Merged Relativity+ / Farsight

[ctamblyn]

I actually did it by drawing visual references to the rotational motion on a translucent piece of paper and then flipping it on two different axes.

I didn't have a bit of paper handy.

 

[ctamblyn]

(deleted stuff that has already been covered)

 

[Reality Check]

And you know, I think we've covered the screw nature of electromagnetism enough for now.

We have certainly covered again and again your obsession with the word "screw" in descriptions of electromagnetism, Farsight .
A pity that you continue to ignore the science in preference for that obsession about cherry-picked descriptions and produce non-physical cartoons of imaginary objects.

 

[The Man]

We have certainly covered again and again your obsession with the word "screw" in descriptions of electromagnetism, Farsight .
A pity that you continue to ignore the science in preference for that obsession about cherry-picked descriptions and produce non-physical cartoons of imaginary objects.

Well, it would hardly be a "screw nature" if it didn't just keep going around and around digging itself deeper into a hole it cut for itself. I find the right-hand rule more accurately descriptive and shall I say intuitive. That the force on a charged particle moving through a magnetic field is perpendicular to both the direction of motion and the magnetic field.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-hand_rule

Wait I got it, that means the electromagnetic field is right-handed! Well unless your just looking at it the wrong way round (or in a mirror) then it is left-handed!! Heck, perhaps it is just oblivious to our mnemonic nomenclature? If only there were some language we could count on so as not to be under handed nor screwed in our descriptions of the interactions of charged particles.

 

[ben m]

That the force on a charged particle moving through a magnetic field is perpendicular to both the direction of motion and the magnetic field.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-hand_rule

Wait I got it, that means the electromagnetic field is right-handed!

Here's the funny thing. The magnetic field is always perpendicular to the source current and to the vector between you and the source. (You use the right-hand rule to find the "correct" one of two possible senses of "perpendicular"). But a particle in a magnetic field always feels a force which is perpendicular to the field! You used the right-hand-rule to define the field direction, but there's no force in the field direction. A magnetic force is always in a direction you can identify without using the right-hand-rule. Always.

If you use the left hand rule instead, consistently? You'll do a left-handed field calculation (i.e. a negative-sign cross product in Ampere's Law), and also a left-handed force calculation (i.e. a negative-sign cross product in the Lorentz Force Law), the negative signs cancel exactly, and you will get precisely the same
results for all calculations as a right-hand-rule user. Forces always end up aligned with non-handed vectors (displacement vectors, velocity vectors, rotation axes) that are present in the setup of the situation.

(Hard to square with Farsight's belief in a fundamental "screw" associated with E&M, right? Anyway, Farsight appears to have some mistaken understandings about what forces are in what directions---i.e., I'm not sure he could actually derive the above statement without making a mistake. But of course he refuses to test himself on this or any other Freshman-problem-set-level question, which can't be helping.)

Where did the right-hand-rule come from? Well, magnetic fields were first discovered and measured using alignment of lodestones or bar magnets, not forces on test particles. A modern physicist looking at a bar magnet can, non-arbitrarily, assign a vector direction to it ("the bound-current is clockwise around this vector"). The ancients couldn't, they had a totally-arbitrary Earth-based sign convention ("here is the end that swings north, let's call that ... +"); THAT assignment is the one that forced us into a "right hand rule" version of magnetism. The opposite convention choice would have left Ampere et. al. discovering "left hand rules".

 

[Farsight]

Right. (What, do you think nobody but you has thought of that?) If you're talking about an interaction, you have one particle or collection of particles (not necessarily fermions) that generate a field, and the above Lagrangian tells you how the fermion responds. As it so happens, it also figures into the inverse problem---if you want to know how the "other particles" respond, the above tells you what fields are generated by this passing fermion. But the above is the core of the calculation.

Fine. But remember that you are modelling the interaction between two fermions each with its electromagnetic field. Remember that it takes two to tango, and that Minkowski distinguished between field and force and referred to a screw.

It's a good thing QED does NOT predict that magnets shine. Did you think otherwise? Why? By overstretching the tennis analogy? WHO CARES.

I care. I care about professional physicists swanning around preaching cargo-cult pseudoscience trash.

