page_title: Lorentz ether theory
section_title: Principles and conventions
hierarchical_section_title: Lorentz ether theory / Principles and conventions
caption_attribution_description: Henri Poincaré (1854-1912), mathématicien français
context_page_description: What is now often called Lorentz ether theory has its roots in Hendrik Lorentz's "theory of electrons", which was the final point in the development of the classical aether theories at the end of the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century.
  Lorentz's initial theory was created between 1892 and 1895 and was based on a completely motionless aether. It explained the failure of the negative aether drift experiments to first order in v/c by introducing an auxiliary variable called "local time" for connecting systems at rest and in motion in the aether. In addition, the negative result of the Michelson–Morley experiment led to the introduction of the hypothesis of length contraction in 1892. However, other experiments also produced negative results and Lorentz tried in 1899 and 1904 to expand his theory to all orders in v/c by introducing the Lorentz transformation. In addition, he assumed that also non-electromagnetic forces transform like electric forces. However, Lorentz's expression for charge density and current were incorrect, so his theory did not fully exclude the possibility of detecting the aether.
caption: Henri Poincaré
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