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Chasing a Beam of Light:

Einstein's Most Famous Thought
Experiment

John D. Norton
Department of History and Philosophy of Science
University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh PA 15260
Homepage: www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton
This page (with animated figures) is available at
www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/goodies

Einstein recalled how, at the age of 16, he imagined chasing after a

beam of light and that the thought experiment had played a
memorable role in his development of special relativity. Famous as
it is, it has proven difficult to understand just how the thought
experiment delivers its results. It fails to generate serious problems
for an ether based electrodynamics. I propose a new way to
read it that fits it nicely into the stages of Einstein's discovery of
special relativity. It shows the untenability of an "emission" theory
of light, an approach to electrodynamic theory that Einstein
considered seriously and rejected prior to his breakthrough of 1905.

For more details, see:

"Chasing the Light: Einstein's Most Famous Thought Experiment,"

prepared for Thought Experiments in Philosophy, Science and the
Arts, eds., James Robert Brown, Mélanie Frappier and Letitia
Meynell, Routledge. Download.

Sections 5-6 of "Einstein's Investigations of Galilean Covariant

Electrodynamics prior to 1905," Archive for History of Exact
Sciences, 59 (2004), pp. 45105. Download.

1. The Puzzle

How could we be anything but charmed by the delightful story

Einstein tells in his Autobiographical Notes of a striking thought he
had at the age of 16? While recounting the efforts that led to the
special theory of relativity, he recalled

"...a paradox upon which I had already hit at the age of sixteen: If
I pursue a beam of light with the velocity c (velocity of light in
a vacuum), I should observe such a beam of light as an
electromagnetic field at rest though spatially oscillating. There
seems to be no such thing, however, neither on the basis of
experience nor according to Maxwell's equations. From the very
beginning it appeared to me intuitively clear that, judged from the
standpoint of such an observer, everything would have to happen
according to the same laws as for an observer who, relative to the
earth, was at rest. For how should the first observer know or be
able to determine, that he is in a state of fast uniform motion? One
sees in this paradox the germ of the special relativity theory is
already contained."

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The thought is simplicity itself. Here is light, a waveform

propagating at c:

If the young Einstein were to chase after it at c, he would catch up

with the wave and be moving with it, like a surfer riding the
wave. He would see a frozen lightwave.

The untenability of that thought led to the downfall of the great

achievement of nineteenth century physics, the ether, which then
provided the basis for all electromagnetic theory.

The trouble is that it is quite unclear just how this thought

creates difficulties for the ether. Einstein gave three reasons and
each of them could be answered readily by an able ether theorist.

Einstein wrote... The ether theorist replies...

"...I should observe such a beam of light as an

electromagnetic field at rest though spatially
oscillating. There seems to be no such thing,
however,..."

1 "...neither on the basis of experience..." ...but we don't experience frozen light for
the simple reason that we are not moving
at c through the ether. If we were moving
that fast, we would experience frozen light.

2 "...nor according to Maxwell's equations..." Not so. A very short calculation shows that
Maxwell's equations predict that light
becomes frozen for observers moving at c
through the ether.

3 "...From the very beginning it appeared to me intuitively clear

that, judged from the standpoint of such an observer,
An observer knows he is moving rapidly
with respect to the ether simply because
everything would have to happen according to the same laws
light has become frozen. Analogously a
as for an observer who, relative to the earth, was at rest.
surfer knows he is moving since he stays
For how should the first observer know or be able
on the wave.
to determine, that he is in a state of fast uniform
motion?..."

So what are we to make of the thought experiment? Perhaps it is no

more than the recording of the visceral hunches of a precocious
16 year old who did not even study Maxwell's theory until two years
later. This is a possibility we cannot rule out. If it is correct, then we
need not puzzle any further over how the thought experiment
works, for there is little more to be found that illuminates Einstein's
pathway to special relativity.

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But then we must ask why the thought experiment merits pride of
place in Einstein's defining autobiography? Does it have a cogency
that extends beyond Einstein's final high school year? That
Einstein mentions Maxwell's equations in the thought experiment
suggests their relevance to the operation of the thought experiment
and thus that this operation was pertinent to Einstein's later
thought, after he had learned Maxwell's equations.

While we cannot know on the evidence available if the thought

experiment truly had cogency beyond the mullings of Einstein's 16th
year, we can ask if there are plausible accounts of Einstein's
pathway to special relativity in which the thought experiment
figures more significantly.

2. A Proposed Solution

There is a way of understanding how the thought experiment could

have a significance that extended well beyond the confines of
Einstein's final year at high school. The key is not to relate the
thought experiment to ether theories of electromagnetism. Rather,
we know that Einstein devoted some effort during the years leading
up to his discovery of 1905, to so-called "emission" theories of
light and electromagnetism. Einstein eventually found such theories
objectionable and untenable.

