Electromagnetism: quantum mechanics or vortices?

[PhysBang]

Because you know that light can't get through the lead sheet. So you know those magnets aren't chucking photons at one another.

Are you saying that the only photons are those that produce visible light?

 

[Aqueous Id]

Are you saying that the only photons are those that produce visible light?

A pin drops. Checkmate.

 

[Farsight]

What do you mean, checkmate? Everybody knows that electromagnetic radiation consists of photons, whatever the frequency. And everybody knows that magnets don't shine. Not at any frequency.

 

[PhysBang]

What do you mean, checkmate? Everybody knows that electromagnetic radiation consists of photons, whatever the frequency. And everybody knows that magnets don't shine. Not at any frequency.

Except that you are claiming that everyone doesn't know this; you are claiming that there are scientists that claim that magnets do shine, just with photons that you cannot detect.

Can you walk us through the details of this theory and show us where it doesn't match observations? Could you point us to the observations that this theory uses that are incorrect? And why?

And could you please show us how your theory allows us to calculate a simple electromagnetism problem? Could you show us how to calculate the amps in a circuit, for example?

 

[James R]

Farsight:

Yes, what other law do you think vortices follow?

I don't know. You haven't provided anything that says they follow an inverse-square law. Can you demonstrate that they do, or point me to where I can find such a demonstration?

[Students] aren't taught about the screw nature of electromagnetism. They're taught something that downright contradicts Minkowski and Maxwell.

One of the first things a student of physics learns about magnetism is the force law: $$\vec{F} = q\vec{v} \times \vec{B}$$. There's your "screw nature" right there.

Yes there is. Come on, we've been through this. Magnets don't shine.

I don't remember claiming that they do.

No it wasn't. Come on, who are you talking about? Feynman Tomonaga and Schwinger?

Yes. They shared a Nobel prize for quantum electrodyamics.

Yes, and QED is so regarded. But it features a virtual-photon exchange. Not a real-photon exchange.

QED explains both virtual and real photons.

Only now a cargo-cult myth has grown up where electrons and protons are chucking photons back and forth.

Those are virtual photons. That's what QED says happens.

An electromagnetic wave propagating. As for what it is, it's a soliton pulse of four-potential. The spatial and time derivatives of the potential yield the sinusoidal electric waveform and the in-phase sinusoidal magnetic waveform. Hence Minkowski said "division of the field into electric and magnetic forces is a relative one with respect to the time-axis". There aren't two waves playing dozy-doh creating one another. Again see Jefimenko. Or see The role of the potentials in electromagnetism by Percy Hammond.

You can't bluff me with technical language, Farsight. Tossing around terms like "soliton pulse of four-potential" won't get you anywhere, because I see through that nonsense jargon. I know what a soliton is, and electromagnetic waves generally aren't solitons. And talking about potentials doesn't get you anywhere, either. Fields and potentials are equivalent descriptions. I also understand what Minkowski meant with what you've quoted here, though I fear you do not.

You're hiding behind calls for mathematics, when there's oodles of it out there:

$$\begin{align} & \varphi(\mathbf{r},t) = \dfrac{1}{4\pi \epsilon_0} \int \dfrac{\rho(\mathbf{r}',t_r)}{|\mathbf{r}-\mathbf{r}'|} \mathrm{d}^3 \mathbf{r}'\\ & \mathbf{A}(\mathbf{r},t) = \dfrac{\mu_0}{4\pi} \int \dfrac{\mathbf{J}(\mathbf{r}',t_r)}{|\mathbf{r}-\mathbf{r}'|} \mathrm{d}^3 \mathbf{r}'\\ \end{align}$$

And trying to bluff me with mathematics won't work, either. I am familiar with those equations. They have nothing to do with vortices, and are therefore irrelevant to what I asked you.

I can see that you have to clutch at straws. When asked about mathematics you're hopelessly out of your depth. It shows. It's actually a bit pathetic that you think you can bluff your way through mathematics with people who have actually studied it. (There are a number of us here.)

Space. A field is a state of space. An electromagnetic field is curved space.

Nonsense. Electromagnetic fields do just fine in flat space.

No, you moved. ....

No, you move, and you see that what you thought was an electric field, is an electromagnetic field.

There's no way to distinguish whether I moved or the electron moved. That's basic relativity for you. I expected more from such a self-proclaimed devotee of Einstein.

It isn't weird at all. Just think of a seismic wave which travels from A to B. Draw a line from A to B. It isn't only the houses on the line that shake. The seismic wave travels "many paths". So does a photon. It isn't some point-particle, it has an E=hf wave nature.

I don't disagree with the wave nature of the photon. All quantum particles behave like both particles and waves.

But most professional physics adopt the position wherein the spin of an electron is something totally unlike the spin of a hurricane, despite the evidence of Einstein-de Haas and magnetic moment.

No they don't. They explicitly acknowledge that the quantum spin of an electron, say, is analogous to the classical spin of a ball.

Think of the above as merely the centre of the electron, the eye of the storm as it were, surrounded by frame-dragged space as per the spiral on the right

There seems to be no value in such a picture. Not that you've provided, anyway.

Says you. You think the electron is a point particle, even though in atomic orbitals electrons "exist as standing waves".

Again, you need to read beyond the early 20th century. Electrons in atoms don't exist as standing waves. It's more complicated than Bohr's simple picture.

You've led a sheltered life. Here, have a read about gravity probe B. Note the mention of vortex and twisted space.

I don't see any mention of "twist fields" or "turn fields".

The virtual photons aren't real photons. They're field quanta. Arbitrary abstract parts of the field. So the exchange aspect of the theory is OK. What isn't OK is the notion that there's actual photons flying around.

Virtual photons are photons too.

Because you know that light can't get through the lead sheet. So you know those magnets aren't chucking photons at one another.

I know they aren't chucking real photons. But virtual photons work just fine.

No it isn't. The crucial point is that Maxwell unified the electric field and the magnetic field into the electromagnetic field.

What Maxwell did (with Faraday before him) was he showed that varying magnetic fields cause electric fields and vice versa. This is the "unification" of electricity and magnetism into electromagnetism. There's no big mystery here. Electromagnetism is just electricity and magnetism. It's not a mysterious new thing never seen before.

