However, adding deuterium or tritium to one of Mills' Suncells might produce a nuclear chain reaction ....
Putting some Dioxin on your butter bread could also improve your health. Isn't it worth a try ?...
I do not understand that people still think we should do LENR with dirty isotopes like tritium...
I wasn't suggesting actually doing it - rather the opposite due to the explosive potential - and home-grown Suncells would be unlikely due to their complexity and cost - leave that to BLP its their invention.
I find these few paragraphs of the preface of "the 4th phase of water" fitting to the discussion:
"Treating any scientific formulation as sacred is a serious error. Any framework of understanding that we build needs to rest on solid foundations of experimental evidence rather than on sacred formulations; otherwise, the finished product may resemble one of M.C. Escher’s renderings of subtle impossibility — a result worth avoiding. Even long-standing models remain vulnerable if they have not managed to bring simple, satisfying understandings. Galileo’s story teaches us that when an established foundation requires the support of elaborate “epicycles” to agree with empirical observations, it’s time to begin searching for simpler foundations.
This book attempts to build reliable foundations for a new science of water. The foundation derives from recent discoveries. Upon this new foundation, we will build a framework of understanding with considerable predictive power: everyday phenomena become plainly explainable without the need for mind-bending twists and jumps. Then comes the bonus: the process of building this new framework will yield four new scientific principles — principles that may prove applicable beyond water and throughout all of nature.
Thus, the approach I take is unconventional. It does not build on the “prevailing wisdom”; nor does it reflexively accept all current foundational principles as inherently valid. Instead, it returns to the root method of doing science — relying on common observation, simple logic, and the most elementary principles of chemistry and physics to build understanding. Example: in observing the vapor rising from your cup of hot coffee, you can actually see the clouds of vapor. What must that tell
you about the nature of the evaporative process? Do prevailing foundational principles sufficiently explain what you see? Or must we begin looking elsewhere?
This old-fashioned approach may come across as mildly irreverent because it pays little homage to the “gods” of science. On the other hand, I believe the approach may provide the best route toward an intuitive understanding of nature — an understanding that even laymen can appreciate.
I certainly did not begin my life as a revolutionary. In fact, I was pretty conventional. As an undergraduate electrical engineering student, I came to class properly dressed and duly respectful. At parties, I wore a tie and jacket just like my peers. We looked about as revolutionary as members of an old ladies’ sewing circle.
Only in graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania did someone implant in me the seeds of revolution. My field of study at the time was bioengineering. I found the engineering component rather staid, whereas the biological component brought some welcome measure of leavening. Biology seemed the happening place; it was full of dynamism and promise for the future. Nevertheless, none of my biology professors even hinted that students like us might one day create scientific breakthroughs. Our job was to add flesh to existing skeletal frameworks.
I thought that incrementally adding bits of flesh was the way of science until a colleague turned on the flashing red lights. Tatsuo Iwazumi arrived at Penn when I was close to finishing my PhD. I had built a primitive computer simulation of cardiac contraction based on the Huxley model, and Iwazumi was to follow in my footsteps. “Impossible!” he asserted. Lacking the deferential demeanor characteristic of most Japanese I’d known, Iwazumi stated in no uncertain terms that my simulation was worthless: it rested on the accepted theory of muscle contraction, and that theoretical mechanism couldn’t possibly work. “The mechanism is intrinsically unstable,” he continued. “If muscle really worked that way, then it would fly apart during its very first contraction.”
Whoa! A frontal challenge to Huxley’s muscle theory? No way.
Although (the late) Iwazumi exuded brilliance at every turn and came with impeccable educational credentials from the University of Tokyo and MIT, he seemed no match for the legendary Sir Andrew Huxley. How could such a distinguished Nobel laureate have so seriously erred? We understood that the scientific mechanisms announced by such sages constituted ground truth and textbook fact, yet here came this brash young Japanese engineering student telling me that this particular truth was not just wrong, but impossible.
Reluctantly, I had to admit that Iwazumi’s argument was persuasive — clear, logical, and simple. As far as I know, it stands unchallenged to this very day. Those who hear the argument for the first time quickly see the logic, and most are flabbergasted by its simplicity.
For me, this marked a turning point. It taught me that sound logical arguments could trump even long-standing belief systems buttressed by armies of followers. Once disproved, a theory was done — finished. The belief system was gone forever. Clinging endlessly was tantamount to religious adherence, not science. The Iwazumi encounter also taught me that thinking independently was more than just a cliché; it was a necessary ingredient in the search for truth. In fact, this very ingredient led to my muscle-contraction dispute with Sir Andrew Huxley (which never did resolve)."
