Wave theory of matter

[Enola Straight]

Surfing Youtube I came across this guy...Geoff Haselhurst...who seems to have united Relativity with Quantum Mechanics.

If I understand him correctly, he used particle/wave duality to convert everything into waves, and that can be descrived by Relativity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ekp1OKi6e4o



Is he onto something, just a crock, or has he rediscovered something trivial?

[Paolo]

I'm not exactly sure what he's saying he's discovered. Louis De Broglie derived his hypothesis for massive particles starting with the energy-mass relation from special relativity.

[Singular Intellect]

I was under the impression all forms of energy and matter have wave properties...

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Surfing Youtube I came across this guy...Geoff Haselhurst...who seems to have united Relativity with Quantum Mechanics.

If I understand him correctly, he used particle/wave duality to convert everything into waves, and that can be descrived by Relativity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ekp1OKi6e4o

Is he onto something, just a crock, or has he rediscovered something trivial?

I have no recollection of General Relativity having any linkage with this the particle/wave duality, which as someone said, was derived from de Broglie's thesis which was a few pages long and with an electron scattering experiment to show proof of it. I might add that the electron scattering experiment is old and I myself did that experiment not too long ago.

What some pretty brilliant people are doing right now is to quantize gravitational force. That is one of the key things Physicists are trying to do. They already assume that there exists a particle that has the particle/wave duality and it translates the gravitational force. Really, there's nothing particularly new about it.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Quantum gravity will probably fringe science for a long time, given that direct experimentation is literally practically impossible.

[Wyrm]

Surfing Youtube I came across this guy...Geoff Haselhurst...who seems to have united Relativity with Quantum Mechanics.

We have a perfectly fine union of Special Relativity with Quantum Mechanics. It's called the Standard Model. It's uniting General Relativity and QM that gives us the problem, but this is not what Haselhurst is talking about.

(The Standard Model explains more, too.)

[Kuroneko]

The interviewer is apparently amazed that QM and STR have been unified, but this is nothing new (although Dr. Haselhurst doesn't appear to claim that that particular part is new). The Klein-Gordon equation is the relativized Schrödinger equation, and there are others that describe relativistic particles, although it should be noted that if even the non-relativistic Schrödinger equation is presupposed, it is not too difficult to derive the de Broglie relationship from it (more challenging is to derive the equation without the de Broglie wavelength, but this can be motivated in several ways). Not having read his book, I don't know if he actually discovered something valid and insightful, but if he did, it is at best a new method to arrive at previously known results.

This is not any sort of unification of relativity and quantum mechanics, because that refers to the general theory. STR and QM have been adequately unified for going on 75 years or so.

Interestingly, the opening comment "spherical standing wave structure" and his talk of "inward" and "outward" waves sounds suspiciously similar to certain ideas of Wheeler and Feynman's, which involves interactions of retarded ('outward', forward-time) and advanced ('inward', backward-time) waves, which should then form a standing wave.

[Wyrm]

Interestingly, the opening comment "spherical standing wave structure" and his talk of "inward" and "outward" waves sounds suspiciously similar to certain ideas of Wheeler and Feynman's, which involves interactions of retarded ('outward', forward-time) and advanced ('inward', backward-time) waves, which should then form a standing wave.

Having read the book, yes, this is what he's talking about.

[Kuroneko]

Having read the book, yes, this is what he's talking about.

Interesting. Does he acknowledge Wheeler, Feynman, or perhaps Cramer?

[Wyrm]

Having read the book, yes, this is what he's talking about.

Interesting. Does he acknowledge Wheeler, Feynman, or perhaps Cramer?

I donno, although I vaguely remember something about that acknowledgemet. I last read it in Texas 3-4 years ago. It's probably with SCICOP now, as it was a pretty crackpottish book. We didn't want to be burdened by crackpot books during the move. It just may be in the attic, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Had all the features of a crackpottish book: simple math, claims of revolutionary thinking, new dog doing old tricks, ect.

[Paolo]

I haven't read Wolff's book, but it seems to me his "insight" at best would be dividing Planck's constant by both momentum and the Lorentz factor. I thought he mistakenly believed that this was not already in the derivation de Broglie gives in his thesis. Is he actually talking about something else?

[Enola Straight]

Surfing Youtube I came across this guy...Geoff Haselhurst...who seems to have united Relativity with Quantum Mechanics.

We have a perfectly fine union of Special Relativity with Quantum Mechanics. It's called the Standard Model. It's uniting General Relativity and QM that gives us the problem, but this is not what Haselhurst is talking about.

(The Standard Model explains more, too.)

I think what he's trying to say is, with his theory, everything in quantum mechanics can be re-explained by using relativity...provided the particles involved are converted into waves, that is.

More sites on Geoff Haselhurst:
http://www.spaceandmotion.com/Haselhurst-Biography.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Haselhurst

[Paolo]

I think what he's trying to say is, with his theory, everything in quantum mechanics can be re-explained by using relativity...provided the particles involved are converted into waves, that is.

You'll still need hypotheses outside of relativity to explain wave-particle duality, specifically you need to rework the relation δE/δp = δω/δk via E = ℏω and p = ℏk to talk about massive particles.

[Wyrm]

I think what he's trying to say is, with his theory, everything in quantum mechanics can be re-explained by using relativity...provided the particles involved are converted into waves, that is.

Except waves aren't conserved. Particles are. He needs to explain that in order to re-explain "everything".

[Zixinus]

Is he onto something, just a crock, or has he rediscovered something trivial?

Most likely failed, untestable or just plain wrong. Seems that an Unification theory pops out every month or so around here.