Merged Relativity+ / Farsight

[ctamblyn]

...
No, you can assume that the field vector at a given point is defined as the force vector per unit charge that would be exerted.
...

In full: In a given inertial frame, the E field is equal in value to the force per unit charge which would be exerted on a stationary test charge. It is fundamentally and utterly point-missingly wrong to claim that E is simply "the" force, as if the electromagnetic field somehow generated a single, well-defined force at each event in spacetime (or even a single, well-defined pair of forces; that is also completely wrong).

As I stated in an earlier post, the relationship between E, B and the force on a particular charged particle having a particular velocity is much more complicated than you make out, being given by the Lorentz force law. In addition, as I also stated above, it makes no sense to speak of "the force" at points where there is no body to act upon, and yet we can and do speak of the E and B fields at such points (or, if you insist, the electromagnetic 2-form).

To return to another sub-topic which I'd prefer didn't get dropped just yet - perhaps when you return from your 2-week suspension you could get around to addressing the lack of predictive power of these loopy photon models?

 

[DeiRenDopa]

This, from Senex, leads to something very interesting ...

So, straight question, Mr Marketing: how can you tell what value Farsight's writing has, in terms of the physics?

Just so that I'm clear on this, Senex; from your perspective, all that's required - for you to accept that an idea has merit (in terms of physics) - is that it claims to see "the beauty of another's work"?

Not just that, but I see dozens of pages over years of Farsight's capturing the imagination of you guys with this theory.

From a marketer's perspective, perhaps a more pertinent point might be something like this: why is it that this thread still attracts lots of readers? Not counting those who post to it, what do the (regular?) readers of this thread get from it?

One answer surely is "putting the 'E' in 'JREF'": if it weren't so unpredictable, responding to reams of quite readable 'crackpot' text must count as a highly effective way to learn both your subject area and how to write clearly and concisely. For the general reader, not only are quite a few aspects of an important area of physics (in this case) made very clear (and lots of references given, so you can follow up on your own), but many aspects of pseudoscience can be clearly seen, and key differences with science made obvious.

Another might be something like "maybe, just maybe there's an idea here which could be worth following up." For a scientist, inspiration and ideas can come from many sources; it's possible that the dialog in this thread - and other, similar ones - may provide just such a spark. Same for historians of science. Textbook authors. Etc.

With your Marketing hat on Senex, what do you think? How do you explain the life and vitality of this thread (other than due to Farsight's own posts)? In particular, after the first few pages - in which all Farsight's key ideas were explained and clarified, and in which all the key rebuttals were made - why didn't 'the regulars' simply ignore it?

 

[steenkh]

I've given the ample evidence for the wave nature of the electron, and I've challenged the alleged evidence for the pointlike nature of the electron, saying it's a wrong inference. I can't do much more than that.

Yes, you can. You can show it, instead of claiming it.

It's a lot to comment upon. And as I said you can diffract an electron so it has a wave nature. And see above, it's the Schrödinger wave equation.

This is not a proof that the wave-particle duality does not exist.

You said what would you yourself think if your opponents used these kinds of evasion all the time? when I'm not evasive. I respond faithfully to physics posts. But I don't respond too well to when did you stop beating your wife? You are attempting an ad-hominem by claiming I'm evasive. It doesn't work. Stick to the physics.

I pointed out that you have been evasive whenever you have been asked to prove your points instead of stating them. I asked how you would react if others did the same. That is not "when did you stop beating your wife"-question. It is not even a "when did you stop being evasive"-question. Stating your position on evasiveness is not the same as admitting guilt.

There was a time when the experts here seemed willing to go all the way do the math with you. That would have been your chance to show that they were wrong, but you chose to change the subject, or even dismiss their efforts with a "bah".

 

[Senex]

With your Marketing hat on Senex, what do you think? How do you explain the life and vitality of this thread (other than due to Farsight's own posts)? In particular, after the first few pages - in which all Farsight's key ideas were explained and clarified, and in which all the key rebuttals were made - why didn't 'the regulars' simply ignore it?

