On Wednesday, October 30, 2024 at 1:46:46 PM UTC-6 John Clark wrote:
On Wed, Oct 30, 2024 at 1:09 PM Alan Grayson <[email protected]> wrote: *> when repeated MM experiments had null results, what model was developed, if any, to explain the existence of EM wave motions? AG * *The greatest experimental physicist of the 19th century, Michael Faraday, developed a model that can explain electromagnetic waves, and he did it before the **Michelson **and Morley experiment. Faraday visualized two fields that permeated all of space, an electric field and a magnetic field; it can be thought of as arrows associated with every point in space with the arrows indicating the direction the field was increasing or decreasing and the length of the arrow indicating the magnitude of that rate of increase. Faraday thought that if you changed the direction or the length of just one of those arrows in one field then you would cause nearby arrows in both fields to also change. However, although Faraday had keen physical intuition, he was the last great physicist that lacked any mathematical ability, and you need mathematics to determine exactly how the fields change and to get actual numbers out of the idea that you can use. * *The greatest theoretical physicist of the 19th century, James Maxwell, had enormous mathematical ability and he was able to translate Faraday's intuitive and imprecisefeeling into precise mathematical language. And when Maxwell found a formula that allowed him to calculate the speed of electromagnetic waves from just the Permeability and Permittivity of the vacuum, and that speed happened to be the speed of light, then everybody realized that light must be an electromagnetic wave and Faraday and Maxwell must be correct. * *And then Quantum Field Theory (QFT) came along, and AFAIK, there is no assumed underlying field for the photon, the force carrier for EM forces! Baffling. AG* lgp -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/a62b04e7-f088-4d5a-a958-a32ee9fa1ee0n%40googlegroups.com.
