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Tags cern , higgs boson , physics

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Old 15th November 2012, 12:07 PM   #601
smartcooky
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Originally Posted by Farsight
E = hf whilst momentum p = hf/c. Hence momentum p=E/c.
Originally Posted by W.D.Clinger View Post
So Farsight has confirmed, using his own words, that his interpretation fails at the level of eighth-grade algebra.
Proposition:

E = hf
p = hf/c


p = E/c

Looks right to me, but lets test it using simple numerical substitution:

h = 3
f = 4
c = 300

E = hf ∴ E = 3 x 4 ∴ E = 12 √

p = hf/c ∴ p = (3 x 4) / 300 ∴ p = 0.04

so

p = E/c ∴ p = 12/300 ∴ p = 0.04


Still looks right to me.
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Old 15th November 2012, 12:14 PM   #602
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Originally Posted by MattusMaximus View Post
Wow. Dude, you've forgotten (or maybe you didn't read) what I clearly outlined here...

Have you even bothered to do this calculation yet? Incidentally, the first person to do this very calculation was... you guessed it... Einstein!

As I said before, these are some pretty elementary mistakes you're making, Farsight. Unless and until you acknowledge these errors and show us some working math to back up your ideas, instead of butchering and misrepresenting Einstein's work, I'm guessing that you will continue to bat zero here.
I'm not batting zero, you are because you didn't spot that I referred to in post post 430 on page 11 and in in post 473 on page 12. Wow dude, missing that is a bit of a howler, what? Then claiming I'm making elementary mistakes and butchering and misrepresenting Einstein, without any kind of backup, just isn''t going to cut it.

Next!
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Old 15th November 2012, 12:53 PM   #603
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Originally Posted by sol invictus View Post
Experiment says that it costs 511keV to make an electron, yes. But the claim that the Higgs is responsible is anything but "unscientific".
It is when it contradicts E=mc˛. What Einstein said is the mass of a body is a measure of its energy-content. Not some measure of whether that body interacts with the Higgs field. Now go and read the paper. See the line that says If the theory corresponds to the facts, radiation conveys inertia between the emitting and absorbing bodies. In pair production the original massless photon/s conveys inertia. So the inertia of an electron at rest doesn't come from some interaction with the Higgs field. It came from the energy used to make that body. And so again, the mass of a body is a measure of its energy-content.

Originally Posted by sol invictus View Post
What do you think science is? It's coming up with theories to try to explain experiment, and then testing them.
And then when they're proved to be correct, we don't just dream up some other theory that contradicts them.

Originally Posted by sol invictus View Post
And that's precisely what the Higgs mechanism is - it's a theory to explain where that 511keV comes from
It doesn't explain where that 511keV comes from. We already know it came from the photon.

Originally Posted by sol invictus View Post
and like all good theories, it makes a bunch of other predictions too. One of them is the prediction that the Higgs particles exists, and that it has certain very specific properties and interactions. That prediction looks like it has now been confirmed.
It wasn't a specific prediction at all. Higgs did not predict that we'd find a particle with a mass of 125Gev. There was an opportunistic "prediction" that you read about here. Also don't forget that Higgs' paper was initially rejected as being unscientific, and he tacked on a vague prediction to get it past peer-review.

Originally Posted by sol invictus View Post
And the theory - correct or not - is 100% consistent with E=mc^2.
See above. And can you explain that theory? No.

Originally Posted by sol invictus View Post
Again, it's not an assumption - it's a theory, one which may or may not be correct, but which is manifestly scientific because it makes testable predictions.
OK, list 'em. And while you're thinking about it, I'll give you a theory: At the quantum level, the world is made up of fairies beating their wings. The existence of these fairies mean we can expect to discover a particle that last for no time flat and has a very large mass. Capiche? When we discover a bump on a graph, have we proved the existence of fairies?

Originally Posted by sol invictus View Post
No, I don't have it wrong. In the standard model, the electron's mass comes from the electron's Yukawa coupling to the Higgs field.
The Yukawa interaction was used to describe the residual strong force between protons and neutrons via virtual pions. And see wikipedia which says An obvious possibility is some kind of "Yukawa coupling". So it isn't a certainty, is it? It's an assumption, like in RC's link.

Originally Posted by sol invictus View Post
strong nuclear force between nucleons (which are fermions), mediated by pions (which are pseudoscalar mesons).
Yes I know that. The Yakuwa interaction describes a fermion-fermion interaction, the strength of which varies with distance. A bit different to fermion mass, isn' t it? And how convenient that fermion mass just happens to always tie in with energy-content.

Originally Posted by sol invictus View Post
Sorry, but you're wrong. Yes, in some sense the main role of the Higgs is not to account for fermion masses - it's to spontaneously break electroweak symmetry, and hence provide masses for the W and Z bosons.
We'll be having a good old look at them sometime.

Originally Posted by sol invictus View Post
And it's also true that in general, one can write down masses for fermions without a Higgs.
Good.

