Merged Relativity+ / Farsight

[edd]

Page not found.

Physicsworld appears to be doing some EB&W with its links. If you search for it on the site it crops up at that URL, and for me the link then became live.

 

[W.D.Clinger]

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

It's hard to respond to someone who dismisses the relevant math and science with arguments like this:

You've got that back to front. Let me try to explain it for you in terms simple enough for you to understand.....screwing around....screwing around a little....screws around even more....totally screwing around....

 

[Tubbythin]

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

Ok. I've read the article now. So what exactly have you nailed?

 

[ctamblyn]

You forgot about charge.

I said that the electron interacts with photons - that what having charge means. I thought you knew that.

And that we cannot distinguish neutrino speed from c.

No-one who believes SR is correct doubts that the speed of a massive neutrino does in fact differ from c, so your point is irrelevant.

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.

The fact that electrons and neutrinos participate in weak interactions while photons do not is an observable fact, so I will quite happily refer to it.

You've got that back to front.
(...snip...)

No, I have that perfectly correct and it's not up for debate - anyone can read up on SR and see that is correct. If neutrinos have rest mass, they travel slower than c. Just like all other massive particles. Unless you're saying SR is wrong, of course.

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 are asserting that there is no inertial reference frame in which a neutrino is at rest, which would only be true if the neutrino is massless. I am pointing out that at least two of the three varieties of neutrino are massive.

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.

Neutrinos are not washing lines...

I'm not confused about it at all. I understand E=mc².
(...snip...)

Actually, I'm beginning to think you are just as confused about SR as you were about GR. Particles with rest mass (including massive neutrinos) travel slower than c, and therefore there are inertial reference frames in which such particles are at rest. If you deny that by saying this like "you can look at an electron sitting there in front of you; you just can't do this with a neutrino", you deny SR.

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.

No. No-one needs to trap anything in a box. If you were to travel alongside a massive neutrino, you'd see a particle at rest with a rest mass on the order of an eV, not 511 keV.

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.

If it was massive, it was never going at c to begin with. In some frames of reference, it was even at rest.

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 wrong. A photon does not produce electrons, as you stated. A photon in a suitable e/m field might produce electron/positron pairs, though (among other possibilities).

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.

What? Did you even read what I wrote?

Huff puff.

Oh, I was quite correct.

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.

All speculative, with no experimental support and plenty of reasons to disbelieve it. Like the fact that the photon is neutral, doesn't feel the weak interaction, is a boson, etc. etc. etc.

 

[ctamblyn]

Page not found.

Ditto.

 

[edd]

Page not found.

As I said, the server does evil, bad and wrong things. Remove the final argument it appends to the URL or just search physicsworld for the story.

Anyway it doesn't say much other than that the LHC hasn't seen anything tremendously exciting yet. Which isn't exactly unexpected and I think hardly counts as a strong prediction.

 

[ctamblyn]

As I said, the server does evil, bad and wrong things. Remove the final argument it appends to the URL or just search physicsworld for the story.

Anyway it doesn't say much other than that the LHC hasn't seen anything tremendously exciting yet. Which isn't exactly unexpected and I think hardly counts as a strong prediction.

Ah, I've got the link to work now (I notice that the article is over a year old, though). Thanks for the tips!

As I understand it, by the end of 2012 there should be enough data to say whether then standard model Higgs exists or not. Hardly unexciting, regardless of the outcome!

 

[Reality Check]

Farsight: Just what did you nail in "Reality check at the LHC"

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

Ditto: Farsight: Just what did you nail in Reality check at the LHC?

ETA: This article was written on Jan 18, 2011!
Farsight, you are ignoring over a year's worth of progress in particle physics, e.g.
January: CDF finds new physics in tops
April: CDF gives us goosebumps
November: LHCb finds CP violation in charm
December: LHC glimpses Higgs

ETA2: Relativity+ claims to be a TOE.
That raises querstions like just what does this crackpot (if it was not crackpottery then it would be published in journals or textbooks, not a paperback!) TOE actually predict?

So Farsight, what does Relativity+ predict for the CP violation in charm quarks? For that matter what does it predict for any CP violation?

 

[ctamblyn]

Ditto: Farsight: Just what did you nail in Reality check at the LHC?

What I want to know, RC, is what were you doing at the LHC?

 

[Reality Check]

Just noticed something.
One person who gave this paperback a 5 star review is a "Mr. J. Dunning-Davies" of Hull. Could this be the Jeremy Dunning-Davies, a contributor to the crank Thunderbolts site and the editor of a edition about the Electric Universe idea in a supposibly peer reviewed journal?

 

[kalen]

...Make some testable quantitative predictions for these notions you want to support or to be supported. If those notions make no testable quantitative predictions other than those already tested from current theories, than said notions provide no advantage over those already tested and verified theories (other than to you).

This.

Nobody cares about any new theory unless it predicts something new. True, sometimes a new theory allows for predictions to be calculated easier, or to higher accuracy.

So, predictions and/or calculations: what'll it be?

 

[Eggs Ackley]

This.

