Superconductivity at room temperature??

[INRM]

Reality Check

That single electron cyclotron sounds very fascinating -- it almost seems to invalidate the Heisenberg's uncertainty principle

 

[Ziggurat]

Reality Check

That single electron cyclotron sounds very fascinating -- it almost seems to invalidate the Heisenberg's uncertainty principle

Uh... no. No, it doesn't. Not even remotely.

 

[johanfprins]

Now we have the typical crank paranoia that there is a conspiracy to suppress unnamed "other physicists" work .

I see you are in conspiracy theories: It figures! It is the only paradigm within which a weak mind like yours can think.

A strong corollary of Murphy's law is that: "When a system can be abused it will be abused". This is how human beings are, and have always been: In this respect the physicists who are venerated "as experts" at present have over the last century become the biggest abusers of the physics-system. This has been encouraged by the criminally insane rule that a referee must be anonymous. An increasing number of practising physicists with common sense have experienced, with increasing frequency, that once a physics-field is believed to be understood by the “experts”, these same so-called “experts” are not keen to allow manuscripts to be published that question the accepted dogma. Taking into consideration that the referees are usually selected from the persons who consistently propagated the accepted dogma, manuscripts are increasingly not refereed for their scientific value anymore, but rather censored and banned when not being written within the paradigm that the experts believe must be correct; especially when they and their students have published numerous papers without ever questioning in any manner the accepted dogma.

Young physicists soon learn that they must publish within the paradigm and quote the papers of the "experts" as being “holy breakthroughs” in order to get published. Add to this that the standing of a physicist is not judged by the quality, but by the quantity of his/her publications, then it is clear why physics is in trouble; as everybody with common sense knows at present that it is. Many bright young minds have decided to rather leave physics than to partake in this incestuous farcical-spectacle. I know many of them, and mourn the loss to new knowledge this represents.

It is totally insulting to accuse scientists of faking their results.

So scientists are "gods" who will not do this? I am sorry to wake you up from your hallucinating dream-world. There have been far too many examples in the press of this happening. And in either case I talked about fudging results as is being done by means of renormalisation

Renormalization is not a way of fudging results. The theory is not adjusted to fit the experimental results for the anomalous magnetic moment of the electron.

Then calculate this anomalous magnetic moment without first renormalizing the theory. You cannot and therefore it is obvious that you are again blatantly lying and deliberately distorting the facts. There are many other well-qualified physicists in QFT who also disagree with you, but are prevented from publishing their doubts. I suggest that on this specific topic you should at least read: www.cgoakley.demon.co.uk/qft/index.html

Even more idiotic: Kinetic energy.

Kinetic energy is T=m*c^2-m(0)*c^2 where m is the mass of the moving electron. Have you ever read about Einstein? Obviously not!

The rest mass of an electron expresseed as an energy is constant.

Where have I denied this?

A bound electron has the same mass as an unbound electron. It has a different total energy though bescuase it is bound (binding energy).

So you argue that when you add the free rest mass of a proton and the free rest mass of an electron it will be equal to the rest mass of a hydrogen atom? Wrong again as you consistently have been on this thread.

Totally wrong. The Schroedinger equation is non-relativistic because it is essentially a translation of classical mechanics. It has the symmetries of Euclidean space.

The latter is also true for Maxwell's equations and they are definitely NOT non-relativistic: In fact they DEFINE relativity. The main difference between Maxwell's equations and Schroedinger's equation is that in the latter case you use the electron's rest mass as input: Thus it MUST be the rest-mass as input that makes it non-relativistic.

If you replace rest mass with relativistic mass you get nonsense.

I do not “replace” the rest mass with the relativistic mass, I use a wave equation for the electron which do not use ANY mass as input since such an equation is automatically a relativistic equation and its solution MUST be the mass-energy of the electron: And for a bound electron this mass is less than the free mass of an electron. No Higgs’ boson required.

.
No: The energy of an electron can be treated as an equivalent mass.

You like fuzzy ideas do you not? Spin is “like” …….”equivalent” mass, etc. As usual you are writing nonsense. Mass is energy which in addition is a measure of inertia. Thus the energy of an object with mass which is stationary is always its rest mass. An electron-orbital around a nucleus is stationary and therefore its total energy is rest-mass; and this energy is less than that of a free stationary electron as it MUST be for the electron to be bound to the nucleus. QED.

Totally ignorant: The Dirac equation is constructed to be totally commensurate with special relativity.

If you want to believe this, be my guest. I do not believe this! I believe that the Dirac equation is a red herring that placed modern physics on the path towards the hell of an autistic non-reality.

That is an idiotic strawman.
I am arguing that a 89 year old professor in Engineering Physics probably has less knowldege of QM than people wokring in QM every day, e.g. the reviewers that you are too scared to submit your work to.

Like the typical crackpot that you are you jump to conclusions without first verifying the facts. That is why you are so arrogant to believe that you can judge a book without having to read it; and even more arrogant to believe that you understand physics.

The fact is that Doris, and her husband Heinz, were both professors of physics who studied in Germany during the 1930’s and 1940’s. Heinz did some of his studies under Heisenberg, and both he and his wife Doris have had a lifelong connection with Goettingen University where, which you probably do not know, much of the theory of quantum mechanics had been generated. They were both exquisite intellectuals and able to cover all fields in physics. Doris Wilsdorf for years, in addition to teaching these fields, also gave popular lectures on quantum mechanics and relativity. But you, in order to satisfy your sick prejudices against my ideas do not hesitate to insult these fine people. Are all people living in New Zealand like you?

String theory is a valid area of mathematical physics.

Who validated it? YOU?

The people working in that area are not crackpots because they are brave enough to publish their work in peer-reviewed journals. It has generated a wealth of mathematical insights, a few of which are actually useful! I personally do not think that string theory will get to the point of being an actual scientific theory since it is sadly deficient of predictive power.

All models in physics that have no predictive power have been developed by crackpots: As Pauli commented: “Such a model is not even wrong” This is exactly the same criticism that Bernd Matthias, one of the few physicists with brains who did research on superconductors, claimed for the BCS model. And he is being proved correct. Have you come across Peter Woit’s book on string theory? Obviously not.

Because she agreed with the ignorance displayed in your work.

On the contrary she did not agree with everything, but not being a crackpot like you, she was willing to first read what I have written before raising criticisms. Furthermore she was open to counterargument and then admitting when I might be correct. And then trying to find ways how we can resolve differences we might still have. This is the mark of a decent person: But why worry to tell you this? You will not be able to understand decency.

Yes those flaws, like the non-conservation of energy.

I have made this mistake in my first interpretation of the AC Josephson effect and I admitted it and have now corrected it. The reason why I made the mistake was that I believed Josephson when he claimed that you can place a voltage across an insulating Josephson junction while a superconducting current is flowing. This is an even more stupid mistake than the one I have made.

We are not hiding behind false names. These are nick names as usually used in interet forums (fora?).

I am against this practice since it can be abused and as can be seen on this thread it is being abused.

P.S. My real name is Ian Fisk. Now your work is totally invalidated because I have stated my real name !

Thanks! Now I could google you and I could not find anything on an Ian Fisk in New Zealand which even remotely indicate that there exists such a person who knows anything about physics whatsoever. To claim that you have the knowledge to opine about special relativity or quantum mechanics is thus, most probably, another lie. And then you have the arrogance to insult Prof. Doris Wilsdorf? Can you not see what a distasteful person you are?

Only YOU can be as dumb to think that I am doing that.

This is exactly what you did. Don’t try and now wriggle out of it!

