Abstract
PROF. EDDINGTON (NATURE, April 14, p. 201) challenges those of us who have asserted that “relativity does away with the æther” to defend our statement. He himself provides our defence. He tells us that his æther—the æther that relativity does not do away with —“has not . . .density, elasticity, or even velocity”. But our æther—the æther of pre-relativity days, which relativity has done away with—has all those properties. In particular, it has the last. The nineteenth-century æther simply was a system relative to which light had the normal and invariable velocity c; so that the velocity of light relative to a system which had, relative to the æther, the velocity v was c+v. That statement conveys the very meaning and essence of the old æther; deny it, and the Fizeau and Michelson-Morley experiments lose all significance.
Similar content being viewed by others
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
CAMPBELL, N. “Space” or “Æther”?. Nature 107, 234 (1921). https://doi.org/10.1038/107234a0
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/107234a0
Comments
By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.