(originally submitted 29 November 1918)

(1918)
in Verhandlungen der Deutschen Physikalischen Gesellschaft, 20, 261.

In the above-mentioned note, it is claimed that aberration can be explained by the theory of a light-bearing aether which moves with matter. This claim depends upon a theory proposed by Stokes, which is referred to briefly in the third edition of Drude's Optik. Thanks to the importance of the subject and due to Stokes' authority, I deem it necessary to stress that that theory is unsustainable because it rests on other contradictory presuppositions. Namely, if the aether is to be carried along by bodies in space, then its velocity vector cannot at all be free of rotation (and stable), as the Stokes derivation of the aberration-laws proposes. This follows from well-known propositions of potential-theory.

In truth, the hypothesis of an aether which moves with space-bodies is incompatible with the aberration-law.