The Simplest Hypothesis Possible

exchemist said:
Created from the radiation. But it has to involve a 3rd body due to the need to conserve both momentum and energy. Normally a nearby atomic nucleus, which takes some of the photon's momentum.

Which is interesting, as it must mean that the reverse process, annihilation, also requires a 3rd body to contribute some momentum to the formation of the photon. I had never thought of that before.
Click to expand...
What allows charge to be created from energy, since charge is not a form of energy.
 
Wizard of Whatever said:
What allows charge to be created from energy, since charge is not a form of energy.
Click to expand...
It isn’t created from energy. Charge separation is already implicit in the oscillations of the electric field in EM radiation. Pair production results in appearance of a pair of static charged entities. But I never studied the quantum mechanics of pair production so I can’t help you with the details. Maybe if a quantum physicist reads this, he or she might.
 
InnerSpace said:
And DCEP welding?
Click to expand...
Not being an engineer or a welder I had to look this up. But it seems that with DCEP the welding electrode is the anode (+ve charge) and the work piece the cathode (-ve). So electrons do indeed travel from the work piece to the welding electrode. This results in 2/3 of the heat being dissipated in the welding electrode and 1/3 at the workpiece, so the rate of fusion of the filler metal (which comes from the melting of the electrode) is greater. It is the filler metal that forms the bulk of the weld so this is important. Whereas in DCEN, because electrons are emitted from the welding electrode, there is a thermionic effect which helps it lose heat, so the balance of heat generated is the other way round (2/3) generated at the work piece. (As an aside I'd have thought the process might be in reality a bit more complex since, if an arc is formed in air, one would also expect a plasma to be generated which is more complex to analyse. It may be that these websites, which are intended for welders, don't go into the physics in full detail.)

There are evidently pros and cons to each (and to use of AC which is a halfway house) and I don't pretend to have followed all that. But I certainly don't see any problem for physics in accounting for what happens, nor do the various welding websites that explain it: all of them say the same thing, it seems. What's the issue, in your opinion?
 
Pinball1970 said:
I've read through most of the posts. I think it may be beneficial to outline where QT/QFT and the standard model of particle physics fail currently.
The examples you have given do not illustrate that.
Click to expand...
He may even now be trawling the internet for obscure, or hard to study phenomena that have not been thoroughly investigated, so he can claim only STEM accounts for them. Something like ball lightning, perhaps? Let’s see. ;)

I found another paper of his on line that made some rather alarming statements, e.g. that atomic hydrogen does not exist and can’t be detected. Whereas we all studied the spectrum of atomic hydrogen in the 6th form at school. Shome mishtake, shurely? There are also some very odd remarks about water molecules. His knowledge of physical science seems distinctly patchy.
 
exchemist:
exchemist said:
Which is interesting, as it must mean that the reverse process, annihilation, also requires a 3rd body to contribute some momentum to the formation of the photon. I had never thought of that before.
Click to expand...
In electron-positron annihilation, the process is: (e+) + (e-) -> 2(gamma)

There are two photons emitted, in opposite directions, so there's no problem with momentum conservation.
 
Wizard of Whatever said:
What allows charge to be created from energy, since charge is not a form of energy.
Click to expand...
Nothing is created from energy. Energy is just an accounting system. Conservation of energy says that if you calculate a certain number before a physical process, then recalculate the number after the process, then the two numbers you calculated will be the same, if appropriate conditions are met. That's all. Energy isn't a substance. It can't make things or do anything, on its own.

Pair creation, like pair annihiliation, is a fundamental process permitted by quantum electrodynamics. All QED interactions involve various conservation laws. For example, electrical charge is conserved in pair creation. The two photons have zero net charge, and the resulting electron and positron, taken together, also have zero net charge. Several other quantum numbers are also conserved (e.g. lepton number). And, of course, energy is conserved as well.
 
Last edited:
InnerSpace said:
No indication that an of the current respondents have taken the trouble to read the paper. Perhaps 8 pages is beyond their intellectual capacity.
Click to expand...
Perhaps, if you'd put even a little effort into summarising the paper, somebody might have been interested enough to go and read it. But you didn't.
 
James R said:
exchemist:

In electron-positron annihilation, the process is: (e+) + (e-) -> 2(gamma)

There are two photons emitted, in opposite directions, so there's no problem with momentum conservation.
Click to expand...
Indeed, as I subsequently found out.
 
James R said:
Nothing is created from energy. Energy is just an accounting system. Conservation of energy says that if you calculate a certain number before a physical process, then recalculate the number after the process, then the two numbers you calculated will be the same, if appropriate conditions are met. That's all. Energy isn't a substance. It can't make things or do anything, on its own.

