Paper detail

Light propagation and observed light propagation

Light propagation is viewed as a process involving mutual creation of electric and magnetic fields. This viewpoint is used to argue that the conventional retarded solutions to electromagnetic wave equations (whose source is a current density in this work) are wrong, and to solve the wave equations in a different way by tracking every step in the said process. It turns out that the solutions to the wave equations, or the emitted fields from the current density, have equally weighted advanced and retarded components. After these components are explained for their mathematical and physical origins, it is then pointed out that the emitted fields are related but not identical to those fields observed in light observation. The latter fields are calculated and found, as expected, to be retarded.