Why c is the limit

[ChildInAZoo]

I came across this and couldn't help but think of Farsight.

http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.c ... rance.html

As a former Christian, especially when I first converted, I thought I knew the answers to the riddle of existence. The answers were all in the Bible. And I thought I could also understand the Bible well enough to know, especially before I had any advanced learning. Initially I was a Bible Thumper. My motto was: God said it. I believe it. That settles it. Looking back on those initial years I could see clearly that I was not able to think through the issues of the Bible, especially hermeneutics, until after gaining a master's degree. I would have told you upon receiving my master's degree that I was ignorant before then. But I kept on learning and studying. Age has a way of teaching us as well. It seems as though as every decade passes I would say I was more ignorant in the previous one. As every decade passes I see more and more wisdom in Socrates who claimed he was wise because he didn't know. According to him the wiser that a person is, then the less he claims to know. Awareness of our ignorance only comes with more knowledge.

The analogy only gets better.

[lpetrich]

I don't know if that's really fair to Farsight, but there's another such analogy that does fit very well: his way of arguing. He quote mines like a creationist, acting as if we consider the writings of Maxwell, Einstein, and Feynman some sort of sacred books of physics. Yet he remains obtuse to anything that they write that contradicts his beliefs.

His theories also fit some of Martin Gardner's pseudoscience criteria rather well, like inversion of mainstream theories. Instead of motion being a function of time, time is a function of motion. Complaining about how difficult it is to get published fits another one.

[mistermack]

How does matter emit light?

There's various ways. Typically you slow down an electron, and the emitted light is akin to the "inverse" Compton effect. But instead of increasing photon energy from x to y, you increase it from 0 to x so creating a photon. Another way to emit light is via annihilation. But then the matter isn't there any more.

If it would take an infinite amount of energy to accelerate matter to light speed?

Yes it would. But do read the thread to understand why. It's scarily simple.

Ok, but the inverse Compton starts with a pre-existing photon already moving at c, and adds energy by affecting the wavelength. You're not causing anything to move at c. I was asking about how matter emits light without a pre-existing photon.
I thought your answer would be 'because it's made of light' and doesn't need to accelerate anything. I wanted to know how the standard model explained it.
Reading a bit more, it seems that changing magnetic fields are involved, rather than acceleration of matter.
I haven't read all the posts on this yet, and know sod all about it, as I'm sure you can tell.
.

[Farsight]

A fourth generation. And a fifth. Like I said, there's no end to it.

Your model predicts a fourth generation of fermions. Can you calculate the rest masses these objects will have upon discovery? Get 1 right and you win a prize.

I've never thought about it. But there is something called the Koide formula, which might be extended.

The point you're missing newolder, is that all these components are in themselves constructions.

My toy box contains 33 known items: 6 quarks + 6 antiquarks, 6 leptons + 6 antileptons, a gluon and its anti, 2 charged W bosons & their antis, a neutral Z boson and its anti and a photon. In order for me to construct something with rest mass (such that it doesn't explode at c in all directions upon being revealed to another human being), my kit requires at least one additional item. How do you construct mass from your loops?

The mass is there because the loop is there. Rummage around in your toybox and get the photon out. Notice it's a 511keV photon, and your toybox version is a paper strip with arrows on it depicting stress-energy moving straight at c. Now form it into a double loop like the dark line on the picture below, and what you've got is an electron. It's two loops morphed into one "moebius doughnut" loop.



It goes round and round at c, and because it isn't going anywhere it's like the photon in the mirror-box and it adds mass to the system. Only in this system that we call the electron, there isn't any box. Of course in the real world there's nothing to "brace" against, so to conserve angular momentum you have to make a positron at the same time. It's a bit like when an astronaut spins a satellite - he spins the other way.

[

stress-energy travelling at c is the lowest common denominator.

How does this not radiate during a direction change?

Because it's in curved space, and in that space it's going straight. To appreciate this you have to read the original Maxwell such as On Physical Lines of Force and focus on displacement current. As a photon passes you by there's an electromagnetic field variation, but there's no charged particle present. Instead it's "displacement current" passing you by, and it's effectively alternating because the field variation goes this way ↑ then that way ↓ in line with the sinusoidal EM waveform. Think of the photon as a "pulse of displacement", or "a pulse of spacewarp". In the electron configuration, this spacewarp is travelling entirely through itself. Read up on topological charge.

