Matter and photons are one and the same

[Starcrow]

Where were we when we were so rudely interrupted? There's far more to mystical physics than some people's philosophy is able to imagine because the ghosts are all around us, and not just in the castles and the lower astral plane.

True, the discussion died down when two participants started to discuss odd theories and went down a dead-end street, through no fault of their own. That's exactly what physics and cosmology have been doing in the last four decades.

Physics is trying desperately to justify the building of the biggest, most expensive machine ever seen, while people go hungry in the streets: the Large Hadron Collider of the CERN, which has a circumference of nearly 30 km. Now they want to build one that's three times larger!!!!!!!

They're in a crisis and will never find a way out unless we have a breakthrough that no one can even start to imagine, so it will probably be another several decades of going nowhere, and just finding more and more extrasolar planets in a search that the rest of the world has lost all interest in. The total has recently gone beyond 5,000, and they also have more than 8,000 candidates.

... so we were saying just yesterday that matter is really nothing at all, except maybe just swirling energy. That's what Dr. D. Lincoln (Fermilab) tells us in one of his YouTube videos.

"To a first approximation, modern physics has proven that mass is an illusion: there is NO mass." (As concerns matter, only a belief in the ether establishes a difference between Blavatskian theosophy and physics in its present state of development.)

Then he goes on. Protons and neutrons are made up of "smaller objects that have little mass, nearly none, so where does the mass of the former come from?"

Those smaller objects "are orbiting around each other at crazy fast speeds. You can think of protons and neutrons as tiny subatomic tornados, vortices of motion and energy. Moving mass is just moving energy, and, of course, a photon is moving energy, so a moving photon and a moving proton are not so different. Both are NOTHING more than moving energy, so if a moving proton has momentum, so does a moving photon. "

That last phrase is the conclusion of a video titled "How can a photon have momentum?" , which is not really part of the present subject. In that video he summarizes near the end the substance of one titled "The origins of mass". The answer to the question about the photon is wonderfully reasoned out and would make a good thread. It involved some quite simple, basic equations.

If photons didn't have momentum then there wouldn't be any "radiation pressure", which actually pushes small objects in the Solar System and is the wind in the sails of certain spaceships, but the misuse of the equation p = mv (momentum, expressed by the letter p, equals mass times velocity) leads to the false conclusion that photons have no momentum. Since a photon has no mass, then p = 0 x v, and thus 0 = 0 x v, so, no momentum. The video explains where the mistake lies.

(It was regrettable to see that "Cat" found only two copies of the old book on fraudulent science, each one being offered for the price of "a good encyclopedia", about 260 pounds. If it could be of any use, I would send extracts via e-mail to anyone who needs to know more about things like why "peer review" is a scandalous swindle on humankind, or, better yet, start a thread that would include only such extracts, if that doesn't break the rules here and infringe the copyrights.)

 

[Helio]

Physics is trying desperately to justify the building of the biggest, most expensive machine ever seen, while people go hungry in the streets: the Large Hadron Collider of the CERN, which has a circumference of nearly 30 km. Now they want to build one that's three times larger!!!!!!!

If it will lead to a greater understanding of how we can, say, build safe and environmentally friendly fusion power plants, then I'm pleased to see them build what is needed. The reason we can feed 7 billion people is due exclusively to technology since the hunter-gathering method is very limited and often violent with neighbors.

They're in a crisis and will never find a way out unless we have a breakthrough that no one can even start to imagine, so it will probably be another several decades of going nowhere, and just finding more and more extrasolar planets in a search that the rest of the world has lost all interest in. The total has recently gone beyond 5,000, and they also have more than 8,000 candidates.

The main thing to science isn't popularity, but it sure helps to have it, admittedly. What we learn from other planets, especially with atmospheres, could make a difference for our complex, but still a bit clumsy though improving, climate models. Finding a new future home for our descendants would be a great accomplishment for any generation that can do this, and it could easily be this generation. Of the 5k we've found, the exoplanet thread is keeping track of how many of those are in the HZ (Habitable Zone), currently over 100, and how many are in the preferred size range as well.

... so we were saying just yesterday that matter is really nothing at all, except maybe just swirling energy. That's what Dr. D. Lincoln (Fermilab) tells us in one of his YouTube videos.

Yeah, the physics to the BBT has matter emerging from "pure" energy, and we have E=mc^2, so such claims seem logical.

"To a first approximation, modern physics has proven that mass is an illusion: there is NO mass." (As concerns matter, only a belief in the ether establishes a difference between Blavatskian theosophy and physics in its present state of development.)

