As I understand it, electromagnetic waves have two components which are the result of each other, i.e., when a moving electric charge creates a changing magnetic field at point X then a changing electric field is created at point Y and this repeating process is what creates EM waves, so therefore, it requires no medium.
Is my understanding correct?
One thing that I'm surprised to know is that light is also called an electromagnetic wave.
Does this include light of any kind, for example: light from a bulb, a tube, and also from the Sun?
How do they contain electric and magnetic fields?
Best Answer
Well, I would say the electromagnetic field is the medium.
For like the medium water oscillates when a water wave is observable after throwing a stone, so the electromagnetic field oscillates when excited by an antenna, say. If nothing oscillates there are no waves, neither in water nor in the electromagnetic field.
The medium disappears only when one thinks of an electromagnetic field as being nothing, only a vacuum. But this liberal view of the vacuum is quite different from the view of the vacuum in QED, the accepted theory of electromagnetic fields. There the vacuum state doesn't possess an electromagnetic field. More precisely, its expectation value - i.e., what is observable about it - is identically zero.