enquiries

A recent subject (question?) posted on a theoretical Physics forum asks, “What happens when one of a pair of entangled particles crosses an event-horizon?” This presumably simple question assumes agreement on a) what is an entangled particle?, b. what is an event-horizon?, etc., c)do any two physicists agree on those meanings?,  etc.  After first wondering what possible purpose the answer to such a question serves in the happenings of the real world, one realizes that it serves a real purpose in pointing out the problems the obscure languages of modern physics pose for the ordinary reader, you and me.

In talking about the concepts and issues we are concerned with here in the real world, Zone of Middle Dimensions, it is important that we make sure that we are speaking the same language. Language is, of course, a latecomer in the evolution of human thought. Up until about 100,000 years ago with the advent of homo sapiens sapiens the fossil evidence indicates that we did not even have the anatomical structures necessary for the rapid vocal interaction needed for the development of a complex spoken language. Certainly we had some sort of primitive symbolic communication, necessary for a developed social structure, for cooperation in the hunt, for interactive behavior in the cave or tribe, as early as homo erectus some 1.8 million years ago, but not the sophisticated and subtle systems necessary for the communication of concepts and ideas. Written language, a true form of symbolic communication, has only been with us for a very short time, since about 3400 B.C. The marks we see on this page, the way in which the ideas and concepts we are now passing between us, have been available only a very short time.

Now, of course, language governs all communications between individuals and groups. It is transmitter of knowledge between generations. But for language to do its job, even within just one of the many tribal, ethnic, national languages we use, there must be agreement on both its syntax and its meanings. A word used in one science or discipline develops meanings from its context. When used in another, it brings those earlier associations along with it. If we are not very careful, we may use a word to mean something that seems very clear to us but which carries associations that either muddy its meaning in another context or interfere with its carrying concepts or models we wish it to invoke.

In physics, astronomy, and cosmology, there are many such examples, the use of the word “particle” for one. I carried in my head for many years my 11th grade chemistry teacher’s assertion that an electron had no mass. It bothered me that such an important “particle”, one so important in our daily lives could be so insubstantial. We now are told that it presumably has a mass though that mass is very small. But “particle”, meaning “small part” in the language of classical physics, has become for physicists something which occupies a point in space, so small that it can only be detected by the track that it leaves behind, and perhaps by the mathematics that describes its behavior.

Physicists have identified many particles now, with unique and sometimes fanciful names, defined by mass, angle after a collision, spin, and the curvature of their tracks. There are others postulated to exist, not yet identified, but necessary to explain the existence or behavior of “known” ones. We publish papers, books, hold conferences to discuss their most obscure characteristics.

But pick up any book on particle physics, even in its more obscure versions such as “superstring theory” and you will find copious use of the term “discovery”. It is as if there has been the fortuitous opening of an obscure archaic volume, and there, in words of fire, perhaps, is the key to “Relativity”.

We might more appropriately, see these discoveries as “inventions”, for that is what they are. Einstein did not “discover” relativity, he created it as a model, a metaphor, of how the universe and its constituent parts might work. He created it in a true metaphorical language, mathematics, even though he may have seen it in his head as a conceptual model.

The value of such inventions is measured in terms of their level of completeness, and their testable and confirmable predictive power. They live and die based on these tests. But to call them “discoveries” imputes to them the sense that they must be eternal verities, found as if they were jewels pulled from the depths of the earth and destined to live and prevail forever. No true scientist believes that of these “discoveries” so let’s call them what they are. Still we can pick up even a skeptical book, as Peter Woit’s “Not Even Wrong”, with its scathing and convincing dismissal of superstring theory, and find every new equation in cosmological history described as a discovery.

We are also guilty, in many instanced, of what we might call the misuse of metaphor. A couple of examples come to mind. Edwin Hubble the astronomer, looking deeply into the far reaches of the universe in the 1920’s, deduced that distant galaxies were moving away from us. In his now famous red-shift observations, he also noted that the farthest distant ones were moving faster than those nearby. The proof of these observations convinced Einstein that his belief in a “flat” non-expanding geometry was false and led to the abandonment of the controversial cosmological constant in his equations. This observed expansion was accompanied by the observation that this expansion would appear the same from any point in the universe. But this expansion was not considered due to the outward motion of the galaxies themselves away from each other, but, out of deference to the Einsteinian entity of “spacetime”, was attributed to the expansion of space itself. The too simple analogy that was commonly used was that of a balloon on which the galaxies were represented as ink dots, which, as the balloon was blown up, appeared to be moving apart, but remained in place in relation to one another. (We now know from subsequent observations that this is not necessarily true, some irregular galactic motions have been determined.)

