[General] Photonic electron models - etc

[Dr Grahame Blackwell]

Hi Richard, Chip, Chandra, John W, Vivian, John D et al



(Chandra, I’ve specifically included you as there’s some stuff starting 7 
paras from the end of this email that relates very closely to things of 
yours that I’ve read.)



I thought it might be useful for me to sum up where I stand on this ‘model 
of an electron’ thing – basically because that’s not really what I’m about. 
I have an interest in electron structure, certainly, and hopefully I’m able 
to make some meaningful observations on the subject – but it’s very much 
secondary to my own main area of study, which is the underlying nature of 
physical reality.



For me that starts with TIME: what time is, what drives time, how it 
manifests in the physical realm.  Until we have a reasonable handle on time, 
anything we say about time dilation, how time changes in different 
circumstances is totally speculative.  If we don’t have a feel for what time 
is then we can’t begin to comprehend what it is that’s being dilated – so 
also what that ‘dilation’ actually means.  Also time plays a major part in 
other concepts we need to be able to work with: ‘spin’ is a classic 
example – being essentially angular momentum, but rather less tangible in 
the quantum sense (as John W has so rightly pointed out), we’re going to 
have serious trouble working with it (as we do!) if we don’t understand one 
of its main parameters.



Right, so: time is the process of electromagnetic energy threading its way 
around the cosmos, either wholly linearly as light (including non-visible 
frequencies) or cyclically as particle structure (this includes a linear 
component for particles in motion – which is pretty well all of them).  This 
isn’t news, it’s implicit in the concept of increasing entropy as the arrow 
of time.  Just from that beginning, bearing in mind that all of the 
particles forming sentient beings and measuring instruments are themselves 
formed in this way, the whole of Special Relativity – every last bit of it – 
drops out totally naturally without ANY need for any metaphysical property 
of light (such as its speed being objectively the same in relation to the 
motion of any observer).



[Just in passing I should observe that, given the clear accepted nature of 
time as energy-flow – the whole entropy thing – I’m absolutely mystified as 
to how adherents to SR can also see time as a pseudospatial dimension that 
objects move through.  Not just as a useful metaphor – which it is – but 
literally, leading to the concept of closed timelike curves and potential 
time paradoxes in cases of superluminal travel (or equivalent); it’s hard to 
see how this can be compatible with time as energy-flow.]



For me this is absolutely 100% convincing: from this standpoint it’s 
possible to derive, from first principles, ALL of the relationships that are 
said to be so according to the SR assumption of inertial frame equivalence. 
Some are shown to be objective (such as speed-related time dilation), some 
are shown to be subjective (such as the apparent symmetry of the Lorentz 
Transformation and the perceived invariance of the speed of light – right 
down to a particulate level, i.e. a fast-moving elementary particle will 
respond to EM radiation as if that radiation is travelling at c relative to 
it), and some are shown to be just plain wrong (such as the assumed 
reciprocity of time dilation, for which no empirical evidence exists to my 
knowledge).



Now that I KNOW that SR phenomena can be fully explained in this way I can’t 
un-know it.  I’m with Oliver Wendell Holmes when he said: “A mind once 
expanded by a new idea can never return to its original size”.  Think Matrix 
red-pill/blue-pill.  More than this, I KNOW that greater understanding of 
our space-time environment, understanding that might one day take us to the 
stars (and God knows, we desperately need more lebensraum and a new 
challenge!) is at present being seriously impeded by trying to force the 
‘Cinderella’s slipper’ of physical reality to fit an outdated paradigm.



If any find that arrogant, I’m sorry.  Was Lavoisier arrogant when he 
insisted that combustion involves a constituent of the surrounding 
atmosphere rather than emission of phlogiston from the burning substance 
(the accepted theory for the previous 100 years)?  In my second ‘Kybernetes’ 
paper (Nov 2011) I offer a coherent and consistent proposed explanation for 
gravitation, based on the cyclic-photon structure of elementary particles; 
it may or may not prove correct – but I absolutely guarantee that it will 
not be possible to produce a satisfactory explanation for gravitation based 
on a frame-symmetric universe.



So where does this fit in with electron models?  Going back to time as an 
energy-flow phenomenon, we all agree (I think) that a cyclic-photon 
structure for a static particle becomes a helical-photon structure for a 
moving particle.  If the cyclic element of that helical path is the same 
length – i.e. its radius remains constant – then the Relativistic 
Energy-Momentum Relation drops out, as does the relationship between 
particle speed and time dilation (based on the premise that the cycling of 
energy around a particle or system is the driving force for time-effects in 
that particle or system) as well as crucial aspects of the Lorentz 
Transformation.



There may be some other electron model that maintains all of those features; 
if so then it could be an alternative contender*.  The main point for me is 
that the simplest approach – simply pull that repeating circle out into a 
helix without changing its radius – fits the various criteria perfectly and 
so is proof-of-concept as far as I’m concerned.  With that proof-of-concept 
I’m entirely comfortable with the notion that a suitable form of photon 
orbit will give the spin known to apply for an electron – I don’t need to 
know exactly how orbital + intrinsic spin of photon combine to give spin of 
electron, any more than I know how the various spins and rotations of the 
constituent particles of a helium atom wind up (!) giving a spin of 1 for 
that particle (and I suspect that the spinor calculations will be 
considerably more complex than any of us have put forward as yet – in this I 
again agree with John W).



