Above: spin-1 quantum gravity illustration from the old 2009 version of quantumfieldtheory.org (a PDF linked here, containing useful Feynman quotations about this). To hear to a very brief Feynman tongue-in-cheek talk on spin-1 graviton mechanism problems, please click here.

Above: the dilemma of “looking clever” or being humble and honestly searching for the facts, no matter how “heretical” or unexpected they turn out to be. This review of Surely You’re Joking My Feynman is a lot better than the autobiography itself which rambles on a lot and needs severe editing for busy readers, like all of Feynman’s books. Feynman does relate several incidents that led him to the conclusion that a major error in fashionable consensus is groupthink. Working on the bomb at Los Alamos, he found he could break into any secret safe very easily. People left the last digit of their combination on the lock dial, and he could extrapolate the other digits using logic about the simple mind of the physicist or mathematician. E.g., a 3 digit combination safe showing 7 implies the combination 137, 4 implies the combination 314, 1 implies 271, and so on. When a very complex safe of a military top brass was opened very quickly by the locksmith at Los Alamos, Feynman spent weeks getting to know the guy to find out the “secret”. It turned out that there was no magic involved: the combination that opened the safe was simply the safe manufacturer’s one, which the top brass hadn’t got around to changing! Feynman was then told by a painter that he made yellow by mixing white and red paint, which sounded like “magic”. After a mishap (pink), he went back to the painter, who informed him he added yellow to the mixture to give it the right tint. Another time, he was falsely accused of being a magician by fixing radios by switching over valves/vacuum tubes (they used the same kind of vacuum tube in different circuits, so an old output amplifier tube which was failing under high current could be switched for a similar valve used for lower currents in a pre-amplifier circuit, curing the problem). In a later book, What Do You Care What Other People Think Feynman’s time on the Presidential investigation into NASA’s January 1986 Challenger explosion is explained. Upon close inspection, Challenger was blown up by engineers not in a mistake involving some weird mathematical error of the fashionable magical “rocket science” that is supposedly beyond mortal understanding, but just regular groupthink delusion: the low-level engineers and technicians in charge of O-rings knew that rubber turns brittle at low temperatures in cold weather, and that brittle rubber O-rings sealing the Challenger booster rockets would leak fuel as the rocket vibrated, and they knew that gravity and air drag would cause the leaking fuel to run towards the rocket flames, blowing it up.

However, those technicians who knew the facts had Orwellian doublethink and crimestop: if they made a big scene in order to insist that the Challenger space shuttle launch be postponed until warmer weather when the rubber O-ring seals in the boosters would be flexible and work properly, they would infuriate their NASA bosses at launch control and all the powerful senators who had turned up to watch the Challenger take off, so the NASA bigwigs might give contracts to other contractors in future. They would be considered unAmerican fear-mongers, decrepid incompetent fools with big egos. It was exactly the same for the radar operators and their bosses at Pearl Harbor. There are no medals given out for preventing disasters that aren’t obvious threats splashed over the front pages of the Washington Post. It was not 100% certain the shuttle would explode anyway. So they crossed their fingers, said little, and nervously watched Challenger blow up on TV. Feynman was told the truth not by fellow committee investigator Neil Armstrong, or by any NASA contractor (they were just as good at covering up afterwards as keeping quiet beforehand), but by the military missile expert who investigated the 1980 Arkansas Titan military missile explosion. Feynman used a piece of rubber and a plastic cup of iced water to expose the cause at a TV news conference, but the media didn’t want to know about the corruption of science and peer-reviewed risk prediction rubbish in NASA’s computers and groupthink lies. His written report was nearly censored out, despite the committee chairman being a former student! It was included as a minority report, Appendix F, which concluded that NASA safety analyses were a confidence trick for public relations:

“… reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.”

Nobel Laureate Professor Brian Josephson emailed me (exchanged email PDFs are located here and here) that he used 2nd quantization in his Nobel Prize QM calculations, but is still stuck in 1st quantization groupthink when it comes to “wavefunction collapse” in the EPR paradox! Er, Brian, nobody has ever seen an epicycle or a wavefunction! Nobody has ever measured an epicycle or wavefunction! Schrodinger guessed H*Psi = -i*h-bar*d{Psi}/dt. This is a complex transmogrification from Maxwell’s displacement current law, {energy transfer rate} = constant*dE/dt (for energy transfer via “electric current” flowing by the vacuum through an electric field E effect, akin to half-a-cycle of a radio wave). Note that H*Psi = -i*h-bar*d{Psi}/dt is a relativistic equation (it is only non-relativistic when his non-relativistic Hamiltonian H for energy is included; Dirac’s equation is no different Schroedinger’s except in replacing H with a relativistic spinor where particle spin is included, hence making the law relativistic). Dirac later showed that H*Psi = -i*h-bar*d{Psi}/dt is “analogous to” its solution, Psi_t/Psi₀ = exp(-iHt/h-bar), which Feynman modified with -Ht = S with action S defined in units of h-bar, so the “wavefunction” (epicycle) varies in direct proportion to exp(iS). This creates the complex circle (rotation of a unit length vector on a Argand diagram, as a cyclic function of S). Feynman in his 1985 book QED reduced this exp(iS) using Euler’s “jewel” to simply cos S, where the lagrangian for S is expressed so that the direction of the vector is fixed as the relativistic axis (the relativistic axis is the simple direction of the arrow for the path of zero action S = 0, because the “relativistic action” is actually defined as that action which is invariant to a change of coordinates!). So we now have the “reinvented wheel” called a Euclidean circle, whose resultant in the on-shell or relativistic axis is simply the scalar amount cos S, for each path. This gets rid of complex Hilbert space and with it, Haag’s theorem as an objection to the mathematical self-consistency of renormalized QFT. All photons have 4 polarizations (like virtual or off-shell photons), not just 2 polarizations (as presumed from direct measurements). The extra 2 polarizations determine the cancellations and additions of phases: there is no “wavefunction collapse upon measurement”. The photon goes through both slit in Young’s experiment and interferes with itself, with no need for an observer. As Feynman writes in QED (1985) we don’t “need” the 1st quantization “uncertainty principle” if we sum the paths.

Above: here we have Feynman pushed to explain why similar poles of magnets repel, using it as an excuse to talk about why ice is slippery and why good husbands call an ambulance for their wives who slip on the ice and break their hip, unless they are drunk and violent. He does end up saying that he can’t explain why magnets repel in terms of anything else with which the non-mathematician is familiar. However, in his 1985 book QED he explains that virtual photons are exchanged between magnets, and this process creates the magnetic force field. The problem for Feynman was knowing what the virtual photon wavefunction means physically. In the 1985 book, he draws pictures of a rotating arrow accompanying each virtual photon, that rotates in step with the frequency of oscillation of the photon, i.e. each oscillation of the virtual photon is accompanied by a full rotation of the phase factor (which is the “hidden variable” behind the so-called “wavefunction”, itself just an epicycle from 1st quantization, with no direct physical reality behind it, despite obfuscation efforts from the “nobody understands quantum mechanics”-Gestapo and the “parallel worlds” fantasy of Hugh Everett III and, with varying laws of nature, the 10⁵⁰⁰ parallel universes of the superstring theory Gestapo/arXiv “peer”-reviewers).

Above: like Dr Zaius said to Charlton Heston in 1968, don’t search for the facts if you have a weak stomach. It might turn out that a “unified theory” is analogous to merely a bunch of bananas, so many groupthink “bury my head in the sand” simplicity-deniers will feel sub-ape because they can’t, don’t, and won’t be assed to put two sticks together to reach the facts. A pretty good example, discussed in detail in one way later in this post and in other ways two posts back, is Einstein’s relativity, which has multiple levels of explanation. The strongest formulation of relativity is the statement that our laws of motion must give the same predictions regardless of the chosen reference frame, i.e. we get the same prediction of the reference frame is that of the earth or that of the sun. This makes the laws “invariant” of the selected reference frame. Then there are progressive weaker formulations of relativity, used in “simplified” explanations for the layman, such as “there is no spacetime fabric, there is nothing in space which can produce forces”, or “relativity doesn’t say an absolute reference frame is unnecessary for doing our sums, relativity actually disproves the existence of any absolute reference frame!“

These “simplified” relativism “explanations” are a continuation of the best traditions of Egyptian priesthood and the Pythagorean mathematical cult. The objective of science is to act as a magician, to make the masses of the people believe whatever you say, “trust me with political power, I’m a scientist!” Then you trust them and you get mishaps, because they turn out to be humans, or more often than not, subhumans, even subape! Hence the mishaps of caloric, phlogiston, Maxwell’s mechanical gear cog aether, Kelvin’s stable vortex atom, Piltdown Man, peer-review, unprecedented climate change, nuclear winter theory, lethal cobalt bomb theory, superstring, etc. Groupthink science is not the kind of thing Newton and Darwin were doing, or Feynman was doing before and during the 1948 Pocono conference. Groupthink science education doesn’t train people to put up with the taunts for doing unorthodox revolutionary work, so it progresses only slowly and haltingly, the “alternative ideas” are developed slowly, with the mainstream ignoring it.

Above: Dr Zaius is alive and well, ensuring that consensus censors facts, as shown in this BBC propaganda programme, Horizon: Science Under Attack where groupthink pseudophysics is labelled “science” and the facts are dismissed because they have been censored out by “peer”-review pseudoscientific bigotry. Telegraph online Journalist James Delingpole, who exposed to the world the “hide the decline” climategate email of Dr Phil Jones is dismissed by Dr Zaius on the pretext that people must define science as the consensus of “peer”-reviewed literature. Great. So we can go on pretending that there is nothing to worry about, and using “peer”-review to prevent human progress. Ah, if only it were that easy to sweep the facts under the carpet or wallpaper over them. A PDF version of the errors in the BBC Horizon: Science Under Attack episode is located here, with additional relevant data (20 pages, 2 MB download). To read the 1960s background about Dr Zaius, see the wikipedia page linked here: “Zaius serves a dual role in Ape society, as Minister of Science in charge of advancing ape knowledge, and also as Chief Defender of the Faith. In the latter role, he has access to ancient scrolls and other information not given to the ape masses. [Dr Phil Jones and the FOIA/Freedom of Information Act "harrassment" controversy.] Zaius … blames human nature for it all. Zaius seems to prefer an imperfect, ignorant ape culture that keeps humans in check, to the open, scientific, human-curious one … The idea of an intelligent human … threatening the balance of things frightens him deeply.”

“The common enemy of humanity is man. In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.” – Club of Rome, The First Global Revolution (1993). (That report is available here, a site that also contains a very similar but less fashionable pseudoscientific groupthink delusion on eugenics.)

The error in the Club of Rome‘s groupthink approach is the lie that the common enemy is humanity. This lie is the dictatorial approach taken by paranoid fascists, both on the right wing and the left wing, such as Stalin and Hitler. (Remember that the birthplace of fascism was not Hitler’s Germany, but Rome in October 1914, when the left-wing, ex-communist Mussolini joined the new Revolutionary Fascio for International Action after World War I broke out.) The common enemy of humanity is not humanity but is fanaticism, defined here by the immoral code: “the ends justify the means”. It is this fanaticism that is used to defend exaggerations and lies for political ends. Exaggeration and lying about weapons effects in the hope it will be justified by ending war is also fanaticism. Weapons effects exaggerations both motivated aggression in 1914, and prevented early action against Nazi aggression in the mid-1930s.

From: Phil Jones

To: “Michael E. Mann”
Subject: HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL
Date: Thu Jul 8 16:30:16 2004

… I didn’t say any of this, so be careful how you use it – if at all. Keep quiet also that you have the pdf. … I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is! …

- Dr Phil Jones to Dr Michael Mann, Climategate emails, July 8th 2004.

For NASA’s “peer-review” suppression of its own climate research contractor, please see:

http://nige.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/dr-miskolczi-nasa-resignation-letter-2005.pdf

“Since the Earth’s atmosphere is not lacking in greenhouse gases, if the system could have increased its surface temperature it would have done so long before our emissions. It need not have waited for us to add CO2: another greenhouse gas, H2O, was already to hand in practically unlimited reservoirs in the oceans. … The Earth’s atmosphere maintains a constant effective greenhouse-gas content [although the percentage contributions to it from different greenhouse gases can vary greatly] and a constant, maximized, “saturated” greenhouse effect that cannot be increased further by CO2 emissions (or by any other emissions, for that matter). … During the 61-year period, in correspondence with the rise in CO2 concentration, the global average absolute humidity diminished about 1 per cent. This decrease in absolute humidity has exactly countered all of the warming effect that our CO2 emissions have had since 1948. … a hypothetical doubling of the carbon dioxide concentration in the air would cause a 3% decrease in the absolute humidity, keeping the total effective atmospheric greenhouse gas content constant, so that the greenhouse effect would merely continue to fluctuate around its equilibrium value. Therefore, a doubling of CO2 concentration would cause no net “global warming” at all.”

- http://nige.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/saturated-greenhouse-effect-fact.pdf page 4.

CO2 only drives climate change in NASA and IPCC computer climate fantasies when positive-feedback from H2O water vapour is assumed. In the real world, there is negative feedback from H2O which cancels out the small effect of CO2 rises: the hot moist air rises to form clouds, so less sunlight gets through to surface air. Homeostasis! All changes in the CO2 levels are irrelevant to temperature variations. CO2 doesn’t drive temperature, it is balanced by cloud cover variations. Temperature rises in the geological record have increasing the rate of growth of tropical rainforests relative to animals, causing a fall in atmospheric CO2, while temperature falls kill off rainforests faster than animals (since rainforests can’t migrate like animals), thus causing a rise in atmospheric CO2. These mechanisms for CO2 variations are being ignored. Cloud cover variations prevent useful satellite data on global mean temperature, the effects of cloud cover on tree growth obfuscate the effects of temperature, and the effects of upwind city heat output obfuscate CO2 temperature data on weather stations. Thus we have to look to sea level rise rates to determine global warming.

We’re been in global warming for 18,000 years, during which time the sea level has risen 120 metres (0.67 cm/year mean, often faster than this mean rate). Over the past century, sea level has risen at an average rate of 0.20 cm year, and even the maximum rate of nearly 0.4 cm/year recently is less than the rates humanity has adapted to and flourished with in the past. CO2 annual output limits and wind farms etc are no use in determining the ultimate amount of CO2 in the atmosphere anyway: if you supplement fossil fuels with wind farms, the same CO2 simply takes longer to be emitted, maybe 120 years instead of 100 years. The money spent on lying “green” eco-fascism carbon credit trading bonuses can be spent on humanity instead.

For background info on how H2O cloud cover feedback cancelling CO2 variations on temperature has been faked in IPCC NASA “peer”-review bigotry, see http://www.examiner.com/civil-rights-in-portland/blacklisted-scientist-challenges-global-warming-orthodoxy and http://nige.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/the-saturated-greenhouse-effect-theory-of-ferenc-miskolczi.pdf:

(1) increased cloud cover doesn’t warm the earth. True, cloud cover prevents rapid cooling at night. But it also reduces the sunlight energy received in the day, which is the source of the heat emitted during the night. Increase cloud cover, and the overall effect is a cooling of air at low altitudes.

(2) rainfall doesn’t carry latent heat down to be released at sea level. The latent heat of evaporation is released in rain as soon as the droplets condense from vapour, at high altitudes in clouds. Air drag rapidly cools the drops as they fall, so the heat is left at high altitudes in clouds, and the only energy you get when the raindrops land is the kinetic energy (from their trivial gravitational potential energy).

Obfuscation of the fact that hot moist air rises and condenses to form clouds from oceans that cover 70% of the earth (UNLIKE any “greenhouse!!!!) caused this whole mess. IPCC models falsely assume that H2O vapour doesn’t rise and condense into clouds high above the ground: they assume hot air doesn’t rise! That’s why they get the vital (FALSE) conclusion that H2O vapour doubles (amplifies) projected temperature rises from CO2, instead of cancelling them out! Their models are plain wrong.

Above: electric current is essentially displacement current under disguise. Juice in Joules coming out of wires isn’t due to the 1 mm/second drift of conduction band electrons, so much as Heaviside energy current. Moreover, charge up a capacitor which has a vacuum for its “dielectric”, and energy flows in at light velocity, has no mechanism to slow down, and when discharged flows out at light velocity in a pulse twice as long as its length and with just half the voltage (PD) of its static charged state. It turns out that the simplest way to understand electricity is as electromagnetic energy, so we’re studying the off-shell field quanta of QED, which causes slow electric drift current more like a side-show than the main-show. So by looking at IC’s published cross-talk experiments, we can learn about how the phase cancellations work. E.g., Maxwell’s wave theory of light can be improved upon by reformulating it in terms of path integrals.

Above: Dr Robert D. Klauber in 2010 accidentally misrepresented Feynman 1985 book QED in terms of Feynman’s earlier (complex) phase factor! The actual idea of Feynman in his 1985 book dispenses with the Argand diagram and converts exp (iS) into cos S (where S is in units of h-bar of course), as shown above. Notice that the path integral of cos S gives the resolved component of the resultant (final arrow) which lies in the x-direction only. To find the total magnitude (length) of the final arrow we simply have to choose the x-axis to be the direction of the resultant arrow, which is easy: the direction of the resultant is always that of the classical action, because the contributions to the resultant are maximized by the coherent summation of paths with the least amounts of action (the classical laws correspond to least action!). In other words, we don’t need to find the direction of the quantum field theory resultant arrow in the path integral, we only need to find its length (scalar magnitude). We easily know the arrow’s direction from the principle of least action, so the work of doing the path integral is then just concerned with finding the length, not the direction, of the resultant arrow. In practice, this is done automatically by relativistic formulation of the Lagrangian for action S. The definition of the path of least action as the real or “on shell” relativistic path automatically sets up the path integral coordinate system correctly.

“… every particle is associated with waves and these waves may be considered as a field. … very close to the charges that are producing the fields, one may have to modify Maxwell’s field theory so as to make it a non-linear electrodynamics. … with field theory, we have an infinite number of degrees of freedom, and this infinity may lead to trouble [Haag's theorem implies that the renormalization process for taking account of field polarization is ambiguous and flawed if done in the complex, infinite dimensional "Hilbert space"]. We have to solve equations in which the unknown … involves an infinite number of variables [i.e., an infinite number of Feynman diagrams for a series of ever more complicated quantum interactions, which affect the classical result by an ever increasing amount if the field quanta are massive and significantly charged, compared to the charges of the on-shell particles whose fields they constitute]. The usual method … is to use perturbative methods in which … one tries to get a solution step by step [by adding only the first few terms of the increasingly complicated infinite number of terms in the perturbative expansion series to the path integral]. But one usually runs into the difficulty that after a certain stage the equations lead to divergent integrals [thus necessitating an arbitrary "cutoff" energy to prevent infinite field quanta momenta occurring, as you approach zero distance between colliding fundamental particles].”

- Paul A. M. Dirac, Lectures on Quantum Mechanics, Dover, New York, 2001, pages 1, 2, and 84.

Above: Feynman’s 1985 book QED is actually an advanced and sophisticated treatment of path integrals without mathematics (replacing complex space with real plane rotation of a polarization plane during motion along every possible path for virtual photons, as shown for reflection and refraction of light in the “sum over histories” given graphically above), unlike his 1965 co-authored Quantum Mechanics and Path Integrals. The latter however makes the point in Fig. 7-1 on page 177 (of the 2010 Dover reprint) that real particles only follow differentiable (smooth) “classical” paths when seen on macroscopic scales (where the action is much larger than h-bar): “Typical paths of a quantum-mechanical particle are highly irregular on a fine scale … Thus, although a mean velocity can be defined, no mean-square velocity exists at any point. In other words, the paths are nondifferentiable.” The fact that real paths are actually irregular and not classical when looked at closely is what leads Feynman away from the belief in differential geometry, the belief for instance that space is curved (which is what Einstein argued in his general relativity tensor analysis of classical motion). The idea that real (on shell) particle paths are irregular on very small scales was suggested by Schroedinger in 1930, when arguing (from an analysis of Dirac’s spinor) that the half integer spin of a fermion moving or stationary in free space can be modelled by a “zig-zag” path which he called “zitterbewegung”, which is a light-velocity oscillation with a frequency of 2mc²/h-bar or about 10²¹ Hz for an electron. Zitterbewegung suggests that an electron is not a static particle but is trapped light-velocity electromagnetic energy, oscillating very rapidly.

My recent comment to Dr Woit’s blog:

“One of my criticisms of the two organizations would be that they don’t support research of the sort that Witten has had success with, at the intersection of mathematics and quantum field theory.”

Do you think it possible that the future of quantum field theory could lie in a completely different direction, namely Feynman’s idea of greater mathematical simplicity. E.g. the path integral sums many virtual particle path phase amplitudes, each of the form of Dirac’s exp (-iHt) -> exp(iS). The sum over these histories is the path integral: the real resultant path is that for small actions S. Feynman in his 1985 book QED shows graphically how the summation works: you don’t really need complex Hilbert space from the infinite number of Argand diagrams.

To plot his non-mathematical (visual) path integral for light reflecting off a mirror, Feynman shows that you can simply have a phase polarization rotate (in real not complex space) in accordance to the frequency of the light, e.g. what he does is to take Euler’s exp(iS) = (i*sin S) + cos S and drop the complex term, so the phase factor exp(iS) is replaced with cos S, which is exactly the same periodic circular oscillation function as exp(iS), but with the imaginary axis replaced by a second real axis. E.g., a spinning plane of polarization for a photon! This gets rid of the objection of Haag’s theorem, since you get rid of Hilbert space when you dump the imaginary axis for every history!

Feynman makes the point in his Lectures on Physics that the origin of exp(iS) is the Schroedinger/Dirac equation for energy transfer via a rate of change of a wavefunction (Dirac’s of course has a relativistic spinor Hamiltonian), which just “came out of the mind of Schroedinger”. It’s just an approximation, a guess. Dirac solved it to get exp(-iHt) which Feynman reformulated to exp(iS). The correct phase amplitude is indeed cos S (S measured in units of h-bar, of course). Small actions always have phase amplitudes of ~1, while large actions have phase amplitudes that vary periodically in between +1 and -1, and so on average cancel out.

Are graphs mathematics? Are Feynman diagrams mathematics? Is mathematical eliticism (in the mindlessly complexity-loving sense) obfuscating a simple truth about reality?

Feynman points out in his 1985 book QED that Heisenberg’s and Schroedinger’s intrinsic indeterminancy is just the old QM theory of 1st quantization which is wrong because it assumes a classical coulomb field, with randomness attributed to intrinsic (direct) application of the uncertainty principle which is non-relativistic (Schroedinger’s 1st quantization Hamiltonian treats space and time differently) and is unnecessary since Dirac’s 2nd quantization shows that the field is quantized not the classical coulomb field. Dirac’s theory is justified by predicting magnetic moments and antimatter, unlike 1st quantization. The annihilation and creation operators of the quantized field only arise in 2nd quantization, not in Schroedinger’s 1st quantization where indeterminancy has no physical explanation in chaotic field quanta interactions:

‘I would like to put the uncertainty principle in its historical place: When the revolutionary ideas of quantum physics were first coming out, people still tried to understand them in terms of old-fashioned ideas … But at a certain point the old-fashioned ideas would begin to fail, so a warning was developed that said, in effect, “Your old-fashioned ideas are no damn good when …” If you get rid of all the old-fashioned ideas and instead use the ideas that I’m explaining in these lectures – adding arrows [path amplitudes] for all the ways an event can happen – there is no need for an uncertainty principle!’

- Richard P. Feynman, QED, Penguin Books, London, 1990, pp. 55-56.

“… Bohr [at Pocono, 1948] … said: ‘… one could not talk about the trajectory of an electron in the atom, because it was something not observable.’ … Bohr thought that I didn’t know the uncertainty principle … it didn’t make me angry, it just made me realize that … [ they ] … didn’t know what I was talking about, and it was hopeless to try to explain it further. I gave up, I simply gave up …”

- Richard P. Feynman, quoted in Jagdish Mehra’s biography of Feynman, The Beat of a Different Drum, Oxford University Press, 1994, pp. 245-248.

Bohr and other 1st quantization people never learned that uncertainty is caused by field quanta acting on fundamental particles like Brownian motion of air molecules acting on pollen grains. Feynman was censored out at Pocono in 1948 and only felt free to explain the facts after winning the Nobel Prize. In the Preface to his co-authored 1965 book Quantum Mechanics and Path Integrals he describes his desire to relate quantum to classical physics via the least action principle, making classical physics appear for actions greater than h-bar. But he couldn’t make any progress until a visiting European physicist mentioned Dirac’s solution to Schroedinger’s equation, namely that the wavefunction’s change over time t is directly proportional to, and therefore (in Dirac’s words) “analogous to” the complex exponent, exp(-iHt). Feynman immediately assumed that the wavefunction change factor indeed is equal to exp(-iHt), and then showed that -Ht -> S, the action for the path integral (expressed in units of h-bar).

Hence, Feynman sums path phase factors exp(iS), which is just a cyclic function of S on an Argand diagram. In his 1985 book QED, Feynman goes further still and uses what he called in his Lectures on Physics (vol. 1, p. 22–10) the “jewel” and “astounding” (p. 22-1) formula of mathematics, Euler’s equation exp(iS) = i (sin S) + cos S to transfer from the complex to the real plane by dropping the complex term, so the simple factor cos S replaces exp (iS) on his graphical version of the path integral. He explains in the text that the cos S factor works because it’s always near +1 for actions small compared to h-bar, allowing those paths near (but not just at) least action to contribute coherently to the path integral, but varies cyclically between +1 and -1 as a function of the action for actions large compared to h-bar, so those paths in average will cancel out each other’s contribution to the path integral. The advantage of replacing exp (iS) with cos S is that it gets rid of the complex plane that makes renormalization mathematically inconsistent due to the ambiguity of having complex infinite dimensional Hilbert space, so Haag’s theorem no longer makes renormalization a difficulty in QFT.

The bottom line is that Feynman shows that QFT is simple, not amazingly complex mathematics: Schroedinger’s equation “came out of the mind of Schroedinger” (Lectures on Physics). It’s just an approximation. Even Dirac’s equation is incorrect in assuming that the wavefunction varies smoothly with time, which is a classical approximation: quantum fields ensure that a wavefunction changes in a discontinuous (discrete) manner, merely when each quantum interaction occurs:

‘It always bothers me that, according to the laws as we understand them today, it takes a computing machine an infinite number of logical operations to figure out what goes on in no matter how tiny a region of space, and no matter how tiny a region of time. How can all that be going on in that tiny space? Why should it take an infinite amount of logic to figure out what one tiny piece of spacetime is going to do? So I have often made the hypothesis that ultimately physics will not require a mathematical statement, that in the end the machinery will be revealed, and the laws will turn out to be simple, like the chequer board with all its apparent complexities.’

- R. P. Feynman, The Character of Physical Law, November 1964 Cornell Lectures, broadcast and published in 1965 by BBC, pp. 57-8.

“When we look at photons on a large scale – much larger than the distance required for one stopwatch turn [i.e., wavelength] – the phenomena that we see are very well approximated by rules such as “light travels in straight lines [without overlapping two nearby slits in a screen]“, because there are enough paths around the path of minimum time to reinforce each other, and enough other paths to cancel each other out. But when the space through which a photon moves becomes too small (such as the tiny holes in the [double slit] screen), these rules fail – we discover that light doesn’t have to go in straight [narrow] lines, there are interferences created by the two holes, and so on. The same situation exists with electrons: when seen on a large scale, they travel like particles, on definite paths. But on a small scale, such as inside an atom, the space is so small that [individual random field quanta exchanges become important because there isn't enough space involved for them to average out completely, so] there is no main path, no “orbit”; there are all sorts of ways the electron could go, each with an amplitude. The phenomenon of interference becomes very important, and we have to sum the arrows [in the path integral for individual field quanta interactions, instead of using the average which is the classical Coulomb field] to predict where an electron is likely to be.”

- Richard P. Feynman, QED, Penguin Books, London, 1990, Chapter 3, pp. 84-5.

“You might wonder how such simple actions could produce such a complex world. It’s because phenomena we see in the world are the result of an enormous intertwining of tremendous numbers of photon exchanges and interferences.”

- Richard P. Feynman, QED, Penguin Books, London, 1990, p. 114.

“Underneath so many of the phenomena we see every day are only three basic actions: one is described by the simple coupling number, j; the other two by functions P(A to B) and E(A to B) – both of which are closely related. That’s all there is to it, and from it all the rest of the laws of physics come.”

- Richard P. Feynman, QED, Penguin Books, London, 1990, p. 120.

Above: the path integral interference for light relies on the cancelling of photon phase amplitudes with large actions, but for the different case of the fundamental forces (gravitation, electromagnetism, weak and strong), the path integral for the virtual or “gauge” bosons involves a geometrical cancellation. E.g., an asymmetry in the isotropic exchange can cause a force! The usual objections against virtual particle path integrals of this sort are the kind of mindless arguments that equally would apply to any quantum field theory, not specifically this predictive one. E.g., physicists are unaware that the event horizon size for a black hole electron is smaller than the Planck length, and thus (in Planck’s argument), a radius of 2GM/c² is more physically meaningful as the basis for the grain-size cross-section for fundamental particles than Planck’s ad hoc formulation of his “Planck length” from dimensional analysis. Quantum fields like the experimentally-verified Casimir radiation which pushes metal plates together don’t cause drag or heating, they just deliver forces. “Critics” are thus pseudo-physicists!

My great American friend Dr Mario Rabinowitz brilliantly points out the falsehood of Einstein’s general relativity “equivalence principle of inertial and gravitational mass” as the basis for mainstream quantum gravity nonsense in his paper Deterrents to a Theory of Quantum Gravity, pages 1 and 7 (18 August 2006), http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0608193. General relativity is based on the false equivalence principle of inertial and gravitational mass, whereby Einstein falsely assumed that Galileo’s law for falling bodies is accurate, whereas of course it is a falsehood, because the mass in any falling body is not accelerated purely by Earth’s mass, but is also “pulling” the Earth upwards (albeit by a small amount in the case of an apple or human, where one of the two masses is relatively small compared to the mass of the Earth). But for equal masses of fundamental particles (e.g. for the simplest gravitational interaction of two similar masses) this violation of Galileo due to mutual attraction violates Einstein’s equivalence principle as explained below by Dr Rabinowitz. Einstein forgot about the error in Galileo’s principle when formulating general relativity on the basis of the equivalence principle (note that genuine errors are not a crime, unlike arrogantly continuing to use personal worship by the charlatan media as a sword to “defend” the errors of GR BS against genuine competent critics for another 40 years, which was Einstein’s real crime against progress in science, which continues to this day under the guise of protecting a Jew no matter how factually wrong his physics is):

“As shown previously, quantum mechanics directly violates the weak equivalence principle in general and in all dimensions, and thus violates the strong equivalence principle in all dimensions. …

“Most bodies fall at the same rate on earth, relative to the earth, because the earth’s mass M is extremely large compared with the mass m of most falling bodies for the reduced mass … for M [much bigger than] m. The body and the earth each fall towards their common center of mass, which for most cases is approximately the same as relative to the earth. … When [heavy relative to earth's mass] extraterrestrial bodies fall on [to] earth, heavier bodies fall faster relative to the earth [because they "attract" the earth towards them, in addition to the earth "attracting" them; i.e., they mutually shield one another from the surrounding inward-converging gravity field of distant immense masses in the universe] making Aristotle correct and Galileo incorrect. The relative velocity between the two bodies is v_rel = [2G(m + M)(r₂^-1 - r₁^-1)]^1/2, where r₁ is their initial separation, and r₂ is their separation when they are closer.

“Even though Galileo’s argument (Rabinowitz, 1990) was spurious and his assertion fallacious in principle – that all bodies will fall at the same rate with respect to the earth in a medium devoid of resistance – it helped make a significant advance [just like Copernicus's solar system with incorrect circular orbits and epicycles prior to Kepler's correct elliptical orbits, or Lamarke's incorrect early theory of "acquired characteristic" evolution pathing the way for Darwin's later genetic theory of evolution] in understanding the motion of bodies. Although his assertion is an excellent approximation … it is not true in general. Galileo’s alluring assertion that free fall depends solely and purely on the milieu and is entirely independent of the properties of the falling body, led Einstein to the geometric concept of gravity. [Emphasis added to key, widely censored, facts against GR.]“

“Einstein and his successors have regarded the effects of a gravitational field as producing a change in the geometry of space and time. At one time it was even hoped that the rest of physics could be brought into a geometric formulation, but this hope has met with disappointment, and the geometric interpretation of the theory of gravitation has dwindled to a mere analogy, which lingers in our language in terms like “metric,” “affine connection,” and “curvature,” but is not otherwise very useful. The important thing is to be able to make predictions about images on the astronomers’ photographic plates, frequencies of spectral lines, and so on, and it simply doesn’t matter whether we ascribe these predictions to the physical effect of gravitational fields on the motion of planets and photons or to a curvature of space and time.”

- Professor Steven Weinberg, Gravitation and Cosmology, Wiley, New York, 1972, p. 147.

Above: “Could someone please explain how or why, if, as SR tells us, c is the ceiling velocity throughout the Universe, and thus gravity presumably cannot propagate at a speed faster than the ceiling velocity, the Earth is not twice as far away from the Sun every thousand years or so which is the obvious consequence of gravity propagating at such a low speed as c and not, as everyone since Newton had always supposed, near-instantaneously?” – James Bogle (by email). Actually this supposed problem is down to just ignoring the facts: gravity isn’t caused by gravitons between Earth and Sun; it’s caused instead by exchange of gravitons between us and the surrounding immense distant masses isotropically distributed around us, with particles in the Sun acting as a slight shield.

If you have loudspeakers on your PC and use an operating system that supports sound files in websites, turn up the volume and visit www.quantumfieldtheory.org. The gravitons are spin-1 not spin-2, hence they are not going between the sun and earth but the sun is an asymmetry: the speed that “shadows” move is not light speed but infinite. This is because shadows don’t exist physically as light velocity moving radiation! The sun causes a pre-existing shadowing of gravitons ahead of any position that the earth moves into, so the speed of the gravitons had nothing to do with the speed that the earth responds to the sun’s gravity. The sun sets up an anisotrophy in the graviton field of space in all directions around it in advance of the motion of earth. The mainstream “gravity must go at light speed” delusions are based purely on the ignorant false assumption that the field only exists between earth and sun. Wrong. The sun’s “gravity field” (anisotropy in graviton flux in space from distant immense masses) is pre-existing in the space ahead of the motion of the planet, so the speed of gravitational effects is instant, not delayed.

The exchange of gravitons between masses (gravitational charges) has a repulsive-only effect. The Pauli-Fierz spin-2 graviton is a myth; see the following two diagrams. Spin-1 gravitons we’re exchanging with big distant masses result in a bigger repulsion from such massive distant masses (which are very isotropically distributed, around us in all directions) than nearby masses, so the nearby masses have an asymmetric LeSage shadowing effect: we’re pushed towards them with the very accurately predicted coupling (diagrams below for quantitative proof) G by the same particles that cause the measured cosmological acceleration ~Hc. So we have an accurate quantitative prediction, predicting the numbers accurately via connecting the observed cosmological acceleration with gravitational coupling G, and this connection was made in May 1996 and was published two years before the cosmological acceleration was even discovered! Notice that the acceleration and expansion of the universe is not an effective expansion! I.e., as discussed later in this post, all the fundamental forces have couplings (e.g. G, alpha_EM, etc.) that are directly proportional to the age of the universe. This is implied by the formula derived below, which is the correct quantum gravity proof for Louise Riofrio’s empirical equation GM = tc³, where M is the mass of the universe and t is its age.

Edward Teller in 1948 made the erroneous claim that any variation (which had been predicted in a an error-filled guesswork way by Dirac) of G is impossible because it would vary the fusion rate in the big bang or in a star, but actually a variation of G does not have the effect Teller calculated because (as shown in this and several earlier posts) all fundamental couplings are varying, electromagnetic as well as gravity! Hence, although Teller was incorrect in claiming that a doubling of G increases fusion via proton-proton gravitational compression in a star or the big bang fusion: it can’t do that, because the force of electromagnetic repulsion between colliding protons is increased by exactly the same factor as the gravitational force is increased! Therefore, fusion rates are essentially unaffected (uncharged particles like radiation pressure have a relatively small effect). Louise’s investigation of a presumed of c with as the reciprical of the cube-root of the age of the universe in her equation is spurious: her GM = tc³ is instead evidence of a direct proportionality of G and age of universe t (the full reasons are explained in earlier posts). Now, galaxies, solar systems, atoms and nuclei are all orbital systems of stars, planets, shells of electrons and shells of nucleons, respectively, with their size controlled by fundamental forces by equations like F = m₁m₂G/r2 = m₁v2/r or m₁G/r = v², so if m₁ and v are constants while coupling G (or a Standard Model force coupling like alpha_EM) is directly proportional to the age of the universe, it follows G must be directly proportional to radius r, so that the radius of a galaxy, solar system, atom or nucleus is directly proportional to the age of the universe t. If the horizon radius of the flat spacetime universe and the radii of galaxies, solar systems, atoms and nuclei are all directly proportional to t it follows that although distant matter is receding from us, the expansion of all objects prevents any relative change in the overall (scaled) universe: rulers, people, planets, etc. expand at the same rate, so receding galaxy clusters will not appear smaller. You might think that this is wrong, and that increasing G and alpha_EM should pull the Earth’s orbit in closer to the sun, and do the same for the electron. However, this more obvious solution or increasing orbital velocities it is not necessarily consistent with the very slow rate of increase of G, so that it’s more consistent to think of a scaling up of sizes everything as force strengths increase: a stronger gravitational field can stabilize a galaxy of larger radius but containing the same mass! It is possible that a stronger alpha_EM can stabilize a larger electron ground state radius; whether this is the case depends on whether or not the orbital velocity is altered as the electromagnetic coupling is varied.

However, if course, the Lambda-CDM cosmological model, basically a Friedmann-Walker metric from general relativity which implicitly assumes constant G is totally incorrect viewed from the new quantum gravity theory. Is spacetime really flat? From a naive extrapolating using the false old framework of cosmology, hyped by Sean Carroll and other bigots who refuse to accept these facts of quantum gravity proved over a decade ago, you might expect that the linear increase of G with age of the universe will cause the universe to eventually collapse. However, remember that the cosmological acceleration (a repulsion that supposedly flattens out the spacetime curvature on cosmological distance scales by opposing gravitation) is itself a quantum gravity effect: on the largest scales, mutual repulsion of masses predominates over LeSage shadowing and its pseudo-attraction.

Nevertheless, back in 1996 when we predicted the same cosmological acceleration using two completely different calculations, only one way was from the quantum gravity theory. The other correct prediction of the a ~ Hc cosmological acceleration was simply from the effect of spacetime on the Hubble v = HR observed recession rate law (see proof linked here). That analysis is a complementary duality with the similar prediction of comological acceleration from a different calculation method via quantum gravity, the cosmological acceleration should be viewed as an artifact of the problem that the receding galaxies we see are being seen at times in our past which are related to distances by R = ct. If we represent time since the big bang by t, then the time, T in our past of a supernova apparently distance R away is related to time t by simply t + T = 1/H. So the cosmological acceleration is just a result of the fact that radiation comes back to us at light velocity, not instantly. So if there was not a time delay, we wouldn’t see any cosmological acceleration: the acceleration is physically being caused by the effective reference frame in which greater distances correspond to looking backwards in time. The universe horizon radius expands at the velocity of light, a linear expansion. This produces cosmological acceleration forces and thus gravitation due to the increasing time-lag for the exchange all forms of radiation, including gravitons. At the same time, masses and rulers expand by the mechanism already explained, so the relative scale of the universe remains constant while gravitation and cosmological acceleration operate.

Correction of mainstream errors in Electroweak Symmetry

Over Christmas, Dr Dorigo kindly permitted some discussion and debate over electroweak symmetry at his blog posting comments section, http://www.science20.com/quantum_diaries_survivor/blog/rumors_about_old_rumor, which helped to clarify some of the sticking points in the mainstream orthodoxy and possibly to highlight the best means of overcoming them in a public arena.

Some arguments against electroweak symmetry follow, mostly from replies to Dr Dorigo and Dr Rivero. The flawed logic of the “Higgs boson” assumption is based on the application of gauge theory for symmetry breaking to the supposed “electroweak symmetry” (never observed in nature). Only broken “electroweak symmetry”, i.e. an absence of symmetry and thus separate electromagnetic and weak interactions, have actually been observed in nature. So the Higgs boson required to break the “electroweak symmetry” is an unobserved epicycle required to explain an unobserved symmetry! What’s interesting is the nature of the groupthink “electroweak symmetry”. Above the “electroweak unification” energy, there is supposed to be equality of electromagnetic and weak forces into a single electroweak force. Supposedly, this is where the massive weak bosons lose their mass and this gain light velocity, long range, and thus stronger coupling, equal in strength to the electromagnetic field.

This unification guess has driven other possibilities out of sight. There are two arguments for it. First, the breaking of Heisenberg’s neutron-proton SU(2) chiral “isospin symmetry” leads to pions as Nambu-Goldstone bosons; so by analogy you can argue for Higgs bosons from breaking electroweak symmetry. This is unconvincing because, as stated, there is no electroweak symmetry known in nature; it’s just a guess. (It’s fine to have a guess. It’s not fine to have a guess, and use the guess as “evidence” for “justifying” another guess! That’s just propaganda or falsehood.) Secondly, the supposed “electroweak theory” of Weinberg and others. Actually, that they is better called a hypercharge-weak theory, since U(1) in the standard model is hypercharge, which isn’t directly observable. The electromagnetic theory is produced by an adjustable epicycle (the Weinberg angle) that is forced to make the hypercharge and weak theories produce the electromagnetic field by ad hoc mixing. The prediction of the weak boson masses from the Weinberg angle isn’t proof of the existence of an electroweak symmetry, because the weak bosons only have mass when the “symmetry” is broken. All evidence to date suggests that electroweak symmetry (like aliens flying around in UFOs) is just a fiction, the Higgs is a fiction, and mass is not generated through symmetry breaking. Yet so much hype based on self-deception continues.

The funny thing about the Glashow-Weinberg-Salam model is that it was formulated in 1967-8, but was not well received until its renormalizability had been demonstrated years later by ‘t Hooft. The electroweak theory they formulated was perfectly renormalizable prior to the addition of the Higgs field, i.e. it was renormalizable with massless SU(2) gauge bosons (which we use for electromagnetism), because the lagrangian had a local gauge invariance. ‘t Hooft’s trivial proof that it was also renormalizable after “symmetry breaking” (the acquisition of mass by all of the SU(2) gauge bosons, a property again not justified by experiment because the weak force is left-handed so it would be natural for only half of the SU(2) gauge bosons to acquire mass to explain this handedness) merely showed that the W-boson propagator expressions in the Feynman path integral are independent of mass when the momentum flowing through the propagator is very large. I.e., ‘t Hooft just showed that for large momentum flows, mass makes no difference and the proof of renormalization for massless electroweak bosons is also applicable to the case of massive electroweak bosons.

‘t Hooft plays down the trivial physical nature of his admittedly mathematically impressive proof since his personal website makes the misleading claim: “…I found in 1970 how to renormalize the theory, and, more importantly, we identified the theories for which this works, and what conditions they must fulfil. One must, for instance, have a so-called Higgs-particle. These theories are now called gauge theories.”

That claim that he has a proof that the Higgs particle must exist is totally without justification. He merely showed that if the Higgs field provides mass, the electroweak theory is still renormalizable (just as it is with massless bosons). He did not disprove all hope of alternatives to the Higgs field, so he should not claim that! He just believes in electroweak theory and won a Nobel Prize for it, and is proud. Similarly, the string theorists perhaps are just excited and proud of the theory they work on, and they believe in it. But the result is misleading hype!

I’m not denying that the interaction strengths run with energy and may appear to roughly converge when extrapolating towards the Planck scale. You get too much noise from hadron jets when doing such collisions, to get an unambiguous signal. Even if you just collide leptons at such high energy, hadrons are created in the pair production at such high energies, and then it’s a reliant on extremely difficult QCD jet calculations to subtract the gluon field “noise” before you can see any signals clearly from the relatively weak (compared to QCD) electromagnetic and weak interactions.

… continued with part 2 here

I’m simply pointing out that there is no evidence given for electroweak symmetry, by which I refer not to the weak bosons losing their mass at high energy. I don’t accept as evidence for electroweak symmetry a mere (alleged) similarity of the weak and electromagnetic cross-sections at very high energy (differing rates of running with energy in different couplings due to unknown vacuum polarization effects could cause apparent convergence simply by coincidence, without proving a Higgs field mechanism or the existence of electroweak symmetry). It’s hard to interpret the results of high energy collisions because you create hadronic jets which add epicycles into the calculations needed to deduce the relatively small electromagnetic and weak interactions. The energies needed to try to test for electroweak symmetry are so high they cause a lot of noise which fogs the accuracy of the data. If you wanted to use these HERA data to prove the existence of electroweak symmetry (massless weak bosons), you would need to do more than show convergence in the cross-sections.

“I am talking about very clean events of hard deep inelastic scattering, where the bosons are seen with great clarity due to their leptonic decays.”

You’re thinking possibly about weak SU(2) symmetry and electromagnetic symmetry, and you think these two separate symmetries together as “electroweak symmetry”. I’m 100% behind the extensive evidence gauge theory for weak interactions and 100% behind gauge theory for electromagnetic interactions. These separate symmetries, produced in the “electroweak theory” by mixing U(1) hypercharge boson with the SU(2) bosons, are not however “electroweak symmetry”, which only exists if massless weak bosons exist at very high energy. The Higgs field is supposed to give mass to those bosons at low energy, breaking the symmetry. At high energy, the weak bosons are supposed to lose mass, allowing symmetry of weak isospin and electromagnetic interactions by making the range of both fields the same.

I really need to find any alleged evidence for “electroweak symmetry” in my research for a paper, so if you ever recall the paper with the HERA data which you say contains evidence for electroweak symmetry, please let me know! So far I’ve read all the QFT books I can get (Weinberg, Ryder, Zee, etc.) and electroweak theory papers on arXiv, and I have not found any evidence for electroweak symmetry.

My understanding (correct me if I’m wrong here) is that if you collide protons and electrons at TeV energies, you knock free virtual quarks from the sheer energy of the collision? These virtual quarks gain the energy to become real (onshell) quarks, forming hadron jets. These jets are difficult to accurately predict because they are dominated by QCD/strong forces and the perturbative expansion for QCD is divergent, so you need lattice calculations which are inaccurate. So you can’t compare what you see with a solid prediction. You can measure what you see, but you can’t analyze the data very accurately. The color charge of the QCD jets can’t interact with the weak bosons, but the jets also have electromagnetic and weak charges which do interact with weak bosons. So you cannot do a precise theoretical analysis of the entire event. All you can really do is to produce particles and see what they are and how they interact. You can’t do a complete theoretical analysis that’s accurate enough to deduce electroweak symmetry.

Yes, definitely SU(2) weak symmetry is based on an enormous amount of good empirical evidence: what I’m questioning is “electroweak symmetry”. Evidence for the broken and mixed U(1) symmetry and SU(2) symmetry is not at issue. What should be regarded as an open question is whether electroweak symmetry exists. The simplest default alternative to the Higgs-electroweak theory is to have a mixed but broken “electroweak symmetry”, i.e. no electroweak symmetry. This is precisely what Feynman argued in the 1980s. Instead of having a Higgs field which makes weak field quanta massive at low energy but massless at high energy, you instead add a quantum gravity gauge theory to the standard model, which gives mass to the weak field quanta at all energies (as well as giving masses to other massive particles). The quantum gravity gauge theory has mass-energy as its charge and it has gravitons as its bosons. In other words, the Higgs/electroweak symmetry theory is a complete red-herring. If its advocates are allowed to continue their propaganda, then there will be no well-developed alternative to the Higgs/electroweak symmetry when the LHC rules out the Higgs. The result will be the usual last-minute panic with a consensus of ill-informed opinions promoting new epicycles to prop up nonsense (save face).

Feynman’s opposition to “electroweak symmetry” is in Gleick’s biography of Feynman:

Virtual quarks form in pairs due to pair production around the proton. The pairs get knocked free in high energy collision. I do know that individual quarks can’t exist by themselves. I wrote that the quarks are produced in pair production, and get knocked free of the field of the proton in a high energy inelastic collision. I didn’t write that individual quarks exist alone.

The mass term in the lagrangian always exists, but it doesn’t have the same value. If m = 0, that is the same as getting rid of the mass term. Reference is for instance Zee’s QFT book. You can’t formulate a QFT very conveniently without the field having mass. Sidney Coleman is credited by Zee with the trick of adding a mass term for the massless QED virtual photon field, for example. You have to have a mass term in the field to get the gauge theory lagrangian, but at the end you can set the mass equal to zero. It’s a mathematical trick. It’s not physics, just math.

The precise reference is Zee, 1st ed., 2003, pp 30-31: “Calculate with a photon mass m and set m = 0 at the end … When I first took a field theory course as a Student of Sidney Coleman this was how he treated QED in order to avoid discussing gauge invariance.” He ends up with an electromagnetic potential of (e^{-mr})/(4 Pi r). The exponential part of this, e^{-mr}, is due to the mass term. Setting m = 0 gives e^{-mr} = 1, so the mass term has no effect, and you get the expected potential for a massless field. By exactly the same argument, mass terms in the weak field need to be eliminated for “electroweak symmetry” by making m = 0 where such symmetry exists. Otherwise, you end up with a weak field potential which has an exponential term (reducing the range and field strength) due to the mass of the weak field quanta. To get “electroweak symmetry”, the weak field potential must become similar to the electromagnetic field potential at unification energy. That’s the definition of this “symmetry”.

Pauli first applied Weyl’s gauge theory to electrodynamics and was well aware that that for electromagnetic interactions, it really doesn’t matter if you have a mass term in the propagator like 1/[(k^2)-(m^2)], because it just represents the momentum delivered by the field boson in the Feynman diagram. You can treat the relativistic field quanta (moving with velocity c) as non-relativistic, allow the rest mass momentum in the propagator to represent the relativistic momentum of photons, and then simply edit out the problem of field quanta mass in the field potential by letting m = 0 in the final stage. This math trick complements the physics of gauge invariance so there is no problem. Pauli however knew that the mass in the propagator is a real problem for non-Abelian fields that carry electric charge, so he objected to the Yang-Mills theory when Yang gave his lecture in 1954. Yang and Mills could not treat the mass of the field and Pauli made such a fuss Yang had to sit down. Electrically charged field quanta can’t propagate without rest mass (their magnetic self-inductance opposes their motion), so they must really have a mass in the propagator, as far as Pauli was concerned. This doesn’t apply to uncharged field quanta like photons, where you don’t need a massive propagator. Now the problem is: how do you get electroweak symmetry with electrically charged, massless SU(2) quanta at electroweak unification energy. As far as I can see, most of the authors of modern physics textbooks ignore or obfuscate the physics (which they mostly disrespect or frankly hate as being a trivial irrelevance in “mathematical physics”). But Noether makes all of the “mathematical symmetries” simple physical processes:

Noether’s theorem: every conservation law corresponds to an invariance or symmetry.

Gauge symmetry: conservation of charge (electric, weak, or color).

Electroweak symmetry: equality of couplings (strengths) of electromagnetic and weak interactions at electroweak unification energy.

Langrangian symmetry or local phase invariance: produced by a lagrangian that varies with changes in the wavefunction, so that emission of field quanta compensate for the energy used to change the wavefunction.

When you switch from describing massive to massless field quanta in electromagnetism, the equation for field potential loses its exponential factor and thus ceases to have short range and weak strength. However, the field quanta still carry momentum because they have energy, and energy has momentum. So there is no problem. Contrast this to the problems with getting rid of mass for SU(2) electrically charged W bosons!

“… concentrate on the hard subprocess, where the real (perturbative) physics is. There, the gamma and the W/Z have similar strengths once you reach virtualities of the order of the boson masses.”

You seem to be arguing is that “electroweak symmetry” is defined by similarity of the strengths of the weak and electromagnetic forces at energies equivalent to the weak boson masses (80 and 91 GeV). There is some confusion in QFT textbooks on exactly what the difference is between “electroweak symmetry” and “electroweak unification”.

At energies of 80 and 91 GeV (weak W and Z boson masses), the electromagnetic (gamma) and W/Z don’t seem to have very similar strengths: http://www.clab.edc.uoc.gr/materials/pc/proj/running_alphas.html

Yes, the electrically neutral Z weak boson has higher mass (91 GeV) than the electrically charged W weak bosons (80 GeV), but that’s just because the weak isospin charge coupling (g_W) has a value of only half the weak hypercharge coupling (g_B). The weak hypercharge for left-handed leptons (ie those which actually participate in weak interactions) is always Y = -1, while they have a weak isospin charge Y = +/-1/2. (Forget the right handed lepton hypercharge, because right handed leptons don’t participate in weak interactions.) So the weak isospin charge has just half the magnitude of the weak hypercharge! The Weinberg mixing angle Theta_W is defined by:

tan (Theta_W) = (g_W)/(g_B)

The masses of the weak bosons Z and W then have the ratio:

cos (Theta_W) = (M_W)/(M_Z)

Therefore, the theory actually predicts the difference in masses of the Z and W weak bosons from the fact that the isospin charge is half the hypercharge. This is all obfuscated in the usual QFT textbook treatment, and takes some digging to find. You would get exactly the same conclusion for the left-handed weak interaction if you replace weak hypercharge by electric charge for leptons (not quarks, obviously) above. Because isospin charge takes a value of +/-1/2 while electric charge for leptons takes the value +/-1, the ratio of isospin to electric charge magnitude is a half. Obviously for quarks you need an adjustment for the fractional electric charges, hence the invention of weak hypercharge. Physically, this “(electric charge) = (isospin charge) + (half of hypercharge)” formula models the compensation for the physical fact that quarks appear to have fractional electric charges. (Actually, the physics may go deeper than this neat but simplistic formula, if quarks and leptons are unified in a preon model.) I’m well aware of the need for some kind of mixing, and am well aware that the difference in W and Z boson masses was predicted ahead of discover at CERN in 1983.

I’m writing a paper clarifying all this, and it is good to be able to discuss and defend a criticism of electroweak symmetry here, to see what kind of arguments are used to defend it. It will help me to write the paper in a more concise, focussed way. Thank you Alejandro, thanks to Tommaso for tolerating a discussion, and other commentators.

For the record: the essential “tan (Theta_W) = (g_W)/(g_B)” is equation 10.21 in David McMahon’s 2008 “QFT Demystified” textbook.

The problem with the usual interpretation of the top quark mass for Higgs boson studies is that to counter this argument, I would have to discuss an alternative theory in detail, instead of just pointing out inconsistencies in the mainstream theory. Then critics will dismiss me as a crackpot and stip listening. But the top quark coupling seems to me to be evidence pointing exactly the other way, towards a quantum gravity gauge theory. The top quark mass fits in perfectly to a simple model for particle masses. The foundation is model for masses was a relationship between the Z boson mass and the electron mass (or similar) in a paper you wrote with Hans de Vries, so thank you for that. To summarize the essentials, we put a quantum gravity gauge group into the standard model in a very neat way (treating it like hypercharge), and remove the Higgs mass model. Mixing gives masses to the massive particles in a very novel way (not). A charged fundamental particle, eg a lepton, has a vacuum field around it with pair production producing pairs of fermions which are briefly polarized by the electric field of the fermion, and this shields the core charge (thus renormalization). The energy absorbed from the field by the act of polarization (reducing the electric field strength observed at long distances) moves the virtual fermions apart, and thus gives then a longer life on average before they annihilate. Ie, it causes a statistical violation of the uncertainty principle: the energy the off-shell (virtual) fermions absorb makes them move closer towards being on-shell. For the brief extra period of time (due to polarization) which they exist before annihilation, they therefore start to feel the Pauli exclusion principle and to behave more like on-shell fermions with a structured arrangement in space. One additional feature of this vacuum polarization effect in giving energy to virtual particles is that they briefly acquire a real mass. So the vacuum polarization has the effect of turning off-shell virtual fermions briefly into nearly on-shell fermions, simply by the energy they absorb from the electric field as they polarize! This vacuum mass and the Pauli exclusion principle have the effect of turning leptons into effectively the nuclei of little atoms, surrounded by virtual fermions which when being polarized add a Pauli exclusion principle structured real mass. It is this vacuum mass effect from the vacuum which is all-important for the tauon and also the top quark. The neutral Z acquires its mass by mixing of SU(2) with a quantum gravity gauge group. http://nige.wordpress.com/2010/05/07/category-morphisms-for-quantum-gravity-masses-and-draft-material-for-new-paper/

Theta_W or θ_W is empirically determined to be 29.3 degrees at 160 MeV energy using the 2005 data from parity violation in Møller scattering (sin^2 θ_W = 0.2397 ± 0.0013 was obtained at 160 MeV) and it was determined to 28.7 degrees at 91.2 GeV energy in 2004 data using the minimal subtraction renormalization scheme (sin^2 θ_W = 0.23120 ± 0.00015). This difference is usually cited as evidence of the running of the Weinberg angle with energy, due to the running coupling which is caused by vacuum polarization (shielding the core charges, which is a bigger effect at low energy than at high energy). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weinberg_angle

What I stated was that, ignoring the running coupling effect (which is smaller for the weak isospin field than in QED, because of the weakness of the weak force field relative to QED), the Weinberg angle is indeed

tan θ_W =1/2.

