LECTURE NO. 20
DEBATE ON CREATION
Copyright © Harold Aspden, 1998
INTRODUCTION
There is nothing more fundamental so far as
concerns physical science than the understanding of the processes involved in
creating the matter which constitutes our universe. Yes, one can think that
there are greater questions, concerning God and the creation of the human life
form or, indeed, the sub-structure of that stage on which our universe performs,
meaning what physicists refer to as 'space-time' or what I, as a physicist,
prefer to refer to as 'the aether', but one must have a foundation on which to
build an understanding of all things. There is no better foundation than an
insight into how matter is distilled from the sea of energy that pervades space
and that means that we must begin by explaining how the proton, which accounts
for more than 99.9 per cent of all matter, is created and we must explain why
the proton is 1836.152 times the mass of its companion particle, the electron.
Together, these two particles create the hydrogen atom and from that all other
forms of matter evolve.
Now to create the heavier atoms we see around us
in solid matter and in the air we breathe, those hydrogen atoms have to undergo
a process of fusion. Physicists like to think that the nuclear fusion which
created our universe occurred in a one-off event some ten and more billion years
ago. That is their hypothesis as developed from their problem in understanding
how light radiation from distant stars can degenerate in its frequency spectrum
as it travels ever onwards at the enormous speed of light for billions of years
before reaching us here on Earth. So they have signed off, as it were, in trying
to understand how it might be that those protons and electrons can be involved
in an ongoing process of creation and decay here and now wherever matter already
exists.
Those physicists think that protons have no finite lifetime,
because they do not see proton decay. They see that when neutrons appear they
decay with a half-life of several minutes and, yet, notwithstanding that, they
are naive enough to imagine that there are neutrons in the atomic nuclei of
atoms heavier than hydrogen. Such is the parlous state of affairs in modern
physical science.
So when, in 1989, the discovery of 'cold fusion'
involving a heavy isotope of hydrogen was reported and no neutron emission was
in evidence, that discovery was ridiculed by the scientific establishment. Here
the issue was not just the prospect of a new much-needed energy source, but also
the opening of a pathway which could lead to a more sensible understanding of
the actual processes of the Creation of our material universe.
This
introduces this Lecture theme. I seek to debate the case for the ongoing
creation of matter by making reference to 'cold fusion'.
IS THE IDEA OF 'COLD FUSION' NONSENSE?
I find it quite hard
to believe that there are so many trained physicists in the world who have such
confidence in their intuitive opinions that they are willing to reject outright
the very thought of 'cold nuclear fusion'.
No doubt those same physicists
will tell me that I must be off track in even thinking that a proton might be
involved in an ongoing scenario of creation and decay. They may have read
somewhere that attempts to measure the decay lifetime of the proton gave a null
result and that in fact there is no evidence of decay even over a period
estimated on a scale going back to before the event of their imaginary Big
Bang.
Well, let me ask you how you can measure the lifetime of a particle
if the energy it sheds in its decay is pooled in a sea of energy from which
those very particles are being recreated to keep the energy equilibrium. I could
answer that myself if Nature was obliging and was willing to deploy the energy
shed so as to create two separate families of stable electrically-positive
particles. We might then see the decay process in our experiments, but that will
not be the case if a proton decays, sheds its energy to the underlying energy
pool, thereby upsetting its equilibrium, which it promptly restores by creating
a new proton at the very location where the original proton suffered
decay.
Now, if you, the reader, wish to be a critic and you say that
cannot be, then you must have some special knowledge which we ought to share.
You may 'think' that there is no such thing as that 'sea of energy', because you
do not subscribe to the belief that there is an aether. Such thought does not
amount to knowledge. Remember that there were those who once thought that light
travelled at a constant speed relative to the aether and, when they read about
an experiment that they 'thought' would confirm that assumption but found it
gave a null result, they did not question their own notion that light speed was
constant relative to the aether. No, they drew the illogical conclusion that the
aether does not exist. They did not take account of a discovery made only after
the experiment had been performed, namely that, since the apparatus used
involved mirrors, the reflected light waves were setting up standing waves
locked to the mirror surfaces. The light energy was being dragged along with the
apparatus as part of the system of those standing waves. The velocity of the
light, as such, in relation to a frame of reference external to the apparatus
was meaningless in those circumstances. You see, thought can mislead when it
comes to interpreting physical phenomena! I note, by the way, that Wiener
discovered and first demonstrated the standing wave phenomenon in 1890, whereas
the Michelson-Morley Experiment dates from 1881-1887.
Somehow physicists
have become hooked on the idea that the Michelson-Morley Experiment rang the
death knell of the aether and then blew the trumpet acclaiming the birth of
Einstein's notions about the speed of light being relative to an observer. How
long will it be before they learn what their experiments are really saying to
them?
