E-text prepared by Barbara Tozier, Ronnie Sahlberg, Bill Tozier, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 24667-h.htm or 24667-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/4/6/6/24667/24667-h/24667-h.htm) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/4/6/6/24667/24667-h.zip) Transcriber's note: Numbers preceded by a carat character are superscripts (example: 3^2 = 9). Numbers preceded by an underscore are subscripts (example: CO_2) Text enclosed by underscores is italicized. A detailed transcriber's note is at the end of the text. AETHER AND GRAVITATION by WILLIAM GEORGE HOOPER, F.S.S. [Illustration] London Chapman and Hall, Ltd. 1903 INTRODUCTORY NOTES The author in this work endeavours to solve the greatest scientific problem that has puzzled scientists for the past two hundred years. The question has arisen over and over again, since the discovery of universal gravitation by Sir Isaac Newton, as to what is the physical cause of the attraction of gravitation. "Action at a distance" has long ceased to be recognized as a possible phenomenon, although up to the present, the medium and method of gravitational attraction have not yet been discovered. It is, however, generally accepted by scientists, that the only possible medium which can give rise to the phenomena incidental to, and associated with the Law of Gravitation, must be the universal aether, which forms the common medium of all phenomena associated with light, heat, electricity and magnetism. It is impossible, however, to reconcile gravitational phenomena with the present conception of the universal aether medium, and a new theory is therefore demanded, before the long-sought-for explanation will be forthcoming. Professor Glazebrook definitely states the necessity for a new theory in his work on J. C. Maxwell, page 221, where he writes: "We are waiting for some one to give us a theory of the aether, which shall include the facts of electricity and magnetism, luminous radiation, and it may be gravitation." A new theory of the aether is also demanded in view of the recent experimental results of Professor Lebedew, and Nichols and Hull of America. It is logically impossible to reconcile a frictionless aether, with their results relative to the pressure of light waves.