Understanding Light.

[quickquestion]

I am trying to understand light and why it travels at the speed of light.

 

I have been reading Phenomenal Physics by Isaac Mcphee and I've noticed some logical incoherence in the book. On page 62, the author says "Faraday had shown that electricity and magnetism are both one and the same; light is a product of the interaction between these two things." This is logically incoherent, because first he says they are one and the same, then he says they are 2 different things. If electricity and magnetism were one and the same, then why are they called different names, first of all. Saying electricity and magnetism is one and the same, is like saying a fat person jumping into a pool of mud is one and the same, because both affect each other and have related and proportional outputs.

 

He then makes a diagram which implies Light is Normal to electric displacement and magnetic force, according to Maxwell. So I would assume that fire should have some kind of magnetic field, since it emits light. "In Maxwells theory, light is nothing more than a repeated oscillation between elecricity and magnetism...Inside a ray of light one may imagine a complex interaction between electricty and magnetism: electricity is produced, which creates a bit of electricity, which creates a bit of magnetism, and so on. According to Maxwell, the result of this interaction between electricity and magnetism is not just a single ray of light but an entire electromagnetic field." - Phenomenal Physics, Issac McPhee, 2016. If according to Maxwell, light is a magnetic field, then why does it have no effect on magnets.

 

Thus...I have formed a theory.

 

My hypothesis is, that Newton was indeed correct about F=ma.

 

And einstein was semi-correct...what he called spacetime was actually more like a bad description of aether. That is why space time diagrams are dimensionally wrong representations of aether...similar to how 2d pictures of topogrophy fields are dimensionally wrong representations of terrain and are inaccurate and somewhat wrong, but basically more or less give you an idea of the terrain.

 

Thus my theory is that light itself is the aether wobbling. And the F=ma and that aether is so light, that the smallest force will accelerate the aether at an astounding velocity.

Edited April 20, 2017 by quickquestion

[exchemist]

I am trying to understand light and why it travels at the speed of light.

 

I have been reading Phenomenal Physics by Isaac Mcphee and I've noticed some logical incoherence in the book. On page 62, the author says "Faraday had shown that electricity and magnetism are both one and the same; light is a product of the interaction between these two things." This is logically incoherent, because first he says they are one and the same, then he says they are 2 different things. If electricity and magnetism were one and the same, then why are they called different names, first of all. Saying electricity and magnetism is one and the same, is like saying a fat person jumping into a pool of mud is one and the same, because both affect each other and have related and proportional outputs.

 

He then makes a diagram which implies Light is Normal to electric displacement and magnetic force, according to Maxwell. So I would assume that fire should have some kind of magnetic field, since it emits light. "In Maxwells theory, light is nothing more than a repeated oscillation between elecricity and magnetism...Inside a ray of light one may imagine a complex interaction between electricty and magnetism: electricity is produced, which creates a bit of electricity, which creates a bit of magnetism, and so on. According to Maxwell, the result of this interaction between electricity and magnetism is not just a single ray of light but an entire electromagnetic field." - Phenomenal Physics, Issac McPhee, 2016. If according to Maxwell, light is a magnetic field, then why does it have no effect on magnets.

 

Thus...I have formed a theory.

 

My hypothesis is, that Newton was indeed correct about F=ma.

 

And einstein was semi-correct...what he called spacetime was actually more like a bad description of aether. That is why space time diagrams are dimensionally wrong representations of aether...similar to how 2d pictures of topogrophy fields are dimensionally wrong representations of terrain and are inaccurate and somewhat wrong, but basically more or less give you an idea of the terrain.

 

Thus my theory is that light itself is the aether wobbling. And the F=ma and that aether is so light, that the smallest force will accelerate the aether at an astounding velocity.

So, you say you don't understand what light is, you quote from a simplified source for science beginners and then you announce your own theory, which contradicts established physics. Can't you see how inappropriate that is? I suggest you would do better to make more effort to understand the established physics before jumping to the conclusion that a new theory is needed.  

 

I agree that - as you describe it - the book you have been looking at does not seem very satisfactory. But Wiki has a good article on light as an electromagnetic wave. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_radiation

 

Why not take a look at that, and then ask questions about it? I'm only a chemist and not an expert on Maxwell's equations but I may be able to help. The theory does work pretty well in fact. 

