The Dynamics of Streams of Matter

Abstract

If one builds up a theory based on point particles interacting with fields, the particles cause singularities in the fields and lead to awkward mathematics. One is led to doubt whether the basis is really suitable for a description of nature. One can evade the difficulties by getting away from the point particle model. One can have instead a continuous stream of matter, each element of which interacts with the field. One can arrange for the field to act on each element of matter in the same way as it acts on a point particle, while each element of matter disturbs the field like a point particle would, but owing to the smoothing out coming from the continuous distribution there is no singularity in the field.