rpenner said:
Actually, only electrically charged fundamental particles annihilate in gamma rays. Einstein died in 1955 before the chromodynamic force was discovered or the electro-weak forces was well understood, so his attempts at a Unified Field Theory would be wrong-headed no matter how smart he was. And if (as I suspect) you are advocating a single luminiferous aether, Fizeau's 1859 measurements of the refractive index of moving water combined with the frequency-dependent nature of the refractive index of water implies a vast number of different luminiferous aethers. With evidence from other lines of investigation, this nineteenth century idea is fundamentally unworkable.
If neutrinos and anti-neutrinos are experimentally determined not to annihilate one another (into gama rays), I have haven't heard about it. It would certainly make the laws of physics more interesting. Never-the-less, I think an aether makes sense.
You mentioned the
Fizeau experiment. The experiment demonstrated that there was an aether drag (although only a very slight). It does make sense. As the light travels through the water medium, the water is made of H20 molecules in a vacuum. The light is continually absorbed and reradiated by the water molecules. In effect, the light spends part of its time being absorbed/reradiated by the medium, and another part of its time traveling throught the vacuum (through the distance between molecules).
In my view, the luminiferous aether is made of waves that obey, as a characteristic,
$$c=\lambda f = \frac{1}{sqrt{\epsilon_0 \mu_0}}$$. In my view, light power is dependent upon how many photons (are being detected per second) at each frequency. In quantum mechanics, the propability of detecting a particle, like a photon, is $$\psi^* \psi$$. If there is more than one photon (perhaps there are billions of them), then you get light power; which is sort of related to power.
So what is $$psi$$, the wave amplitude? Sorry this is a really quick and dirty description, but $$\psi$$ should be the electromagnetic field. Gotta go. But I need to find the equation that relates light power as the square of the electromagnetic field.