Yes, there’s a hole in the heart of quantum electrodynamics because it describes the interaction between light and matter, but not the interaction between light and light. That’s the interaction that creates matter in gamma-gamma pair production. QED misses the crucial point that waves interact. Even though we’ve all seen waves interact, down on the beach. Imagine a big wave is coming towards you. You make a little wave with your hand and send it scooting towards the big wave:
The little wave rides up and over the big wave, and carries on going. If you didn’t see the little wave ride up and over the big wave, you might conclude that waves don’t interact. You might conclude that water waves pass through each other without any interaction. You might also conclude that electromagnetic waves pass through each other without any interaction. But look again. We aren’t just talking about superposition here. The little wave rode up and over the big wave. As it did so, it changed direction. The little wave was originally moving horizontally, then it changed direction gradually so it was going up at an angle, then down at an angle, and so on. Eventually it was moving horizontally again. If you hadn’t watched, you might have thought there was no interaction. There was no lasting interaction, but there was an interaction. And the essence of that interaction is this: when a wave interacts with a wave, it changes direction.
Tying light in knots
There’s plenty of physicists who know that light interacts with light. That’s why there’s plenty of arXiv papers with photon-photon interaction in the title. There’s also people like Kirk McDonald of SLAC, see the 1998 PhysicsToday article gamma rays create matter just by plowing into laser light. It’s about gamma-gamma pair production, and it’s good stuff:
Image by Gil Eisner from the November 1997 issue of Photonics Spectra above a brief note about the SLAC experiment
But it’s from 20 years ago, and since then not much has happened. It’s almost as if it’s been “studiously ignored” by particle physicists. It’s as if the physicists who are interested are working in optics or photonics or electromagnetism. They’re the people who feature in media articles about light interacting with light. For example see the 2018 Imperial article experiments underway to turn light into matter. It’s about the Breit-Wheeler process which dates from 1932. Also see the 2013 physicsworld article physicists tie light in knots. Alternatively see the 2010 Bristol article tying light in knots. That’s where Miles Padgett of the Glasgow optics group said this: “The sophisticated hologram design required for the experimental demonstration of the knotted light shows advanced optical control, which undoubtedly can be used in future laser devices”. That’s fair enough, but look closer and you’ll perhaps pick up on the rather cryptic comment by Mark Dennis of Bristol: “the study of knotted vortices was initiated by Lord Kelvin back in 1867 in his quest for an explanation of atoms. This work opens a new chapter in that history”. He was referring to the vortex theory of atoms. That’s where Lord Kelvin said this: “after noticing Helmholtz’s admirable discovery of the law of vortex motion in a perfect liquid – that is, in a fluid perfectly destitute of viscosity (or fluid friction) – the author said that this discovery inevitably suggests the idea that Helmholtz’s rings are the only true atoms”. Lord Kelvin was also William Thomson of Thomson and Tait fame. Peter Tait was the physicist who got the Edinburgh chair in competition with Maxwell, and the man who drew up the knot zoo. Thomson and Tait wrote a treatise on natural philosophy. They also coined the phrase spherical harmonics.
Vortex particles
That’s what Mark Dennis was referring to, but the new chapter isn’t about atoms. See David St John’s essay on vortex particles dating from 2011. The vortex theory of atoms was way ahead of its time, because subatomic particles hadn’t been discovered in 1867. It was JJ Thomson (no relation) who discovered the electron in 1897. It was JJ’s son George Thomson who discovered the electron’s wave properties with Andrew Reid via electron diffraction in 1927, at the same time as Davisson and Germer. And it was Mark Dennis who co-authored the 2016 Nature Communications paper vortex knots in tangled quantum eigenfunctions. The abstract says “the results suggest that knotted vortex structures are generic in complex three-dimensional wave systems”. In the PhysOrg reportage you can read that all matter has a wave nature. Dennis was also one of the organisers of the 2011 ABB50/25 conference in Bristol. That’s where Qiu-Hong Hu had a poster entitled the electron, twisted photon, and knotted light. Qiu-Hong told me he talked to Sir Michael Atiyah about that, and more. Atiyah was of course involved in the development of topological quantum field theory: “although TQFTs were invented by physicists, they are also of mathematical interest, being related to, among other things, knot theory”. Ed Witten was also involved in TQFT, see his knots and quantum theory. I am reminded of Buffalo Bill Menasco’s circular history of knot theory. What goes round comes round.