[Farsight]

Ok, but the inverse Compton starts with a pre-existing photon already moving at c, and adds energy by affecting the wavelength. You're not causing anything to move at c. I was asking about how matter emits light without a pre-existing photon.

It's like the inverse Compton where the pre-existing photon has an "infinite" wavelength. And therefore isn't there!

I thought your answer would be 'because it's made of light' and doesn't need to accelerate anything. I wanted to know how the standard model explained it. Reading a bit more, it seems that changing magnetic fields are involved, rather than acceleration of matter. I haven't read all the posts on this yet, and know sod all about it, as I'm sure you can tell.

Yes, it is essentially because it's "made of light", that's why it involves changing electromagnetic fields. But you don't have to go that far. If you slow down an electron you're taking motion out of a moving electromagnetic field. Conservation of energy means this motion escapes as light, effectively a motion through the electromagnetic background. See X-Ray Production Mechanisms for more.

[lpetrich]

A fourth generation. And a fifth. Like I said, there's no end to it.

Your model predicts a fourth generation of fermions. Can you calculate the rest masses these objects will have upon discovery? Get 1 right and you win a prize.

I've never thought about it. ]But there is something called the Koide formula, which might be extended.

The Koide formula is purely empirical, and may even be a lucky accident. Farsight, have you derived the Koide formula from your circling-photon theories? Have you also derived quark masses and mixing angles from your theory? Neutrino masses and mixing angles?

Those are all on-shell masses, measured at energy scales equal to them, but it would be interesting to see what they look like at GUT energies -- will the Koide formula hold at GUT energies also?

The mass is there because the loop is there. Rummage around in your toybox and get the photon out. Notice it's a 511keV photon, and your toybox version is a paper strip with arrows on it depicting stress-energy moving straight at c. Now form it into a double loop like the dark line on the picture below, and what you've got is an electron. It's two loops morphed into one "moebius doughnut" loop.

Why a 511-keV photon and not some other energy? What makes it go in circles?

[

stress-energy travelling at c is the lowest common denominator.

How does this not radiate during a direction change?

Because it's in curved space, and in that space it's going straight. To appreciate this you have to read the original Maxwell such as On Physical Lines of Force and focus on displacement current. ...

Maxwell-thumping. How stupid. I'd be surprised if Maxwell had ever thought of curved space.

[Farsight]

The Koide formula is purely empirical, and may even be a lucky accident. Farsight, have you derived the Koide formula from your circling-photon theories? Have you also derived quark masses and mixing angles from your theory? Neutrino masses and mixing angles?

No. Give me a break! I can't do everything.

Those are all on-shell masses, measured at energy scales equal to them, but it would be interesting to see what they look like at GUT energies -- will the Koide formula hold at GUT energies also?

I don't know. Carl Brannen's the guy to talk to, see http://www.brannenworks.com/

Why a 511-keV photon and not some other energy? What makes it go in circles?

The 511keV photon has a wavelength that's 2 pi times the common amplitude signalled by the h in E=hf and the fact that the dimensionality of action is momentum x distance. It goes round in circles because it's "spacewarp". It's travelling through itself. It's travelling through warped space.

Maxwell-thumping. How stupid. I'd be surprised if Maxwell had ever thought of curved space.

He thought in terms of deformation of an elastic medium. What do you think displacement current does to the surrounding space? It displaces it. Hence the spacewarp.

[newolder]

But there is something called the Koide formula, which might be extended. 

Go on then. (Perhaps you could also explain how numerological coincidence is taken as evidence of any physics?)

The mass is there because the loop is there.

How?

Rummage around in your toybox and get the photon out. Notice it's a 511keV photon,

Nope. The toy box photons can have energies, hν, up to the Planck limit. Perhaps you think all photons are 511 keV?
[snip]Irrelevant Figure 2 because it does not describe mass or why c is the limit.[/snip]

It goes round and round at c ...

Because it's in curved space, and in that space it's going straight.

How do you explain this contradiction?

Because it's in curved space, and in that space it's going straight.

You repeat this as if it clears things up. How strange.

In the electron configuration, this spacewarp is travelling entirely through itself.

