Classical unified field theories version of the general-relativistic field equation expressed the property that the universe was "self-gauging". Since the simplest cosmological model (the De Sitter universe) that solves that equation is a spherically symmetric, stationary, closed universe (exhibiting a cosmological red shift, which is more conventionally interpreted as due to expansion), it seemed to explain the overall form of the universe. Like many other classical unified field theorists, Eddington considered that in the Einstein field equations for general relativity the stress–energy tensor formula_1, which represents matter/energy, was merely provisional, and that in a truly unified theory the source term would automatically arise as
Fundamental interaction distance". Conversely, during the 1820s, when explaining magnetism, Michael Faraday inferred a "field" filling space and transmitting that force. Faraday conjectured that ultimately, all forces unified into one. In 1873, James Clerk Maxwell unified electricity and magnetism as effects of an electromagnetic field whose third consequence was light, travelling at constant speed in a vacuum. The electromagnetic field theory contradicted predictions of Newton's theory of motion, unless physical states of the luminiferous aether—presumed to fill all space whether within matter or in a vacuum and to manifest the electromagnetic field—aligned all phenomena and thereby held valid the Newtonian principle relativity