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mgmirkin: My understanding is that sound and E/M (light) waves are wholly different. IE, sound is a mechanical interaction between various atoms/molecules, whereas light, or the electromagnetic spectrum is just that: electromagnetic (whatever physical process that actually is), rather than collisional. ... "collision length" ... if what we call "particles" are simply waves with "larger" properties
@rc-us: wave/particle duality
mgmirkin: what of the inherent "spin"/"vortices" detected in Bose-Einstein Condensate?
.I've been studying aether theories for a while now, including Thornhill's and I'm understanding things somewhat.
.The aether is a neutrino sea according to Thornhill. Steven Rado at http://aethro-kinematics.com/ has a CD that I got and on it he explained that you can find the distance between aether particles the same way you find it between atoms, using the frequency formula, which is wave velocity divided by wavelength. Since wavelength should approximately equal distance between aether particles, we have to turn the formula around and make it wavelength = wave velocity divided by frequency. He first calculated the distance between iron atoms in a steel beam using sound wave frequency, then he calculated the distance between aether particles using light wave frequency. I have the calculation in one of my files. The result was that aether particles are 6 million times closer together than are iron atoms in a steel beam.
.So it seems that your speculations are right, that sound is a compression wave in atoms or molecules, whether gas, liquid, or solid, and light is a compression wave in aether particles. Rado said the distance between particles in an ideal gas, which he thinks is what aether is, is called the collision-free path, which is how far aether particles go on average before they hit another aether particle. He calls the particles aethrons. And he says they travel at the speed of light, but only for tiny distances. But he says that's why the speed of light is what it is.
.Thornhill says these aethrons are neutrinos, which are collapsed subatomic particles. If a neutrino happens to absorb a gamma ray, it expands into a matter & antimatter pair, either an electron and positron, or a proton and antiproton. When a matter and antimatter pair meet, they collapse into a neutrino. There are several kiinds of neutrinos, so I guess electron-neutrinos can expand into an electron-positron pair and another kind of neutrino expands into a proton-antiproton pair.
.My own theory is that a positron and an antiproton can also combine without collapsing to form a neutron.
.From Ralph Sansbury, Thornhill got the idea that electrons and protons consist of 3 subtrons each. Each subtron has the same charge as an electron or proton, but in an electron 2 charges are negative, while in a proton 2 are positive. 2 positive and 1 negative in the proton adds up to 1 positive charge. 2 negative and 1 positive in the electron add up to 1 negative charge. I think the 2 same charges orbit the opposite charge. They think they have this structure because experiments apparently show that electrons and protons can behave like dipoles, with 2 poles of opposite charge. They seem to think this happens when the subtron orbits become highly elliptical. 2 dipolar particles attract and repel each other like a bar magnet, depending on which poles encounter each other.
.I think a proton is 1x10^-15 meters in diameter. A neutron, which consists of a proton and an electron, is 2.2 proton diameters in diameter. An electron is about 5.6 proton diameters in diameter. Although the proton is 1836 times more massive than the electron, the electron is larger in volume. A hydrogen atom, which is like a neutron in the sense that it consists of a proton and an electron, has the electron orbiting 53,000 proton diameters away from the proton. Somehow that electron can be brought to the proton [maybe at high velocity] and can form a neutron with a diameter of 2.2, whereas the proton diameter is 1 and the electron is 5.6. Somehow the proton and electron squeeze down to only 2.2 diameter.
.The distance between aethrons is about .06 proton diameters, so 16.66 aethrons can fit across a proton's diameter. How big each aethron is is not yet guessed as far as I know, but Rado said the distance between them should be large compared to their diameters. So I guess they'd be at least a tenth or a hundredth of their distance apart, which is .006 to .0006 proton diameters.
.If neutrinos consist of collapsed matter-antimatter pairs, each pair would have 6 subtrons: 3 positive, 3 negative. The diameter of a subtron would have to be at least half a proton diameter and probably a lot less than that. In order to collapse to .006 diameters or less, they'd have to be somewhat smaller than that.
.On Rado's site you can see an illustration of how aether particles may form into torus shapes, which can behave like elementary particles. It starts with 2 streams of aether going at different velocity, so a vortex forms. Since there's no friction between aethrons, the vortex becomes a stable particle.
.Light is a compression wave going through aethrons, but Thornhill says there's a resonance force related to gravity, I think, which travels much faster than the speed of light. I think Tom van Flandern said there's a wave that goes about 20 million times the speed of light. I don't know if Thornhill agrees on that speed, but he and Sansbury say that subtrons orbit within electrons and protons at superliminal velocity.
.Since Rado says aethrons travel at the speed of light for tiny distances, which gives light its speed, maybe the subtrons similarly produce a wave motion of superliminal velocity through a subron sea which produces the speed of gravitation and resonance. Maybe our consciousness can communicate across the universe via such waves.
OP "lk"
), the following may be of interest to some. I make no pretense to fully grasping it myself, but it may be helpful in forming further conceptual development along this line of reasoning. (Warning: content may be offensive to those of a materialistic bent) 