Introduction
I feel like I have to apologize for this topic. I am not a scientist, not a physicist, not even a mathematician. Yet, I want to question the very foundation of modern physics, from a philosophical point of view. A philosopher, at least, I can somewhat claim to be! Cosmology is a proper topic for philosophy -- and it has been entwined with physics for most of the 20th century.
This monograph has a simple purpose - to point out an alternative paradigm for the cosmology that seems to underlie all of modern physics -- a paradigm which would radically solve many seeming paradoxes.
This idea is amazingly simple, and solves some of physics' most interesting problems. How can light be both particle and wave? How can gravity and electromagnetic phenomena ever be reconciled under one theory? The philosophical concept described here was developed by a professor of theology, who was also a chemist. He was Father Gordon F. Knight, C.S.Sp., who died about 1961.
Several years after his death, another student of his sent me a copy of a monography by Daniel P. Fitzpatrick, Jr., which had the same basic approach, but much enhanced. That work was published in 1966 and is entitled "Unification of the Fields of Gravity, Magnetism, and Electrostatics Using a Law of Relative Motion".
In Oct. of 2007, the author of this piece above, Daniel Fitzpatrick, Jr., found it here on the web, and sent me a note. In 2006, he published a much more comprehensive work, which takes the basic idea and extends it considerably. It is entitled "Universities Asleep at the Switch". Fitzpatrick has managed to glean the best of a lot of other people's work, and to put it together in a comprehensive fashion to fundamentally explain the nature of matter. It's all based on scalar standing waves. The general approach is described in the literature as WSM, Wave Structure of Matter, but he carries it to the nth degree, incorporating gravity and making predictions should be verifiable. If you are interested in this stuff at all, I recommend you read his work. You can find information about him and the book here: http://www.amperefitz.com/reviews.html.
I highly recommend the book. Almost every page has some startling insight. How gravity works, the speed of light, quanta, wave - etc. It is pretty amazing.
My Purpose
This current document is primitive indeed, compared to what Mr. Fitzpatrick has accomplished. On the other hand, this piece does explain a bit the basic philosophy or cosmology that underlies this approach. If nothing else, you can see some of the history of the development of the ideas.
I would encourage the reader to focus on the basic ideas here presented, and not on the naivete of the author. We need a real physicist to grasp this and expound it -- perhaps that can be you!
A Different Paradigm of Interaction
Father Knight was a theology professor, but he had this penchant for trying to make sense of the whole universe. He came up with this radically different 'paradigm' of the physical world, based on philosophical assumptions that were a departure from the norm.
Most scientists work within a basic philosophical paradigm or set of assumptions, that are rarely examined.
Given that apology, as you read, give your imagination some freedom here, and see if the resulting paradigm doesn't feel much simpler than the prevailing view, even though the premise seems outlandish at first.
Effect versus movement
One of the basic problems with our current view of reality is that subatomic "things" look like both waves and particles -- depending on how you detect them or study them. Something about an uncertainty principle. We have discrete quantities of energy that seem to have wave properties -- they even seem to split and impact two different "things" at the same time. Or, a resulting effect, a wave pattern, is caused long after the 'particles' departed the light source, and they seem to have anticipated the interference in their path. It seems that our need to conceptualize the "effect" that one thing has on another is so rooted in the old philosophical construct of "matter" that we must have "something" moving from one "thing" to the other, be it a wave in a medium or a particle.
If one can let go of this macro view of things, where objects seem to bump into each other, and operate in a world were they simply “affect” one another, some amazing possibilities open up. This solves the problem of the so called “dividing photon” and it does not violate any “rules of common sense”, if you accept this one modest assumption about how the cosmos operates.
The assumption is: what if all electromagnetic phenomena are simply effects propagated through space at a discrete speed (the speed of light), with nothing, I repeat, nothing, actually traversing the distance.
Just make the assumption for a moment, that things simply affect other things in predictable ways with an "effect" which is propagated at a finite speed -- the speed of light! Imagine that an electron, in a specific "energy level" is really an oscillating "charge" which basically can affect every other electron, tending to make them oscillate in harmony with itself, which "effect" is propagated at some finite speed. Other electrons which are harmonically tuned to the transmitting frequency will more readily absorb this energy transfer. Thus the receptors in my eye detect visible light because they are "resonant" at these frequencies.
