Foundations of Special Relativity: A Critical Review
Our critical review of the foundations of special relativity is available here. The article has been completed for a year, but has not been distributed nor widely read. However it serves as a foundation stone for all our subsequent ideas.
Weber Hamilton and Gibbs Liouville
Draft available here. Work in progress.
Weber and Steam
Weber has a physical kinematic description of the various states of water (ice, liquid, steam) in his final eighth memoir (Weber 1894). Most interesting is Weber’s hypothesis that steam is essentially water molecules with negatively charged satellites, and these negative satellites mutually repel one another, thereby making steam expansive. The hypothesis suggests that liquid water could be evaporated into steam somewhat more rapidly by applying an electric constant uniform electric field throughout the liquid.
Weber and Brehmstrallung
The physics of W. Rontgen’s brehmstrallung “braking radiation” is simple and interesting. When the accelerated electron impinges and strikes the tungsten anode, then Rontgen argues that the tungsten anode absorbs the electron into the material tungsten lattice, causing a high frequency vibration within the anode, and also causing the anode to relax and radiate energy via photons with energies computed according to Planck-Einstein’s formula \(\delta E = h \nu\). But the question is whether the energy is radiated locally via photons or whether the energy is transmitted by action at a distance according to Weber’s electrodynamics.
Frequency, Cycles, Time
Reviewing the quantum theory and Brehmstrallung, we begin to appreciate the influence of Einstein’s formula \(E=h\nu\) where \(\nu\) is the supposed frequency of the photon. Frequency \(\nu\) is measured in units of cycles per second. Therefore frequency is a relative measure of cycles per “cycle”, as per the cycle which defines the unit of second. As per our earlier posts, time is not a proper unit in itself, but is strictly observed by matter in motion.
Andre suggests that the a cycle is represented best as periodicity in the energy variables. For example, in the pendulum, it’s not the physical motion but the periodicity in the potential or kinetic energy variables. This is useful in 2-body systems with precession, where the precise orbits are not periodic but precess, although there is a obvious periodicity in the energy variables.
Photoelectric Effect
The discovery of the photoelectric effect by P. Lenard (Wheaton 1978) was also unexplained by the Maxwell field theory. Lenard observed that electrons were dislodged only when light exceeded a certain frequency (i.e. uv microwaves) independant of the light intensity or duration of exposure. Lenard observed that the more intense the light (higher frequency, and higher energy) then more electrons would be released from the plate, but increasing the frequency did not increase the velocity of the escaping electrons. Moreover a low frequency beam of light at high intensity does not “build up” or accumulate the energy required to produce photo-electrons. For Lenard, that the electron velocity is independant of the light intensity suggests that the energy for the electrons comes from the atom and not from the light. This was called Lenard’s “trigger” theory.
A. Einstein introduced the photon heuristic (EINSTEIN 1905) in 1905 to account for Lenard’s observation. With Einstein’s photon hypothesis, light radiation becomes a localized packet of energy which is presumably travelling at the speed of light, and having a certain characteristic frequency \(\nu\). In the above paper Einstein introduces the Planck-Einstein relation \(\Delta E = h\nu\) to account for the energy released by photoelectrons.
The Weber-Sansbury interpretation of the photoelectric effect is something similar to a PNP transistor. We imagine the source of light as a radio dipole source. The light frequency of the source is, in our model, realized as an oscillating electrodynamic dipole system. This oscillating system is causing an instantaneous action at a distance on the target system, i.e. the metallic photocell. The oscillating source induces a cumulative oscillation in the target photocell. This oscillation “drops the potential” at the target allowing mobile electrons in the photocell to opportunistically escape. These escaping electrons are the so-called photoelectrons.
Ralph Sansbury
A key influence in the research program at JHMLabs is the late American physicist R. Sansbury. Compare this JHMLabs post.
