Referees, moderators, etc have, perhaps an impossible job of determing
what is a legitimate - but on the fringes - report and what is a just
a kook. They can't be experts in everything.
I also realize that I'm opening myself up to being accused of just
trying to draw attention to the paper. Not so, but I don't think I
can win that argument. I'm mainly trying to address the issue of "not-
main-stream" versus "kooky" For some papers it's easy to tell -
others more difficult. To what extent do we judge the author/
affliation and not the content? If so, is that fair? Perhaps in many
cases the content can't be judged because of lack of expertise. I see
lots of hard questions.
Thanks for any input
I think it's a great paper and I'll write a blog post on it, but hey,
I'm
a certified kook. The physics papers will publish stuff that you
send into them without it appearing in hep-th, depending on what
the referees say, of course, and I myself am proof that it is possible
to get physicists to pay attention to your work even if you don't
bother to publish it. (But instead present at APS meetings and
the like.)
But I need to look at this some more. What comes to my mind
immediately
is that the quadratic equations you solve at the end, to get that a
"charge" is 2/3 and -1/3, are too simple.
There is a set of 6 quadratic equations in 6 complex unknowns
whose solution gives the weak hypercharge and weak isospin
quantum numbers of the elementary fermions, along with a
(0,0) solution for the unobserved neutrino handedness. The
six quadratic equations amount to the definition of a projection
operator, that is, Q = QxQ, where the multiplication "x" has
to do with the permutation group on 3 elements.
The reason this comes to mind is that the symmetry of the three
quaternions ought to be a permutation group on 3 elements.
I suspec that you can't get the full set of 6 quadratic equations
without moving out of a state vector formalism and into a
density matrix formalism, which allows non Hermitian states.
Density matrices are sort of double sided state vectors, and
so do not have to have the same state vector on their left
and right sides. Density matrices that are mixed in this way
cannot be Hermitian. Perhaps there's some reason to look
at non Hermiticity in relation with quaternions.
If you're interested, I'll dig up a link.
Carl
I looked at the various professional journals (in which I published
before, a couple of decades ago) and they all require a "page charge."
which is - for a retiree - rather steep. Even travel to an APS meeting
is a major expenditure.
Is it a reasonable view of the future that "paper journals" are a
thing of the past? I think we're in a transitional stage between
"paper journals" and "electronic media". I don't think the
"electronic media" (aka arXiv) have yet quite figured out how to do
the "peer review" aspect. E.g.,...some of the usenet groups are
filled with "anti-Relativity" - "2nd law of thermo=wrong" - "I have
discovered the secret of the universe" kooks so arXiv has the
endorser system - which, I admit, keeps the kooks out - but I wonder
about what happens to the "on the fringes, but legitimate"
contributors.
>
> But I need to look at this some more. What comes to my mind
> immediately
> is that the quadratic equations you solve at the end, to get that a
> "charge" is 2/3 and -1/3, are too simple.
I can understand where you're coming from, but that is what the
formalism gave me. Remember the complexes are not available to me -
only the quaternions. Adler has shown that if you mix complexes and
quaternions - aka "complexified quaternions" you can't develop a
meaningful definition of probability current.
>
> There is a set of 6 quadratic equations in 6 complex unknowns
> whose solution gives the weak hypercharge and weak isospin
> quantum numbers of the elementary fermions, along with a
> (0,0) solution for the unobserved neutrino handedness. The
> six quadratic equations amount to the definition of a projection
> operator, that is, Q = QxQ, where the multiplication "x" has
> to do with the permutation group on 3 elements.
>
> The reason this comes to mind is that the symmetry of the three
> quaternions ought to be a permutation group on 3 elements.
> I suspec that you can't get the full set of 6 quadratic equations
> without moving out of a state vector formalism and into a
> density matrix formalism, which allows non Hermitian states.
>
> Density matrices are sort of double sided state vectors, and
> so do not have to have the same state vector on their left
> and right sides. Density matrices that are mixed in this way
> cannot be Hermitian. Perhaps there's some reason to look
> at non Hermiticity in relation with quaternions.
I've got to think about what you've said.
>
> If you're interested, I'll dig up a link.
