Naked Science Forum
On the Lighter Side => New Theories => Topic started by: samcottle on 11/06/2017 21:41:45
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Ok, all this sounds a bit grandiose but I think I've come up with a decent theory of dark matter that also explains gravity, and I'd love someone to prove me wrong (or at least give compelling reasons why this is incorrect). I'll try to be as clear and concise as possible.
The first thing to get out of the way is that the exponential functions governing the wave functions of electrons are just heuristics. There is a probability of 1:4.17 x 10^42 that the electron will appear at at least some distance beyond the Van Der Waals radius of the atom to which it belongs. So this is a tiny probability that the electron volume probability density of an atom extends somewhere beyond the Van Der Waals radius, i.e. an electron can pop-up somewhere beyond the radius of the atom for a very brief amount of time before it interacts with a photon and changes position again. This amount of time I estimated to be around 2.5 x 10^-43s, this isn't strictly important, what's more important is that for a body composed of atomic matter, such as a planet, there is some large number of very ephemeral electrons surrounding it which is analogous to the gravitational field. I call this cloud of electrons the secondary electron density. When another object y approaches the secondary electron density of an object x the secondary density electrons from x pop-up within the first electron shell, or within the primary electron density of the atoms composing object y and exert a very mild force of attraction over the protons in the nucleus of object y. En masse this effect produces a net force of attraction between two objects which is proportional to their mass.
I'll quickly deal with a potential objection. Neutron beams curve due to a polarisation effect caused by the secondary electron density over the up quark in the neutron, given that the up quark is 2/3 charged and the down quarks are -1/3 charged the net force of attraction is greater than the force of repulsion. I admit this is one of the many weaknesses of the theory, but please bear with me.
How does this explain dark matter? given that electrons repel each other, and that objects composed of atomic matter are surrounded by secondary density electrons, there should be a resistance generated between the secondary electron densities of rotating bodies that is greater than non-rotating bodies. This is the hardest part to explain, but the idea came from thinking about the perihelion precession of Mercury, and the observation that the moon has a similar precession in its orbit. Neither the moon nor Mercury rotate. Einstein's explanation of this was that the sun's orbital wobble causes ripples in the fabric of spacetime that causes Mercury to shift on it's orbit. I'm not sure if this can also be applied to the moon since the earth/moon system exhibits much less of a mass disparity than does the sun/mercury system. In my theory it's primarily the gravity of the other planets and secondarily the gravity of the rest of the galaxy that pulls on Mercury and causes precession in it's orbit. Because it doesn't rotate it isn't as 'locked-in' to it's orbit around the sun as the other planets. Extend this effect to the rest of the galaxy and you find that the majority of bodies within the galaxy rotate and are, crucially, nested within the secondary electron density of the supermassive black hole at the centre. One way to test this experimentally would be to examine the rotational speed of the SMBH and correlate it to the rotational curve of the galaxy, if it's the same it implies there's some connection between the rotational speed of SMBH and that of the galaxy (unless it's somehow producing WIMP's, in line with the ΛCDM model) as a whole. To conclude, my theory states that the fact of the rotation of stars within a galaxy coupled with the fact that those stars are surrounded by a secondary electron density produces 'electrical resistance (best term I could come up with)' that is greater than that of non-rotating bodies, and this keeps them locked-into fairly orbits of a fairly regular velocity within the secondary density of the supermassive black hole. On a side note, the faster rotational speeds of stars closer to the secondary density of the black hole are caused by the fact (within this theory), that the primary electron density of the black hole has been pushed beyond the event horizon due to the enormous density of the black hole due to as yet unknown facts about black hole physics.
