I think I have a theory (hypothesis?) that would explain the double slit experiment and black holes. Please have a look if you're interested.

[GeoffonTour]

I have a theory (hypothesis?) that would explain how all the particles in the universe are created and destroyed (apart from collisions like in the LHC). It explains the double slit experiment and black holes. Can anyone help me test it?

Ok so we know that electromagnetic energy exists as a wave of probability, and particles. A wave of probability, if you think about the word requires something to be probable. At some point (a “1”) something has to happen. I was looking and the only thing I couldn’t explain was particles popping into existence. So I believe that electromagnetic waves overlap and gain probability, until they cross a threshold (a “1”), and then part of the wave collapses into a particle. The particle inherits the vector properties of the peak of the wave that created it, hence why electromagnetic particles are all created at around what we call light speed.

Ok, I thought, let’s keep going. The strong nuclear force, (I’m not sure if this has been proven so this is conjecture) may exist as a massless energy wave similar to electromagnetic energy. As the waves overlap and combine the probability gains strength, until it hits a 1. This is higher than the threshold for electromagnetic energy because what is created is larger and more complex. As it crosses the threshold a matter particle pops into existence. It would very quickly attract an electron due to the magnetic charge and you have a hydrogen atom. This would explain how you can create matter from energy, which I believe is a known phenomenon.

Ok, let’s keep going. There’s only one more fundamental force of nature (I’m ignoring the weak nuclear force as a fundamental force because it isn’t required for what I’m describing I may be wrong to do that) which is gravity. Gravity is a lot weaker than the other two and what it creates is a lot less probable since it’s larger, more complicated, and requires the existence of everything before it. So the energy waves overlap and overlap until eventually the probabilty hits 1, and a gravity particle is created. I believe that’s what a black hole actually is, it would have the same mass as what it was created from, and since it’s black it would be difficult to see. I would guess that like other particles it does emit radiation, but given it’s size and going by what we know about the other two types of particle (matter particles oscillate more slowly than electromagnetic) I would predict the radiation oscillates incredibly slowly. Supermassive black holes have more energy than smaller ones, so again going by what we’ve already observed with other particles they should oscillate more quickly.

The basic premise could be tested with a photon emitter. Set it up to produce waves, then introduce another electromagnetic field near it, and turn it up slowly. At some point the waves should overlap and it should start emitting photons. Turn it down and it should stop. Possibly you could even predict wave patterns if you can get them overlapping in sync I don’t know.

If this is true it basically explains all the particles in the known universe and how they appear and disappear. I was going to ask physicists to test this but the university of Oxford hung up on me and frankly I’m worried about someone taking credit for this if they prove it so I’m hoping that posting here will be evidence that I came up with it first haha.

If it’s nonsense I’d love to hear why, tell me what you think.

Edited Tuesday at 05:43 PM by GeoffonTour

[GeoffonTour]

I have posted this on quora, if you think it's worth discussion then I would respectfully request that you join in the discussion there as I think that if it's correct that's the best place for it to gain traction. Thanks. 

[NFUN]

Quote

If it’s nonsense I’d love to hear why, tell me what you think.

It is, but it's also in the "not even wrong" category which makes it hard to even start. I'm afraid you have a pretty fundamental misunderstanding of particle-wave duality and where probability comes into play in quantum mechanics. To save some time,

Quote

The basic premise could be tested with a photon emitter. Set it up to produce waves, then introduce another electromagnetic field near it, and turn it up slowly. At some point the waves should overlap and it should start emitting photons. Turn it down and it should stop. Possibly you could even predict wave patterns if you can get them overlapping in sync I don’t know.

we've tested this. Both theory and experiment indicate that under reasonable conditions, in free space electromagnetic fields are "linear", which essentially means that they obey the laws of superposition. Put two waves together and you get two waves moving together. If you want to measure the value of the electric field at a certain position at a certain time, the result would be the sum of the waves' electric fields, very simple. A consequence is that they don't actually interact with one another. Put as many fields as you want; so long as you don't reach such absurd densities that the vacuum becomes birefringent, all you have is just a bright light, with nothing unexpected or fundamentally different compared to only one dim source. By the way, photons aren't like dense spots of concentrated radiant energy; you don't get a photon by having stronger light somewhere. You can think of them as excitations in a field (read up on harmonic oscillators) which are always extricable from any EM field.

