[General] Group discussion at San Diego

Wed Mar 25 12:11:27 PDT 2015

Hi Martin

Thank you for the detail in your description.  I really appreciate your
concrete and effective explanation technique.

What occurs to me is that our current understanding may be incomplete, and
that dealing with the current interpretation of all the many experiments is
not necessarily giving us the accurate picture. I know full well that there
are many physicists who feel this matter has been "put to rest" by that
application of theory in the way you have described. However, science often,
throughout history, has required that we return to, and question, what were
"solid" beliefs. We think we know the answer, all wrapped and tidy, and then
discover that we really did not get it.

I also appreciate you taking the effort and time to point out several of the
"supporting" experimental pieces.  However I am very familiar with these
experiments.

There are implications resulting from our current photon exchange
explanations which seem to contradict experience. It seems there must be
more to the story of photon exchange which allows for it to describe better
the interactions in the universe we live in. Perhaps I can look up some
experiments which will illustrate these contradictions.

In the time since Special Relativity was introduced, and became accepted, we
have placed a tremendous importance in the "law" that nothing can travel
faster than light, and that space and time are in certain ways
interchangeable. But what if we found that there are things which can travel
very much faster than light?  

And what if we found that time was simply affected by velocity, due to the
Pythagorean transformations which extend interaction (photon or field
propagation) distances for particles when they have velocity.  Then time as
we perceive and measure it, would be an artifact of the velocity of light.
That is to say that time would be caused by the velocity of light.  Light
would be fundamental, time would be a consequence.  Time transformations
would not apply to light.  Now there is significant incidental evidence that
this is precisely true. Some of that evidence is in the Pythagorean form of
Lorentz transformations themselves.

I understand your steadfast belief, and may come to share that belief, but
certain issues must be resolved for me to get there.  I have raised several
concerns in these email exchanges regarding this issue, and to this point
those concerns have not been addressed well enough for me to dismiss them.
I have read and reread experimental results, and paper after paper, to try
to find any means to address those issues under the current theory.  I still
come to the tentative conclusion that we do not yet have the real answer to
describe accurately these events.

While you did not do any speculation in reciting the common interpretation
of experimental evidence, I feel certain pieces of our "understanding" and
"proven theories" are still speculation, and we will continue to sharpen and
refine our understanding, and lay better foundations.  I feel we will do
this specifically because of forums such as this one, and people such and
this group. 

Sometimes when it seems impossible to correctly assemble the puzzle pieces,
it is because some of the pieces are missing, and some don't even belong in
this puzzle at all.  When we have the correct pieces it will probably become
much easier to see how they all fit together.

If a photon cannot leave the emitter until the absorber has identified
itself, whether we are talking about the absorber looking infinitely back in
time, or the emitter looking infinitely forward in time, then "events", as
you refer to them, would be predetermined for billions of years in the more
distant circumstances. Since photons don't curve to fit the trajectory of an
absorber's trajectory through space, and there is no way for such a
transaction to take place without absolute predetermination of the position
of the absorber at the instant the photon arrives, it seems the theory falls
apart. And this is only one of the concerns with this specific
interpretation of experimental results. While is it ingenious, this specific
solution just does not seem to fit the conditions found in our universe.

Knowing full well that it may be deemed heretical or ignorant to question
such an established notion, I feel that in this forum is the right place to
address such concerns.  We are all a group of independent thinkers working
toward the same goals.

Chip

From: General
[mailto:general-bounces+chipakins=gmail.com at lists.natureoflightandparticles.
org] On Behalf Of Mark, Martin van der
Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2015 8:38 AM
To: Nature of Light and Particles - General Discussion
Subject: Re: [General] Group discussion at San Diego

Dear Chip, 

let me start by answering your questions (not because John cannot do it, but
he is doing a lot of answering already)

First of all you are right in saying that it is not the whole story,
something else is going on as well.

But first we have to get a few things very straight.

What I know as being correct knowledge, as a professional physicist, is what
I will describe below. Correct knowledge is that knowledge that science has
approved of to be the closest to the truth as we presently know. Not more,
and also not any less.

(Special) relativity is essentially correct, it describes experiment,
including time dilation, twin paradox, etc.

The foundation of the theory is that the speed of light is the same for all
observers. The consequence is that clocks flying at high speed seem to be
slow (the clock thinks the same of stationary you). Clocks will stop ticking
in the limit where they would move at light speed. At the same time space is
contracted, the clocks look short. No size (in the direction of motion) will
remain when at light speed.

Conclusion: something that goes at the speed of light does not see any time
or space, it is there but contracted to nothing at all. Something that
happens, but without space or time interval. This is what we call an event.
It is a point in space-time.

