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Tags cern , higgs boson , physics

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Old 5th November 2012, 09:10 AM   #321
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Interesting to note that it's just two pages and half a dozen or so equations. It's almost poetry.
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Old 5th November 2012, 10:03 AM   #322
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Originally Posted by Ocelot View Post
Interesting to note that it's just two pages and half a dozen or so equations. It's almost poetry.
Loads of the great historical papers are short. Maria Goeppert Mayer's paper explaining shell structure in nuclei is about a side and a half.
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Old 5th November 2012, 11:51 AM   #323
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My favorite historical paper is Weinberg's 1967 paper on electroweak unification. That's a 2500x-cited paper that won a Nobel prize and so on. After going through the calculations that predict the W and Z-boson masses (correctly, as it turned out 10-15 years later) Weinberg says:

Originally Posted by http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v19/i21/p1264_1
Of course our model has too many arbitrary features for these predictions to be taken seriously ...
Huh.
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Old 5th November 2012, 11:57 AM   #324
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Originally Posted by ben m View Post
My favorite historical paper is Weinberg's 1967 paper on electroweak unification. That's a 2500x-cited paper that won a Nobel prize and so on. After going through the calculations that predict the W and Z-boson masses (correctly, as it turned out 10-15 years later) Weinberg says:

Huh.
The antithesis of certain people on this forum who think that the "mainstream" have got it wrong and only they know the real truth about...
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Old 5th November 2012, 12:18 PM   #325
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Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
Like the electron, the Higgs boson is made of kinetic energy, and the inertia of a body depends on its energy content.
So the Higgs is made of photons, too?
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Old 5th November 2012, 04:42 PM   #326
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Originally Posted by Cuddles View Post
Just in case anyone is interested in actual physics, here is Higgs' 1964 paper which was the first to predict a massive boson as the result of the incorrectly named Higgs mechanism. Any objections that do not directly address this at a similar level of mathematics are simply irrelevant. No amount of wordy analogies and pointless handwaving can compete with an actual theory.
Excellent. Thank you.
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Old 8th November 2012, 04:00 AM   #327
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Sorry to have been away, there was something I had to do then I got distracted by other physics.

Originally Posted by Cuddles View Post
Just in case anyone is interested in actual physics, here is Higgs' 1964 paper which was the first to predict a massive boson as the result of the incorrectly named Higgs mechanism. Any objections that do not directly address this at a similar level of mathematics are simply irrelevant. No amount of wordy analogies and pointless handwaving can compete with an actual theory.
This pompous Emperor's New Clothes line can be used to dismiss anything. It's the modern equivalent of you don't even speak Latin. You won't get away with that on a skeptics forum.

Will he, guys? Guys?

Originally Posted by kalen
So the Higgs is made of photons, too?
No. Remember that what's actually been discovered is a bump on a graph, that Peter Higgs didn't say I predict a resonance at 125GeV, and we're calling this thing "the Higgs" for short. Assuming there's no event-selection issue, then whatever this might be, it's made of energy, mainly the kinetic energy which was given to the accelerated protons. It has mass by virtue of E=mc˛, it lasts for maybe 10^-24 seconds and can decay into two photons.
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Old 8th November 2012, 04:23 AM   #328
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Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
Sorry to have been away, there was something I had to do then I got distracted by other physics.
Hahaha! Good one! Oh, wait, you were serious?

Quote:
This pompous Emperor's New Clothes line can be used to dismiss anything. It's the modern equivalent of you don't even speak Latin. You won't get away with that on a skeptics forum.

Will he, guys? Guys?
Says the naked man. Sorry, but your ignorance of mathematics is not as widely shared as you seem to believe, and the flaws in your arguments are easy to spot even for non-physicists with a decent background in maths.

Mathematics is not Latin, and even if it were, trying to argue that mathematics can be ignored when studying physics, while trying to promote your own personal variant of relativity is about as close to wandering around naked, while telling everyone how beautiful your clothes are, as I have ever in my life seen.

I don't know if Cuddles or Ben are right about everything they say, but I would be a sorely failed skeptic if I thought anything you said was actual physics. If you actually tried answering some of the questions they asked, I might consider taking you seriously for at least a fraction of a second, but your continual sidestepping and ignoring direct and very relevant questions makes it clear your expertise is nil. Whether modern physics is right or not.

Cuddles pointed you to the actual math that's relevant to the topic under discussion. Either refute the math or admit you can't, and aren't qualified to opine on the Higgs.
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Last edited by xtifr; 8th November 2012 at 04:28 AM.
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Old 8th November 2012, 06:23 AM   #329
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Originally Posted by TjW View Post
You assert this, and give an example of something else you consider to have this flaw. Can you explain why it's a non-answer?
This refers to Robo's post #298 where he said: "Without the Higgs we've got the masses of all massive fundamental particles to explain, with it, only one. Which is more elegant?" This is a false argument that dismisses Einstein's explanation of mass and plays the "elegance" card like a card-sharp. Look carefully and you will notice that the explanation of mass is being palmed off into something which in itself is not explained at all. Off the top of my head, another example would be to say "magnets attract nails and the Earth attracts nails because of force, and it is more elegant to to explain only one thing". But then this "force" is not explained at all.

Originally Posted by Roboramma
You have? I must have missed that, could you quote the post where you did so?
I started in post 242 on page 7 where I pointed to Susskind talking about radiation in a box adding mass to the system. Then in posts 247 thru 249 I used a standing-wave to explain that inertia is the flip side of momentum. In post 255 I referred to a the original problem in QED and explained that the standing-wave adds mass because it's interacting with the box. In post 258 I referred again to Guidice and to the importance of symmetry and what's interacting with what. In post 262 I referred to electrons existing as standing waves in atomic orbitals. In post 274 I quoted Einstein's explanation of mass as the measure of a system's energy content. In post 275 I explained that the electron was literally made of kinetic energy. In post 282 I pointed out that the Higgs mechanism says that electron's mass doesn't depend on its energy content. In post 286 I threw down the challenge of how does the Higgs boson get its mass. The answer is from the kinetic energy given to the LHC particles. So its mass is a measure of its energy content. Like Einstein said. So the same applies to the electron. So it doesn't get its mass from the Higgs mechanism which contradicts E=mc˛.