While I do have a BS in marketing I also have a degree in education. I'll wear my educational hat for this post. You can minimize Farsight's physics ideas perhaps but you can not minimize his ability to keep this thread going. He's brilliant. I'm jealous I couldn't have a popular thread like this with my name on it going for years. It's a coup d'état.

As far as the regulars, nobody posts anywhere because they do not get something out of it. We all have our reasons. I believe Farsight has given a number of people an opportunity to show off knowledge. It seemed to me when I was outside there was hostility on this thread, but once I posted I started to understand the love.

 

[phunk]

While I do have a BS in marketing I also have a degree in education. I'll wear my educational hat for this post. You can minimize Farsight's physics ideas perhaps but you can not minimize his ability to keep this thread going. He's brilliant.

You've been here long enough to know it takes no brilliance to keep a thread going here. All it takes is persistence. Just have to keep posting nonsense and people will keep replying to tell you that it's nonsense.

Here's one that's been going 7 years and 7000 posts, and no one believes the OP's premise.

 

[steenkh]

While I do have a BS in marketing I also have a degree in education. I'll wear my educational hat for this post. You can minimize Farsight's physics ideas perhaps but you can not minimize his ability to keep this thread going. He's brilliant.

Brilliant at what? I am not saying that Farsight is not brilliant, but his brilliance should rather lie in his ideas, and not in his stubborn repetition of his claims.

I'm jealous I couldn't have a popular thread like this with my name on it going for years. It's a coup d'état.

Why is that a goal?

Anybody can post a thread with outrageous claims, and as long as they keep repeating the claims, the forum community will respond, and the thread keeps going. You will see that when the OP stops posting (usually because s/he is being banned), the thread dies if nobody else steps into his/her shoes.

As far as the regulars, nobody posts anywhere because they do not get something out of it. We all have our reasons. I believe Farsight has given a number of people an opportunity to show off knowledge. It seemed to me when I was outside there was hostility on this thread, but once I posted I started to understand the love.

That is true. I like Farsight because he does try to get his point through, and in contrast to others here, I find his style funny, and not offensive.

It is the work of the real experts here that makes the thread one of my favourites. I feel I learn a lot when seeing the arguments against Farsight. This is the E in JREF.

There are others who have similarly long-lived threads that I stop following because of the same lack of progress, but also because the OP has less style, and the opposition has less opportunity to display brilliance.

 

[DeiRenDopa]

While I do have a BS in marketing I also have a degree in education. I'll wear my educational hat for this post.

Cool!

Have you tried using 'rebut this high quality pseudoscience' as a learning technique? How did it work out?

You can minimize Farsight's physics ideas perhaps but you can not minimize his ability to keep this thread going. He's brilliant. I'm jealous I couldn't have a popular thread like this with my name on it going for years. It's a coup d'état.

Nah, don't believe you.

Provided you put the time and effort into it, I would think your Marketing BS would give you more than enough 'tools and techniques' to do exactly that. In fact, if you couldn't, you should probably return the BS ...

As far as the regulars, nobody posts anywhere because they do not get something out of it. We all have our reasons.

Sure.

Why is it, do you think, that the regulars continue to post here?

(to the extent that I count as one, my interest is in understanding what common ground there is, in order to have a meaningful, science-based dialog; hence my questions to you*)

I believe Farsight has given a number of people an opportunity to show off knowledge. It seemed to me when I was outside there was hostility on this thread, but once I posted I started to understand the love.

Are you one of those ("people [who have had] an opportunity to show off knowledge")?

* most of which you have not, as of now, yet answered ...

 

[lpetrich]

Me earlier:

Nobody's dismissing the claimed evidence, and your invoking of Einstein and Maxwell and Minkowski seems so much like a theologian -- invoking some sacred book that one believes to contain revealed truth.

Science doesn't work that way. About Maxwell and Einstein and Minkowski and the like, we have no trouble pointing out that they had made mistakes when we conclude that they have. We don't consider their writings revealed truth.

Sigh. I refer to Einstein and Maxwell and Minkowski and all the evidence in papers and articles, and lpetrich tries to dismiss it all by saying I'm like a theologian with a sacred book. Incredible.

