TheCosmologist

4 minutes ago, Bufofrog said:

I think the problem here is that you do not understand how a particle can be it's own anti-particle.  So you say, "this is what it really means".

What you should say is, "How can a particle be it's own anti-particle?"  Then other members can help you learn instead of them just telling you that your ideas are wrong.

That seems like a more fruitful discussion.

It's a bit strange I admit. You are either a particle or an antiparticle. Saying you are your own antiparticle, is like saying a photon is both a particle and an antiparticle, but when we talk about antiparticle particle annihilation, which is a special delay process, we don't observe these properties in a photon.

That's why I said, "whatever that is supposed to mean," because I would prefer to say, that the photon is simply a fluctuation with no mirror image that is interpreted as going backwards in time. Mathematically, antiparticles are synonymous with time reversed physics - though not highly popular, this mathematical analogy still remains true to this day.

And of course, photons do not experience time, they do not possess any inertial frame of reference.

1 hour ago, exchemist said:

My hovercraft is full of eels. 

A lot of people here consider themselves as regular bullies, don't they? My skin is thick, so don't worry.

If I was speaking nonsense, then I wonder what I could say about half the statements I've read since being here and have seemingly been glossed over by the family of posters here. But I'm not like you people, I don't go out my way to intellectually attack people, but I will defend myself. Thus is more a reflection on the behaviour of others here, not me.

15 minutes ago, John Cuthber said:

I think you just proved my point.
You actually think this

 

is meaningful.
What do you claim that "infer on" means?
 

I'm not being funny, but are you unaware of what "infer" means? It's definition is a deduction. 

20 minutes ago, John Cuthber said:

The problem with this thread is not physics.
The problem is that you seem to think that sentences like this are meaningful.
 

 

Well we didn't. We simply gave a definition of what the word chirality means.

I mean look, quantum mechanical lingo isn't easy. It never is, and sometimes people will use a phrase and it may not mean the same thing to another person. In the Susskind lectures, when Sussind described antiparticles and the solutions therein obtained of them from the Dirac equation, he asks the audience, "what do we mean by chirality?"

After a brief moment of silence, he continues, "We just mean it's handedness, whether it is right handed or left handed."

Obviously when we speak of left handedness or right, we are literally talking about the spin orientation of the particle/system. When you decompose the DIrac equation, finding negative solutions, we end up writing out wave functions of either [math]\psi_L[/math] and [math]\psi_R[/math]. The universe is literally filled with left handed particles, not right handed particles and has been dubbed the antimatter problem.

Or another phrase, Baryon problem.

24 minutes ago, exchemist said:

No, chirality refers to entities that cannot be superimposed on their mirror image. For example your right hand is a mirror image of your left and there is no way you can superimpose your right hand onto your left hand. The same is true of right hand and left hand helices. 

Spin polarisation is simply the (partial) alignment of the angular momentum vector with some external influence, e.g. a magnetic field. Chirality does not feature in that, since particles can and do flip from one orientation to another.

Polarity refers to an asymmetrical distribution giving rise to opposite "poles", in physics usually either electric or magnetic.   

 

 

This is just additional information. The spun cannot be superimposed when you have antiparticles, for example. Yes that is important, I would never deny this.

For instance gauge theory have massless bosons in which it doesn't matter if you superimpose, simply because they are their own antiparticles, whatever that means. To me it simply makes more sense to say there are no antiparticles, than saying they are their own. For massless radiation, the chirality is said to be the same as the helicity. Nevermind.. however, without going into the superimposed bit, chirality literally means handedness, and yes we can use it to describe the spin of right or left moving particles. Clearly this is heavily investigated under the spinor formalism of Dirac.

The physics is exotic, as you will know, when antiparticles are thrown into the mix. The handedness of a particle can only be up or down, but as soon as we establish what chirality a particle has, we immediately deduce the spin of the antiparticle. So when I use the word chirality, I literally mean it's observable spin, getting into other technicalities is just fun, childsplay.

I take a quote to point this out, "In physics, chirality may be found in the spin of a particle, where the handedness of the object is determined by the direction in which the particle spins."

Notice here we didn't need to infer on superimposed arguments. We simply say, "Yes, chirality is the property of handedness of a system, for a particle, this refers to the directionality of its own spin."

19 minutes ago, exchemist said:

Polarity and polarisation are not the same, and neither is the same as chirality. 

