Dear John,

You wrote: " The accepted powers-that-be simply do not want to accept that a significant paradigm shift is necessary. The number of ad hoc explanations and unexplained observations are increasing."

The "powers-that-be" simply have become prisoners of a self-contained system that progressively evolved in such a way that any new ideas is systematically stifled by reviewers cowered by peer-pressure into rejecting any such new idea not likely to serve the traditional mercantile interests that hoard as much scientific output as possible and sell it for a profit.

The old saying is that "Nature abhors a vacuum", and similarly, searching minds abhor a vacuum of ideas.

Consequently, many Nobel Prize winners have started to completely ignore the top tier journals when having their new developments submitted for publication:

https://www.gsjournal.net/Science-Journals/Communications-Miscellaneous/Download/5547

Essentially, I think that the theoretical physics orthodox community has completely lost its bearings and that time has come to just sidestep it.

Best Regards, André

Dear J.N.C.

Because we have to rethink our conception of space and time, and until this paradigm shift is not accepted we will be hitting a wall.

Here is the Rosetta stone that could unify them:

Preprint ALL SPECIAL RELATIVITY EQUATIONS OBTAINED USING GALILEAN TRA...

There are two major issues.

• The maths - in particular we hit a brick wall when we try to apply the current thinking regarding the infinite and the infinitesimal. Quite simply, traditional math in these areas lacks applicability to the measurements we make and the reality we see.
• As Sergio has written, the concepts of space and time and dimensionality are poorly constructed. In particular, this led to the world of quantum mechanics going down a rabbit hole created by the limitations of current 'physical mathematics'

Until we can reinvent our understanding of infinity and infinitesimal then we cannot move forward in explaining physical reality.

These mathematical limitations are beginning to affect the leading edge of engineering and as we approach the world of bulk energy capture and storage we need a refreshed outlook.

This is a good title. My theory, the universe is a quantum mechanics phenomenon. My believe universe is working accurately to detail, it means this entity did not create by the Big Bang, therefore GTR, STR is not describing universe at all. All the formulas are all prediction only, and formula can not present any conscious entity as the Universe.

https://www.academia.edu/38373675/Creation_of_a_Quantum_Mechanic_Universe_and_its_Rotation.doc

First, thank you to all who have provided answers and comments to this question.

As a relatively inexperienced user of ResearchGate I failed to note that there are different forums for asking technical questions and for beginning general discussions, and it turns out that I inadvertently have posed my question in both forums. For the sake of manageability and convenience, it would appear sensible to consolidate further answers and discussion to just one of these two forums. Inasmuch as the majority of comments thus far have been in the discussion forum, I suggest that we mover the remainder of any additional comments to that forum.

Apologies for any inconvenience this may cause. Henceforth, I'll plan to avoid this error, but, knowing myself, all bets are off regarding other, different errors.

J. C. N. Smith

Dear Abdulnabi Abdulameer Matrood

I see a notice that you have added an answer, but I do not see your answer. Can you please post your answer again? Thank you!

JCN

If you live in San Diego county, I will be speaking on Monday Sep 9th, at 6:00PM about Quantum Mechanics Universe, in Landing restaurant in Carlsbad. California. Admission is free. Please join us.

Javad Fardaei

Thank you for your kind invitation to your speaking engagement. I'm afraid I'm in the wrong part of the country to attend. Hope it goes well.

JCN

Dear J. C. N.,

The reason why general relativity and quantum mechanics have not yet been reconciled is that neither of them has been correctly reconciled with electromagnetism.

Both of them ignore the adiabatic transverse increase of the energy that increases the transverse magnetic field related to velocity or proximity between the charged elementary particles of which all masses are made that adds inertia to all such charged particles as a function of the inverse of the distance separating them.

General relativity cannot be corrected to account for it because it is a closed self-consistent idealized theory, but Quantum Mechanics can, because it is an open theory fundamentally connected to classical mechanics.

Best Regards, André

Our team with Emmanouil Markoulis heading experimental investigations are attempting is attempting to unify with quantum field magnetic "quagmire" model.

The accepted powers-that-be simply do not want to accept that a significant paradigm shift is necessary. The number of ad hoc explanations and unexplained observations are increasing.

The STOE is a set of new paradigms that do united relativity and quantum mechanics with a universal equation and explanations of many problem observations. BTW it also includes a model of electromagnetism.

see summary:

Article STOE replaces relativity and quantum mechanics

Dear John,

You wrote: " The accepted powers-that-be simply do not want to accept that a significant paradigm shift is necessary. The number of ad hoc explanations and unexplained observations are increasing."

The "powers-that-be" simply have become prisoners of a self-contained system that progressively evolved in such a way that any new ideas is systematically stifled by reviewers cowered by peer-pressure into rejecting any such new idea not likely to serve the traditional mercantile interests that hoard as much scientific output as possible and sell it for a profit.

The old saying is that "Nature abhors a vacuum", and similarly, searching minds abhor a vacuum of ideas.

Consequently, many Nobel Prize winners have started to completely ignore the top tier journals when having their new developments submitted for publication:

https://www.gsjournal.net/Science-Journals/Communications-Miscellaneous/Download/5547

Essentially, I think that the theoretical physics orthodox community has completely lost its bearings and that time has come to just sidestep it.

Best Regards, André

Zooming out, possibly because our construction of our mathematics leads us astray. It's the math that doesn't work, after all.

For example, we assume very early on that a number can be arbitrarily small. Is this natural? Or is it more natural to assume smallest units, of which all the truly fundamental things and measures of them are composed. "Reals" then are unreal inventions to succinctly describe to ourselves that which we see.

Dear Karl,

You wrote: "For example, we assume very early on that a number can be arbitrarily small. Is this natural?"

Yes it is entirely natural to conceive of arbitrarily small or large figures from the idealized mathematical perspective. Very useful in dealing with processes amplitudes reaching their asymptotic amplitude limits in both directions.

