Researching the limits of Coulomb's Law
Every area of technology is subject to advancement by inventions. The pure theoretical sciences should be no different. They should not be missing out.
The scientific method has served us well and continues to do so. But there are areas of science where the very different methods of patent law and practice might break up a logjam. These different methods include different approaches to forming ideas and different standards for pursuing and publishing ideas. These methods, newly applied to science, are to identify old and new ideas that would be non-obvious even to experts in the field. It means digging into the history of physics, looking for ideas that were improperly disfavored, prematurely rejected, or entirely missed. It means reexamining the standards of proof that were used to accept and reject ideas. Historically, the consensus of scientists against an idea was often the end of it. In patent practice, consensus against an idea may merely be evidence of the non-obviousness that is required to get a patent.
The step of formulating a hypothesis must not be taken for granted. This is an inventive step. It cannot be forced to happen in a certain time, or in a certain way, or to certain people. It cannot be restrained either. You cannot even know when it is complete.
Applying the principles of patent practice to the theoretical sciences initially means seeking out new hypotheses to feed into the scientific method. This is what Coulomb Labs seeks to do, starting with some secrets of nature that may counterintuitively involve the discoveries of Charles Coulomb.
Charles-Augustin de Coulomb (1736-1806) figured out how electric charges work. He figured out that the force between two electric charges depends on the strength of the charges and the distance between them. Near means a stronger force. Opposites attract. Charges of the same kind repel each other. This, roughly, is what is known as Coulomb's law, which is how electrical forces work. Read More
For many years it seems that we knew pretty much all that there is to know about Coulomb's law, where it applied, and how to use it. Yet its causes and boundary conditions were not well explored. One unexplored area is the extremely short distances when the math says it will behave entirely differently. Another unexplored area is its cause, including side effects that may have something to say about the nature of spacetime and perhaps even gravity.
The history of physics includes at least two situations where the involvement of the electrical force (Coulomb's law) was briefly considered and rejected: What holds the atomic nucleus together and gravity. The best evidence pointed elsewhere, so intense efforts were directed elsewhere. For many decades, generations of alternative theories fell into favor only to fall out of favor[1]. Proofs were offered and shown to be flawed. Certainty was more elusive than it seemed. These conditions are markers of non-obviousness, suggesting that valuable truths are hiding where no one is looking.
At the smallest of distances, smaller than a proton deep inside an atom, evidence is rising that the electrical force behaves in a strange, entirely unfamiliar way. Instead of the familiar force that makes sparks and that can send radio signals over great distances, at almost zero distance this force may be what sticks protons to neutrons with near-infinite strength.
Why is this important? Because ever since it was discovered that atoms contain a nucleus, scientists have been trying to figure out how the protons in the nucleus manage to stick together. For a time, they spent more money and put more hours into this question than any other.
Protons act like they hate each other because they all have the same charge. They want to fly apart so badly that we can use them to power our cities, or our bombs. (When the atom was first split, it was noted that the energy released was consistent with both Coulomb's law and the now-famous energy equation.) We know how to break atoms apart, which makes it odd that our ideas of what's holding them together keep changing every few decades.
Originally, scientists figured there must be electrons in the nucleus, somehow holding everything together. Protons like the oppositely-charged electrons. But the math didn't work out, and there were other problems with every variation of this idea. It survived for a time because it was the only idea they had.
Then, this already awkward idea was blown away when they discovered not electrons in the nucleus, but neutrons that have no charge at all. The absence of electrons and the participation of neutrons made it look like the electrical force had nothing at all to do with the protons sticking together.
Scientists figured there must be some other kind of glue, not the electrical force, holding everything together. They didn't really follow the scientific method on this one, they just assumed it. They all just agreed it must be so because they couldn't imagine anything else. Nobody dissented.
Many decades later, they discovered that the neutrons are not really all that neutral. It turned out that neutrons do have charges in them. When a particle gets up close to a neutron, it can "feel" both kinds of charges in every neutron. The two kinds of charges are equal in amounts and opposite in sign, so the charges add up to zero. It's only from a distance that a neutron appears neutral.