Display MoreThis thread has been named church of SM (Standard Model) physics because of an unlucky coincidence that fooled a world wide - self elected – elite. After the success of the famous Bohr electron model with the reduced mass correction and the elegant fitting of the Schrödinger equation with arbitrary measurements of the Hydrogen nucleus energy /frequency levels, a large number of physicists developed a well known disease called the all mighty syndrome. As a reaction, the famous Swiss writer Dürrenmatt wrote a piece called the physicists. The entire action of the stage play runs inside a so called mental Hospital.
Unluckily this all mighty disease got worse and worse as the physicists started to believe that they found the fundamental law(s) of nature. A well known story centered around this madness is the discussion about Schrödinger's cat, that emerged out of a mathematical paradox, that simply shows that the QM model is incomplete. But goods can never fail and the discussion about the famous cat is still ongoing inside circles of severely damaged minds.
Today, if we look back, we know that the experimental limitations of the years between 1940..1980, were the sole origin of this disease. The precision of the Schrödinger approximation for chemical orbits is now reduced to higher quantum numbers only, where the magnetic force can be neglected in relation to other perturbations. The old famous solution todays is wider off than on the measurement point.
The biggest damage left behind of the “unlucky” 1940..1980 period is SM-QED/QCD/QFT. There was never, at any time shown a physical reason why QM like math should be able to explain the behavior of dense matter. From a todays perspective we only can diagnose a collective madness that disturbs the brains of most nuclear-and-particle-physicists that finally has converted into sect like religious behavior.
Modern physics around 1910 has been defined around the magnetic mass formula of the electron. May be the second all mighty madness, the nuclear bomb, definitely damaged the whole physics system, that now is unable to restart even the simplest basics thinking.
SO(4) physics is simple and explains what we daily see: LENR!, something damaged brains are not even able to think about and, like junkies, try to deny.
SM-QED/QCD/QFT are not able to give any half way exact connection to basic Maxwell & Newton physics something, last time, was possible with Einsteins “GR”.
Be aware of people like THH that defend the sharia of the SM religion's church without explaining the missing links or doing it like other fringe theorist. “Oh why talking about mass? – its the only deficit of SM....
Amen.
I'd rather call this thread "the church of mainstream experimental science rejection".
Throughout the last 80 years, theoretical and experimental advances have gone hand in hand. experimental data has driven new theories, causing rejection of some, and acceptance of others, no matter how weird they seem or what is the initial opposition.
This process continues.
I see nothing in this root and branch rejection that shows better agreement with experiment. Quite the reverse. The semi-religious idea that any good theory should have an exact connection to Maxwellian and Newtonian Physics is indeed I think the main motivation for this rejectionist philosophy. I've argued elsewhere that I see that is an anthropomorphic lack of imagination. Like saying that molecular kinematics is bad because it does not have an exact connection to the laws of thermodynamics.
I've asked many times for merit in such claimed new physics. Even some way to explain the vast amount of existing data, hundreds of thousands of parametric relationships, equally with SM/QED/QFT. Or some clear and interesting new prediction, like the intermediate vector bosons and the Higgs, all predicted and then later found. Readers interested in the criticisms of the Higgs discovery on this site as a "125MeV proton resonance" should read the relevant thread. The Higgs has experimental evidence from multiple experiments showing it to be a 125GeV zero-spin (as of 2017) particle. It is a tour de force of QFT as fundamental theory that a whole new particle invented as needed to make a a kludged-on Higgs field to explain apparent rest mass should be discovered with exactly the correct properties to do this.
Having said all that - I and most others hope for something new and better. But you are doomed, looking for something better, unless you can replicate the enormous success of SM/QFT. That means in practice being able to derive the QM/SM/QFT results - explaining enormous quantities of particle accelerator data as well as many other things - from some more fundamental theory - not reject it and retreat to an exact connection with Maxwellian and Newtonian physics.
There are more than enough attempts to vary current theory - many alternative QFTs, other approaches, which obey this simple rule of replicating the successful predictions of current theory. There are exciting root and branch reform ways to do this using aspects of string theory and quantum entanglement as something more basic than space or time. Why look backwards?
Why look backwards?
I think that looking for a way of avoiding the problems and incoherences of QM and the SM is not looking backwards, but moving forwards.
Again, citing Pollack “Treating any scientific formulation as sacred is a serious error”.
