There is an evolving theory, more like an evolving semanics, of what aether "is".
Lets begin with ZPE and its main proponent. Puthoff, without necessarily endorsing an aether by name, has said that there is a "dynamic equilibrium" (the ZPF) which stabilizes the electron in a set ground-state orbit. "It seems that the very stability of matter itself appears to depend on an underlying sea of electromagnetic zero-point energy." http://ldolphin.org/zpe.html What are the objections of starting from this end and defining the aether as "ZPF plus" - IOW aether is the Dirac/Hotson epo field [by definition] in which the base level of energy "bleed-over" into higher dimensions, is defined as ZPE. And furthermore, one can integrate "gravity" as it operates on the higher dimensions without the need for another "force". IOW there is no "gravity" and the "graviton" is merely an abstraction of statistical groups of epos. When these are asymmetric, as they often are, there is an "attraction" but it is based on geometry not a force. In fluid mechanics, the so-called "cheerio effect" is the tendency for small floating objects to attract one another - and this is tied to a geometric asymmetry in surface tension and buoyancy which becomes self-reinforcing. IOW this kind of attraction, which is on the same order of intensity as gravity, and can serve as a model for it (if one can abstract it to higher dimensions) is tied to *geometry* and not to a separate kind of "force" per se. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheerio_effect Under Einstein's reconception (or alternative view) of gravity, there is no "force" of gravity; instead, the curved paths that falling objects 'appear' to take are an illusion brought on by our inability to perceive the underlying curvature of the space. The objects themselves are said to be moving in straight lines in a hidden dimension. But that tends to isolate them from mutual interaction. Or at least it makes it infinitely complicated. If there is a hidden structure - the aether of epos, and if it is very dense at the same time - then voila: it can provide the required curvature in an unusual way, based on its own geometric properties. If Einstein's gravity is a curvature of space-time, not a force - then any secondary "attraction" on that curved surface can be explained as a superset version of the cheerio effect - an asymmetric geometric effect based on surface interactions. Does this help or hurt the Einstein revisualization, in consort with this new kind of aether? The "Einstein-aether theory" is different from this, and even if were more similar - it too is as controversial as anything with his name on it can be. It is described as a covariant generalization of general relativity which describes a spacetime endowed with both a metric and a unit "timelike" vector field. In effect, it is "like" a subject which we cannot adequately define anyway <g> (except in terms of perception). Lots of geek humor there, but anyway - such theory has a "preferred reference frame," and so is not Lorentz invariant. BTW - that "preferred reference frame" could be a single dimension if there happened to be eight of them to begin with. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein-aether_theory Then there is LQG. Is it coming to the rescue or not? Loop quantum gravity is a quantization of a Lagrangian field theory, equivalent to the usual Einstein-Cartan theory in that it leads to the same equations of motion describing general relativity with torsion. As such, it can be argued that LQG respects local Lorentz invariance. It is not clear if torsion is the "timelike" field of Einstein-aether - or not - as by the time torsion arrived, there was already enough controversy in the mix to turn things over to the next generation of theorists. Almost everyone in 'alternative energy' likes the idea of torsion. This is not necessarily because it is still classified as pseudoscience, and most of us are contrarian to the core, but because it may provide a fundamental mechanism to transfer some of whatever is "in" the aether, out of the aether, as a power source. The fact that epos may have charge, torsion, density, curvature and gravity as inherent properties makes it all very facile to fit into somebody's evolving electrogravity theory, only problem is: there are becoming so many permutations of these ToE's ; not to mention Lisi's E8, that it boggles the mind. Wouldn't it be nice and orderly to find that the base level dimension of the E8 corresponds to this kind of epo field and that everything else builds on top of that? ... and if that is not crazy enough- how about "time" and "torsion" being interconnected? ... which is the superset? Jones
