IS Forum
Forum Index Register Members List Events Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read Help

Go Back   International Skeptics Forum » General Topics » Science, Mathematics, Medicine, and Technology
 


Welcome to the International Skeptics Forum, where we discuss skepticism, critical thinking, the paranormal and science in a friendly but lively way. You are currently viewing the forum as a guest, which means you are missing out on discussing matters that are of interest to you. Please consider registering so you can gain full use of the forum features and interact with other Members. Registration is simple, fast and free! Click here to register today.
Tags cern , higgs boson , physics

Reply
Old 8th March 2013, 01:51 PM   #1001
lpetrich
Muse
 
Join Date: Feb 2007
Posts: 762
Originally Posted by Mister Earl View Post
Hrm. But what is the point of reference? I don't think there's any sort of obvious topology involved, of course. Spin a baseball, and you can tell by the laces. Spin a particle and... ?
Its wavefunction changes. Remember wave-particle duality.

For a 360d rotation, a boson's wavefunction gets its original value, while a fermion's one gets minus its original value. For a 720d rotation, all particles get their original wavefunction values again.

Let's see what happens in a rotation. Make its axis the z-axis, and its angle a:

x' = x*cos(a) - y*sin(a)
y' = x*sin(a) + y*cos(a)
z' = z

Let's make linear combinations of x and y.

(x' + i*y') = (x + i*y)*exp(i*a)
(x' - i*y') = (x - i*y)*exp(-i*a)
z' = z

For a spin-0 particle, its wavefunction is F(x). Rotating it with rotation matrix R gives F(R.x). R for the example above is
{{cos(a),-sin(a),0},{sin(a),cos(a),0},{0,0,1}}

The electromagnetic fields E and B rotate as R.E(R.x) and R.B(R.x), and it's easy to see that z-axis R does:
(Ex' + i*Ey') = (Ex + i*Ey)*exp(i*a)
(Ex' - i*Ey') = (Ex - i*Ey)*exp(-i*a)
Ez' = Ez
and likewise for B. Note the mixing of field components. That's why the photon has spin 1.

The gravitational field h rotates in a more complicated way: h'(i,j) = R(i,i')R(j,j')h(i',j') for indices i,j,i',j' -- h is a symmetric 2-tensor.
(hxx' + hyy') = (hxx + hyy)
(hxx' + 2i*hxy' - hyy') = (hxx + 2i*hxy - hyy)*exp(2i*a)
(hxx' - 2i*hxy' - hyy') = (hxx - 2i*hxy - hyy)*exp(-2i*a)
(hxz' + i*hyz) = (hxz + i*hyz)*exp(i*a)
(hxz' - i*hyz') = (hxz - i*hyz)*exp(-i*a)
hzz' = hzz
More mixing, and twice as much rotation of some components. That's why the graviton has spin 2.


Half-odd spin is more difficult. Let's only do spin 1/2. One has to do the quaternion version of the rotation matrices on their wavefunctions: X(x) becomes Q.X(R.X). Quaternions are related to ordinary rotation matrices by R ~ Q.Q, more-or-less a square. So Q and -Q will give the same R.

For the rotation here, we get
X1' = X1*exp(i*a/2)
X2' = X2*exp(-i*a/2)
for components {X1,X2} of X.

Rotating 360d will turn X1 and X2 into -X1 and -X2, and rotating 720d will get X1 and X2 back.
lpetrich is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 8th March 2013, 02:40 PM   #1002
Mister Earl
Illuminator
 
Mister Earl's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2007
Posts: 3,504
Thanks lpetrich! Quite a bit above my level, I fear, but I'm getting the gist of it. What I'm not getting now, I'll read through in wiki.

I appreciate it!
Mister Earl is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 9th March 2013, 11:01 AM   #1003
W.D.Clinger
Philosopher
 
W.D.Clinger's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2009
Posts: 5,758
Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
Groan. Clinger, you still don't understand electromagnetism.
How odd, then, that you haven't been able to identify any specific errors in what I've said about electromagnetism, while it's very easy to identify specific errors in what you've said about electromagnetism.

For example:

Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
Now stop all this huffing and puffing and crackpot naysaying, pay attention, and watch my lips: the field concerned is the electromagnetic field. Electromagnetic field interactions result in linear and/or rotational motion. When only linear motion is observed people speak of an electric field, when only rotational motion is observed people speak of a magnetic field,
Your highlighted assertions are incorrect.

Coulomb's law has essentially the same form as Newton's law of gravitation, so a negatively charged particle can be in circular orbit around a positively charged body just as planets can have circular orbits around stars. That's circular motion caused by a purely electric field.

Ampère's force law (for the simple case of two parallel conductors) describes a Lorentz force that, left unopposed, results in linear motion caused by a purely magnetic field. This example of magnetic fields causing linear motion is the basis for our current definition of the ampere.

Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
Sheesh, somebody please save us from mathematicians who know ****-all physics trying to pretend that they do, and just getting in the way. Will nobody step up to the plate and say actually Farsight is right about this?
The physicists here would be a lot more likely to say Farsight is right about this if Farsight were right about this.

Last edited by W.D.Clinger; 9th March 2013 at 11:21 AM. Reason: corrected link, added parenthetical in gray
W.D.Clinger is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 9th March 2013, 06:37 PM   #1004
lpetrich
Muse
 
Join Date: Feb 2007
Posts: 762
Taking a break from Farsight's science-done-like-theology, I wish to note the numbers that the ATLAS and CMS teams have gotten for the Higgs particle.

Mass:
ATLAS 2-photon: 126.8 +0.34-0.30 GeV
ATLAS 4-lepton: 124.3 +0.8-0.6 GeV
CMS 4-lepton: 125.8 +-0.5 GeV
ATLAS's double vision is decreasing, and the combined result is 125.6 +- 0.6 GeV

Rates:
2-photon: ATLAS 1.65 +0.56-0.42, CMS 1.56 +-0.43
4-lepton: ATLAS 1.7 +0.5-0.4, CMS 0.91 +0.30-0.24
WW: ATLAS 1.5+-0.6, CMS 0.72+-0.21
2-tau: ATLAS 0.9+--0.4
2-b-quark: -0.4 +-0.7 +-0.8

Source: Latest news on the Higgs boson - Quantum Diaries


The 2-photon decay is not a lowest-order or tree-level decay, but a next-order or one-loop decay: the Higgs particle makes a virtual charged particle-antiparticle pair, and these two then annihilate, making two photons. The largest contribution comes from the W particle, with the top quark next at about -1/4 of the W's contribution.

Though its rate has been higher than the Standard Model's prediction, that excess is a little over 1 standard deviation, and is likely some statistical artifact. An effect that would make it greater would be some additional charged particles that the Higgs can make, though their effect would be insignificant unless their mass was not much greater than the Higgs-particle mass.

The 4-lepton decay is a result of decay into two Z particles. Because of the Higgs particle's mass, one of them is virtual. Likewise, in the WW decay, one of the W's is virtual.

One must not forget how the Higgs particles are created. From the Standard Model, the strongest process in the LHC turns out to be "gluon fusion", like the Higgs-particle 2-photon decay, but in reverse, and with gluons instead of photons. The top quark makes the largest contribution here. The gluons make a virtual top-antitop pair, and they then annihilate to make a Higgs particle.

