title: Era of Stagnation

text: In 1980, RIA Novosti reported that the Soviet Union showed the highest, in Europe, and second highest, worldwide, industrial and agricultural output. The Soviet statistics claimed that in 1960, the Soviet Union's industrial output was only 55% that of America, but this increased to 80% by 1980. The 18 years of Brezhnev's leadership of the Communist Party saw real incomes grow by more than 1.5 times. More than 1.6 billion square meters of living space was commissioned and provided to over 160 million people. At the same time, the average rent for families did not exceed 3% of the family income. Housing, health care, and education were affordable and low priced. As the circulation of the work force could not be balanced by salaries, there was a lack of workers in some areas, largely in the agricultural sector. This was partly solved by forcing "nonproductive" urban population (older pupils, students, scientists, soldiers, etc.) to work during the harvesting time as agricultural workers. The practice has been informally called "naryady na kartoshku" ( "assignments to potato fields").


title: Era of Stagnation

text: Acts of protest took place in reaction to the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia with protesters being dismissed from their jobs, beaten or arrested. Eight protesters held a demonstration in Red Square in Moscow and were subsequently imprisoned. A number of suspected dissidents had their homes and property searched and a group of Moscow lawyers specialised in defending people charged with anti-Soviet activity. Supporters of these meetings and demonstrations claimed that the arrests were illegal, because there is no criminality in the realization of the human right to obtain and distribute information. They asserted this right was part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the final act of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (1975).


title: Era of Stagnation

text: The 60 years' history of our country is full of horrible violence, atrocious intra-state and international crimes, a punishment, suffering, humiliation and perversion of millions of people. But at the same time there were (especially during the first decades) noticeable great hopes, work-related and moral steps forward, a sense of ardour and self-sacrifice. Now all of this – senseless and cruel, tragical and heroistic: it has succumbed to a superficial relative material welfare and a massive disinterest. What has come to being is a caste society and as I see it – a cynical unhealthy caste society that is dangerous to the whole mankind (for itself just as well as for the humanity) where two principles rule: "blat (a slang expression that means "I give you my share and you give me your share") and the every-day life's quasi-wisdom that finds its expression in the slogan "breaking your head through your wall won't work". But under the patronage of these two stark there is obvious massive cruelty, non-legality, impunity of an average citizen vis-a-vis the authorities and the complete lack of control over the authorities, just like towards their own people, as it stands towards the whole world, the both of which are interconnected. And as long as all continues to exist, no-one either in our country or elsewhere in the world should be complacent.


title: Era of Stagnation

text: During the introduction of glasnost, many writers claimed that they did not know about the repression of citizens who did not support the Brezhnev politics. Artists propagating "Soviet values" within the framework of Socialist realism, however, formed a well paid, elite group that enjoyed an easy life and high social status.


title: Era of Stagnation

text: Nevertheless, a noticeable part of Soviet scientists and artists (collectively known as "the dissidents") continued both open and clandestine political opposition to the regime that they began during the Khrushchev rule. Prominent nuclear physicist Andrey Sakharov and Soviet Army General Pyotr Grigorenko are well-known representatives of this movement.


title: Era of Stagnation

text: Many other members of the Soviet intelligentsia systematically criticized the social and moral manifestations of the Stagnation without overtly challenging the authorities. Examples include writers Viktor Astafyev and Oles Honchar, playwright Grigory Gorin, directors Eldar Ryazanov and Mark Zakharov.


title: Era of Stagnation

text: In the years 1975–1985 the US industrial output grew at a rate of 2.6% per year. The Soviet net material product is a partially corresponding measure. It increased at yearly rate of 3.8%.


title: Jana Duggar

text: Jana Marie Duggar (born January 12, 1990) is an American television personality. She is known for her appearances on TLC as part of the reality television shows "19 Kids and Counting" (2008–2015) and "Counting On" (2015–2021).


title: Jana Duggar

text: Duggar was born in Tontitown, Arkansas, with her twin brother, John-David, as the first set of twins in the family and is the second child and first daughter of Jim Bob Duggar and Michelle Ruark. Their parents went on to have a total of 19 children, ten boys and nine girls. She was homeschooled as a child.


title: Jana Duggar

text: Duggar began her public life as a member of the family featured in the documentary "14 Children and Pregnant Again" (2004), which talks about daily life of the family from the "time they wake up" to the "time they go to sleep". The documentary aired on the Discovery Health Channel. Another documentary, "Raising 16 Children" was produced on the same channel in 2006, when Duggar's sister Johannah was born. This was followed by another feature, "On the Road with 16 Children" about a family cross-country trip.


title: Jana Duggar

text: On September 29, 2008, "19 Kids and Counting" (formerly "18 Kids and Counting" and "17 Kids and Counting") began as a regular series based on the Duggar family. The show ran until its cancellation in 2015.


title: Jana Duggar

text: Another series, "", starring Jessa and her sister Jill, premiered on December 13, 2015. Various other family members were featured on the show. It followed the Duggars present lives after "19 Kids and Counting" was cancelled. The show was cancelled in 2021 following the arrest of Josh Duggar.


title: Jana Duggar

text: Duggar co-wrote the book "Growing Up Duggar: It's All About Relationships" with her sisters Jill, Jessa, and Jinger. It was released on March 4, 2014, by Howard Books. The book focuses on life in the Duggar home, their social relationships, and religious beliefs.


title: Jana Duggar

text: In 2021, Duggar was charged with a misdemeanor count of endangering the welfare of a minor. She was babysitting when a child wandered outside and was found by a passerby, who called the police. A "not guilty" plea was originally entered; however, Duggar later changed her plea to guilty and paid an $880 fine and other costs, avoiding a trial and potential jail time.


title: Paul Williams (The Temptations singer)

text: Paul Williams (July 2, 1939 – August 17, 1973) was an American baritone singer and choreographer. Williams was noted for being one of the founding members and original lead singer of the Motown group The Temptations. Along with Elbridge "Al" Bryant, Otis Williams, and fellow Alabamians Eddie Kendricks and Melvin Franklin, Williams was a member of The Temptations. Personal problems and failing health forced Williams to retire in 1971. He was found dead two years later as the result of an apparent suicide.


title: Paul Williams (The Temptations singer)

text: Paul Williams was born and raised in the Ensley neighborhood of Birmingham, Alabama. He was the son of Sophia and Rufus Williams, a gospel singer in a gospel music vocal group called the Ensley Jubilee Singers. He met Eddie Kendricks in elementary school; supposedly, the two first encountered each other in a fistfight after Williams dumped a bucket of mop water on Kendricks. Both boys shared a love of singing, and sang in their church choir together. As teenagers, Williams, Kendricks, and Kell Osborne and Willie Waller performed in a secular singing group known as The Cavaliers, with dreams of making it big in the music industry. In 1957, Williams, Kendricks, and Osborne left Birmingham to start careers, leaving Waller behind. Now known as The Primes, the trio moved to Cleveland, Ohio, and eventually found a manager in Milton Jenkins, who moved the group to Detroit, Michigan. Although The Primes never recorded, they were successful performers, and even launched a spin-off female group called The Primettes, who later became The Supremes.


title: Paul Williams (The Temptations singer)

text: In 1961, Kell Osborne moved to California, and the Primes disbanded. Kendricks returned to Alabama, but visited Paul in Detroit shortly after. While on this visit, he and Paul had learned that Otis Williams, head of a rival Detroit act known as The Distants, had two openings in his group's lineup. Paul Williams and Kendricks joined Otis Williams, Melvin Franklin, and Elbridge Bryant to form The Elgins, who signed to the local Motown label in 1961, after first changing their name to The Temptations.


title: Paul Williams (The Temptations singer)

text: Although the group now had a record deal, Paul Williams and his bandmates endured a long series of failed singles before finally hitting the Billboard Top 20 in 1964 with "The Way You Do the Things You Do". More hits quickly followed, including "My Girl", "Ain't Too Proud To Beg" and "(I Know) I'm Losing You".


title: Paul Williams (The Temptations singer)

text: Although Williams had been the group's original lead singer during its formative years, by 1965, his role had been eclipsed by David Ruffin and Eddie Kendricks, who had both sung lead on Temptations hit singles. As such, Williams was often overlooked for leads, even on album tracks and B-sides, prompting him to complain, "shit, I can sing too!" In response, he was given lead vocals on the song, "Don't Look Back" (1965).


title: Paul Williams (The Temptations singer)

text: Williams sang lead on several of the group's songs, and served as the main lead singer during the group's early years. His early leads include, "Your Wonderful Love" (1961), "Slow Down Heart" (1962), "I Want a Love I Can See" (1963), and "Oh, Mother of Mine" (1961) (the group's first single) and "Farewell My Love" (1963) both shared with Eddie Kendricks. Considered the Temptations' best dancer, Williams served as the group's original choreographer, devising routines for his group and The Supremes (most notably their trademark "Stop! In the Name of Love" routine), before Cholly Atkins took over that role for all of Motown's acts. Williams' later leads on Temptations songs include, "Just Another Lonely Night" (1965), "No More Water in the Well" (1967), and a cover version of "Hey Girl" (1969).


title: Paul Williams (The Temptations singer)

text: Williams also sang lead with Dennis Edwards, who joined in 1968, on Motown's first Grammy Award-Winner "Cloud Nine". One of his best-known lead performances is his stand out live performance of "For Once in My Life", from the television special "TCB", originally broadcast on December 9, 1968 on NBC. The live version of the song "Don't Look Back" is also frequently cited as one of his standout performances. He also took over the lead vocal for live performances of "My Girl" following David Ruffin's departure from the group.


title: Paul Williams (The Temptations singer)

text: Williams suffered from sickle-cell anemia, which frequently brought havoc on his physical health. In 1965, Williams began an affair with Winnie Brown, hair stylist for The Supremes and a relative of Supremes member Florence Ballard. In love with Brown but still devoted to his wife and children, Williams was also depressed because Cholly Atkins' presence now made Williams' former role as choreographer essentially, but not completely, obsolete. Life on the road led to Williams developing alcoholism, which was in strong contrast to drinking nothing stronger than milk. Otis Williams recounted, "So to see a guy come from drinking milk to drinking, sometimes, two to three fifths of Courvoisier a day—that was kind of hard to take."


