Merged Relativity+ / Farsight

Only it's not my theory. See Minkowski’s Space and Time:

"In the description of the field caused by the electron itself, then it will appear that the division of the field into electric and magnetic forces is a relative one with respect to the time-axis assumed; the two forces considered together can most vividly be described by a certain analogy to the force-screw in mechanics; the analogy is, however, imperfect."

Hilighted the important part.

And see Maxwell's On Physical Lines of Force:

"A motion of translation along an axis cannot produce a rotation about that axis unless it meets with some special mechanism, like that of a screw".

Written decades before electrons were even discovered and longer still before quantum theory. He knew absolutely nothing about particle spin.

But when I try and tell people about the screw nature of electromagnetism, I get shouted down by the troll-patrol.

Because what you present as evidence is evidence for the mainstream theories, not your theories, and you have nothing but non-sequiturs.
 
What does is the resemblance between my "cartoon spiral" and depictions of gravitomagnetism.
Go on, tell us what gravitomagnetism has to do with the electromagnetic field around the electron? And I mean directly, not by the analogies for which gravitomagnetism is named. You're just throwing out terms that you superficially think have something to do with what you're talking about.

And if you could hurl the cyclone past the anticyclone, they’d swirl around one another too. Like electrons and positrons do in positronium. Sigh, I suppose you're going to tell me that electrons etc move the way they do because they're somehow magicking up photons and throwing them another. As if hydrogen atoms twinkle, and magnets shine.
Again, superficial analogies.

What you mean is that you know I'm right, but you won't admit it.
If you want my opinion - I agree that the electron appears pointlike down to the scale of our experiments. I agree electrons have wavelengths associated with them, and what may be termed a spatial extent in certain respects, but this is not in conflict with the definitions of pointlike and the experimental results pertaining to that definition as spelled out quite clearly by ben m, for example. I further think one must not get too bogged down by wedging physical phenomena into words and then falsely drawing conclusions based on those words.

I think that you persistently produce (a word I use to include the production of references to, as well as the origination of) ideas that are crackpot.
 
Hm, I read this article also but I thought that when they said (with my bolding):
The Compton wavelength can be contrasted with the de Broglie wavelength, which depends on the momentum of a particle and determines the cutoff between particle and wave behavior in quantum mechanics.
... that this was in contrast to Quantum Field Theory that reigned supreme at wavelengths below the Compton Wavelength. You seem to think that the term "quantum mechanics" is an imprecise term here for QFT.

Rather curious that given Farsight’s apparent fixation on particular words that he evidently misses (perhaps deliberately) the word “single” in the quote he cites. Indeed when you have to consider at least 2 point particles (due to the additional energy of a measurement of an electron at the Compton scale) “…the concept of a single pointlike particle breaks down completely”.
Bolding added.

The problem with quote mining is that you can often get buried by it.

ETA: for those interested here is the relevant portion that Farsight mined the quote from (bottom of page two going to page three).
I missed it too, although I read that paragraph carefully. I do see your point that the meaning is that at wavelengths below the Compton limit, there will always be more than one point-like particle if you measure them. Farsight, do you agree that it makes sense in this way?
 
Hm, I read this article also but I thought that when they said (with my bolding):

... that this was in contrast to Quantum Field Theory that reigned supreme at wavelengths below the Compton Wavelength. You seem to think that the term "quantum mechanics" is an imprecise term here for QFT.


I missed it too, although I read that paragraph carefully. I do see your point that the meaning is that at wavelengths below the Compton limit, there will always be more than one point-like particle if you measure them. Farsight, do you agree that it makes sense in this way?


Sort of, Quantum Mechanics is just a more general term encompassing things like Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) and Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) which are Quantum Field Theories.
 
The electron Compton wavelength is 2.42 ×10ˉ¹² m. But ben m will tell you the electron is some 10ˉ²² m speck that "has" a field,

Did I tell you that? No I didn't. I explained some actual physics, and you didn't read it. Again. Here's what I explained:

There are two different totally phenomena with separate scales here: (a) the length scale associated with internal degrees-of-freedom of all objects of this type vs. (b) the spatial extent of the object's wavefunction in a given experiment.