And it turns out the protons also have both positive and negative charges in them. Protons are just like neutrons except that the protons have more positive charge than negative charge. From a distance, all the little charges in a proton add up to the one positive charge that that is just as strong as an electron's charge but opposite in sign.
So why is it that nobody is looking back to the original idea, that these protons are being held together by electric charges?
It turns out that the opposite charges inside protons and neutrons, if they can get close enough to each other, might be able to make tiny bonds much smaller than the protons and neutrons themselves. These bonds would occur where they touch or nearly touch. This happens at a much smaller scale, where the Coulomb (electrical) force starts acting weird with near-infinite strength. The math says that these tiny bonds would be strong enough to overpower the desire of even many protons to fly apart. Each proton and each neutron can form up to three bonds, allowing varied nuclear structures to be formed. With these tiny bonds, the math starts to work. Not only that, but the very reasons for rejecting the electrical force not only go away, they morph into explanations of why the nucleus behaves as observed. Read more.
At the greatest of distances, between stars and galaxies, gravity is known to be the dominant force holding things together. Ever since the electric force was discovered, some scientists have wondered if gravity somehow comes from the electric force.
The math for gravity and the electric force does look similar, but such similarity should be expected simply because both forces take place in a universe of three spacial dimensions. The planets and stars, as a whole, don't have the opposite charges needed to explain the attraction. Gravity does not care about charge, and it is only ever attractive.
Newton gave us the math that explains how we can work with gravity. This was good enough for us to get to the moon and back. But Newton admitted he had no idea what gravity was.
Einstein taught us about mass and spacetime and improved upon Newton's math. When it really matters, Einstein's math is better. Loosely summarized, mass bends spacetime and curved spacetime is felt as gravity. But he had no explanation for how mass affects spacetime.
Coulomb Labs is not satisfied with the current lack of explanations and is exploring what the curvature of spacetime actually is, including how mass here affects spacetime elsewhere. This in turn leads to non-obvious ways that gravity may nevertheless emerge from the Coulomb force. In particular, it is preparing to use some relatively simple experiments to provide more insight into the why of gravity.
The simple experiments that have been tried so far have not been conclusive one way or the other. They do suggest that some outside funding would be useful if not critical to achieving the level of precision that is required. In December of 2021, Coulomb Labs applied for an NSF grant, but there was no program for a proposal such as this. A program director said he read the entire proposal but "return it without review" because his program could not fund it.
NSF has a multi-level a process for "reconsideration," which was pursued. However, it did not seem to be oriented toward overturning an adverse decision of the program director. They even had a person on Zoom calls who said her job was to make sure only procedure was discussed and to shut down any incidental discussion of the merits of the research proposal! It seemed they were only interested in causing the applicant
to reconsider.
This is very different from patent practice. The US Constitution makes it clear that Congress is to "promote the progress of science and useful arts". This provision is why the issuance of a patent is not optional and an inventor can appeal on the issues and even sue to enforce the right if necessary. NSF programs, on the other hand, are competitive and funding is discretionary, not a Constitutional right.
The lack of an existing program for a proposal as transformative as the current one was predicted by the National Science Board (NSB), which has Congressional oversight authority over the National Science Foundation (NSF). In 2007, the NSB issued a report entitled Enhancing Support of Transformative Research at the National Science Foundation. It pointed out that transformative research should not be expected to fit neatly into existing programs and existing paradigms, so NSF should prepare for and accept proposals that do not fit their designated programs. Specifically, the report stated that "Transformative research frequently does not fit comfortably within the scope of project-focused, innovative, step-by-step research or even major centers, nor does it tend to fare well wherever a review system is dominated by experts highly invested in current paradigms or during times of especially limited budgets that promote aversion to risk." (p. 4) and that "There exists a substantial external perception that NSF does not support transformative research" (p. 6)
NSF did respond to the NSB report with much rhetoric about transformative science and some changes, but they missed this one.
