I take on board a lot of the comments in the last two posts from Dead Boss and Drakkith.
It is true to say that there is a problem with knowing that the descriptive level is correct. What I am saying is that the descriptive level is important, but it is only when this is combined with the...
Hi Drakkith,
I think it would help in the following way. There must be a single unified description of the world which can provide a starting point for the unification of physics. It's just that we haven't quite found the right description yet. In the past, attempts at unification have been...
Hello Haeel,
This is an important point of agreement, that the GR world view is the best starting point for the unification of physics. As I understand it the Lagrange/Hamiltonian formalism does deal with Energy/Momentum in spacetime so this would seem like a good approach.
What I wanted...
The above quote was received by email but doesn't seem to be in the thread.
What I feel is that we have to find a solution and not just accept that the competing worldviews are incompatible. Physics takes place in spacetime and it doesn't make sense that there should be several different and...
I looked at the Theory of Everything entry in Wikipedia and in the section Modern physics it states that 'A Theory of Everthing would unite all the fundamental interactions of nature: gravitation, strong interaction, weak interaction and electromagnetism.'
In my previous post I suggested that...
I took a look at the wikipedia entry for General Relativity and under the section titled Einsteins equations, it talks about the energy-momentum tensor and so energy seems to be a fundamental part of GR theory.
I think it is also useful to consider the concept of irreducible physical...
We have seen how mass is handled differently by General Relativity as compared with the standard model of particle physics. I wanted to look at other physical attributes that are treated differently such as force. In the standard model the nuclear forces are explained by particle exchange. In...
In trying to understand the nature of mass and starting from the question 'How does an electron curve spacetime?' there is another area of physical theory which seems relevant. The relationship between the energy and frequency E=hf where E is the energy equivalent of the mass and h is planks...
I agree that General Relativity doesn't predict the mass of the electron but it is the nature of the property mass that I am trying to focus on. If we perform a measurement of mass by experiment we are measuring the inertial or gravitational mass and the underlying theory that applies to these...
We experience mass in our everyday lives and in experiments in two forms: gravitational mass and inertial mass. General relativity explains that a mass distribution has the effect of curving spacetime. GR also indicates that the effect of mass in curving spacetime is cummulative so that the...
Thank you very much for your explanation. I can't form a clear picture of the meaning of the descriptions but this is my lack of understanding of the fundamental concepts of the standard model. The big disappointment for me is that the concept of mass which is so nearly fully explained by...
The problem is compounded by the fact that I thought I understood the nature of mass as described by general relativity. I am happy with the explanation of the observed properties of mass in terms of spacetime curvature. The mass of the Earth curves spacetime so the moon responds to the...
Well, the popular descriptions suggest that the Higgs field slows down particles. Particles in empty space will continue in a state of uniform motion without being slowed.
WaveHarmony
With the recent announcement at Cern there have been many video clips published describing the Higgs field. They show heavy and light particles passing through a field and the commentary says that the effect of the field is to slow down particles and thus give them mass. The Higgs field...
I was reading a book recently in which it was stated that X-rays travel faster through material substances than through empty space. Could it be that the CERN experiment shows that neutrinos travel faster through rock than through empty space?
WaveHarmony