Re-doing Physics

What To Do Next?

2008-11-14T13:58:00.003-06:00

Since I believe that:
1. Gravity is nothing more than an imbalance in electric fields
2. Magnetism is nothing more than a minor effect of moving charges/moving fields
3. Atomic physics and nuclear physics cannot be done right without having the electromagnetism right to start with,

Then it seems clear that the most vital thing to figure out is the business of charged particles and their associated electric fields and how they interact with each other. But either I'm totally lacking in imagination or totally lazy or both those things, because I'm just not certain where to go next.

My present feeling is that what we call magnetism is mostly a simple result of propagation delay, i.e., the effects of the distortion of electric fields as they move through the aether. O.K., so? What do I need to do next?

Aether 'Density'

2008-10-22T15:14:00.004-05:00

Here's a little pure speculation for you. One can ask, what is the relative contribution of each primary electric field to the medium at a given location? One possibility is that the 'weighting factor' is proportional to the electric field strength at a given location. Since the electric field strength falls off as the inverse square of the distance from the source particle, one would expect pretty big variations in the effective state of 'rest' of the medium and the propagation speed of the medium. In other words, stars (and planets) would tend to carry their own state of rest with them. For example, the dominating medium around the earth would more or less move with the earth, and we might expect to see significant variations in the characteristic speed (speed of light) with distance from the earth.

On the other hand, if there was no weighting factor at all, in others words if the contribution of each field element was completely independent of field strength, then one might expect the characteristic speed to be totally constant and the state of rest to be solely determined by the 'average' state of motion of all particles in the universe.

Now, if the weighting factor were dependent on the inverse distance from the source particle (like the electric potential), then one would expect an intermediate result. For example, the characteristic speed would be nearly constant, varying just a tiny bit near massive objects. And friends, this is precisely what we see. Likewise, the local effective state of rest of the medium would almost solely determined by the average state of motion of all particles in the universe.

Ernst Mach dimly perceived that something like this could be the case. In a sense, local physical laws are determined by the large-scale structure of the universe.

What About Relativity?

2008-10-08T19:49:00.003-05:00

Let's see if I can roughly paraphrase it. The correct laws (equations) of physics ought to be independent of the frame of reference. That, more or less, is the principle of relativity. It appears that the authors of that statement never stopped to talk to the ordinary guys who deal with elastic waves in solids, acoustic waves in fluids, et cetera. Anybody knows that the equations are only going to be simple in the reference frame stationary with respect to the medium of propagation. So you see, we've gone down a bad road. Some smart guys, for example, got completely fooled by the null result of the Michelson-Morley experiment.

You know, I'm definitely not the 'smartest guy in the room', and I've been wrong about lots of things. But I can say these things with honest conviction. I'm not actually a threat to anybody. I'm not in academia. My work is not published in the prestigious journals. I have nothing to lose by being perfectly honest about how I see it. And (scary thought) I just possibly might be right.

Anyway, my advice: don't try to make electromagnetic radiation special. Electromagnetic radiation is a disturbance propagating in a medium. The real task is in trying to understand that medium and exactly how it works. Progress will not be made until we stand toe-to-toe with Faraday and Maxwell and think more deeply about the problem than they did.

One more thing: Maxwell's Negative Energy Difficulty wherein a vector theory of gravity is supposedly not possible? If (as is most likely) there is no separate force of gravity (i.e., gravity is a purely electromagnetic phenomenon), then Maxwell's arguments are without merit. I dare to claim that this, along with the invalidity of the principle of relativity, completely undercuts the General Theory of Relativity, not to mention the special Theory of Relativity.

No shame; we've all gone down bad roads. Now is a good time to exercise a little humility, admit that it was all wrong, and start over again.

An Idea About Beta Decay

2008-08-30T03:02:00.003-05:00

How can we possibly explain the continuous spectrum of electron energies in beta decay without having to invent another particle to properly arrive at conserved energy and momentum? There are two factors that give me hope that a solution is possible. One is the extreme difference in mass between the unstable nucleus and the escaping electron. For example, what was known as Radium E is, in fact, Bismuth - 210. This nucleus has a mass approximately 382,000 times bigger than the electron. Secondly, all atoms in solids undergo thermal oscillations. Thus, a decaying nucleus will have a unique velocity at the instant of ejection of the electron. The velocity distribution of the nuclei may be intimately related to the spectrum of the ejected electrons. This seems worth looking into.

If this is correct, then we would expect to see some much smaller variation in the energies of alpha particles ejected in alpha decay.

