#33. Big-electron Theory [physics]

PH

Red, theory; black, fact.

Some of the paradoxes and weirdness of quantum mechanics can be dispelled if we assume that any particle that can be diffracted isn't really there: we are only looking at the center of spherical symmetry of a much larger, possibly cosmologically large, wave function. Furthermore, this center of symmetry is only an abstraction, like the north pole of the Earth. Like the fields that we impute to them, quantum particles would have a wave function amplitude that decreases asymptotically to zero with distance from the center, and thus would have no well defined outer boundary. I shall denote this lack of an outer boundary by calling particles or wave functions "expansive."

Elementary particles seem submicroscopic in size because the wavelength of the corresponding wave functions is often submicroscopic, which imposes a requirement for the centers of symmetry of two such "particles" to coincide with very great precision before an interaction can be observed. This would be the case if the default interaction were characterized by destructive interference almost everywhere, which only switches over into constructive interference when the centers nearly coincide. An assumption needed for further development of this theory is that interaction is contingent on the development of expansive constructive interference. (In this post, I confine my attention to scattering-type interactions.)

The common presence of  accelerations in our universe combined with a finite speed of light might suggest that expansive wave functions would quickly fill up with incoherence, destroying their usefulness as explanatory causes. However, if there are no non-expansive elementary particles, we just have expansive interacting with expansive to produce every acceleration. Once you get entirely away from the tiny-electron idea, it is not at all clear that any incoherence could ever develop. Such may well occur to a limited extent under some conditions, however, but it may take more detailed mathematical treatments than I am prepared to carry out to characterize these conditions. One naturally suspects that Relativity theory is based on such limited incoherencies.

Two baffling kinds of experiment seem amenable to the big-electron treatment: diffraction of "particles" of matter like electrons, and entanglement experiments.

Electrons fired in a vacuum at a pair of closely-spaced slits, with a photographic plate situated on the other side of the slits, will produce a diffraction pattern on the developed plate consisting of alternating exposed and unexposed bands. These are interpreted as locations of constructive and destructive interference between "matter waves" emanating from the two slits under the stimulation of the electron beam. If the intensity of the beam is lowered to the point where only one electron is "in the chamber" at a time, thereby eliminating the possibility of inter-electron interactions inside the chamber, the diffraction pattern develops just as before. It merely takes longer. Now here's the weird part: all this could happen only if each electron goes through both slits at once! This is truly weird if we try to use the traditional tiny-electron picture, but much easier to visualize using the big-electron picture.

Entanglement of two particles that persists over distances measured in kilometers is also easier to understand if we remember that the experimental apparatus is itself made up of expansive wave functions and is therefore mostly overlapped with the two particles being studied throughout the experiment.

If all this is true, we live in a vast web of inter-validating illusions called the particle model.

#29. My Second Theory of Everything [physics]

PH

Red, theory; black, fact.

This post comes from considering how wavelike, low-frequency light becomes particle-like, high-frequency light as frequency is smoothly increased. Waves are continuous, whereas particles are discontinuous; how, then, does the breakup occur?

You have to put the source in the picture. Recoil of the source atom sends the wave function off in a specific direction, but the wave function is known to expand (about its center of symmetry?) as it goes. Presumably, it is the vector sum of these two motions that must equal the speed of light; either one is presumably free to take on some lower speed, say, that of a pitched softball. I conjecture that as frequency increases, the particle-like drift of the center progressively dominates the mixture at the expense of the local, wave-like expansion of the wave function about its center. This is how I see waves morphing into particles as the frequency increases. 

These ideas suggest the existence of a unique, watershed frequency at which both motions are equal, and equal to one-half the speed of light when the vectors are aligned. I suspect that this frequency lies in the terahertz range, between radar frequencies and the far infrared, partly on the basis that this seems to be the last part of the electromagnetic spectrum to find technological use. The non-dominance of either the particle or the wave model in this range may translate into a perfect storm of undesirable properties. That comment about the softball, however, suggests the possible existence of easy, classroom experiments with these frequencies that illustrate wave-particle duality.

These considerations brought me to the following set of TOE assumptions, some from relativity theory, some in apparent contradiction of it, and some from quantum mechanics:

• There is an absolute frame-of-reference, which I shall call "#."
• All motions seen in this frame of reference will be observed to occur at the speed of light (c); no more, but no less, and only this frame of reference has this property.
• All speeds lower than c are illusions caused by the motion of the observer's frame of reference.
• That which moves always at c is not a wave function, but a phase marker of some sort within it, such as a zero crossing or a wave crest.
• The local wave function evolution relative to its center of symmetry combined with the drift of that center relative to # always travels at c relative to #.
• If local evolution is an expansion along all wave function radii, you have light; if it is a rotation about the center of symmetry (i.e., motion perpendicular to radii), you have matter.
• Light wave functions will be like nested spherical shells, whereas matter wave functions will have a lobar, angle-dependent structure like a p-, d-, or f-orbital in theoretical chemistry. The lobes are essential to provide a contrast pattern that could, in principle, be observed to spin.
• The presence of one axis of rotation produces the neutrino; two simultaneous axes of rotation produce the mesons; three produce the remaining stable particles, e, p, and n. If the three rotational rates are distinguishable, the resulting structure has a handedness.
• The matter/antimatter dichotomy arises from this handedness, when combined with a law of conservation of spin that would result from space initially being symmetrical. 
• The mesons should have an ability in 3-space to flip over into their corresponding antiparticles.

