Fundamentals of Physics Part 3

Aethers

Since Newton’s time innumerable aethers have been proposed, and new ones are presented frequently. But it needs to be stated that each and every such ‘vacuum filling’ compositions are pure speculations, they have no evidential basis and indeed are far beyond empirical investigation.

This from Wikipedia:-

“Aether theories in physics propose the existence of a medium, the aether a space-filling substance or field, thought to be necessary as a transmission medium for the propagation of electromagnetic or gravitational forces. The assorted aether theories embody the various conceptions of this “medium” and “substance”.”

Partly due to Newton’s apparent acceptance of outer space as a vacuum, and contrary to alternative suggestions, by such as Christiaan Huygens, in that light propagates as a wave, he proposed a ‘corpuscular’ (particulate) light, which was generally accepted up to 1801 when Young’s double-slit experiments proved conclusively that light propagates as a wave.

Today, despite many thousands of experiments attempting to falsify Young’s result and demonstrate that light is particulate, it is an indisputable fact that it is a wave.

“The period from Newton to Maxwell saw a bewildering variety of ethers which in many cases were introduced for specific purposes, such as explaining electricity, magnetism, light, gravitation, nervous impulses, and chemical action” (1)

“Æthers were invented for the planets to swim in, to constitute electric atmospheres and magnetic effluvia, to convey sensations from one part of our bodies to another, and so on, till a space had been filled three or four times with æthers.” (2)

Of course with Young’s findings the problem of transmission resurfaced, as all such aethers had to have remarkable properties, firstly, in accordance with the requirements of the kinetic atomic theory of gases, these ‘space-filling’ mediums could not inhibit the eternal, kinetic motion of atoms through or within it, while at the same time these were required to sustain the propagation of light and to somehow allow the force of gravitation to act attractively between material bodies of any dimension.

“Following the pioneering work of Thomas Young in England and Augustin Fresnel in France, by the 1820s the corpuscular theory of light was abandoned and replaced by a theory of transverse waves. The new “luminiferous” ether pervaded the universe and, according to most physicists, had to behave like an elastic solid that – strangely – did not interact with other matter. Although it had the form of a solid, and was sometimes likened to steel, the planets and comets passed through it without noticing any resistance. Strange indeed!” (3)

However one such concept, based on the assumption that there was an absolute reference frame in the universe, a ‘stationary’ aether, was dealt a fatal blow in 1887, when Michelson and Morley’s sophisticated experiments, which were designed to prove its existence by demonstrating that the motion of the Earth through it could be detected, failed to do so.

To explain this ‘null’ result some aether proponents then introduced an ‘entrained aether’, i.e. one that moved with the Earth, but the problems with this concept, in a celestial sense, were enormous, and it was generally rejected.

Following Young’s experiments, the next important development, with respect to vacuum theory, was Clerk Maxwell’s statistical treatment of the kinetic theory of gases, his ‘Laws of Distribution of Velocities’ published in 1860, theselaws were later generalised by Boltzmann and are known today as the Maxwell-Boltzmann Distribution.

When Maxwell formally postulated electromagnetic waves and identified light as being just a partof the spectrum of electro-magnetic radiation (EMR), he initially considered the possibility of an aether to sustain the transmission of such waves, but later distanced himself from this concept.

“Maxwell also introduced the concept of the electromagnetic field in comparison to force lines that Faraday described. By understanding the propagation of electromagnetism as a field emitted by active particles, Maxwell could advance his work on light. At that time, Maxwell believed that the propagation of light required a medium for the waves, dubbed the luminiferous aether.” (Wikipedia)

In 1900 Max Planck presented his solution to the “Ultra-violet Catastrophe” in that light exists in discrete quanta of energy. Later described as a ‘mass-less particle’,and named as the ‘photon’.

In 1909 in a lecture at Columbia University, Max Planck said: “In place of the so-called free ether there is now substituted the absolute vacuum, … . I believe it follows as a consequence that no physical properties can be consistently ascribed to the absolute vacuum” (4)

“Two years later Planck would suggest the notion of zero-point energy and thereby unwittingly initiate a development that led to the modern view of a quantum vacuum endowed with physical properties” (5)

The next development in this context was of course the ‘Einsteinian revolution’ at the beginning of the 20^th century, with the Theories of Special, and later General Relativity.