I would be interested in a link. Thanks for your comments.
>
> Carl
> I looked at the various professional journals (in which I published
> before, a couple of decades ago) and they all require a "page charge."
> which is - for a retiree - rather steep. Even travel to an APS meeting
> is a major expenditure.
This is one model. Another common model is an expensive subscription,
and members of the subscribing institute can publish for free. If you
have SOME loose affiliation with an institute (one which doesn't object
having you list it as your institute in the paper), then you should be
able to publish for free---if the journal uses this model.
> Is it a reasonable view of the future that "paper journals" are a
> thing of the past?
Yes and no.
> I think we're in a transitional stage between
> "paper journals" and "electronic media". I don't think the
> "electronic media" (aka arXiv) have yet quite figured out how to do
> the "peer review" aspect. E.g.,...some of the usenet groups are
> filled with "anti-Relativity" - "2nd law of thermo=wrong" - "I have
> discovered the secret of the universe" kooks so arXiv has the
> endorser system - which, I admit, keeps the kooks out - but I wonder
> about what happens to the "on the fringes, but legitimate"
> contributors.
At least a few years ago, ArXiv saw itself as an alternative to
traditional publishing in some sense. At some point it became possible
to add the bibliographic information after the article was published
(probably most articles are preprints, i.e. they appear on ArXiv before
they are published), although many folks don't bother updating this
field. I suggested making it mandatory within a certain time after
submission to ArXiv, or at least reminding people periodically to fill
it in, but that was never taken up, as far as I know. My impression was
that that would be having the traditional journals put a seal of
approval on ArXiv, which doesn't jibe with it being an alternative to
traditional journals.
Really, the only thing keeping traditional journals alive is the
refereeing process, which gives a seal of approval (at least for
reputable journals). If ArXiv had that, it could quickly take over from
the traditional journals---but my feeling is that they don't want to
take over by being better (technically, economically, ease of access
etc) but rather by being different.
There are some peer-reviewed paper journals that try to take care of
the "on the fringes, but legitimate" contributors. Physics Essays is
one I have experience with.
Dick Dolan
Some journals don't enforce page charges in all cases --
e.g. for Phys Rev, it is possible to decline to pay and
they will still publish anyway.
--
---------------------------------+---------------------------------
Dr. Paul Kinsler
Blackett Laboratory (PHOT) (ph) +44-20-759-47734 (fax) 47714
Imperial College London, Dr.Paul...@physics.org
SW7 2AZ, United Kingdom. http://www.qols.ph.ic.ac.uk/~kinsle/
There will be local APS meetings near you that should be
pretty easy to get to. These get cited just as easily (if not
more so) than the big national APS meetings. For instance,
Gerald Rosen, in Modern Physics Letters A, Vol. 22, No. 4 (2007)
283-288, cited my APS NW section meeting talk (see reference
#5).
What's more, I got the date wrong and missed the conference.
I wasn't even there for the talk. (Not that I suggest this; I feel
very embarassed about it.)
> Is it a reasonable view of the future that "paper journals" are a
> thing of the past? I think we're in a transitional stage between
> "paper journals" and "electronic media".
My feeling on this is that the meaning of the word "amateur
physicist" is "lover of physics", as opposed to professional.
Professionals suffer from publish or perish, amateurs do not.
As far as I am concerned, so long as I have other people
working on stuff I am working on, I really have no reason to
publish. Well, publish other than what I have already done
on the internet, for instance, I have the website
www.DensityMatrix.com and put links to papers on density
matrices, including my own, there.
Because of the costs of hosting, it really only makes sense
to pick up a website if you have ideas for a bunch of other
websites. You can host 50 different websites, each with
different (or the same) information, for something around
$500 per year. I use: www.mydomain.com
> "electronic media" (aka arXiv) have yet quite figured out how to do
> the "peer review" aspect. E.g.,...some of the usenet groups are
> filled with "anti-Relativity" - "2nd law of thermo=wrong" - "I have
> discovered the secret of the universe" kooks so arXiv has the
> endorser system - which, I admit, keeps the kooks out - but I wonder
> about what happens to the "on the fringes, but legitimate"
> contributors.
