A Revised Planck Scale?

Thus spake "
Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply wrote:

2. Both EM and GR are 1/r^2 interactions.

Isn't this just geometry together with massless exchange particles?

GR has gravitoelectric and
gravitomagnetic phenomena that are remarkably analogous to EM
phenomena.

Isn't this just a consequence of special relativity?

Regardless of their origins, these known characteristics of GR and EM
are similar. Whether these particular similarities are important clues
to a possible unification or just secondary curiosities remains to be
seen.

No, you completely miss the point. We already know the cause of this
particular similarity, and it is not important in giving us any clues to
a unification.



Regards

--
Charles Francis
substitute charles for NotI to email

Oh No wrote:

No, you completely miss the point. We already know the cause of this
particular similarity, and it is not important in giving us any clues to
a unification.


Point taken.

What do you make of the Tajmar experiments? Cold fusion redux? A
breakthrough discovery? Something in between? If other teams verify
their results, it's back to the drawing boards in cosmology and
particle physics, methinks.

Rob

Thus spake "
Oh No wrote:

No, you completely miss the point. We already know the cause of this
particular similarity, and it is not important in giving us any clues to
a unification.


Point taken.

What do you make of the Tajmar experiments? Cold fusion redux? A
breakthrough discovery? Something in between? If other teams verify
their results, it's back to the drawing boards in cosmology and
particle physics, methinks.


Really difficult to say. If it is not experimental mistake and the
results are verified, then the one has to recognise that superconduction
is a quantum mechanical effect and is not fully understood. The
implication then is that it is something which will be very difficult to
analyse in a theory of quantum gravity which we do not yet have.



Regards

--
Charles Francis
substitute charles for NotI to email

Oh No wrote:

Really difficult to say. If it is not experimental
mistake and the results are verified, then the one
has to recognise that superconduction is a quantum
mechanical effect and is not fully understood. The
implication then is that it is something which
will be very difficult to analyse in a theory of
quantum gravity which we do not yet have.

It's important to realize that this experiment
didn't spring out of the woodwork unprovoked. They
did some fairly obvious (in hindsight, of course)
twiddling with Maxwell's equations, found something
predicted that wasn't known, set up the needed
experiment, and found exactly what their math said
they should see.

No "changed plank scale" or any other voodoo.

What I found fun in reviewing their work, is that to
do some of the most precise measurements imaginable,
required lots of big bags full of sand draped all
over everything. I'll admit also to being way
disappointed at the available sensitivity of their
accelerometers; there were possible effects they
wanted to measure that still drowned in the
experimental noise.

What I wish I could understand, but don't, is the
direction of the force they measured. Their diagrams
had arrows for everything but that, and the wording
was splendidly ambiguous. I'd _like_ it to be a
frame dragging force that was axial to the spinning,
a new "exhaustless Dean drive", but I'm almost
convinced that's not what it was.

FWIW

xanthian.

Kent Paul Dolan wrote:
Oh No wrote:


Really difficult to say. If it is not experimental
mistake and the results are verified, then the one
has to recognise that superconduction is a quantum
mechanical effect and is not fully understood. The
implication then is that it is something which
will be very difficult to analyse in a theory of
quantum gravity which we do not yet have.


It's important to realize that this experiment
didn't spring out of the woodwork unprovoked. They
did some fairly obvious (in hindsight, of course)
twiddling with Maxwell's equations, found something
predicted that wasn't known, set up the needed
experiment, and found exactly what their math said
they should see.

No "changed plank scale" or any other voodoo.

What I found fun in reviewing their work, is that to
do some of the most precise measurements imaginable,
required lots of big bags full of sand draped all
over everything. I'll admit also to being way
disappointed at the available sensitivity of their
accelerometers; there were possible effects they
wanted to measure that still drowned in the
experimental noise.

What I wish I could understand, but don't, is the
direction of the force they measured. Their diagrams
had arrows for everything but that, and the wording
was splendidly ambiguous. I'd _like_ it to be a
frame dragging force that was axial to the spinning,
a new "exhaustless Dean drive", but I'm almost
convinced that's not what it was.

FWIW

xanthian.

Tajmar's group likes to distance itself
from the original Podkletnov experiments,
but furthering your 'simplicity is best' comments
I thing the effect may be similar
and due to engineering an apparatus
to create a significant fraction of the material
as superconducting supercurrent.

This significant fraction moves at orbital velocity of earth
sqrt(g*R) which results in observed gravity effects.

Values of 'significant fraction' as measured as
superconducting supercurrents are large (~100 amps/cm^2),
but theoretically, these supercurrents
can be on the order of 1E9 amp/cm^2.

Perhaps, Podkletnov and Tajmar have been able to do this
by some means, perhaps not even known to them.

Richard

Richard Saam wrote:
Kent Paul Dolan wrote:
Oh No wrote:

No "changed plank scale" or any other voodoo.


J. E. McClintock, et al, in vol. 652 of the Astrophysical Journal,
pages 518-539, 2006, dervive the following relationship for a
Kerr-Newman black hole.

J = aGM^2/c

where J is the angular momentum, a is dimensionless spin, G is the
Newtonian gravitational "constant", M is the mass and c is c.

So here is a little consistency check on the Revised Planck Scale
hypothesis, which is the theme of this thread. Take the proton as a
test case, with J = h(bar), a = 1/2, and, most importantly, with G(n-1)
= 2.18 x 10^31 cgs instead of G. Solve for m(proton) to see if G(n-1)
gives a reasonable result.

When you do the math, you get m(proton) = 1.70 x 10^-24 g.

Unless I have made one of my classic math errors, that agrees with the
empirically measured value of m(proton) at the 98.3% level.

Not bad for "voodoo".