The gluons were originally gluons that had bound the protons -- the LHC and other big hadron accelerators can be interpreted as light-quark and gluon accelerators.

So what these rate tests are testing is the Higgs-top interaction multiplied by the Higgs-W, the Higgs-Z, the Higgs-tau, and the Higgs-bottom interactions. So far, these combinations agree with the Standard Model, though the error bars are not much smaller than the results themselves for the W, Z, and tau, and the error bar is bigger than the result for the b.

Sources: Higgs bosonWP, Higgs physics at the LHC
lpetrich is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 9th March 2013, 09:12 PM   #1005
lpetrich
Muse
 
Join Date: Feb 2007
Posts: 762
"Farsight physics", as it may be called, has further problems, like treating analogies for nontechnical readers as somehow truer than the mathematical statements of theories.

There's also a certain lack of predictive value, like lack of prediction of rates of pair production and annihilation. Mainstream physics can, however, make those predictions, and it does so with theories contrary to "Farsight physics".

To see how these predictions work, let's consider a Feynman vertex for an electron, positron, and photon coming out of a point. It describes all these processes:
e+ in e- in ph in
e+ in e- in ph out
e+ in e+ out ph in
e+ in e+ out ph out
e- out e- in ph in
e- out e- in ph out
e- out e+ out ph in
e- out e+ out ph out
since
creation of e- ~ destruction of e+
creation of e+ ~ destruction of e-
the photon is its own antiparticle

Thus, electron-photon scattering, positron-photon scattering, electron-positron pair production from photons, and electron-positron annihilation into photons are all related effects, and one can successfully predict their rates using their interrelationships.

Electrons do not have to be circling photons, and there's no evidence that they are, and plenty of evidence that they aren't, like their electric charge and their having spin 1/2 instead of some integer value.

Returning to the Higgs particle, this is how one can calculate part of its rate of production at the LHC, and also part of its rate of 2-photon decay, all from the mass of the top quark. Complete with success to within experimental limits.
lpetrich is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 10th March 2013, 12:59 AM   #1006
Perpetual Student
Illuminator
 
Perpetual Student's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2008
Posts: 4,852
Quote:
Originally Posted by Farsight
Now stop all this huffing and puffing and crackpot naysaying, pay attention, and watch my lips: the field concerned is the electromagnetic field. Electromagnetic field interactions result in linear and/or rotational motion. When only linear motion is observed people speak of an electric field, when only rotational motion is observed people speak of a magnetic field,
Originally Posted by W.D.Clinger View Post
Your highlighted assertions are incorrect.

Coulomb's law has essentially the same form as Newton's law of gravitation, so a negatively charged particle can be in circular orbit around a positively charged body just as planets can have circular orbits around stars. That's circular motion caused by a purely electric field.

Ampère's force law (for the simple case of two parallel conductors) describes a Lorentz force that, left unopposed, results in linear motion caused by a purely magnetic field. This example of magnetic fields causing linear motion is the basis for our current definition of the ampere.
Farsight's comments above reveal a lack of experience with electromagnetism and a childlike understanding of the consequences of the mathematics.
The above exchange also brings us a classic example of the nature of crackpot physics.
The crackpot has touchy-feely notions (usually incomplete and often dead wrong) while the science itself can only be completely described mathematically and understood only by those who have made the necessary effort.
__________________
It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong.
- Richard P. Feynman

ξ
Perpetual Student is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 10th March 2013, 06:33 AM   #1007
Kwalish Kid
Muse
 
Join Date: Feb 2010
Posts: 509
Originally Posted by Farsight View Post

LOL, as if you understand it. Talk about Emperor's New Clothes. Oh and scroll up. See that word skepticism? You might try exercising some about the way the Higgs mechanism contradicts E=mc². Mass is a measure of energy-content, not something else.

Gotta go. You know guys, I've missed our little chats.
I don't know that I would call them, "chats". In a chat, two or more people exchange information and ask and answer questions. You seem to have never, or at best very rarely, answered a question.

You still have not answered very basic questions about your position, such as how waving your hands around constitutes a proof that motion exists.
Kwalish Kid is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 10th March 2013, 07:34 AM   #1008
Farsight
Banned
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Posts: 2,640
Originally Posted by HighRiser View Post
Does this ever happen? That someone who knows physics comes along and says that? Ever?
Yes.

Originally Posted by HighRiser View Post
What does anything you have posted in this thread have to do with disproving the Higgs in any reasonable manner?
I've told you what physicists have said: that the Higgs mechanism is a "crutch", and "the toilet of the standard model", that it's said to be responsible for only 1% of the mass of matter and so doesn't solve "the mystery of mass". And that the cosmic treacle is nonsense, which Susskind backed up, and the Higgs boson gets its mass from the kinetic energy given to the protons, that the "bump" could be anything, and that . None of this disproves the existence of the Higgs, just as nothing disproves the existence of unicorns, but it ought to be informative and of interest to somebody on skeptics discussion forum.

Originally Posted by HighRiser View Post
You, Farsight, if you haven't noticed, pop into nearly every physics thread to peddle your unsubstantiated worldview, and in every case have that view disassembled by learned scientists who cite sources and show figures and experimental results that don't agree with your philosophy.
I'm the one giving the references to experiment and Einstein and to physicists telling it as it is. There aren't any learned scientists here dissembling what I've said. If there was, you'd be able to link to it, wouldn't you? Instead of posting what is essentially all ad-hominem and no physics. Let's stick to the physics please.
Farsight is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 10th March 2013, 08:10 AM   #1009
Farsight
Banned
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Posts: 2,640
Originally Posted by edd View Post
So you still support Worsley and his hilariously not-even-wrong formulae?
Yes. I don't think he's got everything right, but I think that in the fullness of time it will be acknowledged that he got some very important things right. Like (quasi) spherical harmonics underlie the electron itself, not just electron atomic orbitals.

Originally Posted by edd:9058301
I was referring to the subject of the thread.
OK noted, my mistake.

Originally Posted by edd View Post
It's an analogy. A rather imperfect analogy, but it would be going quite far to call it garbage. I suggest we stop worrying about an analogy that no-one is trying to support completely.
It's more than just an imperfect analogy, edd. Like Susskind said, it's just wrong, but it's been trotted out by CERN and others a great deal. Search CERN on treacle. Surely this plus everything else you've learned on this thread arouses at least the merest spark of skepticism in you?
Farsight is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 10th March 2013, 08:21 AM   #1010
Kwalish Kid
Muse
 
Join Date: Feb 2010
Posts: 509
Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
I'm the one giving the references to experiment and Einstein and to physicists telling it as it is. There aren't any learned scientists here dissembling what I've said. If there was, you'd be able to link to it, wouldn't you? Instead of posting what is essentially all ad-hominem and no physics. Let's stick to the physics please.
Do you actually believe that this is true?

For one thing, it seems clear that it is false that you are making references to experiments. While some of the discussion here is actually about the relevant experiments and the relevant physics, you have consistently denied reference to the applications of physics and instead stuck with popular statements taken out of context.

For another, we can see many times throughout this thread references to actual papers and physical principles that contradict your (at best) popular science understanding of physics.