All hydrogen atoms have internal stuff going on a scale of 1A. All lead nuclei have internal structure spread over 8fm. All protons have internal structure spread over 1fm. All C60 buckyballs have internal structure spread over 10nm. A baseball has internal structure over 10cm. This is all visible in experiments. This is the scale you see in scattering experiments.

You can prepare an atomic hydrogen beam in which the particle positions are uncertain on a scale of 1cm. Or 1mm. Or 1A. Depends on the experiment. You can prepare a proton beam where the wavefunction diffracts through two slits 100um apart. Or 1um. Or 1nm. Depends on the experiment. It's a totally different phenomenon than the scale mentioned in the previous paragraph.

On the first observable: scattering experiments cannot find a spatial scale associated with electrons qua electrons. No matter how hard we look. This means there is no such scale down to 10^-18m. On the other hand, you can have an electron wavefunction spread over 1mm, or spread over 1A, or spread over 0.01A. (Depends on the experiment, remember?)

The standard term for the former quantity is "the size of the particle". If I say "the size of a buckyball is 10nm", I'm referring to the former quantity. You cannot rebut this by pointing out a buckyball diffraction experiment that used 100nm slits---that's referring to the latter quantity.

I will continue to say "electrons are pointlike", and I'm always referring to the former quantity. Electrons are pointlike in the same sense that hydrogen atoms are 1A wide and protons are 1fm wide. Electrons are wavelike in the same uncontroversial sense that everything is wavelike.
 
OK, Farsight, let's test your ability to explain these things.

For a hydrogen atom, what is:

a) The spatial extent of the atom wavefunction? Could you get a hydrogen atom to diffract through slits 1mm apart, for example?

b) The size scale of the atom's internal structure? (Measure it any way you want. I recommend a low-energy scattering experiment that separates s wave from p wave.)

c) The Compton wavelength of the whole atom?

I await your answers. If a,b, and c are NOT the same number, please suggest a three different words you'd use to separately describe these three things.

OK, now for your physics.

I want to make my own plot of your greyscale spiral. I have Maxwell's Equations and a differential-equation solver. What boundary conditions should I plug in, to exactly which equations, to obtain this spiral? Your plot seems to show an unidentified scalar quantity (represented by the greyscale). What quantity, precisely, maps to the greyscale?
 
Farsight -

...you cannot show us how any one of the loopy photon models you've been talking about can be used to make experimentally testable assertions.

Any progress on this? You've had 7+ years to refine your model and work out some of its experimentally verifiable consequences. I'm keen to hear your results.
 
No, it's not testable because it makes no testable predictions. If Farsight were to name even one thing that "his" theory could predict, it doesn't matter if it's testable right now; it would be testable eventually, and that would suffice for our purposes. The problem is that it makes zero predictions that can be tested, now or later. That's not science, that's crackpottery.
Not all theories predict stuff in their infancy. Even Einstein didn't know what his theories would end up predicting.

Einstein's doctoral dissertation, A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions, is readily available:
Albert Einstein. A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions. Republished in Annalen der Physik (4), 19, 1906, pages 289-306, with corrections in volume 34, 1911, pages 591-592. These publications are available online in PDF.​
What? I didn't see any claims made by the author that he didn't use minions in the solving of his equations?
No, we're rejecting Farsight's numerology, Farsight's endless references to pictorial models that either make no testable predictions or predict consequences known to be false, and Farsight's belief that quoting random things Einstein has said or written can substitute for understanding the mathematics and physics Einstein is discussing.
It's ironic you bring up Einstein because they said the same stuff about him.


If his ideas are patently nonsensical, it does.
Well if they are patently nonsensical who better to bring them to than our favorite patent clerk in the sky.

attachment.php

Brilliant!

Maybe.

But how would you - Senex - ever know?

For avoidance of doubt, that's a serious question.



Maybe.

But how could anyone - you, me, Farsight - tell ... today?

For avoidance of doubt, that's a serious question.



Why do you need a "math minion", Senex?

For avoidance of doubt, that's a serious question.



Maybe they will.

How can you - Senex - tell, today, if there's "something to that stuff"?

Those are some serious questions. Let me answer the third one first. Before "the accident" and the loss of my liquid helium and ensuing neighbor's bad feelings, I was close to finishing an equation I couldn't possibly solve myself.
Question four is unlikely to be true but I didn't want to hurt ben m's feelings.

