The Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Creationism (2018)

phrase which I borrow from popular science writers, “the fabric of space” (Fig. 1). Nineteenth-century physicists, such as the creationist James Clerk Maxwell (1891a) regarded space as pervaded with, or equal to, an intangible material called the æther (or “ether,” but not the anesthetic gas). Maxwell (Fig. 2) had noticed that electromagnetic experiments would make sense if the vacuum could be electrically polarized (indicating bound electric charges hidden in it) when one applies an electric field to it (Maxwell, 1891b, p. 253). This involved the idea of “displacement” electric current in a vacuum, which in turn led him to the discovery that light is an electromagnetic wave propagating through the æther. The properties of this “luminiferous medium,” as he called it, determine the speed of light, just as the properties of water in a pond determine the speed of waves moving over it (Maxwell, 1891b, pp. 431-450, 402-493.) When Albert Einstein (1905), Fig. 3, introduced his special theory of relativity, he sought to dispense with the æther (or “light-aether” from the original German) as anything useful to physicists, declaring it “superfluous” (unnecessary). However, in a little-known address in 1920 (Einstein, 1922), he came back to the concept of an æther: “According to the general theory of relativity, space without ether is unthinkable.” He had found that his 1916 theory, general relativity, insists on space having physical properties, in particular being bendable in the same way that a solid material is bendable. He hastened to explain that we cannot measure our speed with respect to the æther, but he did not back down from saying it is real. Academics ignored the 1920 address, and while not recanting it, Einstein did not publicize it or repeat its ideas. Hence the idea of an æther remained in the state of disrepute into which Einstein had put it in 1905. However, modern physicists began to find it was essential. Quantum field theory is built on the assumption that all space is filled with “fields” which have mass and oscillate like particles (Henley and Thirring, 1962). This “quantum vacuum,” a modern code name for the æther, makes forces between metal plates in a vacuum (Casimir effect), affects the orbits of electrons in atoms (Lamb shift, vacuum polarization), explains the appearance of electron-positron pairs from a vacuum (Dirac electron “sea,” Fig. 4), (Milloni, 1994), and determines the speed of light (Urban et al ., 2013). Other modern code names for the æther are “spacetime,” “continuum,” “manifold,” “substratum,” and “plenum,” often in various combinations. Though most modern physicists are reluctant to admit it even to themselves, the bottom line is that they believe that space is a real material, an æther (Dirac, 1951). This modern æther is pervasive. It moves through us as we move through it. The quantum physics of solids offers an explanation of how this could be, based on the Pauli Exclusion Principle. This principle could allow us to move through a material space as freely as an unbound electron moves through a perfect crystal (Feynman, Leighton, and Sands, 1965). This medium, space, also offers a reason why there should be a relativistic speed limit, namely the speed of light, on particles moving through it. If space were a truly empty nothingness, why should there be a speed limit at all? Instead, motion through this medium affects clocks (actually slowing them down) and rulers (actually shortening them) in such a Humphreys ◀ Accelerated cooling ▶ 2018 ICC 732 Figure 1. If space has the structure of a fabric, it must be woven exceedingly fine, with the threads very much closer together than the size of a proton, about 10 −15 meter. Figure 2. James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) predicted radio waves on the basis of electromagnetic experiments suggesting that space is a physical material, which he called the æther. Figure 3. In 1905,Albert Einstein (1879-1955) tried to dispense with the idea of an æther. But in 1920, he came back around again to the æther. Figure 4. In 1931 Paul Dirac (1902-1984), one of the founders of modern quantum theory, predicted the existence of antimatter on the basis of his theory requiring the existence of a “sea” of electrons permeating all space — an æther.