Air Pressure: A SEP in Physics

'An SEP,' he said, 'is something that we can't see, or don't see, or our brain doesn't let us see, because we think that it is somebody else's problem. That's what SEP means. Somebody Else's Problem. The brain just edits it out, it's like a blind spot. …it relies on people's natural predisposition not to see anything they don't want to, weren't expecting, or can't explain.'

The movie INCEPTION (2010), had a great image of how we can tell if we are viewing the real world or a virtual, fantasy image - a spinning top. In reality, the top will start to wobble and eventually come to rest. The top does this because some of its energy is converted into heat. This is the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics - Entropy. In the virtual world, where the Laws of Nature do not apply, the top spins, perpetually, forever, and ever, and ever.

The Problem with Kinetic Gas Theory

Since the mid-1800s, students have been taught that air pressure is caused by gas molecules colliding with each other in space, with velocities that increase with temperature - the Kinetic Gas Theory. I was taught this in high school and then again in university, and accepted it as truth. This theory has some problems. First, why would molecules have this velocity? My textbook says that molecules at room temperature are moving at speeds exceeding that of a jet plane! Wow. But, the kicker is that for the theory to work, gas molecules were given a special elastic property, not seen in nature, the ability to have collisions with no damage and heat production - no Entropy. Today we can Google the Kinetic Gas Theory and see a box containing some small balls, in perpetual motion, bouncing off each other and the wall forever, and ever, and ever.

The colliding molecule story, of course, is simply an imaginative story, is as real as a video game, it breaks the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. It is ironic that the fundamental Model of the Theory of thermodynamics breaks a Law of thermodynamics. When I took Thermodynamics, the colliding balls were presented as reality. But in another, later class, I saw a professor smile and put air quotes over "Kinetic Gas Theory", and heard some students chuckle. There is a problem.

The Reality of Our Atmosphere

Unlike virtual images, the atmosphere is very real and critical to life. It is a thin scattering of the lightest molecules, suspended in space between the draw of the upper atmosphere and the draw of the earth. This arrangement of matter and space is a gas. The Kinetic Gas Theory is a fantasy story that disguises the fact that physics has absolutely no explanation for why there is air pressure. What is the pressure? What is pressing? There is a gaping hole in our knowledge of nature, covered by an illusion. In all these years no one has addressed the problem. Physicists in Thermodynamics seem satisfied with the model, and for physicists, in all their various other fields, if considered at all, consider it to be Somebody Else's Problem.

A New Theory of Space and Photons

This is a quantum universe. Presently, in physics, space is considered to be a 'nothing' with some(?) energetic photons moving at the speed of light. Photons are particles which have been proven to exist, a photon is a 'something'. I believe that just as a body of water is a continuum of water molecules, space is a continuum of photons. Here and there are clusters of larger quanta - molecules. Each molecule has a molecular wall, and it is this that we can see, touch, and think of as matter. Just as a fish doesn't feel the water, we do not consciously feel space, but our body feels the 14 psi (standard pressure) the photons exert. The photon is a form of matter, of energy.

We observe that this is an expanding universe because space is increasing. Photons are constantly being produced at the outer surface of molecules. We measure this energy conversion as thermal radiation. This is Entropy - the continual generation of the photons of space, as described by the Radiation Law. The Boltzmann Constant is the rate of photon production. This push of photons being emitted by the relatively confined gas molecules is air pressure.

Just as a disturbed body of water generates waves, so does a disturbance in space. These are the waves of photons that physics calls matter or gravitational waves and are used for electron microscopy.

Redefining the Photon

Because of believing that an individual photon is moving at light speed, the photon is assumed to be a 'massless particle'. This is an oxymoron. A quantum, a particle, is a unit of energy with inertia, and mass is one of the dimensions. You can no more have a massless particle, then make a triangle with two rods. Photons have mass, albeit that it will be a very tiny number. Space is so vast, that I suspect that space itself is the mass we don't see - Dark Matter.

The Soap Bubble Analogy

A photon is the simplest quantum, which I liken to a soap bubble. The bubble has two features, the physical wall of soap molecules, and the image on the surface. The wall of the photon, like the soap bubble, is a 3-D object, it is matter, has mass, and occupies space. The surface image is massless and does not occupy space. It is a 2-D form of energy – a picture, information, electromagnetic radiation (EMR). Physics believes that thermoradiation is 2-D EMR, whereas I propose that it is 3-D photons.

When you look at bubbles, they display a remarkable property - on each exposed surface, no matter the size, there is captured a full image of the surroundings, all the information available. This property is called redundancy. Space is redundant since each photon surface, like the soap bubble's surface, holds all the information available. A photon is a 'quantum of electromagnetic radiation' because all the EMR available is displayed on each exposed surface. The image on the photon surface is what our eyes and wi-fi devices read.

Forces, Fields, and Gravity

Mathematics describes nature, and the formula for the heat (photon) production of electrical equipment is I squared R, I feel this aptly describes the photon. I imagine a spherical electric grid - the Current squared -, coated and encapsulated in the elastic fluid of magnetism, - the Resistance. The electric, magnetic, and gravitational forces exist in the internal tensions of this electric-magnetic shell. It is the photons that we measure as the electric, magnetic, and gravitational fields surrounding objects. I believe gravity is magnetic in the direction of time -IN-, this is called the imaginary plane and is perpendicular to the spacial planes and unaccounted for in our magnetic equations.

Thermal Radiation and the Conservation of Energy

Photon size is an inversion of its temperature. Hot photons produced by an emitter, like the sun, are very small and then expand as they cool outward. The background 3*K is probably the elastic limit of the photon shell, as large as it gets. The size change creates curvatures of the space around emitters, which we can observe. The relation between curvature and gravity (Einstein) is that it is the gravitational mass generating the heat that is the photons.

Energy is conservative. I believe that the smallest quanta, the nuclei of each element, generates the quantum molecules, which generate the photons. Matter creates space and this space is ultimately drawn into a Black Hole, where it is spun (compressed) for some billions of years to reach critical mass and erupt as a new star system that will produce space and the cycle continues. Energy is a cycle in which the total is neither created nor destroyed.