We see from the people that you disagree with that they provide actual scientific claims that produce predictions or the potential for measurements that we can use to evaluate these theories. You, on the other hand, carefully avoid any attempt to test your theories other than compare them to the English language (or translation) claims of scientists and not their specific physical claims made in such a way as we could evaluate them with observations. You cannot even answer basic questions about how someone could begin to compare your claims to physical events.

Last edited by Kwalish Kid; 10th March 2013 at 08:26 AM.
Kwalish Kid is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 10th March 2013, 08:37 AM   #1011
Farsight
Banned
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Posts: 2,640
Originally Posted by ben m View Post
Ding ding ding ding! Congratulations! You are the 1,000,000th person to daydream that the electron mass can be predicted from fundamental constants, plus some sort of geometry! Please pass through the first door into the Vestibule of Amateur Mass-Spectrum Prediction!
TQFT is no daydream, nor is pair production, nor is Boldimir & Hammond's Geometry of Electromagnetic Systems. Nor is the proposal for the kilogram. See the Watt balance section of the wiki kilogram article and note this: "By fixing the Planck constant, the definition of the kilogram would depend only on the definitions of the second and the meter." The second and the meter are defined using c which relates to ɛ and μ.

Originally Posted by ben m View Post
Here is your numerology wand! Keep it close, it is your only weapon. You will be confronted with enemies bearing Differential Equations, Linear Algebra, and Experimentally Verified Predictions. The wand is activated by chanting, "Pi equals 22 over 7!" You must chant this pi times.

Please pass through this door and choose your wizarding robe. Would you like the black robe, giving you the power to ignore dimensions and units? The blue robe gives you the ability to inscribe and circumscribe polygons. If you add the blue hat to the blue robe, your ability will expand to mentioning advanced mathematics, including topology, knots, but not to the extent of doing actual calculations...
My weapons are hard scientific evidence and references to papers and articles and what Einstein and others, including CERN physicists, actually say. Your only weapon is to duck the physics and attempt ridicule instead. Only it isn't a weapon at all. It doesn't work, ben.
Farsight is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 10th March 2013, 08:46 AM   #1012
Farsight
Banned
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Posts: 2,640
Originally Posted by Perpetual Student View Post
And the charge just pops into existence, violating charge conservation?
Huh? No. You create an electron in pair production, along with a positron. Charge is conserved like angular momentum is conserved. In our subatomic world of fields and waves there's nothing to "brace on". You can't make a spinor like this without making one with the opposite chirality. Have a browse on topological charge.
Farsight is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 10th March 2013, 09:40 AM   #1013
Farsight
Banned
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Posts: 2,640
Originally Posted by lpetrich View Post
Let's do some dimensional analysis. I'll use 3+1 separation with space (L) and time (T) as separate. I'll also make mass (M) and charge (Q) sort-of fundamental...

...However, one can't get the electron's mass out of these numbers, because they don't set a length or mass scale.
See my post to ben above where I referred to the kilogram proposal. See this: "If the kilogram is redefined in this manner, mass artifacts—physical objects calibrated in a watt balance, including the IPK—would no longer be part of the definition, but would instead become transfer standards". And note that M isn't sort-of fundamental and neither is Q, because we can create mass and charge in pair production where we start with the photon E=hf and (in the rest frame of the electron) end up with m=E/c². You can also stick the photon in a mirror box wherein it will add mass to the system. When you open the box it's a radiating body that loses mass. The box of course alters the path of the photon and adds a little geometry or topology if you prefer.

Originally Posted by lpetrich View Post
What makes Percy Hammond a Prophet of Revealed Truth?
He's no prophet, he's "a very distinguished figure in the circles of electromagnetic scholarship". What makes you such a prophet of revealed truth that you dismiss what Einstein and Maxwell and Minkowski and others like Percy Hammond actually say?

Originally Posted by lpetrich View Post
Farsight, you need to recognize that your Prophets of Revealed Truth had had used much of the mathematics that you disdain so loudly. Newton, Maxwell, Einstein, Minkowski, Feynman...
I don't disdain mathematics. I've said repeatedly that mathematics is a vital tool for science. The point I've also made is that you can't use mathematics do define the terms you use in mathematics. Miss that and you end up going round in circles defining terms in terms of each other.

Originally Posted by lpetrich View Post
He was making an ANALOGY. If one chooses to disdain the mathematics of electroweak symmetry breaking, then one's stuck with analogies like these.
Here's The Role of Potentials in Electromagnetism by Percy Hammond. He says things like Linkage demands a closed curve, which is a topological feature and not a local geometrical one. A closed curve cannot be replaced by an open one. He mentions the word analogy when speaking of vector potential, but that's in the Physical Significance section, and when he said We conclude that the field describes the curvature that characterizes the electromagnetic interaction, he meant it.

Originally Posted by lpetrich View Post
It doesn't happen that way. Instead, the photons disappear and make the electrons and positrons appear as they do so.
Poof! Magic!

Originally Posted by lpetrich View Post
The electron and positron collide and make a virtual photon, a virtual Z, and a virtual Higgs particle all together...
Virtual particles are virtual. They aren't real particles. And in plain-vanilla electron-positron annihilation you're dealing with circa 2 x 511keV, and the typical result is two 511keV photons. How are they produced then? By magic? Like the same magic that was used in gamma-gamma pair production to make the electron and the positron in the first place? There isn't the energy for an 80GeV vector boson and a 125GeV Higgs. Not unless you're using magic.

Originally Posted by lpetrich View Post
Farsight, that sort of attitude will is NOT going to get you taken seriously by other physicists. Seriously. They use math to make predictions and they use math to test predictions against observations. So if the numbers don't work out, they don't work out, and one ought to accept that. Disdaining math is sort of like changing the rules in the middle of the game.
See above, I don't disdain the maths. Instead it's serious physicists I refer to who you disdain. They'll do the work.

Originally Posted by lpetrich View Post
Furthermore, Farsight, you've been pushing your theories for several years now, enough time for you to learn the mathematics. Claiming that you are too busy to do so is no excuse, because you are not too busy to push your theories. Whether you invented them or not is irrelevant, because you are advocating them.
They aren't my theories. I'm not some my-theory guy. I refer to Einstein and others remember? The people you dismiss.

Last edited by Farsight; 10th March 2013 at 09:44 AM.
Farsight is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 10th March 2013, 09:54 AM   #1014
Mister Earl
Illuminator
 
Mister Earl's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2007
Posts: 3,504
I'll just make a note as a random guy watching from the sidelines: Farsight, I don't have the knowledge you and the others have, but even as an arm-chair science cheerleader, it's painfully obvious to me that you're not holding your own here. Whenever you make a statement, the others take great pains to point out how you are wrong and why you are wrong. When they make a statement, you retort with out of context quotes and links to long-proven-wrong papers either taken in correct-but-wrong context or out of context.

I honestly think you're out of your league here. Sorry.
Mister Earl is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 10th March 2013, 10:03 AM   #1015
Farsight
Banned
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Posts: 2,640
Originally Posted by Mister Earl View Post
Just want to pop in here to ask a question: What is spin, exactly? I've heard various ways of explaining it, but they're not really doing it for me. Something that must rotate 720 degrees to again face in the right way?
We argue here about the nature of intrinsic spin, but a moebius strip has a spin ½ feature. You go round twice to end up back as you started.

