Problematic Issues of Particle Physics

Home Contact Me

 


General Problems

A human community uses rules that aim to facilitate its members' activity. The following points indicate issues that are not included in the present practice of the particle physics community. The need for these items is understood by most people.
  1. No physics mainstream journal dedicates a permanent section to a discussion of theoretical errors.

  2. There are many awards in physics but there is no award for a detection of a meaningful error in mainstream theories.

  3. The contemporary particle physics community does not cordially welcome persons who claim that there is a flaw in its theories. In particular, Editors and referees of mainstream journals systematically reject papers that are written by these persons. In many cases, these rejections have no scientifically valid basis. The publish or perish rule explains why it is difficult to find these people in the academy.

Remarks

These primary errors affect the quality of the present work of mainstream theoretical physicists. Indeed, error correction is widely recognized as an extremely important assignment of human activity. Factories call it QA, computer programmers call it debugging, etc. The concept called Devil's Advocate is relevant to this issue. The unfortunate absence of this task from the contemporary particle physics agenda and the very long duration of this practice have caused the present situation where many specific errors of theoretical physics have not been corrected. Obviously, these errors deteriorate the merits of contemporary accepted theories as well as the merits of the theoretical work that endeavors to proceed further.

The following list of specific errors aims to convince physicists that this claim is correct. In particular, these items are supported by appropriate references. Each of these errors belongs to an appropriate Standard Model sector. The conclusions which are written at the end are understandable by most readers.
  1. Believe it or not, a free gauge transformation is unacceptable in QED. The correct form of the relevant theorem is: "If a Lagrangian function is invariant under a transformation and both the Lagrangian function and the transformation are mathematically consistent then..." (for details click here ). In particular, a specific example proves that a gauge transformation is inconsistent with a simple interference calculation of an electronic beam. For details, see section 3 on p. 4 here .

  2. The present form of the electromagnetic fields term of the QED Lagrangian density is

    ℒ = -F μν Fμν /16π (1)

    (see e.g. [1], p. 349). Here F μν is the sum of bound fields and radiation fields. Now, radiation fields have spin=1 and an odd parity. On the other hand, one can regard the hydrogen atom as a measuring device and prove that bound fields have spin=0 and an even parity. Hence, the product of the sum of these different kinds of fields in (1) means that the present form of QED violates parity conservation. Furthermore, the angular momentum of a product of a spin=0 and a spin=1 functions is unity. By contrast, the Lagrangian density of a physical field should be a Lorentz scalar. For these reasons, the Lagrangian density (1) is certainly an erroneous element of the present structure of QED. For details click here and see also the references therein.

  3. The recent QED failure to explain the proton's charge radius data [2] is certainly an experimental support for these theoretical QED contradictions.

  4. QCD has been constructed on the basis of an erroneous argument. The proof of this claim takes less than 30 text lines. For reading this proof click here .

  5. QCD is inconsistent with many experimental data. For reading an article that discusses this issue click here . You can also read a popular science book that discusses many aspects of this issue. For this purpose just use the following string in google together with the name of your favorite bookseller: "Science or Fiction? The Phony Side of Particle Physics".

  6. Experiment shows that the cross-section of a hard photon scattered on a proton is about the same as the corresponding neutron data. The Standard Model has no explanation for this effect. For reading a brief discussion click here. The following issue is relevant to this matter. The photon is an elementary particle which is known for more than 100 years and the nucleons are the best-known hadrons. However, many particle physics textbooks take an ostrich policy and do not contain an appropriate discussion of hard photon-nucleon interaction in general and of the above mentioned proton-neutron similarity in particular.

  7. The EMC effect is known for more than 30 years. The data prove that the QCD predictions are completely inconsistent with the effect [3]. This QCD problem has not been settled yet. Indeed, a recent CERN publication admits that the data still puzzles QCD supporters. For details, click here.

  8. Experimental data show that the proton radius is larger than that of the pion. For seeing the PDG data, click here. Another proton information says that its quarks are enclosed in a volume that is much smaller than that of its antiquarks. (This information is derived from the uncertainty principle and the width of the momentum graphs of the proton's quark and its antiquark (see [4], p. 281)). QCD has no explanation for the effect where the pion's one quark can hold the antiquark within a rather small volume whereas the proton's four quarks (the three valence quarks and the antiquark's companion) cannot hold the antiquark within a volume which is at least not larger than their own volume.

  9. The Standard Model electroweak theory contains erroneous elements. For details, see section 2 here. In particular, the W± are two electrically charged particles which are regarded by the electroweak theory as elementary particle. These particles play a crucial role in this theory. However, in spite of the fact that the electroweak theory is about 50 years old, this interpretation of the W± contradicts Maxwellian electrodynamics because it does not satisfy charge conservation (see section 2 here or read a full paper here ). The following evidence illustrates this issue. In the case of the electron, the Dirac theory provides an expression for a conserved 4-current (see [5], p. 24). By contrast, the electroweak theory is nearly 50 years old. However, people working with the CERN LHC machine still use an effective expression for the W± electromagnetic interactions (see e.g. eq. (3) in [6]).

  10. The Standard Model electroweak theory is inconsistent with the data. For example, eq. (21.3.2) of [7], p. 305 means that the electroweak theory treats the neutrino as a massless two-component spinor. By contrast, it is now recognized that the neutrino is a massive four-component spinor [8]. Referring to this issue, one should note that Wigner's analysis of the representations of the inhomogeneous Lorentz group proves that a massive particle and a massless particle are inherently different physical objects.

