system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
In the 19th century, the concept of ether was disproven, but the Higgs field sounds a lot like ether to me. How are they different?
gpt
The main feature of the ether is that it created a universal reference frame as the medium in which light traveled. In order for it to work it had to be possible to tell how fast you were moving with respect to the ether, for example by comparing the speed of light rays traveling in different directions with respect to yourself.

The fact that it was a field that permeates the universe was not the fact that was disproven, and indeed all of modern particle physics is based on the idea that fields permeate the universe. None of these fields, however, have the property that they create a preferred reference frame. It is never possible to do an experiment that tells you how fast you are moving with respect to the Higgs field, for example.