I am commenting on what you have said she said about your ideas. Since your ideas are based on you ignorance of basic physics, there must be a reason that she seemed to support them.

What makes a non-entity like you, who one cannot even find on the internet, and who has not contributed anything to physics in your life, able to judge my physics-knowledge or that of Prof. Doris Wilsdorf?

There are many possible reasons, e.g.
She was being polite.

She has always been a polite person. But why that should be held against her to argue that she will agree with wrong physics just to be polite, can only come from sick minds like yours and Ben m. Doris and I have been arguing physics for many years; and suddenly she becomes “polite” not to disagree with me. You are really sick you know.

Her age.

So according to you when a person grows old he/she becomes stupid? There are many cases of physicists who stayed as sharp as a pin right up into their advanced 90’s. Take Hans Bethe, John A Wheeler etc. for example. There are also many others.

Her lack of expertise in the field.

Again based on your unwillingness to first obtain the correct facts. Can you not see why YOU are a crackpot?

More dumb insults: What is disgusting ahout the word random?

Since you implied with this word that I am running around hoping that I will get “anybody” who is “stupid” enough to agree with me. In fact I select people who have the knowledge; and also ask other people who know people who are supposedly “experts” to introduce me to these "experts". However, the typical reaction I got from the so-called "experts" on superconduction is illustrated by Brian Josephson, after one of his previous students asked him to look at my work. He responded that he is not even willing to read what I have written since he knows that he will disagree with me: And he calls himself a scientist? Do you see how “experts” protect their field by not tolerating any “heresies”. And Brain Josephson is unfortunately not the exception. This reaction became the rule; and is still what is happening: Also on this forum. People who react like this are committing treason against everything the founding fathers of the Royal Society of London stood for.

I have no doubt that she is a outstanding physicist. I verifyied your facts.
And see above: the long relationship implies that she is being polite.

Oh she will agree with wrong physics just to be polite? You are insulting her integrity. Have you got no shame whatsoever?

Are you saying that you have a number of people who have expertise in QM, superconductivity, etc. who have all read your book and say that your ideas are correct?

Yes I have. Mostly younger people who still have open minds: But when they try and convey this to the older “experts” who are wedded to the ridiculous BCS model, they are also threatened to become banned as heretics. I thus asked them not to jeopardise their own careers.

Or are you saying that the only person in the world who agrees with you is an old firend?

I never said that she fully agreed with me, but that she was open-minded and that she had the knowledge, that YOU will never have, to raise physically valid arguments.

P.S. Just where are your ideas published in the scientific literature?
Could it be that your ideas are so obviously flawed (as displayed in this thread)

Which ideas did I display on this thread are “obviously” flawed? You have not been able to raise a single physics argument against them that sticks: This is not surprising since your knowledge of physics and ability to argue logically are woefully inadequate.

that you cannot convince anyone to publish them and so have to resort to publishing then yourself?

The latter is true: I could not convince anybody to publish them; but to conclude from that, that my ideas are flawed without checking them out by yourself (like Professor Wilsdorf did) still leaves you as the crackpot in this case: And a very disgusting one at that.

 

[johanfprins]

I do not recall you trying to teach anyone elementary vector calculus and physics. Perhaps you can list some of the posts and the citations to textbooks or scientific literature that show that your teaching is correct?

I am not going to look up all my posts in which I tried to teach elementary physics and vector calculus on this thread. I will only list three elementary topics to prove my point:

1) The most basic elementary fact that I have been conveying is that any material with free charge-carriers which can be accelerated can NEVER have a current flowing through it without an electric-field within this material; even when the charge-carriers do not scatter.

So let me explain again: It is known that the free charge-carriers within a conductor will redistribute to cancel an applied electric-field within it when a current is not flowing through it. This fact is in all elementary text books, even those we use in our secondary schools here in South Africa. Maybe New Zealand is not as advanced? It is thus found that when you apply an electric-field by means of contacts through which an electric-current can flow, the charge-carriers flow in an attempt to cancel this applied electric field, but can in this case not do so, since the charges cannot accumulate anywhere to cancel the applied electric-field: Thus, when you measure a current flowing through a material without a voltage across the contacts (as in the case of superconductor), this current cannot be transported by free charge-carriers.

2) That to model superconduction one must be able to explain where the kinetic energy of the charge carriers come from, without accelerating the charge-carriers, and next explain why this kinetic-energy does not dissipate within or outside the superconductor. If you ignore this aspect you are violating energy conservation; as Ziggurat has repeatedly done, with the approval of Ben m and Sol Invictus (and now also you) on this thread.

3) That when taking the gradient of a differential scalar field, a loop integral within the resultant vector field MUST always be identically zero. The only cases where this is not so is in the case of a single variable; but, of course, the latter is not really a field in space. Thus to claim that the integral (d/d(theta))(theta) gives you 2*pi when integrating from theta to theta+2*pi which is the same as theta, IS not the same as claiming that a loop integral over grad(S) where S is a real scalar field, can be non-zero; even when you want to interpret this field as a phase-angle.

There are also many other elementary and advanced issues I have raised about physics and vector calculus on this thread: If you cannot find them it is your incompetence showing.

You have made several unsupported assertions that display an inability to understand some (sometimes non-elementary) physics. The latest is your mistake in thinking that the Dirac equation is not relativistically invariant.

I have no claimed that it is not relativistically invariant, but that it is not the correct relativistically-invariant wave equation that should be used. Why do you keep on distorting what I posted?

 

[sol invictus]

So let me explain again: It is known that the free charge-carriers within a conductor will redistribute to cancel an applied electric-field within it when a current is not flowing through it. This fact is in all elementary text books, even those we use in our secondary schools here in South Africa. Maybe New Zealand is not as advanced? It is thus found that when you apply an electric-field by means of contacts through which an electric-current can flow, the charge-carriers flow in an attempt to cancel this applied electric field, but can in this case not do so, since the charges cannot accumulate anywhere to cancel the applied electric-field:

That is correct, more or less. To add something to it, if in the later case the current I and the voltage V across the contacts are constant, the resistance of that piece of conductor is (by definition) R = V/I. Hence, if V is zero but I is non-zero, you evidently have a material with zero resistance.

Thus, when you measure a current flowing through a material without a voltage across the contacts (as in the case of superconductor), this current cannot be transported by free charge-carriers.

That obviously does not follow from the above. It simply means you have a perfect conductor, one with R=0.

2) That to model superconduction one must be able to explain where the kinetic energy of the charge carriers come from, without accelerating the charge-carriers, and next explain why this kinetic-energy does not dissipate within or outside the superconductor.

The energy comes from whatever source was used to create the current in the superconductor - an electric field, the motion of a magnet, a battery, etc.

3) That when taking the gradient of a differential scalar field, a loop integral within the resultant vector field MUST always be identically zero.

No one has disputed that, nor is the contrary used anywhere in the theory of superconductivity. What is true is given in the post of mine from long ago, quoted below. The loop integral of the gradient of the phase of a scalar field is not necessarily zero (because the phase does not need to be single valued, even when the scalar itself is).

I've just looked up that equation. Big surprise - Johan, you're wrong. The integral they do is of the gradient of the phase of a complex function. It is exactly like the example I gave you.

Here's the example again (the one you keep pretending doesn't exist), using the notation of Tilley and Tilley this time:

ψ = |ψ|exp(iS)

Consider (as before) |ψ|=r, S=φ, where r and φ are cylindrical or spherical radius and angle respectively. ψ satisfies just about any wave equation (not that it needs to) because it's proportional to a single Cartesian coordinate, it's manifestly regular (in fact it's analytic) and single-valued. The current j, which is a vector, is in this case simply j=|ψ|²∇S=r² pointing in the φ direction - so it's a circulating current around the ring.

