How do radio waves travel through space if they don't have a medium to travel through?

Answer 1

How, five circular answers so far (radio waves don't need a medium because electromagnetic waves don't need a medium). There actually is a medium, of sorts. It's called the vacuum. It differs from media made of matter though in being "Lorentz Invariant". That means, amongst other things, it has no preferred reference frame in which it can be said to be stationary. Most people thing of "vacuum" as being equivalent to "nothing", but nothing can be farther from the truth. It's actually a rather busy place full of virtual fields and has many tangible properties such as curvature and a metric. Nothing, on the other hand, has no properties. Modern physics treats radio waves (indeed all forms of particles and waves) as a sort of excitation of the vacuum state.

Answer 2

Radio waves are a part of the electromagnetic spectrum. They do not require a "medium" to travel through. A radio wave is composed of an electrical wave, and a magnetic wave. The 2 waves travel together, creating each other as the wave travels through what ever medium it is in, be that air, wire, or what we call "space".

Answer 3

Consider two oppositely charged plates parallel to each other placed in a vacuum bulb.

If we now change the charges in one of the plates, the charge in the other plate is simultaneously changed even though there is nothing in between them.

If we drop an objects inside a long vertical evacuated vertical glass tube, the objects is pulled down by gravity even though there is nothing in between them.

On one side of an evacuated glass bulb if we place an iron piece and keep a magnet on the other side, the iron piece sticks to the bulb even though there is nothing in between them.

The radio waves and all other electro magnetic radiations like heat rays[infra red rays] light and X-rays work in the principle that a variation of charge and magnetic properties in a conductor is affected in a conductor placed far away from the initial conductor.

Thus they require no material medium for their transformations. Energy can travel through vacuum.

The answer to your question lies in the answer to the question why should one expect a medium for radio waves to travel.

Answer 4

Radio and light waves do not need a 'medium' to propagate through. They are electro-magnetic waves.
This is why light from the sun and radio waves from the space station and the shuttle are received on Earth through the almost perfect vacuum of Space.

Answer 5

Radio waves are simply light emitted on frequencies outside the visible spectrum.

I think you're confusing radio waves with sound waves. Sound waves indeed cannot travel through the vacuum of space. (In space, no one can hear you scream!) But light travels easily through space, and in fact travels easier because there's no atmosphere to impede it.

Answer 6

Radio waves are basically the same as light, that is, electromagnetic radiation. They easily travel through vacuums because electric fields do not need matter in which to travel through.

Answer 7

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Electromagnetic radiation can propagate through free space. It doesn't need a medium. It travels at a speed c = 1 foot / nanosecond

Answer 8

Radio waves are one type of electromagnetic radiation, they do not require a medium to travel through.

Answer 9

When the Michelson Morley experiment was done the concept of a "medium" that had no viscosity and therefore no observable effect on wave propagation. Since then we have "discovered" superfluid’s which do have that property among others and some scientists are speculation that the "aether" does exist and that dark matter and dark energy may actually be superfluid’s (or even that the whole universe is s superfluid universe

Answer 10

Radio waves are photons which are actually particles albeit massless ones. As you know particles don't need a medium to travel through