“Oh, the path is a path of light,

We are not afraid of any cristall lattice…”

The song of the frontline driver.

Words: N.Labkovsky and B.Laskin.

Music: B.Mokrousov.

Again, about the extension of the conclusions of the General Theory of Relativity to the phenomena of electromagnetism. (See “Thought Chains 2”, “Electromagnetic Theory of Relativity”, “On the applicability of the General Theory of Relativity to the phenomena of electromagnetism”)

How does light pass through transparent bodies and media?

Why does its velocity decrease in them compared to the constant velocity in a vacuum?

For a while, it seemed to me that the reason was simple and understandable: Light in matter is transmitted along a chain of atoms (or ions) of matter, and although the absorption and emission process is very fast, there is still a slowdown in the propagation speed of the light wave front or light quanta.

This is just a typical “CHAIN REACTION!”.

But somehow, in a conversation with one of my friends, a physicist by profession, I heard a completely different explanation for this “deceleration”: Light in matter, which is actually also a empty, a vacuum, DOES NOT CHANGE its “vacuum velocity of propagation”, but its path in matter becomes “WINDING” and not in a straight line! And the more optically dense the medium, the more tortuous the path, that is, the light wave in the substance is forced to travel a longer, deeper path, and this creates the appearance of its “deceleration”.

I liked the idea at the time, but by my stupidly, like a schoolboy, I did not reflect on it and compare it with my usual idea. THEN!

What’s wrong with the idea of a “chain reaction” of light transmission? In fact, an “induced radiation”.

Atoms can absorb light only quantum-wise, that is, quanta with a certain energy are absorbed by certain orbiting electrons, which jump to higher orbits, and then emit this induced radiation further on the way back

(Another question: Why do atoms, having absorbed quanta, emit them strictly in the SAME DIRECTION as the absorbed ones? How does the “atom know” from which direction the quantum it absorbed came and where it should emit a similar one?)

But quantum transitions should produce some atom-specific absorption-emission lines, for example, in fresh water there are atoms and molecules of water and no more. Do hydrogen and oxygen atoms have such a set of quantum states that they SELECTIVELY transmit the entire set of “white light” quanta, and not even in stripes (like molecular spectrum), but in a continuous spectrum?

Or glass, which is also not very rich in variety elements?

It’s kind of hard to believe; there are lines and even entire absorption regions, but it seems unlikely to skip an entire section of the spectrum without CHANGING and without characteristic absorption-emission lines.

The “winding path” is much more interesting.

Why does the ray path become tortuous in the environment?

The only explanation is that the force fields of atoms bend the path of a wave or quantum.

(The idea of a frontal or off-center collision of quanta with atoms as two elastic balls is ridiculous, it seems to me! Just as the idea of electric current electrons colliding with defects in the crystal lattice of metals is ridiculous, as I have already written many critical articles about it, proposing the “Magneto-electric theory of metal resistance” instead).

So, it turns out that light waves and quanta INTERACT with their changing electromagnetic fields with quasi-stationary electromagnetic fields of atoms.

But I’ve just discussed this topic – the interaction should be discrete and discontinuous… But then a lot of lines should appear again – the “strip spectrum”!

But — it’s CONTINUOUS!

Hence the conclusion: The interaction of wave fields and quanta with atomic fields occurs NON-QUANTUM, but CONTINUOUSLY, LIKE the DEFLECTION OF LIGHT RAYS IN THE GRAVITATIONAL FIELDS OF MASSIVE SPACE OBJECTS, the Sun, for example.

That is, it is the process of a similar passage of light through regions of CURVED (NOT COSMIC, but) INTERATOMIC SPACE AND THE CHANGED COURSE OF TIME IN THEM!

The electromagnetic force fields of atoms are also nothing more than a curvature of space and a change in the course of time in them!

Thus, we again come to the idea of the fundamental possibility of extending the conclusions of the General Theory of Relativity to the phenomena of electromagnetism, which was proposed in a number of my articles many years ago.

Faciant meliora potentes.

If I’m wrong, let my seniors correct me.

22 II 2026