Why indeed clever physicists before Einstein came up with ether to explain light phenomenon?

Question

What I really want to know is:

1- What were the contradictions that they faced between light and relativity theory.

2- How did ether help them to resolve those (or at least some of those).

3- What did ether not resolve between relativity and light that Einstein resolved.

4- And the final question: Could we not still keep the notion of ether while Einstein's notion of relativity could still be applicable? What harm does ether do to the new understanding of relativity if any?

Answer 1

The original concept of ether (or aether) comes from ancient Greek mythology. This is where the Greek gods lived and what they breathed. The concept found its way into medieval science. Needless to say that this concept was purely a philosophical one, with no factual evidence to support it.

It's been in use up untill the leate 19th centiry. 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. Michelson–Morley experiment is considered the first and the most important experiment against the theory of aether.

There's more to read in the links below. But from me personally, the biggest problem for aether is that if it existed it would considerably influence the movement of objects in the Universe, and we simply don't see that anywhere. Aether is a myth.

Answer 2

1.There are no contradictions as Einsteins theory still holds, even very complicated behavior of space-time-experiments has been newly proved by satellites. But, before Einstein, Newton had an ether-less theory.

2.  When Fresnel and Young proved that waves were transverse and could be polarized as well as the diffraction of waves, Newtons theory of longitudinal particles in ether-less space was abandoned

3. Before Lorentz and Fitzgerald proved that Ether can resolve all, an ether-wind could not be found. Problem was that all could be explained simplest by Einstein. There, you don't have to define any ether. Problem with the ether theory was also the definition of a very strange (strong) medium!

If you find an experiment that resolves the real behavior between the source and the observer (which is hard, as you always en up as an observer), maybe you could prove the ether theory as the only true.

4 The framework of Lorentz ether theory is a solution to how the motion of an absolute aether could be undetectable (length contraction), but as it is more complicated and not needed, Einstein's theory is used. Ether does that harm as giving more complicated reasoning - but don't give up, maybe you find some physical process where it's needed!

Answer 3

Prior to Einstein - it was assumed that all waves propagated through a medium. Hence, the ether was supposed to be the medium of propagation for light and EM waves.