This is gives θ_W = 26.57 degrees. Remember, empirically it is 29.3 degrees at 160 MeV and it is 28.7 degrees at 91.2 GeV. The higher the energy, the less vacuum polarization we see (we penetrate closer to the core of the particle, and there is therefore less intervening polarized vacuum to shield the field) Therefore, the figure for higher energy, 28.7 degrees is predicted to be closer to the theoretical bare core value (26.57 degrees) than the figure observed at low energy (29.3 degrees). The value of θ_W falls from 29.3 degrees at 160 MeV to 28.7 degrees at 91.2 GeV, and to an asymptotic value for the bare core of 26.57 degrees at much higher energy.

Yes, there must be a mixing of SU(2) and U(1). But no, I’ve never been against such a mixing. My incomplete draft paper from last October explains what I mean: http://nige.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/paper-draft-pages-1-5-2-oct-2010.pdf (ignore underlined Psi symbols; they should have an overbar). My argument is that the mathematics of the Standard Model are being misapplied physically. The electroweak unification is achieved by mixing SU(2) with U(1) but not anywhere near the way it is done in the Standard Model. SU(2) is electroweak symmetry: the three gauge bosons exist in massless and massive forms. Massless charged bosons can’t propagate unless the magnetic self inductance is cancelled, which can only happen in certain circumstances (e.g. a perfect equilibrium of exchange between two similar charge, so that the charged bosons going in each opposite direction have magnetic vectors than cancel one another, preventing infinite self-inductance, just electromagnetic energy in a light velocity logic step propagating along a two-conductor power transmission line). This effectively makes electric charge the extra polarizations that virtual photons need to account for attraction and repulsion in electromagnetism. The massive versions of those SU(2) bosons are the weak bosons, and arise not from a Higgs field but from a U(1) hypercharge/spin-1 quantum gravity theory.

There is a massive error of the Standard Model’s CKM parameter matrix in the “electroweak” theory, which has the contradiction that when a lepton like a muon or tauon decays, it decays via the intermediary step of a weak gauge boson to give a lepton, but when a quark decays it doesn’t delay into a lepton via the weak gauge boson, but instead into another quark: http://nige.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/diagram1.jpg. See
http://nige.wordpress.com/2010/05/07/category-morphisms-for-quantum-gravity-masses-and-draft-material-for-new-paper/ and
http://nige.wordpress.com/2010/06/29/professor-jacques-distler-disproves-the-alleged-anomaly-in-beta-decay-analysis/. When you correct this theoretical beta decay analysis error, all of the problems of the Standard Model evaporate and you get a deep understanding (this draft PDF paper is incomplete and underlined Psi symbols should have overbars, but most of the rest of the theory is on other blog posts).

www.quantumfieldtheory.org

“… it comes about that, step by step, and not realizing the full meaning of the process, mankind has been led to search for a mathematical description … mathematical ideas, because they are abstract, supply just what is wanted for a scientific description of the course of events. This point has usually been misunderstood, from being thought of in too narrow a way. Pythagoras had a glimpse of it when he proclaimed that number was the source of all things. In modern times the belief that the ultimate explanation of all things was to be found in Newtonian mechanics was an adumbration of the truth that all science as it grows towards perfection becomes mathematical in its ideas. … In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries of our era great Italians, in particular Leonardo da Vinci, the artist (born 1452, died 1519), and Galileo (born 1564, died 1642), rediscovered the secret, known to Archimedes, of relating abstract mathematical ideas with the experimental investigation of natural phenomena. Meanwhile the slow advance of mathematics and the accumulation of accurate astronomical knowledge had placed natural philosophers in a much more advantageous position for research. Also the very egoistic self-assertion of that age, its greediness for personal experience, led its thinkers to want to see for themselves what happened; and the secret of the relation of mathematical theory and experiment in inductive reasoning was practically discovered. … It was an act eminently characteristic of the age that Galileo, a philosopher, should have dropped the weights from the leaning tower of Pisa. There are always men of thought and men of action; mathematical physics is the product of an age which combined in the same men impulses to thought with impulses to action.”

- Dr Alfred North Whitehead, An Introduction to Mathematics, Williams and Norgate, London, revised edition, undated, pp. 13-14, 42-43.

Einstein’s tensors (second order differential equations) presuppose a classical distribution of matter and a classical, continuously acting acceleration. Einstein and others have problems with the fact that all mass and energy is particulate, in setting up the stress-energy tensor (gravity charge for causing spacetime curvature) in general relativity. How do we use a tensor formulation, that can only model a continuous distribution of matter, to represent discrete particles of mass and energy?

Simple: we don’t. They average out the density of discrete particle mass-energy in a volume of space by replacing it with the helpful approximation of an imaginary “perfect fluid” which is a continuum, not composed of particles. So all the successes of general relativity are based on lying, averaging out the discrete locations of quanta in a volume, to feed into the stress-energy tensor. If you don’t do this lie, general relativity fails completely: for discrete point-like particles in the stress-energy tensor, the curvature takes just two possible values, both of them unreal (zero and infinity!). So general relativity is just a classical approximation, based on lying about the nature of quantum fields and discrete particles!

“In many interesting situations… the source of the gravitational field can be taken to be a perfect fluid…. A fluid is a continuum that ‘flows’… A perfect fluid is defined as one in which all antislipping forces are zero, and the only force between neighbouring fluid elements is pressure.”

- B. Schutz, A First Course in General Relativity, Cambridge University Press, 1986, pp. 89-90.

However, there is one thing that Einstein did do that was a step beyond Newton in general relativity, which is explained well at http://www.mathpages.com/home/kmath103/kmath103.htm:

It is this “trace” term that Einstein had to introduce to make the stress-energy tensor’s divergence zero (satisfying the conservation of mass-energy) that makes light deflect twice as much more due to gravity than Newton’s law predicts. But as Feynman showed in the final chapter to the second edition (not included in the first edition!) of the second volume of his “Lectures on Physics”, this special feature of curved spacetime is simple to understand as being a gravitational field version of the Lorentz-FitzGerald contraction. Earth’s radius is contracted by (1/3)MG/c² = 1.5 millimetres to preserve mass-energy conservation in general relativity. Just as Maxwell predicted displacement current by looking physically at how capacitors with a vacuum for a dielectric allow current to flow through a circuit while they charge up, you don’t need a physically false tensor system to predict this. The fact that Maxwell used physical intuition and not mathematics to predict displacement current is contrary to the lying revisionist history at http://www.mathpages.com/home/kmath103/kmath103.htm, the author of which is apparently ignorant of the fact that Maxwell never used vector calculus (which was an innovation due to self-educated Oliver Heaviside, a quarter century later), messed up his theory of light, never unified electricity and magnetism consistently despite repeated efforts, and came up with an electrodynamics which (contrary to Einstein’s ignorant claims in 1905 and for fifty years thereafter) is only relativistic for a (non-existent) “zero action” approximation, and by definition fails to be relativistic for all real-world situations (that comprise of small not non-zero actions which vary as a function of the coordinate system and thus motion, and so are not generally invariant). You don’t need tensors to predict the modifications to Newtonian gravity that arise when conservation of mass-energy in fields is included; you don’t need general relativity to predict the excess radius that causes the apparent spacetime curvature, because a LeSage type quantum gravity predicts that spin-1 gravitons bombarding masses will compress them, explaining the contraction. And a light photon deflects twice as much due to a perpendicular gravity field than slow-moving bullets deflect, because of the Lorentz-FitzGerald contraction of the energy in the light photon: 100% of the energy is in the plane of the gravitational field, instead of just 50% for a bullet. So light photons interact twice as strongly with the gravity field. There is no magic!

Prediction of gravitational time-dilation

When light travels through a block of glass it slows down because the electromagnetic field of the light interacts with the electromagnetic fields in the glass. This is why light is refracted by glass. Light couples to gravitational fields as well as electromagnetic. The gravitational time dilation from the Einstein field equation is proved in an earlier blog post to be simply the same effect. The gravitons are exchanged between gravitational charges (mass/energy). Therefore, the concentration of gravitons per cubic metre is higher near mass/energy than far away. When a photon enters a stronger gravitational field, it interacts at a faster rate with that field, and is consequently slowed down. This is the mechanism for gravitational time dilation. It applies to electrons and nuclei, indeed anything with mass that is moving, just as it applies to light in a glass block. If you run through a clear path, you go faster than if you try to run through a dense crowd of people. There’s no advanced subtle mathematical “magic” at work. It’s not rocket science. It’s very simple and easy to understand physically. You can’t define time without motion, and motion gets slowed down by dense fields just like someone trying to move through a crowd.

Length contraction with velocity and mass increase by the reciprocal of the same factor are simply physical effects as FitzGerald and Lorentz explained. A moving ship has more inertial mass than its own mass, because of the flow of water set up around it (like “Aristotle’s arrow”, fluid moving out at the bows, flows around the sides and pushes in at the stern). As explained in previous posts, the “ideal fluid” aproximation for the effect of velocity on the drag coefficient of an aircraft in the 1920s was predicted theoretically to be the factor (1 – v²/c²)^-1/2, where c is the velocity of sound: this is the “sound barrier” theory. It breaks down because although the shock wave formation at sound velocity carries energy off rapidly in the sonic boom, it isn’t 100% efficient at stopping objects from going faster. The effect is that you get an effective increase in inertial mass from the layer of compressed, dense air in the shock wave region at the front of the aircraft, and the nose-on force has a slight compressive effect on the aircraft (implying length contraction). Therefore, from an idealized understanding of the basic physics of moving through a fluid, you can grasp how quantum field theory causes “relativity effects”!

“… light … “smells” the neighboring paths around it, and uses a small core of nearby space.”

- Richard P. Feynman, QED, Penguin Books, London, 1990, Chapter 2, p. 54.

Above: classical light “wave” illustration from Wikipedia. Most people viewing such diagrams confuse the waving lines with axes labelled field strengths in a single physical dimension, for field lines waving in three dimensional space! Don’t confuse field strength varying along one axis for a field line waving in two dimensions. It’s interesting that field lines are just a mathematical convenience or abstract model invented by Faraday, and are no more real in the physical sense than isobars on weather maps or contour lines on maps. If you scatter iron filings on a piece of paper held over a magnet several times, the absolute positions of the apparent “lines” that the filings clump along occur in randomly distributed locations, although they are generally spaced apart by similar distances. The random “hotspot” locations in which high random concentrations of the first-deposited filings land, form “seeds”, which – under the presence of the magnetic field – have induced magnetism (called paramagnetism), which attract further filings in a pole-to-pole arrangement that creates the illusion of magnetic field lines.

This classical theory of light (the diagram is a colour one of the version in Maxwell’s original Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, final 3rd ed., 1873) is wrong: it shows fields along a single, non-transverse, dimension: a longitudinal “pencil of light” which violates the experimental findings of the double slit experiment! (If you look, you will see only one spatial direction shown, the z axis! The apparent y and z axes are not actually spatial dimensions but just the electric E and magnetic B field strengths, respectively! You can draw a rather similar 3-dimensional diagram of the speed and acceleration of a car as a function of distance, with speed and acceleration plotted as if they are dimensions at right angles to the distance the car has gone. Obfuscating tomfoolery doesn’t make the graph spatially real in three dimensions.)

The real electromagnetic photon, needed to explain the double slit experiment using single photons (as Feynman shows clearly in his 1985 book QED), is entirely different to Maxwell’s classical photon guesswork of 1873: it is spatially extended in a transverse direction, due to the reinforcement of multiple paths (in the simultaneous sum of histories) where the action of the paths is small by comparison to about 15.9% of Planck’s constant (i.e., to h-bar or h divided by twice Pi). However, this quantum theory path integral theory of the light photon is today still being totally ignored in preference to Maxwell’s rubbish in the ignorant teaching of electromagnetism. The classical equations of electromagnetism are just approximations valid in an imaginary, unreal world, where there is simply one path with zero action! We don’t live in such a classical universe. In the real world, there are multiple paths, and we have to sum all paths. The classical laws are only “valid” for the physically false case of zero action, by which I mean an action which is not a function of the coordinates for motion of the light, and which therefore remains invariant of the motion (i.e. a “pencil” of light, following one path: this classical model of a photon fails to agree with the results of the double slit diffraction experiment using photons fired one at a time).

To put that another way, classical Maxwellian physics is only relativistic because its (false) classical action is invariant of the coordinates for motion. As soon as you make the action a variable of the path, so that light is not a least-action phenomenon but instead takes a spread of actions each with different motions (paths), special relativity ceases to apply to Maxwell’s equations! Nature isn’t relativistic as soon as you correct the false classical Maxwell equations for the real world multipath interference mechanism of quantum field theory on small scales, precisely because action is a function of the path coordinates taken. If it wasn’t a function of the motion, there would simply be no difference between classical and quantum mechanics. The invariance of path action as a false classical principle and its variance in quantum field theory is a fundamental fact of nature. Just learn to live with it and give up worshipping Dr Einstein’s special relativity fraud!

Thus, in quantum field theory we recover the classical laws by specifying no change in the action when the coordinates are varied, or as Dirac put it in his 1964 Lectures on Quantum Mechanics (Dover, New York, 2001, pp. 4-5):

“… when one varies the motion, and puts down the conditions for the action integral to be stationary, one gets the [classical, approximately correct on large-scales but generally incorrect on small scales] equations of motion. … In terms of the action integral, it is very easy to formulate the conditions for the theory to be relativistic [in the real contraction, FitzGerald-Lorentz-Poincare spacetime fabric, emergent relativity mechanism, not Einstein's damnable lies against a quantum field existing in the vacuum; remember Dirac's public exposure of Einstein's damned lies in his famous Nature v168, 1951, pp. 906-7 letter, "Is there an aether?": ‘Physical knowledge has advanced much since 1905, notably by the arrival of quantum mechanics, and the situation has again changed. If one examines the question in the light of present-day knowledge, one finds that the aether is no longer ruled out by relativity, and good reasons can now be advanced for postulating an aether. . . . Thus, with the new theory of electrodynamics [vacuum filled with virtual particles] we are rather forced to have an aether.’!]: one simply has to require that the action integral shall be invariant. … [this] will automatically lead to equations of motion agreeing with [Dirac's aether-based] relativity, and any developments from this action integral will therefore also be in agreement with [Dirac's aether-based] relativity.”

Classical physics corresponds falsely to just the path of least action, or least time, whereas real (“sum over multiple path interference”) physics shows us that even in simple situations, light does not just follow the path of least action, but the energy delivered by a photon is actually spread over a range of paths with actions that are small compared to h-bar, but are not zero! There is a big difference between a path having zero action and a spread of paths having actions which are not zero but merely small compared to h-bar! This “subtle” difference (which most mathematical physicists fail to clearly grasp even today) is, as Feynman explained in his 1985 book QED, the basis of the entirely different behaviour of quantum mechanics from the behaviour of classical physics!

We have experimental evidence (backed up with a theory which correctly predicts observed force couplings) that the force-causing off-shell radiation of the vacuum isn’t a one-way inflow, but is falling in to the event horizon radius of a fundamental particle, then being re-emitted in the form of charged (off-shell) Hawking exchange radiation. The reflection process in some sense is analogous to the so-called normal reflection of on-shell light photons by mirrors, as Feynman explained in QED in 1985. Light isn’t literally reflected by a mirror, as Feynman showed by graphical illustration of path integral phase amplitude summation in QED (1985), light bounces off a mirror randomly in all directions and all paths of large action have random phase amplitudes which cancel one another out, leaving just paths with small path actions to add together coherently. The path integral for off-shell virtual photons (gauge bosons) is exactly the same. They go everywhere, but the net force occurs in the direction of least action, where their phases add together coherently, rather than cancelling out at random! The effective reflection of similarly charge polarized gauge bosons between similar charges is just the regular exchange process as depicted in basic (non-loopy) Feynman diagrams for fundamental interactions.

Above: electric fields carry electric charge (nobody has ever seen the core charge of an electric field), although this is contrary to the mainstream reasoning based on historical accident, which assumes that the virtual photons of electromagnetism are electrically neutral and are distinguished for positive and negative fields due to some magical, unobservable extra polarizations! It’s obvious that charged massless exchange radiation can propagate simultaneously along paths in opposite directions (although it can’t go along a one-way path only, due to infinite magnetic self-inductance at light velocity!), because of the cancellation of the superimposed magnetic field vectors as shown in the diagram above (for theoretical introduction, see linked paper here, although note that underlying of Psi symbols should be overbars).

Wow. You’d think this would be immediately taken up in education and the media and explained clearly to the world, wouldn’t you? No chance! What’s wrong is that Feynman’s 1985 book QED is simply ignored. When Feynman first tried to publish his simple “Feynman diagrams” and his multipath interference theory of quantum mechanics at the Pocono conference in 1948, he was opposed bitterly by the old 1st quantization propagandarists like Niels Bohr, Oppenheimer, Pauli, and many others. They thought he didn’t understand Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle! They hated the idea of simple Feynman diagrams to guide physical understanding of nature by allowing the successive terms in the path integral’s perturbative expansion to be given a simple physical meaning and mechanism, in place of obscure, obfuscating guesswork pseudo-mathematical physics. They hated progress then. People still do!

In 2002 and 2003 I wrote two papers in the Electronics World journal (thanks to the kind interest or patience of two successive editors) about a sketchy quantum field theory that replaces, and makes predictions way beyond, the Standard Model. Now in 2011, we can try an alternative presentation to clarify all of the technical details not by simply presenting the new idea, but by going through errors in the Standard Model and general relativity. This is because, after my articles had been published and attacked with purely sneering ad hominem “academic” non-scientific abuse, Leslie Green then wrote a paper in the August 2004 issue of the same journal, called “Engineering versus pseudo-science”, making the point that any advance that is worth a cent by definition must conflict with existing well established ideas. The whole idea that new ideas are supplementary additions to old ideas is disproved time and again. The problem is that the old false idea will be held up as some kind of crackpot evidence that the new idea must be wrong. Greene stated in his paper:

“The history of science and technology is littered with examples of those explorers of the natural world who merely reported their findings or theories, and were vehemently attacked for it. … just declaring a theory foolish because it violates known scientific principles [e.g. Aristotle's laws of motion, Ptolemy's idea that the sun orbits the earth, Kelvin's stable vortex atoms of aether, Einstein's well-hyped media bigotry - contrary to experimental evidence - that quantum field theory is wrong, Witten's M-theory of a 10 dimensional superstring brane on an 11 dimensional supergravity theory, giving a landscape 10⁵⁰⁰ parallel universes, etc.] is not necessarily good science. If one is only allowed to check for actions that agree with known scientific principles, then how can any new scientific principles be discovered? In this respect, Einstein’s popularisation of the Gedankenexperiment (thought-experiment) is potentially a backward step.”

So the only way to get people to listen to facts is to kill the rubbish holding them back from being free to think about a vital innovation that breaks past the artificial barriers imposed by mainstream groupthink ideology and its suppressive and corrosive treason to the case of genuine scientific advance and human progress in civilization.

Fig. 1a: the primary Feynman diagram describing a quantum field interaction with a charge is similar for mathematical modelling purposes for all of the different interactions in the Standard Model of particle physics. The biggest error in the Standard Model is the assumption that the physically simplest or correct model for electromagnetism is an Abelian gauge theory in which the field is mediated by uncharged photons, rather than a Yang-Mills theory in which the field carries charge. This blog post will explain in detail the very important advantages to physics to be obtained by abandoning the Abelian theory of electromagnetism, and replacing it by a physically (but not mathematically) simpler Yang-Mills SU(2) theory of electromagnetism, in which the massless field quanta can be not merely neutral, but can carry either positive or negative electric charge. (Source: Exchange Particles internet page. For clarity I’ve highlighted an error in the direction of an arrow in the weak interaction diagram; this is of course nothing to do with the error in electromagnetism which I’m describing in this post.)

Note also the very important point for high-energy physics where particles approach very closely into field strengths exceeding Schwinger’s 1.3 x 10¹⁸ volts/meter cutoff for vacuum fermion pair production, i.e. spacetime annihilation and creation “loops” as shown on a Feynman diagram, have been excluded for these simplified diagrams. In understanding the long range forces pertinent to the kind of low energy physics we see everyday, we can usually ignore spacetime loops in Feynman diagrams, because in QED the biggest effect for low energy physics is from the simplest Feynman diagram, which doesn’t contain any loops. The general effect of such spacetime loops due to pair-production at high energies is called “vacuum polarization”: the virtual fermions suck in energy from the field, depleting its strength, and as a result the average distance between the positive and negative virtual fermions is increased slightly owing to the energy they gain from their polarization by the field. This makes them less virtual, so they last slightly longer than predicted by Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, before they approach and annihilate back into bosonic field quanta. During when gaining extra energy from the field, they modify the apparent strength of the charge as seen at lower energies or longer distances, hence the need to renormalize the effective value of the charge for QFT calculations, by allowing it to run as a function of energy. In QCD there is gluon antiscreening, which we explained in previous posts is due to the creation of gluons to accompany virtual hadrons created by pair production in very strong electric fields, so the QCD running coupling at the highest energies runs the opposite way to the QED running coupling. Field energy must be conserved, so the QED field loses energy, the QCD field gains energy, hence asymptotic freedom for quarks over a certain range of distances. This total field energy conservation mechanism is completely ignored by QFT textbooks! As the virtual fermions gain some real energy from the field via the vacuum polarization, they not only modify the apparent charge of the particle’s core, but they also get modified themselves. Onshell fermions obey the Pauli exclusion principle. Thus, the virtual fermions in strong fields can actually start to become structured like electron shells around the particle core. This mechanism for vacuum structuring, as shown in earlier blog posts, gives rise to the specific discrete spectrum of fundamental particle masses, a fact that has apparently led to the repeated immediate deletion of arXiv-submitted papers, due to ignorance, apathy, and hostility of mainstream physicists towards checkable, empirically based mechanisms in QFT. Elitist superstring theorists preach (off the record, on Dr Lubos Motl’s superstring theory blog, or in anonymous sneering comments) that all of this progress is merely “heuristically based” physics, that such experimentally guided theory makes them sick, is mathematically naive, inelegant or repulsive, and that it would “just” reduce physics to a simple mechanical understanding of nature that the person in the street could grasp and understand. (Amen to that last claim!)

Fig. 1b: Maxwell’s equations (Maxwell wrote them in long-hand first-order differential term summarizing the laws of Gauss, Ampere and Faraday with the addition of his own, now textbook-obfuscated, law of “displacement current” through the aether for the vital case of open circuits, e.g. the effects of net energy transfer through space from of accelerating and decelerating currents in the plates of a charging or discharging of a capacitor which has a vacuum as its “dielectric”; the advanced curl and div operator notation was introduced by self-taught mathematical physicist Oliver Heaviside) contradict reality experimentally in what is called the Aharonov–Bohm effect (or Ehrenberg–Siday–Aharonov–Bohm effect). The failure of Maxwell’s equations is their neglect of energy in fields in general, and neglect of the conservation of energy in supposedly “cancelled” fields in particular! E.g., inside a block of glass through which light travels, there is positive electric field energy density from atomic nuclei and negative electric field energy density from orbital electrons. The two fields superimpose and neatly “cancel”, leaving no effect according to Maxwell’s equations (which don’t predict the variation of relativity permittivity as a function of “cancelled” fields!). So why does light slow down and thus refract in glass? Answer: the energy density of the “cancelled” electric fields is still there, and “loads” the vacuum. The photon’s electromagnetic field interacts with the electromagnetic energy in the glass, and this slows it and can deflect its direction. All you can do with Maxwell’s equations to allow for this is to make an ad hoc modification to the permittivity of the vacuum, fiddling with the “constants” in the equation to make it agree with experiments! The same effect applies to magnetic fields, as the experimental confirmation of the Aharonov–Bohm effect proves. To correct Maxwell’s equations, we replace them with a similarly first-order but more comprehensive “field potential” vector which includes a term that allows for the energy of cancelled fields in the vacuum. Note, however, that this modification to Maxwell’s equations under some conditions leads to conflicts with “special relativity”. E.g., if the zero point vacuum itself is viewed as consisting of “cancelled” field energy by analogy to a block of glass, then the modified Maxwell equations no longer necessarily necessitate the principle of special relativity, but under some circumstances necessitate absolute motion instead. This fact is usually obfuscated either to defend mathematical mysticism in theoretical physics, or to “protect Einstein’s authority”, much as people used to reject Newton’s laws in deference to the more-ancient “authority” of Aristotle’s laws of motion.

The problem that the zero-point electromagnetic energy in the vacuum might constitute an absolute frame of reference due to gravitational effects is clearly stated by Richard P. Feynman and Albert R. Hibbs, Quantum Mechanics and Path Integrals, Dover, New York, corrected edition, 2010, page 245:

“… if we were to sum this ground-state energy over all of the infinite number of possible modes of ever-increasing frequency which exist even for a finite box, the answer would be infinity. This is the first symptom of the difficulties which beset quantum electrodynamics. … Suppose we choose to measure energy from a different zero point. … Unfortunately, it is really not true that the zero point of energy can be assigned completely arbitrarily. Energy is equivalent to mass, and mass has a gravitational effect. Even light has a gravitational effect, for light is deflected by the sun. So, if the law that action equals reaction has qualitative validity, then the sun must be attracted by the light. This means that a photon of energy {h-bar}*{omega} has a gravity-producing effect, and the question is: Does the ground-state energy term {h-bar}*{omega}/2 [this assumes two modes per k] also have an effect? The question stated physically is: Does a vacuum act like a uniform density of mass in producing a gravitational field?”

On page 254, they point out that if the charged and neutral Pi mesons differ only in charge, then their observed differences in mass (the charged Pi meson has a greater mass than the neutral Pi meson) implies that this extra mass in the case of a charged particle comes from “the different way they couple to the electromagnetic field. So presumably the mass difference … represents energy in the electromagnetic field.” Using the same cutoff that works here for the electromagnetic field of an electron, on page 255 they find that the corresponding correction to the mass of the electron for electromagnetic field interactions “is only about 3 percent, but there is no way to test this, for we do not recognize a neutral counterpart to the electron.” As we pointed out since 1996, there are two separate long-range zero-point fields in the vacuum: gravitational (gravitons) and electromagnetic (off-shell photons), with very different energy densities due to the factor of 10⁴⁰ difference in their long-distance couplings (the coupling at the low-energy IR cutoff limit, i.e. asymptotic limit of the running coupling that is valid for the low-energy physics domain, below ~1 MeV kinetic energy). The confusion in the value of the pseudo “cosmological constant” from the zero point vacuum comes from confusing the immense electromagnetic field energy density of the vacuum for the relatively tiny gravitational field energy density of the vacuum. It is the latter, manifested (as we proved effectively in 1996) by spin-1 gravitons, which causes the small observed cosmological acceleration of the universe, a ~ Hc. This is so because electric charge comes in two forms which balance, preventing long-range electromagnetic forces in the universe, whereas all observed gravitational charge has the same single sign and cannot cancel out. Gravitation thus pushes the matter apart (over long distances), causing cosmological acceleration. (On relatively small distance scales, the shielding of an observer by the presence of a relatively nearby mass, from the immense convergence of exchange gravitons with the surrounding isotropic universe, pushes the observer towards the nearby mass. The details of this have been carefully checked and confirmed to experimental accuracy!)

Fig. 1c: the SU(2) Yang-Mills field strength equation for electromagnetism utilizing massless charged field quanta reduces to the Maxwellian U(1) equation (equivalent to uncharged gauge bosons) under all necessary conditions, because of the motion-denying magnetic self-inductance of charged massless field quanta of SU(2). Note that the transfer of electric charge by Yang-Mills gauge bosons is not unaccompanied by a force. The charged gauge bosons carry both force-causing energy and charge. SU(2) includes one neutral boson as well as two charged bosons, so the neutral boson can deliver forces without carrying charge. SU(2) is thus a rich mathematical theory that can do a lot, and it is tempting with massless exchange radiation to attribute the neutral boson to graviton and the charged ones to electromagnetism (with left-handed interacting massive versions also existing to produce weak interactions). An addictive “drunkards walk” of charged massless gauge bosons between the ~10⁸⁰ real fermion pairs in the universe the produces a path integral resultant that “conveniently” predicts the low-energy electromagnetism coupling IR limit to be (~10⁸⁰)^1/2 stronger than gravitation, because the neutral bosons (gravitons) don’t undergo such an addictive path integral! However, the theory is stronger than such superficial conveniences suggest, because it also predicted two years ahead of observation the correct observed cosmological acceleration of the universe, and vice-versa, it predicts the observed gravitational coupling (not using the 10⁴⁰ factor just mentioned). It turns out that the simplest fully-consistent theory of nature has the graviton emerge from U(1) hypercharge which mixes with the neutral massless gauge boson of SU(2). Ignorant critics may claim that this correct limit proves that the SU(2) model is unnecessary under Occam’s Razor since for most cases it reduces to U(1) for practical calculations in electromagnetism, but this is a false criticism. The SU(2) electromagnetic theory is necessary to properly understand the relationship between electromagnetism and weak interactions (only left-handed interacting spin field quanta effectively acquire mass and partake in weak interactions)! The Abelian U(1) theory is a hypercharge which – when mixed with SU(2) – gives rise to the masses of the weak field quanta and also gives rise to a neutral field quantum, a spin-1 graviton. This is necessary. The spin-1 graviton pushes masses together, and this was falsely rejected by Pauli and Fierz in 1939 on the basis of a hidden implicit assumption which has been proved false. The currently fashionable claim that, because Maxwell’s equations are rank-1 tensors and general relativity’s Ricci tensor curvature is rank-2, electromagnetic field quanta are spin-1 and gravitons are spin-2, is a complete fraud; it is an expression of the most puerile physical and mathematical confusion between physical reality and the different mathematical models that can be used to represent that physical reality. We can, for instance, express electromagnetic forces in terms of rank-2 curvature equations. We don’t, not because this is the “wrong” thing to do, but because it is unnecessary, and it is far more convenient to use rank-1 equations (divs and curls of Faraday’s “field lines”).

Regarding mathematics being confused for reality, the great Eugene Wigner in 1960 published a paper called “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences”, Communications in Pure and Applied Mathematics, vol. 13, No. I. It’s mainly hand-waving groupthink fashion, that is a “not even wrong” confusion between reality and continuously-evolving mathematical models that are just approximations, e.g. differential equations for wavefunctions in quantum mechanics implicitly assume that wavefunctions are continuously variable – not discretely variable – functions, which disagrees with the physical premise of quantum field theory, namely that every change in the state of a particle is a discrete event! (This definition, of a change of “state” as being a discrete change, doesn’t include purely rotational phase amplitudes due to the spin of a particle which has a transverse polarization; the wavefunction for phase amplitude will be a classical-type continuous variable, but other properties such as accelerations involve forces which in quantum field theory are mediated by discrete particle interactions, not continuous variables in a spacetime continuum.)

The first false specific claim that Wigner makes in his paper is his allusion, very vaguely (the vagueness is key to his confusion), to the fact that the integral of the Gaussian distribution, exp(-x²), over all values of x between minus infinity and plus infinity, is equal to the square root of Pi. He feels uneasy that the square root of Pi, the ratio of the circumference to diameter of a circle, is the result of a probability distribution. However, he ignores the fact that there is -x² in the natural exponent, so this is a natural geometric factor. If x is a scaled distance, then x² is an area, and you’re talking geometry. It’s no longer simply a probability that is unconnected to geometry. For example, the great RAND Corporation physicist Kahn in Appendix I to his 1960 thesis on deterrence, On Thermonuclear War, shows that the normal or Gaussian distribution applies to the effect of a missile aimed at a target; the variable x is the ratio of distance from intended ground zero, to the CEP standard error distance for the accuracy of the missile. We see in this beautiful natural example of falling objects hitting targets that the Gaussian distribution is implicitly geometric, and it is therefore no surprise that its integral should contain the geometric factor of Pi.

The circular area that objects fall into is the product Pi*r² where r is radius, which is directly proportional to the scaled radius, x. This is mathematically why the square root of Pi comes out of the integral of exp(-x²) over x from minus to plus infinity (i.e., over an infinitely extensive flat plane, that the objects fall upon). Quite simply, the Gaussian distribution law fails to include the factor Pi in its exponent, so you get the square root of Pi coming out of the integral (thus the square root of Pi is the normalization factor for the Gaussian distribution in statistics). If only the great Gauss in 1809 had half a brain and knew what he was doing, he’d have included the Pi factor in the exponent, giving an integral output of 1, so we wouldn’t get the fictitious square root of Pi! The Gaussian or normal distribution is just the plain old negative exponential distribution of coin-tossing, with relative area as its variable! It’s therefore simply the insertion of area as the variable that introduces Pi (either directly in the exponent, or else as the square root of Pi in the integral result and related normalization factor). The error of Wigner was in not recognising that the square of dimensionless relative radius, x², needs to be accompanied by the equally dimensionless geometric factor Pi, in the negative exponent. It is a classic error of theoretical physicists to believe, on the basis of a mistaken understanding of dimensional analysis, that dimensionless geometric conversion factors like Pi only apply to dimensionful, absolute distances or areas, not to relative distances or areas. In fact, factors like Pi obviously also apply to dimensionless relative measures of distance or area, because it is self-evident that if the radius of a circle is one dimensionless unit, then its area is obviously Pi dimensionless units, and not one dimensionless unit, as confused people like Gauss and Wigner believed with their obfuscating formula for the normal distribution!

Statistician Stephen M. Stigler (best known for Stigler’s law of eponymy) first suggested replacing the Gaussian distribution exp(-x²) with exp(-Pi*x²) in his 1982 paper, “A modest proposal: a new standard for the normal”, The American Statistician v36 (2). However, Stigler was too modest and therefore failed to make the point with sufficient physical force to get the world’s mathematics teachers and users to dump Laplace’s and Gauss’s obfuscating, fumbling nonsense and make statistics physically understandable to clear-thinking students. So even today, Wigner’s lie continues to be believed by the fashionable groupthink ideology of pseudo-mathematical physics prevailing in the world, as the following illustration indicates (note that the hoax began with Laplace, who infamously claimed that God was an unnecessary hypothesis in his crackpot mathematics!!!):

Wigner also ignores the fact that the mathematical concept of Pi is ambiguous in physics because of excess radius of mass in general relativity; general relativity and quantum gravity predict that around a spherical mass M, its radius shrinks by excess radius (1/3)MG/c² metres, but the transverse direction (circumference) is unaffected, thus varying Pi unless there is curved spacetime. Since curved spacetime seems to be a classical large-scale approximation incompatible on the deeper level with quantum fields, where all actions consist of not of continuously variable differential equations but rather of a series of discrete impulsive particle interactions, it appears that the “excess radius” effect proves that the mathematical textbook value of Pi is wrong, and the real value of Pi is a variable quantity, which is the effect of the gravitational field warping spatial dimensions. Wigner simply ignores this mathematical failure of Pi, implicitly assuming that the textbook formula is correct. Actually, nobody verified the textbook formula precisely to more than a few significant figures, and since gravity is so small, the variation in Pi is small. So the point remains: mathematics has nothing to do with physics, beyond constituting a puerile tool or model for imperfect but often helpful calculations and is a danger in leading to arcane worship as an alternative to religion, a problem that goes back to the very roots of mathematics in the Egyptian priesthood and in the Greek Pythagorean cult.

The failure of mathematics to make deterministic predictions precisely even for classical systems like the collision of three balls in the “three body problem” which is beyond Newton’s laws, shows this mathematical failure so very clearly. Newton only came up with laws of motion that are deterministic when applied to an artificially simplistic situation which never really occurs precisely in our universe! Even if you tried to collide two balls in the vacuum of space, particles of radiation would affect the outcome! Nature isn’t mathematical! It’s physical. So Pi isn’t really the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter; that’s only an approximation!

Wigner’s “mathematical reality” ideology nearly cost America the vital Nagasaki plutonium bomb that finally convinced Japan to agree to a conditional surrender without a horrific million plus casualties in an invasion of Japan, after Hiroshima and the Russian declaration of war against Japan failed. Wigner designed the plutonium production reactors but arrogantly tried to prevent the engineers from enlarging the core size to allow for unknowns. He raged that the engineers were ignorant of the accuracy of the cross-sections for fission and the accuracy of the mathematical physics of nuclear chain reactions, and were delaying plutonium production by insisting on bigger reactor cores than were needed. After the first reactor started up, it shut itself down a few hours later. Wigner’s data on the 200 fission products had been incomplete, and it turned out that some fission products like Xe-135 had large cross-sections to absorb neutrons, so after a few hours enough had been produced to “poison” the chain reaction. It was only because the engineers had made the cores bigger than Wigner specified, knowing that mathematical physics predictions are often wrong, that they were able to overcome the poisoning by adding extra uranium to the core to keep it critical!

Fig. 1d: he was unable to understand the immoral perils of relativism in blocking progress in physics, and was unable to understand the simplicity of physical mechanisms for fundamental forces, but at least Einstein was able to make the equations look pretty and attractive to the children who have only learned to count up to the number three, and who like patterns and very simple equations (a PDF version of above table is linked here, since I can’t easily put Greek symbols into html blog posts that will display correctly in all browsers; notice that the top-left to bottom-right diagonal of zero terms are the trace of the tensor, which is zero in this case). Actually, using the field tensor formulation to represent the various components of electric and magnetic fields, is quite a useful – albeit usually obfuscated – reformulation of Maxwell’s equations. However, mathematical models should never be used to replace physical understanding of physical processes, e.g. by deliberate attempts to obfuscate the simplicity of nature. If you’re not blinded by pro-tensor hype, you can see an “anthropic landscape” issue very clearly with Einstein’s tensor version of Maxwell’s equations in this figure: the field strength tensor and its partial derivative are indeed capable of modelling Maxwell’s equations. But only in certain ways, which are “picked out” specifically because they agree with nature. In other words, it’s just ad hoc mathematically modelling; it’s not a predictive theory. If you chisel a beautiful woman out of marble, all well and good; but you are a liar if you claim she was already in the marble waiting to be chiselled out. Your chisel work created the statue: it’s not natural. Similar arguments apply to mathematical modelling in Maxwell’s theory!

(On the subject of Einstein’s relativism worship as an alternative to religion, see the earlier post linked here. While many liars still try to “defend” relativism by claiming falsely that proponents of quantum field theory are racists out to gas Jews, the sad fact is the precisely the opposite: Einstein tried to get a handful of Jews out of Germany, including Leopold Infeld, but his popular relativism helped Professor Cyril Joad attack Winston Churchill’s call for an arms race with the Nazis in the early 1930s, making it politically unacceptable to the nation, and thus weakening the hand of the already weak-brained Prime Minister at the Munich watershed in September 1938. E.g., Joad was standing at the back of one of Churchill’s popular lectures. Churchill made the point that we could deter Hitler by having an arms race. Joad then stood up and “innocently” asked Churchill “whether this advice was what he would tell the enemy”, triggering cheers and applause and media criticism of Churchill. It is certainly true that if everything were relative with no absolute truth and no absolute distinction between good and evil, Churchill’s advice is rubbish. This relativism, however, is not the case in morality, any more than in light velocity under a real FitzGerald-Lorentz contraction. Joad’s popular deceit led to millions of unnecessary deaths, as Kahn proved in 1960. Joad’s successors simply attacked Kahn while ignoring the facts, and then tried the same error of relativism during the Cold War with the Soviet Union. “The people suffering in the Soviet Union had a right to be free to be forced by the KGB to live under Soviet communism, just as we are free to have “a different system of government”, you see! Relatively speaking, neither side was right, and it was just “playground politics” to have a Cold War instead of sensibly disarming to ensure peace and safety from the horrible risk of deterring invasions, you see!” After President Nixon’s Watergate scandal and failure in Vietnam, to deflect media attacks from Nixon, America began to press ahead with negotiations with the Soviet Union for SALT treaties just when the Soviet threat was reaching parity with the Western arms stockpile, and when Soviet civil defense was being transferred from civilian control to military control with vastly increased spending. If the arms race had been stopped, the Soviet Union might have survived instead of going effectively bankrupt when Reagan manipulated oil prices in the 1980s. In 1975, America signed the Helsinki Act, for the first time agreeing to the borders of the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact in Europe. This officially handed over those countries and people to Soviet control. After it was signed, the Chairman of the Soviet KGB (secret police), Yuri Andropov, stated in a letter to the Soviet Central Committee on 29 December 1975: “It is impossible at present to cease criminal prosecutions of those individuals who speak out against the Soviet system, since this would lead to an increase in especially dangerous state crimes and anti-social phenomena.” Einstein’s “peaceful co-existence” propaganda was a falsehood. How on earth can anyone surrender to such lying relativist evil?)

Fig. 1e: clever field strength tensor in SO(3,3): Lunsford using 3+3d obtains the Pauli-Lubanski vector for particle spin, hence obtaining a quantum phenomenon from classical electrodynamics! The quantum number of particle spin is crucial to classical physics because, as we shall see, it determines how the phase amplitudes of paths with different actions vary. The quantum path with least action in the path integral has the classical equations of motion. The other paths are excluded due to spin-related phase amplitude cancellation. It’s really that simple! Bosons with spin-1 are transformed by Dirac-Anderson pair-production into pairs of spin-1/2 fermions (the charged radiations in pair-production are trapped in loops by gravitation, thus giving the black hole event horizon cross-sectional area for quantum gravity interactions, which is confirmed by empirically-checked quantum gravity calculations, which allows the magnetic field of any portion of the loop to be cancelled by the magnetic field from the opposite side of the loop which has the opposite direction, allowing stable spin without self-inductance issues; this is shown in my 2003 Electronics World paper), so just as fermions combine at low temperatures into a Bose-Einstein condensate composed of Cooper pairs of electrons (or other fermions) that together behave like a frictionless, superconducting, low-viscosity boson, so too a spin-1 boson of radiation at any temperature is physically equivalent to a superposition of two spin-1/2 fermion-like components. (Higher temperatures cause random brownian motion with enough energy to break up the delicate Cooper pair spin-coupling, thus preventing superconductivity, etc.)

Fermion amplitudes during scatter subtract, while boson amplitudes add together with a positive sign, because of the superposition of the magnetic field self-induction vectors that are the consequence of spinning charges! (This rule applies to the scatter of similar particles in similar spin states with one another, not to unpolarized beams.) It is related to the Pauli exclusion principle, because Pauli stipulated that no two fermions with the same set of quantum numbers can exist in the same location; in a sense, therefore, the Pauli exclusion principle (only an empirically confirmed principle, not a mechanism or really deep explanation) causes fermions with originally similar sets of quantum numbers to change their states when they approach closely enough to interact. Bosons don’t obey Pauli’s exclusion principle, so they don’t need to change their states when they scatter! This problem is discussed – but it’s simple solution is ignored – by Feynman in the Lectures on Physics, v3, p.4-3:

“We apologise for the fact that we cannot give you an elementary explanation. An explanation has been worked out by Pauli from complicated arguments of quantum field theory and relativity. He has shown that the two [boson and fermion interaction amplitude sign rules] must necessarily go together, but we have not been able to find a simple way of reproducing his arguments on an elementary level. It appears to be one of the few places in physics where there is a rule which can be stated very simply [for particles with identical spin states: fermion scattering amplitudes subtract in scatter, but boson scattering amplitudes add with a positive sign], but for which no one has found a simple and easy explanation. The explanation is deep down in relativistic quantum mechanics [QFT]. This probably means that we do not have a complete understanding of the fundamental principle involved. For the moment, you will just have to take it as one of the rules of the world.”

(But don’t be fooled. Just because Feynman said that, doesn’t prove that peer-reviewers and journal editors are interested in the nurture and publication of deep-explanations to long-existing problems. Instead, the situation is the exact opposite. The longer an anomaly or “issue” has existed, the better the textbook authors learn to live with it, to camouflage it behind a wallpaper of obfuscating symbolism, and to reinterpret it as a badge of pride: “nobody understands quantum mechanics”. This is spoken with the “nobody” snarled as a threat accompanied by a motion of the hand towards the bulging holster, after you have just explained the answer! Progress comes from change, which is violently opposed by bigots. Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (1513), Chapter 6: “And let it be noted that there is no more delicate matter to take in hand, nor more dangerous to conduct, nor more doubtful in its success, than to set up as the leader in the introduction of changes. For he who innovates will have for his enemies all those who are well off under the existing order of things, and only lukewarm supporters in those who might be better off under the new.” The struggle for progress against the vested interests of the status quo is called politics, and the extension of politics against unreasonable opponents who won’t really listen or actually try to block progress is, as Clausewitz defined it, war: “War is not merely a political act, but also a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying out of the same by other means.”)

Danny Ross Lunsford’s magnificent paper Gravitation and Electrodynamics over SO(3,3) overcame the hurdles required to unify gravitation and electrodynamics dynamically, making confirmed predictions (unlike the reducible gravitation-electrodynamics unification ideas of 4+1d Kaluza-Klein, Pauli, Einstein-Mayer, and Weyl; Pauli showed that “any generally covariant theory may be cast in Kaluza’s form”, hence the mindless and fruitless addition of 6/7 extra spatial dimensions in “not even wrong” string theory), but despite acceptance and publication in a peer-reviewed journal (International Journal of Theoretical Physics, Volume 43, Number 1, 161-177), and despite supplying the required arXiv endorsement, his brilliant paper was mindlessly removed from the stringy unification theory dominated arXiv (U.S. Government part-funded) pre-print server, thus denying its circulation via the accepted mainstream electronic route to physicists around the world. To summarize Lunsford’s great idea is very easy. There is not one time dimension, but three, making a total of three spatial and three time dimensions. In other words, spacetime is symmetric, with one timelike dimension per spatial dimension.

One way to grasp this is to note that the age of the universe can be deduced (since the universe has been found to have a flat overall geometry, i.e. dark energy offsets the gravitational curvature on large scales), from looking at the redshift of the universe to obtain the Hubble parameter: the age of the universe is the reciprocal of that parameter. Since we build geometry on the basis of 90 degree angles between spatial dimensions, we have three orthagonal dimensions of space, SO(3). Measuring the Hubble constant in these 3 orthagonal dimensions by pointing a telescope in the three 90-degree different directions and measuring the redshift-distance Hubble parameter in each of them, would give 3 separate ages for the universe, i.e. 3 time dimensions! Obviously, if we happen to see isotropic redshift, all the 3 age measurements for the universe will be similar, and we will live under the delusion that there is only one time dimension, not three. But in reality, there may be a simple reason why the universe has an isotropic expansion rate in all directions, and thus why time appears to have only one discernable dimension: nature may be covering up two time dimensions by making all time dimensions appear similar to us observers. If this sounds esoteric, remember that unlike string theorists who compactify 6/7 unobservable extra spatial dimensions, creating a landscape of 10⁵⁰⁰ metastable vacua, Lunsford’s SO(3,3) is the simplest possible and thus the best dynamical electromagnetic-gravitational unification according to Occam’s razor. Lunsford proves that the the SO(3,3) unification of electrodynamics and gravitation eliminates the spurious “cosmological constant” from general relativity, so that the “dark energy” causing the acceleration must be spin-1 repulsive quantum gravity, just as we predicted in 1996 when predicting the small but later measured acceleration of the universe, a ~ Hc. (A prediction published via Electronics World, October 1996, p896, and also Science World ISSN 1367-6172, February 1997, after the paper had been rejected for “being inconsistent with superstring theory”, an (as yet) “unconfirmed speculation”, etc. (after confirmation, they just gave no reason for rejection when repeated submissions were made!) by the so-called “peer-reviewers” who censor predictive theories from publication for CQG, Nature, et al. Unfortunately, just like those mainstream bigots, IC – despite claiming to champion progress, and despite my efforts to write about his work which culminated in publications – has never in fifteen years agreed host a single discussion on his website of QFT, nor in his numerous scientific publications, but instead like the crank string theorists resorted to shouting the idea down and wasting time!)

Lunsford finishes his paper: “It thus appears that the indeterminate aspect of the Einstein equations represented by the ordinary cosmological constant, is an artifact [in general relativity, not in nature!] of the decoupling of gravity and electromagnetism. … the Einstein-Maxwell equations are to be regarded as a first-order approximation to the full calibration-invariant system. One striking feature of these equations that distinguishes them from Einstein’s equations is the absent gravitational constant – in fact the ratio of scalars in front of the energy tensor plays that role. This explains the odd role of G in general relativity and its scaling behaviour (see Weinberg, 1972 [S. Weinberg, Gravitation and Cosmology, Wiley, p. 7.1, p. 10.8, 1972]).”

Fig. 1f: Oleg D. Jefimenko and Richard P. Feynman (equation 28.3 in the Feynman Lectures on Physics, vol. 1) independently solved Maxwell’s equations in the early 1960s, which allows quantum field theory effects to be easily seen in the Maxwell correction to Coulomb’s force law for steady charges to an equation which allows for charge motion. The Jifimenko-Feynman equation for electric field strength is a three component equation in which the first component is from Coulomb’s law (Gauss’s field divergence equation in the Maxwell equations) where force F = qE so that electric field E = q/(4*Pi*Permittivity*R²) . The Feynman-Jefimenko solution to Maxwell’s equations for field directions along the line of the motion and acceleration of a charge yields the simple summation of terms: E_v/m = [q/(4*Pi*Permittivity)] { R^-2 + [v(cos z)/(cR²)] + [a(sin z)/(Rc²)] }

The sine and cosine factors in the two motion related terms are due to the fact that they depend on whether the motion of a charge is towards you or away from you (they come from vectors in the Feynman-Jefimenko solution; z is the angle between the direction of the motion of the charge and the direction of the observer). The first term in the curly brackets is the Coulomb law for static charges. The second term in the curly brackets with a linear dependence on v/c is simply the effect of the redshift (observer receding from the charge) or blue shift (observer approaching the charge) of the force field quanta, which depends on whether you are moving towards or away from the charge q; as the Casimir effect shows, field quanta or virtual photons do have physically-significant wavelengths. The third term in the curly brackets is the effect of accelerations of charge, i.e. the real (on-shell) photon radio wave emission: this radio emission field strength drops off inversely with distance rather than as the inverse square of distance. (The time-dependence of E at distance R in the equation is the retarded time t – R/c, which allows for the light speed delay due to the field being composed of electromagnetic field quanta and waves which must transverse that distance from charge to observer before the field can be observed.)

This solution to Maxwell’s equations is important for the analysis of quantum field theory effects due to gauge bosons.

Physical mechanism of electric forces

Fig. 1a shows the Feynman diagrams used for the main force-causing interactions (there are many others too; for example the pions aren’t the only mesons involved in the strong nuclear force that operates between nucleons).

Fig. 2: mathematical concepts like plots of electric and magnetic field strengths or even “field lines” inside photons are not physically real but they do constitute a useful tool, when mathematically shown on a graph, for establishing the physical distinctions and mechanisms for on-shell (real) and off-shell (virtual) radiations in quantum field theory, and it should be remembered that Maxwell’s equations are an incomplete description of electromagnetism (the field potential A_{mu} is needed to account for effects of the superimposed energy density in so-called “cancelled fields”, e.g. the Aharonov-Bohm effect, where the superimposed field energy loads the vacuum and thus affects quantum phenomena, just as the “cancelled” negative and positive fields from electrons and nuclei in a block of glass load the vacuum with energy density and thus slow down light).

This diagram is a revision of one from my 2003 Electronics World article, the main updates being due to a continuing study of IC experimental work (which he interpreted sadly using an obsolete theory) on electromagnetic energy currents, and a forceful argument in an email from Guy Grantham, which stated that the only realistic way to make a simple exchange-radiation mechanism for both attraction and repulsion is to have electrically charged field quanta (although being he didn’t help in actually working out the details shown above!). The whole point is that off-shell electrically massless field quanta can’t propagate in the vacuum, due to magnetic self-inductance! Therefore, they will only propagate if there is an ongoing exchange in both directions such that the magnetic fields are cancelled out. This physical mechanism for transmission and cancellation is obviously at the root of the phase amplitude in quantum field theory, whereby spinning quanta can be supposed to take all possible routes through the vacuum, although the wildly varying phases at large actions cause the paths with large actions to cancel one another out, e.g. to be stopped by field effects like non-cancellation of magnetic self-inductance.

Fig. 3: physical basis of path integrals for the simple case of light reflection by a mirror. Classically the reflection law is that the angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection, which is of course the path that light travels in the least time or least “action” (action is defined as the integral of the lagrangian over time; for classical systems the lagrangian is the difference between the kinetic and potential energy of a particle at any given time). Light follows all paths, but most of them have randomly orientated “phases” and thus cancel out in the vector summation. Only for small actions do the phases add together coherently. Thus, light effectively occupies not a one dimensional line as it propagates, but is spread out spatially in space due to the reinforcement of all those paths with actions small compared to Planck’s constant, h = E/f (which has units of action, and when divided by twice Pi, is equal to the proper unit of quantum action in quantum field theory). Hence Feynman’s great statement: “Light … uses a small core of nearby space. (In the same way, a mirror has to have enough size to reflect normally: if the mirror is too small for the core of nearby paths, the light scatters in many directions, no matter where you put the mirror.)” – R. P. Feynman, QED (Penguin, 1990, page 54).

Fig. 4: a minor mathematical modification of Feynman’s path integral theory involving replacing the imaginary (complex) phase amplitude with the real term in its expansion by Euler’s equation, which is needed to overcome Dr Chris Oakley’s mathematical problem with today’s sloppy (mathematically non-rigorous) textbook quantum field theory, namely Haag’s theorem, which proves that essential renormalization is impossible in a complex space like Foch space (an infinite-dimensional vector space) or Hilbert space (a complex inner product space, in which a complex number is associated to each pair of coordinate elements), because the isomorphism that maps the free-field Hilbert space on to the renormalized-field Hilbert space is ambiguous! (This theorem was proved by Hall and Wightman. The reason why the mainstream ignores Haag’s theorem is that Haag postulated that the whole interaction picture doesn’t exist, an interesting possibility which was investigated without great success by Dr Chris Oakley. Nobody seems to have grasped the obvious solution, namely that Hilbert space doesn’t exist and the phase factor is mathematically fictitious and in the real world must lose it’s complexity (this lack of sense is probably due to groupthink or mathematical respect to Euler, Hilbert, Schroedinger, Dirac, et al.; by analogy Newton should have resisted suggesting his laws of motion, purely out of respect for the dead genius Aristotle?). We must express the phase vectors as arrows in real space if we want quantum field theory to be renormalizable in a self-consistent, non-ambiguous manner. The path integral as shown above works just as well this way, it just eliminates the problem of Haag’s theorem. (Haag’s theorem is the argument behind Dr Oakley quotations from both Feynman and Dirac, who point out that because of renormalization, quantum field theory can’t be proved to be self-consistent. As Feynman wrote in his 1985 classic, QED, the lack of proof of self-consistency due to Haag’s theorem is embarrassing to any self-respecting mathematical physicist working in quantum field theory.) The diagram proves the equivalence of the resultant amplitudes when using e^iS and cos S for the phase factor in the path integral (sum over path histories). Basically, what we are suggesting is that we take Euler’s e^iS = cos S + i sin S then drop the complex term i sin S, which cuts out the use of the imaginary axis from the Argand diagram, giving only real space!

Fig. 5: how simply replacing the complex e^iS phasor with its real component cos (iS) replaces complex space with real space, averting the inability to prove self-consistency in quantum field theory due to Haag’s theorem. This allows the spatially distributed (truly transverse) on-shell and off-shell photons (unlike Maxwell’s idea of the photon) shown in Fig. 2 to have a physically real phase factor to be modelled, with the phase denoting a real physical property of the photons taking different paths, e.g. the phase factor can denote differing angles of spin polarization or differing charge combinations, unlike the imaginary, unphysical phase factor. The reasons why this isn’t done in textbooks is the fashionable groupthink argument that, historically, the origins of the textbook complex exponential phase factor are rooted in the solution to the time-dependent form of Schroedinger’s equation, and the time-dependent form of Schroedinger’s equation survives as Dirac’s equation because Dirac’s equation is only different from Schroedinger’s in its Hamiltonian (i.e., the spacetime-compatible Dirac “spinor”). However, as Feynman explained in his Lectures on Physics, Schroedinger’s equation was just a guess that “came out of the mind of Schroedinger”! It’s not a physical fact, and it’s actually contrary to physical facts because in quantum field theory it should take a discrete quantum interaction to cause a discrete wavefunction change, but Schroedinger’s equation intrinsically assumes a classical, continuously varying wavefunction! The error here is obvious. Why defend a guesswork derivation error which prevents renormalized quantum field theory from being rigorously, unambiguously formulated mathematically and proved self-consistent? Dr Thomas Love has explained that all of the problems of wavefunction collapse in quantum mechanics originate from this guess by Schroedinger: “‘The quantum collapse [in the mainstream interpretation of quantum mechanics, where a wavefunction collapse occurs whenever a measurement of a particle is made] occurs when we model the wave moving according to Schroedinger (time-dependent) and then, suddenly at the time of interaction we require it to be in an eigenstate and hence to also be a solution of Schroedinger (time-independent). The collapse of the wave function is due to a discontinuity in the equations used to model the physics, it is not inherent in the physics.”

Just as Bohr’s atom is taught in school physics, most mainstream general physicists with training in quantum mechanics are still trapped in the use of the “anything goes” false (non-relativistic) 1927-originating “first quantization” for quantum mechanics (where anything is possible because motion is described by an uncertainty principle instead of a quantized field mechanism for chaos on small scales). The physically correct replacement is called “second quantization” or “quantum field theory”, which was developed from 1929-48 by Dirac, Feynman and others.

