[cm127]

What's the point? It's about understanding the universe! If the ether exists then it could mean an open-system exists in the universe, i.e. the big bang is still happening, -- or the laws of thermodynamics, i.e. entropy, are not set in stone because structure can be created with an open-system, -- or even general laws of physics: free energy because an open-system exists.

The implications are phenomenal, -- we could be in the presence of something HUGE, -- but people seem to rather "know for a fact" that we live in an empty vacuum devoid of anything but relics of a big bang.

[jhanschoo]

You seem to argue from a premise that there is an absolute truth that is discoverable without obscene expenditure in research, and that getting closer to the truth is likely to cause great advancements on our quality of life.

I dispute that premise; it seems to me unlikely that we know anything from certain, and it seems to be that expanding our understanding of the world has had diminishing returns; fire has had greater returns than agriculture, and that engineering, than Newtonian mechanics, that than relativity and quantum mechanics, and so on.

From the above observation of the utility of scientific discoveries, if Ether theory nevertheless is closer to how the world functions, it seems very unlikely, and the conditions that enable it to exhibit its characteristics seem so alien to our present way of life that it is unlikely that funding research in such a direction gives better expected returns than research into other questions.

[dwaltrip]

Has Ether theory made any novel predictions that have been verified experimentally?