The aether

Photons have the peculiar property that they often seem to appear right out of nowhere. All that is needed is to heat a suitable material to a high enough temperature, and it starts to glow. But the material is made up of protons and electrons, where then do all the photons come from?

The only way to answer this in terms of the theory proposed in this book is that photons originate in the aether. They are somehow made visible through the interaction between the aether and heated materials.

Energy is transferred from the heated material to the aether in such a way that visible photons appear. But what is energy, and how exactly does energy interact with the aether to produce light?

As to the mechanism of production, it is either one in which photons are produced on the fly from particle quanta, or one in which energy makes pre-existing photons visible. The more reasonable of these suggestions is the latter. It is also the one that serves us the best in explaining a whole range of other phenomena encountered later in this book.

From this, we get that the aether contains low energy photons that serve as a reservoir for processes in which photons appear seemingly out of nowhere. Since we know that neutrinos also have this peculiar tendency to appear out of nowhere, we can conclude that the aether is a mix of very low energy photons and neutrinos. From our theory, we must also conclude that the aether is so dense that no single particle is ever out of contact with its adjacent neighbours.

Another property of the aether is that it has no absolute reference point. Every particle in it travels at the speed of light relative to its immediate surroundings. The aether is so void of energy that anything with a bit of energy quickly becomes an anchor point. The aether inside a car travelling down the highway, has the car as its anchor. The aether in a forest, has the forest as its anchor. Earth as a whole, drags the aether with it as it turns. The solar system in turn, is another anchor point. This spans the entire size hierarchy from the subatomic to the galactic  and beyond.

Relative to the local anchor, the aether moves with equal number of particles in every direction. Furthermore, the local anchor point sets the speed of its particles in such a way that when the forward speed of the local frame is added to the local speed of the aether, we get the speed of the aether outside the local frame.

This means that the aether inside a speeding train is slower than the aether outside of it. The aether inside a rocket moving at close to the speed of light is close to standstill.

To allow for all of this, the aether must be tolerant of small differences in speed. However, it is extremely intolerant when it comes to dissenting member particles. It behaves as a mob of wimps, ganging up on anything smaller than itself, while quickly conforming to anything bigger than itself.

There is no explanation for this behaviour in the theory presented here. All we can suggest at the moment is that it has something to do with the high density of the aether, coupled with its lack of energy. We will therefore use the above description of the aether as an unexplained premise as we progress through the rest of this book.

A notable consequence of this model is that all frames of reference have some higher reference frame that can be viewed as static compared to itself. This becomes important when we compare one reference frame to another. Furthermore, there is an ultimate top to this hierarchy. Viewed from that top, all reference frames have an aether that is either as fast moving as its own, or slower.

Since the particles in the aether move in all directions, the most natural analogy we have is a gas in which fast moving particles are hot and slow moving particles are cold. Similarly, we will describe fast moving aether as hot and slow moving aether as cold. The aether inside the above mentioned rocket ship is in other words extremely cold relative to its external reference frame.

Energy

Sticking with our theory, we must take the position that energy is a property of particle quanta. This is especially true since we know that neutrinos, consisting of single neutral particle quanta, are capable of carrying energy. Energy is therefore something fundamental, requiring no complex assembly or structure to exist.

As stated at the beginning of this book, particle quanta have three fundamental properties. They are their 3 dimensions, their size and their texture. Additionally, we can propose speed, vibration and spin as fundamental. However, neutrinos do not speed up or slow down when given extra energy, so energy can not be speed.

Dismissing the idea that dimensions or texture may have anything to do with energy, we are left with spin, vibration or size as top contenders. Noting that large particles, such as protons, are known to carry more energy than smaller particles such as electrons and photons, our prime candidate becomes size. Choosing this as our definition of energy, we get that an increase in size of particles at the subatomic is equivalent to an increase in energy.

Pilot waves

We can now explain the phenomenon of visible light, as well as all other energy carrying photons, in terms of the aether and energy as size. When a suitable material is heated in the right way, electrons in that material start to kick low energy photons, everywhere available in the aether, one notch up in energy.

The more energetic a particle is, the larger it is, and the more it interacts with the aether. This in turn has two consequences:

1. Energetic particles take less direct paths through the aether because they are constantly knocked about by the interfering aether.
2. Particles in the aether are pushed to the side by larger, more energetic, particles.

This allows for a pilot wave to build up around energetic particles. This pilot wave is comprised of low energy photons and neutrinos that travel along straighter paths than their more energetic counter parts. A wave front develops, similar to that in front of a ship moving through water.

Pilot waves are at their most intense in near vicinity of their host particle and diminish into nothing at a distance. This means that a host particle is never very far from the extremities of its pilot wave. However, relative to the tiny size of the host particle, pilot waves cover vast distances. This can be deduced from analysing the double slit experiment in light of this model.

The double slit experiment

Consider the set-up of the double slit experiment:

Set-up of the double slit experiment

Now, consider what is registered on the light sensitive far wall as we pass one photon at the time through the barrier:

Building up an interference pattern

Each photon leaves a mark on the light sensitive wall, proving that photons manifest themselves as particles. At first, little can be seen of the interference pattern. However, for each additional photon passed through the barrier, the pattern becomes more defined, until it finally becomes a clear and undeniable wave pattern. Each photon must therefore have interfered with itself in some way.

Our explanation for this is that the pilot wave associated with each photon produces an interference pattern at the far side of the barrier as it cuts through both openings. This interference pattern alters the path of the photon in such a way that it can only reach certain areas of the far wall.

This is similar to what would happen if a boat were to pass through one of two adjacent openings into a bay. While the boat passes through only one of the openings, its pilot wave passes through both, creating an interference pattern in the waters inside the bay. The boat will thus experience self-interference similar to that experienced by a photon passing though a double slit barrier. Furthermore, a small boat will be more affected by self-interference than a big boat. This corresponds nicely to the difference in interference patterns produced by red and blue light. Red photons have less energy than blue photons. They are therefore smaller than blue photons.  Hence, they are more affected by self-interference than blue photons, which explains why red photons produce wider interference patterns than blue ones.

Keeping in mind that the two slits in the barrier of the double slit experiment can be far enough apart for us to be seen as separate lines with our naked eyes, it is clear that pilot waves are truly enormous relative to the particles that cause them. Photons are far smaller than electrons, which are so small that we have never been able to see them, even with the most powerful microscope. The difference in size between particle and associated pilot wave is therefore in the orders of millions, if not more.