If the analogy gives you confusing results, don't use it. I don't particularly care to debug whether you mis-learned the analogy, or learned it correctly and misused it, or whether you're in an unremarkable any-word-salad-is-good-enough-as-long-as-it-says-physicists-are-wrong mode. Don't care.

Well I care. I care for physics. And I do not care for people peddling garbage who dismiss Einstein. And who cannot explain why the electron and positron move together.

Don't tell me you've never seen it before. My guess is that you've seen it plenty of times and you know exactly how to figure out the standard notation, but that you'd rather wait for me to explain it, then nitpick my explanation, then actually read a textbook and attempt to nitpick the textbook explanation.

The truth is that other readers turn off when presented with math, so I prefer not to get sucked into sub-discussions that involve complex equations. It's a bit like Hawking saying every equation halves the readership.

(Derailing already?

No. It's relevant.

Yes, there is a photon-photon interaction.

Good man. We're getting somewhere. Some of the physics I've been telling you about is sinking in.

It's a higher-order effect, perfectly ordinarily and uncontroversially within the domain that QED is good at calculating. Let me guess: because photon-photon scattering is possible, you think you can infer that photons twist themselves into loop-shaped bound states, whatever that means. Let me correct you: you're wrong. There is no photon-photon bound state. The coupling is too weak.

It's a self-bound state. You start with two photons, you do your gamma-gamma pair production, you've got an electron and a positron. You can diffract 'em. They have a wave nature but they ain't moving linearly at c. Then you annihilate 'em together, and you've got two photons again. There ain't no magic ben. Don't shut up and calculate, wake up and smell the coffee.

Sticking with ben for the moment:

Here's the funny thing. The magnetic field is always perpendicular to the source current and to the vector between you and the source. (You use the right-hand rule to find the "correct" one of two possible senses of "perpendicular"). But a particle in a magnetic field always feels a force which is perpendicular to the field!

Because there isn't really a "magnetic field" there, what you have is force resulting from the interaction of electromagnetic fields. In the current-in-the-wire you have electrons with their electromagnetic fields, and metal ions with their electromagnetic fields. The electrons are moving so the forces don't cancel. Then we talk about concentric "magnetic field lines", only electrons go "around" these field lines, not along them.

You used the right-hand-rule to define the field direction, but there's no force in the field direction.

Because it isn't a field per se.

A magnetic force is always in a direction you can identify without using the right-hand-rule. Always. If you use the left hand rule instead, consistently? You'll do a left-handed field calculation (i.e. a negative-sign cross product in Ampere's Law), and also a left-handed force calculation (i.e. a negative-sign cross product in the Lorentz Force Law), the negative signs cancel exactly, and you will get precisely the same
results for all calculations as a right-hand-rule user. Forces always end up aligned with non-handed vectors (displacement vectors, velocity vectors, rotation axes) that are present in the setup of the situation.

Sure. And you are working out forces. Do not confuse fields with the forces that result from field interactions.

(Hard to square with Farsight's belief in a fundamental "screw" associated with E&M, right?

No. And it was Maxwell and Minkowski who referred to the screw mechanism. I didn't dream it up.

Anyway, Farsight appears to have some mistaken understandings about what forces are in what directions

Not me mate.

Where did the right-hand-rule come from?

Probably from Faraday's homopolar motor. See Wikipedia. Where by beautiful irony there's a picture of a homopolar motor featuring a screw.

 

[steenkh]

The truth is that other readers turn off when presented with math, so I prefer not to get sucked into sub-discussions that involve complex equations. It's a bit like Hawking saying every equation halves the readership.

Absolute nonsense. We know that Hawking can do his math, like Einstein and Minkovski. But we get the impression that you have no math at all, and that your ideas (which you unconvincingly claim are not yours) are in fact inconsistent, though you can coach it convincingly.

Show the math, and then explain it in lay-man terms afterwards. That will gain you credibility.

 

[Farsight]

...Very basically attractive forces are particles throwing photons away from each other...

No, they aren't.

All: anybody want to tell Reality Check how particles like the electron and the positron throw photons when they attract and repel and go around one another as ortho or para positronium? You might want to mention a few little physics things like conservation of momentum.

 

[The Man]

Here's the funny thing. The magnetic field is always perpendicular to the source current and to the vector between you and the source. (You use the right-hand rule to find the "correct" one of two possible senses of "perpendicular"). But a particle in a magnetic field always feels a force which is perpendicular to the field! You used the right-hand-rule to define the field direction, but there's no force in the field direction. A magnetic force is always in a direction you can identify without using the right-hand-rule. Always.

