The Structure of Aether and the Mechanics of the Electromagnetic Wave Spectrum
| Scientific Paper | |
|---|---|
| Title | The Structure of Aether and the Mechanics of the Electromagnetic Wave Spectrum |
| Read in full | Link to paper |
| Author(s) | William R Hohenberger |
| Keywords | spectrum, aether, wave, electromagnetic waves, magnetic fields |
| Published | 2009 |
| No. of pages | 26 |
Read the full paper here
Abstract
The various philosophies of the physics of aether can and must be integrated for there is only one real truth. Aether, whether it is called cosmic lattice, quantum foam or the neutrino sea, is a multi-dimensional, multi-generational, hyper-dynamic fractal, which can be thought of as both a fixed lattice and a dynamic fluid, and which is always in constant motion. All energy preexists within the aether, as waves, particles, matter or fields and all are interchangeable. Particles, and the matter they form, are saturated constructs of quarks, which are charge segments of an electromagnetic wave. Electrons are created within the second generation of electromagnetic waves, and protons, neutrons and nucleons are created within the third generation of electromagnetic waves. The electromagnetic wave spectrum ends at Planck's frequency. Waves are three-dimensional structures, exhibiting both properties of compression and tension, and having both transverse components (electric and magnetic fields) and a longitudinal component (their natural propagation speed). Fields are distortions within the circular structures of the aether. Objects in motion rip and tear apart the fabric of aether, as their inertia is altered and their directions reversed. All phenomena can and must be explained as mechanical variations in form and structure of the cosmic, quantum, neutrino, quark, – aethereal sea.
Overview
Presented to the 16th NPA conference at Storrs, Connecticut, this paper is William R Hohenberger's attempt to give the Aether a definite mechanical structure and then to derive the whole of the electromagnetic spectrum, the Quark families, and the stable particles from that structure alone. The aether is renamed the aether fractal plenum (AFP) — a term Hohenberger says he and Don Briddell coined jointly — and is pictured not as an inert homogeneous medium but as a nested hierarchy of interlocking rings, each ring itself made of smaller rings, without end. Everything else in the paper is a mechanical consequence of what happens when this ring lattice is stretched, compressed, skewed or torn.
The departure from the mainstream account is total rather than local. Charge is not a property but a state of the lattice (tension positive, compression negative); Quarks are not constituents of particles but "quantum charge segments" of a wave; the curved space-time of General Relativity is replaced by aether density gradients; and gravity becomes an inflow of aether into celestial bodies that are growing as matter is created at their centres. Hohenberger is explicit that the paper is offered as a source of ideas rather than a finished theory: "although both the structure and the formula are viable, they still need more explanation, clarification, and edification."
The argument
Integration as method
The paper opens with an unusual methodological premise. Because there is "one and only one absolute reality," every sincere theory must be "both partially right and partially wrong," and the proper question is "not why is my theory right and their theory wrong, but where is their theory right and where is my theory wrong?" Hohenberger accordingly treats integration of rival dissident models — his own, Briddell's Field Structure Theory, Alexander Tsybin's neutrino sea, William Day's particle theory — as the actual research method, and he ties it to an "Organized Word Structure" for the human mind he had presented the previous year.
The construct for aether
The construction proceeds by a syllogism assembled from three independently reached conclusions: Tsybin's "aether is constructed from neutrinos," Hohenberger's own "particles are constructed from aether," and Day's "particles are constructed from neutrinos." He takes the mutual consistency of the three as evidence for each. Neutrinos are then given two forms — strings (kinetic energy) and rings (rotational energy) — and the rings are identified with the interlocking loops of the aether lattice.
The elementary unit is an energy cell: four rings arranged as a tetrahedron on a three-dimensional polar axis, the same arrangement Briddell's field-structure topography and Hohenberger's own proposed nuclear structure both display. The cell is magnetic — four north poles at the ring centres, four south poles at the triangular intersections, possibly obeying the two-in/two-out rule of spin ice — and behaves as a three-dimensional spring. Extended, its sides collapse and it is in tension: positive charge. Contracted, its sides extend: negative charge. Because the extended and contracted configurations are geometrically perpendicular, the cell also supplies the 90° relation between the transverse and longitudinal components of a wave. Cells exist in three states — four-dimensionally magnetically coupled, three-dimensionally interlocked, or uncoupled — which Hohenberger likens to solid, liquid and gas, and he assigns the 4d state responsibility for the Speed of Light and the 3d state responsibility for the speed of gravity.
The fine structure constant
Hohenberger offers a structural formula for the Fine Structure Constant: (π/2 − 0.006720884)11 = 137.035999, where π/2 is the length increase when a circular loop collapses into a doubled straight line, 0.006720884 is the cross-sectional diameter of a loop, and the eleventh power is a multi-generational fractal effect. He is unusually candid about its status: "this formula was derived backwards knowing the answer in advance in order to achieve a possible structure," with no account of why there are eleven generations and no independent way to calculate the loop diameter. As a check he notes 1/(137.035999)11 = 3.124774 × 10−24, which applied to the electron radius gives a fine structure within 5% of the Planck length.
