The Case Against the Photon

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Jewish Cowboy

Posted: Tue Dec 05, 2006 1:05 am

Guest

Wikipedia is a really good website. I looked up the article on
"photons" a
few months ago and was especially impressed by how well it dealt with
the topic
of historical development. So I did something you can only do on
Wikipedia: I went
back into the Wikipedia logs and found out that until last
summer, the history of the photon was hardly mentioned. Almost all the
activity
in revising the history took place in the summer of 2006. Something is
in the
air, and I think any day the whole subject could blow wide open. And
I'm just
starting to think that I might be the person who gets to light the
match.

What do I have against the photon? I'll tell you what. The photon is
the source
of all evil in quantum mechanics. All those unexplainable paradoxes
like the collapse
of the wave function, the action at a distance, Schroedinger's cat, you
name it:
they all trace back, one way or another, to the concept of light as a
particle
rather than a wave. It's a kind of sickness that's taken over physics
and held
it in its grasp for a hundred and one years now. And it may be about to
end.

I know there are people a lot smarter than me who have been working on
this for a long
time. I've been trying to get in on the discussion for years, doing
things like posting
messages on sci.physics and knocking on doors of physics professors in
over twenty
university campuses across North America. (So far I've been "banned for
life" from
at least four.) But in all that time I've never once gotten anyone to
engage me
in a serious discussion and hear my ideas. I've often been dismissed as
a quack.

I'm a quack who passed the PhD Qualifying exam at my alma mater back in
1991. I then
knocked on faculty doors trying to get a professor to sponsor me as a
grad student
so I could work on just this topic, to no avail. Getting nowhere in
physics, I tried Electrical Engineering, where I got my undergrad
degree. Howard Card, you turned me
down after you said you would work with me and I'll never forgive you
for that. Because
unlike your colleague Bob McLeod, you were at least smart enough to
recognize the potential
of what I might have done. But you let that ignorant cocksucker scare
you away from
getting involved with me. "Marty's a troublemaker". Well, alright. A
person should
do what he's good at, after all. Let's just say I'm about the "share my
light" with
the world.

I remember sending a four-page handwritten letter of introduction,
laying out some
of my ideas and asking to be taken on as a grad student,
to one of the leaders in the field, a professor in Arizona by the name
of Scully.
When I didn't hear from him for months, I tracked him down by phone;
yes, he had
received my letter, but "I get so many letters I really don't have time
to read
them all". After that I got a job in a paper mill. But I never gave up
on physics.

So what makes me think it's my turn to speak out? And why now? I'll
tell you why.
Because of Wikipedia. Not only does the article on photons tell me that
something
big is in the air...but there all all kinds of links on the Wikipedia
page that
open my eyes to what's happening at the very forefront of physics. And
I'm APALLED!

There's a video lecture you can link from the site by one Roy Glauber,
Nobel Laureate
in Physics 2005. It's the speech he made upon accepting the prize for
his work on
photons; in the speech, he tries to explain the history of the photon
up to the
present time, including his contribution to that history. What a
bumbling, incompetent,
incoherent lecture! In fact, it was this lecture that inspired me to
begin writing
this set of articles. My original plan was to deconstruct Glauber's
speech line by
line, showing how confused, disorganized, and inconsistent he is. I
eventually realized
that I have a big enough task laying out my own ideas, and that I can't
risk getting
distracted into a sideshow which will consume more time and energy than
I may have
at my disposal. So I've shelved my original plans; but I will still
have more to
say about Glauber as I procede.

Back to Wikipedia: in addition to the article and the lecture, there is
a list of
references including numerous articles by men who I considered giants
in the campaign
against the photon, including people like Scully, Jaynes, and Willis
Lamb. (I learned
that even Schroedinger never accepted the photon until the day he died.
But no one talks
about this.) I had our local librarian do an interlibrary loan to get
those articles
(thanks Shelly!) and when I read them, I couldn't believe how POORLY
the arguments were
made! Compared to the clear, intuitive pictures which I have developed
for myself over
the years, their arguments were sterile, mathematical, strained, and
non-physical. There
is no longer any doubt in my mind: I am miles ahead of the pack in
terms of
physical reasoning (as opposed to abstract mathematical manipulation);
I know things
that nobody else has figured out. Well, now I'm going to lay them out
in black and white.

This is what it comes down to. There are a handful of key experimental
phenomenon,
which according to conventional wisdom, defy explanation by the wave
theory of light.
They can only be explained if you assume light is a particle. The two
most important
are the photo-electric effect and the Compton effect. Other significant
phenomena
include such "two-photon" processes as the 2s-1s transition in
Hydrogen, and the
second-order correlations found e.g. in the Hanbury-Brown-Twiss
experiments. (Glauber
places great importance on this, but I'm baffled as to what exactly is
his point.)

