QM and General Relativity may have finally been merged

[scruffy]

The highest frequency theoretically obtainable is 1.85 x 10^43 Hz

 

[para bellum]

Nobody has time to read through all that without some idea of what the content is. How about summarizing it in a paragraph or two and note the pertinent parts of the article so we can know whether we want to spend that much time or effort?

It won't make any sense without some physics background, but the authors are presenting the holy grail of physics- the uniting of gravity, the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, and electromagnetism into a single "theory of everything".

They started with Einstein's field equation for gravity and modified it to make it compatible with quantum physics, and then derived some of the fundamental equations of particle physics from it. In the process, they eliminated some major nagging problems in physics and cosmology. They accomplished this in a very simple manner- they propose a minimum possible unit of time and a minimum possible unit of space, and they make gravity (the effect of mass on space) symmetrical. It is a remarkable thing.

They also took something that was considered inviolable- the rest mass of the electron is considered a fundamental constant- and they made it variable. This will cause some serous heartburn for some particle physicists!

So it must be viewed with a great deal of caution right now, and will be scrutinized and attacked mercilessly, as it should be. But if it holds up, it is an amazing achievement- guaranteed Nobel Prize work that will put their names alongside the greatest physicists in history.

 

[Wuwei]

The authors derive the mass and charges of the up and down quarks proportional to the electron, so the treatment provides the nuclei and electrons are changing at the same rate.

The relevant para (bolded part mine):
"As the universe expands, the charge and mass of electrons decreases, resulting in less interaction in the aging universe. The electron charge and mass are no longer constant. They depended on the radius of the universe at the time.
We can consider the mass of the quark in terms of the mass of the electron in the same way, considering the charge. For the up and down quarks, the charges were 2/3e and -1/3e respectively. Because a quark is equivalent to a confined electron in the fractal dimension of space–time, it results in a larger interaction energy.
The mass of the down quark, md should be proportional to (3e)2
because we divide the electron into 1/3 fractal dimensions. Hence,
md = 9e2 = 9me = 4.5 MeV, (SM value 4.8 MeV)
the same reason for up quark is for fractal dimension ½. Therefore, its
mass
mu = (2e)2 = 4e2 = 4me = 2 MeV (SM value 2.2 MeV)."

e is the electric charge.
m is the electron mass

The fine structure constant is proportional to e^2.
The Rydberg constant is proportional to m e^4

Those two constants control the hydrogen atomic spectrum. Even if the mass of the electron and proton track linearly, the basic hydrogen spectrum will change by the fourth power of e. The fine structure constant will not change as much.

I really shouldn't criticize the work until I understand it more than I do now, but that is one thing I need to resolve. I am sure the authors have it covered.

 

[Foxfyre]

It won't make any sense without some physics background, but the authors are presenting the holy grail of physics- the uniting of gravity, the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, and electromagnetism into a single "theory of everything".

They started with Einstein's field equation for gravity and modified it to make it compatible with quantum physics, and then derived some of the fundamental equations of particle physics from it. In the process, they eliminated some major nagging problems in physics and cosmology. They accomplished this in a very simple manner- they propose a minimum possible unit of time and a minimum possible unit of space, and they make gravity (the effect of mass on space) symmetrical. It is a remarkable thing.

They also took something that was considered inviolable- the rest mass of the electron is considered a fundamental constant- and they made it variable. This will cause some serous heartburn for some particle physicists!

So it must be viewed with a great deal of caution right now, and will be scrutinized and attacked mercilessly, as it should be. But if it holds up, it is an amazing achievement- guaranteed Nobel Prize work that will put their names alongside the greatest physicists in history.

Thank you for that analysis. I don't know you, but I will accept that you know more about it than I probably ever will. LOL.

But you know, since more and more people are going for PhDs, and their doctoral thesis is required to be of a unique and uncharted topic, I think a lot of these people are inventing things to study in order to come up with a thesis topic. I think a lot of these things probably fall into that particular phenomenon.