What we have here is the old philosophical bug-a-boo, “actio distans” -- action at a distance. Thomas and Socrates and Plato could not admit this, so it is no wonder the rest of us tend to think that this unthinkable premise is not worth considering. If "A" affects "B", then something needs to have passed between them! But what if this simplistic macro view is the source of our problems?
The assumption we all make is that “something” must move from here to there to effect a change over there. It's how everything seems to work in our macro world - but in fact, we know that it does not. Nothing ever really touches anything - the electron shells in the skin on my fingers are pressing up against the electron shells in the plastic keyboard. None of those elemental particles need actually “touch” - whatever that means at this level - in order for me to effect a change.
If the phenomena we know as light and radio waves are actually only an “effect”, propagated at the speed of light, then all of the problems dealing with photons and the like seem to evaporate.
Here's how this professor explained it me some few decades ago. If I set electrons oscillating in a wire, call it an antenna, they tend to make every other electron in the universe oscillate in a similar fashion. Now this “effect” cannot propagate immediately, else everything happens all at once, and the net result is that nothing happens. If some other group of electrons in a wire happen to be in an electronic circuit resonant at the same frequency, then the effect is amplified enough that we can even detect it - using something called a radio! Our eyes work the same way, with resonant detectors for the wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum called visible light.
In fact, Fitzpatrick has an explanation for this "apparent" delay -- which I do not quite grasp, but I am working on it.
Nothing travels, nothing needs to travel, the effect is propagated. Opacity and sensitivity to the effect are determined by whether or not an electron in other affected body is sufficiently resonant at the emitter's frequency to allow for detection. Bodies in the way, other resonators, reflectors, whatever, modify the effect, and can amplify or nullify it.
If you take this first leap, most everything else works very, very well.
In the "split photon" problem, that single photon is not divided; it does not determine which path to take far ahead of time. The "effect" of the emitter is passed on to the receiver, depending on the detector, and the "stuff" in between. If we let go of the need to send ANYTHING AT ALL, but just propagate a quantum of EFFECT at the speed of light, things seem to make a lot more sense. Anything we do to detect the effect, actually modifies it, in flight, as it were.
Particle and Wave
Given our premise, this problem disappears.
Nothing travels, an effect is simply propagated.
This electron's movement tends to make another electron move that is harmonically tuned -- not
shielded, "influenceable" if you will.
The effect is the discrete energy level associated with the shift in electron orbits, that is effectively propagated in all directions where it is not canceled out by a tuned reflector that absorbs or cancels or shields its effect.
This effect would reasonably look like both particle and wave if your paradigm requires
some transmission entity.
Energy Absorption Rates
Another possible result of this paradigm shift is that energy itself is a propagated effect -- not a discrete packet of any thing. All electromagnetic "radiation" seems to exhibit this kind of effect.
If energy is the effect of one oscillating entity on another, then the propagation of that energy depends on some other entity receiving it, by being influenced. That means that it is not possible to simply "radiate" energy into empty space.
There has to be something nearby to "absorb" the energy, or interact with it, in
order for there to be any net loss or propagation!
Of course, the potential effect is propagated forever and in all directions, but the power it contains is reduced by the square of the distance.
Just think about our Sun. How much real energy does it radiate, if there is precious little "matter" nearby to be a receptor?
I have since learned from Mr. Fitzpatrick's little book, that this is not quite how things work. The energy that is transferred from one electron to another is NOT reduced by the distance. And it is a one on one interaction. The electrons "see" each other, and from their perspective, the interaction is instantaneous. Although the dispersion by the distance does reduce the number of potential interactions from, say, a distant star to my eye. But you will have to read his work to understand that.
Conclusion.
That's about as far as I can go with this.
Please read the monograph, or just skip to the
book.
Thanks for your patience in reading this far.
Last revised on ... Jan. 12, 2008 - minor errors.
Created March, 1999
Copyright Carl Scheider 1999, 2002, 2007