Cosmics Rays and Tree Rings, A Mysterious Link

A recent article from the BBC news science pages, reported an interesting mystery. Patterns of tree ring grow, seem to match up with the solar cycle, and more precisely with the amount of cosmic radiation hitting the earths upper atmosphere. The story has spread around the web as a big mystery. Researchers in Scotland took slices of spruce trees, and measured there yearly grow, by the size of the rings in the in the tree slices. They where looking for a link between climate change and tree growth, instead they found tree growth matched the ammount of cosmic rays hitting the Earth's surface. Cosmic ray intesity varies with the Solar Cycle when there's less Solar Wind theres more more cosmic rays and vice versa,. The Study was published in the journal New Phytologist, and the effect was shown to be statistically significant. For more cosmic ray variation see the measurements here.

So we have a mystery of how could Cosmic Rays possible aid tree growth. To date no one has made this link, but I think I can provide an explaination using plain ordinary physics. When a cosmic ray hits the atmosphere, it creates a shower of ionizing radiation, each of the secondary particles (with the exception of neutrino and muons, which are to penitrating) are energetic enough to ionize oxygen and nitrogen molecules in the atmosphere, forming nitrogen oxides, these react ready with water forming nitric acid, which will precipitate in dilute form in the rain. Only lightning and cosmic rays can form nitrogen oxide, and lightning is relatively rare, so the amount of available free nitrates in the soil, depends very much on the amount cosmic rays hitting the earth.

Plants of course need nitrogen to grow, the trouble is they can't absorb nitrogen from the atmosphere (except for Legumes (pea, and beans and similar plants)). So for the majority of plants and trees, not feed by human fertilizers, the amount of fertilizing nitrate available to them, is directly proportional the cosmic ray flux.

Lets try and back this qualitivity theory with some rough back of the envelope calculations. We need to know how much cosmic ray energy hits each meter squared of soil in a year. Starting from wikipedia's cosmic ray flux graph, we can estimate for the range of energies from 1 GeV to 1000 TeV, a flux of

F =(m^2 sec GeV^-1) 10^25.5 E^-2.5 ( Where E is in GeV)

Integrating over the Energies assuming a base energy of 10 MeV, we get 2*10^22 eV despoited per meter squared per area, or about 3KJ. Lets assume that about 20% of this energy eventially goes into splitting the bonds between N2 nitrogen molecules in the air, the bond strength is 0.59 KJ per Mole, so we might get 2.5 Moles or 46 grams for nitrogen dioxide produces by cosmic rays in a year. This isn't a bad ammount for fertilizing perposes. Compare this is Nitrogen Fixation by Lightning, its estimated that the world wide production of nitrogen dioxide by lightning is 14.4 million tonnes a year, which works out as 28 grams per year. Once you factor in that temperate region like scotland have much less lightning than tropic regions, we can easiery begin to believe that the Scotish Highlands where the measurement where taken, take much of the fertization from cosmic ray nitrogen fixation.

So I've backed up my tree ring theory with some very rough calculations the true figures are probably fairly different, (especially the very rough cosmic ray flux integration), and the assumption that 20% of cosmic ray energy goes into fixing nitrogen. Still the ball park figures give the idea the OK, and I can claim to have solved the mysterious link between scottish tree rings and cosmic rays.

Moved my introduction to the Axial Force

Yahoo Geocities is closing down, so i've had to move my introductory description of the Axial Forcee, to a new address at Yola.com. The pages are a bit to long, and have two many graphical elements to fit into a blog page. So go and read it there.

Dark Energy from QCD

Dark Energy is the mysterious substance causing the universe to accelerate its expansions, its a fluid (or something) with more self attraction (negative pressure), than its own mass energy, which you investigate its gravity (via Einstein's General Relativity), causes a repulsive force, pushing all the galaxies in the universe apart. These blog started because I produced my own theory of what the dark energy fluid is composed of, which required adding a new force to physics. Could the all ready know forces of physics create dark energy. Up to now, everyone thought the answer was no, dark energy was from something extra not in the Standard Model. Then last week Federico Urban and Ariel Zhitnitsky published a paper "The QCD Nature of Dark Energy". It does something miraculous, it explains dark energy using one of the know existing forces, namely the strong nuclear aka Color force.

QCD or Quantum Chromodynamics is the modern theory of the force binding protons and neutrons in the nucleus, and of the binding of quarks inside a proton and neutron. It was developed in the late 1960s by Murry Gell-Mann almost others. Briefly QCD states that each quark come in three otherwise identical versions named colors. Anti-quark then have anti-colors, going by the usually rule that anti-particle have inverted properties to the ordinary particles. Different colors attract, as do colors and anti-colors, while identical colors repel. Overall matter must be color neutral, thus the allow states, are group, a red quark, a green quark, and a blue quark, making a baryon (protons and neutrons, as similar particles). Or a meson, made of colored quark and an anti-colored antiquark. The actually binding of the quarks is done by colored particles called gluons each having a color and an anti-color. There are 8 gluons as describe by the group theory of SU(3). QCD has worked very well in explaining the patterns of baryons and mesons that physicists have discovered. So if dark energy can be explained by QCD alone, physicists will have no need to invent anything more complex.