Pair creation, like pair annihiliation, is a fundamental process permitted by quantum electrodynamics. All QED interactions involve various conservation laws. For example, electrical charge is conserved in pair creation. The two photons have zero net charge, and the resulting electron and positron, taken together, also have zero net charge. Several other quantum numbers are also conserved (e.g. lepton number).
Click to expand...
I wonder how many times you and I, and others on the forum in the past, have had to make this speech about energy. It really does seem to be one of the most widespread and enduring misconceptions about physics.

Largely Star Trek's fault, but also reinforced by decades of the gosh-wow school of science journalism that seeks to make things mysterious, instead of demystifying them.
 
exchemist said:
I wonder how many times you and I, and others on the forum in the past, have had to make this speech about energy. It really does seem to be one of the most widespread and enduring misconceptions about physics.
Click to expand...
I think that many people - some more than others - have a tendency to want to reify things. For example, they might think of fear as an actual "force" in the world, rather than as a label that we attach to a certain set of emotional reactions.

In science, it is often a very useful shorthand to speak as if the entities and concepts in the models we use to describe nature actually exist in the physical world. Since we so often speak of conceptual constructs such as "spacetime" or "energy" or "electric charge" using an unspoken shorthand that obscures (or assumes) certain details of what we're actually talking about, a lot of non-scientists (actually, a lot of scientists, too) tend to assume that we can go out into the world and see spacetime or energy or electric charge.

To an extent, this is not a great problem. We say things like "an electron carries a negative electric charge" and in many ways the electron acts as if there is a kind of magical substance called "electric charge" riding along on it. Of course, there is no such substance.

What's more problematic is when people start imagining that abstract properties like electric charge can exist as real things in isolation, away from the real things they help us to describe. What does electric charge look like when separated from any object or particle? Well, since it's imaginary, it can look like anything. Maybe we imagine it's green fuzzy stuff that flutters around in space.

This sounds a bit silly, but only because most people don't find themselves having to picture electrical charge all that often. But when it comes to energy, we all hear the word all the time, but only a tiny proportion of human beings are able to define what it is with any accuracy.

We hear that energy is something that power plants can generate by burning coal. That it is something that can be piped along cables to our houses. That it is something that makes light when we flick a switch in the kitchen. So we imagine that energy is, mostly, some kind of invisible substance. Maybe we think we can see it from time to time. Maybe lightning is "pure energy". Maybe sunlight is "pure energy". Maybe an inner feeling of gently-glowing contentment is "pure energy". Maybe, in its "purest" form, energy is like a bright glowing ball of light.

All of that is wrong, of course. Power plants don't create any substance called "energy". Wires don't carry a substance called "energy" from the power plant to your house. Energy isn't "turned into" light when you flick the light switch to "on". And E=mc^2 doesn't imply that matter is "made of" energy, or even that it is "equivalent to" energy. Nor can matter be created from energy, or energy created from matter.

So, it's all wrong, but the idea not only persists in popular culture but is actively encouraged to a large degree.

From time to time, I come across people who, apparently, find it almost impossible to consider concepts and ideas, in isolation from real-world experiences or examples. Some of them don't understand hypotheticals, apparently. For them, everything has to be either true or false. They have a hard time with "Let's assume, for the sake of argument [counterfactually], that X were the case. What would be the implications of that?" They can't cope. It's too hard. "But X isn't like that!" is the best they can come up with, in response.

If you try to tell those people that energy isn't a glowing substance, they will say things like "Are you telling me that energy doesn't exist? That's crazy talk." After all, why would we have a word for something that doesn't exist in reality? Love is a real force in the world. If we can understand that, then energy is a no-brainer. Energy is the stuff that your TV runs on, dummy!

exchemist said:
Largely Star Trek's fault, but also reinforced by decades of the gosh-wow school of science journalism that seeks to make things mysterious, instead of demystifying them.
Click to expand...
Sci-fi has something to answer for. Thinking here about the many "beings of pure energy" and such that appear in (the worse kind of) science fiction. On the other hand, I have a soft spot for science fiction. Science fiction is one of the things that helped to spark my interest in science. I imagine that's true for a lot of science fiction nerds.

Science fiction, however, is seldom explicitly distinguished from science fantasy fiction. If you're learning by osmosis through reading science fiction, you might gradually pick up the difference. But it's better to broaden your horizons and find out what science is, separately, then let that inform your consumption of sci-fi. I think that the net effect of science fiction (and fantasy) on the fandom comes down mostly on the side of encouraging people to learn something of what science is, but it's certainly possible to be an enthusiastic fan while remaining largely clueless about the difference - or even that there is a distinction to be made.

