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Introduction

At this early stage in presenting these Physics Lectures I have decided to discuss a specific subject in theoretical physics but in a way that will be instructive to prospective research students in a more general sense.

I should first clarify that, in common with physicists in academic institutions, I have made my contribution by endeavoring to get my scientific papers published in orthodox scientific journals. However, my efforts have been motivated solely by interest in my subject and not as a means for justifying my position in academia with a view to career advancement. Indeed, though I am professionally qualified in physics, my career in gainful employment has been in industry and has involved me in technology, as such, rather than theoretical physics. That said, I have for 12 of my 15 years at university been involved in research pursuits connected with physics.

Now, concerning the photon, the point I wish to make concerns what some would call: ‘the state of the art’. Suppose you pose to yourself the question: “Where do I learn about the photon?” Well, you first of all read a physics book if your education from teachers or lecturers in physics has not given you enough of an introduction to the subject. Very probably you will know little more than the fact that a photon is a quantum of energy, a kind of particle having no electric charge, a particle of light that can only move at the speed of light, a particle having no mass, but having a characteristic frequency related to its energy by Planck’s action constant.

If that is the sum total of your knowledge concerning the photon, then you can get by in physics until you decide to learn more about this enigmatic actor on the physics stage and its relationship with the ubiquitous fine structure constant. The fine structure constant is a dimensionless physical constant , a pure number, which in our decimal system can be expressed by the relationship:

This constant appears in several theoretical formulations as a small factor of value slightly greater than 0.007297, but its inverted form as a quantity slightly smaller than 137.036 is regarded as a more convenient numerical representation.

Now where do you find ‘state-of-the art’ information on this subject? Your question is: “What is a photon in reality?” You are not satisfied with just the assertion that it is a quantum of energy, the transporter of light. You can see that Planck’s constant h is set alongside the speed of light c and associated with the electron charge e in that dimensionless number of equation (1). Your question, naturally, is what is it in Nature that determines that number?

That, then, is my introduction to this Physics Lecture No. 3.

An Emeritus Professor’s 1998 Verdict

Professor R C Jennison of the Electronics Laboratory at the University of Canterbury in Kent, England is one of the few physicists who has shown interest in the thunderball phenomenon. He once experienced one floating down the aisle in an aircraft preceded by an air stewardess who was trying to escape from its path! In my opinion, when he witnessed the passage of that glowing object, he was seeing an aetherial phenomenon, as energy was shed from a sphere of spinning aether as it decayed by ionizing molecules of air. Here was energy, pure energy, possessed by something that can penetrate through a stone wall or the aluminium skin of an aircraft and emerge seemingly unaffected, though progressively decaying to vanish after shedding that energy. Here was aether revealing itself, thanks to it having acquired a state of spin, not something that has the form of a mathematical equation symbolizing ‘four space’, whatever that might mean to the relativist. However, in spite of witnessing that airborne thunderball, Professor Jennison has preserved his allegiance with the doctrines of Einstein’s theory, whilst attending the occasional conference at which the Theory of Relativity comes under question.

Now, in referring to a scientific paper written by Professor Jennison and having regard to a comment I made above, I do not wish to imply that Professor Jennison’s efforts are motivated by anything other than interest in his chosen subject. It would otherwise not be possible to express oneself freely in matters scientific, given that peer review dictates conformity and avoidance of issues that could prove too controversial. Indeed, those who must conform are not to be seen at conferences where sensitive scientific issues come under scrutiny.

I am therefore attentive to what is of record in the Proceedings of a Conference sponsored by the British Society for the Philosophy of Science held in London on 11-14 September, 1998. The subject of the conference was ‘Physical Interpretations of Relativity Theory’. I did not attend that conference on that occasion but its organizer Dr. M C Duffy kindly set me a copy of the Proceedings, so I am able to comment on the paper which Professor Jennison presented. It is of record at pages 169-180 in those Proceedings. Professor Jennison’s title was: ‘Electromagnetic Waves and Photons Related to the Ubiquitous Fine Structure Constant’.