And I agree that's why a 'peer reviewed study' should always be viewed within the scope of what we already know and can't be accepted just because it is a 'scientific study.' Scientists are fallible and can be dishonest human beings just as every other type of human beings can be.

But you are right that if a new concept of science holds up, it moves us forward in what we know. And I am pretty sure we currently have a teensy fraction of all the science there yet to learn.

 

[para bellum]

Those two constants control the hydrogen atomic spectrum. Even if the mass of the electron and proton track linearly, the basic hydrogen spectrum will change by the fourth power of e.

This is a good observation and I will have to ponder it.

Would not the change would reflect the difference between me^4 then vs. now? Not the fourth power of e, but the change in the fourth power of e over time?

As I understand it, the constant is a reflection of the difference in energy states of orbitals, and if the charge of the proton is changing at the same rate as the charge of the electron, the differential should remain the same? (it's late here and my brain is getting fuzzy )

 

[scruffy]

The universe is already so flat and the electron mass so tiny that it may be changing and we just don't notice. (or the rate is too small for us to measure)

This does not disagree with the value, it just says it's not quite a constant. (I agree, that is a fundamentally different way of viewing it.)

But the ability to derive the rest mass of the electron from a quantum theory of gravity and match up with QED is very powerful.

Reciprocity already exists in relativity- Mass and energy are interchangeable, space can exchange mass (energy) with matter in both directions and conservation only happens if you include gravitational energy in your calculation. Red shift is a loss of energy- the number of photons are not growing but the space is expanding. Likewise "dark energy" is an increase in total energy- the energy density does not change while the volume is increasing.

The beauty of this is it a function of the geometry and does not require a new force or particle, it just says it is an interchange that is governed by the curvature itself. The space is flattening out, and the energy is given to the matter.

To me that is intuitive and much more elegant than some mysterious unknown force or arrangement of quarks that is not predicted by QM.

This paper is the teaser, not the proofs, so it will take time to flesh all this out by people who are a lot better at it than us old guys, haha. They published enough to say "we have made the connection in a way that can't be casually discarded." The rest of the fundamental particles have to match up, the relative strengths of the forces have to match up, etc.

Any fundamental constants that can't be reconciled will be a problem. QM is too good to claim it's just wrong about the fundamentals.

Absent any disagreements in that regard, this smells good to me. Simplicity is elegance and convoluted explanations are always defective. I am happy today.

I will read it again tonight and then let it percolate in my subconscious for a while. It's a really dramatic paper, it will take me time to digest the implications.

I don't fully understand it either, but after 3 readings it still smells good topologically.

Agree with Wuwei that the changing charge and mass will take some careful verification. Seems to me though, we could gain some insight into boundary conditions by looking at tritium spectra from far away, and also along the same lines, curious about neutrino mass. If the theory is correct it should be able to predict which neutrinos are most massive. These masses should relate to distance, yes? They make some definite predictions but then they kinda wave their hands over the exchanges.

Last I heard (10 years ago?) they were using Penning traps to measure electron mass to about 11 or 12 decimal places. Is that still the best we have?

 

[ding]

It won't make any sense without some physics background, but the authors are presenting the holy grail of physics- the uniting of gravity, the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, and electromagnetism into a single "theory of everything".

They started with Einstein's field equation for gravity and modified it to make it compatible with quantum physics, and then derived some of the fundamental equations of particle physics from it. In the process, they eliminated some major nagging problems in physics and cosmology. They accomplished this in a very simple manner- they propose a minimum possible unit of time and a minimum possible unit of space, and they make gravity (the effect of mass on space) symmetrical. It is a remarkable thing.

They also took something that was considered inviolable- the rest mass of the electron is considered a fundamental constant- and they made it variable. This will cause some serous heartburn for some particle physicists!

So it must be viewed with a great deal of caution right now, and will be scrutinized and attacked mercilessly, as it should be. But if it holds up, it is an amazing achievement- guaranteed Nobel Prize work that will put their names alongside the greatest physicists in history.

