Farsight

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{{afd|This article's subject is [[John Duffield]]. John Duffield was deleted. This article may also merit deletion.}}
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'''Farsight''' is the online name of a certain advocate or advocates of certain alternative physics theories. This article makes no statement about Farsight's identity, other than maybe noting Farsight's self-identification in various places. "Farsight" may be a collective pseudonym.
'''Farsight''' is the online name of a certain advocate or advocates of certain alternative physics theories. This article makes no statement about Farsight's identity, other than maybe noting Farsight's self-identification in various places. "Farsight" may be a collective pseudonym, like
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* Publius: the US [[Federalist]]s, supporters of the [[US Constitution]]
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* Brutus: the US Anti-Federalists, who preferred the Articles of Confederation
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* Nicolas Bourbaki: some mathematicians who have written under that name since 1935
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== Space and time ==
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==Space and time==
 
Farsight's essay "Time Explained" has appeared in several forums over the years. [http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=11006 rationalia.com • View topic - Time Explained] is typical. He starts out with a perceptual illusion that gets resolved by a change in how one thinks about it, and he then describes how sound and heat are the results of motion. He then tries to argue that time similarly emerges from motion, pointing out that we measure time with motions and similar effects. He notes Palle Yourgrau's book ''A World Without Time, The Forgotten Legacy of Gödel and Einstein'', which states that according to [[relativity]], time as we understand it does not exist, and that time is much like space.
 
Farsight's essay "Time Explained" has appeared in several forums over the years. [http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=11006 rationalia.com • View topic - Time Explained] is typical. He starts out with a perceptual illusion that gets resolved by a change in how one thinks about it, and he then describes how sound and heat are the results of motion. He then tries to argue that time similarly emerges from motion, pointing out that we measure time with motions and similar effects. He notes Palle Yourgrau's book ''A World Without Time, The Forgotten Legacy of Gödel and Einstein'', which states that according to [[relativity]], time as we understand it does not exist, and that time is much like space.
  
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Farsight's arguments have numerous problems.
 
Farsight's arguments have numerous problems.
  
=== What does one directly see? ===
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===What does one directly see?===
 
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Farsight's hands argument suggests that one ought to reject the appearance of anything that one does not see or otherwise perceive. That would be very limiting to science, because it would eliminate a great many very successful hypotheses. Has anyone ever perceived the force of [[gravity]]? Not its effects but the force itself.
 
Farsight's hands argument suggests that one ought to reject the appearance of anything that one does not see or otherwise perceive. That would be very limiting to science, because it would eliminate a great many very successful hypotheses. Has anyone ever perceived the force of [[gravity]]? Not its effects but the force itself.
  
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Finally, the senses that return spatial information do not return complete 3D information. They return information like joint angles (proprioception), 2D surface locations (skin senses), and direction (sight).
 
Finally, the senses that return spatial information do not return complete 3D information. They return information like joint angles (proprioception), 2D surface locations (skin senses), and direction (sight).
  
=== Past, present, future: which are real? ===
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===Past, present, future: which are real?===
 
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Farsight rejects the "block universe" in favor of a presentist theory of time:
 
Farsight rejects the "block universe" in favor of a presentist theory of time:
 
<blockquote>
 
<blockquote>
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So one must conclude that Farsight's theory of time is contrary to relativity, despite his considering himself a supporter of Einstein and relativity.
 
So one must conclude that Farsight's theory of time is contrary to relativity, despite his considering himself a supporter of Einstein and relativity.
  
=== Inversion ===
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===Inversion===
 
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The idea of time derived from motion is rather obviously an inversion of motion being derived from time. However, this sort of theorizing has some rather unflattering precedents. In his classic work on [[pseudoscience]], ''Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science'', Martin Gardner noted that pseudoscientists often invert well-established mainstream theories:
 
The idea of time derived from motion is rather obviously an inversion of motion being derived from time. However, this sort of theorizing has some rather unflattering precedents. In his classic work on [[pseudoscience]], ''Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science'', Martin Gardner noted that pseudoscientists often invert well-established mainstream theories:
 
<blockquote>
 
<blockquote>
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</blockquote>
 
</blockquote>
  
== Mass ==
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==Mass==
 
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He explains it in his essay [http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=12575 rationalia.com • View topic - Mass Explained].
 
He explains it in his essay [http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=12575 rationalia.com • View topic - Mass Explained].
  
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There are several things wrong with Farsight's circling-photon model of the electron.
 
There are several things wrong with Farsight's circling-photon model of the electron.
  
=== Confinement ===
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===Confinement===
 
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From the uncertainty principle, the confinement potential energy must be on the order of the electron's mass, if not greater. Furthermore, there is no known interaction that can cause such extreme confinement. The closest that the Standard Model comes to such an entity is the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glueball glueball], a self-confined gluon field. It is self-confined because it is self-interacting, with its interaction "charge" being around 1 at a size scale of about 10^(-15) m. That gives it a mass of a few GeV. To date, a glueball state has yet to be unambiguously identified, since it is difficult to distinguish one from a flavor-neutral meson. But it is an interesting illustration of what is necessary for a field to be self-confined.
 
From the uncertainty principle, the confinement potential energy must be on the order of the electron's mass, if not greater. Furthermore, there is no known interaction that can cause such extreme confinement. The closest that the Standard Model comes to such an entity is the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glueball glueball], a self-confined gluon field. It is self-confined because it is self-interacting, with its interaction "charge" being around 1 at a size scale of about 10^(-15) m. That gives it a mass of a few GeV. To date, a glueball state has yet to be unambiguously identified, since it is difficult to distinguish one from a flavor-neutral meson. But it is an interesting illustration of what is necessary for a field to be self-confined.
  
