Every time we move things from one place to another, we do work by changing the energy of whatever we’re pushing around. When we speed things up, we add energy to them. When we slow things down, we subtract energy from them.

Both actions involves effort on our part. We burn chemical binding energy to speed things up. We also burn energy when we slow things down.

First puzzle

This leads us to our first puzzle. When an object in motion is pushed from behind, energy is added to it, and when it’s pushed from the front energy is subtracted. But how does an object know what is front and what is back?

An object in motion is at rest relative to itself. There’s nothing internally to the object telling it that it is in motion, or in what direction it’s moving. It’s only by looking out that it can infer that it’s in motion. However, objects cannot sense their environments in this way, so there has to be some other mechanism that tells an object whether a push is from behind or from the front.

Pilot waves

Having ruled out that an object in motion has some internal mechanism that tells it where it’s heading, we’re left with its environment as the source of this information. Since this mechanism is unrelated to atmosphere, we must conclude that the answer has to do with the aether.

Our prime candidate for solving this puzzle is therefore the pilot wave that accompanies any moving object.

When we push a moving object from behind, we add to the pilot wave. When we push it from the front, we subtract from the pilot wave. The pilot wave adds or subtracts energy to the moving object accordingly.

Second puzzle

When we pick up an object from the floor, we do work in order to lift it. Energy is transferred from us to the object. This happens continuously as we lift it higher.

However, when we drop the object, no energy is subtracted from it on it’s way back down to the floor. All the energy that we added to it is released on impact with the floor, and no sooner.

There’s a conversion of energy from potential to kinetic as the object accelerated towards the floor, but this conversion is merely a matter of Newtonian accounting. There’s no change to the block’s energy.

Newton’s equations

We can use Newton’s equations to calculate the exact speed with which our object hits the floor. We can also calculate the exact amount of energy that’s released on impact. However, we cannot use Newton’s equations to explain why energy remains unchanged during the fall.

Whichever way we look at this, we come to the conclusion that there is acceleration without any overall change in energy.

Field forces

Gravity accelerates things without adding or subtracting energy. The same goes for the electric force and the magnetic force. They too accelerate things without adding or subtracting energy. Any change in energy communicated through field forces is supplied from outside, as explained in the two chapters on motors and generators and radio transmission. The field forces themselves don’t store energy, and they don’t supply or remove energy either.

Field forces are accelerations of various kinds, communicated through the aether.

An electron in an aether of zero-point particles

Space as aether

Field forces are due to high and low pressure regions in the aether. However, these pressures aren’t due to some added or subtracted energy. Rather, they’re related to space itself. Where there’s a low pressure in the aether, space is subtracted. Where there’s a high pressure, space is added.

Objects fall to the ground because gravity causes aether to exit the field that separates objects from the ground. Space is subtracted, and we get acceleration without any change in energy.