What’s Wrong with Maxwell’s Equations?

Maxwell’s electromagnetic wave theory has provided the foundation for life- changing and life-saving technologies from smartphones to magnetic resonance imaging. This is especially intriguing given that Maxwell’s electromagnetic wave is inconsistent with the fundamental scientific principles of causality and conservation of energy, as well as the assumption of the Kirchhoff diffraction integral, which is the fundamental equation used in optics to relate the object to the image. These contradictions exist because Maxwell arbitrarily considered the waves that represent the magnetic and electric fields to be in-phase. In this article, I show that the reintroduction of the “evil” magnetic vector potential resolves the contradictions by giving a first principle approach to the claim that the waves that represent the magnetic and electric fields are a quadrature out-of-phase.