Lattices and Lorentz invariance

Well you're welcome to reply to post #160 any time.

 

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You dismissed me for being too mathematical, as if string theory provided no insight or understanding of anything worth discussing. Not being a physicist by degree and doing mathematical stuff doesn't mean one doesn't grasp and contribute to physics.

I've tried in the past to engage you, you don't want to know. I offered to help you learn what is considered required knowledge to a physics undergrad, you didn't want to know. Your responses to me always amount to "You're being mean, I don't want to talk to you.", even when I'm offering help. I'm not the one whose scared here, I've offered plenty of interactions with you on a multitude of subjects. I even offered to help you format your work so it would be evaluated by journals on its 'scientific merit', rather than layout. You ignored me.

I fear nothing from you. I know you want to think otherwise but that's really how it is. I have a dislike of your dishonesty and your wilful ignorance but that is a long way from fear. Precisely what do I have to fear from you?

Your comments about how you wanted to do the physicist vector calculus, rather than the mathematical stuff, shows you don't.

So why don't you do it. If by your own admission it's vital why are you below A Level standard in it while claiming your work is worth multiple Nobel Prizes? A little inconsistent don't you think?

You're hardly taking the high road are you, calling people chicken? Don't you keep complaining how I'm rude to you?

Yes, lets. Please provide a working model of a particular physical phenomenon, including its derivation, so that we can experimentally test at least some part of your claims.

 

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I haven't posted in this thread for a while, but I am still following.

Farsight may find this posting of interest, and indeed, the whole thread.

 

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Other Andrew Worsley tricks:
\(\left( g_e - 1 \right)^{-8}\frac{\varepsilon_0}{4 \pi c^3} \approx 2.56701259 \times 10^{-38} \, \frac{\textrm{A}^2 \cdot \textrm{s}^7}{\textrm{kg} \cdot \textrm{m}^6}\) vs. \(e^2 \approx 2.56696942 \times 10^{-38} \textrm{A}^2 \cdot \textrm{s}^2\) http://books.google.com/books?id=giVNratXuzAC&pg=PA48
(Where \(g_e\) is the electron g-factor ~ 2.0023193 )

and the related:
\(\left( g_e - 1 \right)^{-8} \frac{1}{8 \pi h c^4} \approx 0.0072974761 \, \frac{\textrm{s}^5}{\textrm{kg} \cdot \textrm{m}^6}\) vs. \( \alpha = \frac{e^2}{2 \varepsilon_0 h c } \approx 0.00729735337\) http://books.google.com/books?id=giVNratXuzAC&pg=PA50
Algebra shows that this is the exact same approximation in two different forms, but Worsley passes each off as a separate "truth" each requiring a separate "reply" to people who would tell him that you can't abuse units like this and still do physics.

This trick/approximation depends on \(D = \frac{4 \pi ( g_e - 1 )^8 c^3 e^2}{e_0} \approx 0.99998 \, \frac{\textrm{kg} \cdot \textrm{m}^6}{\textrm{s}^5}\) being conveniently close numerically 1 in SI units, but it is close to \(10^{15}\) in cgs units because units matter.

 

Sorry to be absent for a while guys, I was totally tied up all weekend.

I didn't find that post interesting I'm afraid. It's a weak argument based on the assertion that the radius of the electron is less than 10^-13 m. Given that and the fact that I'm pushed for time, I don't feel motivated to read the whole thread.

Sorry pryzk, I must have missed that. I'll get right on it.

 

I'm defining it exactly how it's written, as motion through spacetime. Take a block of spacetime, draw a non-vertical worldline in it to represent an object's motion through space over time, and yes, you're representing that motion in spacetime. But the object doesn't move along that worldline. It's that Nasty little truth about spacetime physics. You need an extra time dimension for motion through spacetime. It isn't there, nothing is moving in the block universe.

I think you are disregarding what you can see in favour of abstractions that you cannot.

No it isn't. You record events as they happen. You don't record them after they happened! Try recording a plane crash with a TV camera after it happened.

Oh come on pryzk. There's no mystery to this. You can recall the past because you can play back the recordings. You can't play back recordings you haven't made.

I've already explained this. It's trivial. The people who bang on about it have got a book to push.

Mine's the same as the standard explanation. Chance. Statistics. Entropy.

