Essay Abstract

After recognizing dubious assumptions regarding light detectors, a famous beam-split coincidence test of the photon model was performed with gamma-rays instead of visible light. A similar test was performed to split alpha-rays. Both tests are described in detail to justify conclusions. In both tests, coincidence rates greatly exceeded chance, leading to an unquantum effect. This is a strong experimental contradiction to quantum theory and photons. These new results are strong evidence of the long abandoned accumulation hypothesis, also known as the loading theory, and draw attention to assumptions applied to key past experiments that led to quantum mechanics. The history of the loading theory is outlined, including the loading theory of Planck's second theory of 1911. A popular incomplete version of the loading theory that convinced physics students to reject it is exposed. The loading theory is developed by deriving a wavelength equation similar to de Broglie's, from the photoelectric effect equation. The loading theory is applied to the photoelectric effect, Compton effect, and charge quantization, now free of wave-particle duality. It is unlikely that the loading theory can apply to recent claimed success of giant molecule multi-path interference/diffraction, and that claim is quantitatively challenged. All told, the evidence reduces quantized absorption to an illusion, due to quantized emission combined with newly identified properties of the matter-wave.

Author Bio

I have been independently concentrating on fundamental physics since 1999. My experiments clearly contradicted the photon model in 2001, and the probabilistic particle atom in 2005. In my ownership of Computer Continuum, 1980-'96, I successfully designed, built, and sold computer enhancement products for industrial automation and data acquisition. Formal education: CA State University concentrating on physics and biology. At CSU Sonoma: built an electron spin spectrometer and a heliostat sunspot exhibit. Technical sculptures at San Francisco's Exploratorium 1970-'75 were well publicized. www.unquantum.net shows physics details, inventions and other projects.

Download Essay PDF File

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  • Post #2

What happened to Reiter's reference list? Page 10 seems to be missing.

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  • Post #3

I read your interesting essay.

Reading your essay I start to think that can be possible to use a superconductive screen to verify the interference patterns (fringes).

I think that it is possible a perturbation of the fringes in the collapse of the wave function, because of the screen wave function correlation: it is only a weak idea that I have not totally developed, but I think that can be useful to write freely in the forum.

Saluti

Domenico

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    • Post #4

    I have the courage, and the unconscious, to claim my words; the lack of the name is due to a distraction.

    Saluti

    Domenico

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    • Post #6

    Eric,

    Wow. Hope this gets the attention it deserves and have you considered some of the broader applications, such as a lensing effect as cause of cosmic redshift. An interesting paper on that subject from C.I. Christov, which might well tie into your work.

    My entry in the digital vs analog contest, [link:fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/800]Comparing Apples to Inches[/link}, tries to make a similar argument,from a more philosophical perspective, for propagating light as analog and only its detection and measurement as digital. Constantinos Ragazas makes a more systemic argument in his entry, A World Without Quanta.

    So you will get my support certainly and likely those others who wish for a non-unicorn based physics to return. Keep up the good work, as you give others hope.

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      • Post #7

      Sorry for the mucked up link, though they both seem to work.

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      • Post #8

      ESSAY WITH REFERENCES

      The reference page was left out. The entire essay is here, from my website:

      http://www.unquantum.net/challenge2.pdf

      ER

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      • Post #10

      Eric,

      Challenging a well established paradigm, one of the sacred ones, even with direct evidence that the paradigm is wrong is a tough go. Your viXra article title isn't even controversial, "An Understanding of the Particle-like Property of Light and Charge". I note you published the paper on your website in 2001, and recently on viXra. Did you attempt to get sponsorship so you could post it on arXiv? I suspect it would not have stayed on arXiv unless you had a number of highly ranked sponsor-supporters.

      The photon and the "vacuum of space" are two common terms that writers fail to properly define, they make the assumption that we know what they are thinking. I recently encountered the term "virtual photon", a one-legged version of the traditional two-legged photon.

      The fourth paragraph, page 3, of your "Experiment Reveals an Understandable World" article has a mild criticism of establishment science. I stated in my essay article, "Additionally, over time, with improved communications, the scientific community has tended to become more monolithic in defending particular assumptions. This has made it more difficult for those that challenge an established assumption to get articles published in traditional scientific journals."

