Merged Relativity+ / Farsight

[Dancing David]

While it is perhaps OK to set up a religion where one worships Farsight's theory without any evidence, it is not OK in philosophy. Philosophy should rely on a certain amount of rigour that is obviously missing here. philosophyforums.com effectively got rid of Farsight years ago by regulating his works to their pseudophilosophy section.

Phlogiston was part of a theory that had a lot more going for it than Farsight's theory. There were different ways to measure the amount of phlogiston, ways that agreed with each other, phlogiston theory was productive in terms of technology and discoveries, and there was a long period with no obvious anomalies for the theory.

It turned out that people were measuring the amount of oxygen used in a reaction, not the amount of phlogiston, but people didn't believe in phlogiston for no reason.

The phlogiston was meant as flame bait.

Now the Philosophy comment is very apt, it is common argument amongst various people in teh R&P forum,

Pseudo Kantians are the most likely to say "But you can't examine thought with thought."

or the infamous

"You can'y stand outside objective reality to determine objective reality."

So the math can't be studied by math.

 

[Tubbythin]

Not right now, but it'll come.

I won't be holding my breath.

Only I suspect it won't be much different to QED.

It already bares no resemblance whatsoever to QED.

I don't think so. QED is a good crisp theory, it's just lacking in physical meaning. This, in case you hadn't noticed, is what's coming.

It can make predictions about physical experiments that are more precise and accurate than any other theory in the history of physics ever. It doesn't get more physically meaningfull than that.

Just give it time. And don't forget that this is just a discussion forum.

So let's summarise. Your conjectures offer us nothing of any use whatsoever for any purpose.

 

[RussDill]

Gotta go guys, I'm aware I've missed out a patch of posts, I'll try to cover them when I can, but I'd be grateful if you could highlight any that you think are particularly relevant.

Yes, please, related to diagrams of the electromagnetic spectrum, please show where the "common amplitude" may be found:

Please, enlighten us. I can't find any such diagrams mentioning a "common amplitude". In fact, a google search shows that 5 out of the 10 first results are all you. The other 5 are using "common amplitude" and "electromagnetic spectrum", but no together.

http://www.google.com/search?q="co...ic+spectrum"

 

[ctamblyn]

Here's a less tex-heavy definition. All four Maxwell's equations can be written in the compact form

*dF = J_m
*d*F = J_e

F is the electromagnetic field strength 2-form, d the exterior derivative, * is Poincare duality, J_e is the electric charge-current 1-form, and J_m is the magnetic charge-current 1-form. Experiment so far has shown that J_m=0, but if it's not, its time component is the magnetic monopole density.

Note that if J_m≠0, F≠dA (since otherwise dF=0 automatically). That gives rise to all sorts of interesting results, like Dirac quantization of electric charge in units of the magnetic monopole charge.

I'm sure all of this is incomprehensible to Farsight, but maybe someone else will find it informative.

*reappears*

Now, that would have saved my thumbs from a lot of pain .

I suppose I wanted to emphasise the fact that there are two physically different species of monopole field - although each is really the dual of the other - and that if somehow you can get a vacuum solution which looks like the first type, then you must also be able to have vacuum solutions which look like the second type. But we've covered that ground pretty thoroughly by now!

 

[Farsight]

I'm afraid this says we've covered no ground whatsoever, ct.

Sol's mathematical statement creates an abstract entity, the "magnetic charge current", which does not exist. It has no experimental support, and he refuses to understand why. He still doesn't understand that we're dealing with an electromagnetic field, wherein curl/rot/rotor is the result of dynamical vorticial interaction as per Maxwell and his screw machanism, but with the vortices in the particles rather than the intervening space. He's then "finding" an interesting magnetic monopole charge in a mathematical derivation, and can't and won't see that this demands a region of freely rotating space. And moreover he can't see that if space could do this, an electromagnetic field could not exist.

When it comes from supposedly rational scientists, I find the credence given to abstraction and the disregard for experimental evidence rather disturbing.

 

[Hellbound]

Such as the experimental evidence that shows electrons have no axis of rotation?

