A New Way to Look at Electromagnetism: Stress in the Vacuum

Standard electromagnetics says the important things are electric and magnetic fields. Potential is treated as a math tool: you take its gradient and get the “real” fields.

This model flips the emphasis.

The scalar potential is not just a convenience. It is a physical measure of how “stressed” the vacuum is at a point in spacetime. Voltage is not “potential at a point”; it is a difference in that stress between two points over some time, and only those differences can do work.

So:

– Scalar potential at one point is how hard the vacuum is “pressing” there.

– Voltage between points is how much that pressure differs, and that is what pushes charges around.

Once you treat potential as real vacuum stress, you can imagine waves of stress that travel through the vacuum, even before any ordinary electric or magnetic field appears. Call those scalar stress waves.

SCALAR INTERFEROMETRY: HOW STRESS MAKES FIELDS

Any vector field can be built from scalar functions. That is standard mathematics. This model says nature actually does this.

A single stress wave passing by may not create any obvious EM field. But when two different stress patterns overlap in space and time, their interference can synthesize an electric and magnetic field pattern in the overlap region and only there. Ordinary EM waves are then composites of two underlying stress waves. Vectors are not fundamental, but built from scalar interference.

Think of the vacuum as a four dimensional elastic medium:

– Scalar waves are compression patterns in that medium.

– Electric and magnetic fields are patterns that appear where multiple compression patterns overlap in the right way.

This one idea lets you reinterpret some of the strangest phenomena we see.

EXAMPLE 1: EARTHQUAKE LIGHTS AS REMOTE ELECTROMAGNETIC HOT SPOTS

Earthquake lights and ghost lights, luminous balls or glows near fault zones, do not fit neatly into standard EM. The usual explanations invoke piezoelectric effects and charge separation, but they struggle with distant, long‑lasting glows.

In this picture, a stressed fault is two giant, messy stress antennas facing each other. Nonlinear rock, especially quartz, throws off rich spectra of stress waves from both sides. Occasionally, the patterns from the two sides interfere constructively in a patch of air away from the rock.

In that distant patch, the overlapping stress waves finally synthesize a strong EM configuration, a glowing plasma ball. Air there is excited and shines; elsewhere, nothing special happens.

Energy still comes from the stressed rock, but it is delivered by remote synthesis through the vacuum, not by a simple beam you can easily trace. Earthquake lights become evidence that the vacuum can assemble localized EM structures using interference of stress, not just straightforward radiation.

EXAMPLE 2: BALL LIGHTNING AS A VACUUM‑BUILT PLASMOID

Ball lightning, bright spheres that last seconds, drift, and sometimes seem to pass through materials, remains mysterious. Many models exist, but none is definitive.

In this model, thunderstorms create huge charge separations and complicated fields. They also launch stress waves into the vacuum, not only ordinary EM waves. The geometry of cloud and ground charges can act as a scalar interferometer.

Rarely, those stress patterns interfere so that a self‑stabilizing EM structure appears in the air, a ball of plasma with its own internal field architecture.

Because it is defined by the global stress configuration of the storm, not just local combustion, it can last longer than ordinary sparks and interact strangely with materials, including transiently changing how fields and charges behave inside walls. Ball lightning becomes a vacuum‑engineered object, a naturally occurring EM “device” built entirely by stress‑wave interference.

EXAMPLE 3: LONG‑DELAY RADIO ECHOES AS STORED STRESS PATTERNS

Some radio operators report echoes of their own signals delayed by seconds, far too long for normal reflections. Standard models struggle with such delays without invoking improbable paths.

In this model, complex transmissions plus ionospheric structure create meta‑stable stress patterns in the upper atmosphere. These patterns are not ordinary EM waves bouncing around, but standing or slowly evolving stress configurations that encode the signal.

Later changes in the environment or new transmissions can cause those stress patterns to convert back into EM waves, releasing a delayed copy of the original signal. The echo is not a simple reflection; it is a re‑materialisation of stored information, an after‑image in the vacuum’s stress field.

TIME IS NOT JUST GRAVITY’S BUSINESS

If scalar potential really is “stress on spacetime itself,” then strong stress waves need not only push charges; they can, in principle, slightly alter the local rate of time flow wherever they are strong.

In weak fields we normally use, this effect is negligible compared to gravitational time dilation. But at extreme stresses, very high voltages in unusual media or intense astrophysical events, this model allows tiny shifts in timing beyond what conventional EM plus gravity predict.

This does not mean science‑fiction time travel. It means:

– Electromagnetism and gravity may both be ways of talking about how different kinds of energy stress the same underlying geometry.

– In edge cases, EM stress alone might measurably tweak local clock rates or reaction rates.

That is a testable, falsifiable idea, not just philosophy.

WHAT THIS NEW ERA LOOKS LIKE