Originally Posted by Roboramma
This is assertion for which so far you've given no evidence.
The evidence is right there in what the LHC does. You start off with protons. You make them go very fast. Then you make them collide. The only things you've got in the mix are protons and kinetic energy, and the 937MeV proton rest mass is scant.

Originally Posted by Roboramma
Mass is a form of energy (remember E=mc˛ that you keep mentioning?) so if mass is determined by "coupling to the Higgs field" then stronger coupling equates to higher energy content. Where exactly is the problem?
High-energy photons don't do it, but electrons & positrons made from them do. You can trace the problem right back to QED like I said. Photons do couple with photons, and light can bend itself into an arc. The standing wave in the box adds mass to the system because it interacts with the box, not the Higgs field. Those atomic orbitals tell us the electron is a standing wave. Electron diffraction confirms its a wave. A Penning trap confirms it's standing. We know it's got magnetic moment, so we know something is rotating in there. The Einstein-de Haas effect tells us that spin angular momentum is indeed of the same nature as the angular momentum of rotating bodies. Two-photon pair production tells us we can make the electron and the positron from photons. Annihilation tells us we we can reverse the process. All these things tell us that the electron is a standing wave that gets its mass not by interacting with a box, or the Higgs field, but by interacting with itself. That's why it's standing. That's why it's got mass. Mass is just the flip side of momentum, it's just resistance to change-in-motion for a standing wave whilst momentum is resistance to change-in-motion for a wave propagating at c. Simple. No magick required.

Last edited by Farsight; 8th November 2012 at 06:44 AM. Reason: It was Robo's post 298, not RC's
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Old 8th November 2012, 06:40 AM   #330
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Originally Posted by xtifr View Post
Hahaha! Good one! Oh, wait, you were serious?
Yes, I was on a promise. I talk to a lot of people.

Originally Posted by xtifr View Post
Says the naked man. Sorry, but your ignorance of mathematics is not as widely shared as you seem to believe, and the flaws in your arguments are easy to spot even for non-physicists with a decent background in maths.
What flaws? You haven't pointed any out.

Originally Posted by xtifr View Post
Mathematics is not Latin, and even if it were, trying to argue that mathematics can be ignored when studying physics, while trying to promote your own personal variant of relativity is about as close to wandering around naked, while telling everyone how beautiful your clothes are, as I have ever in my life seen.
I'm not promoting my own personal variant of relativity. I'm referring to Einstein's E=mc˛ here. And I'm not saying mathematics should be ignored. I'm saying it shouldn't be used to dismiss scientific evidence and rational argument. That's what Cuddles tried to do.

Originally Posted by xtifr View Post
I don't know if Cuddles or Ben are right about everything they say, but I would be a sorely failed skeptic if I thought anything you said was actual physics. If you actually tried answering some of the questions they asked, I might consider taking you seriously for at least a fraction of a second, but your continual sidestepping and ignoring direct and very relevant questions makes it clear your expertise is nil. Whether modern physics is right or not.
I'm not sidestepping or ignoring direct and relevant questions. I'm talking physics here. Follow my references. It's plain-vanilla physics. You are a sorely failed skeptic for fooling yourself into thinking otherwise. And have you asked Cuddles to explain the Higgs paper? No. You're no skeptic, xtifr, you're an acolyte, one who fools himself into dismissing physics he can understand in favour of something he doesn't understand at all.

Quote:
Cuddles pointed you to the actual math that's relevant to the topic under discussion. Either refute the math or admit you can't, and aren't qualified to opine on the Higgs.
No. You refute the evidence and logic instead of trying to hide behind mathematics you don't understand. Talk physics instead of playing the naysayer.

Oh, and do please note, even though my Latin is poor, I am qualified to opine on heaven.
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Old 8th November 2012, 06:50 AM   #331
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Originally Posted by Dancing David View Post
Did you mean photon or electron, an electron is a lepton. I think you meant photon which is a boson.
No, I meant electron. We can turn a photon into electron kinetic energy. Or we can turn a photon into an electron (and a positron) in pair production. So we can say the electron is made of kinetic energy. In the LHC we add kinetic energy to protons, then use that to make a "Higgs boson" which decays instantly into two photons.
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Old 8th November 2012, 07:05 AM   #332
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Just because you can use kinetic energy to make an electron positron pair doesn't mean they are physically constituted of kinetic energy.
And that's hardly the only thing I could take issue with.
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Old 8th November 2012, 07:24 AM   #333
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Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
I started in post 242 on page 7 where I pointed to Susskind talking about radiation in a box adding mass to the system.
Okay, E=mc2
I was aware of that, but yeah cool

Quote:
Then in posts 247 thru 249 I used a standing-wave to explain that inertia is the flip side of momentum.
I'm fine with that too

Quote:
In post 255 I referred to a the original problem in QED and explained that the standing-wave adds mass because it's interacting with the box.
Okay, sounds reasonable
Quote:
In post 258 I referred again to Guidice and to the importance of symmetry and what's interacting with what.
Okay, symetry is cool
Quote:
In post 262 I referred to electrons existing as standing waves in atomic orbitals.
Okay
Quote:
In post 274 I quoted Einstein's explanation of mass as the measure of a system's energy content.
Yeah, we got that: E=mc2

Quote:
In post 275 I explained that the electron was literally made of kinetic energy.
You asserted that Personally that doesn't seem like a meaningful statement to me
An electron has kinetic energy, and it's true that the energy of its mass may have come from the kinetic energy of some other particle, but what does "made of kinetic energy" even mean?