Now we can trivially check that [latex]$\int_C \vec \nabla S\cdot d \vec l = \int_0^{2 \pi} d\phi = 2 \pi$[/latex], just as Tilley and Tilley say.

"Mathematically impossible"? Go play with your grandchildren, Johan.

 

[johanfprins]

Don't blame me for your mistakes. And don't pretend that it wasn't YOU that first insulted me without cause.

Not really without cause. I was insulted on this website even before I posted. I do not remember you coming to my rescue; and since you are all anonymous I feel like being attacked by a faceless lynch mob. So I retaliated. Maybe irrationally.

Yet another elementary quantum mechanics fail.
You don't need de Broglie do show that <p> = 0 for a stationary state. But I never claimed <p> =/= 0. What I claimed was that <p²> =/= 0. Which is true. And which de Broglie's postulate will tell you nothing about, but Schrodinger's equation will.

The reason why you can obtain this result is because Schroedinger did include de Broglie's postulate into his equation. If he did not do this his equation would have given the correct result namely that <k²>=0: i.e. that the wave also has a spread in reciprocal space; just like ALL harmonic waves do.

I never claimed that one should use the de Broglie wavelength for a stationary state. YOU were the one who made that claim.

I did NOT claim a de Broglie wavelength for a stationary state; since it can only be valid when you view a stationary state of a free electron within an inertial reference frame that moves relative to the electron-entity.

Now you admit it's irrelevant.

I have said from the start that a de Broglie wavelength cannot be part of a stationary electron wave.

You make no sense.

Well if you cannot grasp simple logic do not blame ME for “not making sense”.

How can there be a position-space representation when the wave is centered at the origin?

Do you not know that a wave is a field and that it thus fills a volume in position space; and owing to the fact that wavelengths are involved it also have a reciprocal-space representation?

You mean stuff like energy conservation? Sorry, that was us trying to teach you.

In the case of the AC Josephson effect you did teach me and I am grateful for you for pointing it out.

And you never learned.

It is ironic that it is really YOU have not learned from yourselves. Your explanation of where the kinetic-energy of the superconducting charge-carriers comes from and why this energy does not dissipate, violates energy conservation.

I didn't make a mistake with displacement current. Rather, you've badly misinterpreted what I was saying.

How could I have misrepresented you? You have claimed that the charge-carriers must be accelerated when you switch on a voltage across a superconducting magnet since the current must start flowing everywhere along the superconductor. And I pointed out that the latter does NOT require acceleration since the current is a displacement current which does not require free charge-carriers to manifest. There is NO misrepresentation: Just a refusal on your part to admit that you have been wrong.

 

[Ziggurat]

Not really without cause. I was insulted on this website even before I posted.

Not by me. You were wrong to insult me. And you didn't do it once, either. You KEPT doing it, even after I repeatedly asked you to stop. You can't justify treating me badly on the basis that other people treated you badly.

The reason why you can obtain this result is because Schroedinger did include de Broglie's postulate into his equation. If he did not do this his equation would have given the correct result namely that <k²>=0: i.e. that the wave also has a spread in reciprocal space; just like ALL harmonic waves do.

Um... no. If you're using k = p/hbar, then <k²> =/= 0 except for the unnormalizable free-particle solution psi = constant. And if you're not using k = p/hbar, then k doesn't mean anything.

Again, you seem to be confusing <p> = 0 (<k> = 0) with <p²> = 0 (<k²> = 0). They are not equivalent statements. The claim that "the wave also has a spread in reciprocal space" actually contradicts the claim that <k²>=0.

Do you not know that a wave is a field and that it thus fills a volume in position space; and owing to the fact that wavelengths are involved it also have a reciprocal-space representation?

Way to miss the point, johan.

The point is that <x> = 0 doesn't mean <x²> = 0, and <p> = 0 doesn't mean that <p²> = 0. And since <p²> does NOT equal zero, you get a nonzero σ_p. Furthermore, reciprocal space representation is the SAME THING (to within a constant prefactor) as momentum space representation. Let me remind you of what you claimed:

"How can there be a momentum-space representation when the wave has no momentum whatsoever?"

A stationary state has a distribution of momentums. That distribution has an average of <p> = 0, but it's got a spread, so <p²> =/= 0. Just like how it can have a distribution of positions, even though <x> = 0. Your claim was nonsense to begin with, and now you've explicitly contradicted it by stating that it's got a reciprocal-space representation, which is the same thing as a momentum-space distribution.

 

[johanfprins]

Not according to Maxwell's Equations. Not according to QED. Not according to the experiments I just linked to which clearly have only one charge (quite isolated)

No, not in one case is it a charge without any other charges.

that radiates just as Maxwell says it should

Maxwell's equations are based on three experimental phenomena which have been observed before Maxwell derived his equations and a fourth which Maxwell postulated and that was confirmed after he derived his equations: These experimental observations are: 1) Coulomb's law, 2) Ampere's law, 3) Faraday's law and 4) Maxwell's displacement current.

The first two laws deal with steady-state (equilibrium) conditions and BOTH require more than a single charge: In the case of Coulomb's law, and to incorporate charge-neutrality, the minimum number of charges is two opposite charges. In the case of Ampere’s law ALL the experimental currents, which had been used, consisted of opposite charges moving relative to each other. The last two laws have time-varying magnetic and electric fields, and must thus also, according to the first two laws, require charges and opposite charges.

To obtain Maxwell’s equations Coulomb’s law is written in differential format (ignoring constants) as divE=rho; and this leads to to Gauss’ law for its integral format. Ampere’s law is written as curlB=J and its integral format is Stoke’s law. As any experienced physicist with common sense should know, it is possible to derive solutions from differential equations which are mathematically self-consistent but has nothing to do with reality: In fact, to digress a bit, it is even possible to use wrong mathematics to model physics, while then finding that it fits the experimental results: This has happened in the case of Brian Josephson with his derivation of tunnelling and also with Aharanov and Bohm when they predicted the effect which is now named after them.

But to return to the first possibility where solutions are derived which are mathematically self-consistent but not physically possible: It is my contention that when using Gauss’ law to derive radially-symmetric electric-field lines that end or originate at infinity, is a case where the solution is mathematically self-consistent, but not physically possible. The same when calculating a magnetic-moment for a single charge circling an axis: It should be noted that it is exactly the latter two calculations which have caused a lot of heartache in physics: When trying to equate electron mass to the supposed radially-symmetric electric field lines; and when trying to equate the spin of the electron to a rotating single charge the results had to be fudged to fit experiments.

Aha, so first you propose that Maxwell is wrong about radiation,

No I am of the opinion that the derivation of the radiation generated from a single charge that is accelerating might, like Josephson tunnelling, and the Aharanov Bohm effect be fortuitously correct; but I even suspect that it is not totally correct.

.and then you propose a totally new and invisible phenomenon which tricks us into thinking that Maxwell was right.

No I have never said Maxwell’s equations are wrong, but that they can be wrongly applied: And this happens when you derive electric-fields by assuming that a solitary charge can generate them. Thus, when an electron, which is far away from other charges, radiates EM by being accelerated (for example by gravitation) it can only do so if there is a second charge nearby. Therefore I proposed that an accelerating electron induces a positive charge when it is being accelerated. This also explains why an electron must be stationary within an inertial reference frame. To be stationary the electron must be in equilibrium, and this means that as soon as it wants to move out of its equilibrium position, a restoring force must appear; and the latter requires an opposite induced charge to appear. There is not enough space on this thread to discuss the concept in detail. It can be found in section 34 in my book.