But we known very little about the essence of gravity, yet no one is saying it doesn't exist. We use the label "mass" to help us understand Nature and we can improve those labels if it will improve this understanding, too.

Since a photon has no mass, then p = 0 x v, and thus 0 = 0 x v, so, no momentum.

But for photons, the more robust equation for momentum is found in E^2 = p^2c^ + m^2c^4, where the latter term becomes zero for the reason you state (m = 0). Since p = h/L [L for lambda, the wavelength], then momentum isn't zero.

If it could be of any use, I would send extracts via e-mail to anyone who needs to know more about things like why "peer review" is a scandalous swindle on humankind, or, better yet, start a thread that would include only such extracts, if that doesn't break the rules here and infringes the copyrights.)

I would assume some "peer review" is inaccurate for whatever reason, but I would rather see some review by fellow scientists than none at all.

 

[Starcrow]

Helio says:

"The reason we can feed 7 billion people is due exclusively to technology (...)."

It's already nearly 8 billion (about 7.8 billion), and no, nobody is feeding all of them. Tens of millions are chronically undernourished, according to the FAO, and we still see famines. Some people can eat only one meal a day, others eat something once every two or three days. In some big cities the homeless kill stray cats and dogs for food. In Europe, the first news about people scrounging for leftovers in the garbage bins came from Greece. The Welfare State was discarded as soon as the Soviet Union collapsed because that welfare was necessary only while Communism was there threatening to rouse the rabble.

... yet they keep saying that the Malthusian catastrophe was avoided because technological breakthroughs saved humankind. There's still a World of the Damned out there.

It was the potato that ended the famines in Europe ... at least until the blight sent millions from Ireland to America.

... and he also says ...

"The main thing to science isn't popularity (..)."

That's hinting at another frequent reasoning: that if we were to wait until we've solved all our social, political and economic problems and then finally sit down and work on science and technology we would NEVER do any science and technology. The problem is that we ALREADY have the know-how that would allow us to let everyone live happily ever after, but we refuse to allow it. We don't need any more knowledge. We're giants standing on the shoulders of giants.

...nor do we need to go colonize other moons and planets. Northern Canada and Siberia are deserted and they're half the planet and packed with resources, and a warming planet will turn those two huge areas into Gardens of Eden with beaches for the bikini-clad ladies, but what about the poor, starving polar bears? Bears or no bears: that's the question.

... and he says ...

"But for photons, the more robust equation for momentum is found in (...)."

That equation also appears in the video, but expressed thus:

E^2 = (pc)^2 + (mc^2)^2

... and so finally here we get down to business, after ranting like the dreaded hoi polloi. First the video presents three equations ...

1) p = mv
2) KE = (1/2)mv^2 = p^2/2m

... that one, having derived it saying that ...

There's one that connects mass, velocity and kinetic energy (KE),

KE = (1/2)mv^2

Let's see how kinetic energy and momentum are related (the video says). Squaring and dividing by mass on both sides of the momentum equation ...

(p)^2/m = (mv)^2/m

... on the right-hand side the bottom m cancels one of the top m's ...

p^2/m = mv^2

... and replacing mv^2 in the kinetic energy equation with p^2/m, one finds that ...

KE = (1/2)mv^2 = p^2/2m (and we have reached the initial equation)

Then the video gives us ...

3) E = mc^2

... the one we all know about, saying it works only for mass that is stationary. (I know it has a version that accounts for movement by including a factor, lambda, on the right.). It's not a general equation. It doesn't work for ...

- massless objects
- moving objects

Now it tells us that ALL those three equations are special cases. They work for mass that moves slowly.

There's a more general equation that works for all situations and "looks like kind of Einstein's famous equation". Here finally we get to the Helio equation:

E^2 = (pc)^2 + (mc^2)^2

It works for EVERYTHING:

- massive objects
- massless objects
- moving objects (objects moving near the speed of light AND at the speed of light)
- stationary objects

Let's see how it works for special cases, like in the special case of the photon, which has no mass (m = 0), so that the second term on the right-hand side goes to zero and we have ...

E = pc

Here we see that energy and momentum are equal, except for a constant (c, the speed of EM radiation), and if an object isn't moving, the momentum (p) is zero, so now the first term on the right-hand side is zero ...

E = (mc^2)^2
E = mc^2

... which gets us back to Einstein's equation, "so the first lesson is that when you learn an equation it's SUPERIMPORTANT to understand if it's a special case or not, and if it is, when it applies and when it doesn't ...

"... so, p = mv doesn't apply to photons (which are massless), and the question of momentum, which was COMPLETELY sensible, arises when using an equation where it was never intended to be.