Quote:
In post 282 I pointed out that the Higgs mechanism says that electron's mass doesn't depend on its energy content.
You said it doesn't depend on it's energy content, but I don't see any evidence that that's the case: are you saying that the Higgs mechanism violates conservation of energy?

The fact that an electron's mass is determined by its coupling to the Higgs field doesn't mean it's mass doesn't depend on it's energy content: it requires a certain amount of energy to create an electron which is so coupled, so I really don't see your point here

Quote:
In post 286 I threw down the challenge of how does the Higgs boson get its mass. The answer is from the kinetic energy given to the LHC particles. So its mass is a measure of its energy content. Like Einstein said. So the same applies to the electron. So it doesn't get its mass from the Higgs mechanism which contradicts E=mc˛.
I'm still not following the logic of the highlighted bit
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Old 8th November 2012, 07:24 AM   #334
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Originally Posted by Tubbythin
Nothing is made of kinetic energy. That is not meaningful English.
Take that up with Einstein, who said: "The kinetic energy of the body with respect to (ξ ɳ Ϛ) diminishes as a result of the emission of light". Then take a look at electron-positron annihilation. The kinetic energy of the body diminished as a result of the emission of light. Totally. And afterwards, there's no body left.

Originally Posted by Tubbythin
Yes you are. You're hiding behind meaningless phrases like "the Higgs boson is made of kinetic energy". Kinetic energy is the energy a body has due to it's motion.
Not when that "body" is a photon. It isn't some billiard-ball thing. It's got a wavelength. It's a wave. When you take all the kinetic energy out of that wave, it doesn't exist any more. Like I was saying you can convert the photon kinetic energy into electron kinetic energy, whereafter there is no photon. Or you can convert it into an electron (and a positron). That's why we have the phrase "matter is made of energy". What else do you think it's made from? Cheese?

Originally Posted by Tubbythin
It's as meaningless to say the Higgs boson is made of kinetic energy as it is to say an elephant is made of grey.
No it isn't. grey is a colour, it's a quale, something that only exists inside our heads. It's how we perceive light of a given frequency. Energy isn't like that, it's the one thing you can neither create nor destroy. Matter really is made of energy. And that "Higgs boson" was quite literally made of the kinetic energy that we put in.

Originally Posted by Tubbythin
I explained that you were wrong because the photoelectric effect dominates over Compton scattering at lower energies. I may not have given you a detailed explanation of this but told you where you were wrong and gave you a link to a source that would give you more details. I see you've backed down from your previous claim that I was "claiming a point edd raised as [my] own".
I haven't backed down. Edd made the point, you hitched a ride on it.

Originally Posted by Tubbythin
You are familiar with the first law of thermodynamics right? The high school level version of that usually goes along the lines of "Energy can be transferred from one form to another but never created or destroyed". On its own, the fact that a photon's energy can be converted to the kinetic energy of an electron tell us two basic things: 1) Electron and photons interact; 2) photon-electron interactions obey the first law of thermodynamics. Well blow me Sherlock! And now because you've told us two facts about photons that I learnt when I was at school, we are meant to be impressed and believe everything you say about the Higgs boson.
And blow me Sherlock, that photon doesn't exist any more. Take its kinetic energy away, and it isn't just sitting there. It's gone. That's why it is kinetic energy. And you can make matter out of it.

Originally Posted by Tubbythin
You haven't given a rock solid argument. You've given a nothing argument. Nobody except you thinks you've given a rock-solid argument. The fact that you think you've given a rock-solid argument is entirely tied to your own convictions that you are right. Alanis Morissette would probably have something to say about that.
You can't point out where I'm wrong, all you can do is go into denial and resort to dissmissal and abuse. I'm with Einstein here Tubby. Don't forget that.

Originally Posted by Tubbythin
You've given evidence that electron-photon interactions obey the first law of thermodynamics. You have not given evidence for anything else.
Spoken like a creationist.

Last edited by Farsight; 8th November 2012 at 07:26 AM. Reason: typos
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Old 8th November 2012, 07:44 AM   #335
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Tubbythin
Nothing is made of kinetic energy. That is not meaningful English.
Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
Take that up with Einstein, who said: "The kinetic energy of the body with respect to (ξ ɳ Ϛ) diminishes as a result of the emission of light". Then take a look at electron-positron annihilation. The kinetic energy of the body diminished as a result of the emission of light. Totally. And afterwards, there's no body left.

So I go to the supermarket and buy dinner. My bank account diminishes as a result. Therefore my dinner is made out of money??
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Old 8th November 2012, 07:57 AM   #336
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Originally Posted by DSo View Post
So I go to the supermarket and buy dinner. My bank account diminishes as a result. Therefore my dinner is made out of money??
You may be taking Farsight too literally. His argument is metaphorical, not mathematical.

To deal with his argument on its own terms, you have to think metaphorically. Like this:

Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
Photons do couple with photons,
So that's where baby photons come from?

Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
All these things tell us that the electron is a standing wave that gets its mass not by interacting with a box, or the Higgs field, but by interacting with itself.
That's not where baby electrons come from.
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Old 8th November 2012, 08:08 AM   #337
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Originally Posted by DSo View Post
So I go to the supermarket and buy dinner. My bank account diminishes as a result. Therefore my dinner is made out of money??
The lhc is powered by electricity, some of which comes from hydroelectricity, therefore the Higgs boson is made of gravitational potential energy
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Old 8th November 2012, 08:08 AM   #338
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Farsight
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cuddles
Just in case anyone is interested in actual physics, here is Higgs' 1964 paper which was the first to predict a massive boson as the result of the incorrectly named Higgs mechanism. Any objections that do not directly address this at a similar level of mathematics are simply irrelevant. No amount of wordy analogies and pointless handwaving can compete with an actual theory.
This pompous Emperor's New Clothes line can be used to dismiss anything. It's the modern equivalent of you don't even speak Latin. You won't get away with that on a skeptics forum.
It's really quite simple. Some of us laymen have studied enough physics to have a general understanding of the Higgs paper. Since it has been accepted for several decades as standard physics, anyone refuting that paper should present specific arguments against the mathematically developed conclusions in that paper. Anything else is sophistry! Are you capable of finding any flaws in Higgs' paper or not? If not, you are nothing more than another crackpot populating the Internet.
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Old 8th November 2012, 08:10 AM   #339
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Originally Posted by Roboramma View Post
You asserted that. Personally that doesn't seem like a meaningful statement to me.
You've missed something somewhere along the line. The photon has a wavelength, it's a wave, and when you take all the kinetic energy out of the wave it doesn't exist any more. It isn't like some cannonball where you steal all its kinetic energy and you've still got a cannonball. So you can say the photon is kinetic energy. You know this is reasonable because you can convert a photon into electron kinetic energy in Compton scattering with a final bound-electron absorption like edd said. The photon has totally gone, and all you've got to show for it is electron kinetic energy. Alternatively you can use pair production to convert the photon, which is kinetic energy, into an electron. So the electron is made out of the same thing that makes an electron move. Kinetic energy. This is what E=mc˛ is all about. Read what Einstein said: "The mass of a body is a measure of its energy-content". That's what it is, not the measure of how strongly it couples with some cosmic treacle.

Originally Posted by Roboramma View Post
An electron has kinetic energy, and it's true that the energy of its mass may have come from the kinetic energy of some other particle, but what does "made of kinetic energy" even mean?
See above. Matter is made of energy. That's the whole point of E=mc˛.

Originally Posted by Roboramma View Post
You said it doesn't depend on it's energy content, but I don't see any evidence that that's the case: are you saying that the Higgs mechanism violates conservation of energy?
No. I said the electron's mass depends on its energy content. Like Einstein said. The Higgs mechanism doesn't, it says it depends on how much it couples with an-all pervasive field. It ignores the wave nature of matter and it contradicts what Einstein said.

Originally Posted by Roboramma View Post
The fact that an electron's mass is determined by its coupling to the Higgs field doesn't mean it's mass doesn't depend on it's energy content: it requires a certain amount of energy to create an electron which is so coupled, so I really don't see your point here.
The point is that the electron is a body, and the inertia of a body depends on its energy content, not on something else. If you trap a photon in a box, the added mass is nothing to do with the Higgs mechanism. If you trap a photon in a box of its own making because photon-photon coupling and photon self-coupling really does occur despite what QED says, the added mass is again nothing to do with the Higgs mechanism. It's just the flip side of momentum. It's the resistance to change-in-motion for a standing wave propagating round and round at c and getting nowhere, rather than the resistance to change-in-motion for a wave propagating linearly at c. It's that simple, and it's a symmetry. Again look at atomic orbitals which says the electrons exist as standing waves, and look at electron diffraction. Electrons aren't cannonballs, they're waves, made from photons in pair production. They have spin angular momentum and magnetic moment so something really is going round and round in there.

Originally Posted by Roboramma View Post
I'm still not following the logic of the highlighted bit
See above. The inertia of a body depends upon its energy content, just like Einstein said. Not on something else.

I've got to go. I'll look at other posts I've skipped such as RC's another time.

Last edited by Farsight; 8th November 2012 at 08:13 AM.
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Old 8th November 2012, 08:23 AM   #340
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Originally Posted by Perpetual Student View Post
It's really quite simple. Some of us laymen have studied enough physics to have a general understanding of the Higgs paper.
So explain it then. In your own words. And while you're at it, do mention why the inertia of a body doesn't depend upon its energy content.

Originally Posted by Perpetual Student View Post
Since it has been accepted for several decades as standard physics, anyone refuting that paper should present specific arguments against the mathematically developed conclusions in that paper. Anything else is sophistry! Are you capable of finding any flaws in Higgs' paper or not? If not, you are nothing more than another crackpot populating the Internet.
Well, that's one way to dismiss patent scientific evidence along with plain-vanilla physics and a straightforward explanation that even a child can understand. And Einstein to boot. Hide behind mathematics, like a witch doctor hides behind incantations when a pharmacologist shows up. Like a medieval bishop hides behind Latin and says "you're not qualified to speak of such matters". Nobody falls for it on a skeptics website. Do they?

Perpetual Student, explain the Higgs paper in your own words. When you can't, it will be a nice demonstration of Emperors' New Clothes. Cue ducking and diving and a few more outraged "crackpot" squawks. Bah.

Now I really must go.

Last edited by Farsight; 8th November 2012 at 08:26 AM. Reason: Typos, bishop, must go
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Old 8th November 2012, 09:40 AM   #341
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This really is crazy. Photons do not trap themselves in self-made boxes. Photons do not couple directly to photons. QED is in complete agreement with all two-photon physics. Electrons are not made up internally of photons, and photons are in no meaningful way made up purely of kinetic energy.

To follow your logic Farsight, photons can't be fundamental since they also have spin angular momentum, so presumably there's something smaller going round and round in them too?

Your idea makes no useful predictions, unlike the Higgs mechanism. The Higgs mechanism also does not violate relativity (you'd have thought someone might have mentioned that when they found the Higgs if it did, no?)
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Old 8th November 2012, 10:29 AM   #342
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Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
So the electron is made out of the same thing that makes an electron move. Kinetic energy. This is what E=mc˛ is all about.

See above. Matter is made of energy. That's the whole point of E=mc˛.
As usual, Farsight can't tell the difference between "explaining Relativity" and "explaining his crackpot mental image of Relativity".

You really seem to think that energy is the underlying "stuff", and that if you rearrange and recombine energy in different ways you get different "stuff". Tie up some energy like this, and you get an electron at rest; tie it up like that, you get a top quark moving at 0.5c. This is wrong---or, at least, this is not what Einstein or anybody else thought.

