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In 1662, under the patronage of the king, a group of former Oxford comrades founded the Royal Society in London. Their aim was to encourage progress in philosophy through the study of systems, history and experiments pertaining to "natural things, mathematics and mechanics" ([13], p.86).
Every week, some learned scientists or well-off amateurs were invited to present "three or four significant experiments". A number of new and daring ideas regarding all aspects of natural sciences could now be freely aired and discussed, in an atmosphere of freedom of thought very conducive to the elaboration of new theories.
It is in this atmosphere of general intellectual feverishness that in 1687 was published by Sir Isaac Newton, a now illustrious member of the Royal Society of the time, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, a monumental work in which he explained his theory on gravitation and proposed the mathematics which are still universally used to calculate the motion of celestial bodies and the trajectories of all bodies launched on ballistic trajectories: missiles, satellites, spacecrafts, shells, etc.
But sadly, the freedom of expression that flourished for a few decades, mainly under the leadership of Robert Hooke, its first curator, eventually faded to leave the field open to the sterile dogmatisms that are too often found in the various scientific domains, a situation that was exposed as recently as 1993 by Sir John C. Eccles, Nobel Prize of medicine in 1963 ([9], p.18). Throughout history, current orthodoxies have always fiercely resisted any change that was not a logical evolution of currently popular premises.
A very insidious problem is also at play, that blurs still more the issue. It is the tendency towards hyperspecialization and compartmentalization of the various disciplines at the university level, that has been on the increase ever since the 1940's. The end result is that all modern reference works have been written by great experts of each sub-specialty, who often have only superficial notions of some of the other sub-specialities of their own field.
Over time, as sub-specialties kept being separated, reorganized and eliminated, important information eventually completely ceased to be referred to in reference works written subsequently, and have thus completely disappeared from the collective consciousness of the physical community, even though they are still available in the humongous mountain of past writings.
For example: Abraham and Kaufmann's important conclusions regarding the distinction that must be made between longitudinal inertia and transverse inertia, key to the calculation of the correct angle of deflection of the trajectories of photons by gravitational attraction in the frame of classical mechanics ([15]), ([16]), ([24]).
Another example is De Broglie's important conclusion regarding the possible internal structure of the photon, which, in conjunction with Abraham and Kaufmann's discovery, seem to be the very key to building the last missing causality link between the quantities of motion that accumulate by means of electromagnetic acceleration of particles and the energy that quarks up and down are made up of.
But even more fundamental problems remain to be addressed without anyone apparently paying attention. For example, the treatment of free moving electromagnetic energy dissociated from matter (photons) has never been integrated into Special Relativity. It is taken as a postulate of course, but it is always treated separately, and cannot be derived from any of SR's equations. We will address this question in detail in Chapter "The Deflection of Light".
Most physicists are convinced that QED is the theory that deals with photons. But no! QED applies only to the electrodynamic aspect of energy and completely ignores the magnetic aspect.
Even today, the only theory in existence that properly deals with free moving electromagnetic energy at the general level is still Maxwell's theory although it has not yet been adapted to really describe real electromagnetic photons. This question will be analyzed in Chapter Maxwell's Geometry.
Besides this failure of SR to integrate free moving electromagnetic energy, and although it deals properly with the rest mass of elementary particles, such as electrons or positrons, it has not yet been adapted to account for the internal contraction of complex particles such as protons and neutrons as a function of the local intensity of Coulomb interactions with elementary components of surrounding matter (up and down quarks). This is why no one currently can properly calculate the trajectories of Pioneer 10 and 11. We will address this problem in Chapter "The Slowing down of Atomic Clocks".
The reason is that SR was conceived of before it was known that protons and neutrons are not elementary, and that no one became sufficiently aware since to induce the physics community to reconsider.
But this particular failing is easy to remedy as we will see, and once the rest mass question of complex particles is correctly addressed, the photon's energy problem should immediately follow, since the internal contraction solution for complex particles should finally cause the time dilation parameter to be seriously questioned.
But let's go back to the main subject. This state of hyperspecialization of each physicist has caused recent experimental observations, the likes of which used to throw physics circles into frenzied effervescence at the beginning of the 20th century, and sent every physicist of the time into an unbridled race to discovery, to be taken on today with a level of interest akin to apathy, each physicist being under the impression that colleagues, "experts" in this new field, will take charge somewhere, and that they will eventually be informed of the answer, none of them feeling particularly competent to deal with the problem.