I meant accurate in that the explanation matches what we can observe in experiment. Like we can't observe time flowing.

You're making incorrect assumptions.

You think that because you've made the wrong assumption. I've explained the non-sequiteur in the Stern-Gerlach wikipedia article, which is how intrinisic spin is typically presented.

It doesn't deliver understanding.

That really isn't what the problem is. The problem is that what's taught today is effectively the photon winks out of existence and the electron is magically created. Can you hear a hum przyk, like a turbine? That's Feynman turning in his grave at what amounts to cargo-cult science.

Then it contradicts electromagnetism too.

Alternatively I can deliver understanding to people who do know all those terms.

What I said. It's something along the lines of a vector vectored by itself into a closed path. Pair production makes the +1022keV photon magically disappear and the electron and positron magically appear. Annihilate an electron and a positron and you typically get two 511keV photons.

It doesn't. I haven't given the explanation you asked for. But think it through. Before annihilation, each photon was travelling in a closed path, through itself.

Well take a look at pair production and work out how to do it.

Alternatively I can deliver understanding to people who do know all those terms. Then everybody who didn't think it looked like a promising avenue will be left high and dry.

Carve that "seem to" in stone, pryzk, so you don't forget it.

OK.

And the self-same people who say "there is no evidence" say "you haven't supported your case properly".

I know. And all we've got is two 511 keV photons.

 

Because if you had you'd have spotted the non-sequiteur for yourself. Or at least seen it after I pointed it out. But you still can't. You haven't thought it through at all.

Bing bang boom, your straw-man argument stopped with the classical electron radius. It's based on "the electrostatic potential energy of a sphere of charge". So you're employing a wrong model to try to say a model is wrong. It won't wash, rpenner. People are way too sharp for that.

Who'd want to use a solid sphere when we can make electrons out of light waves and then diffract them?

You definitely haven't thought this through at all, rprenner. Not in the slightest. Trap a massless photon in a mirror-box and you add mass to that system. The photon has its \(E^2 = p^2c^2\) and the system has an extra \(E^2 = m^2c^4\), and all because it's got a massless photon inside it, going round and round. Now think about it. Why does an electron have mass when we started with a photon moving linearly at c, and ended up with an electron that's just sitting there? With its "intrinsic" spin.

You should try reading up on two-photon physics. The model is alive and kicking.

Waves can be subject to superposition but vorticial wave structures can't.

Only if you've never heard of two-photon physics.

Pair production trumps that. We made the electron and the positron starting with something massless.

How utterly vague that is. Come now rpenner, nobody is taken in by that.

A patently circular argument. All you're saying here is this can't work because nobody's done it yet.

Yes you do, because you can diffract electrons. You can diffract waves. You can't diffract point particles.

Argument from authority?

It isn't fundamental enough.

And my, how they cling to it.

Real physicists don't start from the classical electron radius.

So demonstrate that perfect understanding, and tell us how pair production works. Something more impressive than a mathematical expression followed by a risible and that's how it all works! And if you really want to demonstrate that you've thought this through, tell us about the symmetry between momentum and inertia.

Sorry guys, I'm off to bed.

 

This is a strawman argument. I'm not advocating any of this, and despite what might be suggested by the language some physicists use, there is no formal theory that we "move" in time, or along the worldline, or anything of the sort. Time "flowing" is, as you say, a figure of speech. It is not the object of any generally accepted theory in mainstream physics.

Also, if there's any confusion about proper time appearing in SR, that's just a convenient parameter we use. It is not an additional dimension.

I think the material you are responding to shows just the opposite: I'm not disregarding what I see or the way I see things at all, and I am satisfied I can account for it at least to some extent.

"Made" being the past tense of the verb "to make". So you are just asserting that an event has to have occurred in the past in order for us to be able to have a recording of it. This is just reasserting that we can have records of past events but not of future events. That doesn't explain why this is the case, and your choice of language only indicates you're not interested in giving this any more consideration than taking it for granted.

Where have you explained this? Where have you explained why it is that we see an asymmetry in time at the macroscopic level, when there isn't one at the microscopic level that you can explain it in terms of? I meant what I said: you are trivialising a very real open problem in physics.

I'm banging on about this. I don't have any books to push.