The discoverer of the path integrals approach to quantum field theory, Nobel laureate Richard P. Feynman, has debunked the mainstream first-quantization uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics. Instead of anything being possible, the indeterminate electron motion in the atom is caused by second-quantization: the field quanta randomly interacting and deflecting the electron.

“… Bohr … said: ‘… one could not talk about the trajectory of an electron in the atom, because it was something not observable.’ … Bohr thought that I didn’t know the uncertainty principle … it didn’t make me angry, it just made me realize that … [ they ] … didn’t know what I was talking about, and it was hopeless to try to explain it further. I gave up, I simply gave up …”

- Richard P. Feynman, quoted in Jagdish Mehra’s biography of Feynman, The Beat of a Different Drum, Oxford University Press, 1994, pp. 245-248. (Fortunately, Dyson didn’t give up!)

‘I would like to put the uncertainty principle in its historical place: When the revolutionary ideas of quantum physics were first coming out, people still tried to understand them in terms of old-fashioned ideas … But at a certain point the old-fashioned ideas would begin to fail, so a warning was developed that said, in effect, “Your old-fashioned ideas are no damn good when …” If you get rid of all the old-fashioned ideas and instead use the ideas that I’m explaining in these lectures – adding arrows [path amplitudes] for all the ways an event can happen – there is no need for an uncertainty principle!’

- Richard P. Feynman, QED, Penguin Books, London, 1990, pp. 55-56.

‘When we look at photons on a large scale – much larger than the distance required for one stopwatch turn [i.e., wavelength] – the phenomena that we see are very well approximated by rules such as “light travels in straight lines [without overlapping two nearby slits in a screen]“, because there are enough paths around the path of minimum time to reinforce each other, and enough other paths to cancel each other out. But when the space through which a photon moves becomes too small (such as the tiny holes in the [double slit] screen), these rules fail – we discover that light doesn’t have to go in straight [narrow] lines, there are interferences created by the two holes, and so on. The same situation exists with electrons: when seen on a large scale, they travel like particles, on definite paths. But on a small scale, such as inside an atom, the space is so small that [individual random field quanta exchanges become important because there isn't enough space involved for them to average out completely, so] there is no main path, no “orbit”; there are all sorts of ways the electron could go, each with an amplitude. The phenomenon of interference becomes very important, and we have to sum the arrows [in the path integral for individual field quanta interactions, instead of using the average which is the classical Coulomb field] to predict where an electron is likely to be.’

- Richard P. Feynman, QED, Penguin Books, London, 1990, Chapter 3, pp. 84-5.

His path integrals rebuild and reformulate quantum mechanics itself, getting rid of the Bohring ‘uncertainty principle’ and all the pseudoscientific baggage like ‘entanglement hype’ it brings with it:

‘This paper will describe what is essentially a third formulation of nonrelativistic quantum theory [Schroedinger's wave equation and Heisenberg's matrix mechanics being the first two attempts, which both generate nonsense 'interpretations']. This formulation was suggested by some of Dirac’s remarks concerning the relation of classical action to quantum mechanics. A probability amplitude is associated with an entire motion of a particle as a function of time, rather than simply with a position of the particle at a particular time.

‘The formulation is mathematically equivalent to the more usual formulations. … there are problems for which the new point of view offers a distinct advantage. …’

- Richard P. Feynman, ‘Space-Time Approach to Non-Relativistic Quantum Mechanics’, Reviews of Modern Physics, vol. 20 (1948), p. 367.

‘… I believe that path integrals would be a very worthwhile contribution to our understanding of quantum mechanics. Firstly, they provide a physically extremely appealing and intuitive way of viewing quantum mechanics: anyone who can understand Young’s double slit experiment in optics should be able to understand the underlying ideas behind path integrals. Secondly, the classical limit of quantum mechanics can be understood in a particularly clean way via path integrals. … for fixed h-bar, paths near the classical path will on average interfere constructively (small phase difference) whereas for random paths the interference will be on average destructive. … we conclude that if the problem is classical (action >> h-bar), the most important contribution to the path integral comes from the region around the path which extremizes the path integral. In other words, the article’s motion is governed by the principle that the action is stationary. This, of course, is none other than the Principle of Least Action from which the Euler-Lagrange equations of classical mechanics are derived.’

- Richard MacKenzie, Path Integral Methods and Applications, pp. 2-13.

‘… light doesn’t really travel only in a straight line; it “smells” the neighboring paths around it, and uses a small core of nearby space. (In the same way, a mirror has to have enough size to reflect normally: if the mirror is too small for the core of neighboring paths, the light scatters in many directions, no matter where you put the mirror.)’

- Richard P. Feynman, QED, Penguin Books, London, 1990, Chapter 2, p. 54.

There are other serious and well-known failures of first quantization aside from the nonrelativistic Hamiltonian time dependence:

“The quantum collapse [in the mainstream interpretation of first quantization quantum mechanics, where a wavefunction collapse occurs whenever a measurement of a particle is made] occurs when we model the wave moving according to Schroedinger (time-dependent) and then, suddenly at the time of interaction we require it to be in an eigenstate and hence to also be a solution of Schroedinger (time-independent). The collapse of the wave function is due to a discontinuity in the equations used to model the physics, it is not inherent in the physics.” – Thomas Love, California State University.

“In some key Bell experiments, including two of the well-known ones by Alain Aspect, 1981-2, it is only after the subtraction of ‘accidentals’ from the coincidence counts that we get violations of Bell tests. The data adjustment, producing increases of up to 60% in the test statistics, has never been adequately justified. Few published experiments give sufficient information for the reader to make a fair assessment.” – http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/quant-ph/pdf/9903/9903066v2.pdf

First quantization for QM (e.g. Schroedinger) quantizes the product of position and momentum of an electron, rather than the Coulomb field which is treated classically. This leads to a mathematically useful approximation for bound states like atoms, which is physically false and inaccurate in detail (a bit like Ptolemy’s epicycles, where all planets were assumed to orbit Earth in circles within circles). Feynman explains this in his 1985 book QED (he dismisses the uncertainty principle as complete model, in favour of path integrals) because indeterminancy is physically caused by virtual particle interactions from the quantized Coulomb field becoming important on small, subatomic scales! Second quantization (QFT) introduced by Dirac in 1929 and developed with Feynman’s path integrals in 1948, instead quantizes the field. Second quantization is physically the correct theory because all indeterminancy results from the random fluctuations in the interactions of discrete field quanta, and first quantization by Heisenberg and Schroedinger’s approaches is just a semi-classical, non-relativistic mathematical approximation useful for obtaining simple mathematical solutions for bound states like atoms:

‘You might wonder how such simple actions could produce such a complex world. It’s because phenomena we see in the world are the result of an enormous intertwining of tremendous numbers of photon exchanges and interferences.’

- Richard P. Feynman, QED, Penguin Books, London, 1990, p. 114.

‘Underneath so many of the phenomena we see every day are only three basic actions: one is described by the simple coupling number, j; the other two by functions P(A to B) and E(A to B) – both of which are closely related. That’s all there is to it, and from it all the rest of the laws of physics come.’

- Richard P. Feynman, QED, Penguin Books, London, 1990, p. 120.

‘It always bothers me that, according to the laws as we understand them today, it takes a computing machine an infinite number of logical operations to figure out what goes on in no matter how tiny a region of space, and no matter how tiny a region of time. How can all that be going on in that tiny space? Why should it take an infinite amount of logic to figure out what one tiny piece of spacetime is going to do? So I have often made the hypothesis that ultimately physics will not require a mathematical statement, that in the end the machinery will be revealed, and the laws will turn out to be simple, like the chequer board with all its apparent complexities.’

- R. P. Feynman, The Character of Physical Law, November 1964 Cornell Lectures, broadcast and published in 1965 by BBC, pp. 57-8.

Sound waves are composed of the group oscillations of large numbers of randomly colliding air molecules; despite the randomness of individual air molecule collisions, the average pressure variations from many molecules obey a simple wave equation and carry the wave energy. Likewise, although the actual motion of an atomic electron is random due to individual interactions with field quanta, the average location of the electron resulting from many random field quanta interactions is non-random and can be described by a simple wave equation such as Schroedinger’s.

This is fact, it isn’t my opinion or speculation: professor David Bohm in 1952 proved that “brownian motion” of an atomic electron will result in average positions described by a Schroedinger wave equation. Unfortunately, Bohm also introduced unnecessary “hidden variables” with an infinite field potential into his messy treatment, making it a needlessly complex, uncheckable representation, instead of simply accepting that the quantum field interations produce the “Brownian motion” of the electron as described by Feynman’s path integrals for simple random field quanta interactions with the electron.

Quantum tunnelling is possible because electromagnetic fields are not classical, but are mediated by field quanta randomly exchanged between charges. For large charges and/or long times, the number of field quanta exchanged is so large that the result is similar to a steady classical field. But for small charges and small times, such as the scattering of charges in high energy physics, there is some small probability that no or few field quanta will happen to be exchanged in the time available, so the charge will be able to penetrate through the classical “Coulomb barrier”. If you quantize the Coulomb field, the electron’s motion is indeterministic in the atom because it’s randomly exchanging Coulomb field quanta which cause chaotic motion. This is second quantization as explained by Feynman in QED. This is not what is done in quantum mechanics, which is based on first quantization, i.e. treating the Coulomb field V classically, and falsely representing the chaotic motion of the electron by a wave-type equation. This is a physically false mathematical model since it omits the physical cause of the indeterminancy (although it gives convenient predictions, somewhat like Ptolemy’s accurate epicycle based predictions of planetary positions):

Fig. 6: Schroedinger’s equation, based on quantizing the momentum p in the classical Hamiltonian (the sum of kinetic and potential energy for the particle), H. This is an example of ‘first quantization’, which is inaccurate and is also used in Heisenberg’s matrix mechanics. Correct quantization will instead quantize the Coulomb field potential energy, V, because the whole indeterminancy of the electron in the atom is physically caused by the chaos of the randomly timed individual interactions of the electron with the discrete Coulomb field quanta which bind the electron to orbit the nucleus, as Feynman proved (see quotations below). The triangular symbol is the divergence operator (simply the sum of the gradients in all applicable spatial dimensions, for whatever it operates on) which when squared becomes the laplacian operator (simply the sum of second-order derivatives in all applicable spatial dimensions, for whatever it operates on). We illustrate the Schroedinger equation in just one spatial dimension, x, above, since the terms for other spatial dimensions are identical.

Dirac’s quantum field theory is needed because textbook quantum mechanics is simply wrong: the Schroedinger equation has a second-order dependence on spatial distance but only a first-order dependence on time. In the real world, time and space are found to be on an equal footing, hence spacetime. There are deeper errors in textbook quantum mechanics: it ignores the quantization of the electromagnetic field and instead treats it classically, when the field quanta are the whole distinction between classical and quantum mechanics (the random motion of the electron orbiting the nucleus in the atom is caused by discrete field quanta interactions, as proved by Feynman).

Dirac was the first to achieve a relativistic field equation to replace the non-relativistic quantum mechanics approximations (the Schroedinger wave equation and the Heisenberg momentum-distance matrix mechanics). Dirac also laid the groundwork for Feynman’s path integrals in his 1933 paper “The Lagrangian in Quantum Mechanics” published in Physikalische Zeitschrift der Sowjetunion where he states:

“Quantum mechanics was built up on a foundation of analogy with the Hamiltonian theory of classical mechanics. This is because the classical notion of canonical coordinates and momenta was found to be one with a very simple quantum analogue …

“Now there is an alternative formulation for classical dynamics, provided by the Lagrangian. … The two formulations are, of course, closely related, but there are reasons for believing that the Lagrangian one is the more fundamental. … the Lagrangian method can easily be expressed relativistically, on account of the action function being a relativistic invariant; while the Hamiltonian method is essentially nonrelativistic in form …”

Schroedinger’s time-dependent equation is: Hy= iħ.dy /dt, which has the exponential solution:

y_t = y_o exp[-iH(t – t_o)/ħ].

This equation is accurate, because the error in Schroedinger’s equation comes only from the expression used for the Hamiltonian, H. This exponential law represents the time-dependent value of the wavefunction for any Hamiltonian and time. Squaring this wavefunction gives the amplitude or relative probability for a given Hamiltonian and time. Dirac took this amplitude e^-iHT/ħ and derived the more fundamental lagrangian amplitude for action S, i.e. e^iS/ħ. Feynman showed that summing this amplitude factor over all possible paths or interaction histories gave a result proportional to the total probability for a given interaction. This is the path integral.

Schroedinger’s incorrect, non-relativistic hamiltonian before quantization (ignoring the inclusion of the Coulomb field potential energy, V, which is an added term) is: H = ½ p²/m. Quantization is done using the substitution for momentum, p -> -iħ{divergence operator} as in Fig. 6 above. The Coulomb field potential energy, V, remains classical in Schroedinger’s equation, instead of being quantized as it should.

The bogus ‘special relativity’ prediction to correct the expectation H = ½ p²/m is simply: H = [(mc²)² + p²c²]², but that was falsified by the fact that, although the total mass-energy is then conserved, the resulting Schroedinger equation permits an initially localised electron to travel faster than light! This defect was averted by the Klein-Gordon equation, which states:

ħ²d²y/dt² = [(mc²)² + p²c²]y.

While this is physically correct, it is non-linear in only dealing with second-order variations of the wavefunction. Dirac’s equation simply makes the time-dependent Schroedinger equation (Hy = iħ.dy/dt) relativistic, by inserting for the hamiltonian (H) a totally new relativistic expression which differs from special relativity:

H = apc + b mc²,

where p is the momentum operator. The values of constants a and b can take are represented by a 4 x 4 = 16 component matrix, which is called the Dirac ‘spinor’. This is not to be confused for the Weyl spinors used in the gauge theories of the Standard Model; whereas the Dirac spinor represents massive spin-1/2 particles, the Dirac equation yields two Weyl equations for massless particles, each with a 2-component Weyl spinor (representing left- and right-handed spin or helicity eigenstates). The justification for Dirac’s equation is both theoretical and experimental. Firstly, it yields the Klein-Gordon equation for second-order variations of the wavefunction. Secondly, it predicts four solutions for the total energy of a particle having momentum p:

E = ±[(mc²)² + p²c²]^1/2.

Two solutions to this equation arise from the fact that momentum is directional and so can be can be positive or negative. The spin of an electron is ± ½ ħ = ± h/(4p). This explains two of the four solutions! The electron is spin-1/2 so it has a spin of only half the amount of a spin-1 particle, which means that the electron must rotate 720 degrees (not 360 degrees!) to undergo one revolution, like a Mobius strip (a strip of paper with a twist before the ends are glued together, so that there is only one surface and you can draw a continuous line around that surface which is twice the length of the strip, i.e. you need 720 degrees turning to return it to the beginning!). Since the spin rate of the electron generates its intrinsic magnetic moment, it affects the magnetic moment of the electron. Zee gives a concise derivation of the fact that the Dirac equation implies that ‘a unit of spin angular momentum interacts with a magnetic field twice as much as a unit of orbital angular momentum’, a fact discovered by Dirac the day after he found his equation (see: A. Zee, Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell, Princeton University press, 2003, pp. 177-8.) The other two solutions are evident obvious when considering the case of p = 0, for then E = ± mc². This equation proves the fundamental distinction between Dirac’s theory and Einstein’s special relativity. Einstein’s equation from special relativity is E = mc². The fact that in fact E = ± mc², proves the physical shallowness of special relativity which results from the lack of physical mechanism in special relativity. E = ± mc² allowed Dirac to predict antimatter, such as the anti-electron called the positron, which was later discovered by Anderson in 1932 (anti-matter is naturally produced all the time when suitably high-energy gamma radiation hits heavy nuclei, causing pair production, i.e., the creation of a particle and an anti-particle such as an electron and a positron).

(To be continued when time allows. In the meanwhile, as linked on an earlier post, the introductory pages from my draft PDF paper can be found at http://nige.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/paper-draft-pages-1-5-2-oct-2010.pdf, although please note that there are some trivial mathematical symbol typos that are outside my control, e.g. the QuarkXpress software I used doesn’t contain any apparent way of writing Psi with an overbar, so I’ve had to underline Psi instead. I also gave some comments about errors in “electroweak symmetry” on Tommaso’s blog which are of relevance, posts on this blog discuss particle masses and the quantum gravity mechanism.)

Above: a quantitative prediction of the cosmological acceleration of the universe in 1996, two years ahead of the discovery, was ignored! Pseudo-physicists at the so-called Classical and Quantum Gravity and also Physics Review Letters think anything fundamental that doesn’t agree with superstring liars must be wrong! Maybe the gravitons heat up or slow down planets? If so this should apply also to the well established off-shell Casimir radiation in the vacuum which would have dragged and slow the planets making them glow, slow down, and spiral into the sun millions of years ago. They didn’t. Contrary to string theorists who are ignorant of the basics of quantum field theory, field quanta are off-shell particles, which impart kinetic energy to accelerate charges thus causing forces, without causing direct heating or drag, merely the Lorentz mass increase and the real FitzGerald-Lorentz contraction effect. Maybe rank-2 tensors prove spin-2 gravitons? Nope, rank-1 tensors are first order field line gradients, and rank-2 tensors are second-order equations of motion. You can use either rank-1 or rank-2 equations for electromagnetism or gravity; it depends not on spin but purely on whether the theory is formulated as field lines (rank-1 equations) or accelerations in spacetime (rank-2).

Update (20 January 2011):

Sadly, superstring theorist Dr Lubos Motl, a Facebook friend who is 100% right about global warming hype, left-wing dangers and political correctness, has called for the famous superstring theorist Professor Greene at Columbia University to fire superstring critic Dr Peter Woit. Dr Woit, whose blog and paper on representation theory and quantum field theory since 2002 has led me to my current approach to the problem of fundamental interactions and unification, has replied robustly: “It seems that some unemployed guy in Pilsen who reads this blog thinks Brian Greene is my employer and is upset that Brian is not having me fired. For the record, my position as “Senior Lecturer” in the math department is not tenured, but I have a long-term contract and whether it gets renewed at some point in the distant future will have nothing to do with what Brian thinks about this blog, or with what I think about his books. Actually, my impression is that if most string theorists could choose one well-known blog dealing with string theory to shut down, it wouldn’t be this one …”

Elsewhere, Dr Woit writes: “The controversy over the multiverse is … the idea that string theory implies a multitude of completely separate universes with different physical laws. This is quite different than many-worlds, which is an interpretation of standard quantum mechanics, with one fixed set of physical laws.”

Dr Peter Woit, “Is the Multiverse Immoral?”: “One of the lessons of superstring theory unification is if that a wrong idea is promoted for enough years, it gets into the textbooks and becomes part of the conventional wisdom about how the world works. This process is now well underway with multiverse pseudo-science, as some theorists who should know better choose to heavily promote it, and others abdicate their responsibility to fight pseudo-science as it gains traction in their field.”

Friend says (January 29, 2011 at 8:00 pm): “I think that multiverses are a misinterpretation of the Path Integral used in QFT, etc. Instead of it predicting the actual existence of alternative paths/universes, it really predicts that it takes ALL possibilities to make just one universe. Thus it is impossible for multiverses to exist.”

{NC note: the “Friend” who wrote this comment, which goes on to another paragraph of abject speculation, is not me, although I have contributed comments under anonymity where I can’t otherwise contribute comments. The probability that “Friend” is Dr Woit writing an anonymous comment on his own blog, or a friend of his doing so, is not 0. However I don’t really know what Dr Woit thinks about Feynman’s 1985 book QED. My wild guess from reading Dr Woit’s 2002 arXiv paper on “Quantum Field Theory and Representation Theory” is that he hasn’t really spent time on Feynman’s 1985 book, doesn’t physically put too much stress on the “heuristic” picture of 2nd quantization/QFT as virtual particles following every path and interfering to cause “wavefunction” chaos; he works in a mathematics department and is fixed into a belief that sophisticated maths is good, only objecting to misrepresentations of mathematics for hype and funding by superstring theorists and others. “Friend”, in a later comment time-stamped 9:29pm, writes about another pet interest of Dr Woit’s: “how about the financial market;-) Unsatisfied with economic progress, they’ve invented extravagant financial theories of prime-lending rates and complicated security instruments. Funny, I’ve heard that some physicists have found work in the financial industry. Perhaps their theories work in some other universe.” Dr Baez replied to Friend: ‘That’s a nice analogy because it seems to have been caused by a desperate search for “high rates of return”.’}

John Baez says (January 29, 2011 at 8:45 pm): “Maybe a branch of science is ripe for infection by pseudoscience whenever it stops making enough progress to satisfy the people in that field: as a substitute for real progress, they’ll be tempted to turn to fake progress. One could expect this tendency to be proportional to the loftiness of the goals the field has set for itself… and to the difficulty its practitioners have in switching to nearby fields that are making more progress. But is this really true? …”

Thomas Larsson says (January 31, 2011 at 12:12 pm): “Medieval astronomers knew that the universe is a mechanical clockwork with at least 13 epicycles. The point is that Nature’s answers depend on how the question is posed. If you ask her about epicycles, she will answer with epicycles, even if that has little to do with the correct dynamics. And if you ask her about dark matter and dark energy, she will answer in terms of dark matter and energy. Perhaps this is the right framework. But perhaps it is not.”

Update (2 Feb 2011): IC’s February 2011 Electronics World article has now been published, linked here. For the first part (in the same excellent on-line user friendly format), see the link here. I disagree with IC’s simplistic theoretical interpretation of his experimentally valid findings, for the reasons given in the blog post on QFT help for electromagnetic experiments, linked here. IC suffers from the same problem Einstein had with relativism, although IC is “sticking to his guns” (like Einstein did) despite having no real benefit from promoting a false interpretation of his results. If IC was genuinely famous for a discovery which turned out to be misinterpreted, he would have some unethical but at least “logical” reason to censor out attempts to improve the theoretical analysis of his results. He has no such fame to lose, his self-promotion on the internet by having several “personal name” websites exploits his unusual name to give high ranking google results when his name is searched, but if you look at the webcounters on his sites, he gets little interest. Few people google his name in the first place. If I buy a domain called “zzzuuuyy”, and it gets top rank results on google when searching for that “name”, it doesn’t mean anything because nobody will search for it.

I regularly write that groupthink fashion and popularity are no measure of science. But that doesn’t mean that writing such useless and boring material is a measure of helpfulness! IC should aim to write in a useful way, which unfortunately for him means confronting the depressing fact that his research work is relevant to path integrals in quantum field theory. Remaining prejudiced against QFT is irrational. The only way to destroy classical Maxwellian lies about light is to do so using the best replacement theory, Feynman’s QFT. By the time IC ever tries that, it will be too late and he will have polluted the world with too much boring, vacuous drivel to be taken seriously. There are only so many times you can cry wolf and get away with it. The best thing you can say about IC is that, with friends like him, who needs enemies?

- Al Gore, Earth in the Balance, 1992.

“A fascinating article by Mark Musser in American Thinker on one of the pioneers of apocalyptic global warming theory. Turns out – whoulda thunk? – that he was a eugenicist and a Nazi. … the quest for Lebensraum [habitat/living space] did not die with Hitler in his bunker in 1945 …”

- James Delingpole, Why do I call them Eco Nazis? Because they ARE Eco Nazis, Telegraph.

“After the war in the 1950′s, Guenther Schwab’s brand of environmentalism also played a fundamental role in the development of the green anti-nuclear movement in West Germany. The dropping of the atom bomb and the nuclear fallout of the Cold War helped to globalize the greens into an apocalyptic ‘peace’ movement with Guenther Schwab being one of its original spokesmen. The unprecedented destruction in Germany brought on by industrialized warfare never before seen in the history of the world only served to radicalize the German greens into an apocalyptic movement. Their hatred toward global capitalism became even more vitriolic precisely because the capitalists were now in charge of a dangerous nuclear arsenal that threatened the entire planet.”

- Mark Musser, “The Nazi Origins of Apocalyptic Global Warming Theory”, American Thinker, February 15, 2011.

Above: Dr Alexis Carrel, a medical Nobel Laureate and eugenicist, wrote the pro-Nazi “scientific” eugenics gas chamber-recommending bestseller Man the Unknown was the first book to popularize Hitler’s “final solution”. It was still going strong in 1948 when Penguin reprinted it, after simply removing text that praised Hitler (which can be found in the 1936 and 1939 editions). Page 291: “Those who have … misled the public in important matters [to the Nazis this meant the Jews, to decent people it means Carrel], should be humanely and economically disposed of in small euthanasic institutions supplied with proper gases.”

Carrel also uses his alleged “authority” to be conveyor of consensus as a “scientific expert” to “pass off” as fact the lie that all feminists are ignorant of basic biology on page 91 (this is analogous to an ignorant claim in the BBC Horizon: Science Under Attack propaganda that the only possible problem with GM food critics may be that “critics” don’t know that plants contain genes), the lie that telepathy pseudoscience is science on page 121, the lie that Mussolini built up a “great nation” on page 205 (Penguin/Pelican books in 1935 omitted out Carrel’s praise of Hitler’s Nazis from the 1936 German and 1939 American editions), the lie that democracy is wrong on page 249 (where he claims “The feeble-minded and the man of genius should not be equal before the law”, without realizing that he himself is feeble-minded for writing eugenics gas chamber evil), the lie on page 269 that cities are “inhuman”, the lie on page 273 that “Modern nations will save themselves by developing the strong, not by protecting the weak”, and the lie on page 274 that “Eugenics is indispensable for the perpetuation of the strong. A great race must propagate its best elements.”

The environment is always changing and the problems are always changing. So how on earth can anybody know today ahead of time, even in principle, what is going to be “best” for the rest of eternity? It’s complete rubbish, composed of ignorant assertions that contradict the facts of evolution that requires the diversity in order to allow natural selection. If you choose to propagate an “element” that seems to be doing well today, you may find it lacks some vital gene necessary for protection against a new disease that appears tomorrow! In 1970, an analogous narrow-genetic-base plant eugenics failure was demonstrated in the USA: 70-90% of corn hybrids carried the T gene for male sterility, and these were highly vulnerable to the corn leaf blight fungus. So eugenics lies continued:

“The process of indoctrination is made even easier by the fact that a small success rate is sufficient. During World War II, Dr H. V. Dicks made an extensive study of the psychological and political characteristics of German prisoners. Only 11 percent were Nazi ‘fanatics’, all others having some or many reservations about Nazi doctrine. This percentage did not change with the fortunes of war, nor did it change much after the war ended. In 1948, 15 percent of Germans expressed an admiration for Goebbels; and even by 1955, 10 or 11 percent of Germans under twenty-five still admired Hitler. … Ten percent, coupled with powerful leaders, can bring about world war. War, it seems, is an activity fomented by the few for the detriment of the many.”

- Robin Clarke, Science of War and Peace, Jonathan Cape, London, 1971, page 220.

“We cannot go on trying to separate the responsible from the irresponsible, punish the guilty … We are not capable of judging men. However, the community must be protected against troublesome and dangerous elements. How can this be done? Certainly not by building larger and more comfortable prisons, just as real health will not be promoted by larger and more scientific hospitals. Criminality and insanity can be prevented only by a better knowledge of man, by eugenics… Those who have … misled the public in important matters [Jews in Nazi propaganda], should be humanely and economically disposed of in small euthanasic institutions supplied with proper gases.”

- bestseller by Alexis Carrel, 1912 medical Nobel Prize winning eugenicist and Nazi eugenics praiser and appeaser, Man the Unknown, 1939 edition.

So it seems that the Nazis ideas like hot air and eugenics racism survived the destruction of WWII and were simply relabelled “eco-warriorism” and “political correctness”. The idea that evil fascist ideas died because Hitler was defeated is a big lie, according to Fredrick Forsyth in Daily Express 11 February 2011, page 13:

Looking round at the persecution, often at staggering public expense and on the basis of anonymous denunciation, of harmless Christians and others, I am struck by this. The rabbi’s four criteria of practising fascism are absolutely identical to the tenets of political correctness.

In the 1960s the BBC first banned the broadcast of eugenics holocaust facts from Fredrick Forsyth from the Nigerian Civil War, where British Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s supply of arms to Federal Nigeria was resulting in genocide of the Biafrans who had declared themselves an independent state. Nazis refuse the analogy of Hitler’s six-million holocaust to be applied to genocide against races that are allegedly not God’s “chosen people” and deemed “unclean”. Sounds like eugenics when Israeli gunships take “revenge” on kids. It is important that Anne Frank was murdered by neglect in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, dying not from a gas chamber but from typhus in March 1945: this murder by a lack of humanity is the threat from the new Hitler Youth Movement, which is using a new Goebbels propaganda liar to saturate the media, diverting money from humanity to anti-humanity activities that will kill not by gas chambers but by this kind of evil deliberate neglect, as was the case for Anne Frank, and tens of millions under the Stalin communist regime genocide, and many in other dictatorships after 1945:

“The common enemy of humanity is man. In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.” – Club of Rome, The First Global Revolution (1993). (That report is available here, a site that also contains a very similar but less fashionable pseudoscientific groupthink delusion on eugenics.)

The error in the Club of Rome’s groupthink approach is the lie that the common enemy is humanity. This lie is the dictatorial approach taken by paranoid fascists, both on the right wing and the left wing, such as Stalin and Hitler. (Remember that the birthplace of fascism was not Hitler’s Germany, but Rome in October 1914, when the left-wing, ex-communist Mussolini joined the new Revolutionary Fascio for International Action after World War I broke out.) The common enemy of humanity is not humanity but is fanaticism, defined here by the immoral code: “the ends justify the means”. It is this fanaticism that is used to defend exaggerations and lies for political ends. Exaggeration and lying about weapons effects in the hope it will be justified by ending war is also fanaticism. Weapons effects exaggerations both motivated aggression in 1914, and prevented early action against Nazi aggression in the mid-1930s.

Jesus was a Jew, but did not endorse “chosen race” eugenics, and Jesus was crucified for opposing Jewish orthodox bigotry and intolerance to other races, just for the fanatical accumulation of wealth. It is a fact that six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis, and this gas chamber fact is not grounds to refuse to acknowledge the even bigger genocide by Stalin and other nutters in what has been politely named “ethnic cleansing” by the BBC Hitler Youth, to make murder sound “clean”:

“In Fiscal Year 2010, NASA spent over 7.5% – over a billion dollars – of its budget on studying global warming/climate change. The bulk of the funds NASA received in the stimulus went toward climate change studies. Excessive growth of climate change research has not been limited to NASA. Overall, the government spent over $8.7 billion across 16 Agencies and Departments throughout the federal government on these efforts in FY 2010 alone.” – Reps Posey, Adams and Bishop Join Colleagues in Calling on House Leaders to Reprioritize NASA for Human Space Flight Missions, Drop Climate Change, U.S. House of Representatives, Tuesday, February 8, 2011.

“… wisdom itself cannot flourish, and even the truth not be established, without the give and take of debate and criticism. The facts, the relevant facts … are fundamental to an understanding of the issue of policy.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer, 1950

The best documented analogy to climate conspiracy for NASA’s life-costing groupthink is NASA’s “accidental” 1986 Challenger space shuttle explosion. It blew up because the booster rocket’s rubber seal rings are brittle and leak at icy temperatures (the shuttle boosterss were reusable, so were composed of a series of sections). (Physics professor Feynman proved this using a glass of iced water on TV, after a tip off from military expert General Donald Kutyna, not from NASA staff who knew but covered-up the problem, or from the “expert” Armstrong astronaut who was vice-chair on the Presidental Commission!)

An engineer from the Thiokol Company, a Mr. [Allan] McDonald, wanted to tell us something. He had come to our meeting on his own, uninvited. Mr. McDonald reported that the Thiokol engineers had come to the conclusion that low temperatures had something to do with the seals problem, and they were very, very worried about it. On the night before the launch, during the flight readiness review, they told NASA the shuttle shouldn’t fly if the temperature was below 53 degrees — the previous lowest temperature — and on that morning it was 29.

Mr. McDonald said NASA was “appalled” by that statement. The man in charge of the meeting, a Mr. [Lawrence] Mulloy [manager of the NASA booster rocket program], argued that the evidence was “incomplete” — some flights with erosion and blowby had occurred at higher than 53 degrees — so Thiokol should reconsider its opposition to flying.

Thiokol reversed itself, but McDonald refused to go along, saying, “If something goes wrong with this flight, I wouldn’t want to stand up in front of a board of inquiry and say that I went ahead and told them to go ahead and fly this thing outside what it was qualified to.”

That was so astonishing that Mr. Rogers had to ask, “Did I understand you correctly, that you said…,” and he repeated the story. And McDonald says, “Yes, sir.”

The whole commission was shocked, because this was the first time any of us had heard this story: not only was there a failure in the seals, but there may have been a failure in management, too.

- Professor Richard P. Feynman, “What Do You Care What Other People Think?”, Bantam Books, London, pp. 101-104

… it struck me that there were several fishinesses associated with the big cheeses at NASA.

Every time we talked to higher level managers, they kept saying they didn’t know anything about the problems below them. … this kind of situation was new to me: either the guys at the top didn’t know, in which case they should have known, or they did know, in which case they’re lying to us.

When we learned that Mr. Mulloy [Lawrence Mulloy, manager of the NASA booster rocket program] had put pressure on Thiokol to launch, we heard time after time that the next level up at NASA knew nothing about it. You’d think Mr. [Lawrence] Mulloy would have notified a higher-up during this big discussion, saying something like, “There’s a question as to whether we should fly tomorrow morning, and there’s been some objection by the Thiokol engineers, but we’ve decided to fly anyway — what do you think?” But instead, Mulloy said something like, “All the questions have been resolved.” There seemed to be some reason why guys at the lower level didn’t bring problems up to the next level.

- Richard P. Feynman, “What Do You Care What Other People Think?”, Bantam Books, London, pp. 158-159.

Lawrence Mulloy, manager of the NASA booster rocket program since 1982, was the culprit. Howard Berkes was the first to discover the way NASA groupthink and obfuscation of errors and uncertainities deliberately deceived everyone and caused the disaster:

“The next morning, two of the engineers told us, they fully expected Challenger to blow up at launch ignition. One of the engineers silently prayed during the countdown. At liftoff, with no explosion, he began to wonder whether he’d been wrong. The relief didn’t last. Seventy-three seconds into the flight, as the spacecraft began an expected roll, the forces on the solid rocket motors began to pull one of them apart. The cold and stiff o-rings at one joint didn’t flex and seal as designed. Searing hot gasses escaped. In an instant, the sky was filled with smoke and debris. The engineers were filled with grief. And as one later told Zwerdling, “…we all knew exactly what happened.”"

The important thing is that the NASA manager Lawrence Mulloy got away with blowing up the space shuttle, despite having been told that it was too cold to launch. This tragic situation of “conflicting interests” and poor judgement is very much analogous to the peer-pressure “groupthink” backed appeasement of aggressors by pacifists in the 1930s that Herman Kahn blamed for causing WWII, angering of the publisher and book reviewer of Scientific American.

Nobody wanted a criminal case against those idiots, and there are “revisionist” historians like David Irving who try to defend the neo-Nazi fellow travellers of the who ignored the risk of “peaceful” gas chambers in their endless bleating exaggerations of aerial bombing effectiveness for “peaceful” disarmament propaganda. Groupthink continues to this day because there is no accountability and responsibility. These people behave like Nazis because of the lack of any risk of ever being personally imprisoned. Even if Sir Paul Nurse or the BBC ever admit to getting it wrong, so what? If the defendant can’t pay, you lose your legal costs in suing even if you do prove criminal neglect (Sir Paul will say he “made an error” and “is sorry” like Mulloy, then walk away laughing with nothing lost, and lots of green eco-fascists in the Guardian writing what a great big guy he is to admit to being wrong, as if that repays defrauded taxpayers). Nobody will ever be able to claim back the immense sums of money being squandered on carbon credits by suing Sir Paul Nurse, the BBC, or anybody else behind the lies. But forget money, and concentrate on human lives. Who is going to resurrect the dead when Sir Paul Nurse or the Mein Fuhrer the BBC Director General’s pension funds have been pumped by on the bubble of green carbon credit trading capitalist liars? Why is going to do something about the lives lost due to this pseudoscientific fashionable groupthink horseshit, Hitler’s final solution?

Above: 1986 Challenger space shuttle explosion cover-up exposed by Feynman (not Armstrong, the vice-chairman of the Rogers-chaired Presidential Commission!) on TV. Feynman used a cheap cup of iced water but found that there was a crazy management groupthink quango of lying culture at NASA, because the experts knew that the rubber O-rings sealing the boosters lost ductility and became brittle at low temperatures, but they dared not say so for fear of angering TV crews and VIPs assembled to watch in the freezing January conditions. So they obfuscated their knowledge and blew the shuttle up, “accidentally” killing everyone on board, rather than have the GUTS to say it was dangerous to launch it. The great Armstrong failed to spot the simple cause of the disaster, despite being supposedly an expert on rockets because he knew how to walk on the Moon! Feynman had help from an expert on rockets, General Kutyna, who was the military expert that determined the cause of the Titan II missile silo explosion at Damascus, Arkansas in 1980. (In that case, a technician had dropped a wrench socket down the hole, which set off a chain of unpleasant events resulting in the detonation of the 100 tons of propellant and the missile’s massive 9 megaton W-53 thermonuclear warhead being blown straight out of the silo.)

Above: my YouTube video exposing the always-known lies of climate change propaganda against Telegraph journalist James Delingpole (who first exposed Dr Phil Jones’ “hide the decline” Nature peer-reviewed journal “climategate”) by the unelected BBC quango, which just like the unelected British Government Civil Service, is really in control of the country, keeping the politicians in the dark or more often than not actually in receipt of lies masquerading as facts. These quangos have always made Britain a danger to the world. Either they go, or Britain is finished. The Prime Minister David Cameron is a bigot (albeit not as dangerous to the economy as the previous prime minister, Brown) who refuses to listen to criticisms of climate propaganda or anything else. He must be made to listen or removed one way or another. The problem is that decent people in Britain are not very good at the lying needed to climb the greasy poles of political expediency, so the whole of British politics is almost as corrupt as its lying “science” propaganda (and that is, believe me, a very big insult to the politicians). This is not a joke, it is hard fact.

Yesterday the BBC sent me a deceptive fact-dodging “response” to my complaint about Horizon: Science Under Attack. I’ve published their response as a PDF here: http://nige.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/bbc-horizon-science-under-attack-complaint-response.pdf

Dear Mr Cook

Reference CAS-561749

Thanks for your correspondence regarding ‘Horizon: Science Under Attack’ , broadcast on BBC Two on 24 January.

I understand that you feel this edition of the programme was biased in favour of the theory of man-made climate change.

Your concerns were raised with the producer of the programme – Emma Jay who replies as follows:

“I’m sorry you felt the film was biased. … In the course of the programme Paul Nurse argued that scientists need to focus on the science and keep politics and ideologies out of the way; that scientists need to be more open in the way they do their science, and be more willing to communicate the uncertainties that are sometimes inherent in their work.

“A substantial part of the film did use the example of climate science to look at this dynamic between science and society, and at the question of public trust. But I don’t accept that the film was biased in its representation of the state of the scientific debate about anthropogenic global warming. The overwhelming majority of scientists and scientific institutions accept the link; in scientific terms it is not controversial and the programme’s approach reflected that.

“I fully acknowledge that, even now, not everyone accepts this view and that there is still a continuing political debate. That is why the programme included Professor Fred Singer’s views on the primacy of solar activity and James Delingpole’s views on ‘Climategate’, the perils of scientific consensus, and how peer review in science was being challenged by peer-to-peer review. These were significant parts of the film.”

… Kind Regards

Mark Roberts
BBC Complaints

Emma made no comment about the lie I specifically raised in my complaint, namely the fact that the ONE reliable indicator or the rate of climate change (aside from cloud cover affected tree ring temperature “proxies” and weather stations downwind of direct heat sources like growing cities) is sea level rise rates, 120 metres over past 18,000 years = 0.67 cm/year mean compared to much smaller rates of rise at all times over the past century. Emma doesn’t answer my scientific complaint. It’s absolutely sickening propaganda, just like Dr Goebbels claiming that the inclusion of edited film of Jews in his racist propaganda films made the Nazis unbiased. If any decent politician ever censors this lying left-wing quango (Cameron won’t), people like her will be to blame.

See Darrel Huff, “How to Lie with Statistics”, 1954. You plot graphs and find that the number of telegraph poles is rising and the infectious disease rate is rising, and hence you have “proof” that telegraph poles are causing disease. There is no evidence whatsoever that CO2 causes temperature rises. Correlation does not imply causation. There are lies, damned, lies and statistics.

1. H2O due to water evaporation is a far bigger greenhouse gas than CO2, and the annual emission of CO2 from “unnatural” sources is only

2. Cloud cover presently covers 62% of the surface area of the globe and the fraction increases as a function of injected CO2, caused by evaporation of water from the oceans and lakes that cover 70% of the area of the globe. This additional “global dimming” causes a negative feedback cancelling out the temperature rise from CO2, as the oceans warm up (there is a slight time lag due to the high specific heat capacity of water and the wintertime mixing of warm thermocline waters with deeper water dueing storms).

3. Cloud cover has an average altitude of 2 km, so the lower altitude air and surface below the cloud is unable to benefit from CO2 which only absorbs infrared (the infrared energy is absorbed or reflected near the top of the clouds, where the heated air rises, and is unable to transfer warmth to lower altitudes efficiency due to the buoyancy of warm air).

4. “… there is … a very grave danger for science in so close an association with the State … it may lead to dogmatism in science and to the suppression of opinions which run counter to official theories.”

- J. B. S. Haldane (1892–1964), The Causes of Evolution, Longmans, London, 1932, p. 225.

5. Beware of NASA’s $1,000,000,000 annual budget to fight Delingpole with big lies:

To make a name for learning
When other ways are barred
Take something very easy
And make it very hard

“[Hitler's] primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.” – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Lie

6. Dr Ferenc Miskolczi points out that NOAA data on atmospheric H2O over 61 years from 1948-2008 show a fall in humidity. It seems that this implies an increase in cloud cover so that H2O varies in such a way as to cancel out the effect of CO2 on temperature.

Notice that Rob van Dorland and Piers M. Forster wrote a paper “Rebuttal of Miskolczi’s alternative greenhouse theory” (hosted at realclimate.org) which falsely states on page 4:

“… there is ample observational evidence that the most important greenhouse gases, water vapour and carbon dioxide have increased in the last four decades, meaning that the total infrared optical depth is indeed increasing. Finally, direct satellite observations of the outgoing infrared spectrum show that the greenhouse effect has been enhanced over this period.”

This contradicts the NOAA data Dr Miskolczi gives. I don’t have any interest in Miskolczi’s idealized calculations which are irrelevant to the real world (regardless of whether they are correct or not), just in the actual data from observations and the mechanism he proposed. All of Miskolczi’s critics ignore the data and the cloud cover mechanism and focus on showing that his model is imperfect or beyond their understanding (by which they try to imply he is wrong, rather than they haven’t made the effort to understand the details!), which is obvious since it is just an idealized model.

As Dr Miklos Zagoni shows in his paper (CO2 cannot cause any more “global warming”: Dr Ferenc Miskolczi’s saturated greenhouse effect theory, SPPI Original paper, December 18, 2009), when you ignore Dr Miskolczi’s idealized calculations, and simply look at the data he unearthed from NOAA, you see the evidence for the cloud cover feedback mechanism.

The variations of CO2 during Earth’s geological record were all caused by rapid temperature changes by means other than CO2 variations, such as cycles in the Earth’s orbit or geological processes that created large mountain ranges. These variations produce the climate change, which in turn caused an imbalance between CO2 absorbers and emitters. Rainforests (CO2 sinks) can be killed off by temperature fall rates which can be compensated for by the migration of CO2 emitting animals. A drop in global temperature caused an increase in the atmospheric CO2 level indirectly, due to the fact that rainforests cannot migrate as quickly as animals, and are therefore more likely to be killed. An increase in global temperatures had the opposite effect, allowing dense rainforests to proliferate faster than the rate of increase of CO2 emitting animals. Therefore, the fossil record correlation between CO2 and temperature has nothing to do with a direct mechanism for CO2 to affect temperature.

“Since the Earth’s atmosphere is not lacking in greenhouse gases, if the system could have increased its surface temperature it would have done so long before our emissions. It need not have waited for us to add CO2: another greenhouse gas, H2O, was already to hand in practically unlimited reservoirs in the oceans. … The Earth’s atmosphere maintains a constant effective greenhouse-gas content [although the percentage contributions to it from different greenhouse gases can vary greatly] and a constant, maximized, “saturated” greenhouse effect that cannot be increased further by CO2 emissions (or by any other emissions, for that matter). … During the 61-year period, in correspondence with the rise in CO2 concentration, the global average absolute humidity diminished about 1 per cent. This decrease in absolute humidity has exactly countered all of the warming effect that our CO2 emissions have had since 1948. … a hypothetical doubling of the carbon dioxide concentration in the air would cause a 3% decrease in the absolute humidity, keeping the total effective atmospheric greenhouse gas content constant, so that the greenhouse effect would merely continue to fluctuate around its equilibrium value. Therefore, a doubling of CO2 concentration would cause no net “global warming” at all.”

- Dr Miklos Zagoni, CO2 cannot cause any more “global warming”: Dr Ferenc Miskolczi’s saturated greenhouse effect theory, SPPI Original paper, December 18, 2009, page 4.

1. I’m quoting qualified climate scientists Dr Miklos Zagoni, Dr Miklos Zagoni. I’m a qualified technical author (not a PhD yet, but the PhD is just a badge of groupthink consensus outside the specialism concerned anyway), who has read the “peer”-reviewed crap.

2. Hitler’s “big lie” propaganda trick is ESSENTIAL to understanding climate groupthink.

3. Lawyer Godwin’s law in his own words: “When you get these glib comparisons you lose perspective on what made the Nazis and the Holocaust particularly terrible.”
(Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10618638 .)

I think that says it all, however it appears Godwin takes his bible too seriously and believes in the myth that the Jews alone are God-win’s “chosen people”, and the “ethnic cleansing” of many peoples since 1945 doesn’t count as a holocaust worthy of comparison to the six millions gassed by Hitler’s brainwashing “science” of genetics.

See how genetics and weapons effects were perverted for appeasement of the Nazis; it all started out with the big lie from 1912 Nobel Laureate Alexis Carrel best-selling eugenics book:

“Those who have … misled the public in important matters, should be humanely and economically disposed of in small euthanasic institutions supplied with proper gasses.”

- L’Homme, cet Inconnu (Man the unknown)

Adding in the 1936 German edition preface:

“… German government has taken energetic measures against the propagation of the defective, the mentally diseased, and the criminal.”

To the 1936 German government, the “defective” included Jews. Now maybe you get the drift? If Carrel could succeed in misleading the world into not grasping the danger of Nazi eugenics in 1936, allowing Britain to appease Hitler instead of stopping him, does that not tell you the danger from “Godwin’s law” today? Sea levels have risen 120 metres over the past 18,000 years at faster rates than they’re rising today. We’re still here. Trying to stop the sea level rising was tried without success by King Canute. It cost him a fortune and he’d have been better off spending the money helping people, not putting carbon credit trading billions into politicians pockets, BBC pension funds, and politically correct windfarms.

The real problem is that the media is being manipulated by an age old conspiracy of fascist officialdom in science which gets beaten back at every scientific revolution (Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Einstein), then creeps back to shore up status quo against simple facts.

“Even if WMO agrees, I will still not pass on the data. We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it.”

- Dr Phil Jones to Warwick Hughes.

There is nothing complex to understand, Disgruntled. It’s very simple. You heat water and it evaporates, right? Steam rises? Steam condenses when it reaches cool air high up? Clouds form? This simply adds to the “global dimming” effect which works against CO2 induced temperature rises. The global dimming effect caused the failure of tree ring data to proxy temperatures after 1960, contrary to Nurse’s claim.

There is evidence therefore from several different sources, not just global humidity measurements since 1948, indicating that cloud cover has been increasing, offsetting temperature effects from CO2. It keeps low altitude air cool, and warm air layers high in the atmosphere are unable to warm the ground because their positive buoyancy.

I’ve put a PDF of medical Nobel Laureate Alexis Carrel’s 1935 eugenics bestseller, Man, the Unknown online on my domain

http://quantumfieldtheory.org/ALEXIS%20CARREL%20Man%20the%20Unknown%201935.pdf

http://nige.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/alexis-carrel-man-the-unknown-1935.pdf

Page 165 of the PDF:

“There remains the unsolved problem of the immense number of defectives … an enormous burden … Why do we preserve these useless and harmful beings? … Why should society not dispose of the criminals and the insane in a more economical manner? We cannot go on trying to separate the responsible from the irresponsible, punish the guilty … We are not capable of judging men. However, the community must be protected against troublesome and dangerous elements. How can this be done? Certainly not by building larger and more comfortable prisons, just as real health will not be promoted by larger and more scientific hospitals. Criminality and insanity can be prevented only by a better knowledge of man, by eugenics… Those who have … misled the public in important matters [Jews in Nazi propaganda], should be humanely and economically disposed of in small euthanasic institutions supplied with proper gases.” – bestseller by Alexis Carrel, 1912 medical Nobel Prize winning eugenicist and Nazi eugenics praiser and appeaser, Man the Unknown, 1935 and 1939 (died awaiting trial for collaboration).
My argument is that if such fashionable gas chamber bullshit in best selling books by pseudoscientific “leaders” had not been so adored and loved due to Nobel’s warmongering prize (financed by deliberately supplying explosives to both sides in the Crimean War, an act of abject evil that makes Hitler’s gas chamber massacres look heavenly), maybe Nazi appeasement could have been stopped by Churchill. As it was, peer-review groupthink prevailed. Godwin should study what happened to cause the holocaust, which was the racism due to eugenics pseudoscience in the 1930s. There was a form of Godwin’s law then, where anyone criticising fascist evil was simply censored out of the British evil as being unpleasant. It didn’t help Churchill to stop Hitler.

All evil springs from perverted “science”, pseudoscience, enforced by petty dictatorial officaldom, wasting money. The abuse of anonymous “peer”-review power politics to censor rival theories is manifest in particle physics, where money from our pockets to fund CERN’s LHC fascist search for imaginary particles in a fascist attempt to prove mainstream hocus pocus theories that Feynman long ago exposed as speculative claptrap. These fascists are always portrayed as great Nobel Laureates in the right wing media, when their success comes not from originality or hard work, but from the corruption of “peer”-review.

The BBC has just made a big issue about a fiddled Nature journal (remember “Mike’s Nature trick” climategate email? Dr Phil Campbell, editor at Nature, and his Physical Sciences Editor Dr Karl Zemelis in 1996 used Edward Witten’s pseudoscientific M-theory string theory obfuscation to censor my paper on quantum gravity, correctly predicting an cosmological acceleration from a quantum gravity mechanism of a ~ Hc in 1996, two years before it was measured and confirmed) CO2 computer model flood risk assessment:

“Using publicly volunteered distributed computing [11,12], we generate several thousand seasonal-forecast-resolution climate model simulations of autumn 2000 weather, both under realistic conditions, and under conditions as they might have been had these greenhouse gas emissions and the resulting large-scale warming never occurred. … The precise magnitude of the anthropogenic contribution remains uncertain, but in nine out of ten cases our model results indicate that twentieth-century anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions increased the risk of floods occurring in England and Wales in autumn 2000 by more than 20%, and in two out of three cases by more than 90%.”

- Pardeep Pall, et al., Anthropogenic greenhouse gas contribution to flood risk in England and Wales in autumn 2000, Nature, v470, pp382–385, issue date 17 February 2011, http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v470/n7334/full/nature09762.html

There are two immediate obfuscation problems in this paper. First, the computer models used assume positive feedback from water vapour (not the negative feedback due to buoyant moist air forming extra cloud and thus “global dimming” that cancels out the CO2 effect over timescales of decades), so they are just assuming that CO2 is causing the massaged data on temperature rises from tree rings, weather stations in or downwind of direct heat pollution (e.g. growing cities, factories, etc.), and satellite data (62% of the surface is covered by cloud, so the satellite data is biased towards seeing ground blackbody temperatures for clear sky areas, etc.). Second, they are giving increased percentage risks as 20% and 90%, and the BBC is interpretating this (as evidently intended by the dishonest presentation of the abstract in terms of percentages) as a causal proof that the floods of 2000 were 20% or 90% likely to be due to global warming.

Nothing could be further from the facts. Those are just the percentage increases on very small percentages. If the risk is 1% then a 90% increase means 1.9% not 90%. But the spin the BBC gives is misleading because of their green pension fund managers. They have a vested interest in reporting deceitful spin, and adding to the spin even more. The biggest British floods, costing the worst casualty toll, were actually in 1953, when my father (in the Civil Defence Corps in Essex) helped out. The whole of the Essex coast was affected to some degree, 1,600 km of coast was flooded in Britain with over 300 people were killed in Britain. The BBC seem to have forgotten this event, which was FAR worse than the 2000 floods! If they want climate change flood probabilities, here’s one that they can’t go wrong with: over the past 18,000 years sea level rose 120 metres, causing massive floods. The probability that it was due to climate change was 100%.

Holocaust deniers have jumped in to defend Al Gore’s association with Holocaust denial via spending diverting money from life-supporting schemes to holocaust supporting ones, based on the principle of murder by starvation enforced by NASA eugenics HQ as proved in my video in the previous blog post (where the NASA spokesman lies on camera about CO2 emissions!). NASA, please remember, hired the Nazi Dr Werner Von Braun (previously employed by Hitler to kill british kids using supersonic V2 rockets) to design the Saturn V for God’s greatest human being Niel Armstrong (yep, the great genius who – as reported in the last post – couldn’t find the rubber O-ring failure mechanism because he didn’t look for it during the Challenger inquiry in 1986) to pollute the moon, detracting vital money and American public sympathy from the Vietnam War against the evil, massacring commies. I explained the following graphs on Delingpole’s blog, linked here: “Climate scepticism: not just the new paedophilia, but the new racism and homophobia too!” NASA is a really great organization, not.

Fig. 1: the earth’s surface is 70% water and currently about 62% is covered with clouds at a mean altitude of 2 km. There is some evidence that pushing extra CO2 into the atmosphere slightly increases cloud cover rather than global climatic mean temperature. We’re been in global warming for 18,000 years, during which time the sea level has risen 120 metres (0.67 cm/year mean, often faster than this mean rate). Over the past century, sea level has risen at an average rate of 0.20 cm year, and even the maximum rate of nearly 0.4 cm/year recently is less than the rates humanity has adapted to and flourished with in the past. CO2 annual output limits and wind farms etc are no use in determining the ultimate amount of CO2 in the atmosphere anyway: if you supplement fossil fuels with wind farms, the same CO2 simply takes longer to be emitted, maybe 120 years instead of 100 years.

Dr Ferenc Miskolczi resigned from a NASA contractor due to their censorship of observational evidence of global humidity levels between 1948 and 2008, showing that global mean humidity has not increased and consequently the positive-feedback effect of CO2 emissions on H2O is not substantiated. Moist warm air rises, expands, and condenses into increased cloud cover. This is the “anti-greenhouse effect”. Put simply, the Earth has large oceans and a large mass, which effectively prevents water vapour escaping into outer space, unlike small planets with runaway CO2 greenhouse effects due to loss of water.

The variations of CO2 during Earth’s geological record were all caused by rapid temperature changes by means other than CO2 variations, such as cycles in the Earth’s orbit or geological processes that created large mountain ranges. These variations produce the climate change, which in turn caused an imbalance between CO2 absorbers and emitters. Rainforests (CO2 sinks) can be killed off by temperature fall rates which can be compensated for by the migration of CO2 emitting animals. A drop in global temperature caused an increase in the atmospheric CO2 level indirectly, due to the fact that rainforests cannot migrate as quickly as animals, and are therefore more likely to be killed. An increase in global temperatures had the opposite effect, allowing dense rainforests to proliferate faster than the rate of increase of CO2 emitting animals. Therefore, the fossil record correlation between CO2 and temperature has nothing to do with a direct mechanism for CO2 to affect temperature.

Venus, which is closest to the sun than earth is, allegedly has a runaway greenhouse effect due to an atmosphere which is 96.5% CO2 and a surface temperature of 462 °C, but the CO2 percentage alone is not causing it alone, it’s the fact that the atmospheric pressure at the surface of Venus is 93 earth atmospheres which is to blame. Neglecting for the moment effects due to orbital radii, Mars is similar to Venus in having a large fraction of its atmosphere composed of CO2 (96%) but has a low total surface air pressure, only about 0.64% of earth’s, and a mean surface temperature is a chilly −46 °C. The “runaway greenhouse effect” that keeps Venus roasting hot is not possible on earth, where the large oceans regulate the climate (Figure 2 below). Venus only has a runaway greenhouse effect because the total atmospheric pressure is so high, 93 times earth’s sea-level atmospheric pressure, and it is nearer the sun than earth!

Fig. 2: “Since the Earth’s atmosphere is not lacking in greenhouse gases, if the system could have increased its surface temperature it would have done so long before our emissions. It need not have waited for us to add CO2: another greenhouse gas, H2O, was already to hand in practically unlimited reservoirs in the oceans. … The Earth’s atmosphere maintains a constant effective greenhouse-gas content [although the percentage contributions to it from different greenhouse gases can vary greatly] and a constant, maximized, “saturated” greenhouse effect that cannot be increased further by CO2 emissions (or by any other emissions, for that matter). … During the 61-year period, in correspondence with the rise in CO2 concentration, the global average absolute humidity diminished about 1 per cent. This decrease in absolute humidity has exactly countered all of the warming effect that our CO2 emissions have had since 1948. … a hypothetical doubling of the carbon dioxide concentration in the air would cause a 3% decrease in the absolute humidity, keeping the total effective atmospheric greenhouse gas content constant, so that the greenhouse effect would merely continue to fluctuate around its equilibrium value. Therefore, a doubling of CO2 concentration would cause no net “global warming” at all.”

