Do you remember? Aether...

Well, there are still so many mysteries in the universe. Today, I'd like to indulge in some irresponsible speculation about something that is a bit sci-fi, or perhaps a "hypothesis" of past science—an entity that once held great sway called aether.

By the way, just because the title sounds similar, it has nothing to do with Minmay or Tetsuro! Of course, it has nothing to do with Macross or Galaxy Express either! Seriously, I'm sorry!

Is outer space filled with "something"?

Once upon a time, in the world of science, it was believed that outer space was not truly an empty "vacuum," but was filled with something. That is today's topic, aether.

If you thought, "Wait, isn't outer space basically just filled with super-thin hydrogen?" then you're sharp. Yes, in modern science, that is correct. But you know, humans have always imagined various things and, like the geocentric model, tried to explain things by forcing them to fit the common sense of their time.

Aether was one of those things. Light was thought to be a wave, and it was believed that a medium was necessary for waves to propagate. Just as waves travel through water, this thing called aether was hypothesized as a "medium" to carry light to every corner of the universe.

In the 17th century, Christiaan Huygens proposed this idea of aether, and later, in the 19th century, as James Clerk Maxwell established the theory of electromagnetism, the existence of aether became increasingly promising. It was, so to speak, the "absolute ace" of the scientific world.

The unexpected retirement of the absolute ace, and then...

However, this absolute ace was forced into an unexpected retirement by a single experiment.

At the end of the 19th century, American physicists Albert Michelson and Edward Morley conducted a grand experiment to prove the existence of this aether. They thought that if aether were flowing, the speed of light should be affected by it.

However, no matter how many times they experimented, the speed of light was always constant. Aether simply did not exist anywhere.

This shocking result was later brilliantly explained by Albert Einstein in his "Special Theory of Relativity." Einstein's theory, which states that the speed of light is always constant regardless of the observer's speed, made the concept of aether completely unnecessary.

Thus, aether, which had been the absolute ace of the scientific world, saw its role come to an abrupt end as the 20th century began.

Is aether the same as dark energy?

However, although the existence of aether was denied, something else whose true nature is unknown has appeared in modern cosmology: "dark energy." It is said to account for over 70% of outer space as a mysterious energy accelerating the expansion of the universe, yet no one knows its true nature.

When you think about it, I feel like what's happening with aether and dark energy is similar. Just as aether was once hypothesized to explain the mystery of light propagation, dark energy is now hypothesized to explain the mystery of the universe's expansion. Hmm, it's truly mysterious.

Perhaps a day will come when a future genius scientist proves that dark energy doesn't exist either. At that moment, our imagination will surely enter a new dimension.

Thinking about it that way, the history of science is just a repetition of romance, frustration, and then romance again. Thinking about such things, I find myself feeling a bit sentimental again today.

#Universe #HistoryOfScience #Medium #Aether #SciFi #Romance #Huygens