{"id":43210,"date":"2015-04-17T08:38:00","date_gmt":"2015-04-17T14:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=43210"},"modified":"2015-04-17T01:35:29","modified_gmt":"2015-04-17T08:35:29","slug":"mis-using-louis-de-broglies-wave-particle-duality-hypothesis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/04\/17\/mis-using-louis-de-broglies-wave-particle-duality-hypothesis\/","title":{"rendered":"Mis-using\u00a0 Louis de Broglie’s wave-particle duality\u00a0 hypothesis."},"content":{"rendered":"

Bodhi Dhanapala, Quebec, Canada.<\/span><\/h2>\n

[This is an English version of a Sinhala article submitted to Vidusara in reply to Dr. Nalin de Silva’s Sinhala article in the Lankaweb, 2nd April 2015 entitled de Broolie’s prathibhaava\u201d \u0daf \u0db6\u0dd8\u0dbd\u0dd2\u0d9c\u0dda \u0db4\u0dca\u200d\u0dbb\u0dad\u0dd2\u0db7\u0dcf\u0dc0]

As a science teacher, I\u00a0 recently confronted\u00a0 the many science\u201d articles written in the Vidusara by Dr. Nalin de Silva with great consternation and worry. Furthermore, all of Dr. Silva’s articles begin with an introduction\u201d of\u00a0 Prof. Amaratunga and other contributors written with a\u00a0 sarcastic, highly derogatory tone unheard of in academic discussions since ancient times, as seen in the discourses of the Buddha that should surely be the role model for us. Other writers are people who are claimed by Dr. Silva to report little tit bits picked up from other’s or books without understanding them ( \u0d85\u0dc0\u0db6\u0ddd\u0db0\u0dba\u0d9a\u0dd2\u0db1\u0dca \u0dad\u0ddc\u0dbb\u0dc0 \u0d9a\u0dd2\u0dc3\u0dd2\u0dc0\u0d9a\u0dd4\u0d9c\u0dd9\u0db1\u0dca \u0dc4\u0ddd \u0db4\u0ddc\u0dad\u0db4\u0dad\u0dd2\u0db1\u0dca \u0dc4\u0ddd \u0d85\u0dc4\u0dd4\u0dbd\u0dcf\u0d9c\u0dad\u0dca \u0d85\u0daf\u0dc4\u0dc3\u0d9a\u0dca \u0d85\u0db1\u0dd9\u0d9a\u0dca \u0d85\u0dba\u0da7 \u0db4\u0dd0\u0dc0\u0dc3\u0dd3\u0db8 \u0dba\u201d). But Dr. Silva may\u00a0 be some one in a glass house throwing stones at others.

