Richard Jernigan -> RE: The Beauty and Mystery of Mathematics (Nov. 28 2013 14:26:24)
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ORIGINAL: Ricardo It might not exist as a separate entity but it "exists" I am sure non the less perhaps as some other description. How about those pesky imaginary numbers, do they "exist"? I think that word "exist" is part of the problem. Does the classical electromagnetic field "exist"? Walking back across the parking lot from a tour of the planet's most precise radar, where I had been pulling on the government money guy's arm, he asked, "Okay, I've heard all about the electromagnetic field waving, but nobody has been able to explain to me exactly what is waving." My good friend, the MIT Site Manager started talking about sending waves down a rope by wiggling the end you're holding onto. The money guy interrupted, "Yeah, I've heard about that, but what I'm asking is, what is the rope?" I put my oar in. "Well, what we actually see is that if we wiggle some electrons here, a lot of them, wiggling really hard and fast, then other electrons on satellites hundreds of kilometers away start wiggling a little later, at the same frequency. After some further delay this causes electrons in our receiver to wiggle a little, and we decipher the results. We don't see anything at all wiggling in between, but it's as though something were there wiggling, and transmitting the energy back and forth even through a vacuum. You can use Maxwell's field equations to figure out when and how the electrons out there will wiggle, no matter where they are." The money guy seemed better satisfied with that. However, I don't think my explanation had anything to do with our getting a million bucks for a new radome. I think that was because of how important that radar was for keeping track of just what was going on in space. RNJ I'm off to my brother's place in the Hill Country northwest of San Antonio. Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate it!
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