Unified Theory's Wave-Quantum Unity of Light

Scientific Paper
Title	Unified Theory's Wave-Quantum Unity of Light
Read in full	Link to paper
Author(s)	Rati Ram Sharma
Keywords	Wave-Quantum Unity, Quantum Theory, Photon, Special Relativity, Uncertainty principle, nonexpanding universe
Published	2011
No. of pages	11

Read the full paper here

Abstract

Quantum Theory and Special Relativity stand apart because their authors were unclear about Wave-quantum Unity of light. In our Unified Theory light is propagated as a wave-quantum UNITY along transverse electromagnetic wave as per Poynting vector in the 'sharmon medium' contiguously via 1-spin sharmons, which do not physically move. It appears as Quantum Theory's wave-or-quantum DUALITY for not observing both characters simultaneously. Sharmon comprises a positive positrino and negative negatrino, the two all-composing indivisible elements of diameter 1.6x10^-33cm, electric charge 1.3729x10^-30 esu, mass 2.596116x10^-48 gm, spin = 1/2. Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum Theory is reviewed and Uncertainty Principle replaced by new Principle of Null Action. A single experiment shows wave-quantum unity for low intensity light and moving electrons. Since spin of light-emitter does not fall and of absorber does not rise by one, NOT the 1-spin photon but 0-spin sharmon composed energy-quantum is emitted, absorbed and propagated. 'Contraction of space' and 'dilatation of time' are unrealistic. Constancy and invariance of light velocity c are explained, as also the observed variability, superluminality and subluminality which invalidate Relativity theories. Energized 1-spin sharmon replaces conventional photon and explains photoelectric effect and bending of light under gravity. Non-Doppler cosmological redshift supports non-expanding universe.

Overview

Rati Ram Sharma, retired Professor and Head of Biophysics at the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research in Chandigarh, has developed since 1988 a comprehensive alternative physics he calls the Unified Theory. This paper is the part of it that concerns light. Its organising idea is that quantum theory's wave-particle duality is a failure of description rather than a fact of nature: light is a wave-quantum unity, and appears dual only because no experiment observes both aspects at once.

The mechanism proposed is a material medium. Sharma posits two indivisible "micromost basic elements", the positive positrino and the negative negatrino, jointly named cosminos, each with diameter 1.6×10⁻³³ cm (the Planck length), charge 1.3729×10⁻³⁰ esu, mass 2.596116×10⁻⁴⁸ g and spin ½. A bound positrino-negatrino pair is a sharmon; sharmons fill all space as a kinetic gas, the sharmon medium. Light is not a travelling corpuscle. A 0-spin sharmon at the source absorbs the emitted energy quantum and rises to 1-spin, marking the "origin"; the disturbance is handed on contiguously through 1-spin sharmons that "do not physically move"; a final 1-spin sharmon delivers the quantum to the target and drops back to 0-spin, marking the "terminus". Because the sharmon medium supplies a real ε₀ and μ₀, the speed of light is constant relative to the medium — but not relative to a moving observer, for whom it becomes c ± u. On this basis Sharma rejects the Lorentz Transformation, length contraction, time dilation, the Uncertainty Principle, the massless photon, quarks, the Higgs boson and the expanding universe alike.

The argument

Against the Uncertainty Principle: the Principle of Null Action

Sharma accepts ΔE·Δt ≥ h/2π and Δp·Δx ≥ h/2π as perceptual relations describing what measurement disturbs, and rejects them as statements about nature. The damage, in his account, came when ΔE and Δp were read as real spontaneous fluctuations, licensing virtual particles, vacuum pair creation and "creation of matter out of nothing" in both Big Bang and steady state cosmologies. He replaces them with equalities

ΔE·Δt = nh ,    Δp·Δx = nh

in which ΔE and Δp are "objectively actual increases", and from these derives a Principle of Null Action: the path taken by an isolated closed system is the one for which the integrated action over all energy and momentum variations sums to zero. He offers this as superior to Hamilton's principle of least action.