The real issue comes up when attempting to map these idealized figures with physical reality.

For example, the lowest stable mass ever repeatably confirmed to exist in physical reality is the electron rest mass, so any concept theoretically considered such as Planck mass can only be an idealization that has no physical existence.

Another is the fact that the unit charge of the electron is the only charge ever measured in nature for free moving electrons, consequently, all macroscopic equations treating electric current as continuously varying instead of being a multiple of the unit charge describe physical reality less precisely than if this quantization was systematically taken account of.

The confirmed limits from physical reality must be taken account of if the aim is to better describe it. If the aim is to simply theorize, then there are no constraints, but no hope of describing anything real.

Best Regards, André

André Michaud

Yes. Sidestep it, indeed. The problem is "HOW"? and still have ideas distributed for comment and review.

Dear John,

You wrote: "Yes. Sidestep it, indeed. The problem is "HOW"? and still have ideas distributed for comment and review."

Easy. My friend Walter Babin in 2000 and Randy Schekman (this one a Nobel Prize winner) in 2013, showed the way by making it possible to upload promising papers that had been refused by top tier journals, out of anybody's reach to impede.

See here links to articles describing what Randy Schekman accomplished:

https://www.gsjournal.net/Science-Journals/Communications-Miscellaneous/Download/5547

And here is a link to Walter's General Science Journal:

https://www.gsjournal.net/

Walter's preprint friendly free public journal, and Randy Schekman's more formal peer-reviewed open access journal are now accompanied by hundreds of Open Access peer-reviewed journal that are deeply disliked by the formal theoretical orthodox community, because they are losing grip on their traditional stifling control on formal research results.

Also available are numerous engineering journals who will peer-review and accept for formal publication all well built and well presented theoretical papers that are mathematically sound and self-consistent, and all papers coherently describing physically carried out experiments. Once you have been published in one, you will eventually be invited by other journals to submit your work to them. This is what happened to me after my first publication in a Kazan State U engineering journal in 2007.

All my work has been published since 2007 upon specific invitations by the editors in either engineering journals or Open Access peer-reviewed journals, and is now available for good in the permanent record.

This cannot be undone by anybody, and I suggest to anybody who produced a sound derivation from formally confirmed mathematical grounding or has carried out a now well described experiment to follow the same route. Your work will then become available to all searching minds in the world out of anybody's control to hinder.

Proper derivations and experimental results do not need any formal community "approval" to be sound. Either a derivation is sound and seamless, or else it is not. Anybody interested in some issue is fully able to verify for himself the soundness of anybody else's derivations. Mathematics is a collectively intelligible language.

See Section "27. The Mathematical Thinking Mode" starting on page 394 in this paper:

Michaud, A. (2019). The Mechanics of Conceptual Thinking. Creative Education, 10, 353-406. https://doi.org/10.4236/ce.2019.102028

http://www.scirp.org/pdf/CE_2019022016190620.pdf.

For example, it took me a whole week to thoroughly verify an intriguing derivation by Paul Marmet that he had published in the same Kazan State U engineering journal in 2003 where my first derivations of his work were published in 2007. I found it seamless and it then allowed completely reconciling classical/relativistic mechanics with electromagnetism, which is what all my papers have been about in complement of de Broglie's own hypothesis.

Anybody with promising ideas can make them available in the permanent record by sidestepping the close minded orthodox theoretical physics community that refuses publication on purely arbitrary grounds.

Best Regards, André

First, thank you to all who already have offered comments and replies here. My question that opened the discussion is genuine and heartfelt, not merely rhetorical. It is a question that has truly and deeply puzzled me for all of my many years of watching a wide variety of other amazing advances in science. Why has this one crucial problem eluded solution by all of the best minds of science? Is the reason simply that it's a very, very difficult problem? Or is it possible that there is some other factor standing in the way of a satisfactory solution? I do not pretend to know the answer, but the world of science is eagerly awaiting one.

I have been reluctant to comment at length here before, because I did not want to "prejudice" the nature or direction of the discussion with my own thinking. But perhaps it is time to do so in the hope of getting comments -- pro or con -- and help to better inform my thinking.

I would like to begin by quoting theoretical physicist Lee Smolin from his book The Trouble With Physics, in which he wrote: "More and more, I have the feeling that quantum theory and general relativity are both deeply wrong about the nature of time. It is not enough to combine them [quantum theory and general relativity (qt and gr)]. There is a deeper problem, perhaps going back to the beginning of physics."

Smolin is one among an eclectic band of well-regarded contemporary scientists who have given much thought to this topic. Among this group, however, Smolin is the only one of whom I'm aware who has seriously suggested looking back to the beginning of physics for clues about the nature of our current, seemingly intractable impasse regarding a reconciliation of qt and gr.

I believe Smolin is exactly on the right track in doing so. Moreover, in this particular instance, Smolin's thinking happens precisely to dovetail with my own, so how could I possibly imagine it as being anything other than totally brilliant? All joking aside, however, I do agree with Smolin wholeheartedly, and I have speculated in some of my own musings on the topic that a problem of the sort to which Smolin alludes easily could have arisen in a seemingly innocent and innocuous -- but ultimately insidious -- manner, having origins that well predate the advent of physics as a science.

The potential problem that concerns me in this regard boils down to the paradigm for the nature of time currently being used in physics. It is the same paradigm that was used by Galileo and it is the same paradigm that has been used by every other physicist -- including Einstein -- since the inception of physics as a science. It is the operational definition of time: time is that which is measured by clocks. It is this powerful definition -- or paradigm -- that has made it possible for physicists to convert their empirical, experimental observations into the language of mathematics, and thus ultimately to convert their observations into theories such as general relativity and quantum mechanics, among others.

But what would be the consequences if there were some sort of fundamental, underlying flaw with this paradigm and, especially, with the current practice of relying exclusively on this paradigm in physics?