[*Note that ANY photonic electron model will have implications for the space 
and time experience of an object or observer travelling at speed; if it 
doesn’t produce those effects grouped under SR (and largely proved by 
experiment) then it will produce OTHER effects which, by implication, do NOT 
accord with experimental results (this includes no effects at all).  Any 
such model is thus effectively invalidated.]



Neither do I need to know the exact configuration of that orbit to give the 
charge of an electron; it’s very clear that a circularly polarized photon 
WILL give an emanation that could manifest as ‘charge’, and clear also that 
an electron DOES produce that ‘charge’.  Similarly there’s absolutely no 
doubt in my mind that field effects of a closed-loop photon in some 
configuration WILL give rise to the ‘confinement’ that we observe in a 
closed-loop photon forming an elementary particle; I believe that it’s down 
to interference effects within that loop, but I’m open to other 
possibilities (though for me, two photons forming an e+/e- particle pair, 
and vice versa, says that everything that’s needed is in those two photons – 
either each forming a particle or a blend of the two combining in each 
case).



So I really don’t feel I’m the best person to be producing a tightly defined 
model of an electron, with all the loose ends tied up.  I completely agree, 
Chip, that once we know the whole story we’ll see all the pieces fitting 
together beautifully just as they do in nature – though that time may be a 
little while coming (as it is for various other aspects of physics).  I 
truly believe that we’ll only get the full picture when we can get our heads 
around the distributed nature of matter (which I believe it is – condensed 
into ‘localised’ form by our senses, as an evolutionary adaptation to 
facilitate existence in space-time).  I’m happy, though, to point out when 
it seems to me that a model doesn’t fit with known facts (as you’ve asked, 
Richard) – and also when one does, and adds to the overall picture.



Finally, I’m totally in agreement with what I understand is Chandra’s 
position: space is some sort of medium in which electromagnetic field 
effects can manifest (and as I’ve said, IMO ‘time’ is the effect of threads 
of EM energy running through that medium).  This is in a sense a 
resurrection of the concept of the aether – which I don’t consider has in 
any way been disproved – though perhaps rather different in form from that 
envisaged by those physicists of the 19th Century.  I see that medium as 
rather a ‘substrate’, in some sense existing at a level in which space and 
time have no meaning (just as ‘weight’ has no meaning in deep space), 
upon/in which the EM phenomena that form our experiential ‘space-time 
continuum’ are acted out.



I’d go one step further and suggest that, at a deeper level, NOTHING 
ACTUALLY MOVES in relation to that substrate.  Rather, what we experience as 
‘motion’, ‘objects’, ‘energy’, ‘events’ are in fact simply variations in 
state at ‘points’ (an inadequate word for such a medium) in that substrate: 
just as pictures and messages are seen to move across the electronic 
billboard displays in Times Square and Piccadilly Circus, so ‘material 
reality’ is a 3-D ‘moving picture’ generated by variations in EM field 
states within that medium that forms the substrate to our physical 
experience.



[In passing, this also offers a coherent explanation for what’s generally 
termed ‘quantum uncertainty’ – without resorting to either pure randomness 
or innumerable alternative universes (MWI), both concepts that for me 
outrage the basics of common sense.  The wave equation for any given 
scenario is surely a dead giveaway.  That’s for another time.]



If it’s all just ‘sparks across a grid’, then, what’s the underlying 
mechanism for those sparks?  What drives this 3-D Times-Square light show?



One option is that it’s just a manifestation of some random phenomenon 
beyond our comprehension, with a prime cause that we couldn’t begin to guess 
at.  The other is that it’s a manifestation of some form of distributed 
cosmic intelligence – a bit like Fred Hoyle’s ‘Black Cloud’ but comprising 
the whole universe; that would make us, and our consciousness(es), 
constituent parts of that cosmic entity, operating autonomously but with a 
high level of interaction just as individual cells in our bodies (or any 
other living organism) do.  In this case again the prime cause/origination 
of that entity (of which we are part) is totally beyond our comprehension, 
as also would be its objectives or purpose.



It seems it’s very much a matter of personal preference which of these we 
each individually choose to run with.  If one chooses the ‘randomness’ route 
then presumably one also has to re-introduce infinite universes, whereas the 
‘intentional universe’ route offers a clear rationale for universal 
constants fine-tuned for ongoing evolution and structure.  One thing’s for 
certain: there’s absolutely no reason why the ‘conscious universe’ option 
should be regarded as un-scientific whilst the randomness option should be 
regarded as the obvious preference for anyone with a rational scientific 
outlook; a number of our most notable luminaries in this field, including 
Planck and Schrödinger, were very much not of this view.



Anyway, I seem to have moved quite a long way from cyclic-photon models of 
the electron; I hope, though, that these thoughts may prove of interest to 
some.



Grahame