| Subject: RE: The circulation
in 4-space Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2002 15:11:01 -0600
Dear Karsten,
Yes, the standard
assumption is that the positive charge is a source of observable energy
flux or flow.
That is purely an
assumption. Started way back when Benjamin Franklin guessed that the
current flowing in a circuit was positive. Hence we still have the
crazy thing that much of electrical engineering still treats "positive
current" flow by assumption! Of course you get the right answer if the
entire model is made to fit. But in electronics, often we have to use
the electron flow, and so there exist two ways of modeling and looking
at the standard circuits.
Charge in
electrodynamics (and physics) has been completely undefined.
One has to look in
more advanced models (other than classical EM) such as quantum
electrodynamics, particle physics (some very good and advanced EM
developed there) and quantum field theory. As we explained, there is no
such thing as an "isolated charge" anyway, in the sense modeled by
classical EM. Instead, the observable charge is clustered around with
virtual charges of opposite sign. Indeed, the "shielding" effect of the
clustering opposite charges is taken into account in the standard value
of charge put into the handbooks. The "bare" charge in some ways winds
up being an infinity (that's when treated as a unit point charge,
e.g.). The physicists actually subtract the infinite clustering charge
from the infinite bare charge and get the finite handbook value.
So charge is far more
complicated that the 137-year-old classical EM theory and electrical
engineering treat it.
Also, no real
foundation problem can be solved as long as one believes that an
observable travels continuously through space in "propagating". That
non sequitur alone will defeat every attempt to gain a concrete
definition of charge, time, energy, force, etc. Read Feynman; he
bluntly tells even the sophomores that we really have no definition for
force or for energy.
Here is a proposed
definition for charge, that at least meets all the criteria that I use
in my own work (including COP>1.0 systems).
-----------------------------------
charge.
Charge is the ongoing
circulation of EM energy flow between the time and 3-space domains, as
"seen" by the observer. Negative
charge is (i) the ongoing absorption, by a mass particle, of
EM energy input from the time domain (from ict), (ii) transduction of
the absorbed energy into 3-space EM energy, and (iii) re-emission of the
EM energy in all directions in 3-space.
Positive charge is (i) the ongoing absorption, by a mass
particle, of EM energy input from 3-space, (ii) transduction of the
absorbed energy into the time domain, and (iii) re-emission of the EM
energy in the time domain. Time reversal of EM energy can be seen to
result from the combined broken symmetries of EM energy flow (in
4-space) between time and 3-space, of two opposite charges and thus of
dipolarity itself. See paragraph 3.1 of Chapter 3.
------------------------------------
Now let us annihilate
the usual notion of charge. The Nobel Prize was awarded in 1957 to Lee
and Yang for their prediction of broken symmetry. Wu et al. proved it
experimentally in early 1957, and that was so profound a change to all
of physics that the Nobel Prize was awarded to Lee and Yang in December
of that very same year.
One of those broken
symmetries --- long proven; one does not have to reprove it --- is the
broken symmetry of opposite charges, as on the ends of a dipole.
Rigorously, in particle physics terminology this means that every dipole
and dipolarity is receiving and absorbing virtual photon energy from the
vacuum, transducing it (coherently integrating it, most probably by the
spins of the observable charged particles) into observable energy, and
radiating that observable EM energy outward in all directions. So the
conservation of energy law for a dipole has to be applied between the
virtual state and the observable state!
Now look at the
conventional "observable energy flow" assumed for the positive charge as
a gushing source (with absolutely no statement of what furnishes this
energy TO the positive charge) and the negative charge as a sink (with
absolutely no statement of where this energy flow goes when it
disappears into the negative charge.
You see the point.
That's about as gross a set of violations of energy conservation as one
can imagine. Even in a flat spacetime (leaving the frame alone).
