5 ms·

Maxwell's fluid model of magnetism (2015)

91 points by dschuetz 8y ago

ltbarcly3 8y ago
Only took a quick peek at this, but it seems to resemble Feynman's Absorber Theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheeler%E2%80%93Feynman_absorber_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheeler%E2%80%93Feynman_absorb...
- mrtnmcc 8y ago
  Sorry don't see a connection.
  - Koshkin 8y ago
    It is yet another interpretation of the classical electromagnetism.
twtw 8y ago
If people are interested in the historical developments of EM theory and the various physical analogies maxwell used, I'd highly recommend "Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field" by Forbes and Mahon. It has a interesting description of these, and also emphasizes the insights Faraday had - he wrote about the potential of EM waves ~30 years before maxwell came up with the mathematics.
- madengr 8y ago
  Thanks. Added to wishlist. Check out books on Oliver Heaviside for the first one to put Maxwells equations to use.
- nabla9 8y ago
  And if you want to know what kind of thinking Einstein used to move from Maxwell equations to light being quanta I recommend: Einstein lecture by Douglas Hofstadter (Feb 4, 2018) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXdQfPrU64g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXdQfPrU64g You might want to jump directly to point: https://youtu.be/NXdQfPrU64g?t=704 https://youtu.be/NXdQfPrU64g?t=704
  - Koshkin 8y ago
    > to light being quanta Courtesy of Planck, of course.
    - nabla9 8y ago
      >Courtesy of Planck, of course. No. Absolutely not. This is where physicists get their history wrong and what the lecture explains. When Planck described black-body radiation, he wrote that it was "as if" there were resonators in the walls that can oscillate at certain discrete frequencies. He did believe that light was a wave. Even after Einstein published his paper much later, Planck and everyone else thought he was silly for almost twenty years. They accepted the photoelectric effect explanation but not how Einstein came to the result (photons).
      - mhh__ 8y ago
        Isn't this somewhat simplified? The modern "proper" understanding/mechanistic explanation of the Quantization of (spin-1/2, massless - or symmetry groups etc.)fields resulting in photons came later still.
        nabla9 8y ago
        No, I don't think so. You have to think how the ideas proceeded historically, not to try to retrofit current understanding backwards in time. For example, Isaac Newton believed light was composed of a stream of corpuscles, but he lost his case in 1801 when Young presented his double slit experiment. Einstein's idea at that time was more correct and provided better explanations and predictions.
      - Koshkin 8y ago
        OK, but it is worth mentioning, then, that the quantum theory as it has developed in the later years has, in fact, rejected the idea of the light quanta as Einstein thought of them, being "particles of light," i.e. something that is localized in space, whereas Planck's notion of energy quanta (or energy quantization, of the light wave or in general) has remained in force.
- iorrus 8y ago
  'Fields of Force' by William Berkson is also highly recommended.
- scottlocklin 8y ago
  Kinda hard to beat Whittaker's "A History of the Theories of Aether & Electricity" -the more recent things tell a rather more linear story than the actual history. There were some crazy ideas, most of which were quasi-mechanical or fluid mechanical.
  - twtw 8y ago
    Thanks for the recommendation. The book I referenced discusses both the early hydrodynamic model maxwell used for electrostatics and a rather bizarre (and intriguing) mechanical model involving flywheels and gears. Can't comment on whether it linearizes the history though.
