Time and the Speed of Light

[Anomalocaris]

Why no?

Explaining what something does is not the same as explaining what something is.

As it pertains to magnetism and other forces I would like to visualize what is there. I understand that it is not possible at this time.

Just understanding the characteristics of something still leaves a big question mark to me.

Would I be correct in assuming your concept of "Understanding" something like electromagnetism involves creating a detailed mental model of electromagnetism, made up from consitituent parts of electromagnetism, which appear to provide a detailed explanation of why electromagnetism works the way it does?

This mode of understanding would work only when the thing in question has smaller consitituent parts which effects its overall behavior. It would seem this kind of understand simply can not exist when one gets down to the level of reality of elementary particles.

Photons and electrons are elementary particles. A complete understanding of them can consist of no more than how they interact with their surroundings. There is nothing more there to understand.

[pocaracas]

Some would speculate: fields.
Everything is fields, often more than one.

[Mudhammam]

Explaining what something does is not the same as explaining what something is.

As it pertains to magnetism and other forces I would like to visualize what is there. I understand that it is not possible at this time.

Just understanding the characteristics of something still leaves a big question mark to me.

Would I be correct in assuming your concept of "Understanding" something like electromagnetism involves creating a detailed mental model of electromagnetism, made up from consitituent parts of electromagnetism, which appear to provide a detailed explanation of why electromagnetism works the way it does?

This mode of understanding would work only when the thing in question has smaller consitituent parts which effects its overall behavior. It would seem this kind of understand simply can not exist when one gets down to the level of reality of elementary particles.

Photons and electrons are elementary particles. A complete understanding of them can consist of no more than how they interact with their surroundings. There is nothing more there to understand.

To me it's equivalent to either a) demanding to see each air molecule traveling at what pace in the opposite direction of your face in order to fully "understand" the concept of wind, in which case we only "sense" it, feel it, but to some degree this is also true of electromagnetism. Or b) it's demanding to know why there is something rather than nothing. What is a finger, made of innumerable, infinitesimal, different cells, themselves composed of even finer elements, that is on a larger scale attached to more cells that form a hand and arm attached to a body, used to pick up objects among other helpful uses? Well, grossly oversimplified, it is exactly all that I just described, acknowledging that language expresses symbols for an object that I'm perceiving with my human brain that evolved as a result of the environment. So in that sense, what IS electromagnetism is as elusive as this computer I'm typing on.

[little_monkey]

So in that sense, what IS electromagnetism is as elusive as this computer I'm typing on.

A little history might shed some light on this. In the 1860's, Maxwell put together all the equations that were known then about electric fields and magnetic fields. There were four of them in all. When he solved them, like you would solve 4 equations in algebra, the solutions was astounding: it was a wave whose components were the electric field in one direction, the magnetic field, in a direction perpendicular to the electric field, and perpendicular to these two, was the motion of that wave, which turned out to be the speed of light. This was the first time that electricity, magnetism and optics were linked. Twenty years after, Hertz invented a simple apparatus that would produce these electromagnetic waves, the forerunner to the radio and Marconi's wireless transmission. But it was not until Relativity, Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Field Theory were fully developed before we began to understand what electromagnetism really meant. The theory is known as Quantum Electrodynamics (QED), that came about the 1960's, a full 100 years after Maxwell's historic accomplishment. Words cannot begin to describe this theory.