Talk-Polywell.org

Theoretical physics breakthrough: Generating matter and antimatter from the vacuum
http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-12-the ... acuum.html

Mainstream physicists no less. Article speaks of it's applicability to inertial confinement fusion as well. I'd like to see what the guru's around here think of this...

Edit Added: found a link to paper instead of article:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.0703

As per the debate on the other thread ['theory' versus 'discovery']; it seems a bit of an oxymoron 'theoretical... breakthrough'. One has a breakthrough, or one does not.

I don't know much about the higher details of quantum mechanics, so I ask; is it of much surprise to suggest that one might be able to make particles out of [apparently] nothing, with enough energy pumped in? I thought it was a given, in quantum mechanics, that things do pop in and out of existence.

"It is better to say, following theoretical physicist Paul Dirac, that a vacuum, or nothing, is the combination of matter and antimatter -- particles and antiparticles. Their density is tremendous, but we cannot perceive any of them because their observable effects entirely cancel each other out," Sokolov said."

To Sokolov, it's fascinating from a philosophical perspective.

"The basic question what is a vacuum, and what is nothing, goes beyond science," he said. "It's embedded deeply in the base not only of theoretical physics, but of our philosophical perception of everything---of reality, of life, even the religious question of could the world have come from nothing."


Sounds like a modern ether theory. So a tremendous density of equal parts matter and anti-matter clearly has zero charge density but what about the (inertial) mass density?

Maybe zero net rest mass density, due to light speed motion of the annihilated pairs (photons), but non-zero net energy density of the ether.

In that interpretation positrons actually have negative rest mass energy in the sea and so those cancel out too. But of course that doesn't make sense because it clearly has positive rest mass energy when we measure them. This is gotten around by saying that positrons travel backward in time. Looking at the four momentum of a particle (E, Pc), then if you flip the time part you get (-E, Pc). Voila negative energy going back in time is positive energy! So then why don't they travel backward in time when they are in the "invisible" sea? Oh no we are back where we started. hahaha.

Grumalg wrote:Theoretical physics breakthrough: Generating matter and antimatter from the vacuum
http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-12-the ... acuum.html

Mainstream physicists no less. Article speaks of it's applicability to inertial confinement fusion as well. I'd like to see what the guru's around here think of this...

Edit Added: found a link to paper instead of article:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.0703

Might lend credence to the Hiasch-Rueda-Puthoff ZPF Inertia Hypothesis.

chrismb wrote:As per the debate on the other thread ['theory' versus 'discovery']; it seems a bit of an oxymoron 'theoretical... breakthrough'. One has a breakthrough, or one does not.

Indeed.

Giorgio wrote:

chrismb wrote:As per the debate on the other thread ['theory' versus 'discovery']; it seems a bit of an oxymoron 'theoretical... breakthrough'. One has a breakthrough, or one does not.

Indeed.

If you think you have a breakthru but are not quite sure, is that a "theoretical" breakthru or just a "hypthetical" breakthru? 8o

KitemanSA wrote:

Giorgio wrote:

chrismb wrote:As per the debate on the other thread ['theory' versus 'discovery']; it seems a bit of an oxymoron 'theoretical... breakthrough'. One has a breakthrough, or one does not.

Indeed.

If you think you have a breakthru but are not quite sure, is that a "theoretical" breakthru or just a "hypthetical" breakthru? 8o

Shouldn't we just call it an hypothesis?
We can even call it a "breakthrough hypothesis" if we really want to waste words.

or how about 'a set of testable predictions' - based on a (novel?) description - just to pointlessly restir the debate.

from some scant reading i see some commentators suggesting that there might not be that much 'new' here - a composit numerical method, plus recognising that actual kit to test it against is now available. anyone read the paper in detail?

I did.
Numerical method full of hypothesis and semplifications based on older works.
Might be all good or all bad as far as we can say now.
Recognizing that a kit to test it against might be available when ELI gets online (anytime between 2015-2017).

For the one who do not know what ELI is:
http://www.extreme-light-infrastructure ... -id357.pdf

are we creating matter (and anti-matter) out of nothing or out of all the energy that the laser provides?

AcesHigh wrote:are we creating matter (and anti-matter) out of nothing or out of all the energy that the laser provides?

Out of the energy. This is simple matter/anti-matter pair creation. Been in textbooks for 50 years, I can't see what's novel here save that they did some new calcs. I did a 40 page paper on this as a junior in high school, more than 30 years ago.

Giorgio wrote:

KitemanSA wrote:

Giorgio wrote: Indeed.

If you think you have a breakthru but are not quite sure, is that a "theoretical" breakthru or just a "hypthetical" breakthru? 8o

Shouldn't we just call it an hypothesis?
We can even call it a "breakthrough hypothesis" if we really want to waste words.

I would suggest it is possible to have a 'ground-breaking hypothesis' on the basis that one can know that ground has been broken, but it is not always possible to know if it has been usefully broken, or even if it is in the right direction!

There seems much pedantry here at TP at the moment. I shall now shoot over to the other thread and continue the pedantics there, also.

Tell Hawking this is a breakthrough. Sounds to me like his mechanism for black hole evaporation, which has been around for a couple of decades.

A week or so back there was a lot of noise about bottling a few atoms of anti-hydrogen in a magnetic bottle, and how this would allow the study of "mysterious antimatter." Yaaaawn! Positrons form spontaneously in many nuclear reactions, and anti-protons are not all that new in accelerator studies. No big mystery about changing a sign.

To impress me you have to tell me why the Universe is made of matter and not a mix of matter and antimatter. If you want to address a mystery, trap me a little dark matter in a bottle so we can look at it. Illuminate the sample with dark energy.

Haven't Penning Traps (magnetic bottles to trap a bit of antihydrogen) been around since the 90s? Or was this the first time they actually made the design work?