Yes, I know this topic is started alot, but I'm going to try and take it a different way this time *I hope lol*. From what I understand, the particles that "transmit" magnetism, are photons. But after reading the book Driving Force, which was about magnetism and stuff, it said that magnetism was transmitted via photons, but these were like "virtual photons"... What the heck is that supposed to mean? Hopefully someone with some knowledge of quantum electrodynamics will be able to help. Thanks in advance.

Caleb

Dear cb767,
You know, it is my basic question to any nova-specialists of QFT: "What is the quantum structure of the magnetic field?" Amazingly, many of them know how to arrange braking of any symmetry of any Lagrangian of any field and generate "mixing" of any fields in 11D-string theory, saving the quazi-renormalization features and so kind stuff, but have no clue what quanta transmits ... the static magnets interaction! And I do not want even to mention the creators of theories of Everything and destroyers of SRT who can not often understand what you are asking about...
But your question concerns to a simple and plain physics: "What is the static magnetic field as a quantified system?" You can check out that this simple question will confuse a majority of professors in our Universities - that is a sad reality of our Organized Education System...
I will together with you enjoy answers on your very good question...

Yuriy - this a question, not an argument. Are you saying, after all we learned from Maxwell-Hertz, that it still makes sense to talk about "magnetism" without reference to the electromagnetic field? If this is true, you are right, it could be a very interesting discussion

QH,
You know, I do not recall any essential and/or deeply fundamental contribution of Maxwell and/or Hertz in the issue "What is magnetostatic field?" Do you? Tell us about it...

If you put it like that, no. But equally I never heard of an "magnetostatic field". Is the EM field static - never heard that either.
I said it was a question, not an argument. Please tell us your thoughts

Hi Caleb

In physics, when we have nonlinear equations that cannot be solved exactly, we like to parameterize the nonlinearity, and then write the solution as a Taylor series in that parameter. Each coefficient of the series can be calculated exactly as the solution to the corresponding linear problem. To solve the nonlinear problem, we "simply" have to evaluate an infinite number of these terms. This sounds bad, but if the value of the parameter is small, we can get useful answers after only calculating a few of these terms. This is the same as the way that e^x≈1+x is a good approximation when x is very small. This is called perturbation theory.

In quantum mechanics, the terms of the perturbation series have matrix elements which correspond to classically forbidden transitions. Like in nonrelativistic quantum mechanics, when calculating the perturbation series for a transition between two neighboring states, one has to sum intermediate amplitudes for all other energy states, even though a transition to those states would violate the conservation of energy. Of course, a transition to a forbidden region is never observable, so the system never violates the conservation of energy in a meaningful way. Sometimes this is described using the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, saying that the system can violate the conservation of energy if it does so for a short enough time.

In quantum field theory, the intermediate states are particles. In old school field theory, these were inobservable particles that violated the conservation of energy for a short time, but Feynman made a Lorentz invariant approach where instead energy is conserved for all intermediate states, and the intermediate particles violate the relationship p²=m², which should be obeyed for all observable states. The hyperboloid described by that equation is called the mass shell, and virtual particles are referred to as "off-shell" because they violate that.

so um, to sum up, virtual particles are still particles, since they are quanta of various fields, but they are not observible, and they do not obey their mass shell condition. They are intermediate classically forbidden particles whose infinite series of amplitudes must be summed up to get a physically observable amplitude.

magnetostatics = magnetic fields whose time derivatives are 0.

Wow, that was a lot to take in at once! Well, that's interesting that their non-observable particles although still in existance. Anything relating to quantum theory always seems to end up that way lol. But I've also heard a few small descriptions of superconductivity with "virtual photons" and other such terms. I'm currently in my second year of physics *calculus integrated lol*, so I still have a LONG way to go before I fully grasp what you posted. Even so, I still find it extremely interesting to study superconductors, magnets, and electricity, even if it is from a limited perspective due to my lack of understanding in these areas.

yeah, quantum theory has a lot of weird things that it takes a long time to get comfortable with. and it doesn't help that the mathematics of quantum theory is rather abstract.



for more about virtual particles, you might try this page. It's not too technical and tries to focus on an intuitive idea of the virtual particles, rather than a mathematical description, which is more or less what I tried to give you.

So, guys, you are witnessing one very remarkable situation: nobody can find any sophisticated answer on very simple and old question: "What quanta are transmiting the magnetostatic field?"
Faradey was looking for the physical structure of the permanent magnets field ... and we, talking about Unification, Confinement and Gravitational waves, still do not know the answer on this simple and obvious question... Is not it amazing?...

why do you think no one knows the answer?