 

[Kwalish Kid]

I'm afraid this says we've covered no ground whatsoever, ct.

Sol's mathematical statement creates an abstract entity, the "magnetic charge current", which does not exist. It has no experimental support, and he refuses to understand why. He still doesn't understand that we're dealing with an electromagnetic field, wherein curl/rot/rotor is the result of dynamical vorticial interaction as per Maxwell and his screw machanism, but with the vortices in the particles rather than the intervening space. He's then "finding" an interesting magnetic monopole charge in a mathematical derivation, and can't and won't see that this demands a region of freely rotating space. And moreover he can't see that if space could do this, an electromagnetic field could not exist.

When it comes from supposedly rational scientists, I find the credence given to abstraction and the disregard for experimental evidence rather disturbing.

Wait a minute. You are the person who wants us to believe in a vortex model of the electron, a model you cannot fully describe. You want us to believe in an abstraction that you can't even describe and you criticize mathematical abstractions that are not only descriptive, they accurately predict what happens in actual experiments? Heck, you believe in an abstraction that you cannot fully describe, and you are criticizing scientists for believing in abstractions that have a far better basis in empirical research.

 

[dafydd]

Wait a minute. You are the person who wants us to believe in a vortex model of the electron, a model you cannot fully describe. You want us to believe in an abstraction that you can't even describe and you criticize mathematical abstractions that are not only descriptive, they accurately predict what happens in actual experiments? Heck, you believe in an abstraction that you cannot fully describe, and you are criticizing scientists for believing in abstractions that have a far better basis in empirical research.

Typical delusionaut behaviour.I've seen it so many times in these forums.The biggest joke is that they all think that they are unique.

 

[ben m]

I find the credence given to abstraction and the disregard for experimental evidence rather disturbing.

Who's disregarding experimental evidence? We're disregarding your bizarre interpretations of experiments you barely understand. The experiments themselves are highly regarded, and theorists pay a lot of attention to them.

Your interpretations---your knots and amplitudes and Mobius strips and whatnot--- are abstractions, like it or not; if you wanted to compare them to experiments in a meaningful way, you'd HAVE to turn them into mathematical abstractions.

 

[Dancing David]

I'm afraid this says we've covered no ground whatsoever, ct.

Sol's mathematical statement creates an abstract entity, the "magnetic charge current", which does not exist. It has no experimental support, and he refuses to understand why. He still doesn't understand that we're dealing with an electromagnetic field, wherein curl/rot/rotor is the result of dynamical vorticial interaction as per Maxwell and his screw machanism, but with the vortices in the particles rather than the intervening space. He's then "finding" an interesting magnetic monopole charge in a mathematical derivation, and can't and won't see that this demands a region of freely rotating space. And moreover he can't see that if space could do this, an electromagnetic field could not exist.

When it comes from supposedly rational scientists, I find the credence given to abstraction and the disregard for experimental evidence rather disturbing.

You can't make your idea coherent, that is your problem.

 

[sol invictus]

Sol's mathematical statement creates an abstract entity, the "magnetic charge current", which does not exist.

So set it to zero in that equation, just like I said to in that post.

It has no experimental support, and he refuses to understand why. He still doesn't understand that we're dealing with an electromagnetic field, wherein curl/rot/rotor is the result of dynamical vorticial interaction as per Maxwell and his screw machanism, but with the vortices in the particles rather than the intervening space.

Total gibberish. Those equations are in the form that exhibits explicitly the fact that electric and magnetic fields fit together into a 2-form. Notice how there are no E's or B's in there?

He's then "finding" an interesting magnetic monopole charge in a mathematical derivation, and can't and won't see that this demands a region of freely rotating space. And moreover he can't see that if space could do this, an electromagnetic field could not exist.

It quacks.

When it comes from supposedly rational scientists, I find the credence given to abstraction and the disregard for experimental evidence rather disturbing.

It quacked again!

 

[ctamblyn]

Sorry to resurrect this old thread, but there has been a lot of mention of this "Relativity+" malarky in several threads recently, and perhaps this thread is a more appropriate discussion venue.