If you use the left hand rule instead, consistently? You'll do a left-handed field calculation (i.e. a negative-sign cross product in Ampere's Law), and also a left-handed force calculation (i.e. a negative-sign cross product in the Lorentz Force Law), the negative signs cancel exactly, and you will get precisely the same
results for all calculations as a right-hand-rule user. Forces always end up aligned with non-handed vectors (displacement vectors, velocity vectors, rotation axes) that are present in the setup of the situation.

(Hard to square with Farsight's belief in a fundamental "screw" associated with E&M, right? Anyway, Farsight appears to have some mistaken understandings about what forces are in what directions---i.e., I'm not sure he could actually derive the above statement without making a mistake. But of course he refuses to test himself on this or any other Freshman-problem-set-level question, which can't be helping.)

Where did the right-hand-rule come from? Well, magnetic fields were first discovered and measured using alignment of lodestones or bar magnets, not forces on test particles. A modern physicist looking at a bar magnet can, non-arbitrarily, assign a vector direction to it ("the bound-current is clockwise around this vector"). The ancients couldn't, they had a totally-arbitrary Earth-based sign convention ("here is the end that swings north, let's call that ... +"); THAT assignment is the one that forced us into a "right hand rule" version of magnetism. The opposite convention choice would have left Ampere et. al. discovering "left hand rules".

I think you are thinking of the radial right hand rule. That is the radial magnetic field generated by a current in say a wire. I know, kind of gets confusing with the static electrical field of a stationary charged particle "+" the radial magnetic field of a linear current.

I was speaking to just the force on a charged particle moving perpendicular to a uniform, flat, like say between two permanent magnets, magnetic field for the open hand right hand rule.

Brings up another question, in his exchange with ctamblyn, Farsight brought up the arrows he deliberately (by his own assertions) excluded. That would have made one charge a source and the other a sink. I find it curious that actually including such would have gotten him the visually intuitive attraction and repulsion aspects he was after without the spatial dependence of his diagram and description. Sources repel sources and sinks repel sinks, while sources and sinks attract each other. Works in electrostatics where one charge is a source and the opposite charge is a sink as well as magnetically where source and sink are combined in, again, like a permanent magnet. Until, well, a magnetic monopole is found. Hence the apparent disdain for not just charges in general (as stated) but the specific exclusion of the arrows that would have purportedly confused things (though required for time reversal once CPT symmetry breaking was brought up) as it excludes the very concept of singular sources and sinks that makes magnetic monopoles such a tantalizing prospect.

 

[Farsight]

...Take a while to picture this if it isn't obvious: it's just saying that if you view a steering wheel from the other side, it will seem to turn the other way.

Correct. You can also think of it in terms of a glass clock. Walk around the back of the clock, and the hands are moving anticlockwise. When you then spin it like a coin you can't say which way the original rotation is going. If you stood there looking at it you might call out clockwise anticlockwise clockwise anticlockwise. If I ask you to tell me which way is it spinning you struggle to say.

Now take one of those "electrons" and rotate it by 180 degrees about the y axis (or indeed any axis perpendicular to the "coin spin" axis).This turns the "coin spin" axis upside-down (if we take the z-axis to be vertical), so that if you view the thing from above it will appear that the coin has gone from spinning clockwise to spinning anticlockwise. Hey presto: we have transformed Farsight's electron into Farsight's positron by a series of rotations.

Only it isn't Farsight's electron, it's an illustration of biaxial spin, and it's the Williamson / van der Mark electron, only you "inflate" the torus into a spindle sphere torus and then place that at the centre of my spiral depiction. Now take a look at the chirality.

 

[Farsight]

Absolute nonsense. We know that Hawking can do his math, like Einstein and Minkovski. But we get the impression that you have no math at all, and that your ideas (which you unconvincingly claim are not yours) are in fact inconsistent, though you can coach it convincingly.

Show the math, and then explain it in lay-man terms afterwards. That will gain you credibility.