I quote now from the opening words of Professor Jennison’s paper:

“Photons have been shrouded in mystery ever since they were first propounded to account for the spectrum of black body emission and thence the quantized characteristic of radiation. We know that these quanta exist and their behaviour is accounted mathematically in a plethora of contexts, but there has never been a satisfactory model of an isolated photon.”

I cannot here resist the temptation to mention the fact that, notwithstanding the glorification of Einstein for his Theory of Relativity, the was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1922 for the contribution he made by writing a paper in 1905 on the subject of the photon.

Even so, that contribution back in 1905 can hardly have conveyed much of an account of the photon, given that Professor Jennison tells you in no uncertain terms that the theoretical physicist knows of no satisfactory model that can represent the photon. Planck’s quantum hypothesis was elaborated by Einstein, who adopted the point of view that if atoms can absorb or emit light only in the form of quanta of energy, then light itself must consist of such quanta of energy. Yet one could argue still that light consists of waves, undulations in the aether, and photons are merely events that register the energy transactions occurring when such waves are emitted or absorbed. The photon, according to standard textbook physics, is therefore an enigma that has, as Professor Jennison says, no satisfactory explanation.

You then wonder what Professor Jennison is about to reveal and so read on through his paper. He then describes a rather special antenna, a new type of transmitting aerial which he has developed at Canterbury University. It is small by comparison with other conventional antennas in relation to its transmitting power. It involves a ‘trapped’ field. ‘Extensive measurements have confirmed that the loops of displacement current are always phase-closed, irrespective of the emitted flux and the angle of launch’. A deeper study revealed that there were two such loops with centres spaced at half a wavelength. ‘The Poynting vector is in the direction of the line joining the centres of all the loops of the entity. In continuous, coherent radiation each figure of eight pattern is followed by a contiguous repetition of the same phenomenon’.

As an aside comment here I note that readers who may have already browsed through the TECHNOLOGY section of these web pages and seen the Lecture entitled ‘An Antenna with Anomalous Radiation Properties’ might wonder if there is something here in common with the physics of the Gieskieng antenna.

Jennison then goes on to compare his conclusions concerning his antenna with the properties of the photon and the result of a calculation of the electrical energy of two opposite-polarity electric charges e separated by half a wavelength at the Compton electron frequency. This then leads to the statement that ‘it appears that we may relate the electrical energy of pair production (meaning the electron-positron pairing) to the total energy by a factor involving the fine structure constant.’ Then comes the next statement: ‘It follows that the majority of the rest energy must reside in the mechanical energy of the particles.’

A page later we read:

“The part played by the fine structure constant in this relationship came as a complete surprise, but, in retrospect, makes wonderful sense. I had forgotten the definition and known properties of the fine structure constant but, shortly after discovering the relationship derived in this paper, I asked Dr. D G Ashworth, who I recruited on my staff 35 years ago, if he knew anything about the constant.”

Professor Jennison then goes on to say that Ashworth reminded him of a Presidential Address that he, Jennison, had delivered to the Institute of Electronics at the College of Science and Technology in Manchester on October 3rd, 1964. It was about the electron and ‘relativistic rotation’, in which the fine structure constant, ‘will be seen to play a remarkable role’. Jennison said that he had completely forgotten that early paper.

Now, at this point, I can but interject my own observation that the fine structure constant is a factor that features in atomic theory where an electron’s angular momentum quantization is a key property. It is, for example, the ratio of the speed of the electron in its K shell orbit in the hydrogen atom to the speed of light. If that electron is elevated to a higher energy orbit and then falls into that lower K shell orbit from a higher energy state then a photon is emitted. So photons, electrons and the fine structure constant go hand in hand in the world of physics that regulates electromagnetic radiation.

I cannot see reason for surprise here.

What I find curious, however, is that Professor Jennison could declare: “There has never been a satisfactory model of an isolated photon”. You see, the physics literature abounds with theoretical ideas and the photon can hardly escape attention in such effort.

