DemistifySci Podcast Interview With Robert Close

This is really interesting. He has written a book The Classical Wave Theory of Matter: A Dynamical Interpretation of Relativity, Quantum Mechanics and Gravity.

  

See his website: https://classicalmatter.org/.

My comments:

17:28 It's not clear this is a conservative system though. What if this wheel, gummy-bear, whatever is not at the end of the string? If you hold the neighbouring wheels, gummy-bears, whatever, still and turn one on the middle then all that happens is you warm up the elastic band they're threaded on. So it is important that the neighbouring elements are free to move and that the elastic band is perfect. Then wouldn't you get half the twist going in one direction and the other half going in the other direction? [31:58 Ah OK] I think the more interesting model is that the 'photon' is a topological deformation in the perfectly elastic ether and is emitted by a spin 1/2 particle doing that Dirac belt trick thing, but that's not a material model, unless you allow 4-dimensional material ... Do you? [I just looked up his book "A Classical Wave Theory of Matter" and it is clear he is not talking about an elastic band strung with gummy-bears or bicycle wheels. Sorry, I got a bit confused there.] 

 49:42 The trouble with spherical harmonics for me is that I don't understand where the symmetry breaking comes from, i.e. what is it that defines "the z-axis" intrinsically? I.e. if it isn't with respect to the orientation of some other matter. Maybe this is just because I don't understand Lie algebras. [This is related to the symmetry-breaking at 55:11 I guess]

See also Huygens Optics - DIY Compton Scattering & X-ray Coincidence Measurements.

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