About the Author

How This Theory Came to Exist

This theory began not in a physics lab but in an act of imaginative extension. The observation that massive bodies like planets have measurable influence on other bodies led to a simple question: if planets influence, does every mass? And if every mass, then every atom? And if every atom, then every atom is a point of influence — and the universe is not a stage on which physics happens, but a network of mutual pressures, every node both source and receiver simultaneously.

From there came the visual model that unlocked everything. Trying to understand the opposite of a black hole — the concept that time runs slower near enormous mass — required reshaping how time itself is conceived. The breakthrough: the solar system is a time bubble. Its collective mass defines a local EM density. A hydrogen atom floating alone in deep space, far from all other matter, would still tick at its orbital period — unchanging, because its orbit is unchanged. Time is not a background field. Time is the periodic oscillation of matter. Without matter, there would be no time.

This conclusion — that atoms are time generators, not time-keepers — restructured everything. If time comes from orbital period and orbital period comes from the properties of the medium the atom moves through, then the speed of light and the passage of time are not the same thing. Light speed is variable. Time, measured by orbital mechanics, is not. They are related by the density of the medium, which is what we call the fine structure constant.

"Without matter, there would be no time."

The visual model that completed the theory: not a sine wave — a 2D projection of something 3D — but a rope. A bundle of ropes, actually: one rope extending from every atom in every direction, each rope made of the elementary medium itself, each rope transmitting oscillations from the atom that holds it. When an atom vibrates, it shakes every rope simultaneously. Each rope carries the wave outward linearly. The spherical wave we observe is the combined output of near-infinite ropes radiating in all directions.

And when the wave reaches another atom — when the rope end hits its connection point — the energy that was distributed across the rope's entire length arrives in concentrated form. This is not wave-particle duality as mystery. It is the mechanics of a wave in a rope reaching its terminus.

Everything that follows in the theory is the formal development of this vision.

Richard Polidoro

[Author Photo]

Richard Polidoro is an independent researcher who developed the Infinite Wave Theory beginning from a set of questions about the physical interpretation of the fine structure constant and the nature of time. The work spans quantum mechanics, general relativity, particle physics, and their unification under a single fluid-dynamic framework.

The ten extension papers were developed across 2025–2026, building from the initial Schrödinger derivation through gravitational equivalence, molecular chemistry, lepton mass structure, and the anomalous magnetic moment of the electron — each paper establishing a new result from the same four axioms.

Key Contributions

01.First mechanical derivation of the Schrödinger equation from a compressible fluid medium, without quantum postulates
02.First physical explanation of the imaginary unit i as a symplectic rotation in the EM fluid phase space
03.First explicit statement of T_orbit / T_light = 1/α = 137 in the form of a gear ratio between EM propagation and electron sub-cycles
04.Beer-Lambert derivation of the exponential gravitational metric — a physical mechanism no prior treatment provided
05.Algebraic proof that T_W = T_standard for nodeless orbitals, establishing IWT as the physical realisation of the Hohenberg-Kohn theorem
06.Derivation of all three charged lepton mass ratios from two integers alone, with no free parameters
07.Topological derivation of g = 2 exactly from the Hopf fibration — explaining the Dirac result physically, not algebraically
08.Derivation of the fixed-point equation for α from three simultaneous physical conditions on the electron's ground-state orbit

Collaboration & Contact

The Infinite Wave Theory is an open project. All ten papers are available for download. Collaboration is welcome — particularly on the Faddeev-Niemi PDE calculation needed to compute C_Hopf and complete the first-principles derivation of α, on experimental proposals for the five falsifiable predictions, and on extending the quark sector analysis beyond the current QCD obstruction.