luminiferous

• Maxwell couldn't bring himself to conceive of light waves just “waving themselves,” so he proposed what came to be known as the luminiferous aether. —  Strange Horizons Aug '01
• And slowly I fall through this world and back into the luminiferous aether where my heart lives. aka_Monty —  Hidden City
• This paper also argued that the idea of a luminiferous aether -- one of the leading theoretical entities in physics at the time -- was superfluous. —  MAKE Magazine
• Thus, one arrived at a picture of the ether as a quasi-rigid (not completely rigid because it can vibrate) luminiferous (light carrying) medium that is a massless transparent solid at rest with respect to the Earth and the stars. —  Citizendium, the Citizens' Compendium - Recent changes [en]
• Yet he does not, with Dr Whewell, regard an inductive theory as proved if it accounts for the facts: on the contrary, he sets himself in the strongest opposition to those scientific hypotheses which, like the luminiferous ether, are not susceptible of direct proof, and are accepted on the sole evidence of their aptitude for explaining phenomena. —  Auguste Comte and Positivism

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