At the occasion of his retirement from the Presidency of the American Physical Society, Dr. Wilson stated the reason why the above-presented model has no chance to be accepted by the present physics establishment. Namely, my aether model automatically accounts for all known force fields by means of pressure gradients generated by various dynamic states in this anisotropic fluid. Thus, the "unification" exists a priori in this aether model.
Here is an excerpt from the article of Robert R. Wilson's talk, published in PHYSICS TODAY: vol. 39, p. 26, July 1986.
Unification is becoming almost serious enough that it bears a bit of watching-- from a strictly occupational point of view. I suppose thousands of physicists, perhaps all, secretly fantasize stumbling upon the ultimate theory of everything. This is not completely unreasonable, for it is almost a religious precept of science that the solution to a problem is most likely to come by indirection.
Just suppose, even though it is probably a logical impossibility, that some smart aleck came up with a simple, self-evident, closed theory of everything. I--and so many others--have had a perfectly wonderful life pursuing the will-o'-the-wisp of unification. I have dreamed of my children, their children and their children's children all having this same beautiful experience.
All that would end.
APS membership would drop precipitously. Fellow members, could we afford
this catastrophe? We must prepare a crisis-management plan for this eventuality,
however remote. First we must voice a hearty denial. Then we should ostracize
the culprit and hold up for years any publication by the use of our well-practiced
referees. Just to be safe, we should put the paper on our Index--I mean
in our index--where it can be lost for centuries. Then too, our high-tech
bonfires will make an auto-da-fe seem like a Turkish bath. Unification
researchers, be warned! Hell hath no fury like a physicist overly united.
I really did not intend to be that "culprit." Namely, for 30 years I thought that I was doing something worth-while, but just could not comprehend why all my attempts to publish were thwarted; so, I am grateful to Dr. Wilson for the explanation. Yes, physics became just a practical joke that is costing us billions of dollars. Quite a show!
The pursuit of truth is open to everyone, so, how many generations of those "children" will ignore it? I am hoping that some of them will change their mind, and do something useful instead.
However, there is no indication for an improvement of the situation, as lately, the "overly united physicists" apparently appointed someone at Cornell to set up a web-site, where anyone who does not agree with them is listed as a crank. This just confirms that they are incapable of comprehending real physics, as everybody knowledgeable in fluid mechanics can check my equations and concepts for validity. Thus, it is becoming quite clear who the real cranks are. Therefore, by providing further exposure to my theory, they are failing not only in physics, but even in their slander campaign. So, I thank them for the service.
Also, in 1905 Albert Einstein introduced the special relativity theory to obviate the seeming difficulties encountered with the ether concept. These problems arouse from the mistaken view that matter is not composed of ether.
However, as is evident from the following excerpt of his talk at the Leyden University in 1920, Einstein had by then completely reversed his position on the ether.
"... Recapitulating, we may say that according to the general theory of relativity space is endowed with physical qualities; in this sense, therefore, there exists an ether. Acccording to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable; for in such space there not only would be no propagation of light, but also no possibility of existence for standards of space and time (measuring-rods and clocks), nor therefore any space-time intervals in the physical sense. ..."
Furthermore, the existence of the 2.7 K cosmic radiation, discovered in 1965 by A.A. Penzias and R.W. Wilson, clearly points to an absolute inertial frame of reference.
Thus, while Einstein himself already acknowledged the blunder in 1920 by saying: "...space without ether is unthinkable...", 80 years later, the students are paying tuition to be told that ether does not exist. Who, then, are the cranks that should be listed?
Newton occupied himself with "natural philosophy," which would today fall mostly in the realm of physics, but he was also a very ingenious mathematician. For example, he invented calculus just to be able to carry out calculations in physics. However, in spite of the fact that his mathematical powers were superb, even in his advanced age, he never bothered to elaborate on his discoveries for their own sake. When he was 75 years old, and already working 20 years for the government as the warden of the Mint, he was able to solve in an afternoon a difficult problem in variational calculus that was submitted by Leibniz with the intent to embarrass Newton. In spite of his prowess in mathematics, Newton considered it to be merely a tool for physics. Later, J. Willard Gibbs expressed similar views.
