The Ether Dispute -- Revisiting Einstein's argument that space is a physical substance

There’s an unresolved dispute over the physical nature of space. It occurs because of what Bacon called our “dull and deceptive human senses.” On one hand, space appears empty. This led biblical and modern cosmologists to conclude space is an “empty vacuum.”
But, when astrophysicists from Newton to Einstein studied space, they found it exhibits physical behaviors – for example, it physically carries light and heat from the sun to earth. This led the astrophysicists to conclude space is an i...