 

The theory doesn't work (it's pretty hard to come up with a novel explanation for physics that fits the data), but enthusiasm and creativity goes a long way. Read up on the subject more (eg, David Griffith's textbooks on Electrodyanmics and Quantum Theory are great) and you might stumble onto something

[HebaruSan]

The descriptions and metaphors that popular science communicators use to explain things to the public are simplifications (notably, they usually drop all the math). They're helpful enough for giving us a general sense of what physicists are working on, and they can even help us develop intuition about things like time dilation within the narrow scope where they're applicable. But they aren't the actual way this work is done, and they have limitations; if you try to use them to develop new ideas, what you produce will be very likely to get tripped up by those limitations and miss the underlying physical phenomenon. That seems to have happened here; the absence of any worked-out math is a very notable red flag.

3 hours ago, GeoffonTour said:

the university of Oxford hung up on me

University physics departments get lots of cranks sending them theories of everything that never pan out as anything worthwhile, and the submitters often show a lack of interest in learning why their idea is wrong. These people are paid to teach students and do research, and fighting with cranks is an infinite time-sink that doesn't advance those goals.

Edited Tuesday at 09:10 PM by HebaruSan

[farmerben]

1 hour ago, NFUN said:

 

The theory doesn't work (it's pretty hard to come up with a novel explanation for physics that fits the data), but enthusiasm and creativity goes a long way. Read up on the subject more (eg, David Griffith's textbooks on Electrodyanmics and Quantum Theory are great) and you might stumble onto something

I've got two of Griffith's book on my shelf!  Some of the only university books I actually kept!

[GeoffonTour]

3 hours ago, NFUN said:

It is, but it's also in the "not even wrong" category which makes it hard to even start. I'm afraid you have a pretty fundamental misunderstanding of particle-wave duality and where probability comes into play in quantum mechanics. To save some time,

we've tested this. Both theory and experiment indicate that under reasonable conditions, in free space electromagnetic fields are "linear", which essentially means that they obey the laws of superposition. Put two waves together and you get two waves moving together. If you want to measure the value of the electric field at a certain position at a certain time, the result would be the sum of the waves' electric fields, very simple. A consequence is that they don't actually interact with one another. Put as many fields as you want; so long as you don't reach such absurd densities that the vacuum becomes birefringent, all you have is just a bright light, with nothing unexpected or fundamentally different compared to only one dim source. By the way, photons aren't like dense spots of concentrated radiant energy; you don't get a photon by having stronger light somewhere. You can think of them as excitations in a field (read up on harmonic oscillators) which are always extricable from any EM field.

 

The theory doesn't work (it's pretty hard to come up with a novel explanation for physics that fits the data), but enthusiasm and creativity goes a long way. Read up on the subject more (eg, David Griffith's textbooks on Electrodyanmics and Quantum Theory are great) and you might stumble onto something

Is there a reason that isn't widely publicised why photons or other electromagnetic particles appear and disappear? Because this was the thing I was trying to answer that wasn't explained anywhere I looked. 

 

Maybe the probability can increase without increasing any of the other properties of the electromagnetic wave?

Thanks

Edited Tuesday at 11:52 PM by GeoffonTour

[FleshJeb]

11 hours ago, GeoffonTour said:

If this is true it basically explains all the particles in the known universe and how they appear and disappear. I was going to ask physicists to test this but the university of Oxford hung up on me and frankly I’m worried about someone taking credit for this if they prove it so I’m hoping that posting here will be evidence that I came up with it first haha.