Still wrong. Here's a sequence of approximations. Solve Gauss's Law for a pair of charges, (say) 1m apart---an ordinary dipole. It works fine.

I agree; and the rest of your arguments is one of the rare cases where you at least tried to use some logic: I am impressed. But it might be an egg and chicken argument since the partial radially-symmetric field-lines may also be a result of applying Gausss’s law incorrectly.

Look at the positive charge; the field lines are very nearly radially symmetric at a distance of (say) 1cm.

How do you know that the field lines are nearly radially symmetric? There is no experimental proof whatsoever that they are. To determine these field lines you have to map them out with a test charge and then you have 3 charges involved instead of only 2. That is a problem: How to experimentally determine the actual field lines without disturbing them: Obviously for macro-charges one can use a small charge to map the field lines without much disturbance: But even then one does not know whether they are there without using a test charge. For an electron-charge the problem is even more severe.

Now move the negative charge to 10m. The lines are darn close to radial, just like Gauss says they would be for an isolated charge.

But even if you are correct, they are still not radially symmetric.

Now move the negative charge to 10^10m. Gauss's Law still works, and Gauss's Law still tells you that the lines emanating from the positive charge are radial. In fact, from simply looking at the field lines, it's extremely hard to tell whether the negative charge is there or not. (Is Gauss's Law inapplicable yet?)

It is possible that it is not applicable since you cannot prove experimentally that it is, unless you use a third charge to map out the field lines; and when doing this the field lines are disturbed by this third charge. All your arguments rest on the assumption that you have a test charge which does not disturb the field lines it is tracing. This is not physically possible in the case of electric charges at all. So I am not going to quote your further deductions by moving the other charge further away to infinity. But I do take note of them as a possibility: But only as a possibility until a way is found to test their reality.

You haven't thought about this very hard, have you?

No I think YOU have not, Radially symmetric field lines is assumed in terms of a test charge which can trace them while the test charge does not disturb the field lines. The latter is not physically possible and therefore, I believe, that your deductive reasoning is also wrong.

Consider two charges of different magnitude: Is the small charge generating the field within which the larger charge finds itself, or is it the larger charge that is generating the field within which the small charge finds itself. These two fields will have different energies. But the energy of the field between two charges must have the same energy. This means that you cannot have a field around a solitary charge since the field is jointly generated by both charges.

(Even better: repeat the exercise above, not with a distant negative point charge, but with a distant shell of negative charge, say of radius R0. Now the E field is q/r^2 within the shell and 0 outside the shell at r > R0.

Only in this case must the field lines be radially-symmetric

Johan's statement seems to suggest that taking R0 to infinity is nonsense ... even though there is no quantity anywhere (not field, not voltage, not total field energy) which is ill-behaved in this limit.

It is mathematically convenient that one can go to infinity but one should be careful not to assume that what is mathematically possible is also physically real. It is probably not physically real since there are too many other charges in our universe. Thus when doing this and not getting a realistic answer one has to be careful.

 

[johanfprins]

The bit in bold is something ben m did not address.
The field lines do not 'end at infinity'. That would
Require infinity' to be a finite distance!
The mathematics (Gauss's law) would require that your universe containing only a single electron actually also contains a shell of positive charge at this 'infinite' distance where the field lines end.

Wow! You have used logic! Congratulations my boy you might still learn to think.

You have set up a scenario that is physically impossible.

No it is not I who set it up, but the mainstream scientists who for more than 100 years assumed that this physically impossible scenario is possible, and then used Gauss’s law to calculate the impossible.

The physically possible scenario is a universe containing a single electron where infinity means what infinity means - the concept of extending without bounds. In this universe field lines never end.

This is also not physically possible since this would mean that the universe has a single inertial reference frame which is absolutely stationary. According to Einstein’s theory of special relativity this is not possible when calculating electrical phenomena. So, sorry, you are wrong again!

Solving Gauss's law shows that the field lines are created by the sources and sinks of field within a selected surface.

NO! field lines are also created by sources and sinks OUTSIDE any closed surface you want to choose.

In this theoretical universe containing a single electron, there is only one source.

Which according to Coulomb’s law cannot interact with any other charge and therefore there cannot be an electric field around it.

Any surface that contains the electron will have field lines passing through it.

Only when there are other sources and sinks outside this surface. Please give me an experiment, even a thought experiment, how one can verify this statement of yours claiming that field lines can pass through the surface without any other sources or sinks being present outside this surface. You keep on claiming things that you cannot prove.

It does not matter if someone has the delusion that the electron is a dipole, whether the electron is treated as a sphere of charge or whether the electron is treated as a point particle: Far enough away from the electron, the field lines have to be those from a point charge, i.e. radial.

Again, prove this by an experiment: If you cannot, then please be less arrogant: If it is possible for you to be so.

 

[ben m]

No, not in one case is it a charge without any other charges.

You are incorrect. I've got Maxwell's Equations right in front of me. Jackson, 3rd ed., chapter 9.1 is "Fields and radiation from a localized source". This shows plenty of radiation from an isolated point charge accelerating (no matter WHY it's accelerating). If you can't point out an error in this derivation, why should I believe your assertion that the result is wrong?

Chapter 9.2 is "Electric dipole fields and radiation." Neutral dipoles are a special case, you are wrong to think they are the only things that radiate.

The first two laws deal with steady-state (equilibrium) conditions and BOTH require more than a single charge: In the case of Coulomb's law, and to incorporate charge-neutrality, the minimum number of charges is two opposite charges.

No it doesn't. Your insistence on charge-neutrality is nonsense.

In the case of Ampere’s law ALL the experimental currents, which had been used, consisted of opposite charges moving relative to each other.

Incorrect. It's easy to measure the magnetic field from (e.g.) an electron beam, consisting of a line of negative charges moving in one direction.

But to return to the first possibility where solutions are derived which are mathematically self-consistent but not physically possible: It is my contention that when using Gauss’ law to derive radially-symmetric electric-field lines that end or originate at infinity, is a case where the solution is mathematically self-consistent, but not physically possible.

Too bad for you that neutral arrangements of charge also have field lines that end at infinity. Dipoles have such lines. Quadrupoles have such lines.

It should be noted that it is exactly the latter two calculations which have caused a lot of heartache in physics: When trying to equate electron mass to the supposed radially-symmetric electric field lines;

The "heartache" associated with the electron self-energy has nothing to do with where its field lines end, out towards r--> infinity. All of that trouble is on the other end, towards r-->0. The large-r end, where the field lines "end", is the easy part of the problem. If you insist on dealing only with neutral dipoles---well, sorry, the field self-energy of a dipole has the same r->0 divergence as that of an isolated point charge.

 

[ben m]

It is probably not physically real since there are too many other charges in our universe. Thus when doing this and not getting a realistic answer one has to be careful.

So we have the actual Gauss's Law:

div E = rho

and its modified version, Prins' Law:

div E = rho, unless the Universe contains only a single charge, in which case E = 0.

Thanks for that hypothesis about the true nature of Gauss's Law. I agree that the difference between Prins' Law and Gauss's Law is untestable, since we don't have a spare empty Universe sitting around.

And then we have the Ampere/Faraday laws of radiation:

dE/dt = del x B
dB/dt = - del x E

and the proposed modification, Prins' Laws of radiation:

dE/dt = del x B.
dB/dt = - del x E.
as long as there is at least one other charge somewhere in the Universe; otherwise
dE/dt=0.
dB/dt=0.

