Scholasticism

 

Response to Nigel Cook’s request.

 

Electromagnetic Theory from First Principles.

 

Preamble is at the end.  

 

 

Electromagnetic Theory from First Principles.

Ivor Catt, 13th August 2004

 

This theoretical structure was spawned in nineteenth century physics, and owes nothing to developments during the twentieth century. It is a throwback to the nineteenth century.

 

Although Catt came to the idea of “Energy Current” independently, he found out later that Heaviside, who had been suppressed, predated him with the idea, in 1872. [Heaviside mentions the idea only twice in all his writings.] The structure of the three theories, N, H and C, follows from the two concepts; electric current and energy current.

 

We begin with Theory N. This is the Normal Theory, which has held sway for a century. This says that a battery yearns to deliver electric charge into a pair of wires connected to the battery plates. If such a pair of wires are attached, the battery delivers charge into them. As this charge progresses down the wire(s), it forms electric current.

 

This is a summary of Theory N. When electric (charge) voltage and current has been established in (on) the wires, they cause electric field and magnetic field in the space (dielectric) between the wires. Electric Charge and current cause electric and magnetic field.

 

Heaviside instigated “Theory H” with the regal phrase; “We reverse this”. Theory H says that the battery yearns to deliver electromagnetic field, electric and magnetic, into the space between the attached wires. Should it succeed, then the resulting electric field travelling down the space between the wires causes electric current in the wires. Electric and magnetic field cause voltage and current.

 

The next advance was a century later, in 1976. It came as a result of considering power transmission. Whereas in Theory N, the original Cause, electric charge and current, caused electric and magnetic field, which then delivered the power down a transmission line, in the case of Theory H, the original Cause was electric and magnetic field, which delivered the power down the transmission line. Electric charge and current had been removed from the essential progress of causality; the delivery of power from battery on the left to load on the right. Electric current did not exist.

 

Theory C is that electric charge and electric current do not exist. This was published in Wireless World, December 1980.

 

That ends the backdrop to Catt’s theories.

 

Particles do not exist. An apparent particle is an array of trapped waves [Note 1].

 

The theoretical starting point is the Transverse Electromagnetic Wave, usually called the TEM Wave [Note 2]. In a vacuum, this travels forward at a single velocity, 300,000 Km/sec, or ©. It has an electric field at right angles to the direction of travel. It also has a magnetic field which is at right angles to both the direction of travel and the electric field. The relative direction (i.e. whether it is at 90 degrees or 270 degrees) of each field with respect to the other field and direction of travel is always the same. The ratio of electric field to magnetic field, called Zo, is 377 ohms.

 

Catt’s approach, usual in Occam’s minimalist scientific tradition, is to attempt to construct as much as possible of the universe in all its variety from this single Primitive. It is called the Transverse Electromagnetic Wave (TEM Wave for short). Only twice during his life, Oliver Heaviside called it “Energy Current”.

 

It seems clear that the whole of electromagnetic theory can be built up from individual or superposed primitives described above, and that such a theory will be correct. Thereafter, the task will be to construct everything apparently non-electromagnetic from the TEM Wave as well. A start has been made with gravity (see Electromagnetism 1, on my website).

 

1 Everything travels at the same velocity ©. (Note SV.) Travel at less than velocity © is impossible, so a stationary field (i.e. zero velocity) is impossible. An apparently stationary field or object is an illusion. (Note M) If Maxwell‘s Equations are of comfort to the reader, it will be useful to point out that the solutions to Maxwell’s Equations exclude the stationary case. The only solutions are +© or –©.

 

2 It is impossible for an electric field to exist on its own.

 

3 It is impossible for a magnetic field to exist on its own. Electric and magnetic fields always co-exist, in fixed poroportion 377, and always travel forward together at a fixed velocity of 300,000 Km/sec ©. The very concepts of an electric field and of a magnetic field are faulty. The only field which exists is the electromagnetic field, and deconstruction is unwarranted. Similarly, no meaning should be attached to the physical reality of a brick’s width, or its length, or its breadth. However, if something has all three; width, length and breadth, it is possible for it to exist, and even to be a brick, and for it to have width, length and breadth. In fact, in order to exist, it must have these three characteristics. The essential difference between a TEM Wave and a brick is that the TEM Wave has only two, rather than three, physical dimensions, or amplitudes, and moves forward in the third dimension at fixed velocity ©. Also, its electric dimension has a fixed amplitude compared with its magnetic dimension, 377. The Primitive here described as a TEM Wave (or perhaps we should say impulse) has approaching zero thickness. It has energy density of amplitude ExH, but no energy. A long sequence of such TEM waves can add up to a TEM Pulse of fixed length, with finite energy.