What produced the radiation (i.e. CMB) in the two possible cases for the evolution of the universe?

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

It seems that the theory rests on a reciprocity between mass and curved space, which is novel to me. I am not going to get excited about that until the theory is verified and approved by those who understand it.

I studied GR too in the mid 70s, Why is the reciprocity catching your attention? I though the final Einstein equations did exactly that, equated spacetime curvature with the stress/energy tensor, so isn't that already defining the reciprocity?

 

[scruffy]

Their statement about neutrinos bothers me.

It reveals some ignorance, don't you think?

I mean, for people who have the universe all wrapped up.

 

[Wuwei]

I studied GR too in the mid 70s, Why is the reciprocity catching your attention? I though the final Einstein equations did exactly that, equated spacetime curvature with the stress/energy tensor, so isn't that already defining the reciprocity?

View attachment 1008730

Para bellum already covered that. Yes mass creates curvature, but what is new is that curvature relaxation can create mass. The authors are talking about the Ricci tensor R which defines curvature.

 

[Wuwei]

Their statement about neutrinos bothers me.

It reveals some ignorance, don't you think?

I mean, for people who have the universe all wrapped up.

Yes, I was taken aback by their comments on neutrinos but didn't think further about that.

 

[Wuwei]

This is an analysis of how the author's GUT affects spectral analysis that leads to Hubble's constant.

Rydberg constant R = e⁴m/K
where K is a constant involving plank's constant, permittivity, and speed of light.

An example of a specific spectral wavelength on earth is, λ₀, and is proportional to 1/R,

e₀ is the electric charge;
m₀ is the mass on earth.

So λ₀ = 1/R = 1/(e₀⁴m₀ / K) = K / (e₀⁴m₀) on earth.

The wavelength for the article's GUT theory has changes in e and m denoted by the subscript 1:
λ₁ = K / (e₁⁴m₁)

The ratio of wavelengths wrt changed m and e is:
λ₁ / λ₀ = (e₀⁴m₀) / (e₁⁴m₁) .
λ₁ / λ₀ = e₀⁴ / e₁⁴, where mass change is ignored.

The red shift, λₓ, for velocities not near the speed of light is
λ = λ₀ (1 + v/c)
The apparent redshift is also changed by the GUT theory
So at a distant galaxy that changes the observed wavelength λₓ,
λₓ = λ₁(1 + v/c) e₀⁴ / e₁⁴
Solving for velocity computed by redshift,
v/c = λₓ/λ₁ × (e₁/e₀)⁴ -1

Conclusion: (If I made no mistakes)
The velocity of distant galaxies is very non-linear with distance and Hubble's linear law is dead wrong.
(I hope I made a mistake)
The calculation could be continued to see how that affects the age and size of the universe. But at this point it isn't worth while.

 

[para bellum]

λ₁ / λ₀ = e₀⁴ / e₁⁴

This is what I was getting at. If the delta is very low, e₀⁴ / e₁⁴ could be very close to 1. It wouldn't make a big difference.

I agree with you, red shifted H is still H. If the spectral lines are wrong, it's not H, it's something else. It seems to me we need to know the delta e.

Wrt the neutrinos, I think people are misreading- they are just modifying the Ricci tensor for local conditions, not using different curvatures for different particles. (Obviously deriving mass from curvature is a departure, but that's kind of their point...)

The statement about oscillations is obviously speculative, but the cause is unknown anyway, so suggesting their theory may account for it is okay I guess, lol. It is a bit of a stretch...

I am a little less sanguine today, wondering how long it will take before we see the retraction, haha.

Always fun to see new ideas though.

 

[Wuwei]

This is what I was getting at. If the delta is very low, e₀⁴ / e₁⁴ could be very close to 1. It wouldn't make a big difference.

I agree with you, red shifted H is still H. If the spectral lines are wrong, it's not H, it's something else. It seems to me we need to know the delta e.

