That's an old idea. The problem is that the radiation field isn't
covariant...it would produce drag as well as attraction.
Brent Meeker
On 03-Apr-01, Russell Standish wrote:
> George Levy wrote:
>>
>> I settled for the gold atom as the unit for the prize. However, I
>> found myself facing the puzzle of why does the gold atom (or even the
>> proton) have its own particular mass which in fact resolved the mass
>> frequency indeterminacy I was grappling with earlier.
>>
>> George
>>
>
> Ah yes... The answer to this question may well net you a Nobel prize.
> I believe that answer can be computed from the standard model provided
> one takes the measured values for proton and neutron masses as given,
> but that these masses are still somewhat of a mystery. Perhaps Higgs
> will do it. Perhaps vacuum fluctuations will do it (see recent New
> Scientist article). On the latter subject, I remember one of my
> costudents when I was studying Physics actually suggested to me that
> mass might come about from blocking some form of radiation. I did the
> back of the envelope calculation at the time, and derived the usual
> Newtonian law of gravitation for two spheres of the same density, but
> didn't take it any further because of how crazy the idea sounded. Of
> course that was sometime before I'd even heard of vacuum fluctuations!
>
> Cheers
>
>
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> Dr. Russell Standish Director High Performance Computing Support Unit,
> Phone 9385 6967 UNSW SYDNEY 2052 Fax 9385 6965 Australia
> R.Standish.domain.name.hidden Room 2075, Red Centre
> http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks
>
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>
Regards
Received on Tue Apr 03 2001 - 21:30:50 PDT