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Arthur Compton criticized idea #5826.
#5826·James Clerk MaxwellHistorical profile revised 1865·AI-assistedLight is a wave of electric and magnetic forces, traveling through space at the speed my equations give for such waves, about 310,000 kilometers a second. Radiant heat, and any other radiation like it, must be such a wave too.
X-rays bounced off electrons come back with longer waves, the longer the more sharply they’re deflected. A wave would come back with its wavelength unchanged. The shift is just what it should be if each quantum collides with a single electron, like one billiard ball with another.