An analogy that comes to mind is that of the Ptolemaic and Copernican paradigms of cosmology. Imagine, for example, that today's scientists and engineers were attempting to plan and execute missions of interplanetary space exploration while still wedded firmly to the Ptolemaic paradigm of cosmology. Could it be done? Perhaps, but a what cost in terms of needless complexity and difficulty? Is it possible that contemporary scientists who are attempting to reconcile qt and gr are laboring under a similar hidden constraint and burden? I suspect that this may indeed be the case.

Some of my own further musings on this topic -- and efforts to move beyond an exclusive reliance on the operational definition of time in physics -- will be found in the various essays posted here on my home page at ResearchGate, should anyone care to explore them.

Thoughts and comments on all of this are welcomed and invited.

JCN

One of the biggest mistake is, to think of merging a "Mechanical event" to "Quantum Mechanics " these two are different from each other, and there is no comparison between these two. The foundation of general relativity is totally wrong, and even it is not working with our solar system, think of billions of solar system just in Milky Way galaxy. Quantum mechanics universe is applied for all of billions of galaxies, and their solar system.

https://www.academia.edu/38373675/Creation_of_a_Quantum_Mechanic_Universe_and_its_Rotation.doc

This theory of Quantum Mechanics Universe is revealed in few days in 2nd Quantum Physics summit, by me as a plenary speaker in this conference. best

Dear J. C. N.,

You commented: "Or is it possible that there is some other factor standing in the way of a satisfactory solution? I do not pretend to know the answer, but the world of science is eagerly awaiting one."

Actually, the orthodox world of science is NOT eagerly waiting for a satisfactory solution. It is eagerly waiting for a genius that will rise from their ranks and who will serve them all with a solution easy to understand even by the less educated among them.

Lee Smolin is right. Orthodox theorists have stopped studying real physics for the past hundred years, which is why they all painted themselves in to the current dead end corner.

You certainly are familiar with this famous quote from Planck:

" A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it"

History has taught us that as always in the past, they will all pass away waiting for the messiah with their hopes unfulfilled while the upcoming generation studies the increased offering and finally identifies what works and what doesn't work, just like the Flat Earth believers observed in disbelief that the rest of the scientific world was falling for outrageous beliefs such as the Earth being round.

Best Regards, André

André Michaud

Certainly having papers published (available to all ) has and is being done on even questionable contributions. But if the powers-that-be do not recognize it, any contribution is unlikely to be a candidate for the Nobel Prize or any of the other prizes and recognition the scientific community.

Dear John,

You wrote: "But if the powers-that-be do not recognize it, any contribution is unlikely to be a candidate for the Nobel Prize or any of the other prizes and recognition the scientific community."

The "powers-that-be", whoever they may be, have been closed to any new idea for more than 1 century. As recently as the beginning of the 2000's the shameful treatment they meted out to Marmet and to many other searching minds is clear proof of this sorry state of fact. They never did and will never recognize any clearly unorthodox work, whatever its objective value.

In reality, nobody is the "powers-that-be". This is a myth. nobody is in charge of the orthodox community but the mutual peer-pressure that keeps everyone's head bowed in submission in the community. Nobody dares risk his grant supported job. This is what has kept fundamental physics in stagnation for the past century.

If you goal is to earn a Nobel Prize or any other prize and recognition in the orthodox scientific community, you are out of luck because it has become an exclusive club serving only its members and its own grant fuelled interests.

If your aim is to make a contribution to further progress in fundamental physics, then have your material published so as to make it available for the upcoming generation.

The human neocortex is so structured that it is impossible to change the mind of someone who has become deeply certain of whatever belief he has rationalized.

The orthodox community is closed to any possible change by definition. The only way to further progress at the fundamental level is to completely sidestep it.

Luckily, the engineering community is not affected by this problem. Applied research is still ongoing.

This is something that more and more now understand.

Best Regards, André

André Michaud

Yes. The engineering community is paid by the effectiveness/commercial success of the innovation. As you say, not so for the basic research community where grants and political rewards are removed from modeling/predicting/usefulness criteria.

So, I do the thinking and publishing at my expense and interest. IMHO I determine usefulness by distribution and search-ability (result of internet searches for topics). Secondarily, having a DOI and submission to various libraries (library of Congress in the US) and having others respond/communicate (knowledgeably).

So, I have concluded the secondary peer reviewed media are not worth the money. I've been published in first tier peer reviewed (New Astronomy) and arXiv. But now my papers are too unorthodox. I am very focused on internet search-ability which requires careful titling and abstracts (short 95% of top line journals in physics) because my interests is more advanced than propagating orthodox models. My criteria for interest is breadth of explaining without ad hoc models and explaining experimental evidence (not continuing the orthodox models). Unity of big and small and the same basic postulates to explain a wide range of observations.

For example, my current thinking is about atomic spectra. The Bohr, de Broglie, quantum models are too ad hoc and contrived. So, start from scratch.

It is too bad that the advance the understanding (predictability and more encompassing modeling ) is not the first criteria for funding in orthodox science as is large projects chasing speculative ideas of accepted people such as CERN and dark matter.

Dear John,

I agree with all that you say.

In particular, you wrote: "My criteria for interest is breadth of explaining without ad hoc models and explaining experimental evidence (not continuing the orthodox models). Unity of big and small and the same basic postulates to explain a wide range of observations."

These are exactly my own aims. All my papers are in this category. You cannot expect however, unless someone has been already thinking along these lines, that anybody in current activity will connect with your research. It never happened before, for the reason I gave (The strength of the synaptic arborescences of the memories related to conclusions that individuals have become deeply certain of prevent reconsideration). This is why the orthodox community will never be open to any new idea. They all are at a dead end.

For example, I have been explaining my material to hundreds of people for the past 20 years, and thousands more have read my material, but I know of only two in the community who really deeply understand it, and how it connects with Maxwell's conclusions (Not Lorenz), and they do not belong to the orthodox community.

