COSMIC MUD OR COSMIC MUDDLE?
Why squander taxpayers' money to allow particle physicists to
wallow in mud?
Copyright, Harold Aspden, 2000
I am motivated to write
this after hearing a radio programme here in U.K. this morning which informed
listeners about the developments at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland concerning the
demise of the electron-positron collider and its replacement by its higher
energy proton-antiproton counterpart. We were well on track, with the discovery
of Higgs in sight, but, with this heavily funded venture at CERN now changing
direction, the Americans, we were told, with their onward plans for a more
powerful electron-positron collider might now be the first to discover
Higgs.
Having read about this in the literature issued by the Institute
of Physics here in U.K., I was only passively interested, but I wondered how the
ordinary person could see sense in scientists building a 27 km circular tunnel
in the vicinity of Geneva and then sucking the air out of it to allow free
passage for high energy electrons and positrons in opposite directions aimed at
bringing them into collision to see what might happen. That free passage was
along imaginary tracks that physicists describe as a curved field, a magnetic
field set up by a very costly system of electromagnets built along the inside of
that circular tunnel. Power is imparted to the electrons and positrons by
accelerating electric fields, the technology being familiar to those who
understand what happens in a television tube, where electric fields give power
to electrons and also guide them as they scan row after row across the
screen.
You can imagine how many millions of television sets could be
made for the cost of a CERN particle collider. You can imagine the pleasure
those televisions can deliver to the public at large who pay for the CERN
collider and you can wonder how the public might benefit from what is discovered
using that CERN collider.
Well, enlightenment on that was not forthcoming
in that radio report. I, however, did learn something I had not heard of before.
It seems that if the Higgs particle is discovered it will deliver an answer to
the question of why you, the reader, has mass. That I had heard, but what I did
not know is the logic of the link between Higgs and mass, mass here not being
the mass of the Higgs particle (called a boson), but rather the mass of
anything, given that Higgs interacts with everything having a mass property. No,
Higgs is not, it seems, about the force of gravity. That is something else.
Gravity sets up a field which acts on mass in proportion to the value of that
mass, but Higgs, on the other hand, is a kind of field that gives the mass of
anything its particular value.
I was enlightened as to the logic of the
connection when the scientist reporting on the subject declared that, in the
language particle physicists use amongst themselves, they call the Higgs field
'cosmic mud'. Once a particle sets a course to travel through that mud it
encounters an effect owing to 'mud' sticking to it and that gives it
mass.
So there you are. Your money paid in tax and diverted into science
funding which gets into the hands of particle physicists cooperating
internationally is being spent on trying to solve a riddle of an imaginary
universe which wallows in mud, a pursuit which can only be deplored.
So
this is why I am putting these thoughts of mine on record today, November 2,
2000, after hearing that radio broadcast, given, however, that I did put my
previous Essay WHY
HIGGS? on record on this web site two weeks ago.
That Essay did show
why the CERN electron-positron collider could indicate energy resonance at
certain threshold levels, including that interpreted as a sighting of Higgs, but
there is no way that the phenomenon could explain why particles have
mass.
For many years that question to me has been a closed subject,
easily explained by the physics of the past. Put in simple terms and without
reference to mud, cosmic mud or otherwise, a particle exhibits mass as its
property of inertia, it being its response in interacting with an accelerating
field to react as we do by the instinct of self-preservation. I have written on
this elsewhere and so many times over the years that it is becoming tiresome to
say it all again. However, in summary, at the demise of the 19th century and
dawn of the 20th century, following the discovery of the electron, physicists
argued that a charged electric particle, if accelerated would radiate its
energy. In their theory they did not take full account of the interaction of
that electric charge and the electric field producing the acceleration. Had they
done that then, as I was to discover in due course, some half century on, they
would have found that, by assuming that no energy could be radiated owing to the
particle responding just so as to conserve its energy, then it would exhibit
inertia and mass, the mass being in proportion to the electric energy intrinsic
to its unitary charge. The constant governing that proportion is simply
c2, where c is the speed at which a disturbed electric field ripples
through the body of electric charge defining the particle.