While I recommend the entire book of “The 4th phase of water” here I paste another selection of paragraphs from the preface that fit in here like the crystal shoe to Cinderella.
“
“Serious challenges abound throughout science. You may be unaware of these challenges, just as I had been until fairly
recently, because the challenges are often kept beneath the radar. The respective establishments see little gain in exposing the chinks in their armor, so the challenges are not broadcast. Even young scientists entering their various fields may not know that their particular field’s orthodoxy is under siege.
The challenges follow a predictable pattern. Troubled by a theory’s mounting complexity and its discord with observation, a scientist will stand up and announce a problem; often that announcement will come with a replacement theory. The establishment typically responds by ignoring the challenge. This dooms most challenges to rot in the basement of obscurity. Those few challenges that do gain a following are often dealt with aggressively: the establishment dismisses the challenger with scorn and disdain, often charging the poor soul with multiple counts of lunacy.
The consequence is predictable: science maintains the status quo. Not much happens. Cancer is not cured. The edifices of science continue to grow on weathered and sometimes even crumbling foundations, leading to cumbersome models and ever-fatter textbooks filled with myriad, sometimes inconsequential details. Some fields have grown so complex as to become practically incomprehensible. Often, we cannot relate. Many scientists maintain that that’s just the way modern science must be — complicated, remote, separated from human experience. To them, cause-and-effect simplicity is a quaint feature of the past, tossed out in favor of the complex statistical correlations of modernity.
I learned a good deal more about our acquiescence to scientific complexity by looking into Richard Feynman’s book on quantum electrodynamics, aptly titled QED. Many consider Feynman, a legendary figure in physics, the Einstein of the late 20th century. In the Introduction to the 2006 edition of Feynman’s book, a prominent physicist states that you’ll probably not understand the material, but you should read the book anyway because it’s important. I found this sentiment mildly off-putting. However, it was hardly as off-putting as what Feynman himself goes on to state in his own Introduction: “It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don’t understand it. You see, my physics students don’t understand it either. That’s because I don’t understand it. Nobody does.”
The book you hold takes an approach that challenges the notion that modern science must lie beyond human comprehension. We strive for simplicity. If the currently accepted orthodox principles of science cannot readily explain everyday observations, then I am prepared to declare that the emperor has no clothes: these principles might be inadequate. While those foundational principles may have come from towering scientific giants, we cannot discount the possibility that new foundations might work better.”
I've argued elsewhere that I see that is an anthropomorphic lack of imagination.
That's exactly what believing in a religion needs...
Having said all that - I and most others hope for something new and better. But you are doomed, looking for something better, unless you can replicate the enormous success of SM/QFT.
This is catholic logic: As long as SM has no success in deriving anything of importance e.g. gamma radiation, magnetic moments from, radius etc.. it is just a religion with a virtual mass, field based particle logic only.
Unluckily for SM we live in a real mass universe and want to understand real physics processes like LENR.
There are more than enough attempts to vary current theory - many alternative QFTs, other approaches, which obey this simple rule of replicating the successful predictions of current theory.
THHuxleynew : A prediction is something "real=number" you can measure. SM has made no prediction since it exists, except that there should be some permutation in the measurement of pseudo particle coupling. This prediction did add 1 bit of information.
What you claim to be high precision is based on high order polynomial fittings of a pseudo QED/QFD-like derived Hamiltonians based on millions of measurements that oh "luck" agree with the 1000000+1 measurements with e.g. 4. digits....
This we call engineering not basic physics.
We can agree that SM as QM too is a suitable engineering method to allow reasonable predictions based on a large number of measurements.
SO(4) physics predicts that dense Hydrogen is a weak nuclear bond. Much more than SM could ever do...
I think that looking for a way of avoiding the problems and incoherences of QM and the SM is not looking backwards, but moving forwards.
Again, citing Pollack “Treating any scientific formulation as sacred is a serious error”.
Two points:
I'm of course open to ideas that are realistic, in the sense that they correctly predict what has been observed, but I've not yet seen them here. All I've seen is proposals motivated by having some analog to Maxwell/Newton that do not address the many quantum spookiness or QFT uber-spookiness results.
A prediction is something "real=number" you can measure
A prediction is something you can measure. But it might be, for example, that there exists a new particle with some fixed mass and zero spin that decays as Higgs is supposed to decay (thus telling us its spin, etc) giving the expected reaction rates.
That is much more information predicted than a single real number, it is a whole load of parametric relations on amplitudes of particle accelerator counts. And the prediction, a new boson with specific characteristics, is strong.