Why is it supposed to be necessary to refer to Einstein and Maxwell and Minkowski? Seriously. Can't their theories stand on their own?

Also, Farsight, why don't you sit in on a particle-physics journal-club meeting some time? That's where some professors and graduate students discuss some recent journal paper.


Back to my recent post on SO(3) and SO(4), one can go from a SO(4) irrep (j1,j2) to SO(3) irreps (j) by using the angular-momentum addition law:
(j1) * (j2) = (j1+j2) + (j1+j2-1) + ... + (|j1-j2|+1) + (|j1-j2|)
(j) * (0) = (j)
(j) * (1/2) = (j+1/2) + (j-1/2) if j >= 1/2
(j) * (1) = (j+1) + (j) + (j-1) if j >= 1
(1/2) * (1/2) = (1) + (0)
(1) * (1) = (2) + (1) + (0)

 

[Perpetual Student]

Senex
I'm jealous I couldn't have a popular thread like this with my name on it going for years. It's a coup d'état.

How curious. Many (I include myself) have had such threads -- ironically, here's one dealing with crackpot physics. I have never though of it as a source of jealousy, popular, a "coup d'état, or in any manner an achievement. It has lead to some interesting exchanges and has been quite revealing when actual crackpots have participated.

 

[Reality Check]

See QFT on wiki where you can read this:
...
It's the Schrödinger wave equation for a particle.

Not right - it is the Schrödinger wave equation for a point particle, Farsight ! The particle only exists at x. It has no extent or size. Thus it is a point particle.
The Dirac equation describing any spin 1/2 point particle (like an electron) is also a equation for a point particle.
Quantum electrodynamics which is the quantum treatment of electromagnetism has field operators for point particles.
No equations in general QM have parameters for the extent or size of particles being modeled.

All of these theories describe actual particles that have wave and particle-like properties.

We can only iterate the real science that electrons have the properties of both particles and waves. As the atomic orbital Wikipedia article you are so found of quote mining states:

With the development of quantum mechanics, it was found that the orbiting electrons around a nucleus could not be fully described as particles, but needed to be explained by the wave-particle duality. In this sense, the electrons have the following properties:

Wave-like properties:
1.The electrons do not orbit the nucleus in the sense of a planet orbiting the sun, but instead exist as standing waves. The lowest possible energy an electron can take is therefore analogous to the fundamental frequency of a wave on a string. Higher energy states are then similar to harmonics of the fundamental frequency.
2.The electrons are never in a single point location, although the probability of interacting with the electron at a single point can be found from the wave function of the electron.

Particle-like properties:
1.There is always an integer number of electrons orbiting the nucleus.
2.Electrons jump between orbitals in a particle-like fashion. For example, if a single photon strikes the electrons, only a single electron changes states in response to the photon.
3.The electrons retain particle like-properties such as: each wave state has the same electrical charge as the electron particle. Each wave state has a single discrete spin (spin up or spin down).

 

[Reality Check]

I refer to Einstein and Maxwell and Minkowski and all the evidence in papers and articles, and lpetrich tries to dismiss it all by saying I'm like a theologian with a sacred book. Incredible.

Farsight, you refer mostly to a few papers from Einstein and Maxwell and Minkowski and threat them as a theologian would treat a few sacred books.
We all dismiss it because you show no sign of understanding the science that you say you have read.
You refer to a paper and still do not understand that it is fatally flawed after 4 years! ctamblyn's post from 25th March 2010 There are two basic mistakes they have made, aside from their semi-classical treatment of the photon...
You claim to understand QM but cannot understand that it uses point particles (no particle extents are in the equations).
You claim to understand GR but have not got past the third equation on one of Einstein's papers and still cannot do homework problems dating from 7th February 2012 on the basics of GR.
You claim to understand science but cannot underatsmd what an analogy is - gravitomagnetism is not electromagnetism, it is an analogy of electromagnetism.

You have presented no evidence for your assertions, e.g. that the electron is a wave and thus not a particle.
You do not understand the evidence against your assertions, e.g. the electron has both wave and particle like properties and so is both a wave and a particle.

