Talk:Scalar wave

Drinkable sunscreen
There is a "drinkable sunscreen". It is otherwise known as "just water", and the British Association of Dermatologists has warned people about it. It works by SCALAR WAVES!! - David Gerard (talk) 15:02, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Bias in this article
Hi... While I may agree with much of what you have written in this article, I think you give science a bad name when you write statements like "In the land of Woo", etc...

No matter how much we may dislike pseudoscience, poking fun won't help... Opinions on whether someone does, or does not know what a quaternion is, strays away from the facts...

Or maybe this wiki should be re-named to something like "Poking fun at Pseudoscience" instead

Physics Chris (talk) 13:48, 23 May 2015 (UTC)Chris


 * Earnest reasoned debate is a fine thing, unless your discussion partner has an agenda (e.g. pushing woo) or is innumerate, or finds joined-up thinking too much like work. In cases such as that, pointing and laughing can be an effective way of influencing the opinions of the onlookers. Are there any particular facts you'd choose to highlight in this article?


 * A kindly word of caution: RW denizens take great delight in poking fun at people who take the wiki's name too seriously. They've even made it into a drinking game. MaillardFillmore (talk) 14:21, 23 May 2015 (UTC)

The word woo is just super gay.73.213.142.170 (talk) 02:02, 14 June 2015 (UTC) a man called horse

Conceit or concept?
Hi, I'm new here, not sure if the second sentence is humour or a mistake. In plain English "The central concept" makes for more normal reading, although 'conceit' works as well in its own quirky way. 120.21.71.172 (talk) 06:46, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
 * "I" is close to "P" on the keyboard, so presumably the latter. —Kazitor, pending 11:35, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

Seems legit
Bearden cited some legitimate references for his scalar waves: "Classical electrodynamics" by J. D. Jackson. Bearden mentioned that the "scalar waves" are the potential fields A and Φ from which E and B are derived from. There is no doubt about that.

In the Tesla fans community, the commonly used term "scalar wave" would just refer to the scalar potential Φ and potential vector field A in electromagnetism.

Outside of that, "scalar waves" may just be pseudo science, like those videos claiming to cleanse your aura and open your 3rd eye with 1THz audio.&mdash; Unsigned, by: Physnoct‎ / talk / contribs

EM Scalar waves exist
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18263114/ https://opg.optica.org/oe/fulltext.cfm?uri=oe-19-9-8526&id=212821 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9780470168981 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9901455/ Again, these have been known to exist since at least 1983 by J. N. Brittingham. . X waves are an example of years of study on this field. The first article I provide has been cited over 400 times, and has 4 patents on it. Just what sort of wiki is this?


 * —cosmikdebris talk stalk 16:28, 8 May 2023 (UTC)
 * What is your point? There's already a section on how scalar wave equations do exist in science. If you want to expand (and correct that section, as the term "scalar waves" is used some it seems so I think that part is in error), feel free. Your links have nothing to do with the woo. BobJohnson (talk) 16:32, 8 May 2023 (UTC)
 * (Edit: I see that there was an edit conflict here. We'll see if other people chime in.)BobJohnson (talk) 16:36, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

As you said, my edit was specifically about scalar EM waves, which is what the woomeisters are talking about (this is evidenced by the fact they seem to go on about the poynting vector, an EM term). They go off the deep end for sure, but are referencing a real phenomenon. My edit refutes the claim or insinuation that scalar EM waves have never been demonstrated and are about as grounded in reality as chem trails, and that they are not a term of art. X waves DO solve the EM scalar wave equation and they DO function like longitudinal waves. One study I cite show there is time dependent negative energy flux in the longitudinal direction, suggesting the energy propagates similarly to a pressure wave (though there are differences), so it's not a bad comparison. As far as I've researched, it's definitely a neat phenomenon with interesting military applications, like visualizing stealth materials hidden from transverse em waves. The message of the article seems to deny the existence of scalar EM waves and mislead readers. Giggity794 (talk) 17:38, 8 May 2023 (UTC)
 * The general gist I am getting right now per the Google is that, although the term "scalar" comes up because, well, it's, scalar wave theory in general is considered pseduoscience and bunk due to the general woo surrounding it. Chances are when you Google "scalar wave" (or other terms like "scalar energy") you're going to get a lot of woo. So one has to be careful with the edits.
 * I'm personally not convinced (albeit just from quick Googles) that "scalar wave" is a good description of X-waves. Nature for instance describes X-Waves as "a specific type of nonspreading wave packet that maintain their transverse shape along a large field depth with respect to Gaussian beams or other packets.". Certainly there can be "scalar" elements of such, but in this case it seems like "scalar wave" (if the term is used, not all articles use this term) should be considered in its math context, and nothing more. On Wikipedia "scalar wave" redirects to  so maybe in certain other articles that synonym also applies; again, a scalar field doesn't seem to be a good description of an  either, but someone handily linked the "scalar waves equation" description in the IEEE article to there. BobJohnson (talk) 20:07, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