 

The above section will now be repeated with more interpolation of the brick analogy.

 

It is impossible for a magnetic field to exist on its own. Electric and magnetic fields always co-exist, in fixed proportion 377, and always travel forward together at a fixed velocity of 300,000 Km/sec ©. The very concepts of an electric field and of a magnetic field are faulty. The only field which exists is the electromagnetic field, and deconstruction is unwarranted. Similarly, no meaning should be attached to the physical reality of a brick’s width, or its length, or its breadth. However, if something has all three; width, length and breadth, it is possible for it to exist, and even to be a brick, and for it to have width, length and breadth. In fact, in order to exist, it must have these three characteristics. The essential difference between a TEM Wave and a brick is that the TEM Wave has only two, rather than three, physical dimensions, or amplitudes, and moves forward in the third dimension at fixed velocity ©. Also, its electric dimension has a fixed amplitude compared with its magnetic dimension, 377. The Primitive here described as a TEM Wave (or perhaps we should say impulse) has approaching zero thickness. It has energy density of amplitude ExH, but no energy. (Similarly, at a point, a brick has density but no mass. Only a given volume of the brick has mass. To bring the analogy closer, a segment, or wafer, of brick with width and length but approaching zero breadth will have density, but no mass.) A long sequence of such TEM waves can add up to a TEM Pulse of fixed length, and finite energy. (A linear array of wafers of brick, each with density but no mass, can add up to a real brick, which has mass.)

 

Anything which appears to a measuring instrument to be stationary is composed of more than one electromagnetic field travelling at the velocity ©.

 

4 It can be shown that the process of detecting or measuring an electric field masks the associated magnetic field, and vice versa. All known measuring instruments unintentionally mask the reality, that an electric field always coexists with a magnetic field, and vice versa.

 

5 There is no instantaneous action at a distance. Anything leaving a point in space at any instant in time is the result of what reached that point in space at that instant, and of nothing else. [see Note 1; Space is the ability to accomodate energy.]

 

6 The simplest case of a TEM Wave of energy current is that which travels unaltered at velocity © guided by two parallel plane perfect conductors of infinite width. The direction of travel at velocity © is parallel with the plates. The (measured) magnetic field is at right angles, and parallel with the plates. The (measured) electric field is at right angles to both, and in a direction perpendicular to the plane of the conducting, or guiding, plates. (It is always in the same direction associated with the direction of travel and of the magnetic field.)

 

7 If a lateral conducting plate is placed across the path of travel it prevents forward progress. The TEM Wave is found to reflect with inversion of the electric, the magnetic field and the direction of forward motion. Thus, the relative orientation of electric and magnetic fields (whether 90 degrees or 270 degrees) is maintained.

 

8 It the two conducting plates end in an open circuit, then the energy current reflects without inversion of the electric field. The relative orientation of electric field, magnetic field and direction of travel is maintained.

 

9 So-called “Electric Charge” does not exist. It is merely the mathematical manipulation of the electric field caused by travelling energy current or energy currents. One of Maxwell’s Equations will show how to calculate the so-called “Electric Charge” by mathematical manipulation of electric field density over distance.

 

10 So-called “Electric Current” does not exist. It is merely a mathematical manipulation of the gradient of the magnetic field caused by travelling energy current or energy currents. One of Maxwell’s Equations will show how to calculate the so-called “Electric Current” by mathematical manipulation of magnetic field density over distance.

 

9 and 10 break the dualistic vice which has trapped electromagnetic theory for a century and a half. As quoted in my December 1980 article in Wireless World, Oliver Heaviside was moving in this direction when he wrote; “By the way, is there such a thing as Electric Current?

 

11 A capacitor is charged by delivering energy current guided between two conductors. When it enters the front end of the capacitor, the process is the same as when a TEM Wave travelling down guided by two conductors experiences a change in the characteristic impedance (which is caused the change in the shape of the cross section of space between the two guiding conductors) of the space between the two conductors. The energy current which enters the capacitor continues to travel at the speed of light (for the dielectric) across the space between the capacitor plates, and there is no mechanism for it to slow down. An apparently steady charged capacitor contains energy current, half of it travelling to the right at velocity ©, and the other half travelling to the left at ©. This is called the Catt, or Contrapuntal, model for a charged capacitor. [Note F]

 

Note F.