No, I say the electron is made from one photon and the positron is made of one photon, typically in gamma-gamma pair production. But I also say you can split a photon into two. This is what happens in "ordinary" pair production where the positron interacts with a nucleus. And in a way this is what happens when an electron drops down an orbital. Think of o-positronium as something like a hydrogen atom. The electron drops down an orbital, and a photon is emitted. Then the electron and positron annihilate, and two more photons are emitted.

You can't split a photon in two.

You didn't create a magnetic field. You just felt some rotational force, because you moved through the electron's electromagnetic field.

A stationary charge has only an electric field. If you move relative to the charge, then you see both an electric field and a magnetic field. This is due to your change of reference frame. Fundamentally, it is a relativistic effect. This is well understood.

"The rule is also used to determine the direction of the torque vector. If you grip the imaginary axis of rotation of the rotational force so that your fingers point in the direction of the force, then the extended thumb points in the direction of the torque vector."

You're citing first-year physics at me, as if I'm not familiar with it. I assure you, I am. A torque is not the same as a force, just like a force is not the same as a field. You really need to get the differences straight in your mind. There are no "rotational forces". There are forces that cause torques, however.

Sorry, that's wrong. I know it's what's taught, but it's wrong. Field lines don't actually exist, nor do electric vectors. But the electromagnetic field does.

Field lines, vectors and the fields are all mathematical descriptions. In that sense, field lines are as real as fields. And an electric field is certainly as real as an electromagnetic field. Both are fields. An electric field is just a subset of electromagnetic fields.

And a tensor is a "mathematical object". The electromagnetic field isn't.

Both are mathematical descriptions.

Two electrons repel, two positrons repel. One electron and one positron attract. The arrowheads are like this →← for two electrons, like this ←→ for two positrons, and like this →→ or this ←← for one of each.

And so... ?

You said there was something wrong with the standard field-line picture of the electric field of a stationary charge. You implied that it couldn't account for your little arrows in the quote above. But it does so just fine. So, I'm not seeing the problem.

 

[Billy T]

(1)... I know what a soliton is, and electromagnetic waves generally aren't solitons. ... (2)You can't split a photon in two. ...

(1) is true. It is quite hard, but valuable to make a optical solitons. My friend when we were classmates at Cornell in very tough 5-Year experimental program called "Engineering Physics" (Soon dropped as half the class transferred out to easier 4-year program, like Chem Engineering, EE. etc.) did that during his career at Bell Labs:

Linn Mollenauer and his team transmitted soliton pulses over 4,000 kilometers using a phenomenon called the Raman effect, named after Sir C. V. Raman who first described it in the 1920s, to provide optical gain in the fiber.

Sending high data rate data thru optical fibers with simple photon pulses that distance is impossible without making the bits be brief photon soliton pulses due to dispersion, but as discussed at the link with dynamic illustration, the solitons of the data must be equally strong to stay separated in time by a constant space. I don't think Linn's discoveries are actually used. During some merger Bell Labs had a reduction in force. Management wanted Linn to drop his work with optical solitons, and he refused. Eventually Linn and his Bell Labs paid for equipment returned to Cornell - after that I don't know what happened.

On (2): That depends on how "split" is defined.
The most standard way to make a coupled or mixed quantum state of two photons is to pass beam of short wave length (near UV ?) photons thru carefully cut highly non-linear dielectric constant crystal. Their "E-field" "wiggles" the bound electrons and generates sub-harmonic component to the bound electron oscillation. I.e. make photon radiation pairs with half the exciting photon's energy - or something like that - sort of a Stokes radiation like effect but not done with molecules being excited and thus only slightly lowering the energy of the incident photons - I.e. Stokes created radiation is only slightly longer in wave length,* not half the wave length generated by the "spilt" shorter wave length incident radiation sent into the crystal.

* There is also the "anti-Stokes" line with slightly more energy. I doubt Stokes ever saw it, nor realized he was proving the quantization of energy. (Probably the first to do so experimentally.) I have seen it / created it/ in Carbon Disulfide "scattering" with long duration photographic spectrograph exposure. It is very weak compared to even the Stokes lines that have lost two molecular vibration energies.

 

[Farsight]

I don't know. You haven't provided anything that says they follow an inverse-square law. Can you demonstrate that they do, or point me to where I can find such a demonstration?

Not offhand. There's various articles and papers when you google it, but I have no special information to impart. Besides, you could ask the same question of a vector field, and I don't know of any demonstrable attraction or repulsion that isn't inverse-square.

One of the first things a student of physics learns about magnetism is the force law: $$\vec{F} = q\vec{v} \times \vec{B}$$. There's your "screw nature" right there.

It isn't. The screw nature is where you exert a linear force and get a rotational force. Like a pump-action screw driver. And vice versa. And after everything I've been saying, you should now be critical of the Lorentz force article on Wikipedia. It says this: if a particle of charge q moves with velocity v in the presence of an electric field E and a magnetic field B, then it will experience a force. For any produced force there will be an opposite reactive force. In the case of the magnetic field, the reactive force may be obscure, but it must be accounted for. $$\mathbf{F} = q\left(\mathbf{E} + \mathbf{v} \times \mathbf{B}\right)$$. The charged particle has an electromagnetic field. Like the other charged particle or particles. You don't create a magnetic field for a particle when you move.

I don't remember claiming that they do.

But you say virtual photons are photons too. What frequency are they? You can't say. Can you see them? No. Can you detect them? No. Because they aren't photons. Which you admit when you say I know they aren't chucking real photons. The electron and the proton aren't exchanging photons, they're exchanging field, such that the hydrogen atom hasn't got much in the way of a field.

QED explains both virtual and real photons.

Only too many people think virtual photons are real photons, and that electrons and protons are chucking photons at one another. Because of rubbish like this from the other thread.

Those are virtual photons. That's what QED says happens.

I dispute that. You find Feynman saying that.

