Its primary purpose is to generate dialogue in the physics community on aspects of a research program that deals with a paradigm change in modern physics, for all domains - from elementary particle physics to cosmology. This change is from the presently ongoing paradigm of the quantum theory to that of the theory of general relativity. It tries to answer the ongong debate between Bohr and Einstein in favor of Einstein's program for the future of physics.
What compels us to suggest a paradigm change from the basis of the quantum theory to that of the theory of general relativity? My answer is that 1) each of these two theories requires an incorporation of the other for its completion and 2) they are logically and mathematically incompatible, thus incapable of unification. I have chosen the Einstein view for the future of physics, so long as its formal expression can be generalized in a way that incorporates the empirically successful results of the quantum theory. Read my views further on The Future of Physics.
We regret to inform you that professor Mendel Sachs suddenly and unexpectedly passed away on Saturday May 5th, 2012. His life's work and profound contributions to theoretical physics will be long remembered. His greatest wish was that other's would carry his research forward into the 21st century and beyond.
We hope you will continue to visit this web site, share your posts, thoughts and memories, as well as assure that his legacy will live on and flourish.
The Sachs Family
In a recent comment on my blog, "Is Mathematics Physics?" (3/8/12), Willie Johnson, Jr. said: "The short answer is yes", My response to him is: Does the Fermat Principle tell us anything about the magnetic moment of the electron or the expansion of the universe?
Mathematics is a very beautiful subject, but it is manmade and, as Galileo said: "a useful language for the expression of the laws of nature. But Mathematics is not Nature! On the other hand, the subject of physics is concerned with what it is that is 'out there' – the laws of nature. These are the principles and concepts that EXPLAIN the workings of the universe, in any of its domains.
A recent review of my book, "Physics of the Universe", Imperial College Press, 2010 (M. Dragoman, Contemporary Physics, vol. 53, issue 2, 2012), summarizes very well the contents of the book. But in the last paragraph, the reviewer says that "the author states that contemporary quantum theory, the standard model and thermodynamics play no fundamental role in his unified theory. However, the major physical and cosmological discoveries contradict this view".
The fact is that many of these "major discoveries that contradict this view" are not yet a proven facts of nature, however many years they have been in the wind! For example, the "string theory" has not given a single empirical fact in agreement with the real world, in decades of research!
The history of science reveals that we cannot ignore alternate theories that can indeed give correct empirical facts in a sufficiently scientifically responsible way, that supersede the hopes of alleged theories of 'normal science'. If not, the entire enterprise of science would be 'dead in the water'!
The theory I have been promoting is based, essentially, on Einstein's general relativity. It is a theory of nature that has yet to be refuted!
I am continually reminded that there is universal confusion on the difference between Mathematics and Physics. It is believed by many that an ingenius person in the field of Mathematics is bound to solve Einstein's problems in Physics, such as his quest for a unified field theory.
It is true that Galileo said that "the book of Nature was written in the language of Mathematics". But this did not mean that the language is identical with what it is supposed to be representing! This is a lesson taught by Plato, millenia ago!
Physics is the science of matter. It is based on concepts that are supposed to explain the empirical facts of Nature. which are 'out there'. Scientists try to understand its manifestations with alleged 'laws of nature'. We look for their predictions that are in agreement with the empirical facts, until some of these laws may be falsified. Thus, scientific truth is contingent, as the late Karl Popper has emphasized.
To express a law of nature, we use a mathematical language, sometimes for want of a better language. As is the relation of Physics to Nature, the mathematical relations are not 'out there'. They are invented by the mathematicians that we physicists use as a tool to express physical laws.
Pythagoras, in ancient Greece, thought that mathematical relationships are identical with laws of nature. In the millenia since his time we have learned that this was a false judgement.
Most cosmologists today believe the 'single big bang" model, wherein there was a singular explosion of all of the matter of the universe, that started off the ever-expansion of the universe that we now view.
With this cosmic model, our own human race (as well as all other races of people throughout the universe) is an accident, in the order of things. For our existence is dependent on the sun – one of the trillions of stars that comprise the Milky Way. Eventually the sun will use up its nuclear fuel and the human race will freeze and disintegrate into ice crystals, joining the rest of the cosmic dust that comprises the ever-expanding universe.
On the other hand, with the oscillating universe cosmology, the last big bang was only the beginning of this cycle of an ever-oscillating universe. Eventually, the presently dominating repulsive forces between galaxies will change to a dominating attractive force between galaxies, changing the expansion to a contraction – starting an implosion of the universe as a whole, The cause of the change from repulsion to attraction are the force terms in the General Relativity equations of motion (in the affine connection, that is not positive-definite), changing sign when the density of matter becomes smaller or greater).
