Gerald E. Marsh

Charge, Geometry, and Effective Mass

Charge, like mass in Newtonian mechanics, is an irreducible element of electromagnetic theory that must be introduced ab initio. Its origin is not properly a part of the theory. Fields are then defined in terms of forces on either masses—in the case of Newtonian mechanics, or charges in the case of electromagnetism. General Relativity changed our way of thinking about the gravitational field by replacing the concept of a force field with the curvature of space-time. Mass, however, remained an irreducible element. It is shown here that the Reissner-Nordström solution to the Einstein field equations tells us that charge, like mass, has a unique space-time signature.

The problem of the ‘prebiotic and never born proteins’

It has been argued that the limited set of proteins used by life as we know it could not have arisen by the process of Darwinian selection from all possible proteins. This probabilistic argument has a number of implicit assumptions that may not be warranted. A variety of considerations are presented to show that the number of amino-acid sequences that need have been sampled during the evolution of proteins is far smaller than assumed by the argument.

Climate Change: Sources of Warming in the Late 20th Century

The role of the North Atlantic Oscillation, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, volcanic and other aerosols, as well as the extraordinary solar activity of the late 20th century are discussed in the context of the warming since the mid-1970s. Much of that warming is found to be due to natural causes.

Monopoles, gauge fields and de Rham's theorems

The topology assumed by most authors for a spacelike hypersurface in a spacetime containing a monopole is generally ; save for the surface isolating the monopole, this space is unbounded. For such a topology, a consistency relation of de Rhams theorems shows that a single isolated monopole cannot exist. Monopoles, with charge , if they exist at all, must occur in pairs having opposite magnetic charge. An extension of de Rhams theorems to non-Abelian monopoles which are generalizations of Dirac monopoles (those characterized by , the fundamental group of the gauge group G) is made using the definition of an ordered integral of a path-dependent curvature over a surface. This integral is similar to that found in the non-Abelian Stokes theorem. The implications of de Rhams theorems for non-Abelian monopoles are shown to be similar to the Abelian case.

Charge, Geometry, and Effective Mass in the Kerr-Newman Solution to the Einstein Field Equations

It has been shown that for the Reissner-Nordström solution to the vacuum Einstein field equations charge, like mass, has a unique space-time signature (Marsh, Found. Phys. 38:293–300, 2008). The presence of charge results in a negative curvature. This work, which includes a discussion of effective mass, is extended here to the Kerr-Newman solution.

A class of cylindrically symmetric solutions to the force‐free magnetic field equations with nonconstant α

The general approach to cylindrically symmetric force‐free magnetic fields first introduced by Lust and Schluter [Z. Astrophys. 34, 263 (1954)], is restricted to fields of the form H=[0,Hφ(r),Hz(r)], and subsequently used to determine a set of solutions to the force‐free field equations with nonconstant α. The first element of the set is the well‐known constant α solution of Lundquist [Ark. Fys. 2, 361 (1951)]. These solutions may have practical applications with respect to high‐temperature superconductors.