To our present knowledge (but there is little doubt about) both Gravity and Quantumness are fundamental and general phenomena, meaning that their laws govern anything & everything. (The third such is Relativity, and as far as we know any further is at best such a general philosophy as e.g. Causality.) But Gravity and Quantumness, as well in their old forms as in the present best ones contradict each other.

          But General Laws of Physics must not contradict each other. So of they contradict, they are incorrect. (At least one of them; but most probably both.) Very probably the way out would be Unification. Gravity & Relativity contradicted each other until 1916; then Einstein unified them, and the unified theory, General Relativity, is free of at least self-contradiction. Similarly, Relativity and Quantumness contradicted each other, but then they were unified c. 1947 as Quantum Field Theory. The unification was gradual, with such names as Dirac, Tomonaga &c., and the present status is a matter of argumentation. QFT does give infinities; but in some cases they are renormalisable, i.e. the infinities "can be removed". Also a lot of Field Theories, quite respectable in nonrelativistic limit, are unrenormalisable. Now this may mean that QFT is an erroneous Unification; but also that Relativity rules out the unrenormalisable Field Theories. This latter is the opinion of the overwhelming majority of QFT experts; and it may quite be correct. Anyways, Relativity rules out an acceleration to FTL velocities, and this "prediction" is generally accepted (with some sad feeling) by physicists.

          Quantumness and Gravity are also in contradiction in their original forms (as I told), but up to now the unification is not ready. The need of it and the reasons why it has not been made are the topics of this series (which will be being unfold or in Latin simply evolving gradually in several steps. The main reason to write these sequences is Advertisement; either of my own or of my viewpoint about. my feeling is that we are not far from the unification (see e.g. Refs. [1]-[11]), but surely we are not yet ready.

          I must state that (Unified) Quantum Gravity is/will be not the (Final?) Theory of Everything. The latter (sought by many, claimed by few and made by none so far) would be a Unification of Gravity, Quantumness & Relativity, a theory containing 3 fundamental constants, G, h & c, in a theory free of self-contradiction. I am less ambitious (more realistic?) for looking the third and last dual Unification, a Theory of G & h. You will see that it is a task enough in itself: and it would have quite enough new predictions in itself.

          At References for some articles I do not give the original German title but the English translation. This happens if I did not see the German original.

          Now let us proceed. The seventh part is from 1990 to 1994.

 

GRAVITY VERSUS/AND QUANTUMNESS, PART 7

 

EXPERIMENTS, FROM 1990 TO 1994, HUNGARY, OTL

B. Lukács

 

CRIP RMKI, Theory Dept., & President of Matter Evolution Subcommittee of HAS

 

H-1525 Bp. 114. Pf. 49, Budapest Hungary

 

lukacs@rmki.kfki.hu

 

 

ABSTRACT

            Between 1990 & 1994 we evaluated experiments initiated by the late L. Jánossy about spurious scattering. His idea was that 1) there is a well-defined and not spurious fundamental process behind the despised spurious scattering; and 2) this process behind is Objective Reduction, preventing par excellence micro behaviour of macro objects. We get that i) the scale parameter of Spurious Scattering is significantly nonzero; ii) if this parameter comes from a Unified Theory, it cannot come from anything else than from Quantum Gravity; and iii) QG predicts the “spurious scattering” parameter just in the good order of magnitude.

 

1. INTRODUCTION

            As I told at the end of Part 6, in 1990 I took the burden dropped from the shoulders of L. Jánossy in his untimely death in 1978; on a simpler language I told Ágnes Holba, his experimenter, what is the theory behind her long-forgotten measurements. Namely, she was never told before. When she started in 1971, she was almost a beginner, and maybe a full member of the Academy was above discussing Theory with a beginner.

            The majority of track measurements, unfortunately, had practically been lost in 1990-91. True, Holba found punched tapes which very probably contained the measurements; and still some paper tape readers were available. But they did not read the actual tapes. At the end an expert told that a special reader would be needed, manufactured in mid-70's by Bulgarians. There was no more such a one in CRIP.

            Then we heard that in the early 80's some data were stored on magnetic tapes. We looked for them; but to 1990 they were erased. It was impossible to repeat the measurements; the original irradiated emulsions went to total oblivion with the death of Jánossy, the measuring technique became obsolete and, for the need of brute womanpower, very expensive anyway. (The involved measuring girls of previous decades went away; I know about careers as actresses and such, one even appeared in the Parliament in the spring of 1990.) It seemed probable that spurious scattering would not be measured for decades. And then we found the minority of the measurement data on paper.