    - scottlocklin 8y ago
      These ideas were not original to Maxwell; virtually ALL of the pre-Maxwell theories of electricity and magnetism looked like that. The first chunk of Whittaker's book is all about these mostly forgotten ideas and the cool people who tought them up. It's really a classic.
phkahler 8y ago
I feel like this illustrates a problem with the world of physics today (and other areas). This paper sounds like it could be the beginning of something new/better. But the effort required to bring all of that together was probably significant, and I kept seeing "to first order" which indicates it's nowhere near complete. I guess my point is that QM took a long time, and work from a lot of people to reach the point it has. Any replacement will likely need a lot of work by a lot of people, and there don't seem to be very many people working outside the box. Or perhaps that's just because nobody wants to publish half-baked ideas. I'd rather see new ideas published and get shot down than yet another experiment confirming spooky action at a distance in some new configuration.
- Koshkin 8y ago
  > QM took a long time About 25 years. > a lot of people About a dozen. > replacement Somehow I am not holding my breath.
- p1esk 8y ago
  Why does QM need replacement?
- masteranza 8y ago
  Well, I'm always enthusiastic when I see such new developments and I'm certainly going to read through it later in the evening. That being said, I'm also more skeptical whether this has a chance to work, especially if it's a classical construction. Why? Well, you'd probably need to study physics for a few years to really appreciate the answer, however I can sum it up quite simply: At the beginning of the 20th century we realized that our models are allowed to contain whatever objects you can imagine (and put in a consistent mathematical form, of course). In particular, theories are allowed to operate on objects which don't even take number values as long as they are objects which obey the defined rules. This realization is so refreshing, so liberating that it allowed for the construction of a number of magnificent things like quantum mechanics, field theory, standard model and strings. However it's hard to convey this truth to someone who's mathematical education finished (even) at an engineer level. Thus, you see the media and half-physicists always focusing on the same stupid "paradoxes" when there was never one to begin with. The insistence of many mediocre people against quantum mechanics (and modern physics in general) is analogous to an ancient Egyptian protesting that: "we should have a theory where everything is explained with natural numbers" which is the only object that his limited imagination can directly connect with reality. Another argument which people tend to use is that "QM is complicated", but nothing stands further from the truth. It might be hard to derive the solutions, but the postulates are really simple and there are no simple alternatives with the scope of validity of QM. The only real way of proceeding is to learn the lessons of quantum theory and build upon it, someday we may be lucky enough to find simple mathematical rules (but likely highly abstract) that govern the universe. So as you see, I partially agree with you. The "spooky action" kind of experiments are stupid, but for the opposite reason!
snarfy 8y ago
I found this page about Purcell enlightening - http://physics.weber.edu/schroeder/mrr/MRRtalk.html http://physics.weber.edu/schroeder/mrr/MRRtalk.html
bronlund 8y ago
It's quite simple really. The aether is real, but has been suppressed for the sake of "national security". When this insight goes mainstream (almost 200 years after it was discovered), stuff we reckon as science fiction today will become reality.