  11. A mathematically real quantum function cannot describe an elementary massive particle. For reading a paper that proves this claim, click here. A brief discussion of this matter can be found here. It follows that the Majorana neutrino theory, the Yukawa theory of the nuclear force, The electroweak Z theory, and the mathematically real Higgs boson theory are wrong.

Discussion

The Standard Model aims to formulate the physical laws of three kinds of interactions: strong, electromagnetic and weak. Each of these interactions is addressed by appropriate items of the foregoing list, which present well documented specific errors. Therefore, the Standard Model contains theoretical and experimental errors that pertain to all forces claimed to be covered by this theory. As a matter of fact, more examples of Standard Model errors can be shown.

It turns out that contrary to what is expected from every responsible scientific community, Standard Model proponents simply ignore this predicament and tell people that the Standard Model is free of any contradictions. As a matter of fact, some of them go even further and use groundless superlatives in their description of the Standard Model. One can find many statements of this kind in the literature and on the web. Here are few examples that have been published in the new millennium by institutes and mainstream physicists. As a matter of fact, even persons who do not belong to the present establishment unjustifiably adhere to the Standard Model.
  1. Fermilab is a large USA national laboratory. On November 18, 2011 it declared:

    The Standard Model: The most successful theory ever. See here.

    Fermilab repeated this groundless declaration on December 18, 2016. See here.

  2. CERN is a very large European research center. An official CERN publication declares: "everything we know up to now is described by the Standard Model" (see here ). It is quite strange to realize that this baseless declaration contradicts another CERN publication entitled "The EMC effect still puzzles after 30 years" (see here ).

  3. In the introduction to his book [9] R. Oerter praises the Standard Model and like the above mentioned Fermilab declaration, he belittles the merits of other scientific theories. Thus, he refers to the Standard Model and states: It surpasses in precision, in universality, in its range of applicability from the very small to the astronomically large, every scientific theory that has ever existed. This theory bears the unassuming name "The Standard Model of Elementary Particles".

  4. M. Strassler completely ignores the above mentiond Standard Model (SM) errors and states:

    SM is simplest and most elegant theory consistent with data
    - Completely self-contained; no missing parts, no inconsistencies
    - No confirmed conflicts with any existing experiments!
    - Simplest and most elegant → the one most likely to be right

    See here.

  5. P. Woit is certainly a physicist who is not afraid to express a critical opinion on current trends of mainstream physical research (see his book Not Even Wrong here ). Unfortunately, he himself adheres to the fundamentally erroneous opinion of Standard Model glorification. For example, in the above mention book he declares: "The standard model has been such an overwhelming success that elementary particle physics is now in the historically unparalleled situation of having no experimental phenomena to study that are in disagreement with the model. Every particle physics experiment that anyone has been able to conceive and carry out has given results in precise agreement with the standard model." (see the top of p. 91). It turns out that he has not changed his mind and on June 24, 2015 he published the following statements: "...one remarkable aspect of the Standard Model is that it is consistent all the way up to much higher energies than we have any hope of probing experimentally. One can take the theory's consistency with all current data as evidence that the Standard Model may be something rather close to a final theory" (see here ). BTW. His statements do not stand simple commonsense. Indeed, how can he be sure that the Standard Model is consistent at energies so high that no experiment has ever reached?

  6. The physical approach of L. Smolin is analogous to that of P. Woit. Indeed, at about the same time each of them has published a book that criticizes the popular idea of string theory (see here ). Unfortunately, like P. Woit he praises the Standard Model and in the introduction to his book he refers to the period that begins with the Standard Model construction. Here he defies evidence and declares: "No one has since done an experiment that was not consistent with this model..."
It is quite sad to say that no contemporary leading physicist has published a loud and clear denial of this kind of blatant distortion of scientific truth. (If you think that the previous statement is wrong then please send me an appropriate link.)


Conclusions

The Standard Model aims to formulate the physical laws of three kinds of interactions: strong, electromagnetic and weak. The foregoing discussion proves that errors exist in all sectors of this model. The information presented above may help people to make up their mind on the present status of particle physics theories and on the efforts of mainstream physicists aiming to develop these theories further. For a description of several examples of these efforts, see here ).

The best Standard Model situation is that every problematic item mentioned above has an adequate solution. However, even in this case readers should realize the importance of this work because it present new angles of physical effects whose clarification contributes to a better understanding of physical issues.

For reading a full article, click here.


References

[1] S. Weinberg, The Quantum Theory of Fields, Vol. I, (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1995).

[2] R. Pohl et al. Nature, 466, 213 (2010).

[3] J. J. Aubert; et al., Phys. Lett. 123B, 275 (1983).

[4] D. H. Perkins, Introduction to High Energy Physics (Addison-Wesley, Menlo Park CA, 1987).

[5] J. D. Bjorken and S.D. Drell, Relativistic Quantum Mechanics (McGraw-Hill, New York, 1964).

[6] G. Aad et al. (ATLAS Collaboration), Phys. Lett. B712, 289 (2012).

[7] S. Weinberg, The Quantum Theory of Fields, Vol. II, (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1995).

[8] J. A. Formaggio and G. P. Zeller, Rev. Mod. Phys., 84, 1307 (2012).

[9] R. Oerter, The Theory of Almost Everything: The Standard Model, the Unsung Triumph of Modern Physics (Plume, New York, 2006).