FEEDBACK NOTE NO. 6

RESPONSE TO GERALD LINDLEY


Copyright, Harold Aspden, 2001


Owing to a diversion of my activities during the past two years, essentially from developing these Web pages as I put effort into an experimental electric motor project, I have not been able to respond as I would have liked to readers comments. However, owing to two communications received from Gerald Lindley of P.O. Box 2552, Manchester, CT, 06045-2552, USA giving no E-Mail address, communications which were copied to 6 different journal editors, I have been stirred into writing this Feedback Note No. 6.

The first message was dated November 5, 2000. It concerned Lindley's criticism of my web page Cosmic Mud or Cosmic Muddle? which discussed a recent experimental claim bearing upon the all-important Higgs particle that is supposed to play a key role in the underworld of physics and is deemed of relevance to the force of gravity.

I will quote this Lindley letter and discuss it after dealing first with his more recent communication to me and those six journal editors, which is dated February 28, 2001 and reads:
"In his recent Lecture No. 6 available at
http://www.energyscience.co.uk/ph/p006.html
Harold Aspden extends his model of the aether to calculate the mass of the neutrino in the section of Lecture No. 6 entitled The Elusive Neutrino. The key point of this calculation is his assertion that each particle of matter has an energy 3kT/2. This quantity is the mean translational kinetic energy of the atoms of an ideal gas. The last I heard, a tank full of liquid water is not an ideal gas. Thus, this quantity cannot be used to calculate the translational kinetic energy of particles in a tank of water. The numerical equality between the measured mass difference between two types of neutrinos and the result of Aspden's calculation is pure coincidence.

In his desperation to get the establishment to accept his work, Aspden is making fundamental blunders. Aspden had better soon regain his grip on reality or he will be discredited."

Now, this is a rather blunt style of expression and one can but wonder how those six journal editors will view receiving unsolicited communications of this kind, given that Lindley did not invite my reaction, but merely copied them on the above. The message was not worded as a communication to me, but rather worded in such a way that Lindley expects those editors to publish what he has written. Accordingly, I will, in posting this on the Web, duly send a copy by normal mail to each of those editors. I certainly do not expect any of them to publish my comments or, indeed, those of Gerald Lindley.

The item concerning the neutrino was included in my Physics Essay dealing with eleven key questions about the universe raised by a panel of U.S. scientists of the National Academy of Sciences. I dealt constructively and at some length with ten of those questions, but could only address the question concerning the neutrino mass in a critical and rather destructive way because I see the neutrino as something invented to avoid speaking of a property of the aether. However, Gerald Lindley has decided to target my comments on this neutrino question without reference to what I had to say concerning the other ten questions. So let us see what I did say about the neutrino. I quote the relevant passage:

"THE ELUSIVE NEUTRINO: In my opinion the neutrino concept is the work of a relativistic accountant who tries to balance his books by making a fictitious entry. He does not recognize the existence of the aether and so, when accounting for something where an energy transaction involves an energy transfer to or from the aether, he incorporates an entry under the heading 'neutrinos'.

That said, I have a mild curiosity when reading the question: "What are the masses of the neutrinos, and how have they shaped the evolution of the universe?".

The latter part of this question has already been answered by my references to the role played by the aether in creating protons and electrons which bring the universe as we know it into being. The first part of the question I cannot answer because I cannot compound, as it were, that accounting error by fiddling some numerical subterfuge that purports to be a mass quantity.

So I leave the subject to await events, noting however, the web link offered by the U.K. Institute of Physics in drawing attention to the eleven questions, the link to 'Super-Kamiokande finds neutrino mass'.

If you pursue that link you will see how a few faint flashes of light in a tank containing 50,000 tons of ultra pure water 1000 meters below ground in Japan is said to reveal that the neutrino has a mass of 0.07 electron volts, but that budget cuts prevent completion of the experiments.

So, you may ask how I react to this claim that 0.07 electron volts is the amount of energy representing the mass of a neutrino that I suspect does not even exist. Well, I can but say that this finding led me to ask what happens if a particle and its antiparticle are annihilated to transfer their energy to the aether and the particle pair is then recreated from aether energy at some other place, the kind of event we associate with quantum-electrodynamics.

The point of interest to me is the energy 3kT/2 possessed by each particle of matter owing to its thermodynamic equilibrium with other nearby matter. Whatever the physical process which determines the fundamental mass-energy of the particles involved, I just cannot believe that Mother Nature takes account of the local temperature when she decides to reconstitute the particle pair in matter form. I suspect that they are delivered in their 'birthday suits', as it were, and have to rely on help from the existing material world to acquire heat and so warm to the ambient temperature T.

In other words, the event I am discussing will shed an energy quantum 3kT and leave the recovery at particle recreation to a non-quantum process. I will then say no more, other than to point out that 3kT is, given that Boltzmann's constant has the value 1.38x10-23 joule/oK and that underground water tank used in the neutrino tests can only have a temperature T a little above 273 Kelvin. This gives 1.13x10-20 joule, which, since 1 electron-volt is 1.6x10-19 joule, corresponds to 0.07 electron-volts, exactly the value reported by the Japanese tests!"