Thanks for that hypothesis about the true nature of radiation. I agree that the difference between Prins' Law and Ampere's/Faraday's Law is untestable, since we don't have a spare empty Universe sitting around.

Occam's Razor is pointing me towards ignoring your hypothesis; you have no evidence for it (obviously) and your argument from properties-of-field-lines is wrong about the properties of field lines.

 

[johanfprins]

What ignorance: There are "particles". They show properties of both classical particles and waves.

ALL entities with mass have each a centre-of-mass which moves as if all the mass is concentrated at that point: [An incorrect person] will conclude from this that all objects with mass has no volume; and that such an entity with mass and no volume can actually exist.

The science is that QM treats objects as point particles.

This I already know for more than 50 years; but such a “point particle” does not exist, and can never exist in real space.

The results of QM leads to the particles being able act as either classical particles or waves.

According to the Copenhagen interpretation you are correct. But this interpretation is based on superstition: “Albert stop telling God what he can or cannot do!”. A typical argument you will find during a dark age. The "gods" determine what happens and it is not for us to argue otherwise. No wonder Carver Mead, who studied under Feynman, stated: “ It is my firm belief that the last seven decades of the twentieth century will be characterised in history as the dark ages of theoretical physics.” But a non-entity in New Zealand thinks that he knows more than Carver Mead.

Experiments show that that particles such as photons, electrons and molecules (C60!) act as both particles and waves.

So a molecule is also a point with no dimensions? Can you not see the nonsense you are spouting? Furthermore a free “photon” cannot act like a “point particle” since it does NOT have a centre of mass. A free electron is a localised wave with an average size (delta)x in position space and (delta)k in reciprocal space. Its intensity is its mass-energy: Therefore it has a centre-of- mass. When this WAVE moves past a [a person, that person may] conclude that it is a “point particle”: It is, however, and stays a single, holistic, wave which as predicted by Schroedinger’s equation, morphs in shape and size when its boundary conditions change. When it reaches two slits it thus morphs to adapt to the new boundary conditions so that it moves through both slits. When you put two detectors behind the slits to determine through which slit the wave came, the wave morphs by collapsing at only one of the detectors. Thus, [an incorrect person may] conclude that the electron can only move through a single slit: Even though this [person] then also observes that the diffraction pattern now disappears he/she just cannot [understand] that the detectors behind the slits collapsed the diffracted wave which was generated by movement through both slits. The [incorrect person] rather want to believe that it is God who is throwing dice, instead of believing the obvious causal explanation which require no superstition in “gods” playing dice.

All you have been doing is stating the obvious and then going off on a fantasy trip about a 'solitary' electron.

No it is not I who go off on a fantasy trip, but the mainstream physicists who for more than 100 years believed that such a fantasy-universe is real; and then being unable to explain why the fantasy postulate that you can have a solitary electron with a radially symmetric electric field around it causes Maxwell’s equations to, as Feynman wrote in his famous lectures, “fall flat on its face”.

That mathematical point is not "spinning" around itself so you get one brownie point for getting that correct !

Then why did it take you such a long time to admit this? So if it is not generated by a spinning charge, where does it come from physically. To say it comes from Dirac’s equation is not a physics-argument, since Dirac’s equation only seem to give an argument, but no physical reason where it actually comes from.

I have read them. I do think about them.

You are bluffing yourself since you have proved time and again on this thread that you refuse to think outside the dogma accepted by the “experts”. You are a fundamentalist “dark age” thinker who will only accept what has been allowed to be published in the “physics bible”

Exactly wrong!
If any object is charged and has angular momentum then it will have an magnetic moment.

I do not agree with this.

Spin is quantum mechanical angular momentum.

So you think that by bringing in the term “quantum mechanical” you have explained spin? So it is another aspect of nature that is determined by the whims of the gods throwing dice?

That is the simple explanation why an electron has a magnetic moment.

Nope! It is not an explanation at all.

Of course if an object is not charged and has angular momentum then it will not have an magnetic moment.

As had been pointed out on this thread (maybe by yourself?), a neutron is not charged and it still has the same spin as an electron. So you are again arguing with your foot in your mouth.

You are obviously lying - read this thread where there is plenty of the idiocy in the PDFs.

Which PDF’s?

Not ONE of your arguments on this thread held up to the actual science.

I did initially make a mistake in my explanation for the AC Josephson effect; and my first attempt to correct my initial mistake was also wrong. I believe that I have ironed out these mistakes and invite you to read the explanation for Josephson tunnelling on my website and pointing out, in terms of impeccable physics and logic, the mistakes you believe are still there.

Wrong. I can substantialte ti by asking a simple question: WHere are you papers in a peer-reviewed journal?

If you are too stupid to google my name on the internet and within the citation index, then I cannot help you. Even though most of my research was classified, I still managed to publish over 80 papers which have been widely cited. You will find my papers in Physical Review B, and many other equivalent journals. I have also been asked to do peer-reviewing for these journals and have as a rule found that excellent manuscripts which generated real alternative knowledge in a field, have been consistently rejected by the second peer reviewer and the editor because it is at variance with the accepted dogma. If you want a manuscript published you must NEVER be at variance with the beliefs of the “experts” in control. Therefore you will find that when experimental results compellingly prove that there is no pair formation, the authors will dress it up as having found “third glue” for pair formation. If they do not play this dishonest trick, they do not have a snowball’s change in Hell to be published.

If you have none then the options are
Your ideas are so obviously invalid that you cannot get them published.

They are not invalid: They are only at variance with the accepted wrong dogma for which Nobel Prizes have been awarded.

You do not have the confidence to publish them

I do have the confidence. If I did not have the confidence why would I write a book after having been blocked from publishing for more than seven years: And this after I have discovered and convincingly proved that I can extract electrons from a diamond cathode by means of an anode, into the gap between the cathode and anode, and that an equilibrium current then establishes itself which flows even though it is physically impossible that there can be an electric field between the cathode and the anode.

There is no such rule in science.

It is the primary rule in science since scientific research in the first instance demands OBJECTIVITY and OPEN-MINDEDNESS.

The practise in science is to study works that have been peer-reviewed.

This is the argument of [an incorrect person].

This is because there are so many cranks out there publishing garbage that there is no sense in wasting time trying to read everything that is published.

Yes I agree that this is a problem: But to rely only on “expert opinion” before reading any literature puts us right back in the dark ages where the “experts” in the church decided what can be read and what cannot be read. They also tried to do this with Galileo, who also self-published a book, but it fortunately did not succeed. Thank God, there were people who did not feel themselves bound by “expert opinion” like you still do. If they were all like you, we would not have known about Galileo today and, most probably, also not about Newton’s laws which are firmly based on Galileo’s impeccable logic.

Peer-review filters out the obhvious garbage, levaing scientists time to concentrate on valid science.

The history of the 20th Century proves just the opposite. Remember Bose? The latter is not the only example. Peer reviewing has come to a stage where it acts as a negative sieve: The chaff is kept and the grain discarded.

Another technique is to analyze the competence of the author by studying his works, continuing to cover all his work while he shows basic competence, stooping when it is obvious that he is incompetent. We have done that.

Who are “we”? In this thread only one mistake in my reasoning, was pointed out: I conceded and believed that I have now corrected it. No other mistake, based on impeccable physics logic, has been pointed out. If you want to reason that since I made a mistake, I must be wrong on all aspects, I would not be surprised, since this is the way in which [an incorrect person] will reason. If I were to apply your reasoning to Einstein, it will mean that all his physics should be ignored and avoided since in one of his manuscripts he made the mistake to divide by zero.

