Electric Fields Are Real

O.K. Let's say we have a charged particle or charged object at some location. At some distance away, in principle, we can place a small test charge, release it, and observe it's acceleration. From that we can know the magnitude and direction of the electric field strength. From my point of view there are two options here. On the one hand we might say that by pure magic, i.e., with nothing physically present at the location of the test charge, the charged particle or charged object attracts or repulses the test charge. On the other hand we might say that 'something' that we call an electric field is physically present at the location of the test charge, in fact, is physically present everywhere in space. It's still magic, but only because we don't know exactly what it is or exactly how it does what it does. Personally I prefer the second option. In other words, the electric field of a charge particle or charged object is something real, physically present.

Following that line it seems to me that the physical presence of that electric field is completely independent of whether there are other charges with their electric fields in the vicinity. In other words electric fields of charges 'overlay' each other at any location. One can determine the net electric field at that location, but whatever the net electric field turns out to be, it in no way obviates the physical presence of the underlying primary electric fields.

Continuing that line, since each charged particle has an electric field of infinite extent, it follows that right here in this room where I'm sitting writing the primary electric fields of every single charged particle in the universe is physically present. Can anyone make an argument that this is not the case? You may say, o.k., but so what? Who cares? I'll come back to that.

Reification

In Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (10th Edition) we find:
reify: to regard (something abstract) as a material or concrete thing.

It's my opinion that sometimes physicists are guilty of reification and that it is impermissible in legitimate physics. The classic example of this is found in the General Theory of Relativity wherein one speaks of the warping of space-time by massive objects. Space and time taken separately or together are not material or concrete things, and therefore, are not subject to warping.

Do not despair. Later I shall at the least offer a simple alternative to General Relativity for your consideration.

What About Electric Fields?

In school we learned about electric fields. Charged particles have electric fields. They are infinite in extent, and the electric field strength falls off as the inverse square of distance away from the particle. We learned that one can calculate the net electric field at some location by doing a vector addition of the electric fields of all the charged particles under consideration. We also learned an operational definition of the net electric field at some location. One takes a small test charge at the point in question and releases it. The instantaneous acceleration of the test charge determines the strength and direction of the net electric field at that location.

Later we are taught that the net electric and magnetic fields are all that matter, that one can have a complete description of electromagnetic phenomena knowing the net fields. In fact, Maxwell's Equations provides just such a supposedly complete theory. We are also told that the underlying fields can't matter since we cannot measure them in any case. Now I would like to take issue with that. Little by little I would like to make the case that the underlying fields do matter and that a deeper understanding of electromagnetism is impossible without including them. The complete failure of 19th-century physicists to arrive at an understanding of the medium of light propagation is a good example.

Casual Comments On Newton's Gravity

Rightly or wrongly Isaac Newton gets credit for the inverse-square law of universal gravity. Mathematically it is an instantaneous-action-at-a-distance formulation. I read that Pierre-Simon Laplace investigated modifying the formulation to incorporate propagation delay. What he found was that unless the propagation speed was millions of times faster than the speed of light, the solar system would go unstable in a matter of centuries. In 1900 Hendrik Lorentz published a paper wherein he attempted to show that a theory of gravity was possible with a more reasonable propagation speed and at the same time a stable solar system. He borrowed an idea from Ottaviano-Fabrizio Mossotti, i.e., that gravity is nothing more than an imbalance in electric forces. Without going into detail here Lorentz showed that his version of an electromagnetic formulation of gravity with propagation of fields/forces at the speed of light had no first-order correction terms and thus yielded a stable solar system. There is an objection that such "vector theories" of gravity are untenable because of something called Maxwell's negative energy difficulty. We'll come back to this subject again, because I claim that James Clerk Maxwell made an error when he looked for a link between electromagnetism and gravity.

What Are My Qualifications?

To what degree do I qualify to write on this subject? I received a B.S. in physics from Stanford University back in 1961. I did 1-1/2 years of graduate study in physics and mathematics at Oregon State University. I spent roughly 40 years as an experimental physicist doing industrial research and development. I spent about 20 years part-time investigating perceived problems in physics theory. Yes, I had a couple papers published in Galilean Electrodynamics, the dissident physics journal. And yes, I was for some years a member of the Natural Philosophy Alliance, and I participated in several of their conferences and presented papers there. Does this qualify me as a crank, a crackpot, and physics knucklehead? I imagine so. Let's see how it goes.