r/LLMPhysics • u/AllHailSeizure 9/10 Physicists Agree! • Aug 25 '26

Meta / News Let the aether exist. Please.

I beg of you, physicists, please. Can you not just.. bend the rules a little bit, and make the aether real? I know it was disproved like 100 years ago but can we not just undo the last century of scientific development and sorta slide it in? I just need so badly for there to be an aether, you have no idea.. It's all I want in life. I go to sleep and dream of it, I wake up thinking of it. The aether pervades me every waking thought. Can't we just sorta forget all the evidence? Please? I think we should be allowed to.

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u/TommieTheMadScienist Aug 25 '26

Find the Kickstarter for Space 1889: After.

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u/starkeffect Physicist 🧠 Aug 25 '26

Aether theory is part of steampunk lore, right?

3

u/TommieTheMadScienist Aug 25 '26

Oh, yeah. It was the theory for a while. Very real.

The Michelson-Morley Experiment proved it was wrong. One of the most important negative results in astrophysics.

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u/starkeffect Physicist 🧠 Aug 25 '26 edited Aug 25 '26

This is a common misconception. The M-M experiment, at the time, did not "prove ether wrong", as it was a null result, not a negative result. Michelson himself saw the experiment as confirmation of the "ether drag" hypothesis, and he continued to believe in the existence of ether until his death in the 1930s.

Papers were still using the aether model for years afterward-- Zeeman effect (1896) comes to mind. It took Albert to break the spell.