CATEGORY:
Cosmology
[back]
TOPIC:
Alternative Models of Cosmology
[refresh]
Login or
create account to post reply or comment.
Anonymous wrote on Mar. 17, 2011 @ 15:39 GMT
In cosmology, it is believed that regions of space on `opposite' sides of the universe are too far apart to have ever been causally connected. That is, they are outside each other's `particle horizon'. Consequently, it is difficult to explain the apparent similarities in their characteristics as evidenced by
COBE results.
Inflation theory has been offered as a way to overcome this
Horizon Problem. However, it is my intention
here to show that it is not necessary to postulate Inflation in order to insure that all regions of spacetime are now, and have always been, causally connected.
In addition, this model offers an alternative explanation for the origin of the
CMBR and eliminates the need to postulate an accelerating universe or
Dark Energy.
Dave Rutherford
post approved
Mark Stuckey replied on Dec. 2, 2011 @ 19:54 GMT
Using the Union2 Compilation data (Supernova Cosmology Project, http://supernova.lbl.gov/Union/figures/SCPUnion2_mu_vs_z.txt
) I find a best fit line through log(DL/Gpc) vs Log(z) gives a sum of squares error (SSE) of 1.95 with correlation 0.9955. The best fit LambdaCDM has 71% dark energy, 29% matter and Ho = 69.2 km/s/Mpc and gives SSE = 1.79. Using the best fit model in this paper (kinematically equivalent to empty model) I find SSE = 1.98 for Ho = 65.3 km/s/Mpc. Therefore, the model presented here does not produce a better fit than the best fit line while LCDM does, so the type Ia SN data favors LCDM over this model.
report post as inappropriate
Douglas William Lipp wrote on Jul. 2, 2011 @ 11:58 GMT
Hi David Rutherford,
I like your theory, but I'm no good at math.
Please consider my CIG Theory also.
CIG theory offers in a "single view of nature", and "simultaneously", the following:
Varying Cosmological Constant
Possible explanation of Virtual Particles
Combination of the Spacetime Continuum with the Mass-energy equation
Quantification of mass to a spatial quantity
Solution to Dark Matter
Solution to Dark Energy
Solution to Horizon Problem
Solution to Red Shift Anomalies
Solution to Double Slit (Young's) Wave-Particle Duality Quantum Confusion
Physical explanation as to what E=mc² actually represents
New Interpretation of Einstein's Field Equations
True reason for Hubble expansion
Fourth Law of Motion Equating Gravity to Other Forces
Possible meaning of Plancks Constant
Lipps Law of Proportionality
Offers a New Explanation of Pressure
Is Relativitivistic in nature and therefore builds upon current science
Does not rely on extra dimensions
Does not rely on speeds greater than "c" as does current inflationary theory
Combines the Fundamentals (Matter, Time, Space)
Coherently respects conservation of energy (current view of expansion of space does not)
Above all else, the theory is experimentally verifiable.
Comments are welcome and can be delivered here or to lippfamily@earthlink.net
For a hard copy, please email the author.
Once again, the author apologizes for what appears to be a paper not altogether written in scientific/academic protocol.
Enjoy the "Fun" section as well.
Please open the attached to find: "The Coney Island Green Theory".
attachments:
1_MTSFINAL15Rollover12.doc
report post as inappropriate
Sridattadev replied on Jul. 4, 2011 @ 15:57 GMT
Dear Douglas,
I enjoyed your CIG theory and it is closer to the truth in stating that matter and energy emerge from space-time itself. As you have requested
" If any of you have a simpler and better conceptual description as to why E = mc², I would be grateful if you would send me in the right direction."
please know the
absolute truth which is with in every one of us and can be represented as S=BM^2 (S=Soul, B= Body, M=Mind).
For a detailed explantion of how the singualarity with in us works, please know that
Conscience is the cosmological constant.Love,
Sridattadev.
report post as inappropriate
Daniel L Burnstein wrote on Jul. 3, 2011 @ 22:41 GMT
Can someone tell me if this is the right place to post link to a theory which explores some possible consequences of space being quantum-geometrical? Seems this is the only place where someone outside the academia can hope to be taken seriously (assuming of course that the his proposed models and mathematics are not only internally consistent, but consistent with observations).
Thanks.