I think you're mistaken quite badly. What do we mean by handedness? It means we are talking about whether a particle has a spin right or a spin left (or up and down) configuration, indeed before anything collapses, it has both. What do we mean that a particle is polarized? It means that a particular spin state is attributed to a particle. Hence I take a quote from Google for you:

"Spin polarization is the degree to which the spin, that is, the intrinsic angular momentum of elementary particles, is aligned with a given direction."

20 minutes ago, swansont said:

I can’t help but notice that you continue to avoid answering my inquiry.

Sorry what was your question? All I see is

"No one mentioned bipolar," ... I was trying to make a funny here.

19 minutes ago, exchemist said:

Polarity and polarisation are not the same, and neither is the same as chirality. 

Take a look here how these terminologies are used

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.2c07088

In the context of spin we see here how it applies more directly to particles, since the last link dealt with molecular spin, or polarization

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chirality_(physics)#:~:text=A chiral phenomenon is one,is the same as chirality.

Just now, swansont said:

I can’t help but notice that you continue to avoid answering my inquiry.

Sorry, I'll read more closely.

No you're not to call me Gareth at all. We are not friends and therefore not on first term name calling, understand?

16 hours ago, exchemist said:

Chirality is not the same as polarity at all. You have no idea what you are talking about, Reiku.

You may be confusing it with polarization, viz. the way chiral systems can rotate the plane of plane-polarized light. But if you knew some physics you would not confuse the two. 

Spin polarisation is how the angular momentum is aligned to a given direction. We have a fancy name to talk about the spin of particles, it's called its chirality. Literally it means handedness. Do I mean to be cheeky here? Of course I do, are there any polite posters here at all? You slander my knowledge of physics when in reality I don't see much physics being argued. Some answers I've read since being here, have been either straight out wrong or highly questionable.

15 hours ago, swansont said:

Who said anything about bipolar? 

That sounds like word salad.

Last I checked this has nothing to do with the subject being discussed, but go ahead and be obtuse about it, and see if that helps matters

I'm becoming bipolar 😐 

Well you were not aware that Einstein was so involved with QM's, so forgive me if I point out that a lot of his work actually centered round it.

49 minutes ago, exchemist said:

No, Gareth, that's not right. Direction of spin determines the orientation of magnetic moment. It tells you nothing about any electric dipole.

And compatibility of what with what? 

Polarity is chirality which means "handedness." 

Do not call me Gareth BTW. 

3 minutes ago, exchemist said:

That is a meaningless sentence. 

Polarity means it spins one way. 

1 hour ago, swansont said:

 

No, they showed there was no electron dipole moment at some level. The article doesn’t say, because it’s a pop-sci report about the experiment. Which is why it uses language that a lay audience might identify with. I thought you were here to discuss physics, not the watered-down verbiage used in press releases and articles like that. 

 

How could a point charge have a dipole moment?

 

I wasn’t aware Einstein was so involved in QM. Citations, please.

 

 

Well he invented a lot of quantum mechanics, such as the photoelectric effect, including other contributions. His main objection was the interpretation  of the wave function...

29 minutes ago, swansont said:

 

No, they showed there was no electron dipole moment at some level. The article doesn’t say, because it’s a pop-sci report about the experiment. Which is why it uses language that a lay audience might identify with. I thought you were here to discuss physics, not the watered-down verbiage used in press releases and articles like that. 

 

How could a point charge have a dipole moment?

 

I wasn’t aware Einstein was so involved in QM. Citations, please.

 

 

Sorry but bipolar ain't my thang lol

Now to have a dipole, you need a sense of quantum compatibility in regards to how spin is distributed as an observable. 

3 minutes ago, TheVat said:

I did infer that specificity and my reply was that the statement was wrong.  It is wrong in the domain of human genetics, and is wrong more broadly applied as well.  

The field of study, behavioral genetics, studies the role of genes in behavior and psychological traits, and has no theoretic models in which everything is determined by genetics.  Such a theory would be viewed as ridiculous, given the role that environmental influences play, and the way environment and epigenetics overlap with gene expression, and the way complex behaviors (particularly in humans and higher mammals) can emerge especially in novel situations. 

I don't agree, it is not wrong in the human domain. We are made from genetic materials, we can even alter our genetics to create babies that are born with advantages. We do the same thing with cattle.

