Vern said:
... you might try having another look at
how to get gravity out of Lorentz's treatment of Maxwell's fields.
Yes, I owe you that now (after falsely sending you off into the internet jungle.).
But the math of physic was never my strong point, so may not be able to help (or hurt) much.
Near your second drawing, which I do not understand except for the main EM wave/photon, especially the little blue blobs that make curved chains, I found text:
"...when a point in space begins to change its electric and magnetic state to accommodate a passing photon, it does not reset to zero, but modifies its present state."
Are you saying than once a photon has gone past point (x,y,z) that point is forever changed? (not "reset") Or just that there is some sort of shift while the photon is near a point, in fact at all points in universe with inverse r^2 diminishing effect? If the latter, are not all points changing all the time, at least very slightly? I.e. except for the much greater magnitude of the effect is there any thing special about the closest photon to (x,y,z)?
In next block of text you conclude with the statement that all photons attract each other. I have my doubts about this. Certainly, in the conventional universe, photons inter act with gravity fields and their "straight trajectory" seem to be curved, but in some minimum action or GRT view is still "straight" (Some people don't do windows -I don't do GR,
![Big Grin :D :D](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
so I do not know much about this - just "spouting words.")
About half a year ago, here at sciForums I formulated for my own use as simple rule (may not be correct) a to when the mass, m, associated with energy via E = mC^2 did "make gravity." Physics Monkey and some others much better informed did not like my rule and thought only via GR could one be sure etc, but it seemed to work.
It was:
If the energy is "frame invariant" - i.e. all frames agree the quanitity of energy is the same, then that energy does make gravity. For example thermal energy does make gravity and the kinetic energy of a flying bullet does not add any gravity to the rest mass gravity of the bullet.
If my simple non GR rule is correct (a big IF) then photons do not* make gravity but they do respond to gravity from other sources. (I like to say they have “relativistic mass” but that infuriates more modern physicists.) That rule is the origin of my doubt about your statement concerning photons attracting each other. I am not sure of what the current well-versed physicist thinks. Why do you believe they do attract each other?
Just by way of encouragement, I have always found it interesting that (1) electrostatic and gravity fields are the same inverse square fall off form their sources. and (2) why exactly 2.000000..., instead of 2.0367 etc for the power? I am well aware that if it were not exactly 2, there would be very serious consequences, not quite as sure that both must be the same, but perhaps only the anthropomorphic principle makes the power 2 - i.e. I doubt, but do not know, if we could exist it were different. It is not as obvious as fact that we could not exist if water were densest at 0 instead of a warmer point. (Oceans always frozen from the bottom up etc.)
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*In some frames they are blue, but in others red with less energy.