Later on, Sonday . . . . no, ain’t drunk or drinkin’ or
gone crazy either. 11:57 ~ midnight. April 23 (doin’ assignment in Stat. Mechanics). So the thing einstein did, really, is to make
a reference frame physically meaningless? (combination of
question/exclamation). The reason I
mention this is that which reference frame is chosen is arbitrary. If it’s arbitrary, in physics, it doesn’t
have a physical significance. Back to
van der Waals stuff, friends.
12:55
a.m. May 1 Tuesday/Belgium
Taking a break from doing HW—from trying to get started
on some HW, really—I’d like to mention the possibility that in looking for a
unified field theory, we are looking for the wrong thing. Wanting to unify the forces of nature under
one theoretical roof, or hold them up with one theoretical foundation, sounds
very admirable. Could we also consider
the possibility that the forces are a mere façade, however? Then where do we want to go with our theories
of gravity, weak/em, strong forces?
Well, we want a causative description of motion, for
one thing. We observe attraction and
repulsion, and want to explain them.
Unifying thus means describing the attraction-repulsion of the known
forces with one theory. “One theory”
then seems to imply that there would then be one force, with different
disguises.
I’m suggesting that “force” itself is a disguise for
something else. What else? Einstein found curvature of spacetime gave
the description of gravitational force.
So that is how the disguise works in that case. To construct a “field” out of particles seems
like a big step away from getting behind the disguise. It seems like putting another level of
disguise on the phenomena. A better
solution would be to not have the need for the particles, like general relativity
has no need for a “force” once spacetime curvature is accepted.
Related to getting rid of the force, Luke, is getting
rid of the force carrier. What then is
left? Somehow we need to look beyond
attraction/repulsion in order to answer that question.
The idea of inertia is a good starting point for
thinking about a better way to describe observed motions—better than
attraction/repulsion mindset.
So, how about starting with the idea I wrote down on
the previous page—which reference frame is chosen is physically meaningless (a
la Einsteiner), so first we just abolish the idea of reference frames. Banish reference frames from the “force”
discussion, see if forces can then be banished, too!
8:15 p.m. Sat. May 5, 2001 [page 45 in blue
journal]
I’m about to catch up with the page number equal to my
age.
After I wrote the previous entry, I realized that in
Jeff Wilson’s class, when he mentioned one of us asking what the force was that
kept fermions apart (I was the one who’d asked about it), that this case of
“exclusion principle repulsion,” as Tipler (Modern
Physics p. 289) puts it, is a case of a force acting without force
carriers. Either that or I misunderstood
it. Jeff Wilson was trying to explain
why it was other forces or other sources of energy [other than the standard
four] that caused the exclusion principle repulsion, but whatever he said
didn’t convince me. I plan to bring up
the subject with him later.
Can I do formal physics for someone besides
myself? I have trouble latching onto the
formal requirements of homework and tests, because I’m not really attracted to
the sort of career that would result from being successful in the formal
sense. I’ve just been reading Walker
Percy’s book The Second Coming and wondering if I could say, okay Walker Percy,
I’ll do this for you. Then I thought of
Daddy, a Walker Percy fan himself. Could
I say to him I’ll do this for you and Walker Percy?
Saturday May 12
One of the conclusions I came to a few years ago was
that, in the Einstein non-simultaneity experiment, the events are actually
determined to by simultaneous by each observer, but are not simultaneous when
each observer transforms [his measurement] to the other’s rest frame. I was looking at this same issue on pages 12
and 13, and previous pages, in here.
The simultaneity issue is closely related to that other
relativity issue I’ve been thinking about lately, how all reference frames must
have the same standards but those quantities that aren’t Lorentz invariant
don’t transform as “standards.”
Which brings up another question: e
and c are Lorentz invariants, but is G?
Oh, yeh, and is h? They would seem to be, as they are taken as the fundamental constants, along with
alpha, a measure of the strength of the EM force [equal to e2/ħc].
And from last Saturday, what are the force carriers
that supposedly carry the “exchange force” causing the exclusion principle
repulsion? Haven’t seen J.W. at a good
time to discuss the question again.
