MAXWELL'S EQUATIONS
© Harold Aspden, 1998
Research Note: 4/98: June 6, 1998
I am writing this in conjunction with Gieskieng's
Addendum in order to clarify my point of view concerning the relevance of
the findings of Dave Gieskieng in his antenna experiments performed by
propagating radio signals across canyons in USA. The question at issue is the
validity of Maxwell's equations.
Now, very few scientists could ever
dream that Maxwell's equations are open to challenge, but it is as well to ask
if the majority of scientists familiar with electrical theory and the theory of
radio transmission have answers to the following questions.
Firstly,
given that we are taught in physics to recognize that, in fundamental terms,
energy has three forms, namely electric, magnetic and kinetic, how do we explain
the difference between magnetic energy and kinetic energy?
Well you might
say that one has to do with how electric charges in motion interact with one
another across empty space and the other is something far more familiar that is
just the energy acquired by a something having mass owing to its motion. Now, in
history, J J Thomson, the person who discovered the electron, derived a
theoretical expression for the electromagnetic energy acquired by an electron of
electric charge e, of radius a, and moving at a speed v, obtaining the result:
Ek = (e2/3a)(v/c)2 ......
(1),c being the speed of light, and he compared this with the formula
for kinetic energy:
Ek = mv2/2 ......... (2)to deduce an
'electromagnetic mass' value m, which one can see satisfies the equation:
m = (2/3)e2/3ac2 ......... (3)This was
based on the electric field energy Es of the electron being assumed
to be
Es = e2/2a ......... (4)and so we can
then see that Es, which is applies at zero speed and so has something
to say about rest mass is:
Es = (3/4)mc2 ......... (5).
He
pondered the question of whether this electromagnetic energy Ek was
in fact nothing other than the kinetic energy of the electron. Indeed, he went
so far as to show that, if it were, then the electron could never be accelerated
to a speed exceeding that of light. This was many years before Einstein came
along and, indeed, it was back in the 19th century that it had been shown
experimentally that electrons got heavier and heavier as their speed converged
on that of light.
In case you wonder about that factor 3/4, not being
unity, as needed to satisfy E=Mc2, take note that J J Thomson had
assumed that the electron was a charged sphere with all its charge distributed
around its surface, as if it were of conductive material. Had he assumed that
the sphere was simply holding electric charge within it at uniform pressure and
so uniform energy density, he would have obtained the E=Mc2
formula.
So you have here two auxiliary questions to weigh in your minds.
Did we really need Einstein and his Theory of Relativity to understand that
E=Mc2? Is the kinetic energy of a fundamental electric particle
wholly that of, and nothing other than, the magnetic energy set up in the
surrounding field as that charge moves?
My answer to the first question
is: "No" and my answer to the second question is revealed as we move on to the
next primary question.
Secondly, why is it that Maxwell's equations
contain no terms which represent mass? Here you may jump to the obvious
conclusion. From what has just been said about J J Thomson, one can see that
there is no need for mass terms at the fundamental level, if electric and
magnetic field energy is all there is to consider.
That, however, is not
my answer. I have an eye to the need to account for gravity and the problem of
how energy travels at the speed of light. I spent a very long time trying to
decipher the secrets underlying something called the 'Neumann Potential', on
which electrodynamic interaction forces are founded. I also explored in various
ways the notion that electric, magnetic and kinetic energies are distinct energy
forms. The outcome depends upon experimental proof, something that is rather
elusive, but I see a glimmer of such a proof in the antenna research findings of
Dave Gieskieng.
Now you may think that, if I challenge the Einstein
account for E=Mc2 and accept the derivation founded in J J Thomson's
method, I must identify kinetic and magnetic energy as one and the same. That is
not so. The reason is that, fortunately, long ago and shortly after I began to
raise these fundamental questions, I found a flaw in the Larmor derivation of
the formula for energy radiation by the accelerated electron. The formula is
used in physics and physicists will say that it works and so must be valid. They
are wrong, because their experimental data only indicate that it works in
respect of the collective action of charges sharing a common acceleration. The
question I am concerned with is radiation by an individual electron, as opposed
to how it may play the 'field' when part of a team.
I reasoned that
Larmor had declared the electron to be accelerated without saying how it was
accelerated and without allowing for its charge interaction with that essential
accelerating field. Keep in mind here the advent of the 'quantum' and the need
to explain why the single electron in its accelerated motion around the proton
in the hydrogen atom did not radiate energy according to the Larmor formula. If
atoms were to lose energy by radiation in that way, then all motion within atoms
would have stopped long ago, but, as it is, they enjoy a life of perpetual
motion!