=== Wrong spin ===
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===Wrong spin===
 
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The theory of quantum-mechanical angular momentum is very elegant. Angular-momentum operators are associated with the generators of the group of 3D rotations, SO(3). This interrelationship of angular momentum and rotation explains the intrinsic angular momenta or spins of fields as a consequence of how they transform under rotation. Spin-0 particles are scalars, looking the same in all directions. Spin-1 particles are vectors. Etc.
 
The theory of quantum-mechanical angular momentum is very elegant. Angular-momentum operators are associated with the generators of the group of 3D rotations, SO(3). This interrelationship of angular momentum and rotation explains the intrinsic angular momenta or spins of fields as a consequence of how they transform under rotation. Spin-0 particles are scalars, looking the same in all directions. Spin-1 particles are vectors. Etc.
  
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Thus, a circling photon cannot have a spin of 1/2.
 
Thus, a circling photon cannot have a spin of 1/2.
  
=== Successful existing theory ===
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===Successful existing theory===
 
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There is a successful existing theory of the electron: the Dirac theory. In that theory, the electron's wavefunction is a 4-component spinor ("spin vector"), one for the two spin states of both the ordinary electron and the positron. Combined with the quantum theory of the photon, one gets quantum electrodynamics, a very successful theory. This theory is a subset of the Standard Model, but most of the other particles in the Standard Model are either electronlike or photonlike.
 
There is a successful existing theory of the electron: the Dirac theory. In that theory, the electron's wavefunction is a 4-component spinor ("spin vector"), one for the two spin states of both the ordinary electron and the positron. Combined with the quantum theory of the photon, one gets quantum electrodynamics, a very successful theory. This theory is a subset of the Standard Model, but most of the other particles in the Standard Model are either electronlike or photonlike.
  
== Energy ==
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==Energy===
 
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He explains it in his essay [http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=12530 rationalia.com • View topic - Energy Explained].
 
He explains it in his essay [http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=12530 rationalia.com • View topic - Energy Explained].
  
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The rest of his essay continues in that hand-waving vein.
 
The rest of his essay continues in that hand-waving vein.
  
== Electromagnetism ==
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==Electromagnetism==
 
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He explains it in [http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=11608 rationalia.com • View topic - Understanding electromagnetism].
 
He explains it in [http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=11608 rationalia.com • View topic - Understanding electromagnetism].
  
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However, they have not exactly gotten much interest from mainstream particle physicists.
 
However, they have not exactly gotten much interest from mainstream particle physicists.
  
== The speed of light ==
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==The speed of light==
 
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He explains its limiting nature in his essay [http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=12686 rationalia.com • View topic - Why c is the limit]
 
He explains its limiting nature in his essay [http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=12686 rationalia.com • View topic - Why c is the limit]
  
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followed by some inlined schematic diagrams of the electromagnetic spectrum. These have schematic depictions of electromagnetic waves as a wavy line with varying wavelength and constant amplitude. This seems like crude literal-mindedness that would embarrass a fundamentalist.
 
followed by some inlined schematic diagrams of the electromagnetic spectrum. These have schematic depictions of electromagnetic waves as a wavy line with varying wavelength and constant amplitude. This seems like crude literal-mindedness that would embarrass a fundamentalist.
  
== Gravity ==
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==Gravity==
 
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He explains it in [http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=12128 rationalia.com • View topic - How Gravity Works].
 
He explains it in [http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=12128 rationalia.com • View topic - How Gravity Works].
  
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Seemingly claiming that "dark matter" is really self-gravity, the gravitational effects of gravity itself. However, that is far too weak. One can estimate the size of self-gravity from (Newtonian-limit gravitational potential)/c^2, and it turns out to be about 10^(-6) for galaxies. That is far too small to account for dark matter.
 
Seemingly claiming that "dark matter" is really self-gravity, the gravitational effects of gravity itself. However, that is far too weak. One can estimate the size of self-gravity from (Newtonian-limit gravitational potential)/c^2, and it turns out to be about 10^(-6) for galaxies. That is far too small to account for dark matter.
  
== Other issues ==
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==Other issues==
 
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[http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=169567 (Merged) Relativity+ / Farsight - International Skeptics Forum] is a long thread on his theories. Much of it was covered elsewhere in this article, but there are several further issues.
 
[http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=169567 (Merged) Relativity+ / Farsight - International Skeptics Forum] is a long thread on his theories. Much of it was covered elsewhere in this article, but there are several further issues.
  
=== The Higgs particle ===
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===The Higgs particle===
 
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From post 737,
 
From post 737,
 
<blockquote>
 
<blockquote>
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Elsewhere, in [http://secularcafe.org/showthread.php?p=149781#post149781 Mass Explained - Secular Café] post 69, he states about the Higgs mechanism that "It's garbage. I know it, you know it, and soon everybody will know it."
 
Elsewhere, in [http://secularcafe.org/showthread.php?p=149781#post149781 Mass Explained - Secular Café] post 69, he states about the Higgs mechanism that "It's garbage. I know it, you know it, and soon everybody will know it."
  
=== Elementary-particle fields ===
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===Elementary-particle fields===
 
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His theory (post 877):
 
His theory (post 877):
 
<blockquote>
 
<blockquote>
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That's a lot of work for space-time to do. Also note his main argument: Einstein-thumping and ignoring the quote's context, a description of a would-be unified field theory that contains both gravity and electromagnetism.
 
That's a lot of work for space-time to do. Also note his main argument: Einstein-thumping and ignoring the quote's context, a description of a would-be unified field theory that contains both gravity and electromagnetism.
  
