Volume 1 • Issue 1.5 October 13, 1998
(C) John Reed
Electro Magnetic Radiation and Visible Light
Are they the same?
Albert Einstein
1.5 begin excerpt
... the absence of the aether and the Michaelson and Morley result that appeared to show that visible light's measured velocity is independent to the motion of its source, or its observers, supported Einstein's two postulates.
1] The laws of physics are measured the same by all observers in uniform motion relative to each other.2] The measure of the velocity of light in a vacuum is the same emitted from a source in uniform motion or at rest.
... they both refer to the measurement of physical quantities. The first postulate suggests that the determination of the laws of physics can be subject to the motion of the measurer. It also assumes that the observers are measuring events in an identical manner. I may expand on this in a later paper but for now I wish to primarily deal with the second postulate. A significant lack of clarity exists in this postulate by virtue of the inclusion "...measure of the velocity of light in a vacuum..." , which I will explain shortly.
At the time Einstein put this forward, the second postulate appeared to be at odds with the principles of classical mechanics. The academic community's acceptance of a rate of travel, the measure of which is not affected by any other rate of travel was not easily accomplished.
The Michaelson and Morley experiments appeared to support the idea and the postulate gained acceptance. However, until the publication of The Physics Preview it has remained as an unexplained and mysterious postulate, and accounted for primarily by the idea for time dilation. I suspect that no one took the time to rationally examine it further, since reason is, and has been held in such high disregard by the mathematical physicist.
If we accept the second postulate, a better conclusion is that currently, there is no detectable component of motion from electromagnetic radiation, within the observer's field of measure. This is a logical, and I might add, essentially unavoidable consequence of the postulate itself. If no component of motion exists in the observer's field of measure, the measure of light's velocity cannot be taken by measuring its effect on the field. The idea that one can stand, say, in a vacuum and measure light's velocity as it passes by, is of course, absurd.
From this process of reasoning we can conclude that the velocity of emr is measured at its source of emission, or at its destination. The measure of the oscillation requires a physical detector. A discrete material object from which, and/or, upon which, the illumination occurs.
If we measure light at its source of emission, or at its destination, do we measure it as we would a water wave? No. We measure it as it interacts with an object, not as it passes an object. Consider the night sky from the middle of the pacific ocean. You look up and see a black bowl dotted with billions of light sources. Here you cannot see the light of our Sun, even though you know its illuminating the opposite side of the Earth. Look to the far horizon all around and you will see no evidence of the Sun's light unless the moon is on or near that horizon. Light exists all around you and you cannot see it. Can we assume that the universe around us is filled with light?
It is an emission, absorption, and reflection process, and requires a minimum of two objects. ..
. ... we have another property of emr that is significant. Electromagnetic radiation has a constant velocity.
Imagine starting your car in the morning and traveling at constant speed. That means as soon as you engage the gears you travel at a certain speed. No speeds approaching the constant speed are allowed. You are either traveling at say, 50 miles per hour, or you are not traveling. Instantaneous velocity is not possible for a mass at zero velocity. A mass must overcome inertial resistance and accelerate to 50 miles per hour. The mainstream physicist believes that emr does not share this limitation. Again, mysteriously, emr has an instantaneous velocity of [c].
It is difficult for a rational mind to let mysteries stand as the basis for a paradigm.
It is clear that no quantity outside of comic book heroes, wizards, and magicians, can go from zero velocity to [c] in no time. We must conclude that the physical quantity we detect as emr, is only detected by us, at a certain velocity. It follows that emr must be moving at velocity before we detect it. And in fact, we detect frequency and wavelength oscillations at the source of emission, or at the receiving destination, or both...
1.5 end excerpt
author's note:
There is another aspect of light's velocity that deserves to be introduced in this sampler from The Physics Preview. We assume that emr propagates according to Newton's first law regarding mass. That it will continue into the far reaches of rarified space, perhaps even forever. Indeed, by this view enhanced with the photon as light's ultimate particle, the universe is expanding, even while each photon gets further and further apart.
In an unencumbered space there is no preferred direction. But if an object is moving at all in a space, its direction of motion defines a preference. So let us impart motion to a satellite and place it in orbit. From that platform we can send it on another direction to escape from the solar system. What kind of a magnitude of velocity is required to cause an object to escape from the solar system? Certainly a velocity greater than any comet or planet. Although it takes less force to deliver a smaller payload to orbit, the smaller and the larger, orbit at the same velocity, if set in the same trajectory.
I suspect that the space vehicles we have sent to the outer reaches of the solar system have no greater velocity than the fastest comet. I see no reason why such an object will not fall back to the Sun, either in orbit or in impact. This having been said, I return to Newton's first law and the propagation of light.
Newton's first law states that a moving object will continue to move in a straight line unless it is acted upon by a force. But this can only occurr in an unencumbered space where there is no preference for direction. Which brings us to a conundrum. In such a space, the direction of the moving object defines a preference, even if its original motion results from God throwing it like a stone. In fact however, a moving object is either under the influence of a force even as it continues to move, or, sooner or later, as it travels rectilinearly through intergalactia, it will come upon another object which will influence its direction, even by direct impact. Newton's first law gives us the idea of a free and unencumbered space, even as it provides an operational, but ideal case of momentum conservation. So, the assumption that an object will continue moving in a straight line forever, is not a logical consequence of Newton's first law. The consequence is that the motion will change as the result of the space it occurs within.
Newton's first law derives from the conservation of momentum. We come now to the massless, and I might add, imaginary photon. It is interesting to note that the continual propagation of the photon in our minds is based on Newton's first law. But the photon is massless with no momentum to conserve. Yet if we give it velocity, we have energy to conserve. Without momentum, how does the photon maintain its velocity?
Which brings me to one of my first major insights. Light is pushed out from its source, and continues to propagate in a manner that directly depends on the push... This eliminates the requirement for a material aether enabling the propagation of EMR. It also suggests that EMR will cease moving immediately as soon as its source quits, provided it is on the extreme boundary of an electromagnetic field.