Indeed, if Professor Jennison were to scan the citator references to his own published papers to see if anything had been published in the orthodox scientific literature which (a) concerned the photon, (b) concerned the fine structure constant and (c) made reference to his own paper about electrons including standing wave oscillations, then he would have found one dated 1986 with the following abstract:

“Recent proposals that an electron might contain an ‘imprisoned’ photon in its field system suggest a wave resonance which allows the QED determination of the electron-factor to be used to establish the precise value of the fine-structure constant, given its approximate value as 1/137. The value of alpha^-1 is found to be 137.03599, in precise accord with its measured value.”

Obviously, if an electron contains an ‘imprisoned photon’, the ‘prison’ cell being bounded by the nodes of a standing wave, then a photon itself, being a prisoner of that standing wave, can be cast as being a model defined by that standing wave ‘cell’. So, in 1998, Professor Jennison was telling his audience at that conference on the ‘Physical Interpretations of Relativity Theory’ that there has never been a satisfactory model of the photon, without, however, explaining why a model already of record and referencing his own paper is not ‘satisfactory’.

So, where do you look for state of the art knowledge concerning the photon, meaning a description of the physical, as opposed to the mathematical, form of the photon? If you look at conference proceedings and published papers you will, in the main, find that their authors do not review the state of the art but rather present their own snapshot image of something that is often little more than their own brainchild, presenting it in such a way that it stands alone in the contest for recognition.

The simple truth is that your interest in your quest to understand the state of art knowledge concerning the photon would involve you in a comprehensive research task, one conducted more as a science historian or science journalist, rather that as a constructive research task by which you hope to make your original contribution to the advancement of science.

There are those in academia who gain satisfaction from the historical pursuit and many a physicist is interested in reading about the history of his or her subject. However, in selecting what should be written about, the historian is also moulding opinion and may miss the gems in the historical records. Such is the ‘state of the art’ and somewhere in all that there is, I believe, the true representation of the photon.

The conclusions terminating Professor Jennison’s 1998 paper on the subject included the two statements:

1. In any interaction the photon fleetingly emulates an electron-positron pair spaced apart by half a wavelength.
2. The fine structure constant is related to the ratio of the electric and mechanical energy of the particles.

With that in mind, should you, the reader, really wish to scan what is of record on this subject in a university library, then, in my own interests as well as yours, I suggest that you include in your survey the inspection of four of my papers, all published in the periodical Physics Letters. They are:

‘Aether Theory and the Fine Structure Constant’, Physics Letters, v 41A, pp. 423-424 (1972).
‘Theoretical Evaluation of the Fine Structure Constant’, Physics Letters, v. 110A, pp. 113-115 (1985).
‘A Causal Theory for Neutron Diffraction’, Physics Letters, v. 119A, pp. 105-108 (1986).
‘Electron Self-Field Interaction and Internal Resonance’, Physics Letters, v. 119A, pp. 109-111 (1986).

The abstract quoted above is that of the last of these four papers.

Your survey should also include an enquiry to see if your university library has a copy of the Series B: Physics Vol. 162 book published in the NATO ASI Series under the title: “Quantum Uncertainties” by Plenum Press in 1987 (ISBN 0-0306-42670-6). It had the sub-title ‘Recent and Future Experiments and Interpretations’ and its Editors were W M Honig, D W Kraft and E Panarella.

See particularly the conference paper in that work at pp. 345-359 entitled ‘The Theoretical Nature of the Photon in a Lattice Vacuum’.

The Ubiquitous Fine Structure Constant

You will in your photon survey efforts come to realize that the photon, electron-positron pair activity and the fine structure constant are all somehow interwoven in the physics of the aether, though much of what you come to read will avoid using that word ‘aether’.