#26. The Phasiverse [physics]

PH

Red, theory; black, fact.

The nucleus around which a TOE will hopefully crystallize.

3-29-2017

I will be arguing here that our reality, the world of appearances, is encoded in the relative phases of an ineffably large number of oscillators, each of which is a kind of primitive clock.

An early interpretation of the theory of quantum mechanics was that there is a harmonic oscillator somehow assigned to each point in space, and that these account for the matter fields of the universe. Examples of such oscillators (the definition is abstract and mathematical), unsuitable for easy, weekend universe creation, would be masses bouncing up and down on springs, and electronic devices called tank circuits, which are just one capacitor connected across the terminals of one inductor, plus taps on the inductor for getting the energy in. (I am thinking here of the Hartley oscillator, of which I built half a dozen as a teenager.)

If a bunch of such oscillators can communicate with each other (exchange oscillatory energy), this is called coupling, and it can make the oscillators tend to pull each other in to the same, common phase. The Huygens's clocks experiment begins with two old-school pendulum clocks in a case with their pendulums swinging in some random phase relationship. The next day,  mysteriously, the pendulums will always be found swinging in opposite directions. The coupling is evidently due to tiny, rhythmic forces travelling through the common case from clock to clock.

If the coupling is positive, as assumed here, (it's negative in the above experiment), the phase pull-in effect becomes stronger the closer the two phases approach each other, causing a positive feedback effect. This is very reminiscent of Hebb's rule in neuroscience and the tendency of natural attractive forces such as gravity to depend inversely on distance. I have already offered Hebb's rule in these pages as an abstract rule of attraction and binding in a scheme for polymerizing spaceless but noisy "time lines" into a three dimensional network that approximates the space we live in. However, oscillators make better space-forming entities than these "time lines" on a number of counts.

First of all, the phase pull-in effect alluded to above provides a simple answer to questions such as where the organizing principle comes from. All you need to explain is where the oscillators themselves all came from, how they oscillate, and why they are coupled. Since the oscillators begin life in spacelessness, it is hard to see how they could avoid interacting to produce a coupling effect. Second, oscillators need no past or future; they can arise as a succession of causally related nows that alternates between two contrasting forms. (Since we haven't gotten as far as space yet, these would have to be abstract, spaceless entities that smack of yin and yang.) Figures in Conway's game of Life would seem to be examples of this alternation.

What is the time required for such an alternation? The question is meaningless; they just do it. With no past or future, the special status of the present becomes self-explanatory, alleviating some of the cognitive dissonance that goes with the concept of a unified space-time. This space-time, and the even more bizarre idea that it is warped by mass-energy as if embedded in an even higher-dimensional space, starts to look like a device to visualize one's way to solutions to problems that have their origin in unvisualizable spacelessness.

A great many oscillators all with the same phase is not an interesting universe. However, suppose this is impossible because of "train wrecks" happening during the synchronization process that produce frustration of the synchronization analogous to spin frustration in spin glasses. An example would be a cyclic relationship of oscillators in which a wave goes around the loop endlessly. Such cycles may correspond to particles of matter in our universe, and the spiral waves that they would throw off into surrounding space may correspond to the fields around such particles.

A black hole or galaxy would be surrounded by a tremendous number of such radiating fields. The resulting desychronization of the oscillators making up the surrounding space would increase the average phase difference between phasically nearby oscillators, thereby inhibiting their coupling, thereby inhibiting the travel of signals generally through the region. Result: the speed of light is reduced in the vicinity, resulting in the bending of light rays, called gravitational lensing. Notice how easily we derive an effect that formerly required General Relativity.

The next level of description deals with where the oscillators come from.

4-23-2017

Let us jettison the particle model altogether at this point and assume the universe to be made of the waves themselves, with no need for generating objects. These waves might have a tendency to synchronize as a fundamental given. If it is not fundamental, maybe the explanation for it can safely be left to a future generation of physicists. (The image I get at this point is of a series of temporary camps struck during the ascent of some stupendous mountain, for step-wise consolidation of gains, with the grail of the TOE located at the summit.)

As a second thread of this argument, I note that some of the phenomena characteristic of quantum theory can be explained as due to the practicalities of representing functions like waves, practicalities that are always in your face when programming a computer, but never mentioned in the physics I have read so far. In programming, you have to define memory space for all variables, which is always, ultimately, an integer or a set of integers, with both a maximum and a minimum (nonzero) amount that can be represented.

Quantization could be due to the presence of small quantities comparable in size to the value of the least significant bit of an integer-like entity. (Deprecated, Part 4)