Originally Posted by Mister Earl View Post
Does this mean the particle is rotating through other dimensions or something?
No. I don't think anybody says this. I've referred to this little-known paper that depicts the electron like this with a compound spin. It's a "moebius doughnut" if you like, but actually I think it would be better depicted as a fatter torus, more like an apple.

Originally Posted by Mister Earl View Post
What about spin zero?
Sorry, I have to go, it's something like it always looks the same regardless of rotation but don't quote me.
Farsight is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 10th March 2013, 10:32 AM   #1016
ben m
Guest
 
Join Date: Jul 2006
Posts: 6,387
Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
TQFT is no daydream, nor is pair production, nor is Boldimir & Hammond's Geometry of Electromagnetic Systems.
(a) TQFT, in the version relevant to particle physics, is a hypothesis. There is no evidence it is true.

(b) TQFT, in the versions relevant to particle physics, is and incomplete hypothesis. TQFT has not actually predicted any masses successfully. It's not obvious that it would do so even if complete.

(c) The success of (mainstream, relativistic, quantum, stringy) TQFT has no bearing on the truth or falsehood of Farsightism. Just because it is "topological", and you daydream about your own theory being "topological", does not mean that you're talking about the same thing. TQFT is using topology a set of mathematical truths which can be applied to physics. Farsightism uses "topology" as a synonym for "I drew some geometrical pictures and I fancy myself pretty smart, so stop criticizing".

Quote:
Nor is the proposal for the kilogram. See the Watt balance section of the wiki kilogram article and note this: "By fixing the Planck constant, the definition of the kilogram would depend only on the definitions of the second and the meter." The second and the meter are defined using c which relates to ɛ and μ.
This is comically, stupidly wrong. Do you have a face-to-face human relationship with a physicist? Ask them to explain this to you.

Either the meter or the second are chosen arbitrarily by humans. Once you choose one, you use the speed-of-light to define the other. We said "hey, let's choose the second to be 9,192,631,770 oscillations of the cesium maser". That's an arbitrary human choice; there is no way to derive 9,192,631,770 from the laws of physics. Once we make that choice, though, the laws of physics fix the length of the distance unit "light-second". The traditional "meter" is 1/299792458 of a light-second.

You can do it the other way around. Declare, arbitrarily, that *this iridium stick* 1/299792458 of a time-unit. Then use the speed of light to figure out how long it takes to traverse the iridium stick. That determines your time unit.
ben m is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 10th March 2013, 10:53 AM   #1017
Mister Earl
Illuminator
 
Mister Earl's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2007
Posts: 3,504
Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
We argue here about the nature of intrinsic spin, but a moebius strip has a spin ½ feature. You go round twice to end up back as you started.
Sure, but a moebius strip involves tracing a surface. So far as I know anyway, particles don't have surfaces.

Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
No. I don't think anybody says this. I've referred to this little-known paper that depicts the electron like this with a compound spin. It's a "moebius doughnut" if you like, but actually I think it would be better depicted as a fatter torus, more like an apple.
Haven't read it, can't at the moment being at work, but I can take a look later. But I'm quite sure it'll be above my minimal expertise in this area.

Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
Sorry, I have to go, it's something like it always looks the same regardless of rotation but don't quote me.
That's what I hear. That's the part that confuses me, I suppose. What does it matter with spin if it always looks the same anyway? Then I tell myself I'm being far too literal and know too little about the subject.
Mister Earl is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 10th March 2013, 12:01 PM   #1018
Mister Earl
Illuminator
 
Mister Earl's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2007
Posts: 3,504
On a side note, I had an odd dream last night about all of this. I dreamt that we'd developed some kind of higgs field manipulator. We tried to send a rocket into orbit on a tiny amount of fuel simply by making everything but the fuel less massive. It failed... the engine blew right through the entire rocket like it was made of paper.
Mister Earl is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 10th March 2013, 12:38 PM   #1019
ctamblyn
Data Ghost
 
ctamblyn's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: The Library
Posts: 2,898
Originally Posted by Mister Earl View Post
Haven't read it, can't at the moment being at work, but I can take a look later. But I'm quite sure it'll be above my minimal expertise in this area.
Farsight mentioned that Williamson / van der Mark article in his first few posts in these forums (in a thread to do with FTL travel, started by someone else), and tried to defend that idea in his Relativity+ thread. It was not a successful endeavour.

In simple terms, it boils down to this: a photon - even a photon forced to wrap itself around some tortuous path in space - cannot be a source or sink of electric field lines, because it is electrically neutral. The entire counterargument to that simple point consists of distractions involving Mobius bands and topology, and papers about knotted interference patterns (which, to be fair, are interesting despite being irrelevant to the argument). It's almost exactly like watching someone try to defend an elaborate design for a perpetual motion machine, which works using large magnets and steam-power.

This idea seems to form the basis of a few crackpot "theories" (I use scare quotes, as these are often just incoherent collections of vague ideas). In the case of Relativity+, the hope was that the Higgs mechanism would not be needed, as you'd be able to prove that (a) photons could wrap themselves up and look like a massive particle, (b) that particle would appear to be charged, and (c) only photons of a particular wavelength would be capable of folding up in the right way. Whenever asked to show that these things are even possible (with actual calculations, rather than text-parsing and hand-waving), no adequate answers have ever been forthcoming, AFAIAA.
__________________
Join Team 13232 - Folding@Home

Last edited by ctamblyn; 10th March 2013 at 12:40 PM.
ctamblyn is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 10th March 2013, 12:39 PM   #1020
Perpetual Student
Illuminator
 
Perpetual Student's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2008
Posts: 4,852
Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
Whatever you say it is. And you've totally missed the point. See this post. You might care to raise that when you next have discussions about GR. The point is that when you use the motion of light to define the second and the metre, which you then use to measure the motion of light, you have doomed yourself to tautology that contradicts Einstein, and then you will never understand GR.
Originally Posted by Perpetual Student View Post
There is no tautology. The second is defined as a specific number of vibrations of a physical system known to be consistent and reproducible. The meter is then defined by the second and the speed of light.
The fact that the definition of time and distance have been discussed so many times and Farsight cannot grasp its significance, but still believes there exists a tautology indicates a deeper problem -- with his reasoning.
__________________
It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong.
- Richard P. Feynman

ξ
Perpetual Student is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 10th March 2013, 12:42 PM   #1021
ctamblyn
Data Ghost
 
ctamblyn's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: The Library
Posts: 2,898
I'll just add, that I've enjoyed reading lpetrich's posts on the thread topic. As far as I can follow them, they have been very interesting indeed. Thanks.
__________________
Join Team 13232 - Folding@Home
ctamblyn is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 10th March 2013, 12:52 PM   #1022
Mister Earl
Illuminator
 
Mister Earl's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2007
Posts: 3,504
Aye. That's why I lurk in threads like these... I usually do not get everything that is going on, but I take an interest in it, and perhaps I'm learning a little by ocular osmosis.