Einstein believed, along with all scientists at the time, that the universe was, what we now now as, the ‘Milky Way’ galaxy and that the Earth’s atmosphere was finite, above which space was an absolute vacuum. And in his paper introducing Special Relativity (SRT) in 1905 he dismisses the aether stating:- “ a luminiferous ether will prove to be superfluous”, and introduced the counter-intuitive concept of ‘wave-particle duality’, suggesting that light propagatesin some instances(e.g.through the vacuum of space) as a ‘particle’ and in others as a ‘wave’.

Around this time he also published a paper on Brownian Motion, a phenomenon that was accepted asexperimental evidence for both the existence of atoms and for the kinetic atomic theory of gases, and the core assumption of this theory in that gases are largely composed of a vacuum and thus that the vacuum permeated all macroscopic matter.

But 15 years later in 1920, following the publication of the general theory of relativity (GRT)in 1917, Einstein, in a lecture entitled “Ether and the Theory of Relativity” he says:-

“ – 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. According to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable”

Robert B. Laughlin, Nobel Laureate in Physics, later had this to say about the ether in contemporary theoretical physics:-

“It is ironic that Einstein’s most creative work, the general theory of relativity, should boil down to conceptualizing space as a medium when his original premise [in special relativity] was that no such medium existed. The word ‘ether’ has extremely negative connotations in theoretical physics because of its past association with opposition to relativity.”

“The modern concept of the vacuum of space is a relativistic ether. But we do not call it this because it is taboo.” (6)

The next important development for ‘vacuum theory’ was Rutherford’s analysis of the results of experiments carried out under his direction, which effectively obliterated Dalton’s indestructible, solid atom, suggesting that atoms instead were, by volume, composed almost entirely of a vacuum, with a tiny material nucleus andelectrons orbiting around it.

The initial discovery was made by Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden in 1909 when they performed the gold foil experiment under the direction of Rutherford, in which they fired a beam of alpha particles (helium nuclei) at layers of gold leaf only a few atoms thick.

Their results showed that around 1 in 8000 alpha particles were deflected by very large angles (over 90°), while the rest passed straight through with little or no deflection. From this, Rutherford concluded that the majority of the mass was concentrated in a minute, positively charged region (the nucleus/ central charge) surrounded by electrons. (Wikipedia}

Like most scientific models, Rutherford’s atomic model was neither perfect nor complete. According to classical, Newtonian physics, it was in fact impossible. Accelerating charged particles radiate electromagnetic waves, so an electron orbiting an atomic nucleus in theory would spiral into the nucleus as it loses energy. To fix this problem, scientists had to incorporate quantum mechanics into Rutherford’s model.

Following Rutherford’s atom and the development of Quantum Mechanics and Electrodynamics, Paul Dirac proposed a model of the vacuum as an infinite sea of particles with negative energy to explain the anomalous negative-energy quantum states predicted by the Dirac equation for relativistic electrons.

Paul Dirac wrote in 1951: “Physical knowledge has advanced much since 1905, notably by the arrival of quantum mechanics, and the situation [about the scientific plausibility of Aether] has again changed. If one examines the question in the light of present-day knowledge, one finds that the Aether is no longer ruled out by relativity, and good reasons can now be advanced for postulating an Aether. . . . . . . .We have now the velocity at all points of space-time, playing a fundamental part in electrodynamics. It is natural to regard it as the velocity of some real physical thing. Thus with the new theory of electrodynamics [vacuum filled with virtual particles] we are rather forced to have an Aether”.

“A full quantum theory of light (QED) had been developed, and one of its features was a new understanding of the vacuum, of emptiness. Where before the vacuum had been understood as pure emptiness – no matter, no light, no heat – now there was a residual hidden energy. Take away everything, cool to absolute zero in temperature, and still the vacuum remains, and it is shimmering with a special kind of light. Called the “zero-point energy of the vacuum” it seems an essential part of quantum field theory.” (Wikipedia)

So, together with a Relativistic Aether, now we encounter a “quantum aether”, and, one of the founders of quantum mechanics, Nils Bohr is describing this aether as having “vacuum energy” and “vacuum fluctuations”.