Energy is a conserved quantity. You can measure it. Different things add up to different amounts of energy. The rest mass of a down quark is worth 5 MeV in this conservation law---that does not mean that "5MeV" worth of "energy blobs" are its building blocks. The field energy of the 1-fm sphere of gluons, found inside a proton, is worth about 900 MeV. The rest mass of an electron is worth 0.511 MeV---that does NOT, emphatically, mean that you build a proton by balling up 0.511 MeV of energy-substance. Energy isn't a substance, isn't a building block, isn't a thing at all. Rest mass has this conserved quantity, energy, as an attribute. High velocities have this energy-quantity as an attribute. Strong fields have this energy-quantity as an attribute. That's as far as it goes. That is the whole point of E=mc^2 --- it tells you what quantity of energy is associated with mass at rest. It does not tell you that one is a constituent of the other.

(ETA: Indeed, Einstein's derivation of E=mc^2 has nothing whatsoever to do with substances. That derivation is *pure* kinematics---you starts with "let's assume that energy is conserved", and you run some inelastic-collision experiments in different frames. You discover that E = 1/2 mv^2 is *not* a conserved quantity, but E = sqrt(m^2 c^4 + p^2 c^2) is a conserved quantity. This derivation does not care about electrons, or photons, or pair production, or fields---it's just the definition of the conservation law.)

All of your assertions revolve around a stupid reinterpretation of words like "contains", etc.. Imagine listening to someone discussing their assets: "I sank $150,000 into my house, and my car is $10,000, and I have $8000 in gold bullion under my mattress." And imagine a crackpot thinking that this literally means that you could pick the car apart under a microscope and find the $150,000 it's made of; that smashing the gold together really hard will reveal a cunning work of dollar-bill origami. It will get worse when the crackpot sees an broker advertising that he can convert gold into money and vice versa (you're ignoring evidence, morons, says the crackpot), and a bank talking about the "liquidity" of assets (see, money is a substance! Everyone knows but you! says the crackpot.)

That is just as stupid as your electron = kinetic energy assertion, Farsight.

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Old 8th November 2012, 02:50 PM   #343
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Testing, one two:

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Old 8th November 2012, 03:17 PM   #344
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Originally Posted by edd View Post
This really is crazy. Photons do not trap themselves in self-made boxes. Photons do not couple directly to photons.
Yes they do couple directly. It's called two-photon physics. SLAC have done the experiments. And go and read Light bends itself into an arc. What do you think's going to happen if that arc is so very curved that it forms a closed path?

Originally Posted by edd View Post
QED is in complete agreement with all two-photon physics.
Not the bit that says pair production occurs because pair production occurs, and that a photon is forever spontaneously morphing into an electron-positron pair all on its own. That's crazy. All you need to do is look at Faraday rotation and understand that a photon is an electromagnetic wave to understand that a photon can couple to a photon. Two photons pass each other, jinkjink, jinkjink.

Originally Posted by edd View Post
Electrons are not made up internally of photons, and photons are in no meaningful way made up purely of kinetic energy.
Oh yes they are. You really can convert a photon into electron kinetic energy and nothing else. And you really can convert two photons into an electron and a positron and nothing else. You really can convert an electron and a positron into two photons and nothing else. Do not dismiss the scientific evidence of Compton scattering, the photoelectric effect, electron diffraction, magnetic dipole moment, the Einstein de-Haas effect, and what Einstein said in favour of something for which there is no evidence, and which fails miserably at explaining why "the Higgs boson" doesn't get its mass from all the kinetic energy we gave the LHC protons.

Originally Posted by edd View Post
To follow your logic Farsight, photons can't be fundamental since they also have spin angular momentum, so presumably there's something smaller going round and round in them too?
No. Don't put words in my mouth. Photons are waves, waves are always associated with angular momentum. Look at wind waves. See the pictures on the right. A wave makes things go round.

Originally Posted by edd View Post
Your idea makes no useful predictions, unlike the Higgs mechanism.
It isn't my idea, it's Einstein's idea. The inertia of a body depends upon its energy content. That's what it depends on, not whether it couples with cosmic treacle.

Originally Posted by edd View Post
The Higgs mechanism also does not violate relativity (you'd have thought someone might have mentioned that when they found the Higgs if it did, no?)
You'd have thought they'd have mentioned that the Higgs mechanism is responsible for only 1% of the mass of matter when they found the Higgs. But they didn't did they? No. Nor did they mention that it's "frightfully ad-hoc" and isn't central to the Standard Model. And nor did they mention the inertia of a body depends upon its energy content. And nor did they mention that it gets it mass from all that proton kinetic energy. So what's your fallback argument edd? That the Higgs mechanism must be right because the people trumpeting it don't mention these things? Wake up. This is a forum for skeptics, for rational thinkers, not for suckers who lap up publicity releases and treat it like gospel.

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Old 8th November 2012, 03:24 PM   #345
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Originally Posted by DSo View Post
So I go to the supermarket and buy dinner. My bank account diminishes as a result. Therefore my dinner is made out of money??
No. And if you buy your dinner with paper money it isn't made out of paper either. Your dinner is made out of energy captured by plants from the sun and used to construct starch etc from materials at hand such as CO2 and water. With a bit of plant material that was eaten by things called animals and reprocessed into something called meat.

Originally Posted by Roboramma View Post
The lhc is powered by electricity, some of which comes from hydroelectricity, therefore the Higgs boson is made of gravitational potential energy
And gravitational potential energy is converted into kinetic energy when a brick falls down. And before the brick fell down, that gravitational potential energy was in the brick as hidden kinetic energy wherein the inertia of a body depends upon its energy content. Find a brick made of antimatter and you can annihilate the elevated brick and antibrick to photons, which can be entirely converted into electron motion. So again, the "Higgs boson" is made of kinetic energy.

Originally Posted by W.D.Clinger View Post
So that's where baby photons come from?
Risible, Clinger. You've got nothing, and you know it. You can't put up a rational argument backed by scientific evidence to counter mine, and it shows.

