Generalization of Lorentz ether

[Dale]

Thanks @PeterDonis those living reviews are always good.

@Ilja the best way to compare your theory to experiment would be to calculate the PPN parameters and the SME parameters for your theory. Then you could at least put constraints on your parameters.

 

[Ilja]

There is no "replacement for experiment" in science.

That means, all the "beyond the standard model" physics is simply nonsense?

By the way, once my model gives the standard model of particle physics, instead of two or four generations and millions of other field theories one could invent, it has a much better correspondence to observation than, say, string theory, which predicts no particular property of the standard model.

No, it is a direct rebuttal to your claim. You claimed that it was impossible to get funding if your research involved a preferred frame, even if you don't use the word ether. And yet there is a body of funded research that tests such theories. They use words like Lorentz violating or CPT violating rather than ether, and are able to secure funding.

Whatever, I'm not a politician, who knows how to hide the true intentions to get money. I do not even want to learn how to do this. I'm happy enough that I'm able to secure my own survival myself, thus, do not have to care at all about getting a science job, thus, can research what I find promising.

So, let's clarify, I was unable to get any funding at the times in the past when I have tried, and given up. I cannot offer any grants myself, and I would have to warn everybody who wants to work in ether theory, in particular, developing my own theories, that this is extremely dangerous for him if he depends on getting some grant in some future.

If you think reasonable ether theoreticians would not have problems to find funding, fine. Yes, I have recognized that Jacobson continues to work and publish about his "Einstein aether". This may be reason to hope that the prejudice against the ether looses its strength with time. Actually this is not more than a little light at the end of the tunnel.

About no interest for the readers:

That is, in fact, a major objection. I always give my judgement of the level of interest for the readership of the journal. It is important feedback for both the editors and the author.

But if I care about the interest of the readers, what would be a better journal than Foundations of Physics? An interest in the foundations is something quite different from an interest in a high impact factor, which matters for mainstream research.

So you believe that you are smart enough to single-handedly revolutionize all of modern physics, but not smart enough to figure out a way to describe it without using the word "ether"?

No, not amoral enough to hide what is behind the theories, namely a revival of some quite old ideas about the ether. I have no problem to use equivalent descriptions - like "condensed matter interpretation" instead of "ether interpretation", but only as far as this does not damage the scientific content itself.

Then, of course, not to be stupid is necessary to start a scientific revolution. But it was even more important that I was not afraid of violating mainstream beliefs. So I was essentially alone in the whole field of research - making modern science compatible with the old ether - and without any competitors it was possible for me to collect all the things lying around there for free.

These two things are, imho, connected with each other. You need some own moral base to be able to work over many years in such an alternative direction, without any moral support from outside. So, if I would have been ready to distort the scientific content of my work to get published, I would have been unable to work many years on ether theory without any reasonable hope to get published.

 

[Ilja]

Is there a good definition of 'preferred frame'?

I doubt, but, fortunately, we don't really need one.

Because if the theory has a preferred frame, this is usually easy to see.

@Ilja the best way to compare your theory to experiment would be to calculate the PPN parameters and the SME parameters for your theory. Then you could at least put constraints on your parameters.

If there would be a large enough group of ether theoreticians, it would make sense for one of them to do this. But I'm alone, and have to care about my time. From this point of view, it is not promising enough. The additional parameters are essentially cosmological parameters, and I simply doubt that solar system type observations will have the ability to restrict them more than cosmology.

I'm actually working on the questions related with Hawking radiation and the trans-Planckian problem. The point will be criticism of the mainstream justification of Hawking radiation. The ether will be involved, but only as an example of a trans-Planckian regularization where we have no Hawking radiation.

This will not give anything in terms of real experiments, I know. But somehow there are already 28 papers of arxiv this year alone which mention Hawking radiation in title or abstract, thus, the mainstream does not care about this too.

 

[PeterDonis]

That means, all the "beyond the standard model" physics is simply nonsense?

No, it means it's speculative. Just as the Standard Model itself was speculative until experiments confirmed its predictions.

Work on speculative theories is part of science; however, past history shows that, without experimental input, it's very hard to make progress.

