Tuesday, December 08, 2009

Does weak equivalence break down at the quantum level?

This post is motivated by PhysOrg comment of article Light-pulse atom interferometry in microgravity. It's surprising, how deeply scientists are surprised by fact, pair of dual theories (relativity and quantum mechanics) are inconsistent mutually. Especially if they know already, these theories are giving quite different predictions, concerning energy density of vacuum or cosmological constants. I mean different in more than one hundred orders of magnitude.

Weak equivalence is indeed violated by Casimir force, which is proportional to cross-sectional area of massive objects instead of their mass, so that equivalence principle of general relativity doesn't apply here / and no large speculations are required about it, question marks the less. 



This insight basically means, quantum scale begins at Casimir force scale, which roughly corresponds the wavelength of cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB), which roughly corresponds the size of transversal waves inside of human brain. Photons of CMB are manifestation of gravitational waves, which are of longitudinal character, so that their shielding resulting in Casimir force is proportional to cross-sectional area (compare the Duillier/LeSage theory of gravitation). Note that the violation of equivalence principle is manifestation of violation of dimensionality of 4D space-time, i.e. the manifestation of extradimensions and nonzero rest mass of photon at the same moment. This force is in fact supersymmetric effect of relativity, i.e. the quantum mechanics effect, too.

4 comments:

Zephir said...

Two papers claim that E = m * c^2 is incorrect and suggests E=mbc where b = 0.624942 * 10^8 m/s. The first one On a Heuristic Viewpoints Concerning the Mass, Energy and Light Concepts in Quantum Physics was published in 2008 and the second one New Concept of Mass-Energy Equivalence was released in 2009.

Zephir said...

On 2006, noted physicist Dr. Franklin Felber [presented his solution](http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0505098) of Einstein's field equations to the Space Technology and Applications International Forum (STAIF) in Albuquerque. The solution is the first that accounts for masses moving near the speed of light. According to this solution, a particle traveling faster than 0.57c gravitationally repels particles ahead of it. This solution was proposed [to be tested](http://arxiv.org/abs/0910.10o84) at LHC (Kavassaliss comment)

Zephir said...

Conflict Between the Uncertainty Principle and General Relativity

Zephir said...

string theory predicts violations of the equivalence principle
Many string theorists have opposite opinion in this matter: By prof. Matt Strasser "string theory does *not* predict practically-measurable violations of the equivalence principle, and yet string theory does not forbid measurable violations of the equivalence principle". By another string theorist L. Motl (not so qualified, but the more convinced in this matter): "If string theory is correct, the superposition principle of quantum mechanics, Lorentz invariance, unitarity, crossing symmetry, equivalence principle etc. are valid to much higher accuracy than the accuracy with which they have been tested as of 2006". He is even more explicit about it here.
By Thibault Damour recent article (at page 12) "the current string landscape prediction is no equivalence principle violation, but if equivalence principle violation is found, that just means string theorists need to look at other currently less popular string theory models". The violation of equivalence principle would violate the Lorentz symmetry, on which string theory is based. The current string landscape prediction is therefore no violation of equivalence principle.
This is following the usual pattern: published article includes only minor references to string theory, since no referee would allow the author to claim that this was a "test of string theory" (since it isn't). The press release then gets spread through various media outlets, often with the outrageousness of the claims increasing as it spreads.