Thank you for confirming that you tried to publish your work. This shows that your ideas are so invalid that people in the field can clearly see this.

Yup, this is the way a fundamentalist, [incorrect person] will reason. If the church does not allow it to be in the bible it must be invalid. You know that the chapters in the Bible were selected by a committee of “experts”. According to your “scientific approach” Galileo’s work must thus be invalid.

This statement shows that you are ignorant about the scientific process.
The facts are that reviewers are selected as having expertise in their field. That means that they have competence in that field.
Some journals even allow the author to suggest a list of reviewers to ensure that the appropriate reviewer are selected.

To have “competence in a field” the reviewer must have published in the field. This means that when he receives a manuscript which, if correct, invalidates most of the work he/she has done he/she will search for a reason to reject it. This is the way people are and have been since they started populating the earth. I have never found any reviewer in my life, except myself and a friend of mine at Philips Research Laboratories (Prof. Peer Zalm), who reacted in any other manner. You see, to allow such a manuscript, has severe implications for the reviewer in terms of his standing and funding etc. The system has been designed to become a negative sieve and is actually acting exactly as such.

Why are you then mouthing off on a science forum?
I am doing it to

Keep current in my scence.

No you are not unless the science is in agreement with the dogma you want to believe

Learn new things.

You are so bonded to accepted dogma that it is impossible to teach you new things: Like Epictetus said: “It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.” This defines your mentality to a tee!

Educate people - with the cravat that I may be (and have occasionally have been) wrong!

First try and educate yourself before being so arrogant to believe that you can educate other people.

Journal of Low Temperature Physics
Volume 61, Numbers 1-2, 1-16, DOI: 10.1007/BF00682727
Effect of localized spin fluctuations on transport properties in the one-band Wolff model
I. Fisk and A. B. Kaiser

So you and your supervisor published a manuscript, which you supervisor probably wrote for you, and now you think that you know enough to criticize established physicists like myself and Prof. Doris Wilsdorf?!

Only one citation which is not surprising since it is a minor paper.

Exactly! And not surprising either!

Where are your publications and citation index to claim tghat you have knowledge of physics?

As I have already said, if you do not know how to google my name on the internet and find it within the citation index, then you are even more useless than I thought you are. If you ever find it, you will see that most of my papers have been done solo and are generally major papers in the field that I have published in.

The PDFs (and your statements here) certainly do not support that you have much knowledge of pohysic.

You have not yet pointed out a single mistake that is based on sound physics-logic. And you probably will not be able to do so even if there is a mistake somewhere, since you clearly do not have the knowledge or insight to do so.

No you have not - 'proving' yourself in physics is publishing papers.

Not necessarily: I know many excellent physicists who have worked their whole life on classified research, and then ended up with NO publications while knowing vastly more than those physicists who wrote a plethora of mediocre manuscripts in order to get them past the dogmatic “expert reviewers”.

Any idiot can self-publish a book.

I agree; but it is only a far bigger idiot who will then reason that all self-published books have been written by idiots.

Look at all of the dumb creationist books, for example. Many of them claim to be sceintific. I doubt that you take them seriously.

I have not yet had time to read them: So I cannot judge whether I must take them serious or not. I have, however, observed that many of the fundamentalist-creationists reason in the same [incorrect person] manner that you do!

Also look at all of the other self-published physics books. Spume of these will contradict your ideas. Are we to take them as being as valid as you book?

The ONLY way one can judge ANY book is to read it and find where it is wrong. If you judge it without reading it, YOU are [an incorrect person] ; like Juan Baez..

Yes I have 'proved' myself in physics- see above.

You call a minor paper with one citation as “proof” that you are a physicist? My God help us!

A person who knows the basics of electromagnetism, hey - a moving charge generates a magnetic field. It does not matter where it is.

Prove this experimentally: This is another characteristic of [an incorrect person] : He/she claims what cannot be proved by experiment since it fits mathematics.

They are not problems.

According to Feynman they are: Or are you now going to argue that your minor publication, which has been written by your supervisor, has given you more insight than Feynman had.

Your usual ignorance. There is nothing in the Ampère-Maxwell law about motion relative to other charges. All it has is moving charges.

There should be since all experiments on which Maxwell’s equations are based involved more than a solitary charge and/or movement of opposite charges relative to each other.

Edited by Tricky: 

edited (repeatedly) for civility.

 

[johanfprins]

Then why do you keep on going on about a universe containing a single electron when
[*]Gauss's law states that it has a radial electric field.

Coulomb’s law is the precursor of Gauss’s law and Coulomb’s law cannot be valid for a single charge in a universe. Therefore it is highly unlikely that Gauss’s law can apply to such a case

[*]It is impossible to measure the electric field because ther eis nothing else in the universe.

Exactly, and that is why neither Coulomb’s law nor Gauss’s law can apply in such a universe. Thus, by solving for the electric-field around such a solitary charge, you are solving Maxwell's equations for a physical situation that cannot manifest. This means that the solution, although mathematically consistent, does not model actual physics.

Citations please
where does Feynman say that 'electrodynamics falls flat on its face'

Where are the calculations that the energy contained in the classical electric field of a single charged particle is infinite? ?

Go to The Feynman Lectures on PHYSICS; volume II on Electromagnetism, chapter 28. On P 28-1: “But we want to stop for a moment to show you that this tremendous edifice, which is such a beautiful success in explaining so many phenomena, ultimately falls on its face” (Sorry that I have previously added “flat” on its face; but, although more dramatic, it states in essence the same) Next quote: “The difficulty we speak of is associated with the concepts of electromagnetic momentum and energy, when applied to the electron or any charged particle. The concepts of simple charged particles and the electromagnetic field are in some way inconsistent.” (Thus there is a problem with charged “particles” as I have claimed all along on this thread)

QED describes a universe where there is an infinite number of particles - an electron and an infinite number of photons.

I know this stupidity: It is based on Dirac’s major fudging when he solved his single-electron equation to find that such an electron will have an energy of minus infinity. So his equation suddenly became a many-electron equation to get rid of this result; which actually proves that his single electron equation is physics-nonsense.

Renormalization is not hocus pocus. It is a technique to extract physically pertinent information from a complex theory.

Let me ask Feynman to directly answer you: “The shell game that we play ... is technically called 'renormalization'. But no matter how clever the word, it is still what I would call a dippy process! Having to resort to such hocus-pocus has prevented us from proving that the theory of quantum electrodynamics is mathematically self-consistent. It's surprising that the theory still hasn't been proved self-consistent one way or the other by now; I suspect that renormalization is not mathematically legitimate.”

Can you not reaqd smiple English? This is not your universe containing a solitary electron which actually has an electric field according to Gauss's law but this field cannot be physically measured because there is nothing else in that universe.

Exactly and this implies strongly that it cannot exist.

This is the universe in which we live.

Then why model a solitary charge as if there are no other charges in the universe if this situation cannot manifest within our universe?

New measurement of the electron magnetic moment using a one-electron quantum cyclotron
This was a single electron

But not a solitary electron as is being assumed when you conclude that you can have a radially symmetric energy field around it

Penning trap for months using static electric and magnetic fields.

Where do the latter fields come if the electron is solitary?

You are showing your ignorance again: Larmor formula

So you say these formulas are correct even though Feynman clearly stated that there are problems to marry the concepts of “simple charged particles” and the “electromagnetic field”? Oh my apologies! I forgot that you have one publication and even a citation; and thus know more than Feynman did.

 

[Ziggurat]

It's funny that you appeal to Feynman, when he supported BCS theory of superconductivity, as well as the conventional explanation of Josephson junctions. In fact, that subject is the final chapter of the famous lecture series you referred to. Why are you appealing to his authority when he contradicts you?