It was Richard Feynman who first suggested that the basic partial-differential equations of theoretical physics might be actually describing macroscopic motion of some infinitesimal entities he called X-ons. He suggested X-ons as the unifying concept for description of physical universe, though he did not specify their properties.

So physics today is still based upon this pure assumption of discontinuous atoms in a vacuum, but now the hypothetical vacuum has been extended to occupy the atom itself, which would reduce the actual volume of matter almost to nothing. So, having dug a substantial hole for themselves, physicists now are left with ‘filling the vacuum’ and I quote a certain Dr de Rũjula:- “As it turns out the vacuum is not empty – there is a difference between the vacuum and nothingness” “Surprisingly, of all know ‘substances’, the vacuum is the least well understood” Rather an understatement for something that has never been isolated and, even if this were possible, it could not be examined or investigated by any technological means.

In addition to these there are a great number of other aethers, (below are listed just a few of the more well-known) all of which (along with all of the above) are purely speculative, in that there is no empirical evidence whatever for their ‘existence’ and the only motivation for these ideas is that physicists are forced to acknowledge that “there must be something, some medium that will permit transmission through the ubiquitous vacuum.”

Bohr’s Zero Point Energy

Dirac’s ‘Zero Point Field’

La Violette’s ‘Kinetic Aether’

Aspden’s ‘Liquid Crystal Aether’

Thornhill and Meyl’s ‘Cosmic Neutrino Background’

Tombe’s ‘Electric Dipole Sea’

Simhony’s ‘Cubic Space Lattice’

Correa’s ‘Ambipolar Aether’

Tewari’s ‘Space Vortex Theory”

But of course none of the myriad of vacuum filling alternative aethers, ‘strings’ ‘loops’, etc. etc., are remotely capable of investigation, as essentially the only method of investigating the sub-atomic dimension is by firing what are assumed to be ‘particles’ at something. And as this ’empty space’, by definition cannot react to such impulses, these are consequently unverifiable and speculative constructs.

But if the vacuum and/or its constituent aethers of any description cannot be proven to exist by any empirical means and, as it is not possible to define what matter ‘is‘ ultimately, then the currently accepted structures of both the sub-microscopic and the celestial dimensions are purely hypothetical, in other words they are speculative constructs based entirely upon a belief in the ‘existence’ of an all permeating vacuum and that ‘real’ matter is almost on the point of non-existence.

And ‘Belief System‘ is an accurate description of the state of the science of physics today as the (incompatible) bases of modern physics, Relativity and Quantum theories, are completely dependent upon this assumption of a universally permeating vacuum.

So the wheel turns full circle, first the vacuum is ‘proven’ to exist, extra atomically, and then it is ‘proven’ to extend down into the atom itself.

Then ‘space-filling’, non-material aethers are proposed to fill space, and now it is suggested that space is full of energy.

“There is no such thing as absolutely empty space. All space contains fluctuating fields and particles. Even in the emptiest space that the laws of nature permit, there are energy levels about which the energies of the fields and particles fluctuate; and these energy levels are never sharply defined” (7)

But in a later book by Frank Close “The Void” he states unequivocally that volumetrically the atom is composed of one trillionth matter, in the form of the nucleus and electrons, while the “rest is a perfect vacuum”. (8)

The facts are however that both these statements are purely speculative as these hypothetical, non-material spaces are far beyond experimental verification.

There is however empirical evidence that the creation of the state of the non-existence of matter in any situation, i.e. a space completely empty of matter at absolute zero pressure and temperature, is not possible.

1 (Cantor and Hodge 1981).

2 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Maxwell (1965, vol. 2, p. 763)

3 Helge Kragh (June 2013). Empty space or ethereal plenum?

4 (Planck 1915, p. 119).

5 (Kragh 2012).

6 Laughlin, Robert B. (2005). A Different Universe: Reinventing Physics from the Bottom Down. Basic Books.

7 ‘Nothingness’ Henning Genz, Basic Books 2001.

8 The Void, Frank Close, OUP, 2006

Fundamentals of Physics

4) Creating a Vacuum

For centuries scientists have been trying to create lower and lower temperatures and pressures, initially by evacuating gas from containers with mechanical pumps.

