Dear Jarek
I haven't realized about your last reply. I am sorry for this.
You: Could we build some "flowmeter" for hypothetical eather? I'm open, but honestly rather very skeptical.
The problem of detection is really complicated but in principle it seems to be feasible. My reference 17 (Eq. 14) gives a clue. There are some other plausible proposals for its detection, see C. Christov Nonlinear Analysis 71 (2009) e2028_e2044
As you say, in the present view, space-time is a continuous empty geometrical vessel filled with fields (gauge, fermion, Higgs, electromagnetic). If this view has been useful, I think the opposite should work much better. One can conceive the fluid as space itself and the fields as states of this fluid with solitons (particles) moving through it. So there is no need of assuming space and the fluid as you imagine. Instead, the fluid plays the roll of space and at the same time of medium for solitons and fields.
You: Another reason I didn't even mentioned them in the essay (besides length limit), is that I don't see a way to make it viscosity-free, so twist-like waves would always dissipate there.
Well I think it is natural to conceive dissipation if space is assumed as a fluid, though dissipation will be so tiny that for low energies can be neglected. At higher energies or cosmological distances the dissipation certainly will play an important role. This is my point and this is why I having asking you about dissipation for photon-like solitons.
You: You have also mentioned Casimir effect as argument for such fluid --I disagree: this energy shouldn't be seen as energy of the lowest state of potential well, but as energy of the well itself: invested while forming it.
I haven't work out the idea, but you may be interested in taking a look at the essay of Luis de la Pena and Cetto. They discuss the zero-point field energy in more detail.
You: "I think light can be treated like a classical wave, there is no need to modify it at all but I do not know if this version is compatible with the topological formalism." What do you mean by classical wave? Standard plane waves are completely incompatible with that optical photon can be produced by a single atom and then after years absorbed by a single atom -- you need a mechanism to keep this energy localized: to make it soliton.
Just remember that in reality atoms do not emit light at one single frequency but at different frequencies centered around an average frequency. Although in theoretical matters (for simplification) one usually deals with single frequencies in reality what is measured is an envelop of waves with different frequencies. In the field of optics (or x-ray spectroscopy, etc.) this is very well known, nobody has ever measured a monochromatic wave. The distribution of energy as function of frequency is always localized in a finite region of space and never resembles a Dirac function (one-single frequency). One classical example is the Gaussian packet. This same idea is used in QM. By the way the conception of space as a fluid can make QM local and give a non-probabilistic interpretation to the wave function, so all the mysteries of this theory automatically disappear. This is in relation to your question:
What direct or indirect consequences would you expect from such "flowing aether?
Physicists have been attempting to unify for the last 30 or 40 years GR and QM and many people question whether one of these theories is fundamentally incorrect. I think that the topic of this contest has a lot to do with this problem. As far as I can see considering space as a fluid could solve many of the most important problems in physics but at the high cost of not only reinterpreting well established facts (such as the CMBR, the expansion of the universe, dark matter, etc.) but also dropping GR. As you know relativity treats space as mere geometry and it seems that this view is utterly incompatible with mine (see Christov article).
Cheers
Israel