Poincar?'s Ether: A. Why did Poincar? Retain the Ether?
| Scientific Paper | |
|---|---|
| Title | Poincar?\'s Ether: A. Why did Poincar? Retain the Ether? |
| Read in full | Link to paper |
| Author(s) | Galina Granek |
| Keywords | stellar aberration, action-at-a-distance, absolute rotation, absolute space |
| Published | 2001 |
| Journal | Apeiron |
| Volume | 8 |
| Number | 1 |
| No. of pages | 13 |
Read the full paper here
Abstract
This paper is divided into three parts, in which I suggest five answers to the question: Why did Poincar? retain the ether? These answers are based on Poincar?'s own reasoning: the ether was required for the explanation of stellar aberration, to remove action-at-a-distance, to remove absolute rotation and absolute space from physics, to save broken theories and to save Poincar?'s conventionalism. Poincar?'s first reason can be seen as related to rectilinear and uniform motions. In 1905 Einstein managed to explain aberration without resource to ether. Special relativity crowned the final oblivion of the ether. Poincar?'s four other reasons are centered on the solution to the following old problem: the principle of relativity is not valid for rotations and we thus can claim for absolute rotation. Poincar? struggled with this problem and could not solve it without resource to the ether. In General Relativity, Einstein could not solve it without returning to some kind of ether, either. I first discuss Poincar?'s reasoning and in a future paper ?Why did Einstein come back to the ether?? I discuss Einstein's solution to the problem of absolute rotation and his return to a revised form of Poincar?'s ether.