DLB
report post as inappropriate
FQXi Administrator Zeeya Merali replied on Jul. 7, 2011 @ 12:26 GMT
Dear Daniel,
Yes, you are more than welcome to post your ideas in this forum thread, for discussion.
report post as inappropriate
Boris Balkh replied on Sep. 19, 2012 @ 20:27 GMT
Today, in the international scientific community, in sciences cosmology and theoretical physics are perceived wrong inferences and conclusions, which are Imposed as fundamental theories and principles. As a consequence, thousands of scientists in the U.S.A. and around the world focus and work in the wrong direction and their efforts not give the desired positive results, only reinforce untruth about the structure of the Universe. This is unjustifiable spent scientific potential, much time and money.
I am convinced, that scientists sooner or later will find the right path, but the question arises, which I want to share with you "Why did this have to happen slowly, difficult and very expensive, then it can be quickly, easily and cheaply? ". It is therefore necessary the scientists of sciences cosmology and theoretical physics adopt model about structure of the Universe and physical laws operating there, of the short e-book "The Dualism". Please visit the
http://uploads.worldlibrary.net/uploads/pdf/20120905183454th
e_dualism_pdf.pdf
report post as inappropriate
Helder Velez wrote on Jul. 10, 2011 @ 02:27 GMT
Space expansion? yes. It is measured in relation to the atoms around us.
What if the atom can vary its dimensions thru time?
I'm pretty sure that no one presented evidence that the atom is invariant.
And yet, everybody is claiming that the universe expands.
Space expansion or matter shrinks ?
The search of a scaling model of the universe, a self-similar one or dilation, has been pursued by the scientific community since Dirac, Hoyle & Narlikar, and others without results.
A scaling model is born, derived from data, using standard physics and making no hypotheses, this model has only one parameter (H0) :
A Self-Similar Model of the Universe Unveils the Nature of Dark EnergySo, from now on I'will ask for proper evidence that the atom is invariant every-time that I hear someone to say: the universe is expanding.
Space expansion? NO.
Matter evanesces? YES.
report post as inappropriate
sridattadev wrote on Jul. 11, 2011 @ 19:31 GMT
Dear Velez,
Universal I or singularity or conscience of god is the cosmological constant.
I = Zero = InfinityLove,
Sridattadev.
report post as inappropriate
Wilhelmus de Wilde de Wilde wrote on Jul. 13, 2011 @ 16:28 GMT
At the Planck scale we encounter also a horizon, from our macro point of view at this scle we cannot longer make measurements, for us there is no longer causality (perhaps this scale is going to be 10^48, see www.physorg.com, integral challenges physics beyond Einstein, but anyway (our) causality no longer rules here), so the same limit we meet at a large universal scale, in this way we can observe ou total observable universe as a Planck unit, where for an observer that is super macro , "his" causality no longer exists, in this way the bubble in the bubble can go on forever...
keep on thinking free
Wilhelmus
report post as inappropriate
Pentcho Valev wrote on Aug. 4, 2011 @ 10:00 GMT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1pgz8QIiso&feature=related
"Is Everything We Know Wrong? (...) So for now the standard model remains unchanged... (...) It's the best we have. And it's so nearly a perfect fit. It's just that it could be totally wrong."
Yes the standard model of cosmology is totally wrong. It is (implicitly) based on the following premises:
Premise 1: (frequency) = (speed of light)/(wavelength)
Premise 2: As photons travel, their wavelength varies with their frequency.
The second premise, which is a consequence of Einstein's 1905 false constant-speed-of-light postulate, should be abandoned. Cosmologists will have to try to deduce their science from the following couple of premises:
Premise 1: (frequency) = (speed of light)/(wavelength)
Premise 2: As photons travel, their wavelength remains constant.
Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.com
report post as inappropriate
Ken Seto replied on Feb. 16, 2013 @ 21:33 GMT
I agree that the wavelength of an elementary source such as H-Alpha is a universal constant. The concept of universal wavelength replaces Einstein's constant light speed postulate of SR eliminates all the paradoxes of SR. Also it gives rise to a new theory of relativity called IRT and a new theory of gravity called DTG.
