The Basic Particle Model

[zosima]

Hey everyone,
I stumbled upon this page that has an interesting theory that seems to extend general relativity to explain inertia and dark matter. I really can't decide if it is woo or not, but it is better than average for several reasons.
The authors try to make it:

1. mathematical
2. precise and clear
3. reduce to GR at the limit

My best personal guess is that it is above average woo, but maybe someone else can give it a fair shake.

Here are some of the relevant pages:
http://www.ag-physics.de/
http://www.ag-physics.de/rmass/
http://www.ag-physics.de/gravity/
http://www.ag-physics.de/relat/

 

[sol invictus]

After a glance, it looks like the theory fails to explain even the Michelson-Morley experiment.

Einstein assumed only two things to derive SR:

1) the constancy of the speed of light
2) that the laws of physics are the same in all reference frames

This theory (as far as I can tell) is abandoning 2) - the author wants an absolute notion of time, rather than a 4D spacetime as in relativity. That means there's an absolute rest frame. (S)he posits that relativistic time dilation etc. results associated with motion with respect to that absolute rest frame. In particular the speed of light emitted by a moving light bulb looks the same to the bulb because a clock attached to that bulb is running slowly.

Unfortunately that is in conflict with a huge number of experiments, going all the way back to Michelson-Morley, an experiment in the early 20th century (EDIT - wrong, it was actually 1887) that measured the speed of light along two axes 90 degrees apart: one aligned with the motion of the earth around the sun and one perpendicular. If the constancy of the speed of light were due to clocks in the rest frame of the emitter running slowly, that can only compensate for the speed along one direction (parallel to the direction of motion of the emitter) but not perpendicular to it.

 

[Reality Check]

The web page states

The concept of the "Basic Particle Model" of matter was presented initially at the Spring Conference of the German Physical Society (Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft) on 24 March 2000 in Dresden
by Albrecht Giese

I have not been able to find any other publications by this author other than the presentation at the conference but maybe he publishes only in German or some obscure journal.

The first problem that I see is on the Structure Of Matter page:

3rd Erwin Schrödinger. He found that, as a consequence of the Dirac function, the inside of the electron permanently moves with the speed of light c.

The Wikipedia article on Zitterbewegung shows the derivation of an oscillation term in the position operator from the Dirac equation.
The author interprets this as an oscillation of particles within the electron.
This is wrong - it is an oscillation of the position operator of the electron itself, i.e. the expectation value of the position oscillates around a mean value. The speed of light that comes into the equation is a consequence of the relativistic Dirac equation and not a "velocity" of the oscillation.
The article above states

Interestingly, the "Zitterbewegung" term vanishes on taking expectation values for wave-packets that are made up entirely of positive- (or entirely of negative-) energy waves

The author seems to have got confused between position operators and their expectation values (what we actually measure).

I find it strange that nowhere does he assign a charge to the 2 massless constituents. An election with a charge of -1 would need 2 constituents each with a charge of -1/2. I would expect that Coulomb repulsion would prevent an orbit.

 

[sol invictus]

Yeah, the particle stuff is totally wrong. But even as a theory of relativity it fails for a more basic reason.

 

[MattusMaximus]

Here's more info on the Michelson-Morley experiment:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%E2%80%93Morley_experiment

Yup, Sol is right. The fact that this theory fails utterly to account for the results of the M&M Experiment means it is severely lacking.

 

[Tubbythin]

Have I got the wrong end of the stick?
On the page about the electron he gives a formula which relates the mass to radius (2.5).
But if you stick in the known values (in SI: m~10^-30, hbar~10^-34, c~10^8) you get R ~ 10^-12m. So electrons are bigger than lead nuclei!

 

[zosima]

Lol, good points all. I don't really think I have the inclination to play devil's advocate on this one at the moment.

It might be interesting to see how much woo would show up from a search on einstein or relativity. I bet we could find most of it and dump on it systematically.

Here's a link to one that someone keeps spamming to everyone at my work:
http://cs.astronomy.com/asycs/forums/t/31701.aspx

Apparently it is "The most revolutionary theory in astronomy" but it looks to me like complete drivel. (s)he likes to link to tangentially related nasa pages and assert them as evidence.

 

[MattusMaximus]

It might be interesting to see how much woo would show up from a search on einstein or relativity. I bet we could find most of it and dump on it systematically.

Just wait - you'll have plenty of chances for that. There are plenty of cranks on the forum who love to spin yarns about "overturning" or "disproving" relativity theory. Mostly they just have no idea what the hell they're talking about. Isn't that right, Sol?