It's not a violation of conservation of energy in a closed system because we are not in a closed system.

Isn't that what I said?

and the certainty of an "ether", which most "scientists" choose to dismiss out of hand.

Most scientists do not dismiss it out of hand. In fact both of the "big theories" of the 20th century use Ether as foundational. They just call it different things. GR calls it "the fabric of spacetime", and QM calls it spacetime foam. Both are fancy words for "ether". Pretty much every single theory, mainstream (e.g. string theory variants, quantum gravity) and fringe (e.g. bohmian mechanics) uses ether. They just call it something else.

The only thing M&M showed was that there was no discernment in the speed of light as the earth moved in its orbit around the sun or on its axis. It had nothing to do with showing there is no "ether", but that there was no static grid structure to the universe (really they just showed it for the earth in its orbit around the sun).

The point is, most scientist adhere to the concept of ether. Its just the word thats verbotten. I used to think that the purposeful shunning on that word was hubris and dogma (like the cold fusion thing), now I think it may have been intentional, to keep us from thinking of that as a unifying substructure. To prevent us from achieving a SUT. I don't know if that's true. I suppose its more suspicion than anything, but it might be.

It's not a violation of conservation of energy in a closed system because we are not in a closed system.

Isn't that what I said?

and the certainty of an "ether", which most "scientists" choose to dismiss out of hand.

Most scientists do not dismiss it out of hand. In fact both of the "big theories" of the 20th century use Ether as foundational. They just call it different things. GR calls it "the fabric of spacetime", and QM calls it spacetime foam. Both are fancy words for "ether". Pretty much every single theory, mainstream (e.g. string theory variants) and fringe (e.g. bohmian mechanics) uses ether. They just call it something else.

The only thing M&M showed was that there was no discernment in the speed of light as the earth moved in its orbit around the sun or on its axis. It had nothing to do with showing there is no "ether", but that there was no static grid structure to the universe (really they just showed it for the earth in its orbit around the sun).

The point is, most scientist adhere to the concept of ether. Its just the word thats verbotten. I used to think that the purposeful shunning on that word was hubris and dogma (like the cold fusion thing), now I think it may have been intentional, to keep us from thinking of that as a unifying substructure. To prevent us from achieving a SUT. I don't know if that's true. I suppose its more suspicion than anything, but it might be.