 

[johanfprins]

I've discovered a methodology for extruding a titanium-based mixture as a long, single chain crystal that is superconductive at up to 341 degrees Kelvin. I was able to synthesize 1.4 kilograms of wire measuring 22 meters. The total cost of my capital investment was $1,250.00 plus approximately $18.66 in electricity. The marginal cost of the last meter of wire was $2.85.

I am happy to take questions.

Yes I have a question. How do you know you have superconduction? And PLEASE do not come with the BS of the Meissner effect: Even a live frog shows the Meissner effect and we all know a live frog is not a superconductor. The only real way to prove that you have superconduction is to prove that when the material forms an element within a circuit, a current is flowing around the circuit while it is IMPOSSIBLE for an electric field to be within the superconducting material. This is what I have proved when I discovered superconduction at room temperature 10 years ago. So how did you prove this only defining property for your material?

 

[Ziggurat]

Yes I have a question. How do you know you have superconduction? And PLEASE do not come with the BS of the Meissner effect: Even a live frog shows the Meissner effect and we all know a live frog is not a superconductor.

You've made this claim before, and I told you why you were ridiculously wrong before. The levitating frog demonstrates diamagnetism. You know what diamagnetism is, right? Do you know what the magnetic susceptibility for a superconductor is? It's -1. Do you know what the magnetic susceptibility for a frog is? It's about -10^-5. That's about five orders of magnitude difference. It's bloody easy to tell the difference. In fact, the largest susceptibility I've ever heard of for a non-superconducting diamagnet is -4x10⁴ (for pyrolytic graphite). Still more than 1000 times weaker than a superconductor. There are no reported cases of diamagnetism anywhere close to 1 without also being a superconductor (as determined by a vanishing resistivity).

Plus, I'm pretty sure he's pulling your leg.

 

[johanfprins]

Reality Check

That single electron cyclotron sounds very fascinating -- it almost seems to invalidate the Heisenberg's uncertainty principle

It depends what you mean with the “uncertainty principle”. If you mean that (delta)k*(delta)x=g is invalidated, then you are wrong, since this relationship is always correct for all harmonic waves; and thus also for an harmonic electron-wave. If you mean that (delta)k must be multiplied with (hbar) to obtain that (delta)p*(delta)x=g(hbar) and that this, in turn, implies that there is an inbuilt uncertainty in the momentum and position of the centre-of-mass of an electron-“particle”, then you are correct that this experiment invalidates this interpretation of Heisenberg; which he concocted in a desperate attempt to discredit Schroedinger's wave equation.

Heisenberg, and everybody that came after him, should have known that this interpretation of Heisenberg invalidates all physics right from the time of Galileo up to Schroedinger's equation. All these equations (even Heisenberg's matrix mechanics) DEMAND that the position and the momentum of any entity with mass (thus also an electron) must simultaneously physically manifest with 100% accuracy; even if it is not possible to measure these parameters with 100% accuracy. The fact that you cannot measure the momentum and position with 100% accuracy DOES NOT imply that this inaccuracy is built into the fabric of the universe: Any electron that moves to follow a classical path, as electrons are observed to do, can only do so if both the position and momentum of its centre-of-mass manifest simultaneously with 100% accuracy at every instant of time.

Heisenberg was aware that this must be so, but wiped this incontrovertible fact under the carpet by claiming that an electron can only follow such a classical path when it is being observed. By making this absurd claim, he defined physics as being subjective-Voodoo: And it seems that he did this just to score a cheap point against Schroedinger. The fact is that an observation is also a measurement and if you can observe a path for the electron which can only be followed by the electron when its position and momentum both simultaneously manifest with 100% accuracy, it immediately invalidates the claim that when you measure the position with 100% accuracy, the momentum is unknown, and when you measure the momentum with 100% accuracy the position is unknown.

We know that for any harmonic wave a change in boundary conditions causes the wave to morph in shape and size: This means that its average sizes in real space (delta)x and reciprocal space (delta)k change. Most measurements require a change in boundary conditions and instead of interpreting the changes in (delta)x and (delta)k for what they really are; namely just a change in shape and size of a harmonic wave to conform to the new boundary conditions, Heisenberg incorrectly interpreted these changes as changes in the position and momentum of a "point particle". And he did this ONLY after Schroedinger postulated his equation. Unfortunately Schroedinger made this nonsensical deduction easy for Heisenberg, since he incorporated the rest mass of the electron as an input parameter into his equation: This gave his equation the facade of being based on the Hamilton-function of a particle with mass and this led to the wrong deduction that the del-operator correlates with the momentum of such a particle. It is a pity that Schroedinger, Einstein and de Broglie never realised that the wave equation should not have mass as an input since the mass-energy of an electron must be the solution of the correct wave equation. It is incomprehensible that Einstein did not see this: After all he is well-revered for the most important result that came from his Special Theory of Relativity: i.e. that E=mc².

This brings us to the “measurement” problem: This problem is not just inherent in quantum mechanics but in ALL physics. It can be formulated as follows: “How does one know that the result which you obtain when making a measurement is what there actually is when not making the measurement”. In fact a measurement probably never gives the same information as what there really was and still would be if the measurement had not been made. A measurement always changes the boundary conditions of what is “out there”; so that the result that one obtains is thus always modified by this fact. Thus, we can only obtain “modified information” and it is then the task of the physicist to try and figure out what this modified information tells him/her about what is actually “out there”. Obviously, some measurements modify the information more than other measurements; and this is especially the case when working with the minute, as is done when using quantum mechanics.

In all physics, and thus also in quantum mechanics, it is primarily the measuring apparatus which determines how much the information we obtain is modified by the measurement. This means that what exists out there, before making the measurement, are NOT inbuilt un-manifested possibilities (which are ALL contained within a wave-function) so that only one of these possibilities can manifest when you make a measurement. It should be logically obvious that it is impossible to get different outcomes for the same measurement UNLESS the measuring apparatus is such that one can measure different outcomes. To argue that the possible outcomes are inbuilt and present within what is “out there” before making a measurement, is to say that the marble in your hand determines the outcome when you randomly launch it on a spinning roulette wheel. The fact that one can have different outcomes is totally determined by the fact that the roulette wheel allows different outcomes. If it has only one position at which the marble can stop, one will obtain the same result every time. The different outcomes in quantum mechanics are also just the normal probabilities that one finds in any Casino. God really does not play dice by having inbuilt probabilities contained within what is “out there”.

This does not mean that the wave-intensity plays no role whatsoever. Consider the following thought experiment: One has a machine which generate exactly the same shaped balloons and launch them one after the other towards a measuring device. Assume that this measuring device consists of a flat plate with many holes through it and that nails with sharp pints move at random into and out of these holes. When a balloon reaches the device, it will explode at the first sharp point that it encounters: i.e. at the nail that is sticking out the furthest from its hole when the balloon arrives. The next balloon will encounter another nail, etc. If one keeps note of the nails where the balloons exploded and how many times it happened at each nail, then after many balloons have exploded, one will be able to deduce the shape and size of the identical balloons. It is absurd to then conclude that the shape and size of these balloons is a probability distribution which determines where the balloons will explode. It is easy to verify that for all the experimental results which had been used to argue that the intensity of a Schroedinger wave is a probability distribution, the probability has been generated by what the measuring apparatus can measure. The intensity of the waves only plays a secondary role in this regard and NOT the primary role as the Born-rule wants us to believe.

