[General] Photonic electron models - etc

Fri Jul 29 12:31:42 PDT 2016

Grahame:
I am off to some family functions for a few days.
I will respond towards the end of the next week.
Chandra.

-----Original Message-----
From: General [mailto:general-bounces+chandra.roychoudhuri=uconn.edu at lists.natureoflightandparticles.org] On Behalf Of Dr Grahame Blackwell
Sent: Friday, July 29, 2016 3:02 PM
To: Nature of Light and Particles - General Discussion <general at lists.natureoflightandparticles.org>
Subject: [General] Photonic electron models - etc

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

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