JOURNAL 



OF THE 







WASHINGTON ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 



Vol. II, APRIL 19, 1912 No. 8 



PHYSICS.— The Ether. 1 P. G. Nutting, Bureau of Standards. 



The whole of theoretical Ether-Physics has been profoundly 

 modified within the past two decades. Many of the fundamental 

 concepts of electricity, gravitation, radiation and even matter 

 itself have been revised from their foundations. Our task today 

 is to examine the storm center, the ether. In anticipation, it 

 may be stated that the task will prove not to be a mortuary one, 

 but rather one of removing and getting rid of rubbish. The new 

 ether is the old ether freed from useless and incongruous 

 attributes. 



What we wish to know about the ether is whether it exists or 

 not, what are its nature and properties, and what are its relations 

 to electricity, gravitation, radiation, induction and chemical affin- 

 ity. Material bearing on these problems is scanty and we can 

 do little more than review the experimental facts and their inter- 

 pretation, contrasting their present interpretation with that of 

 twenty years ago and placing in their proper setting the more 

 recent important discoveries. 



First then, as to the existence of the ether. We shall discuss first 

 the evidence in favor of an ether and then sum the evidence against 

 it. The older reasons for supposing the existence of the ether 

 hold as forcibly today as they ever did and to these have been 

 added a few new ones of some significance. 



1. There is the old question of action at a distance. Wherever 

 two objects are attracted toward or repelled from each other and 



1 Presented before the Physics Association of the Bureau of Standards, Feb- 

 ruary 5, 1912. 



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