Stephen > If I can judge by Jones's rather strong denial of the validity of these > classic experiments....
Whoa. I am not denying their validity for the limited scope which they encompass- but why extend that further ? They do have historical meaning and purpose, but it can be easily exaggerated. This is more of a case of semantics and broadened perspectives, or maybe semantics plus a personal agenda. That goes both ways of course <g> but the definition of 'aether' has moved clearly away (possibly due to these experiments) from a medium which photons 'must have' in order to propagate - to something more akin to the epo field of Dirac/Wheeler etc. as best explained by Don Hotson. There may never be a firm definition which can be agreed-to by everyone. IOW - photons may require some sort of a 'medium' - true, but that may end up being simply gravity, or gravity in conjunction with an epo field. Similarly, if we go back to Maxwell's paper 'On Physical Lines of Force' - magnetic lines of force can be reinterpreted in an analogous way - with rotating electron-positron dipoles as the "hidden" structure. These dipoles will comprise of an electron and a positron in mutual orbit - and in an underlying dimension which may correspond to Dirac's reciprocal space, and from which 'quantum foam' was imagined - which is what Wheeler thought that space-time would reduce-to on the Planck scale. Jones