Gerald Lindley, quite correctly, points out that the energy quantum 3kT/2 applies essentially to media which have gaseous properties, contrasting with the situation in liquids and solids where atoms and molecules are held in close contact with one another. So I point out that we know from nineteenth century physics, an era in which physicists did believe in the existence of the aether, that they were forced to conclude that the aether was neither a liquid nor a solid, but yet it had properties in regulating light propagation that were akin to those expected from a solid. Liquid crystals, as such, meaning substances in which electric field action can control the formation of crystals in a liquid medium, were not, one presumes, known at the time or, if known, seen as relevant to that aether question. However, in my early research I was led to conclude that the aether had a form that I can best describe as a fluid crystal, not a liquid from which a particle system could crystallize, but rather a kind of gas, as a positively charged continuum in which negatively charged particles existed and could form crystal structure without ever coming into contact.

With that in mind, and having noticed that an energy quantum of 3kT at the temperature 273K is, within one per cent, equal to the energy quantum 0.07 electron-volts, the value claimed as the measured mass-energy of the neutrino, I thought this was worthy of mention, notwithstanding the speculation involved. Accordingly, the words I used in the above-quoted text were:
"I can but say that this finding led me to ask what happens if a particle and its antiparticle are annihilated to transfer their energy to the aether and the particle pair is then recreated from aether energy at some other place, the kind of event we associate with quantum-electrodynamics."

I was seeing here the action in which the energy and momentum associated with the so-called 'neutrino' is absorbed from the aether as being in a medium exhibiting the properties of a gas and I followed this by the words:
"The point of interest to me is the energy 3kT/2 possessed by each particle of matter owing to its thermodynamic equilibrium with other nearby matter."

With hindsight based on Gerald Lindley's remarks I can see that this statement is not correct for matter generally but I will not speculate on whether a gaseous state accompanies the transition from aether energy to matter in the quantum-electrodynamic process.

When I wrote the subject Web page I was prepared to leave this issue open and let events take their course. I did realize that one day such neutrino experiments might be performed by tests spread over a range of ambient temperatures and that this could could invalidate or confirm what I had proposed. However, I have, in documenting this reaction to the Lindley's criticism, seen another case that warrants mention and consideration in the light of future events. I feel intuitively that Boltzmann's constant k plays a role in this neutrino detection scenario. Accordingly, I have calculated the thermal energy per molecule of water per degree of temperature.

The calculation proceeds as follows. A molecule of H2O has a mass of approximately 18 atomic mass units, that is 18 times 1.66x10-27 kg. Since the volume of a kilogram of water is 1,000 cc. this says that there are 3.35x1022 molecules per cc. The specific heat of water (cals/gm) is unity, and since 1 joule is 0.2389 calorie this means that, in raising the temperature of 1 cc. of water through 1 degree K, one needs 4.186 joules. On a per molecule basis, therefore, the energy quantum attributable to the thermal state of water, meaning the translational kinetic energy of each molecule, is 1.25x10-22T joules. Given that there are three degrees of freedom, the mean kinetic energy associated with an oscillation of the water molecule per degree of temperature T, is 4.16x10-23 joule. Now, Boltzmann's constant k is 1.381x10-23 joule/K and so that energy of the one-dimensional oscillation happens to be almost exactly equal to 3kT.

At 273K the lowest temperature of water, this is an energy quantum equal to 0.07 electron-volts, the measured energy quantum said to be the mass-energy of the neutrino in the Super-Kamiokande experiments.

So, you see, again, perhaps by further coincidence, that I am able to maintain my claim that the measurement of neutrino mass is somewhat illusory. If, for example, the aether, by its lattice particle system (crystal component) conveys momentum and energy which is absorbed in quanta by a water molecule and one senses an optimum response as an event in which the one-dimensional component of motion of the water molecule is arrested, then that energy of 0.07 electron volts is shed as a photon and so can be detected.

Reverting now to the other of Gerald Lindley's communications, this read:
"Recently, Harold Aspden has extended his theoretical model of the aether to account for the recently observed mass of the Higgs particle. He further extends this analysis to calculate the spectrum of masses: 22.6, 46.1, 68.7, 92.3, 114.9, 138.4, 161.0, 184.6, 207.2 and 230.7 GeV [1]. The value 92.3 GeV is associated with the neutral Z boson and the value of 114.9 GeV is the mass of the Higgs particle.

The masses above 114.9 Gev are the predicted masses of yet to be discovered particles that would be produced at higher energies. Notably absent from this predicted spectrum is the already observed mass of the top quark at 174.3 plus or minus 5.3 GeV [2].

What happened to the top quark?

[1] Aspden, Harold, Cosmic Mud or Cosmic Muddle? http://www.energyscience/2000/ES2007.html.
[2] The Particle data Group, http://pdg/lbl.gov."

