Harmonics Theory, Part 2: The Physics and Maths

by Ray Tomes

Harmonics Theory: The Physics and Maths Part 2

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.

Waves of Matter

The mathematician and physicist William Clifford suggested that matter was an electromagnetic standing wave form very soon after Maxwell produced his equations, and de Broglie showed the essential wave nature of matter followed from Einstein's and Schrödinger's equations, making predictions that were correct. Eventually whole atoms were passed through a version of Young's two slit experiment and showed the characteristic interference pattern of waves. There is no doubt that matter has a wave nature, although sometimes it is described as also having a particle nature. We shall see that particle nature is really the fact that the standing wave has a definite centre.

Next, Wheeler and Feynman came very close to realizing that the electron wasn't just something that manifested waves, but was nothing other than this wave. They arrived at an understanding of the incoming and outgoing waves and the standing wave formed by these. However they could not fully accept the mysterious incoming wave - how did it know where to arrive and to produce this tight centre that we know as an electron? The mystery entirely vanishes when it is fully understood that the electron is the wave and nothing else. The wave does not need to know where the electron is, as wherever the wave converges that is the electron. The forces of nature are to be understood as those events that cause the place of convergence to move in various ways.

Although physicists accept the wave nature of matter, some still seem to hang on to ideas that there is something other than waves while others seem quite content in the wave nature. Perhaps the confusion for some is caused by the pesky particle nature and this duality that is often mentioned. In essence, a particle is a standing wave that has a definite centre where the concentration of the energy is greatest and which may move about and interact with other such particles. Each different type of particle has its own characteristic wavelength and energy.

That wasn't so difficult to digest, but when it comes to light, the particle behavior is more difficult to fathom. In essence, when light is emitted by an atom due to a rearrangement in the structure of an electron relative to the nucleus, the change in energy of the atom is quite discrete. Therefore the light has a particular wavelength related to that energy. A similar thing is observed if different sized stones are dropped in the pond, or a single stone from different heights.

The light wave created by this atomic event then spreads out over the universe just like the ripples in the pond, eventually getting all but lost in the background ripples that exist everywhere in the electromagnetic field. However at some other place, this ripple may combine with a fortuitous combination of background energy to cause an exact reverse of the atomic event that started the ripple. This absorption is of about the same amount of energy as the earlier emission event and is causally related to it through the ripple. However it would be a wrong description to say that a photon of light travelled between one atom and another. The electromagnetic field is continuous not discrete. The discreteness only exists in the possible energy levels of atomic and nuclear configurations.