Nobody in the orthodox community has the faintest idea of what I am talking about. To them, what I explain is just so much meaningless blah blah.

I understand your double-slit experiment, because I already had been thinking along these lines.

The only people who are likely to search for and understand your material are searching minds such as these, already thinking along the same lines, or people who have not yet made up their minds for good in any given directions. Their minds are still searching for what they will finally decide is the best option.

I wrote my material knowing full well that I will be long gone before it can take root and be acted upon by the upcoming generation and I knew it from the start, and I am 75 already.

If you wish your discoveries to be eventually considered and acted upon, having it published formally any way you can in clear and easy terms that searches will allow to come up is the only way.

Best Regards, André

André Michaud

Lee Smolin is right. Orthodox theorists have stopped studying real physics for the past hundred years, which is why they all painted themselves in to the current dead end corner.

I fear that you are correct about this diagnosis. Another problem I see is the fact that researchers (myself included) typically are so busy pursuing and promoting their own agendas that they simply do not allow ample time to look seriously at alternate hypotheses, etc. While this certainly is understandable (isn't this just human nature, after all?) it makes it difficult for promising new ideas to gain traction.

This problem is compounded by the ever growing amount of information and new ideas being presented virtually everywhere. This explosion of ideas makes it ever more difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff; there is simply too much volume and "noise" in our flow of information. How do we quickly determine who may have a brilliant new -- albeit unconventional and original -- insight or idea and who is simply a crackpot polluting the stream of progress?

Back on the topic of my previous post, however, I would welcome any thoughts you may have on my conjecture that current obstacles to progress might be due to a blind, exclusive reliance on the operational definition of time. This definition has been crucial to advances in physics, but I fear that our exclusive reliance on it may have become an impediment and may be putting "blinders" on our thinking.

In an earlier post, you wrote: General relativity cannot be corrected to account for it because it is a closed self-consistent idealized theory . . . .

Yes, this is exactly correct. So long as one plays by "the rules of the game" one will always get a "correct," internally consistent answer. And there is nothing wrong with this brilliant achievement, so long as we recognize what is behind it.

When Einstein began the chain of reasoning that produced his theories of relativity he did not ask "what is time?" Instead, he deliberately began with the well respected operational definition used by all physicists before him. As Julian Barbour wrote, "Relativity is not about an abstract concept of time at all: it is about physical devices called clocks. Once we grasp that, many difficulties fall away."

I have conjectured in some of my essays that if we go back to the difficult question "what is time?" and pursue the question to its logical ends we may arrive at conclusions having relevance to some of the current conundrums of physics, such as the absence of a time variable in the Wheeler-Dewitt equation, for example.

We need new thinking to break out of the dead end corner into which physicists appear to have painted themselves, as you correctly observed.

JCN

Why have concerted efforts by some of the greatest minds in science failed to reconcile general relativity and quantum mechanics?

To tackle this question we must keep in mind that “The greatest minds in science” believe hypothesis which seems good but are wrong. For example:

The spin was initially supposed, in respect of the orbital rotation, to have two perpendicular orientations according to the rotation of the electron in respect of the proton. But the solutions of the Dirac equation give us just , a result which is confirmed with the calculus of the magnetic momentums giving very good agreement according to the experimental magnetic momentums.

Indeed there are two kinds of solutions with the two subshells observed after the ns subshells and the correct number of magnetic states. The ns states belong to the second kind of solutions. The determination of the values of the magnetic quantum number m shows to have the following limits

For the first sub-shell -l -1 < m < l+2

and for the second -( l-2) < m < l+1

Then the angular momentum of all state is (m + ½).

This shows that there is always the same number of negative and positive values of the angular momentum, but the contribution proportional to ½h has always the same direction. This contribution is always positive and well verify from experimental results see “Total angular momentum and atomic magnetic moments”. This leads to suppose that there is just one own rotation or spin with respect to that of the proton.

These results indicate a fundamental property of the structure of the electron and proton.

If we can understand the fact that there is just one kind on own rotation we probably will be able to answer the question.

Dear JCN,

I see that you have been pondering on my comments

For consistency, I will interleave my answers with your comments.

You wrote: "Another problem I see is the fact that researchers (myself included) typically are so busy pursuing and promoting their own agendas that they simply do not allow ample time to look seriously at alternate hypotheses, etc. While this certainly is understandable (isn't this just human nature, after all?) it makes it difficult for promising new ideas to gain traction."

But this agenda is typically two-fold. First priority of course always goes to earning a living and insuring its maintenance. Then only do we put time into establishing and promoting our own hypotheses. Indeed, little time is left to scan for other "promising" hypotheses, particularly if we find or own hypothesis already promising, which seems to characterize each of our personal hypothesis, from each our personal perspective.

You wrote: "This problem is compounded by the ever growing amount of information and new ideas being presented virtually everywhere. This explosion of ideas makes it ever more difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff; there is simply too much volume and "noise" in our flow of information. How do we quickly determine who may have a brilliant new -- albeit unconventional and original -- insight or idea and who is simply a crackpot polluting the stream of progress?"

Actually, I found that this is less of an issue than it seems at first glance. When searching the haystack, we mostly are in search of confirming evidence that our personal hypothesis is correct. This involves searching with keywords, numerical values or themes rather than reading at random in the humongous haystack, that I strongly suggest restricting to formal publications, from any source, including engineering journals, since any article so published has been found consistent by more people (the editors at least) than the single author.

My view is that all people who have found something really worth looking at out of the ordinary will eventually find some way for it not to be lost, and will typically have it formally published somewhere, typically NOT in the top tier journals due to systematic rejection of anything not directly connected to current orthodox views. This is how Marmet for one addressed this issue, fortunately.