You can't bluff me with technical language, Farsight. Tossing around terms like "soliton pulse of four-potential" won't get you anywhere, because I see through that nonsense jargon. I know what a soliton is, and electromagnetic waves generally aren't solitons.

An E=hf photon doesn't disperse, see http://arxiv.org/abs/0803.2596 re the pulse. I'm not bluffing you, I'm telling you.

And talking about potentials doesn't get you anywhere, either. Fields and potentials are equivalent descriptions. I also understand what Minkowski meant with what you've quoted here, though I fear you do not.

I do. See this from the Wikipedia Aharonov-Bohm article: "Feynman complained [sup][citation needed][/sup] that he had been taught electromagnetism from the perspective of electromagnetic fields, and he wished later in life he had been taught to think in terms of the electromagnetic potential instead, as this would be more fundamental."

And trying to bluff me with mathematics won't work, either. I am familiar with those equations. They have nothing to do with vortices, and are therefore irrelevant to what I asked you.

I'm not bluffing you. Those expressions are relevant to potential. Just about all the maths you know about comes from Maxwell's theory of molecular vortices, but you dismiss all aspects of the vortices.

I can see that you have to clutch at straws. When asked about mathematics you're hopelessly out of your depth. It shows. It's actually a bit pathetic that you think you can bluff your way through mathematics with people who have actually studied it. (There are a number of us here.)

Again, I'm not bluffing. Go and read Maxwell's theory of molecular vortices. You'll recognise the maths. Eventually you may realise you think the forces that result from electromagnetic field interactions are fields in their own right. They aren't.

Sorry, I have to go. I'll get back to you later. Whoa:

Nonsense. Electromagnetic fields do just fine in flat space.

Wrong. An electromagnetic field is curved space.

 

[PhysBang]

Not offhand. There's various articles and papers when you google it, but I have no special information to impart. Besides, you could ask the same question of a vector field, and I don't know of any demonstrable attraction or repulsion that isn't inverse-square.

When scientists use vector fields to represent a force with an inverse-square law, they use a mathematical framework that ensures that the vector field also is inverse square. That mathematical framework can also be tested in other ways, if it should have other physical consequences. You seem to want a test-free science Farsight, which isn't surprising since it seems to be almost completely your fantasy.

It isn't. The screw nature is where you exert a linear force and get a rotational force. Like a pump-action screw driver. And vice versa. And after everything I've been saying, you should now be critical of the Lorentz force article on Wikipedia. It says this: if a particle of charge q moves with velocity v in the presence of an electric field E and a magnetic field B, then it will experience a force. For any produced force there will be an opposite reactive force. In the case of the magnetic field, the reactive force may be obscure, but it must be accounted for. $$\mathbf{F} = q\left(\mathbf{E} + \mathbf{v} \times \mathbf{B}\right)$$. The charged particle has an electromagnetic field. Like the other charged particle or particles. You don't create a magnetic field for a particle when you move.

Farsight, you need to learn physics and the required mathematics, since the equation you posted reduces to the one James R posted for the purposes of determining the motion of a charged particle. As usual when you engage in math, you show that you don't understand it and do not understand how physics is done; you are merely cutting-and-pasting the equations that you guess are relevant.

But you say virtual photons are photons too. What frequency are they? You can't say. Can you see them? No. Can you detect them? No. Because they aren't photons. Which you admit when you say I know they aren't chucking real photons. The electron and the proton aren't exchanging photons, they're exchanging field, such that the hydrogen atom hasn't got much in the way of a field.

You have a strict ontological definition of photons that differs from that of quantum mechanics. That's fine for you, but hardly fine for doing physics. As you have demonstrated in the past, you can't produce any way to do physics, so while your metaphysical claims about photons might be interesting, they can't be taken seriously as physics because they cannot relate to physics and to the observations of physics.

Only too many people think virtual photons are real photons, and that electrons and protons are chucking photons at one another. Because of rubbish like this from the other thread.

Farsight, you might reject all of the evidence produced in favor of quantum mechanics and QED, but you haven't given us any good reason to do so. Using QED, people can build televisions and computers. If we were to adopt Farsight electromagnetism, we would enter a new dark age, where we could have no electronics, since you refuse to sully your ideas with practical concerns like precise mathematics, measurements, or applicability.

I dispute that. You find Feynman saying that.

Sure, because he died before people applied that term to his work. This is the problem with your methodology of doing only textual analysis and not learning physics: you don't understand what the words mean and cannot recognize the science when new words are used to describe it.

An E=hf photon doesn't disperse, see http://arxiv.org/abs/0803.2596 re the pulse. I'm not bluffing you, I'm telling you.

You clearly are bluffing, unsuccessfully, since you clearly can't recognize proper physics and you have never been able to produce physics. If you could, you would easily answer the physics questions posed to you, all of which have been softballs given the claims you have been making.

Again, I'm not bluffing. Go and read Maxwell's theory of molecular vortices. You'll recognise the maths. Eventually you may realise you think the forces that result from electromagnetic field interactions are fields in their own right. They aren't.

Regardless of what Maxwell wrote, if we were to believe you, we need to see your vortex equations, the one that supposedly account for spin, which Maxwell did not know of.

Sorry, I have to go. I'll get back to you later.

You should be apologizing for your career of lying.

Wrong. An electromagnetic field is curved space.

If this is the case, you should be able to show us the mathematics. But since your understanding is really a lie, you can't do this.

 

[Farsight]

There's no way to distinguish whether I moved or the electron moved. That's basic relativity for you. I expected more from such a self-proclaimed devotee of Einstein.

You know that you moved, because you can feel the acceleration. And you know that you changed and the electron didn't. Its field didn't change either. Your observation of it or interaction with it changed, but that field didn't. Because it's an electromagnetic field.

I don't disagree with the wave nature of the photon. All quantum particles behave like both particles and waves.

A photon isn't some billiard-ball thing, E=hc/λ. It is a wave. So is the electron.

No they don't. They explicitly acknowledge that the quantum spin of an electron, say, is analogous to the classical spin of a ball.

They tend to say the electron can't be spinning like a planet (or a ball) because it would then have to be spinning faster than light. Then comes the non-sequitur wherein they say it doesn't spin at all, and quantum spin is nothing like classical spin.