It was almost fifteen years ago that I first realized how the
convential explanation
of the first of these phenomena (the photo-electric effect) is riddled
with holes.
In fact, no serious physicist with any real knowledge in the field
would today persist
in holding this up as good evidence for the photon. Yet it still holds
down the fort
in just about every undergraduate textbook; it is THE popular
explanation for the
existence of photons. And it is entirely false! I will deal with it
starting in my
next email.

I will have something to say about the other experiments mentioned
above; but understand
this: For years, I have been unable to explain the Compton experiment
using the wave
picture of light. NOW I HAVE IT. If God gives me the strenght to
complete this series
of emails, I believe I will put an end to the fiction of the photon
which has been the
scourge of modern physics for over one century.

Wish me luck.

Marty

Autymn D. C.

Posted: Tue Dec 05, 2006 9:22 am

Guest

God givs nothing.

The fotòn is a division-distribution of the wave; it is not a
particul. Only matter comes in particuli.

So you are against E = nh/t?

Jewish Cowboy

Posted: Wed Dec 06, 2006 3:42 pm

Guest

Let me start by clarifying what I learned about the crystal radio.
First of all, the crystal has nothing to do with it.
That's only if you want to hear the music. I'm interested in absorbing
pure
power, what you can pick up from a flatline, unmodulated sinusoidal
plane
wave. And for my receiver, I'm taking the theoretical case of lossless
materials and 100% efficiency. Here's how it goes:

Suppose you're tuned to CJOB at 680 kilocycles per second: dividing
this
into the speed of light you get a wavelength of about 450 meters. Now
you
start with all-pure superconducting wires; you put up a 10-meter
antenna,
wind a coil and tune it so you're at the station frequency, and then
choose
a resistor so you are absorbing the maximum possible power. (Choosing
the
right resistor is called "impedance matching". That's why I was asking
those
guys in the faculty lounge about the radiation resistance of a short
dipole
the other day.) Now suppose you've done everything right, there are no
unaccounted-for losses in the system, and all the available power is
going
into heating up your little resistor. And suppose it comes to 1000
milliwatts of power.
Where does that number come from? I don't care and it doesn't matter.
If I'm
set up 3 miles from the station it might be more, and if I'm 12 miles
from
the station, it might be less. SOMEWHERE there's a point where the
maximum
theoretical power I can absorb from CJOB is exactly 1000 milliwatts. Of
course, you can easily estimate how far you need to be by simply taking
the
50 kilowatts broadcast power of the station, dividing it into a
spherical
shell, and equating your 1000 milliwats the power density over a
diameter
equal to about half the wavelength or 200 meters. You do the math.
(Just kidding.)

But seriously: now I'm going to cut the antenna in half. This screws up
everything. Now my coil is all wrong, and my resistor is wrong to. But
suppose I re-adjust, re-tune the coil, and re-match the load impedance
for
my new conditions. How much power can I receive?

Just about anyone would say that with half the antenna, I should get
half
the power, or 500 milliwatts. Some people, with a little more
mathematical
sophistication, might guess what counts is a circular cross-section
using
the antenna length as its diameter...in this case, the expected power
would
be one-quarter, or 250 milliwatts.
But almost no one will guess what the correct answer is.

The correct answer is...the power is the same! 1000 milliwatts. "But
that's
impossible!" I hear you say. "Do you mean that if you cut the antenna
in
half again, you STILL get 1000 milliwatts???" Yes, if you retune and
rematch. How small can you reduce the antenna and still receive the
same
power?? I'm saying you can go RIGHT DOWN TO THE SIZE OF AN ATOM. And
the
effective absorption cross-section is STILL...almost 200 meters in
diameter.
(Of course the atom isn't tuned to CJOB. It has its own
frequencies...but
we'll get to that.)

This little-known classical result has the most far-reaching
implications.
And until a few days ago I never knew how critically important my
insight
was. You see, I've been isolated from the world of real physicists for
a
long time. For a few years, I found a partial substitute in the world
of
internet newsgroups like sci.physics.research. You can still look up
some of
my old battles in the Google Groups archives. Basically, they all went
something like this: I'd start off by saying there's no need to invoke
"photons" to explain the photoelectric effect. Then a bunch of people
would
insult me and call me an idiot. Finally one of the group moderators
would
allow that it might be just POSSIBLE, with some very FARFETCHED
assumptions,
to construct a "semi-classical" model of the photo-electric effect.
"But
what would be the point, since there are so many other conclusive
proofs of
the existence of photons? And in any case, you still haven't explained
the
Compton effect." And that would be it. I never even got the chance to
explain about the crystal radio.