Science journalism varies widely in quality. Of late, there is certainly a trend towards click-bait articles (often AI generated these days) that seek to get more eyes on screens by sensationalising current run-of-the-mill research (making it seem far more earth-shattering than it actually is) and/or by extrapolating the implications of scientific results way beyond anything that is actually supported by the cited research. There is also quite a large new sub-genre of pseudoscientific "reporting" of current research in which most of the work goes into creating the most sensational click-bait headline to entice the reader to click through. "New Hubble telescope picture breaks cosmology!" "Einstein was wrong, says researcher!" "New mathematical model threatens to overturn Big Bang theory!" "13 reasons why evolution is false. Number 11 will blow your mind!"
 
Last edited:
James R said:
I think that many people - some more than others - have a tendency to want to reify things. For example, they might think of fear as an actual "force" in the world, rather than as a label that we attach to a certain set of emotional reactions.

In science, it is often a very useful shorthand to speak as if the entities and concepts in the models we use to describe nature actually exist in the physical world. Since we so often speak of conceptual constructs such as "spacetime" or "energy" or "electric charge" using an unspoken shorthand that obscures (or assumes) certain details of what we're actually talking about, a lot of non-scientists (actually, a lot of scientists, too) tend to assume that we can go out into the world and see spacetime or energy or electric charge.

To an extent, this is not a great problem. We say things like "an electron carries a negative electric charge" and in many ways the electron acts as if there is a kind of magical substance called "electric charge" riding along on it. Of course, there is no such substance.

What's more problematic is when people start imagining that abstract properties like electric charge can exist as real things in isolation, away from the real things they help us to describe. What does electric charge look like when separated from any object or particle? Well, since it's imaginary, it can look like anything. Maybe we imagine it's green fuzzy stuff that flutters around in space.

This sounds a bit silly, but only because most people don't find themselves having to picture electrical charge all that often. But when it comes to energy, we all hear the word all the time, but only a tiny proportion of human beings are able to define what it is with any accuracy.

We hear that energy is something that power plants can generate by burning coal. That it is something that can be piped along cables to our houses. That it is something that makes light when we flick a switch in the kitchen. So we imagine that energy is, mostly, some kind of invisible substance. Maybe we think we can see it from time to time. Maybe lightning is "pure energy". Maybe sunlight is "pure energy". Maybe an inner feeling of gently-glowing contentment is "pure energy". Maybe, in its "purest" form, energy is like a bright glowing ball of light.

All of that is wrong, of course. Power plants don't create any substance called "energy". Wires don't carry a substance called "energy" from the power plant to your house. Energy isn't "turned into" light when you flick the light switch to "on". And E=mc^2 doesn't imply that matter is "made of" energy, or even that it is "equivalent to" energy. Nor can matter be created from energy, or energy created from matter.

So, it's all wrong, but the idea not only persists in popular culture but is actively encouraged to a large degree.

From time to time, I come across people who, apparently, find it almost impossible to consider concepts and ideas, in isolation from real-world experiences or examples. Some of them don't understand hypotheticals, apparently. For them, everything has to be either true or false. They have a hard time with "Let's assume, for the sake of argument [counterfactually], that X were the case. What would be the implications of that?" They can't cope. It's too hard. "But X isn't like that!" is the best they can come up with, in response.

If you try to tell those people that energy isn't a glowing substance, they will say things like "Are you telling me that energy doesn't exist? That's crazy talk." After all, why would we have a word for something that doesn't exist in reality? Love is a real force in the world. If we can understand that, then energy is a no-brainer. Energy is the stuff that your TV runs on, dummy!


Sci-fi has something to answer for. Thinking here about the many "beings of pure energy" and such that appear in (the worse kind of) science fiction. On the other hand, I have a soft spot for science fiction. Science fiction is one of the things that helped to spark my interest in science. I imagine that's true for a lot of science fiction nerds.

Science fiction, however, is seldom explicitly distinguished from science fantasy fiction. If you're learning by osmosis through reading science fiction, you might gradually pick up the difference. But it's better to broaden your horizons and find out what science is, separately, then let that inform your consumption of sci-fi. I think that the net effect of science fiction (and fantasy) on the fandom comes down mostly on the side of encouraging people to learn something of what science is, but it's certainly possible to be an enthusiastic fan while remaining largely clueless about the difference - or even that there is a distinction to be made.

