The absurd notion of particle in physics

This is the transcript of a talk by physicist David Kaplan. The talk is on YouTube. I numbered each sentence for easy reference.

Table of Contents
Section I. Summary of sentences
Section II. The transcript
Section III. My Comments
Section IV. Questions

.............................

Section I.
Summary of sentences

Here I summarize Dr. Kaplan’s sentences the way I understood them.

Sentences from 1 to 6 redifine space as Higgs field.

Sentences 7 to 13 compare a magnetic field to the Higgs field. Magnetic field is a force field because it varies with distance from the source but Higgs field is not a force field because it is uniform (because it does not have a source). Both the magnetic field and the Higgs field are turned on.

Sentences from 14 to 20 state the effects of the Higgs field on particles. Higgs is not a force field so it has no inertial or motion-giving effect but instead it gives particles their mass. Electron is an example of a particle taking its mass from the Higgs field.

Sentences 19 and 22 introduce particles with zero mass. These must be the particles that do not interact with the Higgs field. Why? Zero mass particles always travel with the speed of light. This is prescribed by relativity. So it seems that Higgs field is also enforcing the speed limit for Einstein.

Sentences 23 to 26 explain that without the Higgs field there is no matter.

Sentences 27 to 30 state that particles do not exist. In particle physics “particle” is just another name for the word “wave”. We can substitute the word “wave” whenever physicists use the word “particle”.

Sentences 31 to 35 state that all electrons are same only their motion can differ.

Sentences 36 to 37 state that there must be an associated particle for any field. (Where are these fields?)

Sentences 38 to 42 state explicitly that there are no particles but only waves. Particles are waves. And waves are not fundamental but the field is.

Sentences from 43 to 48 state that Higgs field gives mass to the particles of the Standard Model. (That's a curious statement because there are no particles in the Standard Model but only waves and fields.)

Sentences 49 to 51 state that Higgs field is the fifth force of nature (contradicting what he said on #15.)

Sentences 52 to 54 state that Higgs particle explained the weakness of the weak force.

###

Section II.
The transcript

(Read the transcript or jump to my comments.)

1. I thought I would explain the Higgs without writing anything down.

2. Much easier for me.

3. There are basically three things you need to know to understand rudimentarily what the Higgs is.

4. The first thing, is that the Higgs, there is a Higgs field, that's the most important thing.

5. The Higgs field is turned on in our universe.

6. Higgs is turned on.

7. And a field you experience before in a physical way which is the magnetic field of two magnets.

8. Let's say you have two magnets and let's say that the north ends are facing each other and you try to push them together and you feel the repulsion or you put one north, one south and you feel the attraction.

9. You can feel it even though they are not touching each other.

10. The simplest description of that is that there is a magnetic field around the magnets and they are being manipulated as you get closer and farther and because of that it changes the energy and create forces.

11. That's a non-uniform field because it is strong near the magnet and weak far away from it.

12. But it's the electromagnetic field in a special way turned on.

13. And it's turned on around this magnet because the magnet is a source of that field.

14. What makes sense in the current theory of matter is that there is a Higgs field or something like it some kind of field that's turned on everywhere in space and this field everywhere in space has an effect on particles.

15. And the effect it has is not a force because it's not stronger in some place and weaker in others, it's uniform everywhere.

16. So which way it will force it?

17. There is no force.

18. But it has an even more dramatic effect which is it gives a mass to fundamental particles, namely, just the effect on the electron as it passes through this Higgs field, that is, it acts as if it has mass; it effectively has mass.

19. That's the best description electron, particle with mass.

20. And the fact that it has mass means it can slow down and get trapped in an atom.

21. Amazingly enough, there are particles... particles can have zero mass and the photon, the particle of light, is a particle with zero mass, as far as we can tell.

22. And zero mass particles always travel at the speed of light according to relativity.

23. So, the fact that the electron is in a Higgs field and gets its mass due to that and slows down means that it can be trapped in atoms and because it can be trapped in atoms then matter can form, and atoms can form, molecules can form which require electron bounce states, solid objects can form in the universe as we know it.

24. Otherwise there is no matter as we know it.

25. There are other ways things get mass but the electron mass is crucial for the structure of matter that we see.

26. That's the first thing.

27. The second thing you need to know is that particles in the sort of deepest description are not fundamental.

28. An individual particle is not a fundamental object.

29. [An individual particle] is a vibration, if you will, or a wave, of a field.

30. So in fact all particles are from fields.

31. So the electron itself, that thing that lives in an atom, is an excitation, or a wave, in the electron field.

32. And this is one of the reasons why all electrons are exactly the same.

33. They have exactly the same mass, exactly the same spin, exactly the same electric charge, exactly, every electron exactly the same.

34. The difference is how fast it is moving.

35. And this can be in any direction too.

36. But all vibrations are of the same field.

37. So for every particle there is an associated field that lives throughout space.

38. It's like saying there is a lake and you throw pebble in the lake and the ripple goes across the surface of the lake.

39. The ripple contains energy and it moves from one place to another but the ripple is not fundamental; the lake itself is fundamental.

40. That lake means you can have waves going across it.

41. So the particles, which we think fundamental particles actually they are the waves and it is the field that is fundamental, in our best description of these things.

42. That's the case.

43. Take the Higgs.

44. The Higgs field, if there is a Higgs field or some kind of field has this effect, that gives mass to the electron, then the Higgs field predicts the existence of the Higgs particle, and there should be a Higgs particle.

45. It doesn't necessarily predict what the mass of that particle is, but it predicts its existence.

46. So, seeing a Higgs particle tells us what is the field, the information about the field that is having this effect on all matter.

47. We can study detailed properties of the particle and that tells us the detailed properties of the field itself.

48. And how it interacts with rest of the fields in the Standard Model of the particle physics which is basically a list of all known fundamental particles and the interactions that they have which are basically all of the forces in nature.