So it was that I argued that an electric charge would respond to
an accelerating field in just such a way as to conserve its energy against the
prospect of radiation. When analysed mathematically, that gave me the formula
E=Mc2, without appeal to J J Thomson's method or the methods used by
Einstein [1976b].
My derivation meant that the inertia and mass of an elementary particle are in
no way dependent upon magnetic fields. Kinetic energy stands as an energy form
in its own right. A full formal derivation of the E=Mc2 formula by
this method is to be found in my 1980 book 'Physics Unified' at pp.
80-84.
Just to put this in context, what it means is that all the
elementary particles, such as protons, which have a core charge radius that is
less than one thousandth that of the electron, have an intrinsic kinetic energy
somehow stored as part of their moving system. The questions that then arise
make one wonder if leptons, such as electrons and muons handle that kinetic
energy storage in a manner different from hadrons, such as the proton. However,
our immediate concern is Maxwell's Equations and where mass might feature in
those equations.
Now here it is a question of where you want to begin. I
submit that if you really want to understand Maxwell's Equations you have to
think in terms of an aether containing charge that can be displaced. How else
can waves sent between Sun and Earth make that transit through intervening
space. If you think it is all done by photons then I ask you, where do you see
photons in Maxwell's equations? Cast those equations aside and forget them, if
the photon picture can satisfy your need for knowledge! You cannot back both
horses and expect both to win.
I maintain that we must accept that the
aether exists and contains electric charge in some form and so I say that it
contains quons, electric charges of common polarity permeating a uniform
continuum of opposite charge. That is the model of the aether which I find does
give the right answers.
Now instead of bringing into play our empirical
equations, such as that which expresses the law of induction, meaning something
involving magnetic energy, let us first ask how those quons in the aether might
oscillate as they transmit an undulating electric wave. They will, like the
up-and-down wave motion of the sea, oscillate laterally with respect to the wave
propagation direction and the potential energy stored by electric displacement
will be exchanged with the kinetic energy of the up-and-down charge motion. In
fact, the energy is that of a standing wave condition, meaning that energy does
not have to flow at the propagation velocity of the wave.
If you study
the mathematics of Maxwell's Equations you will see that they are reduced in
form to two wave equations, one representing the electric field and the other
the magnetic field. Both of those equations imply the transport of energy at the
wave propagation velocity. Yet the equation for the electric oscillations is the
same as that we can deduce if the electric potential is exchanged cyclically
with the kinetic energy involved in those lateral oscillations, given that the
quons must have a mass property. Is it then a problem that the aether has
mass?
Before we consider that let us now look at that wave equation
assigned to the magnetic field. Here it helps to have an idea as to what a
magnetic field really is and how, and where, it involves energy storage. Never
mind what the empirical formulations tell you, just think here about passing
current through a long solenoid. There is a magnetic field set up along the axis
of that solenoid and all of it is contained within the solenoid if that solenoid
is infinitely long. That could be in a vacuum. How is energy stored in a
vacuum?
Well I have already explained this elsewhere in these Web pages
but I will describe the process once more. What we think of as empty space is
not empty. It contains charge in motion. A component of that motion could be
said to be a random vibration characteristic of heat. Apply a magnetic field and
a proportion of those charges, just enough to set up an optimum reaction, as
determined by maximum energy transfer, will react by assuming a helical kind of
motion setting up a reaction magnetic field in opposition to the applied field.
This works out as being precisely half that of the primary field. So, given that
2 minus 1 is 1, we know that the primary magnetic field set up by current in the
solenoid is really double that we assume in our standard theory, because half of
it, a half we do not 'see', is cancelled by the reaction. The analysis involved
in that tells us also that the energy transferred from the primary field source
to the secondary reacting field system is precisely that we formulate as
'magnetic energy'.
In other words, when we power a solenoid the magnetic
energy we supply is transferred into that random thermal component of motion of
the reacting charge in the aether. It heats that charge and that heat energy
disperses through the aether. However, when we switch off the current supplying
that solenoid, that 2 minus 1 reaction, becomes a primary action, equal but
opposite to what we thought was the original primary input action, and it feeds
energy back to the solenoid by cooling the aether within the
solenoid.
That is what magnetic induction is all about. There is really
no such thing as 'magnetic energy'. All one needs to consider is the kinetic
energy of reacting charge in the aether.