This is catholic logic: As long as SM has no success in deriving anything of importance e.g. gamma radiation, magnetic moments from, radius etc.. it is just a religion with a virtual mass, field based particle logic only.
The definition of anything of importance to be a 0.001% subset of all possible experimental data is surely what a religion does?
I'm of course open to ideas that are realistic, in the sense that they correctly predict what has been observed, but I've not yet seen them here. All I've seen is proposals motivated by having some analog to Maxwell/Newton that do not address the many quantum spookiness or QFT uber-spookiness results.
You aren't open to ideas that are realistic. I gave you umpteen references to Einstein as well as to the hard scientific evidence. You dismissed it all, in order to cling to convictions that are not based upon hard scientific evidence. Now you're promoting myths that have no foundation whatsoever.
Come on now, have you ever sat down and thought about that cosmic treacle you’ve read about? Space isn’t like molasses, not one bit. Cosmic treacle is just "lies to children". So is the celebrity at the cocktail party. Look closely at that. The celebrity on her own is supposed to be massless, and she supposedly gets her mass from people in the room. But hang on a minute, they’re massless too. So this analogy is just some turtles-all-the-way down non-explanation. A fairy tale. For a real explanation, take a look at Einstein’s 1905 E=mc² paper Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy-Content? He refers to energy as L rather than E, but no matter, because he also refers to the electron. There’s a sentence that says “like the kinetic energy of the electron (§ 10)”. Follow the link to §10 and you find yourself reading Einstein’s special relativity paper On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies. Look at the title. Then do a find on “electron” and there’s 33 matches. So, do you think the mass of a body is a measure of its energy content, unless it's an electron, whereupon it's a measure of its interaction with some fabulous cosmic treacle? Do you think E=mc² is wrong?
It isn't wrong. When you understand the wave nature of matter, you know why See Louis de Broglie's 1923 letter to Nature on waves and quanta. He said he’d ”been able to show that the stability conditions of the trajectories in Bohr’s atom express that the wave is tuned with the length of the closed path”.
Photon momentum is a measure of resistance to change-in-motion for a wave moving at c in a straight line. Electron mass is a measure of resistance to change in-motion for a wave moving at c in a closed path. It's that simple.
The irony of all this is that the Higgs mechanism is supposed to be responsible for the mass of “fundamental” particles like the electron, but not the Higgs boson. Yes. You can read about that here and I quote: “the W and Z particles, the quarks, the charged leptons and the neutrinos must get their mass from a Higgs field. It’s not possible for them to have masses any other way. But this is not true of the Higgs particle itself”.
Please so note that you haven’t seen a picture of the Higgs boson. There are no particle tracks because its lifetime is so conveniently short. Instead its existence is “inferred” from a bump on a graph. Not a spike, a bump. But that’s OK, it’s a five-sigma bump. The fact that this could be anything hasn’t made it into the media. Nor has the fact that what we’re dealing with here contradicts E=mc². But the hype has made it into the media, and how. Because there are lies, damn lies, and then there are statistics. And when a church needs a miracle, a church gets a miracle.
Mass for the Higgs Boson,,,prophecy and confirmation
SM prophecy 1999 :
60----1000 GeV..God knows...?
Unfortunately, the electroweak theory does not predict the mass of the Higgs boson,
although consistency arguments require that it have a mass of less than 1 TeV.
Experimental searches already carried out tell us that the Higgs must weigh more than about 60 billion electron volts (GeV), or 0.06 TeV
https://www.scientificamerican…hat-exactly-is-the-higgs/
SM confirmation 2012:
A new particle with a mass of 125 GeV was discovered in 2012 and later confirmed to be the Higgs boson with more precise measurements.
Masses in the SM church are spiritual events... that need confirmation.
Subject to further confirmation.
SM church
Word for today
The mystery of mass?
Wanted to paste here the quote of Alan Smith in the thread about the rest mass of photons, which is really fitting to the topic of this thread, too:
“......these dead-ends continue to represent the fields in which the leading theorists and experimentalists cluster to investigate. These blind alleys, which have borne no fruit for literally two generations of physicists, continue to attract funding and attention, despite possibly being disconnected from reality completely. In her new book, Lost In Math, Sabine Hossenfelder adroitly confronts this crisis head on, interviewing mainstream scientists, Nobel Laureates, and (non-crackpot) contrarians alike. You can feel her frustration, and also the desperation of many of the people she speaks with. The book answers the question of "have we let wishful thinking about what secrets nature holds cloud our judgment?" with a resounding "yes!"
https://www.forbes.com/sites/s…on-nonsense/#149b4aa97566 “
Great recommendation Alan!!! Ms. Hossenfelder nails it. Got the book now thanks to your recommendation. Loved the name of chapter 6...
