I am seeing something of a character flaw in myself. When you invest yourself in a research paper and then publish it (http://www.scribd.com/doc/17227411/The-Paradoxes-of-the-Electron-Point-Source), there is rather a tendency to constantly see if lots of people are reading it, in the hopes of getting some measure of notoriety…
Of course, it takes a Dilbert strip to bring me back to earth…!!
I have taken a huge deep dive into some fundamental physics, found what looked like some pretty interesting stuff, and started a research project that is still ongoing. But I got way too focused away from the original goal of this journal–this is supposed to be a thinking journal, not a science project. So, I’m coming up for air. The physics paper is published on scribd, and after an initial bout of interest, nobody reads it anymore. I’ll continue with the physics project, but it’s time to get back to fundamental thinking.
On a philosophical level, I’ve done a little reading and a lot of thinking. I have a book called History of Philosophy (Julian Marias) that summarises what people have thought about throughout history. While I’m not done with it yet, one thing that really annoys me is how worthless many of the arguments are, because while the arguments seem to be about real issues, the actual problem is that the words used do not accurately define the question. Most of the discussed philosophical questions revolve around how to define a concept. For example, what is “truth”? What is “good” or “bad”? What does it mean to “exist”? What is the difference between an idea and reality”? What does it mean to be “alive”? What is the “meaning of life”? I’ve discussed some of these earlier in this journal, but every one of these questions is simply a matter of definition, of words. It’s annoying to see great mental effort expended on answering questions that aren’t worth asking or thinking about because the answer depends entirely on how the words are defined.
So, here is a question–what questions are NOT a matter of how words are defined? In a rather bizarre recursive way, I’m pretty sure THAT last question is one such question!! Can we define a set of questions that raises an issue that is isolated from the less interesting matter of how words are defined? I started this journal with a bunch of assumptions and rules on how I was going to proceed, and from there headed down a number of paths, all the while being careful to avoid semantic questions. Why are semantic questions so worthless? Because the answer simply lies in how we choose to define a word, and you’ll get different conclusions depending on different definitions. That’s not to say that some of my fundamental questions above “what is truth”, etc, don’t have an interesting issue at their core, but the way the question is asked hides the interesting part.
Here’s probably the most interesting one to me right now: the question of the difference between reality and an idea. I’ve talked a lot about this previously in this journal, but let’s revisit it, because most of the other concepts are built on this. The first thing we need to do is get semantics out of the way. The definition of these two words requires assumptions about reality, and as I discussed long ago, I can envision a universe in God’s mind where reality is just a consistent sequencing of God’s thoughts. It should be easy to see that there is not necessarily any difference between an idea and reality, and we need to start from here if we are actually going to do any useful thinking about these concepts.
Let’s save that for another post…
Agemoz
I updated my Twist Ring paper at the scribd site:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/17227411/The-Paradoxes-of-the-Electron-Point-Source
This adds some specific analysis of the Heisenberg uncertainty paradox, and discusses the class of experiments that I call excitation experiments (using photons to add energy to a particle). This was important because this is commonly used in determining internal structure of particles but was missing from my paper. I also added a “future research” section which describes my work on creating a computer simulation of the twist ring.
Check it out and send me comments!
Agemoz
An honest writer on the subject of physics has to continuously check that what he writes or proposes is in line at least somewhat reasonably with the latest progress in physics. This behooves a responsibility to read and study as much as possible, even doing homework of various sorts. I picked up a very well written book by Leonard Susskind called The Black Hole War, where Susskind describes his efforts to persuade Stephen Hawking that Hawking’s claim that black hole evaporation causes a different entropy level (information is lost) is wrong. The cool thing about well written physics books for laymen is that if the physicist is at the leading edge, a lot of time he spends time not only on the subject at hand, but also talks a lot about supporting physics, which can give amateur physicists a lot of well summarized information (sans mathematics) of the latest physics thinking. Susskind’s book is one of the very best books I’ve seen in this regard, and his ability to write and explain clearly is on a par with Feynman.
The only trouble with this approach is sometimes you read something that contradicts your own pet theories, so the mark of the physics crackpot is to either not read or disregard what he has read. I’m trying hard not to be a crackpot, so I have very carefully read this very well crafted book with an eye out for why physicists have not gone down the road of twist rings (you know for certain that some large number of physicists have to have already considered this at some point, and I wonder why they chose not to pursue such a promising approach).
