SCIENTIFIC DETERMINISM,
NUCLEAR PHYSICS
AND THE
FUTURE WAR OF ENERGY
Jacques G. Chauveheid
12 mars 2003
1.
FOREWORD
2.
THE SITUATION IN NUCLEAR THEORY
3.
BOHR´S INDETERMINATION IN 1927
4.
INDETERMINATION AND NUCLEAR PHYSICS
5.
TOWARD THE BEGINNING OF A SOLUTION
1. FOREWORD
Stock markets are in crisis for quite a while and this crisis affected
in the first place the sector of the so-called high technologies, which
are mainly the old electronics that fortunately did not stop improving.
The computer industry has accomplished its basic revolution more than
a few years ago, but other technological revolutions seem curiously delayed.
As we will see, this setback is due to the lack of theoretical advance
in other domains, and this remark applies therefore to the controlled
nuclear fusion [1], which for simple reasons did not
work during the last fifty years.
This bad situation is announcing
the energy crisis, so much feared by experts and that we would face in
some years. We are also going to live the "war of energy" that
seems to have started with the aggressive attitude of North Korea and
the confusing events in the Middle East, these looking like a battle for
the control of oil. Following the principles of a rational analysis, which
is supposed to start with its true beginning, it is important to recall
that theoreticians-inventors have always elaborated the procedures from
which all technologies have been derived. Businessmen only apply them
in a second phase, qualified as industrial, and avoid by all possible
means to compensate the inventors without whom their industry would simply
not exist.
We will show how scientific
dogmas, deriving from subjective idealistic preconceptions, continue to
subvert sciences as it was the case in the Middle Ages. To understand
it, we will recall the notion of subjective idealism proposed by the Marxist
philosophy, which is in fact based on two fundamental elements. The first
is the application of the scientific method to the study of economic and
social phenomena. The second postulates that Marxism includes the actualized
sum of indisputable scientific achievements.
This positive remark about
Marxism does not mean that its founders, nor their successors, have always
been perfect because the use of the adequate method is unfortunately not
an absolute guarantee of infallibility. This, because humans make mistakes
so that the best scientists, including Albert Einstein, often made errors.
But, what makes great scientists is the positive balance of their works.
For example, Galileo and Einstein often got lost, which does not diminish
the immense value of their discoveries.
We now recall that an objective
idealist essentially differs from a materialist scientist by his belief
in God. In other words, objective idealists base science on an objective
analysis of observed facts, as materialist scientists who are atheists.
Accordingly, these two groups of researchers produce the same valid scientific
results, because they are equally objective in science. It goes otherwise
for subjective idealists who first create a model of reality, subjective
because it is the one that pleases them, and put then in relief the results
of observation that are favorable to their pre-established model. This
"bourgeois" attitude then drives them to eliminate the results
of observation that are contrary to their views, discarding them as "statistical
anomalies" [2], and others. This rather simplistic
method has until now been very efficient in institutions permeable to
financial influences (grants, financings of research programs, etc...).
As an example, let us mention
the fascism as a subjective idealistic ideology (here, no formal distinction
is established between fascism and Nazism), whose real "bible"
is "The Myth of the 20th Century" written by Alfred Rosenberg,
author of the racial laws of Nuremberg. In this voluminous book, Rosenberg
does not use the word "myth" to destroy supposed liberal or
socialist myths, but to construct the myth of the superior Aryan race,
which is the ideological basis of Nazism. This, because Rosenberg recognizes
that this superior race does not exist, which is precisely why he suggests
to invent it by creating the suitable myth, from where the title of the
book. One could not be clearer.
In what follows, the reader,
interested by science and its basic truths, will understand why subjective
idealistic preconceptions should, once for all, be eradicated from science,
in order to permit theoretical proposals on which new technologies would
be based to solve the problem of energy. Without this type of solution,
the future defaulting in energy would mean the "near" end of
mankind, on the details of which we won't insist more here.
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2.
THE SITUATION IN NUCLEAR THEORY
The scientific knowledge,
on which the industrial world is based, comes from the experimental research
conducted in laboratories, but Einstein did not have a laboratory when
he formulated the first theory of relativity in 1905. In a book he wrote
with Leopold Infeld in 1938 [3], Einstein explained
how the equivalence between heat and energy had, during the 19th century,
been discovered by Joule and three others who were all amateur-physicists
(this advance provided the theoretical basis for internal combustion engines
we still use). Now, experimentation has become so expensive that an individual
could hardly do this type of work anymore by himself. Nevertheless, according
to Einstein, the parallel theoretical work remains quite inexpensive,
because realized with a pen and a few sheets of paper.