That just comes down to what I said earlier: probability theory works one way in time but not the other, for no apparent reason. That's what thermodynamics basically boils down to.

Then "spacetime" and "space+time" are equally accurate as far as any conceivable experiment is concerned. There is no experiment you can perform that can distinguish the two. Personally I don't consider the distinction anything more than a matter of notation and emphasis because of this.

What assumptions specifically, and more importantly, how does not making those assumptions change things?

You asserted a non-sequitur in an argument I wasn't even relying on, and you ignored the argument I was and still am using: there are no half integer orbital angular momentum states in quantum physics.

What exactly does and doesn't qualify as understanding to you? What criteria are you applying to say that QED doesn't constitute "understanding", but an idea like electrons being made of photons does? You have premises in both cases, and QED wins hands down when it comes to making deductions from those premises.

Farsight, you have never followed a university level course or read a textbook on QFT. How in the world would you know what's being taught today?

Why would Feynman turn in his grave over his own theory?

How so? And if you respond in terms of your own interpretation of something Maxwell said that has no experimental support, why should I care?

Without first learning and understanding those terms yourself? How exactly is that supposed to work?

What's a "vector vectored by itself into a closed path"?

So how exactly does this get you a spin half fermion?

If you think it's so easy, why don't you do it yourself? If you can't do it yourself, I don't think you have any business insinuating it is easy.

I mean "seem to" in the same way I'd say conservation of energy seems to rule out the possibility of a perpetual motion machine. There's a general principle in rational debate that "extraordinary assertions require extraordinary proof". The idea of electrons being made from photons is in direct conflict with very well supported and established mainstream physical theories, notably QED and quantum physics in general. That makes the idea an extraordinary assertion, and it means you shouldn't be claiming electrons are made of photons without damn good substantiation for it. That means among other things you'd better be able to explain why all the problems with the idea aren't really problems after all. You haven't done this.

If you change that to "substantial evidence" or "conclusive evidence", they're right on both counts.

 

I don't. I dismiss you because you're abusive and you don't want to talk physics.

Superior by every single measure? Then how come I'm the one talking physics here, giving the evidence, the references, and the argument. And you're not?

I dismissed you for being abusive.

You've never tried to engage me, just as you refuse to engage me now.

I've declined your assistance because I've felt you to be insincere. I took you up on your last offer on the condition that you ceased the abuse, but you didn't, so I withdrew because you can't be trusted.

That I'm right and that you're wrong. It's that simple. And you make it rather obvious. Now take back those ad-hominem allegations of dishonesty and wilful ignorance, because I'm neither dishonest nor wilfully ignorant. And if you don't mind, this is a physics forum, I want to talk physics, not respond to your abuse.

 

How is your book selling by the way?

Can you derive any of those things in your work or are you just borrowing the results of the mainstream without justification?

I'm still waiting for you to provide any way we can experimentally verify any part of your claims.

You don't know what Feynman's work specifically says, how it works or what is taught to students in university so what makes you think you're in a position to tell people who have studied it what the material says?

That is just flat out mistaken. Electromagnetism is a simple limit of QED. QED explains electromagnetism. It doesn't contradict it, it improves it!

In the same way creationists think they deliver understanding for how the universe or life is as it is. They make vacuous assertions they can't back up, just as you do. Your repeated avoidance of answering my direct, relevant essential question illustrates that.

You haven't supported your case at all.

Farsight, until you demonstrate you actually look specifically at the details of mainstream theories it's ridiculous to tell people like przyk what it involves. This whole "I provide understanding" is ridiculous. If I were saying that about string theory would you be accepting it? I doubt it. String theory is superior to your work in every respect, including its applicability to the real world. Your entire position is massively hypocritical.

But then you do have a book to push....

 

Talk physics, Alphanumeric.

It isn't a trick. And it isn't luring children into vans, it's leading a horse to water.

Yes dimensionality matters, but so do ratios, and c is a little bit special.

That's true, but c is a conversion factor between our measure of distance and our measure of time, both the second and the metre are defined using the motion of light, and all physicists are familiar with natural units.

It isn't unphysical numerology. The electron can be created from a photon in pair production. It has spin 1/2, and this article on Dirac's belt tells you this:

"An object must be translated around the loop twice in order to be restored to its original position and chirality. In this sense a Mobius strip is reminiscent of spin-1/2 particles in quantum mechanics, since such particles must be rotated through two complete rotations in order to be restored to their original state".

