Special Relativity Between Reality and Illusion

[samalkhaiat]

You believe a version of what Bohm and Hiley believed. I believe a different version. You have a belief as to what is in Bohm & Hiley's book, "The Unidivided Universe". I have a different belief. What kind of experiment can we run to determine who is wrong and who is right (if either)?

One experiment is to write down the Lagrangian of that Lorentz NON-INVARIANT theory you talked about, which I am still waiting to see.

Saying that "O(3) symmetry" breaks down to a "discrete symmetry" indicates clearly that your knowledge about physics and mathematics is very very poor.
So you already did run that experiment.


sam

 

[CarlB]

One experiment is to write down the Lagrangian of that Lorentz NON-INVARIANT theory you talked about, which I am still waiting to see.

You haven't mentioned anything about "The Undivided Universe" nor the opinions of Bohm and Hiley on special relativity. I have shown that your opinion: It is IMPOSSIBLE, even for God, to distinguish between inertial frames full stop. was not only not shared by all physicists, but it wasn't even shared by the physicists who taught you. And you wrote: Not just in the book, but even in private coversations, Bohm & Hiley never explained or proposed such a "future" experiment. but I showed extensive quotes from their book showing that this is not the case. Look, if you want people to believe your opinions about what opinions are shared by "all physicists", then you might try explaining how it came to be that you didn't even know the opinions of two physicists that you claim were close to you. No one can verify what David Bohm told you "one hour before he died". Anyone can verify what is written in Bohm's books, and that is compatible with what I wrote about his opinions.

Now if, after reading extensive quotes from Bohm & Hiley, you're willing to admit you were wrong about their opinions with regard to preferred reference frames, then we can continue. But if you are so stubborn that even simple things like what is in chapter 14 of "The Undivided Universe" evade you, then I have no further discussion with you. Admit your error and we will continue.

On the subject of the possibility of physical situations having more Lie symmetry at low energies than high, you wrote: "Look Carl, if you want to look for violation of some Lie symmetry, then you should look at low energy phenomena (at large length scale)." and "The correct statement is; the standard model could be an effective theory of more symmetric one. And this "deep" theory must show, in certain limit, all the symmetries of the SM."

In return, I gave you a common physical example where an apparent Lie symmetry at low energies breaks down at high energy, namely where the O(3) symmetry of the interactions of low energy photons with a cubic symmetry crystal break down to the discrete symmetry of the crystal lattice at high energies.

If you want to continue discussing physics you need to confront my example with something deeper than: "Saying that "O(3) symmetry" breaks down to a "discrete symmetry" indicates clearly that your knowledge about physics and mathematics is very very poor.

Your comment says absolutely nothing about physics or mathematics. What you've written is just an ad hominem attack of no use to anyone.

Now if you want me to comment further on this, you need to either adimt that in the example of photons in cubic crystals, an apparent continuous symmetry breaks down to a discrete symmetry at high energies, the reverse of the expected symmetry behavior of the standard model, as I claimed existed (many more examples exist). If you don't like my use of terminology, then correct the terminology. If you don't agree with the physics, then correct the physics. If you think the mathematics is wrong, the say what you think is right.

But if you really want to explain something, not just to me, but to anyone else reading this thread (perhaps your students), then lay off the ad hominem attacks. And the human memory is a treacherous thing. If you're going to argue through the use of name dropping, you need to make sure that the written record supports your memory.

Carl

 

[samalkhaiat]

You haven't mentioned anything about "The Undivided Universe" nor the opinions of Bohm and Hiley on special relativity.

Look, I have never read the book! But I DO know exactly what Bohm & Hiley did put in each chapter. YES, This well I know the two men and their "opinions".
However, I am not a "Bohmian". I don't believe in or share the same philosophical views of Bohm (or Hiley). This is why I DONOT agree with their speculations in some parts of the book.
I even have my doubts about the whole mathematical structure of (what peopel now call) Bohmian mechanics.

