Spencer Heath Archive

Item 201

Montreal, Canada November 2, 1951

White envelope seems to contain more material.

An electro-magnetic wave, or simple or complex series of waves, is defined as kinetic energy (or action) having the velocity of 186,000 miles per second.

Conversely, any energy or organization of energy having that velocity is an electro-magnetic wave or complex of waves.

Taking the customary illustration of relativity:

Assume a flash and a complex of waves proceeding there­from.

 

Then assume a person, a yard-stick and a clock, any or all of them, acquiring and moving with the same velocity (and direction) as the waves from the flash.

Then they, or any one of them, is, ipso facto, assumed as being or having been transformed into a complex of waves, for in no other way can that velocity be attributed to them.

Hence they are integrated or merged (in imagination) with the first-assumed flash or wave complex. They have no properties but the velocity or wave properties assigned to them by the imagination.

 

To send them on their journey into space at wave velocity and at the same time to consider them as “observers” or measurers is to assign to them a different set of proper­ties — properties that they must have lost in the process of their elevation from less velocities to the velocity of the flash first imputed to them.

The observer (and all his contraptions) is, of course, an organization of energy having lower velocities than light. To imagine him as having the velocity of light is to assume him as being something wholly different from what he is and, as an observer, must continue to be.

All action is happenings or events. Events are the objects that constitute the objective world. And all actions, happenings or events are discontinuous. The quantum of action is the atom of action —  the unitary and, except in the imagination, the indivisible event.

But the unit of action is known to be composite of three aspects or elements of itself. It is a very tiny fraction of an erg-second and therefore similarly composed of mass, motion (through distance or space) and frequency or time. These can be separately measured and separately imagined, but they cannot be separately experienced or even separately imagined as an event. And these three elements or aspects may be united in different measures or proportions. Hence the unit of action, although indivisible in its over­all-magnitude as an event, is highly variable in composition or kind. Its elements are related by ratios: For each mass or force unit there is always a definite number of motion (length) units — (potential energy) — and for each mass-motion unit in discrete succession or dis-continuity there is a definite period of duration or time (fraction of a second). Hence, in the case of any given action or event, the product of the mass units into the motion units is the total number of energy units in process or action per this period of time. And this total number of these mass, motion, and time-period units multiplied by the frequency of their action or occurrence gives the quantity of energy in action (kinetic energy) during one second of time. This quantity is just twice the number of erg-seconds gained or lost (transferred) in the operation of the given action or event. (The reason that in a transfer of energy the product of mass and motion times time units is twice the number of erg-seconds transferred is this: A transfer of energy means the imparting of it. Since this cannot occur outside of time, the energy must be transferred at a time he rate or velocity rising from zero to maximum. Hence the mean or effective velocity /of/ transfer is only one half the final velocity on which the erg-second is based.)

 

     These ratios among the three elements involved in a unit of action, these numerical relationships in whole numbers, give evidence that the three elements themselves are discontinuous — that among mass, motion and time each has its own indivisible unit no less than one of which can unite with some number of the other two to constitute a unit of action or event (h).

Under the quantum principle the product of those three numbers cannot in any case exceed the magnitude represented by h or some whole number of them.

Por purpose of illustration, let us assign a numerical

magnitude to h. Let us assume 8 is the least product of the three magnitudes of mass, motion and time that constitute the quantum of action (h) — in terms of their several rational (indivisible) units, when any one of these constituent units is at unit as its least, then the other two factors must be 2 and 4.

 

     The possible combinations in the ascending order of mass per unit of motion, motion per unit of time, and the frequency or number of units of time, — the product being uniformly 8, are as follows:

 

                     /See Zerox reproductions/

 

 

     Thus there are nine different proportions in which our whole numbers of elemental units will combine so that their product will