I'm beginning to think that "Einstein the Patent Clerk" is as good a litmus test of crackpottery as any. Einstein's job at the patent office was to apply mainstream physics, which he had learned in mainstream schools from mainstream physics professors, to patent claims. If you brought your idea to Einstein, it wouldn't be judged by a maverick outsider. It would be judged by a card-carrying member of The Club.
He patently not a member of the club.
I think the constant refrain in this thread is that Farsight's ideas could use a liberal dose of the same stifling Einstein got.
The truth comes out!

OK, Farsight, let's test your ability to explain these things.

For a hydrogen atom, what is:

a) The spatial extent of the atom wavefunction? Could you get a hydrogen atom to diffract through slits 1mm apart, for example?

b) The size scale of the atom's internal structure? (Measure it any way you want. I recommend a low-energy scattering experiment that separates s wave from p wave.)

c) The Compton wavelength of the whole atom?

I await your answers. If a,b, and c are NOT the same number, please suggest a three different words you'd use to separately describe these three things.

OK, now for your physics.

I want to make my own plot of your greyscale spiral. I have Maxwell's Equations and a differential-equation solver. What boundary conditions should I plug in, to exactly which equations, to obtain this spiral? Your plot seems to show an unidentified scalar quantity (represented by the greyscale). What quantity, precisely, maps to the greyscale?

Farsight -
Any progress on this? You've had 7+ years to refine your model and work out some of its experimentally verifiable consequences. I'm keen to hear your results.
What a bunch of naysayers.
 
Not all theories predict stuff in their infancy. Even Einstein didn't know what his theories would end up predicting.

...

:)

But in all seriousness for the sake of the lurkers... Farsight / John Duffield is posting here virtually same collection of vague sciency-sounding sentences he has been posting on forums and blogs continually over the last 7 years or more. In all that time there has been precisely no development, no firming up of the ideas into a mathematical model (or even any beginnings of an attempt to do so), no taking on board of criticism or heeding of advice from actual experts, no willingness to acknowledge that his ideas (or the ideas he supports) could even possibly be anything other than perfect, and certainly no willingness to undertake any of the hard work that transforms what he has - the germ of an idea - into a model of some kind which allows proper evaluation.

There are no signs at all here of someone trying earnestly to find the next great breakthrough.

What a bunch of naysayers.

No we're not!
 
See how the electron is shown as something very small with a size of < 10-18m?
Notice how the experiments that show that the electron has a radius of < 10-18m are ignored by Farsight, steen.
Thus it is reasonable for any graphic to show an electron as a particle with a radius of < 10-18m (except in Farsight's world) :jaw-dropp.

Actually that graphic is slightly wrong - the best measurement of the maximum radius of the electron is much smaller: Electron
The electron has no known substructure.[2][74] Hence, it is defined or assumed to be a point particle with a point charge and no spatial extent.[9] Observation of a single electron in a Penning trap shows the upper limit of the particle's radius is 10−22 meters.[75]
 
Brilliant!.
Actually brilliantly dumb of the creator of the graphic :D!
If you take the first image (radiating lines) and the second image (concentric circles) and add them then you get a dartboard, not the third image. Senex, I hope that you can agree that it is rather dumb to just attach a random image to a post without any indication of its source or what the image actually contains!

Farsight is just obsessing about the word screw in a couple of analogies about the electromagnetic field and not trying to actually visualize the electromagnetic field.
Then he is ignoring everything we know about light - it is not actually an electromagnetic field! That is its classical description. We have known for a century that light behaves as both a wave and a particle.
 
Actually brilliantly dumb of the creator of the graphic :D!
If you take the first image (radiating lines) and the second image (concentric circles) and add them then you get a dartboard, not the third image. Senex, I hope that you can agree that it is rather dumb to just attach a random image to a post without any indication of its source or what the image actually contains!

Farsight is just obsessing about the word screw in a couple of analogies about the electromagnetic field and not trying to actually visualize the electromagnetic field.
Then he is ignoring everything we know about light - it is not actually an electromagnetic field! That is its classical description. We have known for a century that light behaves as both a wave and a particle.

It's a depiction relating to one should properly speak of the electromagnetic field Fuv rather than E or B separately.
 
