Review of Hassani’s “Massless is Not Nonmaterial”

PSI Blog 20191009 Review of Hassani’s “Massless is Not Nonmaterial”

Among the quandaries faced by regressive physics is Einstein’s ad hoc involving his claim that light particles were massless. Now, light is motion—a wave in the aether. Motion, like time itself, is not material—it is what matter does. Matter exists; motion occurs. Motion does not have mass; only the things in motion have mass. Einstein’s youthful denial of aether required his adoption of the particle theory of light. This objectification of motion was his greatest error.[1] That is where all the paradoxes and contradictions of relativity come from. Today, as always, the theoretical choice is clear: photons or aether.

Of course, to be accepted as a respectable mainstream physicist, one must believe in photons and deny aether. The aether hill constructed by the Einstein propaganda is just too difficult to climb. Even especially materialistic physicists such as professor Sadri Hassani have difficulty reaching the top of that massless mountain. Dr. Hassani’s website, https://skepticaleducator.org/, is one of the best at combating misbegotten attempts to use science in support of religious dogma. He is an expert on the immaterialistic woo common to what he calls “Post-Materialist” science.[2] That is why I was shocked to see his overtly strange title starkly indicating what Einstein had done to physics. If any mainstream physicist could straighten that out, it would be Hassani. Unfortunately, as his title suggested, I was to be deeply disappointed.

Why Massless Particles Cannot Exist

We first need to get a few definitions straight. Be mindful that Hassani and other professional physicists subconsciously use definitions more in line with traditional indeterminism and immaterialism. In particular, you will notice their professionally obligatory assumption of finity is at the heart of their confusion.

Mass: The resistance to acceleration. We measure mass by trying to accelerate an object. You can do this yourself by trying to push a small car or a large truck. Both have stuff inside them that makes it difficult, but sometimes not impossible to accelerate them. And that is the key: mass requires an object to have stuff inside it.

Matter: An abstraction for all things, which are xyz portions of the universe containing other things and being surrounded by other things. Readers familiar with neomechanics will recognize these portions as “microcosms,” with their insides consisting of “submicrocosms” and their outsides consisting of “supermicrocosms.”[3]

Obviously, a microcosm with nothing inside it could not have mass. If we accept the above definitions, we would not accept the idea that anything could be “massless.”

According to Special Relativity Theory, if you accelerate a particle with rest mass, m_o to a velocity, v, then the moving mass is supposed to be equal to:

                                             quora.com

  

The mass approaches infinity as the velocity of the particle approaches c. Einstein realized this would never do, so the rest mass of his imagined light particle had to be zero. In other words, the photon had to be perfectly empty, just like the space that surrounded it. This is the point in the history of science where the idealism of mathematics replaced the realism of physics.

Now, on to some of the “logic” Hassani tries to use in support of the claim made in his contentious title. Right away he states: “the myth of nonmateriality of massless particles is just that—a myth.” He then mentions some things that actually are nonmaterial: ghosts, gods, spirit, energy, field, etc. Eschewing a proper Basic Science meter,[4] Hassani uses three simple criteria he thinks will do the job:

The sensuous test:

Putting on his empiricist/positivist hat he writes: “what is common among them is that they cannot be seen, heard, touched, or subjected to any quantitative measurement.” In other words, he assumes infinite subdividability is impossible. For if that were true instead, there would come a time when his empirical criteria would fail. There would always be a particle smaller than what could be detected. He relies on the by-no-means certain criterium “that nonmaterial objects are not detectible.” He then expands on detectability as measured by our senses, with one notable mistake in which he writes: “sound…is material because it is transmitted to our ears through material air.” This, of course, is false. Sound is wave motion in a medium filled with matter. Above all, it is motion, not matter.

The interactive test:

Here he mentions the causes for events, the interactions between things. This is good because it is an amplification of Newton’s Second Law of Motion (F=ma). In other words, a “cause” is defined as the effect one thing has on another. If there is no acceleration or deceleration, the hypothesized thing does not exist. In other words, this interactive test detects the collisions of material things with other material things. Thus, wave motion in the aether produces collisions with your eye, proving aether’s materiality in the same way nitrogen in the air produces collisions with your ear drum, proving the materiality of nitrogen. Light is the motion of aether particles in the same way sound is the motion of nitrogen particles. In other words, both light and sound are motion. They do not exist; they occur. Unfortunately, Hassani’s imagined massless photons do not pass the interactive test. If the mass of a photon was zero, then F=ma also would equal zero. A massless particle cannot accelerate anything.

Microscopic:

This is where Hassani gets off the deep end reiterating: “Light consists of photons, which are massless particles. And the supposed matter-antimatter annihilation (or the decay of certain elementary particles) into photons, falsely identified as “pure energy,” [that] gives mystics and pseudoscientists of all denominations the opportunity to exploit E=mc² and claim” support of the immaterial soul crucial to most religious thought. Of course, there is no evidence that either “antimatter” or photons or souls actually exist. As readers know, the physical meaning of E=mc² requires the existence of aether. It simply involves the transmission of internal motion to the environment.[5] Ironically, the hypothesized photon would not be subject to that famous equation.

We wish Dr. Hassani well in continuing to slay those religious dragons as they continue to attack the ship of science. Maybe he will devise a better BS meter to do the same for physics, but don’t hold your breath.

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[1] Borchardt, Glenn, 2011, Einstein's most important philosophical error, in Volk, Greg, Proceedings of the Natural Philosophy Alliance, 18th Conference of the NPA, 6-9 July, 2011: College Park, MD, Natural Philosophy Alliance, Mt. Airy, MD, v. 8, p. 64-68 [10.13140/RG.2.1.3436.0407].

[2] Hassani, Sadri, 2015, ‘Post-Materialist’ Science? A Smokescreen for Woo: Skeptical Inquirer, v. 39, no. 5, p. 38-41. [https://skepticalinquirer.org/2015/09/post-materialist_science_a_smokescreen_for_woo/].

[3] Borchardt, Glenn, 2007, The Scientific Worldview: Beyond Newton and Einstein: Lincoln, NE, iUniverse, 411 p. [http://www.scientificphilosophy.com/]; Borchardt, Glenn, 2017, Infinite Universe Theory: Berkeley, California, Progressive Science Institute, 343 p. [http://go.glennborchardt.com/IUTebook].

[4] Borchardt, 2017, ibid, Ch. 13.4.  

[5] Borchardt, Glenn, 2009, The physical meaning of E=mc², Proceedings of the Natural Philosophy Alliance: Storrs, CN, v. 6, no. 1, p. 27-31 [10.13140/RG.2.1.2387.4643].