title: Paul Williams (The Temptations singer)

text: In the spring of 1969, Williams and Brown opened the Celebrity House West, a celebrity fashion boutique, in downtown Detroit. The business was not as successful as planned, and Williams soon found himself owing more than $80,000 in taxes (US$ in dollars). His health had deteriorated to the point that he would sometimes be unable to perform, suffering from combinations of exhaustion and pain which he combated with heavy drinking. Each of the other four Temptations did what they could to help Williams, alternating between raiding and draining his alcohol stashes, personal interventions, and keeping oxygen tanks backstage. Ultimately, Williams' health, as well as the quality of his performances, continued to decline and he refused to see a doctor.


title: Paul Williams (The Temptations singer)

text: Because Williams's voice had become ravaged due to his respiratory illness and alcoholism, the Temptations decided to resort to enlisting an on-hand fill-in for him. Richard Street, then-lead singer of fellow Motown act The Monitors and formerly lead singer of The Distants, was hired to travel with The Temptations and sing all of Williams' parts, save for Williams' special numbers such as "Don't Look Back" and "For Once in My Life", from backstage behind a curtain. When Williams was not well enough to go on, Street took his place onstage. In April 1971, Williams was finally persuaded to go see a doctor. The doctor found a spot on Williams' liver and advised him to retire from the group altogether. Williams left the group and Street became his permanent replacement. In support of helping Williams get back on his feet, he was paid his one-fifth share of the group's royalties, and kept on the payroll as an advisor and choreographer for the next two years.


title: Paul Williams (The Temptations singer)

text: By early 1973, Williams began recording solo material for Motown. Kendricks, who had quit the Temptations just before Williams left, produced and co-wrote Williams' first single, "Feel Like Givin' Up", with "Once You Had a Heart" as its b-side. However, by the following summer, Motown declined to release the single.


title: Paul Williams (The Temptations singer)

text: On August 17, 1973, Williams was found dead inside a car parked in an alley having just left the new house of his then-girlfriend after an argument. A gun was found near his body. His death was ruled as an apparent suicide. According to Otis Williams, Paul had expressed suicidal thoughts to him and Melvin Franklin months before his death.


title: Paul Williams (The Temptations singer)

text: Williams's funeral was held on August 24, with his family and former bandmates in attendance. He was survived by his wife, Mary Agnes Williams, and five children: Sarita, Kenneth, Paula, Mary and Paul Jr. Paul Jr later joined a Temptations splinter group, The Temptations Review featuring Dennis Edwards. Williams also had three other children, Paul Williams Lucas, Anthony Johnson, and Derrick Vinyard, with three girlfriends. Williams is buried at Lincoln Memorial Park Cemetery, Clinton Township, Macomb County, Michigan in Lot 275, Grave #4, Section #G.


title: Paul Williams (The Temptations singer)

text: The circumstances surrounding Williams's death caused the Williams family to suspect that some form of foul play was the actual cause of Williams's death. According to the coroner, Williams had used his right hand to shoot himself on the left side of his head. In addition, a bottle of alcohol was found near Williams's left side, as if he had dropped it while being shot. The gun used in the shooting was found to have fired two shots, only one of which had killed Williams.


title: Paul Williams (The Temptations singer)

text: As a member of the Temptations, Paul Williams was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989, the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 1999, and the Rhythm and Blues Music Hall of Fame in 2013. Both of his solo recordings were later released by Motown on Temptations-related compilations in the 1980s and 1990s.


title: Paul Williams (The Temptations singer)

text: In 1998, NBC aired "The Temptations", a four-hour television miniseries based upon an autobiographical book by Otis Williams. Paul Williams was portrayed by actor Christian Payton.


title: Paul Williams (The Temptations singer)

text: The music video for the Diana Ross song "Missing You" pays tribute to Marvin Gaye, Florence Ballard, and Paul Williams, all former Motown artists who had died.


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: A PlayStation Vita version was released in February 2013, but shut down in September 2020. A PlayStation 4 version was released in April 2016. A spin-off/companion game, was released for Android and iOS in 2014. A cloud version for Nintendo Switch, entitled was released in April 2018 and then on PC, released in December 2018. At E3 2019, it was announced that the game would be releasing outside of Asia for the first time on the Xbox One and Windows in early 2020.


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: A massive updated and separate "shared universe" game, ( in the cloud version), was released on June 9, 2021. It was released for Windows, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S worldwide, with the PlayStation 4 version releasing on August 31, 2022, and for Windows (download and cloud), Nintendo Switch (cloud) and PlayStation 4 in Japan. Although it was released nearly a decade after "Phantasy Star Online 2" launch and is substantially different in gameplay, graphics, and content, the creators decided to not name it ""Phantasy Star Online 3"" or focus on creating a game with no backwards compatibility with PSO2 content in order to continue support for current players and to not split up the player-base between two different simultaneously available games.


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: Upon starting the game, the player can select one of several servers, known as "Ships", to play. Players create and customize their characters to be used in the game. The name, gender, race, character class, body and facial features are available for customization during the character creation process, and later, the player can acquire a number of accessories and aesthetic goods to further customize their characters. There are various races available to the players in the game, which include Human, Newman (bio-engineered humanoid elves), CAST (cyborgs), and Deuman (a species that didn't originally exist but due to time-travel was retroactively created in the past that contains recessive genetically engineered Draconian genes in them).


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: At the start of the game, players may select from one of nine starting classes, each with unique stat spreads and weapon specialties. Four more "Scion Classes" can also be unlocked when the player meets certain requirements. Classes can be changed at will in the game's lobby; levels and statistics earned with a specific Class are independent of progress made with other Classes on the same character. Classes can also be customized with Skill Points earned from leveling up, which can be spent on a Skill Tree to learn Skills unique to the Class; Skill abilities can range from passive effects such as boosting stats to toggle abilities that power up your character temporarily. After a certain level, players can also assign a Subclass, a secondary Class that augments the player's Main Class by granting access to most of its Skills, Photon Arts, and Techniques.


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: The user interface and controls are similar between the PC, PS Vita, PS4, Switch and Xbox One. By default, players can play the PC version using a mouse and a keyboard, but may also play the game using an Xbox 360 Controller, which the game supports natively. The player's Character name, Health (HP) and Photon Points (PP) are displayed at the bottom left corner of the screen. At the bottom of the screen, the sub-palette may contain consumable items, class active skills, Techniques and Photon Blast skills. The mini-map is located at the top-right corner of the screen. When a target is acquired, the top-left corner of the screen displays the information and status of the target.


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: The chat log displays messages left by players and NPCs, as well as system messages. Chat commands can customize text in many ways, such as changing the colors of the text, the font, or using special speech bubbles and animations. The player can also create and display Symbol Arts, images made within the game out of various symbolic objects, or uploaded by the player. Autowords can also be created for a character to react to certain events in battle automatically, such as dying, engaging in combat or successfully completing a mission.


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: Gameplay in "Phantasy Star Online 2" is mostly action-oriented, and features a large and diverse selection of weapon types and playstyles for the player to choose from.


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: In combat, players engage enemies in real-time with various attacks; attacks can be chained for additional damage. In addition to standard attacks, combos can be augmented with powerful attacks called Photon Arts that use a resource called Photon Points (PP). Certain Classes have the ability to use Techniques, attacks similar to magic, that also use PP. PP is consumed whenever the player uses these attacks; the player cannot attack with Photon Arts or Techniques if they do not have sufficient PP, but PP naturally restores on its own or can be recovered manually by attacking enemies with standard attacks.


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: In some areas of the game, Photons can be generated by defeating enemies to fill up the Photon level in the environment. In return, Photon-sensitive effects (PSE) can provide bonuses to the players in that area. When one of these effects reaches the maximum level of 8, an event known as PSE Burst can occur where many enemies will rapidly spawn for a limited time. This can be further extended by causing a different PSE Burst to form a Cross Burst, which can be extended for a lengthy period of time.


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: Upon reaching a certain level, each player will be granted their own Mag, a small droid that hovers around the owner of it. Mags can be fed a variety of items in order to strengthen and eventually evolve them. In addition to enhancing the player's stats, a mag will support the player with abilities such as healing or buffing under certain circumstances. Mags also enable the Photon Blast ability, in which the player and mag summon a Photon-based avatar for a brief time to attack enemies or support party members, depending on the type of mag. Photon Blasts can only be used after defeating a certain number of enemies and generating enough Photon energy to fill up its power gauge.


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: "Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis" focuses on an open world field, rather than actual dungeons in the original. Players will be able to explore the field by using Photon Dash and Photon Glide to find hidden secrets around each of the 2 main sectors: Exploration Sectors and Combat Sectors. Exploration Sectors are areas that in which they can obtain food to get boosts and materials to upgrade weapons and armor. Combat Sectors are areas that in which players can defeat enemies and complete trials to fill up the PSE Burst gauge, which are followed by a PSE Burst Climax, which summons a boss enemy. Class Points can be obtained by completing Cocoon Quests and Tower Quests.


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: The game's story primarily focuses on the exploits of the space-faring organization known as Oracle, who uses Photons to traverse the universe and seek new planets for potential colonization while simultaneously suppressing the threat of the Falspawn, alien beings created by evil entities known as Dark Falz that only exist to destroy the universe. Oracle is split between a Mothership, housing the fleet's central core, and a massive fleet of spaceships that contains all civilian entities and the fleet's prime military and exploration department known as ARKS (Artificial Relicit to Keep Species).


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: Initially, ARKS is sent to investigate activity on three planets: Naverius, a planet whose ecosystem was primarily forest before much of the planet became locked in eternal winter, Lillipa, a desert planet inhabited by rabbit-like natives known as "Lillipans", and Amduskia, a bifurcated planet with a volcanic core surrounded by a mass of floating islands inhabited by humanoid dragonfolk. Later story arcs feature the planet Wopal, an ocean planet, and Harukotan, a planet in the shape of a "taijitu" inhabited by two opposing races. In "EPISODE 4", exploration expands to encompass a fictional counterpart of Earth located in an alternate dimension, and in "EPISODE 5", an alternate dimension known as "Omega" located within a black hole becomes the focal point of the story.