There seems to be no value in such a picture. Not that you've provided, anyway.

The value is in understanding why electrons and positrons move linearly and rotationally towards one another. We do physics to understand the world. That's why we fund physicists.

Again, you need to read beyond the early 20th century. Electrons in atoms don't exist as standing waves. It's more complicated than Bohr's simple picture.

Who told you that? We make an electron and a positron out of a say two photons in gamma-gamma pair production. We started with two field-variations, two waves, and we ended up with two standing fields. Two standing waves. We can diffract electrons. The wave nature is a certainty. And that wave isn't going thataway in a straight line at c.

I don't see any mention of "twist fields" or "turn fields".

Sure thing. The NASA article only refers to a vortex and twisted space. I called it a "twist field" that looks like a "turn field" when you move through it.

Virtual photons are photons too.

Aaargh! You start with two photons. They're the only particles there. You do gamma-gamma pair production. You've got an electron and a positron. They're the only particles there. They interact as positronium, and they're still the only particles there. Then they annihilate and you've got two photons. They're the only particles there.

I know they aren't chucking real photons. But virtual photons work just fine.

Because they're field quanta. Chunks of field. The electron and the proton exchange field, such that the hydrogen atom hasn't got much field left.

What Maxwell did (with Faraday before him) was he showed that varying magnetic fields cause electric fields and vice versa.

Noooooo! Maxwell showed that "electric and magnetic fields are better thought of as two parts of a greater whole — the electromagnetic field".

This is the "unification" of electricity and magnetism into electromagnetism. There's no big mystery here. Electromagnetism is just electricity and magnetism. It's not a mysterious new thing never seen before.

The unification unified the electric field and the magnetic field into the electromagnetic field!

You can't split a photon in two.

Yes you can. Look it up.

A stationary charge has only an electric field.

Wrong. It has an electromagnetic field.

If you move relative to the charge, then you see both an electric field and a magnetic field. This is due to your change of reference frame. Fundamentally, it is a relativistic effect. This is well understood.

It isn't relativistic in that you don't need to be moving very fast. And it obviously isn't well understood. Because you do not create a magnetic field for that electron just because you moved. It always had an electromagnetic field.

You're citing first-year physics at me, as if I'm not familiar with it. I assure you, I am. A torque is not the same as a force, just like a force is not the same as a field. You really need to get the differences straight in your mind. There are no "rotational forces". There are forces that cause torques, however.

Google on rotational force.

Field lines, vectors and the fields are all mathematical descriptions. In that sense, field lines are as real as fields. And an electric field is certainly as real as an electromagnetic field. Both are fields. An electric field is just a subset of electromagnetic fields.

Yes, an electric field is just a subset of electromagnetic field. Which is a state of space. It's real. Field lines aren't, nor are lines of force or vectors.

Both are mathematical descriptions.

The electromagnetic field is something real.

And so... ? You said there was something wrong with the standard field-line picture of the electric field of a stationary charge. You implied that it couldn't account for your little arrows in the quote above. But it does so just fine. So, I'm not seeing the problem.

The problem is that you can't actually explain the linear and rotational motion of charged particles like the electron and the positron. Surely you can see that? Or is it just the solution that you can't see?

 

[PhysBang]

You know that you moved, because you can feel the acceleration.

But one can have all the sensations of acceleration without moving. Indeed, this is the core of relativity theory. Do you deny this, Farsight?

A photon isn't some billiard-ball thing, E=hc/λ. It is a wave. So is the electron.

You have, in the past, claimed that these are both vortices. Can you show us the math that allows these to be both waves and vortices?

They tend to say the electron can't be spinning like a planet (or a ball) because it would then have to be spinning faster than light. Then comes the non-sequitur wherein they say it doesn't spin at all, and quantum spin is nothing like classical spin.

Regardless of the difference, can you show us how your vortices can behave like the spin as observed?

The value is in understanding why electrons and positrons move linearly and rotationally towards one another. We do physics to understand the world. That's why we fund physicists.

But your picture cannot produce this undersrtanding, since there is no reason to suppose that it matches the way that electrons behave. There is no reason because there is no way to tie the pictures to measurements of how electrons behave. Until you provide this link, you are only presenting us your fantasy.

We make an electron and a positron out of a say two photons in gamma-gamma pair production.

Please show us the evidence for this. Surrently, the evidence favors QED, which says that electrons are not made from photons. If you have a physics that can match the predictions as well, please show us.

Sure thing. The NASA article only refers to a vortex and twisted space. I called it a "twist field" that looks like a "turn field" when you move through it.

So you admit that you can produce no reference without lying and attributing to people things they did not write.

Yes you can. Look it up.

Again, you produce a citation that does not support your claim. Nowhere in that page is there a claim that a photon can be split into two photons. If you have a theory that allows this, please produce the details of the theory so that we can compare it to measurement.

It isn't relativistic in that you don't need to be moving very fast.

Not all relativistic effects reqwuire great speed. The one under discussion arises at low relative speeds as discussed in Einstein's first paper on the subject. I suggest that you read and work through it.

The electromagnetic field is something real.

Given that a field is, by definition, a mathematical object, how do you distinguish between real mathematical objects and not-real mathematical objects?

The problem is that you can't actually explain the linear and rotational motion of charged particles like the electron and the positron. Surely you can see that? Or is it just the solution that you can't see?

If you have an explanation, let us see it, let us see how you predict how much something will rotate in an electromagnetic field.

 

[James R]

You know that you moved, because you can feel the acceleration. And you know that you changed and the electron didn't. Its field didn't change either. Your observation of it or interaction with it changed, but that field didn't.

Imagine that soon after the big bang, an electron and I came to be floating in space. Then, at some point between then and now, we both accelerated so that after the acceleration we were at rest relative to one another but in motion relative to, say, the Sun. That that's how things stayed for the next 13 billion years.

