What POAMS Has Achieved

(Abridged Edition)

A reader of the full 'What POAMS Has Achieved' asks us to explain these achievements in the simplest possible, non-technical terms.

In these very simplest terms, the method of reviewing, in hindsight, the developmental history of our modern language of physics reveals that its vocabulary may now, logically, be purged of many words and phrases that have long outlived their conceptual usefulness. POAMS proposes that much of this terminology now serves only to cause confusion. The following are just some of the familiar words and phrases which prove to be conceptually redundant.

1. All customary references to 'the constant velocity of light in space'. POAMS shows that this constant, familiarly known as c, cannot be a 'velocity' in any meaningful sense. The true meaning of a 'velocity' is that it is a measure applied to the motion of some definite physical object. Also, any velocity, truly so called, necessarily conforms to the theorem of the addition and subtraction of velocities. The measure c satisfies neither of these conditions, hence it cannot sensibly be regarded as a 'velocity'. POAMS concurs with Herman Bondi (1964) that although c has the dimensions of a velocity it is, in fact, not a velocity but a dimensional constant relating metres of observational distance with seconds of time. This is similar to the way in which the constant 39.37 inches to the metre relates two different conventional measures of length, or in which the constant 0.45358237 relates metric measures in kilograms to imperial measures in pounds. The constant c, of value 299,792,458 metres to the second, just like these other constants, is the same for all observers in all states of relative motion or rest. This needs no explanation other than that these constants are products of pure convention.

2. Dispensing with the 'velocity' interpretation of c also dispenses with all talk of 'photons', conceived as quantum bits of light-energy travelling through space. If 'photons' were particles with mass, then at their alleged 'velocity c' that mass would have to be relativistically infinite. The faintest glimmer of light shone on an object would flatten it out of existence. Some argue that this absurd consequence is avoided by assuming that in its own reference-frame, the photon's mass is zero. However, in Relativity it is axiomatic that the 'velocity' of light is c in all frames of reference, barring none, so that the 'photon's' mass would have to be infinite absolutely and unconditionally. On the other hand, if the 'photon' has no mass at all, then it cannot be a 'particle' in any meaningful sense of the word. POAMS reveals, therefore, by logical/linguistic analysis, that the word 'photon', as applied to light, is just pure nonsense, as are all attempts to preserve the concept. The same goes, of course, for other associated words like 'graviton' (the postulated 'photon' of gravity).

3. The same sort of analysis proves that all language associated with 'electrodynamics' and 'electrostatics', such as 'electron', 'proton', 'electric charge', 'electric field', 'magnetic field', 'field-forces' 'electromagnetic waves' and so on are redundant. A single angular momentum formula, in which the conventional 'charge' in coulombs is converted into spin kinetic energy in joules, is shown to be a sufficient explanation of all the various phenomena in that traditional 'electronics' language-category.

4. Redundant also are all references to 'gravitation', conceived as an invisible and undetectable 'force' drawing masses together against what, according to Newton's first law, is their natural tendency to remain either at rest or moving in a straight line in a universal 'inertial' space. Newton's 'First Law' declares that all force-free motion is naturally straight and his 'Law of Universal Gravitation' explains away the fact that nowhere is this straight-line motion ever observed. In the place of those two completely unempirical 'laws', POAMS presents a single empirical law of angular momentum which precisely describes the orbital motion of free-moving bodies without having to postulate the usual opposing and equally inscrutable forces of 'centrifugal' (or 'inertial') and 'centripetal' (or 'gravitational') acceleration.

5. That same logical analysis proves that all references to the 'space-time continuum' of General Relativity are not only superfluous but are also in direct conflict with that second arm of modern physics, Quantum Theory, which is based on the empirical fact that all fundamental physical events are discrete and discontinuous. POAMS finds that there is no logical reason for this conflict between continuity and discreteness; that Relativity can be seamlessly merged with quantum discreteness, right at its root, to account for all the phenomena in both of those traditionally divided areas. There is thus no necessity to talk of 'gravitation' as an underlying metaphysical continuum in which, in the presence of massive bodies, is geometrically 'warped' and 'twisted' to produce the orbital trajectories we observe. In POAMS, these trajectories are fully accounted for by the phenomena themselves without involving any of the usual intellectual over-elaboration.

6. POAMS reveals, in the same way, that the awe currently inspired by beguiling phrases such as 'The Big Bang' and 'black holes' is logically misplaced. There are more logical explanations of the actual phenomena that are available. POAMS discloses, for instance, something which is really quite obvious but which, due to the demands placed by the publishing media on scientific gimmickry, has been completely sidelined. This is that Hubble's observation of the increasing redshift of galaxies in proportion to their distance by no means necessarily entails that those galaxies are receding from us. From a sober, commonsense point of view, any inference from that observation that the galaxies and everything else in the universe was once contained in a 'primeval atom' the size of a nut, far from being an incredibly entertaining scientific fact, is actually a reduction to absurdity - in other words, a logical 'howler'. The real unembroidered fact is simply that Hubble observed that galaxies manifest a redshift in proportion to their distance. To describe that as tantamount to observing 'galactic recession', hence an 'expansion of the universe' is a travesty of misinterpretation. POAMS reveals that it is just another of those theoretical extravagances whose spuriousness the POAMS method of retrospective logical analysis exposes.

In sum, POAMS proves, by logical analysis, that all these conceptions are now surplus to requirements, that for anyone prepared to contemplate it, the prospect of a cleaned-up, de-jargonised, de-intellectualised language of physics which describes the actual physical phenomena without any theoretical elaboration is now realisable. By removing these increasingly complicated, traditional descriptions of a world of 'theories-within-theories', a world which is different and remote from that of ordinary commonsense perception, POAMS restores physics to a simpler state capable of being understood by the general public on a democratic level, not just by the usual priestly in-group whose days, so it appears in the newer Educational curricula, are now numbered. To appeal to students of the future, our traditional science will need to abandon its conceptual conservatism, with its dogged insistence on 'scholarship' at the expense of creativity, and seriously consider a wholesale revision the language with which what in better days was conceived as 'Physics' is now encumbered. A professor, at a Physics conference angrily reacted against POAMS by saying: 'This is not Physics, as I understand it!' The answer he received was: 'No, but is it nature?'

Viv Pope, 03/01/05