Space pressure reality (Physical Review Letters)

[Guest Brian]

Physical Review Letters v78, n3, p424 contains an article by I. Levine, D. Koltick and about 30 others on the electron. The space around the electron contains polarised vacuum charges which shield the core of the electron. By colliding electrons and positrons at high energy, they could eliminate some of the shielding effect and test quantum electrodynamics in this way. They found that for 57.77 GeV collisions, the fine structure constant for an electron varies, with the well known dimensionless coupling factor of 137.035 falling to only 128.5. (If this coupling number dropped to 1, then the quantum electrodynamic force would equal the strong nuclear binding force, which is 137 times stronger than electromagnetism at short ranges.)

 

The authors described the situation thus: "All charges are surrounded by clouds of virtual photons, which spend part of their existence dissociated into fermion-antifermion pairs. The virtual fermions with charges opposite to the bare charge will be, on average, closer to the bare charge than those virtual particles of like sign. Thus, at large distances, we observe a reduced bare charge due to this screening effect."

 

This is high energy physics, and not subject to the experimental problems of other aspects of physical space pressure like the Casimir force between metal plates or the arguments about the interpretation of the double slit experiment.

 

Physical space is not only present in physics as electric impedance (uc = 377 ohms, where u is magnetic permeability of vacuum), electric permittivity and magnetic permeability, it forms a vacuum foam and acts as a fluid to cause particle-wave duality (Dirac sea).

 

Hubble’s law implies that the further back in time you look with increasing distance, the faster the recession v in direct proportion, hence constant v/t = acceleration. Mass times this acceleration is outward force (F = ma), and every force has an equal and opposite reactive force. This inward force is constant so the shielded pressure (force per unit area) causes gravitation as proved: http://nigelcook0.tripod.com/. Electromagnetism and nuclear forces are results of energy exchange processes

 

What is strange is that there is so little interest in the physical and measurable aspects of space, and so much hype about unproved speculations like 10/11 dimensional space superstrings and multiple universes, which predict nothing and lead nowhere. Why does the media find so much of interest in speculation, and find no time for explaining proved experimental facts? This one predicts the strength of gravity unlike superstring theory, is consistent will other physics and makes cosmological predictions which have subsequently been confirmed (expansion rate of universe).