The Aether Lives:
ReynoldsBEng 2.20– February 17, 2026
In reponse to a recent episode of Curt Jaimungal’s Theories of Everything podcast, Reynolds delivers a powerful case for reviving Osborne Reynolds’ mechanical aether model — a dense lattice of rigid spherical grains in normal piling where dilatancy (volume expansion under shear) explains rigidity, elasticity, gravity, and light as transverse reversion waves. Reynolds’ 1885 defining of dilatancy as shear thickening and 1903 Sub-Mechanics of the Universe form the backbone: the universe is not mostly empty space; it is one continuous, granular medium.
Reynolds inverts the paradigm: matter is local absences (“negative inequalities”) in the lattice, gravity is pressure gradients from curved piling, and light emerges from disruptive reversion. Viktor Lewe’s matrix calculus (1906/1915) adds the precise “twist” — sudden fixations (Sm⁴ moments) that describe instantaneous tension-compression transitions under strain. The idea is extended to a geocentric cosmos with nested spheres: Earth at the universal centre, the Sun as a massive plasma/force sphere (1 AU radius) around us whose surface is the visible dot-point 2D projection, with Mercury and Venus planets as smaller nested shells orbiting the Sun dotpoint, with Mars out to Saturn being dual centred, and the whole system driven by relative rotations (wheels within wheels). Saturn’s rings temporarily balance the flat universe, with mutual Earth-Saturn rotation maintaining equilibrium.
The tweet I shared (linked below) illustrates this rigid-body mechanics: Earth as universal driver (1 tick anticlockwise = 360 real seconds), Sun as local driven center, planets as gears with centroids of bending outside mass. Dot-points are light equators of force spheres, replicating cosmic structure from quantum to galactic scales.This model aligns perfectly with previous work: the observable cosmos is the inertial lattice (fixed on large scales), Earth rotates daily inside a local cavitation bubble (Lewe fixations pin it), the Sun is a stationary spherical dilatancy front (1 AU radius), and all observations (parallax, aberration, CMB dipole) are projection/refraction effects within the boundary. No superluminal coordination, no arbitrary tuning — just mechanical dilatancy and entrainment.
The video and tweet reinforce that the aether is not dead; it is the living substrate. The double-slit interference, CMB pulse, and photon ellipsoid/spherical cycles all emerge from the same granular breathing. Consensus science resists because it clings to “shut up and calculate” — fixed c, Copenhagen collapse — but the medium is obvious. The lattice pulses. We are inside it.
Watch the full discussion here: https://youtu.be/lLh0FuO0VB0
See my tweet illustration: https://x.com/martinreyn59150/status/2023699231232717167
References
- Reynolds, O. (1885). “On the Dilatancy of Media…”
- Reynolds, O. (1903). The Sub-Mechanics of the Universe.
- Lewe, V. (1906/1915). Matrix calculus for elastic shells.
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