One thing among many that I didn’t know–he says two important thoughts about the point source electron (which my paper and the twist ring attempt to show as wrong). He said that while experimental scattering results show the infinitesimal cross section, all physicists actually believe that there will be electron structure at the Planck length scale (far tinier than what I propose). He also said that when they concluded point sources for the electron, it was because it wasn’t possible to add rotational energy to the electron (I had said in my paper that they determined that the electron was a point source because of scattering angles and momentum tracks, but Susskind is saying it is because the angular momentum of the electron cannot be increased, thus implying no interconnection energies can be added, thus implying there are no interconnections).
So far, nothing I’ve read seems to directly contradict my pet theory of twist rings, since there’s no possible way to add interconnect energy or other angular momentum elements to the twist ring (it is a soliton and does not have more than one stable energy state). My arguments against the point source are not discussed in this book–and nothing he writes about the Planck scale electron addresses or solves any of these arguments–so, so far, I’m not going to abandon the twist ring approach.
It’s tough to be conscientous and just want the truth when you’ve invested a lot of thought and think you might have a valid theory!! I am almost done with this book, at least for a first reading, and will see if anything else might show up that blows away twist rings…
Agemoz
PS: I read the wonderful description of the black hole entropy issue in Susskind’s book, but hated the reference to “information loss” in black holes. Physicists came up with a lousy word for entropy issues: “information” or “information loss”. I’ve always been confused by “information” and now understand what is really meant, number of unique states permitted with a particular system. Entropy is the log of that, and thus could be considered the quantity of basis states that covers the set of possible states. “Information” is an imprecise word for that, in my humble opinion…
It’s pretty cool–I’m still in the debugging phase, but I now have it running and displaying in 3D in real time–slowly, but fast enough to see the field propagate (for a relatively small array, just to visualize). I’m testing various known field patterns for correct behavior. A pic is shown below–it has field arrows that change direction and color according to the current field vector. You can zoom in and around while the field is being processed (and this is a full field display, I have different modes to make the field perturbations visible. This sample has a static field state in the center.
Agemoz
I’m underway on creating a dynamic Maxwell’s engine. I will use a 3D environment (actually intended for gaming) called DarkBasic GDK, which is just an API for DirectX graphics. I’ll hopefully have first sims in a week or so–the code is mostly written except for the result display. This has been a really good exercise because it has forced me to refine carefully the specific mathematical model that represents the twist ring. I’ve already realized that there cannot be electrostatic attraction for two good reasons–the first is that infinities will arise that mean that renormalization issues will show up in the model if it’s purely electrostatic (due to the 1/r^2 force as the electrostatic components approach each other). I had already figured out that the 1/r^2 factor is the central force diffusion of the field vector, and that the 1/r^3 factor is due to the twist causing a drag of local E field vectors around the ring circumference, causing a local loop of current that generates a far field B component that drops off as 1/r^3.
The other reason, far more important, is something I’ve overlooked with the twist ring model. If the twist ring is symmetric, how does it generate a negative electrostatic field? If there are both positive and negative field components present, how does the resulting ring model of the electron generate an electrostatic field of negative potential? This could have killed the twist ring approach (and fact does rule out earlier approaches such as the dipole or charge loop), but after thinking about it, it clarifies a nagging issue that’s been sitting at the back of my mind for a while anyway. The twist ring is a complex field component that twists. It does not go positive and negative in value, it just twists–the mathematical representation cannot be e^i(omega theta – k t) like I have thought. It should be represented by a negative charge magnitude that twists around, but the generated neighborhood field will still show a negative charge. The direction of the field does not change the charge of the field.
I’m still thinking this through, and hopefully the Maxwell’s engine will substantiate this–but this is something that has to be resolved very specifically. Currently the paper says there is a radial e^i(omega theta – k t) field, but this can’t be right, that would imply a positive as well as negative field component which would be problematic in generating a negative field. I’ll update the paper with a change, and hopefully the Maxwell’s engine will reveal all…
Agemoz
The question of how can the twist ring work gets a clear guide from the (non) effect of E fields on a photon. I worried about whether 1/r^2 – 1/r^3 could be right given the symmetry between the E field and B field equations–but it is the only possible solution, I realized. If it is only due to B field curvature, then the solution is unstable, it will collapse to nothing on perturbation. And the E field having no effect on a photon clearly points the way–there cannot be attraction of E field components, only attraction/repulsion of twists, that is, rotating field components. And indeed, setting the ring twist induces two effects: an E field, which will diminish as 1/r^2, and a dragged twist of E field components about the ring curve at any point on the ring. This dragged twist is the current loop that will generate the far field 1/r^3 magnetic component.
So, I began the math. I looked at the various Maxwell’s equation field forms, and because of the ring cylindrical symmetry, chose the cylindrical form of Maxwell’s. I derived the expanded form from the grad cross F equations to grad^2 cross F = 1/c^2 partial^2(F)/partial(t)^2 (dang… wordpress needs mathematical notation), and now have a big ugly mess whose initial conditions are defined by the twists at radius re, omega as a function t/(re c) and dont care everywhere else. The idea is to prove that this gives a solution with 1/r^2 – 1/r^3 form and does not dissipate.