- Dr Miklos Zagoni, CO2 cannot cause any more “global warming”: Dr Ferenc Miskolczi’s saturated greenhouse effect theory, SPPI Original paper, December 18, 2009, page 4.

Now the 1930s was not the gas chamber era in Nazi history, it was the time when the Nazis could still have been stopped by threat of force, if only eugenics pseudoscience was not supported by Nobel Laureates like surgeon Alexis Carrel, who won the 1912 medical Nobel prize then collaborated with the Nazi propagandarists of eugenics by suggesting the use of gas chambers to create a super-race (claiming this is scientifically confirmed by Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” when of course you need diversity, which eugenics eliminates). Carrel is still today celebrated by fascists and the evil for his contributions to genocide and of course his end-to-end technique for arterial anastamoses, yet died awaiting trial for collaboration, but his 1930s collaboration is a fact published in his support for the Nazis eugenics programme in the 1930s:

In 1935, Carrel published a book titled L’Homme, cet inconnu (Man, The Unknown), which became a best-seller. The book discussed “the nature of society in light of discoveries in biology, physics, and medicine”.[2] It contained his own social prescriptions, advocating, in part, that mankind could better itself by following the guidance of an elite group of intellectuals, and by implementing a regime of enforced eugenics. Carrel claimed the existence of a “hereditary biological aristocracy” and argued that “deviant” human types should be suppressed using techniques similar to those later employed by the Nazis.

(t)he conditioning of petty criminals with the whip, or some more scientific procedure, followed by a short stay in hospital, would probably suffice to insure order. Those who have murdered, robbed while armed with automatic pistol or machine gun, kidnapped children, despoiled the poor of their savings, misled the public in important matters, should be humanely and economically disposed of in small euthanasic institutions supplied with proper gasses. A similar treatment could be advantageously applied to the insane, guilty of criminal acts.[17]

The danger of Al Gore’s global warming denial movement is that the diversion of funds from impoverished nations to green carbon credit trader’s wallets and quack green person fund holders will divert funds from life-saving third world projects which in times of global economic recession will have to be sacrificed.

Like Carrel, Al Gore certainly does not want a holocaust for eugenics, but like Carrel, his policies and propaganda lies are stamping on scientific facts and are a danger to civilization by the very fascist tactics employed to censor out genuine science criticism.

To read my book-length blog post on the exact mechanism by which science lying in Britain about fascism led to false claims that eugenics is science, exaggerated claims about weapons effects and the “impossibility” of civil defence against Nazi bombing, and hence to many leading “experts” convincing Prime Minister Chamberlain to appease fascists, please click here. People need to oppose lying cover-ups and deceptions from NASA and the British Royal Society President!

The IPCC ignores the increasing future depletion of fossil fuels, and predicts that spending $100 billion will constrain temperature rises by 1.5 C. In any case, the suggested “countermeasure” of throwing billions upon billions of dollars at building alternative technology such as wind power stations (which shut down in strong winds to prevent damage, and also generate no power in hot calm periods where there is a major power demand for air conditioning), will just supplement fossil fuel use and therefore will not reduce the eventual CO2 release from the use of fossil fuels, but will merely protract the rate of its release, so the politics of global warming suffer from inherent problems:

(1) CO2 is not a pollutant but is the vital source of carbon for all plant growth on land and in the sea on this planet, and rising levels of CO2 therefore promote life rather than destroying it – it is an essential gas for the life on Earth. It doesn’t lead to rapid temperature rises on any planet with large quantities of water, since any initial slight temperature rise causes more water to evaporate forming clouds, thus increasing cloud cover and protecting the planet against further temperature rises from the increasing level of atmospheric CO2. As Dr Lubos Motl points out, CO2 only becomes unpleasant for humans at concentrations of around 10,000 ppm while the current one is 388 ppm and with the depletion of fossil fuel reserves it cannot ever exceed 1,000 ppm. CO2 has a net positive impact on life on Earth.

(2) fossil fuels are not inexhaustible and are being depleted anyway, and as oil and coal supplies dwindle the remaining reserves are more expensive to tap and so the price rises, and people are pushed naturally away from using such fuels towards safe nuclear energy (which doesn’t produce collateral CO2 emissions if nuclear power is used to generate electricity to power the trains that deliver the fuel, etc.) and renewable biofuels (plants which lock up the same amount of CO2 while growing that they release on subsequent burning, so there is no net increase in global CO2), so global warming is not a long term doomsday problem anyway unless fossil fuels can be shown to be inexhaustible,

(3) the immense expenditure on trying to reduce CO2 emissions from existing sources and building wind power stations doesn’t cause a significant reduction in global carbon dioxide. For example, if the total fossil fuel reserve (oil, coal, etc.) is X tons, then supplementing it with wind power will simply mean that the carbon in the X tons of fuel is given out over a longer period of time, say 120 years instead of 100 years. Once all of the fossil fuels have been used up, all of the CO2 will be released and the “countermeasures” which consist of reducing the rate at which the CO2 is released will not affect the ultimate level of CO2 in the atmosphere. So it is a confidence trick to waste taxpayers money under false pretenses.

(4) It’s also pretty obvious that before the coal and oil deposits were formed, the atmosphere had a higher CO2 because the carbon in fossil fuels came from the atmosphere in the first place. True, the coal and oil was formed over many millions of years, but nevertheless at the beginning the carbon which is not (now) locked in fossil fuels was essentially all present in the atmosphere. The oxygen levels over the Phanerozoic have been analyzed in detail by Berner and Canfield’s model.

Large amounts of atmospheric CO2 was what fuelled the plant growth which produced much of the fossil fuels around 300 million years ago when the terrific conversion of carbon dioxide into wood released enough oxygen by photosynthesis to make the earth’s atmosphere 35% oxygen (compared to 21% today), fuelling the early inefficient lungs of the first amphibians when they moves on to the land, and also fuelling giant now extinct flying insects which utilized the high oxygen levels. It’s interesting that such high oxygen levels are associated with high ignition probabilities under today’s conditions. E.g., for typical forest fine kindling (dry leaves, etc) today, there is a 70% increase in the probability of a fire being started by lightning for every 1% rise in the oxygen percentage. However, this fire risk would automatically be compensated for over long time periods by a structuring of the forests by evolution to reduce intense fire risks: regular fires reduce ignition probabilities by clearing away kindling like deadwood and underbrush, trees would be spaced on average further apart than they are now, and so fires would spread less easily and burn less fiercely than you would expect by simply scaling up the oxygen percentage and assuming that primeval forests were similar to those today.

Between 300 and 250 million years ago, the oxygen content of the atmosphere fell from 35% to 21% and then dropped to around 15% about 200 million years ago, before rising to 27% 30 million years ago and falling to 21% now (the current level seems to be on a downward slope).

(5) human beings are not unnatural and have always been changing the world. The world can adapt to changes, as it has done many times before in the history of this planet, which has included long periods with much higher temperatures than are forecast for global warming even under the most pessimistic conditions. There was a period when do-gooders tried to stop forest fires: they extinguished all the fires, and gradually the amount of dead wood and underbrush increased until the forest had become a massive bonfire waiting to be ignited. Eventually a fire started which couldn’t be extinguished, and the forest was destroyed completely, not just to the superficial (surface charring of bark) extent that fires usually caused. Then they realized that the policy of trying to stop fires in the forest had been an error. Interfering with global warming may seem just as “obvious” as trying to stop fires in a forest. But are we sure that such interference is the right thing to do? Could the money be better spent on defenses against sea level rises and extreme weather? Global temperature naturally varies and so it is not clear exactly what value you are even trying to change the global mean temperature to. Never mind, ignorant politicians don’t care about these “technical details”, just about being seen to address a problem by flushing trillions of taxpayers money down the drain so more people will vote for them.

“Ever since writing my TV shows in the Eighties I have been talking to students, teachers and the general public and enthusing about the amazing possibilities for science and technology in the future. But over 30 years I have seen a terrible change in science education. Role models such as Dalton, Faraday and Curie are hardly ever mentioned … Kids are introduced to science as something that is life-threatening and deprived of exploration … They are being brainwashed into believing that science and technology is crippling the Earth and our future when exactly the opposite is true. Science education has been turned upside down by worry merchants and it is already costing us dearly in a widespread lack of understanding – it is ignorance that breeds fear … If we scrapped completely the foolhardy and scientifically unsound chase to reduce carbon, while still aiming for greater efficiency in energy usage, we would have all the money needed to bring the Third World out of poverty, save millions of lives year on year, and create a fairer and far more balanced world …”

- Johnny Ball, “It’s Not the End of the World”, Daily Express, 21 December 2009, p. 13.

The lies of Al Gore’s Oscar winning film, An Inconvenient Truth

1. Gore, who lost the 2000 Presidential election to Bush, claims in An Inconvenient Truth that the injury to his child by a car converted him into an genuine environmentalist. But after winning his Oscar for An Inconvenient Truth the media revealed that Gore’s household consumed 221,000 kilowatt hours of energy in 2006, which is over 20 times the American average. So Gore was proved to be a traditional “Do as I say, not as I do” lying politician, not an honest environmentalist.

2. Gore falsely claims that the only solution to global carbon dioxide increases is to reduce emissions, which is a lie, for it neglects the fact that proper sea wall defenses in Holland today permit much of the country to operate safely while being 15 feet below sea level! Gore also ignores other countermeasures such as growing crops further north as the earth warms, and instead just lies that the only solution is to reduce emissions.

3. Gore with political expediency avoids the nuclear solution to global warming explained right back in 1958 by Edward Teller and Albert L. Latter in their book Our Nuclear Future: Facts, Dangers, and Opportunities (Criterion Books, New York, 1958), page 167:

‘If we continue to consume [fossil] fuel at an increasing rate, however, it appears probable that the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere will become high enough to raise the average temperature of the earth by a few degrees. If this were to happen, the ice caps would melt and the general level of the oceans would rise. Coastal cities like New York and Seattle might be innundated. Thus the industrial revolution using ordinary chemical fuel could be forced to end … However, it might still be possible to use nuclear fuel.’

4. Gore lies that sea levels could rise by 20 feet due to global warming causing the Antarctic ice sheet to melt. The report of the International Panel on Climate Change (which probably overestimated the effect greatly) predicted a rise of just over 1 foot by 2100.

5. Gore claims of temperature rise: “in recent years, it is uninterrupted and it is intensifying.” Actually, the “effective temperature” for tree growth (which includes cloud cover effects on sunlight) as measured by tree rings has been declining and this has been deliberately covered-up by the fraudulent “scientists” assembling the International Panel on Climate Change data, who have had to resort to data manipulation tricks to “hide the decline”.

6. Gore lies by including Hurricane Katrina and its devastation of New Orleans in 2005 as a global warming debate phenomenon: the effects of the hurricane were a random result of happening to strike a highly populated coast with poor defenses and actually imply that better sea defenses are needed for such cities, because cutting CO2 emissions can’t stop hurricanes any more than Gore’s lying hot air!

7. Gore lies that the disappearing glaciers and snow on places like Mount Kilimanjaro are due to global warming, when in fact deforestation around those areas is the reason for the reduced precipitation (snowfall), just as deforestation in warmer areas reduces local rainfall! (This is well established: “deforestation of Amazonia was found to severely reduce rainfall in the Gulf of Mexico, Texas, and northern Mexico during the spring and summer seasons when water is crucial for agricultural productivity. Deforestation of Central Africa has a similar effect, causing a significant precipitation decrease in the lower U.S Midwest during the spring and summer and in the upper U.S. Midwest in winter and spring.”)

8. The film’s images of the abandoned ships on the dried-up bed of the Aral Sea are a massive irrelevancy for global warming because it is very well-known that the Soviet Union actually caused the Aral Sea to dry up by diverting the rivers which fed that sea! The Aral Sea did not dry up due to global warming!

9. Gore claims global warming threats are all real because a peer-reviewed review paper of 928 peer-reviewed articles found that none disagreed with global warming. Professor Feynman warned that such peer-reviewed pseudoscience claims about authority and consensus are actually political rubbish of no consequence to the natural world around us and are hence anti-science in their very nature:

“You must here distinguish – especially in teaching – the science from the forms or procedures that are sometimes used in developing science. … great religions are dissipated by following form without remembering the direct content of the teaching of the great leaders. In the same way, it is possible to follow form and call it science, but that is pseudo-science. In this way, we all suffer from the kind of tyranny we have today in the many institutions that have come under the influence of pseudoscientific advisers. … We have many studies in teaching, for example, in which people make observations, make lists, do statistics, and so on … They are merely an imitative form of science … The result of this pseudoscientific imitation is to produce experts, which many of you are. …. As a matter of fact, I can also define science another way: Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.”

- Richard P. Feynman, “What is Science?”, presented at the fifteenth annual meeting of the National Science Teachers Association, 1966 in New York City, published in The Physics Teacher Vol. 7, issue 6, 1968, pp. 313-320.

Science is the belief in the ignorance of expert opinion, of political consensus. Science is the rejection of everything except factual evidence. The object of science is not to achieve harmony or consensus but, on the contrary, to find the facts no matter whether the facts agree with expert opinions and expert prejudices, or not!

In case anyone doesn’t grasp this point by Feynman that statistics alone don’t prove causes, remember the example from How to Lie With Statistics of the Dutch researcher who proved a definite correlation between the number of babies in families and the number of storks nests on the roofs of their homes! This didn’t prove that storks were the cause, and delivered babies like traditional mythology! There was a simple alternative reason: the bigger families tended to buy larger, older houses which naturally tended to have more storks nests on their roofs because they were both bigger and older!

Statistics don’t prove causes. Science isn’t about finding correlations and then lying that the correlation itself proves the cause of the correlation to be this or that! Science is about searching for facts, not making lying claims founded on prejudice. “Coincidence” is a word often said with a sneer, but sometimes it is the factual explanation for a correlation! A statistically proved correlation between curve A and curve B is not statistical proof that A causes B or proof that B causes A, or even that there is any connection at all: it merely proves that the curves are similar, a fact that may be down to pure coincidence, like it or not! A good example of this problem (with the scientific “elbow grease” type solution required) was given during the June 1957 U.S. Congressional Hearings on page 1001 of the Nature of Radioactive Fallout and Its Effects on Man in testimony by Dr H. L. Friedell, Director of the Atomic Energy Medical Research Project in the School of Medicine at Western Reserve University:

“It is difficult trying to make this decision from the statistics alone.

“An example of how this might occur is something that was presented by George Bernard Shaw … Statistics were presented to him to show that as immunization increased, various communicable diseases decreased in England. He hired somebody to count up the telegraph poles erected in various years … and it turned out that telegraph poles were being increased in number. He said, ‘Therefore, this is clear evidence that the way to eliminate communicable diseases is to build a lot more telegraph poles’.

“All I would like to say here is that the important point is that if you really want to understand it, you have to look at the mechanism of the occurrence. I think this is where the emphasis should lie.”

Above: Al Gore’s falsehood about geothermal energy, claiming that the centre of the Earth is at a temperature of “several million degrees” when in fact it is well established from mining data that the Earth’s temperature rises by roughly 1 oC per km of depth and is only around 5,400 oC at the core (the core is hot essentially due partly to tidal effects from the gravity of the Moon as it orbits, and partly to the radioactive decay energy from dense, high mass number elements such as uranium and thorium). But all such scientific facts are apparently irrelevant to the political propaganda lies of Al Gore. Dr Lubos Motl comments:

“It’s very clear that he can’t possibly have the slightest clue about physics, geology, and energy flows on the Earth. It’s sad that many politicians lack the basic science education. …

“Don’t get me wrong, I am no foe of geothermal energy. But it currently produces about 0.3% of the global energy demand. Only near the tectonic plate boundaries, the installation is relatively doable today. That’s why geothermal power plants may thrive in Iceland but not in the bulk of Europe or America.

“There’s surely some room for expansion of this source of energy but it doesn’t seem realistic to expect that geothermal energy will replace the fossil fuels in the bulk of their current applications.

“If you want to have a sensible idea about the amount of geothermal energy we can get by sensible tools, it’s excellent to imagine the ‘hot water bubbling up at some places’ (usually in combination with lots of methane, ammonia, and hydrogen sulfide, besides innocent carbon dioxide) – exactly the right idea that Al Gore doesn’t like because it cools the irrational hype (or downright lies) surrounding the alternative sources of energy.”

Read more about Herr Fuhrer Al Gore’s evil associations with Nazi eugenics or other pseudoscientific lies in my blog post from over a year ago here, and my other blog on weapons effects exaggerating and civil defence denying lies here. I’m writing a lengthy book exposing ALL of the evil thugs who refuse to stand up to continuing neo-Nazi eugenicists and their new pseudoscience today. If like Sir Paul Nurse and BBC Nazis, you support diverting life-saving money into the pockets of Al Gore’s shady henchmen, you may find yourself in it! Please just leave a comment below and we’ll track you down from your IP address.

Janis, Irving L. Victims of Groupthink. Boston. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1972 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink

“Groupthink is a type of thought within a deeply cohesive in-group whose members try to minimize conflict and reach consensus without critically testing, analyzing, and evaluating ideas. It is a second potential negative consequence of group cohesion.

“Irving Janis studied a number of ‘disasters’ in American foreign policy, such as failure to anticipate the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (1941); the Bay of Pigs fiasco (1961) when the US administration sought to overthrow Fidel Castro; and the prosecution of the Vietnam War (1964–67) by President Lyndon Johnson. He concluded that in each of these cases, the decisions were made largely due to the cohesive nature of the committees which made them. Moreover, that cohesiveness prevented contradictory views from being expressed and subsequently evaluated. As defined by Janis, “A mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action”.[1].

“Individual creativity, uniqueness, and independent thinking are lost in the pursuit of group cohesiveness, as are the advantages of reasonable balance in choice and thought that might normally be obtained by making decisions as a group.[citation needed] During groupthink, members of the group avoid promoting viewpoints outside the comfort zone of consensus thinking. A variety of motives for this may exist such as a desire to avoid being seen as foolish, or a desire to avoid embarrassing or angering other members of the group. Groupthink may cause groups to make hasty, irrational decisions, where individual doubts are set aside, for fear of upsetting the group’s balance.”

I’ve collected a lot of information for a book on censored ideas, but I’d had difficulty finding a way to assemble the information in order to overcome censorship.

Clearly some things like lying Nazi propaganda and porn need censorship, so for Ivor catt or anyone to cling on to “censorship” as the root problem is obviously wrong.

Science is the experimentally-based censorship of drivel and lies. Ivor Catt wants lies to be censored out: his term “spring cleaning” or “Occam’s Razor” means censorship of bad ideas. Why then is he engaging in doublespeak elsewhere on his silly internet site where he claims he is against censorship? This is the problem!

Groupthink seems a more specific way to address the problem than censorship. We want censorship to flush lying pseudoscientific dogma down the drain. We want censorship to get rid of ideas that are being falsely defended by “science” without experimental backup. The problem then, is not censorship per se, but a perversion of genuine censorship by a religion of orthodox beliefs dressed up as science, which is a mystical phenomenon going back historically to the Ancient Egyptian priesthood with their star aligned pyramids, the Stonehenge Beaker People, Witchcraft, Voodoo, Scientism, Epicycles, Caloric, Phlogiston, Relativism, Supersymmetry, Alchemy, Creationism, and the Pythagorean mathematical cult that asserted without any evidence that atoms are regular geometric solids.

Has Ivor read Irving Janis’s 1972 “Victims of Groupthink” or not? Janis should have added EUGENICS and the 1986 CHALLENGER NASA disaster to his list of groupthink failures: www.quantumfieldtheory.org

http://www.swans.com/library/art9/xxx099.html contains an excerpt from Irving L. Janis, “Victims of Groupthink,” 1972; Houghton Mifflin Company; ISBN: 0-395-14044-7 (pp. 197-204)

The groupthink syndrome: Review of the major symptoms

In order to test generalization about the conditions that increase the chances of groupthink, we must operationalize the concept of groupthink by describing the symptoms to which it refers. Eight main symptoms run through the case studies of historic fiascoes. Each symptom can be identified by a variety of indicators, derived from historical records, observer’s accounts of conversations, and participants’ memoirs. The eight symptoms of groupthink are:

1. an illusion of invulnerability, shared by most or all the members, which creates excessive optimism and encourages taking extreme risks;

2. collective efforts to rationalize in order to discount warnings which might lead the members to reconsider their assumptions before they recommit themselves to their past policy decisions;

3. an unquestioned belief in the group’s inherent morality, inclining the members to ignore the ethical or moral consequences of their decisions;

4. stereotyped views of enemy leaders as too evil to warrant genuine attempts to negotiate, or as too weak and stupid to counter whatever risky attempts are made to defeat their purposes;

5. direct pressure on any member who expresses strong arguments against any of the group’s stereotypes, illusions, or commitments, making clear that this type of dissent is contrary to what is expected of all loyal members;

6. self-censorship of deviations from the apparent group consensus, reflecting each member’s inclination to minimize to himself the importance of his doubts and counterarguments;

7. a shared illusion of unanimity concerning judgments conforming to the majority view (partly resulting from self-censorship of deviations, augmented by the false assumption that silence means consent);

8. the emergence of self-appointed mindguards – members who protect the group from adverse information that might shatter their shared complacency about the effectiveness and morality of their decisions.

When a policy-making group displays most or all of these symptoms, the members perform their collective tasks ineffectively and are likely to fail to attain their collective objectives. Although concurrence-seeking may contribute to maintaining morale after a defeat and to muddling through a crisis when prospects for a successful outcome look bleak, these positive effects are generally outweighed by the poor quality of the group’s decision-making. My assumption is that the more frequently a group displays the symptoms, the worse will be the quality of its decisions. Even when some symptoms are absent, the others may be so pronounced that we can predict all the unfortunate consequences of groupthink.

[...]

Psychological functions of the eight symptoms

Concurrence-seeking and the various symptoms of groupthink to which it gives rise can be best understood as a mutual effort among the members of a group to maintain self-esteem, especially when they share responsibility for making vital decisions that pose threats of social disapproval and self-disapproval. The eight symptoms of groupthink form a coherent pattern if viewed in the context of this explanatory hypothesis. The symptoms may function in somewhat different ways to produce the same result.

A shared illusion of invulnerability and shared rationalizations can counteract unnerving feelings of personal inadequacy and pessimism about finding an adequate solution during a crisis. Even during noncrisis periods, whenever the members foresee great gains from taking a socially disapproved or unethical course of action, they seek some way of disregarding the threat of being found out and welcome the optimistic views of the members who argue for the attractive but risky course of action. (4) At such times, as well as during distressing crises, if the threat of failure is salient, the members are likely to convey to each other the attitude that “we needn’t worry, everything will go our way.” By pooling their intellectual resources to develop rationalizations, the members build up each other’s confidence and feel reassured about unfamiliar risks, which, if taken seriously, would be dealt with by applying standard operating procedures to obtain additional information and to carry out careful planning.

The member’s firm belief in the inherent morality of their group and their use of undifferentiated negative stereotypes of opponents enable them to minimize decision conflicts between ethical values and expediency, especially when they are inclined to resort to violence. The shared belief that “we are a wise and good group” inclines them to use group concurrence as a major criterion to judge the morality as well as the efficacy of any policy under discussion. “Since our group’s objectives are good,” the members feel, “any means we decide to use must be good.” This shared assumption helps the members avoid feelings of shame or guilt about decisions that may violate their personal code of ethical behavior. Negative stereotypes of the enemy enhance their sense of moral righteousness as well as their pride in the lofty mission of the in-group.

(4) Campbell, D. T., “Stereotypes and the perception of group differences.” American psychologist, 1967, 22, 817-829.

· · · · · ·

Irving L. Janis (1918-1990) obtained a Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Columbia University. He was a faculty member in the Psychology Department at Yale from 1947 to 1985, and was appointed Adjunct Professor of Psychology Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley in 1986.

American relative Theresa has been hailed a hero after spotting a murder suspect with an abducted child a month ago, helping police to return the child. Well done, cousin!

Brittany Smith’s Father: Theresa Shanley is ‘My Hero’.

- Dr Peter Woit’s first documentation of string theory fanaticism, 1 March 2001.

“… it has a large number of possible solutions … It is very difficult to challenge this theory.”

- The latest “defense” of string theory by the Czech Institute of Physics string theory researcher Martin Shnabl, who is the author of the Afterword to the new Czech language translation of Dr Peter Woit’s brilliant book Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and the Continuing Challenge to Unify the Laws of Physics.

It’s the fact that string theory is hard to challenge experimentally that makes it a good hiding place for researchers who don’t want to risk ever being debunked by experiments, at least for the core unification belief system in string theory. (Obviously some of the individual solutions in the landscape can be experimentally debunked, but that’s not really any help because of the size of the landscape.) There is only one way to challenge string theory: to come up with an alternative theory which actually is not just compatible with a large landscape, but has a much smaller landscape which is more susceptible to experimental testing.

On this issue we hear the repeated claim from the most fanatical string proponents to the effect that string theory is the only game in town, there are no alternatives, etc. They don’t want any funding for alternatives, because they don’t want alternatives to challenge string theory. They see quite clearly a benefit to turning physics into an uncheckable religious belief system, which is worse than Plato’s geometric atoms, Kelvin’s vortex atoms, and so on. Those theories were debunked by experiments. You have to admire Planck scale Calabi-Yau manifold 6/7-d compactification in string theory as an ingenious idea which for once and for all puts physics beyond testing. It’s brilliant pseudophysics.

“I like the argument for string theory that ‘it’s in agreement with all experiments so far.’ There are lots of competitors though which can say the same thing, for instance my unified theory which is much simpler.”

- Dr Peter Woit, Not Even Wrong.

“[Not rejecting superstring theory for the reason it is made experimentally non-falsifiable by its uncheckable 10⁵⁰⁰ different metastable vacuum models, each a unique stabilized Planck scale compactification of 6/7 extra dimensions by a Calabi-Yau manifold] is exactly the same as not throwing out quantum field theory (QFT) because not all QFTs are experimentally relevant.”

– Anonymous comment on Dr Peter Woit’s Not Even Wrong blog, falsely claiming that string theory and quantum field theory are analogous, because each has a landscape of different versions from which people should search out those that fit our universe.

But there’s only one theory of quantum fields: fields are composed of quanta (not continuous lines or other classical continuums). There are slightly different mathematical models or approaches in the one QFT that fields are composed of quanta, but you empirically build up a mathematical model that makes falsifiable predictions which are confirmed by experiment. (The guy was confusing mathematical models with the physical nature of quantum field theory.) By contrast, 10 dimensional superstring as the brane on 11 dimensional supergravity is different because even in principle you can never see the exact details of shape and size for the 6/7 compactified extra spatial dimensions the theory necessitates (not to make predictions, but to avoid disagreeing with observed spacetime!), so you can’t even in principle ever empirically pick out any theory from the 10⁵⁰⁰ vacuum ground states in the string landscape. Instead of reducing the number of empirical parameters in the standard model, even the most constrained, minimally supersymmetric string theory increases the number of parameters from 18 to 125 without predicting any of them.

It’s interesting that many people refuse to see a distinction between mathematics and physical phenomena in particle physics, when they sure don’t confuse a mathematical equation for an accelerating car with the car itself. It’s a religious-like belief – unproved by any experiment – that there is a mathematical reality underpining the universe. Seeing the failure of mathematical models to make any deterministic predictions would lead someone rational to draw a distinction, instead of holding on to Heisenberg’s 1st quantization wavefunction collapse dogma as “evidence” of parallel universes or other anti-Occam Razor extravagances. What these guys do when they see no deterministic solutions to mathematical equations is train themselves not to see the mathematical model as inadequate to model nature, but to reverse this like a multistable gesalt, assuming that the way the universe works is non-deterministic, perfectly fitting the inadequate mathematical model. This is nothing new in mathematical modelling: it’s precisely what epicycles did in the Earth-centred universe of Ptolemy, 150 A.D. Every time the flawed mathematical model is discredited by observations, the self-deceived Ptolemy lept in the air and shouted “Eureka! Eureka! I’ve discovered proof of the need for yet another epicycle!” They believed in a mathematical universe, and this goes right back to Plato’s theory of atoms as regular geometric solids. When that guesswork theory failed, the pseudoscience of a mathematical universe survived. This was repeated throughout the history of physics, which is why modern physics textbooks omit most of the history of mathematical physics! It’s mostly failure. But the deception always survives, and usually converts physics into metaphysics. Objective studies of the role of mathematics in describing the universe show a series of failures. Here is a widely-held self-deception in today’s theoretical physics:

Carlos Barceló and Gil Jannes, ‘A Real Lorentz-FitzGerald Contraction’, published in the peer-reviewed journal Foundations of Physics, Volume 38, Number 2, February 2008, pp. 191-199, http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0705/0705.4652v2.pdf:

“Many condensed matter systems are such that their collective excitations at low energies can be described by fields satisfying equations of motion formally indistinguishable from those of relativistic field theory. The finite speed of propagation of the disturbances in the effective fields (in the simplest models, the speed of sound) plays here the role of the speed of light in fundamental physics. However, these apparently relativistic fields are immersed in an external Newtonian world (the condensed matter system itself and the laboratory can be considered Newtonian, since all the velocities involved are much smaller than the velocity of light) which provides a privileged coordinate system and therefore seems to destroy the possibility of having a perfectly defined relativistic emergent world. In this essay we ask ourselves the following question: In a homogeneous condensed matter medium, is there a way for internal observers, dealing exclusively with the low-energy collective phenomena, to detect their state of uniform motion with respect to the medium? By proposing a thought experiment based on the construction of a Michelson-Morley interferometer made of quasi-particles, we show that a real Lorentz-FitzGerald contraction takes place, so that internal observers are unable to find out anything about their ‘absolute’ state of motion. Therefore, we also show that an effective but perfectly defined relativistic world can emerge in a fishbowl world situated inside a Newtonian (laboratory) system. This leads us to reflect on the various levels of description in physics …”

Prediction of gravitational time-dilation

When light travels through a block of glass it slows down because the electromagnetic field of the light interacts with the electromagnetic fields in the glass. This is why light is refracted by glass. Light couples to gravitational fields as well as electromagnetic. The gravitational time dilation from the Einstein field equation is proved in an earlier blog post to be simply the same effect. The gravitons are exchanged between gravitational charges (mass/energy). Therefore, the concentration of gravitons per cubic metre is higher near mass/energy than far away. When a photon enters a stronger gravitational field, it interacts at a faster rate with that field, and is consequently slowed down. This is the mechanism for gravitational time dilation. It applies to electrons and nuclei, indeed anything with mass that is moving, just as it applies to light in a glass block. If you run through a clear path, you go faster than if you try to run through a dense crowd of people. There’s no advanced subtle mathematical “magic” at work. It’s not rocket science. It’s very simple and easy to understand physically. You can’t define time without motion, and motion gets slowed down by dense fields just like someone trying to move through a crowd.

Length contraction with velocity and mass increase by the reciprocal of the same factor are simply physical effects as FitzGerald and Lorentz explained. A moving ship has more inertial mass than its own mass, because of the flow of water set up around it (like “Aristotle’s arrow”, fluid moving out at the bows, flows around the sides and pushes in at the stern). As explained in previous posts, the “ideal fluid” aproximation for the effect of velocity on the drag coefficient of an aircraft in the 1920s was predicted theoretically to be the factor (1 – v²/c²)^-1/2, where c is the velocity of sound: this is the “sound barrier” theory. It breaks down because although the shock wave formation at sound velocity carries energy off rapidly in the sonic boom, it isn’t 100% efficient at stopping objects from going faster. The effect is that you get an effective increase in inertial mass from the layer of compressed, dense air in the shock wave region at the front of the aircraft, and the nose-on force has a slight compressive effect on the aircraft (implying length contraction). Therefore, from an idealized understanding of the basic physics of moving through a fluid, you can grasp how quantum field theory causes “relativity effects”!

Einstein wrote:

“The special theory of relativity … does not extend to non-uniform motion … The laws of physics must be of such a nature that they apply to systems of reference in any kind of motion. Along this road we arrive at an extension of the postulate of relativity… The general laws of nature are to be expressed by equations which hold good for all systems of co-ordinates, that is, are co-variant with respect to any substitutions whatever (generally co-variant).” (Emphasis by Einstein.)

– Albert Einstein, “The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity”, Annalen der Physik, v49, 1916 (emphasis by Einstein).

Notice that Einstein’s general relativity of 1916:

(1) states that special relativity does not apply to non-uniform (accelerating) motion,

(2) states the obvious fact that the laws of nature must apply to systems in all states of motion, and

(3) claims this general covariance of the laws is an “extension” to the principle of special relativity (“Along this road we arrive at an extension of the postulate of relativity”)!

Actually, as Figure 1 below demonstrates, “general relativity” is not an extension of the postulate of relativity, because energy (included in the stress-energy tensor for the source of the gravitational field in Einstein’s field equation) causes curvature, and energy isn’t invariant of the reference frame, but is instead absolutely dependent upon the reference frame selected:

Fig. 1a: proof of absolute motion in general relativity consists of (a) demonstrating that energy is generally dependent on the frame of reference (centre of mass or whatever), rather than being invariant of the frame of reference, and (b) pointing out that the stress-energy tensor producing the spacetime curvature is therefore dependent on something absolute rather than invariant (energy). Is this clear? Einstein knew this but obfuscated because he couldn’t face the negative publicity of admitting in 1916 that special relativity was just an epicycles-type mistake:

‘The special theory of relativity … does not extend to non-uniform motion … The laws of physics must be of such a nature that they apply to systems of reference in any kind of motion. Along this road we arrive at an extension of the postulate of relativity… The general laws of nature are to be expressed by equations which hold good for all systems of co-ordinates, that is, are co-variant with respect to any substitutions whatever (generally co-variant). … We call four quantities A_v the components of a covariant four-vector, if for any arbitrary choice of the contravariant four-vector B^v, the sum over v, å A_v B^v = Invariant. The law of transformation of a covariant four-vector follows from this definition.’ – Albert Einstein, ‘The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity’, Annalen der Physik, v49, 1916.

The lie of Einstein here is calling general covariance an “extension of the postulate of relativity”, which is an obfuscation made up to protect the physical inadequacies of relativity (absolute motion in general relativity is hardly a mere extension to relativity!). What he is did in general relativity was not to “extend” the defective principle of relativity of motion, but to replace it with general covariance of the laws of nature (laws of nature are not the same thing as motion!).

Fig. 1b: proof that special relativity is not in agreement with general relativity even in the case of uniform motion. Hence Einstein was deluded when he claimed that general relativity is an extension to special relativity which is needed only needed for accelerations like gravity. The error is that special relativity says inertial mass increases with velocity, hence by the equivalence of inertial and gravitational mass used in general relativity, the higher the velocity, the greater the gravitational mass, which contracts the mass in all directions (whereas the Lorentz transformation in special relativity just contracts the mass in the direction of its motion). Credit: Bill K. (I wouldn’t have thought of this without his suggestion to simply show one mass. The point is, special relativity is not valid even for uniform motions. Therefore, we need general relativity which is an absolute motion theory, because all the mass-energy in the universe creates gravitational fields, which affect motion!)

Fig. 2: G. Builder in 1958 published a peer-reviewed suggestion for an experimental refutation of special relativity’s principle: “Ether and Relativity”, Australian Journal of Physics, vol. 11 (1958), pp. 279-97. Builder’s experiment was done in 1971 by flying atomic clocks around the world. The clock that is moved most slows down most, determining absolute motion. (For a painfully detailed early history of controversy on this subject, due to confused dim wits making the subject a real mess before experiments were done, see the link here.) This 1971 experimental evidence, citing 1958 Builder’s “Ether and Relativity” paper (without making a fanfare out of confirming Builder’s debunking of the principle of special relativity, however) was published by J. C. Hafele in Science, vol. 177, pp. 166-8. Then in 1978, R. A. Muller used U2 spy aircraft with microwave sensors to discover the great +/- 3 mK cosine variation in the 2.73 K cosmic background radiation temperature which is a variation in temperature with direction in the sky, signifying an effective absolute reference frame to debunk relativity hype: he published it under the title “The cosmic background radiation and the new aether drift” in the Scientific American (vol. 238, May 1978, pp. 64-74):

Fig. 3: R. A. Muller’s article, “The cosmic background radiation and the new aether drift”, was published in the Scientific American (vol. 238, May 1978, pp. 64-74). Abstract:

“U-2 observations have revealed anisotropy in the 3 K blackbody radiation which bathes the universe. The radiation is a few millidegrees hotter in the direction of Leo, and cooler in the direction of Aquarius. The spread around the mean describes a cosine curve. Such observations have far reaching implications for both the history of the early universe and in predictions of its future development. Based on the measurements of anisotropy, the entire Milky Way is calculated to move through the intergalactic medium at approximately 600 km/s. It is noted that in a frame of reference moving with the original plasma emitted by the big bang, the blackbody radiation would have a temperature of 4500 K. Furthermore, if the universe were homogeneous and isotropic before the moment of decoupling, we would observe a homogeneous universe today. This is not the case. Indeed, the cosmos is filled with irregularities, from galactic clusters to moons and planets. Thus, the background radiation should also exhibit irregularities, which, to some extent, it does.”

Now, science journalists won’t shout from the rooftops the truthful discoveries. They’ll shout what their editors will publish, which is determined by the human biases, groupthink, fashions, prejudices, and misunderstandings of the readers. This is why the facts above are ignored, “explained away” with obfuscation to save the popular image of the 1905 Einstein “genius”, to pander to the “expert opinions” of Einstein’s bigoted biographers, and so on. In addition, there is an extremely high noise level from relativity critics who don’t really understand what is going on, beyond the fact that Einstein didn’t really improve on the physics in Lorentz’s and Poincare’s theory by removing the mechanism for the transformation, yet Einstein’s version is still hyped by popular science journalism which carefully ignores all of the experimentally established facts on the subject (above). These people are annoyed that science is promoted on the one hand as being diligently critical of hypotheses, while relativity is defended by the worst consensus-enforced kind of political censorship by the media. Is it a thought-police-enforced religion, or science?

For example, religious-$1,000,000 Templeton Prize winner and popular theoretical physics author Professor Paul Davies (this religion and science combination invoke memories of the “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil” scene from the 1968 Planet of the Apes film) wrote a book called About Time where he wrongly states that Hafele’s experimental data on time dilation from flying atomic clocks around the world in 1971 somehow defend the religious worship of Einstein’s “special” relativism, when in fact as we saw above, Hafele uses and cites Builder’s 1958 Australian Journal of Physics absolute motion “Ether and Relativity” analysis of the twins paradox (Davies with either apparent dishonestly or incompetence makes no admission in About Time of the fact that Hafele’s data disprove special relativity and prove absolute motion; he ignores Hafele’s dependence on Builder)! After I cited Muller’s evidence that the cosmic background radiation constitutes an effective absolute reference frame for our universe in an article, my editor received various abusive and ignorant non-scientific letters from string theory students at Nottingham University (sorted with a helpful device called a bin), but another writer wrote an article the editor accepted and published, containing false claims about the reliability of Muller’s data on the anisotropy in the cosmic background radiation, to defend relativity! Davies won’t receive $1,000,000 religion prizes for promoting religious-scientific groupthink prejudice if he tells the truthful facts. Prizes like that are given for telling people what they want to hear, plain old lies.

Leslie Green wrote: “There was an experiment, reported in 1977, of an anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background radiation, measured by flying a U2 plane around in the upper atmosphere. The anisotropy meant the radiation was not the same in all directions. Anisotropy of the 4 K cosmic background radiation suggests what might pictorially be described as ‘aether drift’. But when you then read that the amount of anisotropy amounted to less than 0.004 K you have to wonder if the experimental conditions were sufficiently perfect for this to be a genuine result. One thing is for sure: very few scientists would have the interest to repeat this experiment, and even fewer would have the budget!” (L. Green, “Engineering versus Pseudo-science”, Electronics World, August 2004, p. 52.)

The problem here is that Green falsely claims that the +/-3 mK anisotropy data is unreliable because it is a small quantity, so relativity survives. In fact, many things measured accurately in science are small numbers, and that doesn’t imply unreliability. First, Muller’s data includes error bars, and the effect is much bigger than the errors in the measurements. Secondly, and far more important, the U2 aircraft paper from 1977 was not the end of the research data. That paper is important for its nascent interpretation and original results, but since then the cosmic background radiation anisotropies have been even more accurately determined by satellites put into space, COBE and WMAP. It’s ridiculous to ignore these data! In fact, the satellite data show even smaller anisotropies in the cosmic background radiation, allowing checks on the gravitational clumping at early stages of the big bang. My research on quantum gravity predicted that all fundamental forces were smaller in the same ratio at early times in the big bang; this reduces the gravitational clumping of matter at early times to the small ripples seen in the 300,000 years age-origin cosmic background, without affecting “Teller’s problem” that fusion rates are varied by gravity varying in the big bang or in stars. Reduced gravitational force doesn’t reduce fusion rates in the sun or the big bang, simply because the other fundamental couplings vary the same way: the electromagnetic force which resists fusion (by repelling protons and other nuclei) is weaker, so this makes fusion (the joining of nuclei by the strong force) easier, offsetting the effect of weakened gravitational compression! This falsifiably predictive quantum gravity thus gets rid of the need for Guth’s “inflation” epicycle and all the metaphysical baggage that accompanies it. (Or it would, if physics were a science, not religious public relations!)

One of my main criticisms of Einstein is precisely the point that he is hyped for one thing in the popular media (pseudorelativity, which assumes wrongly and contrary to QFT that the Lorentz-FitzGerald contraction somehow isn’t physically real), but he is then defended on a personal level for other work!

1. For his brilliant re-derivation of Planck’s 1901 radiation law in 1917 (which I discussed in earlier posts), where Einstein shows you get the same formula from partitioning oscillator emission into spontaneous and stimulated radiation emitters (thus paving the way for the laser theory behind CD’s, DVD’s, laser surgery, etc.).

2. For the Bose-Einstein condensate. Bose, an Indian physicist whose paper had been rejected, sent his paper to Einstein, who translated it into German and had it published, plus extended the theory himself. This is important for low temperature physics: basically it’s just the mathematics of how spin-1/2 fermions at low temperatures can pair up into a spin-1 condensate that behaves like radiation, not ordinary matter, e.g. Cooper pairs of electron which cause superconductivity and similar phenomena in superfluidity.

3. For Einstein’s 1905 paper on Avogadro’s number, calculated from Einstein’s formula for the “random walk” diffusion of pollen grains under a microscope, being struck by air molecules at known temperature and pressure.

4. For the correct deflection of light via the
physically correct and essential contraction term in the field equation of classical (approximate) “general relativity”, speculative gravity waves, objecting to the Bohr’s badly presented 1st quantization politics, etc.

The problem is that citing all this other work of Einstein that is right, is a diversion of attention from the charge against SR, and doesn’t prove SR right. It’s irrelevant to whether Einstein was a liar. Here in England we have politicians going to prison right now for lying about their expenses, despite the fact they in the past championed some good causes!!! Thuus, it doesn’t matter how good a few of Einstein’s scientific paper were. That’s all totally irrelevant to the question of whether Einstein repeatedly lied about SR! (You know it’s irrelevant, and I know it’s irrelevant. We therefore agree!)

Einstein’s deliberate lie in calling his 1916 switch (from relativity of motion in “restricted relativity” to covariance of the laws of motion in “general relativity”) an “extension of the principle of relativity” is akin to the popular lie of calling quantum field theory (2nd quantization) just an extension of quantum mechanics (1st quantization). Einstein might as well have called the solar system of Copernicus just an “extension of application of the epicycles” of Ptolemy’s earth-centred universe, since both Copernicus and Ptolemy used epicycles. The lie Einstein made was a political spin or hype lie, the kind of thing politicians say to cover up errors when forced to make a U-turn in policy. It’s not right to contaminate science with political public relations spin. Mathematically, everything can be viewed however you like (in mathematics you are free to ignore physical concepts altogether and just study how equations are extended or generalized), but in nature there are deeper differences between reality and varying mathematical models.  These differences are due to physics, which is a subject much out of fashion in what is now called physics (better named pseudophysics).  It is not an “extension” to the principle of relativity to introduce absolute motion, i.e. accelerations!  Basically, the kind of string theorist you find defending Einstein’s confused (deliberately obfuscating) Orwellian “double-think” on relativity is the kind of physics hater who wouldn’t fit into a math department for being too incompetent. The kind of guy who confuses everything:

‘… the law of the constancy of the velocity of light. But … the general theory of relativity cannot retain this law. On the contrary, we arrived at the result according to this latter theory, the velocity of light must always depend on the coordinates when a gravitational field is present.’ – Albert Einstein, Relativity, The Special and General Theory, Henry Holt and Co., 1920, p111.

‘… the principle of the constancy of the velocity of light in vacuo must be modified, since we easily recognise that the path of a ray of light … must in general be curvilinear…’ – Albert Einstein, The Principle of Relativity, Dover, 1923, p114.

‘According to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable.’ – Albert Einstein, Sidelights on Relativity, Dover, New York, 1952, p23.

‘The Michelson-Morley experiment has thus failed to detect our motion through the aether, because the effect looked for – the delay of one of the light waves – is exactly compensated by an automatic contraction of the matter forming the apparatus…. The great stumbing-block for a philosophy which denies absolute space is the experimental detection of absolute rotation.’ – Professor A.S. Eddington (who confirmed Einstein’s general theory of relativity in 1919), Space Time and Gravitation: An Outline of the General Relativity Theory, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1921, pp. 20, 152.

In quantum field theory, the field surrounding a charge is composed of quanta, rather than the classical model of “field lines”, “tubes of flux”, “curved spacetime”, etc. Just quanta. Dirac introduced quantum field theory to replace the non-relativistic Hamiltonian energy equation in Schroedinger’s wave equation with a relativistic formula. This process changes the whole physical basis of quantum mechanics from Schroedinger’s and Heisenberg’s 1st quantization (the use of a classical field, with indeterminism assumed to be an intrinsic property of real particles when an observer disturbs them by taking a measurement), to Dirac and Feynman’s 2nd quantization (the use of a quantum field, which as Feynman says in his 1985 book QED makes the requirement for intrinsic indeterminism of real particles unnecessary, because you the real particle is affected in a random way by the interactions of field quanta that convey the force field).

The interesting thing about energy is that it is not invariant of the reference frame! Take two 1 kg apples and move each at 1 m/s towards one another so that they each have kinetic energy E = mv²/2 = 1 Joule. The impact releases an energy of 1 + 1 = 2 Joules. But if you keep one apple stationary and move the other at 2 m/s towards it, the total impact energy is now 2² + 0 = 4 Joules, not 2 Joules. Energy is not relative. It is not invariant of the reference frame. On the contrary, it is critically dependent on the reference frame, as we see in this example. How can that be so, physically? What is the physical difference between having two 1 kg apples impacting at a total speed of 2 m/s, when you get 2 Joules released if you are the the “centre of mass” reference frame, but 4 Joules released if you are in the reference frame of one of the apples?

Wikipedia puts the paradox far more weakly (with obfuscating weakness, in fact) as follows: “According to Noether’s theorem, the conservation of energy is a consequence of the fact that the laws of physics do not change over time. Although the total energy of a system does not change with time, its value may depend on the frame of reference. For example, a seated passenger in a moving airplane has zero kinetic energy relative to the airplane, but non-zero kinetic energy (and higher total energy) relative to the Earth.”

But the key example is the one I gave. Two equal masses hitting at a fixed total speed release an amount of energy that varies by a factor of two, depending on whether the reference frame is the centre of mass, or either of the moving masses. This clearly indicates that energy depends on absolute motion, not relative motion. Energy is conserved only with in a given reference frame. It is not invariant because it varies as you switch between reference frames.

The reason for the variance is simply the fact that kinetic energy is proportional to the square of velocity. If energy was directly proportional to velocity, then energy would be invariant. But it isn’t. Special relativity is often simplistically presented as if it disproves the “preferred reference frames” or “proves that all inertial reference frames are equivalent and indistinguishable”. Well, that isn’t true in general because the amount of energy in a system is not invariant of the reference frame: it depends on the reference frame and varies if you change reference frames! The velocity of light appears similar in all reference frames, but as FitzGerald originally argued in 1889, in the light of the experimental confirmation of the Casimir quantum field force, that invariance of the velocity of light is just because of the physical contraction of the Michelson-Morley measuring instrument in its direction of motion by the pressure of interactions with the quantum field when a real particle moves in a physical vacuum containing quantum fields (see the previous post). Einstein never “debunked” the fact that energy is not invariant. He could not make energy invariant of the reference frame. Change the reference frame, and the amount of energy varies. Energy remains variant, not invariant, even in non-accelerating inertial reference frames.

Surprisingly, nobody uses the fact that energy has an absolute dependence on the reference frame as a compelling argument against the “all inertial reference frames are equal”-lying hype made by proponents of special relativity. It’s obviously only a tool to debunk the simplistic hype of special relativity. It doesn’t debunk the mathematics of special relativity. Special relativity remains applicable in the “restricted sense” of describing the observables it is formulated to describe (variations of length, mass, and time with velocity).

In general relativity, the acceleration-producing field of the vacuum (curved spacetime in classical physics) is described by the stress-energy tensor which is dependent on the reference frame (the coordinate system) used. Because energy is a source of acceleration in general relativity, accelerating motion is absolutely dependent on the reference frame in general relativity. Accelerating motion (curved spacetime) requires energy, and energy is not invariant. Consequence: acceleration is not invariant of the reference frame! It is dependent on the reference frame, because it is produced by energy, which depends on the reference frame!

Motion in general includes accelerations, so motion is generally not invariant. Motion is absolute (because energy is absolutely dependent on the reference frame, and energy produces motion). Einstein knew this in his development of general relativity, but he generally obfuscated and didn’t go out of his way to stress the fact that special relativity is physically incompatible with general relativity: he emphasized the fact that they are mathematically compatible if special relativity is treated as a “restricted” case where accelerations are banned. Kind of dishonest, really, but much easier than trying to build a physical model of absolute motion in general relativity, using a classical spacetime continuum!

‘Physical knowledge has advanced much since 1905, notably by the arrival of quantum mechanics, and the situation has again changed. If one examines the question in the light of present-day knowledge, one finds that the aether is no longer ruled out by relativity, and good reasons can now be advanced for postulating an aether. . . . Thus, with the new theory of electrodynamics [vacuum filled with virtual particles] we are rather forced to have an aether.’

– Paul A. M. Dirac, ‘Is There an Aether?,’ Nature, v168, 1951, pp. 906-7. (If you have a kid playing with magnets, how do you explain the pull and push forces felt through space? As ‘magic’?) Nobody lesser than Dirac can publish this kind of paper now without coming under ignorant and censorship plus probably personal attack from the Distler’s of arXiv and related fashionable physics groupthink Gestapo. This is the crime of relativism: it’s causing stagnation. See also Dirac’s paper in Proc. Roy. Soc. v.A209, 1951, p.291.

Quantum mechanics (1st quantization, i.e. Schroedinger/Heisenberg) is non-relativistic. It contains no relativity and it is incompatible with relativity because, for instance, the Hamiltonian describing the energy in Schroedinger’s equation treats space and time differently. Special relativity is completely incompatible with all of quantum theory, and in particular the so-called “relativistic” quantum field theory (2nd quantization, i.e. Dirac/Feynman) is only compatible with the ether-compatible Lorentz transformation in certain ways like mass increase and time-dilation: it violates the principle of special relativity because the virtual particles around a charge are affected by the motion of the charge, so the radius corresponding to a given renormalization cutoff field energy around a moving particle cannot undergo Lorentz contraction! If you contract the UV cutoff radius due to length contraction when moving a charge, renormalization is affected violating empirical observations. Therefore, we know from physical observations that quantum field theory disproves the principle of special relativity: the length contraction is not a universal contraction of spacetime fields, but merely applies to the physical contraction of real particles! This makes it what Dirac rightly called an “aether” type contraction. Notice that Dirac’s papers on the “aether” of quantum field theory (quoted above) were ignored by mainstream physics. Professor Lee Smolin deliberately obfuscated this failure of special relativity in quantum field theory by choosing to call an ad hoc correction to special relativity “doubly special relativity”. The word “special” is just a euphemism for “wrong”:

‘It has been supposed that empty space has no physical properties but only geometrical properties. No such empty space without physical properties has ever been observed, and the assumption that it can exist is without justification. It is convenient to ignore the physical properties of space when discussing its geometrical properties, but this ought not to have resulted in the belief in the possibility of the existence of empty space having only geometrical properties… It has specific inductive capacity and magnetic permeability.’ – Professor H.A. Wilson, FRS, Modern Physics, Blackie & Son Ltd, London, 4th ed., 1959, p. 361.

Summary:

1. Energy depends absolutely on the reference frame (energy is not invariant).
2. Energy produces spacetime curvature and thus accelerations in general relativity.
3. From 1 and 2 above: accelerative motion depends on energy and this is absolutely dependent on the reference frame (motion is generally not invariant, contradicting the widely perceived and hyped interpretation of “special relativity”).

Update: 22 December 2010

Dr Woit blogs at Not Even Wrong: “Mike Duff seems to now be deep in Lubosian territory, publishing a letter to New Scientist that accuses those who don’t accept the supposed “academic consensus of superstrings and M-theory” as being just like the crackpots and anti-Semites who refused to accept Einstein’s relativity back in the 20s. According to Duff, the explanation for criticism of string/M-theory is that: ‘when people don’t like what science tells them, they resort to conspiracy theories, mud-slinging and plausible pseudoscience’.” Ah, string theorists starting to write letters to the New Scientist to tar critics with the racist brush. If you don’t believe that the universe is a 10 dimensional superstring brane residing on 11 dimensional supergravity, with 6/7 dimensions compactified at the unobservable Planck scale by a Calabi-Yau manifold held together by Rube-Goldberg machines which give rise to a “cosmic landscape” of 10⁵⁰⁰ parallel universes (all with different experimentally uncheckable sets of values for the 125 or more parameters of even minimal supersymmetry theory), then you must be a racist, a conspiracy theorist, or a crackpot. Ummm, very convincing experimental evidence. Not.

Incompetent research as well as dishonesty by the so-called “Subtle Lord”, the ignorant egotist Einstein

It is interesting to consider Einstein actually knew about Poincaré’s 3-postulate relativity theory of 1904, and his reaction to reading Poincaré’s theory, from Abraham Pais’s 1982 biased biography of Einstein, “Subtle is the Lord”. For Richard P. Feynman’s reaction to his friend Abraham Pais’s fanaticism against Einstein’s critics, see his official biographer, Jagdish Mehra’s book, “The Beat of a Different Drum: the Science and the Life of Richard Feynman”. Mehra writes that Feynman asked him the paranoid were so “up in arms” defending relativity hype against critics.

Pais was a very close friend of Einstein in his last days in 1953-1955, relaying to Einstein news of Sir Edmund Whittaker’s attack on Einstein (Whitttaker’s 2nd volume of the “Theories of Aether and Electricity”, published in 1953, was the strongest scientifically-based, well-researched attack on Einstein’s ignorance of relativity in Einstein’s lifetime; see chapter 2: “The relativity theories of Poincaré and Lorentz”). Pais records Einstein’s reaction to Whittaker as pure arrogance. Pais tried to defend “special relativity” against Poincare by saying 2 postulates are better than 3 (Occam’s Razor); he conveniently omits the problem that Occam’s Razor doesn’t really apply because Einstein’s 2 postulates contain errors and omit a physical mechanism. In particular, see Pais’s section on lending Einstein the actual 1904 relativity paper by Poincare.

Poincare’s 1904 relativity paper is book-length, far more detailed than Einstein’s 1905 paper, and unlike Einstein, Poincare’s 1904 paper attempts to deal with other matters beyond electrodynamics, such as gravitation. Pais had an original, bought in Paris for a considerable sum. He showed it to Einstein over 50 years after Poincare had published. It was the first time Einstein had ever seen it. Pais makes no mention of this amazing fact about Einstein’s ignorance, arrogance, apathy, contempt for his contemporaries for 50 years, and bad scientific technique in not doing adequate research to find out what has already been done. If I became famous for special relativity, I wouldn’t wait until 50 years later to read the leading alternative rival theory paper. We’re dealing with the world’s most arrogant, paranoid, ignorant egotist after the notorious 20th century dictators. Moreover, the whole point of Whittaker’s attack on Einstein was Einstein’s contempt for even reading other published peer-reviewed work on the subject of relativity. In other words, Pais’s recorded reactions of Einstein on showing Einstein Poincare’s 1904 paper fifty years later is a disproof of Pais’s own account of Einstein’s grand dismissal of Whittaker as an ignorant critic. Whittaker had read all the relativity paper, so he wasn’t ignorant, unlike Einstein who either refused or lacked the interest in the subject to even read the works of others for fifty years.

Einstein just before his death from heart failure asked Pais to borrow Pais’s own treasured and valuable 1904 Poincare paper, so he could at last read it. Pais records further interesting facts that arose from this episode. First, Einstein’s immediate reaction to reading Poincare’s paper was to ask Max Born (author the book “Einstein’s Theory of Relativity”) to give a lecture acknowledging on Einstein’s behalf the work of Poincare!

