Friday, August 08, 2008

Chew's Meaning of Mass

Geoffrey F. Chew has proposed an alternative to the "Standard" view that Theory must give all scales in Physics. One can read:

"Intervals within our c-based Feynman paths are straight and positive lightlike. These paths propagate wave functions that, in representing massive particles, exhibit ‘zitterbewegung’ (zbw) --fluctuating positive-lightlike 4-velocities-- in a sense recalling that displayed by Dirac’s single-electron wave function which lacked a relativistically-invariant norm. Our massive particles, both bosons and fermions, emulate in certain aspects Dirac’s electron, although the latter's wave-function norm was boost dependent and its mass was regarded as a given scale-setting parameter. We here depict electron mass, through a ‘physical’ infinite-dimensional unitary Poincaré-group representation, as a ground-state energy whose value is dynamically determined, along with that of all particle masses, by wave-function stationarity over macroscopic intervals of ‘universe time’. We recognize an extended meaning for ‘zitterbewegung’—as parity-dictated fluctuation of any massive particle’s ‘substructure’, in both velocity and momentum."

Mass then is "dynamically determined". I understand from that phrase, that Chew views "fundamental physics", with a humble position. S Matrix Theory, expressed observations with the tools given to us by the mathematics of space time, here Gelfand-Naimark, provide the finite answers that were not possible before. Besides that, we have two different scales, cosmological and quantum, Chew just lives with both, and leaves for a future, maybe "Number Theory" based, physical theory, the task of getting those numbers. Some kind of stability condition, may in some future time tell us: Why the electron has the mass it has?

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