

The Higgs Field as the New Ether (2012) - ironchief
http://www.independent.com/news/2012/jul/20/higgs-field-new-ether/

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transfire
The molasses analogy doesn't quite make sense. When an object moves through
empty space it is not impeded by any field, otherwise it would slow down and
eventually stop, which would in turn imply a special (absolute) frame of
reference. So how can a "molasses" only affect _accelerating_ objects? That is
quite a peculiar condition for a field.

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Abraln
Sounds like the ultimate non-Newtonian fluid to me. Also, since objects gain
mass as they approach the speed of light, a better visualization might be a
falling through air, where drag is mass and terminal velocity is the speed of
light. It is not "slowing" so much as it is making going faster progressively
more difficult.

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Trombone12
I think what happened is that the word "field" won over the word "ether",
probably because there was a not very successful "aether theory" on the days
of old.

Certainly if you read this[1] 1999 article by Wilczeck it is clear that he
just points out that we got an awful lot of field theories around, and that
fields are basically a sort of ether. Which, you know, sure, but why not keep
calling them fields?

Since then he has proposed that you can have a current spike travel endlessly
around in a super conductive loop and named it a "time crystal", so I guess he
likes fanciful language.

1:
[http://ctpweb.lns.mit.edu/physics_today/phystoday/Ether.pdf](http://ctpweb.lns.mit.edu/physics_today/phystoday/Ether.pdf)