The paper in the following link describe a theory of everything based on the above concept:
http://www.modelmechanics.org/2012unification.pdf
Ken
Seto
report post as inappropriate
jim baker wrote on Sep. 4, 2011 @ 22:40 GMT
wilton.alano@gmail.com wrote on Nov. 14, 2011 @ 22:09 GMT
Once 'ex nihilo nihil fit', the cosmos fabric is necessarily infinite in time, as well as in space. Creation myths are bull shit, and our minds are full of them; jewish one or not!
The cosmos presents itself as nested construction, so, the most reasonable choice is thinking it is made of infinitely nested 'class of dimensions'.
Every macro or micro particle is infinite, sheltering an infinitely complex 'universe' (every particle of an infinite system is also infinite).
So, the 'model' is: No start, no end, no limit of any order (infiite), infinitEley NESTED'.
Cheers
report post as inappropriate
israel socratus wrote on Nov. 15, 2011 @ 05:57 GMT
The Alternative Models of Cosmology can be Vacuum.
==.
Philosophy of Science : The Models of Vacuum.
1.
A black hole is an idealized physical body ( with a mass of
three - six – ten times more than our Sun ) is a region of
spacetime from which nothing, not even light, can escape.
2.
A black body is an idealized physical body that can absorb
all incident electromagnetic radiation.
The result: from a ‘black body ‘not even light, can escape’
3.
Max Laue called ‘ Kirchhoff black body’ as ‘ Kirchhoff vacuum’
Why?
Because Vacuum is a space in which there is nothing material.
For example: according to QET then electron interacts
with vacuum he disappeared there. And therefore physicists
invented the mathematical " method of renormalization",
a method "to sweep the dust under the carpet" / Feynman./
The result: from a ‘vacuum ‘not even light, can escape’
#
My conclusion.
The ‘black body’, the ‘ black hole’ and the vacuum
can do one and the same work (completely absorb radiant
energy). It means that the ‘black body’ and the ‘ black hole’
are models of vacuum.
Another fact.
A black hole has a temperature within a few
millionths of a degree above absolute zero: T=0K.
/ Oxford. Dictionary./
And the vacuum has background cosmic temperature:
T= 2.7 K ----> T= 0K.
The background cosmic temperature (T= 2.7 K ----> T= 0K)
belongs to ‘ The Theory of Ideal Gas’ and therefore we can use
this theory for explaining ‘ The Theory of Vacuum’.
My conclusion.
The ‘black body’ and the ‘ black hole’ and
‘ The Theory of Ideal Gas’ are models of vacuum.
===.
P.S.
If the ‘black body’ and the ‘ black hole’ and the vacuum can radiate
the quantum of light and electron – then the reason is the Vacuum’s
fluctuations / transformation / polarization. And this is ‘ a song from
another opera’. Because the Vacuum’s fluctuations / transformation /
polarization explains the Origin of the Material Existence.
==.
Best wishes.
Israel Sadovnik Socratus
===.
report post as inappropriate
Mark Stuckey wrote on Dec. 2, 2011 @ 20:11 GMT
We present an alternative model of cosmology (http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.3973) based on modified Regge calculus. The motivation for this modification to Regge calculus (and, thus, to general relativity) comes from our interpretation of quantum mechanics called Relational Blockworld ("Reconciling Spacetime and the Quantum: Relational Blockworld and the Quantum Liar Paradox," W.M. Stuckey, Michael Silberstein & Michael Cifone, Foundations of Physics 38, No. 4, 348 - 383 (2008), quant-ph/0510090). We find that our flat, matter-dominated cosmology model produces a fit of the Union2 Compilation data matching that of LambdaCDM. However, our model is decelerating, not accelerating, so there is no need for dark energy.
report post as inappropriate
Mark Stuckey replied on Feb. 4, 2012 @ 22:44 GMT
The arXiv paper cited above has been accepted for publication in Class. Quant. Grav.
report post as inappropriate
Victor Grauer wrote on Jun. 15, 2012 @ 16:00 GMT
My theory comes in the form of a (paradoxical) question: Is the Universe Expanding into a Black Hole?
