B Constancy of the speed of light

  • #51
Ziang said:
Let us see the following picture

View attachment 223357Light is a transverse wave. In the spaceship the light path is vertical. So the oscillations (blue waves) are horizontal as shown in section a.
According to SR, the diagonal red line in section b is a light path with respect to a stationary observer (who is standing on the ground).

Argument
Physics laws are the same to all observers. Light must be a transverse wave to all observers.
When the spaceship is moving at a constant velocity v, the blue waves would appear as shown in section b, with respect to the stationary observer. These blue waves are not perpendicular to the diagonal red line. So the diagonal red line is not a light path with respect to the stationary observer.
This argument is based on a misconception. Light is not a mechanical wave. There is nothing moving transversely in an EM wave. The electric and magnetic field vectors at a point change in a sinusoidal way, but nothing moves. Transforming the electromagnetic field tensor will give you a transverse electromagnetic wave in both frames, qualitatively because there's cross talk between the electric field as measured in one frame and the magnetic field in the other.

Furthermore your argument is obviously wrong, since you are arguing that light waves aren't light waves in another frame.
 
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  • #52
Ziang said:
Light is a transverse wave.

Not in the sense you mean. @Ibix's response is correct. Please do not post further on this without taking the time to learn the correct model of light.
 
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  • #53
Ziang said:
Light is a transverse wave.
You clearly don’t know what this means. It does not mean that light wiggles back and forth as you show in your diagram, it means that light can be polarized.

Write the equation for a plane wave, propagating along z and polarized along x. Transform it and you have a polarized plane wave. Similarly for a plane wave propagating along z and polarized along y.
 
  • #54
I believe this link covers most of the bases here. It is extremely informative about why electromagnetic phenomena are waves AND why they are inherently Lorentz invariant. It also points out the similar relation ship the E and B fields have with the space and time interval. Very interesting read for those interested in learning.

http://www.mathpages.com/rr/s2-02/2-02.htm
 
  • #55
Dale said:
You clearly don’t know what this means. It does not mean that light wiggles back and forth as you show in your diagram, it means that light can be polarized.

Write the equation for a plane wave, propagating along z and polarized along x. Transform it and you have a polarized plane wave. Similarly for a plane wave propagating along z and polarized along y.
What then is the meaning of a polarized wave? It is created by placing a slit in the light beam so that only waves which are aligned with the slit pass through.

I don't see how the equations help one to visualize this.
 
  • #56
JulianM said:
What then is the meaning of a polarized wave? It is created by placing a slit in the light beam so that only waves which are aligned with the slit pass through.
Nothing is wiggling though. At every point in space there is an electrical field, and at every moment that field points in some direction. If the direction is always the same (so only the amplitude of the field is changing with time - written as a vector we have ##\vec{E}=(A\sin{\omega}t)\hat{x}## where ##\hat{x}## is a fixed unit vector in the direction of polarization), then we say that the wave is linearly polarized.
 
  • #57
Nugatory said:
Nothing is wiggling though. At every point in space there is an electrical field, and at every moment that field points in some direction. If the direction is always the same (so only the amplitude of the field is changing with time - written as a vector we have ##\vec{E}=(A\sin{\omega}t)\hat{x}## where ##\hat{x}## is a fixed unit vector in the direction of polarization), then we say that the wave is linearly polarized.

If that were true then surely a light beam could be polarized by a pinhole and a slit would not be necessary.
 
  • #58
JulianM said:
If that were true then surely a light beam could be polarized by a pinhole and a slit would not be necessary.
The direction of polarization (the direction that vector ##\hat{x}## points) is necessarily perpendicular to the direction of propagation of the light.

A linear polarizer doesn't really use a slit - that's just the way the illustrations are drawn. For an easy-to-understand example of how a polarizer might really work, you might try the Wikipedia description of a wire-grid polarizer.
 
  • #59
JulianM said:
If that were true then surely a light beam could be polarized by a pinhole and a slit would not be necessary.
A polariser (or, at least, one kind of polariser) works by letting electrons flow in the x direction but not the y direction. So an incident EM wave with an electric field in the x direction starts electrons wiggling in the x direction, and one with its electric field in the y direction does not excite electrons. But nothing about the wave itself is moving in the x direction; the field is time varying, that's all.

A pinhole does not have a preferred direction for electron motion, so is not a polariser.
 
