Imagine you are in a little rowing boat, rowing round an island and you notice that your boat always gets washed towards the shore. There is no surprise, since there are likely to be more ocean waves hitting you from the open sea than from the direction of the island.
On a not entirely unrelated subject, many recent experiments (Pohl, 2010, 2016) have shown that muons (heavy electrons) in a close orbit around the proton in so-called 'muonic hydrogen' appear to be bound to the proton a more than expected, a bit like the boat is to the island. This can also be interpreted as a 'proton radius anomaly' where the proton appears to have gone on a diet, and this is what this anomaly is usually called, but an extra binding energy can just as well explain the data. Both possibilities are far too big to be explained by the standard model of physics which has no mechanism by which the proton can go on a diet or suddenly become more attractive to muons (see previous blog).
So, to cut to the chase, can Unruh radiation explain it? I have found that it can explain roughly 55% of it. If you calculate how much Unruh radiation is seen by the orbiting muon and how much of that is blocked by the central proton, just like the island blocks waves from the point of view of the boat, then this predicts that more Unruh radiation hits the muon from outside the atom than from the centre, pushing the muon closer to the proton. The predicted extra binding energy is about 55% of the observed extra binding energy. The normal proton-electron atom does not show an anomaly because an electron orbits 200 times further out than the muon and so the solid angle of the central proton is tiny and the sheltering is negligible (see the reference below for details, McCulloch, 2017).
To go further, this attraction looks a little bit like gravity, which also tends to pull matter together. Wouldn't it be funny if Fatio / Le Sage were right about gravity after all, but instead of it being due to a sheltering of electromagnetic radiation, which has been falsified, it is due to a sheltering of Unruh radiation by protons?
I recently saw an episode of Friends (The One Where Heckles Dies). It amused me because the character Phoebe declares "Gravity seems to be to be not so much pulling me down, as pushing". Maybe the writers here had something, and although Phoebe should listen to Ross about the solid evidence for evolution, her 'scientific arrogance' speech later on in the episode was brilliant: "There was a time when the greatest minds on the planet thought that the world was flat! Are you telling me that there is not the slightest chance that you might be wrong about this?". A plea for humility that is much needed in physics.
Evidence from galaxies and all other low acceleration systems shows something big and deep is rotten in the state of physics. I've managed to show that quantised inertia can clear up some of the mess. What about gravity? It has never sat well with quantum mechanics. In my recent (2016) EPL paper I managed to derive part of gravity as well as quantised inertia from the uncertainty principle. This proton radius anomaly might represent a better line of attack since, as I always prefer, there is some direct data to show the way.
References
Pohl, R. et al., 2010. Nature, 466, 213. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v466/n7303/full/nature09250.html
Pohl, R. et al., 2016. Science, 353, 6300. http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6300/669
McCulloch, M.E., 2017. The proton radius anomaly from the sheltering of Unruh radiation, Progress in Physics, Vol. 13, 2, 101-102. http://www.ptep-online.com/index_files/2017/PP-49-05.PDF
24 comments:
I wonder what is Unruh radiation nature.
As I understand it is vacuum non null energy state...
All quantum field should be represented, EM, strong force, weak force ?
however since the range of the non EM force is short it seems you don't talk of them ?
now for proton anomaly, maybe the weak and strong force are not negligible ?
am I wrong ? did I misunderstand a point?
I have always been intrigued by Le Sage type gravity. See book Pushing Gravity: New Perspectives on Le Sage's Theory of Gravitation by Matthew R Edwards.
Main objection again that type of theory has been that energy absorbed by mass should increase mass energy over time which has not been observed.
Poher's Univerons theory has interesting solution to this as energy is absorbed and then re-emitted with change in vector so get gravitational force but no net energy gain.
I just woke up from a dream of having read 'Goldilocks and the Theory of Horizon Mechanics', whose main character was a scientist who lived on a planet that wasn't too hot and wasn't too cold, and who poked around a universe-ful of vacuum energy with Great Big Wavelengths, Medium-Sized Wavelengths, and Itty-Bitty-Tiny Wavelengths.
... I'm almost tempted to try to write the thing in reality, but I'm pretty sure that I'd get the actual physics wrong.
Alain: All quantum fields should be there. I like to derive the Unruh effect from horizons and uncertainty. An accelerating body looses information about the space behind its Rindler horizons. Since dp x dx ~ hbar, if dx is the distance to the horizon, then when the observer accelerates and the horizon comes closer dx goes down, so dp or dE have to go up. This means more of every kind of particle and field.
The weak and strong forces have a range of less than 1 femtometre and that is about the proton radius. The muon's orbital radius is about 200 fm, so these forces probably do not play a big role.
I think you'll appreciate this clip from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I don't watch the show myself, but I was shown this clip by a colleague, and it's always enjoyable.
