Display MoreThis is a vixra published paper not surprisingly because it has all the intellectual rigor of Brexiteer arguments in the UK pre-referendum.
And it has equally as strong an emotional appeal - hence will convince many.
It proceeds through:
1) Viewing theoretically necessary higher order corrections as fudge factors.
Absurd when they come from the theory and were predicted from the start - just not calculated until needed. That "not calculated till needed" aspect is seen as evidence of fraud (yes, fraud - ridiculous and far-fetched) by the author. However given the difficulty of any such calculations it is only what you would expect. Who would spend two years full time work just to make a correction in a value that is expected to be well within experimental error and therefore untestable?
2) Arguing that so many Feynman diagrams seem over-complex.
Agreed, and in the recent discovery of the amplitudehedron we have found must faster techniques to calculate the exact same answer from FDs. That is still not understood, and maybe when it is some deeper mathermatical structure will emerge that makes much of the current calculation horriblemess go away. Where I don't agree, and the amplitudehedron bears this out, is that there is therefore anything wrong with the theory. Why no mention in this paper of that? It is new research centrally relevant to any argument based on FD complexity.
3) Criticising modern QED based on its early history.
Very few scientific theories emerge in correct entirety at first, they proceed through muddle, errors that almost work, argument.
4) Criticising QED based on its relationship to QM
That is just dinosaur-like behaviour. Sure, QM is counter-intuitive. But as we understand it more, so we see that the counterintuitive yet consistent and very beautiful elements underlie all of physics as we know it. That spacetime and GR can be derived from quantum entanglement is the great scientific discovery we are currently living through. In any case, philosophically, requiring physics to be intuitive is unjustified. Why should all scales of interaction look like our evolutionary relevant spatial interactions with a macroscopic environment? Of course they need not. GR shows they do not at large scale, QM shows they do not at small scale.
5) Criticising QM based on a dissatisfaction with renormalisation
This is something I can agree with. Renormalisation at the level of ignoring infinities "just because it works" is highly unsatisfactory. But for a long time now we have a better understanding of renormalisation which is mathematically rigorous.
Great short pop link which captures the essense of this: as mathematiciens have understood for 100 years in analysis, it is all about taking limits in a well founded way. Possible, but rigor requires care and proper maths.
https://www.volkerschatz.com/science/renorm.html
The proper mathematical treatment of renormalisation as regularisation was not formulated till 1995 (Weinburg).
The big no-no about Consa's paper is the lack of a proper literature review beyond 1970. If he had done this he would at least mention regularisation, as a way to understand fully renormalisation, spacetime generation from QM as evidence that however counter-intiuitive QM might be, it is fundamental to the universe, etc, etc.
The sad fact is that those mavericks who look back to old semi-classical models of physics because they reject modern physics (normally from a visceral dislike of QM and a het of the complexity of QED calculations) selectively cite evidence from 1970 onwards, omitting the stuff that backs these theories and misrepresenting other things (like the timing of higher order calculations).
I get pretty annoyed at it. When Consa calls large numbers of other scientists fraudulent he is behaving very badly. When he publishes popular summaries like this he is being intellectually dishonest, and showing poor scholarship, at the very least.
He is also putting young minds off thinking about the incredibly exciting developments now happening in theoretical physics, all based on QM and the SM. It is these things, unifying QM and GR, that have the capability, eventually, of giving us much better understanding of all the SM symmetries and results, with a better underlying model.
What is a shame, is throwing away half of the stuff that works, and also that has shown itself capable of making fundamental predictions, because you either cannot be bothered to read, or do not understand, the last 30 years of physics.
Hi,
I'm the author of the paper. First of all I would like to thank you for your comments, all criticisms are welcome. I am sorry for the delay in answering, but I have had problems registering in the forum.
The entire history of QED is extremely suspicious. My accusations are many and very serious. I cannot prove them all, but at least I make two explicit accusations very easy to verify:
a) Both the original Kroll & Karplus calculation and the Petermann correction of the Feynman diagram IIc are secret.
b) The calculation of the 17,8 Ry Bethe's fudge factor is also secret.
I hope someone is able to prove me wrong. At first glance it seems like a simple task.