(see attachment for details)
attachments:
Is_the_Universe_Expanding_Into_a_Black_Hole.pdf
report post as inappropriate
Ray Tomes wrote on Sep. 12, 2012 @ 10:06 GMT
What I want to explain here is far away from most cosmology as presently understood. It came about through a very different set of known facts (the study of cycles), although these are not known to most people in the scientific world. However, what is put forward is quite consistent with known physics, indeed I would argue that it MUST result from known physics. It is not consistent with Big Bang...
view entire post
What I want to explain here is far away from most cosmology as presently understood. It came about through a very different set of known facts (the study of cycles), although these are not known to most people in the scientific world. However, what is put forward is quite consistent with known physics, indeed I would argue that it MUST result from known physics. It is not consistent with Big Bang Theory, because it suggests that the Universe is vastly more ancient than that. I call it The Harmonics Theory, and it can most easily be understood as arising from a single simple axiom:
"The Universe consists of a standing wave which develops harmonically related standing waves and each of these does the same."
This axiom is consistent with any field equations such as Maxwell's equations, Quantum Mechanics or Relativity. The fact that each wave produces harmonics is strongly related to non-linear wave equations. I would argue that the ultimate wave equations of the Universe must be non-linear. If they were linear then we would have no senses, because light would pass through our eyes without interaction, and the same for all other senses.
The consequences of this axiom are what makes it interesting. A single fundamental wave, let us call it frequency 1, loses energy gradually to waves of frequency 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 ... and then each of these does the same. This means that frequency 2 loses energy to 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14 ... and 3 loses energy to 6, 9, 12, 15 ... while 4 loses energy to 8, 12, 16 ... and 5 to 10, 15 .. and 6 to 12, 18 ... and so on.
It is immediately evident that some frequencies such as 12 are produced in many ways while others such as primes are produced in 1 or few ways.
When calculations are done to high order (I have done to about 10^53) it is found that there are certain patterns that almost repeat, and certain orders of magnitude where especially strong harmonics of the original wave form. The first of these especially strong harmonics is 34560 and others tend to be near powers of that number or at about powers of 10^4.5 which is found to correspond quite well to the observed spacing (spacing is naturally inversely related to frequency) of the sequence:
observable universe, galaxies, stars, planets, moons, .... cells, atoms, nucleons.
Within each of the levels of very strong structure there are secondary strong structures typically at ratio of 12, 24, 28, or 20 above and below the strongest one of that level. So the outer planets are the dominant structure but the inner planets are spaced at 1/28 of the distances from the Sun. Likewise, spiral galaxies are dominant, but satellite galaxies are spaced at 1/12 of the distance between spirals.
At all levels of structure there are observable tendency towards quanta or periodicity. At some levels of the structure, both the wave spacings and cycle periods are observable, giving strong support to the existence of standing wave structures: (matching cycles periods in years to wavelengths in light years is correct because the waves propagate with the velocity of light)
a. The megawalls of galaxies are at a spacing of 588 million light years according to present estimates of the Hubble constant. A cycle of 586 million years is found in geology according to Afanasiev, geology professor at Moscow University.
b. Cycles with periods 11.1, 9.6, 8.88, 5.92, 4.44 years are commonly reported according to Edward R Dewey who founded the Foundation for the Study of Cycles. My own analysis of nearby stars shows that they more commonly are spaced at distances in light years near these same figures.
c. The spacing of outer planets indicate waves of 80 and 160 light minutes and such periods are found in many solar phenomena. This period is also indicated by galaxy cores and other phenomena throughout the universe. See papers by Kotov.
For more details, background and graphics please see:
Harmonics Theory - The Physics and Maths
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Boris Balkh wrote on Sep. 21, 2012 @ 01:10 GMT
Today, in the international scientific community, in sciences cosmology and theoretical physics are perceived wrong inferences and conclusions, which are Imposed as fundamental theories and principles. As a consequence, thousands of scientists in the U.S.A. and around the world focus and work in the wrong direction and their efforts not give the desired positive results, only reinforce untruth about the structure of the Universe. This is unjustifiable spent scientific potential, much time and money.