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: "Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis" takes place 1,000 years after the events of "Phantasy Star Online 2". The game's story takes place in the planet, Halpha. A new generation of ARKS are Meteorns, people who have landed to a planet via a drop pod, who had advanced techniques, using Photons, to run faster, jump higher and glide between distances. They are also sworn to fight a new enemy, the DOLLS.


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: The story follows the player character, a graduating member of the ARKS Cadet program, and their partner Afin. During their graduation exercise on Naverius, the Cadets are attacked by the Falspawn, forcing ARKS veterans Zeno and Echo to arrive and rescue the player and Afin. Upon arriving on the ARKS Ship, the player encounters a woman named Xion, who grants the player a Divergence Matrix, an artifact with the ability to alter fate. Returning to Naverius to investigate the Falspawn, the player rescues a girl named Matoi, who has apparent amnesia, and sends her to the ARKS Ship to recover.


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: The player is sent out to various planets to investigate Falspawn activity. During their travels, they discover the fragments weapon called the Clarissa, one of a series of weapons known as a Cosmogenic Arm, and collect its pieces while being pursued by a mysterious foe called "Persona". The player successfully gathers the Clarissa fragments and entrusts the weapon to weaponsmith Zig for repairs, but the weapon is stolen by ARKS operatives Gettemhult and Melphonsena. The player, Zeno, and Echo pursue them to Naverius, where Gettemhult revives Dark Falz [Elder] and is subsequently possessed. Zeno stays behind to allow the player, Echo, and Melphonsena to escape and is presumed dead.


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: Returning to the ARKS Ship, the player and Xion meet Luther, the leader of ARKS and last member of an ancient race known as the "Photoners". During a visit to Wopal, the player witnesses Luther manipulating and recruiting Theodore, an ARKS member who was driven insane by the death of his girlfriend Ulku. The player travels to Amduskia to meet Xiao, an imperfect clone of Xion, and is granted the ability to time travel to disrupt Luther's plans by rescuing Zeno and Ulku in the past.


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: Xion urges the player and Matoi to head to the Mothership to rescue her, but the duo are branded traitors of ARKS by Regius, a member of an elite ARKS unit called the Six Pillars, and are hunted down by fellow ARKS. The player and Matoi discover that Luther plans to assimilate Xion and gain omniscience. The duo, aided by other members of the Six Pillars and Ulku, rescues Theodore and presses on to the Mothership's core, where Xion convinces the party to kill her. Luther, enraged by his loss, transforms into Dark Falz [Luther] and possesses the Mothership. Xiao rescues the Oracle fleet by manifesting another Mothership and the party escapes. ARKS confronts and defeats Dark Falz [Luther], and his body is consumed by another Dark Falz, Dark Falz [Gemini].


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: Xiao soon sends the player and Matoi to the planet Harukotan to investigate [Gemini]'s suspicious activity. While there, the duo befriend Sukuna-hime, a local deity, and together they fend off [Gemini]'s attacks. Due to civil war brewing on the planet, Sukuna-hime decides to confront the Nightfaller King, but she is ambushed by [Gemini] and the player and Matoi and are consumed while trying to save her. While in [Gemini], they discover that Luther has survived by being consumed by [Gemini], and he reveals that [Gemini] wants to revive the [Profound Darkness], an ancient enemy of the Photoners and the progenitor of the Dark Falz. The player and Matoi escape and confront [Gemini], but as they are dying [Gemini] infects Matoi with a large quantity of F-Factor, causing her to become a new [Profound Darkness].


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: The player is confronted by [Persona], revealed to be an alternate timeline counterpart of the player, and is coerced into killing Matoi to stop the [Profound Darkness]. However, it is revealed that by doing so, the player becomes the next [Persona]. With the aid of the Divergence Matrix, the player gathers their allies and tries to stop Matoi without killing her; [Persona], moved by the player's willingness to change fate, intervenes and absorbs Matoi's F-Factor, becoming the [Profound Darkness] in her stead. ARKS subsequently confronts and temporarily kills the [Profound Darkness]. However, since it cannot truly be killed the last part of [Persona] forcefully binds himself and the [Profound Darkness] to a time loop using their copy of the Divergence Matrix. Afterwards the player and Matoi have a bittersweet reunion where they both swear to find a way to both save [Persona] and permanently kill the [Profound Darkness].


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: Three years after the events of "EPISODE 3" and one year after the events of "Phantasy Star Online 2 The Animation", the player is revived from stasis by the operator Xiera to accompany a new recruit named Hitsugi, a young boy, who is suspected to have ties to an internal invasion of fake ARKS members. During the mission, Hitsugi is attacked by a mysterious black mass; the player attempts to purify Hitsugi, but Hitsugi disappears prematurely. "Hitsugi" is revealed to be a high school girl from Earth playing the video game "Phantasy Star Online 2", who finds a strange boy with her avatar's appearance in her room after the fiasco. Hitsugi names the boy "Al".


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: The player is sent to investigate Earth, where they discover that Earth uses a parallel mutation of Photons known as "Aether" that has the ability to resonate with the emotions of humans, and "Phantasy Star Online 2" is an espionage tool disguised as a video game to allow members of a mysterious group known as Mother Corps to interface with and infiltrate ARKS. Discovering that Mother Corps is secretly plotting against ARKS, the player allies themselves with Hitsugi and her brother Enga, a member of a secret organization opposing Mother Corps called "Earth Guide", and fights off various members of Mother Corps wreaking havoc across the globe. Hitsugi manifests a weapon constructed of Aether, the Ame-no-Habakiri, but during a confrontation against her best friend Kohri Wagashimiya, who was brainwashed by Mother Corps, it is destroyed. Kohri seemingly kills Hitsugi, but Al, revealed to be a Dark Falz, revives her, and Hitsugi is kidnapped and taken to the Moon.


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: The player and Enga rescue Hitsugi, but discover that the player's ARKS Ship had been attacked by Mother Corps. The player and Hitsugi return to the ship, where Hitsugi witnesses Mother, the leader of Mother Corps, assimilating Al, causing Hitsugi to awaken to her true Aether weapon, the Ame-no-Murakumo. The party returns to Earth, where Hitsugi uses her new weapon to save Kohri, and together the party confronts Mother on the Moon. Mother is revealed to be an imperfect copy of Xion discarded into space and seeks vengeance against the Photoners and ARKS. Mother is overwhelmed by the Dark Falz power she stole and transforms into a Dark Falz, but the party defeats her and returns her and Al to normal. However, the party is betrayed by Adam Sacrid, the leader of Earth Guide, who kills Mother and steals her powers.


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: The party, aided by the remaining Mother Corps members, confront Adam in the Earth Guide sanctuary, and witness him creating Yggdrasil in the Pacific Ocean. Adam takes the guise of a massive Phantasm monster called Deus Esca and seals the party's Aether powers while banishing the player back to the ARKS Ship. Al discovers that Mother's consciousness is still in his body, and Mother possesses him to return the player to Earth and restore the party's Aether powers. The party defeats Deus Esca and Adam, realizing the error of his ways, returns to normal before dying.


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: During an attempt to destroy the [Profound Darkness] permanently by purifying [Persona], the player is sucked into an alternate dimension known as "Omega", where they rescue a young girl before escaping. Returning to the ARKS Ship, they are greeted by Alma, the deceased spirit of the first Klarisklays, who informs them that Omega is form of the fragmented Akashic Records, the source of all knowledge where Xion formerly resided, and has now manifested itself into a black hole threatening to consume the universe. In an attempt to stop the black hole, Alma grants the player the power to return to Omega at will by using her ability to stop time.


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: Upon their return, the player reunites with the girl, named Hariette, and discovers that the continent is plagued by a strange flower called Ephemera, a manifestation of the [Profound Darkness]'s corruption. The player unites with Hariette to put an end to various schemes across Omega instigated by a mysterious foe known as Elmir. They learn that the countries of Omega are associated strongly with the Dark Falz that they had encountered previously, and during their quest the player re-encounters and defeats each of the Falzes revived in some fashion by Elmir, in the process absorbing their consciousnesses.


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: Upon defeating the final Falz, Elmir is revealed to be an incarnation of Dark Falz [Persona], who manipulated the player into killing the Falz and returning their essences to Omega itself, revealed to be an incarnation of the [Profound Darkness]. Elmir kidnaps Hariette and seals her in a giant flower, attempting to use her and the combined Falz essences to destroy the outside world. With the help of Alma and allies from Omega, the player intervenes and defeats Elmir, killing him for good. Hariette is saved and pronounced the new goddess of Omega, and the player successfully seals the black hole.


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: After returning to the ARKS Ship, the player and their allies are attacked by the Goddess of Annihilation, Shiva, a woman with an identical appearance to Hariette, and are unable to surmount her Photon-absorbing powers. Risa, a Class Trainer on the ARKS Ship, is revealed to be in possession of Hariette, who has reincarnated in the form of a Cosmogenic Arm in the real world, and they fend off Shiva. The player learns that Shiva is an artificial Photoner and Hariette's original body who was used to seal the original form of the [Profound Darkness], but was revived by the sealing of Omega and now desires revenge by destroying the universe.


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: Shiva mounts an attack against Mothership Xiao in a bid to steal it for herself; although ARKS is dispatched to defend against her, they are overwhelmed by her Luminmech forces and Xiao is seemingly killed, forcing ARKS to flee. The heroes return to Amduskia to revive Xiao by uniting a fragment of his power with Kasheena, a failed Xion clone whose body lies at the heart of the planet, warding off further direct attacks to Oracle.


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: The player and Matoi return to Harukotan to help Sukuna-hime fend off Shiva's attacks and eventually attempt to fight Shiva herself by using Sukuna-hime's power to seal Shiva's abilities. Although the attempt fails, Hariette learns from Sukuna-hime how to weaken Shiva by using a similar seal within Omega to affect her on a universal scale. Hariette remains in Omega to maintain the seal while the player and Risa return to the real world.