But today more refined technologies such as diffusion, ionisation, chemisorption etc. are used to produce ‘high’ partial vacuums for commercial and experimental use and it is possible to (momentarily) achieve extremely low pressures, termed as ultra-high vacuums (UHV), to within a fraction of absolute zero pressure and temperature.

“Ultra-high vacuum is vacuum regime characterised by pressures lower than about 10–⁷ pascal or 100 nanopascals (10–⁹ mbar, ~10–⁹ torr). (Wikipedia)

But there is no single vacuum pump that can operate all the way from atmospheric pressure to ultra-high vacuum. Instead, a series of different pumps is used, according to the appropriate pressure range for each pump. High pumping speeds are necessary and multiple vacuum pumps are used in series and/or parallel.

Pumps commonly used in combination to achieve UHV include:-

1) Turbomolecular pumps (especially compound and/or magnetic bearing types)

2) Ion pumps

3) Titanium sublimation pumps

4) Non-evaporable getter (NEG) pumps

5) Cryopumps

But the UHV’s produced cannot be sustained for any length of time, this is due to contamination of the sample resulting from such effects as ‘out-gassing’.

Out-gassing can include sublimation and evaporation, which are phase transitions of a solid or liquid substance into a gas, in other words at these extremely low conditions of pressure, atoms, either contained within, or vapourised from the surfaces of, the solid matter of the apparatus are drawn into the volume under examination.

“Out-gassing is a significant problem for UHV systems. Out-gassing can occur from two sources: surfaces and bulk materials. Out-gassing from bulk materials is minimized by careful selection of materials with low vapor pressures (such as glass, stainless steel, and ceramics) for everything inside the system. Hydrogen and carbon monoxide are the most common background gases in a well-designed UHV system. Both Hydrogen and CO diffuse out from the grain boundaries in stainless steel and Helium can diffuse through steel and glass from the outside air.” (Wikipedia)

And extraordinary preparatory steps are required to reduce these effects, which include the following:-

1) Baking the system (for one-two days at up to 400°C while the pumps are running) to remove water or hydrocarbons adsorbed to the walls.

2) Minimizing the surface area in the chamber.

3) High conductance tubing to pumps — short and fat, without obstruction.

4) Low out-gassing materials such as certain stainless steels.

5) Avoiding creating pits of trapped gas behind bolts, welding voids, etc.

6) Electropolishing all metal parts after machining or welding.

7) Low vapor pressure materials (ceramics, glass, metals, and teflon if unbaked).

8) Chilling chamber walls to cryogenic temperatures during use.

9) Avoid all traces of hydrocarbons, including skin oils in a fingerprint.

These preparatory requirements, together with the actual pumping processes, use an enormous amount of energy and, as it is not technically possible to completely eliminate out-gassing or other contaminating efflux, these very low pressures, or conditions, cannot be sustained for any length of time, it is therefore clear that there is a progressively increasing force of resistance to the decompression of a gas, and a very strong resistance to the maintenance of such levels of pressure.

Why should this be the case when the only external resistance is that generated by atmospheric pressure, which in theory should be easily overcome by modern machinery?

In the opposite direction, for example, there are sophisticated machines in regular use today that compress materials to upwards of 200,000 times atmospheric pressure, for example to produce industrial diamond from carbon.

This high level of resistance requires an explanation.

It is a core premise of currently accepted physics theory that a perfect vacuum cannot influence matter in any way, and accordingly nor can any of its hypothetical, aetherial constituents.

This being the case, the question is:-

What forces are operating in these circumstances to prevent the extraction of all matter from within the compartment, and what is the source of this resistance?

The simple diagram below illustrates this situation with a perfectly sealed piston cylinder apparatus, and a single atom within the cylinder.

The hypothetical, non-material, empty space which is believed to occupy virtually all the chamber, by definition, can have no influence and, as matter is undeniably present within the compartmental space under investigation (and in the surrounding structure), it can only be either the single atom, and/or the atomic structure of the apparatus which generates this exponentially increasing resistance.

In other words it is matter, and matter alone, that is the cause of this resistance.

As mentioned earlier, today it is being said that the vacuum is not empty, but is permeated with waves of energy, etc. etc., but again such a medium has to have the qualities of non-resistance to the free motion of atoms and molecules within it (i.e. is a zero-inertia medium) and so could not generate any resistance.