You mean the math we all know and love? Which ben totally misunderstands because all he's ever done is shut up and calculate? What good will that do? I can't even get him to appreciate that one should properly speak of the electromagnetic field Fuv rather than E or B. I can't get him to appreciate the difference between field and force. We haven't got past first base, so me talking about things like

...will be like the shutters are down and there's nobody home. Because ben doesn't understand the terms in the expressions. And is determined to stick with the misunderstanding he was spoon-fed when he was a kid.

 

[Farsight]

In the description you gave, "I said this:", one can be flipped "to give it the same spin as the other". The thing that gives your hand, well, handedness is a lack of some rotational symmetry. Both your diagram and description, "I said this:", also lack some rotational symmetry such that one can be flipped "to give it the same spin as the other". Perhaps you mean your electromagnetic field of an electron lacks rotational symmetry in a way other than you have described or drawn. If that is the case you will have to describe or draw that particular lack of rotational symmetry with more specificity.

See my response to ctamblyn where I referred to the Williamson / van der Mark electron and said inflate the torus into a spindle sphere torus and place that at the centre of my spiral depiction:

Lack of symmetry has consequences and for a lack of rotational symmetry that explicitly means it looks different when rotated or flipped about some axis. Not as intuitive as you seem to have thought.

It is. Try drawing arrows on ping-pong balls, and on Moebius strips. What's difficult is explaining it to people who cannot conceive that what they've been taught is in any way defective or deficient.

For your own edification your left hand does look like your right in your reflection (or when spatial coordinates are reversed). In fact when you are facing someone else your left is their right.

Trivia.

...Wait I got it, that means the electromagnetic field is right-handed! Well unless your just looking at it the wrong way round (or in a mirror) then it is left-handed!! Heck, perhaps it is just oblivious to our mnemonic nomenclature? If only there were some language we could count on so as not to be under handed nor screwed in our descriptions of the interactions of charged particles.

And one more time: the charged particle has an electromagnetic field. It doesn't have an electric field, it doesn't have a magnetic field, it has an electromagnetic field. This deserves a depiction, so we combine radial "electric field lines" with concentric "magnetic field lines" like so:

But we remember we are dealing with curl in three dimensions rather than curvature in a plane, and with chirality rather than helicity. We don't quibble about a 2D depiction of a 3D dynamical thing, do we?

I think you are thinking of the radial right hand rule. That is the radial magnetic field generated by a current in say a wire. I know, kind of gets confusing with the static electrical field of a stationary charged particle "+" the radial magnetic field of a linear current.

Then combine the radial electric field with a dipole magnetic field. What does a dipole look like, ooh, here's a picture of one.

Brings up another question, in his exchange with ctamblyn, Farsight brought up the arrows he deliberately (by his own assertions) excluded. That would have made one charge a source and the other a sink. I find it curious that actually including such would have gotten him the visually intuitive attraction and repulsion aspects he was after without the spatial dependence of his diagram and description. Sources repel sources and sinks repel sinks, while sources and sinks attract each other.

The whole idea of sources and sinks is misguided I'm afraid. A charged particle isn't sucking or blowing. Sinks attract sinks and the arrows just don't work.

... it excludes the very concept of singular sources and sinks that makes magnetic monopoles such a tantalizing prospect.

This current round of discussion began because I said when you understand the screw nature of electromagnetism, you understand why magnetic monopoles do not exist.

 

[steenkh]

You mean the math we all know and love? Which ben totally misunderstands because all he's ever done is shut up and calculate? What good will that do? I can't even get him to appreciate that one should properly speak of the electromagnetic field Fuv rather than E or B. I can't get him to appreciate the difference between field and force. We haven't got past first base, so me talking about things like

[qimg]http://www.forkosh.com/mimetex.cgi?\nabla \times \mathbf{E} = -\frac{\partial \mathbf{B}} {\partial t}[/qimg]

...will be like the shutters are down and there's nobody home. Because ben doesn't understand the terms in the expressions. And is determined to stick with the misunderstanding he was spoon-fed when he was a kid.

Does ben m not understand, or does he not agree with you on this? I have no idea who is right here, but I would suggest that you either show that ben's understanding is inconsistent with reality (not merely with your understanding of Einstein), or that you continue developing your own equations, and simply add an explanation of where your terms differ from the standard. In that case, it would be up to the others to show that your understanding is inconsistent with reality. Your continued reference to Einstein and Minkovski is not getting you anywhere because it is very unclear if you have understood them properly.

