Hi Steven, > First, as an aside, I don't think Einstein originated the idea of the interchangeability of mass and energy.
Are you going to give me a history lesson, or are we going to discuss the physics? Einstein clearly supported the mass/energy equivalence principle and is widely credited with its existence, regardless of whether he plagiarized it or not. There is no mass/energy equivalence principle. Period. There is no valid math to support such a theory. > Once you have radiation pressure and the relativistic Doppler shift, the change in mass for a radiating body follows pretty easily, which is why "Inertia" is such a short paper. He makes one additional assumption, which is that the total energy of an object in a particular frame is some constant plus its kinetic energy. Given that, using the previously derived transformation rules for energy of a photon (term not yet coined in 1905, of course!), he shows with simple arithmetic that if energy is to be conserved, the mass of a radiating body must decrease. And therein lies the source of the deception. What the body radiates is not energy, but photons. Photons are not energy, they are the quantum of light. The concept that energy packets is the same thing as a photon is an incorrect assumption. Energy is merely the amount of work something does. Energy is not a thing. Photons are a thing. Unfortunately, Einstein never quantifies exactly what a photon is, he only quantifies the amount of work that it does. By using loose language, one can be bamboozled into believing that a quantum amount of work is the same thing as a photon, but this is false. In the Aether Physics Model, I properly quantify the photon as a true quantum of electromagnetic radiation. There is only one "size" of photon in the Aether Physics Model, as opposed to the infinite number of "wave packet sizes" in Einstein's theory. Einstein could not have quantified the photon as a wave packet, because a wave packet is not truly quantum. Each frequency has its own wave packet size (amount of work it does), which means that if the photon is a wave packet, then there are an infinite number of different photons, which defies the concept of quantum. > To summarize, the "heavy lifting" was done in "Electro", where the fact that light carries energy and momentum was established. Once that is given, conservation of momentum leads almost inevitably to the conclusion that radiation must _also_ carry away some mass, which is really all the "E=mc^2" formula says. No, photons carry away mass, not radiation. Radiation is a unit, like velocity and energy. It is not a thing of itself. Regardless of the confusion created by Einstein's presentation, the logic does not hold with nuclear binding and unbinding processes, as I clearly pointed out earlier. If mass is lost during binding (fusion), then mass must be gained during unbinding (fission). And if mass is gained during fission, then the environment must give up energy (heat) to the unbinding of the nucleus. According to Einstein's presentation of mass/energy equivalence, a nuclear bomb should freeze the environment, not heat it. Anyhow I had a few comments on your response. >> If you are going to change one side of an equation, you have to >> change the other side, too, in order to maintain the equality. Do >> you disagree? > I think I disagree, but I don't understand what you're getting at > here. Setting "c" to 1 _does_ change both sides of the equation, > after all, as it changes the units in which energy is measured. Then you are at odds with the scientific establishment. According to standard practice, c is changed to one on only the right side of the equation. So if you agree that c has to be changed on both sides, then you agree with me and refute the standard explanation. > Setting "c" to 1 that way doesn't help with the dimensions, of course, and it's still not really valid to actually drop out the coefficients of "c". However, in more formal treatments, such as, e.g., in Misner, Thorne and Wheeler's "Gravitation", time and space are recorded using the same dimensions, applying the "c" conversion factor at the point of measurement. I have "Gravitation," too. Just because one million people make the same mistake doesn't change the fact that it is a mistake. I have agreed that there are instances where you can break the rules of math and still come up with a useful answer. The problem is that once the rules are broken, and the theory accepted as true, then there are many other answers that can never be solved. My work is an attempt to correct the very foundations of physics and eradicate the errors, thus allowing for a truly consistent physics, which works all the time. > This is not invalid, but it does occasionally lead to confusion. Among other things it makes dimensional analysis almost useless for checking results. This is a good example of what I am talking about. Just because Einstein's version of SR has some usefulness does not mean the physics is correct. If the physics were correct, dimensional analysis would always work, as it does in the Aether Physics Model. > And whatever whatever, I still don't see the problem you have with the algebra. Perhaps you can clarify it a bit, and show the exact operation you feel is illegal, or show a contradiction? I have done this in another recent post. The problem with the algebra is simply that it is not a valid rule, which can be used equally with all equations and give correct results. Also, having pointed out the error, I'm not here to waste the rest of my life repeatedly pointing it out. My mission is to promote an alternative foundation of physics, which is far more superior to the mass/energy paradigm. The Aether/angular momentum paradigm is entirely discrete and allows for precise quantification of quantum structure, which is something neither QM nor Relativity theories can do. > I actually had the impression particle physicists used E=mc^2 in their day to day work. They do, which is why they cannot unify the forces, or even reconcile Relativity with QM. But that doesn't seem to deter them. Even though the various theories contradict each other, the scientists seem quite at ease with the situation. > No, not at all. I thought you had claimed SR and QM produced contradictory results. I was pointing out that the modern treatment of QM is based on SR -- they're not separate fields. They do produce contradictory results, as I have clearly pointed out in the analysis of fission and fusion treatments by SR. If SR claims that energy is equivalent or equal to mass, and that the so-called "mass defect" is evidence for Relativity, then either the fusion or the fission reaction should produce energy while the other should absorb energy. You can't both lose mass to create energy and gain mass to create