Remark. Admittedly we at JHMLabs are exploring the Weber-Sansbury hypothesis, that light is not a photon nor a wave that travels through space, but rather the effect of cumulative instantaneous action at a distance. Sansbury makes a subtle distinction between the so-called “speed of light”, and the apparent time delay required for a source transmitter to induce a measurable signal in a target receiver. The perceived time delay is not the time required for light to travel, but is the time required for subatomic oscillations to accumulate and attenuate into a measurable signal. This is one of Sansbury’s fundamental hypotheses. Thus the “speed of light” cannot be used as a foundation stone for physics, since the concept of “speed” imports the problematic issue of “How does light travel distance over time?” Rather, Sansbury proposes that the fundamental measurable quantity is the “time delay” for a signal at a source transmitter to be detected at the target receiver.
Weber-Sansbury and Positronium
We are tempted by the possibility of explaining the relatively short lifetimes of positronium. Theoretical calculations with Weber’s potential applied to the Weber-Bohr-Sansbury model of the electron and “positron” could yield comparisons with the relatively short lifetimes of para-positronium and ortho-positronium (approx. \(1.25 \times 10^{-10} [secs]\) and \(1.38 \times 10^{-7} [secs]\), respectively.)
In the Weberian model, the classical electron and classical positron are replaced with the molecules \([-2,1]\) and \([-1, +2]\). Therefore a two-body problem is replaced with a microscopically six-body system, but which is acting as a four-body system in a macroscopic sense, and then indeed a a two-body problem at a larger scale. [insert figure]
How difficult is it to create positronium in the laboratory? There is possibility of using a radioactive source that ejects positrons. Specifically, Carl Andersen discovered that alpha particles (helium nuclei) bombarding beryllium (atomic number 4 Be !) emitted positrons. Beryllium Be is rather little known atomic element, but now appears very interesting from the Weber viewpoint.
Annihalation of electrons and positrons is claimed to represent the most direct example of Einstein’s \(E=mc^2\), where the claim is that all the mass-energy (in the Einstein terms) of the electron and positron is radiated away by gamma rays [ref]. It’s claimed that \(0.511 [kEv]= m_{e_c} c^2\) of energy are released in the annihalation in agreement with Einstein’s formula. Naively one might consider why the particles \([e]\) and \([p]\) even annihalate at all? Why do they not form a stable planetary system? The idea exacerbates the classical Maxwellian confusion about the inexplicable stability of the hydrogen atom.
How does the Weber potential model the emission of positrons when beryllium is bombarded by helium nuclei?
Weber Sansbury versus Bohr Atom
Sansbury proposes the structured electron hypothesis. However Sansbury was not apparently aware of Weber’s electrodynamics, nor the possibility of the stable \([-1, -1]=[-2]\) molecule [ref]. Rather Sansbury strictly performed his calculations according to the classical Coulomb electrostatic potential. Among his key insights is his understanding the possibility of balanced radiating systems which have no net radiation into the environment, but do mutually exchange radiation between themselves. This leads Sansbury to the idea of metastable orbits which again admit no net radiation into the environment, but do have a balanced exchange of energy between themselves.
Sansbury argues that there is no clear measurable difference between average frequencies during light emitted or absorbed during radiation, and the Bohr concept of discontinuous transition frequencies. Thus Sansbury argues that there is no reason not to accept J.W. Nicholson’s earlier suggestion that radiation was produced by an oscillating, i.e. orbiting electron. Specifically by the average frequency of oscillating electrons during transitions between excited metastable orbits.
The structured electron hypothesis is that the electron \([-1]\) as classically understood is structured in the form \([-2, +1]\). “Deeper into the atom” we have higher frequency motions. Stability and metastability of outward orbits requires frequencies which are synchronized with the higher frequency internal orbits.
We quote from (Sansbury, n.d., Ch.7):At this point, we simply say that we are currently working on this question. Indeed Helium might have a macroscopic two electron orbit, but the Weber-Sansbury model allows the possibility of Helium as an \(N\)-body system with \(N\) not necessarily equal to 3.
Weber Synchotron
We are struck by the intrinsice connection between the discontinuous \(01010101\) signals, and the continous cycles and motions of a particle. The basis of a synchotron particle accelerator is a binary voltage \(010101\) which is maintained while the accelerated particle occupies the distinct halfspaces in the synchotron. There’s more to say…
[-JHM]