 

[steenkh]

And one more time: the charged particle has an electromagnetic field. It doesn't have an electric field, it doesn't have a magnetic field, it has an electromagnetic field. This deserves a depiction, so we combine radial "electric field lines" with concentric "magnetic field lines" like so:

[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=30815&stc=1&thumb=1&d=1398534443[/qimg]

But we remember we are dealing with curl in three dimensions rather than curvature in a plane, and with chirality rather than helicity. We don't quibble about a 2D depiction of a 3D dynamical thing, do we?

Why do you continue using these illustrations that apparently have little or no connection to reality, other than looking very nice? You have yourself admitted that you cannot add radial lines and concentric circles to each other and get a spiral. Present the equation instead and then those who are savant with such things can tell if you are on the right track. If they cannot find a flaw, you would be justified in hauling out the spiral diagram once again.

 

[edd]

And one more time: the charged particle has an electromagnetic field. It doesn't have an electric field, it doesn't have a magnetic field, it has an electromagnetic field. This deserves a depiction, so we combine radial "electric field lines" with concentric "magnetic field lines" like so:

Yet again, the electron's magnetic field lines are not concentric as you've drawn them, and you can't just combine field lines like you have.

 

[Farsight]

No, it isn't. You refer to math for other things, but cannot say how that math for other things is actually applicable for your theory, or how you get something simple like Coulomb's Law from that math.

Huh? It isn't my theory. Didn't you read the Minkowski quote? Or the Maxwell quote? And what's Coulomb's Law...

...got to do with it? Charged particles result in force, there's an inverse square rule in 3D space with its vacuum permittivity wherein 4π relates to an all-round sphere. A simple little expression doesn't tell you why that force occurs. It doesn't tell you that it occurs because electrons and positrons are throwing photons at one another. Or because of some action-at-a-distance magic that surpasseth all human understanding. To understand why, you have to read what guys like Maxwell and Minkowski said.

Since your "spiral" is not, in fact, a spiral, then why would results which derive from a spiral be applicable to your theory which isn't a spiral?

Sigh. Because the real thing is a dynamical 3D version of the 2D depiction. And it isn't my theory. What's with all the "my theory" stuff? I'm telling you about the physics. I'm referring to the greats. Don't try to label it as "my theory" just because you've never heard about it before. I didn't invent the word spinor.

 

[ctamblyn]

...
Only it isn't Farsight's electron, it's an illustration of biaxial spin, and it's the Williamson / van der Mark electron, only you "inflate" the torus into a spindle sphere torus and then place that at the centre of my spiral depiction. Now take a look at the chirality.

Let's just emphasise here that John Duffield's "spinning disk" crackpot model of the electron is nothing like Williamson / van der Mark's "torus" crackpot model of the electron. In particular, while theirs does have chirality, his does not. Given that John Duffield was specifically trying to illustrate chirality with his spinning disk, this is something of a embarrassing error on his part. Maybe that's the reason for wanting to disown it.

 

[Farsight]

Let's just note that John Duffield's "spinning disk" crackpot model of the electron is nothing like Williamson / van der Mark's toroidal crackpot electron model...

Ah, such cute abuse. Next.

Why do you continue using these illustrations that apparently have little or no connection to reality...

Because they have an intimate connection with reality.

Does ben m not understand, or does he not agree with you on this?

No he doesn't understand. He doesn't understand the difference between force and field. But he is gradually grudgingly beginning to understand.

Yet again, the electron's magnetic field lines are not concentric as you've drawn them, and you can't just combine field lines like you have.

Then you combine the radial electric lines with the dipole magnetic lines. Draw it and put it up. You depict the electromagnetic field.

 

[edd]

If I were to draw it, I'd show a standard radial field for the electric component, and I'd show the usual dipole field like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:VFPt_dipole_point.svg for the magnetic component, and when combining the two I'd probably use one colour for one component, one colour for the other and just overlay the two. I'd not try to combine the field lines in any other way than superimposing one set upon the other, with some method of keeping them clearly distinct.

A bit like how an electromagnetic wave is commonly depicted. They don't show some weird nonsensical sum of E and B components - they show each as distinct.

 

[steenkh]

Because they have an intimate connection with reality.

That seems to be an unsupported assertion.