Last edited by Farsight; 8th November 2012 at 03:33 PM. Reason: Related responses combined
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Old 8th November 2012, 03:28 PM   #346
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Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
So explain it then
Perpetual Student, explain the Higgs paper in your own words. When you can't, it will be a nice demonstration of Emperors' New Clothes. Cue ducking and diving and a few more outraged "crackpot" squawks. Bah.

Now I really must go.
I don't know why I'm taking the bait here. I have had such negative experiences in the past with a certain Mozina when I have done so -- I will likely regret this. My own (layman's) words for a mathematically developed argument in such a complex area of physics are mostly pointless. But anyway here goes:

As a starting point (not shown in the paper in question), an analysis of a certain Lagrangian of a complex scalar field constructed to be symmetric under phase transformations shows that the spontaneous breaking of a continuous symmetry generates massless scalars (bosons), which cannot really exist in nature. (I assume you understand why this is so.) The Higgs mechanism solves this problem through a coupling mechanism that I believe is similar to that of fermions (that couple with their anti-particles -- but maybe not?) in order to account for mass. However, a gauge field is postulated to accomplish that for bosons having mass. His equation (4) contains the coupling constant that does the trick.
So, now explain where the errors are in his thesis. You have the floor! No more silly comments about photons being kinetic energy in space -- just tell us where Higgs went wrong!
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Old 8th November 2012, 03:40 PM   #347
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Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
No, I meant electron. We can turn a photon into electron kinetic energy. Or we can turn a photon into an electron (and a positron) in pair production. So we can say the electron is made of kinetic energy.
No, no we can't. This is just the high-school version of the first law of thermodynamics, nothing more.
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Old 8th November 2012, 03:46 PM   #348
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Perpetual Student: Huh? LOL! Call that an explanation? You don't understand this at all! What complex scalar field? What does constructed to be symmetric under phase transformations actually mean? And how does the "spontaneous" breaking of a continuous symmetry generate massless bosons? All you've done is had a stab at an explanation that "explains" things in terms of things you don't understand at all. Why do you fool yourself that abstract blather like this is in any way convincing, whilst at the same time fooling yourself into thinking that patent scientific evidence is silly?

Higgs went wrong because he didn't understand classical electromagnetism and four-potential. The A-field is what "bulges" when a photon passes by, that's what's responsible for both photon momentum and electron mass, that's the "Higgs substance" that doesn't fill space, but is space. And he didn't understand the symmetry between momentum and inertia either. Or the wave nature of matter. Or the Einstein-de Haas effect, or electron diffraction, etc etc etc. And yet he's revered like a gospel saint by people like you who have never read the original Einstein and don't understand the first thing about physics. Ye Gods.
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Old 8th November 2012, 03:48 PM   #349
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Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
Wow, you can count to two!
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Old 8th November 2012, 04:04 PM   #350
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For those interested in the truth, here is the BBC documentary about the Higgs Boson.
YouTube Video This video is not hosted by the ISF. The ISF can not be held responsible for the suitability or legality of this material. By clicking the link below you agree to view content from an external website.
I AGREE
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Old 8th November 2012, 04:23 PM   #351
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Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
Yes they do couple directly. It's called two-photon physics.
Not direct coupling.
Quote:
Not the bit that says pair production occurs because pair production occurs, and that a photon is forever spontaneously morphing into an electron-positron pair all on its own. That's crazy.
"One does not simply dismiss QED." - Niels Bohromir.

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No. Don't put words in my mouth. Photons are waves, waves are always associated with angular momentum.
I just... the... what?

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You'd have thought they'd have mentioned that the Higgs mechanism is responsible for only 1% of the mass of matter when they found the Higgs. But they didn't did they? No.
Plenty of people did. Admittedly not many press offices did, but that's what press offices are like.

Quote:
That the Higgs mechanism must be right because the people trumpeting it don't mention these things? Wake up. This is a forum for skeptics, for rational thinkers, not for suckers who lap up publicity releases and treat it like gospel.
I tend not to do my physics by press releases. I tend to have more direct routes to it. I think it's incredibly likely to be right because of its explanatory power and because a suitable looking particle just showed up.
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Old 8th November 2012, 04:23 PM   #352
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Originally Posted by ben m View Post
As usual, Farsight can't tell the difference between "explaining Relativity" and "explaining his crackpot mental image of Relativity".
As usual, you've got no counterargument and resort to abuse.

Originally Posted by ben m View Post
You really seem to think that energy is the underlying "stuff", and that if you rearrange and recombine energy in different ways you get different "stuff". Tie up some energy like this, and you get an electron at rest; tie it up like that, you get a top quark moving at 0.5c. This is wrong---or, at least, this is not what Einstein or anybody else thought.
It isn't "stuff". Stuff is made of it. And it was Einstein who told us that matter is made of energy.

Originally Posted by ben m View Post
Energy is a conserved quantity.
Yep. And matter is made from it.

Originally Posted by ben m View Post
You can measure it. Different things add up to different amounts of energy. The rest mass of a down quark is worth 5 MeV in this conservation law---that does not mean that "5MeV" worth of "energy blobs" are its building blocks.
Can you show me a down quark? No. But I can show you energy. KICK. That's energy. I can show you Compton scattering. KICK. The electron moves and the photon is diminished. I can show you pair production, and now there's no KICK, just an electron and a positron. Learn to put evidence and reality above abstraction ben. You're an experimentalist aren't you? Act like one.

Originally Posted by ben m View Post
The field energy of the 1-fm sphere of gluons, found inside a proton, is worth about 900 MeV.]
Gluons are virtual particles. See above. Next.

