we have a theory which is called quantum electrodynamics which is our pride and joy
it's so successful and it's such so wide in its application and what i would like to tell you
about is that theory how it works or how it looks like it works what the world looks like from that
point of view and so there was a new theory of light which is that it was an electromagnetic wave
and maxwell's great synthesis in 1873 was to connect electricity magnetism and light
light is just one aspect of the electromagnetic wave which can have different kinds of wavelengths
from that point of view so that there is an enormous range of one property the wavelength
a range of phenomena that's a complete enormous spectrum the spectrum we see with the eye is a
very narrow range and it's the entire spectrum it's all put together with the one theory
of electromagnetic waves that i'm going to call it light instead of saying electromagnetic radiation
light is what we see is only one little part but from the physicist's point of
view the accident that the human eye happens to be sensitive to waves from here to here
it's not essential the phenomena are the same over the whole range and that we call i'm going
to call them all light but it could be radio waves or x-rays i think of the waves and things
that have formed in the water and when there's lots of people have dived in the pool there's a
very great choppiness of all these waves all over the water and to think that it's possible maybe
that in those ways is a clue as to what's happening in the pool
that some sort of insect or something with sufficient cleverness could sit in the corner
of the pool and just be disturbed by the waves and by the nature of the irregularities and bumping of
the waves have figured out who jumped in where and when and where what's happening all over the pool
uh the light that comes out is waves just like in the swimming pool except in three
dimensions instead of the two dimensions of the pool as they're going in all directions
so that there's this tremendous mess of waves all over in space which we call it which is the light
bouncing around the room and going from one thing to the other and then these waves get longer and
longer and they're all through the same space all these things are going on at the same time
so that in this space there's not only your my vision of you but information from moscow
radio that's being broadcast at the present moment and the seeing of somebody from peru
all the radio waves are just the same kind of ways only longer waves
and there's the radar from the airplane which is looking at the ground to figure out where
it is which is coming through this room at the same time plus the x-ray cosmic rays and all
these other things which is the same kind of waves exactly the same ways but shorter faster or longer
slower it's exactly the same thing so this big field this this area of irregular motions of this
electric field this vibration contains this tremendous information and it's all really
there that's what gets you have you had a moment when in a complicated problem where quite suddenly
the thing comes into your head and you're almost sure you've got to be right oh yes i mean this is
not right oh my god yeah yeah yeah and then you tried to figure out what the conditions
were of that moment that you can do it again for example i worked out the theory of helium once
and suddenly saw everything i was struggling struggling yeah two years back and suddenly saw
everything absolutely i can remember everything about it by the way it's psychologically funny
you can remember the color of the paper you were writing on that's not true yeah and
then you wonder what's the psychological condition well i know at that particular time i simply
looked up and i said wait a minute it can't be quite that difficult it must be very easy i'll
stand back and i'll just treat it very lightly i'll just tap it and i'll see and there it was so
how many times since then i'm walking on the beach and i said well look it can't be so complicated
Tap it and tap tap nothing happens
It's that missing bit in the brain isn't it that suddenly lights up
and I have no idea I thought about it because some man suggested I think about that
if you don't believe it then you pick a piece of wire and connect it to a box and in the wire the
electrons will be pushed back and forth by this electric field sloshing just at the right speed
for a certain kind of long ways and you turn some knobs on the box to get the sloshing just right
and you hear radio moscow so you know that it was there how else did it get there it
was there all the time it's only when you turn on the radio that it you notice it
but that all these things are going through the room at the same time which everybody
knows when you but you got to stop and think about it to really get the pleasure
about the complexity the inconceivable nature of nature i think that the discovery of electricity
and magnetism and the electromagnetic effects which what finally worked out the full equations
for everything was worked out by maxwell in 1873 is probably the most fundamental
transformation of the most remarkable thing in history the biggest change in history