As a village youngster who learnt science in Sinhala, I felt it was my duty to present the correct picture for the benefit of the Sinhala reader.\u00a0\u00a0 However, Dr. Nalin de Silva presents this as Mr. Dhanapala merely wanted to present my (i.e., Dr. Silva’s) so-called ignorance. One of the examples he selected was\u00a0 my designation of a mass for a photon. I have said from the beginning that the rest mass of a photon is zero. However, I stated that I designate a mass to the photon in moving inertial frames\u201d. (Here I have given a free translation of Dr. Silva’s Sinhalese text: “\u0db6\u0ddd\u0db0\u0dd2 \u0db0\u0db1\u0db4\u0dcf\u0dbd \u0db8\u0dc4\u0dad\u0dcf\u0da7 \u0d85\u0dc0\u0db7\u0dca\u200d\u0dba \u0dc0\u0dd6\u0dba\u0dda \u0db8\u0d9c\u0dda \u0d8a\u0db1\u0dd2\u0dba\u0dcf \u0db1\u0ddc\u0daf\u0dd0\u0db1\u0dd4\u0dc0\u0dad\u0dca\u0d9a\u0db8 \u0db4\u0dca\u200d\u0dbb\u0daf\u0dbb\u0dca\u0dc1\u0db1\u0dba \u0d9a\u0dd2\u0dbb\u0dd3\u0db8 \u0dba. \u0d94\u0dc4\u0dd4 \u0d92 \u0dc3\u0db3\u0dc4\u0dcf \u0dba\u0ddc\u0daf\u0dcf\u0d9c\u0dad\u0dca \u0d91\u0d9a\u0dca \u0d8b\u0daf\u0dcf\u0dc4\u0dbb\u0dab\u0dba\u0d9a\u0dca \u0dc0\u0dd6\u0dba\u0dda \u0db8\u0dcf \u0dc6\u0ddd\u0da7\u0ddd\u0db1\u0dba\u0d9a\u0da7 \u0dc3\u0dca\u0d9a\u0db1\u0dca\u0db0\u0dba\u0d9a\u0dca \u0db4\u0dd0\u0dab\u0dc0\u0dd3\u0db8 \u0dba. \u0db8\u0dcf \u0db8\u0dd4\u0dbd \u0dc3\u0dd2\u0da7 \u0db8 \u0d9a\u0dd2\u0dba\u0dcf \u0dc3\u0dd2\u0da7\u0dd2\u0dba\u0dda \u0dc6\u0ddd\u0da7\u0ddd\u0db1\u0dba\u0d9a \u0db1\u0dd2\u0dc1\u0dca\u0da0\u0dbd\u0dad\u0dcf \u0dc3\u0dca\u0d9a\u0db1\u0dca\u0db0\u0dba \u0dc1\u0dd6\u0db1\u0dca\u200d\u0dba \u0db6\u0dc0 \u0dba. \u0d91\u0dc4\u0dd9\u0dad\u0dca \u0dc0\u0dd9\u0db1\u0dad\u0dca \u0d85\u0dc0\u0dc3\u0dca\u0dae\u0dd2\u0dad\u0dd2 \u0dc3\u0db8\u0dd4\u0daf\u0dca\u0daf\u0dda\u0dc1 \u0dbb\u0dcf\u0db8\u0dd4\u0dc0\u0d9a \u0dc6\u0ddd\u0da7\u0ddd\u0db1\u0dba\u0d9a\u0da7 \u0dc3\u0dca\u0d9a\u0db1\u0dca\u0db0\u0dba\u0d9a\u0dca \u0db1\u0dd2\u0dba\u0db8 \u0d9a\u0dbb\u0db1 \u0db6\u0dc0 \u0daf \u0db8\u0db8 \u0db4\u0dd0\u0dc0\u0dc3\u0dd4\u0dc0\u0dd9\u0db8\u0dd2.\u201d)

As a prelude, let us clear up some trivial claims that have arisen out of this correspondence. Some correspondents (e.g., Ranjth Soyza) tried to claim that all that Dr. Nalin de Silva is saying when he claims that science, mathematics and all abstract thinking are\u00a0 Patta-Pal-Boru\u201d, is that our knowledge is culture dependent\u201d. This may be true of the social sciences. But if we take the hard sciences and those directly derived from them (physics, chemistry, biochemistry, geology, thermodynamics, engineering etc.,) then can any one give some examples of culture-relative\u201d scientific truths?\u00a0 When geophysics says that the earth is a spheroid, is that only true in some cultures? Let the culture relativists give us some specific examples.

Returning to Dr. Silva’s heavy photon, let us note that modern textbooks pointedly refuse to use the words rest mass\u201d of a photon, since a photon is never at rest. The name invariant mass\u201d is used as it will not mislead any reader.

\u00a0I live in a Canadian province which uses French as its majority language, and I hear its pronunciation from native french-speaking\u00a0 professors. I need to say\u00a0 that the Sinhlala rendering de Brooli\u201d used by Dr. Silva for the name de Broglie is incorrect, while the form de Broy\u201d is closer to the truth. Of course, a name may be sinhalized, just as Gregory\u201d becomes Girigoris\u201d and Erdapfel\u201d becomes arthaapal\u201d. But some warning should be given to the reader. The correct pronunciation may be heard at<\/p>\n