Now, I pull out my second, spare, electron and look at what forces it feels. I observe that it only feels an electric force from the other electron. Now, I fire my jetpack while holding my spare electron, so as to slow us both down until we're at rest relative to the Sun, say. While this is happening, I watch the first electron apparently moving away from me. After the acceleration finishes, I am at rest relative to the Sun, and the first electron is moving. But now I see that the first electron apparently has a magnetic field and can exert magnetic forces on my spare electron. What caused that? Certainly nothing that happened to that first electron. It has been doing the same thing for 13 billion years. So, it must have had something to do with my change in motion. Somehow, changing my state of motion changed the field of that first electron.

A photon isn't some billiard-ball thing, E=hc/λ. It is a wave. So is the electron.

And so...?

They tend to say the electron can't be spinning like a planet (or a ball) because it would then have to be spinning faster than light. Then comes the non-sequitur wherein they say it doesn't spin at all, and quantum spin is nothing like classical spin.

Electrons don't spin like classical objects. That's not a non-sequitur. It's an observation.

Who told you that?

Every physics book I've ever read on the subject and every physics course I've ever taken. Who told you it is all wrong? Or did you just come to that conclusion off your own bat?

We make an electron and a positron out of a say two photons in gamma-gamma pair production. We started with two field-variations, two waves, and we ended up with two standing fields. Two standing waves. We can diffract electrons. The wave nature is a certainty. And that wave isn't going thataway in a straight line at c.

And so....?

[quite]Sure thing. The NASA article only refers to a vortex and twisted space. I called it a "twist field" that looks like a "turn field" when you move through it.[/quote]
I have no idea what your personalised terminology means. What is a "twist" and how is it different from a "turn"?

Aaargh! You start with two photons. They're the only particles there. You do gamma-gamma pair production. You've got an electron and a positron. They're the only particles there. They interact as positronium, and they're still the only particles there. Then they annihilate and you've got two photons. They're the only particles there.

And so.... ?

Because they're field quanta. Chunks of field. The electron and the proton exchange field, such that the hydrogen atom hasn't got much field left.

You keep saying the "hydrogen atom hasn't got much field left". I have no idea what you mean by that.

Noooooo! Maxwell showed that "electric and magnetic fields are better thought of as two parts of a greater whole — the electromagnetic field".

Yes, because electric and magnetic effects interact. Relativity gives an even better explanation as to why we're dealing with a single electromagnetic interaction rather than separate electrical and magnetic interactions. But the fact remains that an electromagnetic field is just electric and magnetic fields. It isn't a new thing, different from electric and magnetic fields.

[quite]The unification unified the electric field and the magnetic field into the electromagnetic field![/quote]
Really, relativity did that.

Yes you can. Look it up.

No you can't. Read your own link.

Wrong. It has an electromagnetic field.

Argument by assertion. Want to go around again, or should we stop? I mean, you're not presenting any evidence that a stationary electron has a magnetic field (apart from the field due to its intrinsic magnetic moment, of course).

It isn't relativistic in that you don't need to be moving very fast.

I didn't say anything about moving fast. When I write "a relativistic effect", I just mean an effect explained by the theory of relativity.

And it obviously isn't well understood. Because you do not create a magnetic field for that electron just because you moved.

Yes you do. Bear in mind that we're talking about the magnetic field created that is due to the motion, not the intrinsic field, in case you're confused.

Google on rotational force.

There are no "rotational forces". There are forces that cause torques, however. If Google says otherwise, then Google is wrong.

Yes, an electric field is just a subset of electromagnetic field. Which is a state of space. It's real. Field lines aren't, nor are lines of force or vectors.

Fields are mathematical objects. They give us a useful picture to understand observable effects. Fields aren't "real" in the sense that we can directly detect them.

The electromagnetic field is something real.

It's a real mathematical construct, if that's what you mean.

The problem is that you can't actually explain the linear and rotational motion of charged particles like the electron and the positron.

What needs explaining, exactly, that you think can't be explained with the usual mathematical models?

 

[Farsight]

Imagine that soon after the big bang, an electron and I came to be floating in space. Then, at some point between then and now, we both accelerated so that after the acceleration we were at rest relative to one another but in motion relative to, say, the Sun. That that's how things stayed for the next 13 billion years. Now, I pull out my second, spare, electron and look at what forces it feels. I observe that it only feels an electric force from the other electron. Now, I fire my jetpack while holding my spare electron, so as to slow us both down until we're at rest relative to the Sun, say. While this is happening, I watch the first electron apparently moving away from me. After the acceleration finishes, I am at rest relative to the Sun, and the first electron is moving. But now I see that the first electron apparently has a magnetic field and can exert magnetic forces on my spare electron. What caused that? Certainly nothing that happened to that first electron. It has been doing the same thing for 13 billion years. So, it must have had something to do with my change in motion. Somehow, changing my state of motion changed the field of that first electron.

It didn't. Both electrons have an electromagnetic field which is like a 3D version of the gravitomagnetic field and far far stronger:

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/04may_epic/

When your two electrons have no relative motion their two fields exert only a linear force on one another. Like this:



But if one is moving past the other they also exert a rotational force on one another, so they move like cyclones. Like vortexes. This is more obvious when you think of positronium, where the elctron and positron go around one another in a kind of death spiral.

Electrons don't spin like classical objects. That's not a non-sequitur. It's an observation.

No it isn't. The Einstein de Haas effect is real, so it magnetic moment. An electron spins like this:

Every physics book I've ever read on the subject and every physics course I've ever taken. Who told you it is all wrong? Or did you just come to that conclusion off your own bat?

Electron diffraction told me it was wrong along with the Einstein-de Haas effect and magnetic moment and the wave nature of matter and quantum field theory. Despite the overwhelming patent evidence, Don Lincoln will tell you the electron is point particle. It isn't.

Continued.

 

[Farsight]

I have no idea what your personalised terminology means. What is a "twist" and how is it different from a "turn"?

Look at the picture of the gravitomagnetic field above. Think of it as a "twist field". Now imagine you were moving through it, but you didn't think you were moving. You would think you were in a "turn field". This is what the screw nature of electromagnetism is all about. Maxwell referred to it, so did Minkowski, but it doesn't feature in contemporary textbooks.

And so?

Virtual particles aren't real particles. Electrons and protons aren't throwing photons at one another. Hydrogen atoms don't twinkle, magnets don't shine.