 

(And there is good evidence that there is no aether, so we can dispense with that at the outset.)

Edited April 20, 2017 by exchemist

[A-wal]

I am trying to understand light and why it travels at the speed of light.

I agree that - as you describe it - the book you have been looking at does not seem very satisfactory. But Wiki has a good article on light as an electromagnetic wave. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_radiation

 

Why not take a look at that, and then ask questions about it? I'm only a chemist and not an expert on Maxwell's equations but I may be able to help. The theory does work pretty well in fact.

And then to really confuse you, it's also a bunch of particles called photons. There is no model for light that works in all situations. If two contradictory models are needed to describe something then both models are inaccurate approximations. Don't be fooled into thinking that light is well understood, very little about nature is really understood by science but scientists love to pretend that this isn't the case.

 

(And there is good evidence that there is no aether, so we can dispense with that at the outset.)

Actually there's no evidence that refutes the aether idea and as far as I know there never could be because it's such an nonsensical concept. It's just that there's no need for it and no evidence that supports it, putting in the same class as god.

Edited April 20, 2017 by A-wal

[exchemist]

Fine, I was wrong we understand nothing and you might as well make up any old sh1t to try to explain it. 

Edited April 21, 2017 by exchemist

[JMJones0424]

Actually there's no evidence that refutes the aether idea and as far as I know there never could be because it's such an nonsensical concept. It's just that there's no need for it and no evidence that supports it, putting in the same class as god.

The evidence that there is no aether through which light moves as a wave exists, to claim otherwise is a fabrication.  You may find the idea nonsensical, but it was assumed to be required for light to behave the way it does prior to tests showing that aether doesn't exist.  When light was found to act as a wave, and because all other waves travel through a medium, it was a natural assumption that the cosmos must be filled with a medium that light waves travel through.  The Michelson-Morley experiment showed that this assumption was false.  It, and all experiments since then, have provided evidence that refutes the aether idea.

Edited April 21, 2017 by JMJones0424

[A-wal]

Fine, I was wrong we understand nothing and you might as well make up any old sh1t to try to explain it. 

Light needs two non-compatible models to fully explain its behaviour and you think light is well understood? Making any old sh1t to try to explain data is a trait of mainstream science, dark matter, dark energy, dark flow, inflation, the big bang itself, etc.

 

The evidence that there is no aether through which light moves as a wave exists, to claim otherwise is a fabrication.  You may find the idea nonsensical, but it was assumed to be required for light to behave the way it does prior to tests showing that aether doesn't exist.  When light was found to act as a wave, and because all other waves travel through a medium, it was a natural assumption that the cosmos must be filled with a medium that light waves travel through.  The Michelson-Morley experiment showed that this assumption was false.  It, and all experiments since then, have provided evidence that refutes the aether idea.

I think you misunderstood my point. A claim that makes good sense is one that can be proven false. The aether is such a badly defined concept that it can't be proven wrong, I'm referring to the aether as preferred frame of reference. It seems like the concept has become a hypothetical special frame used people who can't grasp or don't like the fact that all inertial motion is relative.

[exchemist]

Light needs two non-compatible models to fully explain its behaviour and you think light is well understood? Making any old sh1t to try to explain data is a trait of mainstream science, dark matter, dark energy, dark flow, inflation, the big bang itself, etc.

 

I think you misunderstood my point. A claim that makes good sense is one that can be proven false. The aether is such a badly defined concept that it can't be proven wrong, I'm referring to the aether as preferred frame of reference. It seems like the concept has become a hypothetical special frame used people who can't grasp or don't like the fact that all inertial motion is relative.

Perhaps it would be helpful if you could clarify what you think Michelson and Morley were trying to establish, and whether you think they were idiots to attempt it. 

[A-wal]

Whether or not the speed of light was affected by the motion of the receiver I think. No I definitely don't think they were idiots to be interested in that question.

 

Proponents of an aether can just claim that the aether was moving to make it appear the speed of light is constant. I've heard the term aether drift but that might be something else entirely.

[exchemist]

Well, the link JMJones provided gives you the answer. I quote: "It [the experiment] compared the speed of light in perpendicular directions, in an attempt to detect the relative motion of matter through the stationary luminiferous aether("aether wind"). The result was negative, in that the expected difference between the speed of light in the direction of movement through the presumed aether, and the speed at right angles, was found not to exist; this result is generally considered to be the first strong evidence against the then-prevalent aether theory....."

