Aether Physics Model -- Part Two

A new and very stinky example of what Chris Hillman calls "Simple Physics" has just turned up at BAUTForum. Virginia and Jimmy K are back in Milwaukee for the summer, and my old friends from grad school days, BH and DB are here for coffee and physics. And Tensor was kind enough to send over some doughnuts! Hmmm, doughnuts ...

Celestial Mechanic: "With our cups refilled, we will resume our discussion at section 3 of the white paper, 'Goals and Objectives'. There's not really much here that wasn't already said in section 1, I'm not sure why they have this section here. Oh, they do throw out the first reference to their book here, but that's not really the purpose of this bit of filler."

DB: "I notice that quite a few of the references are to their book."

Virginia: "I counted them. There are 52 references listed, of which 17 are to Secrets of the Aether. That's almost one-third."

CM: "That's not good, but it's not irredeemably bad either. Let's move on to section 4, 'Definitions -- Dimensions'. The authors get off to a rocky start from the very first sentence:"
Jimmy K.: "That's horrible. I've never, ever, measured anything 'non-material' in any of my lab courses. All measurements I've ever taken have been of material things: the length of a board, the time for a ball to roll down an incline, the weight of a ball, the temperature of a beaker of solution, the current flowing through a wire. All of these things quite material."

DB: "And how does a length or a time interval or a mass relate to the 'foundation of existence and being'? Some philosophers and mystics would argue that these measurements are irrelevant and tell us nothing about the 'foundation of existence and being'."

CM: "Yes, but can we do any better? What are your thoughts about dimensions?"

BH: "Well, I think of dimensions as the number of coordinates of a manifold, or the maximum number of linearly-independent vectors in a vector space."

CM: "Good point, BH. That is one of the meanings of the word 'dimension' as applied in math and physics. But there is another meaning. If I may venture to define it, I would say:"
DB: "Are there others?"

CM: "Good question. According to SI, and I don't mean Sports Illustrated, there are seven fundamental measurable dimensions that units are defined for. Can you name the dimensions and their associated SI units?"

JK: "Well, the obvious ones are length measured in meters, time measured in seconds, mass measured in kilograms, and electric charge measured in coulombs. That's four but I can't think of the other three."

CM: "Actually, it's electric current measured in amperes, the coulomb is considered a derived unit. That takes care of MKSA, and that's enough for most people. There's one more that is very commonly used, but I'll admit that the other two are obscure."

V: "Temperature in degrees celsius?"

CM: "Actually it's kelvins, not degrees celsius. As I said the other two are really obscure. One of them is luminous intensity measured in candelas, and the other is molecular substance in moles."

DB: "I would have never guessed those two. The candela is really obscure. Maybe if I worked in the lighting industry I would use it and I would most definitely know my lumens from luxes and phots from foot-candles!"

BH: "I can't see why the mole should be elevated to fundamental status. It's useful for chemists, but not for very many others. And the same for candelas."

CM: "Nor can I. There is an interesting discussion in an arxiv.org pre-print by Okun and two other authors called 'A Trialogue on Units' or something like that. I'll have to look it up. I agree with some of it, but not all of it. I agree about either length or time being fundamental, the other being a derived quantity through use of the speed of light, and perhaps action instead of mass. I disagree about electric charge being fundamental. This is a surprisingly difficult concept with only a narrow consensus.

CM: "But let's see what APM has to say about it. Section 4, 'Definitions -- Dimensions' is the longest section of the white paper, some six pages out of 27, or almost a quarter of the paper. Most of the major sections are a page or two, with 'Other' weighing in at four. This would appear, in some ways to be the heart of the paper."

JK: "Maybe we can drive a stake through it?"

CM: "Not so fast. I know that we sometimes we play very hard here, but we really should adhere to the philosophy (in the good sense of the word!) of Bad Astronomy which is to expose the misinformation, the bad astronomy and bad physics, and try to inform the readers of good astronomy and physics, always keeping in mind that good astronomy and physics means 'to the best of our knowledge'. There is a lot of misinformation in this section of the paper, so let's dive in.