            From this moment everything was almost trivial. Holba had the old computer codes from 1975; we had raw data for 70 & 200 GeV proton tracks, and found data for 0.25 and 9 GeV in the classical book of Jánossy [1]. To wit, similar measurements belonged to pre-accelerator High Energy Physics. I will not give here the details of the measurement, because I found the file of our article [2]; it is available here now that I have translated the MS-DOS WORD 4.0 file into WORD FOR WINDOWS 7.0 and then to .html.

            However it seems appropriate to speak about Spurious Scattering and Cosmic Radiation.

 

2. WHAT IS REALLY SPURIOUS SCATTERING?

            Let us go back to the 30's, OTL! Physicists know that energetic radiation comes from above, from the outer space. Surely the source is Far Out, because it is stronger and stronger as we climb up. We on the surface are shielded by the atmosphere; the energetic particles of the mysterious Cosmic Radiation collide with the atoms of the atmosphere and gradually lose their energies; also, we see the fragments of the atmospheric atoms (mainly protons) instead of the far less primary cosmic particles. But if you could send apparatuses above the atmosphere...

            Now, airplanes remained well below 10 km in that time, so manned laboratories were out of question. But balloons without crew were possible. So photoemulsions were sent up. The nice tracks were developed and evaluated after return. There was only one important difference to radioactive particle tracks of the 30's in laboratories (and to the accelerator tracks of the 70's). In laboratories electric and magnetic fields were applied; the resulted curved tracks made possible to determine both the particles' charges and their energies. But you could not send up a whole laboratory on a balloon.

            Instead an ingenious technique was invented. Without electric & magnetic fields you would expect a straight track; but minute observations tell that the tracks zigzag. The obvious reason is Coulomb scattering on the atoms of the emulsion. Clearly the statistical properties of the zigzag (or winding) depend on 1) the data of the particle: 2) the energy of the particle; and 3) the composition of the emulsion. Now, you can irradiate an emulsion of the same composition in the laboratory with particles of various types and energies; and then by evaluating the zigzags in the emulsion returning from above the atmosphere you can look for the most similar laboratory track. Of course, for this you must know the statistical properties of the tracks during repeated Coulomb scatterings.

            Jánossy worked in similar problems since the 30's, in Oxford & Dublin. (In Part 2 I told the story about Hungarian science just WW I. Now L. Jánossy was the stepson of G. Lukács; but in the physicist community there was a persistent rumour that he was even natural son.) His favourite evaluating method was as follows.

            In average the path is straight; and will not deviate too much anyways. Then take a Cartesian coordinate system whose X axis is the average path. Divide the average path into equal intervals of length s. Then the coordinates of the points at the corresponding real path are:

              x_i = i*s, y_i << x_i                                                                                                          (1)

            Now form the i^th sagitta as

              D_s,_i = y_i+1 - 2y_i - y_i-1                                                                                       (2)

and form the average <D_s>. From the Coulomb scattering you then get

              <D²_s> = cs³                                                                                                                (3)

where c can, of course, depend on energy, composition &c.

            So evaluate the track by using several different cell lengths, and then c is obtained via a cubic fit. Then you look for the same c value in the laboratory amongst tracks of various energies.

            However it was an experience that pure cubic fits were poor. Really, there is another contribution in <D²_s>. The measurements of x_i and y_i have their individual errors. It turns out that the error of x_i is rather negligible if it is well below cell length s (because the path is almost horizontal), but the individual y's are measured with a characteristic error a, independent of energy. Then

              <D²_s> = a + cs³                                                                                                          (4)

you make a 2 parameter fit, and that is all.

            However Jánossy saw that the experimental curves deviated even from (4); there was a third "zigzagging" mechanism with an intermediate exponent. I used here quotation marks, because the first term is not real in zigzagging but a measurement error. And until 1971 even Jánossy did not have an idea what causes this intermediate term. (With one forced exception, which will soon come). However the phenomenon of spurious origin mimics multiple scattering. So: spurious scattering. He suggested for the fits

              <D²_s> = a + bs + cs³                                                                                      (5)

because the linear term is nice for statistics and similar to random walk. Anyways, experience was conform with (5). In 1965 he showed [1] that (5) follows if during development the emulsion softens up, disintegrates into very many small mosaics and then they all turn with small and completely independent angles. However the mosaics must be smaller than s, and the scenario seems rather desperate.

