Mechanism For Inertia/mass

[AnssiH]

This is a topic that I've briefly mentioned in some other thread years ago in this forum. Now it's been bouncing at the back of my head lately, and thought it deserves a thread of its own.

 

Just a context for the uninitiated; While we are all familiar with the phenomenon of inertia in everyday life, we still struggle to explain it in physics. It is usually simply viewed as "intrinsic property of matter", with no further explanation as to why or how the phenomenon occurs.

 

It seems to me that all attempts to describe an actual mechanism for inertia revolve around Mach's Principle one way or another. Meaning, people tend focus on finding some kind of hypothetical interaction between a local body and the rest of the universe (Which also famously acted as an inspiration to General Relativity).

 

But I have never seen any hypothesis or investigation towards a much simpler possibility; inertia due to the finite-speed binding interaction between the microscopic elements of a massive body. In fact, the more I think about this, the more I struggle to explain how it would be possible for inertial effect to not happen.

 

Here's a hand-wavy version about the basic principle;

 

• Imagine a universe consisting exclusive of massless (inertialess) elements (no intrinsic inertia as "property of matter").
• Imagine that those elements can bind together to form composite objects.
• Imagine that information can propagate only at finite speeds (no action at a distance).

If we now imagine "pushing" a single inertialess particle, it would move out of the way with no resistance whatsoever (no inrinsic inertia).

 

But let's imagine a situation with two elementary particles, A and B, bound together. Being bound together implies there's a mechanism that makes those particles settle into specific spatial distance from one another. It does not matter what this mechanism is. What matters is that information between the particles propagates at finite speed.

 

When particle A is "pushed" towards B, there must be some small delay before information about the A being pushed reaches particle B. During this information delay, particle A must be pushing closer to B than its natural stable distance. It gets "uncomfortably close" if you will. Thus, A must feel this situation as resistance to acceleration (and consequently pass the effect back to the "pusher" by the same mechanism). This effect is completely identical to "inertia", even though the elements making up the composite object did not have "mass" as intrinsic property to themselves. Since the elements are bound together by some mechanism, "pulling" would yield identical effect (the particles will get too far apart, and will try to get closer together).

 

Follow this idea up to more particles, and you get a Newtonian billiard ball model, where inertia is fully local effect to the macroscopic objects. The effect appears when object starts to accelerate, and disappears when acceleration ceases. Nothing to do with interaction between distant stars and local bodies, everything to do with binding interactions that make up massive objects.

 

The apparent strength of "inertia" effect would be directly proportional to the number of (massless) elements bound together, the strength of the applied force (or the magnitude of acceleration - depends on perspective), the interaction propagation speeds, and the strength characteristics of the binding mechanism(s). Basically it would be exactly what we call "inertia" as these are circularly defined properties.

 

The single most important point I'm making is, when objects are bound together from smaller microscopic elements, it seems impossible to escape this type of "resistance to acceleration" effect. To escape this conclusion, you'd have to propose "action at a distance" between the microscopic elements of the body!

 

If you view macroscopic objects as "elementary particles settle into a stable configuration", then you can view inertia as the simple fact that the same configuration becomes unstable during any acceleration. It must become unstable because there's no "action at a distance within the object". It will return to a stable configuration as soon as acceleration ceases.

And yet another way to view the same thing is that all of the microscopic elements can only know where their neighbors were in the past (just like we look at stars only in the past but in much smaller scale). Thus, applying continuous force on any part of the macroscopic object must always push the bindings into a state where there's going to be a push back to the applied force.

 

Of course the most obvious implication of this is that it would not be correct to call massive "elementary particles" as truly "elementary" - their inertial effect would be a result of some binding interaction, or possibly in some cases a result of how they interact with a massive measurement device. Of course we know from particle accelerators that we can indeed break massive particles into smaller parts, that are not all stable by themselves (and lose total mass in the process).

 

 

Here's some more random conjecture related to the above. Take it for what it's worth (I think it's worth thinking about);

 

If mass arises due to binding interactions, instead of being intrinsic property, it would yield a circumstance where objects bound by stronger mechanisms would tend to "have more mass" when measured. This appears to be true in The Standard Model of particle physics. For example, neutrinos were long thought to have no mass. They interact very weakly with other objects. A weak interaction would yield very weak inertial effects -> very small apparent mass. Maybe this is not just a co-incident. (Remember to take a close look at how particle mass is actually measured)

 

Also in this view it is quite simple to intuitively understand Mass <-> Energy relationship. When an atom nucleus decays, it loses more "mass" than the sum of the parts that detached. It must, because it also lost some binding interaction(s) that were partially responsible for the inertial effects -> effective measured mass (Looking at this via conservation of energy of course yields the same result so long that you have properly defined the energy of the binding interactions themselves).