If you read what I did say in my web page (reference [1] above), you will find that I calculated those energy resonance values from a generic formula of possible energy thresholds that could occur with high energy collisions between electrons and positrons and went on from there to explain why the 114.9 GeV resonance was the one which Nature favoured over the rest. That point is very important and seems to have eluded Gerald Lindley's attention.

Now, concerning his question:"What happened to the top quark?", the answer, in simple language, is that the 'quark' resonance at 174.3 GeV, as included in that Particle Data Group internet reference and its printed version in the European Physical Journal, Vol. C-15, p. 1 (2000), is clearly stated as being one observed in high energy collider experiments involving protons and antiprotons, not electrons and positrons! The theory involved here is entirely different. Indeed, why would particle physicists be so concerned about pushing their electron-positron collider experiments to higher energies in their search for the Higgs particle, if existing experiments using protons, already at even higher energies, suffice for that purpose?

All I am saying in my web page concerning this Higgs situation is that, if indeed the Higgs particle has a mass-energy of 114.9 GeV, then my theory, as applied to electron-positron collisions, justifies exactly that value as a favoured resonance.

As to that 'top quark' value of 174.3 GeV plus or minus 5.1 GeV found in the proton-antiproton collider experiments, I will, in order to respond constructively to Gerald Lindley's question, now speculate a little on a theoretical account bearing upon that problem.

In my basic paper concerning the supergraviton, as published in 1989 at page 179 in volume 12 of Speculations in Science and Technology, I did discuss the resonance states that could emerge from proton-antiproton collisions. The formula of equation (6) of that paper reads:
W = 2(N)4/3E
where N is an odd integer, E is the energy 0.9383 GeV of the proton and W is the energy of the resonance.

The basis of this equation is the assumption that a proton or antiproton moving at very high speed will conserve its charge volume by sharing that volume equally between an odd number of created particles of equal energy. The unitary charge when squeezed into a smaller volume increments in energy in proportion to the inverse of the cube-root of that volume. The above equation is the consequence.

The factor 2 with N odd arises because as the accelerated proton acquires more and more energy that energy forms pairs of antiparticles and so there are resonance levels involving an odd number of particles. The factor 2 arises because these particles are all brought into collision with an odd number of particles formed from the acceleration of the antiproton. For the collision to be optimum in producing a perfect energy resonance state the values of N for the proton group must be the same as that for the antiproton group.

Now, applying the formula, we see that values of N of 29 and 31 produce a combined collision energy of 167.20 GeV and 182.75 GeV, respectively. Neither is within a standard deviation of the value 174.3+/-5.1 GeV, as measured for the so-called 'top quark' and so one may well doubt the theory proposed. Also, I am all too conscious of the fact that in my other writings I have relied on the argument of particle-pair creation more with regard to leptons such as muons and electrons which feature in the quantum-electrodynamic scenario than with hadrons such as protons. That scenario was very relevant in justifying my theory (Physics Unified, p. 146) where I derived the lifetime of the muon as 2.1973 microseconds, in perfect accord with its observed value, and went on to give account of why that lifetime increased for a muon moving at speed approaching lightspeed and in proportion to its increased mass-energy value.

Accordingly, for the proton and antiproton, the above formula may not apply without some alteration of the energy E to represent the energy of a lepton. Indeed, though I did, immediately following presentation of the above equation in that 1989 paper, list a series of energy resonance levels based on the 0.9383 proton mass-energy quantum, later on the same page of that paper, I listed another set of energy resonance levels based on the use of a lepton energy form. I referred to this in the context of the Japanese H-quantum experiments (a study of the cosmic ray 'fireballs' in the 1970s), the evidence pointing to the range 2.5 to 2.6 GeV. My theory had indicated a graviton lepton form at 2.587 GeV, a crucial factor in my theoretical evaluation of G, the constant of gravitation.

Using this 2.587 GeV base value as E, the above equation gives W as 158.16 and 191.40 GeV using N as 13 and 15, respectively. Neither value fits the observed 174.3+/-5.1 GeV claimed for that 'top quark'. However, you can see that if, perchance, the hadron collider caused the proton to deploy at speed into 15 components with the antiproton deploying into 13 components, then the mean value of 158.16 and 191.40 GeV applies, with some spread consistent with that 5.1 Gev standard deviation measured. This gives 174.78 GeV, a value very close to that 174.3 GeV as measured. Indeed, here it is a quite curious coincidence that, using the 0.9383 GeV base value of the proton as E and the N values of 29 and 31, a similar argument based on the mean of those W values 167.20 GeV and 182.75 GeV gives the result 174.97 GeV.

My next FEEDBACK NOTE No. 7 in these Web pages will deal with a more serious matter, one on which I do stand in need of correction, and which is relevant to the experimental motor project that I mentioned at the outset in introducing this FEEDBACK NOTE No. 6.

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Harold Aspden
March 14, 2001