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: With Shiva weakened, ARKS mounts a last stand against Shiva's forces, with the player and Matoi leading the charge. Although the duo successfully reach Shiva, they are still greatly overwhelmed by her strength until Sukuna-hime intervenes at the last minute and gives them the power to deal the finishing blow. With her dying breath, Shiva transfers the essence of the [Profound Darkness] to the player, causing them to become the original form of the [Profound Darkness], the Primordial Darkness. Xion reaches out to the player and asks them to avert tragedy by traveling back to the beginning of time and becoming the Akashic Record, but the player, choosing to fight the Primordial Darkness, inspires Xion to reach out to Matoi, Hitsugi, and Hariette to unite their powers. The three heroines arrive and use the Ame-no-Murakumo to exorcise the Primordial Darkness from the player, and together they destroy the source of all evil in the universe once and for all, defeating Shiva in the process.


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: According to Sega COO Naoya Tsurumi, "Phantasy Star Online 2" took over five years to develop. Sega "pulled out all the stops", believing the game to be a crucial entry point into the growing free-to-play market on multiple devices. A cross-platform strategy involving PC, handhelds, and smartphones was made possible by the sharing of cloud data. Moreover, Tsurumi stated that the game would serve as a model for other intellectual properties as part of Sega's broader strategy "to further develop the whole of Asia as a single market." When Sega began thinking on how to expand the "Phantasy Star" franchise particularly in Japan where "Final Fantasy" and "Dragon Quest" were dominant, they decided on making it multiplatform and free-to-play without a charge upfront. A pay to win playstyle that was coming out of Korea and China at the time was not something Sega had in mind. They wanted to prove that they had a viable business modeö without compromising the quality.


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: On February 5, 2011, at the "Phantasy Star Portable 2" Infinity Nationwide Fan Thanks Festival 2011 in Japan, Sega announced that the alpha test for "Phantasy Star Online 2" would begin in the summer. They stated "Entry into the test will not be open; instead, all participants will be selected by lottery. And your first chance at putting your name into the drawing will be by purchasing Phantasy Star Portable 2 Infinity." On February 7, Sega listed alternate ways for users to enter into the lottery on the "PSO2" website. The game was originally planned to have support in Japanese, English (US and UK), French, German, Italian, Spanish, Chinese and Korean with voices in Japanese. On March 9, 2012, Sony announced that "Phantasy Star Online 2" would also be released on the PS Vita. On March 26, it was announced that the game would also appear on iOS and Android as "Phantasy Star Online 2 es".


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: Open beta began on June 21, 2012, as free-to-play. Open beta ended on July 2, 2012, in preparation for release on July 4, 2012. Characters created by players during open beta were carried over to the live servers.


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: Episode 2 of "Phantasy Star Online 2" launched on July 17, 2013, which introduced the new Deuman race and the Braver class. EPISODE 3 launched on August 27, 2014, which introduced the new Bouncer class and Casino, new skills for every class, new items, a new planet, and new quests. EPISODE 4 was released on January 27, 2016, and the main theme was revealed to be 'new experience'. It introduced even more advanced customization features, a new planet (Earth), and the brand-new Summoner class, which focuses on combat with pet creatures, as well as Graphic Tier 6, which featured enhanced graphics.


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: The game was launched in Japan on July 4, 2012. The game was free to download and free-to-play, with an optional real money to in-game currency feature known as the "ARKS Cash" system. Sega also has released a retail version of the game on September 13, 2012, along with an installation disc bundled with extra bonuses and in-game items.


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: Asiasoft released "Phantasy Star Online 2" in Southeast Asia. The game was fully translated to English with huge changes to its menu, items and classes name. This is mainly to make the game much easier to understand for newcomers to the series. They also released a Thai language version of the game for Thailand players only. The closed beta for it began on April 10, 2014, with the official launch on May 29, 2014. Asiasoft announced they would also distribute "Episode 2", which was released on March 5, 2015. However, on April 5, 2017, Asiasoft announced they would end servicing Phantasy Star Online 2 to Southeast Asia countries, including Thailand, on May 26, 2017.


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: There's also a Traditional Chinese version released in Taiwan and Hong Kong by Gamania, which also lasted for three years, before the server closed in early 2017.


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: It was speculated that the western release may have been cancelled in the later half of 2013. In November 2017, the English website for the game was taken down, along with any possibility of the game releasing on the west with it.


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: However, on June 9, 2019, a North American release was announced at Microsoft's E3 press conference, launching in spring 2020, with no initial plan for a release in Europe, Middle East and Africa. The game features cross-play between Xbox One and PC with Xbox Play Anywhere. On February 7 to 9, 2020, a three-day closed beta test phase was only playable on Xbox One. The reason for the long delay is because Sega did not have right infrastructure in place to operate a North American version.


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: The game's four week open beta test phase began on March 17, 2020, and concluded on April 14, 2020, to concede the official launch. The PC version launched on the Microsoft Store on May 27, 2020. The Steam version launches alongside EPISODE 4 on August 5, 2020. That same day, the Xbox One and Microsoft Store versions were released in Europe. On September 30, alongside EPISODE 5, the Steam version of the game added more playable regions for the game, with all regions (excluding Antilles, Belgium, Netherlands, China, Japan, and Republic of Korea) able to download and play the game, marking the global release of the game. The Epic Games Store version was released during EPISODE 6 on February 17, 2021. The PlayStation 4 version was released alongside PSO2 New Genesis on August 31, 2022. The global version removed three cutscenes involving three minors in a bathhouse, which was ultimately irrelevant to story or character development. However, later voicelines by the character Xiera commenting on these scenes had not been removed. It also edited a few cutscenes, as in which, Al and Hitsugi were naked in the Japanese version.


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: The global release features dual audio support with English and Japanese voiceovers, along with brand new English versions of the live concert tracks that are originally sung in Japanese, excluding those from the 3 collaborative live concert events (all of which are English only) (including songs that are sung by Quna (voiced in English by Kayli Mills and in Japanese by Eri Kitamura)). Takenobu Mitsuyoshi voices as himself and performed “We're ARKS!” in both English and Japanese. Furthermore, upon the release of the second chapter of PSO2NGS, both songs that are performed by Nadereh (voiced in English by Valeria Rodriguez and in Japanese by Azusa Tadokoro) will also feature an English version alongside a Japanese version. The global release also supports Japanese UI text and subtitles with plans of adding the UI text and subtitles in French, German, Italian, Spanish and Russian in the future.


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: An anime television series adaptation based on the game aired on TBS from January to March 2016. The adaptation was directed by Keiichiro Kawaguchi at Telecom Animation Film, with scripts written by Mitsutaka Hirota and music composed by Takashi Ōmama. The story is set one year prior to the events of "EPISODE 4" and five years after the events of "Phantasy Star Online 2 On Stage".


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: The opening theme is "Zessei Stargate" (絶世スターゲイト) by Shouta Aoi, and the ending theme is "Rare Drop☆KOI☆KOI! One More!" (レアドロ☆KOI☆こい！ワンモア！) by Rina Izumi (Ayaka Suwa) and Aika Suzuki (M.A.O). "Our Fighting" by Quna (Eri Kitamura) was used as the insert song in Episodes 2 and 11. Episode 4 featured three songs: "Endless Story" (終わりなき物語) by Quna (Eri Kitamura), "Try to take me again" by Zeno (Ryōhei Kimura) and "Twin-Star Quality" (双子星クオリティ) by Pati (Kana Asumi) and Tia (Yuka Iguchi).


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: A new anime television series titled "Phantasy Star Online 2: Episode Oracle" premiered on October 7, 2019, on Tokyo MX and BS11. The series recompiled the story of "Episodes 1-3" of the original game, and also included an original story. The 25-episode television series was directed by Masaki Tachibana at Gonzo, with scripts written by Hiroshi Ōnogi, Shigeru Morita, and Bunsei Asanuma, and characters designed by Shinpei Koikawa.


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: The opening themes are "Destiny" and "UniVerse", both performed by Aimee Blackschleger, and the ending themes are "Timeless Fortune" by Mika Arisaka, and "Soleli -Dear Destiny-" (それいゆ -Dear Destiny) by Haruko Momoi. All 3 ending themes for all 3 Episodes of the game ("Eternal Encore" (永遠のencore) by Quna (Eri Kitamura) in Episode 1 (also used as the insert song in Episode 9), "Living on like stars" by Mika Arisaka in Episode 2 and "Hello" by Monique Dehaney in Episode 3) are used as ending themes of Episodes 10, 18 and 25, respectively. "Our Fighting" by Quna (Eri Kitamura) was used as the insert song in Episodes 4, 10 and 16.


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: Registered users for the game exceeded 2.5 million in March 2013. By August 2015, the game had over 3.5 million registered users. As of September 2016, the game has over 4.5 million users. Sega confirmed in 2018 that the PlayStation Vita version had 1.5 million downloads.


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: "Famitsu" gave the game a score of 33 out of 40, and the game won the Rookie of the Year 2012 WebMoney Award.


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: Sega released "Phantasy Star Nova" in 2014. The game shares similar elements to and is set in the same world as "Phantasy Star Online 2," and is also part of the Online series. A novelisation, "Phantasy Star Online 2 Side Story", began on June 15, 2014.


title: Phantasy Star Online 2

text: The North American release received mixed to positive reviews. IGN gave the game a score of a 7/10, praising the visuals, story, online capabilities, and gameplay, while criticizing the implementation of micro transactions.


title: Golden Age of Comic Books

text: The Golden Age of Comic Books describes an era of American comic books from 1938 to 1956. During this time, modern comic books were first published and rapidly increased in popularity. The superhero archetype was created and many well-known characters were introduced, including Superman, Batman, Robin, Captain Marvel, Captain America, and Wonder Woman.


title: Golden Age of Comic Books

text: The first recorded use of the term "Golden Age" was by Richard A. Lupoff in an article, "Re-Birth", published in issue one of the fanzine "Comic Art" in April 1960.


title: Golden Age of Comic Books

text: An event cited by many as marking the beginning of the Golden Age was the 1938 debut of Superman in "Action Comics" #1, published by Detective Comics (predecessor of DC Comics). Superman's popularity helped make comic books a major arm of publishing, which led rival companies to create superheroes of their own to emulate Superman's success.


