Return of the Ether

Deutsch weaves a scientific detective story as profound as Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, yet as fascinating and easy to understand as an episode of Star Trek! Although 20th century quantum mechanics changed the way we looked at the universe and the ether was abandoned, strange gaps in quantum theory remain. Only the 140-year-old idea of the ether, brought up to date to to fit modern theory, can explain these gaps.

Is the universe really a vacuum? Do large bodies such as the Earth carry with them their own ether as they hurtle through space? Dr. Deutsch’s controversial - yet logical and plausible - speculations add credibility to the growing scientific movement that views the return of the ether as a long-needed explanation of "blips" in current cosmological theories.

* Not an isolated idea, the resurrection of the ether was recently profiled in an article entitled "Ether Re-emerges as the Je Ne Sais Quoi of Physics," in the Science Times section of The New York Times (February 2, 1999), quoting several leading physicists and citing articles in various scientific journals.

* Covers the relevancy of the ether as it relates to determinism, photons and electrons, the hydrogen atom, Bell’s Theorem, special relativity, and the Big Bang theory.

* Many scientists have grave difficulties swallowing the more unrealistic tenets of quantum mechanics. This book provides rational answers to some of those doubts.