So either one solves
that problem, to explain the fields and the potentials from that dipole,
reaching across the universe, or one accepts the total death of the law
of conservation of energy. In conventional classical electrodynamics
and electrical engineering, the problem has not been solved. So all our
universities -- sorry, but it's true -- assume that the source charge
(in this case, the positive charge as they see it) freely and
continuously creates all that EM energy from nothing. And the
universities also assume that the negative charge -- as they see it --
continuously destroys EM energy and converts it to nothing.
By considering not
only the "isolated" charge but its virtual charge clusters of opposite
sign, the charge (either positive or negative) becomes a set of
composite dipoles. Each of these dipoles has a scalar potential between
its ends, and that potential decomposes via E.T. Whittaker's 1903
paper. But we still have a problem. Whittaker gave us longitudinal EM
waves going in each direction. Well, there's a problem. The
longitudinal EM photon (and wave) is nonobservable (check out quantum
field theory). So suddenly the standard model, even with Whittaker's
decomposition, falls apart. We can prove the energy is observable, by
simply intercepting it with charges.
Also, Whittaker (and
all classical electrodynamicists until quite recently) continue to
confuse effect with cause. We explained that elsewhere; it's true.
There can be no such thing as "movement in 3-space" since to "move"
requires movement in 4-space. Observation is a d/dt operator applied to
an ongoing NONOBSERVED 4-process. So it gives d/dt(LLLT) => LLL. And
that LLL is a single frozen 3-space snapshot at a single instant of
time. NO MOVEMENT! NO CHANGE! NO PROPAGATION. A priori, no
observable (which is 3-spatial by first principles) continuously
exists. Instead, it continually recurs as a continual result (effect)
of the continually applied observation d/dt operator.
We "see" motion
through space by a series of such d/dt snapshots, much as the rapidly
occurring frames of a motion picture film. Several foundations of
physics books and papers talk all around this, and do not come to grips
with it or solve it. Even Romer, the former editor of Am. J. Phys.,
castigated the standard "illustration" of a so-called EM wave in
3-space. Here is the exact quotation:
"…that dreadful diagram purporting to show the electric and magnetic
fields of a plane wave, as a function of position (and/or time?) that
besmirch the pages of almost every introductory book. …it is a horrible
diagram. 'Misleading' would be too kind a word; 'wrong' is more
accurate." "…perhaps then, for historical interest, [we should] find
out how that diagram came to contaminate our literature in the first
place."
Anyway, we explain all
this elsewhere, so will not repeat the explanation. We will just leave
it to you to consider those things. The challenge is to find a solution
that is consistent with particle physics and broken symmetry,
Whittaker's 1903 decomposition of the scalar potential (as reinterpreted
to give cause and effect rather than two effects), instrumental
measurement, and the fact that neither time-polarized nor longitudinal
EM waves and photons are observable but the combination of the two is
observable (as the scalar potential).
Take your own solution
(the conventional one), e.g., and try to fit it to Mandl and Shaw,
Quantum Field Theory, 1984, Chap. 5 and to the broken symmetry of
opposite charges (not a single charge). If the virtual state is not in
your model (and it isn't), then your model is incomplete and still very
much behind modern physics discoveries. And then make it consistent
with quantum mechanics, where all observables are 3-spatial, hence that
ongoing 4-process is nonobservable. The "Cause" of observation is
nonobservable a priori, since it exists prior to the effect (prior to
observation outputting the observable, which is the effect).
Best wishes and please
hang in there and keep thinking -- but outside that single classical EM
model! Get into quantum field theory, quantum electrodynamics, quantum
mechanics, etc. The classical model you are citing from, does not even
model the local active vacuum and its exchange, or the local curvatures
of spacetime and their exchange back on the EM system. Hence that model
absolutely discards the "active environment" of the EM system, insofar
as any net interaction from it occurs.
Hence that model
absolutely cannot solve the charge problem, since it cannot answer where
the energy returns to (that missing environment) or from whence it came
(that same missing environment) in the first place.
Either one has a
circulation between environment and system and back, or one violates the
entire conservation of energy law.
Tom Bearden
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