So give me some concrete examples as to why you do not think genetics do not play at the very most, the larger contributions, to looks, gender, orientation and intellect? Because I cannot follow your objections, objectively.

10 minutes ago, studiot said:

We have certainly not exhausted or explored all the rooms in 'dimension house' yet.

But we have found some phenomena that run counter to 'common sense' or our ordinary experience.

Nor have we arrived at a consistent definition of dimension, suitable for all purposes.

 

We have also has a couple of threads of discussion here at SF about the subject.

True enough, I concur.

40 minutes ago, TheVat said:

You made this statement.  Everything.  Your linked article makes no such assertion, and suggests only that genes play a role.  That's quite a different thing.

Perhaps then you should double-check.  Ignoring objections to absolute statements you make is not good science, especially when you are clearly not trained in this field and can't seem to understand how profoundly erroneous is "everything is determined by genetics."

You are speaking about the human biological condition so I thought it would be a given that when I said "everything is determined by our genetics," would infer on the human condition.

My goodness, people are very argumentative against me here yes... there are. I'll give you a respectable science site which explains this.

https://www.livescience.com/20350-successful-life-genes-study-suggests.html

I may just start ignoring people objecting to things here  if they are not willing to investigate the counterarguments. If someone challenged me on something, I'd double check. Asking Dr. Google gives multiple reports on genetic disposition.

"Nobody is asking you to abandon your own heterosexual preferences and become a practicing homosexual. "

im sorry, but this sounds like an argument of choice. The only way it could be a choice is that everyone is bisexual.

Tell me something... if someone identifies as straight, when did you choose to be straight? To have a choice means technically you are orientated both ways. This is implausible for people who are orientated one way and are not aroused by another.

27 minutes ago, swansont said:

You posted a link that refers to a theory paper. Lots of theory explorations go nowhere. Has the been shown to be valid?  Has there been experimental confirmation?

You set them to 1, not 0

 

 

 

Yes technically this is true. Mathematically at least. But, set them to zero, the picture hasn't changed so long as they are not interacting with the overall calculation. I admit, your terminology is more correct, I used a loose terminology just to not complicate the meaning of what is being discussed, hence I pointed out, even if it had been set to zero, its not that we multiply the term by zero.

I'll recant this in order not to confuse the more experienced. I'm not arguing the stances on this, just giving a peculiar, but loosely valid viewpoint.

19 minutes ago, studiot said:

At least we can agree on this

Wry smile.

What do you make of

Physical Similarity and Dimensional Analysis  

Duncan

or

Dimension Theory

Hurewicz and Wallman

?

I am in favor of all dimensional analysis arguments. I even created higher powers which diverted away from the Planck regime. In my opinion, dimensional analysis is one of the most exciting aspects of inspection of equations, because it's quite surprising sometimes what solutions can be factored out and to find what constants or variables are left behind. Often they reveal interesting new physics.  Check my Larmor radiation of black holes, which shows a direct example of this where I pull out the gravitational upper limit of the gravitational force, and what was left behind was the Von Klitzing constant which has implications for conductive or resistent surfaces.

29 minutes ago, swansont said:

You posted a link that refers to a theory paper. Lots of theory explorations go nowhere. Has the been shown to be valid?  Has there been experimental confirmation?

Yes. 

The second link was earlier than the first. They discovered that there was no pointlike charges in the second link. Then the first link which again is the most recent discovery, that the field was indeed allowed to rotate. Even say, that the first link is theoretical, the first link is an observed fact. What we still do not know for sure, is that the charge distribution rotates, but it's highly likely since spin is part of the full Poincare group of space translations.

Neglecting the theoretical part, the spherical charge distribution found shows empirically that the electron is not a point like charge. This was a hand in hand argument for the pointlike argument for electrons which led us astray concerning the physics of pointlike dynamics. Further, classical mechanics also predicted pointlike behaviour. Given a small enough balm bearing in the classical limits, the particles would always behave experimentally as if they were fundamentally pointlike - so really, we have a mixture of discrepancies based on theoretical assumptions. In this latter case, because particles behaved pointlike, we assumed they were. 

I was asked by my physicist friend, Tejinder Singh, a rising physicist in the academic world who found a non-free parameter solution to the fine structure, 'what causes the genius of Einstein to assume that particles are singularities of spacetime?' 

