No proof for the existence of a mystery element named ether

Recently, social media users have spread viral claims about a supposed element named “ether” (also spelled “aether”). These posts purport that ether was erased from our scientific knowledge because it can give the world “free energy”. Some of these posts also claim that the renowned inventor Nikola Tesla worked wonders with ether – one such post, published on 9 December, has since garnered more than 2.5 million views.

But these claims are inaccurate – instead, the Facebook post misinterprets a piece of scientific history. In past centuries, many scientists believed that the universe was filled with a substance they called ether. But scientists abandoned the idea after no proof for ether’s existence was ever found. This isn’t a sign of suppression, but rather a natural part of science, to evolve with new evidence. Because ether was never discovered, no one ever added it to the periodic table, no one could ever erase it, and no one can use ether for “free energy”.

To understand this story in more detail, let’s look at ether from a scientific perspective. Below, we’ll show why scientists believed in ether in the first place, why scientists stopped believing in ether, and why ether isn’t a chemical element.

(We shouldn’t confuse the ether described in this review with the anaesthetic often known as ether – more formally named diethyl ether – or with other chemicals called ethers. These chemicals are unrelated.)

Ether is no longer accepted as a scientific IDEA

Here, “ether” actually refers to an outdated idea that was – as we know today – built from incorrect assumptions about how the universe works.

Scientists devised the idea to explain how we see light. Today, we know that light can move through a vacuum (a space without matter). This is a key tenet of Albert Einstein’s theory of special relativity. But we didn’t always understand this – before Einstein published his first papers on special relativity in 1905, most scientists assumed that light waves behaved like sound waves, which do need matter to travel. 

That assumption raised a question: how could light from the Sun or from distant stars travel through the void of outer space to reach our eyes? In centuries past, scientists answered this question by concluding that empty space wasn’t actually empty – that, instead, the universe was filled with an otherwise invisible material that could carry light. Scientists named this hypothetical substance “luminiferous ether”.

Although viral claims assert that ether can deliver some sort of “free energy”, this was never really part of the ether hypothesis. Instead, most scientists believed that interacting with the ether was very difficult, as chemist Gábor Pecs writes:

“In the very beginning of the 20th century, ether was thought to be an actual material that was difficult to detect in conventional ways: its only easily noticeable property was the interactions for which it provided the medium.”

And when physicists tried to test for the luminiferous ether, they found no evidence of its existence. The most famous ether test is the Michelson-Morley experiment. If space is filled with ether, then Earth revolving in its orbit would move through the ether like a ship through water. In that case, two light waves travelling in different directions on Earth should move at different speeds – imagine the difference between sailing against the wind and sailing with the wind at your back. 

In 1887, two physicists named Albert A. Michelson and Edward W. Morley attempted to measure that difference by measuring the speed of light in different directions across a table (Figure 1). They conducted the same experiment at different times of the year, when Earth ought to have been moving through the ether at different angles. Their experiment found no difference at all. 

These results suggested that Earth was not moving through any observable substance. Physicists repeated their experiment again and again over the following decades with ever-more-sensitive instruments, and still found no trace of luminiferous ether.

In retrospect, physicists view the Michelson-Morley experiment as early evidence of special relativity – which is built around the idea that light moves through vacuum at a constant speed, no matter the direction. This idea means that there’s no need for luminiferous ether in our understanding of the universe. And, in sharp contrast to luminiferous ether, special relativity has held up under experiments – physicists have been able to successfully test special relativity’s ideas.

Contrary to social media users’ assertions that “powerful interests decided to change and hide all those discoveries”, there’s no evidence that anyone tried to cover up the existence of luminiferous ether. All of this history is quite well-documented. In fact, as scientific ideas often take some time to fade away, some scientists even held onto the idea of luminiferous ether well into the second half of the 20th century^[1], despite the lack of evidence.

Ether was never “erased” from the periodic table

Ether, in the scientific sense, has never been considered an element. We should first clear up a bit of potential confusion – classical elements aren’t the same as chemical elements.

Ether, alongside earth, water, air, and fire, are the five “elements” that ancient peoples thought formed the world around them. Many of us likely associate these five “elements” with the ancient Greeks – Aristotle, for example, believed that ether made up the celestial spheres beyond Earth, such as other planets and the stars – but belief in these elements also existed in some form or another in other places like Japan and India (“akasha” is the Sanskrit word for ether). 

Although we label these with the word “elements”, it’s tremendously misleading to think of earth or air as anything like hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, plutonium, or the more than 100 other chemical elements that can be found on the periodic table today. Unlike earth or air, chemical elements have a clear scientific definition – each element comes in the form of a specific atom (composed of protons, neutrons, and electrons).

