Merged Relativity+ / Farsight

[Reality Check]

Special relativity works, but don't trust Baez.

I do not trust him alone. I trust all of the science that shows that SR works.

But I do like your YEC quote mining technique. The full quote of the 2 paragraphs is

Einstein went on to discover a more general theory of relativity which explained gravity in terms of curved spacetime, and he talked about the speed of light changing in this new theory. In the 1920 book "Relativity: the special and general theory" he wrote: . . . according to the general theory of relativity, the law of the constancy of the velocity of light in vacuo, which constitutes one of the two fundamental assumptions in the special theory of relativity [. . .] cannot claim any unlimited validity. A curvature of rays of light can only take place when the velocity of propagation of light varies with position. Since Einstein talks of velocity (a vector quantity: speed with direction) rather than speed alone, it is not clear that he meant the speed will change, but the reference to special relativity suggests that he did mean so. This interpretation is perfectly valid and makes good physical sense, but a more modern interpretation is that the speed of light is constant in general relativity.
...
Finally, we come to the conclusion that the speed of light is not only observed to be constant; in the light of well tested theories of physics, it does not even make any sense to say that it varies.

It is never valid in Special Relativity to treat the speed of light as varying because that is a postulate of the theory (for inertial frames).
It is quite valid in General Relativity to treat the speed of light as varying.
The modern treatment is to leave the speed of light as constant since experiments show that it is.

No problem. Pay attention to what I said earlier about the photon being a form of alternating current. And think about what I said about permittivity and permeability. Think for yourself, don't just parrot what you've been taught.

I paid attention and you are wrong. I am thinking for myself.
There is no form of alternating current in a photon. It is a particle without any charge.
There is no form of alternating current in an electromagnetic wave. It is just varying electric and magnetic fields. There are no charges to flow or alternate.

I care. And in case you hasn't noticed, this is relativity+, and I'm with Einstein.

I care. And in case you hasn't noticed, this is relativity+, and I'm with Einstein. I am also with almost every scientist who worked on relativity since him.

 

[Reality Check]

Bedtime.

When you get back:
Farsight, How does the speed of light change in your theory?
This may be moot since you have not cited any actual theory other than quoting Einstein's quite correct statement than in GR the speed of light can be treated as varying.

Farsight, Do you disagree with the experiments that show that spin is intrinsic?
If not then your idea has a fundemental flaw - a photon with a spin of 1/2 is not a photon.
In addition it does not matter how a photon moves - it keeps its spin as 1.

 

[RussDill]

And if you could please, work out

"the wavelength is 2pi times the common amplitude" = 510.9810KeV.

Or somesuch, however you want to phrase that, because I'm having difficulty working it into an equation.

 

[Kwalish Kid]

Then you can wish it away and be a troll like KK who dismisses Einstein, and denies the bleeding obvious because it challenges his faith.

As someone who actually had to learn the physics, I am not the one with faith here. You have already admitted that you can't do the physics of what you believe, right? That makes you the one operating on faith.

So, again, does Minkowski's work actually support your theory? Or does Minkowski's work not support your theory. So far you have said both, so it would be nice of you to clear this up.

 

[ctamblyn]

See above. It gives you the relative strength of the electromagnetic interaction as opposed to the strong interaction. This is not coincidence. By the way, I prefer to keep permittivity in the expression. Remember I said it's the "twistability" of space? Where do you think the strong force goes after low-energy proton/antoproton annihilation? The typical product is two neutral pions and shortly thereafter two photons. What keeps the photon action from dispersing? What keeps an electron in one piece? What stops the universe from expanding like a gas and gives rise to the vacuum catastrophe? The strong force, and it's the strength of space. It changes. See http://arxiv.org/abs/0912.2678. That's New Physics at Low Accelerations (MOND): an Alternative to Dark Matter by Mordehai Milgrom. I don't think he's got it quite right, but I do think he's barking up the right tree. Now look at page 5 and pay attention to this:

"We see that the modification of GR entailed by MOND does not enter here by modifying the ‘elasticity’ of spacetime (except perhaps its strength), as is done in f (R) theories and the like."

Sorry, no. Look at the GPS clock adjustment, it's smaller than the accuracy of the quantum hall measurement. But see http://www.sstd.rl.ac.uk/stereo-soho/announcements.html and http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/10jun_solarprobe.htm and have a search around. See what you can find.

