phyllotaxis wrote: The way I see it (pardon the pun), perhaps light/radiation/heat *is* nothing but the aether in motion. Full stop. No more divisions of source. No separate causes with separate explanations. Unified Theory. All EM and all we see/know from one complexly tweakable thing: the aether. That canvas upon which infinite patterns may be drawn. Aether Theory says: We start with this as a place to say where the waves and actions occur, and that's our one mental concession. No evidence can explain how it can't exist, because we witness the arena of reality that it consists of. The fact is, in my simple view, a large quantity of evidence can explain how it does, in fact, exist.
What is "it" specifically? We can't know, because we weren't there when it became. It's like looking through a microscope to decipher what the lens of the microscope is made of. Effects are visible-- not the transmitter.
I have been thinking the same thing but instead regarding matter rather than light. In other words, that matter is just the aether waving. It took a while after reading the LaFreniere wave theory for me to be able to visualize how it would all work. What follows is my interpretation, an oversimplified theory upon a theory. I am not even sure if it is consistent with what LaFreniere proposes, and how closely this reflects reality is anyones guess.
The first question that immediately comes to mind is, what is forming an electron standing wave? After seeing videos of experiments showing how standing waves form patterns, my interpretation would be that the inherent aetheric motion is causing standing waves. Further out there, I am guessing that the standing waves are due to sub-harmonic effects emerging from the universe having frequencies much higher than the electron wave frequency, and the electron is actually a beat effect. And the effect is localized such that the "preferred" location for this electron is where you approximately find it. Throw in a certain amount of noise chaos and now the electron is hard to pinpoint but has a strong preference to hang around a general vicinity.
Now if the standing wave is somewhat asymmetrical, you will instead see a moving electron, because the electron is seeking balance but the energy is being taken from one side and added to another. The energy comes from inherent vibrations of the aether so is in effect limitless. This would explain inertia.
Now introduce another electron in the vicinity. As the electron waves, which have effects much further out than apparent size of the electron, the two electrons start exchanging energy to cause a shift in one another's asymmetry, and this exchange increases as they approach one another. Because they are in phase, as they get closer their new "preferred" location, due to the asymmetry changes, becomes such that they individually slow down relative to the direction of one another. This would "appear" as if they were pushing one another apart from a distance, when really what is happening is that the exchange of energy is causing each electron's asymmetries to shift so that now the preferred locations would cause them to move individually away from one another, so there is the appearance of a "force" between them that is pushing them apart. This would cover collision and action at a distance to illustrate the effect of repulsion of like charges.
I would be interested to know if there are any other theories like this, or on the other hand any theories, that explicitly forbid such an interpretation of wave and energy interaction. I am unsatisfied in the current models of non-mechanical forces which is why I also am of the belief that LaFreniere is on to something important or at least headed in the right direction.