      My essay, topic 1294, challenges a well established assumption with a mathematical proof of concept. Even the title of the paper referenced in my essay hasn't received any attention from the scientific authority, "A methodology to define physical constants using mathematical constants". I identified the geometric-mathematical concept in 2001. I managed to get it published, with the controversial title, in IEEE Potentials in 2011, because I emphasized my EE background as the reason for recognizing the concept in the first place. It was rejected earlier by another IEEE publication, and there had been rejections from other scientific journals earlier.

        Dear Eric

        I have just read the version of the pdf with references. Your essay showed beyond any doubt your success in proving Planck's loading theory, and in 'shooting down' (your expressive words) Einstein's concept of the photon-as-a-point and not just a quantum of energy spread over space.

        The highly technical presentation may have been justified by Carl Sagan's maxim "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". Having said that I think you or someone who understands your work should write The Unquntum Effect for Dummies (i.e. for the likes of me).

        Such a paper would start with Einstein photo-electric effect being interpreted that light is a particle at emission, in space, and at absorption - i.e. the photon. Planck's objections and his loading theory of partial absorption. Faint-light photography of double slit interference interpreted as proof of a particle photon. Compton's experiment interpreted as a billiard-ball like nature of photons (ignoring his wave explanation of the same phenomena). How this false photon led to the obfuscating concepts of particle-wave duality and the probability of interpretation that have plagued QM to this day. And then your experiments to disprove the particle photon and prove the loading theory!

        As a footnote I might add that I was independently led to mistrust the photon concept because my mid-80's streamline diffraction theory envisaged light spreading along infinite curved streamlines that negates a point photon, and imagined a primitive loading theory concept of my own. That is why I was thrilled when I recently read of your unquntum work as I mentioned in my fqxi essay Fix Physics! .

        I sincerely hope that your work will be replicated in other labs, widely understood by the physics community, and that your Nobel will follow in a timely fashion. You deserve it!

        Vladimir

        Frank: Most of my essay is ABOUT the definition of the photon, in the sense that I contradict its particle property. Its particle property is about how a photon should act at a beam-splitter. The definition of the photon is experimentally oriented only, and not intended to be well visualized, even by its author (Einstein). A simple definition is the quote I use in my other papers, a quote from Bohr's book Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge, paraphrasing Einstein:

        "If a semi-reflecting mirror is placed in the way of a photon, leaving two possibilities for its direction of propagation, the photon may either be recorded on one, and only one, of two photographic plates situated at great distances in the two directions in question, or else we may, by replacing the plates by mirrors, observe effects exhibiting an interference between the two reflected wave-trains."

        I have collected evidence for much more than "mild criticisms of establishment science." Some of this evidence is in this FQXI essay and more is in my other writings. Like I stated in the essay, many have tried to argue against QM, but it requires strong new experimental evidence to mount a serious challenge.

        I tried to publish in several ways since 2001, and in arxiv also with another co-author from a university. I had no hint that I was supposed to obtain sponsorship then, but it would not have mattered anyway. I am grateful to FQXI to receive an audience here.

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        • Post #14

        Hello Eric,

        Thank you for your essay and for all your important work. What you bring to these discussions is unique! Experimental evidence! Your essay makes a strong argument for a nonquantum photon. And I fully agree with that view. In some previous writings, and featured prominently in my upcoming fqxi contest essay (soon to be submitted), I mathematically prove the following proposition: "If the speed of light is constant, light propagates as a wave". Thus, Einstein's CSL Postulate contradicts his Photon Hypothesis!

        And in my explanation of the double-slit experiment I argue for the continuous 'accumulation of energy' before the discrete 'manifestation of energy'. This is similar to your loading theory, but with one important difference. In my view, 'manifestation' can be both 'absorption' and 'emission'. I argue for 'discrete manifestation' and 'continuous accumulation'. The loading theory assumes 'continuous absorption and explosive emission'. This may be an important difference between the two views. But both views allow a 'duration of time' (a time delay) before a physical event 'manifests'. And that, in my humble opinion, may have deeper consequences.

        Constantinos

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          • Post #15

          I think Einstein is being treated a bit unfairly here on the question of whether a photon is a point particle or a blob of energy.

