PHYSICS NOTE NO. 2
SUMMARY THEME OF PART II OF THE PHYSICS OF CREATION
Copyright © Harold Aspden, 2001
PHOTONS AND THE FINE STRUCTURE CONSTANT
Part I of this work claimed the discovery of the truths underlying the nature of the force of gravity and may have implied that one can build a logical step-by-step picture of the underworld of space and so deduce how the dynamics of that system can set up interaction forces related to the mass properties of the interacting particles. That, however, was not the chronological order of progress concerning the development of this theory. One cannot just sit down and, as a mental exercise, devise an explanation for the force of gravity, nor indeed was there any experimental breakthrough on the gravity front that provided the necessary inspiration.
The foundations for this work were laid by the author engaging in an experimental project as a research student working for a Ph.D. degree at Cambridge University. That project was in no way connected with any of the fascinating topics that come within the scope of physics. It was the more mundane pursuit of trying to discover why the magnetization losses in laminated steel cores excited at normal power frequency are so much greater than conventional eddy-current theory predicts. More electrical energy goes into heat that those who design power transformers expect by normal electrical principles based on the physical properties of the materials used.
This research caused the author to focus as a peripheral interest on the question of how it was that a steady magnetic field applied to a metal test piece is not virtually completely compensated by the reaction of the numerous free conduction electrons present in metal.
It was only after leaving Cambridge and becoming immersed in the real world of the electrical power industry that inspiration took a hold and pointed to the possibility that there was indeed a powerful magnetic field reaction set up in metal by those free conduction electrons, but, to the extent that
this would offset the strength of the applied magnetic field, it would then weaken the reaction. Now, here, instead of just thinking of a magnetic ‘field’ as something set up by electric charge in motion, the relationship being direct and determined by empirical rules concerning units of measurement, I argued that Mother Nature might have her own way of controlling the reaction by optimizing at its maximum level the energy density of that reacting system, given that we feed energy into the so-called ‘field’ by the process of magnetization. Once I did this I immediately discovered that the optimum reaction would be one for which the energy stored in the reacting electron motion in the metal would have the the standard energy density that is prescribed in physics, but that the reaction field would halve the applied field. In other words, I had then to accept that an electric current really always develops twice the field action that we expect from standard physics teaching but that invariably there would be an associated reaction from the stored field energy system that halved the applied effect. Since 2 minus 1 is 1, this kept things in order. There was no need to upset standard physical principles, except, that is, for two rather far-reaching consequences.
What pleased me most was that my ‘discovery’ had explained why it is that when a ferromagnetic cylindrical rod, mounted to pivot easily about its central axis, is subjected to a reversal of its magnetic polarization, the associated change of its angular momentum is half that expected from the change of its magnetic moment. In physics this is known as the ‘gyromagnetic ratio’ and physicists have dealt with the anomaly in a rather mystical way by appealing to what they refer to as the half-spin property of the electron.
I was, therefore, beginning to trespass on holy ground, that of a world of physics that was seen as the realm of Nobel Laureate Paul Dirac, which seems to provide territory shared by both quantum theory and the theory of relativity. My university research had been on an energy problem in electrical engineering and here I was swimming in the waters reserved for the physicist.
However, there was also the greater problem. The price I had to pay for accepting that a magnetic field is subject to what I now call a ‘half-field reaction’ effect, is clear once one considers the case of a magnetic field produced by an air-cored solenoid or one located in a vacuum. Space itself, or rather the aether, has to be the seat of electric charge in motion as the ‘half-field reaction’ has to be applicable on a universal scale.
So, there you are, I had no option then. I could either let my discovery drown in a sea of nothingness and forget the gyromagnetic ratio problem and ignore how energy is really stored by a magnetic field, which I could never do, or I could turn my attentions wholeheartedly into a belief in the existence of a real aether medium. This meant, at least at the time, the mid 1950s, that I was committed to a belief that Einstein’s theory, which had cast the aether aside, was a misleading doctrine and that some new physics was needed to restore the aether as the foundation on which to build our understanding of the universe.
Here then was the reason for my research that is described in Part II of ‘The Physics of Creation’.
I had, in fact, an entry point, because I had struggled whilst still at Cambridge to build a better physics picture of the electrodynamic forces active between atoms in the structure of iron crystals, aiming to get a theoretical insight as to how mechanical strain in iron affects its magnetic polarization within the magnetic domains of the crystal. This involved a great deal of mathematical analysis as I tried to bring the Bohr magneton into the picture, where there was electrodynamic interaction merged with attendant electrostatic interactions as between electrons in the 3d shell of the atom moving in concert, that is in synchronous motion. The outcome of this effort is summarized in Chapter 3 of my book ‘Physics without Einstein’. However, the point I make here is that it was only when I switched my attention wholly to the aether theme that I saw that the methods of my analysis as used for the iron crystal in the context of ferromagnetism had a direct and simplified relevance when applied to the aether. If the aether had structure and contained electric charge that could be displaced in that structure whilst having also a quantized state of motion then the energy analysis would surely give me an insight into the properties of the aether, particularly as to the ratio of the radius r of the orbit of the quantized charge motion in relation to the aether lattice dimension d of the cubic structure assumed.
