Why don't magnetic wave forms take up space?

Question

Why don't magnetic wave forms take up space... I can understand why sound waves will not take up space because of the way they move particles already in space but what about radio or other magnetic waves?

Answer 1

There are, of course, no magnetic waves. All electromagnetic waves have a magnetic as well as an electric field and the two fields can never be separated.

And of course electromagnetic waves "take up space". If you "force" an electromagnetic wave into a box with reflecting walls, the wave will exert a pressure on these walls. If you allow the walls to expand, the wave will push them apart while losing energy and changing its frequency.

Electromagnetic waves are not as different from matter as you might think... it just takes getting used to these properties which you have probably never "seen" but which follow pretty easily from the theory.

Answer 2

Fundamentally, there is no difference between a sound wave, a radio wave, a magnetic wave and a ray of light. The difference is that the frequency varies.

Magnetic wave forms are simply traveling in a different formation. Imagine that a radio wave travels along a single axis. The only way to read it would be if the receiver is at some fixed point on that line. Radio waves, however, travel in a different pattern that is dispersed and can be collected easily at one point by a parabolic receiver or another form of receiver properly placed. A magnetic wave form can occur in many shapes, and is harder to observe, but is, essentially, another manner of moving particles at a particular frequency.

Answer 3

How do you take up space if you have no mass?