The implosion ends with a maximally dense matter of the universe and a change from attractive forces to repulsive forces, starting a 'big bang' and the expansion once again.
Thus the last 'big bang' was only the beginning of this particular cycle each initiated by big bangs, in future and past cycles of the oscillating universe.
After the next big bang, the expanding universe will cool once again and galaxies, stars and planets will form, some of the planets with conditions suitable for life, as we know it. With this view of the oscillating universe, the human race is just as ordered as the universe as a whole. It is not a cosmic accident! In addition, this scenario is compatible with the requirements of the theory of general relativity.
I believe that this scenario is closer to the truth than the single big bang theory.
It is said that the recently discovered added acceleration of the expanding universe, beyond the Hubble discovery, is due to additional 'dark energy' in the universe. Of course the empirical facts require added energy that we were unaware of. But as an 'EXPLANATION', dark energy is tautological! There is unanticipated cosmic energy in the universe that is the cause of this additional acceleration. But the question for physics, beyond description, is: What is the cause of this additonal energy? I don't believe that it is due to the (artificially inserted) cosmological constant in Einstein's field equations. Einstein himself thought that this addition to his field equations was his biggest mistake!
The words 'dark energy' is only descriptive - it does not EXPLAIN the effect. It is similar to Aristotle's law of gravity – that a body falls to Earth because it it the natural place for it to be! The force of gravity - an EXPLANATION – was given 1800 years later by the theories of Galileo and Newton, later to be superceded by Einstein's theory of general relativty.
In a recent NOVA TV program on Quantum Mecanics, Brian Greene tried to explain Quantum Mechanics to the viewers. He concluded with a support of the possibility of the 'Srar Trek' dramatization of the breakup of all molcules of a human body on some planet, and a replacement of the same body in the faraway spaceship, molecules reassembled, with the call 'beam me up Scotty'. According to physics, what happened to the second law of thermodynamics? Has Greene rejected this law of physics? Aside from his non-understanding of the quantum theory, has he shown any empirical evidence for the ideas he proposes?
Greene supports this claim with his interpretation of QM, whereby bound particles may be dissociated and taken to (spacelike) places, very distant from each other, yet each atom or particles still maintaining information about the other. (It is called action-at-a-distance) He attributes this to 'entanglement' in the QM description. He then goes on to apply this interpretation beyond the QM domain, to underlying laws of the macroworld, from human beings to cosmology, the properties of the universe as a whole.
I believe that this fiction in his understanding of QM, loses sight of what this is a theory of! Quantum Mechanics is a statistical theory of the particle domain, predicting the results of measurement, up to probability statements by a macroobserver (e.g. human scientists) on the properties of micromatter (electrons, protons, etc.). The properties sought are the results of measurements by macro -observers, up to certain probabilies. It is not a law about the physical universe as a whole, or any of its constituents, galaxies, planets, human beings, etc.It is based on the fundamentalism of indeterminism, laws of chance that define elementary matter, in the first place, in the mathematical language of linearity and atomism and an underlying subjectivity and loss of causality in the very definition of matter. But this interpretation of QM is incompatible with the physics of real matter, as relativity theory prescribes, in terms of the continuous field concept,holism, determinism, and basic nonlinearity.
My conclusion is that Greene's understanding of QM, as a theory of the universe, as well as any of its constituents, is just as fictional as the science fiction of the 'Star Trek' episodes. Indeed, it shows a total lack of understanding of Quantum Mechanics.
Please see my blog, "On Understanding Quantum Mechanics", (July 4, 2011)
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It has recently been claimed by a group at CERN that they have measured neutrinos that move at a speed greater than c (the speed of light in a vacuum). The data is under current study to confirm the claim.
The neutrino is a spin-1/2 particle involved in weak interactions. It has a mass close to zero and it is uncharged. In analyzing tne data, I should like to remind the physicists that this is not a Newtonian discrete particle that moves from one place to another, as a particle would do. It is a wave, subject to the rules of wave motion. It moves with a wave train and interacts with diffraction at the target.
The speed of light in a vacuum, c, in relativity theory, is the speed of intetraction of any sort, gravitational, electromagnetic, weak, nuclear. etc. If the neutrino in this experiment had moved at a speed greater than c, it could not intertact with anything else, to make itself be known to the experimenters! If, on the other hand, relativity theory is in fundamental error, then all other experimental confirmations of this theory, since 1905!, including E = mc^2, must be wrong and would have to be re-explained with some other theory. As a scientist, I cannot reject this possibility. But I strongly doubt it!
From findings recently reported at a symposium on Lepton-Photon Interactions, at the Tata Institute in Mumbai, India, it appears that there is little chance that evidence for the existence of the Higgs particle will materialize.
