A Rational Cosmology: Radio Signals Are Not Waves

This is Essay CIV of Mr. Stolyarov's series, "A Rational Cosmology," which seeks to present objective, absolute, rationally grounded views of terms such as universe, matter, volume, space, time, motion, sound, light, forces, fields, and even the higher-order concepts of life, consciousness, and volition. See the index of all the essays in "A Rational Cosmology" here.

Post-Classical physicists' mistaken views of light as a wave, refuted in prior articles of this series, have adverse consequences beyond their misunderstanding of light itself.

These consequences extend to the misapprehension of all phenomena quantitatively related to light, including the misnamed "radio waves" and "microwaves" -- neither of them waves at all. This error, caused by post-Classical physicists' neglect and at times willful rejection of philosophy, has spread so pervasively to the general public as to become enshrined in false popular terminology. This essay shall conclusively shatter this error, thereby seeking to begin to undo the damage.

Radio signals are quantitatively related to light via the so-called electromagnetic spectrum -- a model which is misnamed, because light itself is not an electromagnetic force. Nonetheless, some measurement of the relationship, "radio signal," is quantitatively lower than some measurement of the relationship, "light." (Radio signals are considered to have a lower "frequency" on the "electromagnetic spectrum" than light.)

Another observation that suggests that the radio signal is similar in kind to light is its ability to be transmitted through the near-vacuum of space -- like light, and unlike a wave. A wave must be a wave of something, a systematic vibration of particles -- particles which a vacuum lacks.

Thus, a radio transmission is not a wave, and the contemporary scientists' error in explicitly calling it a "radio wave" is even more grievous than their sometime attribution of wavelike properties to light. "Radio transmission" or "radio signal" are both far more proper names of this phenomenon.