You will further discover that there is little of record to suggest why it is that ^-1 has a value close to 137.036, other than what has been reported as being of my authorship (Harold Aspden). You may perhaps conclude from this that physicists do not see the theoretical derivation of that number as important, given that the quantity as measured in their experiments suffices for their purposes. What is important, however, is that you reach a conclusion that satisfies you. If you set out to understand the state of the art concerning the photon then do your survey and come to your own conclusion but, if explaining the precise numerical value of a dimensionless physical constant is seen as a waste of time, then ask yourself why it is that so much effort has gone into the theory of quantum-electrodynamics (QED). That theory is resplendent in its use of the symbol , denoting how electron charge e, Planck’s constant h and the speed of light c cooperate in our physical underworld.

I began that above-abstracted Physics Letters paper with the words:
“The electron gyromagnetic ratio or g-factor is attributable to a jitter motion of the electron which causes it to interact with its own radiation field and so exhibit an anomalous response in its spin state. This is formulated as:

This is the formulation developed by the theorists delving into the world of quantum electrodynamics and is their claim to success because that g-factor can be measured to very high precision, as can the value of . The numbers fit together so well that the theory is presumed to be a supreme success. Without the constraints imposed by that ubiquitous fine structure constant the electron would be lost in its meanderings through space. Electron-positron pair creation activity and the consequent involvement with the photon and so with electromagnetic radiation all play their part in quantum electrodynamics but, do not be fooled, they play that part in the all-enveloping aether and not as mathematical symbols printed on paper. Your task in trying to understand the photon is that of understanding the aether and how the aether stores energy in quanta associated with units of angular momentum.

For my part I have placed emphasis on:
(a) understanding how energy quanta are transferred to the background aether and stored in association with angular momentum in such a way that the energy can be recovered whilst also exhibiting a wave frequency, and then:
(b) understanding what it is that determines that dimensionless number of approximately 137.036.

That is what my writings on the subject are about. However, I shall follow with interest what I read on the subject as presented by others, including Professor Jennison, hoping that some convergence in thought will bring others into tune with my own position.

I would, however, warn against belief in the writings of those physicists whose arguments and analysis cannot be checked by the reader and in this respect I would say that if verification of the theoretical findings would involve you in a year or so of in-depth study to understand how to work through the details of the calculation, then do not be deceived. Keep an open mind and, tentatively, entertain doubts.

The Verdict of Another Professor

To arrive at that quantum-electrodynamic formulation for the anomalous g-factor of the electron in terms of the fine structure constant, theoretical physicists have to break down their mathematical analysis into calculations embracing several thousand Feynman diagrams. Historically this is a theory where, as the experimental value moved to higher degrees of precision, so the physicist had to look for new components in the related particle activity so as to add new terms that could adjust the result to give better agreement. The theory always lagged behind the experimental evaluation. In a sense, this is not surprising, to a point, but it would be more convincing if the theoretical value which could be computed to high precision had led the way and been supported without further change as measurement techniques improved.

So, in your quest to learn about the photon, you might seek some insight into how QED arrives at that g-factor value. You might then find interest in comparing it with the very simple method of formulating the theoretical value of this physical quantity that you will see in that Physics Letters paper of mine.

Should you begin to share some of my suspicions concerning the orthodox methods of QED then you might explore the analysis of one of its other acclaimed achievements, namely the theory of the Lamb shift. This is the world of ‘vacuum polarization’ and ‘renormalization’, a world in which one needs to include ‘divergence as part of the electron mass’, a world in which one seeks to avoid difficulties by using ‘relativistically covariant developments’ to enhance the theory. Once you get past all that then you will find that those who understand such things can deduce the value of the fine structure constant from their measurements of the Lamb shifts observed in the spectral hyperfine structure of hydrogen.

One can but be impressed at the result, which gives endorsement to the methods of QED. However, that impression is based on trust, rather than verification, because we have no reason to doubt what we are told on these matters and it really is hardly worth our while to check every step of the mathematical analysis involved, even if we could find a concise account reporting the procedure.

For my part, many years ago, when I ventured to suggest a new way, one consistent with my aether theory, of deriving the precise value of the fine structure constant in a paper I had submitted to a learned journal, I was duly told as part of the rejection that I should not waste my time, as the only acceptable way to compute the precise numbers involved was by the orthodox methods of quantum electrodynamics, the Lamb shift being quoted as its crowning glory.