=== Running of the fine-structure constant ===
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===Running of the fine-structure constant===
 
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Farsight makes a big issue out of how the fine-structure constant is a running one, waving around this page a from the National Institute of Standards and Technology: [http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Constants/alpha.html Current advances: The fine-structure constant]. He completely ignored the page's discussion of the mechanism of that running, and what that running consists of: variation in effective value with interaction energy. From close to 1/137 at the long-distance, zero-momentum energy, vacuum-polarization effects increase it to close to 1/128 at the W particle's mass, near 80 GeV.
 
Farsight makes a big issue out of how the fine-structure constant is a running one, waving around this page a from the National Institute of Standards and Technology: [http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Constants/alpha.html Current advances: The fine-structure constant]. He completely ignored the page's discussion of the mechanism of that running, and what that running consists of: variation in effective value with interaction energy. From close to 1/137 at the long-distance, zero-momentum energy, vacuum-polarization effects increase it to close to 1/128 at the W particle's mass, near 80 GeV.
  
 
That running had been experimentally tested with the former occupant of the Large Hadron Collider's tunnels, an electron-positron collider called LEP: [http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ex/0507078 (hep-ex/0507078) Measurement of the Running of the Electromagnetic Coupling at Large Momentum-Transfer at LEP], [http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ex/0002035 (hep-ex/0002035) Measurement of the Running of the Fine-Structure Constant].
 
That running had been experimentally tested with the former occupant of the Large Hadron Collider's tunnels, an electron-positron collider called LEP: [http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ex/0507078 (hep-ex/0507078) Measurement of the Running of the Electromagnetic Coupling at Large Momentum-Transfer at LEP], [http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ex/0002035 (hep-ex/0002035) Measurement of the Running of the Fine-Structure Constant].
  
=== Irrelevance of short-lived particles ===
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===Irrelevance of short-lived particles===
 
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He argues that short-lived particles are "ephemera" and "events" and the like, meaning that only stable particles can be true elementary particles. However, instability is a function of what decays are permitted under physical conservation laws. Thus, the electron is stable because there is no charged particle less massive than it.
 
He argues that short-lived particles are "ephemera" and "events" and the like, meaning that only stable particles can be true elementary particles. However, instability is a function of what decays are permitted under physical conservation laws. Thus, the electron is stable because there is no charged particle less massive than it.
  
=== No such thing as virtual particles ===
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===No such thing as virtual particles===
 
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In that thread, Farsight repeatedly ridicules the notion of virtual particles.
 
In that thread, Farsight repeatedly ridicules the notion of virtual particles.
  
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</blockquote>
 
</blockquote>
  
=== Electric charge as a topological invariant ===
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===Electric charge as a topological invariant===
 
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Farsight has claimed that electric charge is topological, and his main evidence is discussions of topological quantum field theory and topological charge. However, topological charge -> charge is topological is an unjustified switcharound.
 
Farsight has claimed that electric charge is topological, and his main evidence is discussions of topological quantum field theory and topological charge. However, topological charge -> charge is topological is an unjustified switcharound.
  
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He also talks about "electromagnetic geometry", but he usually links to search-engine results, as in post 1806. So it is difficult to tell what he means by that.
 
He also talks about "electromagnetic geometry", but he usually links to search-engine results, as in post 1806. So it is difficult to tell what he means by that.
  
=== His idea of crackpottery ===
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===His idea of crackpottery===
 
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His idea of crackpottery includes time travel, multiverses, additional space-time dimensions, the Universe having periodic boundary conditions (toroidal topology), magnetic monopoles, supersymmetry, string theory, ... all of which are mainstream-physics speculations. His big argument is that there is "no evidence" for them.
 
His idea of crackpottery includes time travel, multiverses, additional space-time dimensions, the Universe having periodic boundary conditions (toroidal topology), magnetic monopoles, supersymmetry, string theory, ... all of which are mainstream-physics speculations. His big argument is that there is "no evidence" for them.
  
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Using Farsight's arguments in the mid nineteenth century, one would declare that trans-Uranian planets and periodic-table missing chemical elements are both crackpottery unsupported by any evidence. But both were soon discovered.
 
Using Farsight's arguments in the mid nineteenth century, one would declare that trans-Uranian planets and periodic-table missing chemical elements are both crackpottery unsupported by any evidence. But both were soon discovered.
  
=== Mathematics ===
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===Mathematics===
 
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Farsight says about mathematics things like "Really, can you do nothing better than spit out ad-hominems and demand mathematics to distract from the scientific evidence and trash the discussion?" "You have to look to the real world, and experiment, not mathematics. Stop using mathemtics as a smokescreen to dismiss scientific evidence." (post 528)
 
Farsight says about mathematics things like "Really, can you do nothing better than spit out ad-hominems and demand mathematics to distract from the scientific evidence and trash the discussion?" "You have to look to the real world, and experiment, not mathematics. Stop using mathemtics as a smokescreen to dismiss scientific evidence." (post 528)
  
 
Disdain for mathematics is common among physics crackpots, it must be pointed out.
 
Disdain for mathematics is common among physics crackpots, it must be pointed out.
  
=== Arguing like a theologian ===
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===Arguing like a theologian===
 
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Several of Farsight's critics have noted that, notably lpetrich. Some others who have:
 
Several of Farsight's critics have noted that, notably lpetrich. Some others who have:
  
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For his part, Farsight repeatedly complains about people who he thinks dismiss Newton, Maxwell, Einstein, Minkowski, and others, as well as all the "scientific evidence", evidence which he seems to think is only consistent with his theories.
 
For his part, Farsight repeatedly complains about people who he thinks dismiss Newton, Maxwell, Einstein, Minkowski, and others, as well as all the "scientific evidence", evidence which he seems to think is only consistent with his theories.
  
