Yes — we have a unified approach that describes light as just an aspect of the aether, which is why I used that specific term. But much of that wasn’t known at

Yes — we have a unified approach that describes light as just an aspect of the aether, which is why I used that specific term. But much of that wasn’t known at the time the original aether theory was posited. Both MM and LIGO were looking for evidence of “the stuff waves move through” — and LIGO found it by changing the experiment, because you can’t measure our own motion because we squish, as we’re also made of aether stuff. Per wiki: > The experiment compared the speed of light in perpendicular directions in an attempt to detect the relative motion of matter, including their laboratory, through the luminiferous aether, or "aether wind" as it was sometimes called. The result was negative, in that Michelson and Morley found no significant difference between the speed of light in the direction of movement through the presumed aether, and the speed at right angles. You also have the MM experiment wrong — they weren’t looking for a pervasive wind, but for signal from our motion through a static aether, by looking for a difference in speed of light aligned with that motion versus perpendicular. Which is why it’s cancelled by relativity. The mistake of MM was thinking that the aether only pertained to light and matter was something else that could move through it — but it turns out everything is aether, including us.