The Gravitational ETHER of Einstein.

Michio Kaku wrote in an article (Parable of the Lion): Einstein once said, "Nature shows us only the tail of the lion. But I do not doubt that the lion belongs to it even though he cannot at once reveal himself because of his enormous size." Einstein spent the last 30 years of his life searching for the "tail" that would lead him to the "lion," the fabled unified field theory or the "theory of everything," which would unite all the forces of the universe into a single equation. The four forces (gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces) would be unified by an equation perhaps one inch long. Michio Kaku: "Einstein also said that behind every great theory there is a simple physical picture that even lay people can understand. In fact, he said, if a theory does not have a simple underlying picture, then the theory is probably worthless. The important thing is the physical picture; math is nothing but bookkeeping."

Amrit Sorli: Einstein stood onà the point that the notion of "space" designates "gravitational ether", which is a physical reality. "With regards to the general theory of relativity, space cannot be imagined without ether", says he in his "Ether and the Theory of Relativity". According to Einstein, gravitational ether does not have the same properties as ponderable matter, that is why it cannot be described by notions such as "time" and "motion" .In the general theory, gravitational ether could be described by the curvedness of 4-dimensional space-time: the curvedness of space-time is a measure of the density of gravitational ether, which in its turn is dependent on the quantity of matter in a given volume of space-time. In the inter-galactic space, the density of gravitational ether is minimal, with maximums occurring in the centre of black holes. The speeds of changes are proportional to the density of gravitational ether, and they are recorded by means of clocks. In gravitational ether, time does not run, and neither does it run on the surface of space bodies or in space ships. Experiments with clocks, these high precision pendulums, only record the speeds, durations and numerical order of changes taking place in the gravitational ether. Time is not a physical reality, the past and the future exist only in human reasoning. Changes take place "here and now" in the gravitational ether.
In a letter to Lorentz of 17 June 1916, Einstein wrote:"I agree with you that the general relativity theory admitsof an ether hypothesis as does the special relativity theory. But this new ether theory would not violate the principle of relativity. The reason is that the state [...metric tensor] = Aether is not that of a rigid body in an independent state of motion, but a state of motion which is a function of position determined through the metrical phenomena."

Albert Einstein, in an address (Ether and the Theory of Relativity) delivered on May 5th, 1920, in the University of Leiden: "It is only with reluctance that man's desire for knowledge endures a dualism of this kind. How was unity to be preserved in his comprehension of the forces of nature? Either by trying to look upon contact forces as being themselves distant forces which admittedly are observable only at a very small distance and this was the road which Newton's followers, who were entirely under the spell of his doctrine, mostly preferred to take; or by assuming that the Newtonian action at a distance is only apparently immediate action at a distance, but in truth is conveyed by a medium permeating space, whether by movements or by elastic deformation of this medium. Thus the endeavour toward a unified view of the nature of forces leads to the hypothesis of an ether. This hypothesis, to be sure, did not at first bring with it any advance in the theory of gravitation or in physics generally, so that it became customary to treat Newton's law of force as an axiom not further reducible. But the ether hypothesis was bound always to play some part in physical science, even if at first only a latent part." (full text)


Ludwik Kostro quotes Einstein who said in 1930 (L.Kostro, 1988, p.239, “Einstein and the ether”): "[…] that now it appears that space will have to be regarded as a primary thing and that matter is derived from it, so to speak, as a secondary result. Space is now having its revenge, so to speak, and is eating up matter".
Einstein didn't found although the picture how a mechanical (kinetical) gravitational system could work, and in next text you will feel his frustration and dissapointment. He knew ... but could not express it.


Einstein in The Evolution of Physics (1938): "The Galilean relativity principle is valid for mechanical phenomena. The same laws of mechanics apply to all inertial systems moving relative to each other. Is this principle also valid for nonmechanical phenomena, especially for those for which the field concepts proved so very important? All problems concentrated around this question immediately bring us to the starting point of the relativity theory.
....
Is the ether carried with [a] room as the air [is]? Since we have no mechanical picture of the ether it is extremely difficult to answer this question. If the room is closed, the air inside is forced to move with it. There is obviously no sense in thinking of ether in this way, since all matter is immersed in it and it penetrates everywhere. No doors are closed to ether. The 'moving room,' now means only a moving CS [coordinate system] to which the source of light is rigidly connected. It is, however, not beyond us to imagine that the room moving with its light source carries the ether along with it just as the sound source and air is carried along in the closed room. But we can equally well imagine the opposite: that the room travels through the ether as a ship through a perfectly smooth sea, not carrying any part of the medium along but moving through it. In our first picture, the room moving with its light source carries the ether. An analogy with a sound wave is possible and quite similar conclusions can be drawn. In the second, the room moving with its light source does not carry the ether. No analogy with a sound wave is possible and the conclusions drawn in the case of a sound wave do not hold for a light wave. These are the two limiting possibilities. We could imagine the still more complicated possibility that the ether is only partially carried by the room moving with its light source. But there is no reason to discuss the more complicated assumptions before finding out which of the two simpler limiting cases experiment favors
....
Every attempt to explain the electromagnetic phenomena in moving Coordinate Systems (CS) with the help of the motion of the ether, motion through the ether, or both these motions, proved unsuccessful.
Thus arose one of the most dramatic situations in the history of science. All assumptions concerning ether led nowhere! The experimental verdict was always negative. Looking back over the development of physics we see that the ether, soon after its birth, became the 'enfant terrible' of the family of physical substances.