Last edited by Mister Earl; 10th March 2013 at 12:57 PM.
Mister Earl is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 10th March 2013, 02:19 PM   #1023
edd
Master Poster
 
edd's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2007
Posts: 2,120
Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
Yes. I don't think he's got everything right, but I think that in the fullness of time it will be acknowledged that he got some very important things right. Like (quasi) spherical harmonics underlie the electron itself, not just electron atomic orbitals.
What he says is not just wrong. It's nonsense. In the same way that if I said my blood cholesterol level was 73% I'd be wrong. If I said it was 73,000 Japanese Yen it'd be nonsense. He makes that kind of mistake.
You should admit it cannot possibly be right.
__________________
When I look up at the night sky and think about the billions of stars out there, I think to myself: I'm amazing. - Peter Serafinowicz
edd is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 10th March 2013, 03:51 PM   #1024
Reality Check
Penultimate Amazing
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: New Zealand
Posts: 28,521
Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
This cosmic treacle nonsense from a guy at DAMTP see slide 17, and this Fermilab article: "The Higgs field is like a giant vat of molasses spread throughout the universe". It's garbage.
Wrong, Farsight..
It is an simile, Farsight. It would be extremely stupid to think that space is actually full of cosmic treacle.
The Higgs field is actually like a giant vat of molasses spread throughout the universe. It is also like a crowd of friends of the particle.
Reality Check is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 10th March 2013, 04:07 PM   #1025
Reality Check
Penultimate Amazing
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: New Zealand
Posts: 28,521
Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
Huh? No. You create an electron in pair production, along with a positron. Charge is conserved like angular momentum is conserved. In our subatomic world of fields and waves there's nothing to "brace on". You can't make a spinor like this without making one with the opposite chirality. Have a browse on topological charge.
You keep on parroting this trivially true stuff Farsight.
  1. Pair production creates an election and positron. Duh .
  2. An electron has the opposite charge to a positron. Duh !
  3. Charge is conserved. Duh !
Then you go off into ignorance, e.g.
  • a spinor is not a pinwheel !
  • Topological charge (topological quantum number) has little to do with actual charge or electrons or photons or positrons.
A basic example of topological charge is the Dirac quantization condition
Quote:
The hypothetical existence of a magnetic monopole would imply that the electric charge must be quantized in certain units; also, the existence of the electric charges implies that the magnetic charges of the hypothetical magnetic monopoles, if they exist, must be quantized in units inversely proportional to the elementary electric charge.

Last edited by Reality Check; 10th March 2013 at 04:15 PM.
Reality Check is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 10th March 2013, 04:24 PM   #1026
Reality Check
Penultimate Amazing
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: New Zealand
Posts: 28,521
Originally Posted by Mister Earl View Post
Sure, but a moebius strip involves tracing a surface. So far as I know anyway, particles don't have surfaces.
Farsight is obsessing about crank theories that have been already discussed and found failing in this forum on 25th March 2010.
A couple of more weeks and Farsight would not have been able to understand the flaws after 3 years now!
Originally Posted by Reality Check View Post
If anyone is interested: The Is the electron a photon with toroidal topology? paper came up almost 3 years ago and is fundematally flawed. This was exlained to Farsight in the Relativity+ / Farsight's thread, e.g. OK, I've read the Williamson and van der Mark paper again. (they should have got a charge of zero for an electron).
Reality Check is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 10th March 2013, 04:52 PM   #1027
lpetrich
Muse
 
Join Date: Feb 2007
Posts: 762
Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
I've told you what physicists have said: that the Higgs mechanism is a "crutch", and "the toilet of the standard model", that it's said to be responsible for only 1% of the mass of matter and so doesn't solve "the mystery of mass".
Quoting out of context. The context being a problem with the Standard Model with unbroken electroweak symmetry: everything would be massless in it, something that we clearly don't observe. "Massless" meaning zero rest mass.

What the Higgs particle does is give most of the other SM particles rest masses. The only exceptions are the photon and the gluon.

Quote:
and the Higgs boson gets its mass from the kinetic energy given to the protons,
How it's created is irrelevant.
Quote:
that the "bump" could be anything,
However, its interactions
(H-top)*(H-W), (H-top)*(H-Z), and (H-top)*(H-tau)
all agree with the Standard Model to within experimental limits. The error bars are still rather large, but that's a result of statistics.

Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
Nor is the proposal for the kilogram. See the Watt balance section of the wiki kilogram article and note this: "By fixing the Planck constant, the definition of the kilogram would depend only on the definitions of the second and the meter." The second and the meter are defined using c which relates to ɛ and μ.
That's for turning Planck's constant into a units factor rather than something measured. The other quantities you mentioned, c, ɛ and μ are also officially units factors.

Quote:
My weapons are hard scientific evidence and references to papers and articles and what Einstein and others, including CERN physicists, actually say.
Even if you've misunderstood what they are saying and even if you've quoted them out of context. Just like what many theologians seem to do.

Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
Huh? No. You create an electron in pair production, along with a positron. ...
With a photon or a Z, yes, but a W produces an electron and a neutrino. In fact, pair production is very general.

Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
What makes you such a prophet of revealed truth that you dismiss what Einstein and Maxwell and Minkowski and others like Percy Hammond actually say?
A theologian's sort of argument. It's the theories that count, not the people.
Quote:
I don't disdain mathematics. I've said repeatedly that mathematics is a vital tool for science.
That would not be very apparent.
Quote:
The point I've also made is that you can't use mathematics do define the terms you use in mathematics.
The same thing can be said about language more generally. Mathematics can be interpreted as a language.
Quote:
They aren't my theories. I'm not some my-theory guy.
You are advocating them, and your overall theoretical picture seems to be original with you.
Quote:
I refer to Einstein and others remember? The people you dismiss.
The way a theologian refers to sacred books. It's theories, rather than personalities, that I'm concerned with, and even worse, your heroes often advocate theories that you reject. Einstein stated rather plainly that he believed that space and time are part of a space-time continuum.
Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
We argue here about the nature of intrinsic spin, but a moebius strip has a spin ½ feature. You go round twice to end up back as you started.
So what?

Quantum-mechanical angular-momentum operators are connected to rotation generators by

(angular momentum) ~ (hbar) * (rotation generators)

So rotation R(w) = exp(i*(w.L)/hbar)

Let's do it around the z-axis. Then R(a) = exp(a*d/d(phi))

For a wavefunction X that varies as exp(i*m*phi), we find
R(a).X = exp(i*m*a)*X

For rotation by 360d, we get R(360d).X = exp(2pi*i*m)*X = exp(2pi*i*j)*exp(-2pi*i*(j-m))*X = exp(2pi*i*j)*X

since j - m = nonnegative integer for total angular momentum j. Thus,
R(360d).X = (-1)2j*X

for rotation around any axis. Thus, a 360d rotation of a boson (integer j) gets the original wavefunction again, while a 360d rotation of a fermion (half-odd j) reverses its wavefunction's sign. A 720d rotation gets the original wavefunction again in both cases.

Farsight, this is the sort of thing that one learns in advanced-undergraduate or graduate quantum-mechanics courses. It's all in Angular momentum operatorWP.
lpetrich is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 11th March 2013, 05:37 PM   #1028
Reality Check
Penultimate Amazing
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: New Zealand
Posts: 28,521
Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
I've told you what physicists have said: that the Higgs mechanism is a "crutch", and "the toilet of the standard model", that it's said to be responsible for only 1% of the mass of matter and so doesn't solve "the mystery of mass".
Whoops. Missed this nonsense and repeated ignorance from you, Farsight!
You have mentioned a couple of unattributed quotes from a couple of physicists. You have provided no context. This has nothing to do with the scientific validity of the Higgs mechanism.

