Ivor Catt on Oliver Heavisides discovery of light speed electromagnetic energy transfer in electricity; the Heaviside-Poynting vector describes the field quanta or off-shell photons of quantum field theory BACKGROUND Ivor Catt (born 1935) describing the Heaviside energy current or Poynting vector energy current, which consists of the massless quanta of the electromagnetic field. This light-velocity field originates from the electrons in the power source such as the battery, but because the electrons have mass, they are unable to move as fast as the field, which is therefore the driving cause of the much-slower massive electron drift current. Electric current itself consists of typically 1 conduction electron per atom drifting at typically 1 mm/second for a 1 amp drift current, which carries negligible kinetic energy, compared to the light velocity energy delivered by the Heaviside electromagnetic energy current. Hence electric current is a misnomer since the energy delivery mechanism is not the kinetic energy of the slowly drifting electron current, but is the energy delivered by the field quanta themselves; the light velocity Poynting-Heaviside electromagnetic energy current, discovered independently by both Poynting and by Heaviside prior to the discovery of the electron in 1897. After graduating in general engineering from Cambridge in 1956 (he won a scholarship to read mathematics at Trinity, but transferred to engineering after becoming disillusioned with the reductionist problem in calculus and other problems in the dogmas of pure mathematics), Catt entered the new field of computer design engineering, rediscovering electrical genius Oliver Heavisides work on light velocity logic signals in cables or transmission lines between Newcastle and Denmark (Morse code), which was before its time. In 1964, Catt was recruited by Motorola at Phoenix, Arizona, to research cross-talk problems in microchips with fast clock speeds (glitches or mutual inductance), under research contracts to NASA. In December 1967, Catts experimental work Crosstalk (mutual inductance) in digital systems was published in the IEEE Transactions on Electronic Computers, volume EC-16. In 1979, in co-authorship with former physics lecturer Dr David Walton and electronics engineer Malcolm Davidson, he published an article on Displacement current in Wireless World (which had published Arthur C. Clarkes 1945 visionary paper on geostationary satellites for global communications). The paper mathematically proved that the charging of a capacitor with vacuum or plastic dielectric could be treated as the charging of a cable (transmission line) using Heavisides concept of energy current. Full experimental proof followed in Catts December 1980 Wireless World paper Electric Current. Lucidly explaining the basis for this revolutionary discovery of the light velocity field nature of the charge associated with the mass of supposedly static electrons in his 1995 book Electromagnetics 1, Catt states: Let us summarize the argument which erases the traditional model; a) Energy current can only enter a capacitor at the speed of light. b) Once inside, there is no mechanism for the energy current to slow down below the speed of light. c) The steady electrostatically charged capacitor is indistinguishable from the reciprocating, dynamic model. d) The dynamic model is necessary to explain the new feature to be explained, the charging and discharging of a capacitor, and serves all the purposes previously served by the steady, static model. This YouTube interview of Ivor Catt by Nigel Cook is not copyright. A further video on the technical aspects and implications will be produced separately. The two key Wireless World articles downloadable in PDF at nige.files.wordpress/2010/
Posted on: Fri, 16 Jan 2015 17:00:20 +0000
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