You wrote: "Back on the topic of my previous post, however, I would welcome any thoughts you may have on my conjecture that current obstacles to progress might be due to a blind, exclusive reliance on the operational definition of time. This definition has been crucial to advances in physics, but I fear that our exclusive reliance on it may have become an impediment and may be putting "blinders" on our thinking."

This is the actual crux of the matter from my perspective, that I would summarize with the following questions:

What should our theories about physical reality be grounded on?

Should they be grounded on the analysis of idealized "arbitrary definitions" that were established as axiomatic "principles" in the past when much less was known and understood about physical reality?

Or should they be rather grounded on the analysis of repeatably obtainable data from physical reality that our current more sophisticated equipment allows easily confirming?

You invite my thoughts on this issue, so I will try to summarily explain what guided me in my personal search.

Initially, I of course did not know how I should proceed. Like most I initially looked at Newton's classical mechanics and found it sound (I still do for the macroscopic non-relativistic perspective), because all dealings with masses at ground level and all satellite launches are successfully made with it.

I also was lucky to be a French speaker to start with, because this gave me access to first learn electromagnetism from Louis de Broglie's writings (to this day, not yet translated to English from French), who understood electromagnetism in the same way as Maxwell (different from the Lorenz approach that underlies QED and traditional electrodynamics) before I was exposed to the Lorenz view, in generally available English textbooks that I also had access to. Strangely, everyone thinks that electrodynamics is grounded on Maxwell. In fact I found that it is grounded on "Maxwell's equations", but not on Maxwell's interpretation of these equations.

Digging further, I then became aware that what we name "Maxwell's equations" are not from him, but are actually equations established from repeatably obtainable data from physically carried out experiments by Ampere, Faraday, Gauss, and that even Maxwell's modified equation that allows calculating the speed of light was a modification grounded on an experimental observation made by his friend Faraday. The same for the Biot-Savart equation, and the same for Newton's equations. All equations established from analysis of easily obtainable experimental data.

That settled the issue for me. I just did away with all axiomatic "principles" and grounded all further research on equations strictly grounded on experimentally "obtained" data. No ifs and buts about it.

My view was that if we wish to understand physical reality, then we must study physical reality, not hypotheses grounded on idealized concepts.

You wrote: "In an earlier post, you wrote: General relativity cannot be corrected to account for it because it is a closed self-consistent idealized theory . . . .Yes, this is exactly correct. So long as one plays by "the rules of the game" one will always get a "correct," internally consistent answer. And there is nothing wrong with this brilliant achievement, so long as we recognize what is behind it."

Yes. Both of Einstein's theories are brilliant idealized self-consistent theories, but I found that they are irrecoverably in contradiction with Maxwell's first equation (Gauss equation for the electric field), so they can only be invalid as far as describing physical reality is concerned, from what I understand. It thus becomes meaningless trying to harmonize GR with QM as so many have tried and of course failed in accomplishing,

The metaphor I occasionally use to characterize such attempts is that it is useless and leads nowhere to speculate about the color of angels' wings, when we know already that angels do not exist to start with, let alone for them to have wings.

You wrote: "When Einstein began the chain of reasoning that produced his theories of relativity he did not ask "what is time?" Instead, he deliberately began with the well respected operational definition used by all physicists before him. As Julian Barbour wrote, "Relativity is not about an abstract notion of time at all: it is about physical devices called clocks. Once we grasp that, many difficulties fall away.

I have conjectured in some of my essays that if we go back to the difficult question "what is time?" and pursue the question to its logical ends we may arrive at conclusions having relevance to some of the current conundrums of physics, such as the absence of a time variable in the Wheeler-Dewitt equation, for example."

I tend to agree with you about this "what is time" issue. Indeed, I found that Einstein did consider the various possibilities. There is a team of European researchers who also looked at this, in a manner similar to my own view. Put in perspective in this paper if interested:

Michaud A (2016). On the Birth of the Universe and the Time Dimension in the 3-Spaces Model. American Journal of Modern Physics. Special Issue: Insufficiency of Big Bang Cosmology. Vol. 5, No . 4-1, 2016, pp. 44-52. doi: 10.11648/j.ajmp.s.2016050401.17

http://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ajmp.s.2016050401.17.pdf

You wrote: "We need new thinking to break out of the dead end corner into which physicists appear to have painted themselves, as you correctly observed."

Yes. My personal conviction is that any theory for which even one grounding premise is found not to be physically confirmable by repeatably obtainable data from physically carried out experiment should be instantly discarded and dismissed from any further consideration.

Keeping theories such as GR and SR on the table while knowing that they are unsound with respect to physical reality, for example, trying to tackle the impossible task of tweaking them into matching a physical reality that they are structurally unable to match, is in my view what has been keeping the community captive of this self inflicted dead end.

And we end up back at "Lee Smolin is right. Orthodox theorists have stopped studying real physics for the past hundred years, which is why they all painted themselves into the current dead end corner."

Best Regards, André

Dear Xavier,

Vous avez écrit " This contribution is always positive and well verify from experimental results see “Total angular momentum and atomic magnetic moments”. This leads to suppose that there is just one own rotation or spin with respect to that of the proton."

Your conclusion strangely coincides with the conclusion reached from the trispatial geometry perspective that the magnetic relation between electrons and the inner elementary subcomponents of the proton can only be repulsive:

Michaud, A. (2018). The Hydrogen Atom Fundamental Resonance States. Journal of Modern Physics, 9, 1052-1110. doi: 10.4236/jmp.2018.95067. http://www.scirp.org/pdf/JMP_2018042716061246.pdf

Best Regards, André

Dear André,

Thank for your interesting comment. I have wrote “This leads to suppose that there is just one own rotation or spin with respect to that of the proton." but it is better to understand: “This leads to conclude….” Now let me try to shed light on my approach of this question.

