Abstract

It is widely believed that electricity and magnetism were united by James Clerk-Maxwell in the nineteenth century. In his 1865 paper ?A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field', Maxwell substituted the quantity ?Displacement Current' into Amp?re's circuital law and he obtained the electromagnetic wave equation. Displacement current is generally believed to incorporate Gauss's law and so it would appear that Maxwell had successfully united electrostatics with electromagnetism.

Maxwell's physical explanation for displacement current began in terms of tangential stress on the electrical particles in his sea of molecular vortices and it later developed into dielectric linear polarization current. Maxwell was on the right tracks when he considered the tangential stress on the electrical particles in his vortex sea but he went wrong when he later ignored his molecular vortices to concentrate on the dielectric aspect of the aether.

There exists a tangential quantity that might be accurately described as ?Angular Displacement Current' which exists perpendicular to linear polarization current and which has an identical mathematical form. Maxwell mistakenly interpreted displacement current in electromagnetic radiation to refer to linear polarization current, when in fact it should more accurately refer to angular displacement current.

Angular displacement current is a rotational phenomenon and it will be concluded that electromagnetic radiation is a gyroscopic phenomenon involving the coherent plane polarized propagation of rotations (including precessions) and also the longitudinal propagation of centrifugal pressure.