CM: "The first thing APM tries to define is 'Quantum Mass'. And here is how they do it:"
JK: "Whew! All that just to say mass is a dimension that is an abstraction of inertia."

CM: "I'm not sure if I would word it like that, but a good definition of mass should be close to that. But the initial words about 'mass to energy equivalence' and 'rest mass' shows fundamental misunderstanding of rationalized units and special relativity that I must address. In one of his replies volantis writes:"
V: "But that's not what is meant by the equivalence of mass and energy, and that's not what is done when c is set equal to one!"

CM: "Not to mention that that is not what the 'equivalence principle' is either. The authors really ought to do some reading at the library on these subjects."

JK: "So what do you mean by 'equivalence of mass and energy'?"

CM: "It means simply that a mass, m, in kilograms or whatever, is equivalent to an energy E=mc² in joules or whatever. Not equal because the units are different. You can think of mass as a very concentrated form of energy. Most of the energy sources we use every day depend on very small amounts of mass being converted into energy in chemical reactions.

CM: "As for setting c equal to one, that is done for convenience and accuracy in the equations. But nobody (at least nobody that truly understands rationalized units) thinks that a length is converted to time or inverse mass or anything. If answers are desired in SI units, then the various constants must be restored at the end of the computation. Here's an example: in calculating the structure of the hydrogen atom it is convenient to set h-bar, e (unit of electric charge, not the base of natural logarithms), and m the reduced mass of the electron equal to one. In the non-relativistic computation based on the Schrodinger equation the energy levels turn out to be -1/(2*n²), for n an integer greater or equal to one. If we want this in SI units we must restore the h-bar, e and m to the equation. It turns out that the combination m*e⁴/(h-bar)² has dimensions of energy and equals 27.2 eV.

CM: "And 'equivalence principle' refers to the local indistinguishability between acceleration and a uniform gravitational field."

DB: "How time flies! I could go for a refill."

CM: "Let me put another pot on, then. But we're not quite done yet with Quantum Mass', and there are still several subsections to go."

To be continued ...

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Microsoft is over if you want it.

The bar has been lowered for the promotion of ATM ideas; the bar for the acceptance of ATM ideas must remain high.

Why? You haven't finished your doughnut? :-)

We had a nicely flavoured quark salad for starters, but now we seem to have skipped straight to the post dessert coffee and muffins. Where's the beef? Did someone find some Mu-tated P(r)ions in there?

I counted three references to the book in the body of the paper. The rest appear to be in the footnotes. Not surprising to find frequent references to it really, considering it expands on what is presented in the paper.
The criticism of grammar is a bit like the philosophy of language: Going to a good restaurant and eating the menu.
Word counting and grammar policing? I thought the usual complaint here was the lack of maths and equations in new theories. Now you get a paper full of them and they're not even discussed!

I think the theory shows great promise, and is well worth bearing in mind alongside established current theory.

Well done David Thomson and Jim Barossa.

Incidentally, if David gets back out of the sinbin, I wonder if he'd care to comment on the similarity of the numerical quantity he has discovered for the force acting on a free neutron and the proton/electron mass ratio as determined by Van Dyck et al.
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=3517321

Quick check:
equation 4.3 LAMBDA_compton=2,426x10^-12 correctly cites (Wiki) the Compton length for an ELECTRON
Wiki also says that each particle has it's own Compton length.
So what in Earth does the electron Compton length do in the equation 4.6
G_force=G*m_a*m_a/LAMBDA_copton

I'll tell you. To fit the result.
Because if I express LAMBDA_compton as h/m_ec and replace it in 4.6
I get G_force=G*c*m_e*m_a²/h
Now, if I replace electron mass m_e with proton mass m_p I ain't got the value in 4.3 for G_force.
Neither the G-force seems to be constant as extensively used through the 'white paper'.

In passus c the authors arbitrarely chose the electron out of 3 subatomic particles (altough a hundreds are known in Standard Model, they stick that only 3 exist? Who beleives that? Do you Stroller?) to calculate Compton length
because electron is the most mobile ??????
What if I chose neutron because its most massive?
Or proton as the most stable?