It's a depiction relating to one should properly speak of the electromagnetic field Fuv rather than E or B separately.

The electromagnetic field tensor has six independent components. 3 that are E, and 3 that are B. It's a useful way of writing them down both down in one mathematical object, but that doesn't make it possible to take that tensor and just use it to plot a spiral. Or a dartboard for that matter.

It's therefore not a useful depiction of the tensor, nor does it demonstrate that you should always use the tensor rather than talk of the E and B fields separately while recognising their relationship (which is a perfectly valid thing to choose to do).
 
But Dirac's belt is legit.
Dirac's belt is a legit analogy for electron spin - it is idiocy to base actual physics on any analogy.

Electrons diffract :jaw-dropp! They also scatter. Electrons have the properties of both particles and waves. This is high school physics.

You are still atomic orbitals quote mining (lying about) Wikipedia as I pointed out back in 13th August 2013.

Yet more :eye-poppi stuff that you think is significant for some unknown reason, Farsight:
* Displacement current exists!
* Frame dragging exists!
* Gravitoelectromagnetism exists!
* Maxwell and Minkowski used the word screw in analogies!
* Topological quantum field theory exists!

We do not disregard physics.
We do point out your fantasies about this physics, Farsight.
We do point out your ignorance of quantum mechanics, e.g. the creation of virtual particles from actual particles (photons turning into virtual oppositely charged leptons). This is simple enough - the Heisenberg uncertainty principle means that any particle can turn into pairs of particles for a very short time.
 
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It's a depiction relating to one should properly speak of the electromagnetic field Fuv rather than E or B separately.
Sorry Senex but you (and I and no one else in this thread) has any idea what the graphic is supposed to depict. What it actually contains is just dumb because the third image is not the addition of the other two.
What we have is Farsight's assertion of what this random image contains:
You depict E with radial lines of force, you depict B with concentric lines of force. To visualise that greater whole, the field caused by the electron itself, you combine the radial and concentric lines like this:

ETA: This http://bogpaper.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/emfield.jpg graphic cited by Farsight where bogpaper.wpengine.com is an blog run by economists! But bogpaper.com has a blog author called John Duffield writing Science Sunday with John Duffield where the obsession with the "screw nature" of the electromagnetic field appears here. There is plenty of nonsense there, e.g. "And you can diffract the electron, because it’s made of light." You can also diffract C60 molecules - are they made of light :eek:!
 
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crackpot derivation of a crackpot cartoon

Any progress on this? You've had 7+ years to refine your model and work out some of its experimentally verifiable consequences. I'm keen to hear your results.

I want to make my own plot of your greyscale spiral. I have Maxwell's Equations and a differential-equation solver. What boundary conditions should I plug in, to exactly which equations, to obtain this spiral? Your plot seems to show an unidentified scalar quantity (represented by the greyscale). What quantity, precisely, maps to the greyscale?


Those are the relevant questions. In my own response to Farsight below, I will explain why his previous answers have been insufficient (or worse).

That is not a mathematical equation. That is a crackpot equation.
It's a depiction relating to one should properly speak of the electromagnetic field Fuv rather than E or B separately.
It's a crackpot depiction of the electromagnetic field Fμν.

You have never been able to provide any scientific explanation of what that cartoon has to do with the Fμν tensor or its components.

Your references to Fμν are just like your references to Einstein's gμν. After years of quoting a passage in which Einstein refers to those gμν, you had to admit you had no idea of what those gμν actually are.

You don't understand the Fμν any better. Had you actually read the book you've been citing as your proof-text (Jackson's Classical Electrodynamics, Third Edition), you'd realize that (in inertial reference frames) the 12 nonzero components of that tensor consist of the three components of the electric field E and the three components of the magnetic field B, together with their additive inverses (because the electromagnetic tensor is antisymmetric).

By the way, that's Jackson's equation (11.138). Note well how the equation uses Einstein's gμν to lower the indices of the contravariant Fμν. (You can't possibly understand what's that's about without understanding Einstein's gμν, and we know you don't know what those gμν mean.)