I had a look at the links you provided. I couldn't find anything which shows that the strength of the strong interaction, relative to the e/m interactions, actually varies with gravitational field strength.

 

[Farsight]

I'm a bit pushed for time today guys, so I can't stop long.

First asked 22 March 2010 Farsight states that the speed of light changes. The postulates of special relativity are:

The Principle of Relativity – The laws by which the states of physical systems undergo change are not affected, whether these changes of state be referred to the one or the other of two systems in uniform translatory motion relative to each other.

The Principle of Invariant Light Speed – "... light is always propagated in empty space with a definite velocity [speed] c which is independent of the state of motion of the emitting body." (from the preface).[1] That is, light in vacuum propagates with the speed c (a fixed constant, independent of direction) in at least one system of inertial coordinates (the "stationary system"), regardless of the state of motion of the light source. and special relativity has been extensively tested, e.g. Experimental Basis of Relativity.

Farsight, How does the speed of light change in your theory in order to reproduce the experimental results?

It doesn't. The variable speed of light only comes in for general relativity. If we forget about gravity, we can say light moves through space at a fixed speed. It's a wave in space, the speed of the emitting body doesn't affect the speed of the wave.

The issue is that people make a mystery out of why the speed of light doesn't appear to reduce when you travel fast. The answer is very simple. You're made of electrons etc, and these things are in essence "made of light". You might prefer this expressed as "electromagnetic phenomena along with strong-force phenomena which propagate at the speed of light", but go with the flow. To simplify matters sufficient for understanding, imagine yourself to be one single electron, and that its spin is the result of light going round in a circle. Treat one revolution as a thought in your head or a beat of your heart or a tick of your clock. When the electron is motionless with respect to the universe and everything you call your world, this occurs at some given rate. However when the electron is in motion, the light path isn't a circle, it's a helix. Thus light has to move further to complete one revolution. Hence everything in your "frame of reference" occurs at a reduced rate. Hence time dilation.

Yes, motion is relative, and two electrons in relative motion would both assert that the other electron's photon is travelling the helical path. But in practice the CMBR serves as a de-facto "absolute" reference frame for gauging motion with respect to the universe.

 

[Kwalish Kid]

Yes, motion is relative, and two electrons in relative motion would both assert that the other electron's photon is travelling the helical path. But in practice the CMBR serves as a de-facto "absolute" reference frame for gauging motion with respect to the universe.

You actually mean the opposite of what you say here.

You actually mean:
"Yes, motion is absolute, but in practice two electrons in relative motion would both assert that the other electron's photon is travelling the helical path. But in actuality the CMBR serves as a de-facto "absolute" reference frame for gauging motion with respect to the universe."

This is wht you should have written because you actually mean that the CMB provides an absolute reference frame event though it is never used in practice as an absolute reference frame.

But, back to my question: first you said that Minkowski supported your point, then you said that Minkowski was wrong on that same point; which is is?

 

[Farsight]

If the idea could be shown to be correct, it would be welcomed - eventually. Yes, you can always expect some degree of resistance to a new idea, but if you can show that (a) your theory doesn't contradict existing experimental data and (b) can predict - correctly! - phenomena which the standard model cannot, then the scientific community as a whole will be grateful.

Eventually, ct. I think there's rather more competitiveness and resistance than most people appreciate, and eventually takes a lot longer than people realise. I wouldn't say this is anything new, but I would say it's fiercer than is generally known. For example it took Williamson & van der Mark six years to get their paper into a journal, whereafter it was "studiously ignored". This is no accident. The saying "science advances one death at a time" is a reminder of just how much opposition an advance has to overcome. If some new idea is right, it means some old idea isn't. Reputations and funding are at stake, and people are people.

Most people did not feel redundant or betrayed when Einstein produced his explanation for the photoelectric effect (he got a Nobel prize in 1921). Same for SR and GR. Same for any other new theory that has turned out to be correct, at least in the long run.

In the long run. Newton is the father of modern physics, but he was on the receiving end of untold grief for years. You may have seen this already, but on page 53 of Graham Farmelo's "The Strangest Man" you can read how Einstein was still derided by many theoreticians even in 1923:

"At that time, Cunningham and Eddington were streets ahead of the majority of their Cambridge colleagues, who dismissed Einstein's work, ignored it, or denied its significance".