Do keep in
mind here that all matter at its truly fundamental level is a composition of
electrically charged particles. Even the neutron, which has no net electric
charge, comprises positive and negative electric charges which balance to be
neutral overall.
The formula E=Mc2 is the result of that field
ripple within electric charge serving to conserve energy. J J Thomson came close
to discovering this in the late 19th century, when he discovered a theoretical
link between the kinetic energy and electromagnetic energy of an electron in
motion. He had limited his calculation to electromagnetic energy seated outside
the body of charge involved and so his formula did not give E=Mc2.
Instead, it gave E=3Mc2/4. That was before Einstein got into the act.
Once Einstein started writing about the electrodynamics of the electron, he only
got his E=Mc2 formula consistent with the related mass increase with
speed, as known from early electron theory, by making the absurd assumption that
the electron was accelerated slowly and so energy radiation could be ignored. It
is very poor science to argue mathematically that something can be ignored
because it is small, given that a true zero is needed to justify the result
observed.
All this amounts to saying that we surely know why and how any
electric particle has a mass property. It is a corollary of the Principle of
Energy Conservation. It does not involve 'sticking mud' and a playmate called
'Higgs'!
Once the electron structure of the atom was deciphered and we
knew that the electrons in it were being accelerated all the time without
radiating any energy, it should have been obvious to ask the relevant questions
and solve the riddle of why the mass property exists as a direct manifestation
of energy conservation.
Instead, physicists introduced hypotheses giving
birth to quantum theory, without taking that energy conservation into account,
without appreciating how electrons adopt different states of motion expressly to
avoid interactions which do promote energy radiation and without taking account
that the vacuum itself is a real medium which also contains electric charge in
motion.
That is the background, background which offers no mud bath in
giving scope for the Higgs phenomenon.
I admit now that I have a second
motive in writing this Essay so soon as a follow-up to the previous Essay on
Higgs. I had developed the theme of that Essay by reference to a paper published
in 1972 in Physics Letters. It made sense, therefore, to offer what I had to say
about Higgs for publication in Physics Letters and so I wrote the paper which I
append below as part of this Essay.
I think it is instructive for those
who read this to see how my submission was processed by the relevant Editor of
this scientific periodical and so what follows first is my letter to his E-mail
address at the department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at
Cambridge University, followed by his reply dated October 21, 2000.
P.V. Landshoff,
Dear Sir,
I present below the text
of a paper which I would be pleased to have considered for publication in
Physics Letters B. There are no figures. The case presented is simple and
brief. It has the merit of relying solely on what was disclosed in a 1972
Physics Letters paper which I co-authored with a colleague working at the
National Measurement Laboratory in Australia. What is new and original is the
appreciation that the high energy involved in electron-positron collisions may
force just a few electrons to substitute for the prevalent particle form of
that 1972 account by which the fine-structure constant was theoretically
derived. The result, which requires no equations to present, speaks for
itself.
Incidentally, I am now retired and have not declared a
university affiliation, although I do at this time have an active research
project here at the University of Southampton in the Department of Electrical
Engineering.
Also, I mention that decades ago when I was developing the
subject theory I had left academia to work for IBM, but a physicist Dr. D. M
Eagles took an interest in my theoretical efforts, which stem from my
experimental Ph.D. work on magnetic reaction phenomena and related energy
anomalies, and he was very critical and tried to disprove what I was saying.
In the event, however, he was converted to my cause and the outcome was that
1972 Physics Letters paper. I would find it a gratifying tribute to Dr. Eagles
if the paper I now offer were to be accepted. Its acceptance might also
stimulate further interest in extending electron-positron collider experiments
to take us a little closer to the ultimate truth.
Please advise if you
require copies of any of the references.
Yours sincerely,
H.
Aspden (Ph.D. Cantab)
**********
Dear Dr Aspden
Thank you for submitting
your paper, which has been assigned the reference number 8901.
The
paper introduces ideas that differ somewhat from those of the conventional
theory. The conventional theory is highly successful: it explains a very large
number of experimental facts. So the author of any alternative theory has an
obligation to show that it is equally successful, as well as pointing out
where its predictions differ from the conventional ones.