The simplest knot
However we’re not talking about the Gordian knot here. We’re talking about the simplest knot, the trivial knot. It’s also known as the unknot, so you might think it’s not a knot. But note that ”many useful practical knots are actually the unknot”, and that there is such a thing as the stuck unknot. Also note that as I was saying in a previous article, the ocean wave is an analogy for a photon, a singleton soliton electromagnetic wave. And that the ocean wave is a place where the surface of the sea is curved, whilst the photon is a place where space is curved. I also referred to what Schrödinger said on page 18 of his 1926 paper quantization as a problem of proper values, part II: “classical mechanics fails for very small dimensions of the path and for very great curvature”. So, what’s going to happen when an electromagnetic wave moves through curved space? Its path is going to curve. And then what’s going to happen if you curve its path so much, that the wave starts moving through itself? If the wavelength was just right for the curvature of the wave, the wave could end up moving entirely through itself, like an electromagnetic Ouroborus. You could end up with a wave in a closed path. Not a closed string. A closed path. The simplest such path is a double loop. The trivial knot is usually depicted as a single loop, but it’s sometimes depicted as a double loop too:
GNUFDL trivial knot image by Makotoy, see Wikipedia
This double loop is reminiscent of a figure-of-eight that’s been folded over. It’s also reminiscent of a clove hitch with no free ends. And because it’s a double loop, it features a 720° rotation. It goes around and around. That rings a bell. Especially if you’ve read Is the electron a photon with toroidal topology? by John Williamson and Martin van der Mark. They talk about a circular polarized photon formed into a double loop:
Images by Martin van der Mark, from Is the electron a photon with toroidal topology? by John Williamson and Martin van der Mark
They wrote this paper in 1991, and it took them six years to get it published in a low-impact journal. Called Annales de la Fondation Louis de Broglie. Oh the irony, particularly since it’s been studiously ignored ever since. They say the electron is in essence a 511keV photon trapped in a spin ½ double loop, and I think they’re right. Because I’ve read page 26 of Schrödinger’s quantization as a problem of proper values, part II. That’s where he said “let us think of a wave group of the nature described above, which in some way gets into a small closed ‘path’, whose dimensions are of the order of the wave length”. The red line in the image on the right above traces out a single geodesic to highlight the path. It’s a double loop, in the guise of a torus that looks like a single loop. There’s a similar double loop in Qiu-Hong Hu’s 2005 paper the nature of the electron:
Image from the nature of the electron by Qiu-Hong Hu
Once you’ve seen papers like these, the scales fall from your eyes. Well I think they do, because I know that when you make a torus fatter and fatter, it tends towards a spherical symmetry. I also think it’s easy to play detective when someone has told you whodunnit. I think that once you’ve seen papers like these, there’s just no going back to point particles. Particularly since there’s also mysteries and insights of Dirac theory plus other papers by David Hestenes. And the history of the toroidal ring model, which doesn’t start with Allen or Parson or Kelvin, but with Ampère. He proposed “tiny magnetic loops of charge” in 1823.
The Dirac String Trick
The Dirac string trick also features a 720° rotation. There’s a nice animated explanation of that on Robert Gray’s web site. He says this: “It has been suggested that this motion may have something to do with the spin of a particle (like the electron or proton). See for example the paper Geometric Model for Fundamental Particles by Batty-Pratt and Racey“. In 1980 Batty-Pratt and Racey talked about spherical rotations, and said “our geometrical model demonstrates the difference not only between spin-up and spin-down states, but also between the particle and the antiparticle”.
Fair use excerpt from Geometric Model for Fundamental Particles by Batty-Pratt and Racey
Note that the wave nature of matter and electron spin means we’re talking about waves going around and around in a medium rather than a central lump of the medium spinning round bodily. And that Batty-Pratt and Racey said they’d “made the presumptive leap of assuming photons to be undulations of the space-time structure”. They also talked about a “theory of the continuum that purports to describe matter as a distortion of space in the manner first suggested by W K Clifford”. That’s William Kingdon Clifford, the Clifford algebra Clifford. You can see his 1870 space theory of matter on Wikipedia. Clifford said “I hold in fact:
(1) That small portions of space are in fact of a nature analogous to little hills on a surface which is on the average flat; namely, that the ordinary laws of geometry are not valid in them.
(2) That this property of being curved or distorted is continually being passed on from one portion of space to another after the manner of a wave.
(3) That this variation of the curvature of space is what really happens in that phenomenon which we call the motion of matter, whether ponderable or etherial.
(4) That in the physical world nothing else takes place but this variation, subject (possibly) to the law of continuity”.
That nothing else takes place strikes a chord. Clifford died of tuberculosis at the age of 33. If he had not, I suspect the world would be a different place today. Charles Misner and John Wheeler referred to Clifford in their 1957 paper Classical Physics as Geometry. Sadly they missed the trick. If they had not, I suspect the world would be a different place today.
