SUMMARYThe theory of Special Relativity as formulated by Einstein in 1905 was based on the postulate that the laws of physics are the same regardless of the state of motion of the observer, so long as...
Force. Before fields were recognized, forces were thought (except by Newton) to happen through action at a distance. That is, a body or particle in one place causes a body in another place to move, wi...
What is a field? To put it briefly, a field is a property or a conditions of space.
The uncertainty principle. The uncertainty principle, introduced by Heisenberg in 1927, states that the position of a particle cannot be determined, but provides a mathematical formula relating its un...
Quanta of force fields can even overlap each other and yet maintain their separate identities. Each field quantum lives and dies a life and death of its own. For example, a quantum of the EM field can...
QFT deals with the structure and operation of the cosmos in the here-and-now, and not the whys and wherefores.
Because quanta are fields, they do not have sharp edges and can spread over large distances, but no matter how spread out they are, each quantum maintains its own identity. If it is absorbed or change...
Note about youth. Before ending this chapter, I'd like to say something about youth. It was a popular edict in the 1960's to never trust anyone over 30. Whether or not this is true in general, it has...
The vacuum field. Separate and attached fields are not the only fields that exist in QFT. Even in a region where they are absent, or essentially zero, there still is a background field known as the va...
I understand, says Schwinger, and I admit that QFT has not solved the causality problem. But at least it has localized the probability aspect to a single event called field collapse-an event that is n...
Neutron limit. As stated in Chapter 4, the Exclusion Principle places a limit on the number of electrons in an atomic nucleus. Just as electrons added to an atom must go into higher energy states if t...
It is clear the field collapse and renormalization have something in common: they both arise because something happens at the single quantum level that is not described by QFT. Renormalization is nece...
The Higgs mechanism was actually suggested earlier by Schwinger, in the same paper where he introduced the V and A equation. Like the V-A discovery, this contribution by Schwinger is also largely forg...
The way that fields propagate and the speed at which they propagate are determined by the field equations.
Enigmas answered. Not only is QFT the answer to Einstein's search, it also answers or resolves his Enigmas, and in a way that can be understood by the man (or woman) on the street. In Appendix A you w...
A delicate balance. In summary, nuclei are held together by a delicate balance among (a) the attractive strong force between nucleons, (b) the electrical repulsion between protons, (c) the dilution of...
Those events proceed, not in
The fact is, either approach is correct and one does not preclude the other. Yes, the Principle of Relativity is elegant and the top-down approach is easier to use; physicists love it for that reason....
I hope that, like Schwinger, Weinberg, Wilczek, Hobson (and me), you will choose a reality made of quantum fields - properties of space that are described by the equations of QFT. This is a picture th...
In QFT, the various fields, even the matter field, appear separately, each with its own equation and its own behavior. They are not combined into a single field as Einstein hoped, but they are related...
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