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Thursday, April 25, 2019

About Light


ABOUT LIGHT


I walked into a co-worker’s office with a technical calculator in my hand to ask him a question, something related to our work. I was a chemical engineer, but he had a double PhD, one in chemical engineering and another in electrical engineering, so I often went to his office for technical advice and also for interesting discussions on many other subjects. I leaned against the door frame as the discussion drifted to the fascinating subject of light.

He told me that he had long sought for a physical analogy for light. We use such analogies to describe many aspects of what we cant see, like an electron orbiting a nucleus can be thought of as a planet orbiting a sun or the moon orbiting the earth, and those visual analogies can be drawn as an image on a blackboard and discussed.  That helps us find and refine the mathematics and the physics and the forces that define the processes involved.

But, so far, light is a mystery. It has a set of dual properties that can define light as both a particle and as a wave.  But how can we draw an image that represents both a particle and a wave.

However he had found a much better, much simpler analog:
  •           “A photon of light is neither a particle nor a wave.”
His explanation was
  •           "A photon of light is TWO particles orbiting each other at the speed of light, and traveling together in one direction at the speed of light."

Think of it as two neutrino sized particles, lets call them “pips”, one is positively charged and one negative. They are orbiting each other with a speed of ‘C’, that is ~300,000 kilometers or ~186,000 mile per second. AND they are traveling together at that same speed through space.  These are very tiny, but their speed is reportedly the fastest in the universe, i.c. "C".

When we use an instrument to detect the photon by stopping the photon, it appears to be a particle with some minuscule amount of mass, just like Einstein taught us. When light passes a massive body, such as the sun, it bends. And, when it gets close to a black hole, gravity will pull it into the black hole. However, when we use an instrument that looks at the photon from the side, or as it passes the instrument, the photon looks like a wave… it is actually two opposing waves.

That would certainly explain some of the mysteries connected with a photon of light…. but he had more. He went into a long mathematical explanation of what an electron is. He said that an electron is three photons, or 6 pips, “trapped” in a tight orbit. He explained that (statistically I think) this cluster of three negative pips and three positive pips would have a constantly changing “core area” of two positive and one negative pip and a constantly moving exterior shell of one positive and two negative: that leaves one extra negative charge on the exterior shell, thus an electron is seen as being negative.

Then he tried to explain, with a long long equation, how the energy of these six pips (many values of ‘C’) was generating the mass of the electron (remember E=mC2 ?). The math was way above my pay grade, but the logic seemed plausible.

He continued to explain what happened to five (5) photons that entered a similar cluster. Again he put the math on the green board. It was the same long formula but with two different different numerical
factors, the first and last numbers. It looked something like this:

A) 3 photons or 6 pips (an electron?) looked like this: 2 * ( xxx * yyy * zzz * qqq) * ԉ7
and B) 5 photons or 10 pips (???) looked like this: 12 * ( xxx * yyy * zzz * qqq) * ԉ12

He then informed me that the second object with 5 photons or 10 pips was a proton??? At this statement I reacted. “No," I said "you only have a ratio of 10 to six or five to 3.  That is not the mass ratio of a proton to an electron !"

His response was ‘do the math’. If we divide the energy formula B by the energy formula A all the factors disappear but this:   B / A = (12 * ԉ12) / (2 * ԉ7 ) = 6 ԉ5 , or six pi to the 5th power.

Then he said “You have a calculator, do the math.” I looked down at my calculator and input the number. I instantly recognized the first four digits as the mass ratio of the proton to an electron.. some number stuck in my memory from decades before.

I looked up at him in astonishment and said, “That’s it.”    He smiled at me and echoed “That’s it.”

  • Six times pi to the fifth power is 1836.118109
  • The mass ratio of a proton to an electron as reported in Wikipedia is:                                μ = mp/me = 1836.152673

Thus, there is a difference of only 0000.034 or a difference of 3 in the sixth significant figure between these two calculations. Is that number, coming from a technical study of the energies involved, just a coincidence???

As I absorbed the wave of understanding that came from my calculator, my friend smiled and said, “In Genesis He said ‘Let there be light’… that is all there is! Everything is composed of light.”

I have mentioned this
concept of light to a handful of physicists. Without even offering to look at any of my friend’s work, or his math, or even ask me for his name they immediately dismiss it as being “numerology”.  After all, my friend only has two PhD’s to his credit.  However, neither of those degrees are in ‘physics’; so why should they even consider a different approach by an “outsider”. Jeremiah once said 5:21 “...O foolish people, and without understanding; which have eyes, and see not; which have ears, and hear not:”

What they have rejected, and thus failed to read or hear is his ability to also formulate Planck’s constant (to 5 significant figures), the characteristics of all the quarks, and other Physics constants and phenomena. All of his math and conclusions were based on the number and the positive or negative charges of ‘pips’ in the photon, all based on this unique and easily understood definition of the photon.

In parallel to my friend’s experience there is now another theory of light, the Pilot Wave Theory. It is much simpler than the QED or “quantum theory” and it is easier to understand,... that is, Pilot Wave theory is logical,... while QED defies logic. An interesting historical note is that Pilot Wave was proposed by a grad student 92 years ago at the same 1927 Solvay Conference where QED was proposed and accepted an pursued, attracting most of the research funding in physics. QED was illogical, but won, supposedly because the math was a little simpler, or perhaps because the leaders at that 1927 conference had developed QED. (Politics?)


Sadly, I do not have any any published work by my friend on this subject.  He has not been able to attract any funding to test his concept.  However, below is a video on the Pilot Wave theory... which most physicists have ignored for well over 90 years. At last a few people, mostly in France, have given it serious consideration, so perhaps the 100 year mark will bring new hope to this simpler, more logical theory. Then, in another fifty years or so, perhaps my friend’s theory will get an audience.

I read a book a few decades ago called “Ideas in Conflict” (Theodore J. Gordon, 1966). In it the author said that in order for a person to get a truly new concept accepted by the world, they only have three hurdles to overcome “Organized Religions, Organized Government, and, surprisingly, Organized SCIENCE.” In my reading of recent and ancient history, and in my personal experience, I have found this to be true many, many times.