I'll now try to explain the rest of the predictions of general relativity in the context of my model. The redshift is explained in part by the fact that the average number of photons per cubic metre is dwarfed by the number of secondary density electrons; the probability of a single photon interacting with a secondary density electron in the time it takes for a photon to cross a cubic metre is equal to 1. I calculated 8.2 x 10^30 electrons per cubic metre, and 4.2 x 10^14 photons per cubic metre at conservative estimates (later I'll show how to calculate the secondary electron density of the Earth). The greater the number of photons per cubic metre, i.e. the lower the probability that they've already been scooped up by an electron prior to entering the sample cubic metre, i.e. for a number of photons from a star say moving towards the point of observation the electrons will tend to absorb the photons of a lower energy due to the, on average, higher number of electrons that the light has to move through; therefore, lower energy photons are emitted by the secondary density electrons, therefore the light from the approaching object is blushifted. Redshift is the opposite of this. Also, if you take the number of electrons per cubic metre and divide this by the number of photons per cubic metre you get the residual number of photons (of all wavelengths) emitted by the secondary density electrons. This is the vacuum energy in my model. I calculated it to be approximately 0.003eV/c^2/m^3, again at a conservative estimate; I thought this was a nice figure for the cosmological constant, but naturally might not agree with experiment. This could also potentially be applied to black holes to explain the information escape paradox in lieu of quantum fluctuations in space-time. Another prediction of GR that this has to explain is gravitational lensing; so, very simply, a proportion of photons hit all the right electrons in the right sequence (actually different photons, since they're absorbed by electrons and a different photon is emitted, but for sake of argument it's easier to imagine that it's the same photon) such that it follows a jagged pattern between electrons which, on the scales of general relativity looks curved. This is why the effect is only detectable by optical telescopes for visible light around very massive objects, such as galaxies when they create Einstein rings. More precise measures of gravitational lensing have recently been performed around the sun, and to explain why it appears[/I] that all the photons have been lensed bear in mind that the ones that go off in a different direction aren't detected by the instruments. Also, just to head off another possible objection, the reason why the speed of light remains a constant is because the exchange of photons between secondary density electrons is instantaneous. Think about photons moving through the air, the speed of light is slightly slower, because they're being absorbed by primary density electrons of the atoms in the air, and other photons emitted, again in a sort of jagged pattern (slowing them down), which on classical scales looks like a straight line.
Also, to explain the emissions of gravitational waves by merging black holes and binary pullers, you have to imagine the gravitational waves as emissions of pure energy i.e. photons and to also conjecture that photons have mass and can interact with one another, causing the interference in the laser at the LIGO detector. Also, the secondary electron density is a good reason as to why gravitational waves tend to diminish as they propagate through space. The fact that 3 solar masses of material was emitted from the merging binary black hole system as pure energy (photons) is in the abstract of the LIGO paper, so, as a side-note, I'm not sure exactly where the idea of gravitational waves being ripples in spacetime came from. Also, the idea of the photon having mass doesn't break gauge invariance, according to Stueckelberg, and has the potential to explain dark energy (not my idea).
I think that more or less wraps things up. Sorry it's so long, I was just trying to be as concise as possible. I'll also quickly discuss ways of experimentally probing the secondary electron density and how to calculate it.
To calculate the secondary electron density: take the average atomic number of the object being studied, multiply it by the number of atoms to give an estimate of the number of electrons and divide this number by the ratio between gravity and the force of electrostatic repulsion (4.17 x 10^42) and you get the number of electron surrounding the planet over one unit of the time differential (2.5 x 10^-43s). To find out the number of secondary electrons per second, you take the time 1s, divided by the time differential (the average amount of time the electron stays in a given position 2.5 x 10^-43s) and multiply by the number of electrons over 4.17 x 10^42.
Experimental tests: Prove that electron beams are affected by gravity. Prove that neutrinos are affected by gravity. Perform experiments with negatively-charged ions to see if they fall in a gravitational field.
I think that's about it, now find the holes everyone! Thanks for reading.
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NB: I forgot all the stuff about length construction and time dilation. As objects approach the speed of light they become saturated with an increasingly large number of secondary density electrons, surrounding the moving parts of objects with a net negative charge, forcing the primary density electrons of the atoms in those moving parts to slow down also. Since time just measures motion the slowing down of moving objects, including things like RNA on DNA strands, and clocks, caused by the secondary electron density, time slows down also by definition. Length contraction is for a similar reason, as objects approach the speed of light the electrostatic force surrounding the object forces it to occupy an increasingly small space, or just to be torn apart, I'm not exactly sure which, not even sure if that can be proven, but there we go.
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The first thing to get out of the way is that the exponential functions governing the wave functions of electrons are just heuristics.
What so you mean by that precisely.
There is a probability of 1:4.17 x 10^42 that the electron will appear at at least some distance beyond the Van Der Waals radius of the atom to which it belongs. So this is a tiny probability that the electron volume probability density of an atom extends somewhere beyond the Van Der Waals radius, i.e. an electron can pop-up somewhere beyond the radius of the atom for a very brief amount of time before it interacts with a photon and changes position again.
