Merged Relativity+ / Farsight

[Tubbythin]

Think it through. Momentum is just a distance-based measure of energy/momentum, whilst energy is a time-based measure.

Erm, err..., pardon?

 

[RussDill]

Before I left on vacation, you claimed that you could provide the fine structure constant, 1/137.035999679(94). I've returned to (surprise) discover that you have done no such thing. Your excuse is that it is a running constant, which has certainly not stopped particle physicists from determining it experimentally at a given energy level. And I quote "I can tell you why the fine structure constant takes the value it does". You have done no such thing.

Second, you claimed "I'll show an experiment that has a behaviour that is not properly predicted by current models". You have shown no such experiment, all you have done is claimed that models must show "how" things work to your satisfaction. There are things within the standard model that do not give a why or a how, this doesn't make the standard model invalid, it just means that a) there are some things that cannot be answered or b) that there is a better theory around somewhere. You've even decided that "fundamental" can mean anything you want, the standard model carefully defines the meaning of "fundamental" within the framework of the standard model. It makes no sense to claim it means something else and the show contradictions within the standard model by using that different meaning.

Not only that, you haven't even provided any examples of your theory in practice. Not one instance where we can use your theory to predict the outcome of any experiment.

I also find your quote

Other people believe in things for which there is no evidence whatsoever. Things like time travel. And parallel worlds, and tiny vibrating strings and unseen dimensions. And supersymmetry.

Highly ironic. You'll note that theoretical physicists in general do not "believe" in the theory they are developing, nor do they claim that current theories are junk (unless they have really good evidence). Even Brian Greene, who makes a whole lot of money selling books that describe the current state of string theory, is sure to state that the theory is incomplete and that "But let me state categorically, if the theory is wrong, I'd like to know it today so I wouldn't waste my time on it any longer." and also "We will have no certainty that it's right until the experiments show that it's right."

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/greene.html

 

[Dancing David]

No you don't sol. You don't understand electron spin. You say it's "intrinsic". That's a non-explanation. And you believe it with such conviction you dismiss two-dimensional real rotation. Think about that glass clock. From the front you say the hands are moving clockwise. From the back you say they're moving anticlockwise. Now I spin the clock like a coin. Which way are the hands going? You can't say any more. But you can tell the difference if the rotations are reversed. That's why a positron is a "time reversed" electron. It isn't going back in time. The rotations are backwards.

Wow, even I know that you are wrong about the QM property of spin. I suppose you can tell Pauli about that as well. It is an instrinsic property observed in certain particles.

And while you can view a positron as a time reversed electron, there are reasons that it doesn't really act that way.

 

[Farsight]

As already noted the net charge of the produced pair is zero. So no net charge is “created from an electromagnetic wave” even in pair production.

True. No net charge is created, just as no net angular momentum is created when I'm in space and I rotate a satellite and suffer a counter-rotation.

Now you could say that some charge separation resulted due to that pair production and the electromagnetic wave.

Continuing with the angular momentum analogy, I wouldn't say some "rotation separation" occurred when I rotated the satellite...

However charge separation results in (and from) an electrical field and an electromagnetic wave is just a localized variation in an electromagnet field.

...but OK, I'll go with the flow.

So an electromagnetic wave producing some charge separation is just saying an electromagnetic wave involves an electrical field variation, simply trivial.

OK, it's trivial. But there's a horrible issue lurking here, and it's a monster: which is more fundamental? The "current" that causes the field variation, or the "charge" that causes the field? ...this charge being a property of a particle which exhibits magnetic dipole moment where g=2.0023:

"..The factor of two difference implies that the electron appears to be twice as effective in producing a magnetic moment as the corresponding classical charged body...

 

[Farsight]

You could help your case by demonstrating that a circulating photon appears to be a charged particle. Start simple - show that the total flux of electric field through a sphere surrounding your system is non-zero.

Everyone else posting here (I would guess) thinks that the answer is zero, due to the fact that the photon is electrically neutral. Convince us otherwise. One simple surface integral...