 

[martinbn]

I haven't really looked at the paper so I might be wrong. But it seems to me that you introduce two extra parameters (compare to GR) and the theory is formulated in a specific frame. This already seems unappealing. More free parameters and you have to work in the chosen frame or do the work and find the equations in a different frame. In other words more difficult to work with and more freedom to adjust. Can you show any specific computation for example the bending of light or Mercury's perihelion or anything else that leads to numbers that can be observed or measured at least in principle?

 

[Dale]

, I'm not a politician, who knows how to hide the true intentions to get money. I do not even want to learn how to do this

Then this is your choice. You have decided that obtaining the good opinion of others is beneath you. You cannot do that and then blame others for their low opinion of your work. Own your choice.

No, not amoral enough to hide what is behind the theories, namely a revival of some quite old ideas about the ether

Really? You think that your use of the word "ether" is some sort of a moral imperative. That is just plain silly. What kind of moral system requires you to use a word with negative connotations?

if I would have been ready to distort the scientific content of my work

You seem to be assuming that the use of the word "ether" is scientific content. It is not. Is there scientific content in the use of the symbol $\alpha$ vs the symbol $\beta$. Is there some sort of amoral deception or scientific distortion involved when people coined the terms "quark" or "flavor" or "beauty". Of course not.

All your talk about "amoral" and "distortion" is completely irrelevant. Your word choice is nothing more than a word choice.

 

[strangerep]

@Ilja: you claim (iiuc) to have the SM with 3 generations, but I when I searched your paper (0908.0591) for mention of the CKM matrix I found none. Do you derive it somewhere else?

Also, I did not find any discussion about masslessness of neutrinos. (?)
Or, if not massless, a derivation of the PMNS matrix?

 

[Ilja]

The aim of developing this ether theory was not at all to obtain some modification of the equation to modify some solutions. It was the problem of quantization. I have started with a simple thought experiment of quantum gravity, the gravity variant of the double slit experiment where a test particle possible measures the position. If the interaction was strong enough, then the position of the test particle will be different for different paths of the particle - and the superposition is destroyed by the measurement. Else not.

Now do this with gravity. Then you have to compare the positions of the test particle. For the two cases, that means, for two different gravitational fields. And now remember GR, diffeomorphism invariance, and the hole argument. And you will see that there is no such thing in GR as "the same position" for different metrics.

But the experiment will be the same, it will have a result. Or the test particle is at the same place, then the interaction was not strong enough and the position was not measured, or it was measured, and the superposition destroyed. So, quantum theory gives an observable which does not exist in classical theory.

So, an additional equation, which allows to define the notion "the same position" for different solutions of GR is simply necessary to compute a prediction for this thought experiment. There was a nice candidate for this - the harmonic condition. And, of course, one wants to have a Lagrange formalism for the resulting theory, that's all. It is the simplest solution for a problem which GR cannot solve but quantum gravity has to solve, to be able to compute the results of this simple thought experiment.

The parameter choice \Upsilon>0 leads to nice in principle observable differences, namely stable gravastars and a big bounce instead of a big bang, thus, getting rid of the two most important singularities of GR. And of course this would be visible if the values of \Upsilon would be large enough. Then, the spatially flat universe is the only homogeneous one, thus, clearly preferred for symmetry reasons - a curved one would have to have a center. So, the "in principle observable" is not a problem at all.

No, it means it's speculative. Just as the Standard Model itself was speculative until experiments confirmed its predictions. Work on speculative theories is part of science; however, past history shows that, without experimental input, it's very hard to make progress.

Fine. But I disagree about the role of experiments in the progress. Remember on the greatest success stories of physics at all - atomic theory. How long was it "speculative", in the sense that there was no experimental proof of the existence of atoms? Quite long. Was there no progress in atomic theory over all this time? No, there was a lot of progress. But this progress was mainly explanatory. The things which were already well-known have been interpreted in terms of atomic theory. Instead of simply describing them in terms of unspecified "fields".

If we take the example of atomic theory as a pattern, we should expect that new theories have to start with interpretation and explanation of what has been already reached.