 

[Reality Check]

No, you do not create a magnetic field by moving a charged particle, just as you do not create a magnetic field by moving past the charged particle.

Missed this.
Some basic physics for you, Farsight. If a moving charge is moving at v with respect to you, that is equivalent to you moving with a velocity of -v with respect to the charged particle. In both cases a magnetic field is created.
Magnetic field due to moving charges and electric currents
Magnetic Field From a Moving Point Charge

 

[xtifr]

Missed this.
Some basic physics for you, Farsight. If a moving charge is moving at v with respect to you, that is equivalent to you moving with a velocity of -v with respect to the charged particle. In both cases a magnetic field is created.
Magnetic field due to moving charges and electric currents
Magnetic Field From a Moving Point Charge

Sorry, but none of your links pointed to Holy Scripture, so obviously, they're apocrypha, and can be ignored. If it doesn't come directly from the mouth of the holy and almighty Einstein, the one true prophet of physics, it's obviously nonsense.

Plus, they've got all that pesky math in there, which only distracts from someone who's trying to overextend random analogies in order to avoid doing any math. The math is just there to try to distract you from analogies, which are the only true way to describe physics. Einstein once suggested that photons act like a train, so obviously photons are made of iron and powered by steam.

 

[Reality Check]

When Farsight gets back perhaps he could address one of the more interesting particle-like properties of fermions and bosons: The Hanbury Brown and Twiss effect. This can only happen for objects with spin (i.e. not waves!).
IMO, it is the best evidence that light and electrons have particle-like properties:

above treatment also explains photon antibunching [Kimble, 1977]: if the source consists of a single atom which can only emit one photon at a time, simultaneous detection in two closely spaced detectors is clearly impossible. Antibunching, whether of bosons or of fermions, has no classical wave analog.

Bunching-Antibunching of Quantum Particles From Astronomy to AMO is a nice presentation (PDF).

For electrons: Observation of Hanbury Brown–Twiss anticorrelations for free electrons (July 2002).

 

[Perpetual Student]

Mr. Duffield:
When discussing Islamic philosophy, the Koran is an indispensable source of so-called revealed truth. That's the nature of religion and its phantom reality.
However, it's about time that you recognized that when scientists contemplate and debate scientific questions, they examine and discuss evidence, experiments, observations, equations, etc. Since they focus on the most current data available. they do not care much for what is in some 100 year old paper. Einstein's or Maxwell's words are no more evidence in a physics discussion than, say, Darwin's words when discussing evolutionary biology.
This one of the reasons why your arguments are so out of touch with real physics. The other reason is your arguments are devoid of an understanding of the mathematics that underlies modern physics.
.

 

[Senex]

You've been here long enough to know it takes no brilliance to keep a thread going here. All it takes is persistence. Just have to keep posting nonsense and people will keep replying to tell you that it's nonsense.

Here's one that's been going 7 years and 7000 posts, and no one believes the OP's premise.

Your link is to a topic called "Hyper Dimensional Design." Many (some, a few?) posters are interested in that topic regardless of the OP. That topic might exist without the OP. This thread couldn't exist without Farsight..

Brilliant at what? I am not saying that Farsight is not brilliant, but his brilliance should rather lie in his ideas, and not in his stubborn repetition of his claims.

It's more than stubborn repetition. He refutes (and gets creative with his explanations) much evidence tossed his way daily.

Why is that a goal?

Why shouldn't it be?

Anybody can post a thread with outrageous claims, and as long as they keep repeating the claims, the forum community will respond, and the thread keeps going. You will see that when the OP stops posting (usually because s/he is being banned), the thread dies if nobody else steps into his/her shoes.

Seems unlikely Farsight runs afoul.

There are others who have similarly long-lived threads that I stop following because of the same lack of progress, but also because the OP has less style, and the opposition has less opportunity to display brilliance.

That's my point.

Cool!

Have you tried using 'rebut this high quality pseudoscience' as a learning technique? How did it work out?

That's cryptic even by my standards.

Nah, don't believe you.

