electrafixtion,
Since Einstein himself did in fact understand and subsequently promote the irrefutable nature of both space and ether, the entire scientific premise that the ether does not exist is flawed. Why is this? Why is the world's global progress not firmly and expediently fastened to Ether Physics and the tremendous alternatives that the science implies?
I really don't know. I've been at sciforums for several years now, and I'm surprised how many highly intelligent individuals can believe that an observer can contract space and dilate time in his/her entire frame of reference (which by the way is the entire universe), by simply moving. I always thought that energy was required to change the properties of any object, but obliviously no energy is required to change the properties of space-time. What's even more boggling is that an observer, by moving, can somehow change the properties of space-time a million miles away. That's kind of cool isn't it? The enormous gravitational field of a black hole can only curve space-time in its section of the galaxy, but I can contract space and dilate time in the Andromeda galaxy by simply moving. I must be a god!!
Seriously, the scientific community was to eager to accepts Einstein's relativity because, I believe, that they look at Einstein as being some kind of god. I guess there's religion in everything, even science.
I personally believe that the space, or space-time, or ether, or whatever you want to call it, is the medium that light travels through, but that it does not determine the speed of the light. I believe that the speed of light is
not constant for all observers, but is only equal to c for an observer that is stationary in a gravitational field. In other words, I believe that the speed of light would change for an observer moving through a gravitational field, because the speed of light is only equal to c relative to the gravitational field that light is moving through at any given moment.
To go one step further, I would suggest that the gravitational field of a photon is not uniform like regular matter, but may be a dipole. This causes the photon to be accelerated when it is placed in an external gravitational field until it reaches the speed of c in that field, because c is the speed of the gravitational interaction.
Therefore, I believe the results of the Michelson-Morley experiment do not prove that the speed of light is constant for all inertial observers, but instead may prove that the speed of light was only equal to c in the Michelson-Morley device because the device was stationary in the Earth's gravitational field. I believe if you moved the device relative to the Earth's gravitational field, the speed of light in the device would change by the same amount.