To understand the quantum mechanics I suppose in “The quantum state and the doublets, Ann. Fondation Louis de Broglie 25, 1-25, (2000)” that the motion is the result of exchanges of grains of matter that is mass between the proton and the electron. The electron as the proton absorb these grains but to keep the equilibrium the must also reject these grains. The absorption is the result of the motion this induce the rejection.

With the hypothesis that the two particles are formed of very small grains mass, we can consider that the motion between them, is the result of a mixing of their grains mass in other words an absorption: see “The symmetry of the motion, the mass and the quantum state, Ann. Fondation Louis de Broglie 29, 493-512, (2004)”. Now, how the two particles can keep a fundamental property? Let us suppose that the energy of each one must be constant then the sum of the mass and energy velocity is constant. As a result the amount of grains mass corresponding to the mixing, that is the binding energy of the quantum state, is rejected as a photon as a result, the grains mass move with the speed of the light.

This leads to suppose that the quantum state can take place just if the rotation of one particle take place in opposite rotation of the other to favor the absorption, the two rotations in same sense will not favor the mixing of grain mass. Now as the mass of the proton is very much important than that of the electron this leads to suppose that the electron is surrounded by the proton.

Dear André Michaud ,

I see that you have been pondering on my comments

Yes, I have been pondering your comments, and have been finding much in them to like. Thank you very much for your excellent reply to my previous post. As fortune would have it, however, I find myself in the midst of travels at the moment, and will not attempt further comments until I've had an opportunity to give your comments the time and thought they deserve. I look forward to a careful reading your paper On the Birth of the Universe and the Time Dimension in the 3-Spaces Model, which at a quick glance looks most interesting.

Until later.

Best regards,

JCN

Dear André Michaud

Apologies for the delay in replying to your excellent comments. I have now read your paper, and would like to offer what I hope will be constructive comments, particularly on the portions of your paper relating to the nature of time, which is my area of specialization, an area in which I've conducted research for over 50 years. You wrote:

I tend to agree with you about this "what is time" issue. Indeed, I found that Einstein did consider the various possibilities. There is a team of European researchers who also looked at this, in a manner similar to my own view. Put in perspective in this paper if interested:

Michaud A (2016). On the Birth of the Universe and the Time Dimension in the 3-Spaces Model. American Journal of Modern Physics. Special Issue: Insufficiency of Big Bang Cosmology. Vol. 5, No . 4-1, 2016, pp. 44-52. doi: 10.11648/j.ajmp.s.2016050401.17

http://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ajmp.s.2016050401.17.pdf

Regarding the nature of time as discussed in your paper, please give consideration to the following:

1.) A particular time (i.e., a particular moment in the flow of time) is identically equivalent to, and is completely defined by, and only by, a particular configuration of the universe.

2.) What we perceive as "the flow of time" is, in reality, nothing more and nothing less than the evolution of the physical universe, an evolution governed by rules that we strive to understand and that we refer to as the laws of physics.

Followed to their logical conclusions, as I've attempted to do in my essay Time: Illusion and Reality and others, I believe these two simple ideas might open a door to some rather profound -- and potentially powerful -- insights regarding the ways (and possibly the flaws) through which we've traditionally been conducting physics. Links to these essays are available at my home page here at ResearchGate, should you wish to read them.

The terms "past" and "future" refer to configurations of the universe that have no objective reality for those of us living in the present. Our empirical observations lead us to conclude that "the past" consists of those configurations of the universe that once had an objective reality; i.e., that once actually existed. Those past configurations subsequently evolved, through physical displacements of all the various "bits and pieces" of the universe relative to one another, into the "present" configuration, some small portions of which we can observe with our senses. And we infer that this present configuration will evolve into others that we envision as "the future."

We can only engage in educated speculation about future configurations of the universe. By understanding the laws of physics we can predict, or extrapolate, more or less accurately, the likely future configurations of at least some gross, observable features of the universe, up to a point, but we observe no empirical evidence of the objective reality of these predicted configurations. We find no "fossilized remains" of the future as we do of the past, the reason being that the future, unlike the past, has never existed.

This way of thinking about the nature of time would, in my opinion, appear to rule out what Lee Smolin and Roberto Unger have referred to as the "metaphysical" aspects of relativity (as distinguished from the empirically validated aspects) such as the so-called "block universe" in which all times, past, present, and future are equally real, for example.

The universe has one, and only one, real past (history), and it will have one, and only one real future. We stand at the border between them. Our actions (or lack of actions) in the present will have some influence, albeit limited, on future configurations of the universe. This is unavoidable. Therefore, it would appear to be in our enlightened self-interest to use our individual and collective powers, limited though they may be, in ways most likely to lead to future configurations of the universe that are as habitable, pleasant, and rewarding as possible. The fly in the ointment of this advice lies, as always, in unintended and unforeseen undesired consequences of actions taken with the best of intentions. Our history, unfortunately, is replete with examples of such unintended consequences.

By way of being open and truthful, various portions of the preceding comments are drawn -- more or less verbatim -- from one or more of my own essays, which I believe still ring true. I hope you will find them helpful with regard to your own thinking on the topic.

Best Regards,

JCN

Dear JCN,

I must say that I agree with you on all counts.

We seem to have independently come to exactly the same conclusions with respect to the nature of "time".

Convergence at play.

Best Regards, André

Dear André Michaud

I'm gratified to learn that we are kindred spirits with regard to our views on the nature of time! Sadly, however, our shared view -- logical and useful though it is -- appears to be far from the mainstream of thinking among practicing physicists.

Returning to the question that opened our discussion, I strongly suspect that this may have some significant role in the much-ballyhooed failure of science to reconcile general relativity and quantum mechanics.

As discussed in my essay Time: Illusion and Reality, our shared view may well explain the otherwise mysterious absence of a time variable in the Wheeler-Dewitt equation, which is itself an outgrowth of efforts to reconcile these two -- individually brilliant and successful -- achievements of physics. But our view has been slow to gain even minimal visibility, much less traction, with the physics mainstream.