First, the construction of a simple mechanical picture of the ether proved to be impossible and was discarded. This caused, to a great extent, the breakdown of the mechanical point of view.
Second, we had to give up hope that through the presence of the ether-sea one CS would be distinguished and lead to the recognition of absolute, and not only relative, motion.
This would have been the only way, besides carrying the waves, in which ether could mark and justify its existence. All our attempts to make ether real failed. It revealed neither its mechanical construction nor absolute motion. Nothing remained of all the properties of the ether except that for which it was invented, i.e., its ability to transmit electromagnetic waves. Our attempts to discover the properties of the ether led to difficulties and contradictions. After such bad experiences, this is the moment to forget the ether completely and to try never to mention its name. We shall say: our space has the physical property of transmitting waves, and so omit the use of a word we have decided to avoid.
The omission of a word from our vocabulary is, of course, no remedy. Our troubles are indeed much too profound to be solved in this way!"

Einstein: "Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world. In our endeavour to understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch. He sees the face and the moving hands, even hears it ticking, but he has no way of opening the case. If he is ingenious he may form some picture of the mechanism which could be responsible for all the things he observes, but he may never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could explain his observations. He will never be able to compare his picture with the real mechanism and he cannot even imagine the possibility of the meaning of such a comparison."

QB (after talking with) Kostro: "Einstein's 4-dimensional ether, if we wish to call it so, cannot provide the same natural causal explanations which, on the contrary, could be supplied by the introduction of a physical "fluid", filling up the whole 3-dimensional space. The action, and properties, of this universal medium could, in principle, rationally explain all physical phaenomena by means of a simple mechanical analogy (in which, for instance, a force can be interpreted only as a vis a tergo, a field as a perturbation of the space, etc.). Einstein's ether, instead, cannot be thought of but in four dimensions, which means that time must be included in the structure of "space" itself (which is in fact more properly called space-time). This circumstance implies that it is absolutely impossible for the human mind to make an intuitive image of it, and to give any simple meaning for instance to expressions like: "dynamical ether", which would have, vice versa, an easy interpretation with respect to a 3-dimensional fluid ether. As a matter of fact, an ether "moving" with respect to what time?

With the concept of Pelastration and topological holons this simple picture is made and you can see what Einstein was searching for during more then 30 years. ;-)

The topological holon approach is in comformity with the geometric concept that matter and energy are simply different types of curvature of space.

Influenced by the non-Euclidean geometries of Bernhard Riemann and Nikolay Lobachevsky, William Kingdon Clifford presented in 1876 such idea. He was thus preambular to Albert Einstein's General Relativity theory, who called this "deformations" of spacetime or topological defects. So Riemann Riemann showed in 1854 - based on a crumpled paper ball (on which I add origami shapes) - that as there are different kinds of lines and surfaces, so there are different kinds of space of three dimensions, including hidden dimensions.

Einstein's misconception or his blind spot.

Einstein developed this idea since he looked for "Das Feld", a  background gravitational force, where: “spacetime is a fundamental  field in nature as an underlying metric (g-mu-nu) to the world which like a cake, supports the frosting which we see as the gravitational field, g-uv”.

In General Relativity (Einstein) matter instructs spacetime  how to bend and spacetime will tell matter how to move (following the bending). Energy and Mass are equivalent; either produces a  gravitational field. To understand this better the rubber sheet analogy  was created.

But wait a minute. Produce? Matter produces gravity?
Shouldn't this be: “Matter is (incorporated/restructered) gravity” 

So why not say: Energy and Matter are different manifestations of the gravitational field?

If Matter is compacted gravitational fields then it is very logic that “matter” will bend spacetime because they are the same! Occam's razor.

And of course spacetime will tell matter to follow the bending, … because they are one and the same.

If one moves the other moves also.
If matter (visible spacetime) moves, the invisible spacetime background moves too.
It is like a blanket with knots made from the blanket material. Of course the knots will move when the blanket is moved.
If the invisible spacetime (the blanket) moves, … the visible spacetime (matter, the knots) moves too.
So matter then cannot be separated from spacetime, which is the gravitational field.

My holistic point is that a gravitational background field must be a unbreakable elastic continuum that is the source of everything.
At the start there was nothing else. We can understand this nonbreakable  elastic continuum as being an elastic and dynamic  "membrane", without structural shape. The membrane however is  "real" in energetic sense. It is bounded energy and can be called a single boundary, where the boundary is present but is not yet  manifested in structural shape.
That way, without structure, it is the "potency" or neutral energy.

So a dynamic non-dual non-being.

This is similar to the Wu Chi (for Lao Tse), the AIN  (for the Kabbalist), Point of Singularity (Hawking), Zero-point Energy  (Einstein/Stern), etc.
Frank Wilczek proposes now a GRID, related to pure energy. On next linked animated image I show how "pure energy" (as a unbreakable membrane) can create enfold in very compacted and rigid space(s).

So, IF gravity is indeed a unbreakable elastic background  continuum from which everything originates, and at the start there  was nothing else, then "Everything" must be restructured gravitational field.

The more the gravitational field is restructured (having more local layers) in holons, the more it manifests itself as Mass (having more gravitational effects).


Thus more membrane/spacetime layers means more mass (and less internal freedom). So more complex holons - having a large number of layers ... have more mass.

Check: Sergey Kokarev : "Deformational structures on smooth manifolds", pag 24: 5.3. Example 3: Einstein gravity as &Mac198;^2-structure.

Sergey: Within the deformational approach physical essence of Einstein equations becomes very clear. They express vanishing of total 4D stresses on the plate, induced by bending and stretching. In other words, Einstein equations says, that true dynamic of space-time is realized as locally nonstressed states of space-time.
This strange (from the view point of common plate theory) fact is originated from the "wrong" variational procedure, used in GR. From the viewpoint of deformational approach true variational variables are not Riemannian metric components but embedding variables.





© Dirk Laureyssens, 2002-2009. All rights reserved.