If there is someone who really should be aware of what you've
done, send them a nice, short, LaTeX formated letter that can
be understood in a few minutes. They get letters from lousy
amateurs all the time, but nicely formatted scientific letters do
not get ignored.
As an example of this, I sent a letter to Alexei Smirnov, the "S"
in the MSW effect, correcting an error in a preprint by pointing
out my new work on neutrinos. He added references to my
(unpublished) work into his paper, and he regularly mentions
my name when he gives invited lectures on neutrino physics
at conferences. (I extended Koide's formula from the charged
leptons to the neutrinos.)
So what I'm saying here is that publishing isn't everything.
If it matters to you to publish, then I don't see why you can't
do it, but I also don't see the point in putting yourself through
the pain. Physics is fun, writing up papers is boring, but getting
stuff refereed and published is like passing a kidney stone.
You don't need tenure, why publish? A few very important
string theory papers were important long before they were
in print, and I've heard that some of them have never seen
print at all. The sad thing is that publishing a paper will not
seriously increase the number of people who read it. No one
has the time these days to keep up with what everyone
is doing even in their own little field. It's more important,
I think, to send letters to the people who are directly working
on the same things you are.
> I can understand where you're coming from, but that is what the
> formalism gave me. Remember the complexes are not available to me -
> only the quaternions. Adler has shown that if you mix complexes and
> quaternions - aka "complexified quaternions" you can't develop a
> meaningful definition of probability current.
> > The reason this comes to mind is that the symmetry of the three
> > quaternions ought to be a permutation group on 3 elements.
> > I suspec that you can't get the full set of 6 quadratic equations
> > without moving out of a state vector formalism and into a
> > density matrix formalism, which allows non Hermitian states.
>
> I would be interested in a link. Thanks for your comments.
See sections 5.1-5.4 of this:
http://brannenworks.com/dmfound.pdf
I believe the above has some fairly serious typos, but the math
does work. I'm not fixing it because no one but me seems to
be interested in it. Instead, I'm working on mass formulas for
the meson and baryon resonances.
Probably the easiest way to explain why the non Hermitian
density matrices can do more stuff is to note that given a 3-d
Hilbert space, a complete set of states is only 3-d. This means
that a complete set of pure density matrices is also only
3-d. But density matrices are 3x3. The non Hermitian
density matrices get you the other 6 states (which, if
the usual 3 are diagonalized, are the off diagonal elements
of a 3x3 matrix). You get the 9 density matrices =
6 non Hermitian plus 3 Hermitian, by taking products
of the 3 possible kets times the 3 possible bras = 9
degrees of freedom.
> On Sep 6, 4:26 pm, Raphanus <lester.we...@gmail.com> wrote:
> My feeling on this is that the meaning of the word "amateur physicist"
> is "lover of physics", as opposed to professional. Professionals suffer
> from publish or perish, amateurs do not.
There is a traditional distinction between government-funded and gentleman
scientist. Both are professionals but a Gentleman scientist is one who
fund himself without government or other official grants.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentleman_scientist
(\blockquote
It also permits the scientist to have greater control over research
directions, as funding bodies direct grants towards interests that may
not coincide with that of the scientist.
)
>> "electronic media" (aka arXiv) have yet quite figured out how to do
>> the "peer review" aspect. E.g.,...some of the usenet groups are filled
>> with "anti-Relativity" - "2nd law of thermo=wrong" - "I have discovered
>> the secret of the universe" kooks so arXiv has the endorser system -
>> which, I admit, keeps the kooks out - but I wonder about what happens
>> to the "on the fringes, but legitimate" contributors.
>
> If there is someone who really should be aware of what you've done, send
> them a nice, short, LaTeX formated letter that can be understood in a
> few minutes. They get letters from lousy amateurs all the time, but
> nicely formatted scientific letters do not get ignored.
I would recommend to include a short summary of the work and the link with
the work of the author who you are contacting. This automatically
differentiate lousy amateurs with a copy of Hawking popular book on time
from professionals up to date in specific literature.
--
http://www.canonicalscience.org/en/miscellaneouszone/guidelines.html
Some journals charge page charges, but many others don't. For
example, Physical Review does, but waives the charges for papers
submitted in a suitable electronic format. Most IOP journals have
no page charges.