Jackson's equation (11.138) is basically the same as Einstein's equation (62) (in the paper where you got lost at equation (3)), except Einstein uses the gμν to raise the indices instead of using the gμν to lower them. Einstein's equations (60b) and (63a) are Maxwell's equations in vector form. Jackson's equation (11.146) is just Einstein's equation (9) applied to the contravariant electromagnetic tensor Fμν. (You, of course, have a long history of denying the coordinate transformations stated by Einstein's equation (9).)

Your cartoon can't depict a magnetic field because you've said the field is isotropic, which implies your picture violates Gauss's Law for Magnetism, which is one of Maxwell's equations.

Your cartoon can't depict the electric field of a static electromagnetic field because Faraday's Law of Induction says the curl of an electric field is zero unless the magnetic field is changing over time. That too is one of Maxwell's equations. (It might be possible to generate a dynamic electromagnetic field whose electric field looks like your cartoon, but we needn't consider that further because you've always denied that your cartoon depicts an electric field.)

You have always claimed your cartoon depicts an electromagnetic field. As we have seen, however, it depicts neither an electric nor a magnetic field, and every component of the full electromagnetic field is a component of either the electric field or the magnetic field. That's why people who actually understand electromagnetism have greeted your claim with extreme skepticism.

This morning, you finally told us your cartoon depiction of the electromagnetic field was obtained via a crackpot equation:

See that screw? You depict E with radial lines of force, you depict B with concentric lines of force. To visualise that greater whole, the field caused by the electron itself, you combine the radial and concentric lines like this:
attachment.php
A sufficiently ignorant person might indeed think he could add two radially symmetric pictures, both without twist, to obtain a third picture that incorporates twist.

Here, however, you seem to be saying you can add an electric field to a magnetic field. That doesn't work because the units are fundamentally different:
  • kg·m·s−3·A−1
  • kg·s−2·A−1
This difference in the units arises because forces produced by the magnetic field are proportional to speed (and orthogonal to both velocity and the field lines), while forces produced by the electric field are not. (That's related to the fundamental difference between time and space, whose dimensions are related by the speed of light.)

Adding fields of fundamentally incompatible units is crackpottery of Shakespearean misdimensions. I was therefore not surprised to learn your crackpot depiction of the electromagnetic field was obtained by making that mistake.

So far as I can figure out, the only possible connection between your cartoon and the electromagnetic field is that your cartoon does show one (atypical) set of possible trajectories for charged particles moving within an electromagnetic field. Although the trajectories of charged particles are determined by the electromagnetic field interacting with their charge, mass, and velocity, those trajectories are quite different from the six-dimensional electromagnetic field itself. As a depiction of electromagnetic fields, therefore, your cartoon is (and will always remain) a complete failure.

I'm adding this paragraph to address ben m's objection immediately below this post. Trajectories that bear some resemblance to the lines shown in Farsight's cartoon can be obtained by tossing a charged particle slightly to the side of an oppositely charged central body, even if the magnetic field is zero or negligible. I am in complete agreement with the rest of ben m's post.

As I have said elsewhere, the decomposition of an electromagnetic field into electric and magnetic fields is directly analogous to the decomposition of spacetime into space and time.
Minkowski did talk about spacetime. But he referred to a screw too. As did Maxwell. Obviously you've never read the original material.
Your estimates of what others have read or know continue to be less accurate than could be explained by random guessing.

More to the point, you failed to read your own sources.
 
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So far as I can figure out, the only possible connection between your cartoon and the electromagnetic field is that your cartoon does show one (atypical) set of possible trajectories for charged particles moving within an electromagnetic field.

Actually, not even THAT is true. Farsight's radial plot might indeed be interpreted as electric field lines from a static charge; his bullseye plot might indeed be interpreted as magnetic field lines around a static line of current. (If he'd included an arrow, you would be able to make out the direction of the field which would break the symmetry you point out. But let's be generous and imagine such arrows was intended.)

But in this case the spiral lines are NOT trajectories of charged particles. Magnetic field lines exert forces in the "cross" direction (F = v x B) which, no matter what the velocity is, is always perpendicular to B. Farsight's "spirals" have picked up a component parallel to B, in a direction where *neither* the radial nor the circumferential "lines" can exert a force. So those spirals are not force-directions, nor trajectories, nor anything else.