But–there’s no way Mathematica is going to do this (I couldn’t even get mathematica to correctly derive grad^2 F, but that might just be because it’s harder to manipulate than I know how to manage). I searched for some assumptions that would allow me to simplify the equations, but there is only the fact that F(phi) is zero on the ring radius. I can’t assume it is zero elsewhere because E field components are only normal to the ring circumference at the radial point–adjacent E field components are not normal and will contribute to the F(phi) term.
So–right now I only see that I can do an iterative solution, and perhaps that will show me some symmetries of the solution that will allow me to simplify enough to get an analytic solution. But, finding a dynamic Maxwell’s 3D solver that works in cylindrical components is unlikely at best (there are commercial tools, as I mentioned previously, but they are static). And writing such a tool is going to be a major project. I’m first going to trawl the net to see if there’s something I can work from…
Agemoz
Continuing to delve into Maxwell’s for the Twist Ring, I realized there should be several symmetries that will make this derivation easier, I think. The E-field component magnitude on the ring is constant, and the change in phase is also constant, so since the B field will be a derivative of this, its magnitude should also be constant around any circumference. I briefly looked into getting a Maxwell’s eqn solver on the web–no open source ones yet, and it looks like the commercial ones do not necessarily handle moving situations (they solve things like antenna problems where the antenna does not move). It might be worth trying to write one (iterative Maxwell’s solver for the twist ring), but I’d rather get an analytic solution if possible.
I’m a little worried that the symmetry of the E and B fields are such that you cannot get a 1/r^3 – 1/r^2 differential equation, and that got me to thinking–did I make a wrong turn concluding that the twist ring solution is of this form? It’s a perfectly legitimate solution to only use the magnetic portion of the Lorentz force equations, it will generate curvature as well (but haven’t yet derived whether it is stable like the 1/r^3 – 1/r^2 case–it might be better since the 1/r^3 – 1/r^2 has 3D direction dependencies). I had wondered about this before, since I was worried about the 1/r^2 component. You can’t have E field components attracting each other, only particles. If I only have the magnetic part to worry about, this might simplify the derivation, and could get rid of some nagging problems with the 1/r^2 attraction business. I’m starting to think that there’s no way an attraction can be part of the electron model, instead a single normal force due to the twist in a magnetic field at constant speed c should also generate a fixed radius ring.
Whatever the right model, I need to be able to answer the question why doesn’t a photon path get bent by an applied magnetic field (or an E field, for that matter), since I’m proposing that the same magnetic field within the twist ring is bending the ring. It’s got to either be the effect of a twist moving through a specific ring E field, or perhaps the locality and intensity of the B field in the vicinity of the ring path that isn’t duplicated by a global B (or E) field.
agemoz
OK, some analysis of Maxwell’s equations on a twist ring show promise, it should work–but it’s going to be a lot harder to prove it mathematically than I hoped. The key is to show that there is a 1/r^3 magnetic field generated by the twist. The twist will drag an E field around, inducing a changing E field in a ring about the ring, making it a much more complex field equation than I was hoping for. This dragged E component handily causes a B field that matches that of a small current loop, and should have a radial partial derivative that goes as 1/^r3. But–uggh. The math! I’ve got my work cut out for me…
Agemoz
Ok, I’ve done some work on getting the Twist Ring paper out and revised. I like it, and it seems not too dumb–but now it’s time to attack the math and do my best to prove it true. This means getting the Twist Ring equation worked out and seeing how it solves in a Maxwell’s EM field. If this pans out, then I’ll submit the paper to be peer reviewed–a rough process. The last time I did that, it was rejected, the work was somewhat a waste of time. But this set of ideas seems reasonable enough that I think it’s worth another try.
Maxwell’s field equations essentially equate the change of the B field to the curl of the E field and vice-versa (with a changed sign). The twist ring is a solution to these equations with an initial condition of Ere(theta) = e^i Pi (k theta – wt) where Ere is the field on the ring around angle theta from 0 to 2 Pi. Being a ring, there is no problem with an analytic solution since there is no start or endpoint–although a first order derivative may show a discontinuity crossing the ring circumference, given the zero width criteria. But the photon is harder–it has endpoints for the twist. Does the twist suddenly start and end (which will give problems with function discontinuities if not already in a vector field). A Gaussian might make more sense, but is a problematic solution in a Maxwell’s field environment, previous attempts to quantize photons don’t work–perhaps a twist solution will.
Agemoz
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