Luke Campbell wrote:
> On Apr 20, 8:02 pm, Erik Max Francis <m...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
>> Not that CPT invariance means quite what you think it means anyway,
>> evidently, since violations of CPT invariance do _not_ automatically
>> present violations of charge conservation.
>
> I'll go even farther - after all physical processes are complete, the
> net charge of the reactants _is_ automatically still the same as that
> of the products. My best guess is that Caldwell thinks that charge
> conjugation symmetry is a physical process. My brain may be a bit
> addled by flu right now, but I do not believe this to be so - you
> can't just magically do something to turn a particle into an
> antiparticle. All charge conjugation symmetry says is that all the
> physics is the same if all the particles in an interaction are
> replaced by their antiparticles. While charge conjugation symmetry is
> known to be violated, this does not mean conservation of electric
> charge is violated.
Your flu (my sympathies) has not bested you; you're absolutely right.
Violations of CP invariance (for instance) mean that some subatomic
particles (such as the neutral kaon) don't decay at the rate one might
otherwise expect. It has jack squat to do with actual conservation law
violations.
There _are_ ways of turning particles into their antiparticle, but they
involve (like everything else would) reactions that would result in
reactants and products, the sum total of whose changes would (wait for
it) not violate any of the conservation laws we're talking about. But
those are procedural issues which you, of course, know about, so I'm not
telling you anything new. The _rates_ of those reactions can be
affected in the real world by violations of CPT symmetry (and all the
lesser versions), which can lead to different equilibria, but still,
nothing here actually results in a violation of physical law.
I only mentioned his misinterpretation of CPT invariance as a side
point, and didn't dig in with both heels, as it was only one of many
errors, and the others were easy enough to state on their own. Any one
of them, as I'm sure you know, renders his suggestion dead in the water.
--
Erik Max Francis && max@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
&& http://www.alcyone.com/max/
San Jose, CA, USA && 37 18 N 121 57 W && AIM, Y!M erikmaxfrancis
There is no present or future; only the past, happening over and over
again, now. -- Eugene O'Neill
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