Nobody cares about any new theory unless it predicts something new. True, sometimes a new theory allows for predictions to be calculated easier, or to higher accuracy.

So, predictions and/or calculations: what'll it be?

Another way to score science points with a theory is if it is more parsimonious than existing theories. For example, if one could show that the strong force was merely a consequence, say, of electrodynamics and special relativity and didn't require any additional parameters to determine its strength, then that would also be of interest.

 

[Farsight]

Ok. I've read the article now. So what exactly have you nailed?

That it would be a bit of a damp squib. There haven't been any spectacular discoveries. What it has done though is knocked a whole lot of woo on the head. That's good.

 

[Farsight]

Just noticed something.
One person who gave this paperback a 5 star review is a "Mr. J. Dunning-Davies" of Hull. Could this be the Jeremy Dunning-Davies, a contributor to the crank Thunderbolts site and the editor of a edition about the Electric Universe idea in a supposibly peer reviewed journal?

Yes. I said he'd reviewed it on the thread and that I'd exchanged emails with him.

ETA: here you go: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8100114&postcount=83

 

[Farsight]

Another way to score science points with a theory is if it is more parsimonious than existing theories. For example, if one could show that the strong force was merely a consequence, say, of electrodynamics and special relativity and didn't require any additional parameters to determine its strength, then that would also be of interest.

How about if you could explain why a region of space that we call a gravitational field was the result of a gradient in the relative strength of the strong force and electromagnetic force? You could test this by measuring the fine-structure constant near the surface of the sun. Of course this isn't some precise unique prediction, but it does "score points", and with a few more like it the tally starts to look interesting.

 

[Farsight]

I said that the electron interacts with photons - that what having charge means. I thought you knew that.

No it doesn't mean that, because photons interact with photons too. See two-photon physics. I thought you knew that.

No-one who believes SR is correct doubts that the speed of a massive neutrino does in fact differ from c, so your point is irrelevant.

I'm the one rooting for relativity and giving the Einstein quotes. I believe SR is correct, and that E=mc² is correct too. Einstein explained mass over a hundred years ago. If the speed is c none of the energy-momentum is mass, if the speed is zero all the energy-momentum is mass, and these are the two ends of the scale. Take a look at Neutrino Mass by S P King on arXiv and read this on page 3:

"Just as light passing through matter slows down, which is equivalent to the photon gaining a small effective mass, so neutrinos passing through matter also result in the neutrinos slowing down and gaining a small effective mass".

It's wrong to say a photon has mass and therefore travels at less than c. What's correct is to say if a photon travels at less than c it has mass whilst it's doing so. It's the same for a neutrino. And if it's facts you're looking for, neutrinos travel at a speed that is indistinguishable from the speed of photons, and we have never ever observed a neutrino at rest, just as we've never observed a photon at rest.

The fact that electrons and neutrinos participate in weak interactions while photons do not is an observable fact, so I will quite happily refer to it.

And converting a photon into an electron and a positron is an observable fact too. As is the photon-photon interaction. What isn't is the virtual electron-positron pairs that are said to be involved in that interaction.

No, I have that perfectly correct and it's not up for debate - anyone can read up on SR and see that is correct. If neutrinos have rest mass, they travel slower than c. Just like all other massive particles. Unless you're saying SR is wrong, of course.

No SR isn't wrong. Nor is E=mc² and nor is Einstein. See above.

You are asserting that there is no inertial reference frame in which a neutrino is at rest, which would only be true if the neutrino is massless. I am pointing out that at least two of the three varieties of neutrino are massive.

And I'm pointing out that when you slow a wave down from c it exhibits mass.

Neutrinos are not washing lines...

No, the washing line is space. And neutrinos are spinors.

Actually, I'm beginning to think you are just as confused about SR as you were about GR. Particles with rest mass (including massive neutrinos) travel slower than c, and therefore there are inertial reference frames in which such particles are at rest. If you deny that by saying this like "you can look at an electron sitting there in front of you; you just can't do this with a neutrino", you deny SR.

I'm not confused about SR. You're confused about mass.

No. No-one needs to trap anything in a box. If you were to travel alongside a massive neutrino, you'd see a particle at rest with a rest mass on the order of an eV, not 511 keV.

You could do the same with a photon. You slow it down inside a fibre optic cable and travel alongside it outside the cable.

If it was massive, it was never going at c to begin with. In some frames of reference, it was even at rest.

Go and read Light is heavy and try to understand it.

It was wrong. A photon does not produce electrons, as you stated. A photon in a suitable e/m field might produce electron/positron pairs, though (among other possibilities).

What are you on about? The picture showed proton-antiproton annihilation to gamma photons. I said it was a simplification, and that it was, but see wikipedia and pay attention:

"When a proton encounters its antiparticle, the reaction is not as simple as electron-positron annihilation. In general, a proton encountering an antiproton will turn into a number of mesons, mostly pions and kaons, which will fly away from the annihilation point. The newly created mesons are unstable, and will decay in a series of reactions that ultimately produce nothing but gamma rays, electrons, positrons, and neutrinos".