Dirac’s belt
The Dirac string trick is also known as the plate trick or the belt trick, which relates to Dirac’s belt. Kevin Brown has a mathspages article on Dirac’s belt. He refers to the Möbius strip: ”in this sense a Mobius strip is reminiscent of spin ½ particles in quantum mechanics, since such particles must be rotated through two complete rotations in order to be restored to their original state”. There’s a picture of a Möbius strip on the Wikipedia spinor article. This might remind you of something Dirac said: “thus the change in phase round a closed curve must vanish”. How do you achieve that? How do you start with a wave and make the change in phase vanish? Simple. Get a sheet of paper and a pair of scissors, and cut a sinusoidal strip of paper to emulate a wave, like this:
Let’s say the strip is 1cm wide at its widest point, and that the paper is paler on the other side. Now give it a longitudinal twist to emulate the circular-polarized photon. Then turn the ends towards one another and slide them along to make a twisting turning Möbius strip. Like this:
Is it one loop or two? It’s both. A photon is not a flat strip of course, just as a seismic wave is not a flat strip. But I think it’s a good place to start. Your Möbius strip is the same 1cm width all round. There is no width variation as you go round the strip, because at all locations round the loop there are two widths that add up to the same total width. After pair production there’s no field variation any more, because at all locations around the wave path there’s a superposition of two field variations that add to the same field value. When you wrap a sinusoidal electromagnetic field variation into a twisted double loop, the minimum and maximum field variation combine, along with all points in between, to leave you with an all-round standing field. See the Wikipedia atomic orbitals article: “electrons do not orbit the nucleus in the sense of a planet orbiting the sun, but instead exist as standing waves”. This is so true. Something else that’s true is that electrons exist as standing waves when they’re not in an orbital. That’s why we can diffract electrons. The moral of the tale is this: standing wave, standing field.
Standing wave, standing field
If you have a standing-wave photon in an optical cavity, it might look like there’s no motion. But when you kick away one of the mirrors, that photon is off like a shot, instantly moving at c from a standing start. But it wasn’t really a standing start. The standing wave might look static, but it was always moving at c, back and forth, back and forth. It was dynamical, but it looked static because the wavelength matched the cavity. To imagine this without a cavity, think of a seismic wave. When a seismic wave travels a linear path, your refrigerator is dynamically displaced 1m to the left and back again. But what would happen if that seismic wave went around and around in a tight Möbius path? Your refrigerator doesn’t move back and forth any more. It’s displaced by 1m, and that’s how it stays. The displacement is now static, because the seismic wave is now a standing wave, even though it’s still dynamical. As a result the wave of displacement is now wrapped up into an all-round spin ½ displacement field. Standing wave, standing field.
Twist and turn
You can of course make a second Möbius strip with a chirality that’s the opposite of the first. It twists and turns the other way. You can do something similar with light. In fact, you must, because in gamma-gamma pair production, light is the only tool in the box. You twist light one way using light. Conservation of angular momentum means the light you twisted with, twists and turns the other way. But remember that light is a wave in space, and space is not a paper strip. We are dealing with a 3-dimensional bulk. We can twist and turn it all the way to make one stable 511keV particle, and we can twist and turn it the other way to make another, with the opposite chirality and charge. But we can only do this for a given wavelength. We can only create a stable optical vortex if there’s a relationship between the wavelength and amplitude. Only then do we achieve a stable harmonic resonance. Only then do we end up with a dynamical wave wrapped up as an all-round static field.
Gauge theory
The wavelength of a 511keV photon is 2.426 x 10-12 m. That’s the electron Compton wavelength. In the double-loop trivial-knot configuration you divide by 2π for the diameter, which is 3.861 x 10-13 m. That suggests the amplitude of all photons is 3.861 x 10-13 m. Perhaps this is what Hermann Weyl’s gauge theory was really about. The photon itself is like a change in the scale of railroad tracks, only they’re more like corkscrew rollercoaster tracks. The change creates a curvature where the wave in space is, and when that wave moves through curved space, its path curves. Get it right, and it curves around and around, all the way round, twice, like the Möbius strip. There is no width variation as you go around the strip, and there is no apparent electron phase. But there again, there is no strip either, because the electron is a wave in a 3D bulk. It isn’t 3.861 x 10-13 m high, just as an earthquake isn’t one metre wide. It isn’t a hedgehog either, but what does a hedgehog do when threatened? It curls up into a ball. What does a 511keV photon do when you put it through gamma-gamma pair production? It curls up into a ball. Because waves interact with waves, so much so that a wave can end up moving through itself, forever interacting with itself. Knit one purl one. Annihilation is the opposite process. Cast off. There are no magic creation and annihilation operators. It’s just waves in space changing direction, that’s all. You don’t twist your Feynman diagrams, you twist your photons instead, and knot them like knitting to make the matter from which we’re made. Nothing else takes place. It’s all just Einstein’s pure marble and electromagnetic geometry, and we were so close.
The Geon
The geon was proposed by John Wheeler in 1955. That’s 61 years ago. He was the Wheeler in the Breit-Wheeler process, and Feynman’s supervisor. Like Feynman he associated curved space with the gravitational field, not the electromagnetic field. He was the man who said matter tells space how to curve. Hence the geon is “an electromagnetic or gravitational wave which is held together in a confined region by the gravitational attraction of its own field energy”. What a shame Wheeler didn’t think in terms of an electromagnetic wave only. Confined by an electromagnetic interaction circa 1039 times stronger than gravity. Then if he’d worked out that it had to be configured as a 720° double loop so it was moving through itself, he might have thought in terms of a folded figure 8. Then he would have been on the real eightfold way. Then he wouldn’t have called it a geon. He would have called it something else. After all, when we use pair production to confine a 511keV photon into a standing-wave spin ½ spinor path, we don’t call it a photon any more. We call it an electron.