            To be sure, I am not really a historian of Cosmic Radiation Science. Very probably my viewpoint to 30's and 40's is artificial and does not reflects anybody's then. If it is correct, it is that of mid-60's. Still I can give literature back into 40's.

            Ref. [3] seems to be near to the fundaments of determining cosmic radiation data from the amount of Coulomb scattering; but the paper represents a tradition maybe a decade long; however the early papers were written during WWII, and the respective issues are hard to find in Central Europe. Spurious scattering is a sum of various errors, still Jánossy's observation of an intermediate cell size dependence is unknown, but the authors give an Appendix to spurious scattering, and they estimate that spurious scattering is not more than 3 % of the Coulomb scattering.

            Ref. [4] is a circumspect article from 1952 (and observe that there is a common author in [3] and [4]). It estimates the absolute value of the spurious scattering (as cca. 1 µm; is this the contribution to <D²> or exactly what?), and tells that spurious scattering is not much smaller than the Coulomb one, but it is still not a great problem, being independent of energy. The authors seem to believe that mostly it comes from unequal plate spacing.

            Then a breakthrough happens bw. 1955 & 1957. Indian sources attribute it to Biswas; I cannot ask Jánossy anymore, and the proper article was written in India [5]. There Biswas & al. state that spurious scattering

            1) is inevitably present in all emulsions;

            2) differs from stack to stack, but not too much; and

            3) increases with cell length.

Exactly Jánossy's opinion. And now we can continue with Jánossy's argumentation; if you are brave enough (or masochistic?) to compare two slightly but definitely different formalisms, 31 results are given in [6] according to the Indian convention; so far I was unable to calculate standard errors from them, but indeed the absolute values for the phenomenon are always in the same order of magnitude.

            In 1971, however, Jánossy recognised that frequent Reductions of the wave function of the particle would result in Spurious Scattering along the tracks. So the task (or duty) for Ágnes Holba was to lead a Project Spurious Scattering. Unfortunately she was not informed about the fundamental role of Spurious Scattering; she was only ordered to measure spurious scattering. Then she measured, and the quality of measurement was good; but it is not too interesting to measure something spurious, and in addition when Jánossy died, she was without any information to finish the article. Holba even tells a story that she wanted finally to summarize her results on a seminar; but some male colleague(s) cancelled the seminar; this may or may not be a part of the female legendary about male domination.

            Interestingly enough, Holba heard the anniversary lecture of Jánossy on 13^th May, 1971, where I heard the details of the theory. I mentioned her this lecture in 1990, and then she declared that, yes, she had heard too. OK, but I was here deliberately, while she was sent in from the laboratory as pure audience. Therefore she did not listen.

 

3. DOES SPURIOUS SCATTERING EXISTS?

            Our experimental article settled the above question. Yes, the spurious scattering parameter b was not 0; namely it was not 0 on 2s level at 0.25 GeV, at 3 s at 9 and 70 GeVs and beyond 20 s (!) at 200 GeV. (I think, the nice result at 200 GeV can be explained along the fact that that emulsion was from Batavia, while the 70 GeV plate was from Serpukhov, with inhomogeneous emulsion thickness, curvature & such.)

            So Spurious Scattering does exist. Good. But what is its Cause? Jánossy told two possible sources: mosaic-like disintegration of the emulsion, followed by tiny rotations in the development tank (1965) and Reductions (1971). Now, [2] showed that the 1965 explanation is improbable. There were 4 different emulsions, with 4 independent development processes. One would expect widely varying b's, but 3 of them (at 0.25, 9 & 200 GeV's) were rather similar about 10^-4 mm. (For 70 GeV it was smaller by a factor 5, but that was the low quality Serpukhov plate, and anyway, the minimum would be at an intermediate energy, which is rather strange.)

            The 1971 explanation, however, contained a single physical parameter of length dimension; I would call it R. Physical laws result in Reduction at width R of the wave function. Back to 1952 Jánossy guessed 1 mm (or larger) for the Micro/Macro boundary [7], so let us take R~1 mm; and that value is even not absurd and see [4] (and Jánossy mentioned this value on May 13, 1971; I remember). Still, this is not so simple.

            OK; at some point of the track s is 1 mm, an Nature Reduces (Cuts). So now s is 0.5 mm, and this is an initial condition. The width will be doubled in time Ms²/h (eq. (6) of Part 6), which is 10^-5 s (or longer because relativistic mass increase, but let us forget about Relativity, according to the project). In this time the proton would travel 10⁺⁵ cm!