I propose that Einstein's thought experiment provided an especially

cogent way of formulating those objections and thereby
supported Einstein in his final decision: it give up an emission
theory in favor of retaining the celebrated Maxwell-Lorentz theory,
but with a radically altered theory of space and time.

3. An Emission Theory of Light and

Electromagnetism

On many later occasions, Einstein recalled that, prior to his

discovery of special relativity, he had investigated emission
theories, indicating a similarity in his approach to that used by
Walter Ritz. In the then standard electrodynamics of Maxwell and
Lorentz, electromagnetic action always propagated at c with
respect to the ether. The simplest example was the propagation
of a lightwave. But it held equally for the action of one charge upon
another. It was this fact that made it seem impossible to conform
the principle of relativity to electromagnetism. The ether supplied a
preferred state of rest essential to the theory, but incompatible with
the idea that all inertial states of motion are equivalent.

So Ritz in 1908, and Einstein sometime before 1905, tried to modify

electromagnetic theory in such a way that electromagnetic effects
are always propagated at c with respect to the source of the
effect. If such a theory could be found, it would no longer require
an ether state of rest and it would reasonable to expect that it could
conform to the principle of relativity.

The animation below displays the difference. On the left, in the

Maxwell-Lorentz theory, electromagnetic action propagates from a
fixed point in the ether. So when two charges moving together act
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on each other, the source of the effect felt by one is a fixed point in
the ether left behind by the moving source. Since the effect
propagates from a point left behind by the moving charges, an
observer moving with the charges can use this fact to determine
that the charges are moving.

On the right, we see the corresponding process in a modified

"emission" theory, such as devised by Ritz and Einstein. The motion
of the source is added to the propagating effect. So now the effect
propagates isotropically from a point that moves with the source. To
see this, notice how the expanding spherical shells remain centered
on the moving positive charge that is their source, just as would
happen if the two charges were at rest. The propagation of
electromagnetic effects can no longer be used by observers moving
with the two charges to detect their absolute motion; the principle
of relativity is no longer threatened.

The simplest electromagnetic action is the propagation of light. So

in this theory, the velocity of the emitter--the source--is added to
the velocity of the light emitted. For this reason it is known as an
"emission" theory.

Promising as this must initially have seemed to an Einstein intent on

restoring the principle of relativity, the emission theory was
ultimately rejected by Einstein. His later correspondence and
papers are littered with remarks on the problems the theory faced.
Two will return as our story unfolds.

- In a letter to Paul Ehrenfest of June 1912 (and elsewhere),

Einstein remarked that an emission theory ran afoul of an
elementary result of optics: the physical state of a ray of light is
determined completed by its intensity and color (and polarization).

- In an interview with R. S. Shankland in the 1950s, Einstein

remarked that the theory could not be formulated as a local field
theory that is, in terms of differential equations.

In a local field theory, we reconstruct how a field evolves over

time by taking its state at one instant and consulting the theory's
differential field equations. These equations take the present state
of the fields and tell us how rapidly they are changing. From these
rates of change we can then infer the states of the field at future
times. (A similar analysis tells us how the field will alter at different
parts of space.)

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4. Einstein's Thought Experiment in the

Context of an Emission theory of Light

Let us now return to Einstein's thought experiment and imagine that

its target has become an emission theory of light. We immediately
see that the three objections Einstein's reports present serious
obstacles to an emission theory. Let us take the three objections
in order.

1. The first objection was that we don't actually experience

frozen light. That is a puzzle in an emission theory of light. We must
presume that there are light sources with all sorts of velocities
around us. A light source moving rapidly away from us will emit a
lightwave that propagates slowly with respect to us. The most
extreme case is of light source moving away from us at c. That
source will leave a frozen light wave behind in space, as the
animation shows:

So, if an emission theory is the correct theory of light, we should

expect eventually to run into frozen lightwaves, emitted by rapidly
receding sources. But we experience no such thing.

2. The second objection was that frozen light was incompatible

with Maxwell's equations. Why should this be a problem for an
emission theory when such a theory does not employ Maxwell's
equations? It will be a problem, but it takes a few steps to arrive at
the conclusion.

First note that an emission theory allows frozen light in ordinary

circumstances; we don't need to be moving at c to find it. That
means that a frozen light wave must be a part of electrostatics and
magnetostatics, the theories of static electric and magnetic fields.
Now Maxwell's electrodynamics evolved over the course of half a
century and built on a long series of experiments in electricity and
magnetism. An emission theory must adjust the theory, but it
cannot alter it too radically on pain of incompatibility with
those experiments. The one part of Maxwell's theory that seems
most secure is its simplest part, its treatment of static electric and
magnetic fields. So we would expect a successful emission theory to
agree with Maxwell's theory in this simplest and most secure part.