Well Impressive article. Thanks for sharing your information.
My pleasure. It amazes me that how pair production works just isn’t in the textbooks. It also amazes me that a lot of physicists and cosmologists don’t know how gravity works, even though Einstein made it clear enough.
One of the most obvious places that light waves interact is in the production of mirages. Light from the sky is bent, or reflect off an energy gradient caused by the rapid change in temperature between hot road or desert surface and the air above it. Hotter air is energetically denser than cold air and bends light. That is infrared energy interacting with visible light frequencies to change the direction of visible light and create the illusion it came from a different source, Now try to explain why Einstein rings are a fundamentally different phenomena. As you pointed out John, light interacts with light.
I was also privileged to conduct a 90 metre dry dive as part of an experiment a guy was conducting at Arrowe Park Hospital in Wirral. I watched exhaled helium and air mixing with the ambient air at 10 bar pressure and observed the same sort of mixing patterns and light refraction you see when you mix hot water with cold in a sink. Energy density as the intermediate state of affair between light as light and light as matter is just the observable part of the quantised continuum. If that sounds like a contradiction, a quantised continuum, an oxymoron, then consider that atoms seem to group into regions of electronic equipotential. We know that a droplet presents a relatively homogenous boundary to our observations. It may seem continuous. But underlying it, is, most definitely, a collection of nucleii, which are quantised and seperate. No one point of view will explain everything, but understanding how all of the points of view are resolved may well.
Space is a continuum Andy. And it has a quantum nature, as per the E=hf wave nature of the photon. All photons share the same action, and the dimensionality of action can be expressed as momentum x distance. Which is why all electrons are 511keV electrons. As for nuclei, that’s another story, one where you have to gain some understanding of protons and neutrons. I don’t know if you know, but the nuclear force is something of a “disaster”. And I rather fear it isn’t the only one.
Hi, John!
This is brilliant! Congratulations!
Reminds me of this animation from Jeffrey Werbock: https://youtu.be/mBf3LK-zijA. I’m not quite sure what exactly he was trying to illustrate, and I admit not having given it much thought other than: gosh, this is so beautiful, it can’t be wrong! But I can’t help imagining your trapped photon this way in superior harmonics, as in superior electronic orbitals… Worth a look.
Many thanks Pierre. That was an interesting video from Jeffrey Werbock. I think of the toroid as the electron rather than the photon, but nevermind. Thanks, I’d like to contact animators, I’ll look him up. Yes, the trapped photon would be subject to harmonics. Interestingly enough Thomson and Tait coined the phrase spherical harmonics. They were ahead of their time with their knot theory and the vortex atoms. Why didn’t anybody apply it the electron? I suppose Gustav Mie did, but Bohr and friends ignored it.
“light is the only tool in the box” agreed but why 511keV electrons and not 512keV electrons?
Josh: because the 511keV photon has the wavelength that’s just right to make and electron. It’s 2π times the distance associated with Planck’s constant h. The dimensionality of action can be expressed as momentum x distance. See this picture from the Williamson / van der Mark electron model:
The radius r is the wavelength divided by 4π. The diameter would be the wavelength divided by 2π.
I have been binge reading your posts past couple of days. I’m a little worried because I do have some other work to do. But I presume that the number of posts is finite, and so I’ll get to the end soon.
A question: I am good with superposition and waves. But have you treated entanglement somewhere? I know that Einstein wrote about it, so I think I’ll go chase down his paper — but you have such a great style, so I am sure I would enormously benefit from your point of view.
Hi Alan. Thanks for the compliment. Yes the number of posts is finite, but only because life is finite. I don’t plan on stopping any time soon. I’ve just been busy recently. What with work, the holiday, the daughter visiting from Australia, work, the son’s flat, work, and so on. Not to mention the recent sunshine! I had a great bank holiday weekend which involved the beach, the pool, and a whole lot of socialising. So much so that the article I was going to write just didn’t get written.
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No, I’m afraid I haven’t covered entanglement. You’ll have noticed I take a realist approach to physics, and I have to say I find the evidence for entanglement somewhat elusive. See https://physicsdetective.com/einsteins-unfinished-revolution/ where I refer to Joy Christian and the 2007 New Scientist article called Quantum Entanglement: Is Spookiness Under Threat? I think he’s essentially correct because you can’t use entanglement to send a message. See http://www.sciphysicsforums.com/spfbb1/viewforum.php?f=6 for details. But anyhow, please don’t hesitate to say if there’s something you’d like me to take a look at.