F1

The route to Unified Field Theory (uniting electromagnetism with gravity) is suggested via this unlikely source, the contrapuntal model for the charged capacitor. Since the two plates of a charged capacitor experience an attractive force, it follows that when two TEM waves guided by two parallel conductors pass through each other, a sudden physical force appears. This is the “electrostatic force of attraction between two bodies with opposite electric charge“. If we use conventional theory to calculate the “magnetic force of repulsion between two conductors as a result of the electric current passing along them when a TEM Wave passes, we find that it is exactly equal and opposite to the “electrostatic force. Thus, when a TEM Wave glides along guided by two uniform perfect conductors, the conductors experience no physical force. However, should two such TEM Waves travelling in opposite directions pass through each other, a sudden physical force appears between the two conductors while the TEM Waves overlap. TEM Waves of the same polarity result in a force of attraction between the conductors. TEM Waves of opposite polarity result in a force of repulsion between the conductors. This insight led Catt to begin to structure the force of gravitational attraction between two crystals each composed of ordered arrays of trapped energy currents, or TEM Waves. This can be seen in his book “Electromagnetism 1, on his website.

 

F2

Energy current enters a capacitor between the parallel edges at the end of the capacitor plates. We know that it then vacillates to and fro from end to end between the two plates. Strong evidence for this is that if we try to discharge such a charged capacitor, the pulse outputted is twice the length between the capacitor plates and only half the voltage amplitude of the charged capacitor. [Note FB]

 

The immediate question that arises is, what would happen should we attempt to discharge a square capacitor by connecting to the two plate edges at right angles to the two edges via which it was charged? This easy experiment has never been done. It is surmised that the same half amplitude, double length pulse would exit via any of the four edges of the square capacitor. This may imply that the velocity of a TEM wave is greater than © by the square root of 2, but we do not know this. However, this question should be subsumed into the broader question as to how a TEM wave travelling unchanged between two parallel uniform conductors finds out that one of the conductors has terminated. What signal traverses the TEM wave sideways? This leads to the question as to how light from a torch is beamed. This is not known, and certainly is not contained in Maxwell’s Equations.

 

Note FB.

A battery is a charged capacitor with regeneration material in place of dielectric. Experiments on the transient response of a battery are urgently needed, but probably will not be undertaken for some decades. (In any case, results of such experiments would be rejected for publication.) It is to be expected that initially, when we begin to discharge a battery, it will behave like a charged capacitor, so that a 1.5v battery will initially deliver half of that voltage into a transmission line whose characteristic impedance equals that between the battery plates. It will be very interesting to see whether the restoration of the charged state by action of the dielectric is immediate, or whether there is a delay of a few nanoseconds before the battery again delivers its full output power. Similar experiments, to find transient response, can easily done on electrolysis and electroplating. Of course, the conventional story, of ions moving in the wrong direction at the wrong speed, will be a casualty of experimentation. [Note FBB, separate file]

 

It will be interesting to see, in the case of a single TEM wave traverses the electrodes from end to end, meaning that there is no physical force between the electrodes, whether electrolysis or electroplating occurs. We might find that the physical force resulting from a contrapuntal TEM wave is necessary. These experiments are easy to perform.

 

Note 1

Work on high speed logic interconnection showed a fundamental flaw in the concept of the particle, which for the moment we will assume has finite volume. That is, we assume that it is not all concentrated at a single point, which would give it infinite density.

 

I was involved in a split (competitive) contract between my company Motorola and Texas Instruments (TI) to deliver a high speed integrated circuit scratchpad memory, see Fall Joint Computer Conference 1966. I was forced to think hard about how to get signal from one side of my system to the other a.s.a.p. However, there was an unsurmountable problem; the velocity of light, and of TEM Waves.

 

A further brush, this time with the problem of how to speed up the hammer’s dwell time when it collided with the drum in a line printer, broadened my view on the problem with the particle as a concept. I realised that on impact the back of the hammer did not know about the impact at the front for some time. Similarly, the front edge of a particle will not be able to tell the back edge that it has experienced something, until a message has travelled across inside the particle at the speed of light. Thus, the concept of a particle merely divides the whole of space into two regions; the region inside the particle and the region outsider the particle. I would suggest that signals will not travel across the space inside a particle instantaneously – which under my world-view would mean that the particle had no volume and so had infinite density. Under my world-view, space which is traversed in zero time by a TEM Wave (which is the only signal allowed under my developing world-view), has zero width. This is a corollary from my definition of space;

 

Space is the ability to accommodate energy.

 

The next question to ask is whether the laws for the whole of space also apply in the space within the particle. We get no intelligible information on this from the “Modern Physics” community. At this stage of the discussion, perhaps we can say that the particle, although regarded as key to “Modern Physics because it is part of wave-particle duality, has never been properly defined, or even defined at all.

 

Note 2.

A Google search for “TEM Wave gives two hits for pages on my old website; “The TEM Wave; a lost concept.

