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The particle theory of light led Pierre-Simon Laplace to argue that a body could be so massive that light could not escape from it. In other words, it would become what is now called a black hole . Laplace withdrew his suggestion later, after a wave theory of light became firmly established as the model for light (as has been explained, neither ...
This theory came to dominate the conceptions of light in the eighteenth century, displacing the previously prominent vibration theories, where light was viewed as "pressure" of the medium between the source and the receiver, first championed by René Descartes, and later in a more refined form by Christiaan Huygens. [1]
The simplest form of a tired light theory assumes an exponential decrease in photon energy with distance traveled: = where () is the energy of the photon at distance from the source of light, is the energy of the photon at the source of light, and is a large constant characterizing the "resistance of the space".
In the late 17th century, Sir Isaac Newton had advocated that light was corpuscular (particulate), but Christiaan Huygens took an opposing wave description. While Newton had favored a particle approach, he was the first to attempt to reconcile both wave and particle theories of light, and the only one in his time to consider both, thereby anticipating modern wave-particle duality.
But the particle theory of light can not satisfactorily explain refraction and diffraction. [5] To explain refraction, Newton's Third Book of Opticks (1st ed. 1704, 4th ed. 1730) postulated an "aethereal medium" transmitting vibrations faster than light, by which light, when overtaken, is put into "Fits of easy Reflexion and easy Transmission ...
Empedocles (c. 490–430 BCE) was the first to propose a theory of light [128] and claimed that light has a finite speed. [129] He maintained that light was something in motion, and therefore must take some time to travel. Aristotle argued, to the contrary, that "light is due to the presence of something, but it is not a movement". [130]
Accepted classical theories of physics, and in particular general relativity, predict a constant speed of light in any local frame of reference and in some situations these predict apparent variations of the speed of light depending on frame of reference, but this article does not refer to this as a variable speed of light. Various alternative ...
its predecessors like the theories of luminiferous aether, its early competitors, i.e.: Ritz’s ballistic theory of light, the models of electromagnetic mass created by Abraham (1902), Lorentz (1904), Bucherer (1904) and Langevin (1904). This list also mentions the origins of standard notation (like c) and terminology (like theory of relavity).