title: Golden Age of Comic Books

text: Between 1939 and 1941 Detective Comics and its sister company, All-American Publications, introduced popular superheroes such as Batman and Robin, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Green Lantern, Doctor Fate, the Atom, Hawkman, Green Arrow and Aquaman. Timely Comics, the 1940s predecessor of Marvel Comics, had million-selling titles featuring the Human Torch, the Sub-Mariner, and Captain America. Although DC and Timely characters are well remembered today, circulation figures suggest that the best-selling superhero title of the era was Fawcett Comics' Captain Marvel with sales of about 1.4 million copies per issue. The comic was published biweekly at one point to capitalize on its popularity.


title: Golden Age of Comic Books

text: Patriotic heroes donning red, white, and blue were particularly popular during the time of the second World War following the Shield's debut in 1940. Many heroes of this time period battled the Axis powers, with covers such as "Captain America Comics" #1 (cover-dated March 1941) showing the title character punching Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.


title: Golden Age of Comic Books

text: As comic books grew in popularity, publishers began launching titles that expanded into a variety of genres. Dell Comics' non-superhero characters (particularly the licensed Walt Disney animated-character comics) outsold the superhero comics of the day. The publisher featured licensed movie and literary characters such as Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Roy Rogers and Tarzan. It was during this era that noted Donald Duck writer-artist Carl Barks rose to prominence. Additionally, MLJ's introduction of Archie Andrews in "Pep Comics" #22 (December 1941) gave rise to teen humor comics, with the Archie Andrews character remaining in print well into the 21st century.


title: Golden Age of Comic Books

text: At the same time in Canada, American comic books were prohibited importation under the "War Exchange Conservation Act" which restricted the importation of non-essential goods. Canadian publishers responded to this lack of competition by producing titles of their own, informally called the Canadian Whites. While these titles flourished during the war, they did not survive the lifting of trade restrictions afterwards.


title: Golden Age of Comic Books

text: The educational comic book "Dagwood Splits the Atom" used characters from the comic strip "Blondie". According to historian Michael A. Amundson, appealing comic-book characters helped ease young readers' fear of nuclear war and neutralize anxiety about the questions posed by atomic power. It was during this period that long-running humor comics debuted, including EC Comics' "Mad" and Carl Barks' Uncle Scrooge in Dell's "Four Color Comics" (both in 1952).


title: Golden Age of Comic Books

text: In 1953, the comic book industry hit a setback when the United States Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency was created in order to investigate the problem of juvenile delinquency. After the publication of Fredric Wertham's "Seduction of the Innocent" the following year that claimed comics sparked illegal behavior among minors, comic book publishers such as EC's William Gaines were subpoenaed to testify in public hearings. As a result, the Comics Code Authority was created by the Association of Comics Magazine Publishers to enact self-censorship by comic book publishers. At this time, EC canceled its crime and horror titles and focused primarily on "Mad".


title: Golden Age of Comic Books

text: During the late 1940s, the popularity of superhero comics waned. To retain reader interest, comic publishers diversified into other genres, such as war, Westerns, science fiction, romance, crime and horror. Many superhero titles were cancelled or converted to other genres.


title: Golden Age of Comic Books

text: In 1946, DC Comics' Superboy, Aquaman and Green Arrow were switched from "More Fun Comics" into "Adventure Comics" so "More Fun" could focus on humor. In 1948 "All-American Comics", featuring Green Lantern, Johnny Thunder and Dr. Mid-Nite, was replaced with "All-American Western". The following year, "Flash Comics" and "Green Lantern" were cancelled. In 1951 "All Star Comics", featuring the Justice Society of America, became "All-Star Western". The next year "Star Spangled Comics", featuring Robin, was retitled "Star Spangled War Stories". "Sensation Comics", featuring Wonder Woman, was cancelled in 1953. The only superhero comics published continuously through the entire 1950s were "Action Comics", "Adventure Comics", "Batman", "Detective Comics", "Superboy", "Superman", "Wonder Woman" and "World's Finest Comics".


title: Golden Age of Comic Books

text: Plastic Man appeared in Quality Comics' "Police Comics" until 1950, when its focus switched to detective stories; his solo title continued bimonthly until issue 52, cover-dated February 1955. Timely Comics' "The Human Torch" was canceled with issue #35 (March 1949) and "Marvel Mystery Comics", featuring the Human Torch, with issue #93 (Aug. 1949) became the horror comic "Marvel Tales". "Sub-Mariner Comics" was cancelled with issue #42 (June 1949) and "Captain America Comics", by then "Captain America's Weird Tales", with #75 (Feb. 1950). Harvey Comics' "Black Cat" was cancelled in 1951 and rebooted as a horror comic later that year—the title would change to "Black Cat Mystery", "Black Cat Mystic", and eventually "Black Cat Western" for the final two issues, which included Black Cat stories. Lev Gleason Publications' "Daredevil" was edged out of his title by the Little Wise Guys in 1950. Fawcett Comics' "Whiz Comics", "Master Comics" and "Captain Marvel Adventures" were cancelled in 1953, and "The Marvel Family" was cancelled the following year. The Silver Age of Comic Books is generally recognized as beginning with the debut of the first successful new superhero since the Golden Age, DC Comics' new Flash, in "Showcase" #4 (Oct. 1956).


title: Etrigan the Demon

text: Etrigan the Demon is an antihero appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. Created by Jack Kirby, Etrigan is a demon from Hell who, despite his violent tendencies, usually finds himself allied with the forces of good, mainly because of the alliance between the heroic characters of the DC Universe and Jason Blood, a human to whom Etrigan is bound. Etrigan is commonly depicted as a muscular humanoid creature with orange or yellow skin, horns, red eyes, and pointed, webbed ears, who frequently speaks in rhymes. The character was originally based in Gotham City, leading to numerous team-ups with Batman.


title: Etrigan the Demon

text: Etrigan was inspired by a comic strip of "Prince Valiant" in which the eponymous character dressed as a demon. Kirby gave his creation the same appearance as Valiant's mask. The mask may have been inspired by the silent film "Häxan". Since his conception, Etrigan has been adapted into several forms of media outside of comics, including animated series, films, and video games.


title: Etrigan the Demon

text: Etrigan the Demon first appeared in "The Demon" #1 (September 1972) and was created by Jack Kirby. He created the Demon at the behest of DC, who saw it as likely to be more commercially successful than the Fourth World and thus cancelled "New Gods" and "Forever People" to facilitate his working on the new title. According to Mark Evanier, Kirby had no interest in horror comics, but created Etrigan in response to a demand from DC for a horror character. Kirby was annoyed that the first issue sold so well that DC required him to do sixteen issues and abandon the Fourth World titles before he was done with them.


title: Etrigan the Demon

text: Etrigan returned for a four-issue miniseries in 1987, written and illustrated by "Grendel" creator Matt Wagner. Alan Grant followed this with an Etrigan feature in "Action Comics Weekly" #636-641 and a second ongoing title in 1990. The 1990 series lasted 58 issues, two "Annual"s and one #0 issue. Garth Ennis took over the title beginning with issue #40. Ennis' run included the first appearance of his character Hitman. This series was followed by a miniseries, "Driven Out". Following this, John Byrne's "Blood of the Demon" lasted 17 issues, and ignored much of the continuity (i.e. Harry Matthews is human, and not a pillow with human facial features) that took place after Kirby's initial run.


title: Etrigan the Demon

text: While his first monthly comic book series was short-lived, and his second was canceled after five years, Etrigan remains a popular supporting character with occasional additional miniseries. Popular series in which Etrigan has appeared include Neil Gaiman's "The Sandman", Alan Moore's "Swamp Thing", Kevin Smith's "Green Arrow" and "", Garth Ennis's "Hitman", and "Cosmic Odyssey" by Jim Starlin and Mike Mignola.


title: Etrigan the Demon

text: In "The New 52" rebooted continuity, DC Comics launched a new series featuring Etrigan titled "Demon Knights", with issue #1 on September 14, 2011. It was written by Paul Cornell and drawn by Diógenes Neves.


title: Etrigan the Demon

text: Etrigan, son of the demon Belial, is summoned by the wizard Merlin, his half-brother. Unable to gain the creature's secrets, he bonds the demon with Jason Blood, a knight in King Arthur's Camelot. This renders Jason immortal, which he alternately considers either a penance or a curse.


title: Etrigan the Demon

text: In modern times, Jason Blood resurfaces as a prominent demonologist in Gotham City. Jason is called to the crypt of Merlin and discovers a poem that causes him to switch places with Etrigan (appearing to transform him into Etrigan). To his misfortune, he is followed by the long-lived Morgaine le Fey, who lusts for Merlin's secrets. That leads to Etrigan's first major battle. Over the years, Etrigan both clashes with and occasionally aids Earth's heroes, guided by his own whims and Jason's attempts to turn his infernal power to good use.


title: Etrigan the Demon

text: Some time after his first appearance, Etrigan begins speaking in rhyme due to a promotion in Hell, though he is not limited to rhyme. He leads the forces of Hell in the great battle against the Great Evil Beast and is in brief contact with the entity in its questions about its nature - he barely survives the attempt. His high rank would also see him guide Dream of the Endless from Hell's gates to Lucifer.


title: Etrigan the Demon

text: Some time after this, Jason Blood and Glenda Mark attempt to separate Blood and Etrigan, an event which leads to Blood's ally, Harry Matthews, being devoured, and later turned into a pillow, by Belial. At the end of these events, Etrigan and Blood are separated. Both began to age and during the event known as "Cosmic Odyssey", Blood and Etrigan were merged once again.


title: Etrigan the Demon

text: After the remerging, the relationship between Blood and Etrigan becomes even more contentious. Drawn to Hell by the Archfiend Asteroth, Etrigan stops Asteroth's attempt to sacrifice Glenda Mark, Randu Singh, Merlin and Blood himself (in Hell, Blood and Etrigan were, at the time, separated). Etrigan followed these events by overthrowing the triumvirate of leaders in Hell (Lucifer, Belial and Beezlebub) and taking the symbol of authority in Hell, the Crown of Horns, for himself. Separated from Blood via the Crown's power and about to destroy him, Merlin reminded Blood of his "own" power. Jason Blood spoke the incantation and remerged with Etrigan and they were drawn back to Earth. There, he fought Lobo, Klarion the Witch Boy and his gang and was drawn into the Realm Beyond, where he met the Thing-That-Cannot-Die and was reunited with his older brother, Lord Scapegoat.