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Our approach is unique. The ordinary scientific method has gotten us to where we are now. It is time to try something different.
In the 1850s, the US Supreme Court struck down a patent on the grounds that it was trying to claim a law of nature.
While no one should ever own a law of nature, an unintended consequence of this decision was further deepening of a chasm between science and invention. Inventors sought patents. Scientists sought peer-reviewed publications. These were not at all alike.
When an inventor applied for a patent the U.S. Patent Office was required by law to grant the patent, unless they could show a problem. The most common problem was whether the invention was non-obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art. This mythical person of ordinary skill in the art could be a truck driver for a new trucking implement, or a physicist with a Ph.D. for a new kind of transistor.
However, the only requirement for the inventor was that the inventor(s) were properly identified. Qualifications such as education, employment, experience, age, gender, or anything else simply did not exist. Even children have obtained patents. The burden was on the patent examiner to discover a problem and most of the time the problem could be overcome with the examiner. If not, there were many levels of appeal. In the US alone, well over ten million inventions have been determined to be non-obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art and then been issued as patents.
On the other hand, scientists had to jump through many difficult hoops to publish their work. Peer reviewers generally volunteered their time. An author's station and reputation mattered. Journals had no legal obligation to publish anything. Instead, they had to maintain and improve the reputation of their journal and also meet the needs of their subscribers. Some editors dared to publish controversial works while most others preferred papers that were safe and consistent with existing theory.
A major difference between the patent system and scientific publishing is this: The patent system seeks out the new and non-obvious. The more unusual it is, the easier it is to get a patent. Aside from ideas that don't work at all, there is no requirement to maintain the reputation of the patent office or to meet the needs of any subscribers, or to be consistent with previous ideas.
This is important because inventors often stand alone. The more unusual (read: pioneering or disruptive) the invention is, the more unpopular it is at first.
The practice of patent law quickly tunes a patent practitioner into recognizing certain markers of non-obviousness. There are many. A few markers of non-obviousness include:
•Any situation where a single change breaks a device, but a particular group of changes made at the same time result in an unexpected improvement or new function.
•When the literature, especially textbooks, teaches against something being possible but an inventor finds a way to make it work anyway.
•When the experts of a field, including teachers and authors, are of the opinion that something works in a certain way but an inventor discovers that it actually works in a different way.
The first step of the scientific method is to form a hypothesis. This is an inventive step. As an inventive step, it is subject to all the rules of thumb and characteristics discovered during the development of patent law. Sometimes you can try to invent something and succeed, but sometimes inventions are accidental, random, unplanned, and unplannable. Invention cannot be forced. There is no way to ever guarantee that you've tried everything and that there is nothing else to invent. There is no way to make sure that you or your organization will be the ones to put forth the next great thing.
Searching the history of physics for these markers of non-obviousness is an effective way of discovering new hypotheses that were never even thought of, much less tested.
According to current conventional wisdom in the field of physics, the days of making profound fundamental discoveries with simple desktop experiments are long gone. But where the hypotheses and experiments were never conceived, this conventional wisdom cannot be said to apply. The search for such hypotheses and experiments is worthwhile because the pure sciences have been protected from patent-like scrutiny for over 150 years. This adventure is like being the first hunter in a virgin forest, and this forest is anything but picked over.
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Coulomb Labs has been funded by the sale of software and services for creating custom word puzzles. So, a great way to help fund Coulomb Labs directly is to purchase Crossword Weaver software or 1-2-3 Word Search Maker software, or to buy a puzzle or subscription to make such puzzles from www.puzzle-maker.com. About 95% of your payment (donation) becomes available to the company, and you will get to make puzzles for education and entertainment.
At also helps to mention us in social media, either this site (CoulombLabs.com) or our source of funding. The best site to mention is puzzle-maker.com (with the hyphen!) because it has links to the others.
If you have any way to influence a website's links, especially an educational website, a link to this site or puzzle-maker.com would be exceptionally helpful.