Max Born did just what Einstein told him to at the 1955 International Relativity Conference in Bern. Pais blew his top on reading what Born said, and the mushroom cloud of his explosion is visible between the lines of his biography of Einstein. Born, remember, was the first person to correctly interpret the wavefunction in quantum mechanics (the probability density of a particle is proportional to the square of the wavefunction). Born had already written the book “Einstein’s Theory of Relativity”. He was not ignorant of relativity. Born said at the 1955 conference:

“I have now to say some words about the work of these predecessors of Einstein, mainly of Lorentz and Poincare. … H. A. Lorentzs important papers of 1892 and 1895 on the electrodynamics of moving bodies contain much of the formalism of relativity. … Poincare’s papers … show that as early as 1899 he regarded it as very probable that absolute motion is indetectable in principle and that no ether exists. He formulated the same ideas in a more precise form, though without any mathematics, in a lecture given in 1904 to a Congress of Arts and Science at St. Louis, U.S.A., and he predicted the rise of a new mechanics which will be characterized above all by the rule, that no velocity can exceed the velocity of light. … The reasoning used by Poincare was just that, which Einstein introduced in his first paper of 1905 … Does this mean that Poincare knew all this before Einstein? It is possible … Many of you may have looked up his paper ‘Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Koerper’ in Annalen der Physik (4), vol. 17, p. 811, 1905, and you will have noticed some peculiarities. The striking point is that it contains not a single reference to previous literature. It gives you the impression of quite a new venture. But that is, of course, as I have tried to explain, not true.”

- M. Born, “Physics and Relativity”, Physics in my Generation, 2nd rev. ed., Springer, New York, 1969, pp. 101-103.

Born had already in his 1924 book stated some of the historical Poincare versus Einstein facts less forcefully:

“Lorentz enunciated the laws according to which the measured quantities in various systems may be transformed into each other, and he proved that these transformations leave the field equations of the electron theory unchanged. This is the mathematical content of his discovery. Larmor (1900) and Poincare (1905) arrived at similar results about the same time. It is interesting historically that the formula of transformation to a moving system, which we nowadays call Lorentz’ transformation, were set up by Voigt as early as 1877 [sic] in a dissertation which was still founded on the elastic theory of light. … In the new theory of Lorentz the principle of relativity holds, in conformity with the results of experiment, for all electrodynamic events.”

- M. Born, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, Methuen & Co. Ltd., London, 1924, p. 188.

“As mentioned already, Lorentz and Poincare have succeeded in doing this by careful analysis of the properties of Maxwell’s equations. They were indeed in possession of a great deal of mathematical theory. Lorentz, however, was so attached to his assumption of an ether absolutely at rest that he did not acknowledge the physical significance of the equivalence of the infinite numbers of systems of reference which he had proved. He continued to believe that one of them represented the ether at rest. Poincaré went a step further. It was quite clear to him that Lorentz’s viewpoint was not tenable and that the mathematical equivalence of systems of reference meant the validity of the principle of relativity. He also was quite clear about the consequences of his theory.”

- M. Born, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, Dover, New York, 1962, p. 224.

How false “vortex atoms” pseudophysics hype by the physicist Lord Kelvin constituted a danger to radiotherapy against cancer as being a “nonsense”, and how uncritical acceptance of eugenics pseudoscience by groupthink reverence in the 1930s helped to set the scene for the Holocaust, not the promised “utopia through lies”

Now the media may be concerned that exposing the facts concerning a scientific deception in Einstein’s relativity may be misinterpreted as a racist attack on Einstein’s race! You may think that science needs to be perverted in order to safeguard humanity and prevent racism. Wrong. Lying does the opposite. Here is the disproof of the claim that “lying safeguards peace”.

I kind of think it’s pretty astounding and very sad for many people to desperately try to live in George Orwell’s “big brother” world of 1984 groupthink when many millions of people died defending freedom of thought and freedom of speech in the wars. They didn’t fight and die for the right to suppress facts that are contrary to the reigning ideology in science: they fought and died to stop the racist Nazi pseudoscience “eugenics” ideology. Nazism sprang from a pseudoscience that nobody wanted to debunk until they saw the final solution’s results in 1945. They thought the lies of eugenics were a fashionable scientific idea in the 1930s, so hardly anybody opposed it when they had a chance. Instead, in the 1930s up to the Munich conference in 1938 and even beyond, Hitler’s Nazi racist eugenics was fashionable science that was regarded as “harmless” by the world’s leaders, media, and public who were blinded by lies on aerial gas attacks, just like support for pseudoscience today.

I recommend a study of the 1935 Alexis Carrel book “Man, the Unknown”, which advocated the pseudoscientific use of eugenics to create a “super-race”. Notice particularly that the book was hyped and praised around the world because the author and eugenicist Carrel had won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1912. In the 1936 German edition, Carrel enthusiastically collaborated with the early stages of the Nazi eugenics effort by adding the following passage: “(t)he German government has taken energetic measures against the propagation of the defective, the mentally diseased, and the criminal.”

Carrel wrote that such people and also:

“Those who have … misled the public in important matters [which to the Nazis meant the Jews, since they are blamed in Hitler's 1920s Mein Kampf for the German defeat in the 1914-18 war], should be humanely and economically disposed of in small euthanasic institutions supplied with proper gasses.”

On 2 August 1937, well before the final solution of gas chambers and well before the Munich crisis when Prime Minister Chamberlain so eagerly shook hands with Hitler before the cameras of the world’s press, Britain’s Manchester Guardian newspaper reported the construction of 40 new concentration camps in Germany. The proud man of peace had to turn a blind eye to racism because Britain had no civil defense and because Britain exaggerated the strategic bombing threat.

(Eugenics was pseudoscience, and contrary to Darwin’s evolutionary theory of the “survival of the fittest” instead of being supported by it, because the whole basis of biology is to allow the variations necessary for evolution to occur where it is most necessary. E.g., by definition you can’t plan a “super-race” in advance to survive a new strain of super-flu virus which itself hasn’t even yet evolved. Put another way, if the “super-race” idea was so clever, nature could have used simple cloning in reproduction, omitting the much harder and more complex reproduction methods necessary to preserve the potential for variation in offspring. Variation and thus the individual uniqueness intrinsic to diversity has always been vital to survival of the fittest in evolution, because the definition of “fittest” is completely subjective, varying with the environment and circumstances, rather than a universally defined parameter: it you put all its your eggs in one basket, then all your eggs will be vulnerable. Blonde hair and blue eyes might correlate to increased skin cancer risks under certain environmental conditions, or inbred stupidity. By analogy, if you artificially “clone” people mentally by teaching everyone in the same classroom in precisely the same way, instead of allowing individual variation through differing individual projects and field experience, you make them all into mental clones, ending up with the risk of groupthink failure, one reason why Hitler lost his war after literally “shooting the messengers” in removing real critics from his circle of advisers, and why groupthink-type political control of some failed Western military projects have caused them to end in failure.)

Now whose idea was it to gas six million Jews? A Nobel prize winner? Who is responsible? Obviously his pseudoscience was warped and misapplied still further by the evil Nazis, but he certainly did nothing to help prevent the Holocaust by his lying pseudoscience. Nor did the media which praised the lying pseudoscience. The guy actually thought his eugenics by gassing races which allegedly “misled the public in important matters” was a benefit to humanity. This is what can happen when people let lies in science get out of hand. Lies need to be exposed and sorted out, not praised and hyped by the media. There are other examples of the terrible dangers that can occur when a conspiracy of hysterically paranoid and fanatically science-hating nutters in the media, and their fan clubs in the misled general public, tries to lynch those who just want a fair hearing for facts.

We need to know the facts, even if they are unpleasant, because technology and its application depend ultimately upon facts in science.

If science is held up by nutters, the future development of life saving technology will be held up. Particle physics based on facts led to various unexpected innovations in medicine. If Lord Kelvin had been allowed to stop research on radioactivity (which contradicted his false “vortex atom” theory), radiotherapy against cancer would have been affected. Thus, theoretical lies are a danger.

You might love the “big brother” of fashionable consensus and adulteration of Einstein as an alternative or supplement to religion, but this obfuscation is extremely anti-science. Science isn’t a religion of worshipping status quo consensus or some smug lies Einstein made to cover up his own errors a century ago! Science is definitely contrary to a conspiracy of string theorists making up lies and hiding behind a landscape of 10⁵⁰⁰ metastable vacua! Science is not some kind of fanatical, lying, obfuscating religion hell bent on destroying honest understanding, or hell bent upon replacing understanding with metaphysics like 1st quantization and other fanatically hyped lies.

“The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them….To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary.” [Doublethink defined in George Orwell's 1948 novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four", Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd, London, part 1, chapter 3, p 32.]

‘Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity.’

– George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty Four, Chancellor Press, London, 1984, p225.

Groupthink:

“Groupthink is a type of thought within a deeply cohesive in-group whose members try to minimize conflict and reach consensus without critically testing, analyzing, and evaluating ideas. It is a second potential negative consequence of group cohesion. … cohesiveness prevented contradictory views from being expressed and subsequently evaluated. As defined by Janis, “A mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action”. … Individual creativity, uniqueness, and independent thinking are lost in the pursuit of group cohesiveness, as are the advantages of reasonable balance in choice and thought that might normally be obtained by making decisions as a group. During groupthink, members of the group avoid promoting viewpoints outside the comfort zone of consensus thinking. A variety of motives for this may exist such as a desire to avoid being seen as foolish, or a desire to avoid embarrassing or angering other members of the group. Groupthink may cause groups to make hasty, irrational decisions, where individual doubts are set aside, for fear of upsetting the group’s balance.”

Update (5 January 2011): “The End of Electric Charge and Electric Current as We Know Them” (PDF linked here) by I. C. was published in the January 2011 issue of Electronics World, pp. 20-24. He should have published it decades ago. He still uses a flawed theoretical analysis for his experimental data, instead of using a physical (2nd quantization) quantum field theory perspective.

‘Dick [Richard Feynman] distrusted my mathematics and I distrusted his intuition. … You could not imagine the sum-over-histories picture being true for a part of nature and untrue for another part. You could not imagine it being true for electrons and untrue for gravity. It was a unifying principle that would either explain everything or explain nothing. …

‘Dick fought back against my skepticism, arguing that Einstein had failed because he stopped thinking in concrete physical images and became a manipulator of equations. I had to admit that was true. … Einstein’s later unified theories failed because they were only sets of equations without physical meaning. Dick’s sum-over-histories theory was in the spirit of the young Einstein, not of the old Einstein. It was solidly rooted in physical reality.’

- Freeman Dyson, Disturbing the Universe, 1981 Pan edition, London, p. 62.

‘I would like to put the uncertainty principle in its historical place … If you get rid of all the old-fashioned ideas and instead use the ideas that I’m explaining in these lectures – adding arrows for all the ways an event can happen – there is no need for an uncertainty principle!’

‘… with electrons: when seen on a large scale, they travel like particles, on definite paths. But on a small scale, such as inside an atom, the space is so small that … interference becomes very important, and we have to sum the arrows to predict where an electron is likely to be.’

- Richard P. Feynman, QED, Penguin Books, London, 1990, Chapter 3, pp. 84-5, pp. 84-5.

In diffusion like Brownian motion, there is a continuous distribution (and thus an infinite number) of different angles and speeds with which water molecules can hit a dust particle, producing the chaotic motion of dust grains that Brown observed. The experimentally-validated Casimir effect is proof of the off-shell quantum electromagnetic field in the vacuum. Feynman treats the motion of the atomic electron the same way, with the field quanta causing a random diffusion around the classical orbit. This differs from 1st quantization or normal textbook quantum mechanics, which uses a classical coulomb potential rather than a quantum field. It is simple for bound states, but ignores the effects of field quanta, and is non-relativistic. Feynman’s 2nd quantization changes the Hamiltonian to a relativistic one, and then you don’t need first quantization. It gets rid of the notion of intrinsic indeterminancy in particles by making the randomness of the field quanta interactions cause all the indeterminancy; Feynman ascribes indeterminancy to multi-path interference of (off-shell) photons, i.e. field quanta. Thus the electron moves on a real path which is made chaotic by the fact that the Coulomb field, binding it to the positively charged nucleus, does not act smoothly and continuously but instead imparts force in discrete impulses delivered chaotically by randomly-timed off-shell field quanta exchanges!

“… Bohr … said: ‘… one could not talk about the trajectory of an electron in the atom, because it was something not observable.’ … Bohr thought that I didn’t know the uncertainty principle … it didn’t make me angry, it just made me realize that … [ they ] … didn’t know what I was talking about, and it was hopeless to try to explain it further. I gave up, I simply gave up …”

- Richard P. Feynman, quoted in Jagdish Mehra’s biography of Feynman, The Beat of a Different Drum, Oxford University Press, 1994, pp. 245-248. (Fortunately, Dyson didn’t give up!)

Einstein and Infeld in The Evolution of Physics quote Brown’s claim that pollen grains in water have an intrinsic chaotic motion. Brown couldn’t see the invisible water molecules and didn’t want to believe in such “hidden variables”, and this is the same error made in textbook (1st quantization) quantum mechanics which ignores the role of field quanta in producing indeterminancy. Feynman says Bohr, Heisenberg, Schroedinger (1st quantization guys) did the same thing that Brown did with the electron. They assumed intrinsic indeterminancy, when in fact the wave equation works simply because it models the chaotic interactions with field quanta.

The Heisenberg matrix mechanics / Schroedinger equation quantum mechanics approach is wrong physically, since it is 1925 “first quantization”:

(1) it treats the Coulomb potential classical instead of having a quantum electromagnetic field with random interactions (which would produce random motion on the electron which is being bound to the nucleus by the Coulomb field)

(2) it thus has to introduce intrinsic chaos by applying the uncertainty principle directly to real particles (intrinsic chaos) without any field random bombardment mechanism,

(3) it therefore ends up with a Hamiltonian which is non-relativistic by treating time and space differently (a first-order variation of the wavefunction with respect to time is combined with a second-order variation of the wavefunction with respect to distance; see the equation at the top of the page!), thus it is physically and mathematically wrong,

(4) it produces “first quantization” errors, such as the need for “wavefunction collapse” upon measurement, which is not a metaphysical phenomenon as hyped by pseudoscience believers, but is a collapse of applicability to the real world of the statistical model when a measurement is taken. Like the fact that uranium emits say 2.5 neutrons per fission in a particular reaction, we don’t need metaphysics to explain this; it’s simple to understand as an average (50% of fissions give 2 neutrons, 50% give 3; none give 2.5 neutrons, which is just a mean!). Another example is quantum tunnelling “through classically forbidden barriers”; there’s no mystery here, the classical model is wrong simply because it is based on the false assumption of a constant, steadily resisting force-field that is not mediated by statistically fluctuating, random exchanges of field quanta between charges. The real model of the Coulomb field is not a steady arrangement of classical “field lines” but a force field due to the random exchange of particles (field quanta) between charges. This is like air pressure due to Brownian motion; on small scales of space and time it is randomly timed impacts of particles (air molecules in the case of Brownian motion, field quanta in the case of the Coulomb field). On small spacetime scales, therefore, Brownian motion air pressure (or the quantum Coulomb field) is naturally a chaotic force, consisting of impulses delivered at randomly timed intervals. Only on large spacetime scales can the path integral average out the Brownian impacts into a relatively steady “air pressure” or “Coulomb field strength”. On small scales, it’s not even a smoothly varying analogue variable representable by a differential equation; instead it is randomly timed series of discrete impulses. An alpha particle occasionally enters or leave a nucleus by “tunnelling through the classical Coulomb barrier” simply by failing to happen to interact with opposing field quanta. It’s not mysterious at all. The random timing of field quanta exchanges which are the mechanism of the Coulomb force will allow some probability of a fast (high energy) charged particle happening to get through without chancing to hit a field quanta. This is all you need to explain quantum tunnelling, although it is hyped in society by pseudoscientists as a physically deep mystery or religious dogma at the heart of Heisenberg’s first-quantization physics. When you explain how Feynman debunked Bohr and Heisenberg’s dogma, the dogmatic bigots falsely claim that QFT is “hidden variables” which they falsely claim was disproved by John von Neumann in 1932. Not so. The Casimir force experiment demonstrates the reality of QFT field quanta. It’s not an “infinite potential” hidden variables speculation from David Bohm. Feynman’s QFT is based on and verified by experimentally verified facts, and is utilized and tested in the basic structure of the most successful scientific theory ever, the Standard Model of particle physics.

The anti-spacetime fabric claims of restricted (“special”) relativity dogmatists ignores the fact that a consistent UV cutoff energy in QFT (say the black hole size of an electron or alternatively the Planck length) is invariant of the restframe, so it doesn’t obey the Lorentz transformation. This alone debunks the role of restricted relativity as the ultimate theory of spacetime. Instead of the principle of relativity being fundamental in QFT, it is just emergent: moving particles get contracted in length simply because they snowplough in to the field quanta of the vacuum whenever they accelerate, and the force contracts their length by the head-on field pressure during acceleration.

(5) it isn’t mathematically as useful as an epicycle-type “handy model” for calculations as widely hyped, since it only gives analytical solutions for hydrogen: all Schroedinger equation solutions for multi-electron atoms involve massive simplifying approximations,

(6) it is still falsely hyped as being right today by big-shots in physics who don’t understand the physical basis of the mathematics of quantum field theory.

Dirac’s relativistic second-quantization (the wave equation with an altered Hamiltonian which quantizes the Coulomb field to make quantum mechanics relativistic) is almost universally dismissed as just an advanced form of quantum mechanics or an addition to first-quantization, when in fact it is not an addition or supplement, but a replacement. By quantizing the field around a real particle, the randomness of the quantum exchanges of an electron with the field binding it to a proton nucleus produce all of the chaos. Similarly, quantum interactions between the electromagnetic field of a photon and those in a block of glass affect its speed, and the interactions between a photon and two slits (Young’s double slit experiment) prove that virtual particles travel along all possible paths by affecting the motion of the photon: the “real photon” is composed of a summation of virtual photons travelling along multiple paths, most of which usually cancel out.

I’m finishing on a paper resolving all of the problems in the standard model, which has errors in the electroweak sector. Electromagnetism is best modelled as massless version of SU(2) isospin, whereas U(1) is actually spin-1 quantum gravity. I can predict couplings and masses, getting rid of the Higgs symmetry breaking model. The symmetry of U(1) x SU(2) is not broken for gravity and electromagnetism, where the difference in couplings arise from their physical mechanisms being bootstrap summations from all the particles in the surrounding universe. It turns out that the random (diffusion) path integral of quantum gravity for field quanta exchanged between all particles in the surrounding universe is statistically proportional to the square root of the number of charges, whereas for electromagnetism the coupling is directly proportional to the number of charges, so the ratio of gravitational to electromagnetic couplings at low energy is 10⁴⁰/10⁸⁰ = 10^-40 as observed. My model for how mass is given to left-handed isospin fields to produce weak interactions replaces electroweak symmetry breaking and explains the structure of matter, so I’m fairly excited about my paper because I think that experiments now being done in the LHC will discredit the symmetry-breaking Higgs model and lead to progress.

Update: I’ve written my draft paper on quantum field theory, going through the Standard Model and justifying the need to make changes and corrections that incorporate quantum gravity and resolve problems. The first five pages from the draft have been proof-read and are linked here (2 October 2010 draft). It has been an extremely helpful process, to me at least, for clarifying the theory. The paper is a compressed, edited, corrected and updated summary of all the developments in the subject. Once I’ve completely finished polishing the text and diagrams, I’ll submit it to an archive and a suitable journal.

Update (15 November 2010):

Professor N. Nakanishi has just made some comments on Dr Woit’s Not Even Wrong blog which clarify and correct a misconception in textbook accounts of electroweak theory, which is of paramount importance to my paper (here and here):

“I emphasize that the Nambu-Goldstone boson does exist in the electroweak theory. It is merely unobservable by the subsidary condition (Gupta condition). Indeed, without NG boson, the charged pion could not decay into muon and antineutrino (or antimuon and neutrino) because the decay through W-boson violates angular-momentum conservation. … Pion’s spin is zero, while W-boson’s spin is one. People usually understand that the pion decays into a muon and a neutrino through an intermediate state consisting of one W-boson. But this is forbidden by the angular-momentum conservation law in the rest frame of the pion.”

The conventional (QFT textbooks) view is that this spin “anomaly” when a pion of zero spin decays by emitting a spin-1 W-boson, is simply to be viewed as a perfect example of the evidence of the need for the existence of epicycles/caloric/phlogiston/the V-A structure of weak interactions.

As Dr Woit comments in the blog post: “What Philip Anderson realized and worked out in the summer of 1962 was that, when you have both gauge symmetry and spontaneous symmetry breaking, the Nambu-Goldstone massless mode can combine with the massless gauge field modes to produce a physical massive vector field.”

Massless and spinless Namu-Goldstone bosons are produced by spontaneously breaking a gauge symmetry, i.e. electroweak symmetry. But Professor Nakanishi’s point is that W gauge bosons are composite particles and for conservation of angular momentum in pion decays, weak bosons must be spin-0 massless bosons, which only acquire their chiral (left-handed?) spin-1 state – together with their mass – from a symmetry breaking Nambu-Goldstone vacuum field:

“[Goldstone bosons] are massless if the spontaneously broken symmetry is not also broken explicitly. If, instead, the symmetry is not exact, i.e., if it is explicitly broken as well as spontaneously broken, then the Nambu-Goldstone bosons are not massless…” (Wikipedia, linked here)

Thus, electroweak “symmetry” is not (only) spontaneously broken (as in the Higgs mechanism for spontaneous symmetry breaking), but is explicitly broken, in order for the field quanta to acquire their masses. If it was just spontaneously broken, the weak bosons would be massless Goldstone bosons!

Above: Professor Nakanishi’s point about beta decay of pions is that pions are spin-0 and yet the dominating leptonic decay of charged pions is somehow by their conversion into a spin-1 weak boson (which subsequently decays into a muon and a neutrino). It therefore looks as if the spin of weak bosons can be zero, and they pick up spin as well as mass while travelling in the vacuum, thus becoming spin-1 massive W bosons, despite having been emitted with zero spin. An analogy to this change in the properties of particles as the travel through the vacuum is the flavour changing of neutrinos; 100% of the neutrinos emitted by the sun are electron neutrinos, but during their journey they interact with the vacuum and change flavour so that only a third of the neutrinos received on the earth are electron neutrinos and the rest are muon and tauon neutrinos. This is often misleadingly referred to as “neutrino oscillations”, which implies the assumption of a classical oscillating wave that gradually transforms flavours of neutrinos. Contrary to this smooth oscillation idea, any individual neutrino is not at any time a mixture of flavours, but it is only one flavour, so it must change its flavour in a discrete manner as a result of a discrete interaction. Thus, random quantum interactions in the vacuum convert the solar electron neutrinos into an equally partitioned mixture of the three flavours by the time the arrive at the earth and are detected. The well-known extremely low interaction rate of neutrinos with matter is therefore not applicable to the interaction rate of neutrinos with the vacuum.

Since key properties (mass, spin) of the spin-1 massive weak bosons are acquired from vacuum interactions, rather than intrinsic, it is possible that the left-handedness of the weak interaction also lies in the spin acquisition, rather than in the non-falsifiable assumption (in the Standard Model) that right-handed neutrinos don’t exist. The Higgs symmetry-breaking concept is that over very short distances (corresponding to high energies) the weak field quanta are massless, and that mass is acquired as they plow some distance through the vacuum, interacting with massive particles. If they pick up mass from interacting with the vacuum, this will occur as they move along, so mass will only be acquired after a transit through space. Over very small distances (or at very high energies) they won’t move far enough through the vacuum to interact and acquire mass, so they will remain massless over small distances, which is the basis for assuming an electroweak unification at high energies. But this Higgs mechanism is grossly simplistic unchecked speculation, and doesn’t lead to falsifiable predictions of all discrete particle masses. The real theory of particle mass will in some sense be a theory of quantum gravity charge, and you want it to predict masses less vaguely, thus be falsifiable. If quantum gravity charges (fundamental mass particles) have only one sign (as observed so far; because every mass observed falls in the same way in a gravitational field), then there is no way for fundamental charges of mass-energy to disappear. So when matter and antimatter are annihilated, gravitational charge is conserved and doesn’t disappear (the photon interacts with gravitational fields). Thus, the fundamental vacuum field (the raw quantum gravity charge) should be a fundamentally stable ground-state particle, that cannot decay. The Higgs boson is by contrast taken to be yet another unstable particle which is capable of decay, and so the search for the Higgs boson is based on looking for decay products corresponding to those which would be emitted by a Higgs-like unstable particle.

The path integral, Haag’s theorem and relativity: A reformulation of the phase amplitude factor from complex configuration space to Euclidean space, overcoming the problem that Haag’s theorem forbids an interaction picture in quantum field theory within Hilbert space

Quantum field theory is presently formulated in a complex configuration space, such as Hilbert or Foch space. Haag’s theorem denies the existence of the interaction picture of quantum field theory in a Foch or Hilbert space. Therefore, Haag’s theorem disproves the present formulation of quantum field theory in terms of renormalizable (polarizable) fields in such complex configuration spaces. Haag’s theorem states that there is a lack of consistency between the free field and the renormalized (i.e. vacuum polarization-compensated) vacuum states in Hilbert spaces, because the isomorphism that maps the free-field Hilbert space on to the renormalized-field Hilbert space is ambiguous. Haag’s theorem is an outstanding foundational problem for quantum field theory (the basis of the Standard Model, which is the most precisely verified theory in existence) and has led Dr Oakley to suggest the drastic step of removing the interaction picture, which leads to difficulties. We choose the alternative option of overcoming Haag’s theorem by retaining the interaction picture and reformulating the phase factor of the path integral using Euler’s formula for the phase amplitude factor, e^iS = cos S + i sin S where S is the action (the integral of the lagrangian over time, expressed in dimensionless units consisting of action divided into the quantum unit of action, h-bar). As this formula shows, the phase factor e^iS is a simple periodic function when plotted on an Argand diagram. Paths represented by small actions (S » 0) lead to phase factors of e^iS ~ e⁰ = 1, while the cyclical value of e^iS for other paths with greater actions cancel one another, allowing the sum of phase factors for all paths to be maximised where the action is least.

It is shown in Figs. 1 and 2 that a precise duality exists for path integral purposes between the complex phase factor e^iS and the factor cos S, the only difference being the loss of vector information: the direction of the resultant amplitude in a path integral is lost by use of the substitution e^iS -> cos S, since this substitution changes the path integral from summing vectors (of equal length but varying direction on the Argand diagram), to the summation of scalars (amplitudes without direction, i.e. the output from cos S) which vary in value between plus and minus one to allow cancellation of cyclical contributions from large actions. However, this vector information is unnecessary for existing uses of the path integral, so that the substitution e^iS -> cos S is an effective and necessary solution to the problem for Hilbert space in Haag’s theorem, allowing the path integral to be formulated in Euclidean space, instead of a complex space. The implication for quantum field theory is the need to reformulate the existing mathematical structure using simpler tools which allow greater self-consistency, simpler evaluation, and more emphasis on understanding the physical mechanisms behind the equations.

Fig. 1: a single photon of light reflects off a mirror, appearing to reflect at an angle of incidence which is equal to the angle of reflection. Feynman explains in his 1985 book QED (diagrams on the left hand side of the figure) how light knows what angle to reflect at. We know from other experiments (e.g. Young’s double slit experiment when photons are fired one at a time and detected by photomultiplier) that the path a “real” photon of light goes on is influenced by all possible paths although most of the energy is transferred along paths at and near those having minimum action (where the phase factor is e^iS ~ e^~0 ~ 1), so that “virtual photons” or off-shell radiation goes along other paths and is normally cancelled out due to arriving out of phase. This diagram compares of the evaluation of the path integral by the summation of phase factors for all possible in a complex configuration space, with the replacement of complex phase factor e^iS by simply the real space cyclic factor, cos S. Notice that the path integral using e^iS tells us two different things: the magnitude (length) of the nose-to-tail resultant arrow (sum over histories), and also its direction. The use of cos S for the phase factor in place of e^iS gives us the same resultant magnitude for the path integral, but it fails to tell us the complex or imaginary direction of that resultant arrow. So we lose one piece of information, and this is a prime example of the sort of mathematical substitution (analogous to the false statement [x²]^1/2 = x, which of course is clearly seen to be wrong for the case x = -1, where the equation tells you absurdly that 1 = -1) which makes those mathematicians suffering from excessive demands for rigor (a disease called rigor mortis) turn in their graves. The likes of stringy arXiv advisers/bigots may well be unable to see the advantage of this simplification from complex configuration space to Euclidean space, but who cares about the rigor mortis of string theorists?

The whole point we are making is that, the way that the path integral is currently used and checked in quantum field theory (e.g. finding magnitudes of cross-sections or correction factors for magnetic moments and the Lamb shift, by evaluating the perturbative expansion for the path integral), it is not being used to find the imaginary complex direction of the resultant vector, but is simply being used to determine the resultant scalar amplitudes (resultant arrow lengths, not directions), so the full vector properties which include the Argand diagram direction of the resultant arrow are just not relevant for the empirically confirmed predictions from the path integral! Thus, we reverse the obvious argument against the cos S substitution completely! Please don’t fall into the error of assuming that the textbook phase factor e^iS is perfectly correct and that it must be not replaced (or, saying the same thing with different words, “it must be replaced by something which is absolutely identical”). That’s the error of the proponents of epicycles, caloric and phlogiston, who insisted they were interested in science provided that any new theory is completely compatible with the existing (wrong) theory. The complex exponential phase factor comes from the solution to Schroedinger’s time-dependent equation, and that equation is a guess from Schroedinger that is not rigorously theoretically derivable (as Feynman points out in his Lectures on Physics). We know that Schroedinger’s time-dependent equation is only an approximation anyway since it is non-relativistic. So we reverse the old route and find the most useful phase factor heuristically; then we can reformulate quantum mechanics and the mathematical obfuscation and confusion due to Haag’s theorem disappears with the complex configuration space.

We’re left with a Euclidean space in which relativistic curvature is produced by virtual particle interactions. Now what about the Lorentz transformation in special relativity, and the corresponding contraction of spacetime around mass and energy (spacetime curvature) in general relativity, and its consequences for Euclidean space? Dr Woit argues that a Euclidean signature is required even for the conventional formulation (phase amplitudes in a complex configuration space) of quantum field theory in the standard model in Quantum Field Theory and Representation Theory: A Sketch, 2002, p. 51: “the standard model should be defined over a Euclidean signature four dimensional space time since even the simplest free quantum field theory path integral is ill-defined in a Minkowski signature.” Special relativity is in any case based on Machian observables, implicitly excluding the particulate field or ether of virtual particles in the vacuum required by quantum field theory (these virtual particles cause real, measurable effects like the experimentally demonstated Casimir force, the quantum field effect perturbation to the magnetic moment of leptons and the Lamb shift), and it states (correctly) that we can’t observe absolute motion by measuring the time taken for light to bounce back and forward across a “fixed” distance in different directions, because Lorentz contraction varies the length of the “fixed” distances. Thus a Michelson-Morley device simply can’t detect absolute motion:

See Carlos Barceló and Gil Jannes, ‘A Real Lorentz-FitzGerald Contraction’, published in the peer-reviewed journal Foundations of Physics, Volume 38, Number 2, February 2008, pp. 191-199 (online version linked here):

“Many condensed matter systems are such that their collective excitations at low energies can be described by fields satisfying equations of motion formally indistinguishable from those of relativistic field theory. The finite speed of propagation of the disturbances in the effective fields (in the simplest models, the speed of sound) plays here the role of the speed of light in fundamental physics. However, these apparently relativistic fields are immersed in an external Newtonian world (the condensed matter system itself and the laboratory can be considered Newtonian, since all the velocities involved are much smaller than the velocity of light) which provides a privileged coordinate system and therefore seems to destroy the possibility of having a perfectly defined relativistic emergent world. In this essay we ask ourselves the following question: In a homogeneous condensed matter medium, is there a way for internal observers, dealing exclusively with the low-energy collective phenomena, to detect their state of uniform motion with respect to the medium? By proposing a thought experiment based on the construction of a Michelson-Morley interferometer made of quasi-particles, we show that a real Lorentz-FitzGerald contraction takes place, so that internal observers are unable to find out anything about their ‘absolute’ state of motion. Therefore, we also show that an effective but perfectly defined relativistic world can emerge in a fishbowl world situated inside a Newtonian (laboratory) system. This leads us to reflect on the various levels of description in physics …”

Page 4 of their paper:

“The reason that special relativity was considered a better explanation than the Lorentz-FitzGerald hypothesis can best be illustrated by Einstein’s own words: “The introduction of a ‘luminiferous ether’ will prove to be superfluous inasmuch as the view here to be developed will not require an ‘absolutely stationary space’ provided with special properties.” The ether theory had not been disproved, it merely became superfluous. Einstein realised that the knowledge of the elementary interactions of matter was not advanced enough to make any claim about the relation between the constitution of matter (the ‘molecular forces’), and a deeper layer of description (the ‘ether’) with certainty. Thus his formulation of special relativity was an advance within the given context, precisely because it avoided making any claim about the fundamental structure of matter, and limited itself to an effective macroscopic description.”

G. Builder, “Ether and Relativity” in the Australian Journal of Physics, v11, 1958 (linked here), states that if you move atomic clocks, absolute motion is detectable from time-dilation (special relativity does not apply here, and general relativity is based on general covariance, which not the principle of relativity): “we conclude that the relative retardation of clocks … does indeed compel us to recognise the causal significance of absolute velocities.” (In 1971, J. C. Hafele flew atomic clocks around the world, citing Builder’s paper and confirming Builder’s conclusion therefore that the relative aging of clocks in different states of motion implies the existence of the means to detect the presence of absolute motion; Science, vol. 177, pp. 166-8. Notice however that the winner of the Templeton Prize for Religion, Paul Davies, obfuscated Hafele’s analysis at length in his – Davies – book About Time, claiming misleadingly that since Hafele’s analysis of time dilations were based on relativity, his results must somehow defend the religion whereby special relativity disproves the presence of absolute facts. Actually, special relativity isn’t applicable to accelerating motions and some accelerations are needed to separate and return together atomic clocks, so you are dealing with general relativity which is based on general covariance of the equations of motion, rather than special relativity. Regardless of which of Einstein’s theories you use, you find that in similar gravitational fields, clocks which slow down the most are the ones which are moving the most. Thus, time dilation is evidence that you can tell which of two atomic clocks has been in motion. If all motion was relative, you wouldn’t be able to tell. Thus, outside the narrow confines of special relativity, such as uniform motion, motion isn’t relative.)

Fig. 2: (click on image for a larger view) the equivalence of the resultant amplitudes when using e^iS and cos S for the phase factor in the path integral (sum over path histories). Basically, what we are suggesting is that we take Euler’s e^iS = cos S + i sin S then drop the complex term i sin S

Michelson-Morley experiment on YouTube

Thanks are due to Matti Pitkanen for news of these great experiment videos:

It seems that anyone can now repeat the Michelson-Morley experiment to verify the result that, as FitzGerald concluded, no absolute motion is detectable when rotating an interferometer, which works by splitting a light beam with a piece of glass at an angle to the beam, and then sending the two beams (at right angles to each other) on a two-way journey to mirrors, before recombining them to create interference fringes on a screen. The interference fringes are extremely sensitive to small changes in the distance or speed of each beam of light, so by rotating the instrument it would be possible to see the effects of any absolute motion of the earth, provided that the effect of absolute motion doesn’t change two things at once. When rotated in a plate horizontal to the Earth’s surface, no change in the interference fringes are observed, which George FitzGerald historically interpreted in the journal Science in 1889 (two years after the Michelson-Morley experiment) as evidence that absolute motion has two effects which cancel out any change in the interference pattern: (1) absolute motion affects the speed of light, and (2) absolute motion contracts the instrument in the direction of its motion (an effect of the gravitational field in space analogous in some respects to the pressure of water on the front of a moving ship or aircraft, which causes a compressive force and thus a small contraction in direction of motion). FitzGerald explained that the effects of these two results prevent the Michelson-Morley instrument from seeing a change in the interference fringes, because the contraction of the instrument shortens the travel distance for light in the direction of absolute motion.

Einstein didn’t get away from this physical mechanism of relativity, the FitzGerald-Lorentz explanation, because special relativity includes the FitzGerald-Lorentz contraction factor, which is going to shorten the instrument in the direction of motion. Therefore, because special relativity includes that equation for the contraction of the instrument, it implies that light velocity must vary as the instrument is moved (say due to the Earth’s 30 km/s motion in orbiting the sun, or the 600 km/s motion of the Milky Way towards Andromeda), because according to Einstein’s special relativity, motion does contract the instrument by the FitzGerald-Lorentz factor (1 – v²/c²)^1/2, thus the observed lack of interference fringe changes in the horizontal rotation of the instrument rules out a constant velocity of light. The relativistic contraction of the instrument as the relative direction of motion changed due to the rotation of the instrument would be predicted to make the interference fringes change because a contraction of length in the direction of motion will shorten one light path relative to another. The combination of “contraction formula no observed interference fringe shift upon rotation” therefore implies that the velocity of light is absolute, in order to compensate for the contraction and produce the observed lack of interference fringe change!

In the videos, the Michelson-Morley instruments are rotated also in the vertical plane, where the cyclically changing gravitational force naturally causes the oblong rectangular instrument to contract the base board slightly as it rotates, producing changes to the interference fringes. This is simply due to the masses in the instrument such as the camera arm, inducing additional contractions and expansions due to the force of gravity as the instrument is whirled around (gravity has no such effect obviously when the instrument is rotated horizontally, which induces no gravitational force). Unlike the FitzGerald-Lorentz contraction, these additional small contractions and expansions of the instrument base board are of course not compensated for by the absolute velocity of light, so they show up on the screen as cyclical variations in the interference fringe pattern. The second experiment minimized gravitational force effects on the instrument by using a stronger instrument base board and rotating the instrument more slowly in the vertical plane by hand rather than with a motor, and this reduced the amount of shifting of the interference fringes as compared to the first experiment, confirming that the shifting pattern was simply an instrument effect due to gravitational forces during vertical rotation.

20 Vov 2010 update: Garrett Lisi and Peter Woit versus Jacques Distler and the superstring theory community (Aaron Bergmann and others)

The comments section of Dr Woit’s blog post A Geometric Theory of Everything is currently the battleground between Dr Lisi’s half-baked E₈ particle physics theory and his critics such as Professor Distler and other superstring believers. Dr Woit writes in the latest comment:

“There are well-understood rules for how professionals conduct intellectual arguments (e.g. avoid ad hominem attacks, try to accurately describe your opponents arguments, etc.). Jacques and Lubos don’t play by those rules. In Lubos’s case it’s immediately obvious, with Jacques it takes a while to figure out.”

This is just politics. Science isn’t about social niceties or diplomacy, but about facts. The fact is, Dr Lisi’s E₈ theory is less developed than string theory since (for one thing) it has had less time and money has been invested in it, and Jacques Distler has invested research time in string theory, which gives him a vested interest in defending it as the only game in town, and to do that, he dismissively points out problems in other people’s half-baked theories. There’s a paradox here: nobody can expect to produce a theory as well developed as string theory without the decades of time and research which has been invested in string theory, but unless they do, they will be dismissed. Distler’s key argument is that Lisi’s symmetry pattern needs mirror fermions which destroy the theory; Lisi responds with the convenient arm-waving excuse: “I think what’s really going on is that these mirror fermions may be related to usual fermions using an E8 gauge transformation, so that they never appear as mirrors but rather as another generation.” So he doesn’t really have a cut and dried answer, just a vague guess. But in superstring theory too, with all supersymmetric theories, there are unobserved “sparticles”, supposedly with masses are conveniently too high to observe, and conveniently not predictable precisely (so the theory is really non-falsifiable, or “not even wrong” in Pauli’s language).

Special relativity and the Michelson-Morley result

Special relativity demands a “hidden” absolute velocity of light, to compensate for the contraction of the Michelson-Morley instrument in the direction of its motion:

Professor A. S. Eddington (who confirmed Einstein’s general theory of relativity in 1919), MA, MSc, FRS, Space Time and Gravitation: An Outline of the General Relativity Theory, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1921, pp. 20, 152:

“The Michelson-Morley experiment has thus failed to detect our motion through the aether, because the effect looked for – the delay of one of the light waves – is exactly compensated by an automatic contraction of the matter forming the apparatus … The great stumbing-block for a philosophy which denies absolute space is the experimental detection of absolute rotation.”

FitzGerald’s original explanation (published in Science in 1889, about four years before Lorentz) of the failure of the experiment to detect the absolute velocity of light that James Clerk Maxwell postulated when proposing the experiment, was simply that the instrument contracted in the direction of motion, shortening the instrument so the two-way path of light in the direction of motion was shortened, compensating for the effect of absolute motion and preventing the shift in interference fringes from being observable.

Thus, FitzGerald preserved the ether and the absolute velocity of light, with the contraction formula. Einstein’s special relativity doesn’t debunk FitzGerald’s explanation, because Einstein still has the same contraction formula, the FitzGerald-Lorentz contraction.

The Earth is going around the sun at 30 km/s and the Milky Way is going towards Andromeda at 600 km/s. If the speed of light was always constant, then the contraction of the instrument would produce interference fringe shifts as it was rotated, by shortening one two-way light beam path. Thus, if the instrument contracts in the direction of the Earth’s motion, then this would produce interference fringe shifts unless the velocity of light changes with direction, preventing such shifts:

(1) Contraction in the direction of motion by the factor FitzGerald-Lorentz factor will cause interference fringe movement as the Michelson-Morley instrument is rotated around, due to the contraction of the instrument in the direction of motion (shortening one light path relative to the other) caused by the motion of the Earth.

(2) To get rid of the interference fringe shifts due to the Lorentz-FitzGerald contraction of the instrument in the direction of motion (shortening the path taken by one of the split light beams), you need to have a variable velocity of light!

If Einstein wanted to get rid of an absolute velocity of light, he would need to get rid of the FitzGerald-Lorentz contraction. He doesn’t. He has the contraction! He doesn’t realize that it is incompatible with his postulate of the constancy of the velocity of light, because he doesn’t understand the Michelson-Morley experiment. He just focusses on Maxwell’s equations. The FitzGerald-Lorentz contraction is a compensating factor for the absolute speed of light: if you want a non-absolute speed of light, you then have to get rid of that compensating factor, or else it (the contraction of the instrument) will shorten one light path and thus cause interference fringe shifts!

Thus, special relativity was actually misunderstood by its alleged author, Einstein. Sir Edmund Whittaker’s History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity, v2, 1951, attributed special relativity to Lorentz and Poincare, outraging Einstein’s friend Abraham Pais, who then lent Einstein his original copy of Poincare’s 1904 relativity paper, which Einstein had apparently never seen before (this is in Pais’ 1982 biography of Einstein, Subtle is the Lord). Einstein then instructed Born to give a public acknowledgement of Poincare’s role, and Born announced that Poincare had discovered relativity before Einstein. This made Pais furious, because Poincare’s original relativity had three postulates, unlike the two in Einstein’s. Pais ignores the points of Builder and Eddington. The subject has become completely pseudoscientific, putting religious style hero worship ahead of critical analysis. Bearing in mind that Einstein didn’t bother to read up the Michelson-Morley experiment or the papers of FitzGerald, Lorentz and Poincare, before rushing out his own paper, it is no wonder that he was confused.

G. Builder showed in a peer-reviewed journal in 1958 that absolute motion is implicit also in the “relativistic” time-dilation:

“we conclude that the relative retardation of clocks … does indeed compel us to recognise the causal significance of absolute velocities.”

- G. Builder, “Ether and Relativity”, Australian Journal of Physics, v11, 1958. In 1971, J. C. Hafele flew atomic clocks around the world, citing Builder’s paper and confirming Builder’s conclusion therefore that the relative aging of clocks in different states of motion implies the existence of the means to detect the presence of absolute motion: Science, vol. 177, pp. 166-8.

Carlos Barceló and Gil Jannes, ‘A Real Lorentz-FitzGerald Contraction’, published in the peer-reviewed journal Foundations of Physics, Volume 38, Number 2, February 2008, pp. 191-199, http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0705/0705.4652v2.pdf:

“… we show that a real Lorentz-FitzGerald contraction takes place, so that internal observers are unable to find out anything about their ‘absolute’ state of motion. … The reason that special relativity was considered a better explanation than the Lorentz-FitzGerald hypothesis can best be illustrated by Einstein’s own words … his formulation of special relativity was an advance within the given context, precisely because it avoided making any claim about the fundamental structure of matter, and limited itself to an effective macroscopic description.”

It’s a typical example of groupthink that a “restricted” theory of relativity, which only applies to uniform motion in a straight line, is still being worshipped by ignorant pseudoscientific bigots.

Failure of the peer-review system in theoretical particle physics

Just a few additional bits taken from the comments section of the Not Even Wrong blog post A Geometric Theory of Everything. Note that Dr Woit, the blog administrator, wrote a chapter about the failure of the peer-review system in the case of the Bogdanov’s in his 2006 book, Not Even Wrong, and that Professor Jacques Distler of Steven Weinberg’s stringy research department, Texas University, was then an arXiv.org Cornell University preprint server adviser, who allegedly censored trackbacks to string theory papers on the arXiv that came from Woit’s blog postings, while allowing more enthusiastic trackbacks from his own Musings blog and from other string theorists’ blogs. (The fact that non-peer reviewed “preprint” online servers such as arXiv.org are routinely used to “publish” papers, bypassing the supposedly peer-reviewed journal system, is another problem in itself. The role of print journals is now being reversed: no longer are they the means for rapid widespread dissemination of new ideas, they’re now just a slow vehicle for endorsement by “black-balling” elitist groupthink, which due to copyright and charges to download papers, end up making new research unavailable to many people around the world who do not have online access to the journals. It has been made clear that Einstein’s papers were not peer-reviewed; his first instance of peer-review was with the Physical Review in 1936, when he wrote to the editor that he refused to have his papers circulated to anonymous reviewers prior to publication. The peer-review system is a good demarcation of the line between science and the consensus of groupthink, the religious doctrine of believing in what is fashionable or has “endorsement” from “authority” in science.) Woit was accused of not taking the “professional” standpoint of supporting peer-reviewed journal papers over preprints, and responded:

“The fact of the matter is that one can’t judge this kind of research on whether it is peer-reviewed or not, you have to read the things, understand them and make up their own mind. In my posting I gave links people can follow to do this, and that’s what they should do if they are seriously interested in this particular question. I’ve also noted in the comments that my experience with Jacques is that he doesn’t follow the usual rules for intellectual debate, which you can check by reading my public exchanges with him. You may or may not find that relevant if you try and follow his arguments with Garrett.”

He later adds:

“You need people who know what they are talking about to discuss the issue as honestly and clearly as they can. In many cases things will come down to whether there’s any hope that future work will fix known problems with some idea (and I think that’s what’s going on here, as well as in string theory). Reasonable people will differ, with those who believe problems can be overcome going on to try and do so.”

Professor Hawking’s co-author, astrophysicist George F. R. Ellis makes the important point:

“People need to be aware that there is a range of models that could explain the observations… For instance, I can construct you a spherically symmetrical universe with Earth at its center, and you cannot disprove it based on observations… You can only exclude it on philosophical grounds. In my view there is absolutely nothing wrong in that. What I want to bring into the open is the fact that we are using philosophical criteria in choosing our models. A lot of cosmology tries to hide that.” (Quoted in: W. Wayt Gibbs, “Profile: George F. R. Ellis,” Scientific American, October 1995, Vol. 273, No.4, p. 55. Emphasis added.)

Of course, this is the opposite of what happens in science. Ptolemy fits circular epicycles to an earth-centred universe model, then claims that the predictions prove the model right, and everybody believes him, making the transition to a better model (the solar system, requiring Kepler’s elliptical orbits to avoid epicycles) very hard. Early scientific models acquire an authority status just because they were there first, and people religiously believe them to be true just because they contain enough epicycles to make them fit the evidence. Then you get the problem that when the correct theory comes along, it is initially in a form which makes it give worse predictions than the wrong mainstream theory. E.g., Aristarchus first came up with the solar system in 250 B.C., but because he didn’t have good data, he assumed circular orbits (not elliptical orbits), and his model was inaccurate as well as being ridiculed because it contravened the then-assumed laws of motion (Aristotle’s laws of motion, which were very different to Newton’s, and were wrong). Instead of everybody getting together to work on Aristarchus’s solar system in 250 B.C., they simply used groupthink prejudice to ignore it and to assume that the sun, planets and stars all orbit the earth daily, with epicycles accounting for the apparent retrograde motions. Ptolemy’s Almagest of 150 A.D. makes it clear that Aristarchus’s solar system was actually ridiculed for allegedly (in combination with Aristotle’s flawed laws of motion) predicting that clouds and birds should orbit the equator at 1,000 mph, and predicting a 1,000 mph wind the equator. Copernicus, when trying to establish the solar system in 1500 A.D., in his first printing proofs credited Aristarchus with first suggesting the solar system, then deleted that acknowledgement before publication. It looks extremely unfashionable to try to repopularize an old supposedly “discredited” idea in a new format. Similarly, Darwin did not set out his account of evolution by praising Lamarck’s earlier (incorrect) theory of evolution. If you correct an incorrect theory so that it is no longer incorrect, a frank account of the process will make the result look “contrived” or fiddled. However, a certain amount of fiddling around with theories or puzzles is always needed to get anywhere, whether the result is right or wrong.

Changing the path integral phase factor from e^iS to cos iS as explained above gets rid of the problem that Haag’s theorem disproves renormalization in Hilbert’s complex space of quantum field theory, because it replaces Hilbert space with Euclidean space, where renormalization occurs very simply through polarization. Quantum gravity as the exchange of gravitons then becomes the summing of vacuum off-shell radiation exchange processes in real space, an off-shell version of LeSage’s theory. The traditional objections to LeSage all suppose that the graviton is an on-shell particle that can cause drag and heating to moving objects. By contrast, in quantum gravity, the graviton has always been an off-shell (virtual) particle that doesn’t cause heating or drag to moving particles, like the Casimir zero point radiation in the vacuum. However, it is clear that some vacuum interactions with moving particles do occur: gravitons cause contraction to masses moving in the vacuum (the Lorentz contraction), just as they do to static masses (as given by the field equation in general relativity).

Fig. 1: Argand diagrams for the phase amplitude of a path and for the Feynman path integral, from Dr Robert D. Klauber’s paper Path Integrals in Quantum Theories: A Pedagogic 1st Step. The phase amplitude for a given path, e^iS/h-bar (where S is the action i.e. the integral over time of the Lagrangian, L, as shown in the upper diagram; the Lagrangian of a path represents the difference between a path’s kinetic and potential energy) by Euler’s formula has a real part and a complex (or imaginary) part so requires for graphical representation an Argand diagram (which has a real horizontal axis and a complex or imaginary vertical axis). However, as the second graph above indicates, this doesn’t detract from Feynman’s simple end-to-end summing of arrows which represent amplitudes and directions for individual path histories. Feynman’s approach keeps the arrows all the same length, but varies their direction. Those with opposite directions cancel out completely; those with partially opposing directions partially cancel. Notice that the principle of least action does not arise by making the arrows all smaller as the action gets bigger; it simply allows them to vary in all directions (random angles) with equal probability at large actions, so they cancel out effectively, while the geometry makes the arrow directions for paths with the least action add together most coherently: this is why nature conforms to the principle of least action. In a nutshell: for large actions, paths have random phase angles and so they cancel each other out very efficiently and contribute nothing to resultant in the path integral; but for small actions, paths have similar phase angles and so contribute the most to the resultant path integral. Notice also that all of little arrows in the path integral above (or rather, the sum over histories) have equal lengths but merely varying directions. The resultant arrow (in purple) is represented by two pieces of information: a direction and a length. The length of the resultant arrow represents the amplitude. Generally the length of the resultant arrow is all we need to find if we want to calculate the probability of an interaction, but if the path integral is done to work out an effect which has both magnitude and direction (i.e. a vector quantity like a force), the direction of the resultant arrow is also important.

Fig. 2: Feynman’s path integral for particle reflection off a plane in his 1985 book QED, from Dr Robert D. Klauber’s paper Path Integrals in Quantum Theories: A Pedagogic 1st Step. The arrows at the bottom of the diagram are the Argand diagram phase vectors for each path; add them all up from nose to tail and you get the resultant, i.e. the sum-over-histories or “path integral” (strictly you are summing a discrete number of paths in this diagram so it is not an integral, which would involve using calculus, however summation of a discrete number of paths was physically more sensible to Feynman than integrating over an infinite number of paths for every tiny particle interaction). The square of the length of the resulting arrow from the summing of arrows in Fig. 1 is proportional to the probability of the process occurring.

Witten has a talk out with the title above, mentioned by Woit, which as you might expect from someone who has hyped string theory, doesn’t physically or even mathematically approach any of the interesting aspects of the path integral. It falls into the category of juggling which fails to make any new physical predictions, but of course these people don’t always want to make physical predictions for fear that they might be found wanting, or maybe because they simply lack new ideas that are checkable. Let’s look at the interesting aspects of the path integral that you don’t hear discussed by the fashionable Wittens and popular textbook authors. Feynman explains in his 1985 book QED that the path integral isn’t intrinsically mathematical because the real force or real photon propagates along the uncancelled paths that lie near the path of least action; virtual field quanta are exchanged along other paths with contributions that cancel out.

Richard P. Feynman, QED, Penguin, 1990, pp. 55-6, and 84:

‘I would like to put the uncertainty principle in its historical place: when the revolutionary ideas of quantum physics were first coming out, people still tried to understand them in terms of old-fashioned ideas … But at a certain point the old fashioned ideas would begin to fail, so a warning was developed that said, in effect, “Your old-fashioned ideas are no damn good when …”. If you get rid of all the old-fashioned ideas and instead use the ideas that I’m explaining in these lectures – adding arrows [arrows = path phase amplitudes in the path integral, i.e. e^iS(n)/h-bar] for all the ways an event can happen – there is no need for an uncertainty principle! … on a small scale, such as inside an atom, the space is so small that there is no main path, no “orbit”; there are all sorts of ways the electron could go, each with an amplitude. The phenomenon of interference [by field quanta] becomes very important …’

The only quantum field theory textbook author who actually seems to have read and understood this physics book by Feynman (which seems hard to grasp by mathematical physicists like Zee who claim to be nodding along to Feynman but fail to grasp what he is saying and misrepresent the physics of path integrals by making physically incorrect claims) is Dr Robert D. Klauber who has an interesting paper on his domain www.quantumfieldtheory.info called Path Integrals in Quantum Theories: A Pedagogic 1st Step

Mathematical methods for evaluating path integrals

Solve Schroedinger’s time-dependent equation and you find that the amplitude of the wavefunction changes with time in proportion to e^iHt/h-bar where H is the Hamiltonian energy of the system, so Ht is at least dimensionally equal to the action, S (which in turn is defined as the integral of the Lagrangian energy over time, or alternatively, the integral of the Lagrangian energy density over 4-d spacetime). The wavefunction at any later time t is simply equal to its present value multiplied by factor e^iS/h-bar. Now the first thing you ask is what is e^iS/h-bar? This factor is – despite appearances – is the completely non-mathematical phase vector rotating on a complex plane as Feynman explained (see the previous post), and similar complex exponential factors are used to simplify (rather than obfuscate) the treatment of alternating potential differences in electrical engineering. Let’s examine the details.

Notice that you can’t get rid of the complex conjugate, i = (-1)^1/2 by squaring since that just doubles the power, (e^iA)² = e^2iA, so if you square it, you don’t eliminate i‘s. So how do you get from e^iA a real numerical multiplication factor that transforms a wavefunction at time zero into the wavefunction at time t? Of course there is a simple answer, and this is just the kind of question that always arises when complex numbers are used in engineering. Complex analysis needs a clear understanding of the distinction between vectors and scalars, and this is best done using the Argand diagram, which I first met during A-level mathematics. This stuff is not even undergraduate mathematics. For example in alternating current electrical theory, the voltage or potential difference is proportional to e^2Pifti (note that electrical engineers use j for (-1)^1/2 to avoid confusing themselves, because they use i for electric current).

Euler’s equation states that e^iA = (cos A) + i (sin A), so we can simply set A = S/h-bar. The first term is now a real solution and the second term is the imaginary or complex solution. This equation has real solutions wherever sin A = 0, because this condition completely eliminates the complex term, leaving simply the real solution: e^iA = cos A. For values of A equal to 0 or n*Pi where n is an integer, sin A = 0, so in this case, e^iA = cos A. So you might wonder why Feynman didn’t ignore the complex term and simplify the phase amplitude to e^iS/h-bar = cos S/h-bar, to make the path integral yield purely real numbers which (superficially) look easier to add up. The answer is that ignoring the complex plane has the price of losing directional information: as Feynman explains, the amplitude e^iS/h-bar does not merely represent a scalar number, but a vector which has direction as well as magnitude. Although each individual arrow in the path integral has similar fixed magnitude of 1 unit, the path integral adds all of the arrows together to find the resultant which can have a different magnitude to any individual arrow, as well as a direction. You therefore need two pieces of information to be added in evaluating the the vector arrows to find the resultant arrow: length and direction are two separate pieces of information representing the resultant arrow, and you will lose information if you ignore one of these parameters. The complex conjugate therefore gives the phase amplitude the additional information of the direction of the arrow whose length represents magnitude.