 

Since F = ma -> a = F/m, it implies that any force imparted on an unbound massless particle would experience instant acceleration to C. This sounds like a potential starting point for a model of photon - electron interactions... ...maybe.

 

 

Well, thoughts? Are you guys aware of any theories revolving around the above concept? Is it possible something this simple has been completely overlooked for this long? Wouldn't be the first time I guess.

 

What am I missing?

-Anssi

Edited June 30, 2020 by AnssiH

[devin553344]

This is very large in text without any math to support it so I can't say it's an alternate theory. I read the first few paragraphs then scanned for any math support. I find this somewhat typical bizarrely.

Edited July 1, 2020 by devin553344

[AnssiH]

Hi Devin, nice to see at least some reaction to this.

I know Alternate Theory is not exactly proper category for this but I could not think of better suited area. To me, the real reason why this is not a proper location is that there does not exist a commonly accepted theory for inertia, it's commonly viewed as a first-order law of nature (no mechanism behind it). All the theories about it are "alternate".

 

Also what I'm presenting is not a theory - at most you might call it a hypothesis. But what I'm really after is a discussion regarding; how would it be even possible to avoid inertia-like effect when you account for the fact that objects bind together with finite speed mechanism?

 

If you disagree, I'd be interested to hear how to avoid it.

 

A secondary topic of interest is to find out if there exists models of inertia that take the finite speed of binding interactions into account. It's a bit strange thing to overlook.

 

 

Anyway, let me know if there's a better area for this topic.

Also let me know what exactly about it you were hoping to see described mathematically.

 

Thanks,

-Anssi

[devin553344]

Hi Devin, nice to see at least some reaction to this.

 

I know Alternate Theory is not exactly proper category for this but I could not think of better suited area. To me, the real reason why this is not a proper location is that there does not exist a commonly accepted theory for inertia, it's commonly viewed as a first-order law of nature (no mechanism behind it). All the theories about it are "alternate".

 

Also what I'm presenting is not a theory - at most you might call it a hypothesis. But what I'm really after is a discussion regarding; how would it be even possible to avoid inertia-like effect when you account for the fact that objects bind together with finite speed mechanism?

 

If you disagree, I'd be interested to hear how to avoid it.

 

A secondary topic of interest is to find out if there exists models of inertia that take the finite speed of binding interactions into account. It's a bit strange thing to overlook.

 

 

Anyway, let me know if there's a better area for this topic.

Also let me know what exactly about it you were hoping to see described mathematically.

 

Thanks,

-Anssi

Sure, I solved momentum using electromagnetic forces in my theory. Basically all particles of mass come down to electromagnetic energies, therefore any attempt to accelerate that mass causes an inductive reactance-like effect(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_reactance#Inductive_reactance). At least that is my current understanding, see: http://www.scienceforums.com/topic/36816-unification-of-the-forces/

 

In that theory I've described Planck's constant with logarithmic strain energy applied to electromagnetic energies, and also the electron and subsequently protons and neutrons. In that theory I also explained that the energy is contained within the wavelength and only radiates as a strong force of attraction or repulsion, so that any electromagnetic forces experienced by the particles due to velocity would be only be felt in close proximity. In this way, momentum is a magnetic field but does not radiate as a field to infinite distance.

 

The particles in my theory have a magnetic field based on a charge that is moving at almost perfectly the speed of light, due to the log strain, which might produce a magnetic moment and inductive reactance.

 

Let me know what you think, I think it's similar to your ideas of force resisting acceleration and resisting stopping, but uses already established principles.

Edited July 2, 2020 by devin553344

[AnssiH]

Hmm, interesting thought.

 

I'm not sure I'm picking up the connection from your idea to information delays though.. Or is inductive reactance usually viewed as arising from information delay in the interaction between the magnetic field generated by the current, and the magnetic field feeding back to the charged particles? I can see how that could occur in principle but I'm really just guessing here. I can't tell if that's a valid view.

 

I should clarify though that your theory and what I'm alluding to are different category of topics - I'm carefully trying to avoid making any arguments about what a specific binding interaction mechanism might be. Because it will always be possible to model that interaction in multiple valid ways, and what I'm discussing is not dependent on what that specific mechanism might be. The point I'm focusing is; any model that contains the principle of "no action at a distance" (i.e. almost all of them) should carefully take into account information delays.

And in particular it seems to me that modern physics is ignoring binding interaction information delays in the context of inertia. And it seems to me that taking the information delays into account would always yield resistance to acceleration in any binding interaction model.

I guess you could call that a theorem 

[devin553344]

Hmm, interesting thought.