If you cannot agree with the above, you cannot agree with physics as it
stands. It may not be the whole story, but the bit I described is the
consistent truth to our very best knowledge. One cannot dismiss it out of
hand, or even with a lot of experiments, because a zillion experiments have
confirmed this already. There may be an additional subtlety that has been
overlooked, but then one has to point out that subtlety very precisely.

Now there are at least two extra things to the story you want to talk about,
some subtleties you may call them, but before I go into those, I want to
point out something else that we know to our very best knowledge. It is the
single most puzzling thing, I believe, in physics today.

It is the experimental result of the EPR-experiments, the quantum
teleportation, quantum eraser, and other quantum entanglement experiments,
see Bell inequalities and GHZ entanglement. The result of these experiments
is the proof that space is non-local for entangled quantum states. That may
be a part of a very limited set of states describing normal life, but it
shows that space is not simply what normal  reason of local causality makes
of it.

Again I have so far not done any speculation, this is what the situation in
physics is.

>From here it is still nothing new really, it is only just taking the full
consequences of the above, but it is not an embedded piece of knowledge in
the whole body of physics.

So now it comes; These results can be understood completely if we look at
them from the point of view of emission as a result of interaction by the
absorber!!!!!! In all their weirdness, this is how it actually seems to be
workings.

Interaction of the emitter and absorber to exchange a photon is saying that
the photon is part of an event (or that two entangled photons [emitted from
a singlet state] are part of a single event with one emitter and two
absorbers). The emitter and absorber(s) are one at that event.

This notion unifies the idea of non-locality and emission of light, AS A
CONSEQUENCE OF THE LIGHTSPEED BEING CONSTANT FOR ALL ABSORBERS.

Now you can choose to dismiss it or not.

There here are the mentioned two subtleties: 

1)      light is quantized, we are talking about photons. That is not a
required part of relativity, but it is not clear to me how it would upset
it. Or is it perhaps..?

2)      Light does not really go at the speed of light or rather it is, but
I mean photons are not really going at the speed of light. The near-field
part of the excitation or the limited distance between emission and
absorption (it is not infinite) puts boundaries on it and pulls the total
emission slightly off the energy-momentum shell, hence it is ever, ever,ever
so slightly slow.. (only the radiative part is light speed and rigorously
on-shell)

Well John, or anybody else, may add what is missing! I have to go.

Best regards, Martin

Dr. Martin B. van der Mark

Principal Scientist, Minimally Invasive Healthcare

Philips Research Europe - Eindhoven

High Tech Campus, Building 34 (WB2.025)

Prof. Holstlaan 4

5656 AE  Eindhoven, The Netherlands

Tel: +31 40 2747548

From: General [
<mailto:general-bounces+martin.van.der.mark=philips.com at lists.natureoflighta
ndparticles.org>
mailto:general-bounces+martin.van.der.mark=philips.com at lists.natureoflightan
dparticles.org] On Behalf Of Chip Akins
Sent: woensdag 25 maart 2015 13:35
To: 'Nature of Light and Particles - General Discussion'
Subject: Re: [General] Group discussion at San Diego

Hi John W

Still working on coming to grips with emission and absorption interactions.

Lots of opinion follows.

I feel that photon exchange, and virtual particle exchange, is a mechanism
we can demonstrate and is a required part of our understanding, at least for
many short range interactions.  However I do not feel the "single point in
spacetime" approach provides the answer. I believe that photons are very
simple linear, principally transverse, quantized wave structures. And that
mater is made of wave structures as well. And as such photons are
responsible for creating relativity.  Photons are then the fundamental upon
which relativity is built, and are not subject to the spacetime velocity
transformations, but rather are the cause for these transformations being
required for mater.

Imagine an asteroid or planet orbiting a star a billion light years away.
Now envision the past light cone for an absorber on that asteroid or planet.
If photons zig, zagged in their paths to their destination, the popular
concept could work for absorption and emission.  But of course they travel
in "straight" lines in spacetime. Even if an absorber can see all of its
past light cone at one point in space time, it still does not correctly
explain photon exchange.  There is something else going on here, something
is missing, and something that is not really there has been "added" to try
to explain things. I feel we have reached for an explanation which is
convenient, but an error, and that we do not yet have the real answer to
this issue.

Still eager to understand.

Chip

From: General [
<mailto:general-bounces+chipakins=gmail.com at lists.natureoflightandparticles.
org>
mailto:general-bounces+chipakins=gmail.com at lists.natureoflightandparticles.o
rg] On Behalf Of John Williamson
Sent: Tuesday, March 24, 2015 10:28 PM
To: Nature of Light and Particles - General Discussion
Cc: Anthony Booth; Hans De Raedt
Subject: Re: [General] Group discussion at San Diego

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/> 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.natureoflightandparticl
es.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.

  _____  

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