Then you can annihilate electrons with positrons to gamma rays, so all you're left with is photons and neutrinos, both of which travel at a speed which is indistinguishable from the speed of light. I never said photons produce electrons, I said we can conduct pair production. That's where we split a photon over a nucleon. We started off with the photon and the nucleon, we end up with an electron, a positron, and the nucleon.

 

[Farsight]

What? Did you even read what I wrote?

Oh, I was quite correct.

All speculative, with no experimental support and plenty of reasons to disbelieve it. Like the fact that the photon is neutral, doesn't feel the weak interaction, is a boson, etc. etc. etc.

Huff puff, dismiss the evidence and evade the real issue. The real issue here isn’t neutrino mass, it’s the myth of the fabulous Higgs boson, and the cosmic-treacle fairytale that the Higgs mechanism gives everything its mass. See A Zeptospace Odyssey: A Journey into the Physics of the LHC by Gian Francesco Giudice. He’s a physicist at CERN with a hundred-plus papers to his name. On page 173 through 175 he talks about the Higgs sector. He starts by saying: The most inappropriate name ever given to the Higgs boson is "The God particle". The name gives the impression that the Higgs boson is the central particle of the Standard Model, governing its structure. But this is very far from the truth. On page 174 he says: Unlike the rest of the theory, the Higgs sector is rather arbitrary, and its form is not dictated by any deep fundamental principle. For this reason its structure looks frighteningly ad-hoc. He goes on to say: It is sometimes said that the discovery of the Higgs boson will explain the mystery of the origin of mass. This statement requires a good deal of qualification. He gives a good explanation, and finishes with: In summary, the Higgs mechanism accounts for about 1 per cent of the mass of ordinary matter, and for only 0.2 per cent of the mass of the universe. This is not nearly enough to justify the claim of explaining the origin of mass. Damn right, because Einstein explained it over a hundred years ago.

 

[ctamblyn]

No it doesn't mean that, because photons interact with photons too. See two-photon physics. I thought you knew that.

Photons do not interact directly with other photons. They can only do so through their coupling to charged fields. That's why photon-photon scattering amplitudes are so amazingly tiny that you can shine one high-power laser through another without observing a single scattering event. Only charged particles interact directly with photons.

I'm the one rooting for relativity and giving the Einstein quotes.
(...snip...)
Take a look at Neutrino Mass by S P King on arXiv and read this on page 3:

Massive neutrinos have rest mass, Farsight, even when not travelling through matter.

It's wrong to say a photon has mass and therefore travels at less than c.
(...snip...)

Irrelevant. No-one's saying that, because photons are massless. At least two flavours of neutrino, however, are not massless - they have rest mass, just like electrons. And therefore they always travel at less than c, just like electrons, as a consequence of SR.

And converting a photon into an electron and a positron is an observable fact too.

No, a photon interacting with an e/m field producing an electron/position pair is an observable fact. A single photon by itself can never do that. Besides, this is irrelevant - electrons (and neutrinos) participate in weak interactions, have rest mass, have spin-1/2 and obey Fermi-Dirac statistics. Electrons are also charged. Photons, whether they're trapped in a box or not, are neutral, massless, do not participate in weak interactions, have spin-1 and obey Bose-Einstein statistics.

(...snip...)
You could do the same with a photon. You slow it down inside a fibre optic cable and travel alongside it outside the cable.

We're talking about particles in vacuo. You can't travel alongside a photon in vacuo, but you can do so with a massive neutrino.

Go and read Light is heavy and try to understand it.

Nothing on that page supports your position that massive neutrinos cannot be at rest, in the obvious sense that we can find an inertial frame in which the total momentum has all its spatial components equal to zero.

What are you on about?

Your misleading portrayal of pair production in the other thread. We can come back to that later if you like, after we've finished clearing up your misunderstanding of SR.

 

[Tubbythin]

That it would be a bit of a damp squib. There haven't been any spectacular discoveries.

The lack of discoveries to date doesn't make it a damp squib. It might make it of less interest to those outside the field, the general public and some crackpots but that doesn't mean that scientific (and technical) knowledge isn't being accumulated.

What it has done though is knocked a whole lot of woo on the head. That's good.

I think I agree with this, though I think our ideas of what constitutes woo here might differ.

 

[ctamblyn]

(...snip...)
The real issue here isn’t neutrino mass, it’s the myth of the fabulous Higgs boson,
(...snip...)

No, don't try to pretend we were talking about the Higgs all along. If you want to talk about the Higgs we can come to that later, once you grasp the following two points:

1. A photon trapped in a box does not look like an electron. Photons are neutral, spin-1, obey Bose-Einstein statistics and do not feel the weak interactions. They cannot behave like electrons, which are charged, spin-1/2, obey Fermi-Dirac statistics and participate in weak interactions. Furthermore there is no mechanism known to physics by which a photon could self-trap itself.
2. A massive neutrino always travels slower than c (even in vacuo), and can therefore be at rest with respect to certain observers.