  • #60
Ibix said:
A polariser (or, at least, one kind of polariser) works by letting electrons flow in the x direction but not the y direction. So an incident EM wave with an electric field in the x direction starts electrons wiggling in the x direction, and one with its electric field in the y direction does not excite electrons. But nothing about the wave itself is moving in the x direction; the field is time varying, that's all.

A pinhole does not have a preferred direction for electron motion, so is not a polariser.

Nugatory said nothing is wiggling. Your opinion is electrons are wigling.

The OP was talking about light so presumably photons. What are the opinions on light?

As far as I am aware a wire grid is just a matrix of slits and is quite similar to the lines in polarizing sun glasses.
 
  • #61
JulianM said:
Nugatory said nothing is wiggling. Your opinion is electrons are wigling.
The light is not wiggling. Electrons in the polarizer are wiggling.
As far as I am aware a wire grid is just a matrix of slits and is quite similar to the lines in polarizing sun glasses.
A wire grid has effect not because of the slits, but because of its interaction with the time varying field which is light.
 
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  • #62
JulianM said:
What then is the meaning of a polarized wave? It is created by placing a slit in the light beam so that only waves which are aligned with the slit pass through.
A polarizer usually does not have slits, at least not at optical wavelengths. Typically it is simply a material whose electrical properties are anisotropic.

JulianM said:
I don't see how the equations help one to visualize this.
The equations are not about visualizing anything. They are simply about refuting his absurd claim.
 
  • #63
JulianM said:
Nugatory said nothing is wiggling. Your opinion is electrons are wigling.
@Ibix and I are not disagreeing - I was just careless in my wording when I said "nothing is wiggling" when I should have said that nothing in the wave is wiggling back and forth. When electromagnetic radiation encounters any conductive material, electrons in the material do respond by wiggling in response to changes in the electrical field at the position of the electron - but the wave itself is not anything wiggling, and there's nothing wiggling back and forth where the electromagnetic wave is propagating through the empty space on either side of the polarizing filter.
The OP was talking about light so presumably photons
OP was talking about light, so was talking about classical electromagnetic radiation, not photons. Polarization of light is a classical electromagnetic phenomenon understood by solving Maxwell's equations, has nothing to do with photons and quantum electrodynamics. (The relationship flows the other way - you have to understand the classical model before you can start leaning the quantum theory).
As far as I am aware a wire grid is just a matrix of slits and is quite similar to the lines in polarizing sun glasses.
That's not correct. Polarizing sun glasses use fine lines etched in the surface of an otherwise transparent material, and the physics of how that transmits light polarized in one direction and reflects light polarized in another direction is very complicated (How complicated? Well, first you have to explain how any ostensibly transparent material can ever reflect any light). The physics of the wire grid is completely different and much simpler - first-semester electrostatics is all it takes to show that the grid will only allow the electric field to point in one direction.
 
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  • #64
JulianM said:
Nugatory said nothing is wiggling. Your opinion is electrons are wigling.

The OP was talking about light so presumably photons. What are the opinions on light?
In a light wave in vacuum, nothing is wiggling. There is no piece of EM field bobbing up and down as the wave passes - it is just the field vectors at each point changing magnitude and direction.

That wave can start other stuff wiggling, however, such as electrons. And that's how the wire grid polariser works - the electrons absorb energy if the E field is parallel to the wires. All polarisers have a preferred direction, which is why a pinhole doesn't polarise - that's all I was pointing out.
 
  • #65
Nugatory said:
@Ibix and I are not disagreeing - I was just careless in my wording when I said "nothing is wiggling" when I should have said that nothing in the wave is wiggling back and forth. When electromagnetic radiation encounters any conductive material, electrons in the material do respond by wiggling in response to changes in the electrical field at the position of the electron - but the wave itself is not anything wiggling, and there's nothing wiggling back and forth where the electromagnetic wave is propagating through the empty space on either side of the polarizing filter.
OP was talking about light, so was talking about classical electromagnetic radiation, not photons. Polarization of light is a classical electromagnetic phenomenon understood by solving Maxwell's equations, has nothing to do with photons and quantum electrodynamics. (The relationship flows the other way - you have to understand the classical model before you can start leaning the quantum theory).
That's not correct. Polarizing sun glasses use fine lines etched in the surface of an otherwise transparent material, and the physics of how that transmits light polarized in one direction and reflects light polarized in another direction is very complicated (How complicated? Well, first you have to explain how any ostensibly transparent material can ever reflect any light). The physics of the wire grid is completely different and much simpler - first-semester electrostatics is all it takes to show that the grid will only allow the electric field to point in one direction.