Hi Geoff,

I enjoy semi-informed theorycrafting as much as the next nerd, but the exercise loses its value and becomes unhealthy when self-aggrandizement and ego come before curiosity and exploration. This is a common human foible, and physicists are well aware of it because they get thousands of emails from amateur physicists each year. By way of illustration, here are some lightly paraphrased quotes from the transcript of a video produced by a theoretical physicist:

Quote

The first thing emblematic of amateur theories is that they're always huge. An amateur wants to solve the world's biggest problem--They want to be a paradigm shift in the way we understand physics they will prove that quantum mechanics is wrong, they will prove gravity doesn't exist, they will prove that electrons aren't real, black holes aren't real, etc.

Quote

Amateur physicists work alone because they're worried that any interaction with physicists will make them steal their theories or taint their ideas. They need to have the final product and they need to publish it on their own so that the world knows they're Einstein.

Hopefully you're seeing some parallels. Hopefully you don't with the following:

Quote

In 1952, after his paper on how the electrons don't exist was rejected, a man got on a bus, went to New York, went to the American Physical Society office and shot the first person he saw. The first person he saw was 20-year-old Eileen Fahey, and she died.

So, that's the reason Oxford hung up on you. Many of the communications they receive from amateur physicists are angry and violent, because the amateur's ego is on the line. I don't believe you're one of those, nor do I mean to discourage you from thinking and dreaming, but I thought you should be aware.

I wish I could engage with your ideas, but I'm several decades out of school, and I'm more of an applied scientist. This involves a shocking amount of wandering around in the woods and beating things up with a machete or a sledgehammer. Occasionally, I get to do some math. I'm not solving any grand questions, but I DO enjoy it.

--FJ

[GeoffonTour]

Ok that's fair I'm well aware that I'm out of my depth, but I've also been watching videos on black holes for example, and in a BBC documentary with a straight face, Brian Cox confidently stated that at the centre of a black hole was a point in space with 0 dimensions (so infinitely small), which he said wasn't space any more but "Time. The end of time."

It is claimed that thermal radiation cannot escape because the escape velocity is the same as the speed of light. Unless I'm mistaken (and please correct me if I am), escape velocity is the velocity you need to overcome the deceleration due to gravity from a given centre of mass. Thermal radiation is defined as massless, which would surely mean it is not affected or decelerated by mass in any way. Therefore I would assume that thermal radiation would just carry on at it's massless speed regardless of anything to do with any amount of mass? 

Thanks

[farmerben]

9 hours ago, GeoffonTour said:

Is there a reason that isn't widely publicised why photons or other electromagnetic particles appear and disappear? Because this was the thing I was trying to answer that wasn't explained anywhere I looked. 

 

Maybe the probability can increase without increasing any of the other properties of the electromagnetic wave?

Thanks

Electromagnetic waves, and Schrodinger wave function are not the same thing.  

Photons are created or destroyed when a charged particle jumps to a new energy level.  They carry information about the electric field, but do not represent the crest of a wave.  

The Schrodinger equation doesn't tell you how particles appear and disappear.  It is a probability distribution telling you how the position and other parameters vary over time.  The wave function collapses whenever a "measurement" is made.  But it might also collapse due to small events below the threshold of measurement by a conscious observer.

[GeoffonTour]

Ok what charged particles jump? I looked for a while and found nothing that said anything about what was causing them to appear and disappear. I also got so fed up trying to understand black holes that I just tried to make sense of it myself to be honest because I think a lot of the stuff that is claimed about black holes is nonsense. 

Ah also it said particles appear when the wave hits a solid object then collapse into a field again which could be explained as a brief overlapping of the wave as it changes direction which then collapses as it's only just peaked above a probability of 1.

[GluttonyReaper]

4 hours ago, GeoffonTour said:

It is claimed that thermal radiation cannot escape because the escape velocity is the same as the speed of light. Unless I'm mistaken (and please correct me if I am), escape velocity is the velocity you need to overcome the deceleration due to gravity from a given centre of mass. Thermal radiation is defined as massless, which would surely mean it is not affected or decelerated by mass in any way. Therefore I would assume that thermal radiation would just carry on at it's massless speed regardless of anything to do with any amount of mass? 