Originally Posted by sol invictus View Post
But, in the standard model the left-handed particles have different gauge transformations than right-handed particles. An ordinary (non-Higgs) mass for the electron requires a coupling between the left and right-handed electron - but that's not gauge invariant, and hence nonsense. Instead, you need the higgs field (which has the opposite gauge transform as the left-handed fermions) to combine them. When the higgs field is non-zero - i.e. when it's condensed - that's a mass. When it's zero, the mass is zero.
This is wrong sol. Mass is just "how much energy has no aggregate motion with respect to you". The configuration of this energy is something else. Time for tea. But meanwhile, thanks for talking physics.
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Old 15th November 2012, 01:18 PM   #604
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Originally Posted by sol invictus View Post
We see what you did there, Farsight. Yes, light waves often carry angular momentum, and individual photons always do. But waves in general are not always associated with angular momentum. Sound waves, for example, do not have intrinsic angular momentum. And you weren't only talking about light. Here's the full quote:

"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."

Saying "A wave makes things go round" makes as much sense as saying "A horse makes things go round". Admit your mistake and move on. Can you do that?
Yes no problem. I made a mistake. I was thinking of electromagnetic waves and other transverse waves such as wind waves. A longitudinal wave such as a sound wave exhibits only a back-and-forth motion. In mitigation: we aren't talking about sound waves here.

ETA:

Originally Posted by sol invictus View Post
If the Higgs field were zero, the Higgs "particle" would be a tachyon (a field with negative mass squared). That's why it condenses.
Uhhn, not tachyons and negative mass. Not when mass is a measure of system energy content. How much energy does that system have? Minus 511keV? And apologies, I've just realised that your "talking physics post" was address to Cuddles, not me. My mistake.

Last edited by Farsight; 15th November 2012 at 01:23 PM.
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Old 15th November 2012, 01:33 PM   #605
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Originally Posted by ben m View Post
Seeing Higgs tau tau would nail it down.
Update: the word out of Kyoto is that CMS has now detected (at low confidence, null result excluded at 1.5 sigma) H->tau tau decay, at a rate consistent with the Standard Model prediction.
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Old 15th November 2012, 01:45 PM   #606
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Originally Posted by W.D.Clinger View Post
This has been entertaining...in "the smartest man in the world just jumped out of the plane wearing my book pack" sort of way.
Try to talk physics, Clinger. Try to resist sniping from the sidelines.

Originally Posted by W.D.Clinger View Post
Maybe you were trying to argue that energy is the same as scalar momentum multiplied by the speed of light. If so, we can repeat the above calculation to get this:

E˛ = m˛c4 + E˛

Unless you want to argue that every cannonball has zero mass, that interpretation doesn't work either.
Nope. Cannonballs don't have zero mass. They have non-zero mass, and when they're moving relative to you, they have momentum. That's why the expression is .

Originally Posted by W.D.Clinger View Post
In Farsight's own words, written a couple of days later, with my highlighting:

And like space and time, energy and momentum are merely two aspects of the same thing called energy-momentum. You always divide by c to go from one to the other, for example for a photon energy E = hf whilst momentum p = hf/c. Hence momentum p=E/c.
It's true Clinger. Photon energy is E=hf, photon momentum is p=hf/c, and if you trap that photon in a box, the mass it adds to the system is m=hf/c˛. Then if you move that box you say .

Originally Posted by W.D.Clinger View Post
So Farsight has confirmed, using his own words, that his interpretation fails at the level of eighth-grade algebra.
No. You've merely confirmed what you said in post post 415 on page 11. You're not a physicist. And that you're somewhat lacking in the sincerity department.

Oh, and while we're on the subject, it might be an idea if you mentioned this thread. You know. The one where you said "The LaTeX server doesn't appear to be working, and I don't think it's been working for several months now. Is there any possibility of getting that fixed?". You know LaTeX, it's this kind of thing: .

Jesus H Christ. This is like cage-fighting with kids.
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Old 15th November 2012, 01:59 PM   #607
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Originally Posted by Hellbound View Post
I'm sorry, can you explain what that has to do with my comment? I didn't mention velocity, I was discussing speed.
Your comment was:

"Have to just add a voice in support of this comment. If you read Einstein's own book about his theory (aptly enough named "Relativity"), this is made clear. The basis of it lies in Lorentz invariance; that's the mathematical expression of his ideas on the constantsy of light speed. Thus, it's that invariance that leads to E=mc2. It's absolutely the issue.

What that has to do with your comment, is that Einstein changed his ideas when he moved on to general relativity. Here's what Einstein said again. I've corrected the translation of geschwindigkeit for you to make it plain:

1911: If we call the speed of light at the origin of co-ordinates cₒ, then the speed of light c at a place with the gravitation potential Φ will be given by the relation c = cₒ(1 + Φ/c˛)
1912 : On the other hand I am of the view that the principle of the constancy of the speed of light can be maintained only insofar as one restricts oneself to spatio-temporal regions of constant gravitational potential.
1913: I arrived at the result that the speed of light is not to be regarded as independent of the gravitational potential. Thus the principle of the constancy of the speed of light is incompatible with the equivalence hypothesis.
1915: the writer of these lines is of the opinion that the theory of relativity is still in need of generalization, in the sense that the principle of the constancy of the speed of light is to be abandoned.
1916: In the second place our result shows that, according to the general theory of relativity, the law of the constancy of the speed of light in vacuo, which constitutes one of the two fundamental assumptions in the special theory of relativity and to which we have already frequently referred, cannot claim any unlimited validity. A curvature of rays of light can only take place when the speed of propagation of light varies with position. Now we might think that as a consequence of this, the special theory of relativity and with it the whole theory of relativity would be laid in the dust. But in reality this is not the case. We can only conclude that the special theory of relativity cannot claim an unlimited domain of validity; its results hold only so long as we are able to disregard the influences of gravitational fields on the phenomena (e.g. of light).