In addition, though, if your paper is accepted -- the refereeing
process takes place before there's any mention of page charges
-- and you then inform a journal that you can't afford the page
charges, the usual practice is that the paper will still be
published, although sometimes with some delay.
Steve Carlip
Thanks to all who answered. I have taken to heart your suggestions
that there are refereed professional journals that may be possible. I
am pursuing one such option.
The question,..."why publish?" for someone in my situation is a good
one. Made me think. I think the honest answer is "egotism." Hope
that's not bad. :-) But there's also a desire to have someone point
out any mistakes that may have been made - to learn. Referees are
good at that. :-)
I did forward a copy of the paper to a few (5?) recognized experts,
with the abstract in the body of the message and the paper attached.
But I recognize that those guys must get bombarded with such things so
I don't expect any reaction. But you do what you can do.
> arXiv has the endorser system ...
which keeps independent, unaffiliated researchers out. The effect is
that as such a researcher, you'll actually have an EASIER time getting
a paper out by submitting to an ordinary paper journal, where the only
system in place (peer review) does not effectively lock out
independent researchers.
Given that this is where the most significant contributions are going
to time, in these times of major paradigm shift in the field, the
correct question to ask here should actually be: does arXiv have a
future?
This is one of those cases that fall under the category "if you have
to ask...". Not to go too much Simon on you, but in some ways it's the
academic equivalent of tone-deafness.
So, to make this more constructive (and also to show just how much
further you need to go to get to bona fide research proficiency) I
redid parts 1 and 2 and added a new appendix
http://federation.g3z.com/Physics/index.htm#DiracH
As you can begin to see with this reworking (which, as pointed out
therein, subsumes most of what you're doing), much of what you're
trying to do is old news and/or has a more cogent treatment. In
particular, you're running through hoops on things that are easily
handled in one fell swoop using well-known material.
You're in a position where, because of your admitted newness, you're
not really able to distinguish what's new from what's old news. You
don't yet have a feel for where the frontier is. In some ways it's
like coming around in the 19th century proclaiming the study of
infinitesimals as a "new and better way" of doing mathematical physics
that "improves over anything that's ever been seen before" amidst the
groans of the audience in the freshman Calculus classes.
One point especially that bears mentioning: the simplest wave equation
is not the Dirac equation, which - if anything - is the antithesis of
this notion. The simplest wave equations are the Weyl equations for
left and right chiral spinor fields. All this emerges from the
representation theory of the Lorentz group and Dirac, himself, was an
early pioneer in establishing (c. 1935) the unifying envelope for wave
equations of general spin, making early use of the van der Waerden 2-
component spinor notation. In contrast, the Dirac equation is cobbled
together from 2 Weyl equations (and the Dirac spinor from 2 Weyl
spinors) in much the same way that the Frankenstein monster is cobbled
together from unrelated body parts. Among other things, half the Dirac
spinor has upstairs van der Waerden indices, the other half has
downstairs indices. So an important object lesson just in that alone
is: never base anything foundational on the Dirac equation or Dirac
spinor!
The algebras are easily dissected (more accurately: "eviscerated").
That's what you see in the reworked sections 1 and 2. When
"quaterionizing" the Dirac algebra all you're doing is tacking on an H
factor in a tensor product. The Dirac algebra (i.e. the real linear
algebra generated by gamma^0, gamma^1, gamma^2, gamma^3) is (in the
notation used in the revised rewriting) the Clifford algebra C_{1,3).
It's isomorphic to M_2(H), the 2x2 matrix algebra of quaterions.
The complexified Dirac algebra (i.e. the complex linear algebra
generated by the 4 gammas or, equivalently, the REAL linear algebra
generated by the 4 gammas + gamma_5) is the tensor product C (x)
C_{1.3} = C (x) M_2(H) = M_2 (x) C (x) H = M_2 (x) M_2(C) = M_4(C),
since C (x) H = M_2(C). The quaternionized Dirac algebra is H (x)
C_{1,3} = M_2(H) (x) H = M_2 (x) (H (x) H) = M_2 (x) M_4 = M_8, since
H (x) H = M_4.
