Physics in an Electric Universe
As I mentioned in my post earlier, some of the best examples of bad math are really examples of no math. One of my favorite examples of this kind of bogosity is the Electric Universe. The Electric Universe is fun, both because of the utter bizzareness of its ideas, and the fact that it's not just a single crackpot spewing it, but rather a whole active community of crackpots working together. So there are multiple different threads of it - a veritable cornucipia of of lunacy!
There are two main threads to the EU gibberish: the mythology, and the physics. Let's take a look at the physics. Here's one version of the fundamental physics of the electric universe:
The Electric Universe takes a simplifying leap by unifying the nuclear forces, magnetism and gravity as manifestations of a near instantaneous electrostatic force. Instead of being "spooked" by the concept of action-at-a-distance, like most physicists this century, the Electric Universe accepts it as an observational fact. Anyone who has tried to force two like poles of magnets together has demonstrated action-at-a-distance. "Electromagnetic" radiation is then simply the result of an oscillating electrostatic force.
At the level of the atom, the Electric Universe model takes a lead from the work of Ralph Sansbury, an independent New York researcher. Foremost is the simple recognition of the basic electrical nature of matter and the primacy of the electrostatic force** in matter interactions. It also rests upon the simple assumption that the proton, neutron and electron are composed of smaller charged particles, orbiting each other in a classical sense in stable, resonant orbits. That is, the energy exchanged between those sub-particles in elastic deformation during each orbit sums to zero. Being charged, the sub-particles interact via the electrostatic force. A simple calculation shows that the sub-particles that form an electron must travel at a speed far in excess of the speed of light - some 2.5 million light-years per second, or from here to the far side of the Andromeda galaxy in one second! So the electrostatic force must act at a speed which is almost infinite on our scale for the electron to be stable. It is the stable orbital resonances of these sub-particles, both within and between particles that give rise to the phenomena of protons, neutrons, electrons and atoms. Other denizens of the particle "zoo" are merely transient resonant states of the same charged sub-particles. The so-called "creation" of matter from energetic photons is an illusion in which pre-existing matter is reorganized into new resonant states that give the impression that a particle has suddenly materialized. Antimatter is a misnomer since it too is formed from the same sub-particles as "normal" matter except that the total charge is mirrored. Matter cannot be created or annihilated.
Now, how's that for a wacky idea?
Good Math has moved to <a href="http://www.scienceblogs.com/goodmath">ScienceBlogs</a>: Physics in an Electric Universe