So what happens when you launch an ensemble of single electron-waves or single photon waves to an observation screen? The observation screen has many equivalent points with which each incoming wave can resonate. One can only observe a wave by having a measuring device that resonates with it (just think about radios and radio-waves). The screen thus has many small “antennas” that, owing to Heisenberg’s relationship for frequency (energy) and time, are not all exactly “in tune” with the frequency of the impinging wave. This is similar to the nails moving into and out of their holes in the thought experiment above. The incoming wave thus collapses at the measuring point (“antenna”) with which it first finds resonance. Thus, even though you finally end up with a picture of the wave intensity, this intensity has NOTHING to do with the wave-intensity being a probability distribution.

So why and where did the Copenhagen group go wrong? Bohr already set the scene when he proposed his model for the hydrogen atom. He found a RULE according to which he could equate the orbital momentum of an electron-“particle” (which supposedly moves around the nucleus) to be equal to n*(hbar) where n is an integer that can take on the values of 1, 2, 3, etc. This rule gave him the Rydberg spectrum of the hydrogen atom. It was then claimed that Bohr has found the physics-reason why the electron does not spiral down into the nucleus. But this is of course false: The electron still lost energy, but only in discrete amounts as mandated by Planck’s discovery. Furthermore, the only way to ensure that the Bohr atom is stable is to limit the quantum number n not to be less than unity. Bohr did not give any physics reason why the quantum number cannot be zero: If it can be zero, his atom will still also be unstable. Neither could he give any real physics explanation why his rule applies. Although such a rule is very helpful, it really means NOTHING until you can explain the physics behind it.

De Broglie thought that he found the physics behind it when he discovered that the circumferences of the Bohr-orbits are each equal to an integer number of wavelengths, where for each circular orbit the concomitant wavelength is proportional to the inverse of the momentum of the “orbiting electron”; where the proportionality constant is (hbar). It was then subsequently found that moving electrons can diffract and that the wavelengths involved for electrons moving with a momentum p are given by de Broglie’s wavelength. So the physics behind Bohr’s rule has been found: Or has it really been found? It still does not explain why n cannot be zero so that the atom remain stable. Furthermore, it should have been realised that there is not a any differential wave equation that can be solved to obtain a running wave which has wave-fronts that move around a circle. All differential wave equations can ONLY give wave fronts that either move along a linear path, or spread out as circles, or spread out as spheres.

Schroedinger then appeared on the scene: By intuition and clever guess-work he postulated his harmonic differential wave-equation for an electron: He then immediately tried to solve for running waves that have wave-fronts following circular paths around the nucleus. The derived results did not fit the experimental results at all: Thus proving that also in this case, such electron-waves cannot actually exist in reality. He then solved his equation for time-independent stationary waves and got perfect fits; which not only proved that the quantum numbers n are NOT determined by Bohr’s original rule, but also gave a physically acceptable reason why this quantum number cannot be zero. This thus proves that the electrons around a nucleus are not “particles” circling the nucleus with momentums p, but standing waves which have no momentum whatsoever. But horror of horrors, this implies that Bohr’s model is irrelevant since the emission lines from a hydrogen atom are NOT caused by actual “electron-particles” that quantum-jumping from one orbital to another. What was even worse for the young Heisenberg is that it also seems to obviate his matrix-mechanics which he published just a year before Schroedinger published his wave equation: Since Heisenberg clearly based his model on “electron-particles” that quantum-jump. Schroedinger was lucky that he could publish so soon after Heisenberg. If Heisenberg’s theory had enough time to establish itself as the official dogma, Schroedinger’s wave mechanics would probably have been rejected out of hand by editors and peer reviewers: Just as my alternative model of superconduction is being rejected at present.

Goettingen University (Where Born ruled the roost in theoretical physics) and Bohr’s institute in Copenhagen thought they were at the point of solving all aspects of quantum mechanics when suddenly Schroedinger fouled their drink-water with an equation so simple and so logical that they might lose their standing as being on the forefront of this research. So what do you think they did? Did they objectively welcome this new development? NO!! They started fuming! Heisenberg wrote to Pauli that Schroedinger’s arguments are “Scheisse”. (For those of you who do not know German, look this word up in a dictionary). When he heard that Schroedinger had been invited to give a talk at the University of Munich, Heisenberg jumped on a train to attend this lecture, and was so disrupting during lecture that the chairman Prof. Wien, had to ask him to behave. It is ironic that this is the same professor who opposed Heisenberg’s candidacy to obtain a PhD since Heisenberg was so impractical that he did not even know how a light microscope functions. Thank God for that: If he was not so impractical Germany might have had the nuclear bomb before the USA had it.

Next, Schroedinger was invited to Copenhagen where Bohr, in the presence of Heisenberg put poor Erwin under third degree interrogation. So much so that Schroedinger became ill and had to take to bed. Not even this stopped Bohr from sitting next to his bed and bombarding him with questions and arguments which were all aimed to convince him that “jumps” by electron-“particles” are essential to model quantum mechanics. It is clear that he very well realised that if this aspect can be explained in another manner, it would be tickets for his initial model of the atom as well as for Heisenberg’s matrix mechanics: And this was too horrible to even complicate: They could not allow it to happen and had to come up with a reason (any concocted reason) why “particles” must remain part of quantum mechanics: Aha: It can be done by making a postulate that waves and particles are complementary, and then interpreting Schroedinger’s wave as a “probability wave”; even though ALL harmonic waves EVER always had their total intensities equal to their energies. The next step was to ram this nonsense down the throats of the leading physicists at the Solvay conference in Belgium during 1927, before these scientists start to really think about the real implications of these illusions which were presented by Copenhagen and Goettingen as realities. In 1927 they did an excellent job to give physics a frontal lobotomy: So much so that even at present the mainstream physicists still believe this BS to such an extent that they will rather die than to re-examine it objectively.

The fact is that a wave has to morph when its boundary conditions change and when these changes are near-instantaneous, for example when the electron wave absorbs or emits light energy, the morphing must also be near-instantaneous. The latter is the real physics reason for quantum jumps: Not jumping “particles” having zero sizes. And therefore (delta)x and (delta)k changes during such a “jump”: Not because there is an uncertainty in the position or momentum of the centre-of-mass of the electron-wave. For every electron-wave around a nucleus the momentum of the wave’s centre-of-mass remains identically zero and the position of this centre-of-mass is exactly at the centre of the nucleus. Both manifest with 100% accuracy simultaneously all the time.

 

[Ziggurat]

What's funny is that you think Heisenberg's matrix mechanics is actually different than Schrodinger's wave equation.

 

[ben m]

Heisenberg, and everybody that came after him, should have known that this interpretation of Heisenberg invalidates all physics right from the time of Galileo up to Schroedinger's equation. All these equations (even Heisenberg's matrix mechanics) DEMAND that the position and the momentum of any entity with mass (thus also an electron) must simultaneously physically manifest with 100% accuracy

You're wrong. The Schrodinger equation is not an equation for the (classical) position-vs.-time of the electron. It's a wave equation for the evolution of the electron wavefunction. Given Schrodinger's Equation---or, more correctly, given the Born interpretation---you can derive Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.

Indeed this is how I always teach it to my students. We learn Schrodinger and Born first. Then we look at some simple wavefunctions and calculate their position- and momentum-space uncertainties. Out pops delta-x delta-p ~ hbar. With some more care you can find a wavefunction for which delta-x delta-p = hbar/2 and show that this is the strict lower bound. Then we say "this lower bound is called Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, and it's useful to remember by itself."

 

[Ziggurat]

Given Schrodinger's Equation---or, more correctly, given the Born interpretation---you can derive Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.

In fact, I did so a little earlier in the thread.