And then along came Wikipedia. Thanks to information linked from their
"photon" article, in the last month I've read papers and watched video
lectures by the men at the very forefront of this research field. And I
can't BELIEVE what I'm reading! In a paper from 2003, Marian Scully,
one of
the LEADING PROPONENTS of the semi-classical method (and the same guy
who
couldn't be bothered to read my four-page handrwitten application to be
his
grad student in 1993) says about the photo-electric effect that of the
three
things you need to explain (the frequency dependence, the
intensity-dependence, and the latency time)...ONLY the third is
problematical...because...get this: the VERY SMALL SIZE OF THE ATOMIC
CROSS-SECTION makes it impossible to account for the short delay time
of
photo-emission! And he proposes to "save" the classical theory by
invoking...a temporary violation of the conservation of energy!!! FOR
GOD'S
SAKE I'D RATHER HAVE THE PHOTON.

Listen: these aren't the jackasses I'm used to dealing with on Usenet;
these
are the guys who should be my biggest allies: the very standard-bearers
of
the semi-classical theory. AND THEY DON'T UNDERSTAND ABOUT THE CRYSTAL
RADIO. The correct cross-section to use in the calculation has nothing
to do
with the diameter of the atom (around 1 angstrom); it is based on the
wavelength of light, which is about five thousand times greater. So the
cross-section is MILLIONS of times greater. THAT'S why it doesn't take
very
long to absorb enough power to eject an electron.

I know there are some of you out there have a little education in
physics
and I bet you're thinking: what does the photo-electric effect have to
do
with the hydrogen atom? Isn't it about shining light on a metal?
Answer:
there are of course many different photo-electric effects in physics.
One of
them is the optically-induced s-to-p transition in hydrogen. This is
the one
that looks the most like the crystal radio. When you take the
Schroedinger
functions of the two states (s and p) and combine them together, you
literally get a little wee oscillating dipole. This is the case I've
done
the calculations for. The more well-known case of shining UV light on a
metal is even more
extreme: here, the relevant absorption cross-section is not of course
the
size of the atom, or even the wavelength of the light...but the whole
surface of the metal! Because in a metal, the conduction electrons are
shared, and their "band levels" extend physically throughout the whole
metal.

Of course, since Einstein proposed his particle theory of light in
1905, and
Schroedinger didn't explain how the electron "works" until 1926, it's
understandable that Einstein got it wrong. What is inexcusable is that
Einstein's arguments continue to be repeated in textbooks to this very
day,
and not merely as "ancient history." What's even more baffling to me is
how
Compton's "proof" (circa 1919) that his effect cannot be explained
classically has gone virtually unchallenged these scores of years.
Because
Compton bases his analysis on THE JJ THOMPSON ELECTRON OF THE 19th
CENTURY,
basically a little charged metal ping-pong ball. Of COURESE his
argument is
useless when applied to the post-1926 Schroedinger electron!

But it's all over now, because I've got the RIGHT explanation for the
Compton effect. My light is the light of Maxwell, and my electron is
the
electron of Schroedinger. And when I aim them straight at each other,
they
bounce off in a head-on collision. And tomorrow I'll show you how it's
done.

Marty

Jewish Cowboy

Posted: Fri Dec 08, 2006 12:22 am

Guest

Some people have brought it to my attention that my last
email in this thread (Exhibit B: The Hydrogen Atom) was
a bit long on physics and a bit short on personal vituperation.
So before I get into today's topic I want to acknowledge the
two men who were my grad-level physics instructors at the
University of Manitoba: Byron Southern and George Tabisz.
One of these was a gentleman, a thoroughly decent and intelligent
human being; the other was, and I imagine still is, an egotistical
boor. I will leave it to their colleagues and students to decide
which is which.

Now to the crux of the matter: the Compton Effect. Why is this so
important? Because EVERYONE who discusses the history of the photon
ultimately identifies the Compton effect as "the nail in the coffin"
of classical electromagnetism. Check any undergraduate physics texts.
Read at the Wikipedia article on photons. Or download the video clip
of Roy Glauber's ABOMINABLY BAD Nobel Laureate lecture (linked on the
bottom of the Wikipedia page.) The photo-electric effect (so the story
goes) can PERHAPS be explained by some VERY arbitray and farfetched
modifications to classical wave theory...but the Compton effect is
IMPOSSIBLE to explain by the wave theory of light.

