Why an Atheist Thinks the Shroud of Turin is the Real Deal

Luminiferous Aether

In 1898, many if not most scientists believed in something called a luminiferous aether. It was something that permeated all of space. And something was about as precise a word as there was for it.  It was something like a substance that was probably not a substance. It was something like a gas that was certainly not a gas. The last edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica of the 19^th century, published in 1878, explained it in detail. The famous 1911 edition did, too:

It thus appears that the doctrine of atomic material constitution and the doctrine of a universal aether stand to each other in a relation of mutual support; if the scheme of physical laws is to be as precise as observation and measurement appear to make it, both doctrines are required in our efforts towards synthesis.

It wasn’t that anyone had detected it. It was thought to be undetectable yet there were ongoing attempts to detect it. It was, after all, a necessity, or so it seemed. There was no other way to explain the propagation of light. We would need Albert Einstein to show that it was not a necessity.

In 1898, Einstein was still a student at the Polytechnic in Zurich. Even after he published his papers on General Relativity and Special Relativity, it would take scientists, in the face of the evidence, years to abandon the idea of aether.