How to Pronounce Broglie<\/a><\/div>\n
\u00a0
After introducing the highly misleading name\u00a0 rest mass\u201d for the photon, Dr. Silva further says: What is de Brooli’s hypothesis? Planck, Einstein and others had said since 1900 to 1905 that waves have particle properties. The other side of this should be that particles are declared to have wave properties. But there is no sign that anybody even thought of it till 1927. This idea occurred to de Brooli.\u201d (this is a free translation of “\u0daf \u0db6\u0dd8\u0dbd\u0dd2\u0d9c\u0dda \u0dc4\u0dd2\u0dad\u0dc5\u0dd4\u0dc0 \u0d9a\u0dd4\u0db8\u0d9a\u0dca \u0daf? \u0dad\u0dbb\u0d82\u0d9c\u0dc0\u0dbd\u0da7 \u0d85\u0d82\u0dc1\u0dd4 \u0d9c\u0dd4\u0dab \u0d87\u0dad\u0dd2 \u0db6\u0dc0 \u0db4\u0dca\u0dbd\u0dd1\u0db1\u0dca\u0d9a\u0dca, \u0d85\u0dba\u0dd2\u0db1\u0dca\u0dc3\u0dca\u0da7\u0dba\u0dd2\u0db1\u0dca \u0d86\u0daf\u0dd3\u0dc4\u0dd4 1900 \u0daf\u0dd3 1905 \u0daf\u0dd3 \u0dc0\u0d9a\u0dc0\u0dcf\u0db1\u0dd4\u0dc0\u0dbd\u00a0 \u0d9a\u0dd2\u0dba\u0dcf \u0dad\u0dd2\u0db6\u0dd4\u0dab \u0dc4. \u0db8\u0dd9\u0dc4\u0dd2 \u0d85\u0db1\u0dd9\u0d9a\u0dca \u0db4\u0dd0\u0dad\u0dca\u0dad \u0dc0\u0dd2\u0dba \u0dba\u0dd4\u0dad\u0dd4\u0dc0 \u0dad\u0dd2\u0db6\u0dd4\u0dab\u0dda \u0d85\u0d82\u0dc1\u0dd4\u0dc0\u0dbd\u0da7 \u0dad\u0dbb\u0d82\u0d9c \u0d9c\u0dd4\u0dab \u0d87\u0dad\u0dd2 \u0db6\u0dc0 \u0db4\u0dca\u200d\u0dbb\u0d9a\u0dcf\u0dc1 \u0d9a\u0dd2\u0dbb\u0dd3\u0db8 \u0dba. \u0d91\u0dc4\u0dd9\u0dad\u0dca 1927 \u0db4\u0db8\u0dab \u0dc0\u0db1 \u0dad\u0dd4\u0dbb\u0dd4 \u0d9a\u0dd2\u0dc3\u0dd2\u0dc0\u0d9a\u0dd4 \u0d92 \u0d9c\u0dd0\u0db1 \u0dc4\u0dd2\u0dad\u0dcf \u0dad\u0dd2\u0db6\u0dd6 \u0db6\u0dc0\u0d9a\u0dca \u0dc3\u0db3\u0dc4\u0db1\u0dca \u0db1\u0ddc \u0dc0\u0dda. \u0daf \u0db6\u0dd8\u0dbd\u0dd2\u0da7 \u0d92 \u0d85\u0daf\u0dc4\u0dc3 \u0d87\u0dad\u0dd2 \u0dc0\u0dd2\u0dba\u201d).

Before we rectify Dr. Silva’s physics errors, we need to rectify Dr. Silva’s errors even in matters like\u00a0 vital historical dates and times defining the birth of quantum mechanics. De Broglie had already submitted his thesis by 1924. Walthar Bothe and Hans Geiger had shown experimentally, by 1925 the conservation of\u00a0 energy and mass.\u00a0 Schrodinger had established his famous wave equation in 1925. By 1926 Max Born had interpreted the square of the wavefunction to be the probability for the observation of quantum events. But Dr. Silva fails vital history and\u00a0 misreports\u00a0 de Broglie’s seminal contribution, putting it off\u00a0 to 1927, while he was so ready to pick on other contributors to Vidusra for their alleged inaccuracies.

While starting with a title devoted to a scientific topic, Dr. Silve uses the ruse of bringing in discussions of Kalama Sutta or some other discourse of the Buddha as a debating ploy. In our April 1st article\u00a0 we argued (inspired by an article by Prof. Dharmawardana) that Dr. Silva has actually either misrepresented Buddhism or misunderstood it, falling into some type of Dhithupadhana\u201d misconception, where he claimed that all ordinary people (i.e., pruthagjana, viz.,\u00a0 those who have not acquired the special wisdom possessed by Buddhist seers) know only falsehoods (musa\u201d), and hence can only utter falsehoods. Given that Dr. Silva\u00a0 himself is a pruthagjana\u201d, using a self-referential statement that negates itself shows the writer’s incapacity\u00a0 of being logical. Hence we do not tire the reader further with Dr. Silva’s\u00a0\u00a0 discussions that lead to his rejection of all abstract analyses as well as mathematics as Patta-Pal-Boru\u201d. Although he dare not say so, these\u00a0 presumably include the pattichcha samuthpada\u201d and other abstract formulations abundant in Buddhist psychology.