Alan, I have written an article on entanglement. It’s the first of at least two articles. The subject is too big for one post. See https://physicsdetective.com/quantum-entanglement-i/ . Sorry it took me three years to get round to it!
“They say the electron is in essence a 511keV photon trapped in a spin ½ double loop, and I think they’re right.” This is certainly a fascinating idea. But one has to explain the value of the electron charge, and also why two such double loops separated by a large distance will repel each other according to Coulomb’s law. Are there any known results for that? And also, what is a proton?
Andrew Worsley gave an expression for charge: e=√(ε₀/4πc³). I’m not sure he’s got everything quite right, but I think he’s on the right track.
“>
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Two electrons repel each other because they’re like co-rotating vortices. Think in terms of Thomson and Tait vortex theory and TQFT.
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I think of the electron as the first knot in Tait’s knot table, the trivial knot. I think of the proton as the next knot in the knot table. The trefoil knot. See the trefoil on the right of this image:
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Trace around the trefoil anticlockwise from the bottom left calling out the crossing-over directions: up down up.
Reading your blog for the second time and I’m fascinated by physics again. Thanks for putting all of this together. Having worked in computer science for the past decades it takes some time to comprehend. About pair production: Have you seen https://arxiv.org/pdf/1508.06478 ? I think it fits nicely with this post.
Yes, that’s Light is Heavy by Martin van der Mark and (not the Nobel) Gerardus ‘t Hooft. I refer to it in the article on mass. Martin was a friend. He stayed overnight at our house once, with his wife Inge, who got on great with my wife Clare. We all had a great time, with gorgeous steaks and lots of red red wine. Martin also co-authored Is the electron a photon with toroidal topology? with John Williamson. Another splendid paper he wrote is on the nature of stuff and the hierarchy of the forces. Sadly he died earlier this year of a brain tumour. Lovely bloke. What a tragedy.
The pictures in the ‘Light is Heavy’ paper looked somehow familiar ;). I’m reading your articles in order again and the ‘mass’ article is down in the list.
Sorry to hear about Martin van der Mark. I’m reading ‘on the nature of stuff’ now. Very interesting stuff indeed. Thanks again for your effort to explain things in terms not only mathematicians can understand.
My pleasure David. I try.
John Duffield aka “Farsight” wrote above :
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” There are no magic creation and annihilation operators. It’s just waves in space changing direction, that’s all. You don’t twist your Feynman diagrams, you twist your photon standing waves instead, and knot them like knitting to make the matter from which we’re made. Nothing else takes place. ”
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BINGO. We are on the same page! I finally understand you much better. It takes time. Thanks for your patience, John.
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What you describe above, I would like to call it: QUANTUM KNOT-WAVE MECHANICS.
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The ultimate nature of “matter” and of subatomic “particles” is quantum knot-waves, like the anapol wave-particle (1), and the hopfotrino wave-particle (2) :
1.
2.
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Sounds good Zbig. It sounds like we are singing from the same sheet! I only wish everybody was. Sorry I haven’t replied properly still. I am pressed for free time.
The Physics Detective wrote :
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” It sounds like we are singing from the same sheet, Ziggy,
but when we talk about the electron, the issue is going to be
the nature of Light. I see it as merely an electromagnetic
wave in space, like Maxwell did. He said that light consisted
of transverse undulations, but you’re saying that photon
“particle” consists of two hopfotrino knot-waves :
https://quantumantigravity.wordpress.com/hopfotrino/
Seems like we are having a serious difference of opinions, Ziggy. ”
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And who happens to be fully correct this time, eh ?! :-))
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John, would you dare to disagree with James Clerk Maxwell,
the giant of physics ??
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I would never dare. No way !!!
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Therefore, I must say that this is Maxwell, who is fully and completely correct.
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At the same time, I can only hope that you, John, will also fully
and completely agree with Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism :
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” Maxwell’s equations of electromagnetism allow for curious solutions
having linked and knotted field lines. A particularly striking solution
is one characterized by the property of all electric and magnetic
field lines being closed loops, with any two electric and magnetic
field lines linked (see below). These little known solutions are based
on the Hopf fibration and have a remarkably simple representation
in terms of self-dual Chandrasekhar-Kendall curl eigenstates :
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John, are we singing from the same sheet ?
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https://quantumantigravity.wordpress.com/sqkwm/
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I’m now thinking we are not, Ziggy. Sorry. Please make sure you read the articles I refer to in https://physicsdetective.com/what-is-a-photon/
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John, yes, Maxwell said that light consisted of transverse undulations.
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It was true then, as it is now. Amen to that, bro.
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However, this is not the end of the Story of Light.
Quite the opposite. It was merely the beginning.
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After Maxwell had died, quantum mechanics was born,
and eventually, over 100 years ago, it theoretically predicted,
and then experimentally verified the paradoxical particle-wave duality.
Love it, or hate it, it is still here, with us, for the following good reasons :
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAeDBLUT9JA
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Do you think it could be possible that, if Maxwell
were alive now, he would change his mind about photon
being also a particle, and not exclusively an electromagnetic
transverse undulations in the electric field ?