This will need
a rather long paper, which will not be suitable for a letters journal. I am
sorry.
Peter Landshoff
*******
ENERGY THRESHOLDS IN HIGH ENERGY ELECTRON-POSITRON
COLLISIONS
Harold Aspden
Energy Science Ltd
P.O. Box 35, Southampton SO16
7RB
Abstract
Based on criteria concerning particle
interactions in relation to volume conservation of space occupied by transmuting
electrical charge forms, as originally disclosed in Physics Letters in 1972, it
is shown that the data of that paper indicate an energy threshold at 114.9 GeV,
the precise value recently observed in CERN electron-positron collider
experiments.
Main Text
Although the reported sighting of
the Higgs boson at CERN at 114.9 GeV [1] is seen as a landmark in the quest to
unravel the mysteries of the aether, the particle underworld of the vacuum
state, it leaves open the question of which theory it supports.
The Higgs
boson is the missing link in the Standard Model, the last of seven parameters
requiring experimental identification. Six are mass-energy quantities and one is
a dimensionless constant having a numerical value incorporating the
fine-structure constant.
However, though little known, there is a
different aether model of record in Physics Letters since 1972 [2] which also
depends upon seven parameters, six of which are also mass-energy quantities with
the other one also involving that dimensionless fine-structure constant. This
latter theory, as it developed [3], provided a precise theoretical derivation of
all of these seven parameters, although one of the six mass-energy quantities is
necessarily unity, it being the unit of reference for the other
five.
Taking the 0.511 MeV electron as that unit, the five are the
virtual forms of muon and tau, the graviton (2.587 GeV) [4], the supergraviton
(95.18 GeV) [5] and the mo particle, the latter featuring in the key
role defined in the 1972 account. As there shown, its mass is 0.04078 times that
of the electron. The Higgs boson at 114.9 GeV is not involved as a primary
component in this alternative theory.
The functional role of those
particle components in the framework of the aether can be summarized in the
following way. The mo particle constitutes the component of the
lattice structure, the basis of what is a kind of fluid crystal property of the
vacuum state, which defines the E-frame (local electromagnetic reference frame
in which matter at rest is seated). The virtual muons are the primary energy
component. They populate and define the I-frame (the inertial reference frame).
The E-frame has a cyclical harmonious motion about the I-frame and so needs to
be dynamically balanced by a G-frame system in juxtaposed motion relative to the
E-frame. Here G implies the gravitational role of the vacuum state, which is
seated in the presence of the tau, graviton and supergraviton particles which
have transient existence in that G-frame, serving only to keep the E-frame in
dynamic balance but incidentally developing the phenomenon of gravity. Pairs of
tau particles serve the primary quantum gravitational role, whereas gravitons
supplement that action in providing mass balance for the E-frame and matter in
that E-frame, but cater also for non-quantum gravitational mass fluctuations.
The supergraviton is really a cluster of particles created only when heavy
molecules of matter are present and then overriding the function of the tau as
required to assure full gravitational balance.
Given this introduction,
the contribution here concerns only the response of this particle-vacuum system
when we bring an electron and a positron into collision at very high energy as
in the CERN collider experiments. The process involves each particle, in
acquiring an entourage of virtual electron-positron pairs which embody the
energy of their motion. Crucial to the case presented in that 1972 account [2]
is the hypothesis that the volume of space occupied by fundamental electric
charge forms is always conserved. If of spherical, symmetric, form, charge
volume is proportional to the cube of the bounding radius and energy trapped by
electrical charge housed within that radius is inversely proportional to that
radius. Mass, though normally proportional to energy, is a property that also
depends upon the continuum in which the charge is immersed. In the ultimate
hydrodynamic balance in a system having uniform mass density, a sphere exhibits
half the mass it would otherwise have given no background continuum. Only the
mo particle is really affected by this, because electrons and more
massive particles occupy so little volume in relation to their intrinsic mass
that the effect is negligible.