Robert L. Oldershaw

wrote:

Unless I have made one of my classic math errors, that agrees with the
empirically measured value of m(proton) at the 98.3% level.

Not bad for "voodoo".

Funny thing about numerical constants, as anyone who's studied
Genetic Programming would know: you can mix and match them
to produce pretty much any result you want, to any level of
accuracy you care to achieve.

Considering that the numerical prediction capability of the existing
science of particles is accurate to well over a dozen decimal places,
your one and a fraction digit of precision calculation by blind
stirring
of numerical constants impresses only you; to me it looks like
monkey factor numerology and nothing else.

xanthian.

Kent Paul Dolan wrote:

monkey factor numerology and nothing else.


Wow! First I am accused of "voodoo" and now it is "monkey factor
numerology"!

Here is a simple way to decide whether what I am doing is "numerology"
or bears a direct relationship to the underlying patterns and
principles upon which nature is based.

Go to www.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw and check out two things:

1. In the "Main Ideas" section see the basic self-similar scaling
equations that are fundamental to the Discrete Fractal Paradigm.
[Details of their derivation are found in Paper #2 of the "Selected
Papers" section (most papers have been published)].

2. Once you know what the discrete self-similar scaling equations are
(always better to proceed from a position of knowledge and
understanding), see the section: "Successful
Predictions/Retrodictions". There you will find a list of about 33
fundamental properties of nature that have been predicted or
retrodicted by these simple scaling equations.

3. Once you complete steps 1 and 2, ask yourself how such a simple set
of scaling rules can possibly relate so many different and fundamental
things. Note that the overwhelming majority of the results were found
*after* the scaling equations were published. Note also that the
scaling equations have *never been changed* to achieve "concordance".

4. If you still have doubts, try devising an alternative set of scaling
rules that is anything but, in Maxwell's words, "an unnatural and
self-contradictory mass of rubbish".

Oh, and I almost forgot the most important thing. If you approach any
new and slightly radical idea with a closed mind, it will look wrong,
regardless of its true value.

Robert L. Oldershaw

wrote:

[...]
J. E. McClintock, et al, in vol. 652 of the Astrophysical Journal,
pages 518-539, 2006, dervive the following relationship for a
Kerr-Newman black hole.

J = aGM^2/c

where J is the angular momentum, a is dimensionless spin, G is the
Newtonian gravitational "constant", M is the mass and c is c.

No, they don't "derive" this. They *define* a quantity a_* (not a,
incidentally, which is something else) by the equation you cite, and
call it the "dimensionless spin parameter" -- by which they merely
mean "a dimensionless parameter proportional to angular momentum."

Note that a_* is very clearly not the same as the "spin" in quantum
mechanics. In particular, the angular momentum of a particle is
(observably!) equal to a universal constant, hbar, times its spin,
while the angular momentum of a Kerr-Newman black hole is a highly
*nonuniversal* number (depending on the mass) times a_*.

So here is a little consistency check on the Revised Planck Scale
hypothesis, which is the theme of this thread. Take the proton as a
test case, with J = h(bar), a = 1/2, and, most importantly, with G(n-1)
= 2.18 x 10^31 cgs instead of G. Solve for m(proton) to see if G(n-1)
gives a reasonable result.

When you do the math, you get m(proton) = 1.70 x 10^-24 g.

To start with, this is an "argument from linguistics" -- you are arguing
that since the same word is used in two different contexts, there should
be a physical relationship. There is no reason for this to be the case.

More important, a Kerr-Newman black hole has a well-understood set of
properties, of which angular momentum (or "dimensionless spin parameter")
is only one. In particular, the *defining* characteristic of a black hole
is an event horizon. Protons, observably, do *not* have event horizons:
we can probe their internal structure, and their response is nothing even
remotely like that of a black hole. (The 1990 Nobel Prize in physics was
awarded for the first such experiments.)

So if you want to argue that a proton is a black hole, but with a higher
value of Newton's constant, this is observationally testable, and very
clearly fails the tests. If you are instead merely making a rough analogy,
I see no reason that you should use an equation for angular momentum that
was defined very specifically for black holes: if a proton isn't really a
black hole, why should that relation, and not any of the other properties
of a black hole, continue to hold?

Steve Carlip

wrote:

So if you want to argue that a proton is a black hole, but with a higher
value of Newton's constant, this is observationally testable, and very
clearly fails the tests. If you are instead merely making a rough analogy,
I see no reason that you should use an equation for angular momentum that
was defined very specifically for black holes: if a proton isn't really a
black hole, why should that relation, and not any of the other properties
of a black hole, continue to hold?


Your arguments are convincing if the assumptions upon which they are
based are unquestionably correct. These assumptions a

(1) the *theoretical* interpretation of particle scattering experiments
is virtually infallible,
(2) the Nobel prize committee does not make mistakes,
(3) that we have a complete and error-free knowledge of K-N black
holes,
etc.

But consider the following.

A. Standard particle physics gets the vacuum energy density *wrong* by
120 orders of magnitude!!

B. I believe that when the Planck length (and the Planck Scale, in
general) is recalculated without theoretical bias, but rather on an
*empirical* basis, it will be found that the standard particle physics
estimate is off by 20 orders of magnitude! See astro-ph/0701006 and
physics/0701132 at www.arxiv.org for discussions related to this issue.

Given these theoretical shortcomings, why should we have so much
confidence in the contention that standard particle physics can
accurately describe the proton on scales of less than 2 x 10^-13 cm?

Also, when will you comment on the 5 fundamental physical analogies
between hadrons and Kerr-Newman black holes that were emphasized in
post #2 of this thread (11/6/06)? In your opinion, do these analogies
have no scientific value? Are they just 5 coincidences?

Would we be better off ignoring them, or treating them as "anecdotal"?

RLO