Is there anything left to discover in electromagnetism? Are there any mysteries regarding electromagnetism?

[Achilles]

Title says it all pretty much...

[Brett Nortj]

Electromagnetism is the combination of the strong force, being supplied by the proton - magnetism - and the weak force supplied by the electron - electricity - coming together to found electromagnetism.

Basically, friction leads to activity. If we are to observe that without motion, there is nothing, as there are no bonds, then we need friction, supplied by the constant struggle between protons for electrons. This is the fundamental force of, well, everything.

[John Cuthber]

6 minutes ago, Brett Nortj said:

Electromagnetism is the combination of the strong force, being supplied by the proton - magnetism - and the weak force supplied by the electron - electricity - coming together to found electromagnetism.

No it isn't.

[Markus Hanke]

12 minutes ago, Brett Nortj said:

Electromagnetism is the combination of the strong force, being supplied by the proton - magnetism - and the weak force supplied by the electron - electricity - coming together to found electromagnetism.

Electromagnetism has nothing whatsoever to do with the weak and strong interaction.

[Sensei]

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Is there anything left to discover in electromagnetism? Are there any mysteries regarding electromagnetism?

If there would something to discover, somebody would have to do it, and wouldn't bother to tell you about it on forum, rather you would read it in newspaper..

 

[studiot]

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Is there anything left to discover in electromagnetism? Are there any mysteries regarding electromagnetism?

Well yes we still don't have a definitive treatment of the Hall effect, amongst other processes.

[swansont]

Kelvin and Michelson both said something to the effect of "There is nothing new to be discovered in physics" back ca 1900 

They were spectacularly wrong. 

There are known mysteries, and then there would be brand new things we currently have no clue about, so we have no idea that they are there, lurking somewhere below what we can currently measure. 

[MathGeek]

History has shown the value of skepticism when someone asserts that a given area of science is completed and wrapped neatly with a bow.

To my knowledge, most of the remaining areas of interest in electromagnetism are in the area of interactions with matter.  I did a lot of work early in my career in the area of interactions of very strong fields with matter - multiphoton effects of light with atoms and very strong static electric and magnetic field effects with atoms.

More recently, I've contributed to a few projects relating to whether certain species are able to detect electric and or magnetic fields - so called electroreception and magnetoreception.  I suppose one could argue that these are more biology than physics, but as a physicist who understand the fundamentals of E&M and carefully considers potential detection mechanisms I was a valuable team member.

[Brett Nortj]

1 minute ago, MathGeek said:

History has shown the value of skepticism when someone asserts that a given area of science is completed and wrapped neatly with a bow.

To my knowledge, most of the remaining areas of interest in electromagnetism are in the area of interactions with matter.  I did a lot of work early in my career in the area of interactions of very strong fields with matter - multiphoton effects of light with atoms and very strong static electric and magnetic field effects with atoms.

More recently, I've contributed to a few projects relating to whether certain species are able to detect electric and or magnetic fields - so called electroreception and magnetoreception.  I suppose one could argue that these are more biology than physics, but as a physicist who understand the fundamentals of E&M and carefully considers potential detection mechanisms I was a valuable team member.

Nice to meet you.

[studiot]

10 minutes ago, MathGeek said:

History has shown the value of skepticism when someone asserts that a given area of science is completed and wrapped neatly with a bow.

Yes indeed. +1

[Klaynos]

1 hour ago, MathGeek said:

History has shown the value of skepticism when someone asserts that a given area of science is completed and wrapped neatly with a bow.

To my knowledge, most of the remaining areas of interest in electromagnetism are in the area of interactions with matter.  I did a lot of work early in my career in the area of interactions of very strong fields with matter - multiphoton effects of light with atoms and very strong static electric and magnetic field effects with atoms.

More recently, I've contributed to a few projects relating to whether certain species are able to detect electric and or magnetic fields - so called electroreception and magnetoreception.  I suppose one could argue that these are more biology than physics, but as a physicist who understand the fundamentals of E&M and carefully considers potential detection mechanisms I was a valuable team member.

My PhD was in the interaction of electromagnetic radiation with matter. 

It's still a pretty big area of research. 

[Darko]

Are there any mysteries regarding electromagnetism?

 

Quote

The problem of the direction of the electromagnetic arrow of time is perhaps the most perplexing of the major unsolved problems of contemporary physics, because the usual tools of theoretical physics cannot be used to investigate it…

… The fundamental reason why the arrow of time has been found to be such an intractable problem lies in the conventional treatment of the solutions of relativistically invariant wave equations describing massive and massless particles. These equations have both retarded and advanced solutions that are characteristic of the two possible directions of the time arrow. However, the usual procedure is to invoke a “Causality” boundary condition, which justifies the elimination of the advanced solutions as unphysical. Once causality is invoked, an arrow of time has been built into the formalism, and it is no longer possible to use the formalism as a tool for the investigation of the origins of the arrow.

From:

Cramer, John G. "The arrow of electromagnetic time and the generalized absorber theory." Foundations of Physics 13.9 (1983): 887-902.

[Brett Nortj]

22 minutes ago, Klaynos said:

My PhD was in the interaction of electromagnetic radiation with matter. 

It's still a pretty big area of research. 

That would be the dissolving of matter and reshaping of it, to 'go towards' the source of heat, yes?

[Klaynos]

50 minutes ago, Brett Nortj said:

That would be the dissolving of matter and reshaping of it, to 'go towards' the source of heat, yes?

No. Photonics. 