49. The Higgs particle and field together itself actually represent the fifth force of nature.

50. It's like a mass force.

51. You can exchange Higgs particle and that would be like two particles interacting through this new force which is extraordinarily weak in energies we normally live at but lives just fine at high energies.

52. The third important thing is that the Higgs particle is predicted in mid-60s really in 1967 when Steve Weinberg put it in a context of other speculative fields and particles that we knew about and all together it became the Standard Model.

53. It became the way particles of the Standard Model get mass.

54. It explained the weakness of the weak force and it took Sheldon Glashow's model that unified two forces of the model, so this is really confirmation that model.

###

Section III.

My comments on Dr. Kaplan’s statements

References are to the numbered sentences on Section II.

The main topic of Dr. Kaplan’s talk is the Higgs field but since Higgs field is defined as the space itself (#5) and space is defined as the agent that gave mass to matter, Dr. Kaplan necessarily talks about particles and matter, our main interest. Indeed, our aim is to understand physicists’ definition of particle (if such an understanding is possible).

Dr. Kaplan says that there are three things we need to know to understand the Higgs field.

The first is that Higgs is a field. (Is it surprising that something which is called a “field” is a field?) A field is a grid and each point of the grid has a number associated with it. So, a field is a mathematical construct.

#5 defines the Higgs field as universal.

#5. The Higgs field is turned on in our universe.

This means that Higgs field is space. It can also be seen as the new ether. But unlike the old ether, Higgs field interacts with stuff that move in it.

How does Dr. Kaplan know that Higgs field is universal? He doesn’t. Remember that the experiments are limited to electricity and magnetism and the experimental environment is an artificial environment of extremely high energies that do not exist in the everyday world. There is no evidence that the results of these collider conditions exist in everyday world. (See Question 17.)

Also, Dr. Kaplan does not know and can never know the totality of existence.

Prof. Kaplan then uses the example of a magnetic field to give us an idea what a field is. We know how magnets attract and repel each other. Magnets have polarity.

#9. You can feel [the magnetic field] even though they are not touching each other.

#11. [Magnetic field] is a non-uniform field because it is strong near the magnet and weak far away from it.

#12. The electromagnetic field, in a special way, is turned on.

It’s not clear what he means by “turned on.” Can Higgs field be turned on and off?

#13. And it’s turned on around this magnet because the magnet is a source of that field.

Next he explains that in analogy to this magnetic field there is another field which is turned on everywhere in the universe, the Higgs field.

He claims that matter is created by the Higgs field.

This is another meaningless sentence because we don’t know what he means by “matter.” He never defined it. Does matter refer to the individual units that used to be called “atoms”? It’s not easy to define matter and physicists never do. And using such a fundamental concept without definition leads to meaningless sentences and to absurd conclusions.

#14. [...] Higgs field [is] turned on everywhere in space and this field everywhere in space has an effect on particles.

Let’s pay special attention anytime Dr. Kaplan mentions the word “particle”. We want to understand the meaning he ascribes to this word in that particular context.

What does Dr. Kaplan mean when he writes that Higgs field “has an effect on particles”? Do you imagine that he is talking about particles as spherical balls? No. He defines in #29 that particles are waves. So, he is just calling waves particles. Let’s be clear about this. He created a nickname for the word “wave” and this nickname is “particle”. What exists as a physical entity is a wave not particle. He just defined “particle” to be a synonym for “wave.” So, anytime he writes a “particle” we should understand a “wave”. Therefore, #14 can be written as “Higgs field has an effect on waves.” But even this does not make sense because the field and the wave are not different entities.

Dr. Kaplan wants us to believe that there are particles and there are waves. He wants us to believe that particles and waves exist as two independent entities and both are observed. This is not true. Particles exists only as a label which is nothing more than a placeholder for the word “wave”. Physicists like to represent these waves as spherical balls. Are there waves that are shaped like spherical balls? No. You would never see a wave represented as a wave but always as a spherical ball. This is so silly. This must be an inside joke among physicists that we as laymen are not privy to. Or, Dr. Kaplan is drowning in an ocean of rhetorical sophistry of his own creation.

#15 says that the effect that Higgs field has on particles “is not a force”. Let’s keep this in mind because in sentences #49 and #50 he will define Higgs field as “the fifth force of nature.” This is a contradiction. The Higgs field can be defined either as a force or not a force. It cannot be defined as force and not force at the same time. But physicists do not respect contradictions, in other words, contradictions are legal in physics. Physicists are not bound by the Aristotelian logic. In physics something can be both itsef and not-itself at the same time.

#15. And the effect it has is not a force because it’s not stronger in some place and weaker in others, it’s uniform everywhere.

#49. The Higgs particle and field together itself actually represent the fifth force of nature.

#50. It's like a mass force.

The Higgs field has another effect on the particle, it gives it [inertial] mass. So substituting wave for particle again we may say that “Higgs gives waves on the field their mass”. Do you think waves have mass?

I may understand waves with mass, after all, they have energy but what I’m really questioning is why are physicists insisting on calling waves “particles”?

#18. But it has an even more dramatic effect which is it gives a mass to fundamental particles, namely, just the effect on the electron as it passes through this Higgs field, that is, it acts as if it has mass; it effectively has mass.

This is another standard rhetorical device used routinely by physicists. You first make a claim “as if” then in the following sentence you make it effective. The result is sophistry.

#19. That’s the best description of electron, particle with mass.

So, not “as if” but electron is really a particle with mass.

Here Dr. Kaplan again uses the word “particle”. Which definition of particle is he using? He may be using “particle” with its old uncorrupted definition of “spherical ball.” If so, this sentence is a worthless piece of sophistry because we know that in sentences #29 and #41 he denies the existence of particles as spherical balls. So after substituting wave for particle #19 simply becomes “electron is a wave with mass.”

#20. The fact that [electron] has mass means it can slow down and get trapped in an atom.

