In the decades following von Guericke's demonstration, philosophers and scientists wondered if the vast reaches of space were filled with some sort of material known as the ether, which would ...

Discover how Einstein’s theory of special relativity reshaped physics by linking space, time ... scientists proposed the luminiferous ether, a hypothetical medium for light waves.

In appealing to Sir Oliver Lodge for a book on the ether they could count on getting something which could certainly be called “thought,” in the most exalted sense of the word, and would as ...

They need not absolutely exclude, as an idea, the possibility of there being a portion of space occupied by ether beyond which there was absolute vacuum—no ether and no matter. They admitted ...