The analogy fails in two ways: first, it suggests space as a kind of curved ‘flatland’, when in fact, space as conceived then and now, must be what lies inside the balloon; second, it ignores the simple logical expression that if a equals b, and b equals c, then a must equal c. Movement apart is equal to movement apart.

Space, in all literature using relativistic terms, is always given the attributes of a substance. The literature gives it a structure, but only a mathematical structure. When reduced to diagrams or illustrations as having a flat, positively curved, or negatively curved nature, it is represented as a plane, a sphere, or a saddle, with the planets, stars, galaxies arrayed on its two-dimensional surface. It is no wonder that ordinary minds have trouble understanding its essence.

A similar problem occurs in explanations or representations of what is called the “big bang”, the supposed moment when everything began–from nothing. In attempts to make it either clearer or perhaps more dramatic we are asked to imagine that the universe has reached its limit and has begun to contract. Imagine, you are instructed, all of those planets, stars, galaxies headed back to their starting point, rushing ever faster, colliding, being crushed, subsumed, giving off enormous volumes of energy, ultimately grinding together in the true mother of all explosions, and then returning to nothing. It is reminiscent of the comedy routine of a few years ago of the two Las Vegas casinos competing furiously with each other with ever more extravagant entertainments until one advertises, “This Week; The Hydrogen Bomb; One performance only!”

What is left out of this metaphor is that, if there were such a beginning explosion, none of those massive constructs, those planets, stars, galaxies, would have already existed.

Let us now, here declare the First Law of Metaphor: “Metaphors of reality must obey the laws of reality!” (but within limits: nothing in this law shall be construed as to constrain poets).

Perhaps the most confounding element of our use of language is our confusion of levels of meaning. People, particularly politicians, sometimes married couples, find themselves at odds because they seem to be “talking past each other”. Alfred Korzybski, in Science and Sanity, lays out a system of “orders of abstraction” close adherence to which helps to avoid this difficulty. In Korzybski’s system a point-event constitutes a first-order abstraction, that is, the observation, the sensory perception. A statement about that point-event, its initial description, even an exclamation of pain if the point-event was touching a hot stove, constitutes a second-order abstraction; a statement about that exclamation, a third-order abstraction, and so on. It is easy to see how a dialogue where one party is discussing the event while the other is discussing the reaction(s) to the event can lead to a significant loss in the communication. Bertrand Russell and A. N. Whitehead’s Principia Mathematica, uses the term “logical type” in laying out a similar theory. Strict adherence to these principals is often lost both in scientific literature and in popular accounts of scientific breakthroughs and leads to more controversy and confusion than we normally expect from scientists.

(This post, with minor modifications, was first published in 2011, as Appendix B of my book, “the picnic at the edge of the universe.“)

The Wikipedia entry for Maxwell’s Equations, after explaining that these are only close approximations (very close!), goes on to make the following point.

 “Since the mid-20th century, it has been understood that Maxwell’s equations are not exact but are a classical field theory approximation to the more accurate and fundamental theory of quantum electrodynamics. In many situations, though, deviations from Maxwell’s equations are immeasurably small. Exceptions include nonclassical light, photon-photon scattering, quantum optics, and many other phenomena related to photons or virtual photons.”

There seems to be a bias here, in the sense that the “discovery” of quantum electrodynamics has overtaken Maxwell and that we should now interpret his equations in an entirely different way, that QED is now the preferred explanation and while Maxwell is still appropriate, it should now be seen as less than complete.

My question is, “Could it be that the original form of Maxwell’s Equations, describing field interactions without the need for “particle behavior” is actually closer to the truth and there is no need for the so-called “clarification” of QED?” Nor for that matter, its introduction of unique fields for each of 60-plus particles.

