Question

Why was the ether medium known as a hypothetical medium?

Answer 1

Hint: The two characteristics of ether are contradictory to each other. A very low value of density and very high value of the volume elasticity are contradictory to each other. A medium which is having this kind of characteristics cannot be conceived. This will help you in answering this question.

Complete answer:
Ether medium which can also be called as aether. This can be otherwise called a luminiferous ether in physics. The theoretical universal substance which is considered during the nineteenth century in order to act as the medium for the transmission of electromagnetic waves such as light and x-rays. As the sound waves are transmitted by the elastic media like the air. The ether medium was considered to be weightless, frictionless, transparent, and also undetectable physically or chemically and also permeating all matter and space. By the formation of the special theory of relativity by the scientist Albert Einstein and the acceptance by the scientists in general. This ether theorem was abandoned as being not needed in terms of the assumption of Einstein that the speed of the light, or any other electromagnetic wave will be a universal constant. The two characteristics of ether are contradictory to each other. A very low value of density and very high value of the volume elasticity are contradictory to each other. A medium which is having this kind of characteristics cannot be conceived. Because of this reason, the ether medium is known as a hypothetical medium.

Note:
Hypothetical medium in order to transmit the light and heat or the radiation, filling all unoccupied space. This will be also known as luminiferous ether. In Newtonian physics all the waves will be propagated through a medium. The water waves through the water and sound waves through air are the examples.