{Given that BD#Z has opened a new thread with this post, I'll include my original reply here as well...}
Hey, some great thoughts there! And very close to reality. The gravitational field isn't the electromagnetic aether but it is remarkably similar.
Each of the forces we know has its own "aether-like" field - gravitation, eletromagnetism , weak nuclear, and strong nuclear. The search for the unified field theory (that dominated Einstein's later life) has already met with great success. The EM and Weak fields have been shown to be aspects of one field: the electro-weak field. We have the unproven but highly-suggested Grand Unified Theory (GUT) which brings EM, weak and strong together as one Grand field.
The problem has always been getting Gravitation and the other fields to work together. The problem is quantum mechanics. We have no complete quantum theory of gravitation yet, and there are no classical theories of Weak and Strong. However, we can look at the Maxwell's classical (original) theory of EM and combine that with Gravitation. This was done the best part of a century ago, though it was little noticed at the time.
What you do is imagine space-time as being five dimensional, not four. There is an extra space dimension. And we look at the theory of General Relativity (gravitation) in this five dimensional universe. We then roll up the extra dimension, so that it appears as a little loop (by little I mean as far below the atomic scale as the atomic scale is from us). So the universe looks four dimensional (3 space plus time) but each point is not a point but actually a little loop, and you have to specify where on the loop you are looking, and this extra positional number is the fifth dimension. Ok, the universe looks just like ours with normal gravitation. BUT there is something extra! There is also electromagnetism. It wasn't there in the 5d theory before we rolled up that extra dimension, but the bit of gravitation that got rolled up now appears in our effective 4d theory as electromagnetism!!! So electromagnetism IS gravitation.
Now this is far from proved, but this principle lies at the heart of some of our advanced theoretical ideas about the universe: String Theory, M Theory and SuperGravity. It is also key to why we LIKE extra dimensions in our theories, rather than viewing them as problems. Extra dimensions are one way of getting unification.
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