That is incorrect. You misinterpreted the probability incorrectly. The probability associated with the wavefunction refers to the probability of finding an electron in a specified volume of space when the position of the particle is measured. It doesn't refer to the electron popping up somewhere nor does it mean that a photon will collide with it changing its position.
I strongly recommend learning more about the wave function and its correct interpretation. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_function
I also recommend that you learn the philosophy of physics and why the notion of proof is not part of science. Here's a place to start. The following video is of Alan Guth, an MIT cosmologist/particle physicist. Highly respected and well-known in his fields.
http://www.newenglandphysics.org/common_misconceptions/Alan_Guth_04.mp4
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Hi,
Thanks for the response. The theory relies on a new interpretation of the electron's wavefunction. I can't post links so I'll try and explain it the best I can here:
ψ(r)² =ρ1+ρ2
Meaning the electron density is a composite of both a primary and secondary electron density with the secondary density being responsible for gravity. According to QM the probability of finding an electron beyond the Van Der Waals radius is much lower than 1:4.17 x 10^42 but this is because of the use of exponential functions in QM to make the calculations easier, and this has just been adopted as orthodoxy. Using this ratio instead doesn't, I believe, cause disagreement with observations of electron densities and has the power to describe a wide range of other phenomena as well. What I meant by a 'heuristic' is just something that makes something easier. Incidentally it's actually easier to just divide the number of electrons in a hydrogen atom (1) by 4.17 x 10^42 to yield the bare probability of finding the electron at some point beyond the VdW radius, this is roughly equal to 2.5 x 10^-43. So it's still really, really small, and you have a resolution of the wave-particle duality (for electrons at least); it would be a point particle that changes position so often that it forms what looks like a wave. Should have mentioned that.
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Also, on the philosophy of science point, I do know that it's falsifiability that is the mark of a scientific theory and not the notion of proof. Even though some believe Popper is too simplistic the principle of demarcation is still regarded as the gold standard for a scientific theory, and I've given a few ways of disproving mine. I just didn't want my theory to be attacked on those grounds.
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Its not enough to simply propose a theory and say "prove me wrong." One must show where the current theory is wrong and where your theory predicts current observations, which you haven't done here.
Also you still don't show that you understand the meaning of |ψ(r)|² (the argument is the vector r and not the scalar r). You even made the mistake of writing ψ(r)² instead which is a complex function and thus not real one and therefore can't be a probability density.
|ψ(r)|² is a probability of finding a particle in the volume dV about the point r and you keep referring to the Van der Wall radius of an atom as if its a distance from the center of an atom where electrons reside and that's not what it means. I recommend looking up that term.
Also, you keep posting multiple new theories in this thread which makes considering it intractable to do so.
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again, thank you for your patience so far. I know what the term Van Der Waals radius means, and that it's beyond this point that it makes sense that an electron could be responsible for gravity rather than behind that point where it would just be at some point around the nucleus, that's why I kept using it. As for the term ψ(r)² it's just what I saw in a textbook to denote the electron volume probability density, that's where the confusion stems from, if |ψ(r)|² = ρ1+ρ2 is a better fit then I'm sorry for the mistake, but it doesn't change anything about my theory.
As for the current theory being wrong, Einstein's field equations do not predict the rotational curves of galaxies and dark matter has to be invoked to explain those rotational curves. It's a failing of general relativity. You could view this theory as a quantum correction to GR which does account for dark matter, that's the point I was trying to make.
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I know what the term Van Der Waals radius means, ...
What does it mean?
...and that it's beyond this point that it makes sense that an electron could be responsible for gravity ..
Why?
By the way. Your first post contains a large amount of errors and wrong assumptions. You also make statements which are conclusions which you didn't justify but merely state.
I'd have to comment on almost every single sentence and you appear to reply with "But that's my new theory" which means you don't have one theory but dozens of them. In essence its a total mess and can't even be taken to be a coherent theory but a set of beliefs. I've tried to help people who post arguments like this before but found it impossible to do so.
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It represents the distance of closest approach for another atom, which I thought would make sense as a boundary between the two probability densities. Perhaps I'm wrong, could you suggest an atomic radius I should use instead? It would make sense that it's beyond this point that an electron could be responsible for gravity due to the fact that, in my theory at least, an electron beyond this point could appear within the van Der Waals radius of another atom and exert a force of attraction over the protons in that atom.
What are those errors in the first post? Can you list them?