What do physicists mean when they say "impossible"? Do they mean the
same thing as mathematicians, when they say that it is "impossible"
to trisect an angle with straightedge and compass, or to solve the
general fifth-degree equation using radicals? No. As far as I can tell,
what they mean is that some famous person once said it couldn't be
done.
And for them, that's enough.

They point to Compton's original paper of 1919 as the last word on the
wave theory. I READ Compton's paper: and in the section where he
purports
to show that classical light doesn't work, he is actually...get this...
reproducing a standard calculation first done by J.J Thompson in the
19th century for the scattering of radiation by a small conducting
sphere!

And this is where it all falls down. Because ALL of the so-called
proofs
about photons were set forth PRIOR to the year 1926, when Schroedinger
explained for the very first time what an ELECTRON was and how it
"orbits"
an atom. It's not a little raisin embedded in plum pudding, or a little
planet revolving around the sun, or a hard little metal sphere or even
a charged ping-poing ball. It's a WAVE and it does things that NONE of
the workers in the field...not Compton, not Bohr, not even Einstein
could
have imagined prior to 1926.

And all of the proofs that light cannot be a wave? All they REALLY
prove,
in the light of Schroedinger, is that the electron cannot be a
particle.
And when you reanalyze all their arguments taking into account the
Schroedinger
electron...well, I've already done it for the photo-electric effect.
And
now I'm going to do it for the Compton effect.

The Compton effect has frustrated my best efforts at explanation for
over
ten years, until about a month ago. The reason I couldn't do it was
because
I was too closely committed to the same methodology that had worked so
well
in the case of the photo-electric effect. There, to take the case of
the
1s-2p transition in Hydrogen, I had two quantum states of the electron,
each with different energies and therfore different frequencies. When I
took a superposition of those two states, I naturally got a "beat"
frequency
corresponding to an oscillating charge. It was this little atomic
dipole
that interacted so naturally with light, just the way a crystal radio
interacts with wave coming from the distant station.

The problem with the Compton effect was this: there is no frequency
modulation
to work with. Because (when you analyze the problem in a center-of-mass

reference frame) the incoming and outgoing electrons have equal and
opposite
momentums, but exactly the same energy, hence the same frequency. The
superposition
of states cannot give me an oscillating charge, which is what I need to
interact
with classical light.

The answer is so straightforward that it boggles the mind that it has
been
left to me, little Marty Green, after 101 years of relentless effort by
the greatest minds the human race has ever produced...that it falls in
MY LAP to have the honor of being the first to lay it down in black
and white. Has anyone thought of this before? If so, then why to the
textbooks refer to COMPTON'S nonsensical argument as the "last word" on
photons? Is my argument incorrect? The construction is so simple, and
so
robust, as to deny any possibility of error. Here it is:

This is what a head-on collision between light and an electron looks
like
in a center-of-mass reference frame. We have a Schroedinger
electron-wave
moving from left to right PRE-COLLISION, and moving from right to left
POST-COLLISION. The superposition of these two states is a standing
wave
which fills all of the right-hand half of space. (Well, in the simplest
case it fills ALL of space, but the spectral modification needed to
confine
it to half-space is so obvious to anyone well-informed enough to object
to
my simplification that it is unnecessary for me to elaborate on it
here.)

What is the nature of this standing wave? I would like to think that
EVERYONE
knows how the standing waves on a guitar string can be analyzed in
terms of
two travelling waves, one moving to the right and the other moving to
the
left. Obviously, the state of our scientific culture does not extend to
that
level. Sure, on every street corner you can find someone who will tell
you what
happened in the first three microseconds of the Big Band. The market
for that
technobabble crap is unlimited. But REAL physics is about guitar
strings and
pendulums and semi-permeble membranes and frictionless pistons. Not the
shit
you get in the popular science section in Borders. Asimov thumbs up,
Stephen
Hawking thumbs down. But I digress...

The standing electron wave which I have set up consists of parallel
sheets of
charge, spaced very close together, perpendicular to the direction of
motion
of the electron. Because the electron wave function includes
"imaginary"
values, it's not EXACTLY the same as the guitar string wave which
passes
through zero twice per cycle. But it's close. The phase of the of the
wave
sheets oscillates through 360 degrees of the complex unit circle in
each cycle,
but the resolved charge density is actually fixed. Infinite, parrallel
sheets
of charge filling up an entire half of the universe. This is what
Schroedinger's
equation gives us.

And what about the light? I am going to use light of the same
WAVELENGTH as
the space between the parrallel charge sheets, but my light will enter
from
the left. What I am hoping is that it will interact with the charge
sheets
and be totally reflected back in the direction it came from.

And here is what confused me all these years. I was looking for a
FREQUENCY
of interaction, and there IS NO frequency of the charge sheets. Yes,
the
Shroedinger wave has a frequency by it's not remotely close to the
frequency
of the light which I need to use. So where is the interaction?