That's not correct. The polarizing lens, developed and patented by Edwin Land, uses long strand molecules oriented I one direction.
 
  • #66
JulianM said:
That's not correct. The polarizing lens, developed and patented by Edwin Land, uses long strand molecules oriented I one direction.
Ah - right, I was thinking about a different type of polarizer.

The oriented long-strand molecules work similarly to a wire-grid polarizer(electrons move freely along the strands), so pass light that is polarized perpendicular to the direction of the strands.
 
  • #67
JulianM said:
That's not correct. The polarizing lens, developed and patented by Edwin Land, uses long strand molecules oriented I one direction.
On the scale of optical wavelengths there are no slits. The material is a continuous medium. Its material properties are simply anisotropic.
 
  • #68
Nugatory said:
If the direction is always the same (so only the amplitude of the field is changing with time - written as a vector we have ##\vec{E}=(A\sin{\omega}t)\hat{x}## where ##\hat{x}## is a fixed unit vector in the direction of polarization), then we say that the wave is linearly polarized.

JulianM said:
If that were true then surely a light beam could be polarized by a pinhole and a slit would not be necessary.

Can you explain what you mean? How can a pinhole be used to produce an oscillating electric field described by ##\vec{E}=(A\sin{\omega}t)\hat{x}##?

Or for that matter, how could a slit? Slits can polarize a mechanical wave, so that's an analogy often used to describe polarization.

By the way, phrases like "light is a wave" can be easily misunderstood. What it means in this case is that the behavior of light can sometimes be described by equations that describe wave behavior. In physics we're describing behavior, not assigning a status of "real" to any of the models that are a part of those descriptions. What I mean is that saying light's behavior can be described using a wave model may mean to some people quite a different thing than saying light is a wave. But in fact the former is just a more precise way of stating the latter.
 
  • #69
Mister T said:
Can you explain what you mean? How can a pinhole be used to produce an oscillating electric field described by ##\vec{E}=(A\sin{\omega}t)\hat{x}##?

Or for that matter, how could a slit? Slits can polarize a mechanical wave, so that's an analogy often used to describe polarization.

By the way, phrases like "light is a wave" can be easily misunderstood. What it means in this case is that the behavior of light can sometimes be described by equations that describe wave behavior. In physics we're describing behavior, not assigning a status of "real" to any of the models that are a part of those descriptions. What I mean is that saying light's behavior can be described using a wave model may mean to some people quite a different thing than saying light is a wave. But in fact the former is just a more precise way of stating the latter.

Please read carefully. I said - "if that were true"
Clearly it is not, therefore it is caused by something else.

Grids, slits and long chain molecules do polarize light, therefore it seems logical to infer that having a dimension greater than a pinhole is a requirement for polarization.
 
  • #70
JulianM said:
Grids, slits and long chain molecules do polarize light, therefore it seems logical to infer that having a dimension greater than a pinhole is a requirement for polarization.
Polarization also can happen just by reflection from a nonconductive surface, or by scattering off individual molecules in a gas. So a dimension greater than a pinhole is not necessary.

In any case, this discussion of polarization is very much a distraction from the topic of the thread. If you have questions about polarization then please start a new thread.
 
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  • #71
Nugatory said:
Nothing is wiggling though. At every point in space there is an electrical field, and at every moment that field points in some direction. If the direction is always the same (so only the amplitude of the field is changing with time - written as a vector we have ##\vec{E}=(A\sin{\omega}t)\hat{x}## where ##\hat{x}## is a fixed unit vector in the direction of polarization), then we say that the wave is linearly polarized.
May you tell me how can the direction of the field vector be changed when the observer is moving as same direction as the vector?
 
  • #72
Ziang said:
May you tell me how can the direction of the field vector be changed when the observer is moving as same direction as the vector?
Because it's not an electric wave, it's an electromagnetic wave. You need to remember both the electric and magnetic waves and how they transform. What one frame regards as the electric part of the wave contributes to the electric and magnetic parts as measured in the other frame. Similarly the magnetic part. Putting them together gives you a transverse wave, as I said before.
 
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  • #74
Ziang said:
May you tell me how can the direction of the field vector be changed when the observer is moving as same direction as the vector?
I'll do this explicitly. If you can't follow this then you have some learning to do - maybe read Dale's links.