== Online presence ==
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==Online presence==
 
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Farsight has posted in all of these places:
 
Farsight has posted in all of these places:
 
* [http://secularcafe.org/ Secular Café]
 
* [http://secularcafe.org/ Secular Café]
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* [http://www.anti-relativity.com/forum/index.php Anti-Relativity.com - Index page]
 
* [http://www.anti-relativity.com/forum/index.php Anti-Relativity.com - Index page]
 
* [http://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/ Thunderbolts Forum • Index page] -- For discussion of Electric Universe and Plasma Cosmology
 
* [http://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/ Thunderbolts Forum • Index page] -- For discussion of Electric Universe and Plasma Cosmology
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[[Category:Living people]]
 
[[Category:Living people]]
 
[[Category:internet kooks]]
 
[[Category:internet kooks]]

Revision as of 21:00, 29 April 2015

Farsight is the online name of a certain advocate or advocates of certain alternative physics theories. This article makes no statement about Farsight's identity, other than maybe noting Farsight's self-identification in various places. "Farsight" may be a collective pseudonym.

Contents

Space and time

Farsight's essay "Time Explained" has appeared in several forums over the years. rationalia.com • View topic - Time Explained is typical. He starts out with a perceptual illusion that gets resolved by a change in how one thinks about it, and he then describes how sound and heat are the results of motion. He then tries to argue that time similarly emerges from motion, pointing out that we measure time with motions and similar effects. He notes Palle Yourgrau's book A World Without Time, The Forgotten Legacy of Gödel and Einstein, which states that according to relativity, time as we understand it does not exist, and that time is much like space.

Responding to a critic, he offered this argument:

Hold your hands up, colubridae. See that gap between them? That's a space, and you can see it. Now waggle those hands. That's motion, and you can see that too. But can you see time? No. Spot the difference?

Farsight's arguments have numerous problems.

What does one directly see?

Farsight's hands argument suggests that one ought to reject the appearance of anything that one does not see or otherwise perceive. That would be very limiting to science, because it would eliminate a great many very successful hypotheses. Has anyone ever perceived the force of gravity? Not its effects but the force itself.

Furthermore, it is rather naive about perception. We do not perceive entities directly, but instead, we have ideas that we interpret as being perceptions. We also do a lot of behind-the-scenes interpretations of our perceptions, interpretations that we don't usually notice except when they produce odd or erroneous results, like optical illusions. This also explains several premodern beliefs that we now know are erroneous: the sky as a bowl overhead, and rainbows and clouds as solid objects. So according to Farsight's hands argument, we ought to believe those also.

The idea that one perceives space and not time is just plain wrong. We have not only the traditional five senses of sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste, but several others, giving a total of 15 to 20, depending on how one counts. Here's a list:

  • Sight
  • Mechanical senses: touch, pressure, proprioception (kinesthetic sense: joint orientation), acceleration, hearing
  • Temperature: heat, cold
  • Chemical senses: smell, taste, internal sensations like hunger and thirst
  • Pain
  • Time perception[wp]

That we perceive the passage of time is recognized by mainstream psychology.

Finally, the senses that return spatial information do not return complete 3D information. They return information like joint angles (proprioception), 2D surface locations (skin senses), and direction (sight).

Past, present, future: which are real?

Farsight rejects the "block universe" in favor of a presentist theory of time:

It’s the motion that’s king, the universe is not a block universe, it is a world in motion. The worldlines are only in mathematical space, and in your head. There’s no place that’s the future, and no place that’s the past. There’s only this place, and the time is always now.

Presentism, philosopher JME McTaggart's A-series, is the theory that only the present is real, and that the past and future are not. The block universe, McTaggart's B-series, is the theory that the past and the future are as real as the present. Though presentism seems like common sense, that common sense can be reconciled with the block universe by supposing it to be an artifact of living inside such a universe.

Pre-relativity theories of time have supposed that there is a universal time, a time that all the Universe's inhabitants experience. That can easily be fitted into presentism. Newtonian mechanics is the most successful theory of its type before relativity, and it features these space-time symmetries:

Combinations of space and time translations (shifts), rotations, and Galilean boosts (1D form: x = position, t = time, x' = new position, t' = new time, v = boost velocity):

t' = t, x' = x + v*t

Note that time is unaffected. It also has a universal time that can easily fit with presentism.

But the first hint of trouble was the discovery around 1900 by Henrik Antoon Lorentz, Joseph Larmor, Henri Poincaré, and others that one had to modify Galilean boosts to make them consistent with Maxwell's equations. The resulting boosts are usually called Lorentz boosts:

t' = γ * (t - v*x/c^2), x' = γ * (x - v*t), γ = (1 - v^2/c^2)^(-1/2)

where c is the speed of light in a vacuum. Note that one gets a new time, different from the original time. These physicists continued to believe in a universal time, the time measured by an observer at rest with respect to the luminiferous ether, as it had often been called. But an observer moving with respect to the ether will see a different time, a time that they considered purely local.

In 1905, Albert Einstein considered these local times, and he concluded that they were all equally physically meaningful, and as physically meaningful as some purported "ether time". Thus, time becomes relative, just as space is relative.

In 1908, Hermann Minkowski showed that symmetry under Lorentz boosts means that time is much like some additional space dimension, complete with obeying a generalization of Pythagoras's theorem, though with (time)^2 being multiplied by - c^2 (the minus sign is a feature and not a bug) (Space and Time - Wikisource). Furthermore, Lorentz boosts turn out to be a sort of rotation of space and time. To quote him:

Gentlemen! The concepts about time and space, which I would like to develop before you today, have grown on experimental physical grounds. Herein lies their strength. Their tendency is radical. Henceforth, space for itself, and time for itself shall completely reduce to a mere shadow, and only some sort of union of the two shall preserve independence.

