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Waves and Fields
In 1802 Thomas Young did the double-slit experiment, and invented
the wave theory of light to explain his observations. In 1831 Michael
Faraday discovered electromagnetic induction, and invented field
theory to explain those observations. 1n1873 James Clerk Maxwell
bought into both theories, and suggested that light was an electromagnetic
wave whose speed could be measured with respect to what was then
called the luminiferous aether. Then, in 1887, Michelson and Morley
showed that the speed of light could not be measured with respect
to the aether_ Finally, in 1905, Albert Einstein, through his rare
insight, dropped the luminiferous aether idea but kept Young's wave theory and Faraday's field theory in his 1915 general relativity theory, even though his 1905 geometry denies them both. In Einstein's 1905 geometry, space and time come in as a pair of opposites so that if the space and time separations between two events are equal, their total space-time separation is zero. tf a light beam can get from one event to the other in vacuuo, then their space and time separations are equal and their space-time separation is zero. The "speed of light" is therefore not
a speed at all. It is simply the ratio of space to time. One light
year is equal to one year. And, since that puts the total space-time
separation between the emission and absorption events at zero for
both gravitational and electromagnetic radiation in vacuuo, we should,
perhaps, dispense with both the wave and field theories in the explanation
of our observations. Einstein took his famous equation, E = mc 2 ("in which energy is set equal to mass") as he wrote it. However, it is usually taken to mean that mass can be converted to energy, and that energy can be converted to mass, much, as in a swinging pendulum, gravitational energy is converted to kinetic energy on the down-swing and kinetic energy is converted to gravitational energy on the upswing. But that equation would have been E m = K (The sum of mass and energy is constant). That's not what he meant, and its not what he wrote. His equation simply states that what we call mass is just potential energy as Swami Vivekananda had suggested to Nikola Testa in1896. But if one fails to notice that Einstein's geometry rules out the existence of photons and gravitons, because the total space-time separations between their emission and absorption events is zero, then there appears to be energy in the radiation state without mass, and then, of course, Einstein's famous equation could not hold. No one sees electromagnetic waves, and no one sees
photons. All we know about electromagnetic radiation is the emission
and absorption events. Let's stick to the observations! As Thomas Huxley remarked
when he ran into Darwin's theory of evolution, "How extremely
stupid not to have thought of that." John L. Dobson, June
19, 2002 4135 Judah St. San Francisco, CA 94122 (415) 665-4054
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