This is what set me to thinking again about the absolute conflict between “quantum” thinking and reality. When Max Planck invented the quantum, (that’s right, invented) he had neither a clue or an inclination to make it into a “thing.” For him it was a quantitative descriptor, a way of identifying a “unit” that would enable him to quantify his studies of black box radiation. It worked! By being able to put a number, a size, into the equations they suddenly became solvable, not fuzzy. And guess who jumped on this idea and sent us suddenly down a different kind of blind alley? Why the master himself, Albert Einstein. What if Newton was right, he thought, and light was actually made up of corpuscles? What if we divided it up into little packets ? Let’s call them photons, with a value of one “quantum” each. That worked for Max, why not for me? And so was launched a whole new discipline, that has haunted physics now for more than a hundred years. Oh, we know that light sometimes seems to behave like a wave phenomenon, but so what. (“I know I lost my car keys over there, but I’m looking here because the light is better!”). Let’s just say that particles (photons? sometimes look like waves. Nobody will notice. After all, we make the rules, not nature.

Near the end of his recent book (Bankrupting Physics, Unzicker/Jones), Alexander Unzicker offers this summary of what is happening in modern physics and cosmology.

“…if despite all efforts, new contradictions show up, the reaction is as follows:

If physicists do not understand the what of their theories they will introduce a new particle. If they don’t understand the when, then it must’ve happened right after the big bang. If they don’t understand the where, then of course it took place in an extra dimension. And if they don’t understand the how, they will postulate a new interaction. if they don’t understand how much, a symmetry breaking will soon appear. If they don’t understand anything they will propose strings and branes. And if they lose interest in understanding, there is always the strong anthropic principle. Things have come to a pretty pass.”

So far the number of new and presumed new particles is in excess of 60, not counting theso-called “antiparticles” which must exist or this new Platonic structure’s presumed symmetry will be broken. And we have “expansion” to explain the inconsistencies between the big bang and current observations, and new interactions and unsupportable theories galore.

There exist simpler models, but most of the searchers for it are so stuck in the “particle” world they can’t let go of it, and some, like the new model being offered under the heading “Gravity=Dark Energy” on the LinkedIn Theoretical Physics forum, are so full of neoplatonic symbolism and what seems almost like numerology, that one wonders where they come from.

I am convinced that this search needs to go back, first, to a time before Einstein’s probably involuntary corruption of Plank’s “quantum,” back to the field theorists, Gauss, Maxwell, Lorentz; and then forward, looking at the last 200 years of observations and experiments and seeing them in a fresh way. By this I mean bypassing the misinterpretations and misattributions made in the effort to make them fit into particle theories, and seeing if they might actually be seen as waves in a medium, not as clouds of dust.

When we do this, we begin to see a new, simpler model, one that is continuous, not “quantized,” that demands a different math and a different logic, and suddenly becomes a clearer route to both reality and to the truth. The new logic is to see the perceivable entities of the universe as made up of coherent, organized distortions in the medium, a field, just as sound or music consists of organized coherent distortions of its medium, the atmosphere. The new math, then would probably be that of continuum mechanics, not quantum mechanics. The new conceptual logic would be to see these entities, from what we now call “particles” to the distant galaxies, not to mention we humans who contemplate them, as something like topological defects in an elastic solid, that being the electromagnetic field that makes up the extended cosmos we arose out of and inhabit with all of the other objects, events and phenomena we perceive “out there.”

That model is sketched out in my books and this blog. I am still of the hope that some of you will take it seriously enough to offer questions, comments, or even criticisms I can apply to it. Thank you.

The second decade of the 20th century, 1909 to 1919, was a remarkable period in the development of physics and cosmology. In particular, three intellectual giants emerged and published works that would result in profound changes in how we view the world, the universe, and the cosmos. Today we remember one in particular, Albert Einstein, who between 1913 and 1916 published extensive work on his model of the cosmos culminating in his Theory of General Relativity in 1916. Einstein’s theory offered a major update of the Galilean idea of relativity along with a generalization that would effectively replace Newton’s theory of gravity. Einstein’s theory came complete with a set of field equations that described the universe in a seemingly complete fashion.

David Hilbert, until about 1912 known mostly as a brilliant mathematician, turned his attention to physics and on the publication of GR, was able to offer more complete and extensive solutions to Einstein’s field equations. He followed with an almost complete generalization of a theory of everything, his “axiomatic derivation of the basic equations of physics.”

