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Re: Newton's third law

November 12, 2008 by Halliday, 1 year 2 weeks ago
Comment: 32816

Roland:

In Newton's third law, there is no requirement, whatsoever, that reaction "FOLLOW" action. In fact, other than the "spooky action at a distance" cases, the action and reaction take place at the same point in space and time! (In subatomic, Quantum Field Theoretical [QFT], terms there is no action at a distance, all actions/reactions occur at single spacetime points, where particle reaction vertices occur.)

Of course the matter/antimatter imbalance of the universe suggests some additional symmetry breaking. However, even though we have C, and P, and CP symmetry breaking, the CPT (or PCT, as used by the article) symmetry appears to be too strong to allow for sufficient matter/antimatter imbalance to explain what we observe. (The fact is that if CPT symmetry is broken, then Feynman's "sum over histories" approach to QFT cannot work, since probabilities would then be complex.)

Another time reversal dilemma yet to be explained.

David

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