Since the time of Newton, mathematics has made considerable progress in various directions, and I am not advocating that it should be merely a tool for physics; but the current situation seems to be completely reversed. This probably started with Bernhard Riemann, who began associating non-Euclidean geometry with physical phenomena, and progressed through Einstein's formulation of the General Theory of Relativity, until the present time, when all sorts of mathematical constructs are being fitted to physical theories. This is clearly a futile approach because the chance of hitting the correct model, within boundless possibilities, is infinitesimal. These efforts have so far not produced any useful results, merely a lot of bizarre physical theories based on various mathematical schemes; but, as long as there is no agreement with the observed physical reality, no amount of dogma can prove their value.
It is interesting that the current situation closely resembles that which was maintained by the medieval Aristotelian scholars; and this is what Newton wrote about their efforts:
"And the Aristotelians gave the Name of occult Qualities, not to manifest Qualities, but to such Qualities only as they supposed to lie hid in Bodies, and to be the unknown Causes of manifest Effects: Such as would be the Causes of Gravity, and of magnetic and electrick Attractions, and of Fermentations, if we should suppose that these Forces or Actions arose from Qualities unknown to us, and uncapable of being discovered and made manifest."
Does this sound familiar?
The Mediaeval Aristotelian scholars, that Newton chastised, sound downright scientific in comparison with today's particle physicists and cosmologists. Presently one finds in "scientific" journals peer-reviewed articles on worm holes that supposedly connect us to other universes, from where any unexplained phenomenon can be imported. Quite ingenious, would you not say? In these universes one can then also instantaneously travel back and forth in time, or do just about anything imaginable. Mind you, these papers are written by our "top scientists," not some "cranks" that believe in the existence of the aether.
How about super strings with all sorts of shapes that wriggle in some 10 to 20 dimensions to produce the gravitational and other fields? However, I did not yet come across an article that explained the actual nature of these strings.
To account for a few other things, wave-particle duality, virtual particles, penguin particles, quarks with flavor, color, charm, beauty, truth, and strangeness, have been postulated. We also have glueballs, winos, zuinos, etc.; so, why not super bizarrinos?
They are also telling us that the quarks, and other postulated, or observed, particles, reside within the proton, and that they come out of it during a violent collision. The proton, among other particles, is viewed as a complicated mechanism composed of a number of other particles; sort of like a watch containing gears, springs, screws, etc., that one finds after smashing this mechanism. Eventually, this view will turn out to be equivalent to that of the flat earth in the center of the universe. The fact is that these exotic short-lived particles, detected in high energy experiments, are generated after the collision from the kinetic energy; they did not exist inside the proton before the impact. In simple terms, they represent the splashes in the aether.
Among other things, our physicists have also postulated some five "fundamental forces" associated with particles. Yet, when matter and anti-matter annihilate, all these forces, and several other "fundamental" things, vanish. Puff, like magic, they are gone! How can something fundamental disappear?
All this does apparently not disturb our glamorous physicists who are supported with our taxes. They have many conferences where they present their "profound" theories, and then write books, explaining to the public all the "marvels" of "modern non-Newtonian physics".
Lately, however, one of them took another approach to sensationalizing the subject, and declared "The End of Physics," compiling more absurdity on top of all the rest of the existing nonsense. It can be safely stated that, as long as our universe, and a species like ourselves, exist, there will be physics; but I, for one, surely hope that there will be an end to their physics.
As if all of this were not absurd enough, lately, mysticism has been brought into physics to explain some of the phenomena in quantum mechanics.
Newton also stated:
"Such occult Qualities put a stop to the Improvement of natural Philosophy, and therefore of late Years have been rejected."
