Why c is the limit

[Trolldor]

WHY c IS THE LIMIT

To understand why nothing can go faster than the speed of light, you have to have an idea of what energy is and what mass is. In barest essence, energy is a volume of stressed space, and it's usually travelling at c. You can start with a massless +1022keV photon and perform pair production to create an electron and a positron, both of which have mass. They also have spin angular momentum and magnetic dipole moment, and the Einstein-de Haas effect demonstrates that the angular momentum is "of the same nature as the angular momentum of rotating bodies as conceived in classical mechanics". There's something going round and round in there, the rotation is real. But it isn't a simple rotation like a planet, it's a two-component rotation where you "spin the spin axis", hence the Stern-Gerlach effect.



The mass is the result of a symmetry between momentum and inertia. A +1022keV photon has energy/momentum but no inertia. It's massless, and you can't make it travel at anything other than c. But after pair production where conservation of angular momentum applies, it's split into two 511keV photons, each of which is going round and round at c. One's the electron, the other one's the positron. They both have mass because the momentum is no longer moving laterally with respect to you, hence you see it as inertia, because it's like the photon isn't moving any more, because it's going nowhere fast. Because mass is a measure of the amount of energy that is not moving in aggregate with respect to the observer. It's something like the photon in a mirror box which increases the mass of that system, only the electron or positron is a system where a 511keV photon traps itself. Electron/positron annihilation unleashes the 511keV photons, and then there are no "boxes" left.

Of course, one of the problems of mass is that we use the word in many different ways. The accepted definition of mass is rest mass, which is the same thing as invariant mass, intrinsic mass, and proper mass. It's defined as the total energy of a system divided by c². There’s also active gravitational mass which tells you how much gravity the energy causes, and passive gravitational mass, which is a measure of how much an object is attracted by gravity. People also talk of inertial mass, which tells us how much force we need to apply to accelerate or decelerate an object. It doesn't apply for a photon because it travels at c, and you can't make it go faster or slower. Then there’s relativistic mass, which is just a measure of energy, which is why it applies to a photon. When you apply it to a cannonball travelling at 1000m/s, it’s a measure that combines the rest mass energy with the kinetic energy into total energy. It's important to note here that "rest mass" is better thought of as "rest energy", only for something like an electron the energy isn't actually at rest, because it's going round and round at c.

Kinetic energy is droll once you understand this. We use Compton scattering to move an electron, and in simple terms the electron is a photon going round in a circle like this ○. The Compton scattering effects an inverse Compton on the electron’s component photon, bending it like that U-shaped steel bar I mentioned in mass explained. But this photon is tied in a 511keV "knot". The deflection doesn’t break the knot. It stretches it like kicking a rubber ring, it alters the velocity vector and translates into motion. What you see is the same as what you’d see if you moved past the electron. It’s a photon travelling in a circular path, so if it’s side-on you'd see that circular path now looking like a helical path. One full turn round the helix represents the relativistic mass, the total energy. The circular component of this represents the rest mass. The difference represents the kinetic energy. It tells you how fast the energy that's going nowhere fast... is going somewhere!



It’s ridiculously simple, but that’s how it is. The kinetic energy tells you how fast the energy that’s going nowhere fast is going somewhere. Because accelerating an electron is like trying to stretch a spring. Ever seen a split-ring spring? It's like a un-joined circle, like this: Ω. To get the electron moving we have to deform the ring into one turn round that helix. The energy required increases as we attempt to deform it further. As we accelerate more and more, the helix is effectively stretched straighter and straighter. But we can’t stretch it straighter than straight. A photon travels at c, it can’t travel in a straight line at c and still be going round and round at c. It would have to go faster than light to do that. And light doesn’t go faster than light. So matter can’t travel as fast as light. No way no how, and it’s easy when you know how. Matter can't travel at c because it's essentially "made of light", and pair production and annihilation is the scientific evidence that proves it.