Einstein started out with the constant speed of light when he did SR, but when he did GR, he scrapped it.

Originally Posted by Hellbound View Post
And just for fun, can you describe any actual, testible, functional difference between "the speed of light is measured to be constant" and "the speed of light is constant"?
Yep. Optical clocks run slower when they're lower. You can separate two optical clocks by a mere foot of vertical elevation, and you can see the bottom running slower than the other. All clocks "clock up" some kind of regular cyclic motion. Optical clocks don't use swinging pendulums or oscillating crystals. They use electromagnetic hyperfine transmissions which emit light. In essence, they use the motion of light.

Last edited by Farsight; 15th November 2012 at 02:02 PM.
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Old 15th November 2012, 02:08 PM   #608
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20% random out-of-context quotes from Einstein and/or Google
20% explicitly nonsensical physics he's making up as he goes along
20% explicitly nonsensical physics he's cribbing from his crackpot book
20% flat insults to other posters' intelligence and education
20% boo-ya, come-at-me-bro crowing about how well he thinks he's doing
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Old 15th November 2012, 02:13 PM   #609
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Originally Posted by smartcooky View Post
Proposition:

E = hf
p = hf/c


p = E/c

Looks right to me, but lets test it using simple numerical substitution:

h = 3
f = 4
c = 300

E = hf ∴ E = 3 x 4 ∴ E = 12 √

p = hf/c ∴ p = (3 x 4) / 300 ∴ p = 0.04

so

p = E/c ∴ p = 12/300 ∴ p = 0.04


Still looks right to me.
It is right, smartcooky. Clinger is just one of those guys who tries to bamboozle people and ends up shooting himself in the foot. Search google on E=hf -EHF. If you don't put the -EHF in you get all sorts of stuff you don't want.

Last edited by Farsight; 15th November 2012 at 02:20 PM. Reason: typos
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Old 15th November 2012, 02:19 PM   #610
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Oh, and ben's another one. Like he said in post 559, he's not a theorist, and he's out of his depth. So he's a naysayer instead.
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Old 15th November 2012, 03:27 PM   #611
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Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
Oh, and ben's another one. Like he said in post 559, he's not a theorist, and he's out of his depth. So he's a naysayer instead.
Farsight... you're not even a physicist, let alone a theoretical physicist.
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Old 15th November 2012, 03:30 PM   #612
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Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
Yes no problem. I made a mistake. I was thinking of electromagnetic waves and other transverse waves such as wind waves. A longitudinal wave such as a sound wave exhibits only a back-and-forth motion. In mitigation: we aren't talking about sound waves here.
So you'd like to commit to the statement that all transverse waves carry angular momentum now, rather than that all waves carry angular momentum?


Quote:
Uhhn, not tachyons and negative mass. Not when mass is a measure of system energy content. How much energy does that system have? Minus 511keV? And apologies, I've just realised that your "talking physics post" was address to Cuddles, not me. My mistake.
Field, with negative mass squared not negative mass, in a hypothetical situation that doesn't apply to reality, and you might want to go away and check on the distinction between a tachyon and a tachyonic field.
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Old 15th November 2012, 04:23 PM   #613
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Originally Posted by smartcooky View Post
Proposition:

E = hf
p = hf/c


p = E/c

Looks right to me,
You're falling for Farsight's argument by equivocation. He uses massless photons to argue that energy is the same as momentum. He then assumes energy is the same as momentum when talking about cannonballs.

Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
I'm not batting zero, you are because you didn't spot that I referred to http://www.forkosh.com/mimetex.cgi?E... c^4 + p^2 c^2 in post post 430 on page 11 and in in post 473 on page 12. Wow dude, missing that is a bit of a howler, what? Then claiming I'm making elementary mistakes and butchering and misrepresenting Einstein, without any kind of backup, just isn''t going to cut it.
That equation in the image to which Farsight linked says energy isn't the same as or proportional to momentum when we're talking about cannonballs or other massive objects.

Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
Nope. Cannonballs don't have zero mass. They have non-zero mass, and when they're moving relative to you, they have momentum. That's why the expression is http://www.forkosh.com/mimetex.cgi?E... c^4 + p^2 c^2.
So Farsight was quite wrong to say energy is the same thing as momentum, and Farsight was quite wrong when he wrote "You always divide by c to go from one to the other".

Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
You're not a physicist. And that you're somewhat lacking in the sincerity department.
Neither of us is a physicist.

Farsight, however, wrote this:

Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
My physics knowledge far exceeds that of other posters here.
If that claim was sincere, Farsight is somewhat lacking in the reality department.

Getting back to smartcooky's complaint, he missed the word "always" in the text I highlighted, and he also missed the fact that Farsight began the paragraph containing the text I highlighted by talking about cannonballs. I'll quote the first part of that paragraph this time, again with my highlighting:

Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
Now, Einstein's "special relativity" paper is On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, so it's important to look at moving bodies such as our cannonball in space. You exert a constant force to bring it to a halt. Then you say it pushed me quite a distance before I stopped it, and for quite a time too. When you use the force x distance measure you are talking about energy, and when you use the force x time measure you are talking about momentum. And like space and time, energy and momentum are merely two aspects of the same thing called energy-momentum. You always divide by c to go from one to the other,
The cannonball's mass is not zero, so Farsight can't just drop the first term of the energy equation when he says you "always divide by c to go from one to the other."