Here Dr. Kaplan is using the old and deprecated model of the atom as a spherical ball. He is describing a fairy tale world. In reality, atom is not a spherical ball. Again substituting wave for particle we get “the unit of wave has mass and it can slow down and get trapped in another type of wave we labeled an atom.” (The electron which is defined as the unit of charge is really the unit of charged waves.)

#21 introduces particles without mass. So, making our usual substitution of wave to particle, #21 becomes “there are waves that do not have mass. And photon is such a wave.”

#22 tells us that waves without mass travel always at the speed of light according to general relativity.

In #23 Dr. Kaplan again reverts to atoms-as-spherical-balls model and makes electron which is a wave get trapped in atoms. With #23 he effectively admits that he is a liar because if electron is a spherical ball, as he assumes here, it cannot be a wave.

#24 claims that without Higgs field there would not be matter. I always find it interesting that physicists make observations by colliding two electrical beams then they generalize their observations to the entire universe, that is, they define the universe to be made of electric beam particles. But this reasoning is faulty. Let me explain with an analogy. Let's create two beams of water. Suppose that I accelerated water beams to high speeds so that as the result of the collision of the two beams, the constituent atoms “scattered” and registered on my sensors as atoms of Hydrogen and Oxygen. This way I learned that water is made of Hydrogen and Oxygen atoms. Is it a good scientific practice to conclude from my water experiment that all matter in the universe is made of Hydrogen and Oxygen? No. All I can conclude scientifically is that water beams I used in the experiment are made of Hydrogen and Oxygen. Same for physicists. They can only conclude that their beams are made of some particles. They cannot generalize from the collision of electric beams to matter in general.

#27 is very important because now Mr. Kaplan will confess again that he has been lying about his usage of the words “particle” and “fundamental”.

#27 ... particles are not fundamental.

This is a meaningless sentence. He assumes in #29 and #41 that particles do not exist. There are only fields and waves. If particles do not exist what does it mean to say that they are not fundamental. They cannot be fundamental or not fundamental. They don’t exist.

#28 An individual particle is not a fundamental object.

Not only a particle is not fundamental but it is not an object either because a particle is just another name for wave as he states in #29 and #41.

#29 [A particle] is a vibration, or a wave, of a field.

Dr. Kaplan is using the word “or” to connect “vibration” ana “wave.” This means that he considers vibration and wave to be interchangeable. But this is not true. Waves may be vibration, but not all vibrations are waves. Simple harmonic motion of a wave on a string is vibration but the ball is not a wave. Is Dr. Kaplan confusing the sinusoidal wave used to describe the up and down motion of the ball with the ball itself? This is a textbook example of confusing the map with the territory.

Can a particle defined as a spherical ball be a wave at the same time? No. There are no particles. There are only waves. Dr. Kaplan tries to imply that there are two distinct things, one is a particle and the other is a wave. No. There is only wave. Wave is not caused by a particle. Or a particle is not acting like a wave. As in the example of waves on a lake (#38-#41), there are only waves and he calls waves particles. More correctly, up to here, he has been calling waves particles but now he is saying that he was lying. There are no particles. There are only waves.

#30 All particles are from fields.

This sentence is an insult to our intelligence. Let me remind Dr. Kaplan that he admitted in #29 that there are no particles and that particle is his nickname for wave, therefore if he is still talking about particles he must be kidding us or fooling himself.

We can always replace his particle with wave. Then #30 becomes “all waves are from fields.” And this makes perfect sense. Waves are properties of field but particles are not. Or more correctly, there are no fields distinct from waves. The field is the wave.

Sentence #31 specifically defines the electron as a wave.

#31. So the electron itself, that thing that lives in an atom, is an excitation, or a wave, in the electron field.

#32 says that because an electron “is an excitation or wave in the electron field” (#31) “all electrons are exactly the same.” This is not surprising. The electron is defined as the unit charge. So, by definition all electrons must be the same. Imagine stating, as a great revelation, that “all meter sticks are 1 meter long.” Of course. Meter is defined as a unit. By definition they are all the same.

In #37 he is still talking about particles.

#37. So for every particle there is an associated field that lives throughout space.

Dr. Kaplan continues to insult our intelligence by trying to incorporate the concept of particle into his theory of fields and waves. Fields and waves do not need particles.

Dr. Kaplan admitted in #29 and #41 that there are no particles. What he calls particle is just a wave. He takes great pride in calling waves particles. Why?

Again, making our usual substitution, #37 becomes “for every wave there is an associated field that lives throughout space.” (How do these field interect in the wild?)

He is saying that each field has its own characteristic wave. Like its own characteristic amplitude, characteristic frequency and so on? See Question 15.

#38 introduces waves in the lake analogy to cement the fact that particles do not exist in nature.

#38. It's like saying there is a lake and you throw pebble in the lake and the ripple goes across the surface of the lake.

#41 leaves no room for doubt: “Particles are waves”

#41. So the particles, which we think fundamental particles actually they are the waves and it is the field that is fundamental, in our best description of these things.

Dr. Kaplan admits once again that there are no particles and classifies non-existent particles as not fundamental.

Making the substitution, #41 becomes: “Waves are waves.”

So all his insistence on particles was for this tautology: waves are waves. And consequently, “waves are not fundamental but waves are fundamental.”

Dr. Kaplan is still trying to use all kinds of rhetorical sophistry in order not to give up the sacred concept of particle.

He tries to confuse us about fundamentality issue which he introduces as red herring. But we see through his sophistry and lies.

In #44 Dr. Kaplan still tries to mount particles into fields and this time he says that Higgs field predicts a Higgs particle.

Substituting wave for particle: “Higgs field predicts a Higgs wave.”

Again this makes sense. But “Higgs field predicts a Higgs particle” does not make sense. There are not particles in the Standard Model of Particle Physics invented by physicists.

#49: The Higgs particle and field together itself actually represent the fifth force of nature.

#50 It’s like mass force.

But in #15 he stated that Higgs field was not a force.

#15 And the effect [the Higgs field] has is not a force because it's not stronger in some place and weaker in others, it's uniform everywhere.