OK, to kick things off: I have consulted the first edition of John Duffield's (i.e. Farsight's) modestly-titled paperback book Relativity+: The Theory of Everything, and I think I have managed to extract some concrete, falsifiable predictions of the collection of ideas about reality promoted therein.

1. Relativity+ denies the existence of the Higgs boson. Early on the book puts forward the previously-discussed and thoroughly criticised idea that fundamental particles such as electrons are merely photons tied up into "three-dimensional solitons" or "knots" of varying kinds and that this picture is sufficient to explain all of their properties, including their rest masses. It is claimed that "the photon is boson enough" and therefore the Higgs is unneeded (p. 46). Duffield later emphasises that "pair production creates mass" and repeats "the photon is boson enough" (p. 126). He also says the CERN physicists "spin a yarn about the fabled Higgs boson and unlocking the secrets of the universe, when the answers are already there" (ibid.).

2.: As well as the "God particle" (the book's words, not mine) Relativity+ would have us bet against extra dimensions and strangelets being discovered at the LHC (p. 157).

3. Relativity+ is incompatible with any quantum theory of gravity - "The graviton isn't part of the standard model, and never will be, because it's an abstraction. Quantized gravity was always a red herring, based on a misunderstanding of the quantum of quantum mechanics. You can't quantize gravity." (p. 129) and again "Once you realise this, you understand why ... you can't quantize gravity, ..." (p. 161).

4. Relativity+ tells us in very emphatic terms that the LHC will only yield "unspectacular information", "nothing to write home about" and "nothing worthwhile" (p. 157). Though this last category of predictions is complicated by the subjective nature of worth, it is surely dead in the water already - neither the discovery nor the non-discovery of the Higgs would be "nothing to write home about", if your pet theory and book sales depend so heavily on the answer!

 

[Reality Check]

Wow: Point 4 is totally debunked.
The LHC has produced spectacular, worthwhile information, e.g. CDF confirms CP violation in charm.

The ignorance of "The graviton isn't part of the standard model, and never will be, because it's an abstraction." is astounding. The Standard Model does not attempt to describe gravitation so it obviously does not include the graviton.

 

[ctamblyn]

Wow: Point 4 is totally debunked.
The LHC has produced spectacular, worthwhile information, e.g. CDF confirms CP violation in charm.

Well that didn't take long.

 

[ctamblyn]

From another thread, which was getting derailed by this discussion about neutrinos as seen in Relativity+ (post was here: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8211823&postcount=225):

No it isn't. Forget the it's a fermion because that's just Humpty-Dumpty logic, and you don't have a clue about spin. It's got no charge. It goes at a speed that is indistinguishjable from c. It's got no mass to speak of. It's clearly more like the photon than the electron.

Let's list the observable properties of these particles under discussion, to illustrate more clearly your mistake:

Photon: obeys Bose-Einstein statistics, spin-1, interacts with all charged particles, massless and always travels at c.

Neutrinos (e, mu, tau): obey Fermi-Dirac statistics, spin-1/2, interact with W and Z bosons, massive and always travel slower than c (in at least two varieties).

Electron: obeys Fermi-Dirac statistics, spin-1/2, interacts with W and Z bosons, interacts with photons, massive and always travels slower than c.

No, I champion relativity.
...(irrelevant portion snipped)...

OK, so you agree that neutrinos, if they have rest mass, travel slower than c. Good. Experimentally, it is certain that at least two of the neutrino varieties have rest mass, and therefore (for any such neutrino) there exists an inertial frame in which that neutrino is at rest. So it would be incorrect to imply otherwise by saying that "it doesn't stop" (http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8211440&postcount=210).

You don't understand SR, or the wave nature of matter, and you don't understand mass. I could trap a photon in a box, release it, trap it in a box, and so on. Or instead of slowing its speed to zero I can slow just a little. Then the mass varies as the speed varies. Not the other way around. And the speed varies because that's how neutrinos are, because they are dynamical waves, not little 2ev billiard balls subject to magic,

No-one says neutrinos are "magic billiard balls"; that doesn't make them magic loops of light either. They're particles with rest mass, obeying the normal laws of SR. If you are suggesting that rest mass varies with speed, you are very confused about SR indeed.

