Unified Theory Replaces Relativity Theories
| Scientific Paper | |
|---|---|
| Title | Unified Theory Replaces Relativity Theories |
| Read in full | Link to paper |
| Author(s) | Rati Ram Sharma |
| Keywords | Special Relativity, General Relativity, Unified Theory, Sharmon Medium |
| Published | 2009 |
| No. of pages | 15 |
Read the full paper here
Abstract
A wave exists only in its propagating medium but Einstein erred to discard the physical medium for light wave and to introduce the non-existent 4-D spacetime continuum instead. It denied him the chance to address the intrinsic wave-quantum Unity of light and predict the new entity of ?basic substance' to compose all forms of E & m so compellingly demanded for the inter-conversions of E & m by the eqn. E=mc2, which is now re-derived. Unified Theory gives cogent arguments and experimental support for the existence of a real physical medium in space, the all-composing & all-pervading 'sharmon medium' as Basic Substance. It propagates light as a wave-quantum UNITY, the particle aspect showing up at short wavelength e.g. from ~ 7000 Ao downward in photochemical effects and below ~ 3000 Ao in photoelectric effects. The non-substantive abstract concepts of space & time evolve from our perceptions of successive motions & changes in the surrounding objects and cannot fuse into any concrete spacetime continuum. If existent it would retard motion of heavenly bodies, which is not actually observed. Any non-composite static spacetime cannot undulate to transmit transverse light wave. Various multidimensional spacetime continua are mere mathematical constructs bereft of physical existence and theories based on them unrealistic. Unified Theory explains from sharmon medium the constancy & invariance to source-observer motion, the two pillar postulates of Special Relativity without validating Special Relativity. It explains Michelson-Morley and Sagnac experiments as also the observed variability of light velocity and superluminality, which invalidate Relativity Theories. Lorentz transformations do not describe any natural motion since no velocity can vary (like v) with, and be invariant (like c) to, a source-observer motion at the same time. The actual length of an object, viewed by say, 100 differently moving observers cannot undergo 100 different objective contractions at the same time, making ?contraction of length' an unrealistic concept. So is 'dilation of time'. Unified Theory derives from sharmon medium the Maxwell equations and the time containing and time free equations for the propagation of wave-quantum unity in gravitational and electromagnetic radiation. The Schrodinger wave equation is also derived. It explains the photoelectric effect. Explanation of the bending of light in a gravitational field shows that photon has mass and gravitation is not a curved 4-D spacetime. All particles and energy-quanta have definite mass & size.
Overview
Rati Ram Sharma's paper is a compressed statement of his Unified Theory, presented as a replacement for both relativity theories. Its method is to isolate what he calls the models underlying modern physics — the conceptual assumptions that "lie beneath mathematics" — and to attack those rather than the formalism. He identifies a Maxwell Model (light is an electromagnetic wave propagating without a physical medium, at a speed fixed by the permittivity and permeability of empty space), a Planck Model (radiation is emitted and absorbed in quanta E = hν, and absolute vacuum is achievable by cooling), and an Einstein Model that adopts and extends both, adding propagation as quanta, the constancy and invariance of c, the 4-dimensional spacetime continuum, massless photons and neutrinos, and point-like elementary particles.
Sharma's counter-claim is that a wave exists only in its propagating medium, and that space is filled by a real substance — the sharmon medium — composed of two indivisible elements he calls the positrino and negatrino (jointly cosminos). From this medium he undertakes to derive Maxwell's equations, the wave equations for radiation, the Schrödinger equation, the photoelectric equation, E = mc2 and the bending of starlight, while rejecting the Lorentz contraction, time dilation and curved spacetime as unreal. The departure from the mainstream account is therefore total at the level of ontology while being deliberately conservative at the level of results: Sharma wants the same equations from a substantival medium rather than from geometry.
The argument
Why spacetime cannot be a substance
Sharma's objection to the continuum is ontological. Space, he says, is an abstraction from the successive perceptions "there, here, there," and time from "then, now, then"; the arrow of time reflects only the irreversibility of the underlying processes. Two concepts so abstract "cannot fuse into any tangible spacetime continuum." He then gives two physical objections. If the continuum were a real medium, it would retard the motion of particles, planets and galaxies through it, and no such retardation is observed, contrary to Newton's first law. And a "non-composite static spacetime cannot undulate" to carry a transverse wave. Continua of 4, 5, 10, 11 or 32 dimensions are therefore "mere mathematical constructs bereft of physical existence."