Against the spacetime continuum

Space and time are, for Sharma, abstractions from perceived successions — "there, here, there" and "then, now, then". Two such abstractions cannot fuse into a substantive continuum capable of propagating light and gravitation. He adds a physical argument: in a universe granular at every level a continuous infrastructure is inconceivable; a real continuum would retard the motion of heavenly bodies; and a non-composite static continuum could not undulate to carry transverse waves. Higher-dimensional spacetimes are therefore "mere mathematical constructs bereft of real physical existence".

Existence and composition of the medium

The medium is argued for from the Casimir effect — specifically from Sparnaay's 1958 finding of a residual attractive force at absolute zero — together with the need for a carrier of electric, magnetic and gravitational fields, of Maxwell's displacement current and of the zero-point oscillators, and from Dayton Miller's reported aether drift. The interconvertibility of energy and mass through E = mc² then points to a single substance underlying both, "analogous to the possible inter-conversions of solid ice, liquid water and gaseous steam because all the three are made of the same water molecules."

The cosminos are indivisible because "endless infinite divisibility of matter is un-intuitive", singly charged because multiple charges would imply constituents, and possessed of exactly two basic charges, mass and electric charge. Colour charge is excluded because quarks are held not to exist (Sharma cites their measured compressibility and assembleability as evidence of compositeness); weak charge is excluded because it is not conserved. Mass and charge are two manifestations of one "gravitoelectric charge", so no particle can be massless — hence no photon of zero rest mass, no graviton of zero mass, and no Higgs boson, which he predicted in a 2005 press statement the LHC would not find.

The medium's parameters

The sharmon mass is quoted as 5.192232×10⁻⁴⁸ g, "double the mass of a cosmino". In the 0-spin state the antiparallel spins attract, giving a contact pair 1.616×10⁻³³ cm across and 3.23×10⁻³³ cm long; in the 1-spin state the parallel spins repel and hold the surfaces one Planck length apart. The medium contains "~10¹⁵ sharmons per cm³" with a time-averaged inter-sharmon distance of ~10⁻⁵ cm and an average mass density given as 0.519×10⁻³³ g cm⁻³.

Wave-quantum unity, and the disappearance of the photon

Long radio waves look wavelike, X- and gamma rays look corpuscular, and since the spectrum is continuous the unity of the two characters "is inescapable". Sharma cites Tonomura's single-electron and low-intensity-light build-up of an interference pattern as the single experiment exhibiting both aspects together. He then argues the conventional photon away in six steps: kinetic energy and momentum need a material carrier; a material core could not move at c; a freely moving corpuscle cannot have a velocity independent of source and observer; a corpuscle cannot interfere or diffract; constancy of c puts the photon in an unexplained privileged class; and photons of every energy across an infinite spectrum cannot all be non-composite.

A separate argument targets spin: "since the spin of an emitter does not fall by 1 after emitting the photon and that of an absorber does not rise by 1 on absorbing the photon", what is exchanged is not a 1-spin object but one wave-cycle's worth of energy carried by 0-spin sharmons.

Photoelectric effect, and bending of light

For the photoelectric effect the energized sharmon simply replaces the photon and Sharma recovers E = hν − w, "exactly the well-known Einstein equation". For gravitational bending he treats the photon as a massive body falling for a time t = 2R/c with acceleration g = GM/R², so s = ½gt² = 2GM/c², and

θ = s/D = 2GM/Dc² radian

adding that "since the actual gravitational influence-period on light far extends beyond the periphery of the mass body the above equation can as well give 4GM/Dc² radian." He also predicts bending in electric and magnetic fields, of order Dbb′×10⁻³⁷ and 10⁻⁹² radian respectively — "too small for experimental verification, [but] important conceptually because no other theory has them."