The electromagnetic field tensor is, in general,$$F^{\mu\nu}=\pmatrix{
0&-E_x/c&-E_y/c&-E_z/c\cr
E_x/c&0&-B_z&B_y\cr
E_y/c&B_z&0&-B_x\cr
E_z/c&-B_y&B_x&0\cr}$$It's easy to see how you can split that up into a sum of two tensors, one that describes the electric field and one that describes the magnetic field:
$$\pmatrix{
0&-E_x/c&-E_y/c&-E_z/c\cr
E_x/c&0&0&0\cr
E_y/c&0&0&0\cr
E_z/c&0&0&0\cr}
+\pmatrix{
0&0&0&0\cr
0&0&-B_z&B_y\cr
0&B_z&0&-B_x\cr
0&-B_y&B_x&0\cr}$$
For the case of an electromagnetic wave heading in the z-direction with its E-field in the x direction, the electromagnetic field tensor is $$F^{\mu\nu}=\pmatrix{
0&-B\sin \left(kz-\omega t\right)&0&0\cr
B\sin \left(kz-\omega t\right)&0&0&B\sin \left(kz-\omega t\right)\cr
0&0&0&0\cr
0&-B\sin \left(kz-\omega t\right)&0&0\cr }$$where I have used that the amplitude ##E## of the E-field is c times the amplitude ##B## of the B field. Transforming it into another frame is straightforward - ##F^{\mu'\nu'}=\Lambda^{\mu'}{}_{\mu} F^{\mu\nu}\Lambda^{\nu'}{}_\nu##, where $$\Lambda^{\mu'}{}_{\mu}=
\pmatrix{
\gamma&-{{v}\over{c}}\gamma&0&0\cr
-{{v}\over{c}}\gamma&\gamma&0&0\cr
0&0&1&0\cr
0&0&0&1\cr }$$is the Lorentz transform (or, in matrix notation, ##F'=\Lambda F \Lambda^T##). Decomposing our tensor into the electric and magnetic components before transforming, we find that the electric component becomes$$\pmatrix{0&-B\sin \left(k z-\omega t\right)&0&0\cr B\sin \left(k
z-\omega t\right) &0&0&0\cr 0&0&0&0\cr 0&0&0&0\cr }$$and the magnetic component becomes
$$\pmatrix{0&0&0&-B{{v \sin \left(k z-\omega t\right) }\over{
\sqrt{c^2-v^2}}}\cr 0&0&0&B{{c \sin \left(k z-\omega t\right)
}\over{\sqrt{c^2-v^2}}}\cr 0&0&0&0\cr B{{v \sin \left(k z-\omega t
\right) }\over{\sqrt{c^2-v^2}}}&-B{{c \sin \left(k z-\omega t
\right) }\over{\sqrt{c^2-v^2}}}&0&0\cr }$$That is, what the first frame calls an electric field, the other frame sees the same (a special case because the E field is parallel to the velocity - generally a B field component will appear). But what the first frame calls a magnetic field, the other frame sees as both a magnetic field and an additional electric field. Adding them together, we see that the electric field in the primed frame is parallel to ##(1,0,\gamma v/c)##.

It's straightforward to transform the direction of travel of the light to get ##(-\gamma v/c,0,1)## and hence see that the electric field is perpendicular to the direction of the light since the dot product is zero. The magnetic field is also perpendicular, trivially so since it only includes a y component in either frame. It's also straightforward to show that the magnitudes of both the electric and magnetic components have changed by a factor of ##\gamma##.

So, in short, the transformed electromagnetic wave is an electromagnetic wave.

Edit: Note that I was lazy and didn't bother transforming z and t into z' and t', which is why there doesn't appear to have been any Doppler effect. If you do carry out that substitution the Doppler effect (concealed behind my laziness) will become apparent. It has no effect on the argument above, since all it does is change ##kz-\omega t## into ##\vec{k'}\cdot\vec{x'}-\omega't'## and then promptly cancels out of all the direction vectors I was interested in.
 
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  • #75
Ibix said:
Special relativity is the Lorentz transforms. Everything follows from them.

But if you want to regard relativity as a consequence of electromagnetism then you should also argue that it is (independently) a consequence of the strong force, the weak force, and gravity, since all of those are also relativistic theories.
Well, what I meant was that I am fairly confident that Maxwell's equations already had special relativity in them when they were put together, way back in the mid to late 1800s.