As mentioned above, in academic physics contradictions are legal. Higgs field can be a force and not force at the same time. This contradiction can be reconciled by old scholastic technique of rhetorical sophistry and doubletalk.

Section IV
Conclusion

Do we have a better understanding of the definition of a particle in physics? Yes. We now know that experimental data reveal no particles but because experiments are done by “particle” physicists they must interpret data as particles. So they inject the word “particle” into their theories and models superficially by rhetorical sophistry as we have seen done skillfully by Dr. Kaplan.

***

Of course, Dr. Kaplan would vehemently deny our accusations that he is using doubletalk to save the sacred doctrine of atomic materialism. He will say that this is simply a popular talk aimed at laymen and it should not be taken seriously. He would add that if I really wanted to know Higgs or what fields and particles are I should study Quantum Mechanics for 25 years and earn my physics degree.

But my argument has nothing to do with quantum mechanics or any other physics theory. My argument is about physics’ initial assumptions, axioms and doctrines. Axioms are independent of mechanics, theories and models. They are fundamental assumptions and they are valid for the entire physics.

The most fundamental doctrine of physics is the atomic materialism. Physics assume that the world is made of indivisible “particles”. Yes. Particles as in spherical ball particles. This doctrine cannot be questioned or changed or modified. A physicist will always fit all experimental data into the doctrine of atomic materialism, by faking it if necessary, as done here by Dr. Kaplan.

We recognize this method of saving the doctrine blindly against all evidence to save the doctrine. This was famously done by scholastic doctors of philosophy practicing for millenia up to the time of Galileo of the so-called scientific revolution. But we see that, the Doctors of Philosophy never changed their scholastic habits, they just changed their name and started to call themselves “physicists”. That’s why I call the academic physicists the neo-scholastics.

This is the fundamental dilemma of physics: How to explain a world without particles with particles. And Dr. Kaplan showed us how this is done easily by rhetorical sophistry and doubletalk and by semantic acrobacy.

Section IV Questions

1. What is space?

2. What is field?

3. What is mass?

4. What is the reason why some particles do not interact with the Higgs field and remain without mass (the so called zero mass particles)?

5. What is matter?

6. Is the Higgs field the new ether? It permeates the entire space, therefore it is space, and things move in it. This sounds like ether. But ether had zero resistence, the Higgs field interacts with “particles” that move in it and gives inertial mass to them.

7. What does it mean to say that Higgs field is “turned on?”

8. How does Dr. Kaplan know that the Higgs field is universal? He doesn’t. But in physics it is standard practice to generalize local experiments to the universe as a whole without justification.

9. How come the Higgs field alters the particle by giving mass to it but the newly created massive particle does not alter the Higgs field? This is another evidence for the idea that Higgs field is space itself because without the Higgs field nothing will have mass.

10. Can the Higgs field be turned on and off? If so, under what conditions it is turned on and off? It seems to me that, it cannot be turned off because it does not have a source (see #15).

11. How do we distinguish the Higgs field from space?

12. What kind of mass the Higgs field give the particle? Inertial or gravitational? Or is it a new kind of mass, maybe “electromagnetic mass”? “Wave mass”?

13. Can we separate the wave from the field? (#38-#42) Can there be waves without field? This is an old question. In the 19. century physicists thought that waves needed a medium, such as the ether to exist.

14. Is there an electron field in the atom? But atom is not a spherical ball. Atom must also be a wave. What does it mean to say that the electron is a wave that lives inside another wave we call atom?

15. What is a characteristic wave? Amplitude, wavelength and frequency defines a wave. Maybe we obtain a characteristic wave by keeping some or all of these properties constant? So the field A will always have a characteristic wave where amplitude=a, wavelength=a’ and frequency=a’’’. But the field B will have a characteristic wave of amplitude=b, wavelength=b’ and frequency=b’’’. And so on, for every field.

16. Does the extreme environment in colliders artificially created by physicists exist in the everyday world? How do physicists justify this hidden assumption? The hidden assumption is that particles created under extreme and artificial environment of colliders also make up the everyday world objects. One objection to this assumption may be the exceedingly short lifetimes of fundamental particles such as quarks. Were matter made of quarks, object we observe in the everyday world would be extremely volatile and unstable. But they are not. This contradiction usually is explained away as “single quarks may be short-lived but groups of quarks including gluons are stable”. This sounds like an hoc explanation.

###

Notes:

—David Kaplan's video is here.

Science is the magic that actually works

What is the meaning of this sentence?

Science is the magic that actually works.

***

I guess physicists do not realize that there is a one-to-one correspondence between a sentence and an equation. We know this from George Boole's work.

First of all, an equation is an equality of ratios stated with standard units. A true equality of ratios, on the other hand, is always stated with relative units. But in physics, most equations that look like an equality of ratios are not equality of ratios. Physicists routinely divide an equation into two parts by assigning a name to each part thus one side of the equation becomes just a label or a placeholder. The equation had been divided into two definitions (but still connected by the equality sign). Physicists still read these definitions as equations. The reason for this confusion is that in physics the fundamental symbol that makes the equation, the equality sign, is a loaded symbol. It can be used to make a definition, a proportionality, an equation and also an identity.

When a physicist repeats the official physics propaganda that "you should learn the equations because the equations are precise, sentences are not," we can only laugh at his naiveté. How can physics equations be precise when it is created by using the most loaded symbol in physics? But this is the standard rhetorical device physicists use to stave off any non-physicists who question their sacred doctrine. I showed elsewhere that “learning more physics” is not necessary to question the doctrine, because doctrine comes before physics.

We can easily convert any equation into the form of a sentence or convert a sentence into the form of an equation. This is no different than the relationship between geometry and algebra. The same idea can be expressed algebraically or geometrically.

What is fundamental is the ratio and the equalities of ratios. Equation is not fundamental and it is not precise; the equation is the Latin of physics.