title: Etrigan the Demon

text: Upon escape from the Realm Beyond, Etrigan and Blood agreed to work together and teamed with Batman and Robin against the Howler. Soon after, Etrigan was chosen as a political candidate for President of the United States and nearly succeeded in securing the Republican nomination from George H. W. Bush. During his political run, he attempted to gain Superman's endorsement, but was denied it.


title: Etrigan the Demon

text: When Jason Blood's daughter was born, he decided to destroy Etrigan and hired metahuman hitman Tommy Monaghan to help him. After a battle against both Merlin and Etrigan, the two of them rescued the baby and Blood was able to steal the Demon's heart, essentially neutralizing the demon and binding him to Jason's will. At the end of the battle to gain the Demon's heart, Jason Blood left the child, Kathryn Mark, with her mother, Glenda Mark. Jason told Glenda before he had left: "Take care of our daughter, Glenda. I think it would be best if she never knew about her father". Blood then skipped out on paying Monaghan the $2,000,000 he had promised. Etrigan became listless and ceased to rhyme. When Monaghan needed an edge against the demon Mawzir, he conned Blood into returning to Gotham and using Etrigan to retrieve the Ace of Winchesters, an anti-demon rifle, from Hell, all while preparing to force the demonologist to let the monster onto Earth again. Despite the real risk that Etrigan would kill "him" in vengeance, Monahgan traded Etrigan his heart for the Ace of Winchesters, once more forcing Blood to have the full burden of their merging and returning Etrigan to his full strength (though Etrigan reneged on the deal and tried to kill Monaghan "anyway").


title: Etrigan the Demon

text: Despite Blood's own doubts about himself, when the Justice League vanished during their attempt to rescue Aquaman from the past, Batman's emergency program — designed to assemble a substitute Justice League in the event that the originals were ever killed — selected Blood as the team's magic expert, a pre-recorded message Batman had left for Blood assuring the sorcerer that he would not give Etrigan the keys to the Watchtower unless he was certain that he could be controlled. While working with the team, Jason spent some time reinforcing the Watchtower's magical defences. During the subsequent fight with Gamemnae, Jason sacrificed himself to free Zatanna from her control, although he later escaped Gamemnae's quagmire spell thanks to the Martian Manhunter telepathically prompting his transformation into Etrigan. The crisis resolved, Jason handed his duties as the League's magic expert over to Manitou Raven, newly arrived in the present, before departing.


title: Etrigan the Demon

text: The series "Blood of the Demon", plotted and drawn by John Byrne and scripted by Will Pfeifer, began in May 2005. Etrigan apparently loses the restrictions imposed upon him by the wizard Merlin which turned him from evil, caused by his "murder" at the exact moment he was transforming from his human self, Jason Blood, into his demon self. It turns out that the incident has resulted in Jason Blood being able to exert some will over Etrigan's violent nature, whereas previously the two remained separate, only one existing at a time. "Blood of the Demon" ended with issue #17 in July 2006.


title: Etrigan the Demon

text: Etrigan later attempts to use the Trident of Lucifer to take control of Hell. A makeshift Shadowpact team successfully takes the Trident from him and flees to the supernatural Oblivion Bar. Etrigan follows and battles the team inside the bar. He is turned into stone via magical pistols and is used as a hat rack. The pistols' magic would return Etrigan to normal at sunrise, which never happens within the bar.


title: Etrigan the Demon

text: Etrigan takes part in the war for control of Hell on behalf of Neron, duelling Blue Devil. Later, due to the effects of a magical drug Satanus had infested Hell with, he was transformed into a soulless physical human, a perfect duplicate of Jason Blood. Blood, meanwhile, has taken steps as to interfere with any possible attempts of Etrigan's to re-merge.


title: Etrigan the Demon

text: During the "Blackest Night" event, Blood's body is possessed by Deadman, who invokes Etrigan's transformation, using his flames to hold back the Black Lanterns.


title: Etrigan the Demon

text: Etrigan briefly appears in the prelude to the JLA/JSA crossover during the "Brightest Day" event. Etrigan travels to Germany to find a crashed meteorite that contains an unconscious Jade and is drawn into a confrontation with the Justice League after attacking a squad of German superheroes. He mocks the League by claiming they are an inferior team of substitutes, but is ultimately defeated when Donna Troy uses her Lasso of Persuasion to force him back into his Jason Blood form. Jason apologizes for the trouble he caused and departs from the scene, but not before warning Batman and his teammates that the meteorite possesses supernatural qualities. The meteor is later revealed to be the Starheart, a legendary entity that has the power to possess metahumans with magical or elemental abilities.


title: Etrigan the Demon

text: Etrigan is shown aiding the JLA during their mission into Hell, where he helps Hawkman defeat a demonic beast. He also was the guide to the Secret Six in their trip to Hell and led Catman to see the fate of his father, all the while amused by the confusion and pain they were suffering as a result of their visit.


title: Etrigan the Demon

text: In "The New 52", the 2011 reboot of the DC Comics universe, his past and origins are largely changed. Before the Dark Ages, Etrigan was a Rhyming Demon (one not yet good at rhyming) in Lucifer's service and after too many indignities, he led a rebellion. Lucifer waited until the last moment before handing him over to Merlin: the two had struck a deal. Jason of Norwich had been sent to Camelot as a scribe to Merlin and was growing frustrated with life, believing he was meant for greater things and suffering from rages. A prophecy showed that if Jason did not have some sort of quest to force him to heal himself, his rage would grow and cause him to kill his love, Madame Xanadu; at the Fall of Camelot, Merlin bonded Etrigan to Jason in an attempt to provide this quest.


title: Etrigan the Demon

text: Now immortal, Jason and Etrigan came to an agreement and shared their existence. Madame Xanadu began traveling with Jason, only to find Etrigan had now begun falling for her as well and would slaughter innocents if he thought she and Jason were happy together. To placate the demon, she pretended to be in love with him and cuckolding Jason.


title: Etrigan the Demon

text: Over the centuries, Jason became known as Jason o' the Blood and Etrigan continued to practice his rhymes. By the Dark Ages, he and Etrigan became the centre of a rag-tag team of adventurers, the "Demon Knights": Jason/Etrigan, Xanadu, Vandal Savage, Shining Knight, the Horsewoman, Saracen inventor Al Jabr ("The Numbers" in Arabic) and the Amazon Exoristos ("The Exile" in Greek). They first fought Mordru and the Questing Queen's army to a standstill before being tasked by the city of Alba Sarum to return Merlin to life at Avalon (both Jason and Etrigan were enraged at having missed the chance to get him to separate them). Etrigan plotted to betray his teammates' souls and Avalon itself to Lucifer to curry his favour. While he successfully manipulated the Knights into letting Hell invade Avalon (and secretly felt guilty about his treatment of Xanadu), he was himself captured and used by the Questing Queen to gain access as well. Lucifer believed Etrigan had done this deliberately and condemned him; outraged, the demon refused to serve anyone again. At the end of the battle, Jason was tasked as a member of Avalon's Stormwatch, but neither he nor Xanadu wanted to serve Merlin after having Etrigan forced on them again. Jason vowed to not let the demon out so often.


title: Etrigan the Demon

text: In the present, Etrigan's body lies buried in London; it is explained that he was sealed there by his own friends because of his betrayal of them, but magic emanating from it is able to possess persons above, eventually freeing the demon, who promptly attacks Midnighter and Apollo. The entire Stormwatch then battles Etrigan, but even after being defeated, he is able to possess a host and flees.


title: Etrigan the Demon

text: During the "Trinity War" storyline, Etrigan the Demon is among the superheroes that feels the disturbance in the magical plane when Shazam picks up Pandora's Box. In the timeline of "", Zatanna is romantically involved with Etrigan.


title: Etrigan the Demon

text: To transform into Etrigan, Blood must recite the poem from Merlin's crypt (though usually he only recites the last two lines). The poem does not have to be spoken for it to work. For instance, in one adventure, Blood is magically transformed into a fly. Unable to speak, Blood triggers the change by writing out the poem in the dust.


title: Etrigan the Demon

text: To return to human form, a couplet must be recited, either by Etrigan or someone else in his hearing, but there are several versions of it:


title: Etrigan the Demon

text: In other media such as "Justice League Dark", a different poem is used to return Etrigan to human form:


title: Etrigan the Demon

text: Even among demons, Etrigan is considered to be extremely powerful. He has mystically enhanced superhuman strength, to the degree that he can stand against other powerhouses such as Superman, Wonder Woman, and Lobo. He has a high degree of resistance to injury and can project hellfire from his body, usually from his mouth. He has a very high command of magic. Other powers include mystically enhanced fangs and claws, enhanced senses, super speed, agility, telepathy, energy blasts, and precognition. His sadomasochistic nature allows him to enjoy pain as if it were pleasure, making him generally fearless in the face of combat and torture. His healing factor can handle an incredible amount of damage, allowing him to recover from wounds that have removed large sections of his body. He also has pyrokinesis and cryokinesis enabling him to manipulate fire and ice.


title: Etrigan the Demon

text: Jason Blood is a highly skilled hand-to-hand combatant, including mastery in swordsmanship. Jason is adept at magic, and is often called upon to act as an advisor or investigator in occultic matters He has limited precognition and telepathy. Jason is technically immortal due to his connection to the demon Etrigan. He has the combined experiences of Etrigan since he was bonded to the demon. Jason Blood shares all of Etrigan's weaknesses.


title: Etrigan the Demon

text: Etrigan has all the limitations usually associated with a demon, including a weakness towards holy powers, holy water and iron. While his command of magic is strong, but considered to be less than his father, Belial, and half-brother, Merlin the Magician. Additionally, Belial granted the "power of Etrigan" to both Merlin and another son, Lord Scapegoat. He is also helpless against those with magical powers strong enough to control him, such as Morgaine le Fey. He is also said to have a strong frailty for certain sounds as well.


title: Luminiferous aether

text: Luminiferous aether or ether ("luminiferous", meaning "light-bearing") was the postulated medium for the propagation of light. It was invoked to explain the ability of the apparently wave-based light to propagate through empty space (a vacuum), something that waves should not be able to do. The assumption of a spatial plenum of luminiferous aether, rather than a spatial vacuum, provided the theoretical medium that was required by wave theories of light.


