Feb 17, 2016 08:55 PM
(This post was last modified: Feb 17, 2016 09:03 PM by Magical Realist.)
"Absolute space, in its own nature, without regard to anything external, remains always similar and immovable. Relative space is some movable dimension or measure of the absolute spaces; which our senses determine by its position to bodies: and which is vulgarly taken for immovable space ... Absolute motion is the translation of a body from one absolute place into another: and relative motion, the translation from one relative place into another."==Isaac Newton
"In some of his later papers (especially in 1920 and 1924), Einstein gave a new definition of the aether by identifying it with "properties of space". Einstein also said that in general relativity the "aether" is not absolute anymore, as the gravitational field and therefore the structure of spacetime depends on the presence of matter. (Einstein's terminology (i.e. aether = properties of space) was not accepted by the scientific community.)
1920: 'To deny the ether is ultimately to assume that empty space has no physical qualities whatever. The fundamental facts of mechanics do not harmonize with this view. For the mechanical behaviour of a corporeal system hovering freely in empty space depends not only on relative positions (distances) and relative velocities, but also on its state of rotation, which physically may be taken as a characteristic not appertaining to the system in itself. In order to be able to look upon the rotation of the system, at least formally, as something real, Newton objectivises space. Since he classes his absolute space together with real things, for him rotation relative to an absolute space is also something real. Newton might no less well have called his absolute space “Ether”; what is essential is merely that besides observable objects, another thing, which is not perceptible, must be looked upon as real, to enable acceleration or rotation to be looked upon as something real.
1924: Because it was no longer possible to speak, in any absolute sense, of simultaneous states at different locations in the aether, the aether became, as it were, four-dimensional, since there was no objective way of ordering its states by time alone. According to special relativity too, the aether was absolute, since its influence on inertia and the propagation of light was thought of as being itself independent of physical influence....The theory of relativity resolved this problem by establishing the behaviour of the electrically neutral point-mass by the law of the geodetic line, according to which inertial and gravitational effects are no longer considered as separate. In doing so, it attached characteristics to the aether which vary from point to point, determining the metric and the dynamic behaviour of material points, and determined, in their turn, by physical factors, namely the distribution of mass/energy. Thus the aether of general relativity differs from those of classical mechanics and special relativity in that it is not ‘absolute’ but determined, in its locally variable characteristics, by ponderable matter.'===https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_time_and_space
Take for example an empty box. You move the empty box 3 feet to the right. Does it contain new space, or the same old space? Space absolutists would say it is new space since that space does not move and in fact relatively defines the movement of the box. Space relativists say the space has not changed at all, being defined entirely by the surrounding box. Which is it? Is space defined by matter, or is space absolute and self-defining?
"In some of his later papers (especially in 1920 and 1924), Einstein gave a new definition of the aether by identifying it with "properties of space". Einstein also said that in general relativity the "aether" is not absolute anymore, as the gravitational field and therefore the structure of spacetime depends on the presence of matter. (Einstein's terminology (i.e. aether = properties of space) was not accepted by the scientific community.)
1920: 'To deny the ether is ultimately to assume that empty space has no physical qualities whatever. The fundamental facts of mechanics do not harmonize with this view. For the mechanical behaviour of a corporeal system hovering freely in empty space depends not only on relative positions (distances) and relative velocities, but also on its state of rotation, which physically may be taken as a characteristic not appertaining to the system in itself. In order to be able to look upon the rotation of the system, at least formally, as something real, Newton objectivises space. Since he classes his absolute space together with real things, for him rotation relative to an absolute space is also something real. Newton might no less well have called his absolute space “Ether”; what is essential is merely that besides observable objects, another thing, which is not perceptible, must be looked upon as real, to enable acceleration or rotation to be looked upon as something real.
1924: Because it was no longer possible to speak, in any absolute sense, of simultaneous states at different locations in the aether, the aether became, as it were, four-dimensional, since there was no objective way of ordering its states by time alone. According to special relativity too, the aether was absolute, since its influence on inertia and the propagation of light was thought of as being itself independent of physical influence....The theory of relativity resolved this problem by establishing the behaviour of the electrically neutral point-mass by the law of the geodetic line, according to which inertial and gravitational effects are no longer considered as separate. In doing so, it attached characteristics to the aether which vary from point to point, determining the metric and the dynamic behaviour of material points, and determined, in their turn, by physical factors, namely the distribution of mass/energy. Thus the aether of general relativity differs from those of classical mechanics and special relativity in that it is not ‘absolute’ but determined, in its locally variable characteristics, by ponderable matter.'===https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_time_and_space
Take for example an empty box. You move the empty box 3 feet to the right. Does it contain new space, or the same old space? Space absolutists would say it is new space since that space does not move and in fact relatively defines the movement of the box. Space relativists say the space has not changed at all, being defined entirely by the surrounding box. Which is it? Is space defined by matter, or is space absolute and self-defining?