Originally Posted by ben m View Post
The rest mass of an electron is worth 0.511 MeV---that does NOT, emphatically, mean that you build a proton by balling up 0.511 MeV of energy-substance. Energy isn't a substance, isn't a building block, isn't a thing at all.
Oh yes it is a thing. It isn't stuff, but it's the thing from which stuff is made. It's the thing from which matter is made. It's the thing that you can neither create nor destroy. It isn't some abstract thing like money that is merely a tokenised agreement of value. It's real ben. Plants capture it. You consume it to do work and to grow. It isn't just the capacity to do work. Not when work is the energy associated with the action of a force. How many circular arguments do I have to point out to you before you start thinking for yourself?

Originally Posted by ben m View Post
Rest mass has this conserved quantity, energy, as an attribute.
Because it's just energy that is effectively at rest because it isn't getting anywhere, because it's going round and round instead of linearly. That's it, that's all it is. Do you still not understand this symmetry between momentum and inertia? A wave propagating linearly exhibits resistance to change-in-motion called momentum, a wave propagating circularly exhibits resistance to change-in-motion called inertia. Hence the inertia of a body depends upon its energy content. Can I even put it any simpler?

Originally Posted by ben m View Post
High velocities have this energy-quantity as an attribute. Strong fields have this energy-quantity as an attribute.
And is there anything that doesn't? Photons? No. Neutrinos? No. Electrons and positrons? No. Protons and antiprotons? No. Neutrons and antineutrons that decay into the above? No. Fast moving electrons made to move fast by photons? No. How about a gravitational field? No? And so it goes ben.

Originally Posted by ben m View Post
That's as far as it goes. That is the whole point of E=mc^2 --- it tells you what quantity of energy is associated with mass at rest. It does not tell you that one is a constituent of the other.
No, the experiments tell you that. And you're an experimentalist.

Originally Posted by ben m View Post
(ETA: Indeed, Einstein's derivation of E=mc^2 has nothing whatsoever to do with substances. That derivation is *pure* kinematics---you starts with "let's assume that energy is conserved", and you run some inelastic-collision experiments in different frames. You discover that E = 1/2 mv^2 is *not* a conserved quantity, but E = sqrt(m^2 c^4 + p^2 c^2) is a conserved quantity. This derivation does not care about electrons, or photons, or pair production, or fields---it's just the definition of the conservation law.)
Pay attention to that "pure kinematics", because you are made of it. And when it comes to , do not ignore the flipflop between the mass and momentum terms in pair production followed by annihilation.

Originally Posted by ben m View Post
All of your assertions revolve around a stupid reinterpretation of words like "contains", etc.. Imagine listening to someone discussing their assets: "I sank $150,000 into my house, and my car is $10,000, and I have $8000 in gold bullion under my mattress." And imagine a crackpot thinking that this literally means that you could pick the car apart under a microscope and find the $150,000 it's made of; that smashing the gold together really hard will reveal a cunning work of dollar-bill origami. It will get worse when the crackpot sees an broker advertising that he can convert gold into money and vice versa (you're ignoring evidence, morons, says the crackpot), and a bank talking about the "liquidity" of assets (see, money is a substance! Everyone knows but you! says the crackpot.)
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Old 8th November 2012, 04:26 PM   #353
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Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
And gravitational potential energy is converted into kinetic energy when a brick falls down. And before the brick fell down, that gravitational potential energy was in the brick as hidden kinetic energy wherein the inertia of a body depends upon its energy content. Find a brick made of antimatter and you can annihilate the elevated brick and antibrick to photons, which can be entirely converted into electron motion. So again, the "Higgs boson" is made of kinetic energy.
I forgot that you somehow consider kinetic energy to be more fundamental than other forms of energy

Personally I think ben m's most recent post in this thread sums up my objections to this better than I'm likely to

But just to be clear: you're saying that a book sitting on shelf five feet off the floor in my bedroom has more kinetic energy than the same book sitting on the floor?
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Old 8th November 2012, 04:28 PM   #354
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Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
Edited by LashL:  Edited.
<sound of irony meters exploding>

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Old 8th November 2012, 04:29 PM   #355
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Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
All you've done is had a stab at an explanation that "explains" things in terms of things you don't understand at all. Why do you fool yourself that abstract blather like this is in any way convincing, whilst at the same time fooling yourself into thinking that patent scientific evidence is silly?
Excellent question. You should ask it more often, in front of a mirror.

Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
Higgs went wrong because he didn't understand classical electromagnetism and four-potential.
Oh, this is gonna be good...

Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
The A-field is what "bulges" when a photon passes by, that's what's responsible for both photon momentum and electron mass, that's the "Higgs substance" that doesn't fill space, but is space.
If that doesn't demonstrate Farsight's superior understanding of classical electromagnetism and four-potential, then I don't know what does.

Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
And yet he's revered like a gospel saint by people like you who have never read the original Einstein and don't understand the first thing about physics. Ye Gods.
In a discussion of Einstein's most important paper on general relativity, Farsight got lost at the third of 75 numbered equations. While promoting his book, Farsight demonstrated profound ignorance of freshman-level electromagnetism.

Why does Farsight continue to remind us of that history by accusing others of not having read Einstein and not understanding the first thing about physics?

Maybe he thinks it's one of his more compelling arguments.
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Old 8th November 2012, 04:31 PM   #356
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Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
Your physics knowledge is scant.
I assure you it isn't - his knowledge is clear enough to anyone, especially other physicists. I don't think I really need to bother saying this for anyone else reading it, but you're only making yourself look foolish by making this sort of statement about others.
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Old 8th November 2012, 04:38 PM   #357
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Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
Take that up with Einstein, who said: "The kinetic energy of the body with respect to (ξ ɳ Ϛ) diminishes as a result of the emission of light".
That's the first law of thermodynamics.

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Then take a look at electron-positron annihilation. The kinetic energy of the body diminished as a result of the emission of light.
That's the first law of thermodynamics.

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Totally. And afterwards, there's no body left.
There are two photons. Are they not bodies?

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Not when that "body" is a photon. It isn't some billiard-ball thing. It's got a wavelength. It's a wave.
Light has wavelike properties.