 

I'm not sure I'm picking up the connection from your idea to information delays though.. Or is inductive reactance usually viewed as arising from information delay in the interaction between the magnetic field generated by the current, and the magnetic field feeding back to the charged particles? I can see how that could occur in principle but I'm really just guessing here. I can't tell if that's a valid view.

 

I should clarify though that your theory and what I'm alluding to are different category of topics - I'm carefully trying to avoid making any arguments about what a specific binding interaction mechanism might be. Because it will always be possible to model that interaction in multiple valid ways, and what I'm discussing is not dependent on what that specific mechanism might be. The point I'm focusing is; any model that contains the principle of "no action at a distance" (i.e. almost all of them) should carefully take into account information delays.

 

And in particular it seems to me that modern physics is ignoring binding interaction information delays in the context of inertia. And it seems to me that taking the information delays into account would always yield resistance to acceleration in any binding interaction model.

 

I guess you could call that a theorem 

Information delays "sounds" like a great idea if you can prove it mathematically.

 

I think inductive reactance can have an information delay analogy. Since it's forces interacting with each other. If it resists acceleration of a charge due to interaction of forces. That could give you a starting point for physical calculations. Or not.

[AnssiH]

Yeah perhaps, have to think about this a bit. 

 

Right now I feel like any calculations within the classical limit are futile, because you can only approximate the effect on macroscopic objects, and everything is circularly defined. You could still use F = ma, but the meaning of "m" changes into "apparent inertial effect", and at the end of the day F is measured via m and m is measured via F.

 

Mathematical analysis in the framework of the Standard Model could be interesting, but it goes a bit beyond my abilities. There are multiple types of interactions with different strength characteristics, plus the wave characteristics of the associated elements to be taken into account (not to mention it's a complex many-body analysis), and all observation methods are suspect to the properties of the model we use to understand those observations. At the end of the day the different characteristics in any model are circularly defined of course - the real question is self-consistency and simplicity of the model.

 

I'm pretty sure it would be possible to apply this principle in the framework of Standard Model, but I don't know if that would just serve to obfuscate the model or not.

 

Another pertinent question is, is it possible to generate a simpler model than Standard model, if you apply the information delay principle from the very beginning. Also not sure where to even begin there...

 

So I think a first step for me is to try to understand what has motivated everyone to ignore the information delay entirely in this context. Surely everyone should expect it must play a role in some way at least.

Edited July 6, 2020 by AnssiH

[AnssiH]

Well, since it came up in this thread http://www.scienceforums.com/topic/36930-longitudinal-mass-please-explain/ - I've been studying the history of "Electromagnetic mass", as explained in here with some nice citations;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_mass

 

But I'm afraid I'm not getting any wiser about why this line of thought was abandoned.

Or to be accurate, "this line of thought" is not exactly what I was asking about either. The OP is about the expectation of inertia-like effect, arising simply from information delay (microscopic objects can't react to their bonded neighbors instantly). The concept of "electromagnetic mass" arises from observations of induction, which can easily be just one specific mechanisms causing inertia-like feedback. No one seems to consider the general impact of information delays, even though everyone should expect them to play a role in any interactions.

 

The chapter "Modern View" in the above article mentions that once Einstein established the energy-mass relationship [math]E=mc^2[/math], "...the idea that any form of mass is completely caused by interactions with electromagnetic fields, is not relevant any more."
I'm not quite sure why the idea of electromagnetic field interaction becomes irrelevant at this junction - perhaps it does, perhaps it doesn't. But also this says nothing about the idea of inertia as general information delay. On the contrary, seems to me like the mass-energy relationship could have a mechanical explanation somewhere in here.
 

But most of all, it still seems to me like no one has really given this idea serious thought. And that surprises me more than a little... :P

[Dubbelosix]

From my own conclusions, inertia is a drag effect of gravity.

[Dubbelosix]

Certainly the drag of gravity would explain whyba particle would tend to stay in a state of "rest" unless exerted by an external force. Einstein believed it was due to its energy content, I suppose it should be relatable in this sense.

[AnssiH]

Well, feel free to discuss how do you view gravity, although maybe keep it short in this thread as that's another topic entirely.

 

In the meantime, I guess to turn this question around, I'd like to hear thoughts from people about how to avoid the conclusions I make in the OP.

I mean really, by what mechanism could we avoid the idea that microscopic objects get pushed into non-stable state with the objects they are bound to? It seems extremely difficult to me to come up with ideas where this would not happen... So, can it really be valid to ignore the effects of finite information speed entirely?

[devin553344]

Well, feel free to discuss how do you view gravity, although maybe keep it short in this thread as that's another topic entirely.

 

In the meantime, I guess to turn this question around, I'd like to hear thoughts from people about how to avoid the conclusions I make in the OP.