@Ilja: you claim (iiuc) to have the SM with 3 generations, but I when I searched your paper (0908.0591) for mention of the CKM matrix I found none. Do you derive it somewhere else?

No, the masses themselve are not derived.

Also, I did not find any discussion about masslessness of neutrinos. (?)
Or, if not massless, a derivation of the PMNS matrix?

There are no reasons to expect they are massless. What the model predicts is that there are right-handed neutrinos, and that they have to be inert. (This also with the additional possibility of exchanging left with right.)

What is predicted are the fermions, the gauge fields, and the charges.

In http://arxiv.org/abs/0912.3892 I give some qualitative considerations which show that the masses of the neutrinos have to be much smaller than those of the other fermions. And, given that the leptons are more closely associated with the neutrinos, one can for similar reasons expect that their masses are lower than quark masses.

The other qualitative prediction is that the massless part - that with exact gauge symmetry on the fundamental level - is U(3).

I suspect one can make some prediction about the smallness of the CP-violating terms. I would guess these terms will be created only by distortions of the ether, thus, may be even different in different regions and times.

In general I would not expect that the ether model will allow to predict all the details from simple first principles and a few qualitative properties of the model, there will be also some quantative material properties of the ether which will influence the masses.

 

[Ilja]

Then this is your choice. You have decided that obtaining the good opinion of others is beneath you. You cannot do that and then blame others for their low opinion of your work. Own your choice.

? I have decided that to use methods to cheat are beneath me. This changes absolutely nothing about I expect from others. If they would behave like what I would expect from scientists, they would look at the scientific facts, compare what different approaches have reached. I would have no problem with a low opinion if it would be based on some objective arguments. Say, that vacuum Nr. 28450433854592423095843905824905 from string theory gives a description much closer to the SM than my model. What I reject is ignorance as an argument ("your theory is ignored, thus, worth nothing") and the application of criteria which, equally applied to others, would have killed all the "behind the SM" theories together.

Really? You think that your use of the word "ether" is some sort of a moral imperative. That is just plain silly. What kind of moral system requires you to use a word with negative connotations?

The issue is not the word, but the connections between the two scientific theories. My theory of gravity generalizes a theory known as the Lorentz ether in the same way as general relativity generalizes special relativity. There have been some scientific arguments against ether theories, and these are, of course, arguments which my generalization of the Lorentz ether has to be able to answer.

"Answering" them by renaming the theory and distorting its content in such a way that nobody would try to apply these old arguments simply because nobody would see that, in principle, there is a strong enough similarity so that one can try to apply to the new theory too, would be cheating.

You seem to be assuming that the use of the word "ether" is scientific content. It is not.

No. I assume that the non-gravity limit of my theory of gravity is a theory already known and named "Lorentz ether" is scientific content. And a consequence of this fact is that one can try to apply known arguments against the Lorentz ether also against my theory. Some of them fail for trivial reasons (the Lorentz ether was incompressible, violated the action equals reaction principle by acting but not showing any reaction) because they are no longer applicable to the generalization. But all of them? Some of the positivistic "I cannot see it, thus, it does not exist"-type arguments remain unchanged.

 

[PeterDonis]

How long was it "speculative", in the sense that there was no experimental proof of the existence of atoms? Quite long.

Yes, more than two thousand years. But for practically all of that time, it wasn't a "theory" so much as an idea. Not only did the idea make no testable predictions, it didn't even have any structure built up around it. It was just the statement "matter is made of atoms", and nothing more.

Was there no progress in atomic theory over all this time? No, there was a lot of progress. But this progress was mainly explanatory.

Really? What progress are you talking about?

But this progress was mainly explanatory. The things which were already well-known have been interpreted in terms of atomic theory.

Really? What well-known phenomena were interpreted in terms of atomic theory, before the 1800s, when people finally started to figure out testable predictions from the hypothesis that matter was made of atoms, and then started testing them?

 

[Dale]

I have decided that to use methods to cheat are beneath me.