As I noted, Farsight's argument fails at the level of junior high school algebra.

Last edited by W.D.Clinger; 15th November 2012 at 04:25 PM. Reason: consistent third person
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Old 15th November 2012, 05:33 PM   #614
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Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
I'm not batting zero, you are because you didn't spot that I referred to http://www.forkosh.com/mimetex.cgi?E... c^4 + p^2 c^2 in post post 430 on page 11 and in in post 473 on page 12.
Referring to that equation in a previous post doesn't change the fact that it contradicts what you said in a later post
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Old 15th November 2012, 05:44 PM   #615
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Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
OK. But note that the kinetic energy came from the book's potential energy, not from the gravitational field.
What is "the book's potential energy" if not it's interaction with the gravitational field? If the field were not present, there'd be no potential energy, and the potential energy is dependent upon the book's position in the field

Quote:
Robo, it doesn't gain any energy from the gravitational field. The falling book doesn't.
It gains kinetic energy from it's interaction with the field, of course, energy is conserved so the total energy remains the same, but so what? The book isn't moving, as it falls it accelerates, and it's kinetic energy increases What causes that acceleration? The interaction with the gravitational field

Quote:
Nor does a "falling" photon. When a photon is high up, you measure its frequency using a clock. When its low down, you measure its frequency with a clock, but that clock is subject to greater gravitational time dilation, so you measure a higher frequency.
Position a detector 100 meters above your photon emiter, and you'll find that it's frequency is lower at the detector than when emitted, move the detector up another 100 meters and you'll find the frequency lower still What causes the frequency to change? Gravity

Quote:
The book on the shelf comprises more energy than the one on the floor, because you did work on it lifting it up to the shelf. That work equates to extra energy, that is now in the book. So it weighs more. Not so much that you could actually measure it, but conservation of energy tells you its true.
Yep

Quote:
KE=˝mv˛ no problem, but we could replace that book with a photon in a box.
Why? You said the book has more kinetic energy on the shelf than on the floor Can you support that in the case of a book, or not?
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Old 15th November 2012, 06:03 PM   #616
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Originally Posted by W.D.Clinger View Post
You're falling for Farsight's argument by equivocation.
No, I'm just arguing that the formulae were mathematically valid as stated.

If E = hf and p = hf/c are valid, then p = E/c follows, unequivocally!

if A = xy and B = xy/n then B = A/n

These are in agreement. I would be interested to see any argument that state they aren't.

I literally cannot comment on the physics being argued. You are all miles over my head!!
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Old 15th November 2012, 06:18 PM   #617
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Originally Posted by smartcooky View Post
No, I'm just arguing that the formulae were mathematically valid as stated.

If E = hf and p = hf/c are valid, then p = E/c follows, unequivocally!
Those formulas describe the energy and momentum of photons. They do not describe the relationship between energy and momentum for cannonballs.

Originally Posted by smartcooky View Post
These are in agreement. I would be interested to see any argument that state they aren't.

Here you go:

Originally Posted by W.D.Clinger View Post
Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
Originally Posted by W.D.Clinger View Post
ETA: Come to think of it, scalar quantities are seldom the same as vector quantities.
The quantities aren't, but they're just different aspects of energy-momentum, see wikipedia.
That Wikipedia article supports my point to the detriment of yours.

It takes momentum as a scalar quantity (the magnitude of vector momentum), but it doesn't say energy and momentum are exactly the same thing. In fact, the article includes several equations from which it is trivial to prove that energy and momentum aren't exactly the same thing. Here's the first of those equations:
E2 = m2c4 + p2c2
If the energy E were exactly the same thing as the scalar momentum p, then we could substitute one for the other in that equation:
E2 = m2c4 + E2c2
from which it would follow that the energy E is always the square root of m2c4/(1-c2), which would mean the cannonball's energy depends only upon its mass. Unless you want to argue that the cannonball's energy is independent of its velocity, its energy can't be exactly the same as its scalar momentum.

Maybe you were trying to argue that energy is the same as scalar momentum multiplied by the speed of light. If so, we can repeat the above calculation to get this:
E2 = m2c4 + E2
Unless you want to argue that every cannonball has zero mass, that interpretation doesn't work either.

When citing Wikipedia articles that refute your argument is the best you can do, your argument is laughable.

As everyone who knows anything about physics has been trying to tell you: Energy and momentum are related, but they aren't the same thing.
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Old 15th November 2012, 08:28 PM   #618
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Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
It is when it contradicts E=mc˛. What Einstein said is the mass of a body is a measure of its energy-content. Not some measure of whether that body interacts with the Higgs field.
You know what, Farsight? After reading pages and pages of this thread, I have no idea what you think it is about the Higgs mechanism that contradicts E-mc^2. Literally no idea. And I'm pretty sure the same goes for everyone else here.

Quote:
It wasn't a specific prediction at all.
It's very specific. Among many others, one prediction is that the Higgs couples to fermions with a strength that's exactly proportional to their mass. That's quite easy to falsify - if it's wrong.

