Natural Science Forum / Physics / Particle Physics / August 2005

Begin forwarded message:

From: Jack Sarfatti <sarfatti@pacbell.net>
Date: August 11, 2005 8:37:05 AM PDT
To: "Amara D. Angelica" <amara@sonic.net>
Subject: Re: Is jiggling vacuum the origin of mass? Not quite

This is all bad wrong over-simplified physics.  It's not even wrong. I
agree 100% with Glashow. Wesson was on the board of Bernie's short-lived
CIPA when Joe Firmage funded it and is biased. I do not give his opinion
much weight. I read his stuff. Glashow is a better physicist on these
things. In fact Bernie & Alfonso got it wrong. It is the COHERING of the
random ZPF into a COHERENT vacuum condensate (e.g. Higgs mechanism in
standard model that gives the basic inertia to quarks and leptons via
the Yukawa mechanism). This is all explained here with the math i
http://www-conf.slac.stanford.edu/ssi/2005/lec_notes/Dienes1/default.htm
http://www-conf.slac.stanford.edu/ssi/2005/lec_notes/Dienes2/default.htm
http://qedcorp.com/APS/zpf2005.pdf

The bulk of the inertia comes from kinetic energy of confined quarks
inside the hadrons as shown e.g. by Frank Wilzcek - who got the Nobel
Prize for that last year. The Haisch-Rueda origin of inertia and
Puthoff's PV model are both considered cranky stuff by all the
mainstream leaders in the physics community. That's a fact. I don't
always agree with the mainstream, but I do in these two cases.

On Aug 10, 2005, at 10:20 PM, Amara D. Angelica wrote:

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18725124.800&print=true

Is jiggling vacuum the origin of mass?

13 August 2005

From New Scientist Print Edition .

Mark Anderson

Where mass comes from

WHERE mass comes from is one of the deepest mysteries of nature. Now a
controversial theory suggests that mass comes from the interaction of
matter with the quantum vacuum that pervades the universe.

The theory was previously used to explain inertial mass - the property
of matter that resists acceleration - but it has been extended to
gravitational mass, which is the property of matter that feels the tug
of gravity.

For decades, mainstream opinion has held that something called the Higgs
field gives matter its mass, mediated by a particle called the Higgs
boson. But no one has yet seen the Higgs boson, despite considerable
time and money spent looking for it in particle accelerators.

In the 1990s, Alfonso Rueda of California State University in Long Beach
and Bernard Haisch, who was then at the California Institute for Physics
and Astrophysics in Scotts Valley and is now with ManyOne Networks,
suggested that a very different kind of field known as the quantum
vacuum might be responsible for mass. This field, which is predicted by
quantum theory, is the lowest energy state of space-time and is made of
residual electromagnetic vibrations at every point in the universe. It
is also called a zero-point field and is thought to manifest itself as a
sea of virtual photons that continually pop into and out of existence.

Rueda and Haisch argued that charged matter particles such as electrons
and quarks are unceasingly jiggled around by the zero-point field. If
they are at rest, or travelling at a constant speed with respect to the
field, then the net effect of all this jiggling is zero: there is no
force acting on the particle. But if a particle is accelerating, their
calculations in 1994 showed that it would encounter more photons from
the quantum vacuum in front than behind it (see Diagram). This would
result in a net force pushing against the particle, giving rise to its
inertial mass (Physical Review A, vol 49, p 678).

But this work only explained one type of mass. Now the researchers say
that the same process can explain gravitational mass. Imagine a massive
body that warps the fabric of space-time around it. The object would
also warp the zero-point field such that a particle in its vicinity
would encounter more photons on the side away from the object than on
the nearer side. This would result in a net force towards the massive
object, so the particle would feel the tug of gravity. This would be its
gravitational mass, or weight (Annalen der Physik, vol 14, p 479).

Rueda and Haisch say this demonstrates the equivalence of inertial and
gravitational mass - something that Einstein argued for in his theory of
general relativity. "In place of having the particle accelerate through
the zero-point field, you have the zero-point field accelerating past
the particle," says Haisch. "So the generation of weight is the same as
the generation of inertial mass."

The idea is far from winning wide acceptance. To begin with, there's a
conundrum about the zero-point field that needs to be solved. The total
energy contained in the field is staggeringly large - enough to warp
space-time and make the universe collapse in a heartbeat. Obviously this
is not happening. Also, the pair's work can only account for the mass of
charged particles.

Nobel laureate Sheldon Glashow of Boston University is dismissive. "This
stuff, as Wolfgang Pauli would say, is not even wrong," he says. But
physicist Paul Wesson of Stanford University in California says Rueda
and Haisch's unorthodox approach shows promise, though he adds that the
theory needs to be backed up by experimental evidence. "If Haisch [and
Rueda] could come up with a concrete prediction, then that would make
people sit up and take notice," he says. "We're all looking for
something we can measure."

Printed on Thu Aug 11 06:18:59 BST 2005