Bohm saw GOD in his quantum potential, but was very unhappy with the fact that his god (QP) could not account for or explain the existence of photon and other relativistic particles.
For many years, research students at Birkbeck were trying to do two things;
1) Finding the relativistic version of Bohm's equation (i.e doing what Dirac did to Schrodinger equation)
2) Deriving Bohm's Eq. from the integral Schrodiger Eq.

i\hbar \frac{\partial{\phi(p)}}{\partial{t}}= \int d(\bar{p}) H(p,\bar{p}) \phi(\bar{p})

(i.e proving that Bohm's Eq is equivalent ro Schrodinger's)

After 6 mohths of work on this program, I realized that such task is (at least for me) impossible to accomplish (still is an open question). This failure forced me to abandon my earlier interest in the interpretations of QM and choose to do my phd on the mathematical formalisim of field theory instead.
The day, I made this decision, I said to Hiley
"mathematics forces me to believe that photon and other relativistic particles are too fast for Bohm's GOD to see and explain. It seems to me that quantum potential is FUNDAMENTALLY non-relativistic concept. something that disappears completely in the relativistic domain. This together with the fact that Bohm's Eq can only be derived from the differential(x-space) Schrodinger Eq, suggests a place for Bohm theory somewhere between Newton's mechanics and Non-relativistic QM".
After that day, Hiley started introducing me to people by saying (with smile): "this is ... who has been annoying me for some time"

Now if you want me to comment further on this, you need to either adimt that in the example of photons in cubic crystals, an apparent continuous symmetry breaks down to a discrete symmetry at high energies, the reverse of the expected symmetry behavior of the standard model, as I claimed existed (many more examples exist). If you don't like my use of terminology, then correct the terminology. If you don't agree with the physics, then correct the physics. If you think the mathematics is wrong, the say what you think is right.

But if you really want to explain something, not just to me, but to anyone else reading this thread (perhaps your students), then lay off the ad hominem attacks. And the human memory is a treacherous thing. If you're going to argue through the use of name dropping, you need to make sure that the written record supports your memory.

The relavent symmetry groups of "photon" interaction (even when it interacts with cows) are SO(1,3) & U(1), NOT (S)O(3).

1) The symmetry of regular solids(crystalls) is classified by the so-called point groups. They are;
the cyclic group C_{i} and
the dihedral group D_{i} ,with i = 2,3,4 and 6.

2) the symmetry group of an atom is the rotation group SO(3).

Tiny knowledge in group theory tells us

\left(C_{i},D_{i}\right) \subset SO(1,3)

This says that symmetry groups of the macroscopic (low energy) system, the crystall, are subgroups of the symmetry group of the microscopic (high energy),(deep level) system, the atom. Isn't this what I said?
Do you want me to rephrase? OK

The above relation means that low energy "effective" theory (of crystall) is less symmetric than its corresponding high energy "deep" theory (of atom)
, apart from the words atom and crystall, this was exactly my statement.

How about another rephrase? so you understand my statement first and find "that" contradicting "example"

When atoms (small, high energy things) join to form a crystall (large, low energy thing), the symmetry group of atomic physics "breaks down" to its subgroups, i.e to the symmetry groups of crystall physics.

Eventhough my statement was about Lie symmetry groups and its Lie subgroups, your "discrete symmetry example" does support, not contradict, my statement that;
Micro-world seems to be associated with larger symmetry group than that of the Macro-world.
Do you get it now?
You should have put some efforts and understood this statement before bringing about your crystall .

Physicists had very good reason to enlarge Poincare' group and to go from
SU(2) all the way up to SU(5) & SO(10).

sam

oh, what happened to that Lorentz non-invariant Lagrangian?

 

[CarlB]

Look, I have never read the book! But I DO know exactly what Bohm & Hiley did put in each chapter. YES, This well I know the two men and their "opinions".

The book itself is the only tangible evidence of what is in the book. Your memory is intangible. I trust the book. It's quite clear. I'm amazed that you're willing to tell me what is in it without reading it, and even more amazed that you're willing to admit it.

The memory plays tricks on all of us. People believe what they want to believe. The written word is far better evidence.

Isn't this what I said?

Your physics is correct, but you still talk around the example. In your answer, you've completely avoided discussing the subject at hand, which is the difference between the low energy behavior of photons in crystals and the high energy behavior of photons in crystals. Let me repeat it again.

Consider the physics of photons in cubic symmetry crystals. Low energy photons see no crystal at all. For them, the symmetry of the region they operate in is the full Lie group of rotations and translations in 3 dimensions. It is only as the energy of a photon increases that it begins to interact with the crystal and discovers that the symmetry is not so complete.