My methods were based on aether theory, not Feynman diagrams and the problems of ‘renormalizations’, meaning the compensation of infinities to arrive at something finite. I was annoyed at finding the aether outlawed, even though it had a legitimate claim to be the governing power in this realm of physics, whereas the Feynman diagram is just a way of portraying an interaction that, if it occurs at all, has to occur within that outlawed aether.

This caused me, once I re-entered the academic research world in 1983, following my early retirement from my career pursuits in industry, to attempt to explain the Lamb shift directly in terms of aether theory. I soon saw how this could be done and the result was my paper:

‘The Lamb Shift for a Cavity-Resonant Electron’, Lettere al Nuovo Cimento, v. 36, pp. 364-368 (1983)

This is another paper worth including in your university library survey, and in conjunction with your inspection of that 1986 NATO Conference book: ‘Quantum Uncertainties’. You see, moving on from my account of the nature of the photon at pp. 345-359 of that work, you will find on pp. 407-420 the conference paper by F J Belifante of Purdue University, Lafayette, Indiana. However, do read first the Discussion Note on p. 406 which faces the opening page 407 of Professor Belifante’s paper. It reads:

ASPDEN. “I would like to comment on the connection between the photon and gravitation. First of all, I do not think that the photon and gravitation have any immediate, direct connection, but there could be an indirect connection. I presented a picture of a lattice in the vacuum. That lattice must have formed from chaos. My picture of how this lattice was formed is analogous to the formation of ferromagnetic structures which come into being upon cooling below a certain temperature. I found these models to be useful when applied to the vacuum to deduce the nature of photon birth. I would suggest that if we find eventually that there is a good explanation for the photon mechanism that relates to a lattice structure for the vacuum, we may infer that at the instant when that chaos in the vacuum turned into order, gravitation appeared. That is, when the Universe cooled below its ‘Curie Temperature’ and formed the lattice, photons and gravitation appeared and all matter in the Universe began to coalesce. I suggest that quantum mechanics, once it is sorted out, might help solve some cosmological problems.”

At that NATO-sponsored conference about ‘Quantum Uncertainties’ we had discussion sessions each day after each group of speakers had delivered their lectures. My discourse on the photon had the full attention of all participants but it did not come under challenge in those discussions and so I said those words above by way of a reminder.

The next conference event of record was the paper by Professor Belinfante entitled ‘Does Quantum Electrodynamics Explain the Lamb Shift?’ I was particularly interested, for the reason mentioned above.

The ‘Introduction’ of that paper tells its own story:

“While so far the success of relativistic quantum theory for systems with finite numbers of degrees of freedom has been astounding, and relativistic quantum theory of electrons has made predictions about spin and about positrons that have well been confirmed by observations, applications of quantum theory to systems with finite numbers of degrees of freedom suggest that quantum theory in its present form is not yet completely correct. Predictions made by quantum field theory, in particular by quantum electrodynamics, are obtained only by what a mathematician would call ‘swindles’, like treating divergent renormalizations as small corrections. Physicists so far have accepted these swindles, because they consider it reasonable that at very small distances the present theory would yet require corrections, which, they hope, will in the future lead to finite results that would lie close to the results presently obtained by treating logarithmically divergent integrals as finite quantities.

I could live with this trust in future theory, if I were convinced that in other respects there are no blemishes in the calculations which we are told show beautiful agreement between quantum-electrodynamical predictions and experimental observations. A critical look at the conventional calculation of the Lamb shift by second-order perturbation theory, however, reveals the need for a revision of part of these calculations, in particular of the contribution to the Lamb shift from intermediate states with virtual photons of moderate energies from 0.003mc² up, where m is the electron mass. …..”