If this isn't bullshit then how do electrons mange to cross the universe? Surely a 'spacewarp (is) travelling entirely through itself' means that it cannot travel anywhere else. Your bullshit prediction rules out the electronics industry, as far as I can tell

Read up on topological charge.

In physics, a topological quantum number (also called topological charge) is any quantity, in a physical theory, that takes on only one of a discrete set of values, due to topological considerations. Most commonly, topological quantum numbers are topological invariants associated with topological defects or soliton-type solutions of some set of differential equations modeling a physical system, as the solitons themselves owe their stability to topological considerations. The specific "topological considerations" are usually due to the appearance of the fundamental group or a higher-dimensional homotopy group in the description of the problem, quite often because the boundary, on which the boundary conditions are specified, has a non-trivial homotopy group that is preserved by the differential equations. The topological quantum number of a solution is sometimes called the winding number of the solution, or, more precisely, it is the degree of a continuous mapping.

Which set of differential equations is your bullshit diagram a solution to?

In particle physics, an example is given by the Skyrmion, for which the baryon number is a topological quantum number. The origin comes from the fact that the isospin is modelled by SU(2), which is isomorphic to the 3-sphere S3. By taking real three-dimensional space, and closing it with a point at infinity, one also gets a 3-sphere. Solutions to Skyrme's equations in real three dimensional space map a point in "real" (physical; Euclidean) space to a point on the 3-manifold SU(2). Topologically distinct solutions "wrap" the one sphere around the other, such that one solution, no matter how it is deformed, cannot be "unwrapped" without creating a discontinuity in the solution. In physics, such discontinuities are associated with infinite energy, and are thus not allowed.

What is your evidence that this applies to leptons too?

[lpetrich]

Those are all on-shell masses, measured at energy scales equal to them, but it would be interesting to see what they look like at GUT energies -- will the Koide formula hold at GUT energies also?

I don't know. Carl Brannen's the guy to talk to, see http://www.brannenworks.com/

He doesn't address the question of GUT-scale masses and mixing angles.

Why a 511-keV photon and not some other energy? What makes it go in circles?

The 511keV photon has a wavelength that's 2 pi times the common amplitude signalled by the h in E=hf and the fact that the dimensionality of action is momentum x distance. It goes round in circles because it's "spacewarp". It's travelling through itself. It's travelling through warped space.

Why 511 keV and not some other energy? Farsight, you're evading the question.

Maxwell-thumping. How stupid. I'd be surprised if Maxwell had ever thought of curved space.

He thought in terms of deformation of an elastic medium. What do you think displacement current does to the surrounding space? It displaces it. Hence the spacewarp.

An elastic medium in a fixed and flat space-time. Can you point to anyone before Albert Einstein who proposed that space-time is curved?

And one more thing. Farsight, your quote-mining is often as inaccurate as a creationist's.

[Farsight]

He doesn't address the question of GUT-scale masses and mixing angles.

If you say so, but I don't see why that's relevant to next-generation masses.

Why 511 keV and not some other energy? Farsight, you're evading the question.

I'm not evading the question, you're evading the answer. Look at pictures of the electromagnetic spectrum. The depicted amplitude is constant. Underlying this and Planck's constant h in E=hf, is a constant displacement. Displacement current really involves a displacement, because action has the dimensionality of momentum x distance. All photons involve the same displacement, so there's only one wavelength with which you can maintain a stable two-loop configuration.

An elastic medium in a fixed and flat space-time.

That's a contradiction in terms, and you're confusing curved space with curved space-time. If the elastic medium is displaced, you've got curved space around that displacement. Curved space-time is something different. If the space in your room was curved, a thrown ball would follow the same arc regardless of how fast you threw it. When that space has a gμv gradient from top to bottom, the space isn't curved, but instead the space-time is, and the arc depends on the ball's speed.

Can you point to anyone before Albert Einstein who proposed that space-time is curved?

No. And note that there are some issues re the latter. In The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity Einstein employs geometry but doesn't actually say "curved space-time". Instead he talks about equations of motion and curvilinear motion. Again see http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0204044 for a discussion on this, and note the Golden Age of General Relativity wherein "Other paradigm shifts included a growing appreciation of the: Role of curvature in general relativity..."

And one more thing. Farsight, your quote-mining is often as inaccurate as a creationist's.