Here it is: When the light reaches the very first sheet of charge, it
sets up
a TINY amount of oscillation, causing a tiny amount of reflection. Most
of the
light keeps going. When it hits the next sheet...same thing again. A
tiny
amount of oscillation, a tiny bit of reflection, and so on.

Now surely you see what is going to happen. With each sheet, there is a
tiny
amount of reflection, but since the separation of the sheets is equal
to the
wavelength of the light, the reflections RE-INFORCE in the negative
(outgoing)
direction. Meanwhile the direct beam gets weaker and weaker until there
is
nothing left of it.

And what is the mechanics that actually makes the electron turn around
and
reverse course? It is the relentless, distributed "vxB" forces driven
by
the magnetic component of the E-M wave. It works. It really works.

Now where, you may ask, do I find these charge sheet oscillations in
the
Schroedinger equation. Certainly not in my original superposition. But
that
was based on the electron in free space. Add in the forces due to the
electro-
magnetic wave, and you get a modification in the Hamiltonian, which
surely
leads to the oscillating charge.

And there it is. The picture is complete and indisputable. The miracle
is
that no one has written it down before. It is especially tragic that
Schroedinger himself did not live to see his formula vindicated; he
died
in 1960 still maintaining to the very end that light was a wave and not
a particle.

There is a strange and tantalizing postscript to this analysis, which
I am going to share with you now. Very shortly after Schroedinger
published
his equation, Dirac worked out the relativistic modification. I believe
it
was actually Schroedinger, who upon working with Dirac's equation,
pointed
that there is a bizzare, high-frequency oscillation that shows up
unexpectedly
in the wave-function of the Dirac electron. He called it
"zitterbewegun"
which means "trembling motion". (Yes, Wikipedia bears me out
Schroedinger's role in this.)

Here is the crazy thing: My charge sheet oscillations appear to be at
the
exact frequency as the zitterbewegung! It's not clear to me that I NEED
Dirac's equation to get this...I BELIEVE that it would come out of a
correct perturbation analysis using the ordinary Schroedinger equation.
But it really does seem to drop out as a natural consequence of Dirac's
equation. If this is for real, then it may represent the first and only
physical example of the reality of zitterbewegung. Wikipedia calls it
a "theoretical" motion and gives no examples of its experimental
detection.

------------------------------

Well, there it is. I've staked my claim, and now we'll see what
the world does with it. Tonight I'm going to get a good night's
sleep.

Marty
PS Thanks to Prof Kinsner who believed in me, and Prof Finlayson
who helped me develop a lot of my mathematical intuitions. And
of course my high school math teacher, the amazing J.T. Barsby.
If my speculations on quantum mechanics turn to dust in the end,
at least I am proud to say that I am responsible for having
captured on videotape some of the indescribable magic that
was a math class with John Barsby. Coming soon to a YouTUBE
station near you.

Autymn D. C.

Posted: Fri Dec 08, 2006 8:06 pm

Guest

Jewish Cowboy wrote:

Quote:

The problem with the Compton effect was this: there is no frequency
modulation
to work with. Because (when you analyze the problem in a center-of-mass
reference frame) the incoming and outgoing electrons have equal and
opposite
momentums, but exactly the same energy, hence the same frequency. The
superposition
of states cannot give me an oscillating charge, which is what I need to
interact
with classical light.

superunitary

Quote:

There is a strange and tantalizing postscript to this analysis, which
I am going to share with you now. Very shortly after Schroedinger
published
his equation, Dirac worked out the relativistic modification. I believe
it
was actually Schroedinger, who upon working with Dirac's equation,
pointed
that there is a bizzare, high-frequency oscillation that shows up
bizarre
unexpectedly
in the wave-function of the Dirac electron. He called it
"zitterbewegun"
which means "trembling motion". (Yes, Wikipedia bears me out
Schroedinger's role in this.)

Here is the crazy thing: My charge sheet oscillations appear to be at
the
exact frequency as the zitterbewegung! It's not clear to me that I NEED
Dirac's equation to get this...I BELIEVE that it would come out of a
correct perturbation analysis using the ordinary Schroedinger equation.
But it really does seem to drop out as a natural consequence of Dirac's
equation. If this is for real, then it may represent the first and only
physical example of the reality of zitterbewegung. Wikipedia calls it
a "theoretical" motion and gives no examples of its experimental

Zitterbewegung (Jitterbewaying) should not be bizarre or unexpected or
hupothètic at all. It corresponds to the ènèrjy a elèctròn would
hav if it absorbd the mass of another elèctròn. It's the early half
of pair-production. As for the Compton effect, it still means that the
/wave/'s strength is divisibil.