We have had a very telling example of this problem over the course of the past 10 years in the case of the acceleration deemed "anomalous" of far spacecrafts Pioneer 10 and 11, and for which the equations of General Relativity are unable to calculate the observed hyperbolic trajectories, contrary to all expectations for a theory that supposedly is the final word on all observed gravitational phenomena!
On the other hand, it was not recently that Scientific Academies have begun rejecting without examination the too numerous papers that have been sent to them each year by unknowns, considered a priori and in bulk as crackpots. It was already the case in the second half of the 19th century, just as it still is the case today.
As far back as the beginning of the 20th century, Poincaré himself considered that they were not wrong in doing so and that they ran no risk of smothering any serious discovery, for, as he explains: « If you had asked academics [regarding this], they would have answered: "We have compared the probability that an unknown scientist had found what we have been looking for in vain for so long, to that of there being one more fool on the Earth, the second would have appeared greater". » ([15], p.198).
Paradoxically, to explain the reluctance of academics to consider any new idea and their recurring belief that all has already been discovered, Poincaré wrote in the same book: "Each of us carries within himself his own conception of the world, which he cannot so easily dismiss." ([15], p.159); which, of course, is a psychological problem that affects all humans and has nothing whatsoever to do with science.
After having invested years of their life to become comfortable with Minkowski's 4-dimensional space geometry, Special Relativity, General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics and QED, fledgling physicists then tend to subscribe to them for good. They are afterwards very unlikely to ever run the risk again of losing intellectual footing by reconsidering the whole, including the premises. Unfortunately, despite the importance of the remaining problems, orthodox theories always seem too satisfactory, and life too short, for them to consider re-investing even part of their precious remaining time and required effort in looking for potentially more appropriate alternatives at the fundamental level. In fact, not even one ever did!
To them, reconsidering fundamental space geometry, for example, or to what would lead the idea that electron spin would be due to pulsating instead of spinning, seem like useless extreme mindbenders, or quite wrongly feel inadequate to deal with such re-questioning, even if it could potentially cause our theories to evolve towards solving the remaining problems.
It must be said also that there is no blinder man than one who doesn't want to see, and we can seriously wonder then where the next significant progress could possibly come out of, given that all contemporary academics seem resigned a priori to the idea that no further major discovery will ever again be possible at the fundamental level, due to the general acceptance of the idea that Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle would represent physical reality rather than being a simple restriction inherent to the mathematical method being used!
Consequently, it was with nostalgia that I deplored not being able to identify any contemporary place on the planet where new ideas could be expressed and freely discussed as in Newton's time.
One day, on the advice of a friend, I inquired to the vice-president of an international physics congress being prepared, about the possibility for me to present a paper on fundamental physics. To my surprise, I was henceforth invited to participate! No pre-conditions! No pre-selection! I was welcome to come and propose my ideas!
This is how I unexpectedly discovered a contemporary center of intellectual freedom, the existence of which I was no more hoping for! Since 1989, is held every 2 years at the St. Petersburg State University, an International Congress on the "Fundamental Problems of Natural Sciences", whose aim is exactly the same as that of the original Royal Society.
Anatoli P. Smirnov, who recently took over the presidency from A. A. Efimov, founder of the congress, very diplomatically declared at the opening session of the 5th edition of the congress in 1998: "Today, many areas of fundamental knowledge, in particular physics and mathematics, are in a deep crisis, for they are unable to explain many phenomena of the environment of our world. This crisis of the sciences is the crisis of the contemporary paradigms on which these sciences are based" ([11], Préface).
All along the 6th edition of the congress, "CONGRESS-2000", which was held from July 3 to 8 of 2000, I observed with what patience and openmindedness president Smirnov and vice president Klyushin listened to the great variety of presentations of more than 200 participants, speeches during which sometimes transpired the pent up frustration of some of them, who had been forced to silence for too long by the orthodox scientific establishment, and who could at long last freely express their personal viewpoint on aspects of fundamental research that had become important to them.
All of them were now guaranteed that their work would be published at least in the official proceedings of the Congress.
Some could believe that such a congress, which is open without any reservation to all non-orthodox theories, would be the undertaking of a small marginal group, but the fact that it is directly endorsed by no less than the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg State Mining Institute and the Russian Geographical Society, leaves no doubt as to the seriousness of the endeavor.
I am deeply convinced that it is from this unique crucible, modern version of the Royal Society, where ideas can again be exchanged and discussed freely beyond everyone’s deep convictions, that will emerge the fundamental solutions that will allow Humanity to resume its walk towards new horizons.