It isn't simple, ct. I've described the electromagnetic field as a twist/turn field. I'm saying the electromagnetic field is only there because the 511keV photon is twisting and turning because it's a 3.86 x 10^-13m displacement travelling entirely through itself. Photons usually travel in straight lines. When they don't we say space is curved. And there's no discontinuity around this curvature. If space takes the form of a closed loop, the surrounding space must have been dragged around it. Then the force experienced by one of these vorton "rotors" is a path change caused by the curvature caused by another vorton. The moebius strip was a mystery for 75 years, and that's just bit of paper. I need a whole new language for this. Maybe David Hestenes has got something, see http://geocalc.clas.asu.edu/, but it isn't something I can pull out of the hat.

 

[Reality Check]

OK, it's trivial. But there's a horrible issue lurking here, and it's a monster: which is more fundamental? The "current" that causes the field variation, or the "charge" that causes the field? ...this charge being a property of a particle which exhibits magnetic dipole moment where g=2.0023:

"..The factor of two difference implies that the electron appears to be twice as effective in producing a magnetic moment as the corresponding classical charged body...

There is no horrible issue and it is trivial. "Charge" is always "more fundemental" than "current". The charge of an object is a property of the object.

ETA:
I think that The Man is slightly wrong. The electromagnetic wave (incoming photon) does not produce any charge separation (outgoing electron and positron). It is the imparting of momentum to the nearby nucleus that allows the photon to become a separate electron and positron and thus separate charges. Without a nucleus all you have is a virtual electron and positron pair.

The displacement current of an electromagnetic wave has nothing to do with charges (it is a change in the flux density of the electric field).

In electromagnetism, displacement current is a quantity that is defined in terms of the rate of change of electric displacement field. Displacement current has the units of electric current density, and it has an associated magnetic field just as actual currents do. However it is not an electric current of moving charges, but a time-varying electric field. In materials, there is also a contribution from the slight motion of charges bound in atoms, dielectric polarization.

But then you go onto the properties of an electron so you must know this already.

The reason that an "electron appears to be twice as effective in producing a magnetic moment as the corresponding classical charged body" is simply that it is not a classical charged body. It is a quantum mechanical charged body.

 

[Farsight]

That's because it's been a hundred years since Einstein said that, and maybe we've learned a thing or two since then, namely that the speed of light is constant (always, in fact. It just takes detours in non-voids)

Look to the evidence. Two astronauts A and B carry identical parallel-mirror light clocks. Astronaut A stays up in space with you whilst astronaut B goes down into a gravity well, holding his clock flat to avoid radial length contraction. They come back and you look at the counters that tells you how many times the light has bounced back and forth. The readings differ. That tells you that the light went slower where astronaut B was. Note that clocks don't clock up time. They clock up motion through space. An atomic clock employs microwaves:

Since 1967, the second has been defined to be the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom.[1]

You sit there counting microwave peaks go by. When you get to 9,192,631,770 you tick off a second. The second is defined by the motion of light. If seconds are bigger, it's because light goes slower. Einstein was right. And you haven't learned a thing or two since then.

The problem is, you haven't provided this evidence, so it's a little difficult to agree with you.

See above. It's hidden in plain view. You can hold up your hands with a gap between them to show me space. You can waggle your hands to show me motion through that space. You can show me a clock reading that is a cumulative counter of motion. But you can't show me time. There is no evidence that "time goes slower". But there is ample evidence that light goes slower.

 

[Farsight]

The net charge is unchanged by that process - it happens because positrons have the opposite charge as electrons, so that the net charge is zero both before and after. That means - if you didn't know anything else - that a photon could be composed of an electron plus a positron.

No it doesn't, because they have mass, and they can't travel at c. And you can conduct low-energy proton/annihilation to produce neutral pions that decay to photons in a nanosecond. So photons aren't made of electrons and positrons, or protons and antiprotons or pions.

It also means that an electron cannot be composed of photons, because photons do not have a net charge, and electrons do.

Pair production and annihilation happens. An electron and a positron turn into two 511keV gamma photons. Do I have to post up the picture again? What do you think the electron is composed of? Magic?