***

I’ve known John Baez since Usenet days. He was the moderator of the newsgroup sci.physics.research. He was always ready to help with physics questions and he had a talent to explain even the most difficult concepts in simple language. I learned a lot physics from him and sci.physics.research. But today I intend to analyze this sentence of his:

Science is the magic that actually works.    

I want to understand if this sentence has a meaning and if so what it is. I also like to practice my claim that any sentence can be expressed as an equation.

So let

S = Science
M = Magic
M' = Magic that works

Obviously M and M' are not synonyms or equivalent. They are different things. Magic refers to something impossible that a magician fools you into believing that he made the impossible happen. The magician does this by fooling the observer. Therefore, by definition, magic means that the impossible did not happen but faked. Magic that works is not magic. In fact, “magic that works” simply means “magic that is not magic.” But a thing cannot be itself and not be itself at the same time. (But in physics things can be and not be at the same time, as we will see below.)

Symbolically this sentence can be expressed as

S = M’       (1)

This statement does not contain the symbol M, so Dr. Baez’s statement is not about magic at all.

We say that equation (1) is independent of M.

We note that M is not M'

M /= M'

This sentence simply attempts to define the word “science” with a new definition of magic. But it does not succeed because “magic that works” is not “magic”. The sentence ends up defining “magic” as “not magic.”

This form of definition is common in physics.

Also, there are more layers of hidden definitions in this sentence. When Dr. Baez says “science” he means "physics." And he reduces physics to equations. His sentence can be written as, “Physics equations are magic that actually works.”

Initially, he sets us up by saying that the symbols of an equation *seem* magical to a child and then with a sleight of hand he drops the word "seem" so that the sentence becomes "magic that works."

But this is not even true. There is nothing magical in physics equations. In fact a physics equation is the exact opposite of magic because all terms in an equation must be either actual numbers or must be placeholders for numbers. And those numbers must be properties of actual quantities existing in nature.

What may have looked like magic to a child may have been the abracadabra movement of symbols that physicist like to call "derivation." So, just by moving around symbols ceremoniously physicists claim to arrive at deep truths. In fact, derivation is nothing more than putting together the equations physicists have separated previously. We mentioned that physicists split equations again and again to create new definitions. This is the modern version of the old scholastic method of “splitting hairs.” Derivation is the reverse of this process, that is, the combining of previously split equations.

But the physics derivation is all pretend and nothing else. Something known is derived from other things that are known but were hidden by previous manipulations. By algebraic substitutions nothing new can be discovered.

There is nothing magical in derivation either. It is done by using the laws of algebra.

Science was born as an antidote to magic and it is still the opposite of magic. And science will never be "magic that works" because magic that works is not magic. The way a miracle that repeats is not a miracle but a natural phenomenon. So the sentence “a natural phenomenon is a miracle that repeats” can be a meaningful sentence to a physicist. Because it is of the same form as Dr. Baez’s sentence.

***

Why is this important? Why not accept this sentence as a bon mot and enjoy its ambiguity? Why take it so literally?

The reason is that physicists use this sentence form to define fundamental concepts of physics. For instance, they use it to define the concept of particle, one of the most fundamental concepts in physics. For instance, physicists can say something like "a particle is a wave." The form is the same.

P = Particle
W = Wave

P = W

We see that this is not an equation but a definition.

But particles do not exist in modern collider experiments. Only fields and waves exist. So the sentence "particle is a wave" is not even a definition, it is making two words synonyms. In this case the word "is" makes "particle" and "wave" synonyms. Wave has physical existence but particle does not. So, "particle" is defined as placeholder for the word "wave".

Once again we see that the equation is the Latin of physics. Physicists use it to hide information and as a rhetorical device to fit data into the doctrine.

Notes:

--- The sentence occurs in The Math That Takes Newton Into the Quantum World:

But later, when I realized that by fiddling around with equations I could learn about the universe, I was hooked. The mysterious symbols seemed like magic spells. And in a way, they are. Science is the magic that actually works.

--- The equation: The loaded balance of physics

--- Wikipedia entry for George Boole

--- John Baez's blog.

Newton's Inertial motion hoax

The death of Newton's absurd assumption of inertial motion on a straight line:

To formulate [the principle of inertial motion] required a remarkable detachment from the world of experience, for such a motion is nowhere observed, ever, uniform motion in a straight line without any force acting upon the body.

It requires one to envisage a perfectly empty universe, with one sole object moving through space. It would then perform this inertial motion in a straight line. No-one could tell this because there would be no ruler and clock, and if there were, then the motion would no longer be in a straight line, because gravity would make it curve.

I dedicate this quote to all the Newtonian physics teachers still fanatically teaching this absurd notion of inertial motion on a straight line as a law of nature.

Notes:

--- The quote is from Nick Kollerstrom, Isaac Newton: Science's Greatest Fraud, p.70)

Is god a topologist?

Assuming that someone designed the living creatures and calling that someone “god”, we ask if he is a topologist? We don't mean to imply that god was a he; this is the result of the sexist nature of the English language forcing us to choose a gender when we refer to somebody. In my native tongue of Turkish, for instance, we don't need to specify a gender for god unless we want to.

Let's forget about this loaded word "god" and call the designer of living beings “the designer.” (Let's agree to call this designer with male qualifiers of the English language for no other reason than convenience.)

We don't know if there is one designer or many designers. Let’s assume a single designer.

We don't know if the designer is still actively designing. We observe that nature constantly makes new design decisions but these may be automatic decisions not involving the original designer. It may be that the original designer designed the system and put it in motion and now he is watching from a distance and enjoying his system work flawlessly. Humans also create such self-sufficient --or adaptive-- systems that survive by making decisions to adapt to new conditions. We call it artificial intelligence. The original designer may be the ultimate master of artificial intelligence systems.

But here we are not interested in the workings of the whole system but in the original designs of the original designer because we want to point out a limitation in his designing process. It looks like he is not totally free to design any form he wishes to design but he must obey an important constraint. Let me try to explain.

