Fragments of energy, not particles/waves

[QuantumT]

Quote

Matter is what makes up the universe, but what makes up matter? This question has long been tricky for those who think about it – especially for the physicists. Reflecting recent trends in physics, my colleague Jeffrey Eischen and I have described an updated way to think about matter. We propose that matter is not made of particles or waves, as was long thought, but – more fundamentally – that matter is made of fragments of energy.

https://theconversation.com/fragments-of-energy-not-waves-or-particles-may-be-the-fundamental-building-blocks-of-the-universe-150730

[swansont]

!

Moderator Note

This is not news. It’s a description of what might or might not be mentioned in an article. Moved.

Are you proposing to explain and defend this idea? Because the article contains insufficient detail to meet the standard of speculations.

 

[QuantumT]

2 hours ago, swansont said:

Are you proposing to explain and defend this idea? Because the article contains insufficient detail to meet the standard of speculations.

The finer details are behind a paywall, so it's not easy to defend.

I'm not sure it it helps, but they do offer a glimpse of the math:

Quote

For the math and physics aficionados, it is defined as A = -⍺/r where ⍺ is intensity and r is the distance function.

The math should cover the definition of "energy that flows".

And their conjecture does rival GR's ability to explain the bending of light and the slight rotation of Mercury's orbit:

Quote

For the precession-of-Mercury problem, we modeled the Sun as an enormous stationary fragment of energy and Mercury as a smaller but still enormous slow-moving fragment of energy. For the bending-of-light problem, the Sun was modeled the same way, but the photon was modeled as a minuscule fragment of energy moving at the speed of light. In both problems, we calculated the trajectories of the moving fragments and got the same answers as those predicted by the theory of general relativity. We were stunned.

Our initial work demonstrated how a new building block is capable of accurately modeling bodies from the enormous to the minuscule. Where particles and waves break down, the fragment of energy building block held strong. The fragment could be a single potentially universal building block from which to model reality mathematically – and update the way people think about the building blocks of the universe.

 

[swansont]

16 minutes ago, QuantumT said:

The finer details are behind a paywall, so it's not easy to defend.

Or discuss, or evaluate.

 

 

[MigL]

How does it do with Gravitational waves and Black Holes ?
Both predicted by GR, and verified.

[QuantumT]

12 minutes ago, swansont said:

Or discuss, or evaluate.

10 minutes ago, MigL said:

How does it do with Gravitational waves and Black Holes ?
Both predicted by GR, and verified.

I guess we'll have to wait till more details are made public.

[swansont]

One question that leaps to mind is that they claim this is about waves vs particles, which is QM, but their approach is a GR problem, which is classical. And they don’t give any details about how they solved the problems, beyond “energy fragment” GR uses energy, so this isn’t particularly illuminating 

[QuantumT]

7 minutes ago, swansont said:

One question that leaps to mind is that they claim this is about waves vs particles, which is QM, but their approach is a GR problem, which is classical. And they don’t give any details about how they solved the problems, beyond “energy fragment” GR uses energy, so this isn’t particularly illuminating 

Perhaps they're attempting a ToE?

[swansont]

Just now, QuantumT said:

Perhaps they're attempting a ToE?

At this point, we don’t know that their solution brings anything new to the game. What they’ve done is come up with the same answer we already have.  

[QuantumT]

18 minutes ago, swansont said:

At this point, we don’t know that their solution brings anything new to the game. What they’ve done is come up with the same answer we already have.  

It looks to me like they have explained complex macro phenomena with a quantum sized starting point. They just scale it up, and it works (they say).

I, for one, am looking very much forward to getting more details!

[joigus]

I have serious doubts about the plausibility of an idea like this. Trying not to insist on previous points, with which I very much agree:

1st of all, similar ideas have been tried for centuries: anything that satisfies local conservation will spread following an inverse square law when expressed in the right variables

2nd, energy is not even an invariant or covariant concept, in GR it's not even well defined in general

3rd, energy is a very derived concept, constructed in each case from many different variables that do not relate to each other (charge, spin, non-linear terms in the Einstein tensor in the case of gravitational waves).

4rth, how does it relate to gauge charge, which is invariant?

5th, energy is bosonic, not fermionic, how does it build up fermionic states?

6th, reports of a new ToE candidate coming from the blackboards of young science professionals trying to draw attention to their speculations are ten a penny lately; the press is partly to blame for this noise effect

And so on, and so on.

If they can explain the Aharonov-Bohm effect with "just energy", I will eat my words, I promise.

I know they can't.

 

Edited December 14, 2020 by joigus

[studiot]

I think discussion should start (and then finish) with a definitive statement for the term 'fragment of energy'.

Energy is not a thing that has embodiment of itself.
It is a property that things possess by virtue of their configuration, situation or activity.