Abstract

Transverse vibrations of solids. such as waves on a string. exhibit many of the properties of light. Physicists in the 1890' s therefore anticipated that light was also the result of a solid oscillation, and the solid underlying light waves was identified as a new substance. the aether. Einstein's special theory of relativity (SRT) abandoned the aether as superfluous, but persistent troubling problems in physics (such as EPR phenomena) require that we explore alternatives to SRT. and a return to aether science is one exciting alternative. A mathematically rigorous derivation of Maxwell's Equations will be presented based on a simple solid aether model. It will be shown that such a model naturally unifies the two types of currents (moving charge and displacement) which exist in the Maxwell theory. Charge conservation and the absence of magnetic monopoles are readily explained. Physical models result for fields and charges. An experiment is proposed which may lead to a test of the proposed theory.