However, if the length of the arrow is always the same size, which it is in Feynman’s formulation of quantum field theory, then there is only one piece of information involved: the direction of the arrow. So, since we have only one variable in each path (the angle describing direction of the arrow on the Argand diagram), why not vary the length of the arrow instead, and keep the angle the same? We can do that by dropping the complex term from Euler’s equation, and writing the phase amplitude as simply the real term in Euler’s equation,

cos(S/h-bar)

instead of

e^iS/h-bar.

Using cos(S/h-bar) as the amplitude in the path integral in place of e^iS/h-bar doesn’t cost us any information because it still conveys one piece of data: it simply replaces the single variable of the direction of an arrow of fixed length on a complex plane by the single variable of a magnitude for the path that can be added easily.

You might complain that, like e^iS/h-bar as expanded by Euler’s formula, cos(S/h-bar) is a periodic function which is equal to +1 for values of S/h-bar = 0, 2Pi, 4Pi, etc., is zero for values of S/h-bar of Pi/2, 3Pi/2, etc., and is -1 for values of S/h-bar = Pi, 3Pi, 5Pi, etc. Surely, you could complain, if the path integral is to emphasize phase contributions from paths with minimal action S (to conform with the physical principle of least action), it must make contributions small for all large values of action S, without periodic variations. You might therefore want to think about dropping the complex number from the exponential amplitude formula e^iS/h-bar and adding a negative sign in its place to give the real amplitude e^-S/h-bar. However, this is incorrect physically!

Feynman’s whole point when you examine his 1985 book QED (see Fig. 2 above for example) is that there is a periodic variation in path amplitude as a function of the action S. Feynman explains that particles have a spinning polarization phase which rotates around the clock as they move, analogous to the way that particles are spinning anticlockwise around the Argand diagram of Fig. 1 as they are moving along (all fundamental particles have spin). The complex amplitude e^iS/h-bar is a periodic function; expanded by Euler’s formula it is e^iS/h-bar = cos (S/h-bar) + i sin(S/h-bar) which has real solutions when S/h-bar = nPi where n is an integer, since sin (nPi) = 0 causing the second term (which is complex) to disappear. Thus, e^iS/h-bar is equal to -1 for S/h-bar = Pi, +1 for S/h-bar = 2Pi, -1 for S/h-bar = 3Pi, and so on.

e^iS/h-bar is therefore a periodic function in variations of action S, instead of being merely a function which is always big for small actions and always small for big actions! The principle of least action does not arise by the most mathematically intuitive way; it arises instead, as Feynman shows, from the geometry of the situation. This is precisely how we came to formulate the path integral for quantum gravity by a simple graphical summation that made checkable predictions.

Updates (28 August 2010):

“[String theory professor] Erik Verlinde has made a splash (most recently in the New York Times) with his claim that the reason we don’t understand gravity is that it is an emergent phenomenon, an “entropic force”. Now he and Peter Freund are taking this farther, with a claim that the Standard Model is also emergent. Freund has a new paper out on the arXiv entitled “Emergent Gauge Fields” with an abstract: “Erik Verlinde’s proposal of the emergence of the gravitational force as an entropic force is extended to abelian and non-abelian gauge fields and to matter fields. This suggests a picture with no fundamental forces or forms of matter whatsoever“.”

- Dr Woit’s blog post, Everything is Emergent.

““For me gravity doesn’t exist,” said Dr. Verlinde, who was recently in the United States to explain himself. Not that he can’t fall down, but Dr. Verlinde is among a number of physicists who say that science has been looking at gravity the wrong way and that there is something more basic, from which gravity “emerges,” the way stock markets emerge from the collective behavior of individual investors or that elasticity emerges from the mechanics of atoms.

“Looking at gravity from this angle, they say, could shed light on some of the vexing cosmic issues of the day, like the dark energy, a kind of anti-gravity that seems to be speeding up the expansion of the universe, or the dark matter that is supposedly needed to hold galaxies together.” – Dennis Overbye in the New York Times.

Dr Woit quotes Freund’s paper where it compares the “everything is emergent” concept with the “boostrap” theory of Geoffrey Chew’s analytic S-matrix (scattering matrix) in the 1960s: “It is as if assuming certain forces and forms of matter to be fundamental is tantamount (in the sense of an effective theory) to assuming that there are no fundamental forces or forms of matter whatsoever, and everything is emergent. This latter picture in which nothing is fundamental is reminiscent of Chew’s bootstrap approach [9], the original breeding ground of string theory. Could it be that after all its mathematically and physically exquisite developments, string theory has returned to its birthplace?”

Dr Woit’s 2006 book Not Even Wrong (Jonathan Cape edition, London, p. 148) gives a description of Chew’s bootstrap approach:

“By the end of the 1950s, [Geoffrey] Chew was calling this [analytic S-matrix] the bootstrap philosophy. Because of analyticity, each particle’s interactions with all others would somehow determine its own basic properties and … the whole theory would somehow pull itself up by its own bootstraps.

“By the mid-1960s, Chew was also characterising the bootstrap idea as nuclear democracy: no particle was to be elementary, and all particles were to be thought of as composites of each other.”

The Verlinde-Freund papers are just vague, arm-waving, versions of precise theoretical predictions we’ve already done years ago and have discussed and refined repeatedly on this blog and elsewhere: whereas Verlinde in an ad hoc way “derives” Newton’s classical equation for gravity, he does so without producing a quantitative estimate for the gravitational coupling G (something we do), and of course he failed to predict in advance of the discovery in 1998 the cosmological acceleration of the universe and thus the amount of “dark energy” quantitatively (something we did correctly in 1996, despite censorship by string theorist “peer-reviewers” for Classical and Quantum Gravity, who stated that any new idea not based on string theory is unworthy of being reviewed scientifically).

Fig. 3: the first two Feynman beta decay diagrams (left and centre) are correct: the third Feynman diagram (right) is wrong but is assumed dogmatically to be correct due to the dogma that quarks don’t decay into leptons as the main product. It’s explicitly assumed in the Standard Model that quarks and leptons are not vacuum polarization-modified versions of the same basic preon or underlying particle. However, it’s clear that this assumption is wrong for many reasons, as we have demonstrated. As one example, we can predict the masses of leptons and quarks from a vacuum polarization theory, whereas these masses have to be supplied as ad hoc constants into the Standard Model, which doesn’t predict them. In mainstream quantum gravity research, nobody considers the path integral for the exchange of gravitons between all masses in the universe, and everyone pretends that gravitons are only exchanged between say an apple and the Earth, thus concluding that the graviton must have a spin of 2 so that like gravitational charges attract. In fact, as we have proved, quantum gravity is an emergent effect in the sense it arises that the exchange of gravitons with immense masses isotropically located around us in distant stars; the convergence of these exchanged gravitons flowing towards any mass, when an anistropy is produced by another mass, causes a net force towards that other mass.

“Dick [Feynman] fought back against my skepticism, arguing that Einstein had failed because he stopped thinking in concrete physical images and became a manipulator of equations. I had to admit that was true. The great discoveries of Einstein’s earlier years were all based on direct physical intuition. Einstein’s later unified theories failed because they were only sets of equations without physical meaning. Dick’s sum-over-histories theory was in the spirit of the young Einstein, not of the old Einstein. It was solidly rooted in physical reality.”

This is important, because it clarifies Feynman’s position on the role of mathematics in physics, as indicated by some of the quotations from Feynman’s books and lectures given in the previous posts. Dyson is an authority on this subject because he worked with Feynman and Schwinger on the development of quantum electrdynamics, and it was he who first showed that Feynman’s path integrals provided a formal way to generalize, in his paper (in his famous paper The Radiation Theories of Tomonaga, Schwinger and Feynman) the Schwinger-Tomonaga calculations to any problem in quantum field theory. In Dyson’s Disturbing the Universe we find the quotation above on page 62 of the 1981 Pan edition, London. The context of the quotation is the 2,000 mile long, four-day car journey of Dyson and Feynman from Ithaca to Albuquerque in 1948, which ended up with them being fined in Albuquerque for speeding at 70 in a 20 miles per hour limit (Feynman’s chatty personality and love of Albuquerque charmed the J.P. into reducing the fine from $50 to $14.50).

Mathematics is central to making predictions and therefore central to physics; but when you look at how mathematics works you can see that it isn’t behind the phenomena of nature. First off, there are no complete analytical solutions to atoms heavier than hydrogen in quantum mechanics: you need to use approximations to deal with atoms that have more than one electron. How can nature be intrinsically mathematical in that case? Second, Professor Eugene P. Wigner, who worked on group theory and symmetries in physics, wrote a famous article on the “Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Physical Sciences”, Communications in Pure and Applied Mathematics, vol. 13, No. I (February 1960). Wigner of course is the physicist who designed the plutonium production reactors for the Manhattan Project in 1943, ignoring the possibility that some fission products could be strong neutron absorbers when produced in large amounts (at the time he was designing the reactor, the only experience was Fermi’s first experimental reactor, just 200 watts). Wigner admits in his autobiography that when the engineers increased his planned size of the reactor core by an arbitrary safety factor to allow for extra fuel to be inserted in the case of unforseen calculating errors, he was enraged at what he considered to be their ignorance of the precision of the beautiful equations and precision measurements which he used to make his exact calculations. Wigner was convinced that mathematics controlled physics, despite the fact you can’t actually use mathematics to calculate exact analytical wavefunctions to any many electron atoms. A few hours after Wigner’s reactors were turned on, they shut down because some fission products were strong neutron absorbers. It was only because the engineers had been skeptical of Wigner’s misleading calculations and had gone over Wigner’s head and made the reactor cores bigger than he wanted, that they were able to compensate for the fission product neutron absorbers by adding extra fuel to the core to keep it critical despite the effects of the neutron poisons. Still, despite this experience of the failure of physical calculations to completely model the real world, Wigner did not catch on that the universe is physical not governed by the approximate equations people use to describe it. In that article, Wigner dogmatically ignores all the evidence staring him in the face and assumes that mathematics is “unreasonably effective” in physics, when in fact it is unreasonably ineffective as seen from the long struggles to formulate the laws of nature mathematically and the failures to accomplish that objective:

“It always bothers me that, according to the laws as we understand them today, it takes a computing machine an infinite number of logical operations to figure out what goes on in no matter how tiny a region of space, and no matter how tiny a region of time. [There are an infinite series of terms in the perturbative expansion to a path integral, which can't all be evaluated; each term corresponds to one Feynman diagram. For low-energy physics, all of the important phenomena correspond to merely the first Feynman diagram, a simple tree branch shape with no spacetime loops which become important at high energy, above the IR or low-energy cutoff which corresponds to Schwinger's threshold field strength for pair production and annihilation operators to begin to have an effect. Clearly in the real world, an infinite number of Feynman diagrams are not all contributing in the smallest space; this fact is demonstrated by the need for a high-energy UV cutoff to suppress pair production with infinite momenta at the smallest distances, renormalizing the charge by limiting the quantum field effect from the pairs of virtual fermionic charges. However, the UV cutoff used in renormalization, while eliminating the infinite momenta from extremely high energy field phenomena, does not prevent the perturbative expansion having an infinite series of terms. Renormalization still leaves you with an infinite series of different loop-filled Feynman diagram terms in the expansion for energies below the UV cutoff energy.] How can all that be going on in that tiny space? Why should it take an infinite amount of logic to figure out what one tiny piece of spacetime is going to do? So I have often made the hypothesis that ultimately physics will not require a mathematical statement, that in the end the machinery will be revealed, and the laws will turn out to be simple, like the chequer board with all its apparent complexities.”

- Feynman, November 1964 Cornell lectures on the Character of Physical Law, recorded by the BBC.

Richard P. Feynman, November 1964 Messenger Lectures, The Character of Physical Law (also published in book form):

‘What does the planet do? Does it look at the sun, see how far away it is, and decide to calculate on its internal adding machine the inverse of the square of the distance, which tells it how much to move? This is certainly no explanation of the machinery of gravitation!

‘Suppose that in the world everywhere there are a lot of particles, flying through us at very high speed. They come equally in all directions – just shooting by – and once in a while they hit us in a bombardment. We, and the sun, are practically transparent for them, practically but not completely, and some of them hit. Look, then, at what would happen.

‘If the sun were not there, particles would be bombarding the Earth from all sides, giving little impulses by the rattle, bang, bang of the few that hit. This will not shake the Earth in any particular direction [it will just make fundamental particles move chaotically, like Brownian motion, rather than along smooth classical geodesics], because there are as many coming from one side as from the other, from top as from bottom.

‘However, when the sun is there the particles which are coming from that direction are partly absorbed [or reflected, as in the case of Yang-Mills gravitons, an exchange radiation!] by the sun, because some of them hit the sun and do not go through. Therefore, the number coming from the sun’s direction towards the Earth is less than the number coming from the other sides, because they meet an obstacle, the sun. It is easy to see that the farther the sun is away, of all the possible directions in which particles can come, a smaller proportion of the particles are being taken out.

‘The sun will appear smaller – in fact inversely as the square of the distance. Therefore there will be an impulse on the Earth towards the sun that varies inversely as the square of the distance. And this will be a result of large numbers of very simple operations, just hits, one after the other, from all directions. Therefore the strangeness of the mathematical relation will be very much reduced, because the fundamental operation is much simpler than calculating the inverse square of the distance. This design, with the particles bouncing, does the calculation.

‘The only trouble with this scheme is that … If the Earth is moving, more particles will hit it from in front than from behind. (If you are running in the rain, more rain hits you in the front of the face than in the back of the head, because you are running into the rain.) So, if the Earth is moving it is running into the particles coming towards it and away from the ones that are chasing it from behind. So more particles will hit it from the front than from the back, and there will be a force opposing any motion. This force would slow the Earth up in its orbit… So that is the end of that theory. [If the particles are real on-shell radiation, but not if they are quantum field quanta by analogy to the Casimir force radiation of the vacuum, which are off-shell radiation that doesn’t cause drag, heating, etc.]

‘‘Well,’ you say, ‘it was a good one … Maybe I could invent a better one.’ Maybe you can, because nobody knows the ultimate. …”

This is probably the best place to give some additional quotations from Dyson’s book Disturbing the Universe (Pan, London, 1981), showing how Richard (“Dick”) Feynman developed his sum-over-histories or path integrals technique and the difficulties in explaining such a relatively “non-standard” idea which requires only very simple mathematical integration techniques (as Feynman shows in his 1985 book QED in the case of low energy phenomena such as the refraction of light by glass or water or its reflection by a mirror, the path integral is just summing a single Feynman diagram over all of its possible actions so you can avoid any mathematical formulae and “sum over paths” by drawing the different paths on a diagram, plotting their complex phase angles as “arrows” of equal length but varying directioin, then summing all of the arrows nose-to-tail graphically to find the net amplitude or “path integral”!), aided by pictorial “Feynman diagrams”, one for each term in the perturbative expansion with terms having increasing powers of the coupling constant from Feynman’s rules.

Each additional term in the perturbative expansion represents a more complicated physical process, with additional interaction vertices, and according to Feynman’s rules you pick up one coupling constant for every vertex on the diagram. Thus, the simplest Feynman diagram is, say, an onshell photon being scattered an electric charge – by absorbing a gauge boson (offshell photon) from the field of an electron – and this diagram consists of just three lines meeting at one vertex (the gauge boson coming into the photon’s trajectory, being absorbed by it, and thus causing a deflection in the trajectory of the photon, which proceeds at an angle to its original path), so by Feynman’s rules it involves only the first power of the coupling constant, but more complicated diagrams have more than one vertex so they involve higher powers of the coupling constant. Feynman’s pictorial diagrams show the simple physical mechanism of nature operating behind the apparently complicated mathematical terms in the perturbative expansion, which are extremely difficult if not impossible to evaluate without Feynman’s pictures: nature isn’t mysterious, non-understandable mathematics, it requires “child’s play” mathematics, namely simple graphical diagrams of particles interacting. (Dyson tentatively explains a possible reason for this profound simplicity of the universe in the delightful but crazy finish to his book Disturbing the Universe, where he finds out a very simple answer to everything that seems mysterious and counter-intuitive.)

Page 54:

“As soon as I arrived at Cornell, I became aware of Dick as the liveliest personality in our department … I had a room in a student dormitory and sometimes around two o’clock in the morning I would wake up to the sound of a strange rhythm pulsating over the silent campus. That was Dick playing his bongo drums.

“Dick was also a profoundly original scientist. He refused to take anybody’s word for anything. This meant that he was forced to rediscover or reinvent for himself almost the whole of physics. It took him five years of concentrated work to reinvent quantum mechanics. He said that he couldn’t understand the official version of quantum mechanics that was taught in textbooks, and so he had to begin afresh from the beginning. That was a heroic enterprise. He worked harder during those years than anybody else I ever knew. At the end he had a version of quantum mechanics that he could understand. … The calculation that I did for Hans [Bethe], using the orthodox theory, took me several months of work and several hundred sheets of paper. Dick could get the same answer, calculating on a blackboard, in half an hour.

“So this was the situation which I found at Cornell. Hans was using the old cookbook quantum mechanics that Dick couldn’t understand. Dick was using his own private quantum mechanics that nobody else could understand. They were getting the same answers whenever they calculated the same problems. And Dick could calculate a whole lot of things that Hans couldn’t. It was obvious to me that Dick’s theory must be fundamentally right. I decided that my main job, after I finished the calculation for Hans, must be to understand Dick and explain his ideas in a language that the rest of the world could understand.”

On page 55, Dyson explains that “Dick” Feynman tried to explain his sum-over-histories theory to Oppenheimer and Bethe at the Pocono conference in the spring of 1948, and failed:

“Nobody understood a word that Dick said. At the end Oppy [Oppenheimer] made some scathing comments and that was that. Dick came home from the meeting very depressed. …

“The reason Dick’s physics was so hard for ordinary people to grasp was that he did not use equations. [E.g., in his 1985 book QED Feynman uses purely graphical procedures - without equations - to sum over many path histories with arrows of constant length and varying direction to physically represent the integration of phase amplitudes e^iS/h-bar for all paths with the relevant laws of nature expressed as a lagrangian in the action S; even where some integration of equations was really needed, Feynman was able to simplify the process of doing the actual integration of the square of the modulus of e^iS/h-bar using calculus by physically working out that such a path integral is equal to a "perturbative expansion" which is series of terms which can each be represented physically by a different interaction with a unique Feynman diagram; Feynman gave very simple rules for working out the contribution of each Feynman diagram, e.g. you multiply by one factor of the coupling constant for each vertex in the Feynman diagram, and by one propagator for each internal line in the Feynman diagram, etc.]

“The usual way theoretical physics was done since the time of Newton was to begin by writing down some equations and then to work hard calculating solutions of the equations. This was the way Hans and Oppy and Julian Schwinger did physics. Dick just … had a physical picture of the way things happen, and the picture gave him the solutions directly with a minimum of calculation. It was no wonder that people who had spent their lives solving equations were baffled by him. Their minds were analytical; his was pictorial. My own training, since the far-off days when I struggled with Piaggio’s differential equations, had been analytical. But as I listened to Dick and stared at the strange diagrams that he drew on the blackboard, I gradually absorbed some of his pictorial imagination and began to feel at home in his version of the universe. …”

Page 56:

“The behavior of the electron is just the result of adding together all the histories according to some simple rules that Dick worked out. And the same trick works with minor changes not only for electrons but for everything else …

“This sum-over-histories way of looking at things is not really so mysterious, once you get used to it. Like other profoundly original ideas, it has become slowly absorbed into the fabric of physics, so that now after thirty years it is difficult to remember why we found it at the beginning so hard to grasp. I had the enormous luck to be there at Cornell in 1948 when the idea was newborn, and to be for a short time Dick’s sounding board. I witnessed the concluding stages of the five-year-long intellectual struggle by which Dick fought his way through to his unifying vision. …

Page 57:

“In that spring of 1948 there was another memorable event. Hans received a small package from Japan containing the first two issues of a new physics journal, Progress of Theoretical Physics, published in Kyoto. The two issues were printed in English on brownish paper of poor quality. They contained a total of six short articles. The first article in issue No. 2 was called ‘On a Relativistically Invariant Formulation of the Quantum Theory of Wave Fields,’ by S. Tomonaga of Tokyo University. Underneath it was a footnote saying, ‘Translated from the paper … (1943) appeared originally in Japanese.’ Hans gave me the article to read. It contained, set out simply and lucidly without any mathematical elaboration, the central idea of Julian Schwinger’s theory. The implications of this were astonishing.”

Page 62:

“Dick distrusted my mathematics and I distrusted his intuition. … You could not imagine the sum-over-histories picture being true for a part of nature and untrue for another part. You could not imagine it being true for electrons and untrue for gravity. It was a unifying principle that would either explain everything or explain nothing. And this made me profoundly skeptical. I knew how many great scientists had chased this will-o’-the-wisp of a unified theory. The ground of science was littered with the corpses of dead unified theories. Even Einstein had spent twenty years searching for a unified theory and had found nothing that satisfied him. I admired Dick tremendously, but I did not believe he could beat Einstein at his own game.

“Dick fought back against my skepticism, arguing that Einstein had failed because he stopped thinking in concrete physical images and became a manipulator of equations. I had to admit that was true. The great discoveries of Einstein’s earlier years were all based on direct physical intuition. Einstein’s later unified theories failed because they were only sets of equations without physical meaning. Dick’s sum-over-histories theory was in the spirit of the young Einstein, not of the old Einstein. It was solidly rooted in physical reality.

“But I still argued against Dick, telling him that his theory was a magnificent dream rather than a scientific theory. Nobody but Dick could use his theory, because he was always invoking his intuition to make up the rules of the game as he went along. Until the rules were codified and made mathematically precise, I could not call it a theory.”

Page 67:

“Feynman and Schwinger were just looking at the same set of ideas from two different sides. Putting their methods together, you would have a theory of quantum electrodynamics that combined the mathematical precision of Schwinger with the practical flexibility of Feynman. Finally, there would be a straightforward theory of the middle ground. It was my tremendous luck that I was the only person who had had the chance to talk at length to both Schwinger and Feynman and really understand what both of them were doing. In the hour of illumination I gave thanks to my teacher Hans Bethe [at Cornell], who had made it possible. … The title of the [Dyson] paper would be ‘The Radiation Theories of Tomonaga, Schwinger and Feynman.’ This way I would make sure that Tomonaga got his fair share of the glory.”

Page 88:

“The first time I met Teller was in March 1949, when I talked to the physicists at the University of Chicago about the radiation theories of Schwinger and Feynman. I diplomatically gave high praise to Schwinger and then explained why Feynman’s methods were more useful and more illuminating. At the end of the lecture, the chairman called for questions from the audience. Teller asked the first question: ‘What would you think of a man who cried “There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet”, and then at once drank down a great tankard of wine?’ Since I remained speechless, Teller answered the question himself: ‘I would consider the man a very sensible fellow’.”

This illustrates the diplomacy needed in presenting new ideas.

“… Freedom is the right to question, and change the established way of doing things. It is the continuing revolution … It is the understanding that allows us to recognize shortcomings and seek solutions. It is the right to put forth an idea ….” – Ronald Reagan, Moscow State University, May 31, 1988.

Above: Feynman diagrams for the gravity field between two masses in general relativity, spin-2 quantum gravity, and spin-1 quantum gravity (which predicts cosmological acceleration, as discussed later on). For low energy interactions, at energies <0.5 MeV or so, below Schwinger's threshold cutoff for virtual fermion pair-production in the vacuum, the quantum field theories are very simple and described approximately by inverse square force laws in electromagnetism and gravity. Nevertheless, in each case, virtual bosons (field quanta) mediate the interaction. Feynman in QED (1985) shows how to deal with electromagnetic path integrals at low energy (where the IR cutoff excludes any vacuum pair production or polarization, preventing virtual fermionic spacetime loops in the perturbative expansion to a path integral) by geometric summation of pictorial arrows representing amplitudes for different contributions: he proves that the path integral is not inherently mathematical. The amplitude for any given path of action S, i.e., e^iS is just summed as a series of arrows. Feynman argues in his 1965 book Character of Physical Law that the infinite series of terms in a perturbative expansion makes the idea that nature is mathematical in nature crazy. What does nature do when two quarks interact via a gluon exchange event? Do they calculate an infinite series of terms in a perturbative expansion? Does every nucleus contain an infinitely powerful computer? So it’s just absurd to pretend that existing developments in mathematical physics suggest that the universe is mathematical: its no more than an ill-informed prejudice. On the other hand, it is possible to make a simple Feynman graphic calculation for the quantum gravity path integral that does predict things falsifiably. This doesn’t disprove the usefulness of mathematical models in QFT for high energy physics, but it does show that sometimes the only way to make an omelette involves breaking an egg; i.e., you don’t always need to hide behind very complex calculations and to proclaim the unproved dogma that mechanisms don’t exist in the universe. Trying to get quantum gravity by examining only unobservable Planck scale phenomena has been unsuccessful. So why not go about building quantum gravity from low energy gravitational observations which are checkable and essentially non-mathematical (physically simple field quanta exchange without the perturbative corrections for pair production effects needed at high energies, above the IR cutoff)? The discovery of dark energy a.k.a. cosmological acceleration in 1998 has changed the framework of low-energy gravitational phenomenology so that the FRW metric of general relativity, developed from the explicit assumption of Einstein that the Newtonian gravity law is an accurate low energy asymptote, no longer need be taken as bible truth. If the graviton is spin-1, the exchange of gravitons with surrounding masses generates gravity, so there will be limits on the applicability of Newton’s law (based on the solar system and things in it like apples, not dark energy), and cosmological acceleration may be a quantum gravity effect rather than an unexplained lambda-CDM fit. Epicycle type modifications to a theory, such as ad hoc values of a cosmological constant, can model anything but that does not mean that epicycles are physically correct and will lead to progress.

From a New Scientist page:

“We don’t know that gravity is strictly an attractive force,” cautions Paul Wesson of the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. He points to the “dark energy” that seems to be accelerating the expansion of the universe, and suggests it may indicate that gravity can work both ways. Some physicists speculate that dark energy could be a repulsive gravitational force that only acts over large scales. “There is precedent for such behaviour in a fundamental force,” Wesson says. “The strong nuclear force is attractive at some distances and repulsive at others.

Hubble’s discovery of the receding universe in 1929 is that the recession velocity of galaxies away from us is

v = HR

where H is Hubble’s number and R is distance. This implies acceleration a = dv/dt. If there is “spacetime” in which light from stars obeys the equation R/t = c, then it follows that

a = dv/dt

= d(HR)/d(R/c)

= Hc

= 6 x 10^-10 ms^-2.

Alternatively, you can use the product rule of differentiation:

a = dv/dt

= d(HR)/dt

= (H dR/dt) + (R dH/dt)

Since Hubble’s law v = HR = Hct states that v is directly proportional to R or t, it follows that H is a constant with respect to R or ct in observable spacetime (where the distance we see is coupled to time past by the rigid relationship R = ct), so the second term’s gradient dH/dt = 0, although H is not a constant with respect to the expansion of the universe in real time, since the age of the flat universe is T = 1/H. This leaves us

a = H dR/dt

= Hv

where for the very great distances concerned the redshifts are large and recession velocities are relativistic, so v ~ c, giving a ~ Hc.

Another way to derive this, in which time runs forward (rather than backwards with increasing distance from us), is often more acceptable conceptually, and is linked here: http://nige.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/figure-14.jpg (the only difference in the result from the two different derivations is a minus sign, due to the difference in the relationship between time and distance in each derivation).

This is the cosmological acceleration of the receding matter in the universe, implying force F = ma outward and an inward reaction force which is identical according to Newton’s 3rd law, and can only be mediated by gravitons. This makes quantitative predictions (which will be shown later on, below). It’s extremely educational to see people’s reactions to this May 1996 prediction of the acceleration of the universe. String theorist “peer”-reviewers for Classical and Quantum Gravity rejected the prediction because it was part of a paper dealing with a non-string quantum gravity approach; the anonymous peer-review report stated that it did not address problems in string theory, as if that was a valid criticism of the prediction. Similar responses of disinterest were received from other journals. When it was published via the less-appropriate October 1996 issue of Electronics World, and the February 1997 issue of Science World (ISSN 1367-6172), another Electronics World author, Mike Renardson, kindly corresponded but claimed that the predicted acceleration of 6 x 10^-10 ms^-2 was too small to detect. However, the age of the universe is immense, and so over such very large (cosmological-sized) distances, this small outward acceleration was enough to offset the predicted gravitational deceleration of the universe! This is how Perlmutter and others discovered observationally the acceleration of the universe in 1998. Abuse and insults lacking any scientific substance whatsoever followed every attempt to point out that the acceleration had been accurately predicted. Because of widespread ignorance, I had to first explain spacetime, differentiation (people are happy to use it for well established applications without question, but then doubt calculus when used to make progress on a new problem!), and Hubble’s empirical law, then I had to explain the observations of the cosmological acceleration. Usually, one of these basic foundations would prove a stumbling block before the new work had even been explained. Scientific journalism is so poor that many physicists have no idea of the basics in a real, quantitative sense.

This was possible because all of the media obfuscated the discovery of the cosmological acceleration of the universe by failing to state what it was quantitatively; they were deliberately vague and omitted to state that the outward acceleration of the universe is less than 10^-10 of the acceleration due to gravity on the Earth’s surface. Why did they not report the number measured? As always in scientific obfuscation, it was probably considered too technical for readers. As a result, nobody – not even the average physicist – had a clear idea of what had actually been measured. Science is quantitative. Take away the facts, and you are left with arm-waving dogmatic-sounding drivel, which is counter-productive and contrary to real understanding. Political journalists wouldn’t vaguely expect to get away with reporting a national debt vaguely without stating what the number really was, but “scientific” journalists are happy to be pseudo-scientific when it comes to physics! They think that omitting numbers makes it more “user friendly” to readers.

Another objection is the claim that the universe isn’t expanding and Hubble’s redshifts are due to light spontaneously changing frequency. There is no evidence for this; light has never been observed to do this, it slows down in media loaded with electromagnetic fields like a block of glass, but it doesn’t change frequency, and the redshifted galaxy spectra do not exhibit the frequency-dependent degradation effects that occur when dusts redden light. The best example is the cosmic microwave background radiation, which is the most highly redshifted radiation ever observed; it’s also the most perfect Planck radiation spectrum ever observed, proving that the redshift has linearly changed every frequency, unlike the reddening produced when light travels through dust clouds. It’s not possible to accurately explain the redshift data by any known mechanism other than the recession of distant matter. Professor Wright has disproved “tired light” ideas against the empirical Hubble law: http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/tiredlit.htm. Newton’s 2nd and 3rd laws are empirically established. Spacetime is a fact: light from distant stars takes a long time to arrive, so the galaxy will move during that period of time, and the apparent distance in Hubble’s v = HR is therefore only meaningful for time past t = R/c, which is dependent on R. So it’s more sensible to formulate the Hubble law as an acceleration: a = dv/dt = d(HR)/d(R/c) = Hc. This quantitative fact-based prediction of the acceleration of the universe was published via page 893 of Electronics World in October 1996 and the February 1997 issue of Science World ISSN 1367-6172, and was empirically confirmed two years later by Perlmutter and others, see the diagram here (this diagram gives a more rigorous derivation by differentiating time measured from the time of the big bang, running forward, not just spacetime running backwards as we look to greater distances).

In May 1996 we had argued in a preprint submitted to more appropriate journals but rejected by string theorist “peer” reviewers who claimed falsely that it was “speculative”, that this acceleration will be measurable and must be examined with Newton’s 2nd and 3rd laws for its implications on LeSage quantum gravity. Newton’s 2nd law: F = ma where a is the acceleration above and m is the Hubble Space Telescope estimate of the mass of the luminous universe (9 x 10²¹ solar masses or 3 x 10⁵² kg, see p5 the NASA report linked here) gives F = ma = 1.8 x 10⁴³ N. This is the radial outward force corresponding to the radial outward acceleration implied by the spacetime equivalent of Hubble’s empirical law. Newton’s 3rd law then shows that there must be an equal and opposite force, i.e. and inward force which according to the possibilities suggested by the Standard Model and gravitation, is mediated by spin-1 gravitons in a LeSage mechanism. Give fundamental particles a graviton interaction cross-section equal to the cross-sectional area for their black-hole event horizon (for which we have other independent evidence, see the earlier post linked here), and you get a quantitative prediction of G. So this mechanism predicted things correctly, and the cosmological acceleration was predicted in 1996 and published via Electronics World October 1996 page 893 and Science World ISSN 1367-6172, February 1997, years ahead of its observational discovery by two independent groups of astronomers.

Above: Perlmutter’s discovery of the acceleration of the universe, based on the redshifts of fixed energy supernovae, which are triggered as a critical mass effect when sufficient matter falls into a white dwarf. A type Ia supernova explosion, always yielding 4 x 10²⁸ megatons of TNT equivalent, results from the critical mass effect of the collapse of a white dwarf as soon as its mass exceeds 1.4 solar masses due to matter falling in from a companion star. The degenerate electron gas in the white dwarf is then no longer able to support the pressure from the weight of gas, which collapses, thereby releasing enough gravitational potential energy as heat and pressure to cause the fusion of carbon and oxygen into heavy elements, creating massive amounts of radioactive nuclides, particularly intensely radioactive nickel-56, but half of all other nuclides (including uranium and heavier) are also produced by the ‘R’ (rapid) process of successive neutron captures by fusion products in supernovae explosions. The brightness of the supernova flash tells us how far away the Type Ia supernova is, while the redshift of the flash tells us how fast it is receding from us. That’s how the cosmological acceleration of the universe was measured. Note that “tired light” fantasies about redshift are disproved by Professor Edward Wright on the page linked here.

There’s no speculation in any of these fact based falsifiable predictions which have been observationally confirmed, contrasted 10/11 dimension string theory fantasies about unification at the Planck scale. General relativity is a classical theory which isn’t applicable to quantum gravitation for many reasons; the whole concept of representing gravitation using spacetime curvature, i.e. the continuous Ricci tensor rather than discrete accelerations, is contrary to quantum field theory and thus is just a classical approximation at best. The general relativity field equation then insists that the source of gravitation must be likewise a continuous tensor, the stress-energy tensor. In fact, it is obvious that this is wrong because all energy and matter (the source of gravitation) occurs in discrete particles, not a true continuous distribution. If you look at the general relativity textbooks, they have to postulate an imaginary “perfect fluid” to represent matter and energy in the stress-energy tensor, just so that they can solve the equation, giving a smooth (differential) spacetime curvature. This is vital to getting solutions. E.g., Bernard F. Schutz, A First Course in General Relativity (Cambridge University Press, 1986, pp. 89-90), which states: “In many interesting situations… the source of the gravitational field can be taken to be a perfect fluid…. A fluid is a continuum that ‘flows’… A perfect fluid is defined as one in which all antislipping forces are zero, and the only force between neighbouring fluid elements is pressure.”

The reason for such fanciful modelling is that the stress-energy tensor, T_ab, is a rank-2 tensor and you need to put the source of gravitation (energy, mass, momentum, stress) in a way that can be represented by second order differential equations. You can’t have “particles”, discrete quanta, or singularities as the source of the gravitational field or you won’t get a nice smooth equation for the curvature as the solution. So it’s just a classical theory of gravitation. It’s also clear that Maxwell’s equations are all rank-1 tensors, because that’s the way the electromagnetic field is defined. E.g., field lines diverge outwards from an electric charge by a first-order (rank-1) gradient equation. If Maxwell’s equations instead defined fields as curvatures or accelerations (not as Faraday field line divergences or curls) they would be rank-2 equations like general relativity, and the physical relationship would not be obfuscated by the differing definitions of “field” used in the mathematical models.

The whole spacetime curvature modelling procedure for accelerations is such an artificial, classical falsely non-quantized model, it’s hard for me to know how anyone can dupe themselves into believing in general relativity as the correct mathematical framework for quantum gravity. I know it gives the right answers that differ from the supposed predictions of Newtonian gravitation (which is actually a bit vague on the issue of the deflection of light by gravity). But the departure of general relativity from Newtonian gravity, apart from the false continuous curvature tensor formulation, is just due to making gravitation consistent with the conservation of mass-energy for the gravitational field itself when dealing with velocities near those of light.

A bullet fired past a mass with a speed small compared to that of light will be speeded up as well as slightly deflected towards the mass, due to gravity. When you work it out, half of the energy gained by the non-relativistic bullet as it passes a mass (from a great distance of approach) is used to speed up the bullet, and the other half of the energy is used to deflect the direction of the bullet slightly towards the mass. The photon behaves as a mass, m = E/c². But a photon is unable to speed up. So instead of only 50% of the energy it gains from its approach to the mass being used to speed up the photon and the other 50% being used to deflect its direction, 100% of the energy (twice as much as the supposed Newtonian prediction) is used to deflect the photon. Photons can’t speed up; they only deflect.

So there is a physical, non-mathematical explanation of supposedly special aspect of general relativity. Feynman in his Lecture on Physics gives a nice similar discussion for “curvature” in terms of the contraction of radius produced by the gravitational field. It’s like the Lorentz contraction of a moving object; gravitation contracts the dimensions of a mass by the amount (1/3)MG/c² which is 1.5 millimetres for the Planet Earth, but more for bigger masses. Circumference is unaffected since it is perpendicular to radius, so you get a distortion of Euclidean geometry which can be “explained” by a fourth dimension. However, the best explanation is a radial contraction caused by the pressure of exchanged gravitons acting on the fundamental particles in a mass, like a fluid pressure causing an object to contract. The gravitational potential energy gained by a mass falling from an infinite distance to the Earth’s surface is equivalent to kinetic energy needed to reach Earth’s escape velocity, so by Einstein’s equivalence principle between inertial and gravitational mass, energy which increases the mass and causes a contraction and time-dilation by analogy to the Lorentz transformation of special relativity with the escape velocity placed into it as v = (2GM/x)^1/2; because for a mass the gravitational field extends in three spatial dimensions, the contraction of distance is spread over three degrees of freedom so the time-dilation expanded by the binomial theorem to the first couple of terms is [1 - 2GM/(xc²)]^1/2 ~ 1 – GM/(xc²), while the radial distance contraction for a spherical mass is (1/3)MG/c² = 1.5 mm for Earth’s radius. (Full derivation and discussion is linked here.)

The velocity needed to escape from the gravitational field of a mass (ignoring atmospheric drag), beginning at distance x from the centre of mass, by Newton’s law will be v = (2GM/x)^1/2, so v² = 2GM/x. The situation is symmetrical; ignoring atmospheric drag, the speed that a ball falls back and hits you is equal to the speed with which you threw it upwards (the conservation of energy). Therefore, the energy of mass in a gravitational field at radius x from the centre of mass is equivalent to the energy of an object falling there from an infinite distance, which by symmetry is equal to the energy of a mass travelling with escape velocity v. By Einstein’s principle of equivalence between inertial and gravitational mass, this gravitational acceleration field produces an identical effect to ordinary motion. Therefore, we can place the square of escape velocity (v² = 2GM/x) into the Fitzgerald-Lorentz contraction, giving g = (1 – v²/c²)^1/2 = [1 – 2GM/(xc²)]^1/2.

However, there is an important difference between this gravitational transformation and the usual Fitzgerald-Lorentz transformation, since length is only contracted in one dimension with velocity, whereas length is contracted equally in 3 dimensions (in other words, radially outward in 3 dimensions, not sideways between radial lines!), with spherically symmetric gravity. Using the binomial expansion to the first two terms of each: Fitzgerald-Lorentz contraction effect: g = x/x₀ = t/t₀ = m₀/m = (1 – v²/c²)^1/2 = 1 – ½v²/c² + … . Gravitational contraction effect: g = x/x₀ = t/t₀ = m₀/m = [1 – 2GM/(xc²)]^1/2 = 1 – GM/(xc²) + …, where for spherical symmetry ( x = y = z = r), we have the contraction spread over three perpendicular dimensions not just one as is the case for the FitzGerald-Lorentz contraction: x/x₀ + y/y₀ + z/z₀ = 3r/r₀. Hence the radial contraction of space around a mass is r/r₀ = 1 – GM/(xc²) = 1 – GM/[(3rc²]. Therefore, clocks slow down not only when moving at high velocity, but also in gravitational fields, and distance contracts in all directions toward the centre of a static mass. The variation in mass with location within a gravitational field shown in the equation above is due to variations in gravitational potential energy. The contraction of space is by (1/3) GM/c². This physically relates the Schwarzschild solution of general relativity to the special relativity line element of spacetime.

Richard P. Feynman, November 1964 Messenger Lectures, The Character of Physical Law (also published in book form), http://quantumfieldtheory.org/:

‘Suppose that in the world everywhere there are a lot of particles, flying through us at very high speed. They come equally in all directions – just shooting by – and once in a while they hit us in a bombardment. We, and the sun, are practically transparent for them, practically but not completely, and some of them hit. Look, then, at what would happen.

‘What does the planet do? Does it look at the sun, see how far away it is, and decide to calculate on its internal adding machine the inverse of the square of the distance, which tells it how much to move? This is certainly no explanation of the machinery of gravitation!

‘If the sun were not there, particles would be bombarding the Earth from all sides, giving little impulses by the rattle, bang, bang of the few that hit. This will not shake the Earth in any particular direction [it will just make fundamental particles move chaotically, like Brownian motion, rather than along smooth classical geodesics], because there are as many coming from one side as from the other, from top as from bottom.

Dark energy detection paper reviewed by Sabine at Backreaction blog

Martin L. Perl and Holger Mueller have written an arXiv paper on “Exploring the possibility of detecting dark energy in a terrestrial experiment using atom interferometry”:

“The majority of astronomers and physicists accept the reality of dark energy but also believe it can only be studied indirectly through observation of the motions of galaxies. This paper opens the experimental question of whether it is possible to directly detect dark energy on earth using atom interferometry through a force hypothetically caused by a gradient in the dark energy density. Our proposed experimental design is outlined. The possibility of detecting other weak fields is briefly discussed.”

I objected to Sabine’s claim:

“Due to its peculiar properties, as well as the specific value of its measured density, the existence of dark energy is one of the biggest puzzles in theoretical physics today. While it is easily possible to incorporate it into our models as a source for gravity, its microscopic origin is not understood.”

We predicted dark energy in 1996, two years before it was measured to have the predicted value. Sabine has kept her cool, probably with a lot of restraint, in the comments section, instead of instantly denouncing the work as being subhuman or whatever, although she has objected to replies to her questions. In other words, when she asks a question, it’s not in the hope of getting the answer. Then Sabine asks me not to reply but raises further questions… It’s like a political debate. Someone states a fact. Someone then “raises a question” about the fact when the debate has run out of time or further discussion is stopped, so no reply can be given. Then the onlooking journalists must report truthfully that “questions were raised but not answered”:

nige said…
From a June 10, 2009 New Scientist article:

‘”We don’t know that gravity is strictly an attractive force,” cautions Paul Wesson of the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. He points to the “dark energy” that seems to be accelerating the expansion of the universe, and suggests it may indicate that gravity can work both ways. Some physicists speculate that dark energy could be a repulsive gravitational force that only acts over large scales. “There is precedent for such behaviour in a fundamental force,” Wesson says. “The strong nuclear force is attractive at some distances and repulsive at others.’

So if you drop an apple, you detect “dark energy” which causes it to accelerate downwards; the mechanism for this dual role of the gravitational field was predicted and published in 1996 including the a ~ Hv cosmological acceleration of the universe and thus the “effective” value of the small positive CC, two years before it was observed. (Feel free to delete this comment or make a politically-correct caustic remark about crackpotism.)

Bee said…
Well, I agree with the first part of your comment, though I find it very misleading to talk about dark energy as a repulsive gravitational force. It’s not the same thing. You want to talk about repulsive gravity, you’ll first have to come up with a consistent theory that realizes this. I have no clue what the second part of your comment is supposed to mean. You trying to say you can detect the CC in watching a falling apple? Arguably, if the CC was locally present it would slightly influence the fall of your apple, but I can’t see how this would even be remotely detectable. You run into the same problem as Perl and Mueller, it’s way too small compared to the gravitational forces we deal with on Earth/on small distances. Best,

B.
9:27 AM, July 28, 2010

Hi Bee,

Pauli and Fierz in 1939 found that for two masses to attract by exchange of gravitons, the gravitons need to be spin-2:

‘In the particular case of spin 2, rest-mass zero, the equations agree in the force-free case with Einstein’s equations for gravitational waves in general relativity in first approximation …’

– Markus Fierz and Wolfgang Pauli, ‘On relativistic wave equations for particles of arbitrary spin in an electromagnetic field’, Proc. Roy. Soc. London., v. A173, pp. 211-232 (1939).

What I predicted in 1996 is that two masses don’t attract; they repel. Hence spin-1 gravitons. This predicts the cosmological acceleration accurately when you use the same model for gravitation.

So why does an apple appear to be attracted to the Earth, instead of being repelled?

Answer: the exchange of spin-1 gravitons between apple and Earth does cause a repulsion.

However, that repulsion is trivial and is simply not significant compared to the effects of the exchange of gravitons with distant masses, with gravitons converging inward fro great masses (galaxy clusters etc) isotropically distributed all around us.

The Pauli-Fierz theory of spin-2 gravitons necessitates hand-wavingly ignoring the exchange of gravitons with all the mass in the universe, and just pretending that the only exchange of gravitons is between the two masses you are concentrating on. It’s the old reductionist fallacy; quantum gravity requires holistic thinking in that there is no mechanism suggested by anyone to stop gravitons being exchanged between all of the masses in the universe.

Just like the Casimir force where virtual radiation pushes two conducting metal plates together in a vacuum, gravity can operate with spin-1 field quanta!

Where masses are so distant from one another that they begin to approach each other’s cosmological “horizon” distance, the gravitational mechanism of converging gravitons from greater distances no longer applies to the geometry of the situation, so repulsion predominates. Hence “dark energy” causing accelerating expansion!

Kind regards,
Nigel Cook

Bee said…
For all I know, just from the attraction you get that for charges of equal sign the spin has to be integer. (Gravity is not universally attractive. It is attractive between positive masses. However, we haven’t seen any negative masses and they are generically problematic.) You want spin 2 because it couples universally. Masses around us *do* affect the gravitational attraction between bodies on Earth, you can measure it, you can even see it. But point is that in most situations this influence is luckily negligible. (You don’t have to know today’s motion of Venus to get on the highway.) In any case, if you’d consider an isotropic distribution the effect would null out. (There’s no gravitational field inside a sphere.) We have plenty of observational evidence that Einstein’s spin-2 description of gravity is extremely accurate. Instead of making new predictions, maybe better first reproduce the old ones. Best,

B.
11:06 AM, July 28, 2010

“Masses around us *do* affect the gravitational attraction between bodies on Earth, you can measure it, you can even see it. But point is that in most situations this influence is luckily negligible.”

Take F=ma. Stick in the observed Hubble mass of the accelerating universe and the observed cosmological acceleration of the universe, ~6 x 10^(-10) ms^(-2). This gives something like 10^43 Newtons radial outward force. Newton’s 3rd law then suggests equal and opposite reaction force. This 10^43 Newtons inward is hardly negligible, and my paper in 1996 showed that it predicts gravitation (e.g. the value of G) correctly within the input errors in the data, with particles introducing asymmetry and being pushed together. This was discussed by Feynman in 1964: it not only predicts gravity but also explains the radial contraction effect of general relativity which causes the departures from Newtonian gravitation. Feynman raised the point that it then in 1964 predicted nothing observed. The cosmological acceleration was discovered in 1998. Feynman also pointed out that on-shell particles would slow down moving objects, so the original LeSage version of this gravity idea is wrong. However, there is no true link between rank-2 tensors (general relativity) and spin-2 gravitons and between rank-1 tensors (Maxwell) and spin-1 field quanta (photons), that proves spin-2 gravitons in the Pauli-Fierz paper as often misleadingly claimed. The rank is simply the order of the differential equations. General relativity describes gravitational fields in terms of curved spacetime, i.e. acceleration (rank-2 tensors), while Maxwell’s equations describe the field in terms of diverging and curling spatial field lines (rank-1 tensors). If you wrote a rank-2 tensor for Coulomb’s law (which isn’t needed but is possible), you would then have a rank-2 tensor equation for a spin-1 field. Thus, there is no real rank-spin connection.

Cheers,
Nigel

Bee said…
It doesn’t give any outward force, see above. It’s one of the things that you can wreck with modifications of GR, has a name, but forgot, sorry. The FRW solution doesn’t apply on sub-galactic scales anyway. Besides that, may I kindly ask you to either come back to topic of this post or drop your elaborations. Best,

B.
11:46 AM, July 28, 2010

nige said…

“It doesn’t give any outward force, see above.”

I don’t see anything above about this. The cosmological acceleration outward is on the order a~Hc. The simplest way to approach this to to look for outward force and the inward reaction force.

“The FRW solution doesn’t apply on sub-galactic scales anyway.”

The FRW solution is not referred to. Curvature applies on all scales and the contraction of Earth’s radius (see Feynman’s lectures) is (1/3)MG/c^2 = 1.5 mm.

“Besides that, may I kindly ask you to either come back to topic of this post or drop your elaborations.”

I thought the post was about detection of dark energy. You can predict the acceleration of the universe and thus dark energy from the fall of an apple!

However, thanks for being kind. I won’t make any more comments on this post as I can see you’re bored by this approach which predicted the acceleration accurately in 1996.

Cheers,
Nigel

Bee said…
I said above the gravitational force inside a spherical cavity is zero. If your theory doesn’t have this feature, you have a grave problem with cosmological perturbations and structure formation.

“The FRW solution is not referred to.”

Then what is H?

This post is about the paper by Perl and Mueller, read first sentence. Best,

B.

“Then what is H?”

Hubble’s parameter, as in v = HR, which Hubble discovered observationally in 1929.

It’s observational and is not predicted by general relativity, in which metrics can be found to represent anything.

Gravitational force inside a spherical cavity will be zero: in the middle there is no asymmetry, and thus no gravity (which is an asymmetry in graviton exchange). Away from the middle you just have Newton’s “hollow shell” theorem, where a proximity of an observer to the shell at one side means that most of the mass is on the opposite side, with the inverse-square law compensating and eliminating gravitational force. For weak field (little contraction) this [quantum gravity] gives Newton’s law with all the usual implications.

Best,

anon.

Bee said…
Nige,

My question for H was rhetoric. It’s a parameter in the FRW metric, yet you say you make no reference to the FRW metric. It doesn’t fit. How does one compute the gravitational force: you compute the gravitational field. There is, on subgalactic scales, no H in the solution. Galaxies don’t expand. It’s the space between them that does. Consequently, there’s no H in your field and I don’t know what you’re even talking about. Correct, the gravitational field inside a sphere is zero. So why care what’s outside the sphere? Last warning: your next comment is not about the Mueller & Perl paper, and it goes into the garbage bin. Best,

B.

3:25 AM, July 29, 2010

“It’s a parameter in the FRW metric, yet you say you make no reference to the FRW metric. It doesn’t fit.”

Unlike my prediction of the acceleration of the universe published in 1996, the FRW metric failed to predict the acceleration of the universe, because general relativity fails to include the dynamics of quantum. The FRW metric isn’t correct physics, it doesn’t explain the CC. Forget it.

“Galaxies don’t expand. It’s the space between them that does.”

Gravity binds galaxies together. What you are saying is being said as if you think it disproves quantum gravity predictions made in 1996, but it doesn’t have any relevance.

“Correct, the gravitational field inside a sphere is zero. So why care what’s outside the sphere?”

Because the apple is outside the sphere and it’s exchanging gravitons with the entire the surrounding universe, so the gravitons exchanged from that mass converge inwards.

“Last warning: your next comment is not about the Mueller & Perl paper, and it goes into the garbage bin.”

Mueller & Perl are taking up space on arXiv with something that’s wrong and was disproved and published in 1996. Dark energy is the gravitational field, which predicts the acceleration of the universe. My paper on arXiv uploaded from my university email account was deleted in 2002 in the time taken to refresh the browser. So much for people wanting to spread ideas on dark energy or for “peer” review to be objective. They are not. Sorry for boring you with empirical science!

3:41 AM, July 29, 2010

*********

JUDGING OTHER PEOPLE BY YOUR OWN STANDARDS

The key problem in interactions with other people is that there is a difference in standards about how to explain new ideas, as explained by Professor Freeman Dyson:

“When mankind is faced with an opportunity to embark on any great undertaking, there are always three human weaknesses that devilishly hamper our efforts. The first is an inability to define or agree upon our objectives. The second is an inability to raise sufficient funds. The third is the fear of a disastrous failure.” – Freeman Dyson, The Scientist as Rebel, 2008, p. 301

“… Bohr … said: ‘… one could not talk about the trajectory of an electron in the atom, because it was something not observable.’ … Bohr thought that I didn’t know the uncertainty principle … it didn’t make me angry, it just made me realize that … [ they ] … didn’t know what I was talking about, and it was hopeless to try to explain it further. I gave up, I simply gave up …”

- Richard P. Feynman, quoted in Jagdish Mehra’s biography of Feynman, The Beat of a Different Drum, Oxford University Press, 1994, pp. 245-248.

‘I would like to put the uncertainty principle in its historical place: When the revolutionary ideas of quantum physics were first coming out, people still tried to understand them in terms of old-fashioned ideas … But at a certain point the old-fashioned ideas would begin to fail, so a warning was developed that said, in effect, “Your old-fashioned ideas are no damn good when …” If you get rid of all the old-fashioned ideas and instead use the ideas that I’m explaining in these lectures – adding arrows [path amplitudes] for all the ways an event can happen – there is no need for an uncertainty principle!’

- Richard P. Feynman, QED, Penguin Books, London, 1990, pp. 55-56.

‘When we look at photons on a large scale – much larger than the distance required for one stopwatch turn [i.e., wavelength] – the phenomena that we see are very well approximated by rules such as “light travels in straight lines [without overlapping two nearby slits]“, because there are enough paths around the path of minimum time to reinforce each other, and enough other paths to cancel each other out. But when the space through which a photon moves becomes too small (such as the tiny holes in the [Young double slit experiment] screen), these rules fail – we discover that light doesn’t have to go in straight [narrow] lines, there are interferences created by the two holes, and so on.

“The same situation exists with electrons: when seen on a large scale, they travel like particles, on definite paths. But on a small scale, such as inside an atom, the space is so small that [individual random field quanta exchanges become important, so] there is no main path, no “orbit”; there are all sorts of ways the electron could go, each with an amplitude. The phenomenon of interference becomes very important, and we have to sum the arrows [for individual possible field quanta interactions, instead of using the average, the classical Coulomb field] to predict where an electron is likely to be.’

- Richard P. Feynman, QED, Penguin Books, London, 1990, Chapter 3, pp. 84-5.

Above: Professor Freeman Dyson had to battle with Oppenheimer to get a fair hearing for Feynman’s path integrals quantum field theory. Dyson writes in his New York Review of Books (13 May 2004) review of string theorist Brian Greene’s book Fabric of the Cosmos (this review is included in Dyson’s 2008 book, The Scientist as Rebel):

“… there is always a tension between revolutionaries and conservatives, between those who build grand castles in the air and those who prefer to lay one brick at a time on solid ground. … in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the revolutionaries were old and the conservatives [e.g. Feynman and Dyson] were young. The old revolutionaries were Albert Einstein, Dirac, Heisenberg, Max Born, and Erwin Schroedinger. Every one of them had a crazy theory that he thought would be the key to understanding everything. Einstein had his unified field theory, Heisenberg had his fundamental length theory, Born had a new version of quantum theory that he called reciprocity, Schroedinger had a new version of Einstein’s unified field theory that he called the Final Affine Laws, and Dirac had a weird version of quantum theory in which every state had probability either plus two or minus two. … In Dirac’s Alice-in-Wonderland world, every state happens either more often than always or less often than never. Each of the five old men believed that physics needed another revolution as profound as the quantum revolution that they had led twenty-five years earlier. Each of them believed that his pet idea was the crucial first step …

“Young people like me saw all these famous old men making fools of themselves, and so we became conservatives. The chief young players then were Julian Schwinger and Richard Feynman in America and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga in Japan. Anyone who knew Feynman might be surprised to hear him labeled a conservative, but the label is accurate. Feynman’s style was ebullient and wonderfully original, but the substance of his science was conservative. … the old revolutionaries were still not convinced. … I brashly accosted Dirac … Dirac, as usual, stayed silent for a while before replying. ‘I might have thought that the new ideas were correct,’ he said, ‘if they had not been so ugly.’ That was the end of our conversation.

“Einstein too was unimpressed by our success. During the time that the young physicists at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton were deeply engaged in developing the new electrodynamics, Einstein was working in the same building and walking every day past our windows on his way … He never came to our seminars and never asked us about our work. To the end of his life, he remained faithful to his unified field theory.”

The physics Nobel Laureate Frank Wilczek states that Feynman became a closet ether believer when he couldn’t get rid of vacuum interactions:

“As for Feynman … He told me he lost confidence in … emptying space when he found that both his mathematics and experimental facts required the kind of vacuum polarization modification of electromagnetic processes depicted – as he found it, using Feynman graphs … the influence of one particle on another is conveyed by the photon … the electromagnetic field gets modified by its interaction with a spontaneous fluctuation in the electron field – or, in other words, by its interaction with a virtual electron-positron pair. In describing this process, it becomes very difficult to avoid reference to space-filling fields. The virtual pair is a consequence of spontaneous activity in the electron field.”

- Frank Wilczek, The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces, Basic Books, N.Y., 2008, p. 89. (See also press release linked here.)

