This is the never-ending blog which began with Einstein and examines many of ideas extent on how the Universe works. This one examines TEW which is the theory that Elementary Waves fill the universe everywhere at all quantum states and at all frequencies. See other blogs on this site for background and to pick up the story. I will begin the summary today after reviewing TEW theory.
The originator of Elementary Wave theory is generally conceded to be Lewis Little. Below a collegue, Stephen Speicher, gives a description of the theory.
See his website at http://physics.prodos.org/stephenspeicherexplains/
"The elementary wave cannot be understood by appealing to anything more basic to explain it-here is nothing more basic. The elementary waves have a structure and the effects of the changes in that structure are all we can know about them. So the ghost-like packets of waves in the standard theory have been replaced by a real existent, and the behavior of that wave is contrary to standard interpretation - the wave moves in reverse, from the target, or more generally from the detector, towards the source.
In a way, Little's elementary wave is less like a traditional wave and closer to the idea of the elusive ether, in that it is like a flow, or a flux of material, while realizing that it makes no sense to talk about what kind of material it is -it just is.
Twenty-five hundred years ago Parmenides said (and more recently, as Leonard Peikoff is fond of saying) the universe is a "plenum". That is, there are no gaps, no voids, no place where there is nothing. That is what Little's theory has identified, the elementary waves are what fill the universe - they are omnipresent. According to Little's theory the waves exist for every possible quantum state, for every variable parameter that is possible."
This means that all of the universe is connected at every point in the universe by an invisible ether of the kind we have discussed above in the Einstein blogs. Here we go again on the ether--which keeps popping up in Physics theory.
More on tomorrow.
Sept 15, 2010
Now, TEW ideas have not gained much currency but for our purposes we can give a few examples of how the theory works and the reader can make up h/her own mind.
Examples:
1-When we look at the sun what is actually occuring is that waves (yes waves) project directly from our eyes to the sun where photons are excited and shoot back along this wave path to our eyes and we see the sun.
2-Second example: when we blow into a bottle with our lips a sound is created. In EW theory pre-existing waves inside the bottle move toward our lips where the sound is then created moving back into the bottle at a particular frequency determined by the same wave configurations in the bottle. Different sized bottles, therefore, create different sound pitches.
3-In the famous double-slit experiment (look this up on the internet) the explanation is that waves move from the background board through the slits and then to the electron or photon source and a photon is then emitted back to the background board. It is a two-way exchange. This is a princlple, the TEW people say televisions operate upon. They argue that a TEW does not suppplant relativity and quantum theory but merely completes and explains these ideas.
Now TEW people explain that their theory can be proven by having one slit be transparent and then opaque alternatively in nanoseconds. This will show the actual direction of the transactions involved and can prove, thereby, the waveelectron paths involved.
The problem with the theory is that these waves are hypothetical, like ether itself. But this critique can be made of many presuppositions in Physics. The basic nature of space its self, ether or no ether, is what is at issue. At this point no one seems to know for sure although there are certainly empirical data which suggest which descriptions of "empty space" are promising. This aspect is what we propose to examine next.
