Getting Our Bearings
Friday, December 1, 2006 at 02:59PM
Doug

I’m still going to talk about the law of conservation of motion in all this, but I also want to try to clarify what it is that we are doing, to help us get our bearings, so-to-speak, before we get too far down the road. In the LST, the grand goal of the program has been to classify the basic structure of the physical universe in terms of a “few interactions” among a “few fundamental particles.” The standard model of particle physics is the result of this effort and it is very successful, in that sense, capable of predicting physical phenomena to very high accuracy.

However, the standard model is not very satisfying in terms of explaining what the physical structure of our universe is and why it takes the form that it does. We know that there are photons, electrons, positrons, neutrinos, and the various hadrons formed from what is believed to be quarks, and all of these are organized into three families, one of which is stable, but knowing that electrons, positrons, etc interact via photons, and that the quarks of heavy hadrons might be held together by gluons, is not very helpful when the descriptions of these entities are in terms of their measured properties, such as mass, charge, spin, etc. We know what an electron is because we can measure its mass, its charge and its spin and, given this information, we can now predict how it will interact with other electrons, or with other entities under different conditions.

Fine, but what do we tell the kids when they ask us, “What is mass, Daddy?” or “What is charge, or spin?” As long as there are no answers to these questions, explaining that the energy of an electron changes when it aborbs or emits a photon, isn’t enough. The new system of physical theory, and the new system of mathematics comprise a new program of research, or science, the goal of which is not the classification of particles of matter, in terms of a few, fundamental, interactions, but rather the uncovering of the process by which the infinity of one is manifest in the infinite diversity of everything. That is to say, we don’t focus on the forces, or interactions, of nature to understand what its underlying reality is, but rather we focus on identifying those patterns of motion, combinations of motion, and relations between motions, which we have assumed make up the structure of the physical universe.

This is our program, and it gives us a unique insight when we study the standard model, because we can see that base 2 motion is only a part of the picture. Base 3 and base 4 motion obviously play a crucial role in the drama, as well. Thus, we seek to understand how these different types of motion interrelate, not just in terms of interactions that affect the positions, momenta, and total energy of particles and fields, but also in terms of the origin of their magnitudes of mass, charge, and spin.

Hence, in our program, we are interested in what’s “inside” physical entities, and we don’t need to accelerate them to high velocity and smash them into one another to investigate these things. In fact, it’s probably a better approach for us to examine them in the regime of condensed matter physics, where the complication of base 2 motion is reduced to the lowest possible level, rather than raised to the highest possible level, as in particle physics.

However, the history of both the successes and the failures of particle physics is very useful in our program, because it characterizes the thinking of those who have faced the challenge of trying to make sense of the base 3 and base 4 motion, given only a knowledge of base 2 principles. Take, for instance, the concept of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle (HUP) and its use in justifying the concept of virtual photons, in the electromagnetic interactions.

The use of this principle has provided great results, but in spite of every effort to discover the foundation upon which it rests, it’s as mysterious as ever. We can understand how the exchange of virtual photons between electrons can be rationalized by the HUP, but it leaves us with a strong suspicion that this process is an analogy at best, and misguided at worst. While it’s true that a one-dimensional base 3, or interval, motion of sorts is created when, say one skater tosses a medicine ball to another, and Newton’s laws act to increase the interval between the skaters, but we are relunctant to believe that this is anything more than an M21 analogy of a true M31 motion ( from now on, I’ll use the letter M instead of the word base.)

As a matter of fact, when we look carefully at M2, M3, M4, we know that the familiar M2 motion takes three, independent, forms, or dimensions of magnitude, and we also know that M3, cannot take but one, 3D, form, under ordinary circumstances. Otherwise, it couldn’t be scalar motion. It’s a pretty good bet then, given the importance of symmetry, that M3 is more constrained that M2, and less constrained that M4, which leads us to conclude that it cannot take three independent forms, but only two: a two-dimensional, and a three-dimensional form, but not a one-dimensional form.

If this is so, then the chart of the bases of motion that we’ve been discussing, would have entries like the following, disregarding the unit base of motion (M1) and the zero dimension of magnitude:

M2 M3 M4

1D —— ——

2D 2D ——

3D 3D 3D

We get our clue for this conclusion, from the intuition that, since we know that M2 motion defines the change of its space aspect, in terms of the positions of objects, then, probably, M3 motion defines the change of its space aspect, in terms of something else, not in terms of the changing position of objects. If this is correct, then the most likely candidate for what defines the changing space aspect of M3 motion is the wavelength of radiation. However, a wavelenth cannot be changed independently, without also changing the wave amplitude, by a proportionate amount. Nevertheless, two such magnitudes may be summed together, with their wavelengths coincident, but their amplitudes orthogonal. Consequently, if M3 motion is radiation motion, then it could not take a 1D form, just as M4 cannot take the 1D, or 2D, form, at least under normal, unconstrained, conditions.

This leads us to yield to the temptation to classify M2 motion as the motion of matter, M3 motion as the motion of radiation, and M4 motion as the motion of energy.  Of course, the motion of energy is scalar, which fits nicely enough in our taxonomy, but we are so used to thinking of it in terms of radiation, even though we know that radiation differs from energy per se, that the use of the word in this context appears problematic.  It would be better if we could find another word, especially since, once we invert the space/time dimensions of M2, M3, and M4, and we are on the energy side of unity, reference to the “energy” of “energy motion,” M4, would be really confusing.

One approach is to stop referring to the other side of unity as the energy side, and consistently refer to it as the inverse side of unity, and its magnitudes as inverse motion magnitudes, or IM1, IM2, IM3, and IM4, or use Mbar, but it’s hard to write the bar symbol in web page text.  Whatever the decision on that score, we have another new concept that we can now articulate better: the energy concepts that correspond to the motion bases become very clear:

  1. M2E = 1/2mv2
  2. M3E = hv
  3. M4E = mc2
UPDATE: Introducing the notation “M” for the four motion bases, M1, M2, M3, and M4, for the first time in this post, I inadvertantly got them mixed-up in the text above, which is really, really, confusing.  I fixed them now, so the post should be more coherent.  I applogize for any grief this might have caused.


Article originally appeared on LRC (http://www.lrcphysics.com/).
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