"When he proved that electromagnetic waves travel with the speed of light, Maxwell concluded that these waves travel in ether, because since Newton's days ether had been accepted as the medium in which light moved. But since electromagnetic waves travel through all substances this means that ether must pervade all substances, including empty space. ...since the waves move with enormous velocity the ether has to be highly rigid, for the more rigid a body the faster the waves travel through it. On the other hand if ether pervades space it must be completely transparent and the planets must move through it with no friction. These conditions... are contradictory. ...We must conclude that it is a fiction, a mere word satisfying only those minds that do not look behind words."
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Morris Kline, Mathematics and the Physical World (1959) p. 360.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Luminiferous_aether
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Luminiferous aether
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