In the same book, Einstein
and Infeld wrote "In spite of the many experimental data and the
many attempts to throw light on the nuclear problem, were are still in
the dark about some of the most fundamental questions in this domain"
[3]. The reader might suppose that this ignorance
characterizes the year 1938 when this book was written. However, in the
introduction to the new edition in 1960, Infeld, then professor in Warsaw,
indicated that only a few minor corrections were necessary for the actualization
of the book. He then detailed them without mentioning nuclear theory.
Seven years later, this opinion of Infeld was corroborated by the eminent
Russian theoretician Lev Landau who described the theoretical knowledge
of the nuclear problem as unsatisfactory because there did not exist a
theory that was at the same time "consequent" and "achieved"
[4]. Landau and his co-author Evgueni Lifshitz insisted
three times on this specific point in a relatively concise chapter.
Some might now argue that
these questions have been solved by a theory called "Quantum Chromodynamics"
(usually referred to as QCD), notably based on the quark concept introduced
in 1964 [5] but also on a "global symmetry algebra"
whose physical character is far from being established. Although quarks
appear to constitute an indispensable tool and QCD has known some experimental
confirmations, this theory has been indisputably contradicted by other
experiments [2], which make difficult the belief in
its validity. Besides, QCD theory is so inconclusive about fundamental
aspects such as solutions of its equations, quark masses and their bound
energies [5], that it is difficult to take it seriously.
The number of papers ratifying the insufficiency of QCD relative to its
experimental confirmations seems to have increased recently, but this
aspect is not detailed here. The important is that QCD is above all a
theory of nuclear forces, which does not contain any expression, even
approximate, of these forces, which remain therefore without a real description.
It is as if a botanist wrote a chapter on a plant for which he would be
incapable to provide a picture or even an approximate rendering. This
example shows the futile character of an approach that one could hardly
qualify otherwise than "subjective idealistic".
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3.
BOHR´S INDETERMINATION IN 1927
The QCD theory is one of the
multiple extensions of Bohr's concept of indetermination, of which we
now recall the brief history. The year 1927 was marked by the Solvay Congress
of Physics held in Brussels, during which the ideas of Niels Bohr supporting
indetermination were well received (these views became known as "Copenhagen
interpretation"). This probabilistic interpretation of quanta by
Bohr rejected the causality so dear to Einstein and even contested the
existence of a physical reality, which seems incredible. There, Einstein
was curiously alone in raising public objections to Bohr's assertions.
Nevertheless, eminent theorists such as Erwin Schrödinger and Louis
de Broglie, who invented wave mechanics in 1924 and 1926, later agreed
with Einstein's deterministic views but it was "too late" [6].
Let us recall that wave mechanics will quickly give birth to quantum mechanics
through a mathematically impressive addition of physically doubtful axioms
(personal opinion). Besides, from 1932, Paul Dirac, to whom according
to Einstein we owe the best posterior synthesis of quantum mechanics,
began to strongly "criticize quantum theories to which he contributed
so much" [5]. In 1979, a few years before his death, Dirac affirmed
that "it seems clear that the present quantum mechanics is not in
its final form" and that "it might very well be that the new
quantum mechanics will have determinism in the way that Einstein wanted"
[7].
It is important to note that
Bohr was not one of the founders of wave mechanics, in spite of his major
contribution on the hydrogen atom in 1913. So, the true founders of the
quantum mechanics, at the unique exception of Werner Heisenberg (see his
matrix mechanics in 1925), disapproved Bohr's probabilistic indetermination.
It is therefore strange that textbooks for students do not tell the true
story but limit themselves to mention Einstein as if he had been the only
objector to the Copenhagen interpretation. Besides, not a word seems said
in universities about the true debate, of fundamental historic importance
for science. Why ?
The reader will find part
of the answer in what follows: in 1935, Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen published
a paper severely criticizing the indeterministic position. This paper
became quickly famous and still is. Its content, currently referred to
as "EPR theory", is periodically the object of new studies.
In 1936, Rosen, who was Einstein's assistant, got a temporary academic
position in the Soviet Union, following a recommendation that Einstein
had sent to Molotov. The paper apparently caused high interest in Soviet
Union where it was republished (Marxism is determinist), but it has been
difficult to me to verify these details. Until now, I could not find another
paper published against the indetermination. Some objectors to the Copenhagen
interpretation had apparently no other choice than to develop their determinist
position in the books they published themselves. It was the case for Einstein
and de Broglie, this last having published no less than six treaties on
this topic before 1968 [6], but unfortunately not
translated into English. In spite of this opposition, surprising and somewhat
difficult to explain, the publication of two papers appears programmed
in 2003.
