Tag Archives: emitter theory

Revisiting Emitter theory and Neutral Pion decay

According to the Emitter theory, the velocity of an emitted particle is influenced by the velocity of its source. For example a bullet fired from a moving gun (from the top of a moving train) travels at a higher velocity than when it gets fired from a stationary gun. Of course this is what most of us would expect to happen with any particle or projectile in our everyday life. So when a photon gets emitted from a fast moving pion travelling at velocity ‘v’, relativists predicted that, if light particles behaved like the ‘ordinary’ particles/projectiles of our everyday life, the emitted photon would travel at a speed of ‘c+v’. But apparently the emitted photons from the decaying pions only travelled at velocity ‘c’ irrespective of the pion’s velocity. Hence relativists concluded that the speed of light is indeed constant and is not affected by that of the source.

Let’s now explore the truth without being biased by the scientific superstitions.

Is Emitter theory true?

Contrary to the commonly held belief, the velocity of an emitted body doesn’t get boosted by the motion of its source. And there is nothing special about photons in that regard.

To realise that, imagine a golf player standing on the top of a stationary train and hitting a golf ball. Imagine that the ball travels at 10meters/sec eastward. Now imagine that the train moves at 5meters/sec towards the east and the golfer hits another identical ball with exactly the same force as before. According to the Emitter theory, the golf ball should now travel at 15meters/sec with respect to a stationary observer. But it doesn’t because the ball now faces more resistance from air winds. As the source (which includes the train, the golfer and the golf ball) moves at 5meters/sec, it experiences winds coming from the opposite direction at the same speed i.e. 5meters/sec. So the golf ball now has to travel against strong winds unlike the situation when the train was stationary. And the faster the train moves, the stronger will be the winds, the more will the resistance to the ball and hence the slower will be the launching speed of the golf ball.

Similarly as the pion moves at velocity ‘v’ in the Ether medium, it feels Ether wind ‘blowing’ in the opposite direction at the same velocity. And this Ether wind offers more frictional force to the emitted photon. That explains why the speed of an emitted photon remains the same whether it gets emitted from a slow moving pion or a fast moving pion.

Having said that, Emitter theory holds true in one special scenario – when the golfer hits the golf ball inside the compartment of a moving train, the ball travels at a higher velocity. The reason is obvious- air resistance remains the same inside the compartment whether a train is moving or stationary. We can call this as ‘frame dragging’ though relativists may have a delusional description for the phrase.

Where were the photons before they got emitted from the pion?

Or from where do the photons come into existence when the pions decay?

When JJ Thompson observed beta rays being emitted from the ‘indivisible’ atoms, he didn’t make the stupid assumption that the rays suddenly popped into existence from nowhere by some divine synthesis. Rather he rightly concluded that these rays (later identified as electrons) must be coming from inside the atoms and hence must have existed inside them before the decay process. This was at a time when atoms were considered as fundamental and indivisible. Obviously an atom (or any object) can’t release something without being in possession of the same.
But when an electron releases a photon as it jumps to a lower energy level, or when a pion emits a photon as it decays, why don’t we apply the same simple logic? Why don’t the scientific folk think that the photons must have to be inside their ‘parental’ particles first, before they can get released or ‘fired’? Of course doing so would destroy their beautiful and mesmerising theory of relativity. So they feel comfortable by just saying- ‘a photon gets released’ or ‘photon just pops in’ etc and never try to clarify from exactly where and how that photon comes into existence.
The so called fundamental and indivisible particles may not actually be fundamental and indivisible. They could well have some internal architecture and composition, and photons may well be part of their internal milieu. We simply consider some particles as fundamental because we have not been able to ‘peep’ into these tiny particles. But our inabilities as humans can’t be sworn upon as Nature’s laws. The fact that photons get released during the decay of the ‘indivisible’ neutral pions indicates that the photons must be existing inside the pions in some yet undetectable format/ arrangement.
As pointed above, relativists won’t accept the above logical argument because that will destroy their superstition of constant speed of light – If photons are ‘allowed’ to exist inside the pions before getting emitted, then their relative velocity with respect to the pion before the decay would become zero and not ‘c’ (just like how a horse’s velocity with respect to the ‘horse-rider system’ would be zero).