You keep saying "the hydrogen atom hasn't got much field left". I have no idea what you mean by that.

We call it a gravitational field. It's very weak compared to the electromagnetic field of the electron or the positron.

Yes, because electric and magnetic effects interact. Relativity gives an even better explanation as to why we're dealing with a single electromagnetic interaction rather than separate electrical and magnetic interactions. But the fact remains that an electromagnetic field is just electric and magnetic fields. It isn't a new thing, different from electric and magnetic fields.

Yes, relativity gives a better explanation. Stuff like this from Minkowski's space and time:

"In the description of the field caused by the electron itself, then it will appear that the division of the field into electric and magnetic forces is a relative one with respect to the time-axis assumed; the two forces considered together can most vividly be described by a certain analogy to the force-screw in mechanics; the analogy is, however, imperfect."

See how he says "the" field? The electron has one field, the electromagnetic field. When it interacts with another charged particle we see linear electric force and rotational magnetic force. Because the electromagnetic field has this "screw" nature. Visualise it by combining radial electric field lines with concentric magnetic field lines:

Argument by assertion. Want to go around again, or should we stop? I mean, you're not presenting any evidence that a stationary electron has a magnetic field (apart from the field due to its intrinsic magnetic moment, of course).

I will reiterate that the electron has an electromagnetic field. Not an electric field. An electromagnetic field.

Fields are mathematical objects. They give us a useful picture to understand observable effects. Fields aren't "real" in the sense that we can directly detect them.

Fields are real.

What needs explaining, exactly, that you think can't be explained with the usual mathematical models?

Why electrons and positrons move together/apart and go around one another. The mathematics doesn't explain it. And nor does the condescending cargo-cult popscience trash that says electrons and positrons are point-particles throwing photons at one another.

 

[PhysBang]

Farsight, just show us the equations that produce the properties of observed electron spin. You maintain that it is classical spin; show us.

 

[Farsight]

An equation doesn't show it. The Dirac equation is a wave equation, but you'll still assert that the electron is a point-particle spitting out photons. You will dismiss everything I tell you about Dirac spinors:

GNUFDL image by Slawekb, see Wikipedia Commons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Spinor_on_the_circle.pdf

 

[PhysBang]

An equation doesn't show it.

Wrong answer. You are claiming that electrons are magical things that no equation can describe but that you, somehow, know the real truth of. Every physicist working in particle physics can produce a mathematical description of the electron and its behavior that has been demonstrated to be amazingly accurate.

So you are presenting religious fantasy and asking us to ignore science.

 

[rpenner]

Well, I'm a bit late to the party, so I will have to focus on just a fraction of the thread.

And you've heard of spinors and Maxwell's vortices.
...
It's a spinor. An optical vortex.

As a historical curiosity, Maxwell's 1861-1862 "On Physical Lines of Force" attempts to cover the intersection of analytic geometry, summaries of empirical observations and the Faraday concept of action-at-a-distance mediated by a spatially-extended field. It's quaint in how unnecessary hypotheses, that would later be stripped away, multiply.

Just as a relevant example, from part IV: "Professor Thomson has pointed out that the cause of the magnetic action on light must be a real rotation going on in the magnetic field."
But more viable is the QED model of electrons and photons with intrinsic angular momentum and exterior magnetic fields causing population shifts in the electron spin distribution which differentially affects the refraction index for left- and right-polarized light through a transparent medium. Because if Maxwell (and Thomson) were right, then the Faraday Effect would not be excluded from vacuum and wouldn't happen in opposite directions for diamagnetic (positive Verdet constant) and paramagnetic materials (negative Verdet constant), why it is temperature-sensitive for paramagnetic materials, and why it has the frequency-dependence it does.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_effect
http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/ugrad/389/Verdet constant-the properties of optical glasses.pdf

Everything is a spinor, you fool! A spinor is a mathematical object that can be used to describe anything. It's like you are calling light a set or a number.

Would you agree with the statement: "Just as vectors and tensors can be used to talk about the algebra and analysis of geometry, spinors can be used to talk about the algebra and analysis of continuous changes to geometry." ?

If the charged particles did have initial relative motion they also rotate around one another, just like vortices.

That description is incompatible with the behavior of charged particles. The classical general motion of an isolated system of two charged particles results in approximate conic trajectories which depart from Newtonian 1/r² predictions of ellipses and hyperbolae due to loss of energy, angular momentum and momentum via radiation. The quantum mechanical solutions for oppositely charged pairs include states without orbital angular momentum. The QED solutions include mutual annihilation for matter-antimatter pairs. All of these models fit the behavior of phenomena in reality better than vortices as an example below will demonstrate viscerally and intuitively.

Did you look at Maxwell's page title and take note of his reference to a screw mechanism?

If you are referring to Maxwell's 1861-1862 "On Physical Lines of Force", I read more than just the section titles. He called out the Faraday effect including the contributions of Verdet with respect to paramagnetism and described left- and right-handed screws in direct parentage to the modern physical interpretation of the propagation of circularly polarized light. However, he didn't anticipate the superposition principle which allows decomposition of the description of linearly polarized light into equal-intensity beams of circularly polarized light. His other use of the term "screw" was an equally misguided attempt to tie magnetism to rotary phenomena where the modern interpretation ties the same observations to peculiarities of geometry in 3 spatial dimensions, where both the vector cross product exists.

Why do you think particles move linearly and rotationally?

A vague question, but strongly related to geometry in 3 spatial dimensions and 1 dimension of time. In fact, Wigner said this best.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigner's_classification

It wasn't me who dreamed up screw mechanisms and vortices. Or spinors.

You, however, seem incapable about talking about screw mechanisms and spinors in the same sense that your cited sources use them, which means you are abusing your citations to historical documents to present your own unfounded interpretations. I contend that such abuse results in misinterpretation.

You're not asking me to accept Maxwell and Minkowski. You're asking me to accept your interpretation of Maxwell and Minkowski, which is quite a different thing.

Well said.

Well, it looks like it was probably a victim of history because it couldn't make any useful predictions. Let's not worry about it.