So look again at λ = 4π / c^1½ and this time consider a wave with two orthogonal rotations, one at c, one at ½ c. The 4π should suggest to you that this wave is sweeping out a sphere, but the spin half tells you it isn't quite a sphere, more a very fat torus, so fat that it would look like an apple.

And then there's the g-factor, a dimensionless constant with the value 2.002319. I need hardly remind you that the Dirac equation predicts g = 2.

 

Pryzk: it's late, I've got to go, I'll get back to you tomorrow. But one comment:

'

No it doesn't. Pair production is the scientific evidence that demonstrates that we really can make electrons from photons. So it isn't an extraordinary assertion at all. The extraordinary assertion is the idea of electrons being made from photons is in direct conflict with very well supported and established mainstream physical theories. You said I'm not disregarding what I see, but I'm afraid you are.

 

Even if the above is true. I told you on other ocassions that the equation you used in the quote below is bogus.

And RPenner went even further than I would have, in actually proving it to you mathematically. And his math work is exactly correct.

Please explain again how that "Binding Energy" thing works again??

Once again the Equation is bogus, give it a rest!!

It is not the concept of an electron being in the shape of a torus that is being ridiculed, it is the equation that you are using to defend it! :xctd:

Oh no, not again!!

 

He hasn't proved anything, Magneto. It's just the usual smoke and mirrors, a bit of LaTeX to try to create an impression, and a voila! No mention of natural units or dimensionless constants or how we define seconds and metres using the motion of light. He reminds me of a witch doctor shaking his bones and trying to hang on to his jealously guarded expertise when a pharmacologist turns up. And the expression isn't bogus. It's just one of those things some folk aren't too keen on, rather like the Williamson / van der Mark electron model:

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See those contours on the slice through the torus? Strip them away and you're left with a ring. Add some more and the torus gets fatter and fatter. It starts looking like an apple, then a sphere, though of course there is no actual surface, just as a whirlpool has no outer edge.

You can see a bit of insight into the binding energy on this biological physics webpage. The caption for figure 1 reads Illustration of the winding pattern of a toroidal spool that has reduced its bending energy by assuming a twist.

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You know, you really ought to look into this properly.

 

OK, but please make that clear to guys like prometheus, back me up when I'm right. He's come out with things like Also, there is a certain freedom of motion in the time direction and but this assumes I have time and we move through time in a linear fashion. See posts #28 and #50. It isn't his fault of course, it's just what he's been taught, or picked up from the likes of Hawking and Carroll.

No problem. Can I add though that I think it's OK to say time is a dimension in the sense of "measure". That's the old sense of the word, from dimetiri, to measure out. However nowadays "dimension" usually comes with freedom-of-motion baggage.

That's what they all say.

So explain how pair production works, and when you can't, don't feel so satisfied.

I'm not taking it for granted. This is just so simple pryzk, simpler than you think. Now think it through. You record an event as it happens. Not after it happens. If you write down what happened, all you're doing is a transcription, from the recording in your head to another recording on paper. Then you say "this event is in the past". It may have escaped your notice, but that's a figure of speech too. All you're actually doing is recording events. And events that are "in the future" haven't occurred, so you can't record them. That's it. There's no Woo! Mystery! to it.

To be continued.

 

In post #151. It might sound trivial to you, but I'm not trivialising it, it's just another of those very simple things. It all comes down to motion. If you don't like what I said there, think about a photon. It's travelling at c, so it's subject to "infinite time dilation" and we say "no time passes for the photon". But it still moves through space. Then you can intercept it and do pair production on it. Now you've got an electron.

And I'm doing my best to show you how simple it is.

It isn't because probability theory works one way in time. It's because that's how things move.

I said accurate in that the explanation matches what we can observe in experiment. Like we can't observe time flowing. Thus it isn't space+time, it's space+motion. And there's plenty of experiments you can do to distinguish the two. You can't see time flowing, remember? Not in any of those experiments. But you can see motion happening.

