A Brief History of Relativity(Cont.)

Part 2 The Fixed Ether Theory

Before Einstein gave a contribution into the theory behind time and space, scientist in the nineteenth century actually believed that they were just about to come to a final discovery that will completely describe how the universe came about. During that time, the belief was space was filled by a continuous medium known as the "ether" This ether was composed of radio and light rays and all that was needed to finish this theory was a precise measurement on the elasticity of it. However, once the century was coming to an end, some discrepancies started to appear. Behind this ether theory, or known as the "Fixed Ether Theory", it was assumed that light traveled at a fixed speed through it. The only other condition to this though was that if an object, for example, a spaceship, was traveling through this ether, in the same direction as the light, its speed would be lower while going in the opposite direction it will be higher. 

Unfortunately, for the scientist at the time, the experiments conducted failed to support the theory. Even the most accurate of studies conducted by Albert Michelson and Edward Morley came to a disappointing end once they discovered that the apparatus they developed did not show a difference in the speed or direction of light when put towards sunlight. Then some scientist, like George Fitzgerald and Hendrik Lorentz suggested that within the ether any body moving through it would be slower, but this still did not support the idea that the speed of light was overall the same.