No it isn't. It's accurate. And note that you're the one here dismissing scientific evidence and what Einstein actually said.

Now, please can we try to get back on topic and talk about why c is the limit?

[Farsight]

...If this isn't bullshit then how do electrons mange to cross the universe? Surely a 'spacewarp (is) travelling entirely through itself' means that it cannot travel anywhere else. Your bullshit prediction...

Read the OP to find out.

What is your evidence that this applies to leptons too?

Pair production, annihilation, spin angular momentum, magnetic dipole moment, Einstein de-Haas effect... But forget it newolder. You keep on dismissing the evidence.

[lpetrich]

He doesn't address the question of GUT-scale masses and mixing angles.

If you say so, but I don't see why that's relevant to next-generation masses.

The reason why is that masses measured at lab energies are affected by renormalization effects, and it's necessary to go up to GUT energies to test unification hypotheses and the like. Like m(tau) = m(bottom).

Why 511 keV and not some other energy? Farsight, you're evading the question.

I'm not evading the question, you're evading the answer. Look at pictures of the electromagnetic spectrum. The depicted amplitude is constant. Underlying this and Planck's constant h in E=hf, is a constant displacement. Displacement current really involves a displacement, because action has the dimensionality of momentum x distance. All photons involve the same displacement, so there's only one wavelength with which you can maintain a stable two-loop configuration.

Empty verbiage that does not answer the question.

An elastic medium in a fixed and flat space-time.

That's a contradiction in terms, and you're confusing curved space with curved space-time. If the elastic medium is displaced, you've got curved space around that displacement. Curved space-time is something different. If the space in your room was curved, a thrown ball would follow the same arc regardless of how fast you threw it. When that space has a gμv gradient from top to bottom, the space isn't curved, but instead the space-time is, and the arc depends on the ball's speed.

I've worked out geodesic trajectories mathematically, and that is just plain wrong.

And one more thing. Farsight, your quote-mining is often as inaccurate as a creationist's.

No it isn't. It's accurate. And note that you're the one here dismissing scientific evidence and what Einstein actually said.

Farsight, what is your excuse for not taking into account what Einstein stated about space-time?

Don't bring up your favorite mined quotes, because I can quote from Einstein's works what he states about space and time being a unified continuum, and I have in fact done so. It is those quotes that you must address.

Now, please can we try to get back on topic and talk about why c is the limit?

And while we are at it, demonstrate Einstein's mass-energy law: E = m0c2(1-(v/c)2)-1/2 for rest mass m0 at velocity v. And do it without resorting to nonmathematical rhetoric.

What is your evidence that this applies to leptons too?

Pair production, annihilation, spin angular momentum, magnetic dipole moment, Einstein de-Haas effect... But forget it newolder. You keep on dismissing the evidence.

There you go again, Farsight. I'm more familiar with the history of science than you seem to be, and I know that relativity and quantum mechanics trumphed because they could explain what Newtonian mechanics could not explain. Where Newtonian mechanics was well-tested was not really evidence, since relativity and quantum mechanics reduce to it in the appropriate limits.

[Farsight]

He doesn't address the question of GUT-scale masses and mixing angles.

If you say so, but I don't see why that's relevant to next-generation masses.

The reason why is that masses measured at lab energies are affected by renormalization effects, and it's necessary to go up to GUT energies to test unification hypotheses and the like. Like m(tau) = m(bottom).

Mass depends on energy of course, but renormalization is a QCD feature, and you don't need to go up to GUT energies and test unification hypotheses.

I'm not evading the question, you're evading the answer. Look at pictures of the electromagnetic spectrum. The depicted amplitude is constant. Underlying this and Planck's constant h in E=hf, is a constant displacement. Displacement current really involves a displacement, because action has the dimensionality of momentum x distance. All photons involve the same displacement, so there's only one wavelength with which you can maintain a stable two-loop configuration.

Empty verbiage that does not answer the question.

You evaded the answer again. You're evading the quantum of quantum mechanics.

That's a contradiction in terms, and you're confusing curved space with curved space-time. If the elastic medium is displaced, you've got curved space around that displacement. Curved space-time is something different. If the space in your room was curved, a thrown ball would follow the same arc regardless of how fast you threw it. When that space has a gμv gradient from top to bottom, the space isn't curved, but instead the space-time is, and the arc depends on the ball's speed.

