An Analysis of the Theoretical Foundations of 20th Century Physics
| Scientific Paper | |
|---|---|
| Title | An Analysis of the Theoretical Foundations of 20th Century Physics |
| Read in full | Link to paper |
| Author(s) | Walter Babin |
| Keywords | philosophy of physics, Galilean relativity, special relativity, Compton effect, determinism |
| Published | 2009 |
| Journal | General Science Journal |
| No. of pages | 11 |
Read the full paper here
Abstract
A critical evaluation is made of the fundamental concepts that shape contemporary physics. The critique is based on the interdependence of philosophical principles and experimental evidence. Application of logical methods that incorporate this interdependence provide simple solutions to seemingly difficult problems, whereas it is shown that ignoring it leads to excessive complexity, ad hoc theories, contradictions and statements that have no basis in logic or experience.
Overview
Walter Babin's essay is a two-part programme. Part A, "The Generalization of Philosophy," argues that twentieth-century physics went wrong when "theoretical physics usurped the role of philosophy, claiming itself in sole possession of, and sole purveyor of truth." Part B, "The Generalization of Theoretical Physics," attempts to show that the formulas of Special Relativity are already contained in classical mechanics and Electrodynamics once one stops attaching them to changes in space and time.
Babin's four stated postulates are: acceptance of Galilean relativity, classical mechanics and electrodynamics; acceptance of the formulas of special relativity as an extension of these; the intrinsic identity of philosophy and physics; and the existence of "archetypal functions" already contained in the categories of philosophy. The departure from the mainstream account is therefore not a rejection of relativity's mathematics but a reinterpretation of what the mathematics refers to: relativistic effects are ascribed to the electromagnetic field rather than to the metric, Simultaneity is reinstated, Length Contraction and Time Dilation are replaced by ordinary Doppler Effect changes in wavelength and frequency, and light is allowed compound velocities c±v "similar to sound."
The argument
Part A: four oppositions
Babin organises the philosophical section around four antitheses, each of which he says modern physics resolved by choosing one side to the exclusion of the other.
Absolutism versus relativism. He quotes the Scholium of Isaac Newton's Principia on absolute time, absolute space, place and absolute motion, together with Newton's admission that absolute rest "cannot be determined from the position of bodies in our regions." Babin reads this as "pure Platonism": archetypal entities alongside mundane counterparts. His key inference is Newtonian in spirit — "if one thing is absolute, all things are absolute" — from which he concludes that Albert Einstein's postulate of a universal, absolute speed for light destroyed the Galilean insight Einstein had otherwise restored. Hermann Minkowski's four-dimensional continuum is then charged with circularity: it rested on presumed experimental evidence for special relativity, while that evidence was itself read through the continuum.
Determinism versus probabilism. Max Planck's quantum of angular momentum is treated as a confirmation of absolutism which the Copenhagen interpretation inverted. The Uncertainty Principle, ΔpΔx ≥ ħ/2, is dismissed as "merely the either/or coin-flip basis for probability," and Babin objects that a theory professing indeterminacy nevertheless tabulates constants to extreme precision. His summary is the epigram "Probabilism states that something is true because it works. Determinism states that something works because it is true." Because probabilism "has no basis in logic, no logical argument will dislodge it" — which he offers as the explanation for editorial censorship in mainstream journals.
Monism versus dualism. Aristotle's unmoved mover, the general-relativistic singularity, the Black Hole and the Big Bang are grouped as monist constructions each of which "contains its opposite." Wave–particle dualism and de Broglie's matter waves are treated as the physical expression of the opposite error. Here Babin asserts that the Rydberg constant "reduces to 1/4πtc where t is the orbital period and c is the speed of light," and that since m, v, r, t are invariant, extending the principle to the Proton makes the Hydrogen Atom invariant as a whole. Radiation is then the excitation of the Electron: the Photon carries the same ħ, its "mass-equivalence" is reduced to mα (α the Fine Structure Constant) and its speed raised to c. The Aether is replaced by "the well-known attributes of the electromagnetic field," and empty space by a "null field" signifying systems in equilibrium.
Qualitative versus quantitative. Since quantitative statements are a posteriori, quality "submits to no system of logic"; the section closes with the demand that "if logic must correspond with principle, then principle must correspond with experience."
The four "archetypal functions" — Logic, Intuition, Practicality, Emotion — are then presented, following C. G. Jung's quaternity, as the operational cornerstones of science and art, with logic and intuition constituting "mind" and practicality and emotion "matter."
Part B: two velocities
The physical core is a reinterpretation of the Lorentz factor. Babin writes it as [(c−vm)(c+vm)/c2]1/2 = (1−vm2/c2)1/2, where vm is "the velocity associated with momentum." Being the root of a second-order expression, he argues, it "refers to area and must necessarily incorporate the Y axis": in his Figure 2 it is the half-chord d perpendicular to the displacement, with radii L and L′ equal but the former rotated through v/c. On that reading nothing happens to space, time or mass; the rotation plus compound velocities supply, he claims, the basis for stellar aberration and the Sagnac Effect. Superluminal motion is represented by inversion of the chord, giving negative wavelengths, with d = −L at 2c.
He then defines a second speed, vk, "the velocity associated with kinetic energy," by (m−m0)c2 = mvk2/2, and derives
vm2 = vk2 − vk4/4c2, so that vm2/vk2 = 1 − vk2/4c2 = (m+m0)/2m.