Professor Belinfante then goes on the explain in detail that there are errors in the theoretical evaluation of the Lamb shift and urges verification and correction. His final words in the paper are:

“Until all of that work has been completed, nobody has the right to claim that we would know that quantum electrodynamics with renormalizations yields results that agree with observed facts.”

In the subsequent Discussion period Belinfante was asked to comment on there being a paper of record which claimed agreement between the experimental value of the Lamb shift and the theoretical value to seven or eight digits. Belinfante responded:

“The fine structure constant is known to six digits, and the calculation is based on the fine structure constant. I don’t trust the seventh and eight digits because to a power comes in.”

Then came the question:

“Why have the people who wrote that paper missed all the things you say are wrong?”

Belinfante answered:

“Many of those who worked in this field were fascinated by Feynman diagrams which are appropriate for the high energy part of the calculation. This is nice from a mathematical point of view. Essentially, these are higher order calculations and some errors were later found. But in the lowest order, the calculation is nothing more than taking French-Weisskopf and putting it in fancy form so you can understand better why it is covariant.”

What is a Photon?

I have sought above to convey the message that for the majority of the physics community the photon, which is so much a part of physics, is really an unsolved mystery. It is sending us a coded message in allowing our experiments to measure that number 137.03599 but physicists in general do not know how to decipher that information. The reason for their ignorance is simply the fact that they are looking into space, where photons abound, but cannot see what is there. They cannot see the aether and so their logic tells them that it does not exist. They can see the mathematical equations that describe Einstein’s Theory and they can see Feynman diagrams by looking at what is written on sheets of paper by those who profess to understand theoretical physics, but yet there is that mystery concerning the photon.

A person willing to come to terms with the reality of the aether can solve the mystery. All that is necessary is to picture the aether as a silent machine with moving parts, a machine that can store energy and return it, a machine that has a simple harmonic style of motion which accepts energy by setting up a reaction in terms of angular momentum, a machine having structure, the geometry of which determines the fine structure constant. The nearest ‘model’ of an analogous system in the matter form is that used by physicists to explain the Quantum Hall Effect. It concerns the discovery that electrical resistance is quantized. The model is that of a two-dimensional electron gas controlled by a magnetic field where all the electrons move in harmony. The Quantum Hall Effect is used to measure h/e². Combine this with c, the speed of light, and you have that ^-1 factor.

However, as applied to the aether, this is not just a collection of words. After all, the aether is the seat of the activity determining that fine structure constant on a universal scale. Indeed, what I am describing here in this Physics Lecture is a summary of what can be seen and verified by looking elsewhere in these web pages. If you think that I am putting my own story concerning the photon in my web pages because I cannot secure publication in a refereed physics periodical, then take note of those four Physics Letters papers which I listed above. Publication in the orthodox scientific literature is not sufficient, given that the physics community does not want to be led into the sinful ways of believing in the aether, which they see as the realm of the ‘devil’. If Einstein is your God then you must keep your faith and remain wandering in the wilderness in fear of falling into a ‘Black Hole’. However, in that context, to me, Aether is God showing us the way to discover the ultimate truth and Einstein is the devil!

To summarize my case, I regard the photon as a 3x3x3 cubic lattice array of 27 aether charges in a state of spin. This is all described in the PHYSICS section of my web pages in the TUTORIAL section, see particularly Tutorial No. 8. Keep in mind that all that physics textbooks can tell you about the photon amounts to little more than saying that it is an energy quantum having virtually no mass but travelling at the speed of light, even though it has angular momentum (spin 1) of h/2 and even though experimental evidence concerned with quantum theory seems now to indicate a superluminal speed of communication between photons emitted together but going in opposite directions.

My photon theory is based on the hypothesis that a photon is not something that moves from A to B, but it is something that can be at A in a state of spin. By virtue of its cubic structure, as a transiently independent unit within the enveloping cubic structure of aether comprising those aether charges, its state of spin nudges surrounding aether four times per revolution and propagates waves which travel at the speed of light. Those waves are intercepted by encounter with matter, typically an electron, at B and this sets up a separate photon spin at B. The spin at B adapts so as to absorb the wave arriving from B and so there is communication at the speed of light between A and B.