Also, it's not a set of beliefs, that isn't the distinguishing factor for a theory, it's replacing spacetime curvature with a cloud of electrons to explain dark matter and gravity simultaneously. I thought that was one of it's strengths, the ability to explain a wide range of phenomena with a single idea.
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what's more important is that for a body composed of atomic matter, such as a planet, there is some large number of very ephemeral electrons surrounding it which is analogous to the gravitational field.
In what sense is it analogous to a gravitational field?
When another object y approaches the secondary electron density of an object x the secondary density electrons from x pop-up within the first electron shell, or within the primary electron density of the atoms composing object y and exert a very mild force of attraction over the protons in the nucleus of object y.
How would that work for materials that already have all of their electron shells filled? Do they go into higher, unoccupied orbitals? That would only work if the electrons have enough energy to reach those higher orbitals. Have you done the calculations to see if that is plausible?
There is also another problem with this: it isn’t consistent with gravity being a force that obeys the inverse-square law. Take the probability distribution of an electron in an atom for example. Your model relies on electrons from one atom moving to another atom and producing an attraction to that atom’s nucleus. However, the relationship between an electron’s distance from the nucleus and the probability of it being there falls off much, much more quickly than the inverse square law (as you seem to agree with your initial values of probability). I’d be surprised if you had even a single electron in all the Earth jumping to the Moon within the span of a human lifetime. That’s an incredibly large distance for an electron bound to an atom to go. Yet the Moon and Earth are strongly bound by gravity. How does you model explain that?
En masse this effect produces a net force of attraction between two objects which is proportional to their mass.
The attraction wouldn’t be proportional to mass, though. If your model was correct, then heavier isotopes (those containing more neutrons) would still weigh about the same as their lighter counterparts because the electrons are attracted to the protons, not the neutrons. I see you mention something about neutrons being polarizable, but that would still make the attraction between an electron and neutron extraordinarily weak compared to the attraction between that of an electron and proton.
This is something that has been experimentally demonstrated. The ionization energy (the energy required to pull the electron off of the atom) of normal hydrogen is 13.595 electron-volts, whereas the ionization energy of deuterium (which has a neutron) is 13.6 electron-volts. So if the electron is attracted to neutrons, that attraction is practically nothing compared with the attraction to the proton. Here is the source for the ionization energies (the table is very low on the page, with the heading “Hydrogen Properties”: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/deuterium
I'll quickly deal with a potential objection. Neutron beams curve due to a polarisation effect caused by the secondary electron density over the up quark in the neutron, given that the up quark is 2/3 charged and the down quarks are -1/3 charged the net force of attraction is greater than the force of repulsion. I admit this is one of the many weaknesses of the theory, but please bear with me.
As pointed out before, the amount that an electron is attracted to a proton is overwhelmingly larger than the attraction between an electron and a neutron. So if your model was correct, then a proton beam should bend under gravity much, much more than a neutron beam does, despite the fact that the neutrons are very slightly more massive than protons. This would violate Galileo’s observation that all objects fall at the same rate in a gravitational field.
given that electrons repel each other, and that objects composed of atomic matter are surrounded by secondary density electrons, there should be a resistance generated between the secondary electron densities of rotating bodies that is greater than non-rotating bodies.
I don't see how you came to that conclusion.
Neither the moon nor Mercury rotate.
They do, actually. The Moon's rotation period is equal to its orbital period. Mercury, however, actually does rotate faster than its orbital period (about 58.6 days versus about 88 days).
Einstein's explanation of this was that the sun's orbital wobble causes ripples in the fabric of spacetime that causes Mercury to shift on it's orbit.
That’s actually not the case. The precession would still be there even if the Sun didn’t rotate. The precession is caused by the distortion of the geometry of space caused by the Sun’s mass.
In my theory it's primarily the gravity of the other planets and secondarily the gravity of the rest of the galaxy that pulls on Mercury and causes precession in it's orbit.
If that was true, then we’d expect to see an irregular precession because the arrangement of the planets changes over time. Have you done the math to see if it works?
Because it doesn't rotate it isn't as 'locked-in' to it's orbit around the sun as the other planets.
It does rotate, and I’m not sure what you mean by “locked-in”.
Extend this effect to the rest of the galaxy and you find that the majority of bodies within the galaxy rotate and are, crucially, nested within the secondary electron density of the supermassive black hole at the centre.
Black holes don’t have electrons. If they did, those electrons couldn't get out of the event horizon anyway and thus couldn't interact with the outside Universe in the way you propose they should.