I am buoyed up, however, by the hope that eventually the truth will out. Science has a wonderful way of accomplishing that end, albeit too often via a process that can be slow and tortured. According to an aphorism often attributed to Arthur Schopenhauer, Truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed. Second, it it violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as self-evident.

Prior even to this first stage, however, it must become visible. Perhaps you and I are even now doing what we can to make our shared view visible.

Best Regards,

JCN

Dear JCN,

You concluded: "But our view has been slow to gain even minimal visibility, much less traction, with the physics mainstream."

From my analysis, our view will never gain traction with the physics mainstream.

I will qualify Schopenhauer's aphorism that you quote as: "Truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed. Second, it it violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as self-evident."

My own version of this quote is: Truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed by the mainstream community. Second, it it violently opposed by the mainstream community when they realize that it threatens their own interpretation of the truth. Third, it is accepted as self-evident by the following generation.

Remember Planck's famous quote: “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

I wrote all my papers for the upcoming generation to have an opportunity to assess, irrespective of mainstream opinions and out of their reach to prevent.

Best Regards, André

Dear JCN,

You wrote: "Perhaps you and I are even now doing what we can to make our shared view visible."

Effectively, what we are now doing is indeed what is under our individual control to make our shared views visible.

The real issue is that the mainstream community cannot be by definition the pool of people who might potentially be interested. Only searching minds looking for better options than what is offered in mainstream will be potentially interested in even investing the effort to even try to understand the new offer. Mainstream orthodoxy is out of such a process simply because they already "know" the "truth" and are not open to any reconsideration.

This is completely out of our control as individuals and from my understanding is strictly a matter of sufficient time having elapsed for the number of people who will have invested these efforts to become sufficient for them to start discussing among themselves and then become the next dominating trend that will at last restart research in these new directions.

From my analysis, the only possibility for this to happen simply is to have our research published so that it remain permanently available in the formal offering.

In my case this is already done, and I suggest that anybody who has new ideas, experiments, analyses to offer to do the same. This is how our work can become "permanently visible". This is the only thing that we directly control as individuals. The upcoming generation will chose what they find the most interesting, will correlate it further and will build on it. This is what always happened in the past.

Best Regards, André

André Michaud

I'd add and be searchable.

John Hodge

A resounding "yes" to your comment about being searchable, but what, in your view, is the most effective way to do so? Who controls "searchability"? Is it the mysterious search algorithms of Google or others?

As discussed briefly earlier in this thread, the vast quantities of information available on the internet seem at times overwhelming. How does a serious researcher even begin to separate the wheat from the chaff? In a comment above, André Michaud expressed optimism that this "needle in the haystack" issue may be less problematic than I fear, but I'm still far from convinced. I claim no expertise on this topic, but I believe it is of great importance. I've heard that even reputable journals and repositories of papers restrict access to their holdings from the general public behind a "paywall" of some sort. Even more problematic from my perspective, little-known researchers such as myself typically cannot even have our work published in major repositories. My own tiny "voice" in the larger scientific community, for example, certainly is very quiet, to the point of being virtually non-existent.

Taking the topic that André and I have been discussing in this thread regarding our shared view of the nature of time, for example, how would researchers of the future (or even those of today) stumble across our shared view (which I, for one, believe is of considerable value when pondering the grand scheme of things)? I just "googled" the topic "nature of time," and found over 5 billion results. To my amazement, one of my own essays appeared on page 7 of the search results, which gives some cause for optimism, but I have no idea why that is the case or whether a similar result would come of a similar search tomorrow.

Your thoughts welcomed. Thank you!

JCN

Can you imagine that Einstein would not have published his theory because the reviewers would not like that time is relative and that they would not even have looked at their demonstrations?

Well, welcome to the current endogamic "scientific" community in which only your institution matters.

Then we have "scientists" who publish every week, and one of two, or you have to make them a statue in each square or it is only useless garbage to get better positions. What creates so much noise that it really costs true science to progress

Then we wonder why nothing has been discovered in the last 100 years that has not been preceded by a technological breakthrough and why we have Nobel prizes that, like Formula 1, always wins the one with the best "car"

The only solution I can think of to end the scam of the journals is to create one totally free in which the condition for publication is to make the review process only by objective and verifiable methods of other candidate works

Dear JCN,

You wrote: "I've heard that even reputable journals and repositories of papers restrict access to their holdings from the general public behind a "paywall" of some sort."

You can ignore all those paywall protected repositories from the get go. They are typically replete with infinite variations of only the few failed theories that have kept physics at a standstill for the past hundred years.

It has been so long since real progress from real experimentally obtained data has been made that practically all valid papers on valid experiments are already in the public domain by copyright extinction, or else these results are in the books published by the discoverers themselves.

You wrote: "Even more problematic from my perspective, little-known researchers such as myself typically cannot even have our work published in major repositories."

Not so. All modern Open Access journals offer the same indexing possibilities as the top tier formal journals. Your work will not be frowned upon by them. You keep your copyright and the papers remain free access for ever.

You wrote: "My own tiny "voice" in the larger scientific community, for example, certainly is very quiet, to the point of being virtually non-existent."

Not so either. When searching the web, researchers are not searching for voices, tiny or otherwise, but by keywords about fundamental constants, specific numerical values, names of physically existing particles, names of processes, names of discoverers, and so on.

Combining keywords drastically reduces the selections. Think of how you do research on the net yourself. They will do the same.

You wrote: "Taking the topic that André and I have been discussing in this thread regarding our shared view of the nature of time, for example, how would researchers of the future (or even those of today) stumble across our shared view (which I, for one, believe is of considerable value when pondering the grand scheme of things)? I just "googled" the topic "nature of time," and found over 5 billion results. To my amazement, one of my own essays appeared on page 7 of the search results,"

You see? And you were just idly testing the case. If you really had been into digging what hypotheses already were established about the nature of time, don't you think that you would have patiently scanned each link of these few top pages in search of new ideas? You quickly learn how to select promising links.

