
Maxwell's fluid model of magnetism (2015) - dschuetz
https://arxiv.org/abs/1502.05926
======
twtw
If people are interested in the historical developments of EM theory and the
various physical analogies maxwell used, I'd highly recommend "Faraday,
Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field" by Forbes and Mahon. It has a
interesting description of these, and also emphasizes the insights Faraday had
- he wrote about the potential of EM waves ~30 years before maxwell came up
with the mathematics.

~~~
nabla9
And if you want to know what kind of thinking Einstein used to move from
Maxwell equations to light being quanta I recommend: Einstein lecture by
Douglas Hofstadter (Feb 4, 2018)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXdQfPrU64g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXdQfPrU64g)

You might want to jump directly to point:
[https://youtu.be/NXdQfPrU64g?t=704](https://youtu.be/NXdQfPrU64g?t=704)

~~~
jiggawatts
I have a quick question: is the modern understanding that "the electromagnetic
field itself quantized" OR is it just shorthand for "light emitted
specifically by atomic electron orbitals changing is produced in discrete
energy levels because the energy levels between orbitals are discrete"?

To me, it always felt like the latter, but I've never seen that written down
explicitly, and everyone seems to talk like it's the former. I mean sure,
99.99% of the time experiments that emit or absorb photons are performed using
atoms (and hence discrete electron orbitals) but that's certainly not the only
way to create or or absorb photons. There's Cherenkov radiation,
Bremsstrahlung, etc...

~~~
frutiger
The EM field itself is quantized. You start with the classical electromagnetic
field and you try to quantize it. The rules for this are not precise nor
formal.

That means something a little different to "photons can only have specific
energies" (that applies only to very specific atoms or atoms with certain
structure; in many materials, electrons can exist in bands of continuous
energy).

------
phkahler
I feel like this illustrates a problem with the world of physics today (and
other areas). This paper sounds like it could be the beginning of something
new/better. But the effort required to bring all of that together was probably
significant, and I kept seeing "to first order" which indicates it's nowhere
near complete.

I guess my point is that QM took a long time, and work from a lot of people to
reach the point it has. Any replacement will likely need a lot of work by a
lot of people, and there don't seem to be very many people working outside the
box. Or perhaps that's just because nobody wants to publish half-baked ideas.
I'd rather see new ideas published and get shot down than yet another
experiment confirming spooky action at a distance in some new configuration.

~~~
masteranza
Well, I'm always enthusiastic when I see such new developments and I'm
certainly going to read through it later in the evening. That being said, I'm
also more skeptical whether this has a chance to work, especially if it's a
classical construction. Why? Well, you'd probably need to study physics for a
few years to really appreciate the answer, however I can sum it up quite
simply: At the beginning of the 20th century we realized that our models are
allowed to contain whatever objects you can imagine (and put in a consistent
mathematical form, of course). In particular, theories are allowed to operate
on objects which don't even take number values as long as they are objects
which obey the defined rules. This realization is so refreshing, so liberating
that it allowed for the construction of a number of magnificent things like
quantum mechanics, field theory, standard model and strings. However it's hard
to convey this truth to someone who's mathematical education finished (even)
at an engineer level. Thus, you see the media and half-physicists always
focusing on the same stupid "paradoxes" when there was never one to begin
with. The insistence of many mediocre people against quantum mechanics (and
modern physics in general) is analogous to an ancient Egyptian protesting
that: "we should have a theory where everything is explained with natural
numbers" which is the only object that his limited imagination can directly
connect with reality. Another argument which people tend to use is that "QM is
complicated", but nothing stands further from the truth. It might be hard to
derive the solutions, but the postulates are really simple and there are no
simple alternatives with the scope of validity of QM. The only real way of
proceeding is to learn the lessons of quantum theory and build upon it,
someday we may be lucky enough to find simple mathematical rules (but likely
highly abstract) that govern the universe.

So as you see, I partially agree with you. The "spooky action" kind of
experiments are stupid, but for the opposite reason!

~~~
phkahler
Thanks for that. I am that engineer / half-physicist and I can appreciate my
own ignorance in this area. I have my own interest where my depth seems to go
beyond most people studying it, so I know your frustration if only a little.

>> "we should have a theory where everything is explained with natural
numbers" which is the only object that his limited imagination can directly
connect with reality.

That part though... Physics has a problem where the people practicing it can't
even make a satisfactory connection to reality. Even from the outside we see
this in debates about "interpretation" which go on among physicists. To be
satisfied with the mathematics is one thing, to have a satisfactory connection
back to reality is quite another. Don't let the beauty of the abstractions
blind you to that.

~~~
masteranza
It seems like you've really missed the crucial part. The whole point is to
have a theory which will mirror the __relations __of objects in the world
__not the objects themselves __. The former leads to truth, the latter is
silly. All the interpretations stuff you read about is, unluckily (for the
public image of physicists), a fools game. QM is as it was 100 years ago and
no progress has ever been made in the "foundations of quantum mechanics", most
people who work in this area are either philosophers or very confused
physicists. Who's to blame for this state of affairs? Well, there has been
plenty of wrong stuff said about QM in media and even in academia. Part of the
problem is that people still insist on using the old classical language in the
description of quantum experiments. Examples: * "nonlocality" \- quantum
theory is a local theory, it's only when you assume that it's "classical in
disguise" you get nonsense * "delayed choice" \- should have rather be called
"post-factum reasoning"

As I said before if you really dig down deep, you'll realize that this is
because our classical macroscopic quantities like "value of momentum",
"magnetic moment" etc. are not the same things that exist "down there". The
language of nature turns out to be much more subtle. Quantum Mechanics is
really the best you can get when you try to hold on to the old classical
ideas. Thus an alternative to QM would most likely have nothing to do with
classical mechanics at all, it would need to be something entirely new.

------
bronlund
It's quite simple really. The aether is real, but has been suppressed for the
sake of "national security".

When this insight goes mainstream (almost 200 years after it was discovered),
stuff we reckon as science fiction today will become reality.

------
ltbarcly3
Only took a quick peek at this, but it seems to resemble Feynman's Absorber
Theory

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheeler%E2%80%93Feynman_absorb...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheeler%E2%80%93Feynman_absorber_theory)

~~~
mrtnmcc
Sorry don't see a connection.

~~~
Koshkin
It is yet another interpretation of the classical electromagnetism.

------
snarfy
I found this page about Purcell enlightening -

[http://physics.weber.edu/schroeder/mrr/MRRtalk.html](http://physics.weber.edu/schroeder/mrr/MRRtalk.html)

