The Making of the Stonequest Series

In our world, the concept on a luminescent Aether was much popularized in the 19^th century by many physicists. The concept was still quite topical at the turn of the 20^th century and is featured in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel - The Poison Belt.

First postulated by Isaac Newton, the concept of an Aether located out in space was used to explain the propagation of light waves. Similar to how physical waves need water to propagate, and sound waves require air, the analogous concept was applied to light, claiming there must be a medium in order to transmit light waves. The idea that outer space was a vacuum eluded physicists for hundreds of years. Part of the reason for this lack of knowledge was the absence of any means of testing the Aether hypothesis. The famous thermodynamic theorist, James Clerk Maxwell, suggested that the absolute velocity of the Earth traveling through the Aether may be optically determined. With this inspiration, a careful experiment was conducted in 1887 by Michelson and Morley, which verified the null-hypothesis, determining that no such Aether exists. A meticulously derived interferometer was used, a giant marble block buoyed by a mercury fountain, providing unprecedented stability. The elaborate experiment is described in a watershed paper published in the American Journal of Science. The original is provided here as a reference:  michelson.pdf

In the Stonequest Series, the term Aether is used to define an alternate dimension, one which exists in the folds of our four-dimensional space time continuum. It is the place where beings of immense power dwell.