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December 8, 2002 [From Dr.
Arnold Lynch, co-author with Ivor Catt in IEE paper http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/y7aiee.htm
] [Add to book http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/wbbanbk1.htm ] Dear Ivor, I should like you to consider this rather as a draft than as a perfect statement of my position. If you disagree factually with me, or find my argument obscure, please let me know and I’ll try to improve it. Remember that I am a lab. worker, not a theorist except within my special field of electrical metrology. There is no general “Lynch theory”. I still support much of what you have published about electromagnetic
theory, but I will try to explain why I do not accept it totally. You use the entirely respectable strategy of examining a simplified
situation first, in the hope of getting an approximate theory and then
modifying it to meet some slightly different conditions. In the history of
science there are many examples of this strategy; the gas laws (Boyle,
Charles, etc.) later modified by Van der Waals: study of the visible
spectrum, beginning with the hydrogen lines and extending to fine structure
and to other elements. But there are also some counter-examples; Milne’s
“kinetic theory” of the expansion of the universe; Kelvin’s theory of the
mechanical ether and all the pre-1908 theories of the structure of the atom
before the use of quantum theory. You have simplified the e-m theory by assuming ideal conductors and
dielectrics, as might be possible with superconductors and a perfect vacuum.
This leads to the idea that the charging of a capacitor will be oscillatory
(so far I agree with you) and that the oscillation will continue
indefinitely. But no real capacitor meets your conditions; there are no
zero-loss dielectrics (not even a vacuum) and no zero-loss electrodes. This
single example will show my point of view: real physical changes result in
some loss of energy, possibly small. I have myself measured systems in which
“Q” (energy-stored/energy-lost-per-cycle) is over 100,000, and I am aware of
values of over 109 [One
thousand million.] in superconducting resonators. But Q is never
infinite; oscillations will always die away, usually in a time much less than
1 second. (The answer to one of your questions: I do not believe that the
wave velocity becomes less; it remains the same, but the amplitude
decreases.) The Maxwell equations do not include loss. Nowadays they may be used
with the insertion of a complex number as a multiplier ( <1 ) of the
wave-velocity, but I am not happy with the results. I have published results
which show that in a stationary-wave system, refraction at an interface is
not correctly described by the Maxwell equations. There is really no reason
why they should apply; Maxwell considered a uniform medium (i.e. one with no
molecular structure) and he did not know that electric charge is associated
with inertia. Of course the Equations are an excellent approximation in most
practical situations, but that, and that only, is their true status. You may be interested in another heretical view which I have reached
in the last few years. I cannot understand the concept of space expanding,
taking material bodies with it, which is used to account for the large
red-shifts of very distant stars. What used to be thought of as empty space
is now filled with various strange objects – neutrinos, wimps [sic], and even
electrons (in which case, where is the corresponding positive charge?). The
light we receive from stars is not c.w.; it consists of photons. If a photon
collides inelastically with a particle, it will lose energy. But a photon
cannot be attenuated; if it loses energy, the frequency of the remaining
energy is reduced. Thus the light will develop a red-shift, proportional to
the number and violence of collisions it has made. I accept, of course, that
the much smaller red-shifts and blue-shifts of relatively-near stars are
genuine Doppler effects. I have no objection to your posting this letter, or preferably the
second one based on an interchange of arguments as suggested in my first
paragraph, on the Web. We might be able to bring our points of view more
closely together, which I think both of us would prefer. If you publish it in
part, please use complete paragraphs, not just parts of them. Yours sincerely, [signed] Arnold Lynch |
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