It seems that there must be some type of conductive medium, or mechanism, for transference of information[photons] between different points in the universe.
It seems to me that there are two layers of thought concerning propagation in a medium. At the outer layer is what we observe—some type of wave—such as a wave rolling in at the beach. Or I could plot a sound wave (or any other kind of invisible wave) and visualize it as a function of time (or space). From this perspective I can go deeper into analyzing the wave properties by looking into its frequency and amplitude components—its spectrum.
If the wave traverses water (such as the ocean wave) or air (such as sound) it gives me a sense of confirmation because it's plausible how this works, since I only have to imagine particles colliding with each other—albeit on a massive scale under a complex distribution of forces imparted by the source. Nevertheless this comports with common experience, whether I relate this to the way billiard balls collide and bounce apart or the way a row of standing dominoes will topple into each other sequentially.
This perspective—in which I can visualize the (usually) invisible particle-particle interaction that's embedded inside the group behavior and over huge numbers of particles all forcing collisions in one direction, then another—is what I mean by the inner layer of perception. Here, I'm open to the idea that the particles cross empty space to collide with one another because it comports with common experience. I don't need a medium to send a particle.
So even when I'm at ease with the idea of wave propagation in a medium, I have implicitly allowed for particle propagation to occur across some (usually small) span of the vacuum of space.
My take on your position is that this is probably acceptable to you, but that you find it harder to allow for the wave itself to traverse empty space, because that's not how it works in common experience. Intuition reduces this to the particle collision explanation, which seems plausible.
So I'm wondering if your pursuit for an ether of some sort is a reflection on another kind of problem, namely, that in physics particles have a dual nature in which they also exhibit wave properties, such as frequency, and, contrary to common experience, the waves propagate in three dimensions even though the particle travels in only one dimension (the Euclidean distance, or the projection of 3-space onto 1-space).
So I offer this as something to consider, that perhaps it's not so weird that waves propagate without a medium, but rather, that 3D waves "emanate" from the 1D space traversed by particles.
That discussion can lead to some observations about wave-particle duality by revisiting the matter-energy and matter-frequency equivalences of Einstein and Planck:
$$
E\quad =\quad m{ c }^{ 2\quad },\quad E\quad =\quad h\nu \quad \quad \Rightarrow \quad \quad m{ c }^{ 2 }\quad =\quad h\nu \quad \quad \Rightarrow \quad \quad m\quad =\quad \nu h{ c }^{ -2 }\quad \quad \Rightarrow \quad \quad m\quad \propto \quad \nu \quad \quad \Rightarrow \quad \quad m\quad \propto \quad { \lambda }^{ -1 }\quad $$
Which gives a rationale for wave-particle duality: mass is proportional to frequency, or inversely proportional to wavelength. Considering what frequency and wavelength mean, we can also determine that mass is inversely proportional to an amount of time or space, depending on which formulation we pick.
I say this because we commonly think of a particle in terms of an infinitesimal mass. To some extent this is an arbitrary selection we make based on perception; we could just as easily think of the particle as an infinitesimal wave of a particular frequency. As a corollary, we can describe its mass (in magnitude) in terms of an amount of time (to complete one cycle), or an amount of space (to hold one wavelength)—as an inverse relationship, that is.
My purpose in saying this is to note that I can readily accept that particle collisions produce the propagation of sound waves in air, and that I can readily accept the way the collisions must occur between air molecules in the interstitial vacuum of space within the air. Once I accept the above formulation, then I can begin to visualize the propagation of a wave in the vacuum of free space, merely from the viewpoint that this must be what is happening even if it doesn't seem as intuitively obvious.
I recall reading some speculative idea that our universe could be inside a black hole. Other theories also propose that universes can be born inside a black hole, become pinched off from the parent universe and expand into a region of hyperspace away from the parent universe.
I am going to assume that singularity pinch points cannot actually exist. Instead, black holes can have universes inside them but they are not expanding universes; these universes are being computed - as in - they are being computed by a quantum computer. Hypothetically speaking, black holes are natural quantum computers.
These universes inside black holes would be continually shrinking ...but to the occupants inside them, it looks like their universe is expanding.
Suppose I accept that the universe springs from a Big Bang event billions of years ago. And suppose I further accept that space and time are created in the Big Bang.
I don't find it too hard to believe that time and space are created. For one thing, it helps me get around the possibility that time extends infinitely into the past, which is itself a puzzle...namely: how does the clock ever get to the present if it has to work its way out of an infinite past? I can set that problem aside when I go with the idea that time and space are created. In a sense it seems more plausible.
Now another problem crops up. This implies a prerequisite: a timeless, spaceless origin, a point of convergence looking back into the cone as I imagine I must do in contemplating it. I am now required to accept that there is a domain (the origin) in which neither time nor space exist. If so, then this domain must exist for all time—that is, it must be eternal. I infer this from the fact that its clock never advances, therefore it's always "there" no matter where we mark time on the world line.
Furthermore, if I note that the oldest epochs are the ones coming at me from all directions, as in the most distant of light sources, or the cosmic microwave background itself, then another problem comes up. Now I must convince myself that no matter where I look, in any angles of azimuth and elevation, I am staring into that cone that converges to the eternal spaceless point.
I am left to visualize the universe as a gigantic sphere having an inner surface that contains the largest possible area that can fit within the bounds of space. If I infer that this sphere is inflating like a balloon at the speed of light, then this "inner surface" is what is expanding. I can further equate this imagined "surface" as the boundary condition that existed at the birth of spacetime. Thus, if I could "cross over" that boundary, at any point on this imagined surface, I would "enter" that origin, namely, that original domain which is timeless and spaceless.
By this reasoning, I am required to imagine that the universe is imploding inside this dimensionless point. In other words, the reasoning I have followed seems to require that we are stuffed inside the Big Bang singularity itself. Furthermore, the dimensionless point which forms the "shell" of the universe, since it is timeless, is a vantage point from which an observer would look out onto all that ever was and ever will be—supposing, of course, that anything could be seen across the event horizon.
Furthermore, suppose I were to connect the idea that wherever there exists a singularity, there must be a cone that looks back to the origin. This would imply that anywhere that I could traverse an event horizon, I would simply end up at the same common point, the origin, looking back at the universe, that is, all that ever was and ever will be.
Finally, if I incorporate the idea from string theory that all matter is composed of quantum singularities, then I would conclude that crossing a quantum event horizon leads to its singularity which is identical to that same timeless spaceless origin, peering out over the entire universe in its entire continuum, that is, all that ever was and ever will be. In this case I arrive "outside" the "shell" of the universe by something akin to a wormhole which is tied to the most infinitesimal object of all, a string. That is, this wormhole joins the largest and smallest possible realms by delivering each string to the outermost shell of the universe. I would liken this to the way the limit, as x→∞ ,of f(x)=x, and the limit, as x→0, of g(x)=1/x, would both converge at infinity.
This leaves me to consider the universe as a complex of involuted "surfaces" that bend the outermost, largest surface conceivable, inside-out, into a zillion quantum singularities that "boil up" inside the sphere. Since the "inner surface" is ever-expanding, then there would seem to be some kind of correspondence to the generation of strings directly from the outer expansion.
By involution, I mean something like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_w4HYXuo9M
I have no idea whether the solution given in the video is legitimate, or even if that quick knot-tying at the end might suggest a something as improbable as a Calabi-Yau manifold, but there seems to be some kind of inference like this which must be required upon accepting the idea that time and space are created in the Big Bang.