[Trolldor]

This isn't you is it farsight?

by something going over the speed of light, it probably surpasses the molecular sub-atomic states of stationary matter that aren't accelerated beyond light speed

[Coito ergo sum]

Can't it be stated simply thus:

Things with mass cannot travel at the speed of light because as velocity increases the mass of the thing also increases. As mass increases, it takes increasingly more energy to further speed up the same thing up. In order to increase the velocity of anything with mass up to the speed of light, that last bit of increase to go from "speed of light minus a teeny bit" to "the speed of light" would be an infinite amount of energy.

[Twiglet]

Can't it be stated simply thus:

Things with mass cannot travel at the speed of light because as velocity increases the mass of the thing also increases. As mass increases, it takes increasingly more energy to further speed up the same thing up. In order to increase the velocity of anything with mass up to the speed of light, that last bit of increase to go from "speed of light minus a teeny bit" to "the speed of light" would be an infinite amount of energy.

Yes it can!

[Farsight]

Farsight, Your theory of mass as 'trapped light' has been repeated in numerous threads now. I won't deny that it has a certain appeal to someone that is relatively inexperienced in particle physics. You claim that the energy of a photon is 'trapped' in the body of an electron/positron pair and that it is this spinning energy that causes mass - all well and good (and please correct me if my simplification of your theory is in error)

I'd say the energy of the photon is trapped by itself, and then we call it an electron or positron. But note it isn't my theory.

- now here's my question. What about the other elementary particles? Quarks, leptons and their anti-particles? Are they too made up of trapped light?

Pretty much, but not quite because we don't consider neutrinos to be light. A free neutron decays into a proton, an electron and an antineutrino, and whilst the latter isn't light it moves fast and has very little mass and charge, so it does show some similarity with a photon, even though it's classed as a lepton. You can annihilate the electron with a positron to yield two gamma photons. Then you can annihilate the proton with an antiproton to get say two neutral pions which decay very rapdily into gamma photons. So you've reduced the neutron to light and an antineutrino. The quarks have totally disappeared. So whilst they're elementary particles because they're elements of a proton or neutron, they aren't elementary in the sense that they're fundamental.

And if so, how do you explain their different weights, spins, charges, etc. as part of your theory?

They're different stress-energy loop configurations. The mass depends on how much energy is there, the spin is a two-component rotation around a loop, and charge is the "twist" component of this. For example the proton is a trefoil configuration. Take a look at the picture below, and trace round it anticlockwise starting from the bottom left and look at the crossing-over directions.



They're up, down, and up. A proton consists of two up quarks and a down quark:



Essentially the quarks are the loops. If you imagine the trefoil is made of elastic, then if you grab it and pull, it get harder and harder to stretch it out. This corresponds to the "bag model" of quark-gluon confinement. If you were to throw rocks at this thing, the "elastic" would deform into a v shape before sending the rock flying straight back at you. This makes the quark look pointlike.

And what of the other bosons, the strong and weak forces, gravity?

The W and Z vector bosons have a very short lifetime and are more like "events" than particles. They're very different to photons. The strong force is like the elastic resistance to stretching, the residual strong force is "neutron linkage", and the weak interaction is akin to rotational friction. Gravity is something very different. I've got a thread on that, see How Gravity Works. It seems to be a gradient in the relative strength of the electromagnetic force and the strong force.

Can these become trapped too?

No, stress energy gets trapped, and then it's a particle with mass and charge. It's important to note that there are only four stable particles with mass and charge - the electron, the positron, the proton and the antiproton. Apart from photons and neutrinos all the other "particle zoo" particles are transient. They aren't in the same league. They aren't stable configurations. They're not knots.

And how does your theory explain the differences in spin between bosons and fermions?

In a nutshell: a fermion is a spinning boson. It's a boson going round and round at c, but in a closed path.

You seem to have concentrated on one particularly familiar set of particles (photons/electrons) which are (relatively) well understood in your essays - I would be interested to see how you explain all of the others.

