 Although Mach does not mention the globes thought experiment specifically, it is easy to read an implicit response to it in the things he does say: nobody is competent to say what would happen, or what would be possible, in a universe devoid of matter other than two globes. In other words, Mach would question Newton’s starting premise that the cord connecting the two globes in an otherwise empty universe might be under tension, and indeed under a wide range of different quantities of tension. So, for Mach, neither the bucket nor the globes can establish the existence of absolute space.