One of the most enduring questions throughout the history of Physics is the nature of light. What is light? What would the mediator of light itself look like if we happened to be blessed with the all-seeing-eye?
Over the centuries, researchers have proposed a handful of candidates. The most popular, of course, is the particle. Under this model, light consists of a flow of particles.
The Particle Hypothesis
The first proposal as a mediator for light was the corpuscle. Researchers visualized the mediator of light as a flow of particles.
However, proponents have found it difficult to reconcile the Particle Hypothesis with the amply verified undulatory properties of light.
What entity compels a particle to go up?
What entity compels a particle to go up?
The longitudinal wave was proposed as an alternative model for light in the 17th Century.
The Longitudinal Wave
This signal propagates back and forth along a given axis.
It would not be until the early 19th Century that transverse waves came into favor.
The Transverse Wave
The disturbance moves up and down, perpendicular to the direction of travel of the overall signal.
The problem with waves was that they required a medium. What is it that is waving?
Wave theorists had assumed until then that what was vibrating was the aether, a medium that was hypothesized to either fill space or was identical to space. That notion died in the minds of most theorists by the first quarter of the 20th Century.
The Aether
A transverse wave was regarded by most 19th Century investigators as the vibration of the aether. Many dissidents still hold on to that idea today.
By the first quarter of the 20th Century, the notion arose that light enjoyed attributes of both: particles and waves. Rather than brainstorm further, researchers blended the two notions into an unimaginable concoction known as the wave-packet and left it at that. It is the wave-packet together with the field model that is taught in colleges today.
The Quantum Wave-Packet
This proposal cannot even be imagined. It merges the irreconcilable properties of up-and-down transverse waves with a series of discrete corpuscles flowing like bullets. The best approximation (if it makes any sense) is the corkscrew.
The ‘field’ model of ‘photons’
Under this version, a Quantum particle is not a physical model, but rather a host of values surrounding an excited ‘point’ particle. These values extend in ever decreasing strength all the way to the edge of spacetime. Theorists now attempt to convince you that particles are actually vibrating ‘fields’.