91 points by dschuetz 8y ago

Only took a quick peek at this, but it seems to resemble Feynman's Absorber Theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheeler%E2%80%93Feynman_absorber_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheeler%E2%80%93Feynman_absorb...

mrtnmcc 8y ago
Sorry don't see a connection.
- Koshkin 8y ago
  It is yet another interpretation of the classical electromagnetism.

twtw 8y ago

If people are interested in the historical developments of EM theory and the various physical analogies maxwell used, I'd highly recommend "Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field" by Forbes and Mahon. It has a interesting description of these, and also emphasizes the insights Faraday had - he wrote about the potential of EM waves ~30 years before maxwell came up with the mathematics.

madengr 8y ago
Thanks. Added to wishlist. Check out books on Oliver Heaviside for the first one to put Maxwells equations to use.
nabla9 8y ago
And if you want to know what kind of thinking Einstein used to move from Maxwell equations to light being quanta I recommend: Einstein lecture by Douglas Hofstadter (Feb 4, 2018) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXdQfPrU64g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXdQfPrU64g You might want to jump directly to point: https://youtu.be/NXdQfPrU64g?t=704 https://youtu.be/NXdQfPrU64g?t=704
- Koshkin 8y ago
  > to light being quanta Courtesy of Planck, of course.
  - nabla9 8y ago
    >Courtesy of Planck, of course. No. Absolutely not. This is where physicists get their history wrong and what the lecture explains. When Planck described black-body radiation, he wrote that it was "as if" there were resonators in the walls that can oscillate at certain discrete frequencies. He did believe that light was a wave. Even after Einstein published his paper much later, Planck and everyone else thought he was silly for almost twenty years. They accepted the photoelectric effect explanation but not how Einstein came to the result (photons).
    - mhh__ 8y ago
      Isn't this somewhat simplified? The modern "proper" understanding/mechanistic explanation of the Quantization of (spin-1/2, massless - or symmetry groups etc.)fields resulting in photons came later still.
      - nabla9 8y ago
        No, I don't think so. You have to think how the ideas proceeded historically, not to try to retrofit current understanding backwards in time. For example, Isaac Newton believed light was composed of a stream of corpuscles, but he lost his case in 1801 when Young presented his double slit experiment. Einstein's idea at that time was more correct and provided better explanations and predictions.
    - Koshkin 8y ago
      OK, but it is worth mentioning, then, that the quantum theory as it has developed in the later years has, in fact, rejected the idea of the light quanta as Einstein thought of them, being "particles of light," i.e. something that is localized in space, whereas Planck's notion of energy quanta (or energy quantization, of the light wave or in general) has remained in force.
iorrus 8y ago
'Fields of Force' by William Berkson is also highly recommended.
scottlocklin 8y ago
Kinda hard to beat Whittaker's "A History of the Theories of Aether & Electricity" -the more recent things tell a rather more linear story than the actual history. There were some crazy ideas, most of which were quasi-mechanical or fluid mechanical.
- twtw 8y ago
  Thanks for the recommendation. The book I referenced discusses both the early hydrodynamic model maxwell used for electrostatics and a rather bizarre (and intriguing) mechanical model involving flywheels and gears. Can't comment on whether it linearizes the history though.
  - scottlocklin 8y ago
    These ideas were not original to Maxwell; virtually ALL of the pre-Maxwell theories of electricity and magnetism looked like that. The first chunk of Whittaker's book is all about these mostly forgotten ideas and the cool people who tought them up. It's really a classic.

phkahler 8y ago

I feel like this illustrates a problem with the world of physics today (and other areas). This paper sounds like it could be the beginning of something new/better. But the effort required to bring all of that together was probably significant, and I kept seeing "to first order" which indicates it's nowhere near complete. I guess my point is that QM took a long time, and work from a lot of people to reach the point it has. Any replacement will likely need a lot of work by a lot of people, and there don't seem to be very many people working outside the box. Or perhaps that's just because nobody wants to publish half-baked ideas. I'd rather see new ideas published and get shot down than yet another experiment confirming spooky action at a distance in some new configuration.

Koshkin 8y ago
> QM took a long time About 25 years. > a lot of people About a dozen. > replacement Somehow I am not holding my breath.
p1esk 8y ago
Why does QM need replacement?
masteranza 8y ago
Well, I'm always enthusiastic when I see such new developments and I'm certainly going to read through it later in the evening. That being said, I'm also more skeptical whether this has a chance to work, especially if it's a classical construction. Why? Well, you'd probably need to study physics for a few years to really appreciate the answer, however I can sum it up quite simply: At the beginning of the 20th century we realized that our models are allowed to contain whatever objects you can imagine (and put in a consistent mathematical form, of course). In particular, theories are allowed to operate on objects which don't even take number values as long as they are objects which obey the defined rules. This realization is so refreshing, so liberating that it allowed for the construction of a number of magnificent things like quantum mechanics, field theory, standard model and strings. However it's hard to convey this truth to someone who's mathematical education finished (even) at an engineer level. Thus, you see the media and half-physicists always focusing on the same stupid "paradoxes" when there was never one to begin with. The insistence of many mediocre people against quantum mechanics (and modern physics in general) is analogous to an ancient Egyptian protesting that: "we should have a theory where everything is explained with natural numbers" which is the only object that his limited imagination can directly connect with reality. Another argument which people tend to use is that "QM is complicated", but nothing stands further from the truth. It might be hard to derive the solutions, but the postulates are really simple and there are no simple alternatives with the scope of validity of QM. The only real way of proceeding is to learn the lessons of quantum theory and build upon it, someday we may be lucky enough to find simple mathematical rules (but likely highly abstract) that govern the universe. So as you see, I partially agree with you. The "spooky action" kind of experiments are stupid, but for the opposite reason!

snarfy 8y ago

I found this page about Purcell enlightening - http://physics.weber.edu/schroeder/mrr/MRRtalk.html http://physics.weber.edu/schroeder/mrr/MRRtalk.html

bronlund 8y ago

It's quite simple really. The aether is real, but has been suppressed for the sake of "national security". When this insight goes mainstream (almost 200 years after it was discovered), stuff we reckon as science fiction today will become reality.