Part 3 - Some further insights into energy and charge

In a previous paper, we showed that electro-magnetic radiation could be seen as a series of events which transported a quantum of energy from its origin to some receiver or observer located at another place. It was pointed out that the key issue that emerged from that model was that the energy quantum was being transported along a series of events which in themselves acted as vibrations, and would therefore appear to have wave properties. Thus the wave particle dichotomy of electro-magnetic radiation disappears. In this paper I want to look at one of those events in a little more detail and see if we can make some deductions about some other mysteries of physics which look a lot more complicated than they should be.

The model we developed transported a quantum of energy along a series of events in each of which a dipole was sprung from empty space under the driving force of the magnetic field from the immediately preceding event, reinforced by the fields from earlier ones (only a very small number would actually be of any marked influence.) We know that the quantum energy of electro-magnetic radiation increases with the apparent frequency, and we showed that the likely effect of that is that the magnitude of the charge would increase proportionately. We also showed that the initial velocity of the poles or charges would have to be the same irrespective of quantum energy in order for the time it took for them to move apart, stop, and reverse to again coalesce to be in accordance with the beam’s apparent frequency. We noted that the only actual motion was that of the poles or charges, and that motion was perpendicular to the direction of the beam.

When we look at this dipole event in a little more detail, the first thing that comes to mind is the question of how straight the paths of the charges will be. The first assumption is that they will shoot out perpendicular to the path of the electro-magnetic radiation beam, and come back right to the spot where they started. I’m sure that's what they would do in a perfect world, but in the real world that’s not quite possible because the event is taking place only a very short distance away from the preceding one. Just as in two parallel wires carrying current, there will be a force between these two sets of moving charges which will result in the path being nudged in the direction of the beam. So the charges actually will traverse a short parabola meeting again not exactly where they were spawned but a very short distance away in the direction of the beam. The effect of this is to make their collision not exactly perpendicular, but at a very slight angle, which will result in a very slightly reduced magnetic effect. The ultimate result is that the next event will have a very slightly reduced energy, or will have a lower frequency. Voila! we have red shift.

So what happened to the bit of energy that was not transferred. As we said the charges moved just a little bit down the path of the beam. this very small movement is in effect an origination event for a new photon, but one that starts out traveling at right angles to the source beam, and with a very low quantum energy. So each event is actually spawning two new events, the main path being the majority of the energy, but the second path at right angles to the first takes away a very small bite of energy from each event. With all the electro-magnetic radiation that shines around our universe all the time one would expect this low energy radiation to create quite a buzz, and it does! It is the cosmic background radiation discovered by Penzias and Wilson in 1965. Some of you will be wondering if this slow degradation of electro-magnetic radiation is at variance with the requirement that a full quantum of energy be absorbed, and the simple answer is that it is not. The full quantum released by the previous event is absorbed by the new event, but two not one quanta are released.

So here we are, we have explained two of the great mysteries of the cosmos, and we have never mentioned the expanding universe, or the big bang!

As great as that understanding is, there is more. As the quantum energy of an electro-magnetic radiation beam increases so the magnitude of the charges increase, and so the forces on the charges increase. The result is greater deviation from the vertical path. So the higher the energy of the beam, the greater will be the red shift. Also a very strange thing happens when you try to calculate the amount of deviation. As the quantum energy grows to a level approaching twice the energy equivalent of an electron mass, calculation shows that the charges start to have such a great velocity in the direction of the beam that the attraction of the opposing charge can never catch up. Yes, the charges approach the speed of light itself. So what the model predicts is that at that quantum energy the two charges will travel along parallel to each other and to the beam, and will not recombine. This can be interpreted in two ways, firstly that electro-magnetic radiation cannot propagate in the usual way with quantum energies this high, and perhaps electro-magnetic radiation of these energies is actually more akin to a kind of neutrino, two equal charges zipping through space being virtually undetectable by any observer. What is clear is that if such a photon were to be disturbed by passage close to a particle or barrier, the possibility that the charges could separate and spin off into the observable world is very high. Thus the creation of an electron positron pair.

So now we begin to see how everything hangs together, how energy is transported through space by vibrating dipoles and how these dipoles break apart to form particles with mass. At the heart of both these phenomena are charges. and it seems to me to be the most basic of issues. Whenever energy is present, so is charge, and spinning charges create the rest mass of the observable world.

So if charge is related to frequency by the direct relationship e=kN, and energy of a photon is also related to frequency by the simple relationship E = hN where h is Planks constant, then charge must be related to energy by e = kE/h. We do have one known point of equivalence namely in the electron, where we know it’s charge, and we can use the above relationship to deduce k.

If this all hangs together, we can finally put a face on charge itself. Charge is the tendency by which space resists being deformed by energy.

While discussing this most basic of phenomena, it is interesting to consider what effect the presence of a charge would have on the surrounding space. As we said in our discussion on electro-magnetic radiation, it is considered a certainty that small dipole like events occur in free space on a random basis. It seems likely that very small events occur quite frequently, and space can be visualized as a shimmer of these tiny random events, John Wheeler’s “quantum foam”. Because the events are small and random they cannot be observed, and have no effect on observers or objects in their vicinity, but they can be said to create a fabric of space.

Now what happens if one brings a charge into the picture. Instead of all these little events being random, all of a sudden there is a driving force to align them radially around the charge, which has the effect of transmitting the effect of the charge outwards. Any other charge some distance away will now find itself in a quantum foam that is no longer random, and will therefore feel a force towards or away from the first charge. And so we have electro-static force.

As in the case of electro magnetic radiation, nothing has actually traveled between the two charges, but they feel the effect of each other via the quantum foam, or the fabric of space whichever term you prefer to use.