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Lewis Little's Theory of Elementary Waves: Book Review

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ttn

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Prodos, I would like to comment on this part of your post:

In section 10.2 of the TEW book Lewis Little notes:

I don’t believe conventional theories are able to explain this.

(I don't have Dr. Little's book in order to check, but I will assume that you quoted the entire relevant part.)

In fact, there is nothing unexplicable or strange in the phenomena that Dr. Little described above, from the point of view of the field theory: everything falls in place if one remembers that the field theory in question is not the field theory of the magnetic field only, but of the electromagnetic (EM) field. In this theory, the field is characterized by two "components", the magnetic field B and the electric field E. That is, the electromagnetic field is described by a compound object, which I will write as [E, B], and the same EM is characterized in a different inertial reference frame by a different combination of E and B - by the object [E', B'].

Is there already something un-objective and/or un-realist in the above? No, at least not yet: such a situation is not new, it exists already in the classical mechanics. For example, the velocity v of a particle is different (v') and has different components along the axes in a different reference frame. In addition, if v is constant in time, we can allways find a reference frame in which some, or all, of the components of the particle's velocity v' are zero; this fact was used by Dr. Little in the fragment above.

It follows that there is nothing apriory unusual in a situation where, for a given EM field, we can find a reference frame in which the magnetic component, B', will be zero. What would be unusual indeed, even strange, and even contradictory and truly un-objective, is for the action of the EM field on an electrical charge q to be different in the new reference frame.

The action is measured by the force. The force is, in the first reference frame, F = q(E + vxB), while in the second, in which B' = 0 (and v' = 0), it will be simply F' = qE', but the value of the "surviving" component, the electric field E', should be such that the force with which the EM field acts on the charge will be the same, F' = F (I am simplifying a little bit here). And indeed, in the traditional field theory of electromagnetism it is easily proved that indeed E' takes such a value as to fully compensate for the desappearence of the magnetic component of the EM field.

To sum up: Dr. Little's account of the disappearence of the magnetic field seems incomplete to me, because it doesn't mention the other component of the EM field - the electric component - and its compensating change.

Given these facts, I beleive I can affirm that the conventional theory is able to explain the situation described by Dr. Little. This does not of course, in and of itself, prove that the field theory of electromagnetism is correct (to paraphrase you), but it proves that Dr. Little's (and your) argument against the traditional EM theory does not seem to hold water.

I will also note that the conventional explanation above is strictly local - a characteristic trait of a field theory, as opposed to action-at-a-distance theories. I am here answering your remark:

In contrast, the Theory of Elementary Waves (TEW) is able to offer an explanation. One that is not based on fields and one which involves no nonlocality, thus meeting an essential criteria of objective/realist theories - a criteria which other electromagnetism theories lack.

Sasha

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Manipulation of the wave function chi for a cesium atom has been done.

Quantum Walks which links to Science magazine.

That's a very interesting development, but it doesn't really go into the details of what they did. Presumably, they can select, through some means, the final state of the atom, thus making it possible to convey information using this technique. I think the advantage of some sort of quantum computer is that it will not be operating on a bit (on or off) type of selection (base 2), but would rather make it possible to have a predictable multi-state (or a higher base for the number system). I think something like that can be done today, but engineers I have spoken to say it is a lot easier to read / write either on or off (or one voltage versus another) than it is to have some sort of multi-state system. I'm not really sure of this, but that is the reason I was given for our current binary state of computers. If a computer can be designed to have more than one state that is readable predictably, then computers would be able to function at a much higher rate of calculations and the numbers wouldn't take up so much space in the memory, since binary has very long strings of digits to convey large numbers.

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I can see that this thread has been dead for a while, but I have a quick question that I hope someone can clear up for me.

It's my understanding that in the Aspect-like experiments, the results that one obtains when the polarizers are rotated are exactly the same as the results one obtains when the polarizers are stationary throughout the experiment. Is this correct?

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