Quote:
The Yakuwa interaction describes a fermion-fermion interaction, the strength of which varies with distance.
Not really, no.

Quote:
A bit different to fermion mass, isn' t it?
Nope.
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Old 15th November 2012, 08:32 PM   #619
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Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
Yes no problem. I made a mistake. I was thinking of electromagnetic waves and other transverse waves such as wind waves. A longitudinal wave such as a sound wave exhibits only a back-and-forth motion. In mitigation: we aren't talking about sound waves here.
Oh really? Light waves always carry angular momentum, do they?

Quote:
Uhhn, not tachyons and negative mass.
The mass is imaginary, not negative.

Quote:
Not when mass is a measure of system energy content. How much energy does that system have? Minus 511keV?
Not negative, imaginary. The mass SQUARED is negative. Of course, you haven't a clue how to interpret that or what it could possibly mean. Which is a shame, because it's actually quite interesting.

It's fun to actually understand things, Farsight. That's what makes physics so fascinating - it's rarely what you expect. It's a shame you'll never get to experience that feeling.
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Old 15th November 2012, 08:53 PM   #620
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Originally Posted by sol invictus View Post
You know what, Farsight? After reading pages and pages of this thread, I have no idea what you think it is about the Higgs mechanism that contradicts E-mc^2. Literally no idea. And I'm pretty sure the same goes for everyone else here.
I do. Farsight thinks E=mc^2 means all matter is "made of energy". When he sees "made of energy" he substitutes "made of photons", presumably thanks to various vague pop-science statements (like "matter and matter annihilate into pure energy") that he interprets to mean this. Therefore, he thinks that he's derived "mass comes from internal photons" from Pure Logical Rigor applied to E=mc^2. And, if E=mc^2 tells you what mass *is*, then the Higgs mechanism (which hypothesizes that it's not *that*) must not be Logical and/or Rigorous.

Hence the claim that there is a contradiction, without the ability to point it out. "There must be a mistake in there somewhere", Farsight thinks, "because if there were no mistakes, they would have concluded that mass is all trapped photons."

It's the first standard crackpot pathology identified by Wilfrid Hodges in one of my favorite papers: Bulletin of Symbolic Logic Volume 4, Number 1, March 1998, AN EDITOR RECALLS SOME HOPELESS PAPERS

Quote:
§4. It was surprising how many of our authors failed to realise that to attack an argument, you must find something wrong in it. Several authors believed that you can avoid a proof by simply doing something else. ... The existence of a different argument that fails to reach Cantor’s conclusion tells us nothing about Cantor’s argument.
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Old 16th November 2012, 12:31 AM   #621
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Originally Posted by edd View Post
Field, with negative mass squared not negative mass, in a hypothetical situation that doesn't apply to reality, and you might want to go away and check on the distinction between a tachyon and a tachyonic field.
Actually I was obviously wrong and sol clearly referred to a tachyon particle.
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Old 16th November 2012, 01:48 AM   #622
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Originally Posted by W.D.Clinger View Post
Those formulas describe the energy and momentum of photons. They do not describe the relationship between energy and momentum for cannonballs
Actually I don't really give a fat rats backside what they do or do not describe, but what they ARE, is correct, as pure mathematical formulae.

"If E = hf and p = hf/c are valid, then p = E/c follows".

This is an indisputable mathematical fact, quite aside from the physics. If you write down the algebraical relationships of the first two formulae, then the third formulae given is valid.

A = BC
x = BC/n

therefore

x = A/n

Show me a mathematical proof that disproves this!

Clue: you must not mention the words "photon", "particle", "momentum" "scalar", "mass" or "cannonball" in your proof!

Now Farside may well be incorrect in his application of these formulae to the physics under discussion. I can't speak to that, because as I said earlier, the physics is a long way over my head, but your criticism that "his interpretation fails at the level of eighth-grade algebra" was unwarranted. There was nothing wrong with his algebra; the mathematics is correct!
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Old 16th November 2012, 03:00 AM   #623
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Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
Try to talk physics, Clinger. Try to resist sniping from the sidelines.

Nope. Cannonballs don't have zero mass. They have non-zero mass, and when they're moving relative to you, they have momentum. That's why the expression is http://www.forkosh.com/mimetex.cgi?E... c^4 + p^2 c^2.

It's true Clinger. Photon energy is E=hf, photon momentum is p=hf/c, and if you trap that photon in a box, the mass it adds to the system is m=hf/c˛. Then if you move that box you say http://www.forkosh.com/mimetex.cgi?E... c^4 + p^2 c^2.

No. You've merely confirmed what you said in post post 415 on page 11. You're not a physicist. And that you're somewhat lacking in the sincerity department.

Oh, and while we're on the subject, it might be an idea if you mentioned this thread. You know. The one where you said "The LaTeX server doesn't appear to be working, and I don't think it's been working for several months now. Is there any possibility of getting that fixed?". You know LaTeX, it's this kind of thing: http://www.forkosh.com/mimetex.cgi?E... c^4 + p^2 c^2.