Non-orthodoxy being the hallmark of the St. Petersburg Congress, the solution proposed here can be expected to be non-orthodox by definition, despite being grounded on the well established conclusions of Maxwell and Coulomb.
So, for complete reading enjoyment, the reader is invited to leave behind, for a moment at least, all preconceived ideas that could stem from accepted orthodox theories.
As to the solution proper, it originally was nothing more than a simple demonstration of logical reasoning by perception of coherences in sets ([12], p.79), which was part of a project aimed at rekindling interest for neglected neurophysiological conclusions which are critical for the development of the full intellectual potential of all human children.
After verification however, it seems to be the first logically causal hypothesis of electromagnetic mechanics of fundamental particles to ever have been formulated.
I hope that this paper will contribute to rekindle the causality debate that died down when its most famous promoter, Albert Einstein, passed away in 1955.
The following question will of course jump to the reader's mind: Why attempt to reawaken such an old debate after close to 50 years.
Because this historic debate on causality that very actively raged during the first half of the 20th century between causalists Einstein, Planck, Shrödinger, de Broglie, et al., and the promoters of the Copenhagen-Göttingen school of thought, that is, Bohr, Eisenberg, et al., has actually never been resolved ([18]).
To summarize it in a few words, causalists believed that fundamental objective reality that underlies the theories that we elaborate about it is not chaotic and obeys logical laws that can be identified and understood, while copenhagists believe that there exists no fundamental reality beyond what Quantum Mechanics can describe.
Plain common sense however, seems to indicate that at the fundamental level, the foundation of objective physical reality can be made up of nothing but the whole collection of discrete electromagnetic events in constant interaction that really exist, and of the whole collection of least action trajectories that electromagnetic interaction force them to constantly follow in a very precise manner.
Of course, it is obviously forever beyond anyone's reach to learn the location of every electron in the universe, for example, but it has been well within our reach to understand every which way an electron can occupy the various possible orbitals in any atom. This makes it then possible for us to know how every electron in the Universe behaves in any specific situation where it is part of any atom in the Universe!
This knowledge can be seen as the restricted set of objective characteristics regarding electrons within atoms that allows clear understanding of all similar cases.
Since there seems to exist a restricted set of objective characteristics that similarly allows understanding the objective structure of any concept, process, etc. that we care to consider, the whole collection of these restricted sets seems well within our ability to comprehend, contrary to copenhagists' opinion.
One could even think, based solely on the verified existence of Coulombian interaction, that the quantity of motion that animates any given elementary particle at any given moment, as well as the relative direction of its motion, are very precisely determined by the combined set of the interactions that exist between that particle and each and every other particle in the Universe.
A strange turn of history seems to be responsible for the debate to eventually die down, for lack of fighters on the causalist side. Arnold Sommerfeld for example, a major original proponent of the copenhagist view, was so viscerally opposed to the causalist view, that he apparently taught for an extended period of his career only the copenhagist view to group after group of students.
He was thus almost single handedly, at the origin of a complete generation of eminent professors who had apparently only superficially glanced at the other side of the coin and who concluded, with no reason other than the conviction of their eminent teacher that the idea was worthless, which translated into the causalists views and theories to progressively cease being referred to in textbooks and thus came to not even be minimally explained to students of the following generations.
The non-causalist ball had started rolling and is still in full swing.
Today, physicists are unknowingly trained from the start as Copenhagists in almost all colleges and universities without really being made aware of the fact, and if they never personally question their own philosophical orientation with respect to reality, naturally tend to not even become aware that they are.
No reference book expounds anymore on the causalist viewpoint beyond a few well known traditional showcases, like the EPR experiment for example, which have simply become traditional causalists scapegoats to be flogged in public, presumably because it simply is not possible to completely disregard the major contribution of causalist scientists.
The debate about causality has now come to be shrugged off as a vaguely understood issue believed by most to have been settled decades ago about probably worthless theories.
In fact, so little consideration has come to be afforded to causalists’ opinions at the international level, that despite his immense stature as the last remaining major architect of modern physics, Louis de Broglie’s last book ([1]) seems not to even have been translated to English!
But are causality theories really worthless? Why did such a major player as Louis de Broglie, the finest theoretician in electromagnetism of the 20th century, fail to draw his Copenhagist peers’ attention despite having spent the last 35 years of his life trying?
From my analysis, this rejection finds its roots in the copenhagist philosophy which involves the acceptance of irrational premises as an integral part of Quantum Mechanics, which in turn seems to make it easier for the promoters to more readily accept other irrational explanations to rationalize every observation that does not logically fit accepted theories, which seems to satisfy them sufficiently for them to consider searching for other explanations a waste of time.
