In his new article on Bremsstrahlung, Mathis applies his model (*) of spins and predicts that in this process, electrons turn into photons.
What we will see is that the mechanism of Bremsstrahlung, though roughly correct, is not completely correct. The electron is not emitting a photon, it is becoming a photon.
Mathis takes offence with current theory’s lack of explanation as to why and especially how electrons can emit – that is create – photons. They are not there before, so how can they be there afterwards? He repeatedly expresses the view that scientific description of nature should be “mechanical”.
But notice how convenient it is for them that quantum mechanics has no mechanics. Although they claim to be physicists, the fact that QM and QED are not mechanical allows them to dodge all physical questions.
We do not profess to know what Mathis means when he uses the term “mechanical”, but picture a model of small colliding spheres, not unlike billard balls. In this picture, interaction and forces are transmitted via collisions. Although it seems intuitive for nature to be “mechanical” in this everyday sense, there is no deeper reason why this should be true. Common sense tells us for example that the earth is flat, which is cleary not the case. It remains to say that contempary “non-mechanical” theories like electrodynamics and quantum mechanics are not only useful but make incredibly precise and well verified predictions and are justified in this pragmatist sense.
Mathis clings to his mechanical view because he cannot imagine the universe to be otherwise. His side blow
I thought we were done with force at a distance
to modern theory is in vain, because since the advent of field theory, building so called “local” theories is not a problem anymore. (There, force is mediated through local fields (e.g. the electromagnetic field), which explains the mysterious action at a distance that troubled Newton.)
On a philosophical side note, science has many heuristics, which “explain” how electrons emit real photons in the bremsstrahlung process (for example a cloud of virtual photons surrounding the electron). But they aren’t to be taken at face value from a philosophical perspective. They only thing science can do is make predictions and verify their consistency with experiments. It is true that scientists tend to have a lot of faith in their models, especially if they are established beyond reasonable doubt like general relativity and the standard model. But in the end they will have to hold up to experiment.
This brings us to the most problematic point in Mathis’ theory: He claims that the electron turns into a photon. This would imply that the electron’s negative charge somehow gets lost in the process, leaving the universe with an overall excess of one positive charge. To the best of our knowledge, so far no processes have been observed that violate charge conservation.
(*) “model” is really too strong a word for Mathis’ thinking. He uses heuristics, rather than clearly defined terms, in order to shed light on the problem. His method however, only enables him to make vague descriptions of what might be the case, but fails to produce predictions comparable to experiments.
where 
is a parameter that measures deviations from GR. The GR prediction yields 
