Light’s Constant Speed

The nature of electromagnetic radiation remains a mystery. From Newton’s corpuscles to the 19th-century ether theory, and Einstein’s 1905 photon model, each attempt has left unresolved contradictions—especially with experiments like Young’s slits.

Even Einstein reconsidered ether in 1922, facing the wave–particle duality. Later, de Broglie suggested ether might be a sea of neutrinos.

Despite modern tests confirming the constancy of light speed, the mechanism of EM wave propagation is still unexplained. As de Broglie said, "science will make a major leap when it can explain a simple ray of light". That’s our goal.

Separation of Media

Michelson and Morley experiments suggest that we are dealing with two distinct environments:

• The "Experimentation support"
  It is the visible medium in which experiments are conducted. This medium can move. See the yellow arrow, in the figure below.
• A "Primary Medium"
  EM waves propagate in an underlying 'primary medium'. By deduction, we conclude that it is spacetime, as explained in the wave-particle duality page.

Properties of the "Primary Medium"

For electromagnetic (EM) waves to propagate, the 'primary medium' must possess at least the following two essential properties:

• Propagation Capability. Every wave requires a medium through which it can propagate. Given that spacetime exhibits elasticity-like properties, it stands as a compelling candidate for this primary medium.
• Omnipresence. Since EM waves are observed to propagate universally—in air, water, interstellar space, and beyond—the primary medium must be present everywhere. Spacetime meets this criterion.

Therefore, it is reasonable to consider spacetime as the primary medium for EM wave propagation. This hypothesis also offers potential solutions to several quantum mechanical puzzles, including the nature of quarks (see Part 3). Nonetheless, this approach raises further questions, which are explored further.

Explanation

Let’s now try to solve the riddle of Michelson and Morney by the following alternative:

• The experimental support is stationary:
  The laser diode emits EM radiation from A to B (red arrow). The laser beam will not go from A to B but it will propagate into the primary medium, which is spacetime (blue arrow). The path that the beam takes is A → A' → B' → B.
• The experimental support is moving at 'V' speed:
  The 'V' speed of the experiment support (yellow arrow) will not be added to the speed of light. Indeed, whatever the speed of movement of the medium of the experiment, the light will always propagate in spacetime (blue arrow), which does not move. The speed of light has no reason to vary. It will always remain at 300 000 km/s.

NOTE: This scheme has been voluntarily simplified for educational purposes. Spacetime is different from that described here. This spacetime is discussed in detail in part 4