Radio Signals are not Waves

Errors of Post-Classical Fysics Series: Part IV

G. Stolyarov II

Issue XLVI- January 9, 2006

 

 

 

 

Note: This is the fourth article in Mr. Stolyarov’s “Errors of Post-Classical Fysics” series. The first three articles are “Modern Scientists’ Faulty Definitions of Matter,” “Light is not a Particle,” and “Light is not a Wave.”

           Post-Classical fysicists’ mistaken views of light as a wave, refuted in the prior article of this series, have adverse consequences beyond their misunderstanding of light itself. These consequences extend to the misapprehension of all fenomena quantitatively related to light, including the misnamed “radio waves” and “microwaves”—neither of them waves at all. This error, caused by post-Classical fysicists’ neglect and at times willful rejection of filosofy, has spread so pervasively to the general public as to become enshrined in false popular terminology. This article shall conclusively shatter this error, thereby seeking to begin to undo the damage.

            Radio signals are quantitatively related to light via the so-called electromagnetic spectrum—a model which is misnamed, because light itself is not an electromagnetic force. Nonetheless, some measurement of the relationship, “radio signal,” is quantitatively lower than some measurement of the relationship, “light.” (Radio signals are considered to have a lower “frequency” on the “electromagnetic spectrum” than light.)

            Another observation that suggests that the radio signal is similar in kind to light is its ability to be transmitted through the near-vacuum of space—like light, and unlike a wave. A wave must be a wave of something, a systematic vibration of particles—particles which a vacuum lacks. Thus, a radio transmission is not a wave, and the modern scientists’ error in explicitly calling it a “radio wave” is even more grievous than their sometime attribution of wavelike properties to light. “Radio transmission” or “radio signal” are both far more proper names of this fenomenon.

            Radio transmissions are relationships, similar in kind to light in that they are direct relationships at a distance between source and target entities. The source of the transmission—whether a cosmic source or a broadcasting tower on Earth—affects the target directly, at a distance. The target entity, the radio device, converts the transmissions into sound waves that can then reach the human ear. But this conversion does not mean that the radio transmissions are waves in themselves. They are the relationship prior to the production of sound waves: the relationship which enables the radio device to produce sound waves in consequence.

            The designation of direct relationship at a distance between source and target can be applied to all other fenomena on the “electromagnetic spectrum” as well: infrared and ultraviolet radiation, X-rays, gamma rays, television transmissions, and the misnamed “microwave radiation”—for which the name “microsignal” or “microtransmission” might be more appropriate. All of these relationships can be transmitted through a vacuum and have been shown to quantitatively relate to light.

            The fact that fenomena such as radio signals and microtransmissions are called waves not merely by scientists, but in conventional usage, shows how pervasive the fallacious wave model of light, radio, and microtransmissions has become. The logical error committed by post-Classical scientists has had consequences beyond the scientific field itself; the error has become entrenched in the general culture, the culture that relies so heavily on the scientists’ claims to genuine understanding. This popular misuse of terminology might take decades to weed out through efforts of conscious persuasion by rational thinkers—all because past post-Classical scientists had militantly refused to allow logic and filosofy to shape the formation of their theoretical models.

G. Stolyarov II is a science fiction novelist, independent filosofical essayist, poet, amateur mathematician and composer, contributor to organizations such as Le Quebecois Libre, Enter Stage Right, and The Autonomist.  Mr. Stolyarov is the Editor-in-Chief of The Rational Argumentator and a Senior Writer for the Liberal Institute (http://www.liberalinstitute.com). He can be contacted at gennadystolyarovii@yahoo.com.

Read Mr. Stolyarov's new comprehensive treatise, A Rational Cosmology, explicating such terms as the universe, matter, space, time, sound, light, life, consciousness, and volition, at http://www.geocities.com/rational_argumentator/rc.html.