See above. I also describe the neutrino as a "running loop". You can emulate the particles with paper strips, and it does appear to give a coherent picture that's an improvement on the point-particle idea.

[Farsight]

This isn't you is it farsight?

by something going over the speed of light, it probably surpasses the molecular sub-atomic states of stationary matter that aren't accelerated beyond light speed

No. You won't find me talking about things going faster than light. There are some peculiarities with the evanescent wave or near field, but I say you can't go faster than light because you're essentially made of it. See what I said above re neutrinos.

[Farsight]

Oh it's deep, Twiglet. And you can't fault it, all you can do is squeal. You posed the challenge, that's why I started the Understanding Electromagnetism thread remember? Then you posed another challenge regarding c is the limit, which I've also risen to. And despite all that, your response hasn't been a carefully-constructed counterargument. You've addressed none of the scientific evidence. You haven't challenged my simple logic. All we see from you is dismissal and denial and outrage. LOL! You remind me of how a witch doctor would behave when a pharmacologist turns up.

It's not a you vs me argument any more farsight. It's you vs schoolboy maths problems. A hurdle you seem to be finding it hard to jump over. Your linguistic techniques for dismissing the arguments others pose are quite polished, but you seem to need a posting holiday when someone asks you to solve a "schoolboy" level problem, let alone explain what the results mean.

Yes it is a you v me argument, Twiglet, because you don't know what you're talking about. You're ducking and diving pseud who knows fuck all about physics, and now you're even being dishonest. Here's an example of me responding to one of your silly schoolboy maths-test derails:

http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtop ... 25#p472381

Here's another:

http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtop ... 50#p473334

And you make out I can't deal with this trivia? You might be kidding yourself, Twiglet, but you ain't kidding anybody else. Like I said, you remind me of how a witch doctor would behave when a pharmacologist turns up.

[Twiglet]

Oh it's deep, Twiglet. And you can't fault it, all you can do is squeal. You posed the challenge, that's why I started the Understanding Electromagnetism thread remember? Then you posed another challenge regarding c is the limit, which I've also risen to. And despite all that, your response hasn't been a carefully-constructed counterargument. You've addressed none of the scientific evidence. You haven't challenged my simple logic. All we see from you is dismissal and denial and outrage. LOL! You remind me of how a witch doctor would behave when a pharmacologist turns up.

It's not a you vs me argument any more farsight. It's you vs schoolboy maths problems. A hurdle you seem to be finding it hard to jump over. Your linguistic techniques for dismissing the arguments others pose are quite polished, but you seem to need a posting holiday when someone asks you to solve a "schoolboy" level problem, let alone explain what the results mean.

Yes it is a you v me argument, Twiglet, because you don't know what you're talking about. You're ducking and diving pseud who knows fuck all about physics, and now you're even being dishonest. Here's an example of me responding to one of your silly schoolboy maths-test derails:

http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtop ... 25#p472381

Here's another:

http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtop ... 50#p473334

And you make out I can't deal with this trivia? You might be kidding yourself, Twiglet, but you ain't kidding anybody else. Like I said, you remind me of how a witch doctor would behave when a pharmacologist turns up.

Farsight you do sound rather aggravated. Perhaps you should see a pharmacologist for something to help you settle down a bit?

It's not my fault you can't perform basic schoolboy maths, but if you spent a little bit of time applying yourself to it, instead of trying to convince anyone who will listen that you are the second coming of physics, with brilliant insights (which oddly seem to predict nothing, can't be stated mathematically and have never been published, except at your own expense), you could progress from tooting your own trumpet to coming up with something of value...

Instead of acting like one of those blokes in an end of the world movie wearing a billboard with "The end of physics is nigh" on one side and "time isn't real" on the other. I feel like dropping small change in your metaphorical hat every time I stumble past you on a thread farsight. You put so much effort in, it surely deserves some reward.