Jesus H Christ. This is like cage-fighting with kids.
Did Einstein throw in personal insults too?
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Old 16th November 2012, 03:27 AM   #624
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Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
I'm not batting zero, you are because you didn't spot that I referred to http://www.forkosh.com/mimetex.cgi?E... c^4 + p^2 c^2 in post post 430 on page 11 and in in post 473 on page 12. Wow dude, missing that is a bit of a howler, what? Then claiming I'm making elementary mistakes and butchering and misrepresenting Einstein, without any kind of backup, just isn''t going to cut it.
It was a howler on your part to use the correct equation at one time and use a completely incorrect equation at a different time. It is even more unbecoming that you are now trying to claim otherwise in spite of the fact that the evidence is plain as day for anybody to see. Everybody makes mistakes Farsight. Most of us are man (or woman) enough to admit to them. Pretending your mistakes were somebody else's is not going to do anything but undermine your claims and make you look like a bit of a clown.
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Old 16th November 2012, 04:41 AM   #625
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Originally Posted by ben m View Post
I do. Farsight thinks E=mc^2 means all matter is "made of energy". When he sees "made of energy" he substitutes "made of photons", presumably thanks to various vague pop-science statements (like "matter and matter annihilate into pure energy") that he interprets to mean this. Therefore, he thinks that he's derived "mass comes from internal photons" from Pure Logical Rigor applied to E=mc^2. And, if E=mc^2 tells you what mass *is*, then the Higgs mechanism (which hypothesizes that it's not *that*) must not be Logical and/or Rigorous.

Hence the claim that there is a contradiction, without the ability to point it out. "There must be a mistake in there somewhere", Farsight thinks, "because if there were no mistakes, they would have concluded that mass is all trapped photons."
OK. But even if in Farsight's head electrons are little boxes of bouncing photons, maybe the the Higgs condensate interacts with the electron boxes in such a way that they contain more photons, or more energetic photons, or change size or something.

So even in a "model" like that I don't get the "contradiction" with E=mc^2. But probably logic is not the correct tool to apply here.
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Old 16th November 2012, 04:49 AM   #626
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Originally Posted by edd View Post
Actually I was obviously wrong and sol clearly referred to a tachyon particle.
There's kind of a semantic confusion there. Physicists usually mean a field with negative mass squared when they say tachyon. Such fields really don't have "particles" in the conventional sense of localized excitations - the whole field is unstable everywhere, so if you try to produce a particle (or make any other perturbation) the whole field collapses and condenses to some non-tachyonic phase. Because they're Lorentz invariant, nothing ever propagates faster than light even in the unstable phase. If you want to you can interpret the condensation of the field as spontaneous pair-production of tachyon particles, but because it happens everywhere exponentially quickly you can't separate one particle from the next.

Then there are tachyonic particles in the sense of superluminal neutrinos - real, localized particles that move faster than light. If they exist they aren't described by imaginary mass fields. Fortunately, they don't exist.
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Old 16th November 2012, 05:31 AM   #627
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A digression on what constitutes correct mathematics...

Originally Posted by smartcooky View Post
Actually I don't really give a fat rats backside what they do or do not describe, but what they ARE, is correct, as pure mathematical formulae.

"If E = hf and p = hf/c are valid, then p = E/c follows".

This is an indisputable mathematical fact, quite aside from the physics. If you write down the algebraical relationships of the first two formulae, then the third formulae given is valid.
Of course.

Originally Posted by smartcooky View Post
Now Farside may well be incorrect in his application of these formulae to the physics under discussion. I can't speak to that, because as I said earlier, the physics is a long way over my head, but your criticism that "his interpretation fails at the level of eighth-grade algebra" was unwarranted. There was nothing wrong with his algebra; the mathematics is correct!
No.

Mathematics is more than algebraic formulas. Mathematics (even algebra!) also involves logic, quantifiers, proof structure, and context (which is part of a proof's structure).

Farsight's algebra was correct when he used the formulas for photons to conclude that energy is proportional to momentum.

Farsight's mathematics was incorrect when he used a universal quantifier ("always") in the context of cannonballs to say energy is proportional to momentum. ("You always divide by c to go from one to the other".) He then bamboozled you by performing algebraic manipulations on formulas that are correct for photons but incorrect for cannonballs. Correct algebraic manipulation of invalid formulas does not add up to correct mathematics.

It's as though Farsight were saying you always multiply the length of an edge by three to get the circumference of a regular polygon, and then tried to support his contention by performing correct algebraic manipulations on the formulas that apply to equilateral triangles. That wouldn't be correct mathematics either.

Farsight's argument fails at the level of junior-high-school algebra because correct algebraic manipulations of the correct formulas disproves his argument. I have posted that disproof at least twice.

You could also say Farsight's argument fails at the level of first-order logic. As many others have noted, Farsight's argument is based upon a bait and switch: He uses the equations for photons to do his algebra, and then pretends his result holds more generally. Introducing a universal quantifier without justification is another form of incorrect mathematics.

So Farsight's math is incorrect. That doesn't mean all of his math is incorrect, and you did indeed point out one algebraic manipulation that Farsight did correctly, provided you ignore the cannonball context of the paragraph in which he performed that manipulation, the invalidity of his formulas for cannonballs, and his invalid generalization of his conclusion to include cannonballs. When we say Farsight's math is incorrect, we're just saying Farsight's math is so riddled with errors that his argument is laughable on mathematical grounds alone, before we even get to the more esoteric physics.
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Old 16th November 2012, 05:46 AM   #628
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Originally Posted by sol invictus View Post
There's kind of a semantic confusion there. Physicists usually mean a field with negative mass squared when they say tachyon. Such fields really don't have "particles" in the conventional sense of localized excitations - the whole field is unstable everywhere, so if you try to produce a particle (or make any other perturbation) the whole field collapses and condenses to some non-tachyonic phase. Because they're Lorentz invariant, nothing ever propagates faster than light even in the unstable phase. If you want to you can interpret the condensation of the field as spontaneous pair-production of tachyon particles, but because it happens everywhere exponentially quickly you can't separate one particle from the next.

