Progress in Physics: Online Journal

[Rade]

For those with a more mathematical bent, here is the link to a new online journal of theoretical physics--Progress in Physics:

http://www.geocities.com/ptep_online/2005.html

It would appear that anyone of the papers could spark debate for this forum.

 

[ohwilleke]

There are some interesting ones. One of the article proposes the idea of "unmatter" (i.e. atoms that have a mix of matter and anti-matter in them, for example, a proton and an anti-neutrino). I had hoped Castro's modified Newtonian dynamics article would be good, but after a quick read I came away feeling like someone had tripped out on buzzwords and was going in seventeen directions at once.

 

[Rade]

FYI, it has been suggested by a number of nuclear physicists at a site called 'MadSci' that "unmatter" is a nonsense concept as relates to physics--see this link:
http://www.google.com/u/MadSciNet?q=unmatter&sa=Search&domains=madsci.org&sitesearch=madsci.org

But I find this to be a strange point of view, rather narrow minded. For example, it is well known that pions meet the definition of matter + antimatter = unmatter (e.g., the (ud^, u^d, etc. where ^ = antimatter). Also, the pentaquark (qqqqq^), which is a type of unmatter, appears to exist when looked for at low energy reactions--see this link for updated pentaquark controversy (pro-con as of 2005).
http://www.phy.ohiou.edu/~hicks/thplus.htm

Plus, the recent paper "Antibaryons in Nuclei", published in Phys. Rev. C (71), 2005 confirms the existence of antimatter bound within matter, thus forming unmatter. I suspect that many other forms of "unmatter" exist, but I would appreciate hearing from others on this topic.

 

[ZapperZ]

FYI, it has been suggested by a number of nuclear physicists at a site called 'MadSci' that "unmatter" is a nonsense concept as relates to physics--see this link:
http://www.google.com/u/MadSciNet?q=unmatter&sa=Search&domains=madsci.org&sitesearch=madsci.org

But I find this to be a strange point of view, rather narrow minded. For example, it is well known that pions meet the definition of matter + antimatter = unmatter (e.g., the (ud^, u^d, etc. where ^ = antimatter). Also, the pentaquark (qqqqq^), which is a type of unmatter, appears to exist when looked for at low energy reactions--see this link for updated pentaquark controversy (pro-con as of 2005).
http://www.phy.ohiou.edu/~hicks/thplus.htm

Plus, the recent paper "Antibaryons in Nuclei", published in Phys. Rev. C (71), 2005 confirms the existence of antimatter bound within matter, thus forming unmatter. I suspect that many other forms of "unmatter" exist, but I would appreciate hearing from others on this topic.

Is there a particular reason why you are emphasizing on this set of articles and journals (other than PRC)? This set of journals (which includes the dubious Physics Essays) that allign themselves with one another are very well-known as being unbashfully speculative. I mean, if you want "controversial" and "speculative" stuff but on more solid grounds, what's wrong with the more well-established journals? I'm curious as to why you pay this much attention to these journals?

Zz.

 

[Antiphon]

The two articles by S. J. Crothers are not fringe stuff. He shows that black
holes are inconsistent with General Relativity. The reason he's publishing
in a speculative journal is because this is such a controversial idea that
the mainstream journals are shutting him out.

His papers are worthy of peer review. As for much of the other stuff, its either
speculative or just plain crack-pottery.

 

[ohwilleke]

I'm going to quote the mad scientist argument against unmatter at length to discuss it without misquoting:

Date: Tue Jul 5 08:59:24 2005
Posted By: Benn Tannenbaum, Senior Program Associate
Area of science: Physics
ID: 1120238601.Ph
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Message:


Dear Maryliz,

I think you misunderstood my last answer. There is no such thing as
unmatter. Things are either matter or anti-matter. There is no in-between.
You and I and everything around us are all made of matter, of protons and
neutrons and electrons, of quarks and leptons. These particles are stable,
meaning they do not decay. As far as we have been able to measure, the
lifetime of the proton and the electron are essentially infinite-- they are
at least 10^14 times longer than the age of the universe. (As a paranthetical
note, the experiements that discovered that neutrinos have mass,
Super-Kamiokande, SNO, etc, all were initially designed to measure proton
lifetime.) The experiments we have run on anti-matter, whether they be
anti-protons or anti-hydrogen, all show that the anti-matter is just as
stable as matter. (A result that uses cosmic rays is here:
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/9812/9812025.pdf
. This result is
old and has been superceded, but it's still a good result.)

So far, not very convincing. It doesn't exist because I say so. Also, while anti-matter may be just as stable as matter, that doesn't mean that all anti-matter is stable, just as all matter is not stable.

I mention the stability of matter and anti-matter because that's an
important property for things to have. If they are not stable, they are
only temporary, so I'm not convinced we need to have a new label for them.
Yes, I know, the lifetime of the neutron is only 15 minutes. But that's
*only* for free neutrons. Put a neutron next to a proton, and you've got a
deuteron, and that's just as stable as a proton. There are *no*
combinations of matter and anti-matter that are stable. Pions have
lifetimes of 10^-17 to 10^-8 seconds; lifetimes for kaons and other mesons
are similar but typically not as long as pion lifetime!

This sounds like a serious brain fart. We know that all sorts of mesons and baryons with lifetime of 10^-23 seconds mean lifetime exist, and even the proponents of "unmatter" make clear that it would be unstable. If we shouldn't have a label for stuff that is unstable, that we should also throw out the standard model, because we obvious don't need names for top, bottom, charm and strange quarks, for taus, for muons, for Ws and Zs. Most of the creatures in the particle zoo are unstable and there is nothing terribly odd about having unstable unmatter particles to the mix.

