Lorentz on Electrostatic Self-Interaction
Posted on Saturday, February 26, 2005 @ 21:37:11 UTC by vlad
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In the hydrino yahoo group Tom Stolper writes: Hendrik Lorentz, the patriarch of physics during Einstein's heyday as a theoretician in the first quarter of the 20th century, was one of those who worked on classical electron models, work that was all but abandoned after Schroedinger published his famous equation at the beginning of 1926.
One problem was thought to be how to balance the electromagnetic repulsive stresses in such models, something that Nathanael Rensen brought up here in the HSG a long time ago as an alleged problem with Mills' model of the bound electron orbitsphere. "Nora Baron" ran with the ball that Rensen tossed into the discussion here, and in my opinion ran it into the ground.
Lorentz had his doubts about the existence of such electromagnetic repulsive stresses. His model, like other classical models of the electron, had unbalanced forces at its boundary. When theoreticians wanted to apply countervailing stresses, Lorentz had this to say in justification of his earlier approach: "...perhaps we are wholly on the wrong track when we apply to the parts of the electron our ordinary notion of force." See the entry on the electron by Abraham Pais, in Lerner & Trigg, eds., ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHYSICS, 2nd ed., 1991, at p. 290 col. 2.
Mills made an argument for zero electrostatic self-interaction of his electron orbitsphere based on classical EM theory, an argument that Mills' critics found unconvincing; and I don't want to go over that ground yet again now.
My point here is that Mills was also making an argument similar to the one Lorentz suggested. Mills pointed out repeatedly that his critics were making a mistake in thinking of the bound electron orbitsphere as a collection of little electronettes; and he pointed out repeatedly that his model was a continuous charge-current distribution with radial electrostatic force only, which does result in force balance at the boundary, that is, at the OS. Judging by the above remark of Lorentz, who was one of the great classical physicists, Lorentz would have appreciated the force of Mills' argument. Too bad that Mills wasn't around in 1926 to argue the matter with Schroedinger as well.
Tom Stolper
BA math, MA polisci
--------john_e_barchak writes:
Hi Tom
It was not only Hendrik Lorentz who thought that the "ordinary notion of force" needed re-examination. Einstein and Infield seemed to reject the ordinary notion of force. In 1938, Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld published their book "The Evolution of Physics".
The following is from their book: "In Maxwell's theory there are no material actors. The mathematical equations of this theory express the laws governing the electromagnetic field. They do not, as in Newton's laws, connect two widely separated events; they do not connect the happenings *here* with the conditions *there*. The field *here* and *now* depends on the field in the *immediate neighborhood* at a time *just past*. The equations allow us to predict what will happen a little further in space and a little later in time, if we know what happens here and now. They allow us to increase our knowledge of the field by small steps. We can deduce what happens here from that which happened far away by the summation of these very small steps. In Newton's theory , on the contrary, only big steps connecting distant events are permissible. The experiments of Oersted and Faraday can be regained from Maxwell's theory, but only by the summation of small steps each of which is governed by Maxwell's equations."
Einstein and Infeld present their case for the Maxwellian atom:
"We cannot build physics on the basis of the matter-concept alone. But the division into matter and field is, after the recognition of the equivalence of mass and energy, something artificial and not clearly defined. Could we not reject the concept of matter and build a pure field physics? What impresses our senses as matter is really a great concentration of energy into a comparatively small space. We could regard matter as the regions in space where the field is extremely strong. In this way a new philosophical background could be created. Its final aim would be the explanation of all events in nature by structure laws valid always and everywhere. A thrown stone is, from this point of view, a changing field, where the states of greatest field intensity travel through space with the velocity of the stone. There would be no place, in our new physics, for both field and matter, field being the only reality. This new view is suggested by the great achievements of field physics, by our success in expressing the laws of electricity, magnetism, gravitation in the form of structure laws, and finally by the equivalence of mass and energy. Our ultimate problem would be to modify our field laws in such a way that they would not break down for regions in which the energy is enormously concentrated.
But we have not so far succeeded in fulfilling this program convincingly and consistently. The decision, as to whether it is possible to carry it out, belongs to the future. At present we must still assume in all our actual theoretical constructions two realities: field and matter."
The ideas of Planck, Lorentz, Einstein, Infield, and others were rejected in an era that did not have the technology to support those ideas. Today, we can take a whole new look at the fundamental concepts of physics.
All the best
John B.
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