I don't need to do better than that. Of course there are tens of other obvious and fundamental reasons why this doesn't work (for example: electrons are spin 1/2 fermions, photons are spin 1 bosons, and it's impossible to make a fermion by any combination of bosons), but this one is more than adequate.

You make two fermions from one boson. It's called pair production. Now pull yourself together, stop dismissing the evidence, and stop being in denial.

 

[ben m]

It isn't simple, ct. I've described the electromagnetic field as a twist/turn field. I'm saying the electromagnetic field is only there because the 511keV photon is twisting and turning because it's a 3.86 x 10^-13m displacement travelling entirely through itself.

A) I await your explanation of why "a twisting turning 511 keV photon" should create (a) the divergence term in Gauss's Law, (b) the current term in Ampere's Law, (c) NOT the magnetic monopole term, NOT the monopole current term, NOT nothing-whatsoever, NOT a bunch of dipole or high-order terms, etc. etc. etc. Remember, real electrons (and muons, and protons, and quarks, and W-bosons, but NOT photons or neutrinos or Z-bosons or neutrons) behave this way.

B) All available data is consistent with an electron which is pointlike at scales down to 10^-20 m.

 

[Reality Check]

The second is defined by the motion of light.

That is wrong. The second is defined by counting 9,192,631,770 periods of the transition. The motion of light has nothing to do with it.

There is no evidence that "time goes slower". But there is ample evidence that light goes slower.

Wrong.
There is plenty of evidence that time dilation exists.
Experimental Basis of Special Relativity - Test of Time Dilation.
Note that many of these tests were done before 1967, e.g.

Rossi and Hoag, Physical Review 57, pg 461 (1940).
Rossi and Hall, Physical Review 59, pg 223 (1941).
Rasetti, Physical Review 60, pg 198 (1941).

 

[ben m]

Pair production and annihilation happens. An electron and a positron turn into two 511keV gamma photons. Do I have to post up the picture again? What do you think the electron is composed of? Magic?

What law of Nature tells you that electrons have to be composed of something else? Is there some lost verse in the Book of Genesis which says " ... and the LORD says there shall be only one truly elementary particle which makes up all the others" ? You seem mighty convinced that Nature has to work that way.

 

[ctamblyn]

It isn't simple, ct. I've described the electromagnetic field as a twist/turn field. I'm saying the electromagnetic field is only there because the 511keV photon is twisting and turning because it's a 3.86 x 10^-13m displacement travelling entirely through itself. Photons usually travel in straight lines. When they don't we say space is curved. And there's no discontinuity around this curvature. If space takes the form of a closed loop, the surrounding space must have been dragged around it. Then the force experienced by one of these vorton "rotors" is a path change caused by the curvature caused by another vorton. The moebius strip was a mystery for 75 years, and that's just bit of paper. I need a whole new language for this. Maybe David Hestenes has got something, see http://geocalc.clas.asu.edu/, but it isn't something I can pull out of the hat.

OK. I'm not sure what there is to say at this stage, to be honest. As I suggested earlier in the thread, without solid quantitative predictions, it would require something of a leap of faith for someone to accept this model. The theory needs to be cast as a coherent, mathematical model, eventually capable of making quantitative predictions about observables. Until that stage is reached, the reaction from the physics community is naturally going to be somewhat unenthusiastic.
Anyway, good luck with that if you decide to pursue it.

 

[Farsight]

"We" do not create charge, magnetic moment, and mass and spin 1/2. These obey physical and conservation laws.

1. Charge is conserved: The electron has a measured charge. A photon does not.

Net charge is conserved. When you spin that satellite and suffer counter rotation, you have created two opposite rotations. Where once there was no rotation, there now is rotation. In similar vein where once there was no charge, now there is charge. Two opposite charges yes, but charge nevertheless. And you create it via pair production.

2. Mass is conserved: The electron has a measured mass. A photon has no mass.

Wrong again. Mass is created in pair production. It is destroyed in annihilation. Energy is conserved, momentum is conserved, but not mass.

3. The electron has a measured magnetic moment. A photon has no magnetic moment.

And if that photon is travelling in a circular path?

4. Spin obeys QM rules: The electron has a measured quantum mechanical spin of 1/2. A photon has a quantum mechanical spin of 1. There is no way that a spin of 1 can be made into a spin of 1/2.