Science is progressive. We build on the empirical record of past experiment and observation, but we abandon utterly those unevidenced flights of fantasy that spring from the minds of man because they don't better the precise description of empirical phenomena. Maxwell's 1860's opinions on vortices were plagued with unknowns of the hypothetical luminiferous ether because the mechanical analogy depended on facts not in evidence.

Like E isn't a field, it's a force.

E doesn't have units of force.

Well said. Also, the direction and magnitude of the force associated with a particular E depends on the charge of the test particle being considered, so the force isn't even intrinsically associated with E -- it's associated with the product with the charge of the test particle. Moreover the particular value of E varies in direction and magnitude depending on location and time, so it is a vector field by every conventional definition. If you read Maxwell's 1861-1862 "On Physical Lines of Force", much of it concerns the x-, y-, and z- components of the E (and B) vector fields.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_field

And I repeat: it was Maxwell who talked about vortices well before me. They aren't my vortices. It wasn't me who discovered the Einstein-de Haas effect or that that the electron rotates or came up with the word spinor.

Your use of both vortex and spinor are as meaningless as a diploma-mill degree upon the wall. It's not enough to spell words correctly, you must use those words as they are conventionally understood or your writing just becomes a shambles of unconnected baseless assertions. You model no vortices and you calculate with no spinors, so you have only empty-headed drivel, regardless of the illustriousness of your abused sources. At the end of the next post, I will point out how your interpretation of the Einstein-de Haas effect as motion is not as well supported as the conventional interpretation of it as angular momentum.

You surely know that co-rotating vortices repel and counter-rotating vortices attract? So you know there's a force between two charged particles that depends on their charge and their separation. The vortex model explains why the force is there, no other model does.

Above, I faulted Maxwell for not having a deep understanding of geometry in his attribution of circulation to intrinsic rotational motion of magnetism in the Faraday effect and promised a devastating rebuttal of the vortex model. Now it is time to make good on my promise.

Your model of oppositely-spinning attractive vortices is 2-dimensional but we have three spatial dimensions. That means your model of vortices as charge fails because charges don't change sign when you flip them upside down. We don't get anti-matter explosions every time we turn over an egg-timer, therefore the sign of electric charge cannot be associated with an actual rotation direction of spin. Similarly, vortices are not spherically symmetric -- they can't be by Poincaré's hairy ball theorem, so your model of vortices as electric charge fails because there is no preferred direction of electric attraction.

Decades wasted when you could have been learning what physics was actually capable of.

Did Maxwell derive Coulomb's law from a vortex picture? If so, please point me to where I can find his derivation. I'd be interested to see it.
...
Does the vortex model predict the inverse-square force law? If it does, where can I find the demonstration?

I reason above it can't by the Poincaré–Brouwer theorem.

Oh, and QED explains why the force is there, very nicely.

In QED, the fermion quantum fields couple to the photon quantum field by a constant which immediately explains why electrons and positrons have equal and opposite charges, why protons and electrons don't just collapse together in atoms like hydrogen, why the electric force is spherically symmetric and falls of like 1/r², why opposite charges attract and why the Faraday effect only happens in matter.

Hit a 10Kb limit -- see next post, please.

 

[rpenner]

It's not that different. Minkowski talked about the field and about electric and magnetic force. Maxwell talked about vortices. They both talked about the screw nature of electromagnetism. And all of that is missing from the typical physicist's education on electromagnetism. It's like it's all gone, for no good reason.

Here you conflate Scottish author Maxwell's use of the terms "vortex" and "screw" (meaning the simple machine and the helix that makes it work) with the German author Minkowski's use of the phrase Kraftschraube der Mechanik which refers to a field of rigid-body dynamics. To explain the latter, if you are in free-fall and you poke a nearby body with a stick, usually you will impart both translational momentum and some sort of angular momentum to the body. How much depends on where you poke the body and the direction and magnitude of the poke. That's a field of dynamics all by itself because the math of 3-D rigid body motions is complex enough to be worthy of study, leading to such non-intuitive behavior as spinning tops that don't fall down. What Minkowski was saying in his 1908 address, "Raum und Zeit," was that the geometric transformation laws of the electromagnetic field was not trivial given a change in the standard of rest, and that similar results have been seen in the field of rigid-body dynamics because 3-D space is mathematically tricky. Both the theory of electromagnetism and the theory of spinning tops make use of vectors and cross-production for that underlying reason and Minkowski saw some analogous math between the topics.

The "screw nature of electromagnetism" is taught to first-year students of physics.

Both $$\vec{F} = q(\vec{E} + \vec{v} \times \vec{B})$$ and $$\vec{B} = \nabla \times \vec{A}$$ are commonly taught which compactly describes the way 3-D geometry enters into electromagnetism.

If you'd studied first-year physics, you'd know that. Vortices obviously failed as a viable model of electromagnetism, or else first-year students would be taught about those, too.

Don't dismiss Maxwell like that. We do physics to understand the world, not to make predictions.

That's not a description of physics that is grounded in empiricism. That's some sort of physics authority fetish. In what sense can one be said to understand a physical phenomenon except by precisely describing how it will behave, i.e. to predict it.

Here's how theories work in physics. Somebody invents a theory to try to explain some aspect of the physical world. That theory makes numerical predictions about measurable phenomena. Experiments are then done to test the predictions. If the predictions of the theory are borne out by the data, then the theory is regarded as successful.

Theory must always be tested against the real world. Otherwise it's just words and pretty pictures that somebody imagined.

That's my understanding of physics.

Because there's hard scientific evidence such as the Einstein-de Haas effect and magnetic moment plus historical references to the rotation being a genuine rotation.

No microscopic rotation is evidenced, only angular momentum and an anomalously high (g=2) related change in magnetism which is too large for magnetism arising from motion of electric charge associated with the mass of the electron. So better than saying "genuine rotation" one should say "genuine angular momentum" the changing of which in bulk gives rise to macroscopic torques in the Einstein-de Haas experiments published in 1915, 10 years before "the discovery of spin" in atomic spectra.

 

[Farsight]

Sorry to be ungraciously tardy, rpenner.