Mossotti-Lorentz Gravity

2008-08-16T19:34:00.003-05:00

Everyone interested in gravity and the link between gravity and electrodynamics ought to read the 1900 paper by Hendrik Antoon Lorentz. An English translation can be downloaded from the digital library in the Hague in the Netherlands under the History of science and scholarship in the Netherlands. Starting in Section 5 of the paper Lorentz derives two sets of Maxwell equations for gravity based on the idea that gravity is nothing more than a small residual of electric forces wherein the attractive forces between unlike charges are just slightly larger than the repulsive forces between like charges. He gives full credit to Mossotti for this idea and credit to Weber and Zollner for further development. Naturally, the result looks like Newton's Law (like Coulomb's Law) but with extra terms. Lorentz calculated the effect of the modified theory on the orbit of Mercury; it was common knowledge that Mercury's orbit has a slow rotation of the slightly elliptical orbit that doesn't fit Newton's Law. Lorentz needed to select a speed and direction of the motion of the solar system through the medium. [Remember this was just before Poincaire, Einstein, and everyone else decided that they didn't need a medium for light propagation.] Lacking anything else, it seems that Lorentz chose the 'proper motion' of the sun, i.e., the motion of the sun with respect to the local group of stars in our neighborhood of the galaxy. The speed is about 16km/s. The number he obtained for the 'advance of the perihelion of Mercury', was way too small. It is interesting to note that if one uses a much larger value, like the speed of the solar system with respect to the microwave background radiation, one gets much closer to the observed value. There seems to have been only a little follow-up to Lorentz' paper. To me it seems a shame that the whole idea was not vigorously pursued.

Pointing Out Some Questionable Physics

2008-08-10T15:50:00.006-05:00

I think I'll just go ahead and lay out some items to be explored.

1. There are no photons. It all started with a misinterpretation of the results of the experiments on the photelectric effect. As Augustin Fresnel worked so hard to demonstrate, electromagnetic radiation is purely a wave phenomenon.

2. Even though 19th century physicists were unable to grasp it, there is a medium of propagation of electromagnetic radiation. Up until about 1899 it was clear to physicists that any wave phenomenon is a disturbance propagating through some sort of medium ... by definition.

3. There is no such thing as mass converting to energy and vice versa. There is no E=mc-squared. I need to go back and carefully do my homework to see exactly how that odd idea was introduced and try to show that it has no real basis in nature. Just to give one small example, I feel fairly certain that the energy of an atomic bomb can be accounted for purely by Coulomb forces.

4. The tiny 'bending' of light passing near massive objects can be explained by a slightly lower speed of light close to such objects. I think it will eventually be shown that the characteristic speed of the medium is slightly less near massive objects, i.e., there is a dependence on "aether density" as it were. There are undoubtedly no such things as 'black holes'; this is an inadmissible extrapolation (orders of magnitude) from the miniscule observed 'bending'.

5. Lorentz and Fitzgerald will eventually be shown to have been on the right track regarding the odd null results of the Michelson-Morley experiments. There must be a certain physical change in the dimensions of objects moving through the medium. The effect is a result of propagation delay changing the equilibrium spacing of neighboring atoms in a solid. It will turn out that the Michelson-Morley experiment was precisely the wrong experiment to measure the speed of objects moving through the medium.

Neutrinos? You're Kidding Me

2008-08-07T13:02:00.004-05:00

I'm certainly not the first person that says that neutrinos do not exist. I'm pretty certain that the invention of the neutrino was one of the big boondoggles of modern physics. I would say that Wolfgang Pauli and the others rushed the solution of the problem of the continuous spectrum of the kinetic energy (or speed if you prefer) of the electrons that emerge from the nucleus in beta decay. At the moment I cannot prove it, but I feel fairly certain that the correct explanation lies somewhere in a proper accounting of all the energy and momentum involved in the decay process without neutrinos. Also, I have not yet found a fatal flaw in the 1956 experiments of Frederick Reines and Clyde Cowan, the first time physicists claimed to have observed neutrinos (albeit fairly indirectly). I am open to sensible suggestions and/or experimental results on either side of the hypothesis.

How Does Light Propagate?

2008-08-03T16:45:00.003-05:00

In the 19th century a number of physicists worked hard to understand the mechanism of the propagation of electromagnetic radiation. They failed utterly. I claim that the physicists of the 20th century did no better. I am allowed to speculate on this mechanism. I said earlier that to ignore the underlying electric fields of charged particles and to focus only on the net fields is an error, an error that goes back to Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell among others.

We start with the choice that the electric fields of charged particles are real, are of infinite extent, and overlay each other everywhere. Already we almost have a medium. In the case when one charged particle moves with respect to the others (a rather artificial special case), necessarily its electric field must move with it. I claim that it does not move instantaneously. Rather, the adjustment of the electric field takes place in a measured fashion as it moves with respect to the others. With each increment of motion of the particle, the adjustment of the electric field is "telegraphed" outward from the particle at a characteristic speed, known to us as the speed of light. Why? To put it in homey language, the electric field of a charged particle "knows" it wants to be symmetrically disposed about the particle, and in moving over it encounters a miniscule bit of "resistance" as it slides through the overlaid electric fields of all the other particles. Hence, there's a bit of delay as the adjustment takes place. That's the medium for you. There's no elastic solid-like monolithic aether. There's no sea of ultra-mundane particles zipping around. The medium consists only of what we always knew was there if we had only chosen to look at it clearly. Of course, there's plenty of details to figure out. And of course, we don't know exactly what these electric fields are, nor do we know exactly how they work, but its a start.