Now, I cannot prove that protons decay, just as no one can prove
that they do not decay, but I can suggest that, if one assumes that protons can
be created and so, in a universe in equilibrium, they must decay, then it is a
step forward in support of that hypothesis if one can deduce the precise mass
value of the proton in relation to its companion at creation, namely the
electron!
So, proceeding along that track, where do we begin? Well, I am
going to begin by referring to the published obituary of a very eminent British
physicist who died very recently, namely Sir Charles Frank.
His obituary
was published in the Monday, April 27 1998 issue of the British newspaper THE
TIMES. Sir Charles died in Bristol earlier that month, on April 5, aged 87. The
obituary is relevant to this discourse because it began with the words:
"Sir Charles Frank was an inspirational physicist who worked in a
wide range of fields, from earthquakes to cold fusion."
Now,
much as physicists in general seem to find the thought of 'cold fusion' amusing,
whereas there is nothing amusing about earthquakes, it is appropriate also to
consider 'cold fusion' as a serious proposition and one must respect the wisdom
of Sir Charles Frank for adopting that stance.
So far as this discourse
is concerned, it is relevant to quote a paragraph from that obituary referring
specifically to 'cold fusion':
"Charles Frank was the first scientist to think of the idea of
cold nuclear fusion. In 1947 he suggested using an elementary subnuclear
particle, a muon, to catalyse the fusion of deuterium and tritium. It would
take the electron's place and allow nuclei to approach some 200 times closer
than usual, and so help produce fusion. The investigations in this field that
Frank began at Bristol are continuing around the world, and his original paper
on the subject is still widely quoted."
COLD FUSION AND THE MUON
The muon is the 'heavy electron'.
Its mass is a little below 207 times that of the normal electron. Its role in
Nature is a mystery, at least so far as is judged by physicists in general. In
fact, the muon is the prime constituent of that sea of energy which those
physicists 'in general' refuse to recognize as existing as something that fills
all space.
Incredible though it may seem, I have the experience of one
conference concerned with nuclear physics where I ventured to suggest how the
muon played a role in creating the proton and was a particle, more prevalent in
space than even the electron, where a young experimental researcher sought to
assure me that I was wrong, because he had studied muons experimentally. I was
presenting the theoretical evidence I had discovered and he was basing his
opinions on experimental facts concerning how muons interact with matter. I had
to be wrong, in his opinion, because what I was saying did not conform with the
kind of physics he was learning about in his academic pursuit.
If you try
to talk about 'aether' at a conference on physics, I can assure you that the
physicists present will have no patience and will pay no attention to the
substantive basis of your talk. That is the way things are. Equally, however,
those same physicists admit they are searching for that elusive Holy Grail, the
unified field theory, that they do not understand how Nature determines the
proton/electron mass ratio and that they cannot begin to understand where muons
fit into Nature's scheme. They know so much and yet will not listen when someone
ventures to say: "Here is the answer you seek, but you must accept there is an
aether!"
So, physicists in general are stubborn creatures, having
sheeplike behaviour, but one has to persist in presenting what has that ring of
truth and just hope that someone, somewhere, might pay attention.
Muons
are seen in high energy reactions and in cosmic radiation, but in our laboratory
experiments they are not seen in their full glory as the dominant constituent of
the sea of energy in the aether background. Yet it is the ongoing activity of
those muons, involved, as they are, in a continuous quantum-electrodynamic cycle
of mutual pair creation and decay that is the very reason for proton creation
and decay. The muons are effectively missiles which attack the proton and
destroy it, but, equally, they are both its creator and its
destroyer.
The creation process involves muon bombardment of a charge
form that constitutes the lattice-forming components of the aether. The lattice
structure, its role in forming photon 'units' and its spin feature determine the
action quantum which we term the Planck constant. However, those lattice charges
present a relatively large target for the ongoing bombardment by the virtual
muons in that aether energy sea and it is the coincidental bombardment by nine
muons collectively hitting one such lattice charge that triggers proton
creation.
The full analysis of this is to be found in my book 'Aether
Science Papers', but see also Tutorial
No. 9 in these Web pages.
As to the decay of the proton, this follows
as a consequence of proton creation, given that there is a prevailing state of
equilibrium as between matter and aether, in that the release of energy to
augment the entropy of the environment contributes to the surplus which builds
in the sea of energy and replenishes the energy deployed into proton
creation.
What this amounts to is the fact that energy which we regard as
radiated as heat or electromagnetic radiation is regenerated by creating
protons. That is governed by a statistical process of chance, ever ongoing. Then
there is a balancing proton decay once the energy deficit is felt and the muon
background needs to claw energy back from the protons and recreate those muon
pairs.
With new energy technology in mind, I can see that in an
intermediate state, owing to the way in which Planck's constant is determined by
the systematic motion of those lattice charges forming the aether structure,
which motion acts as a buffer in the energy activity, there is scope for gaining
access to that aether energy by somewhat devious means, intercepting energy that
otherwise will go into proton creation. That motivates my present interest in
this whole field of research that I am describing in these Web pages.
