There Are No Pea Shooters for Photons by Marty Green

Thanks, Edwin. Your feedback is very much appreciated. It's funny but the electronic oscillator circuit is the example that always comes to mind for me when people say, for example, that spontaneous emission is impossible in the semi-classical approach because there is nothing to kick the process off. I mean, we would have this transistor with a couple of resistors and capacitors, and you'd draw out the circuit and by all appearances it should just sit there; and then you connect the battery and the little speaker starts to squeal. Yes, once it's squealing you can trace it around the circuit and see that it's self-sustaing. It still took a while to decide that you're not responsible for understanding how the oscillation got started in the first place.

In general I find the math hard, but even so I've done the odd calculation successfully. The crystal radio is an awesome calculation. I generally take advantage of tricks and short-cuts, so I'm not getting an exact analytical solution but I'm getting pretty good numerical results. Sometimes I can check them against the theory. If I can get a good physical visualisation of what's happening, I can usually pull out some kind of ballpark figure for it.

Hello again,

Yes; I made it in, just under the wire. Regarding oscillator questions, I offer this. At FFP11, Michel Devoret showed a diagram for a wonderfully simple LC oscillator, consisting of a coil and capacitor only, in a micro-sized superconducting circuit.

Pretty cool huh?

All the Best,

Jonathan

Hello again,

It seems my message above was truncated. Thank you; I did make it into the contest, and I responded to the oscillator question above.

All the Best,

Jonathan

Hello Marty,

Thanks for your essay. We are in agreement on many points. But I focus more on 'continuous/discrete' rather than 'wave/particle' distinction. In my essay I mathematically derive Planck's Law for blackbody radiation using continous processes without using energy quanta and show that this Law is a mathematical truism that describes the interaction of energy. In a separate paper I also explain the photoelectric effect without using photons. I think you will enjoy reading what else I have to say!

Constantinos

Hello Marty,

A comment by Edwin Klingman on the essay by Constantinos Ragazas made me aware of your essay. You are a young EE, I am an old one. Constantinos who suggests a "World without Quanta" is happy since Ken Wharton wrote "Quantum theory without Quantization". Andrey Akhmeteli also mentioned what Ken called Boundary -Induced Quantization when he wrote: spectral lines ... are not discrete, as natural line width is finite. I promised already in my abstract new light on quantization and apparent symmetries. However, I am not sure whether or not someone like you is willing and able to accordingly interpret my results. If not, do not hesitate asking me for details.

Regards,

Eckard

Marti

Great essay, particularly for a last minute panic! I agree entirely with your postulates, and you'll find my own essay (2020 vision) explores many consequences for proof from Nature, which proves endless. (last years dealt with the conceptual principle).

Yet in reading your essay one thing did re-arise in my mind. Energy propagation does need localised 'particles' to change characteristics. I have been working with diffraction by plasma, but the same is true of an aerial. last year I conceptually considered the oscillator of an FM radio. 'c' is used as a constant LOCALLY to change the wave form to the original by imposing the original frequency, even if the signals arrive (more properly at an aerial) moving at plus or minus thousands of mph. i.e. in a different inertial frame. The ways of describing the same thing also prove endless, I believe only as it is, at last, truth.

I do hope you have time to read and comment on the viewpoint of my own reality based essay. If you wish I'll pass you some viXra links to my earlier work and experiments on waves.

Best of luck

Peter

Dear Marty,

I felt like cheering as I read your essay. Both your analysis and intuitions are -in my view- spot on. I have come to very similar conclusions as yours about the wrongness of the point-photon assumption, which I have presented in the first sections of my fqxi essay in this contest. Your electrical-engineering approach is very useful here because, as Maxwell theorized (before Einstein so cleverly and so wrongly banished it) space is most probably made up of a dielectric ether. Hertz went further and felt that everything including space and matter are made up of such an ether. I have presented such a model in my earlier 2005 Beautiful Universe (BU) paper and summarized its tenets in the second part of my present fqxi paper. In my theory rather than being just waves, radiation is a wave field of angular momentum occurring in a lattice of point nodes rotating in place - hence the duality that manifests itself in macroscopic experiments.

I say 'good luck to us' - we have to contend with a century's-worth of physics that is right for the wrong reasons!

Alan, the helical screw concept is a nice idea (I like the animation) but it sounds like a version of the 'pilot waves' theorized by de Broglie to explain the presumed point-photon's behavior. Please refer to Fig. 8 of the (BU) paper above for another sort of helical motion - when a circularly polarized e/m pulse is propagated in the lattice. Best wishes, and as Ray say, have fun!