energy. It has to be one or the other. QM and SR are clearly at odds. >> What about the rules of math, do they count for anything? > In my little world they count for almost everything. I'm a lot more interested in the math than in physics experiments, to tell the truth. Then calculate how much energy a photon has using E=mc^2. > The "rest mass" is the mass of an object when it's standing still. Do you agree with that? When I step on the scale in the morning I measure my "rest mass". No, I don't agree with that. The issue I'm raising is that there is only one kind of mass, and it is the measured mass. A photon has zero measured mass, even when the photon is experimentally made to stand still in the laboratory. > I think your objection is to the claim that inertial mass increases with velocity. Is that correct? No, that is not my contention. My contention is that if a photon has energy, then according to E=mc^2 it also has mass. The mass doesn't disappear when the energy increases, the mass increases when the energy increases. You can't say that all the mass is converted to energy, because then there would be no mass, and thus no energy. Work with your beloved equation for the moment. If the photon has the energy of 8.187 x 10^-14 joule and it is traveling at the speed of light, then it must have a mass of 9.109 x 10^-31 kg. That is the only way the equation will work, if it is truly an equation. You cannot arbitrarily invent a new kind of mass that has mass except it is equal to zero even though it is not zero. Let me put it this way, the only way the photon can have energy is because a real mass is moving. If the mass were truly at rest, it would have zero energy. But if that is the case, then mass cannot be equal to energy because we can still measure the mass even though it is not moving. If I have a rest mass of 5kg, then according to E=mc^2, it has zero energy at zero speed. But if it has zero energy, and energy and mass are equivalent, then the 5kg mass should be equal to zero, because the energy is equal to zero. Do you see the lack of logic here? You want to continually bend the rules by inventing non-existent types of mass and applying different perspectives to different phenomena in order to get the result you *want* to see. Once again, isn't this like listening to a religionist? James Cameron just presented strong evidence of Jesus' family tomb. But since the religionists are firmly convinced that Jesus' body ascended to heaven, it couldn't possibly be Jesus' family. The belief drives the interpretation of the facts. You are doing the same thing with E=mc^2. You are so convinced that SR as presented in modern physics is correct, you are willing to break the rules of math just to abide by the popular belief. I'm sorry if you don't like this reasoning, but it is entirely logical. > Photons never stand still (let's wait at least a few minutes before we start arguing about standing waves!) Let's not even bother with standing waves, as they are not an example of still photons to begin with. Let's talk about actually stopping a photon in the laboratory: http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2002/27mar_stoplight.htm > so the "rest mass" of a photon isn't exactly well defined. That is because there is no such thing as "rest mass." Certainly, after 100 years, somebody would have found a way to precisely define and measure rest mass as different from some other kind of mass by now, don't you think? > If we try to extrapolate the formulas of SR to a photon which is "standing still", the mass we'd find for it would be zero -- but since they don't stand still, again, it doesn't mean much. You can't have it both ways. Either a photon has mass, or it does not. The mass does not disappear with speed according to E=mc^2, the mass increases with velocity. > And by the way, what I said about physicists is true. I've been in arguments between physicists on exactly this point, and some assert that it certainly has mass and they even compute a value for it. Others turn purple in the face and start shouting at that point. More evidence that the present theory is wrong. > > The mass=energy equation is false, yet you use the equation as proof > > that itself must be correct. > I didn't "prove" anything there. I just pointed out that there's no trivial contradiction to the fact that the photon carries energy and has zero rest mass, because in relativity theory, the "relativistic mass" and the rest mass are not the same thing. There is no such thing as "relativistic mass" and "rest mass." This is fantasy. You cannot invent a fantasy and use it to explain physics. That is not allowed (except in Special Relativity, which makes it appropriate to call it "special"). > You may think reality doesn't behave that way, of course, and that's an issue to be settled by experiment. This is another hypocrisy of physics. The Aether cannot be directly observed, therefore it does not exist. "Rest mass" cannot be directly observed, but it exists because Relativity theory needs it to exist. [irrelevant calculations of fission and fusion snipped] > I do not see any contradiction between this and the assertion that mass and energy are being interconverted during fission and fusion reactions. Let's not befuddle the situation by comparing apples and oranges. Let's look directly at the fission and fusion processes, themselves. According to modern theory, fusion results in the binding of protons and neutrons. It is observed that when nucleons bind, the total mass is less than the individual parts. This is called a "mass deficit." It is said that the mass deficit is evidence that mass was converted into energy. The energy release during binding is supposedly the mass that was converted to energy. That energy is now gone, having been radiated away. Now let us split the nucleus again into its individual components. According to E=mc^2, the splitting apart should absorb energy from the environment and converted it back to mass. This is not observed in any atomic reaction. In all cases of fission, more energy is released than absorbed. How is it that both fusion and fission reaction result in a net energy release if mass is converted to energy, and energy is converted to mass during the binding and unbinding processes? The answer is obvious, there is no such *thing* as energy, and mass is merely a dimension of inertia. In fact, Relativity theory has absolutely nothing to do with nuclear processes. All nuclear processes can be fully accounted for by tracking photons (gamma radiation), electrons (beta radiation), positrons, neutrons, protons, helium nuclei (alpha radiation), and atomic byproducts. The Einstein fantasy of the dimension of mass being converted to the unit of energy is completely irrelevant to atomic physics. Dave