But would you be willing to elaborate? I know (obviously) that SR is compatible with EM (since it basically came from it) and with gravity (because of GR). I also know with QED that SR is compatible with quantum mechanics. What theories have SR compatible with the strong and weak forces? I know next to nothing about QED so if it's that, then I wouldn't know.
 
  • #76
Ziang said:
May you tell me how can the direction of the field vector be changed when the observer is moving as same direction as the vector?

Ibix said:
Because it's not an electric wave, it's an electromagnetic wave. You need to remember both the electric and magnetic waves and how they transform. What one frame regards as the electric part of the wave contributes to the electric and magnetic parts as measured in the other frame. Similarly the magnetic part. Putting them together gives you a transverse wave, as I said before.

I like this link on discussing this topic, if you're interested Ziang. I believe I posted it in our conversation.

http://www.mathpages.com/rr/s2-02/2-02.htm

It really is an excellent read, and explains the answers many, many of the questions you have.
I especially love how it shows how the invariant E2 - B2 is analogous to the invariant X2 - T2 of spacetime intervals (you have to get to the very end to see this in the article). It, to me, is a very attractive symmetry, which I'm noticing a lot of in special relativity as I learn it.
 
  • #77
Sorcerer said:
I am fairly confident that Maxwell's equations already had special relativity in them when they were put together

They "had special relativity in them" in the sense that they are Lorentz invariant. But special relativity doesn't just say that EM is Lorentz invariant; it says that everything is Lorentz invariant, including ordinary mechanics, the sort of thing that Maxwell and other physicists of his time believed was governed by Newtonian mechanics and was therefore Galilean invariant, not Lorentz invariant.

Sorcerer said:
What theories have SR compatible with the strong and weak forces?

The Standard Model of particle physics, which is, very schematically, a souped-up version of QED with enough fields in it to cover all of the known particles and (non-gravitational) interactions.
 
  • #78
PeterDonis said:
They "had special relativity in them" in the sense that they are Lorentz invariant. But special relativity doesn't just say that EM is Lorentz invariant; it says that everything is Lorentz invariant, including ordinary mechanics, the sort of thing that Maxwell and other physicists of his time believed was governed by Newtonian mechanics and was therefore Galilean invariant, not Lorentz invariant.

So Einstein was the key because he believed that the divide between mechanics and Maxwell was an artificial one, correct?

Is that the origin of Lorentz' idea that matter was squished when moving fast, rather than space and time itself being what is relative? That he wanted to keep the rules of mechanics separate from the Lorentz transformation, and devised artificial ways of explaining experimental results which pointed to his transformation laws being universal? (I ask because if matter comprises chemicals, which are held together by electrons and their attraction to protons, due to electrical force, then presumably Maxwell's equations would apply to the very material objects thought to be in the domain of Newtonian/Galilean mechanics.)
PeterDonis said:
The Standard Model of particle physics, which is, very schematically, a souped-up version of QED with enough fields in it to cover all of the known particles and (non-gravitational) interactions.

Thank you for the information. I don't know a lot about the Standard Model or QED. But by this do you mean that QED is embedded within the Standard Model? And does that mean that SR, QM, the strong, weak, and EM forces are all already united in a unified theory?
 
  • #79
JulianM said:
What then is the meaning of a polarized wave? It is created by placing a slit in the light beam so that only waves which are aligned with the slit pass through.

I don't see how the equations help one to visualize this.

Dale said:
A polarizer usually does not have slits, at least not at optical wavelengths. Typically it is simply a material whose electrical properties are anisotropic.

The equations are not about visualizing anything. They are simply about refuting his absurd claim.

I know this is off topic, but guys like the now apparently banned Julian would do well to attempt to learn the math presented as refutation to a claim made against currently accepted physics by respected and well educated members who have spent years studying this topic. Physics is hard. You can't get beyond lower division undergraduate physics without doing much more than dipping your toes in the ocean of math. You have to jump in, because the subjects become far too abstract and to use simple "every man" models to explain them 100% accurately.

Even Newton's law of gravitation is much more complicated than you might think. Most physics newbies such as myself think it's this:

##F \ = \ G \ \frac{m_1 \ m_2}{r^2} ##

When in reality, that's a vast oversimplification of a complicated vector integral that pushes the limits of undergraduate physics, used because spatially extended bodies are a lot harder to model than magical point masses.
More info on that here: https://physics.info/gravitation-extended/

Point being, physics is a lot more complicated than it seems when you start out looking at it, so don't make assumptions based on your intuition. Particularly when experiment has proven time and time again that our intuition is based on a limited perspective and often leaves us with incorrect assumptions.
 