And if it's wrong, then no problem - it's better to know, and to find out sooner rather than later. The best way to find out is to dig down into the details and hunt for logical/mathematical inconsistencies or disagreement with known experimental data, i.e. try to falsify the theory.

Agreed, ct. The problem is that other "theories" have stood in the way, and they're not even wrong.

On that note, I think your main problem areas are going to be:

• You need a mechanism which allows a photon to become "self-trapped" in a stable bound state, that does not contradict the known attributes of photon-photon scattering.
• Standard QM isn't going to let you get spin 1/2 from an orbital motion, unless you actually change the spatial topology.
• The theory, as presented so far, allows for a continuous spectrum of electron masses.
• From what I've seem so far, if you theory can produce charged particles, then it also allows magnetic monopoles (not to mention some bizarre part electric-part magnetic particles).
• Photon-electron scattering in this model reduces to photon-photon scattering, so the cross-sections are going to come out wrong.

That'll do for starters, I'm sure.

Noted. Thanks for your sincere input. Perhaps we can talk further about the details.

 

[Farsight]

Farsight's idea for the electron seems to be that it is made of a photon travelling on a some kind of "self-limiting" "moebius double-rotation" path that in some unspecified way creates charge from an uncharged photon, changes the photon spin and only contains photons with exactly 510.9810(13) KeV (the mass of the electron).

Farsight - if you have a better description of your idea for the electron, e.g. the exact mathematical path that the photon travels, then I would appreciate it.

It isn't my idea. It's from the Williamson / van der Mark paper at www.cybsoc.org/electron.pdf and the Qiu-Hong Hu paper at http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0512265. There's also another draft paper by Williamson entitled "On the nature of the electron and other particles" athttp://www.cybsoc.org/electremdense2008v4.pdf. I haven't attempted to rewrite any of the mathematics therein. Instead I've tried to write a synthesis of this plus other material that gives an outline and a pointer to the completion of the standard model.

So let us start with spin and the observation that it is an intrinsic property of particles.

First asked 22 March 2010Farsight,
Do you disagree with the experiments that show that spin is an intrinsic property of particles?

Yes. I don't dispute the experimental results in any way, just the interpretation of those results.

The Stern–Gerlach experiment is the classic experiment that shows that particles have spins that

1. are quantized, i.e. are not classical,
2. are intrinsic because passing a beam of particles in a known spin state through a S-G apparatus does not split them up and
3. obey quantum mechanical laws, not classical ones.

It shows what it shows. Your list is a list of inferences, and they are wrong. The spin is two dimensional. Think about a tranparent clock. Which way do the hands fo round? Clockwise. Now go round the back and ask the same question again. Which way do the hands move? Anticlockwise. Now spin the clock like a coin, and try telling me which way the hands go round. That's all it is. Only it isn't a clock, it's a roil of stress-energy wrapped round twice that can't get out of its own embrace.

 

[Cuddles]

here's a bit on Qiu-Hong Hu, http://de.scientificcommons.org/qiu-hong_hu.

I already addressed this. Perhaps you missed it in all your posturing. However, it appears I have a correction to make, and not one in Hu's favour. It appears that the papers listed on arXiv under a search for his name actually refer to a different Hu, Q. It appears that this Hu, Q actually only has his name on a grand total of two papers, published three years apart, and nothing in the last couple of years. And whereas the papers I thought he was a co-author on at least involved plasma and other aspects potentially relevant to particle physics and relativity, this other one doesn't. It's about constructing and measuring LEDs.

So what we have is someone who published a bunch of nonsense in a rather dodgy looking journal several years ago, and then was never heard of again until a few years later when he appeared as a co-author in a completely unrelated field, then disappeared again. In comparison, the post-doc whose paper he had his name on has published around 30 papers in the same time, mostly on similar subjects.

This suggests my original speculation was correct. Qiuhong Hu was most likely a fresh undergraduate when he published his first "paper" that you love so much. For his dissertation at the end of his degree he did some grunt work for a post-doc researcher and got his name on a paper related to it. Since graduating, he has not been working as a physicist and has therefore not published anything.

Let's be honest, as appeals to authority go, this has to be one of the worst.

Watch it with the "crackpot" stuff - free speech in science does not protect you from libel.

Edited by Darat: 

Breach of Rule 0 removed.

 

[sol invictus]

Edited by Darat: 

Breach of Rule 0 removed.

To successfully sue someone for libel you have to prove that what they said isn't true.

