THE ETHER HYPOTHESIS
In the second half of
the 19th century scientists thought that
whole space was filled with some substance - the
ether.
They thought that
electromagnetic waves needed some medium to propagate in as they
imagined them as some kind of mechanical waves. In order to let the
waves propagate as quickly as they do (that is with the speed of
light) ether had to be very inflexible, but besides it had not to
react with celestial bodies moving in it. Creating and using the
hypothesis of such a strange substance can be justified by the fact
that such a model explained many of the experimental occurrences in
the field of electromagnetism. Even Maxwell himself in his researches on
electricity and magnetism assumed the existence of the
incompressible and elastic ether. In 1905 Albert Einstein finally disposed of the
ether hypothesis.