I am convinced, that scientists sooner or later will find the right path, but the question arises, which I want to share with you "Why did this have to happen slowly, difficult and very expensive, then it can be quickly, easily and cheaply? ". It is therefore necessary the scientists of sciences cosmology and theoretical physics adopt model about structure of the Universe and physical laws operating there, of the short e-book "The Dualism". Please visit the
http://uploads.worldlibrary.net/uploads/pdf/2012090518345
4th
e_dualism_pdf.pdf
report post as inappropriate
Satyavarapu Naga Parameswara Gupta wrote on Oct. 27, 2012 @ 00:11 GMT
There is a large number of Blueshifted Galaxies ie., more than about 35 ~ 40 Blueshifted Galaxies known at the time of Astronomer Edwin Hubble in 1930s. The far greater numbers of Blueshifted galaxies was confirmed by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations in the year 2009. Today the known number of Blue shifted Galaxies is more than 7000 scattered all over the sky and the number is increasing day by day. In addition Quasars, UV Galaxies, X-ray, γ- Ray sources and other Blue Galaxies etc., are also Blue shifted Galaxies. Out of a 930,000 Galaxy spectra in the SDSS database, 40% are images for Galaxies; that gives to 558,000 Galaxies. There are 120,000 Quasars, 50,000 brotherhood(X-ray, γ-ray, Blue Galaxies etc.,) of quasars, 7000 blue shifted galaxies. That is more than 31.7% of available Galaxy count are Blue shifted. Just to support Bigbang theory, we are neglecting such a huge amount Blue shifted Galaxies.
How to explain the existence of such large number of blueshifted Galaxies in an expanding universe?
report post as inappropriate
Satyavarapu Naga Parameswara Gupta wrote on Oct. 27, 2012 @ 00:17 GMT
Quasars are Blue shifted Galaxies:
Is that true?
There are 248 papers :
Go to ADS search page try searching title and abstract with keywords “Blue shifted quasars”. If you search with “and”s ie., ‘Blue and Shifted and Galaxies” [use “and” option not with “or”option] you will find 248 papers in ADS search. I did not go through all of them. You can try this link…
DYNAMIC UNIVERSE MODEL: Blue shifted quasars in ADS
http://vaksdynamicuniversemodel.blogspot.in/2012/05/blue-
shifted-quasars-in-ads.html
Now I want to have a live discussion whether quasars are REDshifted or BLUEshifted?
report post as inappropriate
Peter Jackson replied on Oct. 27, 2012 @ 12:32 GMT
Satyavarapu
Quasars are not 'blue shifted galaxies' in astronomical terms, but often emit blue as well as red shifted radiation subject to orientation of the opposing jet 'outflows'. The 'parent' galaxy to the jets is at a distance from us measured in 'redshift', because, consistently, systems further away (so also further in the past) are increasingly redshifted.
The distance correlation is based on an assumption for the cosmological constant or 'rate of expansion' of the universe. I for one do not subscribe to the most mainstream view on this as the evidence is based on space being entirely 'empty nothingness' so having no effect on wavelength of em emissions over time or distance (see my essay - at 7th).
Blue shifted em waves are normally emissions not the emitting matter itself moving towards us. Some are, but far less than the emissions. Galaxy Zoo is a good source of survey data.
But back to quasars. I have a slightly different analysis of them which is more consistent with wider observation that the old mainstream view, and explaining a number of anomalies. You can find it in my last years essay (also 7th in the community list) or in more detail with a bigger picture (and nice pictures) here; http://vixra.org/abs/1102.0016 which shows how they fit precisely with a dynamic but cyclic model.
I hope that helps.
Best wishes.
Peter
report post as inappropriate
Satyavarapu Naga Parameswara Gupta replied on May. 19, 2013 @ 10:16 GMT
Peter
I did not see your post , orelse I would have replied it long ago...
I am showing below that two quasars are blue shifted...
see :
http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8826339039574834163
#editor/target=post;postID=3764090022352257683;onPublishedMe
nu=overview;onClosedMenu=overview;postNum=22;src=postname
or...
view entire post
Peter
I did not see your post , orelse I would have replied it long ago...
I am showing below that two quasars are blue shifted...
see :
http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8826339039574834163
#editor/target=post;postID=3764090022352257683;onPublishedMe
nu=overview;onClosedMenu=overview;postNum=22;src=postname
or
http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8826339039574834163#
editor/target=post;postID=3318178562691887961;onPublishedMen
u=overview;onClosedMenu=overview;postNum=18;src=postname
For the text portion
I. The first Redshifted Quasar 3C273:
The author Schmidt in 1963 published the first paper on a quasar declaring it as red shifted [1]. He said:
“Spectra of the star were taken with the prime-focus spectrograph at the 200-in. telescope with dispersions of 400 and 190 Å per mm. They show a number of broad emission features on a rather blue continuum. The most prominent features, which have widths around 50 Å, are, in order of strength, at 5632, 3239, 5792, 5032 Å. These and other weaker emission bands are listed in the first column of Table 1.”