 

[Farsight]

On the topic of spin, I wouldn't necessarily expect the total momentum of the self-trapped photon to be 1, as there'd be an orbital contribution (unless for some reason the orbital contribution is restricted). So, not only do you not get 1/2, you get a whole spectrum of integer-value spins. Of course, that's just my opinion based on what I understand of a model which quite clearly would require as-yet unknown laws of physics to work in the first place.

It's just electromagnetism, ct. Twist and turn. The photon action causes it, and it can be affected by it too. You can't get a whole spectrum of spins because Planck's constant of action is common to all photons. Look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reduced_Planck's_constant#Value and note this:

The Planck constant has dimensions of energy multiplied by time, which are also the dimensions of action. In SI units, the Planck constant is expressed in joule seconds (J·s). The dimensions may also be written as momentum multiplied by distance (N·m·s), which are also the dimensions of angular momentum.

Only one wavelength will do for a stable 2π electron configuration. That's why electrons come in one size only.

 

[Farsight]

No actually it does not sound odd at all (at least not on this forum). You simply want someone else or everyone else to actually do your work for you...

Blah blah, we're going to dismiss the scientific evidence along with logic and reason and Minkowski and Maxwell, and we're going to trot out any vacuous excuse to defend our exalted position, because if it isn't already in our bible, we ain't listening.

Yep, heard it all before. From the creationist groupies.

 

[Kwalish Kid]

It isn't my idea. It's from the Williamson / van der Mark paper at www.cybsoc.org/electron.pdf and the Qiu-Hong Hu paper at http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0512265. There's also another draft paper by Williamson entitled "On the nature of the electron and other particles" athttp://www.cybsoc.org/electremdense2008v4.pdf. I haven't attempted to rewrite any of the mathematics therein.

Can you follow the mathematics in these articles? If not, why do you cite them? If you can, why don't you answer my question about Minkowski?

Blah blah, we're going to dismiss the scientific evidence along with logic and reason and Minkowski and Maxwell, and we're going to trot out any vacuous excuse to defend our exalted position, because if it isn't already in our bible, we ain't listening.

Yep, heard it all before. From the creationist groupies.

See, there it is again. Just how does Minkowski support your proposal?

 

[edd]

It's just electromagnetism, ct.

If it were just electromagnetism you'd be able to explain using just electromagnetism how you get a charge from something with no charge.

 

[ben m]

To successfully sue someone for libel you have to prove that what they said isn't true.

Watch out---Farsight seems to be in the UK where the libel laws are a bit different.

Seriously though, Farsight, you showed up voluntarily on this board and actively asked for comment. You got a bunch of comments from people who think your theory is wrong---which, and correct me if I'm wrong, is exactly the reception you've gotten at Sciforums, BAUT, etc.. We call your theory a crackpot theory because it's wrong, and wrong in a sadly familiar fashion; we call you a crackpot because to be a crackpot is no more or less than to espouse a crackpot theory. A well-known US case, Dilworth vs. Dudley (decided by one of our most respected judges) held that calling someone a "crackpot" was not defamatory:

A crank is a person inexplicably obsessed by an obviously unsound idea--a person with a bee in his bonnet. To call a person a crank is to say that because of some quirk of temperament he is wasting his time pursuing a line of thought that is plainly without merit or promise. An example of a math crank would be someone who spent his time trying to square the circle. To call a person a crank is basically just a colorful and insulting way of expressing disagreement with his master idea, and it therefore belongs to the language of controversy rather than to the language of defamation.

Nonetheless, given your presence in the UK, where the fate of the good Mr. Simon Singh has highlighted the irrationality of the libel laws I see no reason not to take your libel threat seriously. Even an 0.1% chance of your being serious, is worth more than any educational or entertainment value I'm getting out of this thread.

So: in whatever language the British legal system would find acceptable, I withdraw any and all potentially libelous claims against Mr. Farsight and any of his aliases. I wish for this withdrawal to be in full effect within the boundaries of the United Kingdom, its overseas territories, embassies, territorial waters, and aboard UK-flagged vessels, and on any electronic cables, broadcasts, or media extending into such boundaries. Within such boundaries and media, I do not call Mr. Farsight a crackpot. He is a fully-respectable and un-libeled citizen of whatever nations he is a citizen of, and the fact that his physics ideas appear to be utterly valueless should not reflect on his dignity as a human being.

