Wen ee Proms vitengienea Date Tr 6 Ap 010 182905.0100 (E07) Tor Mier aba aan Dear Michael, I'LL send some further comments later, but for now I would Like to explain why people Gon't usually make the kind of mede! of the proton that you suggest, in brief, the proton is too big and too orders of magnitude. ht by many Your five-dimensional Lagrangian would be 1/13) int dP x RS waere RS is the five-dimensional Ricci scalar. To make dimensiéniess, I've mltiplied by a constant with dimensions of i/Length3, which 1 wrote a2 2/03, where L 4s the five dimensional analeg of the Planck length. Then one compactifies on a circle of radius r. The effective four-dimensional Lagrangian for gravicy becomes. r/L? times @ constant of order 2) and this usually multiplies 4/G_N in Binstein's theory (GN is Newton's constant) so en- ye On the other hand, if the proton is a Taub-NUT soliton vor any classical solution of your fiverdimensional Lagrangian) then ics mass M is we 23 Ames ¢ constant of order 1. order 5. addition,Re mew shea From the above two relations, we can determine L and x in terms of the observed quantities GN and aw, In units with har = ¢ the measured values are roughly GN = 10-66) om? and 1/M = 104-14) em, So we get r= 1071-52) om L = 10°(-39} em There actually are two problem: 3} The proton is too small by 36 orders of magnitude. (Its size is measured in many different ways by studying its interactions with different kinds of particles Considered in any gecail, 7 think these observations give additional problems for your approach.) 2) The model isn’t self-consistent because r is less than L. You want to treat the model glassically, but this is only a good approximation if ris greater than L Forgive me for saying this, but I think you are underestimating zhe thoroughness of physicists. If the orders of magnitude in nature were such as to make this reasonable, this sort of model would be under abundant discussion. I wonder if you have considered the fact that in nature there is an approximate SU(2) symmetry {isospin) that retates the proton into the neutron. one last point, whichyou've probably Tealized. By interpreting the proton as a Taub-NUT solution (which is close incidentally to what Einstein tried to do around 1921 but I believe he didn’t realize that the solution is smooth) ypu are interpreting what is usually called the electric charge of the proton as a magnetic gharge relative to the Kaluza-Klein gauge field. And in your model, r is 30 small that the usual Keluza-Klein charged particles (whose masses are of order 1/r) are very heavy -- indeed thelr masses are similar to the mass of the Earth. So with the value of r that your model requires jand ignoring the fact that the classical treatment isn't valid at this value of r) it is indeed gelfvconsistent to ignore the electric charges and consider the magnetic ones. _aimere isn't any immediate contradiction here as classical electromagnetism has electric-magnetic duality at long distances ~ Edward Edward, Attached is a brief account of my attempt to resurrect Einstein's dream. 1 hope you do not find too many obvious flaws. As you see I am trying to bridge che gap between Finstoin and Bohr, Le reach the agreement that cluded them in their life-time. The mathematical and physical developments Of the last fifty years were needed, MichaelRe etka Subject: Re: new ideas From: Edward Witten Date: Wed. 07 Apr 2010 11:32:02 -0400 ‘To: Michael Atiyah Dear Michael, A point I perhaps should have mentioned is that baryon number can be negative (there are antiprotons and antineutrons) so unless one can assign a meaning to negative b_2, it won't work well to interpret b_2 as baryon number. Perhaps you might have interpreted baryon number as che signature of the four-manifold One point on which all modern researchers agree with you since, perhaps, Scherk and Schwarz in the 1970's) is to interpret the U(1! symmetry of Kaluza-Klein theory as being only asymptotic. Otherwise Kaluza-klein theory just isn't interesting; it is Einstein*Maxwell theory in a different notation. linen particie + antiparticle annihilate to radiation, we know with very high confidence that all the energy goes to radiation. How? First of all, we measure this. Of course there are experimental errcrs that would aliow 3 tiny part of the energy to be "'missing'' but only a try part (certainly well under 1 percent in the context of Brocesses that are well-measured). But more than that there are theoretical calculations, in a framework that assumes all the energy goes to radiation, that agree very well with all the details of what is observed. This makes it not really credible that there is an unaccounted-for component Z am a little disappointed that you consider the Ui1) of Maxwell to be fundamental and not the SU(2) x SUi3 of Yang-Mills and the Standard Model! = Edward Michael Aciyah wrote: Edward, Thanks for taking the time to explain the many problems with my kind of approach. I will study your comments and look forward to others. I am disappointed pur not totally discoursaged. I may give up on physics and return to mathematics, but not yet. MichaelRe ores of magna Subject: Re: orders of magnitude From: Edward Witten Date: Thu, 08 Apr 2010 11:47:48 -0400 To: Michael Atiyah Dear Michael, A quick answer is that your discussion of the Taub-NUT size won't work, In more detail: When I refer to the size of the proton as being a few times. 10°(-14} cm, what I mean is that this is the distance at which the proton differs significantly from the vacuum This corresponds to r in the case of the Taub-NUT solution. At a distance bigger than r, the Taub-NUT solution has power-like approach to the vacuum. You might want to ask to what extent the proton has a long range tail, just like the Taub-NUT solution. The answer to this question is a little tricky. Tf you consider the question purely in QCD, that is ignoring electromagnetism and gravity, then the difference between a state containing the proton and the vacuum vanishes exponentially at infinity. (A precise statement is that the Fourier transform of the charge or mass distrisution of the proton is analytic near zero momentum -- corresponding to a distribution that decays faster than any power of the distance.) This is supported by experiment. However, electromagnetism and gravity are long range forces and when one incorporates them, any attempt to measure the proton's properties will anevitaply involve long range effects produced by these forces. These are the same long range effects, produced by the same long range forces, that you write about in the case of the Taub-NUT solution. (Well, there is one difference, which I've mentioned -- you consider the proton charge to be magnetic while it is custonarily Sonsidered to be electric. This doesn't entail an immediate ontradiction in your theory as the long range part of electromagnetism has electric-magnetic duality.) So the intrinsic size of the proton, a few times 10°{-14) cm, must properly be compared tor of the Taub-NUT solution. If I were to spell out in detail the sort of experiments that are used to measure the proton size, it would become clear that this is the right interpretation. T think