What does an electromagnetic wave consist of?

[Ace-of-Spades]

Originally posted by bdkeenan00
Not all of the photons have to absorbed and remitted. Some could pass in between the spaces between atoms and get to your eyes in a strait line, while some others are absorbed and remitted in a random direction(which could explain why the light seems to expand outward in all directions). And when you think about how many photons there are coming from source it's easy to see how so many can get away without being absorbed.

Thanks, but if that is true, it does away with the reason of why this line of thought started being discussed here anyway.
The original question was:

Why do photons travel slower when traveling through an optically dense medium?

Ivan Seeking's suggestion was that they constantly get absorbed, and new ones are released, making the light beam travel slower.

I was simply arguing this.