Three generations of waves
The electromagnetic spectrum is divided into three roughly equal logarithmic bands. A wave is modelled on the timing spring of a mechanical clock: a rotary oscillating system that spirals in and out along its axis of propagation while translating through the AFP. First-generation waves saturate at about 1 electron volt, just below visible light — which becomes the definition of a quantum, so that "below the frequency of light, waves exist, and above the frequency of light, photons exist."
Above saturation the wave acts as a push-pull vacuum pump, opening dark waves — genuine voids — between concentric light waves. Hohenberger insists that a void can carry no properties, so any parameter ascribed to a dark wave really belongs to the outer light wave surrounding it. Each cycle of a wave contains four energy packets centred at 45°, 135°, 225° and 315°; with the four packets of the accompanying dark wave these eight are identified with up, down, charm and strange quarks and their four "not" partners, and the three quark colours become simply orientation along the three polar axes. The W bosons appear as half of a lopsided wave.
Particle formation then requires bringing three coincident Z0 waves together in phase on three polar axes so that the aether is forced into permanent saturation and all energy-cell links with the plenum are broken. Electrons and positrons form this way in the second generation — leptons being spheres in compression — while the third generation, which saturates longitudinally rather than transversely so that the electric and magnetic components shift from 90° to 0°, yields the ring-shaped baryons: a proton interlocked with an antineutron, and 180° later a neutron with an antiproton. The antineutron is proposed as a stabilising sheath around the proton.
Planck's frequency, growing planets and gravity
Taking the first-generation saturation frequency as 2.41799 × 1014 Hz and squaring and cubing it for the second and third generations gives 1.413720 × 1043 Hz against Planck's frequency of 1.85487 × 1043 Hz — within 25%. Hohenberger canvasses four ways to close the gap, preferring one in which integrating the 90° phase shift across the third-generation band comes "within 6 parts in 100,000," and floats an alternative in which there are eleven wave generations mirroring the eleven fractal layers.
Matter is created in the third generation, seeded by existing matter and fed by inflowing aether, so that a black hole at the centre of the Earth manufactures hydrogen and heavier elements and the planet grows — Hohenberger's link to the Expanding Earth literature. Orbital motion is then governed by two aether forces: a retarding drag as a body rips and reassembles energy cells in its path, and a much larger oscillating force from aether flowing into the Sun. Gravitational light bending becomes refraction by inflowing, densified aether, and warped space-time "does not exist and is a misnomer." Magnetic fields are not aether in motion but energy cells held in a skewed, twisted configuration, the lines of force being the closed paths of that skew.
Assessment
The paper's real attraction is its consistency of ambition. Hohenberger refuses to accept any entity that cannot be pictured, and he applies that refusal uniformly: charge, colour, the W bosons, spin, magnetic field lines and gravitational bending are all cashed out as configurations of one lattice, with no free-standing abstractions left over. Several of the mappings are elegant on their own terms — charge as tension versus compression of a spring-like cell, colour as orientation along the three spatial axes, the identification of the void with an absence that cannot itself carry parameters. The candour is also genuine and rare: he states plainly that the fine-structure formula was reverse-engineered, that alternatives to his Planck-frequency scheme exist, and that "the theory presented within this paper may still contain some conflicts, omissions, and errors."
The difficulties are correspondingly large. Almost nothing here is derived; the structures are asserted and then found to be consistent with numbers already known. The fine-structure expression is the clearest case — a two-parameter fit to a target value, with the exponent and the loop diameter both unconstrained, which by the author's own admission carries no predictive content. The Planck-frequency argument has the same shape: a 25% discrepancy is met not by revisiting the model but by canvassing four adjustments until one of them lands within 6 parts in 105, a procedure that could be made to reach almost any target. The opening syllogism is likewise weaker than it looks — three propositions can be mutually consistent and all false, and consistency confers no evidential support on any of them.
There are also conflicts with measurement that the paper does not address. Identifying the first-generation saturation with 1 eV makes the wave/photon distinction a property of frequency, but the photoelectric and Compton effects show quantised, particle-like exchange of energy across the whole spectrum from radio to gamma, not only above the optical band; radio-frequency photons are routinely counted individually in cavity-QED experiments. The claim that the W± bosons are stable, self-regenerating wave halves sits badly against their measured lifetime of roughly 3 × 10−25 s and their measured mass of about 80 GeV, neither of which the model produces. The gravitational picture is more exposed still: if the Earth grows by internal matter creation and if orbital motion is dominated by aether inflow rather than by an inverse-square attraction, the model must reproduce the lunar laser-ranging determination of the Earth–Moon distance and the planetary-radar ephemerides, which bound any secular change in GM of the Sun and in the astronomical unit at the parts-per-trillion-per-year level. No such quantitative comparison is attempted. Finally, an aether that must be torn and reassembled by every moving body implies dissipation, and the paper offers no estimate of the resulting orbital decay to compare with the observed stability of planetary orbits over geological time.
Judged as what it says it is — a structural proposal offered to fellow dissidents in the hope that someone will supply the mathematics — the paper is honest about its own gaps. Judged as a physical theory, it has not yet reached the stage at which it could be tested, because its two numerical results were both obtained by fitting to the values they were meant to explain.