The Myth of the Photon Nature of Light
Date: Monday, September 18, 2006 @ 21:37:24 UTC
Topic: Science
There seems to be quite a bit of confusion surrounding the concept of the electromagnetic photon. Electromagnetic radiation, at the higher frequency end of the spectrum, gets emmited and absorbed by atomic and molecular matter in discrete quanta of energy. This is due entirely to the quantized nature of atomic and molecular electron orbits. The discrete pulses of electromagnetic radiation contain discrete values of energy related to their frequency by the well known Planck law.
It shouldn't be too difficult to deduce from the above considerations that Planck's constant is a function of the structure of atomic and molecular matter, and that it has got nothing to do with wave mechanics.
Maxwell showed that electromagnetic radiation is a wave in a sea of molecular vortices. Equation (132) of part I of Maxwell's 1861 paper 'On Physical Lines of Force' is Newton's equation for the speed of sound, which links wave speed to density and transverse elasticity. It can be written as E=mc².
Maxwell uses this equation to show that light is an electromagnetic wave. Maxwell's theory of light illustrates that a ray of light is totally coherent. The B field represents the vorticity of his molecular vortices, and is aligned along the axial plane Y in his sea of vortices. The E field represents the linear polarization of his vortices in the X direction. When a vortex is disturbed, the E and B fields will oscillate. This oscillation will propagate laterally in the Z direction, as a result of the tangential angular force dA/dt.
The fact that electromagnetic radiation exhibits both wave behaviour and photon behaviour leads many to conclude that electromagnetic radiation is dual natured. Photons are discrete quanta of totally coherent electromagnetic radiation, and when they are emmitted from a source in many directions, this can indeed give the illusion of a particle nature.
However, a photon is not a particle in its own right. A photon is merely a wave pulse travelling through the luminiferous medium. A photon is not a real entity in its own right. Electromagnetic radiation is unequivocally a wave phenomenon.
See 'The Double Helix Theory of the Magnetic Field', at
http://www.wbabin.net/science/tombe.pdf
Yours sincerely, David Tombe
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