"That (1/2)mv^2 thing is itself ONLY an approximation for kinetic energy that works only at VERY low velocities. There are more precise approximations. "

Here we are shown a neverending equation:

KE = (1/2)mv^2 + (3/8)(mv^4/c^2) + (5/16)(mv^6/c^4) + ...

"There are ENDLESS levels of complexity.

"That's the equationy approach to it. [He has already mentioned the intuitive approach.]. The equations VERY CLEARLY show that energy and momentum are related and that an object that has energy also has momentum, even if it had no mass [which is the marrow of the entire chat: explaining why photons have a certain impulse, a thrust blowing in ... the Sea of Ether that almost no one believes in nowadays].

"One might think that perhaps mass is something special, but [no] (...). "

... and here, having reached the end of the lesson about why photons DO have momentum, so that one realizes how it is that there can be spaceships with sails to catch the photons that the Sun sends out, he ends the video with the aforementioned explanation about why mass is ghostly.

... so there it is, in all its glory, the entire video before you. Blame it all on Helio, who made the mistake of showing us an equation that he might have plucked from the video, making it necessary to go into the matter at full length. It is he who will have to deal with an eventual billion-dollar Fermilab lawsuit and end up fishing out his food in the rubbish heaps and skinning cats and dogs in the streets.

 

[Helio]

... and here, having reached the end of the lesson about why photons DO have momentum, so that one realizes how it is that there can be spaceships with sails to catch the photons that the Sun sends out, he ends the video with the aforementioned explanation about why mass is ghostly.

Your earlier statement claimed photons had no momentum so are you now saying they do have momentum, or is this just a video quote?

... so there it is, in all its glory, the entire video before you. Blame it all on Helio, who made the mistake of showing us an equation that he might have plucked from the video, making it necessary to go into the matter at full length. It is he who will have to deal with an eventual billion-dollar Fermilab lawsuit and end up fishing out his food in the rubbish heaps and skinning cats and dogs in the streets.

I'm working on a way to get more calories out of word salads.

 

[Starcrow]

I had to edit where it said "squaring and dividing by momentum on both sides" because it must be "dividing by mass", which is m, as shown in the equation.

Helio, it's "a video quote", I guess, but I don't understand exactly what you mean by that. The purpose of the video is to show that, even though at first glance it seems that photons can't have momentum because they don't have mass, something with no mass can have momentum.

It looks like you haven't had the chance to go over the calculations, but it would be best to watch the video, instead of helping to look around for more planets, which you've said somewhere it's what you're doing or would like to do, I seem to remember. If you ever find one, will you have the right to give it a name? How about a nice, poetic name such as "Starcrow"? I never came up with that name. It appeared in a dream.

 

[Helio]

Helio, it's "a video quote", I guess, but I don't understand exactly what you mean by that. The purpose of the video is to show that, even though at first glance it seems that photons can't have momentum because they don't have mass, something with no mass can have momentum.

Ok. Thanks for clarifying.

 

[Starcrow]

I sent the following message to the Fermilab ...

Subject: One of your videos, discussed at Space.com

Space.com has a forum section where, in the Solar System forum, I, Starcrow, have started a discussion on Dr. Don Lincoln's YouTube video about how it is that something that is massless, like a photon, can have momentum. It would be nice if someone at the Fermilab were to go check and see and make comments, for which I thank you in advance. It was funny to hear him saying in the video about antigravity that conspiracy fans say that he was eliminated by Fermilab and replaced by an android that looks just like him because he knew too much about secret antigravity devices, if I remember this well. I had come across that same story, but involving other well-known individuals, like some statesmen.

... but they probably won't like my suggestion. They inhabit the Mount Olympus of the Physics Gods and gods rarely come down in a "deus ex machina" to run around with us mortals.

I should've added this to the message: "... but what if it's true? SCARY!!!!!"

 

[Jzz]

Those smaller objects "are orbiting around each other at crazy fast speeds. You can think of protons and neutrons as tiny subatomic tornados, vortices of motion and energy. Moving mass is just moving energy, and, of course, a photon is moving energy, so a moving photon and a moving proton are not so different. Both are NOTHING more than moving energy, so if a moving proton has momentum, so does a moving photon. "

A popular enough theory that many people have thought of, if true however, a similar mechanism should exist in atoms; the electrons (the abstract mathematical electron wave-function, if you like) that is orbiting the nucleus, should by association, be going at astronomical speeds. However, the speed of the electron around the nucleus is just some fraction (admittedly large) of the speed of light. Nothing approaching speed of light squared. It is difficult in such circumstances to equate speed of electron (abstract electron cloud) around the nucleus with energy.

