Energy is not transmitted through the wire

Question

The introduction chapter of "Sound System Engineering, 4th ed." has a section titled "Fields", and in it some quotes that state energy is not transmitted through the wire, rather outside of it. I was taught that electric current travels through the wire and that it's a very factual thing! But...

In this link you can read the section and the quotes. Like these:

Oliver Heaviside, 1882, from his book, “Electrical Papers,” Vol. 1.“Had we not better give up the idea that energy is transmitted through the wire altogether? That is the plain course. The energy from the battery neither goes through the wire one way nor the other. Nor is it standing still, the transmission takes place entirely through the dielectric. What, then, is the wire? It is the sink into which the energy is poured from the dielectric and there wasted, passing from the electrical system altogether.”

John Ambrose Fleming in 1898 wrote, “It is important that the student should bear in mind that, although we are accustomed to speak of current as flowing in the wire in one direction or the other, this is a mere form of words. What we call the current in the wire is, to a large extent, a process going on in the space or material outside the wire….”

And also

Those of you who feel that many of the ideas are not mainstream should find a copy of “Standard Handbook for Electrical Engineers” by Donald G. Fink and H. Wayne Beaty.…there is a section entitled, “Electromagnetic Wave Propagation Phenomena.”

“The usually accepted view that the conductor current produces the magnetic field surrounding it must be displaced by the more appropriate one that the electromagnetic field surrounding the conductor produces, through a small drain on the energy supply, the current in the conductor. Although the value of the latter may be used in computing the transmitted energy, one should clearly recognize that physically this current produces only a loss and in no way has a direct part in the phenomenon of power transmission.”

There's an interesting analogy in the book: imagine a building with walls and corridors. People travel in the corridors. The circuit lines (wires) are the walls, and the spaces are the corridores. Energy travels in the corridors.

This has been melting my brain. I've searched about the subject, but nothing made it click. I know Lenz's law, and in my mind the conceptual view was: "potential difference from a battery applied in a circuit will make current flow through the wire, and this current will create a magnetic field around it according to Lenz".

The question is: if electric current is an abstraction, if energy from a battery does not go from one point to another, what is going on? What's the conceptual view that I should learn and use?

I also found these:

• Is electricity really the flow of electrons or is it more involved?
• What are the fields produced around a current carrying conductor?
• Does electricity flow on the surface of a wire or in the interior?
• If the charge on a conductor always resides on the outside, then why does current flow through the interior of a wire?

Answer 1

When a current runs through a metal wire the electrons are constantly accelerated by the electric field, converting potential energy into kinetic energy. By scattering this forward momentum is randomized and hence the excess kinetic energy is converted into Ohmic heat. Now the standard theory tells us that this energy is not coming through the wire and carried by the electrons, no, it is brought in from outside the wire as described by the Poynting vector.

This does not make sense. There is a problem with the description of the energy-momentum, although its divergency is obviously correct.

There is also a problem with electromagnetic spin.

For a discussion of these points and a solution I refer to my paper A theory of electromagnetism with uniquely defined potential and covariant conserved spin, Eur. Phys. J. D, vol. 8, p 9-12 (2000).

Answer 2

There are many versions of how electric current flows in a conductor . We provide another version that you can actually check. It is well known that all real objects have their aura, which is virtual electrons that are repelled by real electrons of objects. An electrical wire also has a coat of virtual electrons, and the existence of these virtual electrons can be verified using the VEGA-12 device or the biolocation method. But when the wire is part of any electric circuit and this circuit is under voltage, then the virtual electrons disappear from the surroundings of the metal wire, which is indicated by the results of the test by the methods mentioned above. Most likely, virtual electrons became real when voltage was applied to the electric circuit. They created a real current. Real electrons in this case have their spins equally directed, which creates a magnetic field around the current-carrying conductor. After disconnecting the wires of the electric circuit from the power source, a coat of virtual electrons appears around them again. Similar phenomena also occur in electronic lamps and electron-beam tubes, etc. Similar processes take place in autoelectron emission .