Mathematically, rotations and boosts form the "Lorentz group", O(3,1), a relative of the 4D "orthogonal group", O(4). With translations, they form the "Poincaré group", E(3,1), a relative of the 4D "Euclidean group", E(4).

In 1915, Albert Einstein went even further with general relativity. It features arbitrary space-time curvature, complete with not necessarily having any overall symmetry. But locally, space-time has the symmetries of flat space-time.

Special and general relativity are devastating for presentism. That theory requires that there be One True Time that indicates what is each present moment. But neither SR nor GR features such a time, because some purported One True Time would be physically indistinguishable from other coordinate times that one can define. Applying this to Farsight's theory, the One True Time is completely derived from motion, but the other times are mixes of space and motion.

So one must conclude that Farsight's theory of time is contrary to relativity, despite his considering himself a supporter of Einstein and relativity.

Inversion

The idea of time derived from motion is rather obviously an inversion of motion being derived from time. However, this sort of theorizing has some rather unflattering precedents. In his classic work on pseudoscience, Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, Martin Gardner noted that pseudoscientists often invert well-established mainstream theories:

Mathematicians prove the angle cannot be trisected. So the crank trisects it. A perpetual motion machine cannot be built. He builds one. There are many eccentric theories in which the "pull" of gravity is replaced by a "push." Germs do not cause disease, some modern cranks insist. Disease produces the germs. Glasses do not help the eyes, said Dr. Bates. They make them worse. In our next chapter we shall learn how Cyrus Teed literally turned the entire cosmos inside-out, compressing it within the confines of a hollow earth, inhabited only on the inside.

Mass

He explains it in his essay rationalia.com • View topic - Mass Explained.

He starts "Mass Explained" with a lot of hand waving, starting off with how mass feels substantial and energy doesn't. Along the way, he makes this boner:

You’re beginning to get a feel for mass, but to really understand it you have to stop thinking of momentum as something that a mass has got. A thing that’s got energy can have momentum without having any mass. Like a photon. A photon has energy/momentum but it has no mass. And a photon has a size but it has no surface.

A photon has zero rest mass, but it has a nonzero total-energy mass.

He then gets into pair production, illustrating it with a schematic diagram, though not with a Feynman diagram of the process:

(real photon) + (virtual photon from nucleus) -> (electron) + (positron)

This is a well-understood process. One of the photons turns into an electron and a positron, and the other photon then gets consumed by one of the new particles. It is a time reversal of annihilation, and it is also related to electron-photon scattering. A photon goes either in or out, an electron going in is equivalent to a positron coming out, and a positron going in is equivalent to an electron coming out.

He then reveals his theory of the nature of the electron: that it is a self-trapped circling photon.

After mentioning annihilation, he concludes with

It really is that simple. Energy is usually a travelling stress like a photon, rippling through the volume of space like a pressure-pulse shooting through a ghostly block of transparent rubber. Mass is just how you measure it when it's tied in a knot so it's going nowhere fast. Or in other words: Mass is a measure of the amount of energy that is not moving in aggregate with respect to the observer.

Except that the electromagnetic field is not a distortion of space-time. That's what the gravitational field is.

There are several things wrong with Farsight's circling-photon model of the electron.

Confinement

From the uncertainty principle, the confinement potential energy must be on the order of the electron's mass, if not greater. Furthermore, there is no known interaction that can cause such extreme confinement. The closest that the Standard Model comes to such an entity is the glueball, a self-confined gluon field. It is self-confined because it is self-interacting, with its interaction "charge" being around 1 at a size scale of about 10^(-15) m. That gives it a mass of a few GeV. To date, a glueball state has yet to be unambiguously identified, since it is difficult to distinguish one from a flavor-neutral meson. But it is an interesting illustration of what is necessary for a field to be self-confined.

Wrong spin

The theory of quantum-mechanical angular momentum is very elegant. Angular-momentum operators are associated with the generators of the group of 3D rotations, SO(3). This interrelationship of angular momentum and rotation explains the intrinsic angular momenta or spins of fields as a consequence of how they transform under rotation. Spin-0 particles are scalars, looking the same in all directions. Spin-1 particles are vectors. Etc.

Let us turn to finding solutions. To find orbital-angular-momentum wavefunctions, one has to solve some differential equations, but to find quantum numbers of angular-momentum states, one can avoid solving such equations and use the operators' interrelationships directly. This ladder-operator solution constrains angular momentum to values that are either nonnegative integers or positive half-odd numbers. Here are various other associated properties:

What Integer AM Half-odd AM
Wavefunction after rotating 360d Same sign Reversed sign
Multiparticle wavefunction Symmetric Antisymmetric
State occupation number 0, 1, 2, ... 0, 1
Statistics type Bose-Einstein Fermi-Dirac
Particle name Boson Fermion

Angular momentum can add, and in quantum-mechanics, it produces several angular momenta whose values increase in integer steps from the difference absolute value to the sum of the original angular-momentum values. Since the electromagnetic field / photon has spin 1, and since orbital angular momentum only has nonnegative-integer values, the total angular momentum of an electromagnetic-field configuration thus has a nonnegative-integer value. Strictly speaking, it is a positive integer, with a value of at least 1.

Thus, a circling photon cannot have a spin of 1/2.

Successful existing theory

There is a successful existing theory of the electron: the Dirac theory. In that theory, the electron's wavefunction is a 4-component spinor ("spin vector"), one for the two spin states of both the ordinary electron and the positron. Combined with the quantum theory of the photon, one gets quantum electrodynamics, a very successful theory. This theory is a subset of the Standard Model, but most of the other particles in the Standard Model are either electronlike or photonlike.

Energy=

He explains it in his essay rationalia.com • View topic - Energy Explained.