Science Is Wrong... Sometimes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJDgVlv55Uw
Peter: The usual criticism of Le Sage gravity (cummulative input of mass-energy from the em background) may not apply to Unruh radiation, since it is only 'real' for the accelerated particle and not for the non-accelerating (or slowly accelerating) general observer or cosmos at large, for whom it is only apparent as inertia.
Bud: Please see my response to the gravity wave experiment: http://physicsfromtheedge.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/comment-on-ligo-grav-waves.html
With this model of gravity that doesn't depend on space geometry how we can explain black hole ?
There's a nagging feeling there's some other contribution that'll complete the picture, Mike, but I can't pin it down.
Unruh radiation is handy, but I've been reading about tachyons and one of their theorised properties was finite momentum when they were at minimum energy at infinite velocity. Of course there's no experimental evidence for the things - unless electron neutrinos are tachyonic as some data suggests (no, not that 2011 false-alarm).
Interesting preprint that is germane to the discussion: https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.08073
David Anjelo: Well, we have to be careful and not let the tail wag the physics dog. Although I do use horizons a lot in quantised inertia, black holes are a prediction and may have been seen indirectly, but we do not know for sure that they exist as predicted. It's important to focus on things that have been better observed. Lab experiments are best, but galaxy rotation, flyby anomalies...etc are the things to focus on when testing theories. Black holes are fashionable, but not good data.
qraal: I have used Unruh radiation because there was a suggestive correspondence between their wavelength at the cosmic acceleration, and the Hubble scale, and when I use Unruh radiation in quantised inertia it predicts lots of phenomena over a huge range of scales. Neutrinos intrigue me but I've not yet seen any nice correspondences (I had a good look back in 2011).
Brian: Yes, hilarious. Of course, for comedic effect the show's writers deliberately weakened the argument for evolution, but Darwin is infinitely better because he says you can go and check the data for yourself. That's the mark of science.
As far I looked for calculations of proton radius, it consists of two dozens of various QED and QCD corrections (1, 2). The problem is, some of these corrections involve Lamb shift and similar corrections involving the Cassimir/dark matter field. The theory of McCulloch may have some merit there, but it should be applied to raw data of proton radius without these quantum field corrections.
I'm not even sure, it the most trivial correction has been involved, which has served for spectroscopic discovery of deuterium by Harold Urey in 1932.
/* Main objection again that type of theory has been that energy absorbed by mass should increase mass energy over time which has not been observed. */
This objection is fringe: the Cassimir force is of similar origin (just based on shielding of virtual photons instead of gravitons) and of similar order (the nanometer distance scale) - yet the objects subjected the Cassimir force doesn't increase their temperature.
Illustratively speaking: if you have an experience with unsticking plastic bag during shopping, then these bags should be already vaporized, if the objection against LeSage shielding theory would work.
/* The usual criticism of Le Sage gravity (cummulative input of mass-energy from the em background) may not apply to Unruh radiation, since it is only 'real' for the accelerated particle and not for the non-accelerating (or slowly accelerating) general observer or cosmos at large, for whom it is only apparent as inertia. */
My interpretation of this controversy of LeSage theory is, every space-time curvature serves like the dispersion gradient for both transverse both longitudinal waves of the vacuum, therefore the accumulation of energy during shielding of transverse waves (which is responsible for Cassimir force) gets compensated with radiation of energy in form of longitudinal waves and vice-versa: the shielding of longitudinal waves (which is responsible for gravity) is compensated just by radiation of transverse waves. For accelerating bodies this equillibrium just gets broken into account of transverse waves, which are propagating much slower, than these longitudinal ones, which are therefore radiated by this space-time curvature (i.e. with the surface of accelerating objects) in form of Unruh radiation (dynamic Cassimir effect).
/* I wonder what is Unruh radiation nature. */
Just the effect described above. What the McCulloch's theory considers is the projection/shielding of much faster waves, than the Unruh radiation (which is still composed of photons and it propagates with speed of light) - this is the misnomer of MiHsC theory. The MiHsC theory could never work, if it would be based on propagation of information with luminal speed - the Rindler's horizons are too distant for it.
Time seems a fundamental component of fermions not bosons. However if fermions have a fundamental minimum acceleration that implies that bosons have a minimum redshift. If a graviton has a minimum redshift you have gravity? Also, how much of the "expansion of the universe" is due to that minimum redshift. Also, also, :) how much of fermion uncertainty is due the redshift of the measuring bosons? Can it be reduced by including minimum redshift in calculations? Is there a time particle that mediates acceleration and redshift? Getting far out there - quantized time?
different types of boson particles have different redshift rates when compared to fermion time?
I will admit to times where I deliberately claim to believe stuff that's pretty fringe just to irritate people I feel are too confident. Like a fake-Pheobe. I also love her words there. :)
Chaos dice for horizon mechanics:
http://www.sciencealert.com/forget-what-you-learned-scientists-might-have-just-created-a-stable-helium-compound
Moving MiHsCian thought to the next-level-up of abstraction - chemistry - ought to shed light on some interesting questions. In time; lock down the basics first.
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