In topology a mug and a doughnut are the same object because they transform into each other smoothly. When we look at the two genders, man and women, we see the same topological idea at work. Women have functional breasts and nipples. Men too have nipples but they are not functional. Our designer did not say, or could not say, "men don't need breasts and nipples because they don't nurse babies, so let me make men without nipples." No. He makes men's breasts as small as possible but still leaves the nipples. In men nipples are decorative.

Maybe not decorative; they are vestigial and useless.

But calling them vestigial makes a hidden assumption which may not be true. The assumption is that the non-functional design element was once functional but later lost its function and it “evolved” to be vestigial.

By using the same reasoning, people observe the vestigial tail bone coccyx in human vertebrae and conclude that humans once had a tail. I disagree. The coccyx, just like the male nipples, is the result of the topological design constraint that we are talking about.

As if the designer designed initially the most general blueprint for living organisms but he can make no change in the blueprint. He cannot delete (or add) any new specifications; he cannot get rid of the elements he is not using in an organism. So, he still must keep the nipples but he can reduce the size of the breasts. The same with the tail. The designer doesn’t want tails in humans but he cannot design a prototype without a tail because the tail element is in the original specifications, but he can make it as small as possible. These non-functional design elements exist because they are in the original specifications, not because they are vestigial.

Same with the reproductive organs of males and females. They are exactly like the mug and the doughnut, they can be transformed into each other smoothly.

Same with skeletons of different species. A bird skeleton can be transformed into human skeleton smoothly, all elements are there but in different proportions.

So we can speculate that the original designer of living things was a topologist. There are enough clues.

Notes:

— About human tail Coccyx: Caudal vertebrae

--- "A bird skeleton can be transformed into human skeleton smoothly..." I'm not actually sure this is true exactly but human and bird skeletons look awfully similar. (Image source)

Skeletons of a man and a bird drawn to the same scale.
From The Strand Magazine published 1897.

--- Women have functional breasts and nipples. Men too have nipples but they are not functional. Why is it that the god or the designer did not or could not remove the useless male nipples? Did he not want to? Or was it impossible for him to remove them?
--- In this article we are supposing that there was a designer. This may not be the case.

Questions to a cosmologist

Edwin Hubble observed the motions of 24 galaxies. You extrapolated from the motions of 24 galaxies to the universe as a whole. Do you think these 24 galaxies are representative of the universe as a whole?

In order to generalize to the universe as a whole your sample must be representative. But your sample is not representative.

So you make the hidden assumptions that the universe is made of galaxies only and galaxies in the observable universe constitute a representative sample. These assumptions are not justified. Do you agree? If not, how do you justify these assumptions?

In order to know if your sample is representative of the whole, you need to know the whole, that is, you need to know the total number of galaxies in the universe. But you don’t know this. And you can never know it. The reason is simple. There is a part of the universe from where no light reaches us. So there is no information coming to us from that part of the universe. This means that, by definition, you don’t know, and you can never know, the universe as a close system in its totality. Being a scientist is to acknowledge this fact. Being a cosmologist is not having the honesty to admit this fact. Do you agree?

If it is true that no information is coming from a part of the universe, and this is true, then how can you claim that Big Bang was the beginning of the universe as a whole, everything that exists?

So, you observed 24 galaxies, you defined those 24 galaxies to be a representative sample, then you extrapolated linearly to 14 billion years. And you want me to believe that this absurd chain of reasoning is good science.

Here’s a good analogy of your absurd chain of reasoning: Assume that you took 24 measurements of temperature in New York’s Central Park. It was 10 am and temperature was rising. You then extrapolated linearly to 24 hours and you concluded that in 24 hours Central Park will reach temperatures hotter than the center of the sun. Or you extrapolate linearly backwards and conclude that 24 hours ago Central Park was as cold as South Pole.

You see that by extrapolating linearly from small data you can arrive at absurd conclusions. People will laugh at your predictions of temperature at Central Park because your conclusions will be disproved quickly. But when you make a ridiculous linear extrapolation from 24 galaxies to 14 billion years ago no one can confirm or disprove your absurd conclusions.

The temperature does not rise and fall linearly. It varies as a sine wave. But you assume that the most complicated system that exists, the universe as a whole, varies linearly to conform to your linear extrapolation to 14 billion years.

You need to know the cycle of the whole to extrapolate but you don’t know the whole. So what do you do? You assume the whole and then you claim to know the whole. This is called circular reasoning. No new knowledge is obtain from circular reasoning.

As a cosmologist, you are guilty of circular reasoning, anthropocentric reasoning and silly extrapolation and then you claim that cosmology is science.

The Great Cosmological Hoax

I’m reading Mapping the Heavens by Priyamvada Natarajan. It’s a wonderful book full of useful information but unfortunately its main premise is faulty. Ms. Natarajan believes in what I call the Great Cosmological Hoax and repeats it and glorifies it in her book. As I explain in the following article, this hoax is about cosmos building. The words “cosmos” and “universe” are not synonyms. The cosmological hoax is about exploiting the confusion arising from conflating cosmos and the universe.

Modern cosmology is a corruption of astronomy and physics. Cosmology uses and abuses data collected by astronomers by applying this data to the fairy tale creation myths invented by academic physicists.

No one can know the universe in its totality. Anyone who claims to know the universe in its totality is either a prophet enjoying privileged communication with gods or a charlatan or an old fashioned shaman.

***

Mapping the Heavens, From the Preface (p.ix)

1. Our map of the cosmos has altered dramatically in the past hundred years.

2. In 1914, our own galaxy, the Milky Way, constituted the entire universe—alone, stagnant, and small.

3. Cosmological research still relied fundamentally on classical conceptions of gravity developed in the seventeenth century.

4. Modern physics and the triumphs of general relativity have shifted humanity’s entire comprehension of space and time.

5. Now we see the universe as a dynamic place, expanding at an accelerating rate, whose principal mysterious constituents, dark matter and dark energy, are unseen.

6. The remainder, all the elements in the periodic table, the matter that constitutes stars and us, contributes a mere 4 percent of the total inventory of the universe.