Wrt the neutrinos, I think people are misreading- they are just modifying the Ricci tensor for local conditions, not using different curvatures for different particles. (Obviously deriving mass from curvature is a departure, but that's kind of their point...)

The statement about oscillations is obviously speculative, but the cause is unknown anyway, so suggesting their theory may account for it is okay I guess, lol. It is a bit of a stretch...

I am a little less sanguine today, wondering how long it will take before we see the retraction, haha.

Always fun to see new ideas though.

As you know my focus was on the statement,

"As the universe expands, the charge and mass of electrons decreases, resulting in less interaction in the aging universe. The electron charge and mass are no longer constant. They depended on the radius of the universe at the time." ​

​

I understood that as linearly proportional to the radius of the expanding universe which would lead to a fourth power effect. But they didn't say that, and they didn't say what the relation was. So I jumped to conclusions. I don't know the relative size increase of the universe from the first galaxies to present anyway. It's no doubt in the literature somewhere. They should have covered the ramifications of their theory in much more depth, or maybe they are using graduate students to do that.

I hope it all works out when they get to the details.

 

[ding]

See sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0927650524001130

Could be some very big news.

 

[Robert W]

You're right. My apologies. I originally hit the article on my phone and had some difficulty getting it to my pc. Let's see if this works:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0927650524001130

This link came from the latest issue of "Astroparticle Physics" at Redirecting

Both these links now work for me

Check links to the authors of this information. They are from Thailand and China.

 

[Robert W]

Whoa! If this proves out, it is the most powerful advance in physics in history.

It unifies General Relativity and Particle physics. It eliminates singularities and infinities, gets rid of dark matter and dark energy, and accounts for Hubble inflation. It predicts the fundamental particles and their masses and interactions and eliminates the extra dimensions associated with string theories.

It's not just a quantum theory of gravity, it's a true unified theory. Something physics has been looking for for 100 years.

It came from Thailand and China and can be verified or killed when the rest of the important scientists investigate it for the rest of us.

 

[Robert W]

I piqued mine....But, as I mentioned, when you start expressing the timeless in terms of time, you may as well be trying to claim that you've merged baseball and SCUBA diving.

Quantum physics is bizarre enough...The whole abstract looked to me like a long-winded confusing way to put a square peg in a round hole.

Above my remarks is an analysis by Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder whom I am very familiar with and she hits the ball out of the park with her reports.

 

[Robert W]

If electron charge and mass are changing as a function of expansion, we can already see there is no effect on the laws of physics simply by looking at past galaxies. The stars seem to be no different.

If electron properties change change at a different rate than nuclei, the spectra would not be the same. And the red shift wouldn't be an accurate measure of distance.


Paragraph 18.3 says outright that dark matter is not needed to explain galaxy rotation. If that holds up, good riddance.


Yes, Occam's razor strikes.

I still haven't wrapped my head around the circumstances behind the relaxation of the Ricci tensor.
This certainly is a milestone, and will probably even appear in the New York Times. I didn't think it would happen in my lifetime.

Some posters give off the appearance of actually understanding this. I am not among them. When claims are made the James Webb Space Telescope solved the questions contained in quantum physics, it brings out the skeptic in me.
That and the paper came to us from Thailand and China. Seems important physicists would be leaping up to embrace it were it true.

 

[Wuwei]

Some posters give off the appearance of actually understanding this. I am not among them. When claims are made the James Webb Space Telescope solved the questions contained in quantum physics, it brings out the skeptic in me.
That and the paper came to us from Thailand and China. Seems important physicists would be leaping up to embrace it were it true.

You raise valid points. Those of us who are critically analyzing the paper are familiar with QM and GR. I think that we show the proper amount of skepticism in our later posts. A lot of extremely important physics has come from Asian scientists. The editorial staff of the journal is largely from the US and other western countries. The paper is based on a unique idea that is worthwhile publishing, but critics will certainly jump on it. You may not see it's failure in the popular media because that is less of a wow factor for a general audience.