Timeline of Luminiferous Aether the Timeline of Luminiferous Aether begins in the late 19th century with the concept of the aether ("light-bearing aether"), or ether, as a medium for electromagnetic propagation. Timeline 1818 - Augustin Fresnel's Wave Theory of Light. 1820 - Discovery of Siméon Poisson's "Bright Spot", supporting the Wave Theory. 1873 - James Maxwell's Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism. 1878 to 1880 - Maxwell suggests absolute velocity of Earth in aether may be optically detectable. 1881 - Albert Abraham Michelson publishes first interferometer experiment. 1881 - Hendrik Antoon Lorentz finds Michelson's calculation have errors (i.e., doubling of the expected fringe shift error). 1882 - Michelson acknowledges his interpretation errors. 1887 - Michelson and Edward Williams Morley experiment produces the famous null results. 1887 to 1888 - Heinrich Hertz verifies the existence of electromagnetic waves. 1889 - George Francis FitzGerald proposes the Contraction Hypothesis. 1895 - Lorentz proposes independently another Contraction Hypothesis. 1905 - Miller and Morley's experiment data is published. Test of the Contraction Hypothesis has negative results. Test for aether dragging effects produces null result. Albert Einstein introduces the special theory of relativity. 1919 - Arthur Eddington's Africa eclipse expedition is conducted and appears to confirm the general theory of relativity. 1921 - Dayton Miller conducts aether drift experiments at Mount Wilson. Miller performs tests with insulated and non-magnetic interferometers and obtains positive results. 1921 to 1924 - Miller conducts extensive tests under controlled conditions at Case University. 1924 - Miller's Mount Wilson repeats experiments and yields a positive result. 1925 - Michelson and Gale perform the Pearson experiment producing a null result while attempting to detect the effect of Earth's rotation on the velocity of light. Null result predicted by both relativity and aether theory. 1925 April - Meeting of the National Academy of Sciences. Arthur Compton explains the Stokes aether drag problems. Miller Presents his positive results of the aether drag. 1925 December - American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting. Miller proposes two theories to account for the positive result. It consists of a modified aether theory and a slight departure from the Contraction Hypothesis. 1926 - Roy J. Kennedy produces a null result. Auguste Piccard and Ernest Stahel at Mont Rigi produce a null result. 1927 - K. K. Illingworth produces a null result. 1927 - Mount Wilson conference. Miller talks of partial entrainment Michelson talks about aether drag and altitude differential effects 1929 - Michelson and F. G. Pease perform the Pearson experiment and produce a null result. 1930 - Von Georg Joos produces a null result. 1934 - Joos publishes on the Michelson-Gale Results, stating that it is improbable that aether would be entrained by translational motion and not by rotational motion. 1955 - R. S. Shankland, S. W. McCuskey, F. C. Leone, and G. Kuerti perform a debated analysis of Miller's positive results. Shankland, who led the study, reports statistical fluctuations in the readings and systematic temperature disturbances (both allegations have been later disproven). 1984 - Torr and Kolen find a cyclic phase shift between two atomic clocks, but the distance between is relatively short (0.5 km) and their clocks of the less-precise rubidium type 1991 - Over a six-month period, Roland DeWitte finds, over a 1.5-km underground coaxial cable, a cyclic component in the phase drift between higher-precision cesium-beam clocks on more-or-less the same meridian; the period equals the sidereal day http://www.lns.cornell.edu/spr/1998-12/msg0013719.htmlhttp://www.scieng.flinders.edu.au/cpes/people/cahill_r/HPS16.pdf Further readings Banesh Hoffman, Relativity and Its Roots (Freeman, New York, 1983). Michael Janssen, 19th Century Ether Theory, Einstein for Everyone course at UMN (2001). Classical References Maxwell, Collected Papers, H. A. Lorentz, Archives Neerlandaises, xxi. 1887, and xxv. 1892 Versuch einer Theorie der electrischen und optischen Erscheinungen in bewegten Korpern (Leyden, 1895) "Elektrodynamik " and " Elektronentheorie " in the Encyk. der Math. Wissenschaften, Band v. 13, 14 O. Lodge, " On Aberration Problems," Phil. Trans. 1893 and 1897 J. Larmor, Phil. Trans. 1894-95-97, and a treatise, Aether and Matter (1900) p. 262 P. K. L. Drude, A. Schuster, R. W., General physics of the aether; Collected Papers of Lord Rayleigh External links and references Harold Aspden's crystalline theory of the aether -- originally appeared in the late 1950s and is relatively well thought out. OCR scan of the aether listing in the 1911 edition encyclopedia page 1 page 2 Dayton Miller's Ether-Drift experiments Evaluation of Brane World Mach Principles The Hidden Ether of General Relativity Process Physics - this group at Flinders University believe enough data favouring Lorentz over Einstein exist to develop a new theory Emergent Modern Theories of the Ancient Aether -- links to pages that entertain and develop the hypothesis of the existence of the aether. 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