Neither it is clear why the total mass of the Aether m_a is roughly a quarter of the mass of the whole Universe (wiki again :-))?

Obviously, I can't speak for the originator of the theory, and he can't speak for himself since he's been banned for whatever reason, but I will attempt a reply, although I'm not a physics expert, I do have experience proof reading translated tech documentation.
Lets look at passus c again:
As I read it, the equation at 4.2 is given as an example, and the compton wavelength would be different for each particle as wiki says, and David is aware of this, because he states that it is the technique that is applicable to each of the quantum constants, not Planck's constant.

I'm not sure why David beats around the bush about which of the three fundamental sub atomic particle Planck's constant refers to, but since you have confirmed that it is the compton wavelength for the electron, that doesn't matter too much. Anyway, the upshot is that the masses in the equation at 4.6 get divided by the square of the compton wavelength appropriate to them, and the G-force remains constant, as it must, since it is the fundamental quantity and sole assumption of the system.

As for whether I believe in the existence of the host of variously flavoured, coloured and orientated sub atomic ephemera, well, I have faith that the top physicists of the last 70 years have done their utmost to produce an internally coherent and consistent system to explain the phenomena they have detected with the apparatus they built in order to find what they theorised they would see. However, with my engineers hat on, if David can get the job done with fewer particles in his new system, I'm up for a bit of a springclean.
I doubt if the universe would fall over because a few quarks got shuffled out of the limelight anyway, because the Aether takes the role of providing the necessary angular momentum, polarity and spin to the particles.

Its never been clear to me why ninety some percent of the universe's mass was clogged up with 'dark matter' either. Maybe we could do away with a third of that to make room for David's Aether. It'd brighten the place up a bit I reckon.

So, we can safely conclude that the 'technique' is not applicable to Compton length as Compton length is not a constant.
Hence, 4.6 and it's derivates are faulse.
In 4.2 and 4.3 no technique other then citation have been used.

??????????????
I don't think you got it. What is Compton wavelength appropriate to m_a (total mass of Aether) then? It does not work even with you patch.
Please answer the question. Please provide your equations. It's a high school math and you are an engeneer , I don't expect any problems there.


It's a 'white paper' for Gud's sake, ready for publication and scientific scrutiny and yet the very first equation originating from authors contains mistake that inavalidates all other derived equations in the paper.

Only math that doesn't contain mistakes is cited! Amazing achievement!


It does matter VERY MUCH as I even insist on the correctness of the 'math'. Don't you?

Its been shown that G-force can not be a constant.
Exercise: If G-force is a constant then there exist a constant K that satisfies the condition
Kxy=x²/y

Actually, most of the particles were detected before they were theorized.


And that's one of my main concern's about the Aether theory. He seems to ignore all those observations of all those other particles. Even if he only needs three particles, his theory has to explain all those other observations of all those other particles.


I doubt it would also, but he seems to be ignoring 90% of the observed particles out there. Now, if he want's to claim his theory is better than the SM, wouldn't you think his theory would be able to explain those other particles at least as well as the SM?

Maybe we could, but I doubt it as he hasn't even provided any kind of support for new gravitational law. Where is his predictions for the precession of Mercury's perihelion or, for a more accurate test, let's see if he can even match GR prediction for the inspiral of PSR 1913+16. Note the graph on that page and the curved line, which is the prediction of GR. Note the dots which are the observations.

Why hasn't provided predictions for these well known examples? After all, the first thing Einstein tested GR against was Mercury's precession. The first things the quark model was tested against were the already observed particles. The lack of explanation for all those other well known particles and the lack of predictions for well know examples on the gravitational side of his theory tells me he isn't interested in looking for examples that may refute his theory, only for borderline examples that may support it.

__________________
Some try to tell me, thoughts they cannot defend,... - Moody Blues.

You are attempting to set up a teacher-pupil power relationship here.
alt.amateur.psychology is that way ------->
The dock is empty, the originator of the theory has been banged up for seven days for contempt of court. I am an interested observer and commentator, and I am therefore under no obligation to do or provide anything. I will make some general comments in reply to your post though.
In 4.2 and 4.3 no other quantity than planck's constant has been used, which is hardly surprising, since 4.2 and 4.3 are part of the same example concerning the electron.