            Now comes Ghirardi, Rimini & Weber [8] (and Grassi). In their Improved Quantum Mechanics two parameters enter. Reduction happens at time intervals t, when Nature takes a centerpoint stochastically but weighted with YY^*, and attacks Y with a Gaussian of width R around the stochastic centerpoint. The proposition is versatile enough; but I think that R > 10^-7 cm is preferable (otherwise atomic orbits would be influenced, and the H spectrum does not show any influence), and also t > 10^-4 s (not to disturb light emission). Now let us try again with R~1 mm; the problem is that we must not take t > 10^-12 (!) s, because we see zigzags in sub-mm cell lengths. Devil take the light emission!

            Indeed a spurious scattering of type (5) can come then; but for our 9 GeV proton b~10^-14 cm, much below the measured value. The reason is that with too frequent Reduction there is not much expansion of Y, and then there is not much zigzagging.

            In [2] we mentioned a philosophically nice possibility. Bishop Berkeley postulated that God observes the things just not observed by anybody else, and this is the only reason that they remain in existence [9]; Esse est percipi. This is extreme Subjective Idealism, of course, but Bishop Berkeley is a respectable reference in the Anglo-Saxon world. Now, if, according to the habits of Quantum Mechanics, we tell that perceptio is a Measurement, so a Reduction, then God has a Hamiltonian, which attacks rather frequently all objects. We saw that this must be at least with a frequency 10⁺¹² 1/s. However again: the more frequent Reduction, the less zigzagging.

            Here were we in 1991. However we looked at our measurement from another angle in 1994. The 1994 paper is [10] and is seen if you click here; but this is the proper place to start a new Chapter.

 

4. SPURIOUS SCATTERING FROM UNIFIED THEORIES

            In the previous Chapter we tried to interpret Spurious Scattering as a Quantum Mechanics effect, but in a more sophisticated QM, handling the Micro/Macro border as well. And there were serious difficulties. Now let us take the inverse approach. Let us assume that it is the consequence of a Unified Theory; we saw that there can be one fully Unified one (G+c+h), and 3 different partially Unified ones, (G+c), (h+c) and (G+h). In addition, we have measured one parameter, b.

            The question is first: how sure are we in our measurement. (I tell it ours, but this is not exactly true. I did not measure it (between 1971 & 1975) but truly I participated in the evaluation of the measurement (in 1990-1991). Unusual situation; but lots of things are unusual in Quantum Gravity.)

            Now, how many measurements exist for the spurious scattering parameter b? Of course there are our 4 values, 3 around 1*10^-8 cm, and one about 2*10^-9 cm. We looked in the literature and found 3 other values [11], slightly varying but in the general neighbourhood of (2-3)*10^-8 cm, for different emulsions but always at 6.2 GeV particle energy. I do not expect much more measurement for b; b was generally a byproduct of calibration. (Surely, there were more measurements for spurious scattering in general. Ref. [6] gives references to 31 measurements, but not for b. Maybe b can be calculated from some of them, maybe not; it would need and surely would deserve reevaluations, and maybe some time it will be done. But this reevaluation is far from an easy task.) Now, while the 7 measurements cluster about two values, they are not too far from each other. For simplicity I will use b=1*10^-8 cm; anyways henceforth everything is order of magnitude calculation. For the analyses of course see [10]; here I will be rather brief.

            A. Full Relativistic Quantum Gravity, G+c+h. No such reliable theory is at reach, but nevermind. Now RQG has its own length scale, but it is Planck scale, 10^-33 cm. I would be surprised to get there a b~10^-8 cm.

            B. General Relativity, G+c. We have the two fundamental constants, plus the length scale of Spurious Scattering, b. Anything makes b at all, what can be its mass; and what can be the "reaction time"? While the question seems strange, the answer is unique, up to order of magnitude. The answer is:

              M ~ bc²/G ~ 10⁺²⁰ g                                                                                       (6)

              T ~ b/c ~ 10^-18 s                                                                                                         (7)

Now, this mass is that of a substantial moon (although our Moon is larger). There is no such agent in the emulsion. And the time scale is rather short.

            C. Quantum Field Theory, c+h. (Say, Quantum Electrodynamics.) In a similar manner, the corresponding mass is

              M ~ h/bc ~ 10^-29 g                                                                                                      (8)

              T ~ b/c ~ 10^-18 s                                                                                                         (9)

The mass  is one-hundredth of an electron, while we have energetic proton tracks. And the time scale is strange enough.