-Aut

harry

Posted: Thu Dec 14, 2006 6:18 am

Guest

"Autymn D. C." <lysdexia@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
news:1165324968.632819.42310@80g2000cwy.googlegroups.com...
God givs nothing.

The fotòn is a division-distribution of the wave; it is not a
particul. Only matter comes in particuli.

So you are against E = nh/t?

Different people mean different things with "photon". Typically, it means
"particle" in the USA but "wave packet" in Holland.
Similarly in France I know peope who are working on "photons and phonons",
and probably they don't claim that phonons are particles.

Harald

harry

Posted: Thu Dec 14, 2006 6:36 am

Guest

"Jewish Cowboy" <btestware@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1165434137.774257.239600@j44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

Quote:

Sorry but.. if you were right then you could file for a fantastic patent
that tells all the radio engineers in the world how to get rid of their
annoyig antennas

Harald

Quote:

This little-known classical result has the most far-reaching
implications.
And until a few days ago I never knew how critically important my
insight
was. You see, I've been isolated from the world of real physicists for
a
long time. For a few years, I found a partial substitute in the world
of
internet newsgroups like sci.physics.research. You can still look up
some of
my old battles in the Google Groups archives. Basically, they all went
something like this: I'd start off by saying there's no need to invoke
"photons" to explain the photoelectric effect. Then a bunch of people
would
insult me and call me an idiot. Finally one of the group moderators
would
allow that it might be just POSSIBLE, with some very FARFETCHED
assumptions,
to construct a "semi-classical" model of the photo-electric effect.
"But
what would be the point, since there are so many other conclusive
proofs of
the existence of photons? And in any case, you still haven't explained
the
Compton effect." And that would be it. I never even got the chance to
explain about the crystal radio.

And then along came Wikipedia. Thanks to information linked from their
"photon" article, in the last month I've read papers and watched video
lectures by the men at the very forefront of this research field. And I
can't BELIEVE what I'm reading! In a paper from 2003, Marian Scully,
one of
the LEADING PROPONENTS of the semi-classical method (and the same guy
who
couldn't be bothered to read my four-page handrwitten application to be
his
grad student in 1993) says about the photo-electric effect that of the
three
things you need to explain (the frequency dependence, the
intensity-dependence, and the latency time)...ONLY the third is
problematical...because...get this: the VERY SMALL SIZE OF THE ATOMIC
CROSS-SECTION makes it impossible to account for the short delay time
of
photo-emission! And he proposes to "save" the classical theory by
invoking...a temporary violation of the conservation of energy!!! FOR
GOD'S
SAKE I'D RATHER HAVE THE PHOTON.

Listen: these aren't the jackasses I'm used to dealing with on Usenet;
these
are the guys who should be my biggest allies: the very standard-bearers
of
the semi-classical theory. AND THEY DON'T UNDERSTAND ABOUT THE CRYSTAL
RADIO. The correct cross-section to use in the calculation has nothing
to do
with the diameter of the atom (around 1 angstrom); it is based on the
wavelength of light, which is about five thousand times greater. So the
cross-section is MILLIONS of times greater. THAT'S why it doesn't take
very
long to absorb enough power to eject an electron.

I know there are some of you out there have a little education in
physics
and I bet you're thinking: what does the photo-electric effect have to
do
with the hydrogen atom? Isn't it about shining light on a metal?
Answer:
there are of course many different photo-electric effects in physics.
One of
them is the optically-induced s-to-p transition in hydrogen. This is
the one
that looks the most like the crystal radio. When you take the
Schroedinger
functions of the two states (s and p) and combine them together, you
literally get a little wee oscillating dipole. This is the case I've
done
the calculations for. The more well-known case of shining UV light on a
metal is even more
extreme: here, the relevant absorption cross-section is not of course
the
size of the atom, or even the wavelength of the light...but the whole
surface of the metal! Because in a metal, the conduction electrons are
shared, and their "band levels" extend physically throughout the whole
metal.

Of course, since Einstein proposed his particle theory of light in
1905, and
Schroedinger didn't explain how the electron "works" until 1926, it's
understandable that Einstein got it wrong. What is inexcusable is that
Einstein's arguments continue to be repeated in textbooks to this very
day,
and not merely as "ancient history." What's even more baffling to me is
how
Compton's "proof" (circa 1919) that his effect cannot be explained
classically has gone virtually unchallenged these scores of years.
Because
Compton bases his analysis on THE JJ THOMPSON ELECTRON OF THE 19th
CENTURY,
basically a little charged metal ping-pong ball. Of COURESE his
argument is
useless when applied to the post-1926 Schroedinger electron!