          Fact is, it doesn't matter to the mathematical treatment, in a geometric theory like Einstein's. Just as Poncelet demonstrated point-line duality in ordinary projective geometry (i.e., the concepts are interchangeable) Einstein's duality of point and dispersed objects depends on measurement criteria.

          Tom

          Eric

          Thank's for a brilliant essay, and very important findings. I'm bound to agree as the findings verify the ontology I describe, which is fully consistent with yours (and Planck's of course). I've tracked down and derived the wider classical effects of the process emerging from kinetics (and dynamic logic) and found much other evidence.

          Indeed when allowing for relative motion of the electron (as part of a moving medium/body or frame) during the non zero charging time, the classically observed effect postulated in Special Relativity emerge. In this case your mechanism, applied logically, can produce the effects that SR was formulated to explain. It is able to resolve a host of astronomical anomalies.

          I hope you will read my essay, which is couched with a little theatre for readability but deadly serious none the less. But it seems few can 'think kinetically', i.e. follow the evolution of cause and effect chains with progressive motion. Current maths can't either, (as Tom has highlighted above).

          Time stepping maths and quantum or dynamic logic have not yet displaced the 'points and lines' that fool us by hiding the solution. I suggest a charge time an consequential rotation of optical axis of re-emission in my last figure, but I believe this only sets an ontological framework in which your real results and precision provide all the flesh and substance.

          I hope you're able to read it, and I'd be very interested in your comments.

          Best wishes

          Peter

          Dear T H,

          OK, good points. It does not matter if a photon is visualized as a point or blob. And agreed, localized or wave aspects depend on the experimental setup. I do not see why something I did was unfair though. Many people think of the photon as consisting of a quantized amount of energy because Einstein said so in the 1905 paper:

          "According to the concept that the incident light consists of energy quanta of magnitude (equation hf), however, one can conceive of the ejection of electrons by light in the following way. Energy quanta penetrate into the surface layer of the body, and their energy is transformed, at least in part, into kinetic energy of electrons. The simplest way to imagine this is that a light quantum delivers its entire energy to a single electron: we shall assume that this is what happens. The possibility should not be excluded, however, that electrons might receive their energy only in part from the light quantum."

          This is really interesting because in the last part of this quote he actually acknowledges the loading theory. Einstein was pretty sharp. However, most physicists use the quantized light model. A few posts below I quote the definition of the photon based on experiment, that I and many physicists use. The important point is that the experiments I do contradict the particle aspect of the definition. Therefore I say we should not describe light using the photon word at all. It is difficult because we really need a new word to replace photon. I like to just talk of an "h-new" for the energy quantized at light emission, or reached at a threshold of light absorption in matter. When NOT dealing with the quantized emission aspect of light, or reaching the threshold hf of kinetic energy in matter, please IMHO, we should just talk of light in space, and not photons.

          One more point. I took down my link above to my paper Experiment Reveals an Understandable World, because the writing needs editing. I can sometimes come across too confrontational for some people and make steam come out of their ears. Thank you, ER

          Hi Eric,

          Quantum optics experimenters routinely talk about splitting photons; something that has always bothered me if we are to think of a photon as a quantum object. Plus photons should not "bounce" off mirrors and "pass" through beam splitters. Photons would have to be absorbed by such devices and new photons emitted. So Bohr's comment does not even hold up physically. IMHO, all the particle properties of a photon come from the quantum "vacuum". In that viewpoint, a photon is just a wavicle of a relativistic medium with energy hbar*w where w is omega, angular frequency.

          Best,

          Fred

          Fred,

          I share your reservations about 'splitting' these 'quantum objects' and suspect you are correct that "Photons would have to be absorbed by such devices and new photons emitted."

          Zeilinger says "Einstein never found out what a photon is." Like Einstein, I don't know what a photon is, but if it has localized momentum it induces a C-field circulation.

          Eric, I enjoyed your essay and plan to read it again before commenting.

          Edwin Eugene Klingman

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          • Post #20

          Hi Edwin,

          You said that if a photon has localized momentum, then it induces a C-field circulation. In QM, the momentum of a photon is,

          [math]\vec p = \frac{h\vec{k}}{2 \pi} = \frac {h}{\lambda}[/math]

          It's momentum is dependent upon a wave-length. In my view, the photon is the energized portion of an aether wave. Is "localization" of the photon dependent upon the context?