ZP OWER C ORPORATION PAGE OF 352 Z ERO P OINT E NERGY ascendence at the time. This theory assumed that the aether was physically separate from matter -- that is, they were not related. The demise of the concept of the aether resulted from the tumultuous evolution of the physical concepts of the early twentieth century (quantum theory and general relativity. Quantum mechanicists developed the concepts of "probability density" and non-causality. General relativists picked upon the shorthand of space-time developed by Minkowski in 1908 for special relativity and expanded it to a mathematical "space-time continuum" Although most specifically denied a physical medium, Einstein clearly realized that both special and general relativity were based on fluid dynamical models Handbook of Physics, Condon and Odishaw, Page 2-50, Section 29}. The Derivation of Maxwell's Equations One of the most successful theoretical works in physics is Maxwell's theory of electricity and magnetism. Maxwell's equations united and mathematically quantified the interaction of electrical and magnetic effects. In deriving these equations, Maxwell made certain assumptions about the nature of the medium that carried electricity, magnetism, and light. The primary assumption used by Maxwell was that the underlying medium could be described using the perfect fluid vortex theory developed by Hemholtz. "The consideration of the action of magnetism on polarized light leads, as we have seen, to the conclusion that in a medium under the action of magnetic force is something belonging to the same mathematical class as an angular velocity, whose axis is in the direction of the magnetic force, forms apart of the phenomenon. "This angular velocity cannot be that of any portion of the medium of sensible dimensions rotating as a whole. We must therefore conceive the rotation to be that of very small portions of the medium, each rotating on its own axis. This is the hypothesis of molecular vortices. "The motion of these vortices, though, as we have shewn ..., does not sensibly affect the visible motions of large bodies, maybe such as to affect that vibratory motion on which the propagation of light, according to the undulatory theory, depends. The displacements of the medium, during the propagation of light, will produce a disturbance of the vortices, and the vortices when so disturbed may react on the medium so as to affect the mode of propagation of the ray. "... We shall therefore assume that the variation of vortices caused by the displacement of the medium is subject to the same conditions which Hemholtz, in his great memoir on Vortex-motion, has shewn to regulate the variation of the vortices of a perfect fluid."