‘The Michelson-Morley experiment has thus failed to detect our motion through the aether, because the effect looked for – the delay of one of the light waves – is exactly compensated by an automatic contraction of the matter forming the apparatus…. The great stumbing-block for a philosophy which denies absolute space is the experimental detection of absolute rotation.’

– Professor A. S. Eddington (who confirmed Einstein’s general theory of relativity in 1919), MA, MSc, FRS, Space Time and Gravitation: An Outline of the General Relativity Theory, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1921, pp. 20, 152.

‘… we conclude that the relative retardation of clocks … does indeed compel us to recognise the causal significance of absolute velocities.’

– G. Builder, ‘Ether and Relativity’ in the Australian Journal of Physics, v11 (1958), p279.

This paper of Builder on absolute velocity in ‘relativity’ is the analysis used and cited by the famous paper on the atomic clocks being flown around the world to validate ‘relativity’, namely J.C. Hafele in Science, vol. 177 (1972) pp 166-8.

So it was experimentally proving absolute motion, not ‘relativity’ as widely hyped.

Absolute velocities are required in general relativity because when you take synchronised atomic clocks on journeys within the same gravitational field strength and then return them to the same place, they read different times due to having had different absolute motions.

Observing the field quanta or off-shell photons of quantum field theory

Above: Oleg D. Jefimenko and Richard P. Feynman (equation 28.3 in the Feynman Lectures on Physics, vol. 1) independently solved Maxwell’s equations in the early 1960s to update Coulomb’s force law for steady charges to an equation which allows for charge motion. The Jifimenko-Feynman equation for electric field strength is a three component equation in which the first component is from Coulomb’s law (Gauss’s field divergence equation in the Maxwell equations) where force F = qE so that electric field E = q/(4*Pi*Permittivity*R²) . The Feynman-Jefimenko solution to Maxwell’s equations for field directions along the line of the motion and acceleration of a charge yields the simple summation of terms: E_v/m = [q/(4*Pi*Permittivity)] { R^-2 + [v(cos z)/(cR²)] + [a(sin z)/(Rc²)] }

The sine and cosine factors in the two motion related terms are due to the fact that they depend on whether the motion of a charge is towards you or away from you (they come from vectors in the Feynman-Jefimenko solution; z is the angle between the direction of the motion of the charge and the direction of the observer). The first term in the curly brackets is the Coulomb law for static charges. The second term in the curly brackets with a linear dependence on v/c is simply the effect of the redshift (observer receding from the charge) or blue shift (observer approaching the charge) of the force field quanta, which depends on whether you are moving towards or away from the charge q; as the Casimir effect shows, field quanta or virtual photons do have physically-significant wavelengths. The third term in the curly brackets is the effect of accelerations of charge, i.e. the real (on-shell) photon radio wave emission (this radio emission field strength drops off inversely with distance rather than as the inverse square of distance).

The time-dependence of E at distance R in the equation is the retarded time t – R/c, which allows for the light speed delay due to the field being composed of electromagnetic field quanta and waves which must transverse that distance from charge to observer before the field can be observed.

Above: Ivor Catt on Oliver Heaviside’s discovery of light speed electromagnetic energy transfer in electricity; the Heaviside-Poynting vector describes the field quanta or off-shell photons of quantum field theory.

Above: unlike abusive and censoring mainstream string theorists, general relativists, and loop quantum gravity fanatics, Ivor Catt’s theory is based on facts which led to his marketed invention, wafer scale integration, as explained by Sir Clive Sinclair in this TV documentary about Catt.

Observing the field quanta or off-shell photons of quantum field theory

BACKGROUND

Ivor Catt (born 1935) describing the Heaviside energy current or Poynting vector energy current, which consists of the massless quanta of the electromagnetic field. This light-velocity field originates from the electrons in the power source such as the battery, but because the electrons have mass, they are unable to move as fast as the field, which is therefore the driving cause of the much-slower massive electron drift current. Electric current itself consists of typically 1 conduction electron per atom drifting at typically 1 mm/second for a 1 amp drift current, which carries negligible kinetic energy, compared to the light velocity energy delivered by the Heaviside electromagnetic energy current. Hence “electric current” is a misnomer since the energy delivery mechanism is not the kinetic energy of the slowly drifting electron current, but is the energy delivered by the field quanta themselves; the light velocity Poynting-Heaviside electromagnetic “energy current”, discovered independently by both Poynting and by Heaviside prior to the discovery of the electron in 1897.

After graduating in general engineering from Cambridge in 1956 (he won a scholarship to read mathematics at Trinity, but transferred to engineering after becoming disillusioned with the reductionist problem in calculus and other problems in the dogmas of pure mathematics), Catt entered the new field of computer design engineering, rediscovering electrical genius Oliver Heaviside’s work on light velocity logic signals in cables or “transmission lines” between Newcastle and Denmark (Morse code), which was before its time. In 1964, Catt was recruited by Motorola at Phoenix, Arizona, to research cross-talk problems in microchips with fast clock speeds (glitches or mutual inductance), under research contracts to NASA.

In December 1967, Catt’s experimental work “Crosstalk (mutual inductance) in digital systems” was published in the IEEE Transactions on Electronic Computers, volume EC-16.

In 1979, in co-authorship with former physics lecturer Dr David Walton and electronics engineer Malcolm Davidson, he published an article on “Displacement current” in Wireless World (which had published Arthur C. Clarke’s 1945 visionary paper on geostationary satellites for global communications). The paper mathematically proved that the charging of a capacitor with vacuum or plastic dielectric could be treated as the charging of a cable (transmission line) using Heaviside’s concept of “energy current”. Full experimental proof followed in Catt’s December 1980 Wireless World paper “Electric Current”. Lucidly explaining the basis for this revolutionary discovery of the light velocity field nature of the charge associated with the mass of supposedly static electrons in his 1995 book “Electromagnetics 1″, Catt states:

“Let us summarize the argument which erases the traditional model;

a) Energy current can only enter a capacitor at the speed of light.
b) Once inside, there is no mechanism for the energy current to slow down below the speed of light.
c) The steady electrostatically charged capacitor is indistinguishable from the reciprocating, dynamic model.
d) The dynamic model is necessary to explain the new feature to be explained, the charging and discharging of a capacitor, and serves all the purposes previously served by the steady, static model.”

This YouTube interview of Ivor Catt by Nigel Cook is not copyright. A further video on the technical aspects and implications will be produced separately. The two key Wireless World articles are downloadable in PDF here.

Aharnonov is the physicist famous for the Aharonov-Bohm effect, which disproves the idea that electric and magnetic field strengths fully describe the electromagnetic field. This fact becomes intuitively obvious when you notice that you can “cancel out” magnetic or electric fields with nearby opposite poles or opposite charges, without destroying the energy density of the field. Similarly, you can pass two waves with opposite amplitudes through one another and despite the wave feature being temporarily “cancelled” during the period they are passing through one another and overlapping, when they emerge after passing through one another, they are fully restored with no energy loss! (The contrapuntal model of the charged capacitor is another example, suggesting that charged massless SU(2) gauge bosons deliver electromagnetic forces, leaving U(1) hypercharge to generate spin-1 quantum gravity.)

The Aharonov–Bohm effect, sometimes called the Ehrenberg–Siday–Aharonov–Bohm effect, is a quantum mechanical phenomenon in which an electrically charged particle shows a measurable interaction with an electromagnetic field despite being confined to a region in which both the magnetic field B and electric field E are zero.

The Aharonov–Bohm effect shows that the local E and B fields do not contain full information about the electromagnetic field, and the electromagnetic four-potential, A, must be used instead. – Wikipedia.

“In electromagnetism, Jefimenko’s equations (named after Oleg D. Jefimenko) describe the behavior of the electric and magnetic fields in terms of the charge and current distributions at retarded times. … There is a widespread interpretation of Maxwell’s equations indicating that time variable electric and magnetic fields can cause each other. This is often used as part of an explanation of the formation of electromagnetic waves. However, Jefimenko’s equations show otherwise. Jefimenko says, “…neither Maxwell’s equations nor their solutions indicate an existence of causal links between electric and magnetic fields. Therefore, we must conclude that an electromagnetic field is a dual entity always having an electric and a magnetic component simultaneously created by their common sources: time-variable electric charges and currents.” [Something string theorists are unaware of, still ignorantly believing that electromagnetism was unified by Maxwell.] As pointed out by McDonald, Jefimenko’s equations (in the vacuum case) seems to appear first in 1962 in the second edition of Panofsky and Phillips’s classic textbook. [References: Oleg D. Jefimenko, Electricity and Magnetism: An Introduction to the Theory of Electric and Magnetic Fields, Appleton-Century-Crofts (New-York - 1966). 2nd ed.: Electret Scientific (Star City - 1989), ISBN 978-0917406089. Oleg D. Jefimenko, Solutions of Maxwell's equations for electric and magnetic fields in arbitrary media, American Journal of Physics 60 (10) (1992), 899-902. Oleg D. Jefimenko, Causality Electromagnetic Induction and Gravitation, 2nd ed.: Electret Scientific (Star City - 2000) Chapter 1, page 16 ISBN 0-917406-23-0. Kirk T. McDonald, The relation between expressions for time-dependent electromagnetic fields given by Jefimenko and by Panofsky and Phillips, American Journal of Physics 65 (11) (1997), 1074-1076. Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky, Melba Phillips, Classical Electricity And Magnetism, Addison-Wesley (2nd. ed - 1962), Section 14.3. The electric field is written in a slighlty different - but completely equivalent - form. Reprint: Dover Publications (2005), ISBN 978-0486439242.]” – Wikipedia

NOTE: there are inevitably some errors in some of Ivor Catt’s papers and books, which are corrected in my earlier blog post linked here.

Update (9 August 2010):

From comments at Woit’s blog post short items, http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=3082

“The argument you make that QFT is inherently no more experimentally testable than string theory is one I’ve answered many times, despite the obvious absurdity of claiming that the most successful scientific theory we have is not distinguishable from one that predicts nothing. Sure, you can imagine a universe governed by QFTs of such complexity that conventional scientific method would be useless. That’s not the world we live in. The currently popular idea that we live in a universe governed by a string theory with solutions of such complexity that conventional scientific method is useless is logically possible, just like the idea that we live in a simulation run by aliens, but it’s not science.

You’re welcome to believe, as many highly competent physicists do, that some new advance is going to come along and fix the problems of string theory unification. But you should first admit that, given our current understanding of the subject, the problems are deadly and this “doesn’t work”. Maybe someone will figure out how to make it work, but I don’t think the last quarter century of history is at all encouraging, so there’s a lot to be said for getting people to move on and look for something else. …

The problem with the argument that “if we could determine the string theory vacuum” all would be well is that we can’t determine the string theory vacuum. The reasons for this are complicated, having to do with inherent limitations on what is calculable for each possibility in the current string theory set-up, together with the huge number of possibilities.

I have looked closely at attempts to do string theory phenomenology and to make progress on getting to something that would do what you argue for. Everything I’ve seen is ridiculously far from being useful. The fact of the matter is that string phenomenologists have had 20 years to prepare for the opening of a new energy scale at the LHC, it’s here, and they have no predictions at all. If this isn’t failure, I don’t know what is. The idea that new LHC physics is going to match some string-inspired vacuum and justify string theory is so far-fetched that even most string theorists I know dismiss it as completely implausible.

You’re right that my own judgment about ideas worth pursuing involves trying to get inspiration from mathematics. This has worked out sometimes in the past (e.g. general relativity), but it’s true that most of the time it has not been fruitful. I’d argue that this is because historically experiments were throwing up things that disagreed with theory, and pursuing these as hints was far more likely to lead to progress than pursuing mathematical hints. The problem now is that we don’t have much in the way of such hints from experiment, so may not have any choice but to try and make progress along other, more difficult lines. In any case, I think this is a time people should be trying all sorts of different approaches, since no one has good evidence that of any particular speculative approach working out.”

- Woit

“In Disturbing the Universe, Freeman Dyson writes, “Dick [Feynman] fought back against my skepticism, arguing that Einstein had failed because he stopped thinking in concrete physical images and became a manipulator of equations. I had to admit that was true. The great discoveries of Einstein’s earlier years were all based on direct physical intuition. Einstein’s later unified theories failed because they were only sets of equations without physical meaning. Dick’s sum-over-histories theory was in the spirit of the young Einstein, not of the old Einstein. It was solidly rooted in physical reality.” In The Trouble With Physics, Lee Smolin writes that Bohr was not a Feynman “shut up and calculate” physicist, and from the above Dyson quote, it appears that Feynman wasn’t either. Lee writes, “Mara Beller, a historian who has studied his [Bohr's] work in detail, points out that there was not a single calculation in his research notebooks, which were all verbal arguments and pictures.”

- Bruno

“I agree with you that it is very hard to get particle physics predictions out of string theory. … The non-sequitur comes when you present this as evidence that our world is not described by such a string theory vacuum.”

- Stan

This guy is exaggerating Dr Woit’s criticism of string theory (Woit claims string theory is a failure after 20 years to make any falsifiable predictions). Stan can’t dispute this, so he claims Woit is claiming that the failure of string theory disproves string theory. The great virtue of string theory which even woit acknowledges is that because of the size of the landscape, it’s not falsifiable. It can’t be disproved.

That’s why so many people felt secure working on it in the 80s, 90s and why it’s a safe bet for sci fi movie makers who want royalties to still be coming in when they’ve retired decades in the future. They don’t want to hype falsifiable ideas which may turn out wrong and thus go out of fashion like so many 50s B-movies. String theory is a strong fashion label because you can’t disprove it with the LHC. If it made falsifiable predictions, the LHC and all other experiments would be a threat to it.

“Dick [Richard Feynman] fought back against my skepticism, arguing that Einstein had failed because he stopped thinking in concrete physical images and became a manipulator of equations. I had to admit that was true. The great discoveries of Einstein’s earlier years were all based on direct physical intuition. Einstein’s later unified theories failed because they were only sets of equations without physical meaning. Dick’s sum-over-histories theory was in the spirit of the young Einstein, not of the old Einstein. It was solidly rooted in physical reality.”

- Freeman Dyson, Disturbing the Universe, 1979.

“Mara Beller, a historian who has studied his [Bohr's] work in detail, points out that there was not a single calculation in his research notebooks, which were all verbal argument and pictures.” – Professor Lee Smolin’s The Trouble With Physics,

“I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.” – Plato (quote is hanging in the Boston Museum of Science).

“All great discoveries in experimental physics have been made due to the intuition of men who made free use of models which for them were not products of the imagination but representations of real things.” – Max Born

“In the long run my observations have convinced me that some men, reasoning preposterously, first establish some conclusion in their minds which, either because of its being their own or because of their having received it from some person who has their entire confidence, impresses them so deeply that one finds it impossible ever to get it out of their heads. Such arguments in support of their fixed idea … gain their instant acceptance and applause. On the other hand whatever is brought forward against it, however ingenious and conclusive, they receive with disdain or with hot rage – if indeed it does not make them ill. Beside themselves with passion, some of them would not be backward even about scheming to suppress and silence their adversaries. I have had some experience of this myself. … No good can come of dealing with such people, especially to the extent that their company may be not only unpleasant but dangerous.”

- Galileo Galilei

“… my dear Kepler, what do you think of the foremost philosophers of this University? In spite of my oft-repeated efforts and invitations, they have refused, with the obstinacy of a glutted adder, to look at the planets or Moon or my telescope.”

- Galileo Galilei

“We must forever keep physical reality in the front and center, along with logic and reason and physical intuition – otherwise progress in physics will grind to a halt, as it has for the past thirty years.

“But before mankind could be ripe for a science which takes in the whole of reality, a second fundamental truth was needed, which only became common property among philosophers with the advent of Kepler and Galileo. Pure logical thinking cannot yield us any knowledge of the empirical world; all knowledge of reality starts form experience and ends in it. Propositions arrived at by purely logical means are completely empty as regards reality. Because Galileo saw this, and particularly because he drummed it into the scientific world, he is the father of modern physics – indeed, of modern science altogether.”

- Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions.

“Ampere and others had concentrated their attention on the visible hardware – magnets, current-carrying wires, and the like – and on the numbers of centimeters separating the pieces of hardware. In so doing they were following the action-at-a-distance tradition that had developed from the enormous success of the Newtonian system of mechanics and law of gravitation. … But Faraday regarded the hardware as secondary. For him the important physical events took place in the surrounding space–the field. This, in his mind, he filled with tentacles that by their pulls and thrusts and motions gave rise to the electromagnetic effects observed. Although he could thus interpret his electromagnetic experiments with excellent precision and surprising simplicity, most physicists adept at mathematics thought his concepts mathematically naive.”

- Banesh Hoffman, Einstein.

Above: Feynman argued that the Standard Model is wrong:

The observed couping constant for W’s is much the same as that for the photon – in the neighborhood of j [Feynman’s symbol j is related to alpha or 1/137.036… by: alpha = j^2 = 1/137.036…]. Therefore the possibility exists that the three W’s and the photon are all different aspects of the same thing. …

But if you just look at the [Standard Model] you can see the glue, so to speak. It’s very clear that the photon and the three W’s [weak gauge bosons] are interconnected somehow, but at the present level of understanding, the connection is difficult to see clearly – you can still see the ‘seams’ in the theories; they have not yet been smoothed out so that the connection becomes … more correct.’ [Emphasis added.]

- R. P. Feynman, QED, Penguin, 1990, pp. 141-142.

Feynman also argued that the uncertainty principle in textbook quantum mechanics (the “first quantization” lie, in which the uncertainty principle acts lying on the real on-shell particles while keeping the Coulomb field classical, leading to wavefunction collapse issues popularized with lying hype about Schrodinger’s cat and entanglement lies) is unnecessary because of second-quantization (discovered to be necessary by Dirac in 1927; Schroedinger’s and Heisenberg’s first-quantization approaches to quantum mechanics are lies because they are non-relativistic and because they falsely make the real on-shell particle’s position-momentum product intrinsically uncertain due to keeping the Coulomb field classical, instead of correctly making uncertainty work on the off-shell field quanta, so that the chaotic field quanta interactions are the physical mechanism for the apparent indeterminancy of the electron in an atomic orbit):

“I would like to put the uncertainty principle in its historical place: when the revolutionary ideas of quantum physics were first coming out, people still tried to understand them in terms of old-fashioned ideas … But at a certain point the old fashioned ideas would begin to fail, so a warning was developed that said, in effect, ‘Your old-fashioned ideas are no damn good when …’. If you get rid of ALL the old-fashioned ideas and instead use the ideas that I’m explaining in these lectures – adding arrows [arrows = phase amplitudes in the path integral] for all the ways an event can happen – there is no NEED for an uncertainty principle! … on a small scale, such as inside an atom, the space is so small that there is no main path, no ‘orbit’; there are all sorts of ways the electron could go, each with an amplitude. The phenomenon of interference [of on-shell particles by off-shell field quanta] becomes very important …”

- Richard P. Feynman, QED, Penguin, 1990, pp. 55-6, & 84.

First-quantization bigot Niels Bohr never understood how Dirac’s work in quantum field theory (2nd quantization) overturned Heisenberg’s mythology, and he simply refused to listen to Feynman’s 2nd quantization proof, claiming it violated his dogmatic religion of uncertainty principle worship:

“… Bohr … said: ‘… one could not talk about the trajectory of an electron in the atom, because it was something not observable.’ … Bohr thought that I didn’t know the uncertainty principle … it didn’t make me angry, it just made me realize that … [ they ] … didn’t know what I was talking about, and it was hopeless to try to explain it further. I gave up, I simply gave up …”

- Richard P. Feynman, quoted in Jagdish Mehra’s biography of Feynman, The Beat of a Different Drum, Oxford University Press, 1994, pp. 245-248. (Fortunately, Dyson didn’t give up!)

Feynman argued against the path integral being fundamental to particle physics:

“It always bothers me that, according to the laws as we understand them today, it takes a computing machine an infinite number of logical operations to figure out what goes on in no matter how tiny a region of space [because there is an infinite series of terms in the perturbative expansion to Feynman's path integral] … Why should it take an infinite amount of logic to figure out what one tiny piece of spacetime is going to do? So I have often made the hypothesis that ultimately physics will not require a mathematical statement, that in the end the machinery will be revealed, and the laws will turn out to be simple, like the chequer board with all its apparent complexities.”

– Richard P. Feynman, The Character of Physical Law, November 1964 Cornell Lectures, broadcast and published in 1965 by BBC, pp. 57-8.

Feynman also blew the smoke screen out of string theory back in 1988, after the first superstring revolution hype:

‘… I do feel strongly that this is nonsense! … I think all this superstring stuff is crazy and is in the wrong direction. … I don’t like it that they’re not calculating anything. I don’t like that they don’t check their ideas. I don’t like that for anything that disagrees with an experiment, they cook up an explanation … All these numbers [particle masses, etc.] … have no explanations in these string theories – absolutely none!’

– Richard P. Feynman, in Davies & Brown, Superstrings, 1988, pp. 194-195.

Like modern string theorists, Boscovich believed that forces are purely mathematical in nature and he argued that the stable sizes of various objects such as atoms correspond to the ranges of different parts of a unified force theory. The concept that the range of the strong nuclear force determines roughly the size of a nucleus would be a modern example of this concept, although he offered no real explanation for different forces such as gravity and electromagnetism, such as their very different strengths between two protons. Against Boscovich were Newton’s friend Fatio and his French student LeSage, who did not believe in a mathematical universe, but in mechanisms due to particle flying around in the vacuum. Various famous physicists like Maxwell and Kelvin in the Victorian era argued that particles flying around to cause forces by impacts and pressure, would heat the planets up by drag, and slow them down so they spiralled quickly into the sun. Feynman recounts LeSage’s mechanism for gravity and the arguments against it in both his Lectures on Physics and his 1964 lectures The Character of Physical Law (audio linked here). However, the problem is that quantum field theory does accurately predict today the experimentally verified Casimir force which is indeed caused by off-shell (off mass shell) field quanta pushing the plates together, somewhat akin to LeSage’s mechanism. The radiation in the vacuum which causes the Casimir force doesn’t slow down or heat up moving metal or other objects, and the Maxwell-Kelvin objections don’t apply to field quanta (off-shell radiations).

The Casimir force is produced because the metal plates exclude longer wavelengths from the space inbetween them, but you get the full spectrum of virtual radiation pushing against the plates from the opposing sides, so the net force pushes them together, “attraction”. Maxwell’s equations are formulated in terms of rank-1 (first order) gradients and curls of “field lines”, e.g. whereas general relativity is formulated in terms of rank-2 (second order) space curvatures or accelerations, so there is an artificial distinction between the two types of equations. Pauli and Fierz in 1939 argued that if gravitons are only exchanged between an two masses which attract, they have to be spin-2. Electromagnetism can be mediated by spin-1 bosons with 4 polarizations to account for attraction and repulsion. Thus, the myth of linking the rank of the tensor equation to the spin began: rank-1 Maxwell equations implied spin-1 field quanta (virtual photons), and rank-2 general relativity implied spin-2 field quanta (gravitons). However, the rank of the equation is purely a synthetic issue of whether you choose to express the field in terms of Faraday style imaginary “field lines” (which Maxwell chose), or measurable spacetime curvature induced accelerations (which Einstein used). It’s not a fundamental distinction, since you could rewrite Maxwell equations in terms of accelerations, making then rank-2.

Furthermore, Pauli and Fierz wrongly assumed that you can treat two masses as exchanging gravitons, and ignore the exchange of gravitons with all the other masses in the universe. This is easily shown wrong, because the mass of the rest of the universe is immensely larger than an apple and the Earth (say), and forthermore the exchange gravitons being received are converging inward from that distant mass (galaxy clusters etc) which is isotropically distributed in all directions. When you include those contributions, the Pauli-Fierz argument for spin-2 gravitons is disproved, because the repulsion due to the exchange of gravitons between the particles in the apple and those in the Earth is trivial compared to the inward forces from graviton exchange on the other sides. Hence, spin-1 gravitons do the job of pushing the apple down to the Earth. The bigger the mass of the Earth, the more shadowing and asymmetry of graviton forces on the top and bottom of the particles in the apple, so the apple is pushed down with greater force, thus it’s analogous to the mechanism of the Casimir force or LeSage.

The distinction between Newtonian and Einsteinian gravitation is two fold. First, there is the change from forces to spacetime curvature (acceleration) using the Ricci tensor and a very fiddled stress-energy tensor for the source of the field (which can’t represent real matter correctly as particles, using instead artifically averaged smooth distributions of mass energy throughout a volume of space), and secondly these two tensors could not be simply equated by Einstein without violating the conservation of mass-energy (the divergence of the stress energy tensor does not vanish), so Einstein had to complicate the field equation with a contraction term which compensates for the inability of the divergence of the stress-energy tensor to disappear. It is precisely this correction term for the conservation of mass-energy which makes the deflection of light equal to double that of a non-relativistic object like a bullet passing the sun. The reason is that all objects approaching the sun gain gravitational potential energy. In the case of a non-relativistic or slow moving bullet, this gained gravitational potential energy is used to do two things: (1) speed up the bullet, and (2) to deflect the direction of the bullet more towards the sun. A relativistic particle like a photon cannot speed up, so all of the gravitational potential energy it gains instead is used to deflect it, hence it deflects by twice as much as Newton’s law predicts.

It’s pretty clear that special relativity is an effective theory. Carlos Barceló and Gil Jannes state in their paper, ‘A Real Lorentz-FitzGerald Contraction’, Foundations of Physics, Volume 38, Number 2 / February, 2008, pp. 191-199:

“Many condensed matter systems are such that their collective excitations at low energies can be described by fields satisfying equations of motion formally indistinguishable from those of relativistic field theory. The finite speed of propagation of the disturbances in the effective fields (in the simplest models, the speed of sound) plays here the role of the speed of light in fundamental physics. However, these apparently relativistic fields are immersed in an external Newtonian world (the condensed matter system itself and the laboratory can be considered Newtonian, since all the velocities involved are much smaller than the velocity of light) which provides a privileged coordinate system and therefore seems to destroy the possibility of having a perfectly defined relativistic emergent world. In this essay we ask ourselves the following question: In a homogeneous condensed matter medium, is there a way for internal observers, dealing exclusively with the low-energy collective phenomena, to detect their state of uniform motion with respect to the medium? By proposing a thought experiment based on the construction of a Michelson-Morley interferometer made of quasi-particles, we show that a real Lorentz-FitzGerald contraction takes place, so that internal observers are unable to find out anything about their ‘absolute’ state of motion. Therefore, we also show that an effective but perfectly defined relativistic world can emerge in a fishbowl world situated inside a Newtonian (laboratory) system. This leads us to reflect on the various levels of description in physics, in particular regarding the quest towards a theory of quantum gravity….

“… Remarkably, all of relativity (at least, all of special relativity) could be taught as an effective theory by using only Newtonian language … In a way, the model we are discussing here could be seen as a variant of the old ether model. At the end of the 19th century, the ether assumption was so entrenched in the physical community that, even in the light of the null result of the Michelson-Morley experiment, nobody thought immediately about discarding it. Until the acceptance of special relativity, the best candidate to explain this null result was the Lorentz-FitzGerald contraction hypothesis… we consider our model of a relativistic world in a fishbowl, itself immersed in a Newtonian external world, as a source of reflection, as a Gedankenmodel. By no means are we suggesting that there is a world beyond our relativistic world describable in all its facets in Newtonian terms. Coming back to the contraction hypothesis of Lorentz and FitzGerald, it is generally considered to be ad hoc. However, this might have more to do with the caution of the authors, who themselves presented it as a hypothesis, than with the naturalness or not of the assumption… The ether theory had not been disproved, it merely became superfluous. Einstein realised that the knowledge of the elementary interactions of matter was not advanced enough to make any claim about the relation between the constitution of matter (the ‘molecular forces’), and a deeper layer of description (the ‘ether’) with certainty. Thus his formulation of special relativity was an advance within the given context, precisely because it avoided making any claim about the fundamental structure of matter, and limited itself to an effective macroscopic description.”For more on this subject, see the earlier post linked here.

Path integral simplicity for low energy quantum gravity applications

Feynman’s book QED explains how to do the path integral approximately without using formal calculus! He gives the rules simply so you can draw arrows with similar length but varying directions, on paper, to represent the complex amplitudes for different paths light can take through a glass lens, and the result is that paths well off the path of least time cancel out efficiently, but those near it reinforce each other. Thus you recover classical laws of reflection and refraction. He can’t and doesn’t apply such simple graphical calculations to HEP situations above the field’s IR cutoff, where there is pair production occurring leading to a perturbative expansion for an infinite series of different possible Feynman diagrams, but the graphical application of path integrals to the simple low energy physics phenomena gives the reader a neat grasp of principles. This applies to low energy quantum gravitational phenomenon just as it does to electromagnetism.

As implied by Hubble’s discovery of the receding universe in 1929, recession velocity is v = HR where H is Hubble’s number and R is distance. This implies acceleration a = dv/dt. If there is “spacetime” in which light from stars obeys the equation R/t = c, then it follows that a = d(HR)/d(R/c) = Hc = 6 x 10^-10 ms^-2. (Another way to derive this, in which time runs forward rather than backwards with increasing distance from us, is often more acceptable conceptually, and is linked here: http://nige.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/figure-14.jpg.) This is the cosmological acceleration of the receding matter in the universe, implying force F = ma outward and an inward reaction force which is identical according to Newton’s 3rd law, and can only be mediated by gravitons. This makes quantitative predictions which will be shown below.

This is evidence for a spin-1 LeSage graviton (ignored by Pauli and Fierz when first proposing that the quanta of gravitation has spin-2) in the Hubble recession of galaxies which implies cosmological acceleration a = dv/dt = d(HR)/d(R/c) = Hc, obtained in May 1996 from the Hubble relationship v = HR, simply by arguing that spacetime implies that the recession velocity is not just varying with apparent distance, but with time, thus it is an effective acceleration (we published this via p893 of the October 1996 issue of Electronics World and also the February 1997 issue of Science World, ISSN 1367-6172, after string theory reviewers rejected it from more specialized and appropriate journals, without giving any scientific reasons whatsoever). The following statement is from a New Scientist page:

“We don’t know that gravity is strictly an attractive force,” cautions Paul Wesson of the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. He points to the “dark energy” that seems to be accelerating the expansion of the universe, and suggests it may indicate that gravity can work both ways. Some physicists speculate that dark energy could be a repulsive gravitational force that only acts over large scales. “There is precedent for such behaviour in a fundamental force,” Wesson says. “The strong nuclear force is attractive at some distances and repulsive at others.

“… Freedom is the right to question, and change the established way of doing things. It is the continuing revolution … It is the understanding that allows us to recognize shortcomings and seek solutions. It is the right to put forth an idea … It is the right to … stick to your conscience, even if you’re the only one in a sea of doubters. Freedom is the recognition that no single person, no single authority of government has a monopoly on the truth ….” – President Reagan, Moscow State University on May 31, 1988.

Above: Perlmutter’s discovery of the acceleration of the universe, based on the redshifts of fixed energy supernovae, which are triggered as a critical mass effect when sufficient matter falls into a white dwarf. A type Ia supernova explosion, always yielding 4 x 10²⁸ megatons of TNT equivalent, results from the critical mass effect of the collapse of a white dwarf as soon as its mass exceeds 1.4 solar masses due to matter falling in from a companion star. The degenerate electron gas in the white dwarf is then no longer able to support the pressure from the weight of gas, which collapses, thereby releasing enough gravitational potential energy as heat and pressure to cause the fusion of carbon and oxygen into heavy elements, creating massive amounts of radioactive nuclides, particularly intensely radioactive nickel-56, but half of all other nuclides (including uranium and heavier) are also produced by the ‘R’ (rapid) process of successive neutron captures by fusion products in supernovae explosions. The brightness of the supernova flash tells us how far away the Type Ia supernova is, while the redshift of the flash tells us how fast it is receding from us. That’s how the cosmological acceleration of the universe was measured. Note that “tired light” fantasies about redshift are disproved by Professor Edward Wright on the page linked here.

This isn’t based on speculations, cosmological acceleration has been observed since 1998 when CCD telescopes plugged live into computers with supernova signature recognition software detected extremely distant supernova and recorded their redshifts (see the article by the discoverer of cosmological acceleration, Dr Saul Perlmutter, on pages 53-60 of the April 2003 issue of Physics Today, linked here). The outward cosmological acceleration of the 3 × 10⁵² kg mass of the 9 × 10²¹ observable stars in galaxies observable by the Hubble Space Telescope (page 5 of a NASA report linked here), is approximately a = Hc = 6.9 x 10^-10 ms^-2 (L. Smolin, The Trouble With Physics, Houghton Mifflin, N.Y., 2006, p. 209), giving an immense outward force under Newton’s 2nd law of F = ma = 1.8 × 10⁴³ Newtons. Newton’s 3rd law gives an equal inward (implosive type) reaction force, which predicts gravitation quantitatively. What part of this is speculative? Maybe you have some vague notion that scientific laws should not for some reason be applied to new situations, or should not be trusted if they make useful predictions which are confirmed experimentally, so maybe you vaguely don’t believe in applying Newton’s second and third law to masses accelerating at 6.9 x 10^-10 ms^-2! But why not? What part of “fact-based theory” do you have difficulty understanding?

It is usually by applying facts and laws to new situations that progress is made in science. If you stick to applying known laws to situations they have already been applied to, you’ll be less likely to observe something new than if you try applying them to a situation which nobody has ever applied them to before. We should apply Newton’s laws to the accelerating cosmos and then focus on the immense forces and what they tell us about graviton exchange.

The theory makes accurate predictions, well within experimental error, and is also fact-based unlike all other theories of quantum gravity, especially the 10⁵⁰⁰ universes of string theory’s landscape.

Above: The mainstream 2-dimensional ‘rubber sheet’ interpretation of general relativity says that mass-energy ‘indents’ spacetime, which responds like placing two heavy large balls on a mattress, which distorts more between the balls (where the distortions add up) than on the opposite sides. Hence the balls are pushed together: ‘Matter tells space how to curve, and space tells matter how to move’ (Professor John A. Wheeler). This illustrates how the mainstream (albeit arm-waving) explanation of general relativity is actually a theory that gravity is produced by space-time distorting to physically push objects together, not to pull them! (When this is pointed out to mainstream crackpot physicists, they naturally freak out and become angry, saying it is just a pointless analogy. But when the checkable predictions of the mechanism are explained, they may perform their always-entertaining “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil” act.)

Above: LeSage’s own illustration of quantum gravity in 1758. Like Lamarke’s evolution theory of 1809 (the one in which characteristics acquired during life are somehow supposed to be passed on genetically, rather than Darwin’s evolution in which genetic change occurs due to the inability of inferior individuals to pass on genes), LeSage’s theory was full of errors and is still derided today. The basic concept that mass is composed of fundamental particles with gravity due to a quantum field of gravitons exchanged between these fundamental particles of mass, is now a frontier of quantum field theory research. What is interesting is that quantum gravity theorists today don’t use the arguments used to “debunk” LeSage: they don’t argue that quantum gravity is impossible because gravitons in the vacuum would “slow down the planets by causing drag”. They recognise that gravitons are not real particles: they don’t obey the energy-momentum relationship or mass shell that applies to particles of say a gas or other fluid. Gravitons are thus off-shell or “virtual” radiations, which cause accelerative forces but don’t cause continuous gas type drag or the heating that occurs when objects move rapidly in a real fluid. While quantum gravity theorists realize that particle (graviton) mediated gravity is possible, LeSage’s mechanism of quantum gravity is still as derided today as Lamarke’s theory of evolution. Another analogy is the succession from Aristarchus of Samos, who first proposed the solar system in 250 B.C. against the mainstream earth-centred universe, to Copernicus’ inaccurate solar system (circular orbits and epicycles) of 1500 A.D. and to Kepler’s elliptical orbit solar system of 1609 A.D. Is there any point in insisting that Aristarchus was the original discoverer of the theory, when he failed to come up with a detailed, convincing and accurate theory? Similarly, Darwin rather than Lamarke is accredited with the theory of evolution, because he made the theory useful and thus scientific.

Since 1998, more and more data has been collected and the presence of a repulsive long-range force between masses has been vindicated observationally. The two consequences of spin-1 gravitons are the same thing: distant masses are pushed apart, nearby small masses exchange gravitons less forcefully with one another than with masses around them, so they get pushed together like the Casimir force effect.

Using an extension to the standard “expanding raisin cake” explanation of cosmological expansion, in this spin-1 quantum gravity theory, the gravitons behave like the pressure of the expanding dough. Nearby raisins have less dough pressure between them to push them apart than they have pushing in on them from expanding dough on other sides, so they get pushed closer together, while distant raisins get pushed further apart. There is no separate “dark energy” or cosmological constant; both gravitation and cosmological acceleration are effects from spin-1 quantum gravity (see also the information in an earlier post, The spin-2 graviton mistake of Wolfgang Pauli and Markus Fierz for the mainstream spin-2 errors and the posts here and here for the corrections and links to other information).

As explained on the About page (which contains errors and needs updating, NASA has published Hubble space telescope estimates of the immense amount of receding matter in the universe, and since 1998 Perlmutter’s data on supernova luminosity versus redshift have shown the amount of the tiny cosmological acceleration, so the relationship in the diagram above predicts gravity quantitatively, or you can you normalize it to Newton’s empirical gravity law so it then predicts the cosmological acceleration of the universe, which it has done since publication in October 1996, long before Perlmutter confirmed the predicted value (both are due to spin-1 gravitons).

Elitist hero worship of string theory hero Edward Witten by string theory critic Peter Woit

“Witten’s work is not just mathematical, but covers a lot of ground. The more mathematical end of it has been the most successful, but that’s partly because, in the thirty-some years of his career, no particle theorist at all has had the kind of success that leads to a Nobel Prize. If Witten had been born ten-twenty years earlier, I’d bet that he would have played some sort of important role in the development of the Standard Model, of a sort that would have involved a Nobel prize.” – Peter Woit, Not Even Wrong blog

With enemies like Peter Woit, Witten must be asking himself the question, who needs friends? More seriously, this is a useful statement of Dr Woit’s elitism problem. He thinks that Professor Witten tragically missed out on a Nobel Prize, despite his mathematical physics brilliance, by being born some decades too late. Duh. Doesn’t that prove him unnecessary? After all, he wasn’t needed. Physics did not go on hold for decades awaiting him. Others got the prizes for doing the physics. Maybe I’m just too stupid to understand true genius…

On the topic of Bohr’s quoted attack on Feynman’s 2nd quantization path integrals, we found that this kind of “you’re wrong because our lying, false, but widely hyped dogma is popular fashion, therefore we don’t have to listen to you!” claim is still rife in mainstream physics, particularly in groupthink science fantasy like string theory, when in May 1996 we accurately predicted the a = dv/dt = d(HR)/d(R/c) = Hc ~ 6 x 10^-10 ms^-2 cosmological acceleration of the universe from the Hubble relationship v = HR simply by arguing that spacetime implies that the recession velocity is not just varying with apparent distance, but with time, thus it is an effective acceleration; which we published via p893 of the October 1996 issue of Electronics World and also the February 1997 issue of Science World (ISSN 1367-6172), after string theory reviewers rejected it from more specialized and appropriate journals, without giving any scientific reasons whatsoever. This acceleration was thus predicted two years before large groups of astronomers detected it. They failed to acknowledge the prediction and frequently lied in publications that it was unpredicted. Edward Witten claimed – falsely as far as physical facts are concerned – that it was a great surprise, when in fact it had been predicted by quantum gravity in my paper years earlier. None of these people seem to understand general relativity, which lacks the dynamics for quantum gravity. All of the relativistic corrections to Newtonian gravity which general relativity contains come from the contraction term needed for the conservation of mass-energy, which is introduced because a direct equivalence of spacetime curvature to the stress-energy (gravitational field source) tensor would be false since the divergence of the stress-energy tensor does not vanish as it should in order to satisfy local conservation of mass-energy. This contraction term is what makes general relativity shrink Earth’s radius by GM/(3c²) = 1.5 mm as Feynman explains in his Lectures on Physics, and together with the Lorentz transformation, this contraction is predicted by spin-1 quantum gravity. The outward force of the accelerating universe is given by Newton’s 2nd law; the inward reaction force mediated by gravitons is then predicted by Newton’s third law to be equal and opposite. This inward force of gravitons turns LeSage’s idea which Feynman discusses, e.g. on the audio file which plays at this linked site, into a quantitive prediction. Because the gravitons are off-shell, they cause forces and thus contractions instead of drag or heating like on-shell radiations. Similarly, the electromagnetic spin-1 gauge bosons causing your fridge magnet to stay attached to the fridge door don’t cause it to heat up. Also, the Casimir force spin-1 gauge bosons in the vacuum which push metal plates together don’t cause drag on the motion of metal plates in a vacuum. Thus the normal drag and heating objections to LeSage’s on-shell vacuum radiation and null and void against off-shell virtual radiation. In fact, the compression effects cause the radial contraction normally attributed to the fourth dimension in general relativity. Relativity is thus explained in terms of a physical mechanism: force effects from off-shell gauge bosons in quantum field theory.

If you really want to understand masses, you need to understand the field structure in detail. This means facing the facts of vacuum polarization, the gain of energy by virtual fermions as they are physically pulled apart (polarized) by an electric field from the particle which attracts the unlike charged virtual fermion and repels the like charged virtual fermion. This delivers energy from the electric field to the virtual fermions, which thus are not quite so virtual anymore! The pulling apart (polarization) affects the survival time and thus physically undermines the uncertainty principle, shifting them from being totally off-shell to closer to being on the mass shell. Thus, the “virtual” fermions in a strong electromagnetic field (high electric polarization) may become more real and are affected by the exclusion principle, which quantizes their positions. This imposes a geometric shell structure configuration on the field by analogy to atomic or nuclear shell structure, determining the hadron masses.

The pair production field isn’t infinite: there are UV and IR cutoffs on the energies and thus distances around a charge where polarizable pair production of virtual fermions occurs. No infinities are present. There can’t be an infinite number of polarized virtual fermions because the mechanism which produces them depends on energy taken from the electromagnetic field, which isn’t infinite.

Remember the earlier post with the diagram above (linked here)?  The beta decay of leptons (muon and tauon) is analyzed in a way that’s inconsistent with quark decay. E.g., muons are supposed to beta decay into electrons via the intermediary of a W_- weak boson.

For consistency with this picture, downquarks and strange quarks would need to also beta decay into electrons via the intermediary of a W_- weak boson.

But the mainstream interpretation lacks this consistency in interpretation, and instead insists on seeing quark decay as the decay of quarks directly into other quarks, not requiring the intermediary of the W_- weak boson (indicating decay of quarks into leptons, complimenting Cabbibo’s 1964 discovery “universality” e.g. the similarity of CKM weak interaction strengths for quarks and leptons within the same generation). For an illustration that makes the problem clear, see the first diagram in this blog post.

The solution to this discrepancy also gets rid of the alleged and unexplained excess of matter over antimatter. Quarks and leptons differ in terms of having colour charge and fractional electric charge, but these differences are superficial masking effects of vacuum polarization which changes the observable electric charge of a particle. They’re not fundamental and deep properties of nature, as today assumed in the construction of the SM.

Suppose that an upquark is really a disguised electron: it’s lost 2/3rds of its electric charge due to vacuum polarization screening, and that electromagnetic energy has been transformed into strong colour charge. This is because the polarization (pulling apart) of virtual quarks by strong electric fields, which gives them potential energy and thus increases their survival time over that predicted by the uncertainty principle. So some of electromagnetic field energy gets converted by this virtual fermion polarization mechanism into the energy of gluon fields (which automatically accompany the pair-production created virtual quark-antiquark pairs). Virtual fermions which have been pulled apart by strong electric fields, using energy from the electric field in the process, both screens the electric charge and contributes to the colour charge.

Thus the difference between the total electromagnetic field energy from the fractionally chargesd downquark, and the integer charge electron, is converted into the colour charge of the downquark. This idea actually predicts that the total energy of the short-range gluon field of a downquark is precisely equal to (1 – 1/3)/(1/3) or twice the total energy of its electromagnetic field.

Hence in this model downquarks and electrons are the same thing, and are merely disguised or cloaked merely by the vacuum polarization phenomena accompanying confinement. This solves the beta decay interpretation anomaly above, and also explains the alleged problem of excess of matter over antimatter in the universe. Observe that the universe is 90% hydrogen, with one electron, one downquark, and two upquarks. If upquarks are disguised positrons and downquarks are disguised electrons, there is a perfect balance of matter and antimatter in the universe; it’s just hidden by vacuum polarization phenomena.

Responding to the comment and diagram above, Professor Jacques Distler (the pro-stringy bigoted arXiv adviser who leaves snide attacks by trackbacks while not permitting genuine trackbacks, as discussed in detail in the earlier blog post linked here), states: “As to your physics comments, they are, alas, completely wrong,” before recommending a dogmatic book on the Standard Model which is the whole problem because my comments are entirely based on Feynman’s criticisms of the Standard Model in his book QED, so I responded:

Thanks for your technical analysis, Professor. I suggest you read Feynman’s book QED for the faults in the Standard Model I discussed (it’s at your level). Cheers.

Doubtless, he will come back with apologies, terrific enthusiasm for solid physics, and a confession that trying to make an ad hoc theory of the Standard Model using string theory or E8 is missing the point that the Standard Model may not merely be “incomplete” but in need of a complete rebuilding! It’s a bit like Ptolemy using epicycles to model the Earth-centred universe of Aristotle; it doesn’t matter how accurate the epicycle model is, if it is a mathematical model for a false interpretation of the universe, then it is a pipe-dream as far as real-world physics is concerned. In QED, Feynman writes:

The observed couping constant for W’s is much the same as that for the photon – in the neighborhood of j [Feynman’s symbol j is related to alpha or 1/137.036… by: alpha = j^2 = 1/137.036…]. Therefore the possibility exists that the three W’s and the photon are all different aspects of the same thing. …

But if you just look at the [Standard Model] you can see the glue, so to speak. It’s very clear that the photon and the three W’s [weak gauge bosons] are interconnected somehow, but at the present level of understanding, the connection is difficult to see clearly – you can still see the ‘seams’ in the theories; they have not yet been smoothed out so that the connection becomes … more correct.’ [Emphasis added.]

- R. P. Feynman, QED, Penguin, 1990, pp. 141-142.

Professor Distler by claiming that Feynman’s arguments which I quoted were wrong (although that could of course just be his standard response to any non-string idea, and the reason for his arXiv advice), suggests that he is completely unaware of these issues with the Standard Model. However, I may be wrong here, since he is married to a psychologist. So maybe the explanation is different and he is a more complex character, of interest to students of the science of psychology? At a firmer level, you can understand his hostility to the real universe (as distinct from the imaginary landscape in the minds of string theorists) by noting that he works in the same Texas University department as the pro-Israeli Palestine civilian bombing terrorism thuggery proponent (who claims that British regard for the human rights for civilians are disrespectful to American Jews), string theorist and Standard Model contributor Professor Steven Weinberg. Maybe Jacques would be fired if he admitted the truth about Feynman’s criticisms of the Standard Model that Weinberg helped build?

“It always bothers me that, according to the laws as we understand them today, it takes a computing machine an infinite number of logical operations to figure out what goes on in no matter how tiny a region of space [because there is an infinite series of terms in the perturbative expansion to Feynman's path integral] … Why should it take an infinite amount of logic to figure out what one tiny piece of spacetime is going to do? So I have often made the hypothesis that ultimately physics will not require a mathematical statement, that in the end the machinery will be revealed, and the laws will turn out to be simple, like the chequer board with all its apparent complexities.”

– Richard P. Feynman, The Character of Physical Law, November 1964 Cornell Lectures, broadcast and published in 1965 by BBC, pp. 57-8.

It’s true that ignorant morons may object to advanced QFT mathematics simply because it’s so abstract. However, as Feynman’s argument shows, there are intelligent reasons for questioning the fundamental validity of even well established mathematical techniques used ubiquitously in particle physics…

Update: Dr Tommaso Dorigo has a new blog post up, apparently claiming that anyone who works on the original goal of string theory (but doesn’t get the landscape failure problem) is deranged

What is the future of peer review? What does it do for science and what does the scientific community want it to do? Should it detect fraud and misconduct? Does it illuminate good ideas or shut them down? Does it help journalists report the status and quality of research? Why do some researchers do their bit and others make excuses? And why are all these questions important not just to journal editors, but to policy makers and the public? … [includes slides with vague, arm-waving complains about the problem of of "theories of everything" submitted for peer-review which indicate "deranged minds" on principle, and thus need not be taken seriously]

Response:

But who are “peers”? If you discover something nobody else has discovered which is way out, you don’t truly have any peers who are capable of checking your paper. E.g., if you send a paper to Classical and Quantum Gravity on an alternative to string theory, they send it to dogmatic string theorists to act as “peer” reviewers, who send back a rejection report saying the idea is useless for the progress of string theory! The problem is finding a genuine, unprejudiced, “peer” reviewer if you are working on a new idea which hasn’t as yet attracted any other interest.

Your position of publishing ideas written up by large numbers of collaborators misses this point. If you have a large group of authors, even if they get rejected, they have enough weight in numbers to say, start up their own specialist journal with its own peer review advisory panel, and get on the citation index. In reality, science requires groupthink support for new ideas. It’s unlikely that a radical idea can be completely implemented, explored, and popularized in the face of ignorant hostility and sneering rejections from mainstream “peer” reviewers who are basically the doormen to the trade union “closed shop” or maybe “old boys club” (depending on the analogy you prefer) of the Elitist Scientific Research Corp.

Peer review is great for the incremental progress of everyday science, but it is not so good where the new idea contradicts the entire ongoing mainstream research program, especially if that program is being defended as being “the only game in town”.

Just a word about the “deranged minds” with the “theory of everything”.

Here’s how the “theory of everything” gets developed:

1. You try to publish a single idea with a prediction for, say, quantum gravity.
2. You get rejected because your paper does not say how your idea fits into the Standard Model or general relativity.
3. You work on this problem and find a solution. Now you have a “theory of everything”.
4. Tommaso then says you must be deranged.

Thanks for the helpful idea to submit to arXiv.

I did that in December 2002 when only my email at the University of Gloucestershire could be used to set up an account. I uploaded a paper. It appeared online with an arXiv number. Thirty seconds later when I refreshed my browser, it was replaced with somebody else’s paper. Then editor of Classical and Quantum Gravity sent it to string theorists for “peer” review, then sent me the report without the names of the “peer” reviewers. The one good thing about refusing to give the names of the string theorists who wrote that report is that you are forced to suspect the whole lot of them as being your secret enemies

Diatribe against pure mathematical Platonic ideas infecting physics departments

The following is a piece I wrote then deleted from a paper I’m trying to get finished, called “Understanding quantum gravity”. It’s a bitter diatribe against the pure mathematical Platonic ideals that have infected physics via string theory and even loop quantum gravity. It’s not what I want in my paper, and is not specifically targetted at Distler or anyone else, although it might or might not be applicable in any particular case.

I don’t know whether Distler is a complete string quack or whether he has a genuine interest in physics which just became perverted as the landscape and AdS/CFT failures with string theory have been defended by lying that it is “the only game in town”. Although Jacques has in the past made false speculations about my knowledge of physics, which may seem to suggest to some that he is prepared to make false claims about what people are doing without first finding out the facts or asking; this leads me to think he is presently behaving as a quack in defending string theory when it has repeatedly failed to live up to its hype, but that’s just my personal view based on observing his weird behaviour, which may change and improve later on (particularly if Jacques should ever tragically die from old age and become a little quieter or should we say politely, more “comtemplative”).

What I want in the paper is just applied maths predictions, so I deleted the following portions which show the kind of bitterness that comes out when you try to write a paper after a lot of bigoted, quack “peer”-review for 14 years:

INTRODUCTION

Contrary to lying hype about making “predictions”, string theory gains its strength from its failure to predict results in a falsifiable way, and be found right or wrong. Many media science journalists have confused the impossibility of making checkable predictions with rigor, because they think a failure to ever be debunked by experiments sounds like rigor.

On the contrary, real world isolation is not rigor but just evidence of complete physical failure. By definition, in pure (not applied) mathematics you prove theorems without requiring any experiments or observational confirmations from the real world. The problem with string theory is that it doesn’t prove its non-real world fantasies with pure mathematical rigor. E.g., the AdS/CFT correspondence is an unproved conjecture, and while there may or may not be an exact correspondence between anti de Sitter space and conformal field theory, such an exact mathematical correspondence would only approximately model the strong nuclear force which is clearly not analogous to anti de Sitter space, a negative cosmological constant, with attraction forces increasing as distance is increased, which is a rough approximation to the gluon mediated QCD force over hadron sized distances, for the larger, nuclear-sized distances where mesons mediate the strong force (where it falls off with increasing distance, instead of increasing with distance!). Nobody has succeeded in proving that AdS/CFT actually makes useful calculations that have not already been done by other approximate methods. All they have done is to hype fantasy. Even if the approximation works usefully, that won’t prove that string theory is really being right, any more than the ability of Ptolemy’s epicycles to predict the position of the sun proved that the sun orbits the Earth: it doesn’t!

This kind of ‘intellectual’ pure mathematical parlour game may seem harmless or clever to you, but it is attractive not only to harmless pure mathematicians but also to physically ignorant and thus dangerous second rate (or failed) pure mathematicians, who are not innovative and productive enough at pure mathematicians to earn a place in such a department, but are good enough at textbook calculations to get into physics departments.

These people in some cases have an agenda of Platonic fantasy, turning the physics department into a trojan horse by which the idealist goals of ‘beautiful’ pure mathematics are sneakily fostered upon physics. Any opposition to this destruction of science brings angry hostility rather than reform from these bitter pseudo-physicists who often work as charlatan ‘peer’ reviewers, censoring science, believing in a mathematical universe.

There is also a story of cynical vested interests in non-falsifiable ideas by the educational/research theoretical physics community which goes as follows. Before the 1984 superstring revolution, there were a lot of theories which were falsifiable. People would work on those theories for their PhD thesis, then some experiment would disprove the theory. Then they had to go through life saying they got their PhD in something that was disproved! Not very impressive to potential employers! So the wise guys jumped on the string theory research waggon for stability; if string was not falsifiable, it was a safer bet because in 20 years time, your PhD on “stringy D-branes” will still look respectable, etc. This problem has been called the Catt Concept, as explained in the following Editorial from Popular Mechanics, May 1970:

- Robert P. Crossley, Editorial, Popular Mechanics, Vol. 133, No. 5, May 1970, p. 14.

Thus, the problem with string theory may be due to this need for PhD recipients in theoretical physics to have research projects in a general subject area which cannot be experimentally falsified, so that it retains some measure of “non-failure” in the eyes of potential employers for the remainder of their career, decades:

‘The President put his name on the plaque Armstrong and Aldrin left on the moon and he telephoned them while they were there, but he cut America’s space budget to the smallest total since John Glenn orbited the Earth. The Vice-President says on to Mars by 1985, but we won’t make it by “stretching out” our effort. Perhaps NASA was too successful with Apollo. It violated the “Catt Concept”, enunciated by Britisher Ivor Catt. According to Catt, the most secure project is the unsuccessful one, because it lasts the longest.’ (Emphasis added.)

- Robert P. Crossley, Editorial, Popular Mechanics, Vol. 133, No. 5, May 1970, p. 14.

Thanks to censorship of criticisms, string theory has been securely funded for decades without success. E.g., compare the Apollo project with the Vietnam war for price, length and success. Both were initially backed by Kennedy and Johnson as challenges to Communist space technology and subversion, respectively. The Vietnam war – the unsuccessful project – sucked in the cash for longer, which closed down the successful space exploration project! Thus, the Catt Concept explains why the ongoing failure of string theory to be physics makes it a success in terms of killing off more successful alternative projects, by getting ongoing media attention, publicity, and funding which just keeps on coming at the cost of alternative projects which correctly predicted the cosmological acceleration of the universe to within observational error two years before it was detected!

CONTENTS

1. Mathematical lessons from classical gravitation (general relativity) and electromagnetism (Maxwell’s equations), with comments on Lunsford’s unification.

2. The spin of the graviton: evidence that all masses are exchanging gravitons, and that the spin of the graviton is 1 not 2 as claimed by Pauli and Fierz (tensor rank indicates whether field lines or accelerations are being modelled, and is not tied to field quanta spin, contrary to groupthink lying hype)

3. Implications for the Standard Model; changes to electroweak theory which allow gravitation and mass predictions; Feynman’s criticisms of the Standard Model and how these are overcome by the solution to a discrepancy in particle classification in existing beta decay analysis via weak bosons; replacing the Higgs field and current unification ideas

4. Quantitative predictions from the corrected Standard Model, which includes a complete theory of particle masses (replacing the ad hoc Higgs field), removes dogmatic, physically false symmetry breaking mechanisms and includes gravity

5. How arXiv and ‘peer’ review have used uncritical dogmatic censorship of alternative ideas in order to hype misinformed and ignorant non-falsifiable unpredictive pseudo-scientific groupthink fantasy; the analogy to the ‘peer’ review refusals in Nazi publications for the facts on eugenics to be presented and the ‘100 authors against Einstein’ crusade, needed to suppress all scientific dissent against bigoted charlatans with a politican agenda dressed up as ‘mainstream majority-backed science’

6. False modesty versus quantum gravity; obvious facts which you know, I know, you know I know, but which you maybe prefer to pretend that you believe I don’t know; downplaying the facts and being polite and modest in a paper (a) is absolutely no threat whatsoever to a system of censorship in which pseudo ‘peer’ reviewers are bias in favour of mainstream dogmas which have failed physically because ‘they are the only game in town’, when in fact they are falsely producing this illusion by censoring alternatives, and (b) it actually allows ignorant censors to falsely buy convincingly (as far as the ignorant media is concerned) dismiss the facts falsely as ‘speculation’ by quoting the polite statements of presentation of the facts in the paper as alleged evidence for weakness in those statements!