In our Forum - due to a simple fact: nobody answered.
In official Science - due to absence of any answer in literature.
In Internet - I can not find any answers there too.
If you know some alternatives - tell us about them...

So, my friends, we indeed should conclude that nobody in our Forum knows anything about quanta that are transmitted the magnetostatic interaction. It means that we do not know what are the quanta, the field of a permanent magnet consists of. Is not it amazing? Therefore any student, asking the same question, will be confused recognizing that the teacher simply does not know the answer. What credibility entire course of electromagnetism will have in his eyes? We have to do something with this confusing situation, haven't we?
Any suggestions?

The real truth about electricity and magnetism: Experimentally verified.
[JJ Thomson got something wrong]
CORAL CASTLE AND THE THEORIES OF ITS BUILDER


There was a man in the 1920s named Edward Leedskalnin, and he built a small castle made of 3 million pounds of coral rock. Some of the coral stones that he built it with weigh 30 tons. The tools that he had were only simple pulleys and winches and chains. Scientists do not know how he did it. The equipment he had was not strong enough to lift the great stones. He said that he knew the secret of how the Egyptian pyramids were built. He did his own experiments on magnetism and developed his own theories. People spying on him with binoculars swore that they saw one of the great stones move by itself. It seems like he knew some secret of using magnetic force to make the stones weigh less. He published three books on his magnetic theory:- Magnetic Current, Magnetic Base and Cosmic Force. Scientists and others have read these books since the 1920s and no one understood them. If you want to buy these books and read about him and what he did, visit this website: http://www.coralcastle.com You can buy these books for about $11.20.
His theories on electricity and magnetism are backed up by experimental proof.
It looks like his way of viewing electricity and magnetism might be more accurate than what modern physics teaches.
I'll summarize what he found out by experimenting with magnets. Just like physics considers an electron or proton to be the smallest unit of electric charge, there is a smallest unit of magnetism which he calls north and south pole individual magnets. They are free to flow in metals, in the air and in other things. The iron shavings around a bar magnet trace their path. From the North end of a magnet, there are many north pole magnets flowing out and going around the outside of the magnet and coming into the south pole of the magnet and then running in the metal and returning to the North pole. From the South pole of the magnet, there are many south pole magnets flowing out and going around the outside of the magnet and going into the North pole and flowing through the metal and returing to the South pole. Some flow straight out from the poles and don't return, but are replaced by others from the air.
Experimenting with small magnets hung over a wire carring a current he concludes this: Electricity is really north pole magnets flowing out from the + terminal of a battery and flowing through the wire with a right hand twist and there is an opposite flow of south pole magnets coming out of the - terminal of a battery and flowing in the wire with a right hand twist. Modern electronics developed with the theoretical notion of a positive current flowing through a wire, but this is only a way of thinking about electricity to describe and quantify its effects. There is no real positive current flowing through the wire, because protons will not flow through a wire like electricity. Free electrons in the wire only have a slow drift speed, so negative charge cannot flow through a wire like electricity either. This idea of opposing north and south pole magnetic units flowing through a wire might be what is really happening in an electric current. He experimentally shows that this can explain the magnetic effects that electricity produces by its actions on nearby magnets. Too many of these magnetic units being made to flow through a place that has high resistance produces heat, so it can also explain the heat effects of electricity.
I just rubbed a plastic comb on a spread to get an electrostatic charge and I picked up two pieces of small paper, one hanging from the other. I put a magnet near the bottom piece and it was attracted to the magnet like it was really a magnetic force and not an electrostatic force like physics tries to say. Maybe electrical forces could better be explained by small units of north and south pole magnets and not electric charge.
Leedskalnin took two soft iron welding rods and connected one to the positive terminal of a battery and the other to the negative terminal of the battery. He touched them together and held them together till they got hot. He sepearated them from each other while still connected to the battery and investigated them with magnets. The iron connected to the negative terminal was a completely south monopole magnet, and the iron connected to the positive terminal was a completely north monopole magnet. This experiment helped him to develope his theory on electric current.
