Maxwell assumed a material ether, which was assumed to be a thin material fluid filling all space

7. Maxwell assumed a material ether, which was assumed to be a thin material fluid
filling all space. Hence force (which must have mass as a component due to its
definition F == d(mv)/dt) could be modeled as existing in the Maxwellian ether, for
there was already thin matter present everywhere. Hence in Maxwell's EM the
incorrect notion resulted that force fields existed in the vacuum. Oliver Heaviside
continued this erroneous assumption, since in fact he hated the potentials, regarded
them as mystical, and stated that they should be "...murdered from the theory."
Also, electricity was thought to be a similar thin material fluid. So the material
electric fluid could and did flow through the fluid vacuum also, giving the notion of
the material electric flux density for D. Consequently, the units of D are coulombs
(charged mass rate of flow) per square meter. Rigorously, that material D flux
exists only on and of charged mass that moves; it cannot and does not exist in
vacuum. Only potentials and potential gradients exist in vacuum. However, after
Maxwell's formation of his theory, the Michelson-Morley experiment destroyed the
material ether (not the ether per se, but its material nature). So electricians then
simply proclaimed that they were no longer using the material ether, and that such
did not exist! Not a single Maxwell/Heaviside equation was changed. The material
ether is still very much assumed in classical EM (CEM) theory, and so the theory is
accordingly very seriously flawed. Since CEM also has no adequate definition for
either electric charge or the scalar potential, the problem is confounded.
To clarify this problem, one must separate the notion of electric charge from the
notion of mass. The electrical charge of a charged mass is the virtual photon flux
exchange between the surrounding vacuum and that mass. Since a virtual photon
flux is just a scalar potential, the electron's massless electrical charge is simply its
scalar potential. It can now be seen that, if we forcibly remove the notion of "mass"
from D in the vacuum, or in a charged material medium where the charged masses
cannot move, then the "material electric flux concept" portion of D turns into d
/dt, a change in the nonmaterial electric flux. However, D is a vector and hence has
a "net flux" spatial directional aspect which d /dt alone does not possess. It f
that the value of d
ollows
/dt at a patial point actually represents the result of change o
the value of
s f
at that point, as a function of time. Thus a directional operator m
first be invoked upon
ust
at the point, to provide a direction for the spatial -curre
after the d/dt operator is invoked. The appropriate operator to give directionality to
nt
is , so that D in vacuum or in an electron-current-free charged medium becomes
a function of d/dt(- ). Conventionally, the use in the literature of E = -
immediately provides that d/dt(- ) at a point results in dE/dt, or the time rate of
change of the E-field at that point. If no distinction is made between charged mas
current flow and massless charge current flow, this would be true in either vacuum
or material media. However, we wish to specifically distinguish between massiv
displacement current and massless displacement current. So we point out that the
increase dE/dt in the magnitude of the E-field at, on, and of a charged particle at
point, can be due to either (1) the flow of mass current to build up the number of
point coulombs at that given point, where each coulomb has a fixed massless
charge (potential), or (2) the flow of massless current d/dt (-
s
e
a
) so as to alte the
value of
r
at that point, evidenced by a fixed number of coulombs of charged
particles, each of which has altered its individual potential and therefore its
individual massless electrical charge.
So what "flows" when the charged masses are frozen or absent is simply a current
of scalar potential, resulting in a change of the potential upon fixed point charges of
d /dt. This is what crosses between the plates of a capacitor, e.g., which is where
the notion of "displacement current" originated in the first place. (See, e.g.,
Halliday and Resnick, 1988, ibid., p. 836, Sample Problem 1, for expression of the
displacement current as d /dt, neglecting constants of proportionality). This is also