I've worked out geodesic trajectories mathematically, and that is just plain wrong.

LOL, No it isn't! Try throwing a ball and watching it instead of trying to dismiss patent evidence with the mathematics says it's wrong.

Don't bring up your favorite mined quotes, because I can quote from Einstein's works what he states about space and time being a unified continuum, and I have in fact done so. It is those quotes that you must address.

And I have, remember? See page 31 of The Meaning of Relativity where Einstein says "The non-divisibility of the four-dimensional continuum of events does not at all, however, involve the equivalence of the space co-ordinates with the time co-ordinate".

And while we are at it, demonstrate Einstein's mass-energy law: E = m0c2(1-(v/c)2)-1/2 for rest mass m0 at velocity v. And do it without resorting to nonmathematical rhetoric.

What, you mean don't show you the underlying reason why this mathematical expression applies? You want me to demonstrate it without reference to Pythagoras' theorem or the underlying reality? What's the point in that? See relativistic mass and read the OP. Mass is a measure of how much energy isn't moving in aggregate with respect to you. When you add more energy to make it move you use that Lorentz factor again to relate the new total energy to the velocity v and the initial energy. Remember the light beam example where I explained time dilation? We can relate this back to that. All your expression is doing is telling you the ratio of how much energy is in the light beam going diagonally as opposed to the light beam going straight up and down. It's longer, and we divide by √(1-v²/c²) to say how much longer. So we say the relativistic "mass" mrel = m0 / √(1-v²/c²). Multiply by the speed of light squared for the dimensionality of energy. Come on, lpetrich. This stuff is easy once you understand mass. Read Mass Explained and get to grips with it instead of giving me all this moaning and whinging because you don't.

There you go again, Farsight. I'm more familiar with the history of science than you seem to be, and I know that relativity and quantum mechanics triumphed because they could explain what Newtonian mechanics could not explain. Where Newtonian mechanics was well-tested was not really evidence, since relativity and quantum mechanics reduce to it in the appropriate limits.

I don't think you are more familiar with the history of science than me, lpetrich. I know those things too, and more besides.

[Farsight]

And make sure you read Energy Explained too. It's all simple stuff. You can't explain why any of it is wrong, and now it's time that you sat down and thought about it, and realised that it's right. Then we can move on.

Right, gotta go.

[lpetrich]

I'm not evading the question, you're evading the answer. Look at pictures of the electromagnetic spectrum. The depicted amplitude is constant. Underlying this and Planck's constant h in E=hf, is a constant displacement. Displacement current really involves a displacement, because action has the dimensionality of momentum x distance. All photons involve the same displacement, so there's only one wavelength with which you can maintain a stable two-loop configuration.

Empty verbiage that does not answer the question.

You evaded the answer again. You're evading the quantum of quantum mechanics.

Farsight, I think that you are being too literal-minded about the term "displacement current". And no, Maxwell-thumping doesn't count. You are willing to ignore his work when he makes time an independent variable, just as you ignore that in Newtonianism, relativity, and quantum mechanics.

That's a contradiction in terms, and you're confusing curved space with curved space-time. If the elastic medium is displaced, you've got curved space around that displacement. Curved space-time is something different. If the space in your room was curved, a thrown ball would follow the same arc regardless of how fast you threw it. When that space has a gμv gradient from top to bottom, the space isn't curved, but instead the space-time is, and the arc depends on the ball's speed.

I've worked out geodesic trajectories mathematically, and that is just plain wrong.

LOL, No it isn't! Try throwing a ball and watching it instead of trying to dismiss patent evidence with the mathematics says it's wrong.

Farsight, you don't know what you are talking about. All you do is quote-mine nonmathematical descriptions and whine about how irrelevant mathematics supposedly is.

Don't bring up your favorite mined quotes, because I can quote from Einstein's works what he states about space and time being a unified continuum, and I have in fact done so. It is those quotes that you must address.

And I have, remember? See page 31 of The Meaning of Relativity where Einstein says "The non-divisibility of the four-dimensional continuum of events does not at all, however, involve the equivalence of the space co-ordinates with the time co-ordinate".

That's related to timelike vs. spacelike intervals, I think. So it's another mined quote.