I believe Farsight obtained them by just picturing "E + B", presumably believing that "electromagnetism" unification allows him to do this. He presumably was picturing "length of the little E arrow added to length of the little B arrow", which is how you graphically add vectors when the lengths represent magnitudes in the same units, but in this case is not true---in other words, it's precisely the "Shakespearean" crackpottery that you expected.

Also, as an aside, the "bullseye" pattern does NOT give the magnetic field lines of any actual static particle. That's the magnetic field of a line of current. Particles have magnetic dipoles; there is no slice of a dipole's field whose field lines look like Farsight's bullseye. Since Farsight comes right out and says this describes an "electron", we don't have to be generous: he's wrong.

ETA: Farsight is welcome to replace the words "magnetic field" anywhere this post with "the vector quantity that Maxwell and Faraday referred to with the letter B but which also can be treated as part of the electromagnetic field tensor". Just to avoid another terminology digression.
 
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Also, as an aside, the "bullseye" pattern does NOT give the magnetic field lines of any actual static particle. That's the magnetic field of a line of current. Particles have magnetic dipoles; there is no slice of a dipole's field whose field lines look like Farsight's bullseye. Since Farsight comes right out and says this describes an "electron", we don't have to be generous: he's wrong.

For a minute there I thought he might be suggesting that, since the electron is a point charge, that it's also a magnetic monopole. Wouldn't surprise me if he did.
 
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<...>
It's a crackpot depiction of the electromagnetic field Fμν.

You have never been able to provide any scientific explanation of what that cartoon has to do with the Fμν tensor or its components.

Your references to Fμν are just like your references to Einstein's gμν. After years of quoting a passage in which Einstein refers to those gμν, you had to admit you had no idea of what those gμν actually are.

You don't understand the Fμν any better. Had you actually read the book you've been citing as your proof-text (Jackson's Classical Electrodynamics, Third Edition), you'd realize that (in inertial reference frames) the 12 nonzero components of that tensor consist of the three components of the electric field E and the three components of the magnetic field B, together with their additive inverses (because the electromagnetic tensor is antisymmetric).



Jackson's equation (11.138) is basically the same as Einstein's equation (62) (in the paper where you got lost at equation (3)), except Einstein uses the gμν to raise the indices instead of using the gμν to lower them. Einstein's equations (60b) and (63a) are Maxwell's equations in vector form. Jackson's equation (11.146) is just Einstein's equation (9) applied to the contravariant electromagnetic tensor Fμν. (You, of course, have a long history of denying the coordinate transformations stated by Einstein's equation (9).)

Your cartoon can't depict a magnetic field because you've said the field is isotropic, which implies your picture violates Gauss's Law for Magnetism, which is one of Maxwell's equations.

Your cartoon can't depict the electric field of a static electromagnetic field because Faraday's Law of Induction says the curl of an electric field is zero unless the magnetic field is changing over time. That too is one of Maxwell's equations. (It might be possible to generate a dynamic electromagnetic field whose electric field looks like your cartoon, but we needn't consider that further because you've always denied that your cartoon depicts an electric field.)

You have always claimed your cartoon depicts an electromagnetic field. As we have seen, however, it depicts neither an electric nor a magnetic field, and every component of the full electromagnetic field is a component of either the electric field or the magnetic field. That's why people who actually understand electromagnetism have greeted your claim with extreme skepticism.
<...>
If one does not understand the two tensor equations of electromagnetism or even the four vector equations, cartoons (even wrong ones) can provide the delusion of comprehension. Unfortunately, you will never see an equation accompanied by a meaningful mathematical analysis from Mr. Duffield, whose other infamous cartoon, an electron as a photon in esoteric loops is also devoid of a mathematical description.
 
Those are some serious questions.
Thank you.

Let me answer the third one first. Before "the accident" and the loss of my liquid helium and ensuing neighbor's bad feelings, I was close to finishing an equation I couldn't possibly solve myself.
What was that equation, if I may be so bold as to ask?

Question four is unlikely to be true but I didn't want to hurt ben m's feelings.
Q4 is: "How can you - Senex - tell, today, if there's "something to that stuff"?"

I'm puzzled; I can't see how what you wrote is an answer to that question. Would you please be kind enough to explain? For example, are you - Senex - saying that you think it is unlikely that you - Senex - can tell, today, if there's "something to that stuff"?

When may I expect answers to the first two questions?
 

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