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4. INDETERMINATION AND NUCLEAR PHYSICS
Bohr's indetermination is
difficult to oppose in atomic physics, because the dimensions of nucleons
and electrons are extremely small in comparison of the distances separating
them (an atom is much bigger than its components). For example, it exists
lots of free space in the hydrogen atom for supposing that the orbit of
the electron is indeterminate. This situation changes radically in nuclear
physics where the range of the (strong) nuclear force is of same order
as the distance between centers of nucleons in the core (nucleus) of an
atom (a nucleon is a neutron or a proton - the range of interaction between
particles is always calculated between their centers). In an atomic nucleus,
there is therefore not enough space between nucleons for supposing spatial
indetermination, which is illustrated in the next paragraph.
Nuclear forces are characterized
by their observed range of 1.4 fermi (also referred to as the Yukawa distance
- 1 fermi = one ten thousand billionth of centimeter). These forces vanish
at the distance of 2 fermis. According to the usual statistical approach,
the speed v of a nucleon, in a nucleus of average size, is given by v
= 0.00096/R in the cgs system, R being the nucleon radius [4]. For R =
1 fermi, v would then be worth 96,000 km/sec, which would be more than
the quarter of the speed of light. This is the reason why theorists raised
the nucleon radius to 1.2 fermi, to lower the nucleon speed to the value
v = c/4 they consider more acceptable (c is here the speed of light) [4].
But such a nucleon radius of 1.2 fermi would imply 2.4 fermis as minimal
distance between centers of two near nucleons, which is unacceptable because
the nuclear forces disappear at this distance. Therefore, the statistical
method does not work in a (stable) bound nucleus, because the distance
between the centers of two neighboring nucleons should be close enough
to the Yukawa distance of 1.4 fermi.
Now, even supposing a lower
value of 1 fermi for R and respecting the Yukawa distance between centers
of near nucleons, although it would imply a "too high value"
for v , would mean that nucleons penetrate each other in a nucleus. But
this consequence is compatible with the quark hypothesis relative to the
charged components of nucleons. In any case, the importance of all this
is to demonstrate the clear impossibility to permit free space for undetermined
nucleon orbits, because the physics does not allow it.
One wonders then why Landau
and Lifshitz did not detail this in their book [4].
They should have explained that the statistical procedure implies a too
high nucleon speed if one takes in consideration the known range of nuclear
forces. But they said three times that there was no achieved theory, which
was perhaps sufficient.
5.
TOWARD THE BEGINNING OF A SOLUTION
The Walloon Ministry of Science and Technologies (Namur, Belgium) has
an interesting program called PIMENT, which is a contest of researchers
(independent or not) for any useful suggestion helping to solve the problem
of energy. It is time! But, the functionaries, responsible for this program,
do not indicate anything in their mailing about important issues such
as confidentiality or legal protection of suggestions-inventions (inventor
rights, royalties, etc..). It appears therefore that only universities
or "rich" companies, having an army of specialized lawyers when
necessary, are able to participate without risk. There are therefore candidates
who suspended their suggestions as well as their work. With respect to
this, about two years ago, a director of this Ministry sent me a package
of forms, whose quick analysis clearly demonstrated that the protection
of these rights only concerns those who can arrange a minimum of several
hundred thousands euros to this effect.
Mail
REFERENCES
[1] J. Chauveheid: A Moderate Energy Approach to Nuclear
Fusion, preprints of April and May 2001.
[2] A.D. Krisch: Collisions between Spinning Protons,
Scientific American, vol. 257, p. 42 (August 1987).
[3] A. Einstein et L. Infeld: The Evolution of Physics
(Simon & Schuster, NY, 1938-1966) pp. 48, 293.
[4] L. Landau et E. Lifshitz: Quantum Mechanics, French
ed. (Mir, Moscow, 1967), pp. 511 to 520.
[5] A. PAIS: "Inward Bound": of Matter and
Forces in the Physical World (Oxford University Press, 1986) pp. 28, 258,
261, 288, 361, 391, 557, 589.
[6] L. de Broglie: Ondes Électromagnétiques
et Photons (Gauthier-Villars, Paris 1968), pp. 2, 4, 60.
[7] J. Gliedman: The Quantum Debate, Science Digest,
vol. 91, p. 74, 109 (June 1983).
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