[lpetrich]

I'd say the energy of the photon is trapped by itself, and then we call it an electron or positron. But note it isn't my theory.

There you go again, with this childish evasion of responibility. You are advocating it, so take responsibility for doing so.

(protons and neutrons as photons + neutrinos...)

... The quarks have totally disappeared. So whilst they're elementary particles because they're elements of a proton or neutron, they aren't elementary in the sense that they're fundamental.

That does NOT explain the results of high-energy scattering experiments. Furthermore, the results of such experiments show no evidence of internal structure for either quarks or leptons.

Particle Data Group > Summary Tables > Searches (Monopoles, SUSY, Technicolor, Compositeness, ...)

Lower limits of compositeness energy scales are in the hundreds of GeV, MUCH greater than the rest mass of the electron -- and that of all other leptons and all quarks but the top quark. So one can feel confident that all the charged ones, at least, are described by the Dirac equation. If Farsight's theory is correct, then electrons would show evidence of internal structure at energies of around the electron rest mass, about 0.511 MeV. But they don't.

And if so, how do you explain their different weights, spins, charges, etc. as part of your theory?

They're different stress-energy loop configurations. The mass depends on how much energy is there, the spin is a two-component rotation around a loop, and charge is the "twist" component of this. For example the proton is a trefoil configuration. Take a look at the picture below, and trace round it anticlockwise starting from the bottom left and look at the crossing-over directions.

That CANNOT explain half-odd spins. That's because orbital angular momentum always comes in integer values.

And what of the other bosons, the strong and weak forces, gravity?

The W and Z vector bosons have a very short lifetime and are more like "events" than particles. They're very different to photons.

Not according to electroweak unification -- they are massive photonlike particles. When weak neutral currents were discovered, it became possible to test theories of electroweak unification, complete with predictions of the W and Z particles' masses and interaction strengths. These predictions were confirmed by experiment -- the W and Z masses were right on the dot for the Weinberg-Salam electroweak theory.

[Twiglet]

WHY c IS THE LIMIT

The mass is the result of a symmetry between momentum and inertia.

Define Inertia with respect to the above, please.

Of course, one of the problems of mass is that we use the word in many different ways. The accepted definition of mass is rest mass, which is the same thing as invariant mass, intrinsic mass, and proper mass. It's defined as the total energy of a system divided by c².

No, it isn't. The rest mass of the system, m0, is defined as E=m0c^2/(1-v^2/c^2)^1/2
The "m" in E=mc^2 accounts the total mass including the contribution made from motion.
Once again, basic conceptual error farsight. Look it up.

There’s also active gravitational mass which tells you how much gravity the energy causes, and passive gravitational mass, which is a measure of how much an object is attracted by gravity. People also talk of inertial mass, which tells us how much force we need to apply to accelerate or decelerate an object. It doesn't apply for a photon because it travels at c, and you can't make it go faster or slower.

A photon has energy and momentum.

Kinetic energy is droll once you understand this.

Kinetic energy is mc^2-m0c^2, which is blatantly obvious to anyone who understands what E=mc^2 means in the first place.

We use Compton scattering .....

To demonstrate the photelectric effect, gain insight into the structure of matter, illustrate the interaction between photons and matter, and to give ourselves something to do. It is not used, nor does it in any way support the idea - that electrons are composed of photons.

It’s ridiculously simple, but that’s how it is. The kinetic energy tells you how fast the energy that’s going nowhere fast is going somewhere. Because accelerating an electron is like trying to stretch a spring.

It's not "ridiculously simple" or sensible, or consistent with existing theory, which simply accounts the energy of the photon, and via conservation of momentum, angular momentum & energy, predicts the range of energies electrons can be emitted and relates it to the angle of emission.