Nonsense. There is no rule which says you need to use the word ether. You use it because you like the philosophy and want to promote it, not because of some non existent rule that you are honorably obeying.

You have simply chosen to promote the word ether even to the detriment of promoting your theory. That is hardly some moral choice, just a marketing choice.

If they would behave like what I would expect from scientists, they would look at the scientific facts, compare what different approaches have reached.

But there are no scientific facts supporting your idea, and you have even decided that is "not promising enough" to even try to obtain scientific facts supporting your theory.

"Answering" them by renaming the theory and distorting its content in such a way that nobody would try to apply these old arguments simply because nobody would see that, in principle, there is a strong enough similarity so that one can try to apply to the new theory too, would be cheating.

Nonsense. Failure to cite your references would be cheating. But having cited your references there is no rule on your naming convention.

Some of the positivistic "I cannot see it, thus, it does not exist"-type arguments remain unchanged.

Which is probably the real reason that you are reluctant to pursue the experimental aspect as well as the real reason that other scientists are uninterested. If it cannot be detected then it is only philosophy, and an old philosophy that has already been rejected.

 

[Ilja]

What well-known phenomena were interpreted in terms of atomic theory, before the 1800s, when people finally started to figure out testable predictions from the hypothesis that matter was made of atoms, and then started testing them?

Let's start with 1738 when Bernoulli published his hydrodynamics, which laid the basis for the kinetic theory of gases. Then, of course, you can count Daltons law of multiple proportions, with its explanation by atomic theory, already a proof of atomic theory. But, sorry, in this case my ether model of the SM would have to count as a proof of ether theory too. And many scientists, like Mach, have rejected atomic theory much later. So, it seems more reasonable to count 1905 as the date when atomic theory was finally supported by experiment.

So we have much more than a century of development of atomic theory, read about its progress in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_theory_of_gases#History

 

[PeterDonis]

Let's start with 1738 when Bernoulli published his hydrodynamics, which laid the basis for the kinetic theory of gases.

As I understand it, nobody knew it was the basis for the kinetic theory of gases until the mid 1800s, at least; Bernoulli treated fluids as continuous substances, not as made of atoms.

Then, of course, you can count Daltons law of multiple proportions, with its explanation by atomic theory

Yes, published in the 1800s (1803, IIRC).

already a proof of atomic theory

Not according to almost every physicist of the time; it wasn't until the early 1900s that most physicists accepted atomic theory as proved, and if one had to pick a particular experiment that tipped the balance, it would probably be Perrin's experiments on Brownian motion, which confirmed the explanation of Brownian motion by Einstein using atomic theory in one of his "miracle year" 1905 papers. As you appear to agree.

in this case my ether model of the SM would have to count as a proof of ether theory too.

No, because, as you appear to agree, atomic theory was not "proved" until experiments were done confirming an explanation of something that could not be explained by the theory of matter as a continuous substance (Brownian motion). Your theory is not in that position; you claim to explain something that the Standard Model doesn't, but your theory is not the only theory that claims to explain that, and we have no experiments that distinguish between the various theories that go beyond the Standard Model.

we have much more than a century of development of atomic theory

Yes; I already said atomic theory started development in the 1800s.

 

[Ilja]

Nonsense. There is no rule which says you need to use the word ether.

Ok, I could have named a theory which generalizes the Lorentz ether, has a global Euclidean space and absolute time, filled with some condensed matter, those speed of sound is identified with the speed of light, which follows with the continuity and Euler equations classical condensed matter theory equations, and distorts rulers as well as clocks with formulas generalizing those of the Lorentz ether, googledigoog theory instead of ether theory. What would have been the point of this decision?

You use it because you like the philosophy and want to promote it, not because of some non existent rule that you are honorably obeying.

This is already poor polemics. Note also that even if it would be correct, so what? The answer is clear - it is one of the standard accusations against the ether cranks that they like some classical philosophy and that's why reject modern science.

In fact, my motivation was quite different. The original aim was solving an important problem of modern physics, namely the quantization of gravity. To quantize gravity, I need the key properties of the Lorentz ether. The simple point is that we already know how to quantize condensed matter theories. So, if we have an interpretation of gravity in terms of a completely classical condensed matter theory, including all the things we use if we quantize classical condensed matter theories, we have a way how to quantize gravity.