            D. (Newtonian) Quantum Gravity, G+h. Now for it

              M ~ (h²/Gb)^1/3 ~ 10^-13 g                                                                                              (10)

              T ~ (b⁵/hG)^1/3 ~ 10^-2 s                                                                                                (11)

            No problem with the time-scale; that is good "macroscopic". But what is the mass? It is surely above proton masses.

            Yes. But there are agents in the emulsion with such masses: the AgBr grains. The virtual picture is built up from a few Ag atoms/grains (cca. 10), reduced by the ionizing radiation (the ambient proton). However the true picture develops during Development. Now one can use the idea, that the latent picture was never seen by anybody, so we do not know if it was unique or a superposition of different reduced Ag atoms in the same AgBr grain. During Development, however, the mass of Ag atoms go up to a significant part of the AgBr grain; so the superposition is broken down sometimes during Development on a sec scale, maybe in the same manner as multiple pre-tracks in the Wilson Chamber resulted in singular tracks after breaking down of Superposition [12], [13].

            I do not tell that we have proven Spurious Scattering to be a Quantum Gravity effect. But, surely, that explanation is the most promising amongst the 4 possibilities of this Chapter. A concurrent explanation would be Material Theory, something during Development; but then really strong dependence on emulsions would be expected. My opinion is that Breakdown of Track Superposition is the simplest explanation for a zigzagging proton track is the simplest explanation if the mass and time scales are natural: and they are so now, so Occam's Razor can be used...

 

5. ALTERNATIVES AND OUTLOOK

            I told earlier that now the measuring technique of Spurious Scattering is obsolete, because womanpower is too expensive. Well, not exactly obsolete. Look at a paper from 2001 [14]. Maybe, maybe it will come back from coma; and then parameter b can be measured again.

            Of course, AgBr emulsion grains are not the only ones in the mass scale 10^-13-10^-14 g. I can name two others for first guess: colloid grains and primary living organisms. But surely, there are no colloid grains in the system and nothing is living there.

 

REFERENCES

 [1]       L. Jánossy: Theory and Practice of the Evolution of Measurements. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1965

 [2]       Ágnes Holba & B. Lukács: Is the Anomalous Brownian Motion Seen in Emulsions? Acta Phys. Hung. 70, 121 (1991)

 [3]       Y. Goldschmidt-Clermont, D. T. King, H. Muirhead & D. M. Ritson: Determination of the Masses of Charged Particles Observed in the Photographic Plate. Proc. Phys. Soc. LXI, 183 (1948)

 [4]       M. F. Kaplon, B. Peters, H. L. Reynolds & D. M. Ritson: The Energy Sperctrum of Primary Cosmic Radiation. Phys. Rev. 85, 295 (1948)

 [5]       S. Biswas, N. Durga Presad & S. Mitra: Multiple Scattering Measurements on High Energz Protons with Long Cell Lengths. Proc. Indian Acad. Sci. 46A, 167 (1957)

 [6]       P. K. Aditya & R. K. Puri: Distortion and Spurious Scattering in Nuclear Emulsions. J. Sci. Instrum. 41, 529 (1964)

 [7]       L. Jánossy: The Physical Aspects of the Wave-Particle Problem. Acta Phys. Hung. 1, 423 (1952)

 [8]       G. C.Ghirardi, A. Rimini & T. Weber: Unified Dynamics for Microscopic and Macroscopic Systems. Phys. Rev. D34, 470 (1986)

 [9]       G. Berkeley: Treatise on the Principle of Human Knowledge. Dublin, 1970

[10]      Ágnes Holba & B. Lukács: Is the Spurious Scattering a Quantum Gravity Phenomenon?. in Stochastic Evolution of Quantum States in Open Systems and in Measurement Problems, eds. L. Diósi & B. Lukács. World Scientific, Singapore, 1994, p. 69

[11]      P. J. Lavakare & E. C. G. Sudarshan: The Study of Spurious Scattering in Nuclear Emulsions and the Effect of Higher Order Differences in Scattering Measurements. Nuovo Cimento Suppl. XXVI, 251 (1962)

[12]      F. Károlyházy: Gravitáció és makroszkópikus testek kvantummechanikája. Magy. Fiz. Foly. XXII, 23 (1974)

[13]      A. A. Broyles: Wave Mechanics of Particle Detectors. Phys. Rev. 48A, 1055 (1993)

[14]      F. G. Lepekhin & O. V. Levitskaya: Methods of Small Angles Measurements in Emulsion Plane. Gatchina, UDK 539.172.17, 2001