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  • #80
Sorcerer said:
So Einstein was the key because he believed that the divide between mechanics and Maxwell was an artificial one, correct?

Basically, yes.

Sorcerer said:
Is that the origin of Lorentz' idea that matter was squished when moving fast, rather than space and time itself being what is relative? That he wanted to keep the rules of mechanics separate from the Lorentz transformation, and devised artificial ways of explaining experimental results which pointed to his transformation laws being universal?

I'm not sure. Lorentz contraction is part of SR, so it's not like Lorentz was wrong about it. Also, from the viewpoint of the frame in which the object is moving, Lorentz's reasoning--that the way EM fields work when the source is moving causes the object to contract--is perfectly valid. (John Bell wrote an excellent essay about this--it's the one in which he introduces the Bell spaceship paradox, in fact.) The difference between Lorentz and Einstein was that Lorentz believed (at least if the historical claims I've read about him are correct) that there was a particular "privileged" inertial frame, and he intended his argument about EM field behavior causing Lorentz contraction to apply in that particular frame. Whereas Einstein realized that, no, if Lorentz invariance is correct then every inertial frame is the same, none of them are "privileged".

Sorcerer said:
if matter comprises chemicals, which are held together by electrons and their attraction to protons, due to electrical force, then presumably Maxwell's equations would apply to the very material objects thought to be in the domain of Newtonian/Galilean mechanics

Yes, that's correct. And Lorentz understood that. See above.

Sorcerer said:
But by this do you mean that QED is embedded within the Standard Model?

Yes. QED is what you get if you ignore all the fields in the Standard Model except the electron and photon.

Sorcerer said:
does that mean that SR, QM, the strong, weak, and EM forces are all already united in a unified theory?

Yes.
 
  • #81
Sorcerer said:
But would you be willing to elaborate? I know (obviously) that SR is compatible with EM (since it basically came from it) and with gravity (because of GR). I also know with QED that SR is compatible with quantum mechanics. What theories have SR compatible with the strong and weak forces? I know next to nothing about QED so if it's that, then I wouldn't know.
Of the so-called "four forces" we've only ever had a non-relativistic theory for one of them - gravity. EM was developed before relativity but its theory turned out to be compatible with SR and, historically, it was the mismatch between relativistic EM theory and the rest of physics that led to the discovery of SR. And the realisation that Newtonian gravity is incompatible with SR, no matter how hard we try to wedge it in there, led to the development of GR, a classical relativistic theory of gravity.

We then realized that Maxwell's EM was only an approximation to a relativistic quantum theory of EM, which is QED. Further thinking along those lines led to relativistic quantum field theories for the strong and weak forces - so far as I'm aware we never had a non-quantum nor non-relativistic version of those.

Similar lines of thought led to a plausible-looking candidate for a relativistic quantum theory of gravity, but the maths doesn't work and we've been kind of stalled there ever since. Despite ever more creative efforts.
 
  • #82
Ibix said:
Of the so-called "four forces" we've only ever had a non-relativistic theory for one of them - gravity.

It seems to me that Coulomb's law makes for a consistent nonrelativistic theory of charged particles. Why doesn't it qualify?

I'm not sure whether there is a consistent nonrelativistic theory of the electric field + magnetic field.
 
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  • #83
stevendaryl said:
It seems to me that Coulomb's law makes for a consistent nonrelativistic theory of charged particles. Why doesn't it qualify?

I'm not sure whether there is a consistent nonrelativistic theory of the electric field + magnetic field.
I don’t think Coulomb’s law fits the bill as a theory encompassing the totality of one of the so-called four interactions/forces. That would be like saying Newton’s gravitational law encompasses all of classical mechanics (in fact the two look very similar).

That is, Coulomb’s law is a subset theory of the larger electromagnetic theory, and Ibix was referring to the big four, not any subset of them alone.
 
  • #84
stevendaryl said:
It seems to me that Coulomb's law makes for a consistent nonrelativistic theory of charged particles. Why doesn't it qualify?
Fair point. I hadn't thought of it like that.

However, Coulomb's law leads simply to Gauss' law, which is one of Maxwell's equations. So is it a non-relativistic approximation or just an incomplete version of Maxwell?
 

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