You said magnetic moments are only evidence of rotation if you assume that magnetic moments are always produced by rotating charges. That's an assumption that can perfectly well turn out to be false. You've forgotten about rotating displacement current, and assumed that all current-rotation is false, and then you've swallowed the non-sequiteur that spin ½ involves no rotation. Not making this assumption leads you to an accepted electron model, then to one or two revisions to the standard model.

Sorry. I'll give that some attention. But again, I have to go I'm afraid. Nice talking to you przyk.

 

I keep asking you to provide any working model from your work. I want to discuss it with you. I don't want arm waving, I want details. Provide your details and I'll gladly talk about it. Or how about my offer to help you learn electromagnetism? You turned me down. You're the one making excuses and avoiding discussion, not I.

Sorry, I do my physics and maths 10am to 6pm and I get paid for it. I get to work with professors and industry. I get to work along side doctorates in maths and physics on real world problems which people are willing to pay well for me to help solve. I don't need to do my physics on a forum. Like I said, by every measure I'm superior in physics and maths to you and I stand by that. If you think contributions to forums counts then you're really desperate.

I dismiss you for being unable to provide answers to simple questions like "What can you actually model in reality?". Your silence is deafening.

Farsight, I warn you against stating demonstrable lies. How many times have I asked you the same question, which you won't answer but which is directly relevant to the physical validity of your claims?

Just as I feel you to be insincere with your requests I 'talk physics'. I want to talk about your 'physics' but you won't answer my question.

 

Yes, he did prove that the equation is bogus; it is not smoke and mirrors. What Andrew Worley is doing is smoke and mirrors, and you are peddling his wares!!

Once again the concept of a torus is fun physics to model, but the equation that you are demanding that people pull out their calculators and go to work is bogus.

And trying to explain the difference between the Compton correct equation and Andrew Worley's equation as a "Binding Energy" difference is comedy.

Can you please explain how that "Binding Energy" thing works again??

I am not standing up for RPenner, if that is what you are trying to describe. I believe that guy uses his money to fly into countries where they turn a blind eye to inappropriate relations with children.

That guy threatened me that he would contact one of my ex-employers based on blogs on a physics forum. What kind of a person is that. I don't care how much math and physics skills that person has.

But with all that aside RPenner did get the math correct.

I know what a whirpool is I have a vortex theory described on this forum and others. I like pretty physics pictures too. It is just that the equation is wrong.

Art is a different subject from physics and math.

 

Instead of trying to speak for prometheus, why don't you ask him to speak for himself? General point actually: why do you always assume people who say anything you disagree with have been indoctrinated, instead of just asking them where they got the idea from and what they mean by it? You might find that prometheus isn't especially attached to what he said for instance. I don't know. You'll have to ask him.

They all tell you they explained something you ignored, and provide a quote to substantiate that, while you continue to pretend it never happened? If they all do this, you must be ignoring a lot of people's arguments against you.

I was specifically talking about the human perception of space and time. Why are you trying to change the subject?

Farsight, it is simple to you because you are taking it for granted. Your explanations all amount to a restatement of the way things are, in language making it clear you think it's the most natural thing in the world, and with no willingness to look beyond that. Case in point:

All stuff I already know from day to day life. You say "think it through" but then just recount the way things are without really thinking about them.

 

Yes, I know, that's what you said: motion has a tendency to even out. But as I pointed out, that's just a statement of a special case of the second law of thermodynamics, which itself is founded on probability theory. That's why I said thermodynamics basically boils down to saying probability theory works one way in time but not the other, for no apparent reason. And that's why I don't think thermodynamics is ultimately a good explanation at all.

What does this have to do with why an asymmetry with respect to time arises in macroscopic physics? You can't explain this in terms of QED processes because QED is time symmetric and the reverse process always exists: it is also possible to make two photons out of an electron positron pair.

How does this address what I said? You seem to just be denying it and saying that things are the way they are, as if that were an argument against it.

But this is a strawman argument: space+time and spacetime don't predict you'd see time flowing.

When I point out that you are making unsubstantiated assumptions, bringing in additional assumptions doesn't help your case.

I don't know what you're even talking about here.

It is not a non-sequitur. It is a statement of the way quantum physics is at the moment. It is also a matter of fact that there is no such thing as a half integer orbital angular momentum state in quantum physics. The framework of quantum theory just doesn't allow you to describe such a thing.