But it's all over now, because I've got the RIGHT explanation for the
Compton effect. My light is the light of Maxwell, and my electron is
the
electron of Schroedinger. And when I aim them straight at each other,
they
bounce off in a head-on collision. And tomorrow I'll show you how it's
done.

Marty

Jewish Cowboy

Posted: Sat Dec 16, 2006 10:33 pm

Guest

..> "Jewish Cowboy" <btestware@gmail.com> wrote in message

Quote:

news:1165434137.774257.239600@j44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
..> > But seriously: now I'm going to cut the antenna in half. This

screws up

Quote:

everything. Now my coil is all wrong, and my resistor is wrong to. But
suppose I re-adjust, re-tune the coil, and re-match the load impedance
for
my new conditions. How much power can I receive?

Just about anyone would say that with half the antenna, I should get
half
the power, or 500 milliwatts. Some people, with a little more
mathematical
sophistication, might guess what counts is a circular cross-section
using
the antenna length as its diameter...in this case, the expected power
would
be one-quarter, or 250 milliwatts.
But almost no one will guess what the correct answer is.

The correct answer is...the power is the same! 1000 milliwatts. "But
that's
impossible!" I hear you say. "Do you mean that if you cut the antenna
in
half again, you STILL get 1000 milliwatts???" Yes, if you retune and
rematch. How small can you reduce the antenna and still receive the
same
power?? I'm saying you can go RIGHT DOWN TO THE SIZE OF AN ATOM. And
the
effective absorption cross-section is STILL...almost 200 meters in
diameter.
(Of course the atom isn't tuned to CJOB. It has its own
frequencies...but
we'll get to that.)

Harald replied:

Quote:

Sorry but.. if you were right then you could file for a fantastic patent
that tells all the radio engineers in the world how to get rid of their
annoyig antennas

Radio engineers make good practical antennas. If they had
superconducting
wires and coils they could make the antennas much shorter and still
absorb
the same power...at least at the carrier frequency. The practical
problem is
that the antennas then become so resonant that they cannot pick up the
sidebands (where the information is.)

A hydrogen atom intercepting e-m energy at the s-p transition frequency
is of course not subject to these limitations, and it does work as a
perfect
antenna.

Marty

Jewish Cowboy

Posted: Sun Dec 17, 2006 4:02 pm

Guest

Quote:

I am opposed to the idea that one cannot explain things like
the Compton Effect and the Photoelectric Effect using Maxwell's
theory of light. In other words, I think all the traditional arguments
in favor of the photon are readily explainable according to the wave
theory of light.

Marty

harry

Posted: Mon Dec 18, 2006 5:18 am

Guest

"Jewish Cowboy" <btestware@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1166385753.809252.196140@73g2000cwn.googlegroups.com...

Quote:

So you are against E = nh/t?

Different people mean different things with "photon". Typically, it means
"particle" in the USA but "wave packet" in Holland.
Similarly in France I know peope who are working on "photons and
phonons",
and probably they don't claim that phonons are particles.

Harald

I am opposed to the idea that one cannot explain things like
the Compton Effect and the Photoelectric Effect using Maxwell's
theory of light. In other words, I think all the traditional arguments
in favor of the photon are readily explainable according to the wave
theory of light.

Marty

I have seen papers that do claim so, but didn't get the time to read them -
in fact to my regret, I even forgot which ones they are...

Harald

Jewish Cowboy

Posted: Mon Dec 18, 2006 12:33 pm

Guest

Marty wrote

Quote:

...................... I think all the traditional arguments
in favor of the photon are readily explainable according to the wave
theory of light.

Marty

Harals replied

Quote:

I have seen papers that do claim so, but didn't get the time to read them -
in fact to my regret, I even forgot which ones they are...

Harald

There are some papers referenced in Wikipedia by Willis Lamb, Scully,
and some others. But none of them get into clear demonstrations
of how the wave picture works. The thing that astonished me the most
was that Scully, who is supposed to be one of the major proponents
of the semi-classical approach, appears to be unaware of the
significance
of the crystal radio analogy. He explictly writes out the formula for
the
atomic cross-section as being the biggest stumbling block toward making
the wave picture work. As I believe I have shown in my articles, this
is
a major fallacy, one which Einstein was also guilty of.

Marty

Guest

Posted: Tue Dec 26, 2006 4:15 pm

harry wrote:

Quote:

Sorry but.. if you were right then you could file for a fantastic patent
that tells all the radio engineers in the world how to get rid of their
annoyig antennas

Lol. You're wrong, he's right, and engineers have known about this
effect for over a century, since the original radio experiments around
1895. It's public domain: unpatentable.