Urban and Zhitnitsky's theories of dark energy, works something like this. They begin by looking at the QCD vacuum, the state of empty space in QCD. Because quantum mechanics has uncertainty in energy for any measurement of energy, the quantum vacuum is never empty. Instead particle anti-particle pairs, and multiple gluons are constantly appearing and vanishing in the Quantum Vacuum. Calculation of the energy of the QCD vacuum would be done by averaging of all possible such configuration of the vacuum, and this might lead to a cosmological constant, a fixed energy density of the vacuum. Unfortunately the answer to this energy density is probably infinite, a problem physicist avoid by considering only the difference between state, subtracting alway two infinities in a process called re-normalisation. What Urban and Zhitnitsky do is considering what happen to the QCD vacuum as the universe expands. This expansion of the universe, forces the particle in the QCD vacuum slighly further apart, since the color force attract this particles, this gives rise to a inward pressure trying to hold the vacuum together. This in turn leads to cosmologically repulsion, because in general relativity a fluid with a self attract force, gives rise to a gravitional replusion. The calculation is hideously complicated, by the do come up with simple approximation. And there result is remarkably close to observed ammount of dark energy (2.3*10-4) eV^4 the value versus (3.6*10-4) eV^4 from there theory.

There may be many problems with this theory of Dark Energy, which has not yet been confirmed by other workers in the field. However it come from the existing standard model and thus has to be favored over other models by Occams Razor, and makes a clear prediction of the amount of dark energy at any time in the universe.

Hidden Photons and New Forces - Latest Limits

Standard physics claims the world it built from just 4 forces, electromagnetism, the weak and strong nuclear forces, and gravity. This has been the known state of the act
of physics since the late forties. Is it still possible there are more unknown forces at work in the universe. Certainly cosmologist have found known matter to be just 5% of the universe, and dark matter and dark energy could easy interact with unknown forces of which we could say little. Here however I want to see whether current measurement allow for any extra force acting on the sort of matter we find on earth, i.e. acting on neutrons, protons or electrons.

Since I've been making a claim of a new force in my paper and on this blog, axitronics, it behoves to me the duty, of every so often checking physics papers to see if any new experiments rule out my force. Fortunately I'm not the only one claiming new forces. String theory generically predicts many extra U(1) (electromagnetism like) interactions which could have any range or strength. A recent paper, Naturally Light Hidden Photons in LARGE Volume String Compactifications, looks at both the theory and experimental search for such forces. I'll ignore the theory, and concentrate on the experimental limits. The diagram above is taken from that paper. The horizontal (log scale) axis represents the mass of the force carrying particle (given the force a maximum range of around hbar/mc), while the vertical axis represents how much the force mix with ordinary light, given ordinary electronics a fractional charge in whichever new force. The yellow regions are places where a new force might be useful is explaining cosmological data, and the other colour regions are excluded bye existing experiments. In fact very large parameter space exists where new forces can exists.

Which regard to my axial force nothing in the above data excludes it, firstly conversion of parity absolute forbids mixing of the axi-force carrier, the axi-photon, with ordinary photons in the vacuum, and secondly I've assumed the force to be massless in the vacuum. However to the axial force, vacuum is very hard to find, there will always be some neutrinos around, and this leads to an effective mass for axi-photon depending on the neutrino density. For the earth based experiments this gives any effective mass (based on the neutrino density in the atmosphere and presumably in vacuum in earth based labs), of about 100eV), leading to a range of about 5nm. However in deep space and based on the ordinary estimates of neutrino density, the effective mass will be about 0.3 neV (nano eletron volts), and a range of about 7mm. Thus the axial force is a natural chameleon changing with its environment, just like chameleon theories of dark energy suggest.

The most recent experiment looking for a dark energy chameleon particle, is the GammeV experiment. Which looked for light converting to other small mass particles, inside a very strong magnet. Its excluded particles up to 2meV. A much smaller mass than our prediction, so at present, it seems the axial force, dark energy theory, is still very viable.

Perphaps the best test of a fifth force, and certainly one like the axial force, is in neutron interactions. A recent measurement of the ultra cold neutrons which limits any force with range greater than about 1 micrometer, and strength stronger 10^12-10^15 times gravity or 10^24 times weaker than electromagnetism. This is a very stringent limit, but once again the chameleon type, screening of the axial force by neutrinos on the earth seems to hide the axial force very effectively. It seems to me that the axial force is still allowable to present experimental tests. This is not so true of many other forces, only the screening by the neutrino background, allows the force to hide so effectively.

Vixra

One of my many shames is that my paper was never excepted at arXiv the worlds main physics pre-print archives at Los Alamos. ArXiv requires that some already excepted author, endorses your paper before it can be excepted. I'm not a member of any university, and its been quite a few year since I have been. I tried but failed to get an endorsement from the net. The only place that did take my paper, was the Independent Research Forum at the Physics Forums. But new independent pre-print archive has openned up: Vixra, deliberately named as Arxiv backwards, Vixra doesn't have any policy on who can post a paper there.