What this means, however, is that the mass
ratio of electron to mo is such that the cube of
[me/2mo] is equal to the volume ratio of the mo
particle to that of the electron. Now, the thrust of that 1972 Physics Letters
paper involved determining that volume ratio, because it was a vital term in the
theoretical evaluation of the fine-structure constant. It was there shown to be
1843, which further corresponds to the ratio mo/me being
0.04078 as that paper also shows.
To take this argument forward in the
context of the CERN collider experiment, we can now see, given that enough
volume of space has to be deployed to allow creation of the electron-positron
entourage of the colliding particles, this can only come from an action which
provides a substitute for some of the mo particles in the E-frame to
free the space they occupy. The need is to keep the dynamic balance. The
substitution involves matching the mass density, given that the vacuum has its
own way of adjusting to preserve its electrical neutrality.
Now, since an
electron in the E-frame has a mass that is 24.52 that of the mo
particle, if a single electron is created to take over that dynamic balancing
role, then the space occupied by 24 mo particles becomes available to
accommodate the electron-positron energy field in the collider experiment. If
five electrons are created in such an event, given a higher energy requirement,
then the space of 122 mo particles is available. This corresponds to
a mass-energy of 122 times 1843 times 0.511 MeV or 114.9 GeV, precisely the
value of the event which is claimed as a sighting of the Higgs boson
[1].
It is submitted, therefore, that this experimental discovery offers
support to this author's particle-vacuum model, but not necessarily support for
the Standard Model, which in any event does not predict a Higgs boson mass of
this specific value.
A crucial test, of course, is whether, in the
future, the electron-positron collider experiments will reveal other energy
states, corresponding to the number of substitute electrons deployed in the
specific field region occupied by the colliding particles. The following energy
levels are indicated over the range of 1 to 10 electrons: 22.6, 46.1, 68.7,
92.3, 114.9, 138.4, 161.0, 184.6, 207.2 and 230.7 GeV.
However, the
constraints imposed by the need for dynamic balance in an active energy field
may exclude all but a few of these energy threshold values. The analysis in that
1972 paper [2] leading to the evaluation of the fine-structure constant was
based on a 3x3x3 cubic array of those mo particles spinning about a
central axis. Dynamically, this can imply a 3x3 sub-group, or even a 4 or 5
sub-group of substituted me electrons. Hence the energy threshold set
by 9 electrons, with onward separation into energy quanta set by 5 and 4
electron sub-groups, could be favoured. This fits well with the statement in
report [1] that the Higgs was seen at 114.9 GeV in company with what seemed to
be a neutral Z boson (91.2 GeV) when the energy of each colliding beam was just
over 103 GeV. The 9 electron threshold is at 207.2 GeV and the 5:4 electron
sub-group division corresponds to the energy thresholds at 114.9 GeV and 92.3
GeV, respectively.
Presumably the Standard Model requires only one Higgs
boson form. In contrast this author's model indicates the above spectrum of
energy levels. It is submitted that this warrants recording in the archives of
science, just in case onward experimental research indicates discovery of
several energy thresholds at the levels just predicted. The author would have
hesitated in offering this for publication were it not for the remarkable fact
that the theory yields an unambiguous value of 114.9 GeV, precisely that
reported as observed. However, this is the kind of result that the theory has
revealed, notably for constants such as G, the constant of gravitation and the
proton/electron mass ratio, the latter derived from proton creation sourced in
that virtual muon field of the I-frame [6] and so it is appropriate to put the
result on record.
References
[1] Valerie Jamieson, Physics
World, October 2000, p. 5.
[2] H. Aspden & D. M. Eagles, Physics Letters,
41A, 423-424 (1972).
[3] H. Aspden, 'Aether Science Papers', Sabberton
Publications, 1996.
[4] H. Aspden, 'The Theory of Gravitation', Sabberton
Publications, p. 80, 1966.
[5] H. Aspden, Speculations in Science and
Technology, 12, 179-186 (1989).
[6] H. Aspden & D. M. Eagles, Il Nuovo
Cimento, 30A, 235-238
(1975).
********H. Aspden November 2, 2000
Readers interested in
these Essays may now wish to progress to the next Essay: SUPERCONDUCTIVITY
AND THE SUPERGRAVITON
********