Compton scattering and inertia
The Compton Effect is analysed with the photon recoil angle set at 90° for simplicity. From p = E/c = hf/c the photon's mass-equivalences mI and mf are formed, and Babin reads the standard treatment as "obviously partial," since the electron is presumed to gain mass at the expense of the photon's energy. Ascribing relativistic effects to the field instead, he treats the event as an ordinary elastic collision and identifies the recoil photon energy with (mIm0/(mI+m0))c2 — the "reduced mass" of an orbiting pair, hence "obviously a field coupling," implying total photon capture and re-emission. He concludes that "c2 is not related to the rest mass of the electron," that the Compton and Bucherer experiments neglect induced magnetic fields, that "an accelerated charge does not emit radiation," and that emission is limited to reduced-mass couplings — so the classical spiral-into-the-nucleus objection never arose.
The inertia section asserts 2micvmcos φ/(mi+m0) = vnvm = vk2, with vn a Newtonian velocity in the reverse direction, and identifies d as the radius of a de Broglie matter wave, with vmt and vnt as circle radii defining an ellipse whose foci are mass and charge.
Planetary orbits and the hydrogen atom
Babin reproduces the classical two-body treatment: vp/vs = ms/mp, total kinetic energy mpmsV2/2(ms+mp), and the circular-orbit energy mpmsV2/2(ms+mp) − Gmpms/r = −Gmpms/2r, yielding V2 = G(ms+mp)/r. He then declares this last step "incorrect," on the ground that "the velocities have been initially defined and their sum cannot be changed." Substituting a constant Q for G and applying the same machinery to hydrogen, he concludes that "a classical treatment of the total energy of the hydrogen atom reduces to the relativistic expression for energy," and that continuing this line leads to a unified field theory.
Assessment
The attractive part of this paper is its refusal of the usual dissident move. Babin does not claim the Lorentz factor is wrong; he accepts the formulas and asks only what they describe, proposing that the vm/vk pair exhausts their content without any deformation of space and time. That is a legitimate research question, and it is asked with an unusual amount of explicit ontological bookkeeping.
The algebra of Part B is, in the main, correct — and, importantly, it is correct because it is standard Special Relativity rearranged. Setting (m−m0)c2 = mvk2/2 gives vk2 = 2c2(1−m0/m); substituting m0/m = (1−vm2/c2)1/2 and inverting does reproduce vm2 = vk2 − vk4/4c2 exactly, and 1 − vk2/4c2 does equal (m+m0)/2m exactly. Equation (3) also checks: substituting vk2 into m2vk4/4 + mm0vk2c2 + m02c4 collapses to m2c4, which is just E2 = p2c2 + m02c4. So the derivations are sound, but they are identities of the theory being criticised, not evidence against it. This is the paper's central weakness: a standard result is re-derived and presented as a refutation.
Three specific numerical problems should be recorded. First, equation (2) as printed reads m/m0 = 1 − vk2/2c2. That is inverted — the first half of the same equation requires m0/m = 1 − vk2/2c2, and as printed the ratio of relativistic to rest mass would be less than one. Babin uses the correct form thereafter, so this is a slip, but it is a slip in a load-bearing definition.
Second, the Rydberg claim is off by a factor of 2π as stated. The identity is R∞ = α/4πa0 = 1/4πtc with t = a0/v1 = 2.42×10−17 s, which is the orbital period divided by 2π, not the orbital period. Using the actual Bohr period, 1.52×10−16 s, the formula returns 1.75×106 m−1 against the measured R∞ = 1.0974×107 m−1. The relation Babin is pointing at is real and pretty; the verbal definition of t is wrong. By contrast his photon claim is internally consistent: the ground-state electron momentum mev1 = meαc is indeed (αme)c, so "mass-equivalence mα at speed c" conserves momentum exactly.
Third, equation (25), (mp−me)c2 = mpvk2/2, cannot be an equality with the subscripts the paper itself defines as proton and electron: the left side is about 938 MeV, the right side, at the Bohr orbital speed, about 25 keV — four orders of magnitude apart. The pattern of equation (2) suggests relativistic and rest mass of a single body were intended, but as printed the concluding step of the hydrogen calculation does not balance, which undercuts the claim that the classical treatment "reduces to the relativistic expression."
The rejection of equation (19), V2 = G(ms+mp)/r, is also a misreading rather than a discovery. That expression is the virial condition determining what V must be at a given r for a circular orbit; it does not "change" a previously defined sum of speeds, because V was never independently fixed. Babin's equation (20) simply sets V2/2 beside vpV, two quantities that were never supposed to be equal. The standard two-body result he reproduces in (12)–(19) is correct as written.
Elsewhere the paper conflicts with measurement it does not address. The claim that an accelerated charge does not radiate is contradicted directly by synchrotron radiation, whose power output is measured routinely in every storage ring. Compound velocities c±v for light are excluded by the de Sitter binary-star argument and by modern one-way and two-way tests. The Bucherer experiments Babin cites as neglecting induced fields were in fact the early confirmations of the velocity dependence of mass, later confirmed to high precision in accelerators. Barrier penetration, dismissed here as an evasion of law, is the operating principle of the scanning tunnelling microscope and the accepted account of alpha decay. And the remark that the weak force's mediators exceed "the nucleus by many orders of magnitude" overstates the case badly: the W boson is about 80 GeV against a proton's 0.94 GeV — a factor of 86, and lighter than any nucleus above beryllium.
Finally, the Jungian quaternity of Part A is asserted, not argued, and nothing in Part B actually depends on it. A reader interested in the physics can take Part B on its own; a reader interested in the philosophy will find the four functions declared "universal" and "equal in all respects" without any test proposed that could fail.