  We discuss a scenario of ``the path to physics at the Planck scale'' where
todays theory of the interactions of elementary particles, the so called
Standard Model (SM), emerges as a low energy effective theory describing the
long distance properties of a sub--observable medium existing at the Planck
scale, which we call ``ether''. Properties of the ether can only be observable
to the extent that they are relevant to characterize the universality class of
the totality of systems which exhibit identical low energy behavior. In such a
picture the SM must be embedded into a ``Gaussian extended SM'' (GESM), a
quantum field theory (QFT) which includes the SM but is extended in such a way
that it exhibits a quasi infrared (IR) stable fixed point in all its couplings.
Some phenomenological consequences of such a scenario are discussed.
