A possible detection of heavy-photons

Always on the lookout for strange physics, I was fascinated by a Paper by Boer and Fields at ArXiv. They analysised 7 previous experiment all which should something bizarre, A new Light Neutral Boson. There particle has a mass range of 1.5MeV to 20MeV, a lifespan of about 10^-15 to 10^-16 seconds. And strangely shows up only in experiment using photograph Emulsion. There X boson appears to be made in the decay on the neutral pion, one decay out of every thousand, and itself decays into an electron positron pair. They don't even have bad statistics ranging for 2.8 sigma to 8 sigma in the different experiments the review.

A boson is a force carrying particle, given a mass of 1 MeV, Boer's and Field's particle would mediate a short range force novel to the standard model. Looking at previous limits to a fifth force, this particle is in a range previously thought to be ruled out. This might even be the axi-photon as predicted in my axial-force theory, which escapes the those fifth force limits. The axi-photon should gain mass, and additional decay modes (usually it would decay to a neutrino and anti-neutrino) in any dense medium with heavy nuclei, such as photographic emission. However i'd only expect a mass of about 5KeV and only very rare electron pair production. Boer's and Field's particle actual pair produces some thousand times quicker than an ordinary photon. Its very notifable that there particle is only observed in old fashioned photographic emulsion, most modern experiement don't use these, and don't observe the behaviour of particles at depth in ordinary matter. Perphaps thats why this new particle has
escaped our eyes, up to now.

Quantum Mechanics and the Fifth Dimension

Its been a long time since I've thought about interpreting Quantum Mechanics. When i was young, I'd often read about how mysterious quantum mechanics is, about Schrödinger's Cat, which i'm sure you've all heard of. And about quantum entanglement, sometimes known as spooky action at distance, a name which captures the mystery but not the effect very well. Quantum mechanics is very mathematical, so it wasn't until I was studying it at my final year at university, that I could understand it well enough, to try to make the connection between the mathematics of quantum mechanics, which works very well at predicting the outcomes of experiment, and some physical mechanism, some process that describes how the universe works. And so back then, I surveyed whats known as the interpretations of quantum mechanics, and plumped for the Many Worlds Interpretion, that the universe actually has many parallel universes, in which random events happenned in all the other fashions that could have happened. Extreme though the idea sounds, I basically haven't changed my view, since I passed my PhD.

They were, and still are, basically four known Interpretions of Quantum Mechanics, or otherwise counting three Interpretions and one experimentially disproven theory that behaved more like Newtons physics, called hidden variables.

In the Copenhagen Interpretation, when an observer measures a system, the system instantly decides which of many possible results it will show the observer, and then remains the same, until somehow disturbed. This is bizarre of course, since measuring could just mean looking at, and it really does seem to matter if there is a eye looking or not. Does is an eye somehow emit a darkenning reverse light backwards in time, that causing the observed system to jump to some definite state. In the Transactional Interpretation, thats exactly what happens. So called advanced waves, travel backwards in time, from some fated, utimately fixed future, fixing a definite state for all obversation along the way. Unfortantely for gamblers and pundits, the Transactional Interpretation, doesn't say what the observed state will actally be, any better than odinary quantum mechanics.

The only other known Interpretation proved mathematically viable, is the Many Worlds Interpretation. In which, every act of storing information, such as looking and recording an experiment, causes the observer (or recorder), to split into different versions, each one recording one of the possible outcomes of the experiment. Each of the recordeds might as well be in different universes for all they can now say about the result that didn't happen in its record. The ordinary math of QM, keeps track of all these parallel outcomes, or parallel universes, and quantum computers, seem to show, that the universe, or multiverse, really does do enough calculation, to know all the other possible outcomes of any experiment. And yes that means, all those what would have happen if the germans won World War II, etc, and all does sub cases like, the german won the war and Hitler was assassinated on what ever perticular day you care to choose.

The Many Worlds Interpetation is great for science fiction authors, because even the very unlikely, and therefore much a thinner volumes of the multiverse, happen somewhere, such as Aliens landing on Earth during World War II. It uses the same mathematics as ordinary quantum mechanics. But although space (and time) are still three dimensionally (plus one for time make 4-d), keeping track of all those possiblities very rapidly needs very large dimensions, of state vector, with one row (or column) describing each possibility.

So I found what In Müllers and Fosters recent paper, fascinated me. They investigated what happens if you try to describe an universe with two distinct dimensions of time. Amazing if you start with a classical (I.E. Newton like math, and not quantum mechanics), universe with three dimensions of space and two dimensions of time, for approprate conditions of the extra dimension of time, produces the maths of Quantum Mechanics and Field Theory almost perfectly. Sci-fi authors have often used the expression sideways in time, to describe parallel universes, but this is the first time as far as I know that mathematics has actually described quantum mechanical parallel universe as sideways in time. For MWI and Sci-fi enthusasts this is great, as is the fact that if the temperature of the extra time dimensional was to cool down, the value of planks constant would vary, possibly leading to regimes in which communication between parallel universes could happen. However for physicists they may a lot more work to do. To get an average value for a quantum variable in the two-times description, you have to integrate over the entire eternity of the spare time dimension, which somehow seems to long, and not local enough, and as the Authors emit, only sometimes mathematically possible. Perphaps descriptions more localised in the spare time dimension are possible. I'd also like to see, if starting with both time dimensions on the same footing, and then switch to polar coordinates would work. Then you'd have one dimension represent the total temporal distance from the big bang singularity, the radial dimension, and one polar time, a circle running from 0 to 2pi, which might better fit the wave nature of matter.

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 about cosmic ray variation and its recent peak, 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 qualitative 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 per square meter. Once you factor in that temperate region like scotland have much less lightning than tropic regions, we can easierly begin to believe that in the Scotish Highlands where the measurement where taken, much of the fertization comes 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.