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I bet you anything that Maxwell, as opposed to you, John,
would have instantly changed his mind because of
the following new experimental result.
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John, you say that you : ” see light as merely an
electromagnetic wave in space, like Maxwell did. ”
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If so, how will you explain the first ever experimental
holographic image of a photon particle?
The following is the full story of this experiment :
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https://www.fuw.edu.pl/press-release/news4619.html
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John, how will you explain the above photon particle
with your ” Light as merely an electromagnetic wave
in space, like Maxwell did ” ? ? ?
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Let me help you, John.
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Even Maxwell himself would not be able to explain it,
which would be the good enough reason for him
to change his mind about the nature of Light.
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As an aspiring scientist (physicist), I am always open to be proven wrong.
I wish to be proven wrong ( when I am wrong ), because based on my errors
and mistakes, I will never produce anything scientifically correct and true.
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There is no point to keep pretending that, in the vacuum of outer space,
the speed of light is constant. It would have been very nice and elegant
had it been so, but it is not. And insisting otherwise is not science anymore,
and as a result we find ourselves in a miraculous La-La Universe, like God telling Nature to obey our Laws, and where space is made of elastic monolithic stone. :-))
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Your are thinking with your willy.
Don’t be silly :
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I’m sorry Ziggy, now you’ve become abusive both here and in emails, I’m going to say this: let’s agree to differ and go our separate ways.
The Physics Detective — ” Sorry I haven’t replied properly still. I am pressed for free time.”
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Dear John, please, don’t reply, because it will be a waste of time.
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Also, even though I am a tireless, keen and avid debater, I have just decided not to debate you on the nature of space. Waste of time. The nature of space seems to be our only bone of contention, so we better skip it.
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I have a better idea! :-))
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Please, find an issue that we could collaborate on. Why waste time on destructive arguing, when we could do something constructive together instead?
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I admire your dedication, persistence, and scientific intuition.
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I feel confident that our brain-storming and collaboration could produce a small result, but such that could not be ignored by mainstream physics.
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It is all up to you, John.
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Yours truly,
Ziggy
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The Physics Detective — ” Sounds good Zbig. It sounds like we are singing from the same sheet! ”
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Dear John,
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Yes, we have been singing from the same sheet since before we met here, on your blog. And it was thanks to Dr. Alexander Unzicker, who recommended your blog in one of his videos :
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https://www.youtube.com/user/TheMachian/videos
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I have a suggestion for our possible future collaboration.
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You will be the Lead Researcher, and I will be on your Team.
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The goal of our research project will be to produce detailed and precise mainstream physics description of the internal structure of electron.
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For example, the process of electron-positron annihilation suggests strong similarity between electron and photon.
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Before we start, you are invited to critically examine my model of photon’s internal structure that I claim is composed of two hopfotrino knot-waves. It was easy, because I did it straight from obvious mainstream experimental results. It was there, on the silver plate in front of me, free for the taking.
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Now, we do not have such experimental results for electron. The only thing we have are a few suggestions of close similarity between electron and photon. Therefore, if you accept my model of photon’s internal structure, we could think how to twist it into electron, because this is what seems to be happening in the process of electron-positron annihilation :
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” There are no magic creation and annihilation operators. It’s just waves in space changing direction, that’s all. You don’t twist your Feynman diagrams, you twist your photon standing waves instead, and knot them like knitting to make the matter from which we’re made. Nothing else takes place. ”
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What do you say, John ?
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Ziggy
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According to wikipedia, Pair production requires an atomic nucleus to be nearby the two photons. So how was the universe created from light, if there weren’t any atomic nucleus’s created yet? Seems like the chicken and egg problem. I don’t understand why the nearby nucleus is required.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair_production
Rich: pair production doesn’t require a nucleus. There’s such a thing as gamma-gamma pair production, where two photons interact to create an electron or a positron, or some other particle-antiparticle pair. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breit%E2%80%93Wheeler_process, which is mentioned in the “See also” section of the Wikipedia article. Pair production involving a nucleus occurs when one photon is split into two by the nucleus. Thereafter you have two photons, and presumably something akin to gamma-gamma pair production occurring. Do have a read of https://physicsdetective.com/the-hole-in-the-heart-of-quantum-electrodynamics/.
Do you have any animation or video about that “wave traveling on wave” thing? As it is, I can only take your word for it, because I never noticed such an effect myself and there’s nothing on the internet, only talk about constructive interference (superposition).
I don’t I’m afraid, Sandra. All I can suggest is that you try it out for yourself when you next go swimming. Or you could maybe fill the bath and get a board or something to make a big wave that sloshes back and forth, and then make a little wave with your hand.
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Alternatively, think of a big wave in a string moving from left to right, and a little wave in the same string moving from right to left. As the little wave encounters the big wave, it changes direction. It has to. It can’t keep on going straight from right to left, because there’s no string there.