As a historical curiosity, Maxwell's 1861-1862 "On Physical Lines of Force" attempts to cover the intersection of analytic geometry, summaries of empirical observations and the Faraday concept of action-at-a-distance mediated by a spatially-extended field. It's quaint in how unnecessary hypotheses, that would later be stripped away, multiply.

Quaint? That's not the sort of word I would expect. Visionary maybe. Or perhaps brilliant. Ahead of his time. Moving on:

Just as a relevant example, from part IV: "Professor Thomson has pointed out that the cause of the magnetic action on light must be a real rotation going on in the magnetic field."

Faraday rotation is perfectly real:

But more viable is the QED model of electrons and photons with intrinsic angular momentum and exterior magnetic fields causing population shifts in the electron spin distribution which differentially affects the refraction index for left- and right-polarized light through a transparent medium. Because if Maxwell (and Thomson) were right, then the Faraday Effect would not be excluded from vacuum and wouldn't happen in opposite directions for diamagnetic (positive Verdet constant) and paramagnetic materials (negative Verdet constant), why it is temperature-sensitive for paramagnetic materials, and why it has the frequency-dependence it does.

All well and good. But IMHO the important point is that Faraday discovered the Faraday effect in 1845, and here we are 170 years later with Fermilab telling us the electron is a point particle that spits out photons.

Would you agree with the statement: "Just as vectors and tensors can be used to talk about the algebra and analysis of geometry, spinors can be used to talk about the algebra and analysis of continuous changes to geometry" ?

Not particularly. But I wouldn't raise a strong objection.

That description is incompatible with the behavior of charged particles.

No it isn't. Go and look up positronium. But beware of the picture on the right, it's misleading. The electron's field is what it is, it isn't some little ball.

The classical general motion of an isolated system of two charged particles results in approximate conic trajectories which depart from Newtonian 1/r² predictions of ellipses and hyperbolae due to loss of energy, angular momentum and momentum via radiation.

That's a straw man. In atomic orbitals electrons "do not orbit the nucleus in the sense of a planet orbiting the sun, but instead exist as standing waves".

The quantum mechanical solutions for oppositely charged pairs include states without orbital angular momentum. The QED solutions include mutual annihilation for matter-antimatter pairs. All of these models fit the behavior of phenomena in reality better than vortices as an example below will demonstrate viscerally and intuitively.

What's wrong with the QED given explanation is the idea that electrons and positrons are throwing photons at one another. They simply aren't. You could reasonable say they're exchanging field, but not photons. IMHO the way virtual photons have morphed into real photons is a scarey example of the cargo-cult physics Feynman despised.

If you are referring to Maxwell's 1861-1862 "On Physical Lines of Force", I read more than just the section titles. He called out the Faraday effect including the contributions of Verdet with respect to paramagnetism and described left- and right-handed screws in direct parentage to the modern physical interpretation of the propagation of circularly polarized light. However, he didn't anticipate the superposition principle which allows decomposition of the description of linearly polarized light into equal-intensity beams of circularly polarized light. His other use of the term "screw" was an equally misguided attempt to tie magnetism to rotary phenomena where the modern interpretation ties the same observations to peculiarities of geometry in 3 spatial dimensions, where both the vector cross product exists.

He was perfectly clear on the screw. Rotational force is converted into linear force and vice versa. Minkowski was clear too. And yet we have James R insisting that you create a magnetic field for the electron when you move past it.

A vague question, but strongly related to geometry in 3 spatial dimensions and 1 dimension of time. In fact, Wigner said this best.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigner's_classification

A vague answer.

You, however, seem incapable about talking about screw mechanisms and spinors in the same sense that your cited sources use them, which means you are abusing your citations to historical documents to present your own unfounded interpretations. I contend that such abuse results in misinterpretation.

I contend that you are dismissing what Maxwell actually said because it doesn't tally with some cargo-cult nonsense that you've been taught, such being unsupported by hard scientific evidence, and not in accord with classical electromagnetism which Maxwell unified.

Continued.

 

[PhysBang]

All well and good. But IMHO the important point is that Faraday discovered the Faraday effect in 1845, and here we are 170 years later with Fermilab telling us the electron is a point particle that spits out photons.

Yes. And here you are sticking to the 170-year-old, and inaccurate, physics while dismissing the contemporary physics. All the while you produce no evidence that your fantasy of physics is actually correct and all the while you are almost completely ignorant of mathematics.

No it isn't. Go and look up positronium. But beware of the picture on the right, it's misleading. The electron's field is what it is, it isn't some little ball.

Is there anything there to indicate that the motion of charged particles in general is like a vortex as opposed to the standard orbital mechanics? Faright, you have never addressed the question of how vortices move. We all know it is because of your lack of mathematical abilities. Why don't you start a basic thread where you ask for help understanding the different types of motion and their equations?

That's a straw man. In atomic orbitals electrons "do not orbit the nucleus in the sense of a planet orbiting the sun, but instead exist as standing waves".

But macroscopic objects show us these orbits. And you have not demonstrated that QED has the equations for vortices that you claim quantum particles obey.

What's wrong with the QED given explanation is the idea that electrons and positrons are throwing photons at one another. They simply aren't. You could reasonable say they're exchanging field, but not photons. IMHO the way virtual photons have morphed into real photons is a scarey example of the cargo-cult physics Feynman despised.

The cult-like behavior here is your own, since you seem dedicated to denying physics because you don't like the terminology and you hold the writings of Einstein (except the equations) holy.

And yet we have James R insisting that you create a magnetic field for the electron when you move past it.

Now that actually is a straw man. As Einstein clearly showed, that magnetic field is always there, in the relevant system of coordinates. If only you bothered to learn the holy words of Einstein.

I contend that you are dismissing what Maxwell actually said because it doesn't tally with some cargo-cult nonsense that you've been taught, such being unsupported by hard scientific evidence, and not in accord with classical electromagnetism which Maxwell unified.

Farsight, so far the only person without evidence here is you. You refuse to address any experiment done after 1930 and you refuse to show us how we might take your ideas, make a prediction with them, and then compare this to observations.