Mysterious Q Balls -Created in the Heat of the Newborn Universe: Are They SciFi or SciFact?

Daily Galaxy ^ | 9/10/10 | Casey Kazan

[allmendream]

Science has been defined in a USEFUL way. A hypothesis of a supernatural causation is an intellectual dead end that leads nowhere as far as useful prediction and replication of a phenomena.

There originally were no ways to test Relativity. As science advanced, we gained ways to test it, and it came out aces.

It is your blindness that makes you see Science as a denial of God. Most scientists are men of faith. That atheists accept science doesn't make science atheistic. But if you want to see the world through that prism, way to cede to them the most productive means of gaining useful information about the physical world ever devised by man.

[Mr. Jeeves]

Not one reference yet to Corporal Cueball, himself? :)

[MHGinTN]

Now you've done it! ...*_{Where did I put my eyewash?}*

[Fantasywriter]

“A sound explanation may exist for the explosive birth of our Universe; but if it does, science cannot find out what the explanation is. The scientist’s pursuit of the past ends in the moment of creation. This is an exceedingly strange development, unexpected by all but the theologians. They have always accepted the word of the Bible: In the beginning God created heaven and earth... At this moment it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.” — Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers, 1978, W.W. Norton, NY, pp115-116, in Moreland J.P. ed., The Creation Hypothesis, 1994, pp292-293.

[E8crossE8]

The author of the quoted article, "Mysterious Q Balls -Created in the Heat of the Newborn Universe: Are They SciFi or SciFact?", a person called Casey Kazan, wrote in his piece:

“Inside a Q-ball, the familiar forces that hold our world together don't exist…”

As is the case with far too many popular articles that purportedly deal with physics topics, this quote is inaccurate, and very misleading. It is so misleading that some posters here, in attempting to discuss the article, in turn wrote passages such as

[ A q-ball ] “is a region of space where the laws of physics are repealed…”

and

[ a q-ball ] “is in the physical world but ... does not adhere to the laws of the physical world…”

None of this is remotely accurate, although the fault lies with the author of the misleading “popular” article and not with the freepers who merely took him at his word. Q-balls do not "depart" in any way from established facts of physics, and q-balls are not some “new” attempt to “get funding,” and, in fact, they aren’t new in any sense at all. They are explicit mathematical solutions to the differential equations of motion of certain quantum field theories describing the interaction dynamics of specific bosonic fields, first worked out more than 40 years ago. The name “q ball” is due to the fact that these particular mathematical solutions exhibit spherical symmetry (hence “ball”) and possess a non-vanishing type of “charge,” which is often designated in physics by the letter “q.” (The charge in this case is not the same as electrical charge.)

The first q ball-type soution to a quantum field theory was derived in 1968, but the first physicist to work out all the mathematical details required to prove that such states are stable against the phenomenon of quantum mechanical tunneling was Sidney Coleman at Harvard in 1986 (he used a clever technique known as the “thin shell approximation” with which he derived the analytical expressions that comprise his solution, which he named "q ball"). Sidney died a few years ago, but his calculations, clearly presented in published articles, have been independently reproduced by hundreds of physicists around the world since then (including different derivations than the original). There is absolutely nothing controversial about any of this. It is completely inaccurate to imply, as the author of the “popular” article does, that ordinary forces “don’t exist” in a q-ball. On the contrary, the particle field configuration called a q-ball behaves the way it does precisely because of the laws of physics. Due to the peculiar (but theoretically and experimentally well-established) quantum mechanical properties of bosons (physical states that possess integral values of intrinsic angular momentum, also known as spin), it turns out, as Sidney showed years ago, that certain solutions to the field equations can arise that describe bound configurations of bosons which are characterized by a potential function that has a value smaller than would be the case for the corresponding free (i.e., non-binding) potential. Thus, the bound state is the lowest energy state - unusual, but fully consistent with established properties of the forces that determine the dynamics of elementary particles. It will be interesting to see if these theoretical solutions can be experimentally confirmed.

In the meantime, it is very unfortunate that the author of the popular article so completely mangled this point, misleading some posters here as a result. Many scientists have had the experience of popular journalists messing up descriptions of their work with absurd linguistic flights of fancy - this is yet another example.

[onedoug]

Though he certainly wanted to.

[LibWhacker]

Thanks for that. Reminds me of a physicist who used to contribute some really good, lucid comments to FR about all things physical. Especially when we would begin to speculate too much or bandy around lots of imprecise language that was more suited to artistic license than physics — generally when we would get all rowdy and wander off the reservation — he’d swoop down to keep us in check. Place ain’t been the same since he left. Hope you stick around. Cheers!

[Twotone]

Wahoo! That’s the quote. Thanks very much!

[Fantasywriter]

You’re very welcome. :)

[E8crossE8]

Thanks for that.

My pleasure.

Hope you stick around. Cheers!

I believe that Free Republic is of extraordinary importance to our nation, particularly now, during this truly horrible period when our beloved country is in the grip of the most dangerous, evil regime in its history. In fact, irrespective of how bad certain previous administrations may or may not have been, I would never in my life have imagined that the word "regime" would be appropriate to describe any U.S. government, but there is no more apt word. The country in which I grew up, which provided generations of good people with security and hope and opportunity, is in danger of being irreversibly damaged. Caliph Hussein Obozo will hopefully be voted out of office in 2012, but in the meantime his enablers in Congress must be stopped.

VOTE THE BASTARDS OUT IN NOVEMBER.

[AdmSmith]

“Reminds me of a physicist who used to contribute some really good, lucid comments to FR about all things physical.”

Yes that is http://www.freerepublic.com/~physicist/index

[SunkenCiv]

:’)

[SunkenCiv]

great tagline idea ya got there:

VOTE THE BASTARDS OUT IN NOVEMBER.

[LibWhacker]

Yep, that’s him. I miss both his and Astronomer’s comments here on FR. They were definitely two of my favorites.

[allmost]

Maybe they're the good guys. :)