‘Particle engines’

Imagine a horse that normally runs at a velocity of 10meters/sec. And imagine that the horse is made use of to ‘drive’ a cart. Obviously the horse can’t drive the cart faster than its lone velocity. Say for example the horse-cart moves at a velocity of 8 meters/sec. Now imagine that the horse gets ‘released’ from the cart and runs on its own. What would the velocity of the horse now? Obviously it would only run at its normal velocity i.e. 10 meters/sec. It would be stupid to apply the emitter principle here and expect the horse’s velocity to get boosted by the cart’s velocity.
Similarly imagine that a spaceship (pion) is flying at a speed of say 1000meters/sec with the help of 4 rocket engines (photons). If one of the rockets gets detached, this detached rocket will only fly at its own speed and will not get ‘boosted’ by the spaceship’s motion.
We believe that photons are the fundamental particles of energy. So it is logical to imagine them as providing the driving force to various particles of the quantum world, whether it is electrons or neutral pions or others. Obviously for any mass or particle to move through space, it needs energy. Because we believe that photons are the fundamental particles of energy, it must obviously be these particles which are responsible for the motion of any object at the most fundamental level. In other words, photons must be seen as the engines of the quantum world.
So when a particle decays, photons do not get ‘ejected’ but just get freed. And just like how a horse’s velocity doesn’t get boosted by the velocity of the cart it was driving, a photon’s velocity can’t get boosted by the velocity of the particle that it was moving.

Ether to Relativity: The journey from light to darkness

We know that for waves to travel in space they need a medium. As a wave travels in a medium, the particles of the medium oscillate to and fro or up and down depending upon the type of the wave. For example as sound waves travel in air medium, the particles of air move to and fro, and this movement of particles results in alternate compressions and rarefactions in the medium. We know that sound waves also travel in liquid media (e.g. water) and some solid media. The particles of all these media also execute a similar to and fro waving motion when sound waves propagate through them. And we know that as water waves (or ripples) propagate in a pond, the particles of the medium (which is obviously water) oscillate up and down. So we consider water waves as transverse waves in contrast to sound waves which are longitudinal waves.

Then what about light? First of all, to the physicists of the pre-modern era, it was not clear whether light is composed of particles or waves. After centuries of debate on the nature of light, Young’s double slit experiment (1803) had confirmed that light behaves like waves. Half a century later, Maxwell, building upon the equations of electromagnetism, had calculated the speed of light waves as 3×108m/sec (referred to as ‘c’ by the physicists). These two developments posed two very difficult questions to the physicists of those days:

1) If light is a wave, then what is the thing which does the ‘waving’ or oscillation? In other words what is the medium for light waves? As far as scientists knew, there wasn’t any medium in the outer space. But if there isn’t really any medium in the outer space, then how could light, which behaves like waves, reach us from the Sun and other stars?

2) The next question that bothered physicists was that, if light travels at speed ‘c’, it is with reference to whom? Whenever we mention the speed of an object, there is always a reference frame to it whether explicit or implicit. For example when we say that a car moves at 100kmph, we mean that the car moves at 100kmph speed with reference to the road (or to a stationary observer on the road). Obviously the said speed is not with reference to someone who is inside the car or to someone who is following the car on a bike. Similarly the propagation speed of a wave is always mentioned with reference to the medium in which the wave travels. When we say that sound waves travel at speed of 330m/sec, the said speed, though not explicit, is always with reference to the medium in which the waves travel. So, when Maxwell calculated the speed of light as ‘c’, it implied that this speed must be with reference to the medium in which light waves should be travelling. But as just been mentioned, there isn’t any medium in the outer space as far as scientists know. But if there is no medium in the outer space, the speed of light that Maxwell calculated is with reference to whom?

Before the advent of modern physics with all its weird theories, scientists believed in the existence of an ever pervading medium called Ether. Everything in this universe including planets, stars etc were thought to remain suspended and move about in this stationary universal medium. And this putative Ether medium was thought to act as the medium for light waves (hence the name ‘lumiferous Ether’). Though there was no proof of its existence, the Ether hypothesis had enjoyed good support from the physicists of the pre-modern era as that was able to explain how light waves from outer space could reach us on Earth and also was able to provide the answer for the reference frame problem. But over a relatively short span of time, the above Ether hypothesis gave way to the weird theories of the modern physics. And we must talk about three things here which made physics ‘advance’ in the wrong direction.

