The Myth of Dirac supposedly combining Special Relativity with Quantum Mechanics Roger J. Anderton

Transcription

1 The Myth of Dirac supposedly combining Special Relativity with Quantum Mechanics Roger J. Anderton Many popular texts state that Dirac - combined Special Relativity (SR) with Quantum mechanics (QM) to form Quantum Field Theory (QFT). But this turns out to be an untrue myth- SR has not been combined with QM. Many things taught to physics students turn out to be untrue. The way that physics education is setup students are fed specialised subjects such as SR and QM and then told that how these things are connected is dealt with in topics taught at higher level. So in the case of combining SR and QM, they initially just have to take it on trust that these two things are combined at a higher level subject. But in this they are deceived. They might even still be deceived when they are taught QFT as a higher level subject and falsely told it combines SR and QM. The truth is there was never an agreed upon combination of SR and QM into one theory. Eddington the supposed expert on Einstein s relativity after supposedly proving Einstein was correct in 1919 was in conflict with Dirac. Dirac who supposedly combined SR and QM to form QFT so supposedly was expert on QFT. But Eddington never accepted Dirac s QFT and believed that Dirac had misrepresented Einstein s relativity. So first point there was never an agreed upon theory combining SR and QM by the supposed experts. This usually gets glossed over when taught to physics students, the educators want to cover-up the controversy and pretend that there was not any. Students get a taught a distorted physics! Einstein disagreed with QM as is fairly well known. Now the other supposed expert on relativity Eddington was claiming that relativity had been distorted to form Dirac s QFT.

2 Foundations of Modern Physics are therefore very rocky. But educators don t want to students to dwell on that; and instead they want students to just swallow what is being taught to them. And what is falsely being taught is QFT minus the controversy. Second point there are still difficulties with QFT, it can t explain certain things. My position is that this is because the theory QFT is formed from mistakes so no wonder the theory has difficulties. But initial introduction to students from educators is that they don t want to deal with those problems. Third point Eddington and Dirac disagreed over relativity. Now, I have dealt with in my previous articles there is at least two different versions of what might be called Einstein s relativity. Since foundation of Modern Physics supposedly comes from Einstein it is then therefore this controversy over different interpretations of what is supposed to be Einstein s relativity that is a major problem with modern physics. i.e. the foundations of Einstein s relativity are not clearly defined but are ambiguous and this leads to people having different opinions on what is Einstein s relativity. Rather than address this deep problem the educators want to gloss over that and just present Einstein as genius; and then use the block to serious criticism by the ruse of -- so if you don t understand Einstein then you are just not clever enough. But we have at least two different versions of Einstein s relativity from the experts as noted Eddington and Dirac disagreed. Dirac had a different version of relativity to Eddington. The different versions of relativity have to be addressed and not brushed under the carpet as taboo, or physics will never sort itself out. Now to the evidence- Eddington the supposed expert on Einstein's relativity said that Dirac was misusing SR from the biography on Dirac by Graham Farmelo called The Strangest man : "Although Dirac spent most of his time on war work, he was still thinking about quantum mechanics. In one project, he collaborated with Pierls and Pryce to refute accusations made by Eddington that experts in relativistic quantum mechanics, including Dirac, were persistently misusing the special theory of relativity." [1] Graham Farmelo also notes - Eddington never accepted QFT. What a mess to build modern physics on-- SR was a mess. (As dealt with by my previous articles)

3 Einstein never accepted QM. As famously portrayed in Einstein saying God does not play dice. [2] Dirac supposed combined SR and QM to form relativistic quantum mechanics. [3] Eddington - the supposed expert on Einstein's relativity disagreed with Dirac. There was no agreement! It was all a mess. And what gets taught physics students is to try to cover-up the mess (that the supposed experts did not agree). They take on trust what the educators tell them, and the educators just avoid mentioning the controversy, pretending there was no controversy, in that way they pretend there was no mess. As a young naïve physics student- it can be a long time into the education process before you realise that you have been deceived. For instance Professor Penrose seems to have now noticed after he has retired that is quite late to realise- article says it all Roger Penrose Says Physics Is Wrong, From String Theory to Quantum Mechanics [4] If we look at a more technical book such as Arthur Jaffe in Introduction to Quantum field Theory [5] says: Our goal is to present a brief and self-contained introduction to quantum field theory from the constructive point of view. We try to motivate some basic results and relate them to interesting open problems. And then admits: One should mention right at the start that one still does not understand whether quantum mechanics and special relativity are compatible at a fundamental level in our Minkowski four-space world. He then goes into the technical details, but basically at a fundamental level they don t know if quantum mechanics combines with special relativity, and the theory quantum field theory is often falsely represented as doing it. So the physics that we teach our physics students is a mess, it s a collection of things that were never agreed. Einstein supposedly revolutionised physics and started this revolution that became Quantum physics, he then changed his mind and disagreed. Special relativity was supposedly combined with quantum mechanics. Eddington the supposed expert on Einstein s relativity disagreed. Then as Penrose notes Dirac who supposed combined quantum mechanics with special relativity realised he had not.

4 Penrose says: I mean, look at three of the biggest figures in quantum mechanics, Schrödinger, Einstein, and Paul Dirac. They were all quantum skeptics in a sense. Dirac is the one whom people find most surprising, because he set up the whole foundation, the general framework of quantum mechanics. The revolution of physics was a mess, but the mainstream seeks to ignore that and carry on regardless making it the dogma for future generations of physicists. It would be a joke if it was not a terrible waste of people s efforts to struggle with something that was never agreed. Those who were involved in the Physics Revolution that started from 1919 onwards such as Schrödinger, Einstein and others realised it went wrong, and tried a counter-revolution, but by then it was too late and the mess was made dogma to be built upon; especially since people were getting Nobel prizes for this mess that was like putting the official stamp of approval for it. It s all very sad indictment of the mess that humans can get into, and a refusal to correct that mess when started as the process of how to do things. Modern Physics is a gigantic scientific enterprise equivalent to other great human disasters Enron for instance springs to mind; except Modern Physics as human endeavour is on a much bigger scale. References [1] The Strangest man: the Hidden life of Paul Dirac Quantum Genius, Graham Farmelo, Faber and Faber London 2009, isbn , p [2] Einstein was very unhappy about this apparent randomness in nature. His views were summed up in his famous phrase, 'God does not play dice'. He seemed to have felt that the uncertainty was only provisional: but that there was an underlying reality, in which particles would have well defined positions and speeds, and would evolve according to deterministic laws, in the spirit of Laplace. From: Does God Play Dice? Stephen Hawking [3] For instance - School of Mathematics and Statistics University of St Andrews, Scotland says of Dirac and quantum field theory Dirac unified the theories of quantum mechanics and relativity theory.. [4] Discover Interview: Roger Penrose Says Physics Is Wrong, From String Theory to Quantum Mechanics, by Susan Kruglinski; September 2009 issue, One of the greatest thinkers in physics says the human brain and the universe itself must function according to some theory we haven't yet discovered. and

5 Penrose did not flinch from questioning the central tenets of modern physics, including string theory and quantum mechanics. Physicists will never come to grips with the grand theories of the universe, Penrose holds, until they see past the blinding distractions of today s half-baked theories to the deepest layer of the reality in which we live. [5] Introduction to Quantum Field Theory, Arthur Jaffe, Harvard University Cambridge, MA 02138, USA 24 May, c.rjanderton