Ever seen a split-ring spring? It's like a un-joined circle, like this: Ω. To get the electron moving we have to deform the ring into one turn round that helix. The energy required increases as we attempt to deform it further. As we accelerate more and more, the helix is effectively stretched straighter and straighter. But we can’t stretch it straighter than straight. A photon travels at c, it can’t travel in a straight line at c and still be going round and round at c. It would have to go faster than light to do that. And light doesn’t go faster than light. So matter can’t travel as fast as light. No way no how, and it’s easy when you know how. Matter can't travel at c because it's essentially "made of light", and pair production and annihilation is the scientific evidence that proves it.

Can neatly be summarised as "round the twist"

[Farsight]

...The quarks have totally disappeared. So whilst they're elementary particles because they're elements of a proton or neutron, they aren't elementary in the sense that they're fundamental.

That does NOT explain the results of high-energy scattering experiments. Furthermore, the results of such experiments show no evidence of internal structure for either quarks or leptons.

It wasn't intended to, it was intended to remind people that quarks are not fundamental particles. In low-energy proton-antiproton annihilation, the quarks disappear totally.

Lower limits of compositeness energy scales are in the hundreds of GeV, MUCH greater than the rest mass of the electron -- and that of all other leptons and all quarks but the top quark. So one can feel confident that all the charged ones, at least, are described by the Dirac equation. If Farsight's theory is correct, then electrons would show evidence of internal structure at energies of around the electron rest mass, about 0.511 MeV. But they don't.

Wrong. And a straw man. Quarks show no internal structure, nor do electrons.

That CANNOT explain half-odd spins. That's because orbital angular momentum always comes in integer values.

Yes it can. The electron is a double-wrapped twisted loop that appears as a single loop configuration, see below. The proton is similar but with three loops.

The W and Z vector bosons have a very short lifetime and are more like "events" than particles. They're very different to photons.

Not according to electroweak unification -- they are massive photonlike particles. When weak neutral currents were discovered, it became possible to test theories of electroweak unification, complete with predictions of the W and Z particles' masses and interaction strengths. These predictions were confirmed by experiment -- the W and Z masses were right on the dot for the Weinberg-Salam electroweak theory.

Don't talk wet, lpetrich. The lifetime of a W or Z vector boson is 10^-24 seconds. And guess what? They've never been directly observed. See http://dorigo.wordpress.com/2007/05/01/ ... son-width/ and http://www.hep.ucl.ac.uk/~jpc/all/ulthesis/node45.html. Only their decays products have been observed, their "signature". Hence they are most definitely very different to photons.

[Farsight]

Define Inertia with respect to the above, please.

How difficult it is to move something.

Of course, one of the problems of mass is that we use the word in many different ways. The accepted definition of mass is rest mass, which is the same thing as invariant mass, intrinsic mass, and proper mass. It's defined as the total energy of a system divided by c².

No, it isn't. The rest mass of the system, m0, is defined as E=m0c^2/(1-v^2/c^2)^1/2.

Yes it is because the definition says the system is at rest with respect to you. Your expression defines energy, and refers to rest mass m0 and includes velocity.

Once again, basic conceptual error farsight. Look it up.

LOL. Irony isn't your strong point is it Twiglet?

A photon has energy and momentum.

Yep, E=hf and p=hf/c. You divide by c to convert between the two measures.

Kinetic energy is droll once you understand this.

Kinetic energy is mc^2-m0c^2, which is blatantly obvious to anyone who understands what E=mc^2 means in the first place.

And you don't. Because you don't understand pair production, or the resultant mass. You think mass is all down to the Higgs mechanism. You don't even know that this accounts for only 1% of proton mass. Absurd.

It's not "ridiculously simple" or sensible, or consistent with existing theory..

I'm afraid it is. It's consistent with the experimental evidence of pair production, with Einstein's 1905 paper, with magnetic dipole moment, the Einstein-de Haas effect which demonstrates that spin angular momentum is the same classical angular momentum, and so on. But hey, if you want to deny all the scientific evidence and thump your textbook bible, that's up to you.

[ChildInAZoo]

That CANNOT explain half-odd spins. That's because orbital angular momentum always comes in integer values.