If you read the preamble to 4.6 you will see that the quantification of the masses are stated to be relative to the environment.
So we need to find out what sort of 'relativity' the originator of the theory wants us to take on board in order to 'get it'.
My 'patch' is probably not what the originator of the theory intends, given the inclusion of the quantum length as a single quantity in table 'h', we will have to wait until he's allowed to speak for his theory again to find out. It's also part of the reason I asked for a comment on the relative mass of the proton and electron in my original post - to get a better handle on what he means by subjective, relative and environmental. After all, we can't expect things to look or behave just the same off in the 5th dimension can we?

Of course, he may choose not to bother to develop the case for the defense, given the combative nature of proceedings thus far. Perhaps a more collaborative and less judgemental approach would be more productive. It's easy for a group of antagonists to aggravate a single defender to the point of saying something intemperate, not so easy to explain something new to people who have entrenched opinions.

Or is it merely the intention of the contributors to this forum from the mainstream side to seek fault and destroy, or at least silence, rather than appreciate and discuss the interesting aspects of alternative theories, and tease out and elucidate the issues involved in the lacunae with the originator?

Would you expect to comprehend the whole of GR, QM and QED at a single sitting? It seems to me that it takes more patience and effort to comprehend the description of a model of reality than is being demonstrated in the approach of singling out a particular detail, and dismissing the entire theory because one aspect doesn't seem to conform to the standard model. For example, it's concievable that the use of Planck's constant as a general constant in the definition of quantum length for all particles will work out ok, given the relative nature of the aether dynamic. Have patience and ask the question civilly, and maybe we'll get a reply.

"Hey, what was that funny loop de loop that little vapour trail in the cloud chamber did?"

I think we both know that the cycle of observation, head scratching, improved instrumentation, more head scratching, intuition, hypothesis, more observation, application to the vice chancellor for $millions for an electro-particle whizzometer, more observation, demands from the vice chancellor for tangible results, theory, test of prediction etc is more complex than your assertion intimates.


We live in a soup of unexplained interactions. It's a credit to the ingenuity of physicists and engineers that as many 'particles and waves' have been detected and quantified as there have been. If a new theory can demonstrate a better underlying unity and interrelation amongst the primary sub atomic particles than the standard models theory, then you'd hope it may get sufficient attention and man hours to work out how other 'particles' fit into the picture. Of course, it may require more instrumentation, and the vice chancellor is going to be resistant to that.

"Why can't you physicists be more like the philosophy department? All they ask me for is paper, pens and waste baskets!"

He claims to have built a device which has successfully detected gravity waves. Ask him about it when/if he comes back.
Actaully, it was Eddington who performed that experiment, some considerable time later, after Einsteins theories had gained sufficient interest to encourage specialists to perform tests. I'm not saying this theory should immediately merit the same, but I am saying it would be unscientific to dismiss it without giving it a fair hearing, and that involves giving the originator the opportunity to reply and elucidate. If that were done in a more congenial and collaborative atmosphere, it would be more likely to achieve positive results.

You have obviously, at the minimum, never have worked or at least known someone who has worked for their PhD, have you? Not to mention post doc work or presenting something at a full blown conference. What he has gone through here is child's play compared to any of the above. One of the main things here in ATM is to find fault, to correct, to make the presentation more clear. That he takes offense to this, raises serious red flags that he really dosen't consider the possibility that his idea could be wrong.

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Some try to tell me, thoughts they cannot defend,... - Moody Blues.

It's not as if it doesn't happen to everyone who proposes an ATM idea. What was he expecting?

__________________
'The eye can only see what the mind is prepared to accept'

He wasn't expecting anything because didn't present it. He arrived on the scene after someone else did and offered to answer questions about it.

thereby accepting the rules of the board.

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'The eye can only see what the mind is prepared to accept'

Nonsense. He agreed to defend it, hence the move to ATM. Don't bother quoting where he said 'answer questions', that's not how the ATM board works. You have read the rules, right?

__________________
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" -- Charles Darwin

"Ignorance convinces" -- slang's dad