No one has ever discovered an “ether atom”. In the days when ether was an accepted scientific idea, it was predicted that we might one day find an ether atom, but as we’ve said, ether was discredited as a scientific idea before that could happen.

Today, scientists generally credit Russian chemist Dimitri Mendeleev with assembling the first modern periodic table of the elements, in 1869. What makes the periodic table so useful is that it sorts the elements into groups based on recurring patterns in their properties. When Mendeleev did this, he could pinpoint gaps in his table and predict the properties of yet-undiscovered elements that might fill them. Through this method, Mendeleev successfully predicted elements like scandium, gallium, and germanium years before chemists discovered them.

But not all of Mendeleev’s predictions were on the mark. Mendeleev lived in a time when luminiferous ether was a widely accepted scientific idea, and one of his more wildly inaccurate predictions is that ether, too, came in the form of an atom. Mendeleev predicted that ether would be an element lighter than hydrogen (Figure 2). Of course, no one ever discovered ether.

Today, with our modern understanding of atomic and nuclear physics, we know that the periodic table has no room for ether. We know that each element’s atoms contain a unique, specific number of protons. Hydrogen is the lightest possible element – each hydrogen atom contains one proton. It’s not possible to have an atom with less than one proton, and it’s not possible to have an element lighter than hydrogen, as Mendeleev predicted.

There’s no room for ether elsewhere on the periodic table, either. As of this writing, there are 118 known elements, none of which are ether. The most recently discovered elements fill the upper reaches of the periodic table, and they have atoms so heavy that they are highly unstable and decay into other elements within fleeting fractions of a second. Chemists don’t discover these elements in nature, and many scientists doubt that such heavy atoms can exist in nature at all^[2]. Instead, chemists make these elements in the lab. The same will almost certainly be true for any new elements that chemists discover in the future. 

Nikola Tesla’s belief in ether does not make an outdated idea more valid

So, where does Nikola Tesla enter this picture? The engineer certainly believed in ether, but it’s important to remember that he lived and worked in a time when luminiferous ether was widely accepted in the scientific community. Many other scientists in the late 19th and early 20th century also believed in ether – just look at Mendeleev above.

Science historian Kendall Milar Thompson recounted Tesla’s beliefs on ether in detail in a 2015 doctoral dissertation. By Tesla’s time, scientists knew that light was an electromagnetic wave – consequently, they often theorized that ether was critical to making electricity and magnetism function. As Tesla tinkered with devices that relied on electricity, he was naturally interested in ether.

But Tesla did not have a complete understanding of the physics that made his devices work, as Thompson writes:

“Although Tesla was grappling with complicated concepts like the transmission of electromagnetic waves, it is clear that while he knew these ideas were important to his inventions, he did not fully comprehend the mathematical nuances. For example, in a lecture on his wireless lighting system he emphasizes that an understanding of the ether was necessary for understanding his new invention, yet he failed to integrate any explanation of these concepts into his description of the device.”

Thompson’s account doesn’t include any evidence that Tesla believed ether would provide “free energy”. There’s no doubt that Nikola Tesla had a brilliant mind, his name is attached to numerous modern claims that have little basis in reality. Even if Tesla did say or believe something, it isn’t necessarily valid. To wit, Tesla lived through Einstein’s introduction of relativity, and reacted with heavy criticism, going as far as to ridicule Einstein’s ideas. Yet we know that relativity is an integral part of modern physics.

Scientific thought is always evolving – it’s the nature of science to re-evaluate things as new evidence comes along. Simply because prominent minds once believed in a discredited idea doesn’t make the discredited idea any more valid today. 

It’s very possible that a new idea might come along and displace the ideas we hold today – to wit, there’s some evidence hinting the speed of light in a vacuum could change very subtly. If that’s proven, it would strike at the foundations of special relativity. Even if that does prove to hold water, past experiments tell us that whatever would replace special relativity almost certainly wouldn’t be a theory like luminiferous ether.

Conclusion

Ether isn’t forbidden science – it’s a scientific idea that was discredited when no evidence for its existence was ever found. Ether was never an element on the periodic table, and there’s no evidence that anyone erased or buried its knowledge. We also shouldn’t confuse this with the ancient idea of ether as an element that formed the heavens. These ancient “elements”, such as earth, water, air, and fire, are unrelated to the modern idea of chemical elements that come in the form of atoms. 

Since there’s no evidence that an element called ether exists, there’s also no evidence that ether has ever been used to create “free energy”, either by Nikola Tesla or anyone else. Tesla did believe in luminiferous ether, but he worked in a time when many scientists believed in it. Simply because a famous figure believed in a discredited scientific idea doesn’t make that idea any less discredited.

References:

• 1 – Dirac PAM. (1951) Is there an Æther? Nature.
• 2 – Petermann et al. (2012) Have superheavy elements been produced in nature? The European Physical Journal A.