Redshift without expansion

Light loses energy in transit through the medium. Gravitational and electromagnetic losses are negligible; the significant one is viscous. Treating the photon as a sphere of radius r moving at c through a medium of viscosity η, Stokes' law gives ΔE = 6πrηDc over a path D, and hence

Z_v = 6πrηDλ/h = K_vD

For sodium yellow light (λ = 5890 Å) he counts n_s = 3.6146×10¹⁴ sharmons in the quantum, n_c = 2n_s cosminos of radius 0.8078×10⁻³³ cm, and taking the photon as a close-packed sphere obtains r = r_cn_c^1/3 = 7.24×10⁻²⁹ cm. With η ≈ 6.5×10⁻²³ dyne s cm⁻² this gives K_v = 0.8344672×10⁻²⁷ cgs, and he states

cK_v (= H) = 1.84782×10⁻¹⁷ cgs units or 60.13 km/s/Mpc

which he compares favourably with Gamow's 62.3 and the then-current range 58–73 km/s/Mpc. High supernova redshifts are attributed to a local rise in η caused by the explosion showering sharmons into its surroundings, so no cosmological constant or dark energy is needed. A quasar at Z = 4.92 poses no problem because Z = KD has no ceiling. His proposed "crucial test" is that in an expanding universe Z/Z₀ = exp(Ht), so individual galaxy redshifts should creep upward exponentially, while in his model Z = KD with D constant does not change at all.

Assessment

The paper is ambitious and internally motivated: Sharma is not patching one anomaly but replacing the ontology, and several of his complaints are ones that working physicists also make in unguarded moments — that the Copenhagen interpretation puts objective reality outside physics, that "virtual" particles are given more reality in popular exposition than the formalism warrants, and that a wave without a medium is a strange thing to insist on. His recovery of E = hν − w is genuine, though it is genuine only because that equation follows from quantization of the exchanged energy alone and is indifferent to what carries it — so it discriminates nothing between his model and Einstein's.

The numbers, however, do not survive checking, and the central cosmological result fails on a unit conversion. Taking Sharma's own K_v = 0.8344672×10⁻²⁷ cm⁻¹ and multiplying by c = 2.998×10¹⁰ cm/s gives H = 2.50×10⁻¹⁷ s⁻¹, not the 1.84782×10⁻¹⁷ s⁻¹ printed. Worse, 1.84782×10⁻¹⁷ s⁻¹ is 570 km/s/Mpc, not 60.13: one megaparsec is 3.086×10²⁴ cm, so converting s⁻¹ to km/s/Mpc means multiplying by 3.086×10¹⁹, and 60.13 km/s/Mpc corresponds to 1.95×10⁻¹⁸ s⁻¹. The quoted agreement with the measured Hubble constant is therefore an artefact of a conversion error of roughly a factor of 9.5, compounded by a further factor of 1.35 in the multiplication itself; carried through correctly, the viscosity Sharma adopts predicts a Hubble constant an order of magnitude too large. Recomputing K_v from his own inputs (r = 7.24×10⁻²⁹, η = 6.5×10⁻²³, λ = 5.89×10⁻⁵, h = 6.626×10⁻²⁷) gives 7.89×10⁻²⁸, about 6 % below the printed value. The geometric step r = r_cn_c^1/3 = 7.24×10⁻²⁹ cm, by contrast, is correct, as is the algebra taking ΔE = 6πrηDc to Z_v = 6πrηDλ/h.

A second internal inconsistency lies in the medium's density. An inter-sharmon spacing of 10⁻⁵ cm does give ~10¹⁵ sharmons per cm³, but 10¹⁵ × 5.192232×10⁻⁴⁸ g is 5.19×10⁻³³ g cm⁻³, ten times the 0.519×10⁻³³ printed. The photon's sharmon count is also out by a factor of two: hν for λ = 5890 Å is 3.373×10⁻¹² erg and the sharmon rest energy is 4.667×10⁻²⁷ erg, giving 7.23×10¹⁴ sharmons — exactly the figure Sharma assigns to the cosminos, while his n_s = 3.6146×10¹⁴ is half the sharmon count. And the comparison of the inter-sharmon distance with the mean free path of hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen is a comparison of unlike quantities: a mean free path is not an inter-particle spacing (for air at STP the two differ by about twenty times), so the "compares well" carries no weight.