The answer I explained was simple enough. It's because he too was misled by thinking of fundamental particles as pointlike - anything pointlike is synonymous with singular solutions. At the same time, the electron infinite self-energy was so well-accepted that it was hardly challenged only until recent times.

Good question!

3 hours ago, joigus said:

Actually, no. He's a well-known hackler of serious scientists in public talks. I know enough about him to know he's a crackpot magnet.

He claims that all of physics since Planck is wrong --I was patient enough to watch one of his videos or two. That's some time down the drain I'm not getting back.

He certainly doesn't understand the ideas behind renormalisation. I'm not saying quantum physics is problem-free, and there are no consistency issues. There are. But I see nothing of value in trying to substitute renormalisation strategies with WAG numerical games and numerical analysis. And all hand-waving. That's what he does.

Very similar to what you did by copying and pasting some formulae from a 1968 paper and pulling some numbers from a part of your anatomy, and substituting a logarithmically divergent integral by your wild guess.

Zero value from a scientific POV IMO.

 

Physics is a ruthless game. I don't know if I'd call him a true heckler, only passionate about directing physics back on a logical path.

Let me ask you a question, do you think string theory has actually provided true scientific reasoning towards unification? Read Lee Smolin, in fact, there's are dozens of scientists who are convincing in arguments, that string theory has been an ultimate failure.

So yes, I'd do the same if I was in his position as a populariser of scientific progression. When a theory isn't a theory, and is not testable or even falsifiable, then yes, we must heckle against the dogma. People like Unzicker is actually doing the world a favor, instead of being duped by scientists who are over-rated to the point that few challenge their belief system. Keep in mind, Witten has spent most of his career on string theory, which makes him bias. A true scientist doesn't overlook other possibilities based on the bias of their own time-consuming endevours.

Reference 

The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next https://g.co/kgs/ySLGpD

BTW you have not addressed my rebuttal of your bizarre accusations that I had not created a new equation. Maybe you would be generous enough to find a counterargument. You know which thread I refer to.

27 minutes ago, studiot said:

This is not maths or physics.

The constants can't be zero.

E = e²/r

is not dimensionally consistent.

 

It may be of interest to you as a new member to discuss ways of presenting mathematics to best suit yourself.

Scienceforums offers particularly wide ranging possibilities  -   better than any other I know of.

Although the Tex / markup is not as good as some.

 

There is the sandbox

https://www.scienceforums.net/forum/99-the-sandbox/

for testing and also there are several tutorials specific to this site .

Don't hesisitate to ask how to do some of this when you need it.

It's not that constants are zero. We set them to natural units, however for all intents and purposes, it's like setting them to zero, so why do I say this? Simply because we can write an expression without the constants as if they were not effective to the overall argument. We are not multiplying something by zero, this is the difference, it's more accurate to say, and I'll give you this, to say that the constants are 1, but any number multiplied by 1, just results in the variables with no change.

Em yes, btw, I am a dimension expert. 

[math]ER = \hbar c= Gm^2 = FR^2 = e^2[/math]

So yes, rearrange the equivalences and you get what I gave. Conclusion is the dimensions are consistent.

I say I'm an expert, because I've proof read papers a few of my colleagues to expose any inconsistencies. Thankfully my group is good enough that I've only ever exposed one dimensional inconsistency. 

And I was just out of a good discussion between Bruce Greetham and Denis Olivier, the former being a pure mathematician, the other a pure physicist. In my discussions, I explained that all equations in physics can be achieved simply by two tools- an understanding of calculus/algebra coupled with a deep understanding in dimensional analysis. The latter is a very powerful tool - a tool often overlooked by some physicists. You can construct for instance, the Friendmann equation from dimensional analysis without the need to invoke the Einstein field equations. In fact Newton stumbled across a very similar solution to Friedmann's own solution, and this was without knowledge of general relativity. 

Yes, dimensional analysis is a very powerful tool and a close friend of mine. I specialise in this area of research. It's been a tool for instance in constructing the equations that I have produced so far on this ... not-too- bad-forum. You can see how I employ my understanding of this area if you chase any of my three posts.

There are good arguments that everything  is determined by genetics. Therefore I would conjecture it being nature. Nurture, not so much, nurtured by environment, still woukd change the fundamental genetic construct that leads to sexual orientation.

14 minutes ago, swansont said:

Can you cite the reference where scientists have shown electrons to be physically spinning?

