Good point, Nandan, and as I see it, this is the exact problem Einstein also encountered.
Here is the set up, per my view.
Einstein did not know about the Big Bang when he proposed his general relativity theory.
This is extremely important because he worked therefore with a model that was incomplete.
And yet, he figured out the calculation framework, so we can tell he was smart. Others in his day also had similar approaches, Planck probably the best known. They intuited what the answer had to be, yet they did not explain why. They also did not explain how, except through the proposed frameworks.
Do you see it already?
When there are three motions we are involved in, then we can get a certain view on them that is accurate.
If there is, however, an anomaly, such as the precession of Mercury, then we have a choice to make.
1/ Will we work with something we cannot see (the aether, for instance) to explain the special outcome, or…
2/ Do we look for the mechanical explanation of a fourth motion that we had not yet considered?
I am with option #2.
Einstein did not know about a fourth motion (which is of course the ‘First Motion’ because it got established first). Einstein had not heard of the Big Bang model yet.
Here are the motions, shown in reverse importance:
4. Earth spinning
3. Solar System revolution
2. Milky Way circulation
1. Big Bang sent off
Einstein did not incorporate the ‘Big Bang sent off’ into his model. So he missed out on the most important motion of them all. He worked with just two or three motions, and not with the fourth motion.
Sadly, he also did not look for a mechanical explanation once he heard about the Big Bang model.
Why does Einstein’s framework predict the things it predicted? Because the First Motion is a straight line, so it is not based on gravity.
The other three motions can be declared as based on gravity, so Einstein’s framework worked indeed. Adding that First Motion does nothing for the calculations, but it does everything for explaining in a mechanical manner why Mercury has an anomalous precession compared to the other planets.
So, while the aether is a nice proposal, it still does the same thing that Einstein did: It does not incorporate all motions for matter while matter is moving through space.
Aether is the recognition that there is something extra going on. But it is not the right answer because it uses the old model and not the updated model for the universe.
—
Two things to keep apart:
Matter, it is always on the move, and a galaxy is the largest setting in which we can see collective behavior.
Space, it is a phenomenon, which means it is real but not with any attributes of its own.
Matter takes up space, and travels through space (which takes time). Space does not move, does not interact, does not have any borders.
Therefore, we can fully abandon the idea of spacetime if we focus on the behavior (motions) of matter. But we must incorporate all motions then, and not leave one out.