A far better and more fundamental approach would be to try to fathom how the electron channels energy.

But for photons, the more robust equation for momentum is found in E^2 = p^2c^ + m^2c^4, where the latter term becomes zero for the reason you state (m = 0). Since p = h/L [L for lambda, the wavelength], then momentum isn't zero.

Since the equation e= mc^2 applies to rest mass and a photon has no rest mass the equation does not seem to apply to photons. On the other hand since the photon is pure energy, if one thinks about it, obviously the answer tha e= mc^2 is a bit too facile. Definitely something that deserves deeper thought.

 

[Starcrow]

"A far better and more fundamental approach would be to try to fathom how the electron channels energy." ( Jzz)

That seems to be an allusion to the problem of why electrons keep moving forever around the nucleus even if an accelerating charged particle emits EM radiation and they should eventually lose all their energy and crash into the nucleus like a comet or an asteroid crashing into Jupiter. We're told that to understand it one has to treat electrons like a "wave function" and use Schrodinger's equation.

 

[Jzz]

That seems to be an allusion to the problem of why electrons keep moving forever around the nucleus even if an accelerating charged particle emits EM radiation and they should eventually lose all their energy and crash into the nucleus like a comet or an asteroid crashing into Jupiter. We're told that to understand it one has to treat electrons like a "wave function" and use Schrodinger's equation.

True, and examining Schrodinger’s equation in a little more detail: The wave packet model of the electron suggested by Schrodinger enjoyed a runaway success when it was first introduced. However, it was soon realised that Schrodinger’s wave equation could only describe the hydrogen atom with its single electron. When attempts were made to expand the theory to the atoms of other elements, disaster struck. This was because, a multi-dimensional space was required for this 'standing wave' model of the electron. Helium with its two electrons required a 6-dimensional space, lithium with three electrons got 9 dimensions and uranium with 92 electrons needed 276 dimensions.

As you are aware in this world and in this Universe we have 3 dimensions these are; length, breadth and height, if time is included we have 4 dimensions. No-one, till date, has managed to successfully describe a single extra dimension than the ones quoted above (length, breadth, height and time). Note that there is a vast difference between a new dimension and degrees of freedom. For instance a software face recognition program might use the distance between the bottom of the nose and the top of the lip as a defining characteristic, this a degree of freedom not a new dimension. Therefore, and think about this carefully, is a system that (theoretically or not) attempts to describe the position of an electron in a multiple electron atom using multiple (non-existent dimensions) to be trusted? I think not.

 

[Starcrow]

"(...) Schrodinger’s wave equation could only describe the hydrogen atom with its single electron." - -Jzz

That's quite similar to the case of the Bohr model of the atom, if I remember this correctly.

It managed to explain the hydrogen spectral lines arrayed in series, but then, unlike what you say was the case for the wave equation, that model was applied successfully to the other elements, and even though in only certain elements the lines are seen forming groups, spectroscopy allows one to find out an impressive amount of stellar data: temperature, pressure, turbulence, chemical composition, physical state of the gases, density, electric and magnetic fields, movement through space (velocity), axial rotation, and ejection of matter from the rapidly rotating equatorial regions.

A well-known scientist had predicted that it would never be possible to know anything about the composition of other stars, and this showed that one must never make predictions based on the present state of our instruments.

One of the most recent news in the field of astronomy is that ANOTHER use has been found for spectroscopy: the study of the solar cycles of other stars. This is now finally possible because two spectral lines in the infrared part of the spectrum are very clearly affected by the changes in the magnetic field of the star, so now they'll be able to compare our solar cycle to that of other stars and see if the Sun, whose sunspot cycle was the only example we had, is a normal star, and maybe understand why there was a Maunder Minimum (very few sunspots) and a Little Ice Age in Europe, when the Thames froze (1645-1715). They can't see the starspots directly and maybe never will.

"(...) is a system that (...) attempts to describe the position of an electron in a multiple electron atom using multiple (non-existent dimensions) to be trusted? I think not." -- Jzz

Physics has lost its grip on reality. They throw their mathematics blindly at whatever they don't understand and will insist on building ever more monstrous atom smashers in a wild-goose chase to catch the ultimate particle. The next one will have a circumference of nearly 100 km. That's thrice as big as the LHC. They went machine-crazy.

So am I, too, making foolish predictions? Will they discover the Ultimate Particle and then be able to build an entire miniature galaxy that a cat will carry around, hanging from its collar, as in the movie "Men in Black"?