I mean really, by what mechanism could we avoid the idea that microscopic objects get pushed into non-stable state with the objects they are bound to? It seems extremely difficult to me to come up with ideas where this would not happen... So, can it really be valid to ignore the effects of finite information speed entirely?

What about a photon or electron. No connected particles yet each has momentum. Not sure a information delay relates to a build up of vectored energy. But maybe if you can prove it with equations. Energy as information builds up?

Edited July 21, 2020 by devin553344

[AnssiH]

What about a photon or electron. No connected particles yet each has momentum. Not sure a information delay relates to a build up of vectored energy. But maybe if you can prove it with equations. Energy as information builds up?

 

I think there are quite many possibilities, especially when taking into account that the concept of intrinsic mass is so deep in our current models, it is quite likely that this would change the perspective very radically and likely imply different breakdown of "fundamental particles". In particular, I think the complexity of Standard Model is a tell-tale sign that simpler possibilities exist.

 

But there is something very interesting going on with the Standard Model also in this regard, if we just directly apply this principle onto it (which may be invalid after rigorous analysis, but gives some interesting direction nevertheless).

 

The most obvious thought that comes to mind is to model only photons (and possibly gluons) as truly elementary - actually not exhibiting any rest mass as there's no binding interaction happening when they are in free flight. (Perhaps this can also serve as explanation as to why photons always move at "maximum speed", as there's 0 inertia to overcome when they get unbound from an object)

 

But electron mass would imply they should be modeled as composite objects rather than elementary. In this view, when an electron absorbs a photon, we would say the photon is literally bound to the electron (instead of disappears from reality). The energy level of the electron goes up because the photon is now bound to it, and if the electron releases a photon, its energy level goes down.

 

Incidentally also photo-electric effect doesn't transfer momentum exactly as expected (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191001110826.htm) - possibly because the actual momentum is only resulting from the binding interactions between objets, not from the objects themselves. That would explain why the "mass" (or momentum) of a photon only exists when it gets captured it into a binding interaction with other objects.

 

This is essentially how modern physics models photon electron interactions already, except that its very unclear what "electron absorbs a photon" means metaphysically. There are many ways to model it in a meaningful way. Of course it's probably not apt to model the situation purely as particle or purely as wave interaction. For example I'm completely ignoring tunneling effects coming from the wave properties of photons and electrons. Take this just as hand-wavy discussion of potential directions for investigation.

 

One thing that complicates this also is that the massess of particles are measured via already having a model to define meaningful measurement method. For example, by exposing them to electromagnetic fields, and measuring their curvature. This makes the interpretation of the measurement directly dependent on what exactly do we think electromagnetism is, and how exactly do we model those particles. Things get very complex very fast here, and at this point the interpretation of the measurement is very critically coupled to the idea of whether or not some particles have "intrinsic mass" to themselves.

 

Contrary to that view, what is extremely interesting to note is that the established massess of the particles of the Standard Model pretty much already follow the apparent strengths of the interactions involved. Very weakly interacting neutrinos have a tiny mass (so tiny that they were modeled as massless for a long time). This is a complete mystery in the common view, but if you see mass as resulting from binding interactions, it's quite expected. On the same note, protons are modeled as composite particles made out of 3 quarks that bind together with very strong interaction mechanism. But the quarks themselves are measured to have much smaller total mass, than the proton. They make up only 9% of the final mass, according to this article https://sciencing.com/calculate-mass-proton-6223840.html

 

So the way this is commonly viewed is that the rest of the mass comes from the huge binding energy of the strong force;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadron#Properties

https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/where-does-mass-come-from

 

There is never any explanation as to how the binding energy of the gluons is responsible for 91% of the mass to proton other than "total energy density". So, a mechanical explanation like I've described in the OP seems like a pretty obvious candidate to me. Or rather, it seems inescapable to me that at least some portion of the apparent mass would have to come from the fact that the binding interaction cannot propagate instantaneously.

 

Anyway, that's all highly speculative and only applying the idea into current models. What makes this even more complex is that there's no reason to assume that only one type of binding mechanism is possible. Ultimately any binding mechanism should produce this type of effect, and its magnitude would be a function of the speed of the binding interaction, and the spatial strength characteristics of it. If I give out math about this, then I'm only making numbers that match the experiments. I mean, we can't directly measure any of this - we would be making up the strength characteristics of the binding interactions so that they would follow our macroscopic measurements. That's how models are worked on.

 

So, my problem of discussing specific theories here is that, I can see it's possible to model these things in infinite number of ways, and to investigate all those possibilities is literally decades of work for large group of people. It's just not realistic to cover more than a tiny number of possibilities in very superficial and hand-wavy way.

 

That's why the part that puzzles me the most is - why has no one attempted this type of model :shrug: