A Fifth Fundamental Force

Our resident professional Prof poller tashja does it again. Needless to say, I like the good Prof. Gerard 't Hooft's reply and he's now my hero - sort of.

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

That he does. And it's good that physicists respond.

I don't share your view on that. I'll try to explain why:

There is not as much disagreement as you suggest here. What is meant when 'mainstream science' says there are 4 fundamental forces is that there are 4 fundamental forces known. There could be a lot more that have never been detected. Actually, 4 includes gravity: electromagnetic, weak, strong and gravitational. O yes, investigators have been searching for a long time for a fifth force but nothing has been found that could be confirmed and reproduced. Saying that `gravity is not a force' is just semantics. Yes, we can ascribe gravity to space-time curvature, but then you could also say that the other forces are due to some intrinsic curvature in some "internal" space.

IMHO it's good that he said just semantics and hinted at electromagnetic curvature, but he didn't mention electroweak, and he didn't refer to linear electric force and rotational magnetic force, and he didn't say interaction. So I thought that this was a somewhat casual throwaway answer, and he doesn't really supply anything.

This is just wording, the equations say it much more precise, but are avoided in the popular text books, hence the confusion.

But the equations don't offer any explanation of what the interactions are and how they work. They aren't enough.

I agree with you that saying degeneracy pressure isn't a force is confusing too. The pressure is due to the fact that degenerated particles have to move very fast, they can't move slower, and that fast motion generates effectively a very real pressure, or force.

Where did this come from? Have a look on Wiki at electron degeneracy pressure. It arises from the Pauli exclusion principle, not from fast motion.

A classical gas has also a pressure because the molecules are moving, but there they are at least permitted to move slower, so if you lower the temperature, the pressure drops. Not so for a degenerate Fermi liquid: the particles can't go slower.

Why can't they go slower?

As for GUT theories (let alone TOE), you could also say that these actually reduce the forces to just 2: the GUT force, unifying 3 into 1, and gravity - which wasn't included yet. But yes, this one unifying force allows more types of bosons to be exchanged than the original 3 together, but all these bosons are basically the same. I would say the TOE may perhaps only require one "force" which then includes gravity.

Hydrogen atoms don't twinkle, and magnets don't shine. Whilst people talk about exchange particles, electrons and protons are not slinging photons at one another. Virtual particles are not short-lived real particles, they're "field quanta". Like you divide a field up into chunks and say each a particle. But it isn't really a particle. The electrons electromagnetic field isn't made up of photons. On top of that, since there's already two forces in electromagnetism and one field, and since the force of gravity is a different force again, there won't be one force in a TOE.

In conclusion, yes you have to read the small print, or between the lines, or whatever. The popular text books are not so precise, the equations are.

Methinks this answer is not so precise.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

That fast motion is a consequence of PEP applied to conditions inside a degenerate star. There is no error on 't Hooft's part (hint!). See below for link.

Maybe if you read here: http://jila.colorado.edu/~pja/astr3730/lecture17.pdf it will become clearer. Not interested in commenting on the rest of your post.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

It isn't clearer at all. In fact the presentation contradicts itself then proposes a non-sequitur:

"To avoid violating the exclusion principle, electrons in a dense, cold gas must have a larger momenta than we would predict classically."

That's just so not true. The Pauli exclusions principle applies to electrons because they're fermions. Have you spotted the recent coverage of quantum whirlpools? It's like two whirlpools cannot overlap. What's clearer is hyperphysics where we can read this:

"For stellar masses less than about 1.44 solar masses, the energy from the gravitational collapse is not sufficient to produce the neutrons of a neutron star, so the collapse is halted by electron degeneracy to form white dwarfs. This maximum mass for a white dwarf is called the Chandrasekhar limit. As the star contracts, all the lowest electron energy levels are filled and the electrons are forced into higher and higher energy levels, filling the lowest unoccupied energy levels. This creates an effective pressure which prevents further gravitational collapse."

 

Your non-existent non-sequitur there is a product of selectively quoting and then creating a false 'conflict'. But just believe whatever you wish to believe if it makes you happy I guess.

 

Shrug. Same to you. You can believe that electron degeneracy pressure is because electrons are moving fast if you like. It isn't true. So I'm afraid 't Hooft gave an off-the-cuff popscience non-answer for kids. I don't know if you recall the last time tashja asked questions of the pros, about why the vertical light beam doesn't get out of a black holes. The answers varied widely. My advice is to await other answers, then play spot the difference, do your own research, and think for yourself before you fall to your knees and start proclaiming some guy as your hero.

 

Do tell?! Please - go back and check what was actually said, and what that article linked to actually says.

I don't have 'heroes' and that should have been evident given the tongue-in-cheek way I ended the post you refer to. Get a life outside of here Farsight - for your own mental well-being. Seriously. I'm off.

 

I read it. It contains a non-sequitur. Pauli exclusion is NOT down to fast-moving particles.

My mental well-being is fine thanks. And since it's pouring with rain outside, I'll sit at this here desk talking physics thanks.

OK, back to quintessence. There was a mention of aether in the Wikipedia article. See this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aether_theories#Quantum_vacuum

"Robert B. Laughlin, Nobel Laureate in Physics, endowed chair in physics, Stanford University, had this to say about ether in contemporary theoretical physics:
It is ironic that Einstein's most creative work, the general theory of relativity, should boil down to conceptualizing space as a medium when his original premise [in special relativity] was that no such medium existed..."

Also have a look at this: https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090205181350AAf9a6V

"Aristotle posits the existence of a fifth element (corresponding to the fifth remaining Platonic solid, the dodecahedron) called quintessence, of which the cosmos itself is made. Aristotle included aether in the system of the classical elements of Ionic philosophy as the "fifth element" (the quintessence)...".

I don't like the word aether myself, and much prefer space. And the important thing is this: space isn't nothing. You can curve it, Einstein described a field as a state of space. It's the quintessence of old. And IMHO it's the modern quintessence too.

 

Then there's this:

https://www.amherst.edu/aboutamherst/news/faculty/node/457128

 

That requires a citation!

 

Everyone, every expert, every physicist, every professional, that dares disgree with the inflated one, is always written off as popscience for kids etc.
And just to straighten out the truth here, not one reply from any professor, actually 100% agreed with Farsight's interpretations, while most whole heartedly disgreed, to the point of telling him to learn some GR.

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

The evidence speaks for itself with regards to Farsight's always doubtful claims.