Severian

By that argument, all research is a waste of money, since it is all based on a small part of our universe.

Photons are the force carrying particles of electromagetism, or in more technical terms, they are the gauge bosons of a local U(1) symmetry. Imagine that we had a universe with just electrons in it. All we would have is a universe full of free electrons (and positrons) which do not interact with one another at all, but just buzz about. We could describe this with mathematics easily enough, but we would see that the mathematical formulae had a symmetry. We can transform: [math]\psi \to e^{i \theta} \psi[/math] and nothing would change. This is akin, though not quite the same, to the probabilities in quantum mechanics being proportional to the square of the wavefunction; one can make this phase change without changing the probabilities. We say that the theory so far has a 'global U(1) symmetry'. Let me explain the jargon: U(1) means that the transformation is caused by a Unitary 1x1 matrix, which is just a complex number. 'Global' means that [math]\theta[/math] does not depend on position: the change is made everywhere in the universe at once, by the same amount. Now, this is nice, but not very nice, because we might worry what would happen if I choose to redefine the wavefunction everywhere by an amount [math]\theta_1[/math] while someone in Alpha Centuari, who because of the finite speed of light could not know what I have done, redefines it with [math]\theta_2[/math]. What we really want is for our theory to be 'locally' U(1) symmetric, so that we can change the wavefunction by a phase just around where we are without worrying about anywhere else. In other words we want to transform: [math]\psi \to e^{i\theta(x)} \psi[/math] where [math]\theta[/math] is now a function of position. The mathematics describing the free electrons is not symmetric in this way. To make it locally U(1) symmetric, we find that we need to introduce a new particle which interacts with the electron. By interact, I mean that th electron can absorb it, or emit it. When we work out what properties the particle has to have to give local U(1) symmetry, we find that it has exactly the properties of the photon, and the interaction of the photon with the electron is the electromagnetic force. The photon is a consequence of requiring local U(1) symmetry. The other forces of nature are also the result of making other symmetries of the equations local. (I always find that amazingly beautiful!)

Aeschylus is right that the wavefunction has no 'physical reality' because we can never measure it. A measurement will always collapse it to an eigenstate, so we can never see it away from an eigenstate. One can hold the view that since we cannot observe it, then it doesn't exist - our physical reality is expressed entirely in terms of observations, so only observations are 'real' and any abstract mathematics behind it is just an artificial mechanism for predicting the observations. Personally, I think that is a rather sterile way to view the world, even if it is formally valid. I believe that fields do exist even when we are not looking at them, but that has to be a 'belief' since I can never prove it, and is anyway probably a semantic distinction. What do we mean by 'exist'?

If you believe the experimental data' date=' then it's not. WMAP has shown that the universe is open - not closed.

I am not at all recycled. I am 100% pure scientist. (Although some of my ideas are ocassionally recycled.)

The Standard Model doesn't even explain why charge is quantized....

To say that there are 11 dimensions (or whatever number is fashionable at the moment) is a little bit misleading. Heterotic string theory conjectures that there are 10 and M-theory conjectures that there are 11. But string theory etc has never been tested by experiment, never mind confirmed. As far as our experiments see, there are only 4 dimensions. In other words, 4 dimensions is sufficient to describe all observations, or to be more exact, one cannot describe these observations more reliably by using more than 4 dimensions. This may all change soon though. There are some very interesting ideas of having extra dimensions with a rather low compacification scale. If this were the case, gravity could be weak not because the Planck scale is so high, but because it propagates in the extra dimensions. Then the true Planck scale could be as low as a (few) TeV, which is within reach of colliders currently being built. Who knows, we might be experimentally testing string theory in five years time, or even creating our very own black holes in our colliders....

Well, lets take it one step at a time shall we philbo? 1. To which post were you refering (presumptions)? (They are numbered.) Post 40? 2. Which 'presumptions' do you see and object to?

Sort of. If you can move to the rest frame of the object then you can write E=mc2, telling you that the energy of the particle is proportional to its mass, but that is a pretty special case and one cannot always go to the rest from of a particle (eg a photon). The correct equation is (for the 100th time): [math]E^2=m^2c^4+p^2c^2[/math] where p is momentum. So you see if a particle is moving (ie p non-zero) then there is also energy coming from its motion and the energy of the particle is not entirely due to its mass. You are probably correct in saying that a lot of the universe's energy is in mass, but by no means all. (I say 'probably' because we don't know what dark matter/dark energy is yet.)