You still cannot understand that the Higgs mechanism actually is (not "said to be'") responsible for only 1% of the mass of matter (the rest is binding energy) and solves "the mystery of mass".
As written on 5th February 2013:
Originally Posted by Reality Check View Post
A proton is made of 2 up quarks and a down quark (8 to 11 Mev) but has a mass of 938 Mev. Protons make up most of the mass of the universe.
Thus the Higgs mechanism providing ~1% of the mass is not surprising.
This is not hardly even physics. It is simple mathentaics, Farsight!
Mass of proton = 938 Mev
Mass of 1 quark = ~11 Mev
Mass of 2 quarks = ~22 Mev
Mass of 3 quarks = ~33 Mev
Mass of proton minus its constituent quarks = 938 Mev - ~33 Mev.
Thus the proton gets ~905 Mev (or ~99% of its mass) from something other than the mass of its quarks, i.e. not the Higgs mechanism. And this is:
Quote:
Quote:
Originally Posted by lpetrich
Nucleons get most of their masses from color confinement. Their quarks and gluons cannot get more than about 10^(-15) m from each other without those particles' interactions getting superstrong. This means that those particles' wavefunctions cannot extend over a greater size, and thus that their masses should be about a few hundred MeV. Thus, the nucleons' masses.
Anything in this that you do not understand, Farsight?
Reality Check is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 12th March 2013, 02:09 PM   #1029
Farsight
Banned
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Posts: 2,640
Originally Posted by ben m View Post
(a) TQFT, in the version relevant to particle physics, is a hypothesis. There is no evidence it is true.

(b) TQFT, in the versions relevant to particle physics, is and incomplete hypothesis. TQFT has not actually predicted any masses successfully. It's not obvious that it would do so even if complete.
Nothing has. And even the standard model isn't complete. I'm surprised you're attacking TQFT with this line. It's not some notion dreamt up by some amateur.

Originally Posted by ben m View Post
(c) The success of (mainstream, relativistic, quantum, stringy) TQFT has no bearing on the truth or falsehood of Farsightism. Just because it is "topological", and you daydream about your own theory being "topological", does not mean that you're talking about the same thing. TQFT is using topology a set of mathematical truths which can be applied to physics. Farsightism uses "topology" as a synonym for "I drew some geometrical pictures and I fancy myself pretty smart, so stop criticizing".
Michael Atiyah was at ABB50/25 talking to Qiu-Hong Hu about the electron knot.

Originally Posted by ben m View Post
This is comically, stupidly wrong. Do you have a face-to-face human relationship with a physicist? Ask them to explain this to you.
It isn't wrong. Go and read about it instead of launching into outraged denial because you've got nothing. If you had something you'd lay it out.

Originally Posted by ben m View Post
Either the meter or the second are chosen arbitrarily by humans. Once you choose one, you use the speed-of-light to define the other. We said "hey, let's choose the second to be 9,192,631,770 oscillations of the cesium maser". That's an arbitrary human choice; there is no way to derive 9,192,631,770 from the laws of physics. Once we make that choice, though, the laws of physics fix the length of the distance unit "light-second". The traditional "meter" is 1/299792458 of a light-second.
That maser is an optical device. It emits light waves at your detector. You can't refer to frequency which is cycles per second when you're defining the second. So you're effectively counting 9,192,631,770 microwaves and then declaring that a second has elapsed. Then you use the motion of light and the second to define the metre. And wherever you define the second and the metre, you then use them to measure the local speed of light. So you always measure it to be 299,792,458 m/s. Your definition makes the speed of light constant, despite the fact that light clocks at different elevations don't keep time.

Originally Posted by ben m View Post
You can do it the other way around. Declare, arbitrarily, that *this iridium stick* 1/299792458 of a time-unit. Then use the speed of light to figure out how long it takes to traverse the iridium stick. That determines your time unit.
You still use the motion of light though, and you still end up measuring the local speed to be 299,792,458 m/s. NB: the length of the stick is 1/299792458 of a distance-unit, not a time-unit. I'm surprised nobody picked that up.
Farsight is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 12th March 2013, 02:29 PM   #1030
Farsight
Banned
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Posts: 2,640
Originally Posted by Mister Earl View Post
Sure, but a moebius strip involves tracing a surface. So far as I know anyway, particles don't have surfaces.
That they don't. But a moebius strip does have a topology, and as per this mathspages article: "In this sense a Mobius strip is reminiscent of spin-1/2 particles in quantum mechanics, since such particles must be rotated through two complete rotations in order to be restored to their original state". And TQFT isn't some discredited amateur thesis like ben would have you think.

Originally Posted by Mister Earl View Post
Haven't read it, can't at the moment being at work, but I can take a look later. But I'm quite sure it'll be above my minimal expertise in this area.
Just look at picture. Note though that as you said there is no surface. The "onion-ring" contours showing on the slice through the torus should keep getting bigger.

Originally Posted by Mister Earl View Post
That's what I hear. That's the part that confuses me, I suppose. What does it matter with spin if it always looks the same anyway? Then I tell myself I'm being far too literal and know too little about the subject.
When it comes to spin 0 I'd say it doesn't matter as much. Helium-4 atom has spin 0, but it's composite. To get to the bottom of mass we focus on the "elementary" particle that we've actually seen and is common: the electron.

Your "out of your league" comment above noted by the way. But do note that you understand what I say. You don't understand the refutations, or what lpetrich says. Think on that.
Farsight is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 12th March 2013, 02:56 PM   #1031
Farsight
Banned
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Posts: 2,640
Originally Posted by W.D.Clinger View Post
How odd, then, that you haven't been able to identify any specific errors in what I've said about electromagnetism, while it's very easy to identify specific errors in what you've said about electromagnetism.
I haven't made any specific errors. You have.

Originally Posted by W.D.Clinger View Post
For example:

Now stop all this huffing and puffing and crackpot naysaying, pay attention, and watch my lips: the field concerned is the electromagnetic field. Electromagnetic field interactions result in linear and/or rotational motion. When only linear motion is observed people speak of an electric field, when only rotational motion is observed people speak of a magnetic field

Your highlighted assertions are incorrect.

Coulomb's law has essentially the same form as Newton's law of gravitation, so a negatively charged particle can be in circular orbit around a positively charged body just as planets can have circular orbits around stars. That's circular motion caused by a purely electric field.
Aaargh! There is no such thing as a purely electric field! When you move through an "electric field" you start to see a "magnetic field" too. Not because you create it, but because you start to see another aspect of the electromagnetic field. Maxwell unified electricity and magnetism a hundred and fifty years ago. And how many times do I have to tell you what Minkowski said over a hundred years ago: "Then in the description of the field produced by the electron we see that the separation of the field into electric and magnetic force is a relative one with regard to the underlying time axis the most perspicious way of describing the two forces together is on a certain analogy with the wrench in mechanics, though the analogy is not complete"..." How many times do I have to tell you about Jackson's Classical Electromagnetism. Use the read online option and put double quotes around a phrase to search for it. See section 1.2 where he says "Although the thing that eventually gets measured is a force" and "At the moment the electric field can be defined as the force per unit charge acting at a given point". Then see section 11.10 where he says "one should properly speak of the electromagnetic field Fuv rather than E or B separately".

You still don't understand even the first thing about electromagnetism, Clinger.