Electric Fields Are Real

2008-07-29T05:15:00.003-05:00

O.K. Let's say we have a charged particle or charged object at some location. At some distance away, in principle, we can place a small test charge, release it, and observe it's acceleration. From that we can know the magnitude and direction of the electric field strength. From my point of view there are two options here. On the one hand we might say that by pure magic, i.e., with nothing physically present at the location of the test charge, the charged particle or charged object attracts or repulses the test charge. On the other hand we might say that 'something' that we call an electric field is physically present at the location of the test charge, in fact, is physically present everywhere in space. It's still magic, but only because we don't know exactly what it is or exactly how it does what it does. Personally I prefer the second option. In other words, the electric field of a charge particle or charged object is something real, physically present.

Following that line it seems to me that the physical presence of that electric field is completely independent of whether there are other charges with their electric fields in the vicinity. In other words electric fields of charges 'overlay' each other at any location. One can determine the net electric field at that location, but whatever the net electric field turns out to be, it in no way obviates the physical presence of the underlying primary electric fields.

Continuing that line, since each charged particle has an electric field of infinite extent, it follows that right here in this room where I'm sitting writing the primary electric fields of every single charged particle in the universe is physically present. Can anyone make an argument that this is not the case? You may say, o.k., but so what? Who cares? I'll come back to that.

Reification

2008-07-26T19:55:00.003-05:00

In Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (10th Edition) we find:
reify: to regard (something abstract) as a material or concrete thing.

It's my opinion that sometimes physicists are guilty of reification and that it is impermissible in legitimate physics. The classic example of this is found in the General Theory of Relativity wherein one speaks of the warping of space-time by massive objects. Space and time taken separately or together are not material or concrete things, and therefore, are not subject to warping.

Do not despair. Later I shall at the least offer a simple alternative to General Relativity for your consideration.

What About Electric Fields?

2008-07-23T03:26:00.004-05:00

In school we learned about electric fields. Charged particles have electric fields. They are infinite in extent, and the electric field strength falls off as the inverse square of distance away from the particle. We learned that one can calculate the net electric field at some location by doing a vector addition of the electric fields of all the charged particles under consideration. We also learned an operational definition of the net electric field at some location. One takes a small test charge at the point in question and releases it. The instantaneous acceleration of the test charge determines the strength and direction of the net electric field at that location.

Later we are taught that the net electric and magnetic fields are all that matter, that one can have a complete description of electromagnetic phenomena knowing the net fields. In fact, Maxwell's Equations provides just such a supposedly complete theory. We are also told that the underlying fields can't matter since we cannot measure them in any case. Now I would like to take issue with that. Little by little I would like to make the case that the underlying fields do matter and that a deeper understanding of electromagnetism is impossible without including them. The complete failure of 19th-century physicists to arrive at an understanding of the medium of light propagation is a good example.

Casual Comments On Newton's Gravity

2008-07-21T04:00:00.003-05:00

Rightly or wrongly Isaac Newton gets credit for the inverse-square law of universal gravity. Mathematically it is an instantaneous-action-at-a-distance formulation. I read that Pierre-Simon Laplace investigated modifying the formulation to incorporate propagation delay. What he found was that unless the propagation speed was millions of times faster than the speed of light, the solar system would go unstable in a matter of centuries. In 1900 Hendrik Lorentz published a paper wherein he attempted to show that a theory of gravity was possible with a more reasonable propagation speed and at the same time a stable solar system. He borrowed an idea from Ottaviano-Fabrizio Mossotti, i.e., that gravity is nothing more than an imbalance in electric forces. Without going into detail here Lorentz showed that his version of an electromagnetic formulation of gravity with propagation of fields/forces at the speed of light had no first-order correction terms and thus yielded a stable solar system. There is an objection that such "vector theories" of gravity are untenable because of something called Maxwell's negative energy difficulty. We'll come back to this subject again, because I claim that James Clerk Maxwell made an error when he looked for a link between electromagnetism and gravity.

What Are My Qualifications?

2008-07-20T15:33:00.001-05:00

To what degree do I qualify to write on this subject? I received a B.S. in physics from Stanford University back in 1961. I did 1-1/2 years of graduate study in physics and mathematics at Oregon State University. I spent roughly 40 years as an experimental physicist doing industrial research and development. I spent about 20 years part-time investigating perceived problems in physics theory. Yes, I had a couple papers published in Galilean Electrodynamics, the dissident physics journal. And yes, I was for some years a member of the Natural Philosophy Alliance, and I participated in several of their conferences and presented papers there. Does this qualify me as a crank, a crackpot, and physics knucklehead? I imagine so. Let's see how it goes.