He states:

In barest essence energy is a volume of stressed space. This is why you can’t hold energy in the palm of your hand. ... But oddly enough, you can hold energy in your hand. ...

The rest of his essay continues in that hand-waving vein.

Electromagnetism

He explains it in rationalia.com • View topic - Understanding electromagnetism.

It's similar for Maxwell. Read his original seminal work and it's very different to what is described as Maxwell's Equations. That's because "Maxwell's Equations" aren't Maxwell's equations, because Heaviside rewrote them in vector form.

However, its mathematical content is identical to Heaviside's vector form, but written component by component. It is not some revealed truth that later physicists have fallen away from. In fact, Maxwell's equations have been written in four different ways:

  • Component by component
  • Space as a 3-vector (3+1)
  • The above, using quaternions or Pauli matrices indexed over the space dimensions.
  • Space-time as a 4-vector (general covariant)

How many equations (conservation of charge, gauge transform of potentials, fields from potentials, equations for fields, total):

  • Component by component: 1 + 4 + 6 + 8 = 19
  • Space as a 3-vector: 1 + 2 + 2 + 4 = 9
  • Space-time as a 4-vector: 1 + 1 + 1 + 2 = 6

Farsight then quotes Hermann Minkowski (Space and Time, 1908):

Then in the description of the field produced by the electron we see that the separation of the field into electric and magnetic force is a relative one with regard to the underlying time axis; the most perspicuous way of describing the two forces together is on a certain analogy with the wrench in mechanics, though the analogy is not complete.

He continues with a description of the right-hand rule that related electric currents and magnetic fields, and he concludes that electromagnetism has a "screw nature".

He also states that it is one field with two forces, what we call the electric and magnetic fields. Strictly speaking, it is one field, the "Faraday tensor", but it is a six-component field that contains the electric and magnetic fields, each with three components.

Now for the structure of the Faraday tensor. First note that a position in space-time is a 4-vector, a vector with 4 components: time and the 3 space components. Likewise, energy and momentum form a 4-vector, the 4-momentum. Turning to electromagnetism, its scalar and vector potentials form a 4-vector, but its electric and magnetic fields instead form an antisymmetric 4-component 2-tensor, the Faraday tensor. A tensor is an object like a vector but it can have more indices. The Faraday tensor has two space-time indices. Broken up into space and time,

Faraday(time,space) = electric field
Faraday(space,space) = magnetic field

The Faraday tensor is antisymmetric, meaning that if you interchange its indices, its sign reverses. That makes its diagonal components zero, and gives it only 6 independent components out of a total of 4*4 = 16 components. Likewise, the space-space part of it has only 3 independent components out of 9 possible ones, components of a 3-component vector:

F11 = 0, F12 = B3, F13 = -B2, F21 = -B3, F22 = 0, F23 = B1, F31 = B2, F32 = -B1, F33 = 0

He also gives us some sources on his circling-photon theory of the electron:

However, they have not exactly gotten much interest from mainstream particle physicists.

The speed of light

He explains its limiting nature in his essay rationalia.com • View topic - Why c is the limit

About the electron and the positron,

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.

Quoting Einstein–de Haas effect - Wikipedia, an odd source to treat as revealed truth. In that effect, magnetizing an object makes it rotate, from its electrons' spins getting oriented.

Farsight evidently believes that all angular momentum is due to macroscopic circulation. However, fields can have angular momentum build into their structure: elementary-particle spins. A familiar example of it is photon polarization. Circular polarization carries angular momentum, something that has been measured experimentally.

This is followed by some hand-waving that essentially begs the question of why c, the speed of light in a vacuum, is a cosmic speed limit.

Later, Farsight gives his theory of the proton. It is a photon moving in a trefoil pattern, with each handle being a quark. A neutrino has an electronlike loop and a muon has one with more twists, thus being a combination of electron and neutrino loops.

Also,

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.

followed by some inlined schematic diagrams of the electromagnetic spectrum. These have schematic depictions of electromagnetic waves as a wavy line with varying wavelength and constant amplitude. This seems like crude literal-mindedness that would embarrass a fundamentalist.

Gravity

He explains it in rationalia.com • View topic - How Gravity Works.

He starts with "What Einstein Said", almost as if Albert Einstein's words are revealed truth. He then gets into Einstein's 1911 paper, On the Influence of Gravitation on the Propagation of Light, in which Einstein argued that c, the speed of light in a vacuum, is variable. He then argued that Einstein continued to believe that, arguing from Einstein quotes.

Turning to "The Modern Interpretation", he states

People swear that Einstein told us about curved spacetime, but when you read The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity it's just not there. Yes, he talks about geometry and curvature and space-time, but he's giving the equations of motion, through space. He doesn't talk about "motion through spacetime" like people do these days. Surely everybody knows you can't move through spacetime, it's just the mathematical space where we plot our lines. With the time dimension included, you can’t move through it.

Referring to The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity (PDF of English translation). But this document describes several things contrary to Farsight's beliefs:

  • Space and time are coequal
  • Particles' geodesic (unperturbed) equations of motion feature motion through time as well as through space
  • Space-time and not just space is curved; its Riemann curvature tensor is indexed over time as well as over space

Then Einstein's 1920 Leyden address (Ether and the theory of relativity), which Farsight thumps very loudly.

Mach’s idea finds its full development in the ether of the general theory of relativity. According to this theory the metrical qualities of the continuum of space-time differ in the environment of different points of space-time, and are partly conditioned by the matter existing outside of the territory under consideration. This space-time variability of the reciprocal relations of the standards of space and time, or, perhaps, the recognition of the fact that ‘empty space’ in its physical relation is neither homogeneous nor isotropic, compelling us to describe its state by ten functions (the gravitation potentials gμν), has, I think, finally disposed of the view that space is physically empty.