This isn't quite correct (I'm definitely no expert on GR or quantum mechanics, but I think I recall how this works): thermal radiation is an EM wave, EM waves are affected by gravity. This was one of the big revelations of general relativity - by treating gravity as something that "warps" spacetime rather than just being an attractive force, the path that EM waves can effectively be "bent" as they try to follow the distortion caused by a massive object. This is something that's most obvious with gravitational lensing.

Black holes are just an extreme case of this. They distort spacetime around them sufficiently that even the speed of light isn't enough to avoid a collision with whatever singularity exists at their center.

[Terwin]

When a photon hits a particle, the particle can absorb the photon, thus increasing the energy level of the particle(such as an electron).

If a particle is in an excited state(such has having recently absorbed a photon), then it can emit a new photon as it returns to a lower energy state.  (this new photon will often be at a different frequency depending on the particle that emitted it)

 

If you are talking about a photon 'disappearing' during something like the double-slit experiment, then it does not disappear, it was never there, that location was just inside the probability area where the photon might have been.

 

Edited yesterday at 01:31 PM by Terwin

[HebaruSan]

5 hours ago, GeoffonTour said:

I've also been watching videos on black holes

It's best to enjoy those for what they are—entertainment, not education. To understand this stuff at the level needed to contribute to new knowledge, you need to actually study it—as in read books, attend lectures and labs, do lots of problem sets, pass exams, and (eventually) write papers that get peer reviewed.

People like Brian Cox are trying to communicate very complicated and sometimes strange ideas that require a lot of background knowledge to grasp properly, and if try to do that with the language they use in their work, we simply won't understand what they're saying (Wikipedia science pages sometimes offer a taste of this). So to get their points across to a broader audience, they look for ways to give an impression of what the concepts mean, aware that many in the audience might misinterpret. But this can be a worthwhile risk if it inspires some to pursue the actual physics education that would enable them to comprehend the real story.

Imagine I heard a physicist say that rather than having distinct positions and orbits, the electrons in an atom form a "cloud," and suppose I said to myself, "Well, when it's cloudy it often rains, so maybe rain holds the atom together!" That would be fallacious thinking because the rich concept of "cloud" is being borrowed into physics for just one specific aspect of its conventional meaning, and this hypothetical me is getting tripped up by assuming all the other meanings must also apply. That's similar to what's happening here.

Edited yesterday at 01:42 PM by HebaruSan

[farmerben]

7 minutes ago, Terwin said:

When a photon hits a particle, the particle can absorb the photon, thus increasing the energy level of the particle(such as an electron).

If a particle is in an excited state(such has having recently absorbed a photon), then it can emit a new photon as it returns to a lower energy state.  (this new photon will often be at a different frequency depending on the particle that emitted it)

 

If you are talking about a photon 'disappearing' during something like the double-slit experiment, then it does not disappear, it was never there, that location was just inside the probability area where the photon might have been.

 

Well said Terwin!

The allowable energy states for an electron inside an atom are quantized.  The energy of a proton in free space is not quantized if I understand it correctly.  For example a proton in free space can absorb a gamma ray photon and take all the energy.  It might also absorb some of the energy and emit a lower energy photon.  

In relativity an "event" is something all observers will agree on.  To what degree you can entangle multiple particles in a single wavefunction is still somewhat unknown.  The electrons in a helium atom are entangled most of the time.  My opinion is that "events" happen at the nano-scale all the time.  But in the case of a proton in intergalactic space, its wavefunction could evolve for a very long time.  

 

[Jacke]

@GeoffonTour, I suggest you read a couple of books by Lee Smolin:  Time Rebourn  and  Einstein's Unfinished Revolution.  There's a lot more to this that you may initially appreciate.