[Bender]

15 hours ago, Brett Nortj said:

Basically, friction leads to activity. If we are to observe that without motion, there is nothing, as there are no bonds, then we need friction, supplied by the constant struggle between protons for electrons. This is the fundamental force of, well, everything.

While I nothing on topic to contribute, I want to point out that this part is also completely wrong.

14 hours ago, Markus Hanke said:

Electromagnetism has nothing whatsoever to do with the weak and strong interaction.

They can be unified in the electroweak interaction and all three in GUT.

This in no way defends the post you reacted to, which has nothing to with science in general.

[quiet]

On 3/8/2018 at 3:01 AM, Achilles said:

Is there anything left to discover in electromagnetism?

Like someone unexpectedly hitting a column when turning at the end of a corridor, Planck came across quantization when he analyzed the blackbody radiation. The Nobel Prize did not dissipate Planck's concern, because he thought that quantization should not be put as a postulate. Planck's conviction was that quantization must be deduced from Maxwell's equations. He spent a lot of time researching that. And never in his life was he content to introduce that as a postulate.

By 1930 the physics community invited Planck to scientific congresses, more as a historical hero than as a promoter of new research. Hardly anyone thought it possible to deduce quantum properties from Maxwell's equations. Maybe you like to know that. At the same time, nobody has shown until today that this task is impossible. What do you suppose? It could be possible ? If you answer affirmatively, your list of missing discoveries already has something to begin with.

Edited August 23, 2018 by quite

[J.C.MacSwell]

On 8/3/2018 at 3:09 AM, Brett Nortj said:

Electromagnetism is the combination of the strong force, being supplied by the proton - magnetism - and the weak force supplied by the electron - electricity - coming together to found electromagnetism.

Basically, friction leads to activity. If we are to observe that without motion, there is nothing, as there are no bonds, then we need friction, supplied by the constant struggle between protons for electrons. This is the fundamental force of, well, everything.

Yes. Pretty much all of this remains undiscovered...

[quiet]

On 3/8/2018 at 3:01 AM, Achilles said:

Is there anything left to discover in electromagnetism?

Somethig more here:

https://arxiv.org/abs/1005.0131

[Markus Hanke]

10 hours ago, quiet said:

What do you suppose?

Maxwell‘s electrodynamics is the purely classical limit of quantum electrodynamics - hence it does not and cannot account for any quantum effects.

[quiet]

15 hours ago, Markus Hanke said:

Maxwell‘s electrodynamics is the purely classical limit of quantum electrodynamics - hence it does not and cannot account for any quantum effects.

Hello Markus. 

Do you think that classical electrodynamics is fully developed, to the limit of its exhaustion? Some people felt that in the second half of the 18th century about mechanics, founded by Newton a century earlier. Euler and Laplace, with amazing advances, had drawn from the Newtonian bases consequences that extended the application to the entire universe.

Was there anything left to extract? Impossible, everything has been extracted !, said those people with admiration. Several decades later, Lagrange and Hamilton managed to extract from the Newtonian bases much more than everything extracted in the previous history. 

Hamilton went on to show that classical mechanics involves a wave formulation of the motion of a particle. He called phase wave to that formulation. He showed that the action is the governing parameter of the phase wave. Obviously, Hamilton did not quantize the parameter. If he had, he would have laid the foundations of quantum mechanics. Those who rushed to believe that the Newtonian bases were exhausted, received a blunt surprise when Lagrange and Hamilton arrived.

Do you think it's a good idea to rush to believe that everything has been exhausted in classical electrodynamics? Or maybe something similar to what happened in mechanics can appear, so that quantum properties are deduced from classical electrodynamics?

[Markus Hanke]

7 hours ago, quiet said:

Do you think that classical electrodynamics is fully developed, to the limit of its exhaustion?

Yes. We fully understand the classical behaviour of the electromagnetic field - we can say this with some confidence, because we know not only the Lagrangian from which it arises, but also the topological principles that underlie the structure of the electromagnetic field. And of course we know that it is the classical limit of QED. So we can check its completeness from several different angles.

7 hours ago, quiet said:

so that quantum properties are deduced from classical electrodynamics?

It’s the other way round - you deduce classical electrodynamics from quantum electrodynamics. The quantum description is more fundamental, and exhibit phenomena that do not exist in the classical world. It is a much broader framework, so no, it cannot be deduced purely from Maxwell.

What you can do though is work backwards, and apply the tools of quantum field theory to perform a full quantisation of the classical field theory, to arrive at QED. But this quantisation procedure does not follow from Maxwell’s equations, it’s an external tool based on the principles of quantum physics.

[quiet]

Hello Markus. I deeply respect your opinion, I admire your capacity to unite coherently what the theories contribute and, in the same measure, I admire your honesty and your firmness.

[Markus Hanke]

The modern formalism of the Maxwell equations uses differential forms. This formalism is fully covariant, and all of classical electrodynamics reduces to two very simple statements:

[math]\displaystyle{dF=0}[/math]

[math]\displaystyle{d\star F=4 \pi \star J}[/math]

Edited August 26, 2018 by Markus Hanke

[studiot]

With respect Marcus, since your mathematics is faultless, where did the OP specify only classical electromagnetism?

 

Edited August 26, 2018 by studiot

[Markus Hanke]

5 hours ago, studiot said:

With respect Marcus, since your mathematics is faultless, where did the OP specify only classical electromagnetism?

The OP didn’t, but member quiet brought up the question of whether quantum effects can be deduced from Maxwell’s classical equations. The comment was aimed at that particular sub-discussion.