Provided you put the time and effort into it, I would think your Marketing BS would give you more than enough 'tools and techniques' to do exactly that. In fact, if you couldn't, you should probably return the BS ...

Nope, if I started a disingenuous thread it would be tossed into humor or AAH before my second post.

Why is it, do you think, that the regulars continue to post here?

(to the extent that I count as one, my interest is in understanding what common ground there is, in order to have a meaningful, science-based dialog; hence my questions to you*)


Are you one of those ("people [who have had] an opportunity to show off knowledge")?

* most of which you have not, as of now, yet answered ...

I believe this thread is unusual in that some of these posts seem to have a lot of time and thought behind them. This thread keeps some posters off the streets and performing math exercises. It's impressive.

Myself, I have a gift for aggravating people. Really. I can read almost any post and know how to reply in a way that will catch someone's attention. I've showed that ability off.

How curious. Many (I include myself) have had such threads -- ironically, here's one dealing with crackpot physics. I have never though of it as a source of jealousy, popular, a "coup d'état, or in any manner an achievement. It has lead to some interesting exchanges and has been quite revealing when actual crackpots have participated.

Two things: One, is it possible that since you have linked to it you may indeed be proud of it? Two, like phunk's link, yours is about "crackpot physics" and everyone can probably relate to that regardless of the OP. Have a crackpot physic equation for an OP and defend that for dozens of pages and a few years and get back to me.

 

[Reality Check]

Your link is to a topic called "Hyper Dimensional Design."

Sorry, Senex, but you have obviously not read anything in that thread .
The contents have little to do with the topic. It is the pseudo-astrology fantasies of the thread creator (Dutch) who in 7 years has not even been able to describe "Hyper" "Dimensional " or even "Design" coherently or his actual "HDDesign" theory. Dutch basically makes dates up out of thin air and associates them with news stories that he thinks are important to him. For example one of his "predictions" is "Death of the Sun King" happening every so often where he does not get it right (he had Mandela dead months before his death) and death is not even death (some politician got ill)!

This thread is good because Farsight gets such basic things wrong that they can be explained in a few posts. That does not educate him (he seems to still be unaware that a moving charged particle produces a magnetic field, that the magnetic field from a particle does not concentric circles as field lines, etc.) but does educate other posters.

 

[edd]

When Farsight gets back perhaps he could address one of the more interesting particle-like properties of fermions and bosons: The Hanbury Brown and Twiss effect. This can only happen for objects with spin (i.e. not waves!).

I don't see why a wave cannot have spin?

 

[Ziggurat]

Have a crackpot physic equation for an OP and defend that for dozens of pages and a few years and get back to me.

So successful trolling is your measure of merit?

Whatever floats your boat, I guess, but there's no reason for the rest of us to be impressed by it.

 

[DeiRenDopa]

Nope, if I started a disingenuous thread it would be tossed into humor or AAH before my second post.

In light of this, further down in your post: "Myself, I have a gift for aggravating people. Really. I can read almost any post and know how to reply in a way that will catch someone's attention. I've showed that ability off. " you'll understand, I'm sure, why your 'marketing fluff' (or is it 'snake oil sales spin'?) left me somewhat unconvinced.

Have you tried using 'rebut this high quality pseudoscience' as a learning technique? How did it work out?

That's cryptic even by my standards.

Sorry, I'm not buying it, not even for a millisecond.

However, in case any other reader doesn't understand what I mean, here's the outline of an example:

Imagine you're teaching electromagnetism, perhaps somewhat similarly to the example W.D.Clinger provided upthread. As an exercise to really make the material sink in, you get a volunteer (among your students) to prepare a rebuttal of a selection of Farsight's material on electromagnetism (there's plenty in this thread to choose from), and present it to the class. In order to do a good job, the volunteer needs to have really understood what you taught, to be able to find the relevant source material (e.g. Maxwell's papers), and show mastery of the key underlying physics and mathematics (oh, and be able to present well too).

There are many variations: a small group project (rather than a single volunteer); invite Farsight to join in the presentation (via Skype?); task specified very tightly or in a quite open fashion; add historical context (e.g. mathematics of Maxwell's day -> full tensor etc treatment); ...