Albert Einstein in the address “Aether and the theory of Relativity” delivered on May 5th 1920 at the University of Leyden Germany indicated that The General Theory of Relativity predicts, “space is endowed with physical qualities”.
“Recapitulating, we may say that according to the General Theory of Relativity space is endowed with physical qualities; in this sense, therefore, there exists Aether. According to the General Theory of Relativity space without Aether is unthinkable; for in such space there not only would be no propagation of light, but also no possibility of existence for standards of space and time (measuring-rods and clocks), nor therefore any space-time intervals in the physical sense. But this Aether may not be thought of as endowed with the quality characteristic of ponderable media, as consisting of parts, which may be tracked through time. The idea of motion may not be applied to it.”
But why have the best minds in the scientific community been unable devise an experiment to detect the physical properties of space that Einstein was so sure must exist to support the propagation of light.
The reason may be because they are not looking in the right direction.
For example 1887 Albert Michelson and Edward Morley devised an experiment to detect the relative motion of matter through the stationary Aether (“Aether wind”) by creating a device that sent yellow light from a sodium flame through a half-silvered mirror that was used to split it into two beams traveling at right angles to one another. After leaving the splitter, the beams traveled out to the ends of long arms where they were reflected back into the middle by small mirrors. They then recombined on the far side of the splitter in an eyepiece, producing a pattern of constructive and destructive interference. If the Earth is traveling through an Aether medium, a beam reflecting back and forth parallel to the flow of Aether would take longer than a beam reflecting perpendicular to the Aether because the time gained from traveling downwind is less than that lost traveling upwind.
However they did not observe a fringe shift and therefore concluded that space did not contain the “physical medium” called Aether.
However Einstein in his General Theory of Relativity did not endow space with the physical qualities of mass, he endowed it with the geometric properties of a space-time dimension. Therefore, when Einstein referred to space as having physical properties he may not have been referring to the physical properties of a medium made up of mass but those imparted to it by its geometry.
For example he derived the energy of accelerated reference frames not in terms of mass but how it changes as it approaches a gravitational field by assuming it moved through curvature or change in geometry of space-time. However he could not do the same for the energy associated with inertial reference frames in constant relative motion because it does not change with time,
Therefore to define the energy and mass associated with of the geometry of an inertial reference frame one must transposes or convert Einstein’s space-time geometry to four *spatial* dimensions because that is only thing that changes in inertial reference frames in motion .
Einstein gave us the ability to do this when he use the equation E=mc^2 and the constant velocity of light to define the geometric properties of space-time because it provided a method of converting a unit of time he associated with energy to an equivalent unit of space in four spatial dimensions. Additionally because the velocity of light is constant he also defined a one to one quantitative correspondence between his space-time universe and one made up of four *spatial* dimensions.
(This was the bases for assuming as was done in the article “Defining energy†Nov 27, 2007 that one can derive all forms of energy in terms of a displacement in a “surface” of a three-dimensional space manifold with respect to a fourth *spatial* dimension.)
However If it is true that the physical medium Einstein was referring to was related to the geometric property of space and not a properties of mass as we are suggesting one should be able to explain why Albert Michelson and Edward Morley were unable to detect it in terms of geometry of its spatial properties.
Einstein told us that gravitational mass was the result of a curvature in the geometry of a space-time manifold. In other words a change in the relative height of an object in three-dimensional space with respect to the time-dimension was responsible for the gravitational energy of mass
Similarly one could define the energy associated with the constant relative motion of an inertial reference frame in terms of a constant spatial displacement of a “surface” of a three-dimension space manifold with respect to a fourth *spatial* dimension.
In other words it showed the energy of relative motion was not imparted to it by its motion through time but by a linear geometric displacement of three-dimensional space with respect to fourth *spatial* dimension.
However Einstein also told us that mass and energy are interchangeable therefore the substance of the Aether he was referring to in his address was the energy of the relative motion of inertial reference frames.
This means in an inertial reference frame in constant motion all of it parts in including the energy and therefore any Aether it contains is part of its geometric properties therefore must share the motion of as all its other parts.
In other words the reason Albert Michelson and Edward Morley were unable to detect the relative motion of an inertial reference frame through the geometry of space-time or four spatial dimensions because the Aether is that geometry. In other words no relative motion was observed in their experiment for the same reason that an object or reference frame cannot have any relative motion with respect to itself
It should be remember Einstein’s genius allows us to choose whether to define the mass or substance contained in all systems in either a space-time environment or one consisting of four *spatial* dimension when he defined it and the geometry of space-time in terms of the constant velocity of light.
Later Jeff
Copyright Jeffrey O’Callaghan 2013