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Is Jiggling Vacuum the Origin of Mass?
Posted on Wednesday, August 10, 2005 @ 17:42:23 UTC by vlad
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normablue writes: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-08/ns-ijv081005.php
Is jiggling vacuum the origin of mass?
Where mass comes from is one of the deepest mysteries of nature. Now a controversial theory suggests that mass comes from the interaction of matter with the quantum vacuum that pervades the universe.
The theory was previously used to explain inertial mass – the property of matter that resists acceleration – but it has been extended to gravitational mass, which is the property of matter that feels the tug of gravity.
For decades, mainstream opinion has held that something called the Higgs field gives matter its mass, mediated by a particle called the Higgs boson. But no one has yet seen the Higgs boson, despite considerable time and money spent looking for it in particle accelerators.
In the 1990s, Alfonso Rueda of California State University in Long Beach and Bernard Haisch, who was then at the California Institute for Physics and Astrophysics in Scotts Valley and is now with ManyOne Networks, suggested that a very different kind of field known as the quantum vacuum might be responsible for mass. This field, which is predicted by quantum theory, is the lowest energy state of space-time and is made of residual electromagnetic vibrations at every point in the universe. It is also called a zeropoint field and is thought to manifest itself as a sea of virtual photons that continually pop into and out of existence.
Rueda and Haisch argued that charged matter particles such as electrons and quarks are unceasingly jiggled around by the zero-point field. If they are at rest, or travelling at a constant speed with respect to the field, then the net effect of all this jiggling is zero: there is no force acting on the particle. But if a particle is accelerating, their calculations in 1994 showed that it would encounter more photons from the quantum vacuum in front than behind it (see Diagram). This would result in a net force pushing against the particle, giving rise to its inertial mass (Physical Review A, vol 49, p 678).
But this work only explained one type of mass. Now the researchers say that the same process can explain gravitational mass. Imagine a massive body that warps the fabric of space-time around it. The object would also warp the zero-point field such that a particle in its vicinity would encounter more photons on the side away from the object than on the nearer side. This would result in a net force towards the massive object, so the particle would feel the tug of gravity. This would be its gravitational mass, or weight (Annalen der Physik, vol 14, p 479).
Rueda and Haisch say this demonstrates the equivalence of inertial and gravitational mass – something that Einstein argued for in his theory of general relativity. "In place of having the particle accelerate through the zero-point field, you have the zero-point field accelerating past the particle," says Haisch. "So the generation of weight is the same as the generation of inertial mass."
The idea is far from winning wide acceptance. To begin with, there's a conundrum about the zero-point field that needs to be solved. The total energy contained in the field is staggeringly large – enough to warp space-time and make the universe collapse in a heartbeat. Obviously this is not happening. Also, the pair's work can only account for the mass of charged particles.
Nobel laureate Sheldon Glashow of Boston University is dismissive. "This stuff, as Wolfgang Pauli would say, is not even wrong," he says. But physicist Paul Wesson of Stanford University in California says Rueda and Haisch's unorthodox approach shows promise, though he adds that the theory needs to be backed up by experimental evidence. "If Haisch [and Rueda] could come up with a concrete prediction, then that would make people sit up and take notice," he says. "We're all looking for something we can measure."
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THIS ARTICLE APPEARS IN NEW SCIENTIST MAGAZINE ISSUE: 13 AUGUST 2005
Written by MARK ANDERSON
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Re: Is Jiggling Vacuum the Origin of Mass? (Score: 1)
by ElectroDynaCat on Thursday, August 11, 2005 @ 16:02:02 UTC
(User Info | Send a Message) | This confirms is that when energy can be extracted from the vacuum in a useful way, it will also enable a breakthrough in what is refered to as "antigravity", the nullifying of gravitational forces and "inertial propulsion", the achievement of motion without the ejecting of mass.
The science has been resolved, the technology of such an advance, still waits for a breakthrough. The technology will be much more difficult than the science in this case. |
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Re: Is Jiggling Vacuum the Origin of Mass? (Score: 1)
by vlad on Thursday, August 11, 2005 @ 22:25:10 UTC
(User Info | Send a Message) http://www.zpenergy.com | Dr. Jack Sarfatti writes: PS The obvious simplistic error in their whole idea is that they say ONLY RANDOM VIRTUAL PHOTONS create ALL INERTIA. Why only photons? What about the zero point fluctuations of everything else? Also, if they were correct then they should be able to derive Einstein's theory since gravity and inertia are tied together by the equivalence principle. In fact I have done that from the cohering of ALL ZPF in
http://qedcorp.com/APS/zpf2005.pdf
On Aug 11, 2005, at 8:55 AM, Jack Sarfatti wrote:
BTW, my brother Mike Sarfatti was a "Vice President" of Many-One Networks and worked closely with Bernie Haisch until maybe a year ago. Many-One Networks is Joe Firmage's so-far ill-fated attempt to stay afloat. While Joe may have had a good idea there maybe 5 years ago, his misplaced idealism caused him to make a self-defeating business plan that turned off almost virtually all mainstream venture capitalists who, in effect, do not like hearing (between the lines) how greedy they are. I think Maurice Strong helped Joe but I am not sure.
On Aug 11, 2005, at 8:37 AM, Jack Sarfatti wrote:
This is all bad wrong over-simplified physics. It's not even wrong. I agree 100% with Glashow. Wesson was on the board of Bernie's short-lived CIPA when Joe Firmage funded it and is biased. I do not give his opinion much weight. I read his stuff. Glashow is a better physicist on these things. In fact Bernie & Alfonso got it wrong. It is the COHERING of the random ZPF into a COHERENT vacuum condensate (e.g. Higgs mechanism in standard model that gives the basic inertia to quarks and leptons via the Yukawa mechanism). This is all explained here with the math i
http://www-conf.slac.stanford.edu/ssi/2005/lec_notes/Dienes1/default.htm
http://www-conf.slac.stanford.edu/ssi/2005/lec_notes/Dienes2/default.htm
The bulk of the inertia comes from kinetic energy of confined quarks inside the hadrons as shown e.g. by Frank Wilzcek - who got the Nobel Prize for that last year. The Haisch-Rueda origin of inertia and Puthoff's PV model are both considered cranky stuff by all the mainstream leaders in the physics community. That's a fact. I don't always agree with the mainstream, but I do in these two cases. |
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