7. We have confirmed the existence of planets orbiting other stars.

8. We question the existence of other universes.

9. This is remarkable scientific progress.

***

From the above we understand that Ms. Natarajan uses the words “cosmos” and “universe” as synonyms and she exploits the oldest cosmological wordplay, namely, conflating universe as a whole and the cosmos which is nothing more than a truncation of the whole.

Let’s look in more detail at what Ms. Natarajan wrote in the first page of the book.

She likes the word cosmos but she uses it without a clear and unique definition. A field study becomes a science when the practitioners agree on a clear definition of what they study. For instance, the cell is the fundamental unit of study of biology and it is well defined.

Cosmologists study an entity called “cosmos” but they never defined it uniquely and clearly.

When Ms. Natarajan writes “our map of the cosmos has altered dramatically in the past hundred years,” here the word cosmos can mean “the universe as a whole” or “the observable universe” or a closed system defined by cosmologists. We don’t know which and Ms. Natarajan is happy with this ambiguity.

 The word cosmos can mean the universe as a whole in one sentence and can mean part of the universe in another sentence. But it can also be a superposition of two meanings at the same time in the same sentence. This is the most important proof that cosmology is not a science because its fundamental concepts are undefined, “mysterious”, “enigmatic” and “defy a single definition.” A field where what is studied is a piece of sophistry cannot be said to be a science.

***

Ms. Natarajan writes that “in 1924 our own galaxy ... constituted the entire universe...”

No. Our own galaxy did not constitute the entire universe, some people defined our galaxy as the entire universe.

Who are these people?

They are the cosmologists, a professional priestly class who traditionally owned the subject of astronomy, cosmology and cosmogony.

Cosmologists have a problem. They are paid to discover the deepest secrets of the universe as a whole but they are aware that they do not know the universe as a whole and they never will. So what do they do? They define a cosmos and then they define this cosmos as the entire universe. This is the oldest trick in the business of cosmology. We may call this trick the Cosmological Hoax.

The Cosmological Hoax

The universe as a whole is only as complicated as can be known by the current tools of cosmologists. This knowable closed system is called a cosmos.

Corollary: The boundary of the universe as a whole is always the same as the boundary of the cosmos. Therefore cosmos is the the universe as a whole.

Ms. Natarajan too is using the Cosmological Hoax. But she does not say explicitly, “let me define a cosmos and then let me define my cosmos as the entire universe.” No. She does this secretly and implicitly. Since this is the oldest tradition in cosmology, no one can question her false reasoning. No cosmologist will question you for using the Cosmological Hoax.

We are not even aware that she is defining her cosmos as the universe.

As I said, Ms. Natarajan too defines her cosmos as the Totality, the Whole, the Universe as a Whole.

Let me try to explain how the Cosmological Hoax is actually applied.

First, the cosmologist must criticize her predecessors for defining a small cosmos as the entire universe. Basically, the cosmologist accuses his predecessor for applying the Cosmological Hoax. How could these cosmologists believe that our galaxy can be the entire universe?

Ms. Natarajan doesn’t say it but we call such a reasoning to be anthropocentric because you assume that the boundaries of the entire universe cannot be bigger than what is revealed by the resolution of the current observational tools of humans. Every generation of cosmologists falls into this trap of anthropocentric reasoning. But they fall into it willingly. They perpetuate it. Because this is how they turn the observed universe into the universe as a whole. This is their tradition.

More generally, this is called “cosmos building”. This is what the priestly cosmologists who owned the cosmology have been doing ever since they started to look at the sky trying to understand and explain the motions they saw.

***

Modern cosmologists, including Ms. Natarajan, use the word cosmos as a synonym for universe but cosmos has a meaning of its own, distinct from the word “universe”. It’s important to clarify this.

Cosmos means an orderly and harmonious closed system defined by the cosmologists: cosmos is a truncation of the whole. Cosmos is defined in such a way that it is known in its entirety by the current observational and analytical tools of the cosmos makers. Cosmos is not the whole. Cosmos is a truncation of the whole.

Cosmos is not the whole because as humans we cannot know the Whole and we will never know the Whole. For the simplest reason that we can never know if what we defined as the Whole is the Whole. We may have simply reached the observational limit of our tools. The next generation of telescopes with higher resolution may reveal new parts of the universe. Furthermore, the Whole cannot be known in its entirety because it has infinite details.

A cosmologist, usually a physicist, is a professional who does not have the honesty to admit that he cannot know the whole.

On the contrary, the cosmologist defines a cosmos and then defines his cosmos as the entire universe, everything that exists, the Whole, the absolute Whole, the Totality.

He does this so skillfully with rhetorical sophistry and verbal trickery that you will never notice that he is defining his small cosmos as everything that exists.

But he still does not know the whole. Because he can never know if the sample of his observations are representative sample of the Whole.

***

How big is the new cosmos defined by the modern cosmologist?

The new cosmos is as big as that can be defined by the observational and analytical tools available to this cosmologist. Remember that cosmos is defined as a closed system knowable as a whole.

Once again we notice that the modern cosmologist defined the boundaries of the universe as a whole to be the same as the boundaries of the cosmos he defined.

So, Ms. Natarajan continues the cosmological tradition and defines a cosmos and then defines her cosmos as the entire universe.

But, it may be unfair to blame Ms. Natarajan for cosmos building as we’ve been explaining. Because she is not actually doing this. The cosmos as the universe as a whole had been created and formalized and registered in textbooks and made official by beautiful NASA graphics showing the photoshop history of the universe from the Big Bang to today long before Ms. Natarajan was born. Ms. Natarajan learned this fairy tale and creation myth in school and decided to sell it to the public as science. That’s what she is doing.

Her analytical tool du jour is General Relativity and her observational limits are defined by the resolution of the modern telescopes.

But no matter how big her cosmos is, it’s still not the entire universe.

