The Issue Of Point Particles

[Dubbelosix]

Casimir wasn't daft. He did believe the electron was a conducting sphere of radius and associated zero point energy as

[math]E = -C \frac{\hbar c}{2R}[/math]

 

Where C is a dimensionless constant that if positive implied an inward force. That inward force balances the outward Couloumb force (as Poincare stress) when the magnitudes of the corresponding energies are equal

[math]\frac{e^2}{2r} = C \frac{\hbar c}{2r}[/math]

A detailed  calculation  of  C by Boyer, however, shows that Casimir’s intuitive approach was off the mark: The constant is negative, equal to about −0.09; that is, the stress on a conducting sphere tends to make it expand. Boyer’s result remains of interest because it highlights the geometry dependence of the Casimir force, a subject that has received considerable attention.

 

Point particles are a problem for physics and definitely problematic to our understanding of them. I stated that electrons where best seen in a phase space as a Planck cell, by which terminology it was giving by Von Neumann stating that points in phase space do not make any physical sense. When I stated this earlier in the year on a different physics forum I was banned for ''not fitting in'' because my views where openly regarded ''as pseudoscientific.''

 

On what basis this was determined was never made clear, only that academics are more like parrots than true physicists since no one seemed to be concerned with the unavoidable divergence problems found when dealing with point like dynamics, such as an electron possessing an infinite curvature in relativity or even the self energy of an electron blowing up to infinity simply because of they way we model these particles.

 

Moreover I said that rotational bands where actually evidence that things like atoms and even molecules possess a real rotation period which was met with largely skepticism. Anything with spatial distribution doesn't require a notion of ''intrinsic spin'' which was a fancy set of words just to decribe, in every mathematical sense of the word, an identical phenomenon to a real spin or rotary feature to system. Why did we do this to particle physics? The reason is simple, particles of all kinds interact as though they where point like particles - this is not a surprise, classical physics predicts that small objects should behave point like.

 

The real question we need to rethink is whether they actually are.

 

http://www.casimir-network.org/IMG/pdf/Lamoreaux.pdf

Edited April 1, 2018 by Dubbelosix