Interlude 6: The Aether

The Aether, the Great Beyond.  First, it’s an area located everywhere beyond the Outer Husk; and second, it’s the rarified substance that imparts the ‘charge’ in ordinary matter.  And third, it’s often referred to as – “The Mother of All.”  But the mother of all what?  Answer: that's hard to say.  However, the ancient Greeks claimed to know.  According to them, the Aether was the pure upper air that only the Gods could breathe, as opposed to the normal air of we mere mortals.  How is it that the ancient Greeks seemed to have everything right: mathematics, science, philosophy, and even medicine?  We'll deal with this at another time. 

Further, the Greeks personified the Aether.  His parents were Chronos and Chaos.  Aether married Day, and they procreated a seed, upon which they applied great pressure.  It burst forth, causing a tremendous storm.  The atoms arranged themselves into the lighter and the heavier.  Then worlds emerged.  They named one Earth; it was their son.  It's funny how the thoughtful mind never strays too far from the reasonable, even in its fantasies.  The ancient Greeks confronted the infinite with reasonable explanations.  Proving that a rational mind can comprehend a rational universe – and beyond.

Aristotle, in his book, "On the Heavens," postulated five elements: air, water, fire, earth, and aether.  Aether, being the fifth element, was different from the others.  It was unchangeable and located solely in the celestial regions.  He also called it quintessence – the essence of all.  In medieval times, the alchemists sought out this quintessence as a magical elixir, the cure for all that ails.   The terminology evolved, and it came to be called – the Philosopher's Stone.  The holy grail of the alchemists.  A substance with the ability to convey anything anyone would want; rejuvenation, enlightenment, immortality, and . . . heavenly bliss.  But with all of the above, one certainly would not want to be impoverished, so the alchemists threw in the transmutation of lead into gold as well.  It is an understatement to say that the Aether was highly sought after.

No one ever found the Philosopher's Stone, but scientists did find the Aether.  Where?  Everywhere.  They just changed the definition.  The Aether came to be called ‘luminescent quintessence’ and was deemed to be omnipresent, permeating all Space.  And just as sound needs air, and waves need water, it was deduced that light waves also needed a medium in which to propagate.  Sir Isaac Newton himself popularized the concept.  He needed a medium for his early theories of gravity to operate.  Action at a distance was magic without some mechanical means.  To resolve this, he endowed the Aether with properties of elasticity.  It was deemed to stretch like an elastic band and thus induce the force of gravity.  To be fair to Sir Isaac, he later revised this theory and adopted the prevalent understanding today – that gravity is a fundamental force, related to Space and Time.  There is no need for a propagating medium.  However, we're back to action at a distance again, i.e., magic.  No mechanical means is necessary.

A common denominator of many civilizations during our first few millennia was the necessity for something akin to the Aether – something to fill and describe the void.  A similar requisite as the requirement for religion.  Is it odd that civilizations have needs?  Probably not.  Individuals have needs, and civilizations are large conglomerations of individuals.  What's peculiar is that everyone in all these different civilizations sensed the Aether and defined it.  They called it by many names, but generally, it was referred to as spirits, or the life force, or even grace.  And modern artists try to paint it, this essence which lies beyond and affects all things.  The first hominid to climb down a tree and stand on two legs knew.  He knew that all things were affected by something.  The spirits in the forest, the sun in the sky, or the pull of the moon.  Just like he knew about Space and Time.  He remembered the deer he speared yesterday, and where the deed occurred.  Our senses, honed over 4 billion years, inherently perceive all the parameters we live in.  And we all know that there’s something else out there.  But what is it actually?  What is the Aether?

This question was first answered by Albert Michelson and Edward Morley in 1887.  The two physicists devised an experiment in an attempt to prove the existence of this ethereal substance.  They set up mirrors and bounced light back and forth.  It went unimpeded and, therefore, failed to indicate any impeding substance.  After major peer review and subsequent repetitions in different ways, all yielded the same results.  There was nothing there.  Conclusion: There is no such thing as Aether.  Suddenly it was a brave new world.  One without Aether.  Then along came Albert Einstein.

Mr. Einstein hammered the final nails in Aether's coffin.  The Universe, he proposed, is filled with a matrix of Space-Time.  Some called it a fabric.  And also, light became both a particle and a wave.  Dualism.  It was a Universe without Aether.  Then Albert Einstein mused.  He performed thought experiments.  The best kind – no fuss, no muss, just sit back and think.  And he used the math of the Greeks, Pythagoras' law of the squares, and found that light has a speed limit.  Also, he deduced – that time slows the faster one travels and, bizarrely, length contracts, and mass expands.  And then, in 1917, contradicting all his previous work, he postulated the existence of Aether again.  He called it the Cosmological Constant, a mathematical construct he needed to describe a static Universe, something to hold it all together.  So, after two thousand years, we’re back to square one again.  The nails were pulled from the coffin and the lid opened.  And the Aether was everywhere again.

And the question: “What is the Aether” is still being asked today.  And the answers are numerous; vacuum energy, virtual particles popping in and out of existence, dark energy, dark matter, zero-point energy, and so forth.  The First-Born call this area of endeavor – Fifth Level Technology.  And they have long since been its masters.  Having the ability to extract almost limitless quantities of electro-magnetic force, for the Aether is, ultimately, the source of the “charge” in ordinary matter.  But they deemed more knowledge was needed.  For the Eternals and their Progenitor were under siege, existentially threatened.  Prior to this, threats were inconceivable.  However, this was no longer the case.  The Great Husk had been breached!  And the place I call Pleasantville was under attack as well.  Something, an Entity, had turned the Manifolds against the First-Born.  And they faced annihilation.  A rather unbearable thought for ancient immortals.  What propelled the great Nimbi?  What forces were involved?  How were they directed?  Since the First-Born lived in a place, which bore that rarefied substance's name, they surmised the solution to their existential threat lay in the resolution of that primordial question — what is the Aether?