A third observation concerns the cosmino parameters themselves. The quoted charge and mass give a specific charge of 5.288×10¹⁷ esu/g, which is the electron's 5.273×10¹⁷ esu/g to within 0.3 %; equivalently, the cosmino is the electron with both charge and mass divided by the same factor of about 3.5×10²⁰. That is not an error, but it does suggest the "computations in Chapter-4" are a rescaling of the electron rather than an independent determination, and it means the parameters carry no information beyond the electron's own. Separately, the paper is written throughout in cgs-esu units yet uses the SI relation c = (ε₀μ₀)^−1/2 and puts ε₀ and μ₀ into equations (9) and (10); those two order-of-magnitude estimates cannot be trusted as printed.

The spin argument rests on a false premise. Sharma's claim that "the spin of an emitter does not fall by 1 after emitting the photon" contradicts the electric-dipole selection rules, which are among the best-verified facts in atomic physics: an allowed transition changes the atom's total angular momentum by ΔJ = 0 or ±1 with 0 → 0 forbidden, precisely because the emitted photon removes one unit. This is what makes the sodium D-line a doublet and what forbids the transitions that make metastable states metastable. Since the premise is wrong, the conclusion drawn from it does not follow.

Testing the redshift model against itself is the sharpest objection. Equation (12) makes Z_v proportional to λ, and Sharma's own radius r = r_cn_c^1/3 scales as λ^−1/3 because n_c ∝ hν ∝ 1/λ. His redshift therefore goes as λ^2/3: violet light at 400 nm and red light at 700 nm from the same galaxy would be shifted by fractional amounts differing by about 45 %. Observed redshifts are achromatic — an entire spectrum, from Lyman lines in the ultraviolet to Balmer and metal lines in the optical and infrared, fits a single z to parts in 10⁴. This is not an external objection; it follows from the paper's own two equations. The same drag mechanism would also blur images, since Stokes drag on a moving sphere implies momentum exchange with the medium and hence angular scattering, yet distant quasars are seen as sharp point sources.

The wider conflicts with measurement are severe. Light speed of c ± u relative to a moving observer is excluded by the Michelson–Morley experiment and by its modern optical-cavity descendants, which bound any such anisotropy at the 10⁻¹⁷ level; Sharma's appeal to Miller's drift does not address them. A tired-light redshift predicts no time dilation of distant events, whereas the light curves of Type Ia supernovae are observed to be stretched by exactly (1+z), a result Sharma's model has no way to produce and which he does not mention. The claim that z = 4.92 is "inexplicable by theories of expanding universe" because relativity forbids v ≥ c misreads the standard account, in which the cosmological redshift is not a special-relativistic Doppler shift at all and z > 7 objects are routinely catalogued. The gravitational-bending derivation reproduces the Newtonian 2GM/Rc², and Sharma converts it to the observed 4GM/Rc² by asserting that the interaction region "far extends beyond the periphery" — a factor of two obtained by fiat, in a quantity now measured to two parts in 10⁵ by Cassini's radio tracking. Finally, the proposed "crucial test" is not currently a test: the predicted redshift drift over a decade is of order HΔt ~ 10⁻⁹, far below any existing spectrograph, so the absence of observed exponential growth is not evidence either way.

The Unified Theory's appeal is that it insists on a physically real, mechanically describable substrate and refuses to accept mathematical structures as physical entities. That instinct is defensible, and the paper states it clearly. What it does not do is deliver a quantitative account that survives its own arithmetic.

See also

• Rati Ram Sharma
• Aether
• Photon
• Light
• Speed of Light
• Tired Light
• Redshift
• Hubble Constant
• Expanding Universe
• Uncertainty Principle
• Casimir Effect
• Dayton C Miller
• Michelson–Morley experiment
• Photoelectric Effect