Then there are tachyonic particles in the sense of superluminal neutrinos - real, localized particles that move faster than light. If they exist they aren't described by imaginary mass fields. Fortunately, they don't exist.
Yep, the former is what I thought you meant initially, then I thought that you meant the latter (even though it's properly weird), so maybe my first reading of you was right

Anyway, cleared up the entire question I was having with a colleague over coffee this morning.
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Old 16th November 2012, 08:12 AM   #629
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Originally Posted by smartcooky View Post
Actually I don't really give a fat rats backside what they do or do not describe, but what they ARE, is correct, as pure mathematical formulae.

"If E = hf and p = hf/c are valid, then p = E/c follows".

This is an indisputable mathematical fact, quite aside from the physics. If you write down the algebraical relationships of the first two formulae, then the third formulae given is valid.

A = BC
x = BC/n

therefore

x = A/n

Show me a mathematical proof that disproves this!

Clue: you must not mention the words "photon", "particle", "momentum" "scalar", "mass" or "cannonball" in your proof!

Now Farside may well be incorrect in his application of these formulae to the physics under discussion. I can't speak to that, because as I said earlier, the physics is a long way over my head, but your criticism that "his interpretation fails at the level of eighth-grade algebra" was unwarranted. There was nothing wrong with his algebra; the mathematics is correct!
Are you being intentionally dense? No one is disputing that p = E/c for a photon (or any other massless particle). However, it does not follow that energy and mass are the same thing -- that is the point being discussed here.
Analogy: F = ma. It doesn't follow that force is mass. Just like the factor of acceleration is essential in that equation, the factor of 1/c is essential in the former. And, p is a vector and E is not, just like F is a vector and m is not.
Also note that the relationship p = E/c applies for massless particles only. For massive particles, the relationship is E = p2/2m.
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Old 16th November 2012, 08:38 AM   #630
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Originally Posted by Perpetual Student View Post
For massive particles, the relationship is E = p2/2m.
That's just the non-relativistic equation for a massive particles' kinetic energy.
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Old 16th November 2012, 09:25 AM   #631
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Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
I didn't make any mistake, I referred to the expression in post 430 on page 11. I also referred to it in post 473 on page 12 where I said this: Take a look at energy-momentum relation on wikipedia. See where it says the equation simplifies to E=mc˛ for a body in its rest frame. Then a bit lower down it says if the object is massless then the energy momentum relation reduces to E=pc as is the case for a photon.
As Tubbythin already pointed out, you did make an error when discussing the mass of an electron in this post.

Then Tubbythin corrected you here.

Then I clarified here.

And this has been backed up on this thread by the other physicists (some of whom are actual researchers; alas I am merely a physics professor). Yet you continue to ignore your basic errors.

Folks, I have a suggestion. It is apparent to me that Farsight isn't actually interested in learning anything; he's just here to spout his nonsense theory. I suggest that we basically ignore him and his rants and get the thread back to the actual topic at hand: the latest research on the Higgs.
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Old 16th November 2012, 09:26 AM   #632
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Originally Posted by Tubbythin View Post
That's just the non-relativistic equation for a massive particles' kinetic energy.
Yes, this discussion is about relativistic particles, so E2 = m2c4 + p2c2 would have been appropriate, sorry. Relativistic or not, momentum is not the same thing as energy, as everyone here (except Farside) and any high school student understands.
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Old 16th November 2012, 09:29 AM   #633
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Originally Posted by ben m View Post
20% random out-of-context quotes from Einstein and/or Google
20% explicitly nonsensical physics he's making up as he goes along
20% explicitly nonsensical physics he's cribbing from his crackpot book
20% flat insults to other posters' intelligence and education
20% boo-ya, come-at-me-bro crowing about how well he thinks he's doing
Indeed, this is what rankles at getting moderator warnings about saying the facts about Farsight. There is a mistake that many make that attacking an arguer is not germaine to attacking an argument. In this case, there really is no argument, there is merely a pattern of obstinate (and worrying) behaviour. Heck, Farsight has even made an appeal to authority in this thread with himself as the authority.

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Old 16th November 2012, 09:37 AM   #634
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Originally Posted by ben m View Post
I do. Farsight thinks E=mc^2 means all matter is "made of energy". When he sees "made of energy" he substitutes "made of photons", presumably thanks to various vague pop-science statements (like "matter and matter annihilate into pure energy") that he interprets to mean this. Therefore, he thinks that he's derived "mass comes from internal photons" from Pure Logical Rigor applied to E=mc^2. And, if E=mc^2 tells you what mass *is*, then the Higgs mechanism (which hypothesizes that it's not *that*) must not be Logical and/or Rigorous.

Hence the claim that there is a contradiction, without the ability to point it out. "There must be a mistake in there somewhere", Farsight thinks, "because if there were no mistakes, they would have concluded that mass is all trapped photons."