Farsight introduced it with "There's Einstein, talking about space and calling it an aether." But he seems like he was reading too much into Einstein's choices of words, choices which may have been inappropriate. Nontechnical descriptions of scientific theories often contain such malapropisms.

Those ten functions, the gμν, are components of the "metric tensor". It is a function for translating coordinate values into physical distances using a generalization of Pythagoras's theorem. It has 10 components because it is a symmetric 2-tensor over space-time.

He introduces his next section, "The Power of Groupthink", with "People suffer so much conviction about all this that they don't just dismiss Einstein and Newton, and they even dismiss scientific evidence, just like YEC groupies." As if Einstein and Newton are prophets of revealed truth. He complained that people will go to great lengths to deny the "bleeding obvious", that "in a place where the gravitational potential is lower, the light goes slower."

There are two problems with it. First is the definition of gravitational potential. The Newtonian limit has a well-defined scalar gravitational potential, but general relativity in general does not. Second is how one measures distances and times. Locally, the speed of light in a vacuum is still a constant in GR. But nonlocally, it does vary, but it depends on the locations of the points used to measure the distances and times, with the variation being due to space-time curvature. If one tries to measure the speed by following the light's path, one would have no distances or times to work with, because light travels on zero-length and zero-time "null geodesics". Instead, one must work with some path outside the light's path, a path that is alternately spacelike and timelike, giving well-defined distances and time intervals. A simple one for between points A and B is to add a point C and take path AC - CB, while making AC and CB orthogonal at C. The ratio of the length and the time interval gives a measurement of c.

Late in this section, he states

Electron spin isn’t “intrinsic”, nor is the magnetic dipole moment. There’s something going round and round in there, and “it’s not classical” is about as useful as “it surpasseth all human understanding”. Don’t buy it. The Einstein de-Haas effect proves that the spin is classical.

Just because Farsight finds something difficult to understand does not mean that an idea is worthless.

Then a section on "How Gravity Works". After a description of it that halfway fits some nontechnical description of general relativity, he continues with electromagnetism, largely recapping some previous discussion. After a lot of hand-waving, he states near the end:

Gravitational anomalies aren’t evidence for dark matter. Dark matter is just a hypothesis that attempts to explain them. And those who promote it sweep the raisins-in-the-cake analogy under the carpet. The universe expands, but the space within the galaxies doesn’t, because galaxies are gravitationally bound. So each and every galaxy is surrounded by a halo of inhomogeneous space. That’s a gμν gradient. It’s a gravitational field without any matter on the end of it. So when you hear people talking about the hunt for dark matter, bear this in mind.

Seemingly claiming that "dark matter" is really self-gravity, the gravitational effects of gravity itself. However, that is far too weak. One can estimate the size of self-gravity from (Newtonian-limit gravitational potential)/c^2, and it turns out to be about 10^(-6) for galaxies. That is far too small to account for dark matter.

Other issues

(Merged) Relativity+ / Farsight - International Skeptics Forum is a long thread on his theories. Much of it was covered elsewhere in this article, but there are several further issues.

The Higgs particle

From post 737,

it’s the myth of the fabulous Higgs boson, and the cosmic-treacle fairytale that the Higgs mechanism gives everything its mass.

He then quotes physicist Gian Francesco Giudice's book A Zeptospace Odyssey: A Journey into the Physics of the LHC:

In summary, the Higgs mechanism accounts for about 1 per cent of the mass of ordinary matter, and for only 0.2 per cent of the mass of the universe. This is not nearly enough to justify the claim of explaining the origin of mass.

However, most of the masses of protons and neutrons are due to QCD confinement effects, like what makes glueballs. Particles with QCD "color charge" cannot get much more than 10^(-15) m away from each other without their interaction becoming superstrong. Also, much of the mass of the Universe is "dark matter" and "dark energy", and the natures of both of them continue to be obscure, outside of being outside of the Standard Model. Yet there is a familiar elementary particle whose mass is due to the Higgs mechanism: the electron.

He concludes with "Damn right, because Einstein explained it over a hundred years ago." He thinks that the Higgs mechanism is contrary to Einstein's famous equation E = m*c^2.

Elsewhere, in Mass Explained - Secular Café post 69, he states about the Higgs mechanism that "It's garbage. I know it, you know it, and soon everybody will know it."

Elementary-particle fields

His theory (post 877):

A field is typically a spatial disposition or structure. It isn't something separate from space. It's a "state of space". When that state is uniform and homogeneous, we usually say there's no field present. However a wave or field variation can propagate linearly through such space. A wave can also take the form of a standing wave whereupon the field-variation is now a standing field. These can combine in a variety of ways, altering the state of space away from the origin in a fashion that is different from a single linear or standing wave. See Einstein's 1929 history of field theory and note this: "The two types of field are causally linked in this theory, but still not fused to an identity. It can, however, scarcely be imagined that empty space has conditions or states of two essentially different kinds, and it is natural to suspect that this only appears to be so because the structure of the physical continuum is not completely described by the Riemannian metric".

That's a lot of work for space-time to do. Also note his main argument: Einstein-thumping and ignoring the quote's context, a description of a would-be unified field theory that contains both gravity and electromagnetism.

Running of the fine-structure constant

Farsight makes a big issue out of how the fine-structure constant is a running one, waving around this page a from the National Institute of Standards and Technology: Current advances: The fine-structure constant. He completely ignored the page's discussion of the mechanism of that running, and what that running consists of: variation in effective value with interaction energy. From close to 1/137 at the long-distance, zero-momentum energy, vacuum-polarization effects increase it to close to 1/128 at the W particle's mass, near 80 GeV.