The sharmon medium
The positive appeal is to ether-drift evidence — Sharma cites James DeMeo's review and Dayton Miller's statement that after considering all possible sources of error "there always remained a positive effect" — together with the wave phenomena of Young, Fresnel and Sagnac, and the interconvertibility of energy and mass, which he takes to force the existence of a common "Basic Substance."
The medium's constituents are given definite properties. A cosmino has diameter equal to the Planck length 1.6156×10−33 cm, mass 2.596×10−48 g, charge ±1.3729×10−30 esu and spin ±½. A sharmon is a bound positrino–negatrino pair; antiparallel spins give a 0-spin scalar sharmon, parallel spins a 1-spin vector sharmon, and the two interconvert. The constituents do not annihilate, being indivisible. Spinning and vibrating charges give the sharmon electric and orthogonal magnetic dipole moments. The medium is treated as a kinetic gas approximating a "kinetic continuum": ~1015 sharmons per cm3, mean spacing ~10−5 cm (compared with molecular mean free paths), average mass density 0.519×10−33 g cm−3, viscosity 0.57×10−22 dyne s cm−2. Because sharmons pass between orbital electrons, the medium cannot be pumped out and absolute vacuum is impossible.
Forces, Maxwell's equations, and the wave equations
Static forces arise from the interaction of a body's cosminos with the surrounding medium; the field intensity is the line-of-force density on a 4πr2 sphere, giving F = KC1C2/r2 with K standing for G, ε0 or μ0 according to the kind of charge. Action-at-a-distance is thereby "ruled out." Polarizability of the sharmon supplies what Sharma regards as the missing physical basis for Maxwell's displacement current: balancing a deforming force Eq against a restitution force q2/ε0l2 gives D = ε0E and Id = ε0dE/dt. Maxwell's equations then follow in their usual form, and curling them yields (∇2 − ε0μ0∂2/∂t2)H = 0, so that c = (ε0μ0)−1/2 — but with ε0 and μ0 belonging to the sharmon medium, "not of the vacuum as current theories wrongly assume."
Substituting c = νλ = E/p into the general wave equation produces a family of "time-containing" equations such as ∇2ψ − (1/cνλ)∂2ψ/∂t2 = 0 and ∇2ψ − (p/cE)∂2ψ/∂t2 = 0, each mixing a wave quantity with a quantum quantity — this is Sharma's formal expression of "wave-quantum unity." Imposing harmonic time dependence gives time-free versions, and for a particle with p2 = 2m(T − V) one of them becomes the Schrödinger equation ∇2ψ + (8π2m/h2)(T − V)ψ = 0.
Wave-quantum unity and the origin of the light postulates
The most distinctive mechanical proposal concerns where a light wave begins. Sharma denies that the origin is the emitting electron: it is "the first 0-spin sharmon in the sharmon medium," which absorbs the energy quantum and rises to its 1-spin state; the terminus is the last 1-spin sharmon, which hands the quantum to the target and drops back. The 1-spin sharmons do not themselves move; they pass the quantum contiguously. From this he draws his explanation of the two postulates of special relativity: since light "begins creatively" in the medium rather than at the source, c is independent of source motion, and since it "ends vanishingly" in the medium, independent of observer motion — reinforced by the constancy of ε0 and μ0. He stresses that explaining the postulates does not validate the theory built on them, and that the medium, being the frame in which light propagates, is an absolute reference frame.
The same account is applied to the Sagnac experiment: because both counter-rotating beams travel at c rather than c ± v, the time difference is dt = 2πrn/c, and varying the rotation rate n shifts the fringes — which Sharma reads, as Sagnac did, as evidence for a space medium. Local variations in the medium's number density permit local variation of ε0, μ0, c and even G, which he offers as an accommodation of reported variability of c and of the Wang et al. caesium-cell result, where a 62 ns pulse advance over a 6 cm cell implies a group index of −309.
Consequences for particles and gravity
Since everything is built from massive cosminos, "no particle or energy quantum is massless, sizeless or virtual." Sharma tabulates compositions — 3.94×1017 sharmons for the electron and positron, 3.6×1022 for the 105.7 MeV muon, 6.19×1023 for the tau, and separate figures for each quark — and assigns the Super-Kamiokande 0.1 eV muon-neutrino a radius of 3.3×10−29 cm. The Lorentz transformations are rejected on the ground that c and v have "too exclusively different" kinematics to appear in one formula describing real motion, and that "the actual length of an object, viewed by say, 100 differently moving observers cannot undergo 100 different objective contractions at the same time."