Go look at antenna textbooks, in their section explaining the origin of
EA or "effective area" of short antennas. (Ask yourself this: how
large is the EM shadow being cast by an antenna where the antenna
length << wavelength?)

Go look at the recent "towerless" AM radio stations which use a high
power resonator in place of a hundred meter vertical tower.

Go learn how those resonator-powered RF tags work. By tuning its
receiver coil to resonance with the transmitter, a very tiny RF tag can
intercept far more transmitted energy than it could if it's coil was
treated as an untuned, non-resonant transformer secondary.

Or go look at any simple AM pocket radio. Notice that the required
250-meter halfwave antenna is missing? It's inside the radio, in the
form of a ferrite-core coil. That's no simple transformer coil either,
not a "magnetic pickup;" instead it's part of a high-Q resonator being
tuned by the multi-section tuning cap. As part of a resonator, the
antenna-coil creates a large current which is in sync with incoming EM
waves, and so produces a volume-filling "scattered wave." The
scattered wave creates a large interference pattern surrounding the
tiny radio, and this pattern creates a downstream EM shadow
approximately a half-wavelength in diameter. That shadow is WAY larger
than the radio itself. That shadow represents the significant energy
being absorbed by the antenna: it's the "effective area" of the tiny
antenna.

((((((((((((((((((((((( ( ( (o) ) ) )))))))))))))))))))))))
William J. Beaty Research Engineer
beaty a chem washington edu UW Chem Dept, Bagley Hall RM74
billb a eskimo com Box 351700, Seattle, WA 98195-1700
ph425-222-5066 http://staff.washington.edu/wbeaty/

Guest

Posted: Tue Dec 26, 2006 6:21 pm

Hooray! Bravo!

I always knew that others with far stronger math than mine would
eventually dare to commit total heresy and begin to suspect that light,
just perhaps, is not made of particles.

Jewish Cowboy wrote:

Quote:

Now, if you're interested in the gory details:
a few years after I figured this stuff out I looked on the internet
and found a guy named Bill Beaty who was all excited about what he
called "energy-sucking antennas".

Actually the term "energy sucking" wasn't mine. It was coined by
either Paul or Fischer in their 1983 paper on the strange effects
involving resonant short antennas:

H. Paul and R. Fischer "Light Absorption by a dipole", SOV. PHYS.
USP.,
26(10) Oct. 1983 pp 923-926

Quote:

You can link to his stuff here:
https://carnot.physics.buffalo.edu/archives/1999/08_1999/msg00854.html

That's the old sci.electronics thread. Also see:

Simplified version for ease of consumption: the energy received by
short resonant antennas
http://amasci.com/tesla/nearfld1.html

"Energy Sucking" antennas
http://amasci.com/tesla/tesceive.html

The Photon Dies Screaming
http://amasci.com/freenrg/sukdynam.html

Quote:

He does a pretty good job of it. I think the parts on his website about
applications to quantum mechanics are based on our phone discussion.

Could very well be.

Back in the 1980s I began to suspect that QM might be entirely wrong,
and that atoms might really be like tiny radio transmitters which emit
sphere-wave dipole radiation. An obvious heresy, but then I love the
mental exercize of taking some taboo and widely-ridiculed ideas
seriously, in order to see where they lead. But I'd never taken the
next step and considered that perhaps classical EM wave theory could
predict the same things that QM does!

((((((((((((((((((((((( ( ( (o) ) ) )))))))))))))))))))))))
William J. Beaty Research Engineer
beaty a chem washington edu UW Chem Dept, Bagley Hall RM74
billb a eskimo com Box 351700, Seattle, WA 98195-1700
ph425-222-5066 http://staff.washington.edu/wbeaty/

Edward Green

Posted: Wed Dec 27, 2006 3:32 pm

Guest

Jewish Cowboy wrote:

Quote:

Wikipedia is a really good website.

So is Google... but you seem to have defeated it by insertion of
carriage returns at an inadvisable line length. Please fix this for
readability.

<...>

Marty, I've read to the end of your post. I think you should stop
rehearsing your frustration, and get to the point. I will say this so
far based on what I've read: science is hard, quantum mechanics is
hard, physical induction is hard, and physical induction related to
quantum mechanics is extremely hard. Take that any way you want.

As to whether "there is a photon", people somewhat talented in
induction and science may not ask this poorly operatonalized question.
It's like debating whether there is an aether.

I hope to see something more substantive.

Ed

Autymn D. C.

Posted: Wed Dec 27, 2006 3:34 pm

Guest

it's -> its

retard

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