That said, it is not in my legal or financial interest to participate in this conversation. I suggest that the same is true for everyone else here.

 

[Reality Check]

Your reply to Farsight, Do you disagree with the experiments that show that spin is intrinsic? was

Yes. I don't dispute the experimental results in any way, just the interpretation of those results.
...
The spin is two dimensional. Think about a tranparent clock. Which way do the hands fo round? Clockwise. Now go round the back and ask the same question again. Which way do the hands move? Anticlockwise. Now spin the clock like a coin, and try telling me which way the hands go round. That's all it is. Only it isn't a clock, it's a roil of stress-energy wrapped round twice that can't get out of its own embrace.

The last paragragaph has nothing to to with the Stern–Gerlach experiment which is the classic experiment that shows that paricles have spins that

1. are quantized, i.e. are not classical,
2. are intrinsic because passing a beam of particles in a known spin state through a S-G apparatus does not split them up and
3. obey quantum mechanical laws, not classical ones.

Spin is not "two dimensional". The axis of spin can point in any direction. Classical particles can have any spin that they like. QM particles can only have specific spins. QM spins obey QM laws not classical ones.

So exactly how does you "interpretation" differ from the usual one, e.g. how come are spins are not intrinsic because passing a beam of particles in a known spin state through a S-G apparatus does not split them up?

 

[ctamblyn]

Only one wavelength will do for a stable 2π electron configuration. That's why electrons come in one size only.

I understand that only one wavelength will yield the correct energy of 511keV. However, assuming that a mechanism exists which lets photons become "self-trapped", this doesn't rule out the possibility of a photon with some other energy from getting into such a state. You'd have the wrong mass for it to be an electron, sure, and the radius of the orbit would need to be adjusted accordingly - but what renders such a state impossible in principle? Do you posit some fundamental, unique length scale at which "self-trappedness" may occur? How exactly do you avoid a continuous spectrum of energies (with higher energies corresponding to tighter loops)?

Similar considerations apply to excited states. On the face of it, you could just as well have any integer number of wavelengths going around the loop and still satisfy the constructive interference condition - it's very similar to Bohr's early atomic model in this particular regard. This would give a discrete spectrum of energies for each permitted radius. I still don't see a mechanism which (a) permits the self-trapped states and yet (b) forbids all modes but the lowest frequency one.

 

[Farsight]

You seem to be contradicting yourself. Charge can't both be the twist and the divergence of the twist.

It certainly isn't the divergence, that signifies the distribution of charge. Let me rephrase to to try and remove the seeming contradiction: imagine a bicycle wheel with spokes. The charge is the twist you have to apply to the centre to make it look like this:

If you placed a circlar clamp around the spokes at some radius from the centre and twisted it, the divergence is different, which relates to the difference between a point charge and a sphere with a uniform charge density.

If you were to state this in simple vector-calculus terms it would be easy to see whether or not it is consistent with Gauss's Law or not. Are you interested in finding out whether it is consistent?

Yes, but it doesn't prove anything. All we're doing is shuffling terms without actually understanding the reality that underlies them. This is the whole problem. I defy anybody here to explain the reality behind this:

[latex]$\oint_S \mathbf{E} \cdot \mathrm{d}\mathbf{A} = \frac{Q}{\varepsilon_0}[/latex]

Besides, vector calculus came out of quaternions, which is what Maxwell employed. The Heaviside recast into vector form is now considered as "Maxwell's Equations", but the vector fields are describing the effect, not the cause. They aren't describing the electromagnetic field. I suppose the change in vectors does sketch out the "twist", but they're still not getting to the bottom of the underlying rotor that causes the surrounding curl.

Nope, those are all 100% consistent with the electron being a quantum point particle as in QED.

No, they aren't. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.

You keep stating this over and over, but it is false. It is a preconception of yours that you made up out of thin air without paying any attention to Nature. It is only a classical point particle, like a bowling ball of radius zero, which cannot exhibit angular momentum. The electron is not a classical point particle, it's a quantum-mechanical point particle.

Garbage. Replace quantum-mechanical with magic and you'll see what I mean. It's not me with the preconceptions here. It's you.

 

[edd]

I defy anybody here to explain the reality behind this:

[latex]$\oint_S \mathbf{E} \cdot \mathrm{d}\mathbf{A} = \frac{Q}{\varepsilon_0}[/latex]

Errrr.... charges are sources of electric fields. What am I missing here?