Are Photons Dielectric?

At the end of my post on why Morton Spears was right about gravity, I added a caveat about the photon. It has to be dielectric.

The reason for this is that it has been shown in laboratory experiments that photons loose energy as they move away from Earth. Photons are affected by gravity, and since Morton Spears' theory predicts that gravity acts only on dielectric particles, photons have to be dielectric.

What's more, photons loose energy independent of their frequency, so gravity is not a force that acts on energy as I suggested in a previous post on gravitational red-shift. It is a force acting on dielectric matter.

If gravity was attracting energy directly, then different energy photons should be affected differently. Gravitational lensing would result in rainbow like effects, and that's not the case.

The fact that photons are affected identically by gravity regardless of their energy has been used as proof that Einstein was right about space. A curved space would affect photons based on their speed alone. Their energy would have no effect.

However, if photons are dielectric, and equally dielectric regardless of energy, Morton Spears can still be right.

But photons are not considered dielectric in standard textbook physics. They are little bundles of energy. They hold no charge. There are no charged quanta making up the photon, and without charged quanta, it cannot be a dielectric.

This means that my favorite theory of gravity is in trouble. It also means that my second favorite theory is in trouble. It too relies on the dipole property of dielectric matter.

Alternatively, it means that standard textbook physics is wrong about the photon, and there is one particularly mysterious thing about the photon that hints at this to be the case. High energy photons can produce electron-positron pairs.

The odd thing about this is that the photon is supposed to vanish into nothing at the exact same time that the electron-positron pair appears. Why not suppose that the photon carried the charged quanta making up the pair all along?

Electron-positron pair production from photon

Let's suppose that the photon carries all the charged quanta required to produce the electron-positron pair, and that these quanta exist in an extremely tight orbit at its center.

Let's suppose further that the photon cannot absorb energy by widening the orbits of its charged quanta. Any widening will result in an explosion producing an electron-positron pair. The only way a photon can absorb energy without exploding is by vibrating at a higher frequency.

Since inertia is a property of matter related to ordinary matter's ability to widen orbits of charged quanta, such photons will have no inertia. With no orbit to widen there can be no inertia.

Since this model of the photon has charged quanta orbiting each other at their center, it has dielectric qualities. Charged quanta in orbit will produce the required dipole distortion when exposed to an electric field. This is the nature of dielectric material, and our model of the photon will have this property.

Since all photons have charged quanta in identical orbits regardless of their energy levels, all photons have the same dielectric property. They will be affected identically by dielectric gravity regardless of their energy.

This means that my two favorite gravity theories will in fact produce the same effect on photons as Einstein predicted with his curved space model. Instead of curved space, we have dielectric photons.

Einstein's theory of curved space can be replaced by an electromagnetic model of gravity, provided photons are charge carrying objects rather than vibrating bundles of pure energy.

However, standard textbook physics tells us that atoms can emit photons by the mere contraction of their electron orbits. If photons are composed of charged quanta, then it would appear that atoms can miraculously produce charged quanta. That sounds more like magic than science.

Again we are forced to give an explanation that differs from standard textbook science. Instead of little bundles of energy being produced and emitted by atoms that contract their electron orbits, we have to suggest an alternative.

The alternative to having atoms producing photons from pure energy is a universe in which atoms transfer their energy to preexisting low energy photons.

Instead of free space being full of electron-positron pairs constantly coming into existence before equally miraculously disappearing back into nothing, as suggested by standard theory, we have space full of low energy photons.

When an atom emits light by contracting its electron orbit, all that happens is a transfer of energy from the atom's orbit to a random nearby photon. Instead of photons being created and destroyed on the fly, photons are always around. They fill free space. They are everywhere.

Almost all photons are low energy. Only a small portion have enough energy to be detected. However, some have very high energies. They vibrate like crazy and will explode into regular matter if provoked by a sufficiently strong electrical field.

There is nothing mysterious going on in this model. There is no creation or destruction of anything, just phase changes from one state to another. It's all about absorption and transfer of energy to and between preexisting elements.

In this model, nothing is truly empty. Everything is full of energy carrying quanta, mostly low energy photons, but also high energy photons and regular matter. And everything is dielectric.

Since photons are dielectric and space is full of photons, it follows that free space, void of ordinary matter should be dielectric as well.

And sure enough, empty space is dielectric. This follows directly from the fact that empty space can conduct electricity. The permittivity of free space is not infinite. Free space is a conductor of electricity, given a high enough voltage.

The standard explanation for this is that the mysterious electron-positron pairs, constantly appearing and disappearing, carry the electricity. However, it can just as well be interpreted as low energy photons exited to the point of conductivity.

With an explanation, slightly deviating from standard textbook physics, we have successfully managed to explain both gravity and a whole range of energy related phenomena. There is no need for curved space to explain the effect of gravity on photons. There is no need for mysterious quantum fluctuations in which electron-positron pairs continuously appear and disappear. Inertia is no big mystery either.

All that is required to explain all of this is the existence of charged quanta in photons and ordinary matter alike.

The dielectric photon