 

In other words, they were unambiguously and explicitly testing the existence of a luminiferous aether.

 

As I understand it, there were certainly suspicions about it at the time, not only because of the seemingly magical properties such an aether would need to have in order not to be detectable directly, but also because Maxwell's equations do not explicitly require a medium - unless one takes the permeability and permittivity of free space to be measures of the deformability of an aether.

 

But it was an aether they were testing for. 

Edited April 21, 2017 by exchemist

[exchemist]

Light needs two non-compatible models to fully explain its behaviour and you think light is well understood? Making any old sh1t to try to explain data is a trait of mainstream science, dark matter, dark energy, dark flow, inflation, the big bang itself, etc.

 

 

It might also help if you can explain what you mean by light needing "two non-compatible models" to explain its behaviour.  I'm not sure I know what you are referring to here.

[A-wal]

Okay but those are very specific cases, luminiferous aether and aether theory but I'm talking the general concept and that it hasn't gone away because some people simply can't get their heads around relative motion. I've heard it claimed that the aether moves in response ti the motion of the observer which doesn't even make sense, moves relative to what?

 

My other point is that there is no working model that can describe the behaviour of light. There's two models (wave and particle) and I wouldn't really class either as a working model because neither can explain all the behaviour of light and the two are incompatible with each other, yet most physicists will claim that light is well understood.

[exchemist]

Okay but those are very specific cases, luminiferous aether and aether theory but I'm talking the general concept and that it hasn't gone away because some people simply can't get their heads around relative motion. I've heard it claimed that the aether moves in response ti the motion of the observer which doesn't even make sense, moves relative to what?

 

My other point is that there is no working model that can describe the behaviour of light. There's two models (wave and particle) and I wouldn't really class either as a working model because neither can explain all the behaviour of light and the two are incompatible with each other, yet most physicists will claim that light is well understood.

I don't think that is true at all. There is no mechanical model that fits the behaviour of light, it is true, but the behaviour of light is pretty fully accounted for in QM without any internal inconsistencies. Wave-particle duality is represented in QM by position and momentum being conjugate variables in QM (Fourier transforms of one another). You may say with some justice that the interpretation of this model is still argued over, but the model accounts successfully for what we observe, so far as I am aware. 

 

I cannot, offhand think of phenomena involving light that cannot be accounted for by current theory. Do you have something in mind? 

[A-wal]

What exactly causes the wave nature of light to collapses into the particle nature of light considering that the particle model can apply even if the photons are released separately?

 

What is it exactly that collapses the wave function. QM just says it does,

[quickquestion]

The Michelson Morley experiment is Irrelevant to me because the aether I believe in is not lumineferous ether wind.

 

My aether, Adagio Aether is what I call it, moves with the earth's rotation and is affected by matter.

If you have an experiment which disproves such aether then please show it to me.

 

If light is a ElectroMagnetic field, then why does strong light have no effect on magnets? If light was magnetic, then wouldn't a strong laser push or pull a magnet (without touching the magnet.) Hint: Strong lasers have no effect on magnets, therefore I challenge Maxwell. If you prove me otherwise, then I will X out this paragraph.

Edited April 21, 2017 by quickquestion

[A-wal]

See! :)

[quickquestion]

See! :)

See what? Light?

[exchemist]

The Michelson Morley experiment is Irrelevant to me because the aether I believe in is not lumineferous ether wind.

 

My aether, Adagio Aether is what I call it, moves with the earth's rotation and is affected by matter.

If you have an experiment which disproves such aether then please show it to me.

 

If light is a ElectroMagnetic field, then why does strong light have no effect on magnets? If light was magnetic, then wouldn't a strong laser push or pull a magnet (without touching the magnet.) Hint: Strong lasers have no effect on magnets, therefore I challenge Maxwell. If you prove me otherwise, then I will X out this paragraph.

No it doesn't work like that in science. 

 

It is the person making the claim that needs to show evidence for it. What is your evidence?

 

Regarding light affecting magnets, how do you think a radio antenna works? And how do you think absorption of visible light by atoms and molecules occurs?