Originally Posted by W.D.Clinger View Post
Ampère's force law (for the simple case of two parallel conductors) describes a Lorentz force that, left unopposed, results in linear motion caused by a purely magnetic field. This example of magnetic fields causing linear motion is the basis for our current definition of the ampere.
Aaargh! There's no such thing as a purely magnetic field. Each wire consists of moving electrons and static protons, all with their electromagnetic fields. Throw an electron past a wire and you see helical motion. That isn't linear motion. But two sets of helical motion result in linear motion. That's why Minkowski referred to a wrench and Maxwell referred to a screw.

Originally Posted by W.D.Clinger View Post
The physicists here would be a lot more likely to say Farsight is right about this if Farsight were right about this.
They won't say I'm right even though they know I'm right because they're not being sincere. Now go and look up what I've told you, and verify it for yourself.

Last edited by Farsight; 12th March 2013 at 03:01 PM.
Farsight is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 12th March 2013, 03:24 PM   #1032
Farsight
Banned
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Posts: 2,640
Originally Posted by ctamblyn View Post
Farsight mentioned that Williamson / van der Mark article in his first few posts in these forums (in a thread to do with FTL travel, started by someone else), and tried to defend that idea in his Relativity+ thread. It was not a successful endeavour.
It was the same old same old. See below.

Originally Posted by ctamblyn View Post
In simple terms, it boils down to this: a photon - even a photon forced to wrap itself around some tortuous path in space - cannot be a source or sink of electric field lines, because it is electrically neutral.
That's specious ctamblyn, and you know it. We create an electron and a positron from a photon in pair production. Together they have no net charge. We can diffract the electron. It has a wave nature. Then we can annihilate the electron and positron and we typically get two 511keV photons. With no net charge. Charge is conserved. And don't try and make out that you've never heard of topological charge, or that Topological Quantum Field Theory is some crackpot junk.

Originally Posted by ctamblyn View Post
The entire counterargument to that simple point consists of distractions involving Mobius bands and topology, and papers about knotted interference patterns (which, to be fair, are interesting despite being irrelevant to the argument). It's almost exactly like watching someone try to defend an elaborate design for a perpetual motion machine, which works using large magnets and steam-power.
Pity I referred to mathspages about that. And don't give me perpetual motion machines. How do you think the electron's charge gets created? Magic?

Originally Posted by ctamblyn View Post
This idea seems to form the basis of a few crackpot "theories" (I use scare quotes, as these are often just incoherent collections of vague ideas). In the case of Relativity+, the hope was that the Higgs mechanism would not be needed, as you'd be able to prove that (a) photons could wrap themselves up and look like a massive particle, (b) that particle would appear to be charged, and (c) only photons of a particular wavelength would be capable of folding up in the right way. Whenever asked to show that these things are even possible (with actual calculations, rather than text-parsing and hand-waving), no adequate answers have ever been forthcoming, AFAIAA.
I'm here because Einstein said The mass of a body is a measure of its energy-content, and that a if a body gives off the energy L in the form of radiation, its mass diminishes by L/c². What do you think happens in annihilation, when there's no body left? Magic? To defend Einstein I have to tell you about the electron and electromagnetism, and much else.

ETA:

Originally Posted by ctamblyn View Post
I'll just add, that I've enjoyed reading lpetrich's posts on the thread topic. As far as I can follow them, they have been very interesting indeed. Thanks.
If you can follow them, perhaps you'd like to explain the to Mister Earl and others. But you can't. Emperor's New Clothes!

Last edited by Farsight; 12th March 2013 at 03:27 PM.
Farsight is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 12th March 2013, 03:26 PM   #1033
ben m
Guest
 
Join Date: Jul 2006
Posts: 6,387
Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
Nothing has. And even the standard model isn't complete. I'm surprised you're attacking TQFT with this line. It's not some notion dreamt up by some amateur.
TQFT is not a notion dreamed up by an amateur. However, an amateur (you) dreamed up the idea that TQFT bears any resemblance whatsoever to Farsightism. This same amateur chose to cite "TQFT" as a rebuttal to a post complaining about Farsightism's amateur mass-spectrum speculations.

I did not attacking TQFT. I'm attacking Farsightism and your imaginary Farsight-style pseudo-citation of TQFT.

Quote:
That maser is an optical device. It emits light waves at your detector. You can't refer to frequency which is cycles per second when you're defining the second. So you're effectively counting 9,192,631,770 microwaves and then declaring that a second has elapsed.
Yep. And this number 9,192,631,770 is not determined by the speed of light. It is not chosen by measurements of epsilon-0, nor by mu-0, nor by h-bar. The number 9,192,631,770 is a completely-arbitrary human choice. It was chosen, indirectly, by Abū al-Rayhān Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Bīrūnī around 1000 AD.

The maser is not a light clock. It's an atomic clock. The maser looks at an atomic transition frequency---which is really an electron system, not a photon system. The atom is the thing doing the oscillating, and the microwaves are basically a readout technology. If you look at the microwaves and say "well, you're counting light"---well, I may as well say the same thing about a mechanical watch, which I "read out" by reflecting sunlight off the dial and into my eyes.

You could---less practically, of course---define the second as "454545 half lives of a muon at rest". You could define the second as "10^8 times the frequency of the neutral kaon oscillation". In fact, you can define the second as "1/86000 of the sidereal rotation of the Earth".

Last edited by ben m; 12th March 2013 at 04:01 PM.
ben m is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 12th March 2013, 03:30 PM   #1034
W.D.Clinger
Philosopher
 
W.D.Clinger's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2009
Posts: 5,758
Once again, Farsight is arguing against Einstein.

Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
Aaargh! There is no such thing as a purely electric field! When you move through an "electric field" you start to see a "magnetic field" too.
According to Einstein, I'm allowed to use a coordinate system that's at rest with respect to the charged body around which a negatively charged particle is moving in a circular orbit. In that Einstein-sanctioned coordinate system, the magnetic field is zero.

Nonzero electric field, zero magnetic field, with circular motion, all according to Einstein, but not according to Farsight.

Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
How many times do I have to tell you about Jackson's Classical Electromagnetism. Use the read online option and put double quotes around a phrase to search for it.
That book's in my personal library. Unlike Farsight, I can actually read some of its equations.

Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
You still don't understand even the first thing about electromagnetism, Clinger.
Yet I passed the course, and Farsight's been giving proof he hasn't.

Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
Aaargh! There's no such thing as a purely magnetic field.
According to Einstein, I'm allowed to use a coordinate system in which the electric field is zero but the magnetic field is nonzero. In that Einstein-sanctioned coordinate system, I see linear motion resulting from a purely magnetic field.

Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
They won't say I'm right even though they know I'm right because they're not being sincere. Now go and look up what I've told you, and verify it for yourself.
Farsight's accusing the physicists of dishonesty.

I've done the math, starting with a derivation of Maxwell's equations, and I've used Maxwell's equations to verify all of the magnetic fields I've mentioned in this thread. Farsight can't do the math (and can't even get his units right), so he just repeats his empty assertions and declares victory, even as he argues against Einstein.