For a photon emission from A setting up a wave which spreads in opposite directions, this means that absorption at C could be affected by what happens at B and vice versa, A being intermediate B and C. Without the aether serving the role of keeping the energy and momentum books in balance one cannot then have a co-ordinated absorption/non-absorption event as between C and B seemingly implying superluminal co-ordination between C and B.

Now, the key step in developing a photon theory is that of explaining how the frequency is determined in linear proportion to the energy quantum involved in the two transactions between matter and aether at A and B. The constant of proportionality is Planck’s constant h, and you cannot have a photon theory worth the mention if you cannot deduce the value of h from first principles. That means analysis of that cubic structured aether model to determine the dimensionless constant involved. One cannot assume that the Creator of the Universe opted to use the c.g.s. (cm-gm-s) system of units by fixing a definite value of h those units. So the task is one of deriving by pure theory the value of h in terms of the electric charge of each of those aether particles and the speed of light, both being aether properties. I make the assumption that the electric charge is of the same in magnitude as the electron charge, which so far as we know is really universal and really fundamental.

It is all described in those Tutorial Notes, where I show you how to calculate hc/2e² to part per million precision that is fully in accord with the measured value.

The photon is produced at A when energy shed by matter drops into the energy sink of the aether. The aether keeps track of the event in two ways. It sets up waves which propagate signals into surrounding space. The message broadcast says to matter elsewhere: “Here is your chance to tap energy from the aether!” It also imparts linear momentum to the cubic structure of that enveloping aether, the amount of such momentum being E/c, where E is the photon energy quantum and c is the speed of light. The two phenomena work together. The momentum determines direction and the aether keeps track of photon energy that has been pooled with its own reserve of energy. It seeks to preserve its equilibrium and is active in shedding energy as necessary, whether by creating electrons and protons and their antiparticles or in exciting the spin state of photons. The frequency of those waves signals the permissible amount of energy that a photon spin induced by encounter with matter at some point B can take from the aether in absorbing that same momentum quantum and attenuating the waves that are propagating with that frequency.

What this amounts to is an activity governed by probability, but the energy books are kept in balance by a natural equilibrium plus that momentum. I have not brought into this argument that angular momentum of the spin unit or the specific energy of spin. The reason is that my theory told me that a photon having spin-1 angular momentum has a spin energy equal to the rest-mass energy of the electron. I saw this as meaning that two photon spins at a source position A could be developed by an event involving the demise of an electron-positron pair, a quantum electrodynamic phenomenon occurring in the vacuum as such, but really an aether phenomenon. What this meant was that we should look to the photon mechanism as involving creation and interplay between two compliant photons, with the electromagnetic wave generation not being at the very high Compton electron frequency, the jitter frequency of the aether, but being at the difference frequency as between the nudging frequency of one such photon unit and that Compton electron frequency. This allows a compatible spin state to develop as between the two photons, one spinning at a slightly faster speed and the other spinning at a slightly lower speed than the spin rate of the zero-energy photon. Here I use ‘zero’ to signify a photon combination producing zero frequency waves.

Now this may all sound very complicated but this picture of the photon situation occurred to me some 30 years ago when I was challenged by someone high in the physics Establishment to show that my aether theory could explain the Schroedinger equation as used in wave mechanics. I say ‘challenged’, but it is more appropriate to say ‘dismissed on the basis that there was no way in which my aether theory for the photon could possibly lead to that Schroedinger Equation’. In the event, I found that I was faced with a fairly straight-forward task given that quantum-electrodynamic activity, meaning photon creation and electron-positron pair creation and annihilation are ongoing in an atom, even one that is excited into a radiating condition. I included the full analysis of this at pages 63-74 of my 1969 book Physics without Einstein (now out-of-print). I had recourse later to bring some aspects of this effort into play in explaining the rather curious properties of single particle wave diffraction, one of the mystery phenomena of quantum theory. See that paper I have already mentioned above ‘A Causal Theory for Neutron Diffraction’, Physics Letters, v. 119A, pp. 105-108 (1986).