One way to test this experimentally would be to examine the rotational speed of the SMBH and correlate it to the rotational curve of the galaxy, if it's the same it implies there's some connection between the rotational speed of SMBH and that of the galaxy
It can’t be the same because the galaxy doesn’t rotate at one, uniform rate. You’d also expect there to be some degree of correlation anyway, because the angular momentum of the matter that condensed to form the galaxy would also have given angular momentum to the supermassive black hole at the center. The angular momentum of matter is conserved when it is consumed by a black hole.
that the primary electron density of the black hole has been pushed beyond the event horizon
That’s not possible. Event horizons are a point of no return. Things don’t cross from the inside out of them (as a note, Hawking radiation doesn't come out the event horizon).
The greater the number of photons per cubic metre, i.e. the lower the probability that they've already been scooped up by an electron prior to entering the sample cubic metre, i.e. for a number of photons from a star say moving towards the point of observation the electrons will tend to absorb the photons of a lower energy due to the, on average, higher number of electrons that the light has to move through
You have a problem here: the energy levels of electrons are quantized. That means that they can only absorb photons of particular energies, while not absorbing those photons which don't have the right energies. So if your model was correct, then gravitational red shift should only be observed for photons of particular frequencies, not for photons of all frequencies.
on the scales of general relativity looks curved.
So how is it that this curvature just so happens to be towards the source of mass and by the exact same amount predicted by general relativity (in light of the equivalence principle)? Can you show us the math that makes your model’s predicted degree of curvature consistent with observation? Also, this has the same problem as I stated before: only photons of certain frequencies should be interacting with those electrons and thus being lensed.
Also, just to head off another possible objection, the reason why the speed of light remains a constant is because the exchange of photons between secondary density electrons is instantaneous.
How does that explain that the speed of light is a constant in all reference frames?
Also, to explain the emissions of gravitational waves by merging black holes and binary pullers, you have to imagine the gravitational waves as emissions of pure energy i.e. photons
That doesn't work as gravitational waves behave differently than electromagnetic waves. Gravitational waves, for example, have two modes of polarization. This means that space is contracted along one axis and expanded on an axis at a right angle to that one, then alternately expanded on the first axis and contracted on the other in sequence as it passed through a given area: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GravitationalWave_PlusPolarization.gif Electromagnetic waves do not behave like this.
This is exactly the behavior that LIGO took advantage of in order to detect gravitational waves versus other types of waves. LIGO has two arms at right angles to each other. When a gravitational wave passes through LIGO, the distance between the mirrors in one arm increases while the distance between the mirror in the other arm decreases and vice versa until the wave has passed through. This is one reason we know that what LIGO sees are gravitational waves and not some other kind of wave.
As objects approach the speed of light they become saturated with an increasingly large number of secondary density electrons
Where are those electrons coming from?
Since time just measures motion the slowing down of moving objects, including things like RNA on DNA strands, and clocks, caused by the secondary electron density, time slows down also by definition.
How exactly would that affect an atomic clock? How does that explain gravitational time dilation?
Length contraction is for a similar reason, as objects approach the speed of light the electrostatic force surrounding the object forces it to occupy an increasingly small space
That would be inconsistent with relativity, as there is no such thing as absolute motion. In my reference frame, it might look like someone else is moving past me while in their reference frame, I’m the one who is moving instead. We are both equally correct. So how would there be a build up of electrostatic force on an object in one reference frame but not another? Surely you’d be able to detect that extra charge in both frames.
And how does your model explain other effects of relativity, such as frame dragging and the geodetic effect? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_Probe_B
Experimental tests: Prove that electron beams are affected by gravity. Prove that neutrinos are affected by gravity. Perform experiments with negatively-charged ions to see if they fall in a gravitational field.
For what it's worth, experiments have been done that test the way neutrons are affected by gravity: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1367-2630/14/5/055010/pdf
To quote the paper:
In the Earth’s gravitational field, neutrons fall with an acceleration equal to the local value g [16]. The free fall does not depend on the sign of the neutron’s vertical spin component [17]. The studies provide evidence in support of the weak equivalence principle of the equality of inertial mass mi and gravitational mass mg. The results obtained by Koester and others confirm that mi/mg is equal to unity to an accuracy of 3 × 10−4 [18, 19] and is a consequence of classical mechanics and this has been demonstrated by verifying that neutrons fall parabolically on trajectories in the Earth’s gravitational field.