The third of these intellectual giants was Gustav Mie, who was to challenge Einstein on his conclusions and to offer a plausible alternative to his theory, but someone which has been mostly forgotten until recent years. Mie was about ten years older than Einstein and was known to have challenged him on his assumptions and on his conclusions in several of their interactions. Einstein’s view of the universe ultimately prevailed and became a large part of the standard model of cosmology we adhere to today. Mie’s theories were to become an important influence on Hilbert’s later expansion of Einstein’s work, primarily on the mathematical side. Mie’s theories, however, lay unrefuted, but obscure in the wake of Einstein’s success.

I find it personally remarkable that my own researches in the history and development of models of the cosmos somehow skipped right over and past that of Mie, but I think that may have been the result of his major works never having been translated into English and my own lack of comfort with German originals. In any case I have recently been made aware of Mie’s theory of an electromagnetic basis for cosmology because of it’s strong similarities to my own rudimentary model, the simple universe. It all begins with the “discovery” of something very tiny.

What would turn out to be one the most significant discoveries of the later years of the 19th century would turn out to be that of that thing called the “electron.” In 1869, the German physicist Johann Wilhelm Hittorf, while engaged in the study of electrical conductivity in rarefied gases. . .

“. . .discovered a glow emitted from the cathode that increased in size with decrease in gas pressure. In 1876, the German physicist Eugen Goldstein showed that the rays from this glow cast a shadow, and he dubbed the rays cathode rays. During the 1870s, the English chemist and physicist Sir William Crookes developed the first cathode ray tube to have a high vacuum inside.^[28] He then showed that the luminescence rays appearing within the tube carried energy and moved from the cathode to the anode. Furthermore, by applying a magnetic field, he was able to deflect the rays, thereby demonstrating that the beam behaved as though it were negatively charged.^[29][30] In 1879, he proposed that these properties could be explained by what he termed ‘radiant matter’. He suggested that this was a fourth state of matter, consisting of negatively charged molecules that were being projected with high velocity from the cathode. In 1892 Hendrik Lorentz suggested that the mass of these particles (electrons) could be a consequence of their electric charge.

In 1896, the British physicist J. J. Thomson, with his colleagues John S. Townsend and H. A. Wilson, performed experiments indicating that cathode rays really were unique particles, rather than waves, atoms or molecules as was believed earlier.^[5] Thomson made good estimates of both the charge e and the mass m, finding that cathode ray particles, which he called “corpuscles,” had perhaps one thousandth of the mass of the least massive ion known: hydrogen.^[5][14] He showed that their charge to mass ratio, e/m, was independent of cathode material. He further showed that the negatively charged particles produced by radioactive materials, by heated materials and by illuminated materials were universal.^[5][34] The name electron was again proposed for these particles by the Irish physicist George F. Fitzgerald, and the name has since gained universal acceptance.” (from Wikipedia “the electron”)

So. it would appear, the question of “What is an electron?, of what does it consist?” was a hot topic among experimental physicists.

For most of these researchers, it was sufficient to accept an electron as a fundamental particle, of whatever shape or size as long as it was extremely tiny (no one has actually seen one yet). But Mie took a slightly different track. What must have remained on his mind was the question, “What is an electron, exactly?” He wasn’t ready to offer an answer until about 1910 and 1911. Before that he devoted his efforts and research to the phenomenon that still bears his name, the issue of what causes the red and yellow colors and patterns in the atmosphere when illuminated by light at sunset and in rainbows and the like. His studies of the scattering of light by suspended microscopic particles in the atmosphere is what he is remembered most for today, called “Mie scattering.”

What he is not remembered so much for is his studies and concepts of where that mysterious thing called an electron comes from. During this time, Mie was Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Greifswald.

“During his Greifswald years Mie worked on the computation of scattering of an electromagnetic wave by a homogeneous dielectric sphere, which was published in 1908 under the title of “Contributions to the optics of turbid media, particularly of colloidal metal solutions” in “Annalen der Physik“. The term Mie scattering is still related to his name. Using Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory applied to spherical gold particles Mie provided a theoretical treatment of plasmon resonance absorption of gold colloids. The sharp absorption bands depend on the particle size and explain the change in colour that occurs as the size of the colloid nanoparticles is increased from 20 to 1600 nm. He wrote further important contributions to electromagnetism and also to relativity theory. In addition he was employed on measurements units and finally developed his Mie system of units in 1910 with the basic units Volt, Ampere, Coulomb and Second (VACS-system).” (from Wikipedia, “Gustav Mie”)

But the question of “What is an electron, exactly?” must have been still on his mind.

