Spherical Electrons and The Wheeler-Feynman Time-Symmetric Theory

P. C. W. Davies

FRED HOYLE, Jayant Vishnu Narlikar

R. E. Kastner

This paper explores the distinction between virtual and real photons in the context of the Davies quantum relativistic extension of the Wheeler-Feynman classical electromagnetic theory. An alternative way of understanding this distinction is proposed, based on the transactional model.

E. Kastner

This paper explores the distinction between virtual and real photons in the context of the Davies quantum relativistic extension of the Wheeler-Feynman classical electromagnetic theory. An alternative way of understanding this distinction is proposed, based on the transactional picture as first proposed by Cramer. It is noted that this proposed account of the relationship between virtual and real photons might have empirically detectable consequences. c

K. B. Wharton

Ho Yiing Chen

© Copyright 2026 Chen, Ho Yiing (ORCID: 0009-0006-6816-9891), Independent researcher, charenix.com. All rights reserved by the author. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. I argue that the photon's act of propagation between an emission event A and an absorption event B is best understood not as the flight of a particle through a background spacetime, but as a single microscopic wave-form reconstruction event in which the electromagnetic field configuration is deconstructed at A and reconstructed at B. The reading is supported by three independently accepted physical facts: (i) the photon's proper time along its null worldline is identically zero; (ii) Wheeler-Feynman absorber theory binds the emission-absorption pair through symmetric retarded and advanced contributions of the electromagnetic field; (iii) the Feynman path integral assigns the propagation amplitude to a phase-coherent superposition over all kinematically permitted paths rather than to any single trajectory. Under this reading, the constant c is reinterpreted as the coupling constant relating an external observer's spacetime scale to the wave-form reconstruction process, rather than as a particle velocity. The proposal is situated in relation to the standard textbook picture, Cramer's transactional interpretation, Aharonov's two-state vector formalism, Bohm's pilot wave, and Wheeler's delayed-choice experiments. Empirical status, falsifiability in principle, and implications for the foundational ontology of light are discussed. The proposal is a conceptual reorganization of accepted quantum-electrodynamic content, not a new physical mechanism; its claim is ontological, not predictive.