For light bending, a photon of non-zero mass falls under g = GM/R2 during a transit time t = 2R/c, giving s = ½gt2 = 2GM/c2 and a deflection δ = s/D = 2GM/Dc2, which Sharma states is "exactly the Einstein formula" verified by Eddington, and which shows the photon has gravitational mass. Finally, E = mc2 is recovered from radiant momentum E/c = (E/c2)c, though Sharma cautions that the constant in E = km need not always be c2, since conversion efficiencies are below 100% and most natural processes are irreversible.
Assessment
The paper's genuine strength is diagnostic rather than constructive. Sharma is right that the questions he raises are conceptual and are often skipped: what physically carries Maxwell's displacement current, why the two postulates of special relativity should hold rather than merely be assumed, and what it means to say a wave propagates in nothing. His strategy of extracting the "model" underneath the mathematics, and his refusal to let formal success substitute for physical mechanism, is a legitimate philosophical stance with a long dissident pedigree, and his medium-based reading of the Sagnac result is at least internally consistent with his premises. He is also careful, at one point, to note that explaining relativity's postulates from the medium does not thereby validate relativity — a distinction many critics blur.
Against this, most of the paper's derivations are recoveries of results that are already inputs. Maxwell's equations are not derived from sharmon dynamics; the displacement-current argument assumes ε0 and a restitution force of Coulomb form and returns D = ε0E, which is where it began, and the remaining three equations are simply written down. The Schrödinger equation is obtained by inserting the de Broglie relation into a classical wave equation, a textbook heuristic that presupposes quantum mechanics rather than replacing it, and it yields the time-independent equation only — the complex, first-order-in-time Schrödinger equation, the source of quantum interference, does not follow. The photoelectric result E = hν − w is Einstein's equation with the word "photon" replaced by "energized sharmon"; nothing observable distinguishes the two.
The numerical structure has internal problems the reader can check. A stated number density of ~1015 sharmons cm−3 with a sharmon mass of 5.19×10−48 g gives 5.19×10−33 g cm−3, ten times the medium density of 0.519×10−33 g cm−3 quoted in the same paragraph. Likewise the electron's stated content of 3.94×1017 sharmons corresponds to about 2×10−30 g, some two and a half orders of magnitude below the measured electron mass of 9.109×10−28 g, and it is hard to reconcile with the separate claim that "all leptons contain 3.50×1020 cosminos." No derivation is given for any of the tabulated particle compositions, so they function as assignments rather than predictions.
Two conflicts with measurement are decisive rather than merely awkward. The light-bending derivation gives δ = 2GM/Dc2; taken at grazing incidence this is the Newtonian ballistic value, exactly half the 1.75 arcsec that Eddington's expedition and every subsequent measurement report. Sharma's own text acknowledges two paragraphs earlier that Einstein "changed it to 4GM/Rc2," so the claim that his result is "exactly the Einstein formula ... verified by Arthur Eddington" contradicts the paper itself. Modern very-long-baseline interferometry of radio sources confirms the full deflection to about one part in 104, which the factor of two cannot survive. Second, the rejection of time dilation as "unrealistic" runs against direct measurement: the muon lifetime measured in the CERN storage ring at γ ≈ 29.3 agrees with the relativistic prediction to a few parts in 103, and Ives–Stilwell and modern ion-storage-ring experiments confirm the transverse Doppler shift to the 10−8 level. Sharma's argument against contraction — that one object cannot suffer 100 different contractions at once — misstates the claim, which is about the results of measurements made in 100 different frames, not about 100 simultaneous objective changes to one body.
Two further points weaken the supporting evidence. Miller's ether-drift residuals, invoked as experimental support, have been reanalysed as a thermal-gradient systematic, and the modern optical-resonator successors to Michelson–Morley bound any anisotropy far below Miller's claimed signal. And the Wang et al. caesium result cited as superluminality is a negative-group-index pulse-reshaping effect in an anomalously dispersive gain medium; its authors explicitly noted it carries no signal faster than c. Sharma's own concluding remark that his explanation does not affect the causality principle suggests he half-recognises this. The paper is best read as a manifesto: the ontological complaint is stated forcefully, but the quantitative apparatus is assigned rather than derived, and where it touches measurement it does not survive contact.