Science journalism varies widely in quality. Of late, there is certainly a trend towards click-bait articles (often AI generated these days) that seek to get more eyes on screens by sensationalising current run-of-the-mill research (making it seem far more earth-shattering than it actually is) and/or by extrapolating the implications of scientific results way beyond anything that is actually supported by the cited research. There is also quite a large new sub-genre of pseudoscientific "reporting" of current research in which most of the work goes into creating the most sensational click-bait headline to entice the reader to click through. "New Hubble telescope picture breaks cosmology!" "Einstein was wrong, says researcher!" "New mathematical model threatens to overturn Big Bang theory!" "13 reasons why evolution is false. Number 11 will blow your mind!"
Click to expand...
My gas and electricity supplier, EDF, calls itself an energy company, so I suppose it is hardly surprising their customers develop the view that energy is stuff, particularly since they are actually invoiced in units of energy, i.e. kWh.
 
Pinball1970 said:
Not knowing the difference between an ion and electron is something of a red flag. Especially if you are attempting to turn physics on it's head with a new theory.
Click to expand...
Oh I think he knows the difference. He just assumed that the current in this wood burning thing was carried by electrons, as in wires, whereas it is really more like electrochemistry, because of the electrolyte painted onto the wood surface to produce the conducting path.

In fact, once the path has formed it gets hot and burns, whereupon carbon is laid down which will indeed conduct by passage of electrons. But by then the pattern is already formed.

It was interesting. I'd never heard of the phenomenon and there is no doubt that the patterns are very pretty:
1760042607050.png

This is no doubt why people kill themselves by electrocution trying to make them. There is something inherently pleasing about fractal patterns, probably because they are what we find all over the place in plants. We are apes, after all. FfffFFFZZZZT...BANG!! Urgh.
 
Last edited:
exchemist said:
In fractal wood burning the charge carriers are not electrons but ions, both cations and anions. You prepare the specimen by coating the surface with electrolyte. This provides ions.
Click to expand...
Yes, electrolyte is an essential component because, as for dopants in semiconductors, it provides a source of electrons that support current flow. Without an electrolyte, wood acts as an electrical insulator and nothing happens: certainly no current flow. But with current flow possible, under the influence of a high voltage, huge numbers of charge carriers (CC) jostle and fight to join the current flow, causing heating which in turn causes the wood to start burning. It is the CC trying to move as an electric current rather than the ions moving (there would possibly slight ionic drift towards the terminal points at the outer surface of the wood but very little net movement).

This is why I do not believe your statement that ‘the charge carriers are not electrons but ions’. The CC are electrons, with the wood burning working outwards simultaneously from the terminals strongly suggesting that these are aptron (positive) and cetron (negative) electron CC.
 
exchemist said:
with DCEP the welding electrode is the anode (+ve charge) and the work piece the cathode (-ve). So electrons do indeed travel from the work piece to the welding electrode. This results in 2/3 of the heat being dissipated in the welding electrode and 1/3 at the workpiece, so the rate of fusion of the filler metal (which comes from the melting of the electrode) is greater.
Click to expand...
Your statement that ‘electrons do indeed travel from the work piece to the welding electrode’ is an assumption rather than a conclusion. Considering the case that this assumption to be correct, then the electron density within the workpiece, which is essentially a flat thick hunk of metal in the DCEP setup, would be significantly lower than that in the electrode of the DCEN setup electrode. I don’t think that a flat surface (as opposed to the narrow probe-like cross-section of an electrode) would be able to generate an arc from the workpiece, let alone result in the increased weld depth of DCEP.

On the other hand, the STEM explanation is that, because aptron electrons (positrons) have a higher work function, they require far more energy to eject them from the positively charged electrode in a DCEP setup than for cetron electrons (CS electrons) in a DCEN setup. This is in keeping with 2/3 of the heat energy being dissipated in the DCEP welding electrode (the 2/3 is your claim; I don’t know where you found this estimate) and 1/3 at the workpiece. The higher temperature of the melted electrode material, combined with the high energy of the arc, gauge a deeper hole in the work piece to produce a deeper weld than for a DCEN setup.

It should not be difficult to set up an experiment involving the location of a strong magnet with its magnetic field 90 degrees to the direction of the arcing to deflect some of the charge carriers (CC) so as to determine their charge (positive or negative), movement direction and kinetic energy levels. For the CS electron-only approach, the CC would spiral in opposite directions and have opposite spin; for the STEM approach the CC would spiral in the same direction away from the electrode and also have opposite spin. Sounds as if Blackett’s automatic expansion chamber might be needed once again.

To make the experiment easier to set up, no welding (which would most likely obscure observation and measurement) is required as long as there was sufficient voltage to produce arcing. The results for such an experiment I would like to see. Any takers?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top