This is getting embarassing. Pair production does it. Try dividing 1 by 2.

5. You could be ignorant enough to treat the spin classically, put the photon into a path that includes a twist and think that the average spin is 1/2. You would be wrong:
The opposite spin to +1 is -1. An average would be 0.
Classical spins need a force to change their orientation.

Look at the picture below, follow the black round line. It needs two rotations to return to the original position and orientation. There it is. Spin 1/2.

Are you stating that there is no magnetic field due to a moving charge, i.e. that all of electromagnetism is wrong?

No. I'm saying when you move with respect to a charge, you see the magnetic aspect of the electromagnetic field.

Or that there is always a magnetic field but it magically does nothing in some circumstances?

There is always an electromagnetic field. That's what's there. What you think of as a magnetic field is merely how you see this field when in motion with respect to it.

And what is your position on relativistic mass which is also "created" by relative velocities?

It's a measure of total energy, made by you, and your measurement depends on your relative motion. If you move very fast, and swoop past the earth, it hasn't changed one jot. It hasn't gained any relativistic mass. Your motion changed, and that alters the way you see things.

A reference frame is a formalism that has no reality in itself. It has real physicsl effects. Read any textbook on relativity.

Your motion affects your measurements. It doesn't change the things you move past, or the fields you move through, just your measurements of them. A reference frame is mathematical artifice associated with motion and measurement. Relativity is all about motion.

 

[ctamblyn]

Erm, regarding the nice picture of a torus - it might interest you to know that orbital angular momentum can never give you a spin of 1/2. The eigenvalues of each component of orbital angular momentum are always integers (in units where hbar = 1). Only intrinsic angular momentum can have half-integer eigenvalues.

 

[Farsight]

I'd like to highlight the fact that Farsight is so far talking as though the only property of charge is that it's a conserved quantity which shows up in e+e- pair production. If I gave you a blank slate and said, "Look, design a system in which aa --> bc and bc-->aa are both valid reactions", you might invent a scheme in which a,b, and c are the same thing in three different configurations. That'd look OK for ab -> ab and ac -> ac as well. You'd have to make up some conservation law to prevent aa->bb and ab -> ac and so on, but you might find this satisfying and call it a success.

Sounds reasonable.

But that's not the situation we're in, Farsight. Charge isn't a mysterious conserved quantity we invented to explain the lack of electron-electron pair production. Charge is the quantity which appears as a source in electrostatics, the quantity for which like-repels-like and opposites-attract, etc. Your random guess at "abc are the same thing"...

Whoa, this isn't my random guess. This appeared in peer-reviewed papers by ex-CERN physicists.

can work to uncover a conserved quantity that you have no other handle on---the early bookkeeping of "strangeness" in hadrons worked this way---but charge is not such a property. We know enough about charge to know specifically that it is not made up of photons going in any sort of loop whatsoever.

No, you don't. I've shown you the pedigree and given my scientific evidence along with a well-argued case that remains logically consistent. So don't think you're going to get away with bald assertions and dismissal. Show me your scientific evidence and your counter-argument.

Bedtime.

 

[Reality Check]

You are right. I shoud have been addressing your idea that an electron is a photon. That idea is obviously wrong. The electron would have to have

• The same mass as the photon (zero).
• The same charge as the photon (none).
• The same spin as the photon (1).
• The same magneic moment as the photon (zero).

Arbitrarily saying that that photon goes along a path that restricts it magically inside an equally arbitary and physically impossible (see below) radius does not change the mass, charge, spin or magnetic moment of the photon.

• A mass of zero remains as zero.
  A photon with an energy of 510.9810 KeV has an equivalent mass as an electron. But then you have the problem of explaining why a 510.9811 KeV photon cannot form an electron.
  My guess is that you will assert that your magical path can only be travelled by photons at 510.9810 KeV because you want them to.
• A charge of zero remains as zero and thus the magnetic moment remains as zero.
• The spin remains as 1. This is an intrinsic quantum mechnaical property of a photon. If a photon has a spin of 1/2 then it is not a photon. It is a massless neutrino. And if neutrinos turn out to have mass then I think that it is a totally new particle.