A  1999 paper gives the background of Mie’s study, going on to elaborate on it’s influence on the work of Hilbert’s mathematical extensions of General Relativity. Leo Corry of Tel Aviv University describes his contributions this way:

“In 1910 Mie published a textbook on electromagnetism that soon became a classic and saw two additional editions in 1941 and 1948 (Mie 1910). Mie believed that this was the first textbook in which Maxwell’s conclusions were arrived at in a completely inductive way starting from the experimental, factual material. When the first edition was published, Mie took special pride on having been able to “present the Maxwell equations in a complete and exact fashion, expressing himself in plain words, and without having to introduce any mathematical symbols.”. . . Mie sent the first installment of his electromagnetic theory of matter to the Annelen der Physik in January 1912. At the center of Mie’s theory was an articulate attempt to support the main tenets of the so-called “electromagnetic worldview,” and more specifically to develop the idea that the electrons cannot be ascribed physical existence independently of the ether. . .. . . Mie based his theory on three explicitly formulated basic assumptions. The first one is that the electric and the magnetic field are present both outside and inside the electron as well. This means that the electrons are in fact an organic part of the ether, rather than foreign elements added to the ether, as was common belief among certain physicists at the time (e.g. Einstein in 1909). The electron is thus conceived as a non-sharply delimited, highly dense nucleus in the ether that extends continually and independently into an atmosphere of electrical charge. An atom is a concentration of electrons, and the high intensity of the electric field around it is what should ultimately explain the phenomenon of gravitation.”

(“From Mie’s Electromagnetic Theory of Matter to Hilbert’s Unified Foundations of Physics“, by Leo Corry) Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 30(2): 159-183 (1999).

In 1916, Albert Einstein, unwittingly, I think, enshrined in the minds of physicists and most inhabitants of the civilized world, the notion that empty space was a substantive entity that could be warped, stretched, deformed in subtle ways, and that these distortions of a non-existent substance could explain motion, gravity, and a thousand other phenomena that occurred in the real world. It was a wonderful, mathematically beautiful myth, and it overwhelmed otherwise intelligent scientists world wide. Gustav Mie challenged Einstein, saying in his own way that there was another, more complete and consistent explanation. But Mie’s way required an ether, an electromagnetic one, but by this time the age of particles had taken over physics and a field theory of the scope and extent of this one had no chance.

Let’s just summarize what Mie proposed. The electron, the most fundamental entity of the time, was not a solid, spherical entity, but was rather an excitation, a disturbance, a concentration in the ether, not something passing through it but a disturbance in and part of it. As a concentration of energy, it’s influence radiated from its core outward in all directions, causing a diminishing sphere of energy in the medium, and these disturbances might well be the generator of gravity. The ether not only surrounded and penetrated what we called an electron but existed in and through it. They were of the same substance. Further, what we call matter consists of higher level aggregations of these fundamentals. “Both electric and gravitational actions could be shown as a direct manifestations of the forces that account for the very existence of matter.” He further asserted that the rules that governed these actions could be found not in some new particle theory, but right there in Maxwell’s equations, which he then set out to recreate directly out of empirical observations. In short: “The electron is thus conceived as a non-sharply delimited, highly dense nucleus in the ether that extends continually and independently into an atmosphere of electrical charge. An atom is a concentration of electrons, and the high intensity of the electric field around it is what should ultimately explain the phenomenon of gravitation.”

Here is the foundation of “the simple universe,” my own model, a non-particle, electromagnetic-ether based theory that encompasses all of the phenomena of the universe, from the tiniest excitation of the ether, call it an electron or more likely, something very much smaller, out to the stars, galaxies and clusters of the most distant and unreachable objects we are aware of.

My discovery of Gustav Mie and his model has come late, but strongly solidifies my confidence that my own model has intrinsic value and is worthy of testing, a path I continue to follow. The details, as far as they been taken so far, can be found described in first, “the picnic at the edge of the universe,” published in early 2015, followed by “imagine darkness,” released just a month later, both available from bookstores and Amazon. Other confirmations can be found in the series of over 50 articles on the same subject in my blog at enquiriesnw.com (this page). I commend them to you.