title: Luminiferous aether

text: The aether hypothesis was the topic of considerable debate throughout its history, as it required the existence of an invisible and infinite material with no interaction with physical objects. As the nature of light was explored, especially in the 19th century, the physical qualities required of an aether became increasingly contradictory. By the late 1800s, the existence of the aether was being questioned, although there was no physical theory to replace it.


title: Luminiferous aether

text: The negative outcome of the Michelson–Morley experiment (1887) suggested that the aether did not exist, a finding that was confirmed in subsequent experiments through the 1920s. This led to considerable theoretical work to explain the propagation of light without an aether. A major breakthrough was the theory of relativity, which could explain why the experiment failed to see aether, but was more broadly interpreted to suggest that it was not needed. The Michelson-Morley experiment, along with the blackbody radiator and photoelectric effect, was a key experiment in the development of modern physics, which includes both relativity and quantum theory, the latter of which explains the particle-like nature of light.


title: Luminiferous aether

text: In the 17th century, Robert Boyle was a proponent of an aether hypothesis. According to Boyle, the aether consists of subtle particles, one sort of which explains the absence of vacuum and the mechanical interactions between bodies, and the other sort of which explains phenomena such as magnetism (and possibly gravity) that are, otherwise, inexplicable on the basis of purely mechanical interactions of macroscopic bodies, "though in the ether of the ancients there was nothing taken notice of but a diffused and very subtle substance; yet we are at present content to allow that there is always in the air a swarm of streams moving in a determinate course between the north pole and the south".


title: Luminiferous aether

text: Christiaan Huygens's "Treatise on Light" (1690) hypothesized that light is a wave propagating through an aether. He and Isaac Newton could only envision light waves as being longitudinal, propagating like sound and other mechanical waves in fluids. However, longitudinal waves necessarily have only one form for a given propagation direction, rather than two polarizations like a transverse wave. Thus, longitudinal waves can not explain birefringence, in which two polarizations of light are refracted differently by a crystal. In addition, Newton rejected light as waves in a medium because such a medium would have to extend everywhere in space, and would thereby "disturb and retard the Motions of those great Bodies" (the planets and comets) and thus "as it is of no use, and hinders the Operation of Nature, and makes her languish, so there is no evidence for its Existence, and therefore it ought to be rejected".


title: Luminiferous aether

text: Isaac Newton contended that light is made up of numerous small particles. This can explain such features as light's ability to travel in straight lines and reflect off surfaces. Newton imagined light particles as non-spherical "corpuscles", with different "sides" that give rise to birefringence. But the particle theory of light can not satisfactorily explain refraction and diffraction. To explain refraction, Newton's Third Book of "Opticks" (1st ed. 1704, 4th ed. 1730) postulated an "aethereal medium" transmitting vibrations faster than light, by which light, when overtaken, is put into "Fits of easy Reflexion and easy Transmission", which caused refraction and diffraction. Newton believed that these vibrations were related to heat radiation:


title: Luminiferous aether

text: Is not the Heat of the warm Room convey'd through the vacuum by the Vibrations of a much subtiler Medium than Air, which after the Air was drawn out remained in the Vacuum? And is not this Medium the same with that Medium by which Light is refracted and reflected, and by whose Vibrations Light communicates Heat to Bodies, and is put into Fits of easy Reflexion and easy Transmission?


title: Luminiferous aether

text: In contrast to the modern understanding that heat radiation and light are both electromagnetic radiation, Newton viewed heat and light as two different phenomena. He believed heat vibrations to be excited "when a Ray of Light falls upon the Surface of any pellucid Body". He wrote, "I do not know what this Aether is", but that if it consists of particles then they must be exceedingly smaller than those of Air, or even than those of Light: The exceeding smallness of its Particles may contribute to the greatness of the force by which those Particles may recede from one another, and thereby make that Medium exceedingly more rare and elastic than Air, and by consequence exceedingly less able to resist the motions of Projectiles, and exceedingly more able to press upon gross Bodies, by endeavoring to expand itself.


title: Luminiferous aether

text: In 1720, James Bradley carried out a series of experiments attempting to measure stellar parallax by taking measurements of stars at different times of the year. As the Earth moves around the sun, the apparent angle to a given distant spot changes. By measuring those angles the distance to the star can be calculated based on the known orbital circumference of the Earth around the sun. He failed to detect any parallax, thereby placing a lower limit on the distance to stars.


title: Luminiferous aether

text: During these experiments, Bradley also discovered a related effect; the apparent positions of the stars did change over the year, but not as expected. Instead of the apparent angle being maximized when the Earth was at either end of its orbit with respect to the star, the angle was maximized when the Earth was at its fastest sideways velocity with respect to the star. This effect is now known as stellar aberration.


title: Luminiferous aether

text: Bradley explained this effect in the context of Newton's corpuscular theory of light, by showing that the aberration angle was given by simple vector addition of the Earth's orbital velocity and the velocity of the corpuscles of light, just as vertically falling raindrops strike a moving object at an angle. Knowing the Earth's velocity and the aberration angle enabled him to estimate the speed of light.


title: Luminiferous aether

text: Explaining stellar aberration in the context of an aether-based theory of light was regarded as more problematic. As the aberration relied on relative velocities, and the measured velocity was dependent on the motion of the Earth, the aether had to be remaining stationary with respect to the star as the Earth moved through it. This meant that the Earth could travel through the aether, a physical medium, with no apparent effect – precisely the problem that led Newton to reject a wave model in the first place.


title: Luminiferous aether

text: A century later, Thomas Young and Augustin-Jean Fresnel revived the wave theory of light when they pointed out that light could be a transverse wave rather than a longitudinal wave; the polarization of a transverse wave (like Newton's "sides" of light) could explain birefringence, and in the wake of a series of experiments on diffraction the particle model of Newton was finally abandoned. Physicists assumed, moreover, that, like mechanical waves, light waves required a medium for propagation, and thus required Huygens's idea of an aether "gas" permeating all space.


title: Luminiferous aether

text: However, a transverse wave apparently required the propagating medium to behave as a solid, as opposed to a fluid. The idea of a solid that did not interact with other matter seemed a bit odd, and Augustin-Louis Cauchy suggested that perhaps there was some sort of "dragging", or "entrainment", but this made the aberration measurements difficult to understand. He also suggested that the "absence" of longitudinal waves suggested that the aether had negative compressibility. George Green pointed out that such a fluid would be unstable. George Gabriel Stokes became a champion of the entrainment interpretation, developing a model in which the aether might, like pine pitch, be dilatant (fluid at slow speeds and rigid at fast speeds). Thus the Earth could move through it fairly freely, but it would be rigid enough to support light.


title: Luminiferous aether

text: In 1856, Wilhelm Eduard Weber and Rudolf Kohlrausch measured the numerical value of the ratio of the electrostatic unit of charge to the electromagnetic unit of charge. They found that the ratio equals the product of the speed of light and the square root of two. The following year, Gustav Kirchhoff wrote a paper in which he showed that the speed of a signal along an electric wire was equal to the speed of light. These are the first recorded historical links between the speed of light and electromagnetic phenomena.


title: Luminiferous aether

text: James Clerk Maxwell began working on Michael Faraday's lines of force. In his 1861 paper "" he modelled these magnetic lines of force using a sea of molecular vortices that he considered to be partly made of aether and partly made of ordinary matter. He derived expressions for the dielectric constant and the magnetic permeability in terms of the transverse elasticity and the density of this elastic medium. He then equated the ratio of the dielectric constant to the magnetic permeability with a suitably adapted version of Weber and Kohlrausch's result of 1856, and he substituted this result into Newton's equation for the speed of sound. On obtaining a value that was close to the speed of light as measured by Hippolyte Fizeau, Maxwell concluded that light consists in undulations of the same medium that is the cause of electric and magnetic phenomena.


title: Luminiferous aether

text: Maxwell had, however, expressed some uncertainties surrounding the precise nature of his molecular vortices and so he began to embark on a purely dynamical approach to the problem. He wrote another paper in 1864, entitled "A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field", in which the details of the luminiferous medium were less explicit. Although Maxwell did not explicitly mention the sea of molecular vortices, his derivation of Ampère's circuital law was carried over from the 1861 paper and he used a dynamical approach involving rotational motion within the electromagnetic field which he likened to the action of flywheels. Using this approach to justify the electromotive force equation (the precursor of the Lorentz force equation), he derived a wave equation from a set of eight equations which appeared in the paper and which included the electromotive force equation and Ampère's circuital law. Maxwell once again used the experimental results of Weber and Kohlrausch to show that this wave equation represented an electromagnetic wave that propagates at the speed of light, hence supporting the view that light is a form of electromagnetic radiation.


title: Luminiferous aether

text: The apparent need for a propagation medium for such Hertzian waves can be seen by the fact that they consist of orthogonal electric (E) and magnetic (B or H) waves. The E waves consist of undulating dipolar electric fields, and all such dipoles appeared to require separated and opposite electric charges. Electric charge is an inextricable property of matter, so it appeared that some form of matter was required to provide the alternating current that would seem to have to exist at any point along the propagation path of the wave. Propagation of waves in a true vacuum would imply the existence of electric fields without associated electric charge, or of electric charge without associated matter. Albeit compatible with Maxwell's equations, electromagnetic induction of electric fields could not be demonstrated in vacuum, because all methods of detecting electric fields required electrically charged matter.


title: Luminiferous aether

text: In addition, Maxwell's equations required that all electromagnetic waves in vacuum propagate at a fixed speed, "c". As this can only occur in one reference frame in Newtonian physics (see Galilean relativity), the aether was hypothesized as the absolute and unique frame of reference in which Maxwell's equations hold. That is, the aether must be "still" universally, otherwise "c" would vary along with any variations that might occur in its supportive medium. Maxwell himself proposed several mechanical models of aether based on wheels and gears, and George Francis FitzGerald even constructed a working model of one of them. These models had to agree with the fact that the electromagnetic waves are transverse but never longitudinal.