I found something: https://ophysics.com/w2.html
With this tool you can play around with adding two waves with different properties. The phenomenon you describe can only be seen when one wave is of much bigger wavelength than the other. But this is not the case for two photons at the same 511 keV energy. Also I really don’t see how this phenomenon is any different from simple constructive interference.
If it really changed the direction of the wave then its linear momentum would be affected, but that is not what we observe, not even in strings. I think we need to come up with a different mechanism for photon confinement.
Sandra: thanks for that. I had some fun tweaking the parameters. It seemed to work best with a very small wave and a very big wave. Only then could I get an impression of how the small wave changes direction as it goes up and over the big wave. Look out for the blue dotted line. That change of direction isn’t apparent for two equal waves. They look as if they keep going straight, and they continue to look vertical. They don’t appear to climb each others’ slope.
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Yes, if a wave really changed direction its linear momentum would be affected. Take a look at https://physicsdetective.com/the-mystery-of-mass-is-a-myth/. Photon momentum is a measure of resistance to change-in-motion for a wave moving linearly at c. Electron mass is resistance to change-in-motion for a wave going around and around at c. Because that linear momentum isn’t linear any more. But conservation of angular momentum means you can only achieve this this via pair production, which throws each wave into a hitch. Don’t overthink the mechanism. When an ocean wave moves through the sea, the sea waves. When a seismic wave moves through the ground, the ground waves. So, what waves when a light wave moves through space? Space. Space waves. Where space is waving, space is curved, and a wave moving through curved space follows a curved path. That’s how I see it anyway, in terms of William Kingdon Clifford’s space theory of matter. Only I don’t even have an animation of the photon to show you. Sigh.
“…We can only create a stable optical vortex if there’s a relationship between the wavelength and amplitude. Only then do we achieve a stable harmonic resonance….”
Wouldn’t that imply an intricate relationship between “standing wave” (aka particle) and spacetime?
– in such a way, that messing with the latter would impact the resonance-frequency of the former?
… and thus “dissolve” the particle, as it is being exposed to a much stronger (or much weaker!) gravitational field?!?
A photon moving upwards in a gravitational field speeds up, after all; as such the relative resonance should change; we see that as gravitational red-/blue-shift.
So why don’t black holes “dissolve” matter as it gets close to them?
Or do they?!?
CG: they don’t “dissolve” matter per se. They cause gamma ray bursts. Gamma ray bursts reawakened interest in General Relativity in the 1960s. Stephen Hawking came up with Hawking radiation to try to explain them, but IMHO he missed the trick. IMHO Friedwardt Winterberg did not. See https://physicsdetective.com/firewall/. You might also like to take a look at https://physicsdetective.com/the-gamma-bomb/.
chatgpt 4.0 can be easily coaxed into agreeing with you, by just copying & pasting your articles in with simple prompting:
>Yes, forget mainstream physics. Stay with Einstein’s original talks, papers, and this author’s articles please. Now tell me this model’s view of how an electron is created via pair production.
“In the model presented by the author, and considering Einstein’s original works on relativity and the nature of light, the creation of an electron via pair production might be envisioned as follows:
Interaction of Light Waves: In this model, light waves can interact with each other, similar to how water waves interact. When two high-energy photons (gamma rays) collide, their interaction could lead to a change in their paths and energy states.
Formation of a Knotted Structure: The energy from the interacting photons could lead to the formation of a stable, knotted structure. This structure is proposed to be a photon twisted into a double loop, forming what the author describes as a “trivial knot” or an “unknot.” This knotted structure is suggested to have a spin ½ characteristic, similar to that of an electron.
Transition from Photon to Electron: The knotted photon, with its stable structure and spin, effectively becomes an electron. The process of gamma-gamma pair production, where two photons interact to create an electron-positron pair, is thus seen as a transition from a linear photon wave to a knotted, stable wave structure that exhibits the properties of an electron.
Role of Curved Space: The author suggests that the interaction and subsequent knotting of the photon wave occur in curved space. The curvature of space, influenced by the presence of energy, plays a role in the formation of the electron’s stable structure.
In this model, the creation of an electron via pair production is not just a matter of energy conversion but also involves the formation of a specific geometric structure in space. This structure, once formed, exhibits the properties we associate with an electron, such as mass, charge, and spin. This perspective offers a novel way of thinking about particles and their interactions, though it diverges from the conventional quantum field theory description of pair production.”
> Great, now talk about how this novel stable geometric structure of space would interact in a gravitational field (where the speed of light is of course spatially varying)
In the model described by the author, where the electron is considered a novel stable geometric structure of space (a knotted photon), its interaction in a gravitational field, where the speed of light is spatially varying, can be envisioned as follows:
Influence of Gravitational Potential: In a gravitational field, the speed of light varies with the gravitational potential. This variation in the speed of light would affect the geometric structure of the electron, as its formation and stability are tied to the properties of the electromagnetic field and the curvature of space.