I'm saying the electromagnetic field is only there because the 511keV photon is twisting and turning because it's a 3.86 x 10^-13m displacement travelling entirely through itself. Photons usually travel in straight lines.

The upper limit to the radius of an electron is 10^-20 meters !

And if that photon is travelling in a circular path?

Then it is in a black hole.

This is getting embarassing. Pair production does it. Try dividing 1 by 2.

That is really embarassing for you. In reality:

• Spin of a photon = 1.
• Spin of an electron = 1/2. Spin of a positron = 1/2.
• 1 = 1/2 + 1/2

Thus the existing theory of pair production describes reality. Your idea cannot.

 

[Reality Check]

Whoa, this isn't my random guess. This appeared in peer-reviewed papers by ex-CERN physicists.

Citations please.

 

[ben m]

No, you don't. I've shown you the pedigree and given my scientific evidence along with a well-argued case that remains logically consistent. So don't think you're going to get away with bald assertions and dismissal. Show me your scientific evidence and your counter-argument.

I disagree that you've shown me a pedigree for your ideas. Linking to a 100-year-old paper with a vortex in it does not mean that your claim that the electron is a self-trapped photon has a "pedigree".

I disagree that you've shown evidence. You've stated what properties you hope that your model has, or will have in the future. You've stated a few vague things that you don't like about the Standard Model, but only in that it fails to live up to a criterion you seem to have invented yourself.

Furthermore, I disagree that your case is logically consistent---and furthermore that self-evaluating one's "logical consistency" is a reliable way of preventing one from confusing oneself. Aristotle, Ptolemy, Freud, Mesmer, and (say) Mary Baker Eddy sure thought they were being logically consistent back in the day, but that didn't stop them from getting everything horrendously wrong.

 

[Kwalish Kid]

No it isn't. He talks about motive force vectors and four dimensions, but he didn't understand that t is an emergent property of motion.

Ok, so earlier you wrote, "Moving through an electric field doesn’t cause a magnetic field to be generated, because as Minkowski said, it’s the electromagnetic field, and it exerts force in two ways." You used this as part of a justification for your particular diagram of the electromagnetic field.

Now you claim that nothing that Minkowski wrote doesn't match up with your diagram.

Why should we not simply take your earlier claims as a lie?

No, it's because your questions aren't genuine, because you're only interested in stifling this discussion. I've already said I can't explain what lies beneath the mathematics with more mathematics.

But can you demonstrate that your diagram actually matches electromagnetic behaviour as measured in experiments?

No? Then explain why Minkowski referred to a wrench analogy, and Maxwell referred to a screw mechanism. One field exerts a radial force, and a rotational force when you move through it.

The obvious answer is that the composition of forces in relativity is analogous to the composition of forces in determining wrenches. Wrenches do not need to introduce rotation.

Regardless, you have since admitted that Minkowski's work does not support your claims. Why should we not consider your answer to ben m another lie?

I've provided the scientific evidence with the right hand rule, downward motion past a vertical stack of electrons, and that reamer in your fist. Where's yours?

You have not provided any scientific evidence. Where is there any measurements of electromagnetic phenomena that follow your spiral pictures?

 

[Kwalish Kid]

It isn't simple, ct. I've described the electromagnetic field as a twist/turn field. I'm saying the electromagnetic field is only there because the 511keV photon is twisting and turning because it's a 3.86 x 10^-13m displacement travelling entirely through itself. Photons usually travel in straight lines. When they don't we say space is curved. And there's no discontinuity around this curvature. If space takes the form of a closed loop, the surrounding space must have been dragged around it. Then the force experienced by one of these vorton "rotors" is a path change caused by the curvature caused by another vorton. The moebius strip was a mystery for 75 years, and that's just bit of paper. I need a whole new language for this. Maybe David Hestenes has got something, see http://geocalc.clas.asu.edu/, but it isn't something I can pull out of the hat.

If you don't have a single description of a photon that shows the basic properties of an electron, how can you possibly believe that a photon can have the basic properties of an electron?