Essentially, however, concerning my ground work on fundamental theory,
what we see overall is a stable system of protons surviving in a state of
equilibrium with the aether background. Underlying all that there is an ongoing
fluctuation as a kind of zero-point energy activity in which protons are created
and decay virtually in situ, as it were. It means, however, that there is a
possibility that protons could decay as part of one atomic nucleus and be
recreated as part of a different atomic nucleus in very close proximity. This
hints at both cold nuclear fusion and cold nuclear fission and, the more we read
about transmutation of elements in what seem to be nothing other than
chemical-type processes, the greater the support for the scenario of proton
creation and decay as just described. The periodical Infinite Energy is
an important source of information on such discoveries. The URL of its Web site
is http://www.infinite-energy.com/
for those interested in knowing more about that publication.
In summary,
my suggestion differs from the proposal of Sir Charles Frank. I do not see muons
as replacing the electrons in hydrogen atoms and occupying orbits very much
reduced in size. Instead I look to the role of the muon in the aether background
as the creative agent which is able to form new protons very close to existing
protons and capture electron-sized charges which can transmute hydrogen nuclei
into deuterium nuclei or deuterium nuclei into tritium nuclei. That seems a
possible feature associated with the phenomenon of cold fusion.
Either
way, however, or whatever might be the action which occurs in cold fusion
reactions, there can be no doubt that the muon is involved in proton creation
and that proton creation is an ongoing manifestation of the presence of aether
energy everywhere in space.
Once that is recognized the challenge will
attract more who will try to discover the best way of tapping into that sea of
aether energy and that is the main message I seek to convey.
DON'T FORGET THOMSON
This section heading was the title of a
Letter to the Editor published by the American Institute of Physics in their
journal Physics Today, November 1984, p. 15.
Since I want the
world of physics to be left in no doubt as to whether or not I have put my views
on this matter on proper record. I am accordingly, reproducing below the full
content of that Letter to the Editor so that I can point to the ignorance of
those physicists who persist in saying that there is still no theory that can
explain the proton-electron mass ratio.
Don't forget Thomson
Writing in PHYSICS TODAY (November 1981, page
69), Victor F. Weisskopf tells the remarkable story of the development of
field theory throughout the last 50 years. The triumph of Dirac's quantum
electrodynamics was, however, left in sharp contrast by the awesome remarks
that "we have no explanation for the mass of the electron; that is, the
smallness of the ratio (1/1836) between the electron mass and the proton mass"
and "there is not the slightest indication why electrons with different masses
should exist." Here Weisskopf had in mind the normal electron, the
tau-electron and the muon.
Forgotten, it seems, in these modern
developments is the classical basis of electrodynamic theory developed by J.
J. Thomson. Thomson gave a formula specifying the energy of the electron as
2e2/3a, where a is the radius within which its electric charge e is
confined. He did not know about muons and antimatter, but it needs little
imagination to write:
μ+ + μ- = Qowhere
Qo is an energy quantum formed from the mutual annihilation of a
positive and negative muon. Adding energy to such a quantum could well produce
a pair of Thomson-sized charges, including Q-. Thus, for charges e
and -e in touching relationship, the total energy, including that of the
Coulomb interaction, is:
W = P+ + Q- - e2/(x+y) .........
(1)where P = 2e2/3x and Q =
2e2/3y.
Eliminating x and y:
W = P + Q - 3PQ/2(P+Q) ......... (2)
Given a background
source of muon pairs and an amount of energy NP used to create N protons, we
have N systems given by equation (2), NP constant and NW tending to a minimal
value, for optimum stability. We can therefore differentiate W/P with respect
to P to find its minimum. This occurs when:
P/Q = [(3/2)1/2 - 1]-1 and tells us
that:
P = 1836 because Q = 2(mu) = 413in electron mass-energy
terms.
This is such a remarkably simple result based on the Thomson
formula, that one really must exclaim, "Let us not forget the heritage he left
us."
Proton creation follows naturally from the existence of the dimuon
energy quantum. Also remarkable is the fact that W is exactly half of the mass
energy of the tau-electron (half of 1.782 GeV or 1743 electron units). Put P =
1836 and Q = 413 in equation (2) and W is 1743.
Such results cannot be
fortuitous; bear in mind that the formal derivation of the proton-electron
mass ratio using equation (2) in terms of a theoretical determination of Q
gave 1836.1523. This was published in 1975 in a paper I coauthored [1] with D.