In the heading of this report, in 'The Hindu', by R. Ramachandran, he says: "it is only with the Higgs that one can explain the origin of masses .." This is a truly unscientific claim! Why would it not be possible for some other theory, not based on the 'Standard Model', to explain the origin of elementary masses?
The Higgs particle is a model-dependent prediction of the Standard Model, which in turn is based on quantum field theory (qft). It was Dirac himself (one of the architects of qft) who showed that qft is unacceptable because of its mathematical inconsistency. Thus, so is the Hjggs hypothesis then unacceptable as a scientifically valid theory.
I recall when the theory of the quark (a claimed fractionally charged constituent of nucleons) was first proposed, there were many experiments carried out to detect a quark, directly. But it was not found. The physics establishment then 'explained' its lack of observation with an addendum that they called 'confinement theory'. This was the claim that, because of some added forces in a nucleon, one should not be able to directly observe a quark, outside of nuclear matter.
Similarly, if it is finally concluded that the Higgs particle is not directly observed, it will be proposed that some new addendum to the Standard Model will "explain" why this particle should not be observable! That is to say, it will be claimed that the Higgs particle is there, but it is too "elusive" to be seen! I find these "explanations" hard to believe! These are stories designed to protect the claimed truth of the Standard Model, claims that violate criteria of scientific credibility!
On the author's claim that only the Higgs can explain the origin of elementary masses. I should like to mention my research program in General Relativity that indeed has led to the origin of the masses of elementary matter from a field theory of the inertia of matter, based on General Relativity theory. It is demonstrated explicitly in many of my papers over the years and in my books: M. Sachs, General Relativity and Matter (Reidel, 1982), Chapter 4 and in M. Sachs, 'Quantum Mechanics and Gravity' (Springer, 2004), Chapter 4.
I have recently been asked if I still believe what I said in my 1971 paper, "Resolution of the Clock paradox" (Physics today, 24, 23 (1971)), in which I presented rigorous logical and mathematical arguments that reject the conventional acceptance of the relation of motion to aging of a physical entity in relativity theory. I said that I still believe what I said in the article. In a subsequent issue of the journal, letters to the editor were published that tried to refute my article (Physics Today 25, 9 (1972)); I responded to all of them.
What the respondents failed to recognize or mention was my main claim: that the letter 't' in the formulas from special relativity, such as the Lorentz transformation, that require a contraction of the time measure in a moving reference frame, is not a physical process, such as the physical aging of a human being or the unwinding of the spring of a clock! Rather, 't' represents an abstract measure of time, such as the reading of the hands of a clock, not the physical unwinding of the spring behind the face of the clock.
I would like the reader to consider doing the following. Go into a dark room without any interference from another person. Sit in a relaxed position and ask yourself this question: Do you really believe that if a physical body A moves relative to another physical body B, that A's rate of aging is retarded relative to B's rate of aging, by virtue only of A's motion relative to B? I would respond as Newton did to his own rejection of the concept of 'action at a distance' in his theory of gravitation: "Action at a distance through a vacuum, without mediation of anything else by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity, that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it" (letter to R. Bentley III, 1693. See E. A. Burtt, 'The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science' (Anchor Books, 1954), P. 266.
The "absurdity" of the clock problem is that (as Galileo discovered, 400 years ago) motion, per se, is a subjective, qualitative feature in the description of matter, it is not an absolute objective quality of matter. That is, it is just as true to say that B moves relative to A as it is to say that A moves relative to B. Thus, if A's rate of aging decreases relative to B's aging, because of its motion relative to B, it is also true that B's rate of aging decreases relative to A's aging, because of its motion relative to A! (Galileo commented that it is just as true to say that the earth moves relative to the sun, (as Copernicus discovered), from the sun's perspective (i.e. frame of reference) as it is to say that the sun moves relative tlo the earth, from the earth's perspective!) That A and B are both aging less than each other is a logical paradox, and thus unacceptable as a scientific statement!
In 1895, Einstein discovered that to maintain the objectivity of the law of nature in all reference frames (this is the basis of the theory of relativity, called 'the principle of relativity') the time measures in moving frames, relative to any fixed observer, must be contracted in the expressions of the law of nature in the different moving reference frames. But this did not mean that the physical aging of the body in the moving frame is affected by virtue of its motion!
In his later years, Einstein appears to have changed his mind about his original 1905 assertion when he said: "Strictly speaking, measuring rods and clocks would have to be represented as solutions of basic equations,(objects consisting of moving atomic configurations), not, as it were, as theoretically self-sufficient entities." (Autobiographical Notes, in Albert Einstein: Philosopher – Scientist, Open Court, 1949, P. A. Schilpp, editor).