I don't believe it's massless, I believe mass is a measure of how much energy is not moving with respect to you. If the speed is indistinguishable from c, the mass is indistinguishable from zero. Once we can distinguish the speed from c we can say what the mass is. Mass ratios are "speeds-less-than-c" ratios, and if we start with a speed of c and a mass of zero we're stuck. We'll just have to do the experiments and see what pans out.

1. By your argument, a sufficiently high-energy proton has a lower rest mass than a sufficiently low-energy neutrino, contrary to facts.

2. We already know that at least two varieties of neutrino have non-zero masses.

Don't clutch at straws. We all know about pair production.

Good, so you can see how your description was inaccurate and misleading to newcomers to the subject.

Vague? Who are you trying to kid? Just list out the properties.

See above, where I kindly listed the observable properties for you.

The electron is like a photon in a box. You've got mass where you didn't have mass before.

And in every other respect, it is completely different. It has the wrong spin, wrong statistics, wrong interaction with other photons and wrong interaction with the weak neutral current. It is almost completely wrong. Not to mention that there is no known physical mechanism that would cause a photon to enter this state in the first place.

And remember that in pair production, that photon got chopped in half.

No it didn't.

And don't start waffling on about "fundamental" particles when we can make them at will.

You clearly don't understand what "fundamental particle" means.

And don't start waffling about Bose-Einstein statistics when two waves can overlap but two vortons cannot.

You clearly don't understand what "Bose-Einstein" statistics are, and vortons are entirely irrelevant.

Bah. Don't talk to me about ephemera. Go work out how far stress-energy moving at c gets in 10^-25seconds. I'm going to bed.

In other words, don't mention facts that are inconvenient for your position. Photons do not couple to the weak neutral current, while electrons do. Is that better? Whether you look at it in those terms or in terms of the Z⁰ boson, it makes no difference: it means that electrons can participate in interactions that photons (in a box or not) cannot.

 

[Farsight]

Let's list the observable properties of these particles under discussion, to illustrate more clearly your mistake:

Photon: obeys Bose-Einstein statistics, spin-1, interacts with all charged particles, massless and always travels at c.

Neutrinos (e, mu, tau): obey Fermi-Dirac statistics, spin-1/2, interact with W and Z bosons, massive and always travel slower than c (in at least two varieties).

Electron: obeys Fermi-Dirac statistics, spin-1/2, interacts with W and Z bosons, interacts with photons, massive and always travels slower than c.

You forgot about charge. And that we cannot distinguish neutrino speed from c. And you forgot to mention that W and Z bosons have a short lifetime of 10^-25 seconds. As such they are ephemera, they aren't in the same league as photons and neutrinos, and you shouldn't be relying on them to distinguish the latter.

OK, so you agree that neutrinos, if they have rest mass, travel slower than c. Good.

You've got that back to front. Let me try to explain it for you in terms simple enough for you to understand. When energy-momentum moving at c is travelling at c like a photon, it isn't at rest, and you can't make it go slower, so rest mass does not apply. If it doesn't travel at all, like the photon screwing around in a box at c, you can change the speed of the box, and all of the energy-momentum is exhibited as mass. Between these two extremes there's a sliding scale. If the energy-momentum travels slower than c because it's screwing around a little, there's an effective mass. If it travels even slower because it screws around even more, the effective mass increases. If ends up not travelling at all because it's totally screwing around, the effective mass is rest mass. Because inertia is the flip side of momentum. because of the symmetry between momentum and inertia.

Experimentally, it is certain that at least two of the neutrino varieties have rest mass, and therefore (for any such neutrino) there exists an inertial frame in which that neutrino is at rest. So it would be incorrect to imply otherwise by saying that "it doesn't stop" (http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8211440&postcount=210).

It isn't incorrect. You can look at an electron sitting there in front of you. You just can't do this with a neutrino.