So one can understand how
Maxwell's Equations operate. Maxwell did not factor into his analysis the
kinetic energy of the quons in the aether. Instead he incorporated the notion of
the 'magnetic field' and assigned that an energy density. However, the problem
with that was that he derived two wave equations which supposedly move waves
together in step at the wave velocity, each carrying energy forward in the
propagation direction. In fact, the energy of a single wave oscillation, that of
the electric field, remains in situ as it oscillates between kinetic and
electric forms. In free space remote from matter and a radiating source,
electromagnetic waves therefore travel without conveying energy and they really
would be better termed as 'electric waves', given that no magnetic field energy
is involved.
You see, if the aether charge sets up the 'reaction', how
can it at the same time sustain the 'action'? Where is the source of a magnetic
field out there, well into space? If you say charge in motion must set up a
magnetic field, I say where is the separate charge that can absorb the energy
and store that magnetic field. In other words, I say that there is no such thing
as a magnetic field out there in free space and that what we call
electromagnetic waves are merely electrical oscillations exchanging electric
potential energy and kinetic energy.
Now, of course, I cannot say that
radio antenna do not radiate energy. They shed energy in setting up the
disturbance which is that electric wave and, so long as there is undispersed
surplus energy forced into the radiation field energy, there is an associated
but rapidly attenuating wave that could be identified as a magnetic field wave.
As with the wave on water analogy if something sets up a tidal wave, forcing
water to move as a wave, then one distorts the natural equilibrium of the wave
oscillations of the system.
You will then see why the antenna experiments
of Dave Gieskieng are relevant to this question. If that antenna used by
Gieskieng is specifically adapted to set up pure electric wave oscillations then
it will ripple the ocean of space with a minimum of power input, because so
little of the power needs to be dispersed by that thermal activity of the
reacting aether charge.
On the fundamental scientific front, given my
case that magnetic fields involve reacting charge, how can the J J Thomson
formula hold up for the calculation of electromagnetic mass if those reacting
charges are of far greater physical size than the primary charge? To satisfy
that equation they must be minute in relation to the primary charge. Yet if they
then have the unitary charge e common to all fundamental charged particles, they
in turn must have an enormous mass compared with the primary particle. That is
an escalating argument which takes one into the realm of absurdity and so one
has to conclude that the electromagnetic mass notion of J J Thomson is
erroneous.
I hold firm to my interpretation of inertia and mass as being
the unwillingness of a charge to radiate its self-energy (as opposed to energy
shared by mutual field effects) when accelerated. That 'unwillingness' or
'sluggishness' is what we call 'inertia' and the mass property that expresses
that is given by the electric energy intrinsic to the particle as divided by the
square of the speed of propagation of disturbances within the body of that
energy Es of the particle, invariably the parameter c.
There
is then the question of how the aether can have all those quons with a
significant measure of mass, given that the energy involved in those wave
oscillations is by no means negligible.
The answer to this is that the
quon system does have mass. Indeed, I calculated this long ago and found that it
was very nearly 144 gm/cc, meaning that the aether has a mass density well
exceeding that of Earthly matter. That is, however, no problem. Indeed, it is
essential and was deemed so by our forebears in the 19th century who tried to
explain the finite speed of light in terms of an analogy with propagation
properties in solid matter. All one has to do is to explain the evident lack of
aether momentum by accepting there is scope for motion of free quon charges in
counterflow through moving aether [1976a]
or an analogous activity by a leptonic activity involving muons The
Ether - An Assessment, and it all begins to make sense, taking
Michelson-Morley's experiment along with it.
To conclude, I can but say
that it would be a pity if the copious experimental evidence provided by the
researches of Dave Gieskieng were not investigated further and, indeed, repeated
to secure full verification. If they do prove that we can set up waves in the
aether with a minimum of energy input and support the suggestion that there is
very little actual energy transport from transmitter to receiver, as opposed to
an energy exchange with the thermal aether background, then one can see scope
for a technology that is reminiscent of the efforts of Tesla. At the very least
the experiments should establish the reality of the aether and dispose of the
notion that photons, as particles, transport energy. That would be a very
significant breakthrough in the onward march of science. There is so much wrong
with the state of the art in pure physics that technology must be suffering as a
consequence and it is due time that we faced up to the issues involved and began
to see the 'aether' as a future workplace for the energy technologist.
Harold Aspden
June 6, 1998