Abstract—Classical and Quantum Mechanics invoke waves, wave-packets and particles to provide physical interpretations to electromagnetic phenomena. However, these illustrations are neither supposed to be taken literally nor are they advertised as genuinely depicting the real world. Their sole purpose is to represent invisible interactions classically in order to provide a measure of physicality to the mathematical descriptions. It is thus that certain experiments are simulated with extended waves and others with discrete wave-packets. Duality raises questions as to the ad hoc nature of the representation and to the usefulness of abstractions as didactic and explanatory tools. Here we suggest that light has been misdiagnosed. We propose an alternative model that provides a faithful physical interpretation to the fundamental properties of light. We replace the electromagnetic wave with a two-strand rope and simulate the wave-packet as a torsion propagating from atom to atom along this twined entity. The fundamental assumption is that all atoms in the Universe are interconnected. The rope hypothesis justifies and simulates basic features and behaviors of light such as straightness, speed, and orthogonality, and merges light with gravity into a single mechanism.

Index Terms—Light, gravity, rope hypothesis, electromagnetic wave, particle, c=ƒλ, slit experiment, EPR, polarization, GUT

Bill Gaede, ViNi , Frankfurt, Germany (email: viligaede@yahoo.com).



Cite: Bill Gaede, "An Alternative to Waves and Wave-packets," International Journal of Applied Physics and Mathematics  vol. 1, no. 2, pp.  82-87, 2011.