M. Eagles of CSIRO in Australia. It antedates by eight years the measurement
by Van Dyck, Moore and Schwinberg [2], which puts the ratio at
1836.152470(80). The discrepancy is one part in ten million, but even this is
explicable from the basic theory as it stood in 1975, as I have recently shown
[3]. Using the same Thomson formula, the muon-electron mass ratio of 206.7683
has also yielded to theoretical explanation at its one-in-a million level of
measurement [4]. Classical electromagnetic theory can, therefore, be usefully
combined with quantum electrodynamics to solve some of the mysteries of
particle mass.
References
1. H. Aspden, D. M. Eagles, Nuovo Cimento 30A, p. 235
(1975).
2. R. S. Van Dyck Jr, F. L. Moore, P. B. Schwinberg, Bull. Am.
Phys. Soc., 28, p. 791 (1983).
3. H. Aspden, Lett. Nuovo Cimento, 38, p.
423 (1983).
4. H. Aspden, Lett. Nuovo Cimento, 38, p. 342 (1983).
THE ONWARD DEBATE
Again I remind readers that the full
updated account of my proton theory plus related theory concerning many other
fundamental particles is to be found in the published papers as reproduced in my
book entitled: Aether Science Papers.
I come now to the points of
debate which I am sure some readers will wish to raise.
Firstly, I have
suggested above that J. J. Thomson long ago presented the correct formula
relating the mass-energy, electric charge and the radius of the sphere bounding
that electron charge. In short I am saying that I support the view that the
electron has a finite volume.
I note also that, if J. J. Thomson had not
presumed that the electron charge was all concentrated at the surface of that
bounding sphere, his corresponding formula for electromagnetic mass would have
given E=Mc2 long before Einstein came on the scene. As it was,
Thomson's electromagnetic mass formula corresponds to E=(3/4)Mc2. The
true picture of the electron is that of a charge sphere in which the charge is
so distributed within the sphere as to set up a uniform electric energy density
inside the sphere. That gives the E=Mc2 formula and is consistent
with E being 2e2/3a.
It was, incidentally, on April 23, 1997
that I saw reported in the INTERFACE section of the British newspaper THE TIMES
that a major discovery had been made concerning the electron. Scientist Ken Long
was proposing that the electron is no longer a truly fundamental particle, but
is believed to consist of smaller particles 'which some people are already
calling preons'. He stated "This might solve problems with the electron, such as
the fact that it appears to have mass but no volume."
Well, if physicists
give themselves a problem because they think the electron is a point charge and
then they seek a solution by saying the electron is composed of smaller
particles, they are lost in a wonderland of their own making. I think it more
important to begin with the findings of J. J. Thomson, the man who discovered
the electron and keep faith with the belief that the electron must have a finite
radius. That leads me to that 1836.152 proton/electron mass ratio and I am then
ready to listen to the case, if there is one, supporting the view that the
electron has to be a point charge. I hope that case is not just one relying on
the quantum-electrodynamic numerology of Paul Dirac in explaining the anomalous
magnetic moment of the electron. If it is then, that makes my alternative
explanation presented in my book Aether Science Papers all the more relevant.
Then there will
be those who will tell me that the neutron accounts for an important and
substantial part of the material universe and that matter is not all protons and
electrons. Well, I can defend my case here, though I regard antiprotons and
positrons as featuring also in the substance of our material world. The neutron
is a short-lived particle form that emerges from certain nuclear processes. It
does not exist inside stable matter, whatever your textbooks might have to say
on the subject!
I can, for example, see no reason why two protons cannot
sit on opposite sides of an electron, meaning that they are in touching surface
contact with the charge sphere of the electron and that they sit on opposite
sides of that electron because they repel one another but are held by attraction
to the electron. What proven law of physics denies that as a possibility? I once
was told that Earnshaw's Law precluded such a possibility, but I dismissed that
once I checked how that law was derived. It was based on the assumption that the
charges were in a complete void, whereas they are set in a background continuum
of other charge and that makes stable association possible.
Then again,
who says stability is a key necessity? Why cannot a form of 'stability' exist
where a system of particles changes states in a cyclic sequence, always
recycling in the same manner so as to preserve certain characteristics such as
the a steady mean mass, momentum, overall charge and so on?
Who says
that, when an electron is moving at high speed, it is travelling alone? Why
cannot the energy added as kinetic energy be deployed into the transient
creation and decay of electron-positron pairs which keep company with the
electron in motion?
It is only by exploring all such possibilities with a
physically-real spherical charge form of the electron in mind that one can
progress towards a better understanding of particle physics. However, one must
take note of that major discovery of mine that the 1836.152 proton/electron mass
ratio tells us how the proton is created from muons. One must see those muons as
the primary energy source of the aether. Furthermore, one must then come to
terms with that real aether and its properties.
At this point I will
close this Lecture and will invite the reader to refer next to Lecture
No. 24 in which I reproduce a version of an article of mine published in
1982 and entitled: The Ether - An Assessment'.
Harold Aspden
May 26, 1998