravitative Aether fully agrees with the conception of an electric Aether as revealed to us by the lines of force in an electric field.

As is well known, the lines of force are closer together in that part of the electric field where the intensity of the field is greatest; and the intensity of a field being greatest at the surface of an electrified body, the lines of force are therefore closer together nearest to the surface of such a body than further away.

Now according to [Art. 45] Aether is gravitative, therefore the Aether nearest the surface of a body is densest, and the aetherial atoms are therefore more pressed upon than the layer immediately above it. Such a result is exactly what should happen provided that Aether has an electric basis, and that Aether is gravitative. For, in [Art. 45], we have seen that because Aether is gravitative, therefore it must possess various degrees of density, being densest nearest the surface of an attracting body.

In electricity we find a similar phenomenon which corresponds to aetherial density, which is known as Electric Density, by which term is meant the amount or quantity of electricity spread over a certain area or surface. If we double the quantity of electricity on that given surface, then we double the density, and we say that the electric density is doubled, while if we halve the quantity of electricity, then we say the electric density is halved, and so on.