Now we have a problem: An emission theory allows the existence of

frozen light waves. But the emission theory must agree closely with
the treatment of static fields in Maxwell's theory and Maxwell's
theory does not admit the static fields that corresponds to frozen
light waves.

3. In his third objection, Einstein lamented for the observer

catching the light beam, "...For how should the first observer know
or be able to determine, that he is in a state of fast uniform
motion?" Of course, in the context of an emission theory, the "state

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of fast uniform motion" must be read as "fast uniform motion with

respect to the source of the light."

At first it is not clear why it should matter at all whether the

observer catching the light beam can make this judgment. It turns
out to be important if the overall emission theory of light is to be
deterministic; that is, if the present state of fields and the like in
space are to be able to determine how they will develop in the
future. Einstein's worry is that determinism will fail. To see why,
imagine that you are an observer given a waveform, but all you
know of it is its state at the present instant.

Light wave at an instant

Would you be able to tell whether the waveform is one that is frozen
in space;

One possible future: a frozen light wave

or whether it is one that is propagating past you?

Another possible future: a propagating light wave

Both are possible in an emission theory. Which is the case

depends upon your velocity with respect to the light's source. If you
are moving at c with respect to the source, the wave is frozen. If
you are at rest with respect to the source, the wave is propagating
at c.

Can you tell which case you have by merely looking at the
waveform at an instant? You cannot. Einstein's earlier remark about
light is now decisive. A light wave is fully characterized by its color,
intensity and polarization and both cases agree on these properties.
The waveform has no property at an instant that would enable
you to tell what its future time development would be. This is
indeterminism. The present state of the wave does not determine
its future time development.

While this circumstance might just be just an odd incompleteness of

our knowledge, it becomes a crisis if we imagine that we are not
human observers but the differential equations of a local field
theory. For, as we saw above, a basic function of those field
equations is to take the present state of the fields and from them
infer the rates of change of the field. Those rates of change then
determine the time development of the waveform--whether it
propagates or not and how fast it propagates. This essential
function will not be possible in an emission theory, for the

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instantaneous state of the lightwave does not determine the rates of

change of the field.

Hence, thanks to Einstein's thought experiment, we infer that an

emission theory cannot be formulated as a local field theory.

We can summarize the problems brought by Einstein's thought

experiment to an emission theory:

Einstein wrote... The emission theorist worries...

"...I should observe such a beam of light as an

electromagnetic field at rest though spatially
oscillating. There seems to be no such thing,
however,..."

1 "...neither on the basis of experience..." An emission theory allows frozen

waveforms for observers in all inertial
states of motion, so we should expect to
experience them.

2 "...nor according to Maxwell's equations..." An emission theory should agree closely on

static fields with Maxwell's theory, but
Maxwell's theory prohibits the static fields
of frozen light (except in the special case of
observers moving at c with respect to the ether).

3 "...From the very beginning it appeared to me intuitively clear

that, judged from the standpoint of such an observer,
We cannot tell from the instantaneous
state of a light wave whether it is a frozen
everything would have to happen according to the same laws
wave or a propagating wave. So differential
as for an observer who, relative to the earth, was at rest.
field equations cannot tell either and and
For how should the first observer know or be able
an emission theory of light cannot be
to determine, that he is in a state of fast uniform
formulated as a local field theory governed
motion?..."
by differential field equations.

5. Conclusion

When Einstein abandoned an emission theory of light, he had also

to abandon the hope that electrodynamics could be made to
conform to the principle of relativity by the normal sorts of
modifications to electrodynamic theory that occupied the theorists
of the second half of the 19th century. Instead Einstein knew he
must resort to extraordinary measures. He was willing to seek
realization of his goal in a re-examination of our basic notions of
space and time. Einstein concluded his report on his youthful
thought experiment:

"One sees that in this paradox the germ of the special relativity
theory is already contained. Today everyone knows, of course, that
all attempts to clarify this paradox satisfactorily were condemned to
failure as long as the axiom of the absolute character of time, or of
simultaneity, was rooted unrecognized in the unconscious. To
recognize clearly this axiom and its arbitrary character already
implies the essentials of the solution of the problem."

Copyright John D. Norton, December 2004. Rev. February 15, 2005. Reformatted April 14, 2005
on a transatlantic flight returning to Pittsburgh from the Israel Academy of Science and Humanities conference on
Einstein.

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