Ezzat G Bakhoum

Ezzat G. Bakhoum
Residence	Pensacola, FL, United States
Nationality	Egyptian / USA
Known for	The claim that total energy is H = mv2 rather than E = mc2
Scientific career
Fields	Electrical Engineer, Professor of Electrical Engineering
Institutions	University of West Florida, Pensacola

Ezzat G. Bakhoum is an Egyptian-American electrical engineer, professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of West Florida, and the author of a series of papers arguing that the total energy of a particle is H = mv² — the relativistic mass times the square of the particle's own velocity — rather than E = mc².

The claim is narrower and more precise than it first sounds, and it is worth stating carefully. Bakhoum does not dispute that kinetic energy changes as ΔE = Δmc²; he accepts that. What he disputes is the separate proposition that the total energy equals mc², which he argues Einstein never derived but arrived at as, in his phrase, a "subconscious interpretation" of the kinetic-energy equation. On his account E = mc² is the special case of H = mv² at v = c, a particle at rest has zero total energy rather than m₀c², and mass–energy conversion is impossible without relative motion.

Career

Bakhoum took his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering at Ain Shams University in Egypt in 1986, and his master's and doctorate at Duke University in 1989 and 1994. He spent some thirteen years in industry, including seven in engineering management, at Lockheed Martin and ESD Research, then taught for five years at the New Jersey Institute of Technology before joining the University of West Florida in 2006, where he remains a professor.

His engineering record is substantial and entirely conventional. The university credits him with first or sole authorship of 44 peer-reviewed journal articles and with ten patents, covering digital signature verification for credit cards, industrial static dischargers and ultracapacitors for electric vehicles; his work on tunable, very-high-capacitance ultracapacitors for renewable-energy storage has been the subject of university research features. He publishes in the IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, the IEEE Sensors Journal, the IEEE/ASME Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems and similar venues, and is the author of Micro and Nano-Scale Sensors and Transducers (CRC Press).

It is worth noting that he kept the two identities apart: the physics papers were submitted from a separate address at modernphysics.org rather than from his university account.

The argument for H = mv²

Two routes to the same equation

The case is set out in "Fundamental Disagreement of Wave Mechanics with Relativity" (Physics Essays 15(1), 2002), and Bakhoum reaches his result twice.

The first route is wave-mechanical. From the de Broglie relation λ = h/p and the form of a travelling wave, the total energy is H = hν = pu; setting the wave's propagation velocity u equal to the particle velocity v, and p = mv, gives H = mv² directly.

The second route is a re-derivation of Einstein's own. Einstein obtained kinetic energy by integrating E_k = ∫v dp, yielding E_k = m₀c²(γ − 1). Bakhoum integrates the same expression by parts instead, and obtains an algebraically equivalent form in which the leading term is mv². His contention is that the two results are numerically identical but interpretively different, and that Einstein's choice of grouping — not any physical argument — is what produced the rest energy m₀c². Had he integrated by parts, Bakhoum writes, "in all likelihood he would have concluded that the total energy of the particle must be given by the quantity mv²."

What he claims it explains

Bakhoum offers several applications rather than resting on the derivation alone.

The best developed is a claimed deficit in fission energy yields. Reworking Serber's calculation for the Hiroshima device with Δmv² in place of Δmc², he argues that the measured total kinetic energy of fission fragments in thermal-neutron experiments on uranium-235 and plutonium-239 falls consistently below the Δmc² Q-value by tens of MeV, and matches his expression instead. On this reading Δmc² is a maximum theoretical limit rather than the energy actually released.

He also applies the equation to Dirac's velocity paradox, arguing that substituting H = mv² into the Dirac Hamiltonian yields particle velocities of ±v rather than Dirac's ±c while preserving the negative-energy states and the correct spin term; to the fine structure of hydrogen, in a companion paper of the same year, where he claims the Sommerfeld–Dirac formula survives minus its constant m₀c² term; and to neutrino masses and the solar neutrino problem.

The direct test, and his reply

The most direct modern test of E = mc² is the neutron-capture measurement of Rainville and colleagues published in Nature in 2005, which confirmed the relation to a few parts in 10⁷. Bakhoum's response, "Why E = mc² Emerges in the Process of Neutron Capture", is that the experiment tests only the kinetic-energy conclusion he already accepts: the quarks in the captured neutron lose kinetic energy and radiate it as gamma rays, so that "no direct mass to energy transformation ever occurs in the process of neutron capture."

He appended a note to that paper which is worth recording, because it describes the position such work occupies:

This communication was rejected by the journal Nature without any review. I am highly indebted to the arXiv, to the journal Physics Essays, and to other "free speech" scientific publication media.

— Ezzat G. Bakhoum (2007)

Deriving the Lorentz transformation

The paper catalogued on this wiki, Novel Physical Method to Derive the Lorentz Transformation, was written with Nizar Hamdan and A. K. Hariri of the University of Aleppo and appeared in Galilean Electrodynamics 21, Special Issues 2 (2010), 35–40. Hamdan, the senior author of that programme, has since died.

Its method is to replace Einstein's kinematic postulates with a set that includes classical force and conservation laws, and then to apply the classical relativity principle — recovering the relativistic equations of particle motion without invoking the Lorentz transformation at all. The aim is to obtain relativity's verified dynamical results while discarding what the authors regard as the artificial kinematical effects introduced by the original derivation.

Reception

Bakhoum's citation record and his heterodox physics are, in effect, two separate careers. The engineering work is well cited in the IEEE literature. The H = mv² papers appear to be essentially uncited outside the dissident literature: no published refutation, no critique in a mainstream journal, and — by his own account — a rejection from Nature without review. The only substantive engagement located is from Ajay Sharma, writing in Progress in Physics, and from Hamdan's group at Aleppo.

No evidence has been found that Bakhoum attended or presented at a Natural Philosophy Alliance or CNPS conference; his presence in this catalogue comes through Galilean Electrodynamics and Physics Essays.

Papers on this wiki

• 2010 – Novel Physical Method to Derive the Lorentz Transformation, with Nizar Hamdan and A. K. Hariri — Galilean Electrodynamics 21, S2, 35–40.

Selected publications elsewhere

• "Fundamental Disagreement of Wave Mechanics with Relativity", Physics Essays 15(1), 87 (2002). arXiv
• "On the Equation H = mv² and the Fine Structure of the Hydrogen Atom", Physics Essays 15(4) (2002). arXiv
• "Electrodynamics and the Mass-Energy Equivalence Principle", Physics Essays 19(3) (2006).
• "Why E = mc² Emerges in the Process of Neutron Capture" (2007). arXiv
• Micro and Nano-Scale Sensors and Transducers — CRC Press.

See also

• Galilean Electrodynamics
• Special Relativity