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When you take all the kinetic energy out of that wave, it doesn't exist any more.
The photon has 0 chemical potential. We've known that since 1905 (at a guess).

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Like I was saying you can convert the photon kinetic energy into electron kinetic energy, whereafter there is no photon.
That's the first law of thermodynamics.

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Or you can convert it into an electron (and a positron).
That's the first law of thermodynamics too... combined with the conservation of electron lepton number of course.

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That's why we have the phrase "matter is made of energy". What else do you think it's made from? Cheese?
Mass has an equivalent energy content, hence E=mc2.

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No it isn't. grey is a colour, it's a quale, something that only exists inside our heads. It's how we perceive light of a given frequency.
It is a mix of frequencies.

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Energy isn't like that, it's the one thing you can neither create nor destroy.
Like I said, that's the first law of thermodynamics.

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Matter really is made of energy.
Define "energy".

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And that "Higgs boson" was quite literally made of the kinetic energy that we put in.
You're still not understanding the first law of thermodynamics.

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I haven't backed down. Edd made the point, you hitched a ride on it.
The two posts were made at exactly the same time.

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And blow me Sherlock, that photon doesn't exist any more. Take its kinetic energy away, and it isn't just sitting there. It's gone. That's why it is kinetic energy.
You really don't understand the idea of energy do you? It is a scalar quantity. Just like, I dunno, distance. If the distance from one end of an elephant to the other is 5 m it makes no meaningful sense to say that the elephant is actually 5 m. Not 5 m long. Actually 5 m. Meaningless. Just like the photon being made of kinetic energy.

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And you can make matter out of it.
Yay. Gotta love the first law of thermodynamics.

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You can't point out where I'm wrong, all you can do is go into denial and resort to dissmissal and abuse. I'm with Einstein here Tubby. Don't forget that.
No, no you're not. Einstein pointed out that the first law of thermodynamics required the mass-energy equivalence. You think energy is actually a thing like an elephant.

Quote:
Spoken like a creationist.
Nope. Spoken like someone telling the truth.
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Old 8th November 2012, 04:39 PM   #358
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Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
Perpetual Student: Huh? LOL! Call that an explanation? You don't understand this at all! What complex scalar field? What does constructed to be symmetric under phase transformations actually mean?
So, you are admitting that you do not understand what a complex scalar field is? You do not understand what it means for a complex function to be symmetric under phase transformations? And -- you actually believe you are qualified to say anything about particle physics?


Quote:
And how does the "spontaneous" breaking of a continuous symmetry generate massless bosons? All you've done is had a stab at an explanation that "explains" things in terms of things you don't understand at all. Why do you fool yourself that abstract blather like this is in any way convincing, whilst at the same time fooling yourself into thinking that patent scientific evidence is silly?
I have made it quite clear that my knowledge of physics is lacking -- but not so lacking for mathematics. There exists a term in the Lagrangian that is massless (along with one that has mass) which is the reason the breaking of symmetry generates massless particles. If you really do understand the physics involved here, you can tell us all why this is wrong.
Quote:
Higgs went wrong because he didn't understand classical electromagnetism and four-potential. The A-field is what "bulges" when a photon passes by, that's what's responsible for both photon momentum and electron mass, that's the "Higgs substance" that doesn't fill space, but is space. And he didn't understand the symmetry between momentum and inertia either. Or the wave nature of matter. Or the Einstein-de Haas effect, or electron diffraction, etc etc etc. And yet he's revered like a gospel saint by people like you who have never read the original Einstein and don't understand the first thing about physics. Ye Gods.
So, you actually believe Higgs did not understand electromagnetism, the wave nature of matter, electron diffraction, etc.? WHAT HUBRIS!!! Why do you keep on muttering about the symmetry between inertia and momentum, photons are kinetic energy in space and other delusional baloney?
When you can explain what the spontaneous breaking of a continuous symmetry means and tell us why the explanation above is not correct we can proceed. In the meantime, buy yourself a pointed hat with crescent moons and stars painted on it and sell your ignorant rants elsewhere. No one here is buying your make-believe physics.
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Old 8th November 2012, 04:40 PM   #359
Farsight
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Originally Posted by edd View Post
I think it's incredibly likely to be right because of its explanatory power and because a suitable looking particle just showed up.
Can you explain why what I've said is wrong? No. Can you explain why the inertia of a body does not depend upon its energy content? No. Can you explain why Einstein was wrong? No. And can you explain that Higgs paper? No.

Edd, take a tip from Feynman. Pay attention to this: "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool" You can't explain why I'm wrong and you can't explain why you're right. It must be right because it can't be wrong doesn't cut it. And nore does "crazy". What kind of argument is that? One that dismisses patent scientific evidence and plain-vanilla physics? In favour of something you don't understand and cannot explain, but lap up regardless? You know Feynman was called The Great Explainer? I look up to the guy, and try to emulate him. Now go listen to what he said about cargo-cult science, and pay attention. The ultimate irony of all this is that his QED has been corrupted into saying pair production occurs because pair production occurs, and damn the evidence, to hell with SLAC, dismiss light bends itself into an arc, photons do not couple with photons, QED. One day the penny will drop Edd. But on this day, I'm off to bed.

ETA: LOL, Perpetual Student, Emperors New Clothes it is. Abusive words like "ignorant" and "rant" and "make-believe" do not conceal it.

Last edited by Farsight; 8th November 2012 at 04:46 PM.
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Old 8th November 2012, 04:46 PM   #360
Tubbythin
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Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
It isn't "stuff". Stuff is made of it. And it was Einstein who told us that matter is made of energy.
Einstein told us that matter has an equivalent energy content.
Energy is a scalar quantity, like mass. Say you weigh 100 kg. Does that mean you are made of 100 kg? No, that is not a meaningful sentence. Nor is it a meaningful sentence to say you are made of 1m 96 cm. Your body temperature is about 37 degrees C but you are not made of 37 degrees C. And in exactly the same way, you are not made of a billion gigajoules.
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