Re: Download a new book on quantum mechanics and relativity.

From: Bilge (dubious_at_radioactivex.lebesque-al.net)
Date: 10/17/04 

Date: Sun, 17 Oct 2004 05:07:08 -0000

 Eugene Stefanovich:
>Bilge wrote:

>> There is no such thing. Even taking into account your lack
>> of experimental experiece, you should realize the absurdity
>> of what you are saying.
>
>We can agree on my lack of experimental experience, but we do not
>agree on the "absurdity" part. You are right that non-interacting rulers
> and clocks do not exist in nature. But corrections to the Lorentz
>transform formulas due to interaction are microscopic.

   So are the effects to which you refer. In particular, you describe
free photons and interactions that propagate instantaneously, not
a photon or light ray which interacts and is reflected in such a way
that the the intermediate interactions (i.e., the virtual states) can
be subtracted out by replacing the incident radiation with the reflected
(and/or transmitted) radiation or satsify the same boundary conditions,
since you obviously don't wish to say anything about fields and phases.

[...]
>If one wants to be 100% rigorous one should use non-interacting
>rods and clocks. Otherwise the rules for translating the results
>of measurements between moving frames will depend on the kind of
>rods and clocks used for the measurements.

  If one wants to be 100% rigorous, one should quantify that one is
comparing apples to apples by showing that both describe a reflection the
same way. I know how to do this using either classical E&M in which the
fresnel equations are a consequence of fields upon which boundary
conditions are imposed or quantum mechanicaly, since the conditions are
the same: The phase is a constant at the interface. On the other hand,
you've spent most of time saying that phases are irrelevant, so it's not
really clear how you describe a reflection in your theory. I think you
just assumed that it happens, which isn't a very good assumption, since,
for example, a 5 MeV gamma ray will go right through a mirror. Obviously,
one has to know something about the way a theory explains a reflection in
order to say anything about it's relevance. This would all be academic,
if I didn't think this was related to the reason you get instantaneous
propagation of an interaction. But I do think it's related.

[...]
>> Your reference to wigner is not justified, since you apparently have no
>> idea how those masses are measured, nor have you specified a way to do so.
>
>I am working under assumption that experimentalists can measure basic
>particle observables, such as position, momentum, spin, velocity, mass.
 
  Velocity is not a quantum mechanical observable. The spin observables
of any given experiment depend upon the details of the experiment which
tells you what you can and can't measure. For example, in an epr experiment,
total J is 0, so you can't describe a pair of epr photons as two propagating
photons with definite spins. When the spins are measured on a spacelike
interval, it's possible to measure two photons and a spin for each.

>That's their business how they do it. I trust that they do it well.
>I also assume that the values of these observables obtained in my theory
>can be directly compared with experimental measurements. If we find
>a disagreement between predicted and measured values one day, this
>would mean that either experimentalists screwed up, or that the theory
>is wrong. So far, this disastrous event haven't happened.
 
  Well, the entire issue here is that what you call observables aren't
observables and of those that are, I don't think you've comfined your-
self to observables that all commute with the hamiltonian.

>> I suggest purchasing a textbook on particle physics and looking in detail
>> at how particle properties are determined. I suggest ``Quarks and
>> Leptons'', Halzen and Martin, as good introduction to the experimental
>> end.
>
>Thank you for a good suggestion. But I still haven't got an explanation
>of what all these "strong mass", "weak mass", "electromagnetic mass",
>etc. mean. Last time I looked in the particles table I saw just one
>value for the mass.

  Of course. But everyone of those numbers follows from relativistic
kinematics in which the lorentz transforms don't depend upon on the
interaction used in the measurement. You can't simply declare that the
lorentz transforms depend upon interactions and that interactions
propagate instantaneously without incurring consequences. You simply
want to pick and choose the consequences you like and not consider
how that affects measured quantities which assumed different ground
rules.

[...]
>> Don't be silly. Almost any experiment performed in an accelerator
>> takes advantage of that time dilation when designing flight paths
>> to detectors and even the incoming beam. Muon beams are produced
>> by creating pions (\pi+ -> \mu+ \nu) and letting the \pi+ decay
>> in flight. Furthermore the decay of the muon was one of, if not
>> the earliest direct confirmation of time dilation.
>
>I wrote you a few times already that corrections we are talking about
>are much less than the experimental precision.
 
  I guess you've never given any consideration to the fact that
that the electron mass is given by 9.1093819 x 10^-31 kg, despite
not being able to define the standard kilogram to 38 decimal
places. In other words, it's possible to perform high precision
experiments in which the accuracy of any absolute numbers is
irrelevant.

[...]
>> That conflicts with your insistence that it's possible to
>> construct a non-interacting clock.
>
>No it doesn't. Einstein's time dilation formula becomes inaccurate
>only in the presence of interactions. For non-interacting clock
>(e.g., light clock) this formula is perfectly valid.
 
  There is no such thing and without some proof that demonstrates
such an assumption is a valid assumption and gives identical results
in both theories, you might as well not even suggest it. Assumptions
require calculations to validate them.

[...]
>I already introduced some corrections in my book based on our
>discussions. These discussions showed me that some of
>my ideas are not as obvious as I thought. So, I gave more
>detailed explanations. Thanks for keeping talking with me.
>I am trying to extract some positive content from your posts.
>Oftentimes that's not so easy.
 
   At this point, I wouldn't bother looking for positive content.
You rejected all of that out-of-hand as irrelevant, despite having
no idea why it might be relevant. I see no real point in giving
a detailed reason for anything when it desn't matter.

[...]
>The experiment is my major concern at the moment. I want to come up with
>an idea how to reliable measure the speed of propagation of the Coulomb
>or magnetic interaction between charged particles. Can we agree, at
>least, that this question has fundamental importance and has never been
>experimentally probed. Whether you accept my theory or not, you should
>be interested in how nature answers this question.
>

  I'm only interested in questions that are well posed enough to believe
an experiment answeres the question it was intended to answer. Since you
claim there exists some reason to believe your instantaneous propagation
is not simply an artifact of the formalism, the formalism ought to provide
lots of different ways to address the question and for which it's possible
that data already exists. The absolute worst way to perform an experiment
is to waste the precision measuring the absolute value of two numbers that
are only expected to differ in the last decimal point. Unfortunately, you
don't really believe that a lack of lorentz invariance giving you instant-
aneous propagation and interaction dependent lorentz transforms have any
other consequences that might already be answered. After all, the question
of time reversal invariance was answered despite the impossibility of
actually reversing the direction of time to check. The existence of non-
zero neutrino masses was determined without measuring the mass of even a
single neutrino. The neutral pion lifetime is much too short for a direct
measurement, but that did not prevent measuring it. Minimal SU(5) was
declard dead by determining the lower limit on the the proton lifetime
to be larger than about 10^31 years, despite only performing the measure-
ment for a couple of years. Every theory has consequences beyond what
appears to be the most obvious and ususally, the most obvious consequences
are not the ones most easily checked with an experiment.

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