The causalist philosophy, on the other hand, involves refusing to accept irrational premises, and searching for underlying reasons to explain the precision of Quantum Mechanics, a process, the ultimate outcome of which, should logically be a clear electromagnetic mechanics of fundamental particles.
However, the copenhagist generalized indifferent attitude towards causality has apparently succeeded in stopping causality based fundamental theoretical research dead in its tracks for the past 50 years, which would explain their lack of interest for de Broglie’s work.
Yet in his last book, he actually summarizes a very interesting hypothesis, published as far back as 1932, allowing photons to be directly reconciled with Maxwell's theory. It was presently explored by the major physicists of the period, but not completely, as we will soon see.
No doubt considering certain postulates as final, following the recent total heavy handed victory of the Copenhagen school of thought at the 5th Solvey Congress, combined with the recent general adoption of Special Relativity and General Relativity, models that by nature close the door to any improvement, it seems that the most promising potential approach was apparently not even considered, not even by de Broglie himself apparently; at least, I found no trace whatsoever of it in the literature.
The same neglect also occurred regarding an important discovery by Abraham and Kaufmann pertaining to the insensitivity of quantities of motion to transversal interaction, a question that we will also reexamine in this book.
All past physical theories have allowed us to infer conclusions not immediately obvious from previously collected physical evidence. Many of these conclusions have subsequently been confirmed, which increased our pool of accumulated verified data. Such theories however, could initially be elaborated only from inferences made from patterns observed in the physical data available at the moment of their elaboration.
The least action principle, for example, was inferred in just such a manner from the analysis of data collected at that moment, and so was the 2nd Principle of Thermodynamics, the inverse square law of Coulomb interaction, and so on. Successive theories were inferred based on the evolving set of these principles and many others.
But these theories could reach no further than was allowed by the degree of validity and precision of the set of inferences on which they were based. This is why over the course of history, a succession of theories came into being, each aiming at better explaining observed phenomena.
A definite telltale that a theory had reached its predictive limits always was a subsequent extended period of time that went by without major breakthroughs while new data unexplainable by current theories accumulated.
In this light, isn’t it remarkable that no major fundamental breakthroughs has occurred since Quantum Chromodynamics was elaborated in the 1960’s, a theory that remains shaky at best, despite the noticeable headway it momentarily allowed? Even the Standard Model is put in doubt by many!
Hasn’t time come to re-infer from the ground up some new more precise theory based the current more complete and precise pool of experimental evidence?
Out of curiosity, why not reexamine this hypothesis of de Broglie on photons, but this time around, without letting any preconceived idea obstruct our view, and observe the extraordinary scenery that unfolds as an outcome of his conclusions?
In light of his inspired intuition regarding the internal structure of photons, and without putting in question the wonderful progress accomplished in the exploration of how the various complex states of matter can be explained from what we know of elementary particles, we will dive here in a diametrically opposite direction, that is, in the direction of the ultimate foundations, starting from the same starting point, that is, the pool of knowledge that we have now gathered regarding these mysterious elementary particles.
As a foundation, we will start from a very restricted proven subset, that includes only the known properties of stable scatterable elementary particles, the proven triple orthogonality of electromagnetic energy and the proven Coulomb law.
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REFERENCES · [ 1] Louis de Broglie. LA PHYSIQUE NOUVELLE ET LES QUANTA, France, Flammarion, France 1937, Second Edition 1993, with new 1973 Preface by L. de Broglie · [ 9] John C. Eccles. HOW THE SELF CONTROLS THE BRAIN , Springer Verlag, Berlin-Heidelberg-New York, 1994. · [10] André Michaud. Our Bankrupt Elite, Canada, SRP Books, 1999. · [11] Efimov A.A., Klyushin Ya.G., Smirnov A.P.. CONGRESS-98 PROCEEDINGS, Fundamental Problems of Natural Sciences, Volume 1, St.-Petersburg, 1999. · [12] André Michaud. Theory of Discrete Attractors, Canada, SRP Books, 1999. · [13] Isaac Newton. DE LA GRAVITATION, et, DU MOUVEMENT DES CORPS, France, Gallimard, 1995. Presented and commented by François De Gandt · [15] Henri Poincaré. LA SCIENCE ET L'HYPOTHESE, France, Flammarion, 1902, Édition de 1968 · [18] Franco Selleri. LE GRAND DEBAT DE LA THÉORIE QUANTIQUE, France, Flammarion, 1994, Preface by Karl R. Popper |
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