That running had been experimentally tested with the former occupant of the Large Hadron Collider's tunnels, an electron-positron collider called LEP: (hep-ex/0507078) Measurement of the Running of the Electromagnetic Coupling at Large Momentum-Transfer at LEP, (hep-ex/0002035) Measurement of the Running of the Fine-Structure Constant.

Irrelevance of short-lived particles

He argues that short-lived particles are "ephemera" and "events" and the like, meaning that only stable particles can be true elementary particles. However, instability is a function of what decays are permitted under physical conservation laws. Thus, the electron is stable because there is no charged particle less massive than it.

No such thing as virtual particles

In that thread, Farsight repeatedly ridicules the notion of virtual particles.

Post 1603:

You can't. And like ben, you will fight shy of the electron and the positron slinging photons at one another. It ain't magic, Clinger.

Post 1629:

Well they don't. Hydrogen atoms don't twinkle. Magnets don't shine. There are no photons flying around. None. Zip. Zero. Zilch.

Post 1723:

It's cargo-cult kid's stuff nonsense. A photon does not magically transform itself into an electron and positron with which the other photon can couple. Pair production does not occur because pair production occurred.

Post 1738:

I don't believe it. Your physics knowledge is just so weak. I mean, you seriously think a photon spontaneously morphs into an electron-positron pair. Like magic? And that's how pair production works? Because photons don't interact with photons? No, no way can you be a professional physicist.

Post 1739:

Hey, let's sit and watch all those photons turning into virtual and real electrons. Which then magically morph back into single photons. Defying conservation of momentum. And then those photons somehow manage to keep on travelling at c. Even though electrons can't. Magic! No, not magic. Cargo-cult trash. And you defend it.

Post 1813:

Now, is there anybody who still thinks photon-photon pair production occurs because one of the photons mysteriously turns itself into an electron and a positron with which the other photon interacts? Only if it misses, the electron and that positron magically morph back into a single photon that mystically managed to keep on going at the speed of light? Anybody?

Electric charge as a topological invariant

Farsight has claimed that electric charge is topological, and his main evidence is discussions of topological quantum field theory and topological charge. However, topological charge -> charge is topological is an unjustified switcharound.

Topological charge is another name for the value of a topological invariant, a quantity that is unaffected by distortion. A simple one is winding number. Imagine a loop of string and a post. The string's winding number = (number of clockwise turns) - (number of counterclockwise turns), and it cannot be changed without moving some of the string over the top of the post. Another simple one is the genus or number of holes in a solid shape. It's the number of cuts needed to get to spherical topology. A doughnut and a coffee cup with a handle are topologically equivalent, because they both have genus 1. Together, they have genus 1 = 1 + 1 - 1, because one has to undo a cut to get them together (negative genus). Knots also have topological invariants, though they are rather complicated "knot polynomials".

There is a theoretical speculation that there exists some elementary particles whose charges are proportional to some topological invariant: magnetic monopoles. These would be produced by topological defects in unbroken-electroweak or unbroken-GUT gauge fields. As the Universe cooled, GUT symmetry got broken down into QCD and electroweak symmetry, and the latter into electromagnetic symmetry. These symmetry breakings would give MM's their masses, and would make them magnetic versions of electrically-charged particles.

He also talks about "electromagnetic geometry", but he usually links to search-engine results, as in post 1806. So it is difficult to tell what he means by that.

His idea of crackpottery

His idea of crackpottery includes time travel, multiverses, additional space-time dimensions, the Universe having periodic boundary conditions (toroidal topology), magnetic monopoles, supersymmetry, string theory, ... all of which are mainstream-physics speculations. His big argument is that there is "no evidence" for them.

It is a strangely conservative approach to theorizing, one that implies that theories must always tag behind observations and experiments, and not make any predictions of anything not currently observed. That would rule out many of the triumphs of science, triumphs which involve successful predictions.

Using Farsight's arguments in the mid nineteenth century, one would declare that trans-Uranian planets and periodic-table missing chemical elements are both crackpottery unsupported by any evidence. But both were soon discovered.

Mathematics

Farsight says about mathematics things like "Really, can you do nothing better than spit out ad-hominems and demand mathematics to distract from the scientific evidence and trash the discussion?" "You have to look to the real world, and experiment, not mathematics. Stop using mathemtics as a smokescreen to dismiss scientific evidence." (post 528)

Disdain for mathematics is common among physics crackpots, it must be pointed out.

Arguing like a theologian

Several of Farsight's critics have noted that, notably lpetrich. Some others who have:

RussDill #21:

A) Stop mentioning scientists, what they did, when, why, what they said, etc. All useless fluff. The are not oracles or prophets like some sort of religion. Instead mention theories, experiments, equations, etc.

W.D.Clinger #1104 about Farsight's take on Ricci curvature:

The sentence I've highlighted exemplifies Farsight's inability to understand general relativity. The Ricci scalar appears within Einstein's most important equation for general relativity, but Farsight can only guess the meaning of that scalar by applying his usual hermeneutical scholasticism to a Wikipedia page.

In other words, sacred-book interpretation.

Likewise, the title of Einstein's Gravity suggests that Farsight wants to restore Einstein's original version of general relativity. He confirms it with saying things like "My argument is that the modern interpretation of general relativity is no longer in line with Einstein." (post 8 in that thread), implying that physicists working on GR have fallen away from the original revelation. This is similar to his belief about Maxwell's equations, that the most common versions represent falling away from Maxwell's original revealed ones.

For his part, Farsight repeatedly complains about people who he thinks dismiss Newton, Maxwell, Einstein, Minkowski, and others, as well as all the "scientific evidence", evidence which he seems to think is only consistent with his theories.

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