Curvature of the Electron’s Path: Just as the path of light is curved in a gravitational field, the path of the electron, being a stable structure of space (knotted light), would also be curved. The degree of curvature would depend on the strength of the gravitational field and the spatial variation in the speed of light.
Gravitational Redshift: The electron’s energy, like that of a photon, would be subject to gravitational redshift in a varying gravitational potential. As the electron moves to regions of higher gravitational potential, its energy would decrease, and conversely, it would increase as it moves to regions of lower potential.
Interaction with Other Matter: In this model, the electron’s interaction with other matter in a gravitational field would be influenced by the local curvature of space and the varying speed of light. The electron’s behavior, such as its trajectory and energy levels, would be determined by the combined effects of its stable geometric structure and the surrounding gravitational environment.
Quantum Gravity Effects: Considering the electron as a stable geometric structure of space introduces a connection between quantum properties (such as the electron’s wave nature) and gravitational effects. In regions of strong gravitational fields or near massive objects, this model might provide insights into the elusive relationship between quantum mechanics and general relativity.
In summary, in this novel model, an electron’s interaction in a gravitational field is influenced by its nature as a stable geometric structure of space, the spatial variation in the speed of light, and the curvature of space caused by gravity. This perspective offers a unique way of considering the behavior of particles in gravitational fields, though it diverges from conventional quantum field theory and general relativity.
> Would this electron appear to “fall” down?
In the model described by the author, where the electron is considered a stable geometric structure of space (a knotted photon), its behavior in a gravitational field would indeed resemble “falling” down, similar to how any mass is observed to fall in a gravitational field. Here’s how it can be conceptualized:
Curved Path: Due to the curvature of space in a gravitational field, the path of the electron would be curved towards the source of the gravitational field. This curvature of the path would give the appearance of the electron “falling” towards the massive object, much like any other object influenced by gravity.
Influence of Gravitational Potential: The spatial variation in the speed of light within the gravitational field would affect the electron’s stable geometric structure. As the electron moves to regions of lower gravitational potential (closer to the source of gravity), its energy and path would be influenced in a way that results in a trajectory towards the massive object.
Gravitational Interaction: Although the electron is conceptualized as a knotted structure of light in this model, it still possesses mass (as indicated by its rest energy) and would interact with the gravitational field accordingly. The gravitational force would act on the electron, causing it to accelerate towards the source of gravity.
Wave Behavior: The electron’s wave nature, combined with the varying speed of light in the gravitational field, could lead to complex interactions. However, the overall effect would still be a trajectory that appears as if the electron is “falling” towards the source of the gravitational field.
In summary, even in this novel model where the electron is viewed as a stable geometric structure of space, its behavior in a gravitational field would still be consistent with the classical notion of “falling” due to gravity. This is because the fundamental interaction between mass and gravity, as described by general relativity, still applies to the electron, regardless of its conceptualization as a knotted photon.
That’s pretty good Richard. Thanks for that. However the word mixer still fails to distinguish curved spacetime from curved space. Photons are light waves. Light waves are waves in space. Where space is waving, space is curved. If another light wave were to move through that space, its path would be curved. If it curved so much that it encountered itself, it could end up in a closed curved path.
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A gravitational field is not a region of space where space is curved. It is a region of space where space is inhomogeneous, this being mapped out by the varying speed of light. When any wave passes through a medium where there is an orthogonal gradient in wave speed, the wave’s path curves. This is why light curves downwards in a gravitational field. A concentration of energy does not curve space, it renders it inhomogeneous in a non-linear fashion, which is then labelled as “curved spacetime”. Light curves downwards whether it’s moving on a horizontal linear path through inhomogeneous space, or on a closed curved path. In the latter situation, only the horizontal component of the light path curves downwards, which is why the deflection of light is twice the Newtonian deflection of matter.
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The word mixer rehashes the common misunderstanding of gravitational redshift too. And how gravity works. There is no gravitational force on the electron. The electron is like a little motor boat going round and round in circles in inhomogeneous water. It doesn’t stay in the same place.
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Anyway, this is fun. Thanks again!
Today’s scores are just in :
John : 2
Standard Model : 0.00
LOL! Good one Greg. What a pity Artificial Intelligence isn’t really Artificial Intelligence. It isn’t even Artificial Stupidity. It’s a bit like the wife’s food processor. Only instead of dicing carrots and scrambling eggs, it scrambles prose, then serves up something that is vaguely presentable. Only when you consume it, you come to appreciate that there is no MasterChef behind this concoction. There is nobody home!
Hey Richard, would you consider to keep feeding The Word Salad Apt. MORE ? As Oliver Twist once requested. I think it would be a most interesting/ educational real time experiment in testing A.I. limits. Can it make any sense of incorporating some basic Karl Popper ? The Four Basic Steps of the Modern Scientific Method ? Can A.I. interpret and apply the concept of Falsifiability to the current discussions ? At worst you might be able to break it’s f- ing algorithms.