It is quite obvious that, in our time, these "occult qualities" have brought the improvement of natural philosophy to a halt, but are promoted instead of rejected. It is indeed tragic that, with a few exceptions, this noble subject degenerated into mere sophisticated hucksterism.
In his book on optics, Newton, the honest and frank genius from the farm, also expresses his views regarding the direction in which physics should proceed.
To tell us that every Species of Things is endow'd with an occult specifick Quality by which it acts and produces manifest Effects, is to tell us nothing: But to derive two or three general Principles of Motion from Phenomena, and afterwards to tell us how the Properties and Actions of all corporeal Things follow from those manifest Principles, would be a very great step in Philosophy, though the Causes of those Principles were not yet discover'd: And therefore I scruple not to propose the Principles of Motion above-mention'd, they being of very general Extent, and leave their Causes to be found out.
This appears to me like a very sensible advice. Furthermore, Ockham told us that the simplest adequate explanation of a phenomenon is most likely to be correct. The ancient thinkers in Greece, and the Orient, also gave us some good hints.
We now also know that energy and momentum are conserved in all natural phenomena, so, it is sensible to ask what energy might be.
Thus, considering all the extant ancient wisdom, and current experimental knowledge, I am attempting to account for the observed natural phenomena by means of the simplest possible model. So far I have succeeded to explain the photon quantitatively, and all the rest of the known physical phenomena qualitatively, without invoking any "occult" principles.
The energy, in all manifested forms, I attribute to the motion of very minute, actual fundamental particles, that I call GYRONS. These gyrons, in perpetual motion, comprise a fluid, called the AETHER. The average speed of the gyrons in the space that is called the VACUUM, corresponds to the speed of light. In the vacuum, the gyrons move in a random fashion, and therefore, no specific physical properties are observed in it.
However, when the gyrons move in certain organized patterns, then we observe the manifestation of what we call MATTER and WAVES. It turns out that, in order to generate all the observed phenomena, the gyrons cannot be tightly packed in space, and therefore, the aether fluid is technically a gas.
Next, the question arises: what must be the form and size of the gyrons to impart all the necessary properties to the aether?
Considering the relationships between the form of the particles comprising a fluid, and the observed properties of the fluid, as expressed by fluid dynamics equations, I opted for the following form of the gyron:
The arrows indicate the motion of the gyron, its translational and rotational velocities. These velocities remain constant as long as the gyron does not collide with another gyron. At the instant of collision, the velocities of both particles change, depending on their speed, as well as their mutual orientations and locations of the point of impact on the two colliding gyrons. Formally we say that the linear and angular momenta remain conserved in the collision. One must assume this, otherwise, the universe would eventually grind itself to a halt.
How far the gyrons move, before colliding, depends on their size, their mutual orientation, their velocities (both, translational, and angular), as well as on their number in a given volume of the void (their numeric volume density). In the following sketch is depicted the travel path of a gyron, showing how it sweeps out a volume segment between collisions.
In a short time dt, the gyron sweeps out a segment of the volume dV, expressed by the following vector formula.
It turns out that this expression is related to what we call the charge, as well as the mass of a material particle, such as an electron. To derive the complete properties of the anisotropic aether gas from the motion of individual gyrons, is an extremely difficult mathematical problem that I was not able to solve yet. Here is a great challenge for a gifted mathematician. The connection between the motion of individual gyrons, and the description of the fluid properties in terms of fields, is termed kinetics. The picture below shows a few gyrons, comprising the aether, as they move through the void space.
The variations in size are intended to indicate a perspective view; but the actual gyrons are assumed to be all identical in size and form. They must also be much slimmer in shape than indicated in this picture.
Clearly, a legitimate question is: what is the nature of the material that these things are made out of? And, here again, the best I can do is to quote Newton.