Since all that involves photons and electrons, and electrons are somewhat like heavy photons, because they, too, are wavy, then maybe they won't lock us out this time for having strayed too far away from the subject matter.

"Electrons are heavy photons" ... what a bold claim for an amateur to make! Maybe it's the starting point for the Theory of Everything that will end the crisis in physics.

 

[Jzz]

"Electrons are heavy photons" ... what a bold claim for an amateur to make! Maybe it's the starting point for the Theory of Everything that will end the crisis in physics.

First off, let me state that I appreciate your ability to look at a problem without taking sides or being arbitrarily biased.

I agree with you when you say that the Bohr model of the atom was one of the most brilliant break throughs in modern physics. In fact, Bohr had built his model of the atom by studying the data in the Balmer and Lymer spectra. His work was almost wholly empirical, based on facts rather than on suppositions, which is why it could be successfully applied to other atoms. The model of the atom that is used today is, like it or not, almost wholly based on Bohr’s model of the atom but is founded on the supposition that (a) the electron behaves like an abstract, mathematical wave function that somehow is real and (b) that two waves, the electron wave in the atom and the incoming photon wave can act like particles and can interact without experiencing recoil. This is the reason that I say that modern quantum mechanics is more faith based than logic based.

What you state about the role of mathematics in physics is quite true. The mathematicians that physics uses has no place in mathematics! Imaginary numbers leading to multiple dimensions might be of use in analysing complex data, but have no place in explaining physical phenomena.

As you state, electrons are probably the place to concentrate, they might be the key to understanding physics. Firstly, an electron has a discernible mass, it also has a discernible size. If one looks at the old cathode tube televisions, it was electrons that were accelerated towards the fluorescent screen and excited the phosphors. If the electron were a wave as you conjecture, surely it would spread out. Logically, many of the experiments performed in the Large Hadron Collider which has a circuit stretching 27 km would not be possible for the same reason. This raises the question of what an electron is, yes it constantly changes energy BUT it immediately reverts to its fixed energy. It is now fairly apparent that electrons within the atom, when excited, oscillate at the impossible rate of several hundreds of trillions of times a second and emit photons at that rate. Should this be considered a wave like property or should it be considered to be a particle like property? When one thinks that even circuits in smart phones are capable of manipulating data at the rate of several Gigahertz per second, it becomes a moot point.

Why does the electron immediately revert to its base energy?

 

[Starcrow]

Why does the electron immediately revert to its base energy? -- Jzz

Because the oscillation induced by the foreign agent is unmanageable and the intruder must be ejected posthaste?

Then he will resume his neverending journey if he finds himself in outer space, according to conventional physics, but not according to the tired light theory, which seems to imply that all oscillations must end, including EM radiation.

Such radiation would eventually stop disturbing the medium that conveys it, which would be the hypothetical ether, having grown progressively weaker.

Traditional philosophy is always several steps ahead of natural philosophy (physics), in this case with the theory of plenism, which says that space is filled with matter and must be an infinitely dense matrix, since nothingness is nonexistent, and there can be not even the tiniest bit of nothing anywhere. That special kind of matter would be too tenuous to be perceived, but quanta interact with it and make it vibrate.

This sounds more like space-alien physics, so I guess we've lost our way and must put the dreaded lock on the gate and go find greener pastures, but who is one to know.

(Where the other version of the Einstein equation, the one involving motion, was mentioned, there seems to be an error: the additional factor on the right-hand side would be a gamma letter, not a lambda letter.)

 

[Starcrow]

Kimberly, that was a clever way to announce your new theory on the nature of matter-energy to the world, the Sports Pool Theory, which combines online gaming and game theory as developed by von Neumann. I still can't quite grasp the underlying quantum gravity equations involved. That's because no one has come up with equations for quantum gravity yet. You're on the cutting edge of a new physics. Please explain.

 

[Catastrophe]

Photon - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Photon

The photon is a type of elementary particle that serves as the quantum of the electromagnetic field, including electromagnetic radiation such as light and ...
Mass: 0 (theoretical value); −18 eV/c2 (experi...
Color charge: 0
Electric charge: 0; −35 e
Spin states: Two: +1 ℏ, −1 ℏ
‎Photon energy · ‎Photon (disambiguation) · ‎Single-photon source · ‎Quantum


Cat

 

[Catastrophe]

Whilst I totally agree that division by zero negates further scientific conclusion, as is of mathematical interest only, I should point out that it is the rest mass of the photon which is zero.

 

[COLGeek]

This thread is now closed. Thank you to those who contributed.