I note that, rather curiously, the r/d factor of the aether turned out to be much the same as that found for iron in its ferromagnetic state, based on the quantized motion of the 3d electrons which are known to account for the magnetic polarization of iron. Indeed, as one can see from p. 48 of ‘Physics without Einstein’ it was suggested by Slater in 1930 that to be ferromagnetic a metal needed the r/d factor to be of the order of 0.3, it being 0.306 for iron.
Rigorous energy analysis, given the aether model I adopted on the strength of careful logical argument, and using the tools of the day, a slide rule and six-figure logarithm tables, gave r/d for the aether as being 0.3029. So it was that, from the quantization picture defined by the Bohr theory of the atom, which gave the value of r as h/4πmc, m being the mass of the electron and h and c having their usual significance as Planck’s constant and the speed of light in vacuo, I could derive the spacing dimension of the structure of our aether. The resulting value sat well with the scale of atomic structure, meaning that I felt quite comfortable with the result and was not looking at an aether having dimensions on such a scale as to be irrelevant to a real physical world.
It was then an easy step to move on to ask how a photon which played a role in the creation of an electron could have a quantum of angular momentum h/2π. It emerged that the photon had to be a 3x3x3 cubic array of the particles forming the lattice sites occupied by charge in the aether and so, very quickly, I was able to formulate the key equation of by whole theory, namely:
Physicists working in government laboratories that determine standards based on high precision measurement have established the value of the expression on the left hand side of the above equation to within one part in a million accuracy. The expression of the right hand side of the equation can be calculated by simple analysis of energy optimization in this author’s aether model, as will be shown in these web pages. There is agreement and so the theory is well supported. More than this, however, the 144π(r/d) term features in the formula for G, the constant of gravitation, derived from the same aether model and so, if one wishes, one can formulate G theoretically in terms of hc/2πe2 without needing to calculate r/d. Such is the strength of the theory.
That, in summary, is what Part II of this work is all about. It is a formal analysis of the real aether medium aimed at providing the foundation on which the whole theory of ‘The Physics of Creation’ has been built. This foundation was the starting point. It opened the way forward, in that the numerical quantity defining a dimensionless physical constant had emerged so precisely and yet so easily without there being any incentive to decipher what that number meant. Although critics have suggested that I was merely playing with numbers, as if pushing buttons on a modern calculator can of itself serve as physics, that was not the way it was.
It was not my desire to change the world of physics. I had a residual curiosity from my efforts at Cambridge to understand something anomalous concerning energy loss in magnetic materials but my curiosity had been aroused once I saw how physicists had taken a few wrong turns in interpreting certain phenomen. Their explanation of record on the free-electron diamagnetism theme borders on being hilarious. Their concept of the half-spin property of the electron defies all logic, if one seeks to picture the physics involved, and to dismiss the aether as non-existent because of an experiment performed using mirrors, the Michelson-Morley experiment, is somewhat ludicrous.
On the latter point, given that we now know that a laser traps electromagnetic waves between mirrors to set up standing waves which carry energy along with the apparatus, ought one not to wonder how the Michelson-Morley experiment could claim to relate to the one-way free transit speed of light? Keep in mind here that the existence of standing waves and the way in which the wave nodes are dragged along by being locked on the mirror system had not been discovered at the time Michelson and Morley first performed their experiment.
More to the point, the Trouton-Noble experiment (1903), a topic discussed in Part I of this work, was a factor in the scenario by which the aether was dismissed, but as we have seen its significance depended upon a certain law of electrodynamics that had not first been established for action between discrete charges in motion. The law was merely ‘inferred’ by combining assumptions with empirical fact relating ony to action that was part of a closed cicuital flow of current.
So, you see, my interest in the aether is in the underlying physics and not in deciphering number relationships for their own sake. I do find great satisfaction in interpreting the physics that govern our universe and find it gratifying when the numbers come out right. I know that some physicists see beauty in mathematical equations according to their shape and symmetry and have little patience with numerical conclusions. However, having an academic background shaped by the electrical engineering mould, where experiments had to give the right numerical answers as dictated by theory, I can only assume that a theory is either totally wrong or at least partially wrong if it gives the wrong numerical answer when tested by experiment. Accordingly, I trust that here in this Part II, where the reader will see how the value of the fine-structure constant emerges from theoretical analysis, the result will be viewed in proper context, namely as an indication that the underlying aether theory portrayed is indeed a true representation of the real underworld of space.
The Lectures relevant to this Part II of ‘The Physics of Creation’ will, when written, be listed for access here. In the meantime, the reader may find it of interest to inspect those Lectures which have been entered in the corresponding Physics Note 3 relating to Part III.
to return to the main site index.