"Jim" wrote in message
...
OK! i have read this whole thread, so who won?

Among physicists 'no ether' won.

'ether' is an over extended analogy of
acoustic waves. The role of a medium in acoustic
waves is easily and relatively directly perceivable.
That gets added to one's "common sense" and then the
analogy is made to EM waves. But if one goes beyond
just making the analogy and actually tries to measure
this 'ether' it disappears, is contradictory, and/or is
superfluous.

i am not trying to stir
it up again.

But it may serve to do so.

i want to know what is the latest and/or best theory! (i do

The wiki page is pretty good.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminiferous_aether

"today the aether is considered to be a superseded scientific theory"

"... the mechanical qualities
of the aether had become more and more magical: it
had to be a fluid in order to fill space, but one that
was millions of times more rigid than steel in order to
support the high frequencies of light waves. It also
had to be massless and without viscosity, otherwise
it would visibly affect the orbits of planets. Additionally
it appeared it had to be completely transparent,
non-dispersive, incompressible, and continuous at
a very small scale."

"By the early 20th Century, aether theory was in
trouble: A series of increasingly complex experiments
had been carried out in the late 1800s to try to detect
the motion of earth through the aether, and had failed
to do so. A range of proposed aether-dragging
theories could explain the null result but these were
more complex, and tended to use arbitrary-looking
coefficients and physical assumptions. Lorentz and
Fitzgerald offered a more elegant solution to how
the motion of an absolute aether could be undetectable
(length contraction), but if their equations were
correct, the new special theory of relativity (1905)
could generate the same mathematics without referring
to an aether at all. Aether fell to Occam's Razor."

"Today, the majority of physicists hold that there
is no need to imagine that a medium for light
propagation exists. They believe that neither
Einstein's general theory of relativity nor quantum
mechanics have need for it and that there is no
evidence for it. As such, a classical aether is an
unnecessary addition to physics that violates
the principle of Occam's razor."


think that theory is the term because i have not seen proof either way)
who is in charge of the last word? i previously understood that radio
was a magnetic

electromagnetic

force, a subatomic energy similar to gravity. and like
gravity, its not yet completely understood. (we dont need to understand
it to detect, measure or use it) magnetic energy has a spectrum from
gravity

Gravity is something else. Physicists have been
trying to link gravity to the other forces of nature
(electro-weak and strong nuclear) but have not
succeeded.

through radio into light and who knows how far beyond. the
particular qualities of this energy depends upon its frequency or
position relative to the spectrum. now one guy is arguing on the
existence of either, or a medium to propagate the waves. this seems true
at one end of the spectrum. the other guy argues on photons or little
energy packets that transverse distance like particles do.

Photons are photons regardless of which end of the
spectrum one is talking about.
At the low end they have very low energy and one
needs of lots of them in order to detect them.
They are also 'longer'.

this also
seems true at the OTHER end of the spectrum. where are we on the
spectrum NOW? e l f radio is radio but it works very much like a
magnetic force. e h f is also radio. radio at gigahz frequencies and
above is starting to exhibit properties of light. so where the hell are
we talking about on the e m spectrum and how the hell does my antenna
work? SOMEBODY here HAS to be the one with the highest education! what
are YOUR qualifications and then what is YOUR opinion?


--
rb