Physics has recognized the error of thinking the classical electron radius having any physical meaning for quite some time (it’s denoted as classical, after all, reminding us that it’s not derived from QM)

I have done already. ✔️ 

24 minutes ago, studiot said:

I am neither fond nor not fond of you.

However you specifically offered

So I asked to take you up on your offer.

So far you have expended several posts avoiding doing so.

Right okay. Hold on, mathtex takes time.

@studiot

Right, let's do this. It's relatively simple, but again, that's relative. One man's meat and veg is another's nail in a coffin.

We begin with the classical electron self energy equation. Let me simplify by setting all constants to zero, in an electrostatic limit, the energy is simply

[math]E = \frac{e^2}{R}[/math]

BTW, I rarely use natural units as it lacks visualisation but in this case it doesn't matter too much. Anything inverse must imply the inverse of another variable, for instance [math]\frac{1}{T} \propto a[/math] where (a) is some dummy variable, when T decreases, (a) increases and vice versa. So if say in the limit of [math]a \rightarrow N[/math] where now N is some infinitesimal number, then T would increase. Let's apply the same idea to the electrostatic self energy. If [math]R \rightarrow 0[/math] then by law of calculus, we would see an infinite increase in the inverse variable, which is the energy.

Again, if R goes to zero then E becomes infinitely large in

[math]E = \frac{e^2}{R}[/math]

This led to two assumptions. The first being that the charge distribution had to be pointlike. We know now this is wrong..it led further to the assumption because of this erroneous picture, that the electron had to have a divergent energy, in which renormalization was invented to prevent something that wasn't measurable.

I'm the advent of the first assumption being wrong, we must abandon that the following must hold true - that any singular solutions even exist. Infinities have little place in real theoretical physics. They really only apply to pure mathematics - in physics, we are careful not to be too consumed by mathematics as the job is to apply equations to what is observable. The electron could be pointlike - but the problem standing is the charge distribution, the electron is never actually localised to a point, its a smear campaign by the wave function

I hope, even in brevity, this explains the origin of the misconceptions surrounding the mantra of pointlike particles.

And no I didn't avoid, you where just unclear to me. Let's call it a misunderstanding.

15 minutes ago, studiot said:

So no mathematics then ?

Just like your hand wavy references.

"I'm willing to be educated," is not a question.

"How does the mathematics of an electron divergence stand up?" Is however.

I can see you are not fond of me so I will ask directly - do you want to be educated on how the divergence comes about? I'll assume on a preliminary basis, based on your previous reply, it's a yes then?

Just now, studiot said:

I'm willing to be educated, but the rules here are quite clear.

I should not need to go offsite to read the material fundamental to the issue.

So fire away with your mathematics please.

 

Fair does... I'm all about rules, are you? All I'm doing is stating facts. So let's ignore this and start again? Let's pretend this didn't happen.

52 minutes ago, studiot said:

I'm sorry but this glib oversimplification of several important points in Physics gives entirely the wrong impression.

You have made several outrageous statements, with not a shred of support.

Do you understand, for instance the difference between the angular momentum and spin quantum numbers ?

Are you patronising me? Ask any physicist, the mathematics of classical angular momentum and that with quantum are on the face of it, synonymous in structure. This is well-known in physics. By the way, I'm quite up-to-date with this sort of thing, don't assume I am a layman.

As for my statements on the "new" insights of how electrons spin, you can follow this report

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.sciencealert.com/this-physicist-says-electrons-spin-in-quantum-physics-after-all-heres-why/am

And the electron has been observed to have a spherical charge distribution. This is at odds with the classical model divergence problem because it simultaneously assumed the charge was pointlike.

https://www.sci.news/physics/spherical-electrons-06518.html

I'll even demonstrate the mathematics of this singularity of the electron if anyone wishes. It's quite simple. And yet from simple assumptions  came erroneous ideas that are no longer holding up, like they used to.

I was saying for years the same thing due to the problem that the classical electron radius made to go zero upon limit, doesn't match the experimental evidence of ot being a point charge. In light of this, only recently, scientists have now demonstrated that the electron can spin - in short, it is the charge distribution that is spinning. Think of the electron as a smear in space, so the old theory appears to be wrong. It was because of this electron self energy divergence that renormalization, an ad hoc patchwork was invented.