I'm quite proud that my paper is actually first on the list of all particle physics papers they, which should be some claim to fame. The standard of articles don't look as good as Arxiv, you might well assume that many of the papers there are outside the mainstream. Vixra has only been open for a little while, so its too early to conclude on the standard of paper there. But lets hope it bring new life the amateur and semiprofessional science.

Axial Force as Orgone Energy

This no doubt will do my credibility much more harm than good, however for completeness, for interest sake, and for raw publicity seeking, it has to be published. I have for a while noticed the
similarity between, my theory of the Axial force between neutrinos, and Wilheim Reich's experimental properties of his Orgone energy. So much so that it looks to me, like the Axial Force could be a theoretically well motivated cause and theory for Orgone energy. Now most scientist in no way believe in Orgone energy, and indeed it has such crackpot reputation, that no respectable research goes on into it. I'm not here to claim Orgone energy is real, I'll leave that in a probably not state, until some solid evidence comes along. What I will do is show that the properties claimed for Orgone energy strongly match those I predict for neutrino charges under the Axial Force. If you happen to need a theory to explain Orgone energy, then it will probably end up looking a lot like the Axial Force.

This is gone to be a reasonable long post, since for most readers, i'm going have to explain both what Orgone energy is. What and Why the Axial Force is. And Finally show how the well defined properties of the Axial Force, look a lot like many of the features of the Orgone Energy. Many respectable physicists might ask why generate a theory for something widely believed not to exist. The answer of course is that I didn't. I started out looking for a theory to explain why neutrinos seem only to spin in one direction, tried a simple addition to the standard model of results, ending up with a new force, that might explain dark energy. Now If there is an extra force in physics maybe its been observed already, so started looking around claims unverified extra force, and found that its a lot like one of most controversial but enduring claimed forces outside the scientific mainstream. Enough apologies, follows now are description of each.

Orgone Energy

Orgone energy was discovered in the 1930s by the psychoanalyst and ex-research partner of Sigmund Freud, Wilhelm Reich. Wilhelm sharing Freud's obsession with sexuality, named it after the Orgasm, (surely a great bit of marketing). Despite the name, and some of Reich's more bizarre claims for the substance, no experiments with boinking people or animal where performed. Instead Wilhelm seemed to have discovered a fluid or energy which could be trapped in boxes, provided they lined with alternate layers of metal and wood, which Reich called Orgone Accumulators. The energy seemed to come in two charges, Orgone, said to promote life, and Dore which was toxic to life. The energy could be made to flow between accumulators, aid the condensation of water (Reich built a cloud making machine), and apparently people who sat in the Orgone box, came out refreshed, temperature differences between the Orgone box and a Control box (all wood), where measured. Orgone energy would cause either physical attraction or repulsion, between a metal and wood objects, (pendulum experiments), and Orgone would be absorbed by water. Reich often seem get confused between what ordinary electrostatic could do, and what might need a new force to explain, did many experiments poorly, and then produced over dramatic claims of Orgone energy. Never the less, Orgone energy a many believers today's, and a small industry, produces items like Orgone accumulators and Orgone crystals, sometime even according to Reich theory.

Axial Force and Orgone

An axial force force in particle physics is any force, that has opposite charges depending weather the particle is left and right spinning. They have been a few theories of it, it is seems to be required if the force of nature are ever to regain symmetry between left and right handed spinning particles. In my simple formulation of the force, a neutrino gets one unit of axial charge, a antineutrino gets minus one unit of axial charge. Forced to add some extra quark types, to maintain the balance books, all neutrons get minus half a unit of charge, and all protons get plus half a unit of charge. Organic matter and water, is proton rich, has more protons than neutrons (mainly due to hydrogen atoms), while most metals are neutron rich, (containing more heavy elements). So to cancel out the charges, Organic matter contains a anti-neutrino fluid, and Metals a neutrino fluid. Both the fluids are nearly massless, and flow rapidly cancelling out any excesses of Axial charge. Now if you join wood and metal, (organic and metallic material), you get a diode type junction, between the two materials there be a depletion zone, allow the axial charge to flow only in one direction. This explain the Orgone Accumulator, in the middle of layers of organic and metallic materials, axial charge can build up. In most other situations it would quickly flow away. The neutrino fluid can also transmit heat, as well as charge, so an orgone accumulator would trap some ambient heat energy, leading to the temperature results in Reichs experiments.

So now I've explained Orgone, it still remains to demonstrated clearly the existence of either the axial force or Orgone. And I doubt any of my readers are yet convinced, but I hope you are at least a little intrigued.

Research Idea

Just what does the axial symmetry mean for supersymmetry. Might it somehow change the
one to one correspondence of bosons and fermions in Supersymmetry? Supersymmetry has separate left and right handed sneutrinos. Except of course sneutrinos are scalars, and the left and right handness doesn't belong the sneutrino but only the there fermion partners the neutrino. Having both left and right handed Sneutrinos in a theory seems somewhat wrong to me, so i want to look into this more deeply.