Instead of this example, you are defeating a straw man. Yes, I agree that the symmetry of an atom is greater than the symmetry of a crystal. But the example is not the atom. The example is the photons and the photons alone. The crystal, and its atoms, are only providing the background for the photon, they are not of concern.

Physicists had very good reason to enlarge Poincare' group and to go from SU(2) all the way up to SU(5) & SO(10).

Well, the proton didn't decay, did it. If symmetry were the solution to all elementary particle problems there wouldn't be all those string theorists running around loose out there.

oh, what happened to that Lorentz non-invariant Lagrangian?

You can have it after you admit that (a) Bohm and Hiley very clearly wrote in favor of a preferred reference frame in the book "The Undivided Universe", and (b) the photons in cubic system crystals provide a physical example of how a system (in this case the photons in cubic crystals) can have a Lie symmetry broken at high energies rather than low. Until we get through these, no more. This is enough.

I am glad to see you back. I've got some more to talk with you about, I'll put it in another post.

Carl

 

[CarlB]

Since the standard model is only an effective theory, any of its symmetries could be accidental.

The correct statement is; the standard model could be an effective theory of more symmetric one. And this "deep" theory must show, in certain limit, all the symmetries of the SM.

Here is a quote from Lee Smolin's latest book, "The Trouble with Physics":

(p 315) One of the great seers is Holger Bech Nielsen of the Niels Bohr Institute. He was an inventor of string theory, and he has many other key discoveries to his credit. But for many years he has been isolated from the mainstream for advocating what he calls random dynamics. He believes that the most useful assumption we can make about the fundamental laws is that they are random. Everything we think of as intrinsically true, such as relativity and the principles of quantum mechanics, he thinks are just accidental facts that are emergent from a fundamental theory so beyond our imagining that we might as well assume that its laws are random. His models are the laws of thermodynamics, which used to be based on principles but now are understood as the most likely way that large numbers of atoms in random motion will behave. This may not be right, but Nielsen has come remarkably far in his antiunification program.

Here are some Holger Nielsen preprints:

http://www.arxiv.org/find/hep-th/1/au:+Nielsen_H/0/1/0/all/0/1

One that reads directly on our discussion is this one:

Derivation of Poincare Invariance from general quantum field theory
C.D. Froggatt, H.B. Nielsen
Annalen der Physik, Volume 14, Issue 1-3 , Pages 115 - 147
Special Issue commemorating Albert Einstein
Starting from a very general quantum field theory we seek to derive Poincare invariance in the limit of low energy excitations. We do not, of course, assume these symmetries at the outset, but rather only a very general second quantised model. Many of the degrees of freedom on which the fields depend turn out to correspond to a higher dimension. We are not yet perfectly successful. In particular, for the derivation of translational invariance, we need to assume that some background parameters, which a priori vary in space, can be interpreted as gravitational fields in a future extension of our model. Assuming translational invariance arises in this way, we essentially obtain quantum electrodynamics in just 3 + 1 dimensions from our model. The only remaining flaw in the model is that the photon and the various Weyl fermions turn out to have their own separate metric tensors.
http://www.arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0501149
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/109884430/ABSTRACT

By the way, this is NOT my example of how one can obtain Poincare invariance from a QFT that does not possesses it. To get MY example, you have to play nice by admitting that Bohm and Hiley wrote a book that very clearly presented their belief that there is a preferred reference frame, and by admitting that photons in crystals are an example of a Lie symmetry that breaks at high energy rather than low.

Carl

 

[samalkhaiat]

We are not yet perfectly successful. In particular, for the derivation of translational invariance, we need to assume that some background parameters,

DID YOU READ THIS

By the way, this is NOT my example of how one can obtain Poincare invariance from a QFT that does not possesses it

Write down that Lagrangian which you do not know or have.

you have to play nice by admitting that Bohm and Hiley wrote a book that very clearly presented their belief that there is a preferred reference frame,

NO, They suggested a line of thoughts which they admit it could be wrong, because it is based on speculations.

and by admitting that photons in crystals are an example of a Lie symmetry that breaks at high energy rather than low.

School kids know that when they talk about photons in crystalls, in chairs and in cows the symmetry is the Lorentz's SO(3,1).

I can only admit that you have shown everybody that your knowledge about physics and math is infinitesmal. I will be here from time to time to let everybody knows this fact about you.

bye