What happens in reality, once a searching mind has identified even one paper by anybody that in his view produces coherent output, he will then almost automatically look for the remainder of the production of this author.

Just to give you an idea of how this operates, to date this week, from my stats, I see that I had 43 of my papers accessed for full-text reads. On this total, only 3 were from RG members. All others are from readers not on RG. I have observed the same pattern ever since I posted copies of my papers on RG years ago, in French, Spanish and German, the original formally published English versions being accessible via a direct link.

The Spanish versions are the most downloaded. So I suspect that conversations on these new angles on fundamental issues may well be first initiated in the Spanish speaking scientific community.

I have as many full texts downloads if not more each week on the GSJournal site (https://www.gsjournal.net/), none from RG members, and also some on academia.edu, not counting those going directly to the formal journals' sites.

People do read formally published articles on all sorts of issues, wherever they have been published, if they are free access.

Best Regards, André

Dear Sergio,

You wrote: " Well, welcome to the current endogamic "scientific" community in which only your institution matters. Then we have "scientists" who publish every week, and one of two, or you have to make them a statue in each square or it is only useless garbage to get better positions."

It is precisely this thoroughly useless system that must be entirely left on the wayside. No further progress will ever come from them. They painted themselves into such a narrow and irrational conceptual corner that it has become impossible for them to escape.

Best Regards, André

In view to shed light on the difficulty of the quantum mechanics, let me underline that it is important to remark that the expression intrinsic rotation is imperfect, indeed intrinsic suggests a property which belongs to the object itself, but in fact all that we know is defined in comparison to another object or property. In particular the intrinsic rotation or spin must be defined in respect to the proton a result that we have already underline (see september 23).

Indeed we have seen that the contribution proportional to ½h has always the same direction. This contribution is always positive and well verify from experimental results see “Total angular momentum and atomic magnetic moments”. This leads to suppose that there is just one own rotation or spin with respect to that of the proton.

To all who have an interest in the topic of this discussion (it seems fair to surmise that anyone reading this must have such an interest or they wouldn't have ended up here), I would like to recommend a new book by Lee Smolin: Einstein's Unfinished Revolution: The Search for What Lies Beyond the Quantum.

I've only begun reading the book, but I've read enough to see that it's directly in the "wheelhouse" of our discussion here. If others have been reading it, I'd welcome your thoughts. Thank you.

Among the difficulties to better understand the quantum mechanics let me recall the existence of compounds of rare gas like XeF6 not sufficiently known or taken in consideration. Their existence gives a clue to the valence of the rare earths. Indeed it is difficult to explain this property with the deep 4f electrons. In fact it is the electrons of the Xenon shell of these elements which are responsible of their valence properties see “Inner shell and bonds in High-Tc superconductors” and “From Ln valence to that of 3d”. The question is now, how the valence bonds can take place? The answer is: the outermost electrons have a trajectory more and more elliptical when the quantum number n increase, as a result bond with the neighbor are more and more easy.

This strongly indicate that the corpuscular approach is the good one.

Xavier Oudet

Thank you for your helpful comments. It is encouraging to see work such as yours being done to generate empirical findings that hopefully will shed additional light on these questions. Good luck with your continued explorations!

Dear J.C.N.

Many thanks for your comment.

The rare gas compounds lead also to consider that in ionic compounds there no transfer of electron from cation to anion. This allows to propose an explanation of the Sagnac effect see “The Sagnac effect and the transparency medium”. Indeed the electrons of the atoms of a pure metal or those of a transparency medium are able to absorb the photons of the light during a short time opening an explanation of this effect which seems a difficulty in relativity.

Finally the answer to the question “Why have concerted efforts by some of the greatest minds in science failed to reconcile general relativity and quantum mechanics?” is:

A domain as quantum mechanics is involved in many aspects of the physic and chemistry which is not the case of the general relativity. Thus, hypothesizes in the different fields, have to be coherent.

Let us then consider the case of the High-Tc superconductors as La2-xBaxCuO4 where the bivalent barium replace the trivalent lanthanum. The fact that La can be replaced by Ba is due to the role of the xenon shell of La and Ba in the equilibrium of the valence, see: “From Ln valence to that of 3d”. Now the bond between La and the oxygen involve the periodicity of the outermost electrons, as a result with the introduction of a small amount of Ba to replace La there is a breaking of the periodicity of the outermost electrons. This allows the electrons of Ba to easily leave their atom and to participate to the conduction like for the semiconductors. Now the superconductivity is the result of the mean free path, indeed as there is few Ba atoms when their electrons are moving in the crystal their probability to be trapped is small.

Because the increasingly obvious need is to rethink the fundamental paradigms. The cosmology folks want to apply their paradigms to the small world where Quantum mechanics now rules. They are getting nowhere. The QM folks want to apply their paradigms to the world of cosmology. They also are getting nowhere. Neither are willing to completely discard their paradigms (their funding for even bigger projects would evaporate and the powers that be would have to relearn form undergraduate studies on up. ) But it is becoming obvious the need is to discard both sets of paradigms. Tenured professors won't allow that.

Xavier Oudet,

Finally the answer to the question “Why have concerted efforts by some of the greatest minds in science failed to reconcile general relativity and quantum mechanics?” is:

A domain as quantum mechanics is involved in many aspects of the physic and chemistry which is not the case of the general relativity. Thus, hypothesizes in the different fields, have to be coherent.

Thank you for this excellent observation. It is indeed difficult to conceive of a single unifying theory that would accurately describe and -- equally important -- offer empirically verifiable predictions applicable to both the quantum world you describe here and the cosmos at large. Perhaps it is an insurmountable challenge?

I regret that I am not well enough versed in the field of physical chemistry to comment constructively on your example involving superconductors, but I hope that other readers here might do so.