No-one says neutrinos are "magic billiard balls"; that doesn't make them magic loops of light either.

They aren't magic loops of light. Light waves are transverse waves, neutrinos are rotational waves. You know I told edd to twang his washing line? Get a pair of pliers, twist it, then let go.

They're particles with rest mass, obeying the normal laws of SR. If you are suggesting that rest mass varies with speed, you are very confused about SR indeed.

I'm not confused about it at all. I understand E=mc². I understand the symmetry between momentum and inertia. Rest mass is a measure of how much energy-momentum is not moving in aggregate with respect to you. When a wave propagating linearly at c resists your attempt to change its state of motion you call it momentum. When the same wave is in a closed path, then when it resists your attempt to change its state of motion, you call it mass. That's why a photon in a box adds mass to that system. Electron-positron annihilation is like opening one box with the other, then two radiating bodies lose mass, only afterwards they're not there any more.

1. By your argument, a sufficiently high-energy proton has a lower rest mass than a sufficiently low-energy neutrino, contrary to facts.

Not so. The proton is like a 938 MeV wave going round and round in a box. You need to add energy to get the box moving. The neutrino is like a wave moving nearly linearly at nearly c. If you could trap that in a box you'd add 511keV worth of mass to that system, only you can't, not easily, it's really difficult to get hold of.

2. We already know that at least two varieties of neutrino have non-zero masses.

So you slow down a wave moving at c a little, and then you slow it down a little more. And maybe it wasn't quite moving at c to begin with.

Good, so you can see how your description was inaccurate and misleading to newcomers to the subject.

I said it was a simplification. It wasn't misleading. Not like the cargo-cult "cosmic treacle" explanation of mass that contradicts Einstein and E=mc².

See above, where I kindly listed the observable properties for you. And in every other respect, it is completely different. It has the wrong spin, wrong statistics, wrong interaction with other photons and wrong interaction with the weak neutral current. It is almost completely wrong. Not to mention that there is no known physical mechanism that would cause a photon to enter this state in the first place.

Get real. It's called pair production.

No it didn't. You clearly don't understand what "fundamental particle" means. You clearly don't understand what "Bose-Einstein" statistics are, and vortons are entirely irrelevant.

Huff puff.

In other words, don't mention facts that are inconvenient for your position. Photons do not couple to the weak neutral current, while electrons do. Is that better? Whether you look at it in those terms or in terms of the Z⁰ boson, it makes no difference: it means that electrons can participate in interactions that photons (in a box or not) cannot.

Just put the photon through pair production. Chop it half and wrap and trap each half in a box of its own making. Now you've got an electron. It now has a rotational motion when previously it didn't. That's why the weak interaction now applies.

 

[edd]

You forgot about charge. And that we cannot distinguish neutrino speed from c.

That's merely a measurement problem. Making that some fundamental property of neutrinos is just like saying keys can only exist under lampposts.

They aren't magic loops of light. Light waves are transverse waves, neutrinos are rotational waves. You know I told edd to twang his washing line? Get a pair of pliers, twist it, then let go.

This sounds disturbingly like you haven't heard of circular polarisation.

Not so. The proton is like a 938 MeV wave going round and round in a box. You need to add energy to get the box moving. The neutrino is like a wave moving nearly linearly at nearly c. If you could trap that in a box you'd add 511keV worth of mass to that system, only you can't, not easily, it's really difficult to get hold of.

This is the second time at least you've mentioned 511keV when talking about neutrinos. I'm not sure you understand why it was wrong to mention it then and it is wrong to mention it now.

Again, there's much of your post I can't bring myself to comment on.

 

[Tubbythin]

You forgot about charge.

I doubt he did. But charge (or lack thereof) is the only thing they really have in common. Note that he also didn't mention helicity, which is something else that shows the similarity between electrons and neutrinos. And he didn't mention lepton number. Which again highlights the similarities between electrons and neutrinos.

And that we cannot distinguish neutrino speed from c.

Practically we can't. But we know that at least two flavours of neutrino must have mass and thus travel at speeds less than c.

