Presidential Candidate Gen. Wesley K. Clark: Futurist.

In article ,
(luke) wrote:

But it does matter in generality, right? It is "necessary to specify
the physical behavior of a system".. So does an Aharanov-Bohm
experiment tell us the gauge or is there still gauge invariance?

The Aharanov-Bohm effect tells us that the gauge field matters, but it
doesn't matter which gauge you write it down in. Everything is still
gauge invariant.

Aaron

Aaron Bergman wrote in message news:abergman-CCF060.12203113102003@localhost...
In article ,
(luke) wrote:

But it does matter in generality, right? It is "necessary to specify
the physical behavior of a system".. So does an Aharanov-Bohm
experiment tell us the gauge or is there still gauge invariance?

The Aharanov-Bohm effect tells us that the gauge field matters, but it
doesn't matter which gauge you write it down in. Everything is still
gauge invariant.


OK, thanks. I think I get it now. The "phase" of an electron
wavefunction is definitely influenced by the choice of gauge, but we
can only measure phase differences in a A-B experiment (or anywhere I
suppose), so we still have not determined a "correct" choice of gauge.

Discover magazine had an article on the ultra-high energy cosmic rays
in the September 2003 issue that is currently available on the HiRes
cosmic ray detector's web site:

H i R e s / High Resolution Fly's Eye.
Sept. 2003 Discover Article.
HiRes's Pierre Sokolsky quoted in Discover© (Vol. 24, No. 9 September
2003) article, "They Came From Outer Space: Does The Very Existence Of
Cosmic Rays Defy The Laws Of Physics?" (pg.44-47).
"Some physicists argue that at high energies, even the speed of light
may vary—posing a serious problem for Einstein's special theory of
relativity, which states that the speed of light is constant, always
and everywhere. With a speed-of-light loophole, ultrahigh-energy
cosmic rays could travel greater distances than the experts suppose
without getting bonked by background radiation. Evidence of their
sojourns should turn up in data from the next generation of cosmic-ray
detectors. If the source of those most powerful of particles turns out
to be far enough away, Einstein himself could get a makeover."
http://hires.physics.utah.edu/


Bob Clark
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(Robert Clark) wrote in message . com...
Uncle Al wrote in message ...
Robert Clark wrote:
...

FTL violates causality only if relativity is exactly true. If
relativity breaks down at ultra-high energies, then you can have FTL
and causality.
SR has not been tested in our laboratories at the energies of the
ultra-high cosmic rays: they are a billion times higher than the
energies achievable by our accelerators.
There is good evidence that some new physics is required to explain
the anomalous observations of the ultra-high cosmic rays, either by
violation of Lorentz invariance or otherwise.

http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/ohmygodpart.html

Unless you can provide a credible citiation to support your
contention, you are wrong. There is some debate on the distance of
origin of such high energy protons vs. scattering off cosmic
background radiation and slowing over time. There is no debate
whatsover that they behave by the book - including the Standard Model
for modeling the detectable particle showers they cause.


================================================== ==========================
Astrophysics, abstract
astro-ph/0206505
From: Pasquale Blasi
Date: Fri, 28 Jun 2002 14:42:28 GMT (36kb)

Ultra-high Energy Cosmic Rays: a probe into New Physics
Author: Pasquale Blasi (INAF/Arcetri)
Comments: Invited Review Talk at SpacePart 2002, La Biodola, Isola
d'Elba, Italy - May 14-19, 2002
Journal-ref: Nucl.Phys.Proc.Suppl. 113 (2002) 60-67

The most energetic particles ever detected exceed $10^{20}$ eV in
energy. Their existence represents at the same time a great challenge
for particle physics and astrophysics, and a great promise of
providing us for a probe of the validity of the laws of Nature in
extreme conditions. We review here the most recent data and the future
perspectives for detection of cosmic rays at ultra-high energies, and
discuss possible ways of using these data to test the possibility that
new Physics and/or new Astrophsyics may be awaiting around the corner.
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0206505
================================================== =========================

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology, abstract
hep-ph/0202013
From: Subir Sarkar
Date (v1): Sun, 3 Feb 2002 23:47:20 GMT (121kb)
Date (revised v2): Fri, 8 Feb 2002 16:09:32 GMT (121kb)

Ultra-high energy cosmic rays and new physics
Authors: Subir Sarkar (Oxford U.)
Comments: 15 pages (LaTeX), 6 figures; Invited talk at COSMO-01
Workshop, Rovaniemi, Finland, August 30-September 4, 2001; Changes:
typos fixed, references added

Cosmic rays with energies beyond the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin `cutoff'
at $\sim 4 \times 10^{10}$ GeV pose a conundrum, the solution of which
requires either drastic revision of our astrophysical understanding,
or new physics beyond the Standard Model. Nucleons of such energies
must originate within the local supercluster in order to avoid
excessive energy losses through photopion production on the cosmic
microwave background. However they do not point back towards possible
nearby sources, e.g. the active galaxy Cen A or M87 in the Virgo
cluster, so such an astrophysical origin requires intergalactic
magnetic fields to be a hundred times stronger than previously
believed, in order to isotropise their arrival directions.
Alternatively the primaries may be high energy neutrinos, say from
distant gamma-ray bursts, which annihilate on the local relic
background neutrinos to create ``Z-bursts''. A related possibility is
that the primary neutinos may initiate the observed air showers
directly if their interaction cross-sections are boosted to hadronic
strength through non-perturbative physics such as TeV-scale quantum
gravity. Or the primaries may instead be new strongly interacting
neutral particles with a longer mean free path than nucleons, coming
perhaps from distant BL-Lac objects or FR-II radio galaxies. Yet
another possibility is that Lorentz invariance is violated at high
energies thus suppressing the energy loss processes altogether. The
idea that has perhaps been studied in most detail is that such cosmic
rays originate from the decays of massive relic particles
(``wimpzillas'') clustered as dark matter in the galactic halo. All
these hypotheses will soon be critically tested by the Pierre Auger
Observatory, presently under construction in Argentina, and by
proposed satellite experiments such as EUSO.
http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0202013
================================================== =======================


Bob Clark


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