The Luminiferous Ether
What a cool word, Lumini – ferous.
Makes me think of Dr Nefario.
The ether
What is the Ether?
The idea is that one thing must pass through another to get from A to B.
Sound travels through the air.
And Electricity through a copper wire.
How does the light get to us from the sun if there is a vacuum in space?
Or radio waves?
Or any electromagnetic radiation.
For some time in the 19th century, there was this idea of a substance for light to ‘pass through.
https://www.britannica.com/science/ether-theoretical-substance;
The ether was assumed to be weightless, transparent, frictionless, undetectable chemically or physically, and literally permeating all matter and space.
Today the word ether is used in several different ways.
Closed
Ethernet
How do those bits and bytes get from Rumble to your screen? Most people use wifi for these things, but I always like to try and use a cable.
Bob Metcalfe invented Ethernet in 1973 while at Xerox PARC, (PARC is quite a rabbit hole) and the company patented it in 1975. Metcalfe and others then finalized an open Ethernet standard in 1980, and by 1985 it had become an IEEE standard. An industry was born, and Ethernet was ready for its meteoric rise.
Metcalfe has been a key player in the industry since founding network powerhouse 3Com in 1979 and working as a venture capitalist. Late last year, he took a position as Professor of Innovation and Murchison Fellow of Free Enterprise in the Cockrell School of Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin.
Ethereum
This alt-coin gets its name from the word ether.
Ethereum is a decentralized, open-source blockchain with smart contract functionality. Ether is the native cryptocurrency of the platform. Among cryptocurrencies, ether is second only to bitcoin in market capitalization. Ethereum was conceived in 2013 by programmer Vitalik Buterin.
Ethereal
Something that is extremely delicate or light. Slight.
There was a game once where you battled spiritual monsters, and one of the weapons was ethereal arrows.