But there are no scientific facts supporting your idea, and you have even decided that is "not promising enough" to even try to obtain scientific facts supporting your theory.

Cheap polemics. Quantization of gravity is, it seems, not a problem at all, and explaning the quite complex structure of the SM in a simple way not a scientific problem too. And the unification of the SM with gravity is also not a problem.

Which is probably the real reason that you are reluctant to pursue the experimental aspect as well as the real reason that other scientists are uninterested. If it cannot be detected then it is only philosophy, and an old philosophy that has already been rejected.

Feel free to ignore all the problems of modern science beyond the SM as "only philosophy".

But if you think that some "old philosophy" has been rejected, it would be nice to see more than empty claims.

The positivistic arguments Einstein has used for SR he has rejected himself, in his famous conversation with Heisenberg where he has said that it is the theory which decides what is observable. And positivism, which was the leading philosophy of science in the critical time of rejection of ether philosophy, has been rejected as a philosophy of science by Popper 1935.

 

[Ilja]

Fine, almost agreement. Even if we put the origin of kinetic theory and thermodynamics in the 1850s, so what, there is a lot of time of theoretical development of atomic theory and increasing certainty that it is the correct explanation up to the time when there was agreement about experimental support.

... you claim to explain something that the Standard Model doesn't, but your theory is not the only theory that claims to explain that, and we have no experiments that distinguish between the various theories that go beyond the Standard Model.

Oh. Which other theory claims to explain as much of the standard model as my theory?

String theory is the theory where our universe is exceptional because it is the only universe which cannot be explained by it. Ok, that's a joke, but the fact remains that string theory tells us, up to now, nothing at all about the particle content of the SM. LQG does not even have this aim, afaiu. GUTs and supersymmetry postulate much larger groups, which, for unknown reasons, are then effectively reduced to the SM subgroup. Why this subgroup instead of another one remains unclear, as well as what would be the advantage of the larger group.

 

[PeterDonis]

Which other theory claims to explain as much of the standard model as my theory?

The various standard model extensions based on supersymmetry, etc. You discount these, but your reasons are similar to the reasons why others discount your theory: personal opinions about what a theory that "explains" the SM should look like. And unless and until some experiment can decide between them, we won't be able to progress any further than that.

 

[Ilja]

The various standard model extensions based on supersymmetry, etc. You discount these, but your reasons are similar to the reasons why others discount your theory: personal opinions about what a theory that "explains" the SM should look like. And unless and until some experiment can decide between them, we won't be able to progress any further than that.

I disagree. Explanatory power is essentially the same as predictive power - with the difference that what is "predicted" was already known before. So, postdiction instead of prediction, which, common sense tells us, is clearly weaker. But, nonetheless, you can compare different theories which postdict/explain the SM by their predictive power in the usual way. So, there is more to this comparison that personal opinion only. The usual way to compare the predictive power of theory - Popper's criterion of empirical content - works as usual.

So, what could falsify supersymmetry? How many QFTs are there which do not have any supersymmetric extension, so that observing them would falsify supersymmetry? String theory gives at least an answer, with its $10^{300}$ or so different candidates on the landscape. What is "personal opinion" in this question, instead of a simple application of Popper's empirical content?

 

[PeterDonis]

what could falsify supersymmetry?

Failure to discover particles predicted by it. As I understand it, some of the simpler supersymmetric extensions of the SM have already been ruled out by LHC data.

 

[Ilja]

Ok, as far as a particular supersymmetric theory contains definite values for the masses. But this was not exactly my question, because it was I have asked about the explanatory power. Is there some property of the SM (like, say, the three generations) which is explained by supersymmetry?

 

[Dale]

And positivism, which was the leading philosophy of science in the critical time of rejection of ether philosophy, has been rejected as a philosophy of science by Popper 1935.

OK at this point everyone has said their piece. Since both philosophy and "beyond the standard model" are off topic for this forum, it is time to close the thread.