“Chapter 6: The Incomprehensible Comprehensibility of Quantum Mechanics
In which I ponder the difference between math and magic.”
Display MoreMass for the Higgs Boson,,,prophecy and confirmation
SM prophecy 1999 :
60----1000 GeV..God knows...?
Unfortunately, the electroweak theory does not predict the mass of the Higgs boson,
although consistency arguments require that it have a mass of less than 1 TeV.
Experimental searches already carried out tell us that the Higgs must weigh more than about 60 billion electron volts (GeV), or 0.06 TeV
https://www.scientificamerican…hat-exactly-is-the-higgs/
SM confirmation 2012:
A new particle with a mass of 125 GeV was discovered in 2012 and later confirmed to be the Higgs boson with more precise measurements.
Masses in the SM church are spiritual events... that need confirmation.
Subject to further confirmation.
This is a rubbish argument. Indeed masses are not known. That is because SM physics is not a religion!
That article showing (from previous searches) that Higgs must be > 60Gev and less than 1000GeV was the state in 1999, not much better than initially when mass was even more weakly known.
And in 2018 we got multiple confirmations of the 125Gev Higgs particle discovery.
BUT - a new particle is a big deal - a Higgs boson has specific predicted properties. It was FOUND some 60 years after its prediction.
That is positive evidence for the Higgs mechanism. Which I find quite important since Higgs field is kludged onto other (unified) fields. in fact that this has been found is a triumph of SM prediction - one of many.
That some here do not understand that perhaps explains their lack of interest in the many, many other successes of SM physics.
THH
Display MoreWanted to paste here the quote of Alan Smith in the thread about the rest mass of photons, which is really fitting to the topic of this thread, too:
“......these dead-ends continue to represent the fields in which the leading theorists and experimentalists cluster to investigate. These blind alleys, which have borne no fruit for literally two generations of physicists, continue to attract funding and attention, despite possibly being disconnected from reality completely. In her new book, Lost In Math, Sabine Hossenfelder adroitly confronts this crisis head on, interviewing mainstream scientists, Nobel Laureates, and (non-crackpot) contrarians alike. You can feel her frustration, and also the desperation of many of the people she speaks with. The book answers the question of "have we let wishful thinking about what secrets nature holds cloud our judgment?" with a resounding "yes!"
https://www.forbes.com/sites/s…on-nonsense/#149b4aa97566 “
Great recommendation Alan!!! Ms. Hossenfelder nails it. Got the book now thanks to your recommendation. Loved the name of chapter 6...
“Chapter 6: The Incomprehensible Comprehensibility of Quantum Mechanics
In which I ponder the difference between math and magic.”
All of which motivates work like Bee Hossenfelder's own research https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.01415
A generally covariant version of Erik Verlinde's emergent gravity model is proposed. The Lagrangian constructed here allows an improved interpretation of the underlying mechanism. It suggests that de-Sitter space is filled with a vector-field that couples to baryonic matter and, by dragging on it, creates an effect similar to dark matter. We solve the covariant equation of motion in the background of a Schwarzschild space-time and obtain correction terms to the non-covariant expression. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the vector field can also mimic dark energy.
She is one of many theoretical physicists trying to get something better than SM by unifying QM and GR - and having some success.
That is done from the standpoint of accepting the experimental results and the SM simplification of them, and trying to find some more fundamental way to get that stuff. Which we all want.
Whereas the rejectionist view here ignores all that experimental work and goes back to Newton.l
I think the rejectionist arguments here are true pseudoskepticism - not even looking at the stuff they reject!
A real SM triumph (in spite of no-one understanding why the Higgs field interacts as it does):
http://philosophy-of-cosmology.ox.ac.uk/higgs.html
Such successes must be included in any better model of Physics, not rejected!
This is a rubbish argument. Indeed masses are not known. That is because SM physics is not a religion!
Unfortunately, the electroweak theory does not predict the mass of the Higgs boson,
What and when was the best electroweak theory prediction of the Higgs Boaston mass.
after the 1999 prophecy of anywhere btw 60 and 1000GeV
Post 2012? 125 Gev?
Sabine Hossenfelder.
Sociology in Science.. zoology in particle physics?