You see, the task of explaining the photon is not just concerned with the wave frequency as related to the energy quantum involved. It concerns also the action where there are no waves propagating into remote space from the photon system but yet there is evidence of wave properties as exhibited by diffraction properties. It is as if a photon system can exist by exchanging energy within its own system and not letting any escape, so that if that whole system is involved in an encounter with matter it surprises us by somehow exposing its internal wave activity.

Ignorance or Swindle as Factors in Physical Theory

As will be appreciated I am in this Physics Lecture seeking to bring some balance into the way in which some aspects of theoretical physics are presented to us in our physics education. We are usually told about the mainstream opinion on a certain subject without being given a background survey of alternative possibilities. Yet the mainstream seems so often to flow out into an open sea of turmoil without taking you to the promised land, meaning the solutions to those great mysteries we well know await solution.

A theory unifying gravitation and electromagnetism, a theory for proton creation, a theory allowing you to calculate the value of the fine structure constant are primary amongst those mysteries. My task has been to reveal to you the aether pathway which takes you to those solutions.

You must, however, be on the look out for errors whether errors by chance or attributable to ignorance and even the well-intentioned expressions of hope in developing a theory which we have seen Professor Belinfante refer to as ‘swindles’.

Suppose I say that physics offers you two quite separate ways in which to relate a physical quantity A to a physical quantity B, both being pure numbers in that they are dimensionless physical constants. Discovering such relationships is what ‘unification’ is all about, but what if you are confronted with two different formulae linking A and B?

Both A and B can be measured to very high precision and, within the prevailing limits of experimental error in measurement, they give equally valid results. Here the task you face, as I see it, is first of all to check every step of the derivation of each of those formulae, looking for error or ‘swindle’, the latter meaning a ‘tentative and perhaps unwarranted assumption that helps to bring the result into agreement’.

It seems quite illogical for both formulae to be based on sound physical principles. One method must be wrong. However, with the formulae relating the electron g-factor and the fine structure constant in mind, firstly the one quoted by the equation already presented, and secondly the rival equation I derived in that Physics Letters, v. 119A, pp. 109-111 (1986) paper, how can you decide which uses the correct method? That latter equation is:

where N is the nearest prime number to 3/2.

Since ^-1 is approximately 137, N is 647 and the two equations can be combined to give:

and these happen to be precisely equal to the value of these constants as measured.

I submit then that you can only decide which theory is correct by looking at the merits and methods of the two theories involved. You could, as is implied by the combination of the equations, suppose that both theories are valid in a physical sense, but if you do that you are saying that those two constants are both determined by these formulae. However, in that case you encounter the same problem again when you find that one or other of the theories, QED or the aether method, can explain without the help of the other theory. My aether theory began by telling me how to derive in such an independent way, the free space value being found to be 137.0359148. That same theory also gave the result that the proton-electron mass ratio is slightly larger than 1836.152, as can be seen from the paper ‘Theoretical Evaluation of the Fine Structure Constant’, Physics Letters, v. 110A, pp. 113-115 (1985).

In these circumstances how do you think theoretical physics should be advanced? Should physicists hold faith with quantum electrodynamics (QED) with its renormalization problems, or should they embrace my aether theory and its onward introduction to the solution of the unification of gravitation and electromagnetism, with G itself yielding to a pure theoretical evaluation.

All I can say is that if theory A is your brainchild as a physicist then so far as I can see from the exercise of human nature you will try to suppress interest in theory B, which is my brainchild. When neither theory is of your own creation then, so far as I can judge from experience, you opt to support the theory that your teachers have introduced as part of your physics education, this being the mainstream theory A. If, however, you have read this far in browsing through these web pages on PHYSICS and the TUTORIALS, then I hope you will at least be responsive to the alternative prospect of what theory B has to offer and help me to divert the channel of mainstream opinion.

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Harold Aspden, November 17, 1998

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