I am still a big fan of the graviton being the consequence of local supersymmetry....

We are all interested in seeing new ideas, but you seem to have no concept about how well tested the theories you oppose are. Unless you can come up with something which explains some of the problems with the theories as they stand, why should we even listen to you? There are big holes in our understanding of physics - why not try to fill them, rather than just disagreeing with our understanding of things which have been very well tested already? For example, if your theory can explain the quark mass hierarchy, or the uniformity of the universe, or the baryon asymmetry etc etc, I will be very happy to discuss it.

I don't mean to confuse the issue, but why do you think that all the energy was all in one photon? Presumably at the Planck scale, the ultimate gauge group is unbroken, so there will be no 'photons', only gauge particles of the unified group. Or was this just a figure of speech....?

If you can answer that question in a way which is fully consistent with Quantum Mechanics, you will get a Nobel Prize...

It's quite nice to have something which is individual so that people know who you are at a glance. It is also good to have one that sums up your personality if at all possible... ...but then again, it will never be as good as JaKiri's.

Actually, it is exactly the same thing. Philbo's plates are also not interacting at a distance. They are emitting photons, which transfer momentum between the plates - this is just electromagnetism. In Swansont's table, the atoms are likewise emitting photons which transfer momentum between them, keeping the structure of the table, and the table emits photons to hold the lamp in place. So they are both manifestations of electromagnetism, which is well known to be mediated by photon exchange. Similarly, gravity is mediated by the exchange of a graviton, and since gravitons are also massless, they travel at the speed of light. Therefore the effects of gravity travel at the speed of light too.

Yes there are higher frquencies. In principle, there is no absolute limit, but obviously it becomes harder and harder to make higher and higher frequencies because higher frequency waves have more energy. The only possible limit in frequency is that the energy should be less than the Planck scale 1019GeV. This is the energy scale at which gravity becomes strong, so your photons will start to rip holes in space-time at these energies (ie. make black holes). Whether this is an actual limit is a little bit aesthetic...

Bastards! Just because I live on a hill!

They are (at least in the sense that energy and momentum are equivalent)! This was one of the main points of Special Relativity: a Lorentz transformation is (sort-of) a rotation in space-time. the only real difference between space and time in fundamental physics is that the time entry in the metric has the opposite sign, ie. a distance in space-time is measured as: ds2 = dt2 - dx2 - dy2 - dz2 Energy and mass, on the other hand, are not equivalent. One can be changed into the other, but they are not the same thing.

Interesting, but I fail to see why 1/137.035... would be fundamental. It is only the asymptotic limit of the QED beta function. As I have pointed out before, alpha changes with energy so it is not 1/137 for most energies. 1/137 is just the value at really low energies. I imagine that if you work hard enough, you can find an equation which gives you any number you like. It would be interesting to know how far in decimal places the correspondence goes... PS: Are you sure you got F(X) correct? It is a little odd that the first two entries both have no pi in them. I would have expected the first term to be [math]2 \pi X[/math]. PPS: It is also interesting how F(X) seems to change as the inverse square of X (each term is X-2 times the previous one). According to the thesis, X-2 would be alpha itself....

Most Euros want Kerry in because they think 'He can't possibly be worse than Bush!'. Now granted they may be overestimating your other politicians, but from where I am sitting, 'worse than Bush' would be a pretty hard thing to accomplish.

No. If the universe was infinitely old and infinitely large, then the sky would be lit up in every direction at night. But even with an infinite number of stars in the universe, the finite lifetime of the universe would stop this happening. The number of stars in the universe has nothing to do with it - it is the number of stars within your horizon which is important, and your horizon is fixed at 14 billion light years.

You have made two posts on these boards now, and both have been to insult another poster. Now, while I agree that the original poster has shown that he does not understand the concepts under discussion, I find your attitude unconstructive, unscientific (you make no attempt to point out his errors) and downright rude.