title: Luminiferous aether

text: By this point the mechanical qualities of the aether had become more and more magical: it had to be a fluid in order to fill space, but one that was millions of times more rigid than steel in order to support the high frequencies of light waves. It also had to be massless and without viscosity, otherwise it would visibly affect the orbits of planets. Additionally it appeared it had to be completely transparent, non-dispersive, incompressible, and continuous at a very small scale. Maxwell wrote in "Encyclopædia Britannica":


title: Luminiferous aether

text: Aethers were invented for the planets to swim in, to constitute electric atmospheres and magnetic effluvia, to convey sensations from one part of our bodies to another, and so on, until all space had been filled three or four times over with aethers. ... The only aether which has survived is that which was invented by Huygens to explain the propagation of light.


title: Luminiferous aether

text: Contemporary scientists were aware of the problems, but aether theory was so entrenched in physical law by this point that it was simply assumed to exist. In 1908 Oliver Lodge gave a speech on behalf of Lord Rayleigh to the Royal Institution on this topic, in which he outlined its physical properties, and then attempted to offer reasons why they were not impossible. Nevertheless, he was also aware of the criticisms, and quoted Lord Salisbury as saying that "aether is little more than a nominative case of the verb "to undulate"". Others criticized it as an "English invention", although Rayleigh jokingly stated it was actually an invention of the Royal Institution.


title: Luminiferous aether

text: By the early 20th century, aether theory was in trouble. A series of increasingly complex experiments had been carried out in the late 19th century to try to detect the motion of the Earth through the aether, and had failed to do so. A range of proposed aether-dragging theories could explain the null result but these were more complex, and tended to use arbitrary-looking coefficients and physical assumptions. Lorentz and FitzGerald offered within the framework of Lorentz ether theory a more elegant solution to how the motion of an absolute aether could be undetectable (length contraction), but if their equations were correct, the new special theory of relativity (1905) could generate the same mathematics without referring to an aether at all. Aether fell to Occam's Razor.


title: Luminiferous aether

text: The two most important models, which were aimed to describe the relative motion of the Earth and aether, were Augustin-Jean Fresnel's (1818) model of the (nearly) stationary aether including a partial aether drag determined by Fresnel's dragging coefficient, and George Gabriel Stokes' (1844)


title: Luminiferous aether

text: model of complete aether drag. The latter theory was not considered as correct, since it was not compatible with the aberration of light, and the auxiliary hypotheses developed to explain this problem were not convincing. Also, subsequent experiments as the Sagnac effect (1913) also showed that this model is untenable. However, the most important experiment supporting Fresnel's theory was Fizeau's 1851 experimental confirmation of Fresnel's 1818 prediction that a medium with refractive index "n" moving with a velocity "v" would increase the speed of light travelling through the medium in the same direction as "v" from "c"/"n" to:


title: Luminiferous aether

text: That is, movement adds only a fraction of the medium's velocity to the light (predicted by Fresnel in order to make Snell's law work in all frames of reference, consistent with stellar aberration). This was initially interpreted to mean that the medium drags the aether along, with a "portion" of the medium's velocity, but that understanding became very problematic after Wilhelm Veltmann demonstrated that the index "n" in Fresnel's formula depended upon the wavelength of light, so that the aether could not be moving at a wavelength-independent speed. This implied that there must be a separate aether for each of the infinitely many frequencies.


title: Luminiferous aether

text: The key difficulty with Fresnel's aether hypothesis arose from the juxtaposition of the two well-established theories of Newtonian dynamics and Maxwell's electromagnetism. Under a Galilean transformation the equations of Newtonian dynamics are invariant, whereas those of electromagnetism are not. Basically this means that while physics should remain the same in non-accelerated experiments, light would not follow the same rules because it is travelling in the universal "aether frame". Some effect caused by this difference should be detectable.


title: Luminiferous aether

text: A simple example concerns the model on which aether was originally built: sound. The speed of propagation for mechanical waves, the speed of sound, is defined by the mechanical properties of the medium. Sound travels 4.3 times faster in water than in air. This explains why a person hearing an explosion underwater and quickly surfacing can hear it again as the slower travelling sound arrives through the air. Similarly, a traveller on an airliner can still carry on a conversation with another traveller because the sound of words is travelling along with the air inside the aircraft. This effect is basic to all Newtonian dynamics, which says that everything from sound to the trajectory of a thrown baseball should all remain the same in the aircraft flying (at least at a constant speed) as if still sitting on the ground. This is the basis of the Galilean transformation, and the concept of frame of reference.


title: Luminiferous aether

text: But the same was not supposed to be true for light, since Maxwell's mathematics demanded a single universal speed for the propagation of light, based, not on local conditions, but on two measured properties, the permittivity and permeability of free space, that were assumed to be the same throughout the universe. If these numbers did change, there should be noticeable effects in the sky; stars in different directions would have different colours, for instance.


title: Luminiferous aether

text: Thus at any point there should be one special coordinate system, "at rest relative to the aether". Maxwell noted in the late 1870s that detecting motion relative to this aether should be easy enough—light travelling along with the motion of the Earth would have a different speed than light travelling backward, as they would both be moving against the unmoving aether. Even if the aether had an overall universal flow, changes in position during the day/night cycle, or over the span of seasons, should allow the drift to be detected.


title: Luminiferous aether

text: Although the aether is almost stationary according to Fresnel, his theory predicts a positive outcome of aether drift experiments only to "second" order in formula_1, because Fresnel's dragging coefficient would cause a negative outcome of all optical experiments capable of measuring effects to "first" order in formula_1. This was confirmed by the following first-order experiments, which all gave negative results. The following list is based on the description of Wilhelm Wien (1898), with changes and additional experiments according to the descriptions of Edmund Taylor Whittaker (1910) and Jakob Laub (1910):


title: Luminiferous aether

text: Besides those optical experiments, also electrodynamic first-order experiments were conducted, which should have led to positive results according to Fresnel. However, Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (1895) modified Fresnel's theory and showed that those experiments can be explained by a stationary aether as well:


title: Luminiferous aether

text: While the "first"-order experiments could be explained by a modified stationary aether, more precise "second"-order experiments were expected to give positive results. However, no such results could be found.


title: Luminiferous aether

text: The famous Michelson–Morley experiment compared the source light with itself after being sent in different directions, looking for changes in phase in a manner that could be measured with extremely high accuracy. In this experiment, their goal was to determine the velocity of the Earth through the aether. The publication of their result in 1887, the null result, was the first clear demonstration that something was seriously wrong with the aether hypothesis (Michelson's first experiment in 1881 was not entirely conclusive). In this case the MM experiment yielded a shift of the fringing pattern of about 0.01 of a fringe, corresponding to a small velocity. However, it was incompatible with the expected aether wind effect due to the Earth's (seasonally varying) velocity which would have required a shift of 0.4 of a fringe, and the error was small enough that the value may have indeed been zero. Therefore, the null hypothesis, the hypothesis that there was no aether wind, could not be rejected. More modern experiments have since reduced the possible value to a number very close to zero, about 10.


title: Luminiferous aether

text: A series of experiments using similar but increasingly sophisticated apparatuses all returned the null result as well. Conceptually different experiments that also attempted to detect the motion of the aether were the Trouton–Noble experiment (1903), whose objective was to detect torsion effects caused by electrostatic fields, and the experiments of Rayleigh and Brace (1902, 1904), to detect double refraction in various media. However, all of them obtained a null result, like Michelson–Morley (MM) previously did.


title: Luminiferous aether

text: These "aether-wind" experiments led to a flurry of efforts to "save" aether by assigning to it ever more complex properties, while only few scientists, like Emil Cohn or Alfred Bucherer, considered the possibility of the abandonment of the aether hypothesis. Of particular interest was the possibility of "aether entrainment" or "aether drag", which would lower the magnitude of the measurement, perhaps enough to explain the results of the Michelson-Morley experiment. However, as noted earlier, aether dragging already had problems of its own, notably aberration. In addition, the interference experiments of Lodge (1893, 1897) and Ludwig Zehnder (1895), aimed to show whether the aether is dragged by various, rotating masses, showed no aether drag. A more precise measurement was made in the Hammar experiment (1935), which ran a complete MM experiment with one of the "legs" placed between two massive lead blocks. If the aether was dragged by mass then this experiment would have been able to detect the drag caused by the lead, but again the null result was achieved. The theory was again modified, this time to suggest that the entrainment only worked for very large masses or those masses with large magnetic fields. This too was shown to be incorrect by the Michelson–Gale–Pearson experiment, which detected the Sagnac effect due to Earth's rotation (see Aether drag hypothesis).


title: Luminiferous aether

text: Another, completely different attempt to save "absolute" aether was made in the Lorentz–FitzGerald contraction hypothesis, which posited that "everything" was affected by travel through the aether. In this theory the reason the Michelson–Morley experiment "failed" was that the apparatus contracted in length in the direction of travel. That is, the light was being affected in the "natural" manner by its travel through the aether as predicted, but so was the apparatus itself, cancelling out any difference when measured. FitzGerald had inferred this hypothesis from a paper by Oliver Heaviside. Without referral to an aether, this physical interpretation of relativistic effects was shared by Kennedy and Thorndike in 1932 as they concluded that the interferometer's arm contracts and also the frequency of its light source "very nearly" varies in the way required by relativity.


title: Luminiferous aether

text: Similarly the Sagnac effect, observed by G. Sagnac in 1913, was immediately seen to be fully consistent with special relativity. In fact, the Michelson-Gale-Pearson experiment in 1925 was proposed specifically as a test to confirm the relativity theory, although it was also recognized that such tests, which merely measure absolute rotation, are also consistent with non-relativistic theories.


title: Luminiferous aether

text: During the 1920s, the experiments pioneered by Michelson were repeated by Dayton Miller, who publicly proclaimed positive results on several occasions, although they were not large enough to be consistent with any known aether theory. However, other researchers were unable to duplicate Miller's claimed results. Over the years the experimental accuracy of such measurements has been raised by many orders of magnitude, and no trace of any violations of Lorentz invariance has been seen. (A later re-analysis of Miller's results concluded that he had underestimated the variations due to temperature.)


title: Luminiferous aether

text: Since the Miller experiment and its unclear results there have been many more experimental attempts to detect the aether. Many experimenters have claimed positive results. These results have not gained much attention from mainstream science, since they contradict a large quantity of high-precision measurements, all the results of which were consistent with special relativity.