Yes it can. The electron is a double-wrapped twisted loop that appears as a single loop configuration, see below. The proton is similar but with three loops.

The picture tells us nothing. Can you demonstrate how the orbital behavior produces spin 1/2 behavior? You are making predictions about specific behavior described mathematically, so step up and show us.

[newolder]

... The electron is a double-wrapped twisted loop that appears as a single loop configuration, see below. The proton is similar but with three loops.

Where/how do muons and tau leptons (and their associated neutrinos) appear in your model? How does your model explain a muon's rest mass? And that of a tau lepton anti-neutrino? Can you post a table of elementary entities and their properties? Does your model predict any new entities at lhc energies or beyond?

[lpetrich]

...The quarks have totally disappeared. So whilst they're elementary particles because they're elements of a proton or neutron, they aren't elementary in the sense that they're fundamental.

That does NOT explain the results of high-energy scattering experiments. Furthermore, the results of such experiments show no evidence of internal structure for either quarks or leptons.

It wasn't intended to, it was intended to remind people that quarks are not fundamental particles. In low-energy proton-antiproton annihilation, the quarks disappear totally.

The quarks disappear because of *annihilation* -- they run into each other.

Quarks show no internal structure, nor do electrons.

A photon loop doesn't have internal structure??? That's news to me.

That CANNOT explain half-odd spins. That's because orbital angular momentum always comes in integer values.

Yes it can. The electron is a double-wrapped twisted loop that appears as a single loop configuration, see below. The proton is similar but with three loops.

Ah yes, argumentum ex picturis bellis.

That cannot make spin 1/2, from the way that quantum-mechanical angular momentum works.

(the W and Z as very-massive photonlike particles...)

Don't talk wet, lpetrich. The lifetime of a W or Z vector boson is 10^-24 seconds.

So what? Why would that make them less photonlike?

And guess what? They've never been directly observed. See http://dorigo.wordpress.com/2007/05/01/ ... son-width/ and http://www.hep.ucl.ac.uk/~jpc/all/ulthesis/node45.html. Only their decays products have been observed, their "signature".

They decay at the rate that one would expect from electroweak unification,

Hence they are most definitely very different to photons.

Non sequitur. Particle lifetime makes NO difference.

Another case of Martin Gardner's criterion #4, perhaps.
Mainstream physics: particle lifetime is irrelevant to how "elementary" it is.
Farsight: the opposite, particle lifetime is very relevant to that.

[quote='Farsight"]

Kinetic energy is droll once you understand this.

Kinetic energy is mc^2-m0c^2, which is blatantly obvious to anyone who understands what E=mc^2 means in the first place.

And you don't. Because you don't understand pair production, or the resultant mass. You think mass is all down to the Higgs mechanism. You don't even know that this accounts for only 1% of proton mass. Absurd.[/quote]
Pair production -- accounted for in mainstream physics. Farsight, you have yet to prove that it is not. So open a textbook of quantum electrodynamics and go to where it describes pair production and annihilation. You should have no trouble working out where those parts go wrong.

The other 99% is quark and gluon kinetic and potential energy.

It's not "ridiculously simple" or sensible, or consistent with existing theory..

I'm afraid it is. It's consistent with the experimental evidence of pair production, with Einstein's 1905 paper, with magnetic dipole moment, the Einstein-de Haas effect which demonstrates that spin angular momentum is the same classical angular momentum, and so on.

There you go again, Farsight. Let's see how mainstream physics fares against Farsight's physics.
Pair production -- Mainstream: yes, including rate predictions -- Farsight: handwaving without predicted rates
Einstein's 1905 paper -- ???
Magnetic dipole moment -- Mainstream: yes, including departures from lowest-order values -- Farsight: handwaving without predictions of numerical values
Einstein-de Haas -- Mainstream: yes, spin and orbital angular momentum are interchangeable -- Farsight: handwaving