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 HYPOTHESES ON LUMINOUS ETHER AND ON AN EXPERIMENT THAT APPEARS TO DEMONSTRATE THAT THE MOTION OF BODIES CHANGES THE VELOCITY WITH WHICH LIGHT PROPAGATES IN THEIR INTERIOR

H. Fizeau

Several theories on wave systems have been proposed to attempt to explain the abberation of light. First, Fresnel and, more recently, Doppler, Stokes, Challis and several others have published papers on this subject, but it does not seem that any of the theories so far proposed have been able to completely satisfy the physicists. Because of a lack of definite knowledge about the properties of the luminous ether and its relationship to ponderable matter, it has been necessary to introduce hypotheses, among which are those which are more or less probable, but none that can be considered as proven.

These can be reduced to three main hypotheses, all of which refer to the state in which the ether inside a transparent body should be considered:

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