Editing Luminiferous aether (section)

===Problems===
By this point the mechanical qualities of the aether had become more and more magical: it had to be a [[fluid]] in order to fill space, but one that was millions of times more rigid than steel in order to support the high frequencies of light waves. It also had to be massless and without [[viscosity]], otherwise it would visibly affect the orbits of planets. Additionally it appeared it had to be completely transparent, non-dispersive, [[incompressible fluid|incompressible]], and continuous at a very small scale.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Yousef |first=Mohamed Haj |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9_WEDwAAQBAJ&dq=Luminiferous+aether+Additionally+it+appeared+it+had+to+be+completely+transparent%2C+non-dispersive%2C+incompressible%2C+and+continuous+at+a+very+small+scale&pg=PA73 |title=Duality of Time: Complex-Time Geometry and Perpetual Creation of Space |date=2018-01-01 |publisher=Mohamed Haj Yousef |isbn=978-1-5395-7920-5 |language=en}}</ref> Maxwell wrote in ''Encyclopædia Britannica'':<ref group=A name=maxa />

<blockquote>Aethers were invented for the planets to swim in, to constitute electric atmospheres and magnetic effluvia, to convey sensations from one part of our bodies to another, and so on, until all space had been filled three or four times over with aethers. ... The only aether which has survived is that which was invented by Huygens to explain the propagation of light.</blockquote>

By the early 20th century, aether theory was in trouble. A series of [[#Negative aether-drift experiments|increasingly complex experiments]] had been carried out in the late 19th century to try to detect the motion of the Earth through the aether, and had failed to do so. A range of proposed aether-dragging theories could explain the null result but these were more complex, and tended to use arbitrary-looking coefficients and physical assumptions. Lorentz and FitzGerald offered within the framework of [[Lorentz ether theory]] a more elegant solution to how the motion of an absolute aether could be undetectable (length contraction), but if their equations were correct, the new [[special theory of relativity]] (1905) could generate the same mathematics without referring to an aether at all. Aether fell to [[Occam's Razor]].<ref group=B name=whitt /><ref group=B name=janb /><ref group=B name=darrigol /><ref group=B name=schaffner />