This is because the X wave is a subset of solutions to the scalar wave equation in free space for Electromagnetism--Scalar EM wave is a general term according to this article and others it cites.  The introduction states 'X-Waves are a class of Localized Wave (LW) solutions to the scalar wave equation, which have been extensively studied in the literature (see {1} for a historical review), while studies of LW solutions to the vector wave equation have focused only on constructing solutions using a single polarization type, mostly the transverse electric (TE)-polarization (see, {2–6} and references therein).' I don't know why you wouldn't call it a scalar EM wave of a type. Scalar waves were in fact were predicted by Tesla as well, and were not some kooky byproduct of age related psychosis or whatever. If X waves are localized disturbances of the EM field, they're eerily similar to the potential 'vortices' described by Tesla, changing the dynamics of a nearby charged particle while the E and B fields at its location are zero. This is, to my lowly mechanical engineering eye, very similar to the bohm-aharonov effect.

An excerpt from one of the Feynman lectures: "In our sense then, the A-field is 'real.' You may say: 'But there was a magnetic field.' There was, but remember our original idea—that a field is “real” if it is what must be specified at the position of the particle in order to get the motion. The B-field in the whisker acts at a distance. If we want to describe its influence not as action-at-a-distance, we must use the vector potential. This subject has an interesting history. The theory we have described was known from the beginning of quantum mechanics in 1926. The fact that the vector potential appears in the wave equation of quantum mechanics (called the Schrödinger equation) was obvious from the day it was written. That it cannot be replaced by the magnetic field in any easy way was observed by one man after the other who tried to do so. This is also clear from our example of electrons moving in a region where there is no field and being affected nevertheless. But because in classical mechanics A did not appear to have any direct importance and, furthermore, because it could be changed by adding a gradient, people repeatedly said that the vector potential had no direct physical significance—that only the magnetic and electric fields are “right” even in quantum mechanics. It seems strange in retrospect that no one thought of discussing this experiment until 1956, when Bohm and Aharonov first suggested it and made the whole question crystal clear. The implication was there all the time, but no one paid attention to it. Thus many people were rather shocked when the matter was brought up. That’s why someone thought it would be worthwhile to do the experiment to see that it really was right, even though quantum mechanics, which had been believed for so many years, gave an unequivocal answer. It is interesting that something like this can be around for thirty years but, because of certain prejudices of what is and is not significant, continues to be ignored." I'm being verbose because I think its a disservice to completely dismiss Tesla's later work as only kookiness, as he did predict this sort of effect, and this subject should be handled with more care bc there is more to it than 'scalar waves' = kookville. Should we change an intuitive and natural word for solutions to the scalar wave equation of the EM field bc some kooks made it look bad? Won't that confuse people? Also the CIA was very interested in specifically 'scalar waves' and apparently propped up this kook Bearden. Not sure what to make of that, but they've declassified a bunch of stuff they did with him. 98.156.231.171 (talk) 02:37, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Most of the kooks and the pseudoscience surrounds Tesla's usage of "scalar waves" (although only indirectly implied from Tesla's research, see ). Referencing Tesla makes your motives quite suspect IMHO. Again: if someone is talking about a "scalar wave equation", they are generally talking about math, namely, a wave equation that is describing a wave propagating in a scalar field. There is nothing pseudoscience about math, but to go further is weird. There is also "vector wave equations" where a wave propagates in vector space. You hear nothing about "vector waves", though, right?
 * And why the fuck are you quote mining a lecture on electromagnetic fields and bringing in the ? That has nothing to do with any of this (except for concerning the general subject of electromagnetism, I suppose). If you are throwing random technobabble at us, go to Star Trek. BobJohnson (talk) 13:58, 9 May 2023 (UTC)