Vladimir

Thanks, Vladimir. I'm glad you liked my essay. I read your essay with some trepidation because I am wary of attempts to completely revolutionize the basic paradigms of physics. But I have to say that in the end, it was by no means a waste of time for me because I found you challenge the imagination in some interesting ways. I don't have much interest in theories that break up space into a lattice of discrete points, as you argue; but your pictures and examples can, in most cases, also describe an analog space where the properties of the lattice points vary continuously. You have a few instances where this correspondnece becomes invalid, eg. where you allow adjacent lattice points to be oppositely polarized. I'm not sufficiently motivated to really think long and hard about those particular cases. But your visual descriptions were nevertheless thought-provoking to me, because they suggest different ways that you can have a continuously-varying function of space other than simply a scalar, a vector, or a (stree-like) tensor.

I hope you'll check out my blog at http://www.marty-green.blospots.com

regards

marty

Thanks Marty for reading my paper and for your encouraging comments. As I do not present the theory as complete or proven, the fact that you say it is thought-provokong makes it worthwhile for me to have written it. As I have mentioned in my fqxi essay (but not in the 2005 paper), it is also possible that discrete behavior can emerge from continuous regular functions whereby the hidden parts would be in other dimensions and we only see regular 'islands' of discrete points. I gave the example of an egg-crate surface. Did you mean 'stress-like tensor' ? Yes in GR Einstein incorporated his SR paradigm into the equations and I think that has complicated the theory unnecessarily. But again I can only offer my intuitions on that - if it is to work at all the whole thing has to be worked out and tested systematically from scratch. I wish I had the skill at quantitative analysis that you exhibit in your blog. Copy/paste the given blog address did not work, but this did:

http://marty-green.blogspot.com/ interesting range of topics there.

Best wishes

Vladimir

Dear Marty,

Really enjoyed this essay. Very clearly written and looking at a very important aspect of physics.I enjoyed reading your many insights into the subject. Lots of food for thought, which will take time to digest. Well done.

Good luck, Georgina.

Marty

I confirm I thought it and excellent essay, very enjoyable and some good points. I'd hoped you may read, comment and vote on mine, another 'amateur' fighting for attention among the specialist professionals.

It's consistent with Georgina and Vladimir's as you may see from the posts. Your concept of particles being needed for 'change' is one I will try to develop. But my solution, from logic and conceptualisation alone, is dramatic, fundamental, and seems shocking to most physicists, but about 1 in 4 now are seeing it!

I note I didn't put the link last time. I hope you get the chance in the last few days. http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/803

Very best of luck

Peter.

Marty,

Just wanted to say again how much I enjoyed your paper and confirm your impression of fqxi. Almost everyone here comes with their own ideas to sell, and there isn't that much buying going on. But there are stimulating questions and arguments that help to clarify ideas. Like you, I came in at the end of the previous contest, and by the time it was over I had new friends.

This place is like some small towns I drove through in my youth. At the edge of town there was a sign that said:

"Welcome to fqxi-ville, home of 2000 friendly souls, and one or two old grouches."

So welcome to fqxi.

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Marty,

Good points. In my essay, I ask (since the quantum wave is representative of the electron in the double slit and the interference pattern is the same for photons): Is there a wave-particle-wave triality? If so, how do all three relate?

Chris

Marty,

I enjoyed your essay not only because it was well-argued but also selfishly because we seem to share somewhat minority ideas.

Jim

Marty Green,

Hi, I gave you a very high rating. I think your essay belongs in the top 35. Unfortunately, my rating was given several days ago and it did put you in that group. Now, however, you are back down and I cannot help again except to say that I liked your essay.

James

:) :) :)"Welcome to fqxi-ville, home of 2000 friendly souls, and one or two old grouches."

Dear Marty pay attention me I am the young grouche crazzy of spheres but I evolve also.

You know here it's transparent, it's so important and here we put our real names.FqxI is revolutionary for the sciences community.Sometimes we garee, sometimes we disagree, we have our caracteres, our habits, our defaults...we are humans in fact.Someztimes we find friends, real firends, not a pseudo politness , no!a real friendship, sometimes we find critics, sometimes jealousy, a lot of vanities,it's the life.The transparence is super and wonderful.Anybody is betetr than his fellow man after all.....

Fqxi-ville ....don't forget the composting for an autarcic energy .....

Regards

Steve