Oliver Heaviside mastered the concept of the TEM Wave, which appears at the start of my book “Electromagnetism 1, on my website. During the twentieth century, when Heaviside’s work on electromagnetism was comprehensively suppressed, this grasp was loosened and finally lost.

 

Note SV.

Nigel Cook correctly asserted that this concept, that only one velocity, ©, is possible in our universe, is crucial, and revolutionary. However, the student of this approach to electromagnetic theory is advised to limit the assertion to electromagnetism while trying to grasp the material here. This approach to electromagnetism should not be made to stand or fall by the revolutionary idea that everything has to travel at velocity ©, no more or less. This leads to a more general point, that Catt’s set of theories can be fragmented. For instance, the contrapuntal, or Catt, model for the charged capacitor should be able to stand on its own, unimpeded by scepticism about other aspects of Catt’s more general approach.

 

Let us return to the narrow assertion that electromagnetism can only travel at one single velocity ©. It is necessary to attempt to explain why a TEM wave travels at a slower rate down a coaxial cable with a dielectric. My two volumes “Electromagnetic Theory” presents “Leopard space” and “Zebra space” as two possible ways in which a TEM wave might be caused to follow a devious path and so appear to travel at a slower velocity than ©. In Leopard space, the black dots represent a trapped arrays of energy current which cause the incident TEM wave to follow a curved path in the same way as light travelling close to the sun will bend. In the case of Zebra space, the trapped TEM waves create alternate bands of high impedance space and low impedance space. These cause much of the incident wave to reflect at the start of a “black” band and then recoil into the forwards direction at the previous black band. The result is that most of the energy current follows a reciprocating path – two steps forward, one step back. This means that it is necessary to assert that such a material which causes a TEM wave to travel slowly will also cause major “dispersion”; the stretching out of a sharp front edge. Further, there will be a correlation between the slowing down and the dispersion. It should not be possible for a material to slow energy current down a lot without also causing major dispersion. (However, this last sentence only applies to Zebra Space, not to Leopard Space.)

 

Note M.

If Maxwells Equations are of comfort to the reader, it will be useful to point out that the solutions to Maxwell’s Equations give only +© or –©, and exclude both any lower velocity and also the stationary case.

 

Preamble.

 

Two events cause me to discuss the present position, in July 2004. First, Nigel Cook, who wrote an editorial in Electronics World on “The Catt Question, has emphasised to me for some time that my book “Electromagnetism 1, available on my websites, is inappropriate as an introduction to my theories. Further, I myself would say that my book “Digital Hardware Design, also on my websites, does not meet the needs of the student of electromagnetic theory. Rather, it is intended for the practical engineer designing working digital systems.

 

“Electromagnetism 1 was written at a time when, admittedly, Ivor Catt and his theories on electromagnetism were still being rigorously ignored. However, the intention of writing the book was not to ensure that the material remain ignored. The problem which would arise if it were noticed had to be addressed. At that point, the accredited experts worldwide – lecturers, text book writers, would be caught with their pants down, exposed as having more or less no grasp of electromagnetic theory, for instance of the TEM Wave. Presumably they would defend themselves so as to avoid being ousted by their wives, losing their children etc. An attack had to be expected, and it would be launched on the basis of alleged errors in my books. As written and published, those books are invulnerable, whereas attempts to clarify their content may have made them and me vulnerable to attack.

 

The problem of helping a serious student is totally different from the problem of recording my advances while protecting myself against ignorant attack. That brings me to the second event causing me to discuss the present position, in July 2004.

 

The August 2004 issue of Electronics World, page 57, puts the attempt to extract comment on “The Catt Question from accredited luminaries on a more sound footing. A bank account is now set up, accessible to The Editor, and a total of 2,000 pounds sterling offered to students who manage to elicit comment on “The Catt Question from luminaries. [See www.ivorcatt.com/44.htm ]

 

Perhaps the way forward is to suggest that this article, outlining the new theory, is premised on the failure of luminaries to answer “The Catt Question”. That is, if it is impossible for the alleged negative charge on the bottom wire to get into place when needed, a revolutionary new approach is surely required. That is, if everyone, by default, is forced to accept that the Emperor has no clothes, then the next task is to reclothe him. At that point, it would be unreasonable to cite the non-existent old clothes during a criticism of the tailor, Catt, who is trying to restore dignity to a previously revered icon - The Emperor, representing, in our case, Electromagnetic Theory. The restart has to be in its own terms. It must not be articulated onto discarded theory which includes the arrival from nowhere of negative charge on the bottom conductor, as discussed in “The Catt Question”.

Ivor Catt   13aug04. 

 

Letter to those responsible for electromagnetic theory.

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