ABSTRACT. In May 1996, the quantum gravity mechanism of this paper predicted to within experimental error the small positive cosmological constant observationally confirmed two years later. Dark energy was accurately predicted. The greatest benefit of being unread is that your unread writings cannot possibly offend anyone. So we’re free to avoid diplomatic drivel and egotistically motivated false ‘modesty’, and explain why these facts are ignored.

Update:

Perelman has rejected the $1,000,000 Clay Mathematics Institute Millennium prize for proving Poincare’s conjecture, which is relevant to the discussion of pure mathematical trash above: the most competent mathematicians aren’t those who go around sneering at other people and trying to censor out discoveries, or hyping stringy lies. They’re relatively quiet, decent, moral people who put ideas forward, then don’t clamour to win immense materialistic prizes or to give endless interviews.

‘The Poincaré conjecture, proposed by French mathematician Henri Poincaré in 1904, was the most famous open problem in topology. Any loop on a sphere in three dimensions can be contracted to a point; the Poincaré conjecture surmises that any closed three-dimensional manifold where any loop can be contracted to a point, is really just a three-dimensional sphere. The analogous result has been known to be true in higher dimensions for some time, but the case of three-manifolds had turned out to be the hardest of them all. Roughly speaking, this is because in topologically manipulating a three-manifold, there are too few dimensions to move “problematic regions” out of the way without interfering with something else. … Perelman modified Richard Hamilton’s program for a proof of the conjecture, in which the central idea is the notion of the Ricci flow. Hamilton’s basic idea is to formulate a “dynamical process” in which a given three-manifold is geometrically distorted, such that this distortion process is governed by a differential equation analogous to the heat equation. The heat equation describes the behavior of scalar quantities such as temperature; it ensures that concentrations of elevated temperature will spread out until a uniform temperature is achieved throughout an object. Similarly, the Ricci flow describes the behavior of a tensorial quantity, the Ricci curvature tensor. Hamilton’s hope was that under the Ricci flow, concentrations of large curvature will spread out until a uniform curvature is achieved over the entire three-manifold. If so, if one starts with any three-manifold and lets the Ricci flow occur, eventually one should in principle obtain a kind of “normal form”. According to William Thurston, this normal form must take one of a small number of possibilities, each having a different kind of geometry, called Thurston model geometries.

‘It is known that singularities (including those which occur, roughly speaking, after the flow has continued for an infinite amount of time) must occur in many cases. However, any singularity which develops in a finite time is essentially a “pinching” along certain spheres corresponding to the prime decomposition of the 3-manifold. Furthermore, any “infinite time” singularities result from certain collapsing pieces of the JSJ decomposition. Perelman’s work proves this claim and thus proves the geometrization conjecture.”‘

Updates (22 July 2010):

From the “comments” section to this post:

Hi Dirk,

Thanks! The emperor (Distler and other arXiv.org “advisers”) resorts to banning alternatives from string theory such as Lunsford’s peer-reviewed paper* from being hosted, and then falsely claims “string theory is the only game in town”.

Duh. Yeah, that’s because all other serious games are banned by law of arXiv.org, unless they’re wrong/not-even-wrong junk like Smolin’s loop quantum gravity.

The problem with “The Emperor’s New Clothes” is that if you read the original fairytale, when the Emperor realises that the invisible clothes he has been sold don’t actually exist, he decides to continue pretending that they do exist, so the farce continued. People always misinterpret the ending of that fairytale as if the Emperor was debunked. Nope. He was still in command of the situation, and didn’t even blush. If he such wasn’t an arrogant son of a bitch, he wouldn’t have become the emperor or Distler figurehead in the first place!

Cheers,

Nige

—-
* Lunsford’s paper, http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/688763 was published in the peer-reviewed journal Int. J. Theor. Phys. 43 , 1 (2004) 161-177 but then was deleted and banned without explanation from arXiv.org, see Lunsford’s comment: http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=128&cpage=1#comment-1920:

“… the proper way to do it is to put it on arxiv. I don’t know why they blacklisted it – all I know is, it got sponsored, got put up, and then vanished – never got any explanation. I would like for the thing to be on arxiv just on general principles, but now that it’s actually been peer-reviewed and published, it’s not a big issue to me any more.”

————

NEW SCIENTIST, 22 May 2010, page 40, “Muon whose army?” by Kate McAlpine:

“For years the E821 collaboration, based at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, studied particles called muons. These are unstable subatomic particles similar to electrons but about 200 times as heavy. The research focussed on a quantum property of the muon known as its magnetic moment, and it found the Standard Model wanting. According to the measurements, there is a mere 0.27 per cent probability that the Standard Model is correct. …

“In fact, the magnetic moment is so sensitive it is affected by the presence of particles unknown in Dirac’s day, including quarks, W and Z bosons, and the [imaginary] Higgs boson. Indeed, quantum mechanics tells us that virtual versions of any kind of particle – including ones we haven’t discovered yet – can pop into existence by borrowing energy for a passing instant. …

“The muon is affected much more than the electron because of its greater mass. That’s because they have more energy available for virtual particles to borrow. The magnetic moment of the electron is one of the most closely verified predictions of the standard model …. Not so for the muon. The first signs that all was not well came shortly after the E281 experiment got under way in the mid-1990s.”

See www.arxiv.org/abs/1001.4528 (“After a brief review of the muon g-2 status, we discuss hypothetical errors in the Standard Model prediction that might explain the present discrepancy with the experimental value. None of them seems likely. In particular, a hypothetical increase of the hadron production cross section in low-energy e+ e- collisions could bridge the muon g-2 discrepancy, but it is shown to be unlikely in view of current experimental error estimates. If, nonetheless, this turns out to be the explanation of the discrepancy, then the 95% CL upper bound on the Higgs boson mass is reduced to about 135GeV which, in conjunction with the experimental 114.4GeV 95% CL lower bound, leaves a narrow window for the mass of this fundamental particle.”) for an analysis of how much the contribution of hadrons to the muon’s magnetic moment would need to be increased to bring the prediction into agreement with measurements. The problem with this is that it causes the theoretical mass of the W boson to fall below the measured value. So the authors of that arxiv paper, Massimo Passera et al., “wondered what effect the various possible Higgs masses would have on the muon’s magnetic moment. To match the E821 result, their calculations suggest that the Higgs mass is far lower than 114 GeV, which has already been ruled out [NC: but there is no Higgs, mass is given by Z bosons of 91 GeV each!]. Taken at face value, this raises the uncomfortable possibility that the standard model is wrong, as long as E821’s results are bona fide.”

Heavy SUSY partners are postulated as an ad hoc explanation for the discrepancy by string theorists: ‘“There are supersymmetric theories that would explain this discrepancy very well,” says Passera.’

This is because virtual particles in the vacuum BOOST the magnetic moment of a lepton.

Karl Popper demarcated science from pseudo-science by arguing for falsifiable predictions.

A related problem to the muon’s magnetic moment miscalculation by the Standard Model is the fact that the proton’s charge radius when determined using muon interactions is 5 standard deviations different to that determined in an experiment using electron interactions, as Wikipedia states:

This is done by replacing the electron in an atom with a muon:

MAXWELL’S RANK-1 EQUATIONS AND GENERAL RELATIVITY RANK-2 EQUATIONS

Newton’s law of gravitation was proposed in 1665 and Coulomb’s electrostatics force law was proposed in 1785.

In Newton’s theory, force F is related to gravitational charge (mass), m, by the relationship

F = ma,

Where acceleration, a, leads to “rank-2” i.e. second-order spacetime equations because, a = d²x/dt².

In Maxwell’s equations, the corresponding force laws are

F = qE and F = qvB sin N

Where q is electric charge, qv sin N is effectively the magnetic charge, E is electric field, and B is magnetic field.

This definition leads to “rank-1” i.e. first-order differential equations, because the fields E and B are not represented in electromagnetism by rank-2 or second-order spacetime equations like acceleration, a = d²x/dt². The field E and B by contrast are defined as first-order or rank-1 gradients, i.e. E is the gradient of volts/metre, E = dV/dx.

This is the fundamental reason why Maxwell’s equations are rank-1, whereas the accelerations and spacetime curvatures in general relativity utilize rank-2 tensors.

Update (26 July 2010): Dr Woit writes on his blog that the overhyped, imaginary Standard Model Higgs boson, despite so much searching for 45 years, still lacks any statistically significant evidence:

New Higgs Results From the Tevatron

Just got back from vacation this morning. Luckily I managed to be away for the blogosphere-fueled Higgs rumors, returned just in time to catch the released results which appeared in a Fermilab press release minutes ago. The ICHEP talk in Paris announcing these results will start in about half an hour, slides should appear here.

The bottom line is that CDF and D0 can now exclude (at 95% confidence level) the existence of a Standard Model Higgs particle over a fairly wide mass range in the higher mass part of the expected region: from 158 to 175 GeV. If the SM Higgs exists, it appears highly likely that it is in the region between 114 GeV (the LEP limit) and 158 GeV. The most relevant graph is here. It shows an excess of about 1 sigma over the entire region 125 GeV to 150 GeV, which unfortunately is nothing more than the barest possible hint of something actually being there.

Above: Dr Woit explains: “The experiments are not seeing a signal, so the plot is of the 95% confidence level limit they can put on a signal/divided by the signal expected for a SM Higgs. The “expected” value for this is based on the expected performance of the detectors. Around 165 GeV they expect to be able to put a limit on the size of the signal below the SM value, and they do, ruling out the existence of a Higgs at that mass. Around 125 GeV they expect to only be able to get a limit about 1.8 times the SM value, so don’t expect to be able to rule out a Higgs at that mass.

“If there really were a Higgs at a certain mass, one expects that the experiments would start to see an excess above expected background, and this would make their 95% confidence level worse than expected. However, the excess they are seeing is still so small as to be quite consistent with no real signal.”

MAXWELL’S RANK-1 EQUATIONS AND GENERAL RELATIVITY RANK-2 EQUATIONS

Newton’s law of gravitation was proposed in 1665 and Coulomb’s electrostatics force law was proposed in 1785.

In Newton’s theory, force F is related to gravitational charge (mass), m, by the relationship

F = ma,

Where acceleration, a, leads to “rank-2” i.e. second-order spacetime equations because, a = d²x/dt².

In Maxwell’s equations, the corresponding force laws are

F = qE and F = qvB sin N

Where q is electric charge, qv sin N is effectively the magnetic charge, E is electric field, and B is magnetic field.

This definition leads to “rank-1” i.e. first-order differential equations, because the fields E and B are not represented in electromagnetism by rank-2 or second-order spacetime equations like acceleration, a = d²x/dt². The field E and B by contrast are defined as first-order or rank-1 gradients, i.e. E is the gradient of volts/metre, E = dV/dx.

This is the fundamental reason why Maxwell’s equations are rank-1, whereas the accelerations and spacetime curvatures in general relativity utilize rank-2 tensors.

The most curious thing is the false correlation by physically ignorant string theorists and others of spin-1 fields to rank-1 tensors in electromagnetism and of spin-2 fields to rank-2 tensors in general relativity. The correlation is fictitious, because the choice of rank-1 tensors in electromagnetism is purely due to a difference between the way the field is defined in electromagnetism and the way it is defined in general relativity. In electromagnetism, the field is defined by means of Faraday’s diverging or curling field lines, which are modelled in Maxwell’s equations by summing over simple first-order gradients (rank-1 tensors). If Faraday had not gone in for the field line concept, then you can bet we would today have a model of electromagnetism in terms of accelerations, i.e. rank-2 tensors.

There is no physical basis for popular claims that electromagnetism is intrinsically a rank-1 calculus system and that gravitation is intrinsically a rank-2 calculus system. It’s down to historical chance that Maxwell followed Faraday and used gradients of field lines, first order or rank-1 tensors to represent electromagnetic fields instead of directly representing electromagnetic forces in terms of accelerations (second-order equations, rank-2 tensors). If Maxwell had chosen to write his equations in terms of accelerations rather than via the the curls and divergencies of Faraday’s imaginary (fictitious) “field lines” (rank-1 tensors), then we would have spin-1 electromagnetic fields represented by rank-2 tensor equations insteadf of rank-1. It’s purely down to historical fluke. Once Maxwell had formulated his equations using Faraday’s unobservable field lines as rank-1 tensor equations, they became the usual groupthink physics dogma and nobody was willing to try to rebuild the theory in terms of rank-2 tensors.

Similarly, if Einstein and Hilbert in 1915 had formulated the field equation of general relativity using rank-1 tensors by analogy to the field lines of electromagnetism (instead of in terms of spacetime curvature which describes acceleration more directly), gravitation would be described by rank-1 field equations. In summary, the distinction between rank-1 and rank-2 tensor field equations in electromagnetism and gravitation is solely down to the choice of using the divergences and curls of field lines in 3 dimensional space to model electromagnetic fields and the choice of using spacetime curvatures (accelerations) to model gravitational fields. It is quite possible to model fields described in different ways by the use of different ranks of tensors. It’s got nothing to do with the spin of the graviton, because you could model electric forces with a rank-2 spacetime curvature equation and you could reformulate general relativity in terms of a rank-1 Faraday-type field line model where imaginary gravitational field lines diverge outward from mass/energy particles just as imaginary electric field lines diverge outward from electric charges in Faraday’s picture. Do you grasp this point? If you do grasp it and have some time to waste, maybe you will try arguing with the ignorant, lying bigots who are behind Wikipedia’s spin-2 graviton propaganda lies:

“If it exists, the graviton must be massless (because the gravitational force has unlimited range) and must have a spin of 2. This is because the source of gravity is the stress-energy tensor, which is a second-rank tensor, compared to electromagnetism, the source of which is the four-current, which is a first-rank tensor. Additionally, it can be shown that any massless spin-2 field would be indistinguishable from gravity, because a massless spin-2 field must couple to the stress-energy tensor in the same way that the gravitational field does.”

A massless spin-2 field would (if it existed) be indistinguishable from gravity because it couples to the stress-energy tensor like gravity. So what? That doesn’t prove that gravity is due to a massless spin-2 field. It certainly doesn’t disprove spin-1 gravitons, which correctly predicted in 1996 the acceleration of the universe as measured two years later by Perlmutter’s group, something that the non-falsifiable spin-2 gravity “predictions” has never done. The sole success of spin-2 gravitons hype efforts has been to stop the publication of the facts, the falsifiable predictions which were later confirmed by the discovery of the acceleration of the universe as predicted. These people are so ignorant and plain stupid that you are wasting your time if you even say hi to them. Like the Nazis, they are big shots and they know it all too well. Like the Nazis, they have their fellow travellers: the people who have the brains to see, like Prime Minister Chamberlain, that appeasement and shaking hands with these scum brings the applause of the crowd. It’s extremely hard to know how to proceed against a widely lauded groupthink consensus of ignorant liars who censor the arXiv.org, the “peer” (peer?, bigoted mainstream critic, more line)-reviewed journals and the sci-fi obsessed mainstream Hollywood-led media.

(The text above is extracted from the final section of the earlier post linked here, for the reason that the earlier post was primarily concerned with arXiv trackbacks, and it is always a good idea to separate out topics in different posts, or else some people who are not interested in one topic will stop reading a post before reaching material embedded in it which is of more interest to them.)

First versus second quantization quantum mechanics

On Facebook, Dr Jack Sarfatti is reviewing Professor Yakir Aharonov’s ideas.  Aharnonov is the physicist famous for the Aharonov-Bohm effect, which disproves the idea that electric and magnetic field strengths fully describe the electromagnetic field.  This fact becomes intuitively obvious when you notice that you can “cancel out” magnetic or electric fields with nearby opposite poles or opposite charges, without destroying the energy density of the field.  Similarly, you can pass two waves with opposite amplitudes through one another and despite the wave feature being temporarily “cancelled” during the period they are passing through one another and overlapping, when they emerge after passing through one another, they are fully restored with no energy loss!  (The contrapuntal model of the charged capacitor is another example, suggesting that charged massless SU(2) gauge bosons deliver electromagnetic forces, leaving U(1) hypercharge to generate spin-1 quantum gravity.)

The Aharonov–Bohm effect, sometimes called the Ehrenberg–Siday–Aharonov–Bohm effect, is a quantum mechanical phenomenon in which an electrically charged particle shows a measurable interaction with an electromagnetic field despite being confined to a region in which both the magnetic field B and electric field E are zero.

The Aharonov–Bohm effect shows that the local E and B fields do not contain full information about the electromagnetic field, and the electromagnetic four-potential, A, must be used instead. – Wikipedia.

Jack wrote:

Measurements do not necessarily disturb the quantum system, e.g. eigenoperator measurements do not. Aharonov introduced new kinds of “weak” and also “protective” measurements. … Remember Newton’s passion for Alchemy did not detract from his mechanical equations for gravity.

My response:

Measurements often disturb systems, by probing them with particles. Maybe the question is whether first-quantization indeterminate wavefunctions are physically “collapsed” (rather than just mathematically in a model of the process) by the act of taking a measurement of a system. Dr Thomas Love of California State University argues in a preprint he sent me that it’s just a mathematical error of first-quantization, with the time-dependent Schroedinger equation describing the particle prior to interaction, then a switch to the time-independent equation to model the particle’s eigenstate at interaction time:

“The collapse of the wave function is due to a discontinuity in the equations used to model the physics, it is not inherent in the physics.”

Feynman in his 1985 book QED says the same about the first-quantization hype of the uncertainty principle. It’s a problem with Schrodinger/Heisenberg first-quantization, and Feynman offers second-quantization QFT as a replacement. In first-quantization, which is normal textbook “quantum mechanics”, the particle is treated as intrinsically indeterminate while the Coulomb field around it is treated classically. QFT (second-quantization) introduced by Dirac and Feynman, is the exact opposite: the chaotic entity is the field the particle is immersed in, with its creation and annihilation operators. The motion of an atomic electron, according to Feynman’s 1985 book, is not inherently chaotic, but the chaos is produced by the random interferences it experiences with the quantum Coulomb field (which Schroedinger/Heisenberg ignore by treating the field classically in their first-quantization quantum mechanics):

“I would like to put the uncertainty principle in its historical place: when the revolutionary ideas of quantum physics were first coming out, people still tried to understand them in terms of old-fashioned ideas … But at a certain point the old fashioned ideas would begin to fail, so a warning was developed that said, in effect, ‘Your old-fashioned ideas are no damn good when …’. If you get rid of ALL the old-fashioned ideas and instead use the ideas that I’m explaining in these lectures – adding arrows [arrows = phase amplitudes in the path integral] for all the ways an event can happen – there is no NEED for an uncertainty principle! … on a small scale, such as inside an atom, the space is so small that there is no main path, no ‘orbit’; there are all sorts of ways the electron could go, each with an amplitude. The phenomenon of interference [of on-shell particles by off-shell field quanta] becomes very important …”

- Richard P. Feynman, QED, Penguin, 1990, pp. 55-6, & 84.

For a debunking of the fudged experiments of Prof. Alain Aspect on “quantum entanglement”: http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9903066

After making this comment, Dr John Gribbin, the famous 1st quantization quantum mechanics proponent and “In Search of Schroedinger’s Cat“-author, responded:

Measurements ALWAYS disturb systems!

I replied:

John, if I today measure a supernova explosion flash that was set off a billion years ago, do I ‘disturb’ that system? I think you are excluding a category of measurements of this kind (where the system is self-luminous), when you say ‘Measurements ALWAYS disturb systems’. I can measure distant systems without really disturbing them, just by … See Moremeasuring light they emit in my direction. This doesn’t affect the supernova that occurred a billion years ago!

Similarly, Einstein asked if the observer influences the wavefunction of the Moon: ‘Is the Moon there when you aren’t looking at it?’ Clearly, the action of the moon is way bigger than h-bar, so the Moon is to be treated as a classical system, but even if it were just a particle, an observer of a photon emitted by it a quarter of a million miles away will not have any influence on it. Hope this is a friendly sounding response!

He then replied:

John Wheeler for one would disagree. Check out “delayed choice” experiments. John

My response:

Hi John, thanks. ‘The fundamental lesson of Wheeler’s delayed choice experiment is that the result depends on whether the experiment is set up to detect waves or particles.’ – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheeler’s_delayed_choice_experiment

I agree that the observer’s equipment determines whether he sees the wave or particle properties of the photon, but I don’t see how this affects the system which emits the photon in the first place!

In his Nobel prize speech, Feynman mentions the influence of Wheeler’s ideas of electrons travelling backwards in time on his early (failed) attempts to formulate QED. Feynman didn’t get anywhere with that. I haven’t even seen any Nobel Prizes awarded for Aspect’s quantum entanglement experiments (which depend on an ad hoc elimination of 60% of inconvenient results, dismissed as “accidentals”), or for Cramer’s transactional “handshake” interpretation of QM (with its backward time travel). But 2nd quantization QFT has won many prizes for accurate prediction of experimental data, and yet is still being ignored in popular books on 1st quantization quantum mechanics debunked by Feynman 25 years ago in his book QED.

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his livelihood depends on him not understanding it.” — Upton Sinclair

Jacques goes on (prior to the mathematical discussion):

Skip and I wrote a paper, last year, which proved that Garrett Lisi’s “Theory of Everything” (or any E₈-based variant thereof) could not yield chiral fermions (much less 3 Standard Model generations worth of fermions). Anyone with training in high energy theory instantly apprehends the consequence that this “theory” cannot, therefore, have anything remotely to do with the real world. Unfortunately, if your PhD is in pure mathematics (or, apparently, in hydrodynamics), this may not be immediately obvious to you.

Skip has the unenviable task of lecturing on our paper at a workshop, next week, with Garrett in attendance. (Well, OK, the workshop is in lovely Banff Alberta, so perhaps some envy is warranted.) This post is designed to help him fill in the dots. It contains only material which — to someone schooled in high energy theory — is of an embarrassingly elementary nature.

Jacques, you see, is responding to Garrett’s new arXiv paper, An Explicit Embedding of Gravity and the Standard Model in E8, which claims:

The algebraic elements of gravitational and Standard Model gauge fields acting on a generation of fermions may be represented using real matrices. These elements match a subalgebra of spin(11,3) acting on a Majorana-Weyl spinor, consistent with GraviGUT unification. This entire structure embeds in the quaternionic real form of the largest exceptional Lie algebra, E8. These embeddings are presented explicitly and their implications discussed.

So Garrett is claiming to be able to embed fermions within an E8 symmetry, while Jacques and Skip claim to disprove the idea that any chiral (spin-handed) fermions can be produced by an E8 algebra. Being a string theory fanatic against alternative ideas, as we suggested in the previous post, Jacques who is an arXiv adviser finds no problems (unlike Dr Woit, in the recent case of trackbacks to string theory papers) in leaving a critical trackback to Garrett’s arXiv paper.

Garrett, like me, surfs and windsurfs, but I don’t have any enthusiasm for his paper which predicts nothing checkable, explains no particle masses, no coupling parameters, no mixing angles, in short nothing. He claims to show that E8 can be used as an ad hoc model to represent the patterns of fundamental particles, although Jacques and Skip dispute it by showing that E8 will inherently yield non-chiral, “mirror” fermions. In any case, it’s an ugly, ad hoc piece of speculative framework modelling which runs completely counter to Occam’s Razor and to the primitive notion of building theories on facts rather than the time-wasting hype from fiddling around with Platonic mathematical patterns to “describe” directly unobservable features of the world in an uncheckable, non-falsifiable way.

Professor Jacques Distler is a string theory specialist who advises arXiv.org, the online physics free paper preprint server, on what is sensible physics. He had numerous arguments with Dr Woit. Subsequently (maybe the word should be consequently), arXiv.org has banned trackbacks from Dr Woit’s blog to arXiv.org papers he discusses.

To investigate this, Dr Woit secretly set up a spoof new blog called String Theory Fan, full of hype for speculative non-falsifiable pseudo-science.  Unsurprisingly, arXiv.org approved trackbacks to that blog, while still banning them to Dr Woit’s objective Not Even Wrong blog:

In the comments on Dr Woit’s blog, Kea (Dr Sheppeard) writes:

“The shady activities of the arxiv are now well established. Fortunately, alternative sites such as vixra make the arxiv essentially redundant, even if professional ass kissing keeps it alive.”

However, others defend arXiv.org’s censorship of new ideas:

“… there is a danger to feeding the caricatural anti-establishmentarianism manifested by some of those on the fringe of legimitate science – there is a difference between wild, credible ideas and junk …” – Lenny

Stringy theory consisting of wild, credible ideas; not junk?

Recap of the history of quantum gravity

1. Newton’s Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica has a diagram (Book I, The Motion of Bodies, Section II: Determination of Centripetal Forces, Proposition 1, Theorem 1) showing gravity being delivered by discrete (i.e. quantized) impulses.  I.e., Newton uses quantum gravity rather than the continuous variables of his newly created calculus, to prove that the inverse square law applies to Kepler’s elliptical orbits (not just to circular orbits, which Hooke had allegedly already proved ahead of Newton):

2. Newton’s friend Fatio suggests that gravity is quantized and is carried by real particles of a gas.  Newton is unimpressed because the idea is speculative, gas tends to cause drag and to heat up moving objects (which would soon slow down and heat up the planets if they are moving through such a gas), and because Fatio is unable to make any quantitative predictions or progress using the idea.  It’s just too vague, too far ahead of its time, and too problematic in its initial form.  LeSage in 1784 publishes Fatio’s idea in France, pointing out that the geometry of isotropic gas particle pressure being “shadowed” by the sun and the planets will create inverse-square law forces towards those masses, and arguing that two key problems can be overcome if

(a) the mean-free-path of the particles in between collisions with masses is large, i.e. the gravitons have a great penetrating power (so that the particles don’t diffuse into “shadow” zones and thus cut off gravity faster than the inverse square law), and

(b) the nature of matter is mostly empty space, rather than “solid” as currently thought to be the case in 1784 (i.e. similar to the nuclear atom in which the atom consists of a tiny nucleus surrounded by tiny electrons at distances around 10,000 nuclear radii).  This was found necessary by LeSage to allow gravitons to act on essentially all of the mass inside a planet, rather than just to depend on the surface area of the macroscopic planet for constant density, surface area is proportional to square of the radius, while volume and thus mass are proportional to the cube of the radius, so LeSage was constrained to make the fundamental particles of mass a tiny size to prevent significant geometric overlap, therefore allowing all of the mass within a planet to contribute to the “shadowing” effect.

3. a century after LeSage, James Clerk Maxwell devised his mechanical aether of the vacuum of space, in which gear cogs and idler wheels conveyed “athereal displacement currents” between the plates of a charging capacitor (and later, between radio transmitter and receiver antenna, once radio waves had been discovered/invented).  Consequently, Maxwell had a mechanical interest LeSage’s gravity, and so did Maxwell’s aethereal followers, famous physicists like Lord Kelvin who resisted Einstein’s discarding as “superfluous” of the spacetime fabric in 1905.  However, Maxwell, Kelvin and others found that the Fatio/LeSage quantum gravity idea was still incapable of predictions and loaded with apparently insuperable problems.  In order to deliver enough force to cause gravity, the gravitons would apparently deliver enough drag force to heat up the Earth as it moved in its orbit of the sun until it glowed red hot (like an meteorite burning up in the Earth’s atmosphere). In addition, the drag force would slow the Earth down, allowing it to spiral into the sun.  Maxwell, Kelvin and others for these reasons found the Fatio/LeSage theory to be wrong, and they also deplored the fact that it did not make really impressive numerical predictions, e.g. a prediction of the field strength constant for gravity, G.

4. In 1915, Einstein and Hilbert came up with the field equation of general relativity. This is a precise mathematical statement relating the source term for gravity (mass and energy produce gravitational fields, with 1 kg of mass having the same gravitational effects as 9 x 10¹⁶ joules of energy according to the famous mass-energy equivalence), allowing for the conservation of mass energy by making space contract in gravitational fields, producing acceleration and curvature in 3 spatial dimensions. Spacetime curvature is indicated by a curving line on a plot of distance versus time; this spacetime curvature represents acceleration. Curved spacetime in 3 dimensions therefore represents a force field. The Riemann and Ricci tensors are simply related to acceleration:

5. The success of general relativity in predicting accurately in 1919 that star light falls towards the sun at twice the rate predicted by Newton’s acceleration law for particles of non-relativistic matter, led to a great deal of hype for general relativity. Actually, it is only a classical theory, not a quantum theory, and general relativity has an enormous number of problems (far more than LeSage’s gravity):

(a) The stress-energy tensor used to represent the source of gravitational fields in general relativity can’t (and doesn’t) model particles of matter realistically. Like all differential equations, it can only represent accurately smoothly varying quantities, not discontinuities such as an array of particles in space.  So general relativity has never been used to represent the discontinuous nature of atomic and particulate matter and energy! Instead, such matter has to be replaced by a “perfect fluid” field with the same averaged mass or energy density.

(b) The general relativity theory implicitly assumes that G is a constant, i.e. it simply excludes any possibility that the source of gravitation is to be found in the motions of the masses surrounding the observer.  Teller in 1948 and others have tried to discredit a time variation of G by falsely observing that any such variation would alter fusion rates in the big bang or in the sun, whereas of course electromagnetism is closely linked to gravitation (both are long range, inverse square laws forces), and thus a variation in both electromagnetic and gravitational couplings will prevent any variation in fusion rates (increasing gravity increases compression and thus fusion rates, but increasing electromagnetic coupling does the exact opposite by increasing the repulsion between protons and thus reducing fusion rates by increasing the Coulomb barrier; these two effects offset and effectively cancel out).

We predicted in May 1996 that LeSage’s gravity, applied to spin-1 off-shell gravitons (virtual radiation off the relativistic mass-shell, which is not real gas particles that cause heating and drag!), requires a radial inward force of ~10⁴³ Newtons for black hole sized fundamental particles which radiate spin-1 bosons by an off-shell version of Hawking’s radiation theory. This by Newton’s 3rd law predicts an equal and opposite force, i.e. a radial outward force of the gravitational charges (mass and energy) in the universe which are exchanging spin-1 gravitons with us. From the amount of mass in the universe, Newton’s 2nd law, F = dp/dt ~ ma, the theory in May 1996 predicted a cosmological acceleration of 7 x 10^-10 ms^-2, a prediction published via page 896 of the October 1996 issue of Electronics World and confirmed two years later by Dr Saul Perlmutter’s now famous discovery of that the acceleration of the universe is 7 x 10^-10 ms^-2, using computer automated real-time processing of supernova flash data streaming from CCD telescopes. Hence, we have strong evidence (albeit censored out from Classical and Quantum Gravity due to “spin-2 string theory is the only quantum gravity approach worth reading”-lies which are believed by ignorant, dogmatic peer-reviewers) that has not just survived observational tests but has been proved accurate by predicting the dark energy of the universe accurately. This evidence proves that gravity is caused by the reaction force to the acceleration of the universe. Both cosmological acceleration and gravitation are caused by the exchange of spin-1 gravitons between particles of matter/energy. Over great distances and between great masses the effects are repulsive, while between relatively small masses (an apple and the Earth, both small compared to the mass of the surrounding universe) the repulsion is much smaller than the exchange forces on the other sides, so the net result is that the apple gets pushed down to the Earth. The more matter in the Earth, the more shielding of gravitons and the faster the apple gets accelerated because the asymmetry is bigger.

General relativity has other problems. It has few simple solutions due to its complicated calculus, but the few solutions for cosmology are all wrong because they ignore the quantum gravity mechanism implicit in the motion of surrounding matter just explained. Not only that, but the few solutions to general relativity are “landscapes” like epicycles or string theory, which can represent almost any kind of expanding or contracting universes just by varying the amounts of directly unobservable dark energy and dark matter to make the model approximate the observations. In other words, it is easy to fiddle the theory to fit any universe. In this respect, it is not a useful predictive theory which is constrained to one falsifiable prediction. Find an error in the theory? Simply “fix” the theory to do away with the error, by varying some of the adjustable parameters! Similarly, the Standard Model has 19 adjustable parameters and the minimally supersymmetric Standard Model has 125. Plenty of room for “fine tuning” to force the adjustable theory to agree with your data!

6. General relativity led to other problems too. First, the Kaluza-Klein 5-dimensional spacetime theory. Put 5 dimensions into general relativity, and you get the equation for the photon of electromagnetism as a bonus. If the extra dimension is rolled up at an unobservably small Planck scale or whatever is convenient to the theorist, you have put gravitation and electromagnetism together. However, as Lunsford points out, it’s not a falsifiable prediction of anything. Einstein and others tried different approaches to unify electromagnetism and gravitation classically, and all failed. I have some sympathy with Lunsford’s 6-d approach because he finds that SO(3,3) works (predicting zero cosmological constant, i.e. that cosmological acceleration is due to the spin-1 gravitational field which does the repulsive effect of dark energy between larger masses as well as gravitational attraction between relatively smaller masses which are pushed together harder than they repel one another) which has 3 time dimensions and 3 spatial dimensions instead of extra spatial dimensions. There is a symmetry here and you measure the age of the universe (time) by the Hubble expansion rate, v = HR, with time t = 1/H for the observed flat spacetime of the universe. If you were to measure the expansion rates in 3 perpendicular directions and found them slightly different (indicating a predictable, slight anisotropy in the expansion rate), you would have 3 different ages of the universe and thus 3 effective time dimensions. In correcting general relativity to the real world you may well need 6 dimensions, 3 uniformly expanding dimensions proportional to space and time, and 3 contractable spatial dimensions representing the sizes of matter and energy fields which are locally contracted by gravitational fields, rather than expanded by them.

The biggest problem is that string theorists have gone further down the Kaluza-Klein road in order to incorporate the nuclear forces, adding more extra spatial dimensions instead of a properly understood approach to time dimensions. So they have 1 time dimension and 9 spatial dimensions in 10-dimensional superstring theory, where 6 spatial dimensions have to be compactified by a Calabi-Yau manifold which can be stabilized in a “landscape” of 10⁵⁰⁰ different ways, each corresponding to a different metastable vacuum state, or parallel universe, and 1 time dimension plus 10 spatial dimensions in 11-dimensional supergravity theory, which is holographic “bulk” upon which 10-dimensional superstring theory floats like the surface membrane or “brane” of a bubble (the surface of a bubble has one dimension less than its volume or “bulk”).

Instead of seeing the problems of the 10⁵⁰⁰ different metastable vacuum states of the Calabi-Yau manifold required to incorporate particle physics (conformal symmetry), the hardened string theorist insists dogmatically that “we must believe what nature tells us”. The whole thing is just ridiculous, because the framework of string theory is motivated by the idea of Fierz and Pauli in 1939 that gravity waves are composed of spin-2 quanta.

Mathematically, spin-2 quanta are in the reductionist framework (i.e., reductionist in the sense of ignoring the rest of the mass in the universe, instead of being holistic by including effects from the rest of the mass in the universe) the simplest way to model the universal attraction between two particles of matter, but it is physically ignorant of the fact that while electromagnetism can get away with a reductionist approach, quantum gravity can’t. In electromagnetism, the electric charges in the surrounding universe are balanced, with as much positive as negative charge (any asymmetry in this would could attractions of the opposite charges with forces 10⁴⁰ times stronger than gravity, and would thus very quickly cancel themselves out by matter-antimatter annihilation, with gamma ray emission). Therefore, for some purposes we can ignore the surrounding electromagnetic charges in the universe and do path integrals for electromagnetism by just considering two charges.

We can’t extend this to gravity because mass and energy only comes with one sign: all masses fall the same way in a gravitational field. There is no such thing as antimass known. Therefore, gravitational charges (mass, energy particles) don’t cancel out in the surrounding universe in the way that electric fields do; their gravity fields instead just add together. So since the mass of the surrounding universe is so large and since the gravitons we exchange with this mass are converging inward towards us from all radial directions around us (not diverging and losing strength with distance as occurs from a single point source of radiation), we must include it in the path integral. As Feynman shows by pictures in his 1985 book QED, the path integral for long range weak electromagnetic and gravitational fields are very simple. Looped Feynman diagram with complicated integrals are only really important at high energy. For low energy gravitational physics, the small size of the coupling for gravity prevents loops in the vacuum and we can use simple geometrical methods to do the path integral for many situations.

Rank-1 tensors (vectors) are used in electromagnetism because the field is defined in terms of the simple rank-1 gradients and curls of Faraday’s imaginary “field lines”; in general relativity, however, field lines are not used and curvatures describing accelerations (second-order differential equations) are used to describe the field.  Thus the use of rank-1 tensors in electromagnetism and rank-2 tensors in gravitation stems from the differing physical definitions of the “field” in each case (diverging or curling lines in electromagnetism, but accelerations in gravitation), not to the difference in the spin of the field quanta (spin-1 for electromagnetism, spin-2 for gravitation).

The most curious thing is the false correlation by physically ignorant string theorists and others of spin-1 fields to rank-1 tensors in electromagnetism and of spin-2 fields to rank-2 tensors in general relativity. The correlation is fictitious, because the choice of rank-1 tensors in electromagnetism is purely due to a difference between the way the field is defined in electromagnetism and the way it is defined in general relativity. In electromagnetism, the field is defined by means of Faraday’s diverging or curling field lines, which are modelled in Maxwell’s equations by summing over simple first-order gradients (rank-1 tensors). If Faraday had not gone in for the field line concept, then you can bet we would today have a model of electromagnetism in terms of accelerations, i.e. rank-2 tensors.

There is no physical basis for popular claims that electromagnetism is intrinsically a rank-1 calculus system and that gravitation is intrinsically a rank-2 calculus system. It’s down to historical chance that Maxwell followed Faraday and used gradients of field lines, first order or rank-1 tensors to represent electromagnetic fields instead of directly representing electromagnetic forces in terms of accelerations (second-order equations, rank-2 tensors). If Maxwell had chosen to write his equations in terms of accelerations rather than via the the curls and divergencies of Faraday’s imaginary (fictitious) “field lines” (rank-1 tensors), then we would have spin-1 electromagnetic fields represented by rank-2 tensor equations insteadf of rank-1. It’s purely down to historical fluke. Once Maxwell had formulated his equations using Faraday’s unobservable field lines as rank-1 tensor equations, they became the usual groupthink physics dogma and nobody was willing to try to rebuild the theory in terms of rank-2 tensors.

Similarly, if Einstein and Hilbert in 1915 had formulated the field equation of general relativity using rank-1 tensors by analogy to the field lines of electromagnetism (instead of in terms of spacetime curvature which describes acceleration more directly), gravitation would be described by rank-1 field equations. In summary, the distinction between rank-1 and rank-2 tensor field equations in electromagnetism and gravitation is solely down to the choice of using the divergences and curls of field lines in 3 dimensional space to model electromagnetic fields and the choice of using spacetime curvatures (accelerations) to model gravitational fields. It is quite possible to model fields described in different ways by the use of different ranks of tensors. It’s got nothing to do with the spin of the graviton, because you could model electric forces with a rank-2 spacetime curvature equation and you could reformulate general relativity in terms of a rank-1 Faraday-type field line model where imaginary gravitational field lines diverge outward from mass/energy particles just as imaginary electric field lines diverge outward from electric charges in Faraday’s picture. Do you grasp this point? If you do grasp it and have some time to waste, maybe you will try arguing with the ignorant, lying bigots who are behind Wikipedia’s spin-2 graviton propaganda lies:

“If it exists, the graviton must be massless (because the gravitational force has unlimited range) and must have a spin of 2. This is because the source of gravity is the stress-energy tensor, which is a second-rank tensor, compared to electromagnetism, the source of which is the four-current, which is a first-rank tensor. Additionally, it can be shown that any massless spin-2 field would be indistinguishable from gravity, because a massless spin-2 field must couple to the stress-energy tensor in the same way that the gravitational field does.”

A massless spin-2 field would (if it existed) be indistinguishable from gravity because it couples to the stress-energy tensor like gravity. So what? That doesn’t prove that gravity is due to a massless spin-2 field. It certainly doesn’t disprove spin-1 gravitons, which correctly predicted in 1996 the acceleration of the universe as measured two years later by Perlmutter’s group, something that the non-falsifiable spin-2 gravity “predictions” has never done. The sole success of spin-2 gravitons hype efforts has been to stop the publication of the facts, the falsifiable predictions which were later confirmed by the discovery of the acceleration of the universe as predicted. These people are so ignorant and plain stupid that you are wasting your time if you even say hi to them. Like the Nazis, they are big shots and they know it all too well. Like the Nazis, they have their fellow travellers: the people who have the brains to see, like Prime Minister Chamberlain, that appeasement and shaking hands with these scum brings the applause of the crowd. It’s extremely hard to know how to proceed against a widely lauded groupthink consensus of ignorant liars who censor the arXiv.org, the “peer” (peer??? crackpot more like) reviewed journals and the sci-fi obsessed mainstream Hollywood-led media.

The Standard Model is experimentally-based quantum field theory (unlike completely useless string field theory), yet is slightly confused due to the purely speculative electroweak symmetry-breaking Higgs field and string theory is based upon the ignorant lie that spin-2 bosons are required for quantum gravity (see post on Fierz and Pauli’s error of the spin-2 graviton, linked here). U(1) hypercharge gives leptons and quarks particles their measured masses as explained physically on the post linked here. SU(2) is not just responsible for the 3 massive weak Z and W gauge bosons; it also causes massless versions, the charged massless bosons being responsible for positively and negatively charged electric fields, respectively (they propagate in the vacuum because the magnetic self-inductance – normally infinity for massless particles – is completely cancelled out for exchange radiation travelling along two directions, to and from each real charge; this is simply because magnetic field vectors for each component are equal and opposite in direction!; this mechanism also guarantees an exact equilibrium in exchange, so that the SU(2) Yang-Mills field equation term for charge transfer becomes inoperative; you can’t transfer any net charge because of the equilibrium; this constraint on the SU(2) Yang-Mills equation then automatically cancels the equation down to the form of the regular “Maxwellian” Abelian U(1) field equation which doesn’t include charge transfer by gauge bosons!).

Copy of a post by Dr Peter Woit on the Not Even Wrong blog:

Not In Our Lifetimes

A report from one of last Saturday’s events at the World Science Festival has string theorists Brian Greene and Shamit Kachru admitting that they’d be surprised to see experimental evidence for string theory in their lifetimes:

John Hockenberry, the panel’s moderator, asked Greene if he thought experimental evidence would come during his lifetime.

“I’d be surprised,” said Greene.

“And in your lifetime?” Hockenberry asked Kachru.

“…I’d be surprised,” conceded the young physicist reluctantly.

For more reports about the same panel discussion, see here and here.

In the comments of that post by Dr Woit, commentators mention spin-2 gravitons:

Update: as an antidote to depression about string theory lies being used by ignorant media morons to censor the facts of physics until after you are long dead and buried, I strongly recommend Saturday night foam parties at Ibiza’s Eden nightclub

Above: Sat 12 June 2010 Ibiza Eden nightclub (two minutes walk from my hotel) foam party photographed at 5:56am local time Sunday 13th (San Antonio, Ibiza). They gave out free wristband passes for entry at 2am in the town centre, so I didn’t pay a penny. Eden nightclub has only just had its seasonal opening party, and is Keep your phone and money in a plastic bag in your pocket and wear swimming-type earplugs to reduce eardrum stresses when the volume goes up too high for comfort (you still hear the music fine). Don’t drink any alcohol or water if you just want to practice dancing all night long to keep fit and sensibly chat to girls in the chilling out room (being drunk doesn’t make you look attractive, while drinking water or soft drinks makes you look soft). Keep fully hydrated during the day before, then drink a full litre of mineral water immediately before you go to the club at 3am (for just over 3 hours of dancing, you will remain fine without another drink). The foam party began in a special slightly rough-finished circular area (located down from the main dance stage, which is smooth and would be too slippery for foam) around 5:50am and lasted about 20 minutes. It was a water party first (sprays from ceiling sprinklers), and then lots of foam pipes from the ceiling sprayed snow-like waist-deep soap foam.

Update (15 June 2010):

Dr Woit of Columbia University has a new Not Even Wrong blog post up:

Predictions From David Gross

Tom Bethell, senior editor of the American Spectator, has just written an article called “Relativity and relativism” in the Washington Times newspaper criticizing Einstein’s special relativity theory, which we will quote and discuss at the end of this post. First, let’s examine the relationship between relativity, classical fields and quantum gravity.

Below we give an improved presentation of the simple basic calculation in the earlier blog post linked here. In October 1996, we showed via page 893 of Electronics World that spin-1 quantum gravitons do the job now attributed to “dark energy” in accelerating the universe (the “cosmological constant”) as well as quantum gravity.

The cosmological repulsion and consequently the correct cosmological constant was predicted in 1996, years ahead of first being measured. (Few people had any interest and despite concern from the editor, Classical and Quantum Gravity’s peer-reviewers would not support publication of any non-string theory predictions on quantum gravity. A fellow Electronics World author, Mike Renardson, kindly wrote to suggest that the 7 x 10^-10 ms^-2 acceleration was too small to detect, yet it was soon clear that over large, cosmological-sized, distances it would prove measurable to Perlmutter and other astronomers two years later, using automated detection of standard brightness supernovas by new software working off telescope feed in real time. The measured luminosity indicated distance, while the measured redshift allowed the acceleration of the universe to be measured.)

Since 1998, more and more data has been collected and the presence of a repulsive long-range force between masses has been vindicated observationally. The two consequences of spin-1 gravitons are the same thing: distant masses are pushed apart, nearby small masses exchange gravitons less forcefully with one another than with masses around them, so they get pushed together like the Casimir force effect.

Using an extension to the standard “expanding raisin cake” explanation of cosmological expansion, in this spin-1 quantum gravity theory, the gravitons behave like the pressure of the expanding dough. Nearby raisins have less dough pressure between them to push them apart than they have pushing in on them from expanding dough on other sides, so they get pushed closer together, while distant raisins get pushed further apart. There is no separate “dark energy” or cosmological constant; both gravitation and cosmological acceleration are effects from spin-1 quantum gravity (see also the information in an earlier post, The spin-2 graviton mistake of Wolfgang Pauli and Markus Fierz for the mainstream spin-2 errors and the posts here and here for the corrections and links to other information).

As explained on the About page (which contains errors and needs updating, NASA has published Hubble space telescope estimates of the immense amount of receding matter in the universe, and since 1998 Perlmutter’s data on supernova luminosity versus redshift have shown the amount of the tiny cosmological acceleration, so the relationship in the diagram above predicts gravity quantitatively, or you can you normalize it to Newton’s empirical gravity law so it then predicts the cosmological acceleration of the universe, which it has done since publication in October 1996, long before Perlmutter confirmed the predicted value (both are due to spin-1 gravitons).

At some stage, improvements in the presentation of these diagrams may clarify it to the stage where it may reach a point at which people generally grasp it within the time they spend focussing on it, i.e. where the diagram looks self-evident and obvious and incontrovertible rather than off-putting. One thing that needs to be included is some of the gauge theory mathematics with simple explanations, e.g. some of the stuff from Feynman’s 1985 book QED which I’ve discussed on earlier posts. I’ve not included in the diagram the cross-section for quantum gravity interactions, the gauge theory of U(1), how it predicts lepton and quark mass patterns, how it replaces the Higgs mechanism for mass and modifies the electroweak theory, etc. Maybe I will have to condense all that down to a single diagram before this is really taken seriously?

Nobody uses the argument that “off-shell gauge bosons that cause fundamental forces should cause drag like a gas of on-shell particles and slow down (as well as heat up) the planets” to deny mainstream quantum field theories of the Casimir effect and the concept of a theory quantum gravity, but this kind of vacuous “argument” and historical attacks on LeSage’s gravity idea are still levelled against spin-1 gravitons whenever they are explained by me.

It’s a bit like false experts (charlatans and crackpots) trying to debunk Darwin’s evolution by saying:

“Lamarke had the idea of evolution and he got the details wrong; now you are coming up with a new version of an old debunked idea which evades the problems of the old idea. How stupid, pointless, and pathetic!”

There is no science in such an “objection”. It’s just a statement of pure political-style prejudice, not science. There is no way to respond scientifically to purely political objections which ignore the scientific facts. (If reality turns out to be an old idea with some modifications, then tough cheese to those who believe in string theory. Atoms were an old idea by the ancient Greeks when Dalton revived them two thousand years later. What matters is the new evidence on offer, not how famous the critics of the old evidence for the same idea were. I don’t care how famous critics of LeSage were years ago. Science isn’t about the political standing of a “critic” of an old version of an idea. Science is just about the facts.)

Another “objection” of the same sort is the aether, discussed in the previous post and in the one linked here. This “objection” says falsely that Heisenberg’s and Schroedinger’s first-quantization quantum mechanics disproved causality and mechanism in the universe, because the uncertainty principle makes the world crazy.

The answer to that is simply that first-quantization quantum mechanics went out of the window in 1927 when Dirac’s relativistic quantum field theory replaced it. First-quantization is a lie: it treats the Coulomb field binding the electron to the nucleus classically, so the chaos of the motion of the electron has to be falsely introduced by making the electron’s motion intrinsically indeterminate. Second-quantization, as Feynman explains, gets rid of this application of the uncertainty principle because it simply treats the Coulomb field properly as a quantum field, in which field quanta (random discrete interactions) replace the false classical smooth Coulomb field. The electron has a chaotic motion because the quantum electromagnetic field binding it in its orbit of the nucleus is chaotic, as Feynman explains:

“I would like to put the uncertainty principle in its historical place … If you get rid of all the old-fashioned ideas and instead use the ideas that I’m explaining in these lectures – adding arrows [path amplitudes] for all the ways an event can happen – there is no need for an uncertainty principle! … When we look at photons on a large scale … there are enough paths around the path of minimum time to reinforce each other, and enough other paths to cancel each other out. But when the space through which a photon moves becomes too small (such as the tiny holes in the screen), these rules fail … there are interferences created by the two holes, and so on. The same situation exists with electrons: when seen on a large scale, they travel like particles, on definite paths. But on a small scale, such as inside an atom, the space is so small that there is no main path, no ‘orbit’; there are all sorts of ways the electron could go, each with an amplitude. The phenomenon of interference becomes very important, and we have to sum the arrows [amplitudes for different paths] to predict where an electron is likely to be.”

- Richard P. Feynman, QED, Penguin Books, London, 1990, pp. 55-85.

“… Bohr … said: ‘… one could not talk about the trajectory of an electron in the atom, because it was something not observable.’ … Bohr thought that I didn’t know the uncertainty principle … it didn’t make me angry, it just made me realize that … [they] … didn’t know what I was talking about, and it was hopeless to try to explain it further. I gave up, I simply gave up …”

- Richard P. Feynman, quoted in Jagdish Mehra’s biography of Feynman, The Beat of a Different Drum, Oxford University Press, 1994, pp. 245-248.

“The quantum collapse [in the multiple universes, non-relativistic, pseudoscientific first-quantization model of quantum mechanics] occurs when we model the wave moving according to Schroedinger time-dependent and then, suddenly at the time of interaction we require it to be in an eigenstate and hence to also be a solution of Schroedinger time-independent. The collapse of the wave function is due to a discontinuity in the equations used to model the physics, it is not inherent in the physics.”

– Dr Thomas Love, California State University.

“In some key Bell experiments, including two of the well-known ones by Alain Aspect, 1981-2, it is only after the subtraction of ‘accidentals’ from the coincidence counts that we get violations of Bell tests. The data adjustment, producing increases of up to 60% in the test statistics, has never been adequately justified. Few published experiments give sufficient information for the reader to make a fair assessment.”

– http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/quant-ph/pdf/9903/9903066v2.pdf

So much for first-quantization. Like Ptolemy’s epicycles or the Bohr atom, it can be used to make approximate calculations. What is stupid is the way it is taught and popularized as being physically deep, when it is just a non-relativistic classical Coulomb field model. What will it take, really, to get people to give up such pseudoscience and embrace physical reality? Einstein and his early (but not late) hero Mach dismissed physical mechanisms of phenomena in the vacuum, and this is still done in quantum field theory even by critics of non-falsifiable string speculation. Why? What physical justification do they have? Fashion. Yes, fashion. Here is the problem of fashion (first-quantization) being mistaken for fact, from the new 2010 book by Erik von Markovik and Chris Odom, The Pickup Artist published by Villard, New York, page 225:

“From quantum mechanics, I learned that a particle isn’t really in a specific location until it is observed. Until then, it exists as a fuzzy probability cloud. It’s only when a sentient being observes it that it actually collapses into a specific particle at a specific location. Experiments show that it is the act of observation itself that makes the probability collapse and become ‘real’.”

This is first-quantization, the 1925 non-relativistic quantum mechanics of Heisenberg’s matrices and Schroedinger’s wave equation, promoted with inaccurate “experiments” hype: there are no experiments that are not false like Alain Aspect’s “accidentals subtracted” statistical fiddle to show such a thing, which may explain why there have been few Nobel Prizes awarded for entanglement, quantum computing, string theory, parallel universes, and so on, although of course Heisenberg and Schroedinger got them for first-quantization mythology. As Dr Thomas Love of California State University has explained, wavefunction collapse is generated by unnatural, mathematical models which don’t consistently represent reality: it is due to a discontinuity between the time-dependent and time-independent wavefunction modelling equations.

Einstein was thus right to the extent that he dismissed the subjectivist first-quantization approach to quantum mechanics. The shame of Einstein in this context is that Einstein also dismissed the facts: he listened to Feynman’s presentation of path integrals in an informal seminar organized by Wigner at Princeton. Einstein ignored Feynman’s presentation of second quantization, consistent quantum field theory. What you always find is that the few critics of the mainstream heard properly to date, like Bell and Bohm, and maybe Lee Smolin too, have all ended up being obfuscators seeking to introduce ad hoc infinite potentials and other hidden variable or otherwise “crying wolf” ideas which just discredit non-mainstream ideas generally. They don’t seem to grasp the point that Feynman had already sorted out the whole problem. The path integral concept applies to field quanta travelling along all possible paths during their exchange between charges. The Casimir force measurement confirmation demonstrates the reality of this. Sure, if you fire a photon of light at an electron to try to find out its exact position and momentum, you are faced with uncertainty (because the electron is moved by the impact, ending up with a product of uncertainty in position and momentum which is half of the unit of quantum action, h-bar, assuming that you can measure the photon’s properties precisely, which of course you can’t, so the total uncertainty is still greater than half h-bar). But that doesn’t mean that the electron’s position was indeterminate before it was hit by your photon! In other words, just because observing something interferes with it by the impact of the photon of light, that doesn’t prove that the particle was really in an indeterminate state between parallel universes!

Similarly, a blind man swinging a golf club around in order to detect the position of a golf ball will have uncertainty even when he hears the club hit the ball, because the ball will then have moved and won’t be where it was at the instant of being hit. But the golf ball doesn’t need to be split between two parallel universes before he hits it! Similarly, measuring the potential of a battery will drain it slightly, measuring tyre pressure involves the escape of some air and a fall in pressure, shining a light on a painting fades it slightly. You can’t observe something without interacting in some way, but this doesn’t imply intrinsic chaos. The uncertainty principle has its uses, but as Feynman said, you don’t need it to give rise to wavefunction collapse in quantum mechanics, unless you’re using obsolete, first-quantization, pre-Dirac, flawed mathematical models.

Returning to the subject of the fashion-conscious pick up book describing first quantization by Erik, he is the star of a VH1 TV programme called (like his latest book) The Pickup Artist. Surprisingly, there are some really deep connections here between making yourself attractive socially and making your quantum gravity theory attractive to people generally. You need to gain social acceptance in both situations. At some stage you have to stop focussing on individuality and start to show some of the not-individual general characteristics required for social acceptance, such as getting papers published in peer-reviewed journals. The trick is to be individual and yet still fit into normal social circles: in other words, there is a high degree of constraint on the sort of personality you are allowed by evolution. The author Leil Lowndes puts it lucidly when she exposes the whole mythology of love with the words: “Evolutionary theorists tell us that, even when considering one-night nookie with a nerd she never wants to see again, a woman subconsciously listens to her genes.” (L. Lowndes, Undercover … signals, Citadel Press, page 126.) Of course, the problem here is that peer-reviewers have prejudice in favour of status quo.

Although science is supposedly progressive, there is resistance to new ways of thinking, so you need to have a lot of patience, time and energy to deal with the process of trying to respond to pseudoscientific objections presented in a way that tells you that the person making the objections doesn’t even know what science is all about, and just thinks science is playing with existing string theory or some other not-even-wrong speculative framework established sixty years ago which has never led to a single falsifiable prediction. Darwin never engaged in arguments with bigoted “critics”; he just wrote down the evidence and left the mudslinging to others while continuing his investigations. So advice to try to overcome bigotry is wrong: you end up either ignoring the non-scientific “criticisms” or arguing about philosophy; in no circumstances does this go in a fruitful direction. It just sucks in your time and energy, which the peer-reviewers waste on non-scientific matters. So although at some stage journal peer-reviewed publication is inevitable, it isn’t necessarily something suited to this kind of problem. In the context of dating, it reminds me of the silly advice I used to get to waste time in nightclubs, where the music was too loud to enable speech to be heard. It is a waste of time since it prevents any communication at all, just like the peer-reviewers with their lying spin-2 obsessions.