Harmonics Theory, Part 1: The Physics and Maths

by Ray Tomes

Harmonics Theory: The Physics and Maths

This new blog series from FSC Science Director Ray Tomes will share the fundamentals of physics in layman's terms, showing how present theory must inevitably lead to all waves losing energy and forming harmonically related waves. The end result is a very specific detailed structure that matches the observed universe and explains many previously mysterious observations. This series was previously published.

Universal Waves

Maxwell developed his famous equations for electromagnetism around 1870 and showed that not only electricity and magnetism behaved according to wave equations, but that interactions of the two also behaved as waves that travelled at the speed of light and produced the phenomena known as light, later found to include waves from long radio waves down to very short gamma ray waves. Since then, major discoveries in fundamental physics have been dominated by the wave nature of all things, as shown by Einstein, Schrödinger, de Broglie and many others.

Although the diverse phenomena modeled by the various physics equations have not yet been brought into the sphere of a single model, there are enough clues to say that such a model ought to be possible. It is natural that such a model would include a wave equation, and the universe is essentially a wave phenomenon.

Often when people think about waves they only think about traveling waves, the type that happen when you drop a stone into a calm pond, a series of concentric waves traveling out from a central disturbance, all the time getting weaker through spreading over a larger circumference. There is another type of wave also, called a standing wave, an example of which is a vibrating guitar string or a beaten drum. In these types of waves the energy is mostly constrained from leaving a limited region and so wrap back on themselves producing a wave that oscillates in place.

The question of whether the universe is finite or not is generally considered to still be open. When cosmologists mention the "size of the universe" they are generally referring to a parameter related to the distance to a horizon beyond which we cannot see. However in present models of the universe there is nothing to prevent the actual size being much greater. If the universe has a finite size then it can support standing waves which fit evenly into that size in much the same way that a guitar can. Even if it is not finite, there may be characteristic wave sizes that form as a result of the prevailing conditions, much as waves form in the wide ocean.

There are many reports of regular spacings in "things", ranging from nucleons and atoms through to planets, galaxies and even galactic clusters. This regularity is evidence for waves underlying things. The reason for "things" being in quotes is that once the wave nature of all things is properly understood it is found that there are in fact no such things as things. There are only waves and processes. When we watch the surf, we see waves come travelling in and hitting the shore to fall away and die. However the wave is not a thing, it is a trick of mind following the eye, seeing a process of adjacent regions rising and falling as a moving thing when in fact no thing actually does that motion that we see as a wave.

Similarly when we watch TV we see images of people moving about on the screen, but actually they do not move, they are constantly reconstructed by electrons hitting the screen. Even my explanation in terms of this thing called the electron is equally wrong because the moving electron is also an illusion of energy arriving at adjacent locations in a stream that makes the appearance of a thing. This is the essential nature of matter that wave energy arrives wave after wave at a central location which may even be moving, and after passing through the centre travels out again as the other half of the standing wave that makes it seem like a thing wobbling in place.