Leedskalnin believed that electostatic force was really a magnetic force. He would describe an electrostatically charged piece of rubber this way: IN rubber the north and south pole magnetic units are not flowing like they are in a bar iron magnet, (he said the magnetic units flowing in an iron magnet are excess magnetic units that were added to the metal when it was magnetized) but in rubber they are stationary and they are the north and south pole magnetic forces that hold the rubber molecules together. This causes many small north and south magnetic poles on the same side of the rubber, and this is what causes the electrostatic charge. He proves this to be a magnetic force by
attracting iron filings to an electrostatically charged rubber, and bringing a metal bar magnet near. When the bar magnet's poles are reversed by turning it to the other end, some of the iron filings jump off of the rubber. He believed the first approach of the bar magnet with its stronger field, reversed the magnetic fields of some of the iron filings and when the magnet was turned around, the magnetic fields repelled each other. He believed it was magnetic and not electrostatic. He also detected South pole magnetic units flowing upward and North pole magnetic units flowing downward in the northern hemisphere, by hanging a long magnet in the middle and the south pole end would always hang down. To make it level, the south pole end needed to be longer.
In his writings he does make some statements about other things like gravity and moon orbit and tries to explain this by magnetic force. These statements go beyond his experiments and seem to be just false opinions. He only had a 4th grade education, but he studied what science said about electrons and current, and he thought science was wrong about it because his own experiments showed something else.
Mineral, Vegetable and Animal Life, Copyright October 1945 By Edward Leedskalnin Quote:
"The North pole magnets come out of the battery's positive terminal and South pole magnets come out of car battery's negative terminal. To be sure it is so, you get two pieces of soft steel welding rod four inches long, put them in clips and connect them with the car battery. Put those two loose rod ends together until the rod gets hot. Now test each of those rod ends you were putting together with a small needle-like horizontally hanging magnet. Then you will see the one which is connected with positive terminal is North pole magnet, and the one which is connected with negative terminal is South pole magnet (Like poles repulses, and unlike poles attract). You can change the rod peices, but every time the one is connected with positive terminal will be North pole magnet, and the one connected with negative terminal will be South pole magnet".
Leedskalnin believed that electostatic force was really a magnetic force. He would describe an electrostatically charged piece of rubber this way: IN rubber the north and south pole magnetic units are not flowing like they are in a bar iron magnet, (he said the magnetic units flowing in an iron magnet are excess magnetic units that were added to the metal when it was magnetized) but in rubber they are stationary and they are the north and south pole magnetic forces that hold the rubber molecules together. This causes many small north and south magnetic
poles on the same side of the rubber, and this is what causes the electrostatic charge. He proves this to be a magnetic force by attracting iron filings to an electrostatically charged rubber, and bringing a metal bar magnet near. When the bar magnet's poles are reversed by turning it to the other end, some of the iron filings jump off of the rubber. He believed the first approach of the bar magnet with its stronger field, reversed the magnetic fields of some of the
iron filings and when the magnet was turned around, the magnetic fields repelled each other. He believed it was magnetic and not electrostatic. He also detected South pole magnetic units flowing upward and North
pole magnetic units flowing downward in the northern hemisphere, by hanging a long magnet in the middle and the south pole end would always hang up. To make it level, the south pole end needed to be longer. In his writings he does make some statements about other things like gravity and moon orbit and tries to explain this by magnetic force. These statements go beyond his experiments and seem to be just false opinions. He only had a 4th grade education, but he studied what science said about electrons and current, and he thought science was
wrong about it because his own experiments showed something else.

What you have flowing through wire in an electric current is north and south pole magnetic units, flowing in opposite directions with a right hand twist. JJ Thopson did not need to invent the electron to explain what comes off of a cathode, in a cathode ray tube. It is really south pole magnetic units coming off of the cathode. All of electricity/magnetism can be simplified to just magnetism.

yeah, man. Photons. The electromagnetic field (including the magnetostatic limit) is propagated by photons. This is elementary.

lethe,
Of course photons, but which kind and how?
(Do you recall our dispute on Vacuum? So, now you have a chance to destroy me showing that only with transversal photons you can describe magnetostatic field)

Well, you make quantum states corresponding to a given classical solution by constructing coherent states, which I get by exponentiating the creation operators. If I want a coherent state with no electrostatic potential, I should use the three spacelike photons. To satisfy the gauge principle, the the longitudinal photon should vanish if the scalar photon vanishes. Leaving me to exponentiate the two transversal photons.

I haven't checked this calculation, but I see no reason why this shouldn't be straightforward. Perhaps you can give me a hint of your reason for suspecting this to be a hard question?