It's the first standard crackpot pathology identified by Wilfrid Hodges in one of my favorite papers: Bulletin of Symbolic Logic Volume 4, Number 1, March 1998, AN EDITOR RECALLS SOME HOPELESS PAPERS
Good summary!
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Old 16th November 2012, 10:17 AM   #635
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Originally Posted by Perpetual Student View Post
Yes, this discussion is about relativistic particles, so E2 = m2c4 + p2c2 would have been appropriate, sorry. Relativistic or not, momentum is not the same thing as energy, as everyone here (except Farside) and any high school student understands.
Nicely illustrating my point that most people who have made an obvious mistake with a formula will just admit to it .
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Old 16th November 2012, 10:57 AM   #636
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Originally Posted by ben m View Post
20% random out-of-context quotes from Einstein and/or Google
20% explicitly nonsensical physics he's making up as he goes along
20% explicitly nonsensical physics he's cribbing from his crackpot book
20% flat insults to other posters' intelligence and education
20% boo-ya, come-at-me-bro crowing about how well he thinks he's doing
Originally Posted by Kwalish Kid View Post
Indeed, this is what rankles at getting moderator warnings about saying the facts about Farsight. There is a mistake that many make that attacking an arguer is not germaine to attacking an argument. In this case, there really is no argument, there is merely a pattern of obstinate (and worrying) behaviour. Heck, Farsight has even made an appeal to authority in this thread with himself as the authority.
In other words (with apologies to SpongeBob Squarepants):

Farsight:

99% Far
1% Sight

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Old 16th November 2012, 11:01 AM   #637
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Someone here pointed out how nice it is to see the occasional short paper come along. Reminds me of the joke about the student who got 99/100 on a test. (He said that he showed up for one of the lectures.)

Anyway, to segue to my question, has anyone asked about a Higg's wave?
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Old 16th November 2012, 12:59 PM   #638
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Originally Posted by Perpetual Student View Post
Are you being intentionally dense?
I already said that the physics was way over my head. There is no need for you be insulting and be rubbing my nose in it.

Quote:
No one is disputing that p = E/c for a photon (or any other massless particle). However, it does not follow that energy and mass are the same thing -- that is the point being discussed here.
Analogy: F = ma. It doesn't follow that force is mass. Just like the factor of acceleration is essential in that equation, the factor of 1/c is essential in the former. And, p is a vector and E is not, just like F is a vector and m is not.
Also note that the relationship p = E/c applies for massless particles only. For massive particles, the relationship is E = p2/2m.
Once again, for the fourth time, and for the removal of doubt, I was NOT questioning the physics; I'm not even in a position to question the physics. I was questioning Clinger's assertion that Farside's algebraic transposition was incorrect and a fail at eighth grade level. It was not, and Clinger has now acknowledged that in post 627.

From what little I understand of this, Farside is almost certainly wrong in just about everything he is saying here, but there is no need for his opponents to to stoop to stating falsehoods into order win the argument, when truth and scientific accuracy does a much better job.

Just sayin'
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Old 16th November 2012, 01:29 PM   #639
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Originally Posted by smartcooky View Post
I already said that the physics was way over my head. There is no need for you be insulting and be rubbing my nose in it.
Noted and sorry.

Quote:
Once again, for the fourth time, and for the removal of doubt, I was NOT questioning the physics; I'm not even in a position to question the physics. I was questioning Clinger's assertion that Farside's algebraic transposition was incorrect and a fail at eighth grade level. It was not, and Clinger has now acknowledged that in post 627.

From what little I understand of this, Farside is almost certainly wrong in just about everything he is saying here, but there is no need for his opponents to to stoop to stating falsehoods into order win the argument, when truth and scientific accuracy does a much better job.

Just sayin'
Not quite. Clinger said:
Quote:
Mathematics is more than algebraic formulas. Mathematics (even algebra!) also involves logic, quantifiers, proof structure, and context (which is part of a proof's structure).

Farsight's algebra was correct when he used the formulas for photons to conclude that energy is proportional to momentum.

Farsight's mathematics was incorrect when he used a universal quantifier ("always") in the context of cannonballs to say energy is proportional to momentum. ("You always divide by c to go from one to the other".) He then bamboozled you by performing algebraic manipulations on formulas that are correct for photons but incorrect for cannonballs. Correct algebraic manipulation of invalid formulas does not add up to correct mathematics.
The context is the key here. Clinger said, "...mathematics was incorrect when he used a universal quantifier ("always") in the context of cannonballs..."
The point is that misapplying a mathematical expression is just as wrong as using a wrong expression.
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Old 16th November 2012, 01:50 PM   #640
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Quote:
Once again, for the fourth time, and for the removal of doubt, I was NOT questioning the physics; I'm not even in a position to question the physics.
By the way, I am a mere layman in this area too. Nevertheless, it does defy logic and even common sense that some lay person like Farside could believe that a foundational area of physics like quantum field theory is totally off base, only he is able to interpret Einstein and that thousands of physicists throughout the world have been so misguided all these years. He quotes Einstein like a mystic quotes sacred scripture in some ancient tongue with fractured comprehension.
I have no doubt that if Einstein were alive today, he would be deeply immersed in the research of the Higgs field and all its implications.
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