All these things being consider'd, it seems probable to me, that God in the Beginning form'd Matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, moveable Particles, of such Sizes and Figures, and with such other Properties, and such Proportion to Space, as most conduced to the End for which he form'd them; and that these primitive Particles being Solids, are incomparably harder than any porous Bodies compounded of them; even so very hard, as never to wear or break in pieces; no ordinary Power being able to divide what God himself made one in the first Creation.
Ultimately, to account for our existence, some material substance must be postulated. To what agent one attributes this deed is a personal choice that goes beyond the realm of physics. In any case, the purpose of physics is to describe the mechanism of our universe in all its details in the simplest possible way; then, according to Ockham, we may assume that our description is correct.
On the scale of the gyron, physics is beyond experimentation, all must be deduced from a hypothesis. According to my model, there are no continuous physical fields in nature. The gyron collisions are instantaneous events, described by the Dirac delta functions. This is mathematically and physically legitimate. A gyron collision can be considered as the limit of an elastic collision, in the manner shown in the following phase diagram, depicting a central collision. For the mathematically oriented readers, this means that at this level of description, physics is purely Newtonian with an Euclidean space, and Galilean invariance.
The aether must be an anisotropic fluid because, otherwise, it could not manifest all the necessary physical properties to account for the observed physical reality. Failure to realize this was probably the major reason why the aether theories, expounded during the previous centuries, could not succeed. Clearly, since the gyrons, being the matter from which everything else is made, cannot be confined in anything, no direct experimentation is possible to determine their essence and behavior. Therefore, all knowledge about them must be computed mathematically (inferred backwards) from the behavior of the aether.
Due to the enormous number of gyrons involved, possibly on the order of 10^90 in each cubic centimeter of space, dealing with individual gyrons, is out of question. Consequently, one must resort to statistical methods, that in turn lead to the velocity-, and other, field representations of the aether. However, it must also be understood that, mathematically, as is well appreciated in ordinary fluid mechanics, this is only an approximation. A specific field variable represents the mean value in its neighborhood, with a statistical uncertainty. In the case of the aether fluid, this corresponds to the Heisenberg uncertainty (+/-)[h/4Pi]. Thus, the price we pay for manageability of the problem, is uncertainty.
The undisturbed aether, that we call vacuum, is unobservable. Only such dynamic disturbances as waves and vortices become observable. What we perceive as the physical reality is the dynamics of these vortices and waves in the aether. Specifically, the material particles, such as electrons, correspond to the aether vortices, while electromagnetic radiation, and deBroglie, or matter, waves, correspond to the two possible types of aether waves.
The following graph depicts a feasible model for the electron. The flow pattern of gyrons in this particular vortex, represented by the stream lines, can generate all the necessary force fields associated with the electron. The two charge polarities are produced by the right-, and left-handed vortices, while gravity is due to gyron drift towards these dynamic structures.
Consequently, if electrons are vortices, then electron physics can neither be represented by particle mechanics, nor by wave mechanics; instead, vortex mechanics becomes applicable, and, so far, this has not been pursued. Thus, it is due to the complexity of this problem that such empirical theories as quantum wave mechanics and relativity emerged.
Since electrons, being vortices, do not behave like the actual fundamental particles (the gyrons), from which they are generated, the concept of non-Newtonian physics was introduced. The mechanics of individual gyrons, however, is Newtonian. It happens that the quantum mechanical probability density corresponds to the numerical gyron density, but this scalar field is not adequate to describe the aether fluid, the velocity vector field is also necessary. Quaternion vector fields may turn out to be a suitable representation for this type of vortex mechanics.
Using these ideas, and employing dependable experimental data in conjunction with known fluid dynamics concepts, I was able to derive some promising results, both, qualitative, and quantitative. The details can be found in the following publications:
Frank M. Meno, Phys. Essays 4, 94 (1991).
Ibid. 7, 450 (1994).
Ibid. 8, 245 (1995).
Ibid. 10, 304 (1997).
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