But, in terms of the kinetic atomic theory of gases, where the only force allowed is a positive one generated by the collisions of atoms, the generation of such a resistive or negative force is inexplicable, and if the matter of our experience is almost entirely composed of a non-material ’empty space’ (of any speculative description) then, technically speaking, it should be very easy to remove all atoms from within it.

It is an undeniable fact that current physics theory has no answer to this question and, as these numerous empirical results are a direct falsification of current, kinetic-atomic atomic theory of gases, it would be accordingly necessary to conclude that this, the base theory of the science of physics, is invalid.

Fundamentals of Physics 5a)

 Falsification of Kinetic Theory

Diffusion

The transport phenomena of the admixture of two different gases does not proceed as the theory predicts. This observation is confirmed in practice by the mixing of gases for commercial use and an example is the mixture of nitrogen and helium, which is used to test high pressure piping and equipment for leaks, as it escapes through the smallest of apertures and simple equipment is available to detect the gas.

However Helium, as a rare gas, is in short supply and is very expensive, and a mixture of 5% helium and 95% nitrogen serves the purpose, and companies producing medical and industrial gases are able to supply this mixture.

But simply introducing both gases into a storage cylinder, in any order, does not achieve a homogeneous mixture suitable for practical use (i.e. with the helium atoms evenly distributed within the more numerous nitrogen atoms) unless it is left for a week or more.

A quicker method of mixing is achieved by placing such a cylinder horizontally on rollers and rotating (or ‘rumbling’) it for some time (a few hours), which process creates a frictional effect between the internal walls of the rotating cylinder and the gases in contact with it.

If the principles of the kinetic atomic theory of gases are applied to the example of static mixing, we see that, according to the theory, the average velocity of nitrogen molecules in air is around 500 metres per second and that of helium atoms is 1300 metres per second. The relative mass of nitrogen is around 14, and that of helium 4, and a typical industrial gas cylinder is around 1.5 metres high and 200 mm in diameter. If introduced after the nitrogen, the lighter helium content would be positioned in the cylinder at the top, and occupy 75mm of the internal height, while the nitrogen the remaining 1425mm.

The diagram above depicts the nitrogen molecules and the helium atoms at the separation point and the numbers conform to Avogadro’s Law.

If uninhibited by collisions, at these velocities it would be possible for the slower nitrogen molecules that are in the vicinity of the helium atoms at the top of the cylinder to travel to the top of the cylinder and back 3,300 times in one second, 200,000 times in one minute. Extending the time to one hour would enable each nitrogen molecule to travel this distance 12 million times, a total distance of 600 kilometres.

With respect to each of the helium atoms, in one second they could each travel in the other direction to the bottom of the cylinder and back around 400 times, 24,000 times in a minute. In one hour 1,500,000 times and traveling a total distance of over 2,800 kilometres.

But of course collisions of any single atom with others are frequent and such an atom would not move linearly, but in a completely random manner.

This is an unusually frank comment from a Russian textbook:- (1)

“Since this transport is ensured by motion of the molecules, and the velocities of the molecules are high, diffusion should seem to occur rapidly with the concentrations leveling out almost instantaneously. Experiments show, however, that at atmospheric pressure diffusion is a very slow process, and mixing in the absence of motion of the gas as a whole may last several days.” (My emphases)

In an attempt to explain this problem the proponents of Kinetic Theory suggest that while the molecules in the above example move chaotically at high velocity, somehow collisions with the molecules of the other gas mean they always end up in the area from which they started in the first place, somehow, in this particular instance, showing both chaotic and ordered characteristic’s at the same time. In other words suggesting that any collisions that they endure with molecules of the other gas must result in their returning to the area in which they originated.

But this is a direct contradiction of the principle that the collisions are completely random or chaotic, and instead is saying that these interactions are, by some inexplicable means, regulated or controlled.

Given the postulated random, kinetic movement, together with the large volumes of empty space separating molecules and atoms and their high velocities, the fact that mixing, in commercial and experimental practice, is very slow, is direct and incontrovertible proof that this theory is invalid.

(1) Molecular Physics, Kirkoin and Kirkoin, Mir Publishers, Moscow