Dr. Silva accepts that the invariant mass of the photon is zero. However, in general he assigns by fiat a non-zero mass m=hv\/c**2 for the photon, where v is the frequency of the light, with velocity c, and h is a constant named after Planck. His reasoning only needs the use (or misuse) of the two equations E=mc**2 and\u00a0 E=hv\u00a0 to set m=hv\/c**2.\u00a0 So why does Dr. Silva need to invoke de Broglie? Is it because some people put their hand\u00a0 round their own head to scratch their own nose? Or was it another debating diversion (like the discussions of Buddhism) to get more wiggle room for himself? Even Einstein is said to have stated that E=mc**2 is basically an energy-matter conservation law rather than a law for setting the masses of quantum particles. If Einstein’s equation sets the masses of quantum excitations, why does one invoke\u00a0 a Higgs field for that purpose? As Dr. Silva states at the start of many of his articles, some authors\u00a0 write without a clear understanding of what they write.

If the invariant mass m0=0, then according to E=mc**2, the particle’s energy should be zero, which is not so in general. The maximum speed (of any particle) is c in any frame, and the four quantities (momentum, i.e., px, py, pz) and E should transform as a four-component vector. Taking m=0 is the one choice for the photon which is consistent with that and the deeper\u00a0 symmetry considerations (like gauge symmetry), CPT invariance etc.,\u00a0 that I discussed in my previous article. Dr. Silva has ignored all these and attempted to impose his own wishful think in choosing a\u00a0 finite mass\u201d for the photon. In General Relativity the mass is a function of 10 components of a tensor, and the simple setting\u00a0 m=hv\/c**2\u00a0 as the mass of a photon is Dr. Silva’s dangerous simplification of nature.

Instead of discussing the gauge-symmetry and other implications of his proposal, Dr. Silva has re-worked a standard elementary\u00a0 exercise found in the well-known text book by Taylor and Wheeler. It\u00a0 will work for any finite mass m, and does not establish that the photon can, or cannot have a mass. Prof. Tennakoon (an ex-Director of the Institute of Fundamental Studies, Kandy) remarked in an e-mail rejoinder that all this boils down to the following statement. ‘Photon rest mass is zero, its energy E measured in an inertial frame can be written as E=\u00a0 hv\/c**2\u00a0 in mass units’. Note that E and therefore v are not Lorentz Invariants, but the rest mass is an invariant\u201d.

So, Dr. Nalin the Silva has\u00a0 given a I have coconuts in the sack\u201d type of answer when asked where are you going\u201d?

It may be true that you can buy one ton of bricks using a 1000 rupee note. But that does not mean that the rupee note has a weight of one ton. Just because the energy of a photon has a mass equivalent of hv\/c**2 does not imply that the photon is a massive particle.\u00a0 Stating that the photon has a mass sounds as absurd to a physicist as the claim that the earth is flat.

Dr. Silva stated that I took the case of the photon mass\u201d to demonstrate his physics errors. I like to remind him that he took Prof. Amaratunga to task for\u00a0 making a distinction between mass and energy for quantum particles, displaying E=mc**2 as his trump card,\u00a0 whereas such a distinction is entirely\u00a0 correct. So perhaps Dr. Silva has forgotten the many\u00a0 physics errors that I brought to light. But I am sure the discerning reader has not forgotten them.

If Dr. Silva was to propose a new way of doing quantum electrodynamics using a finite photon mass, with the mass equivalent of the energy manifesting as a particle mass,\u00a0 then such new theories should not be announced in the Vidusara. A proper place would a peer-reviewed research journal. If that does not work, he can follow his colleague Dr. Jayasumana and publish his new hypothesis in the same journal as Jayasumana et al., after paying 1500 Swiss francs or what ever the going rate is, with no questions asked by any bothersome referees.

Bodhi Dhanapala, Quebec, Canada.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bodhi Dhanapala, Quebec, Canada. [This is an English version of a Sinhala article submitted to Vidusara in reply to Dr. Nalin de Silva’s Sinhala article in the Lankaweb, 2nd April 2015 entitled de Broolie’s prathibhaava\u201d \u0daf \u0db6\u0dd8\u0dbd\u0dd2\u0d9c\u0dda \u0db4\u0dca\u200d\u0dbb\u0dad\u0dd2\u0db7\u0dcf\u0dc0]As a science teacher, I\u00a0 recently confronted\u00a0 the many science\u201d articles written in the Vidusara by Dr. Nalin […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43210\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}