Also, an anti-tau or anti-bottom quark isn't any more stable than "unmatter".

As for pentaquarks, it seems that they are still just a theoretical
construct. A recent article in Science magazine (22 April 2005 Vol 308,
page 478), says "The elusive pentaquark may be about to disappear. A new
result presented at a meeting here provides the strongest evidence
yet that the much-studied thetaplus particle is just a statistical mirage."
In addition, another experiment at Jefferson Lab is nearing completion of
an analysis that also shows this pentaquark has not yet been seen.

The pentaquarks is, as I say, a theoretical construct. QCD says that quarks
always combine to form color-neutral objects-- either a quark-anti-quark
pair, or a 3-quark combination. You could also combine a 2-quark
combination with a 3-quark combination to get a 5-quark combination that is
also a bound state (this pentaquark), but that's not yet been seen, and may
not be physically possible. This does *not* violate QCD-- it's still color
neutral. All matter likes to be in the lowest energy state possible, which
is why neutrons decay (a neutron is ever so slightly heavier than a proton,
and thus the energy is ever so slightly higher), and why it is so very hard
to make a pentaquark. As for what combinations are possible, you've got 6
quarks that can go in each of 4 slots and 6 anti-quarks that can go in the
last slot. By my count, that's 7,776 combinations. Not all of them work,
but the reasons are beyond this particlar explanation.

OK, so pentaquarks may or may not have been discovered, but they are theoretically possible. This doesn't hurt or help the argument. You hardly have to be a speculative physicists to look for a high energy particle that accepted QCD says is possible, and early data is by it very nature inconclusive.

Smarandache is not a physicist. He's a philosopher who wants to be a
physicist. He's trying to use terms from philosophy and apply them to
physics. That just doesn't work-- because not only does he apply
terminology from one field to another, he uses physics terminology
incorrectly. You might want to read the response from another person here
at MadSci: http://www.madsci.org/posts/1120397918.Ph.r.html
.

Sounds like ad hominem here, not a real argument. Also, reading the article itself, the terminology is more set theory than philosophy, which is hardly anti-physics.

 

[Antiphon]

Firstly, I am not a particle physisct.

Having said that, if you had "unAlpha" or two protons bound to two anti-neutrons
there might be trouble. Because there is a non-zero amplitude for protons to become
neutrons and vice versa in a nucleus. This is a recipe for particle anhilation, no?

Any actual particle physicists want to weigh in on this?

 

[Rade]

I also am not a particle physicist--but if you reduce two protons [P] and two anti-neutrons [N^] to quark structure, where ^ = antimatter, allow them to interact, then your quark picture becomes:

matter = (uud)(uud) + antimatter = (d^d^u^)(d^d^u^), which will yield pions (ud^) if we assume that [PN^]+[PN^] = Unalpha.

But, what if the two [P] and two [N^] have isospin, and form two 6-quark bags and the Unalpha is thus [PP]+[N^N^], then we get (uuuudd) + (d^d^d^d^u^u^), which then must yield an exotic 4-quark type of unmatter "tetraquark" of the predicted form (ud^ud^). Now, this is not just speculation--see this link:

http://www.answers.com/topic/exotic-meson

where the (udu^d^) tetraquark is identified as the f0(600) meson, which is believed to follow chiral type mathematical models--thus, if we view (ud^ud^) as being two "diquarks" bound then the overall structure would be color neutral and it would seem to me that it would conform to quantum chromodynamics theory--but perhaps I error.

 

[danAlwyn]

Having said that, if you had "unAlpha" or two protons bound to two anti-neutrons
there might be trouble. Because there is a non-zero amplitude for protons to become
neutrons and vice versa in a nucleus. This is a recipe for particle anhilation, no?

I'm not a real particle physicist yet either, but I will say that I've heard that the nucleus may be more complicated than that. Quarks may not stay well-confined inside nucleons in the nucleus-and if that's true (something I'm not sure about), then you could have quite a chance of individual quark annihilation upon interaction with their anti-particle.

Does that work at all?

 

[Advocatus diaboli]

The works of Stephen J. Crothers in Progress in Physics contain no relevant information.
Crothers complains that Schwarzschild's solution (which describes a spherically
symmetric black hole) cited in literature is not due to Schwarzschild, but to Hilbert.
This is absolutely clear. Schwarzschild found a solution which is completely equivalent
from the point of view of differential geometry to the simpler form given by Hilbert.
Hilbert simplified the form of the result, but Schwarzschild was the first one who solved the
free Einstein field equations.
Additionally, he argues that the Hilbert solution is only valid for a radial parameter bigger
than the Schwarzschild radius. This is also clear, unfortunately he doesn't realize that
the discussion of continuations of the Schwarzschild metric "inside" a black hole have a
speculative character. Nonbody really claims that we know how the "inside" of a black hole
looks like, but there are a lot of interesting papers which deal with this mind game.
Finally, he insists on the "fact" that the solution given by Schwarzschild
describes a "point mass", but he simply projects away the simple fact that the topology described
by the Schwarzschild metric is that one of a sphere. This is pure math again.
The problem is not the scientific comunity which tries to shut him down.
The problem is that Crothers is not well acquainted with the
axioms of differential geometry. Furthermore, he claims to work in an exact mathematical way, but physical
models are never exact - combining aspects from quantum physics and general relativity makes it
clear that we have no detailed knowledge about the true nature of supermassive objects.
The work seems to be a typical example for a Don Quixote syndrome of somebody who is
fighting against imaginary windmills.