***

So, after ridiculing his predecessors for being naive for defining a small part of the universe as the universe as a whole, the cosmologist explicitly states how much bigger the universe has become as revealed by his stronger telescopes. Then before you know it, he defines this new and larger cosmos as the universe as a whole.

***

Ms. Natarajan says that the universe is expanding. How can she know if the universe as a whole is expanding since she does not, and cannot know, the universe as a whole?

This idea of expanding universe originated with Edwin Hubble’s observation of 24 galaxies. From the observation of the motions of 24 galaxies the priests of cosmology deduced that the universe as a whole was expanding. This is either a prophesy, a divine revelation or charlatanism.

We know that 24 galaxies are not a representative sample of the universe as a whole because in order to know if your sample is representative you need to know the number of galaxies in the entire universe but you don’t know the total number of galaxies in the entire universe and you never will. You don’t even know if the universe is made of galaxies only.

So extrapolating from a pathetically non-representative sample to everything that exists and then selling this reckless extrapolation as a “remarkable scientific progress” is nothing other than a hoax.

***

Choose your own adjective to describe modern cosmology: 1. An elaborate scientific hoax, 2. Divine revelation, 3. Priestly miracle, 4. Creation myth, 5. Charlatanism.

Cosmology is not science we are sure of that. Cosmology is a corruption of astronomy and physics.

Notes:

— “Modern physics and the triumphs of general relativity have shifted humanity’s entire comprehension of space and time.”

General Relativity lives in spacetime. Every prediction General Relativity makes is for spacetime. But no General Relativity experiment or observation is done in spacetime. All are done in space and time existing as separate entities.

From this observation we deduce that the fundamental “triumph” of General Relativity, the spacetime, is a preternatural concept that exists only in the physical fairy tales invented by physicists.

— “Now we see the universe as a dynamic place...”

Classical conceptions of gravity i.e., Newtonian gravity, was dynamic too. The interpretation of Hubble’s observations as the expanding universe does not require any General Relativistic ideas.

— “...contributes a mere 4 percent of the total inventory of the universe.”

Here too Ms. Natarajan claims to have priestly or prophetic knowledge about the universe as a whole. I say that her knowledge must be priestly or prophetic or a revelation from the gods because no human being  —cosmologist or not— can know the totality. But Ms. Natarajan claims to know the "total inventory of the universe" otherwise he cannot know its 4 percent. So she observes in the observable universe and projects to the universe as a whole. But if we ask Ms Natarajan, no doubt, she will be the first to admit that there is a part of the universe from where no light reaches us and therefore will always remain unknown to us. How can she claim to know the totality of the universe while at the same time admitting that she only knows a small part of the universe?

— “We have confirmed the existence of planets orbiting other stars.”

Great. This is astronomy, not cosmology. The existence of other planetary systems is deduced by using “classical conceptions of gravity developed in the 17th century” not “the triumphs of General Relativity.”

— “We question the existence of other universes.”

I have an article about absurdity of claiming the existence of other universes. This is nothing more than a rhetorical deception used by cosmologists or a play on meanings of the word universe.

If Ms. Natarajan uses the word universe in its proper sense of “universe as a whole” his claim to assert existence of other universes makes no sense. Because, surprise, surprise, “universe as a whole” means “universe as a whole.” Universe as a whole is all inclusive therefore supposed universes will be included in the universe as a whole.

As an example, suppose A is the class of living cats. This class includes all cats. Suppose B is another class of all cats. Suppose C is another class of cats. But this is absurd. Then, D = A+B+C becomes the class of all cats. Calling A, B, or C “the class of all cats” is absurd. It is more than absurd it doubletalk. It is rhetorical deception. There is only one universal class. All other universal classes are invented by professional hoaxers called cosmologists.

Physics has demoted mass 1

I will be writing a series of short comments about this article by Jim Baggott, Physics has demoted mass: modern physics has taught us that mass is not an intrinsic property.

***

What is the main thesis of this article?

It’s this:

Physicists figured that mass is not an intrinsic property of matter. But more importantly, matter does not exist.

But this article has an important problem. The author does hot define the words “matter” and “mass”. So we don’t know what he means when he uses these words.

When the author uses the word “matter” he may mean the absolute indivisible unit assumed to make up all solids. But he may also use the word “matter” colloquially to mean objects that appear as solids to us.

And indeed he uses “matter” in both senses in the article without making explicit which meaning he means. This is important because his arguments are based on exploiting this confusion.

When he uses “matter” as the absolute indivisible unit, or the indivisible “building blocks” of matter, he assumes the doctrine of atomic materialism, the fundamental and sacred doctrine of physics. This has been so since the founding father of physics, The Newton, defined nature to be made of indivisible particles.

Newton’s disciples the physicists continue to believe blindly this doctrine defined by Newton. The atomic materialism is so ingrained in physics that there are physicists who call themselves “particle” physicists. How can a physicist who calls himself a “particle” physicist question the sacred doctrine of atomic materialism?

But particle physics is not fundamental, the true fundamental research is the one that tries to answer the question “Is nature atomic?”

Is the world made of indivisible particles which make up everything around us? No physicist can ask this question.

If we do not assume atomic materialism, that is, if we do not assume a discontinuous nature, we could easily question everything physicists attributed to the concept of mass to save Newton’s authority.

Just by denying Newtonian atomic materialism and by reasoning outside of official physics tropes we easily arrived at idea that mass is a superfluous concept and it is not an intrinsic property of matter because we did not assume matter to begin with.

The author arrives at the same conclusion but he must present several old and discarded models of matter and mass first and then switch to the chemical notion of matter and mass and then switch finally to the fairy tales of the Standard Model to deny the existence of matter and mass. All this happens because he failed to define clearly what he meant by matter and mass. So he fooled us but more importantly he fooled himself.

The lack of proper definitions is a problem here too. The author and the physicists cannot decide if quarks are indivisible spherical “building blocks” of matter or just a label for “quantum field” since quarks are nothing more than oscillations of the quantum field. And quantum fields are not spherical particles.