[General] Group discussion at San Diego

[John Williamson]

Dear Chip and everyone,

I am trying to start to get my act together in preparation for August, and just came across the keynote talk from Carver Mead from nature of light and particles 5. It is available here :

http://natureoflight.org/

It addresses the very issue of interaction with the absorber we discussed earlier. In my opinion it is spot on - even though the answer to the last question (similar to your worry Chip) was rather weak - that a lot of people have trouble with resonances over million year plus-time scales. Indeed.

I think the proper way to view this is, as I said, from the point of view of the observer being in touch with all points on the lightcone at previous times, not that the emitter sees all "future" times all over the universe. This is a "pull" not a "push" for the direction of causality. The observer says "hit me!". The past is happy to oblige - zillions of hits per second painting the universe of your perceptions.

Now I enjoyed Carver Mead's book thoroughly a few years ago when I first came across it (thanks Nick) and he is one person I would very much like to meet if I'm coming to California. That man can really think - and think freely.  Is he coming to this one, and, if not, can anyone introduce me? He would be a most excellent person to have on the group. Another excellent chap - and I have just finished reading some spectacularly interesting work of his- is Tony Booth (copied above). Tony is a real engineer (I am in an engineering department but I can tell the difference). Please add him to the general discussion group!

Further to this whole developing endeavour. I am perfectly delighted to try and give classes on any aspect of the new theory - or to help bring people up to speed on some of the other relevant theories and areas in my areas of expertise - in quantum mechanics (relativistic or ordinary), experimental solid state physics, elementary particle physics (including QED, the standard model and various field theories), and relativity (special or general). Another favourite theme of mine is current problems and mysteries in Science as a whole. Another possibility is a question and answer session on "how stuff works". I'm particularly interested in questions I cannot answer. We should make a list!

I expect lots of you to contribute and educate me in areas where I am weak such as optics, photonics, atomic physics to name but a very few (my ignorance is, almost, boundless). Martin and I are quite used to this as we both belong to an international study club (I was a founder member - but it is still going strong after a quarter of a century) which does this sort of thing regularly. It is BIG fun! I'm sure there will be  a lot of input from others in the group in developing aspects of the above theories where, I am sure, many of you go beyond me.

I already have tens of hours of lecture material prepared and am perfectly happy to go on for multiple hours at a time (if people can stand it). I just gave four hours of lectures on-the-trot yesterday (then had lunch and gave another one). I am quite used to it - and it would be much more fun than the first year vector and complex number maths given in two of the lectures today. If a room can be made available either before or after the conference with a projector and board all would be welcome. I know Martin would be prepared to talk on his areas of expertise as well, and I'm sure others of the more senior group would be delighted to help educate the younger ones as well.

We could, further, invite anyone from industry who was interested in new, linear, paradigms for developing and thinking about new kinds of materials, devices and systems for a further session, perhaps after the conference proper. This may have the added advantage of snowballing into some other meetings and prospects for the future.

What does everyone think?

Regards, John.

________________________________
From: General [general-bounces+john.williamson=glasgow.ac.uk at lists.natureoflightandparticles.org] on behalf of chandra [chandra at phys.uconn.edu]
Sent: Monday, March 09, 2015 7:02 PM
To: 'Nature of Light and Particles - General Discussion'
Cc: Hans De Raedt
Subject: [General] Group discussion at San Diego

Dear Out-of-Box “Electron Modelers”:

We are arranging for a special 3-hour (8 to 11AM) discussion session, especially, for this group, on Thursday, August, 13, 2015. The title has been deliberately chosen as a somewhat open ended question:
“Are electrons oscillating photons or oscillations of the vacuum itself?”

If needed, the 3-huor duration would be flexible; and we can add an extra hour. During the main conference schedule, all of you have been given the standard 20-minute slots. This compensating discussion period provides all of you a better forum to debate and further develop your concepts.

I will take the role of the Moderator. I would need a couple of volunteer editors from your “Electron Modeling” group. Feel free to suggest their names. Obviously, I am looking for “volunteers” who are very respectful to logically self-consistent views of others in spite of those views being counter to their personal views. All of you will be given the opportunity to present the summary of your views, as well-articulated issues/point-of-views to promote discussions. Duration of this first presentation will be short (5 minutes??).

The ideas presented above are suggestions, and obviously, they are not set in stone; since we want to maximize the scientific outcome of this discussion. So, please, feel free to send me your suggestions through this “General Forum” to develop a better approach towards our ultimate ambitious goal: The correct ontological model of the electron!

I am soliciting also suggestions and editorial support regarding how to incorporate the summary of this discussion  in the SPIE proceeding. The turn-around time has to be less than a month. Normally, SPIE publishes many of the proceedings pre-conference publication available during the conference. We have been holding out for post-conference. We must finalize everything by the end of September.

Please, develop concepts and ideas on how to summarize the discussion/debate and also relate them to your individual papers. Remember that SPIE proceeding rule is 10-page limit for individual articles.

Also remember, while preparing your papers and presentations that our dominant SPIE audience consists of engineering. Engineers think in terms emulating nature allowed processes in different permutations and combinations to create new working tools and technologies, in spite of their incomplete understanding of the deeper complete theory. So, try to add relevant experiments to illustrate the deeper ontological processes that may be going on in nature; even though you are speculating them with your mathematical models.

Sincerely,
Chandra.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.natureoflightandparticles.org/pipermail/general-natureoflightandparticles.org/attachments/20150325/77cfbebc/attachment.htm>