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Single-Particle Electrodynamics - Assassination Science

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desirable properties—but unfortunately it is derived from a model that is<br />

manifestly and unsalvageably unphysical.<br />

On the other hand, a number of illustrious physicists who contemplated<br />

this problem showed, by simple yet powerful gedanken experiments, that the<br />

simple textbook force expression, while obtained by quite rigorous methods,<br />

could not be the whole story: some truth was being hidden somewhere.<br />

They therefore analysed the systems in question in meticulous detail; and—<br />

as elementary as it may be to us now as Conan Doyle always had it to dear<br />

Watson—the puzzle was solved.<br />

Unfortunately, due to the mist of time, it has sometimes become somewhat<br />

unclear what exactly the puzzle was in the first place; and whose investigation<br />

it was that solved it; or indeed whether perhaps different solutions<br />

should apply in different situations. And then the facts of the case were muddled<br />

a little further, with spurious characters, apparently fitting the modus<br />

operandi of the culprit, being rounded up for good measure, and made to<br />

stand in the ultimate line-up of publication by peer review; but in fact the<br />

wrong man was accused, having inadvertantly switched identities with the<br />

culprit, in the minds of the Authorities, decades ago.<br />

If the situation sounds confusing, good. It is. The author began his<br />

Ph.D. considering this problem; and, perhaps fittingly, has only obtained a<br />

satisfactory understanding of all of the nuances of the situation in the closing<br />

days of his candidature. The full story is as complicated as the metaphorical<br />

situation above, so we shall, in this chapter, let it unfold slowly, and carefully;<br />

it was to assist in this task that Chapter 2 was written in the careful style<br />

that it was. By the end of this chapter, we shall have led the reader through<br />

the maze of contradictory literature on this topic, and shall emerge with the<br />

fully relativistic equations of motion for particles carrying dipole moments—<br />

of arbitrary nature—that would no doubt satisfy the wishes of all workers in<br />

this field.<br />

It should be noted that a summary of the equations of motion obtained<br />

116

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