Michelson- Morley experiment: Michelson presumed that when Earth moved through the stationary Ether medium, it would result in what is called as Ether wind. So he predicted that light beams made to travel to and fro in perpendicular directions i.e. one light beam passed parallel to the Ether wind direction and another beam passed across the wind, would take different times to cover the same distance. But to the astonishment of the scientific community, Michelson’s famous experiment failed to detect any difference in the times taken by the two light beams and thus ruled out any such thing called Ether wind. From this and other observations (aberration of star light), scientists concluded that there isn’t anything like Ether in our universe. (We will discuss later why scientists are wrong to assume so and will expose the misconceptions upon which this famous experiment was devised).

Light and Electromagnetic radiation: From the work of great physicists like Faraday and Maxwell, scientific community had learnt more about electro-magnetism and electromagnetic radiation. It became known that electromagnetic waves get generated from relative motion between electric and magnetic fields. And the scientific community had realised that light is a form of electromagnetic radiation and that visible light comprises only a small part of the total spectrum of electromagnetic radiation. And having discarded the Ether medium, the intelligent physicists had ‘understood’ electromagnetic waves as ‘self propagating’ transverse waves with electric and magnetic fields oscillating at right angles to the direction of propagation. While we the ordinary minds may not correctly grasp the physicists’ imagination of these ‘mythical’ waves of transversely oscillating electric and magnetic fields, the point to note here is that, according to the intelligent physicists, electromagnetic waves (i.e. light waves) do not require any medium to propagate in space unlike mechanical waves (e.g. sound waves).

Emitter theory: But the above ‘understanding’ of the scientific crowd on EM waves had made the second question even tougher to answer i.e. if EM waves are self propagating and if they don’t require any medium , then Maxwell’s calculated speed of electromagnetic waves is with reference to whom?

At this juncture, some scientists believed that the calculated speed of EM waves must be with reference to the source that generated them (Emitter theory). But observations on neutral pion decay didn’t seem to support the ‘emitter theory’. Scientists observed that light photons (EM waves) travelled at the same speed ‘c’ whether they were emitted by fast moving particles (neutral pions) or slow moving particles. In other words, light photons’ velocity didn’t vary with the velocity of the source unlike the case with projectiles in our everyday world!

Another argument against the emitter theory was that Electromagnetic waves get generated when there is relative motion between a magnet and a conductor (e.g. copper wire). In other words, a source of EM waves contains two basic components (a magnet and a conductor) both of which move relative to each other. So if we assume that Maxwell’s calculated speed of EM waves is with reference to the source, which one of the two components of the source shall we consider as representing the source? I.e. shall we swear upon the magnet’s frame or the conductor’s frame as representing the reference frame of the source as a whole?

Imagine that we kept a magnet at rest and moved a copper wire with speed ‘v’ with respect to the magnet and generated EM waves. Here we may assume that the so generated EM waves travel at speed ‘c’ with reference to the magnet because this was the one at rest. In that case obviously the speed of the same EM waves becomes ‘c+v’ in the reference frame of the copper wire. But because motion is relative we can argue that it was actually the copper wire that was at rest and hence the Maxwell’s calculated speed ‘c’ must refer to the copper wire’s reference frame and not to the magnet.

But how can the generated EM waves travel at the same speed with reference to both the magnet and the conductor which are moving relative to each other? In other words, how can a light beam travel with the same speed ‘c’ with reference to two different objects in two different reference frames?

Emitter theory thus failed to solve the reference frame issue and the scientific turmoil continued. Amidst this scientific turmoil came Einstein with his weird and ‘wonderful’ theory of special relativity which mesmerised the confused scientific folk and ‘solved’ the reference frame issue. He said that the speed of light waves (i.e. electromagnetic waves) remains the same to every observer irrespective of one’s state of motion or reference frame. Special theory of relativity woven upon this weird law of constant speed of light then lead to the weird propositions of time dilation, space contraction etc and later paved the way for another weird theory called general relativity.

Now we will analyse each of the above things that mislead the scientific crowd and allowed the weird theories to sprout and flourish in the realm of science masquerading as modern physics.

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