And you forgot to mention that W and Z bosons have a short lifetime of 10^-25 seconds.

Why would he mention that? What relevance does it have?

As such they are ephemera, they aren't in the same league as photons and neutrinos, and you shouldn't be relying on them to distinguish the latter.

What? What does that even mean?

You've got that back to front. Let me try to explain it for you in terms simple enough for you to understand. When energy-momentum moving at c is travelling at c like a photon, it isn't at rest, and you can't make it go slower, so rest mass does not apply.

In simple terms? In nonsense more like. I'm not even sure what you mean by energy-momentum. Do you mean when a particle with energy and momentum is travelling at c you can't make it go slower so it has no rest mass? If so, this backwards. A particle with no mass will travel at c in all inertial reference frames. A particle with mass will travel at less than c in all inertial reference frames.

If it doesn't travel at all, like the photon screwing around in a box at c, you can change the speed of the box, and all of the energy-momentum is exhibited as mass. Between these two extremes there's a sliding scale. If the energy-momentum travels slower than c because it's screwing around a little, there's an effective mass. If it travels even slower because it screws around even more, the effective mass increases. If ends up not travelling at all because it's totally screwing around, the effective mass is rest mass. Because inertia is the flip side of momentum. because of the symmetry between momentum and inertia.

What are you talking about?

It isn't incorrect. You can look at an electron sitting there in front of you. You just can't do this with a neutrino.

You can in principle. It's just difficult because its difficult to interact with a neutrino to slow it down and it doesn't take much energy for a neutrino to be moving very fast.

They aren't magic loops of light. Light waves are transverse waves, neutrinos are rotational waves. You know I told edd to twang his washing line? Get a pair of pliers, twist it, then let go.

Pardon?

I'm not confused about it at all. I understand E=mc². I understand the symmetry between momentum and inertia. Rest mass is a measure of how much energy-momentum is not moving in aggregate with respect to you. When a wave propagating linearly at c resists your attempt to change its state of motion you call it momentum. When the same wave is in a closed path, then when it resists your attempt to change its state of motion, you call it mass. That's why a photon in a box adds mass to that system. Electron-positron annihilation is like opening one box with the other, then two radiating bodies lose mass, only afterwards they're not there any more.

Well the individual words being used are English... but you're just not making a word of sense.

Not so. The proton is like a 938 MeV wave going round and round in a box. You need to add energy to get the box moving. The neutrino is like a wave moving nearly linearly at nearly c. If you could trap that in a box you'd add 511keV worth of mass to that system, only you can't, not easily, it's really difficult to get hold of.

Erm, I'm going for "No." on this one.

So you slow down a wave moving at c a little, and then you slow it down a little more. And maybe it wasn't quite moving at c to begin with.

You can't slow down something moving at c. If it was moving at c it must have no rest mass. If it moves at less than c it must have rest mass. This is really really really basic special relativity.

I said it was a simplification. It wasn't misleading. Not like the cargo-cult "cosmic treacle" explanation of mass that contradicts Einstein and E=mc².

It was nonsense.

Get real. It's called pair production.

Hilarious. In response to just a few of the many factors that distinguish neutrinos from photons that utterly demolish your claims, you say only "Get real. It's called pair production". And yet surprisingly nobody takes you seriously.

Huff puff.

Pardon?

Just put the photon through pair production. Chop it half and wrap and trap each half in a box of its own making. Now you've got an electron. It now has a rotational motion when previously it didn't. That's why the weak interaction now applies.

A neutral pion decays to two photons. Does that mean... I actually don't know what you think this means. Bearing in mind you think two objects that are completely different are somehow the same thing... anything could really go here.

 

[Farsight]

Sorry to resurrect this old thread, but there has been a lot of mention of this "Relativity+" malarky in several threads recently, and perhaps this thread is a more appropriate discussion venue...

I think I pretty much nailed it actually. See the physicsworld article Reality check at the LHC.

 

[Tubbythin]

I think I pretty much nailed it actually. See the physicsworld article Reality check at the LHC.

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