Since you started out by switching the signatures, C_{1,3} to C_{3,1},
and since the Clifford algebra C_{3,1} = M_4, then the complexified
form is C (x) M_4 = M_4(C), and the quaterionized form is H (x) M_4 =
M_4(H).
All of this is barking up the wrong tree if you're trying to
accommodate the fermion spectrum. The correct (and more comprehensive)
treatment is already well-understood and estbalished. If the right
neutrinos and left anti-neutrinos are absent, the best fitting model
is that based on SU(5). However, that's been ruled out in recent times
-- particularly by the presence of non-zero neutrino masses.
If all 3 neutrinos have opposite handed versions ("sterile neutrinos")
then that gives you 32 fermion modes per generation, which factors as:
("up" vs."down") x ("left" vs "right")) vs ("white" "black" "red"
"green" "blue" "cyan" "magenta" "amber")
where I'm using "white" to denote anit-leptons, "black" leptons,
("cyan", "magenta", "amber") the color opposites respectively of
("red", "green", "blue") (they are more commonly called anti-red, anti-
green, anti-blue).
Then it's more appropriate to use a Clifford algebra, which this
already bears the strong imprint of; namely the algebra associated
with the 32x32 matrices over C, M_32(C). In turn, this has a close
relation to the symmetry group SO(10).
You can model "flavor" separately (up/down x left/right) and that
gives you (almost) the electroweak part (only almost, because
hypercharge doesn't quite fit into this mould). That corresponds to
starting with the 2x2 algebra M_2(C) for Weyl spinors, instead of the
4x4 algebra M_4(C) for Dirac spinors. The 2 binary attributes tack on
2 sets of M_2's, giving you the algebra M_2 (x) M_2 (x) M_2(C) =
M_8(C).
You can model the "hypercolor" separately (the 8 colors) and that
gives you the SU(3) part plus a piece of the hypercharge. That gives
you a 8x8 matrix algebra for Dirac spinors, M_16(H).
The only significance I see of your algebra M_4(H) is that it's a
factor of each of these cases:
M_8(C) = M_4 (x) M_2(C) = M_4 (x) (H (x) C) = M_4(H) (x) C
M_16(H) = M_4 (x) M_4(H)
M_32(C) = M_4(M_8(C)) = M_4(H) (x) M_4(C).
I appreciate your translation of my algebra into a language
understandable by the professionals in the field .
Please let me probe your reaction to my paper a bit further,...if you
will.
I take it - since you failed to mention any - that the physics may be
OK even though the mathematical language is jaded?
Is my paradigm of creating "particles" from "quasi-particles" by
requiring a continuity equation new? If not, could you give me a
reference? Thanks.
Is my derivation of the fractional charges of the quarks in the
"Electrodynamics" section - with NO assumptions - new? If not, could
you give me a reference where Clifford algebra formalism is used to
achieve the same result?
I really do appreciate the attention (obviously not insignificant) you
have given. I must admit, Simon :-), that I believe that criticisms
of "language" may not have importance except that it deters attention
by "professionals."
Thanks.
In this overly competitive society, every field still has a subset of
colleagues who are willing to play by more gentlemanly rules. Most
publish early versions or preprints on ArXiV. Usually some version
emerges later in a journal paper. Nevertheless, collegial people are
able to find the integrity to recognise preprints as actual work, and
among them you can get credit for what you did, even if someone better
connected and/or less careful was faster getting into the journal. Only
legalists will demand credit based on the date of appearance in a
journal, and most of them will find ways to get away with avoiding your
published work anyway.
In some fields ArXiV is recognised because it is so fast and it remains
the best way to exchange prepeints among colleagues under conditions
where there is a time-stamp on the preprint which the author cannot
back-date. So you have a chance to get a timestamp on your work which
is recognised by others, with a system which is by nature much faster
and also much fairer than any journal.
--
ciao,
Bruce
drift wave turbulence: http://www.rzg.mpg.de/~bds/
More to the point: a large number of journals don't have page charges,
either. This includes those under the IOP, as indicated on the front
inside cover of any of the journals in this group. So, the only cause
for lockout from these journals is incomptence.