Last edited by W.D.Clinger; 12th March 2013 at 03:34 PM.
W.D.Clinger is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 12th March 2013, 03:45 PM   #1035
Farsight
Banned
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Posts: 2,640
Originally Posted by edd View Post
What he says is not just wrong. It's nonsense. In the same way that if I said my blood cholesterol level was 73% I'd be wrong. If I said it was 73,000 Japanese Yen it'd be nonsense. He makes that kind of mistake. You should admit it cannot possibly be right.
No edd. It's all down to c and h and wave harmonics, which are not wholly different to the spherical harmonics in atomic orbitals where electrons exist as standing waves. There you've got an electron going round and round a proton. You can diffract an electron. It has a wave nature. You made it in pair production along with a positron, from an E=hf photon, which also has a wave nature. Photons travel linearly at c, electrons don't. They have a spin ½ feature and a magnetic moment and E=mc² mass and their topological charge instead. What was a wave, a field variation, is now a standing wave and a standing field. One day you'll hear about something similar from an authoritative source. You'll understand that an electron exists as a standing wave going round and round because it's interacting with itself. And you'll lap it up. You just heard it here first is all. This is where you were disabused of magic.

Right, I'm off to bed.
Farsight is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 12th March 2013, 05:04 PM   #1036
Reality Check
Penultimate Amazing
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: New Zealand
Posts: 28,521
Question Farsight: What does Higgs mean by Lorentz-covariant and relativistic

Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
No edd. It's all down to c and h and wave harmonics..
No, Farsight. It is all down to your fantasies about c and h and wave harmonics. We cannot rely on these fantasies because you are so in denial of the Higgs mechanism that you cannot even acknowledge that it is a relativistic QFT (and so does not violate E=mc^2).

But maybe I am wrong and you can finally answer:
Farsight: What does Higgs mean by Lorentz-covariant and relativistic?
First asked 19 November 2012
114 days and counting, Farsight!

The above question was as a follow-up to:
Farsight: Is the Higgs mechanism a relativistic quantum field theory?
i.e. is it is based on special relativity and is thus consistent with E=mc^2.
First pointed out 1 November 2012
and
Farsight: It is delusional to think that a relativistic QFT violates SR
First poined out 20 November 2012.
Reality Check is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 12th March 2013, 05:17 PM   #1037
Reality Check
Penultimate Amazing
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: New Zealand
Posts: 28,521
Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
It's all down to c and h and wave harmonics, which are not wholly different to the spherical harmonics in atomic orbitals where electrons exist as standing waves.
Wrong again, Farsight !
Electrons in atomic orbitals do not exist as standing waves.
Electrons in atomic orbitals do not go "round and round a proton". That is "lie to chidren" that is told to young children.
Electrons in atomic orbitals exist as probabilities of detecting them. That results in things such as sphericlal (not standing wave), doughnut (not standing wave), dumbbell (not standing wave), etc. shaped atomic orbitals.

You can diffract an electon. It has a wave nature. Duh !
You can scatter an electron. It has a particle nature. Duh !
You can make an electron along with a positron in pair production. Duh !
Photons travel linearly at c, electrons don't. Duh !
Electrons have a spin ½ feature and a magnetic moment and mass. Duh !

Still wrong, Farsight !
Electrons do not have topological charge.

A couple of more weeks and Farsight would not have been able to understand this after 3 years now!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Reality Check
If anyone is interested: The Is the electron a photon with toroidal topology? paper came up almost 3 years ago and is fundematally flawed. This was exlained to Farsight in the Relativity+ / Farsight's thread, e.g. OK, I've read the Williamson and van der Mark paper again. (they should have got a charge of zero for an electron).

Last edited by Reality Check; 12th March 2013 at 05:23 PM.
Reality Check is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 12th March 2013, 06:15 PM   #1038
edd
Master Poster
 
edd's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2007
Posts: 2,120
Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
No edd. It's all down to c and h and wave harmonics, which are not wholly different to the spherical harmonics in atomic orbitals where electrons exist as standing waves.
No, it is nonsense. He's dimensionally incorrect - his units are utter poppycock, just like my example of quoting a chemical concentration in units of a financial currency. You don't even have to know what the properties of an electron are to know that it's wrong. And you've never admitted (to my knowledge) that it is the case that he must be wrong. It has nothing to do with c, h, spherical harmonics or atoms at all. His formula would be just as wrong if applied to a proton, a teapot, or my fictitious pet cat Alfred, because it is literally nonsensical.

Why don't you admit that? Could it be because you don't understand why it's nonsensical? You certainly came up with a complete non sequitur of an argument when lpetrich brought up dimensional analysis not that many posts ago, after all.
__________________
When I look up at the night sky and think about the billions of stars out there, I think to myself: I'm amazing. - Peter Serafinowicz
edd is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 13th March 2013, 12:08 PM   #1039
ctamblyn
Data Ghost
 
ctamblyn's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: The Library
Posts: 2,898
Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
That's specious ctamblyn, and you know it.

<snipped for brevity>
Sorry, but nothing you have posted addresses what I said. Photons are neutral, and a finite simply connected region of space containing a bunch of photons therefore cannot - no matter what those photons are doing - have a net flux of E across its surface - i.e. it will always appear to be neutral. Then of course there is the troublesome matter of the photon being a boson, while the electron is a fermion, so there are entirely different statistics for the two particles. It's a hopeless endeavour. You might have had slightly better luck making a twisted photon an integer-spin neutral particle, I guess, but there is still another problem: there is absolutely no known mechanism that will make a photon curl up in that way. Photons simply don't do that. And if they did, there is no length-scale built into Maxwell's equations that would restrict the mass of the resulting particle to a particular value. Of course, this has all been explained before.

If you want to continue to talk about your loopy photon model I suggest continuing in your R+ thread, where I'd be happy to discuss it further. In the meantime perhaps now we can get back to the thread topic, of the experimental testing of a rather more successful model.
__________________
Join Team 13232 - Folding@Home

Last edited by ctamblyn; 13th March 2013 at 12:28 PM. Reason: Added link.
ctamblyn is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 13th March 2013, 05:11 PM   #1040
ben m
Guest
 
Join Date: Jul 2006
Posts: 6,387
Originally Posted by Farsight View Post
No edd. It's all down to c and h and wave harmonics, which are not wholly different to the spherical harmonics in atomic orbitals where electrons exist as standing waves.
Quote:
One day you'll hear about something similar from an authoritative source.
Really amazing stuff, Farsight. You do a great job of *suggesting* that there's a vast body of knowledge that supports your ideas. "It's all down to", for example, lets you pretend that you're summarizing something too complicated to explain right now. "One day you'll hear", for example, lets you pretend that your view is well-known, and lets you denigrate people with blinkers so thick they haven't seen it.

Except there's nothing there. What is "all down to" c and h? Every time you tried to explain "it", you spewed high-school-grade unit errors, ignorance, and vague analogies.

Who do you think is falling for this?

I mean, half of the point of the modern scientific method---the peer-review, the demands for reproducibility, the clear mathematical language, the error bars---is to prevent people from pretending to understand things they don't.
ben m is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Reply

International Skeptics Forum » General Topics » Science, Mathematics, Medicine, and Technology

Thread Tools

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Forum Jump


All times are GMT -7. The time now is 07:34 PM.
Powered by vBulletin. Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.

This forum began as part of the James Randi Education Foundation (JREF). However, the forum now exists as
an independent entity with no affiliation with or endorsement by the JREF, including the section in reference to "JREF" topics.

Disclaimer: Messages posted in the Forum are solely the opinion of their authors.