He concluded that this quasi stellar object now well known as Quasar. It is the nuclear region of a galaxy with a cosmological red-shift of 0.158, corresponding to an apparent velocity of 47,400 km/sec. The distance would be around 500 megaparsecs, and the diameter of the nuclear region would have to be less than 1 kiloparsec.
II. The first Redshifted Quasar 3C273 is that Blue shifted?
The Table 1 shown below embeds the table 1 of Dr Schmidt in the first 4 columns. The remaining columns show how the quasar is blue shifted for the same wavelengths. I.e., the same wave lengths of his observations were used in this paper to show this same quasar 3C273 is Blue shifted. To support further on this, the spectrum observations made by other three more authors were also discussed in this paper. The checking of the first Redshifted Quasar 3C273 for a possibility of blue shift was tried mainly because of the observation of Dr. Schmidt saying this Quasars 3C273’s spectrum is in the “blue continuum” [1]. The Quasars are known for some of the irregularities in the spectrum like some spectral lines match exactly with the some elemental lines with some blue / redshift ratio while some other prominent lines don’t match for the same ratio.
Basically many astronomers in their published papers said that sodium line, Carbon line CIV etc., are blue shifts other lines. There are observed variation in quasars in the lines w.r.t other lines in the known spectrums. If the quasars are taken as blue shifted such variation will be very very less or even cease to exist. To explain such phenomenon Bigbang based cosmologists take the help of million light years length of sodium with a velocity of jet at 50000000 meters / second in the case of this 3C273. How such length of sodium can exist I don’t know.
Many of these papers talk about such blue shifts. These references can be found at ADS [2,3]. For this, go to ADS search page try searching title and abstract with keywords “Blue shifted quasars”. If you search with “and’s i.e., ‘Blue and Shifted and Galaxies” [use “and” option not with “or “option] you will find 248 papers in ADS search. I did not go through all of them. Some of the papers will be discussed here later in this paper.
In the Table 1, in addition to the original values given by Dr. M. Schmidt, four new columns were added. These columns show the possible blue shift of ‘(-0.143122)’ of the Quasar 3C273 and the resulting wavelengths after the blue shift. SDSS website gives different possible wavelengths in angstrom units in their webpage on ‘Algorithms - Emission and absorption line fitting’ [4]. These wavelengths were chosen as they will be more authentic and accurate. Please note there are some slight differences in the numerical values in wavelengths as given by Schmidt and SDSS webpage.
Table 1. Wave-lengths and Identifications as given by Dr. M. Schmidt
Table 1: Observations in this paper
l
l/1.158
l0
l / 0.856878
l0 from SDSS
3239
2797
2798
Mg II
3780.00
H_theta+19
3799
4595
3968
3970
Hg
5362.49
Mg+186
5177
Note 1
4753
4104
4102
H d
5546.88
Mg+370
5177
Note 1
5032
4345
4340
H g
5872.48
Na-23
5895
5200–5415
4490–4675
6068-6319
Na-OI
Note 2
5632
4864
4861
H b
6572.70
H_alpha+8
6565
5792
5002
5007
[O III]
6759.42
SII+27
6732
6005–6190
5186–5345
7008-7223
blue continuum
Note 3
6400–6510
5527–5622
7468-7597
blue continuum
Note 3
Note 1: Later measurements of this QUASAR 3C273 at wavelengths 4595 and 4793 show dips or flatter curves instead of peaks (absorption spectra instead of emission spectra).
1. Dr. M. Schmidt’s paper “3C 273: A Star-like Object with Large Red-shift”, published in Nature 197, 1040 (1963)
http://www.nature.com/physics/looking-back/schmidt/ind
ex.html
2.http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-abs_connect?db_key=A
ST&db_key=PRE&qform=AST&arxiv_sel=astro-ph&arxiv_sel=cond-ma
t&arxiv_sel=cs&arxiv_sel=gr-qc&arxiv_sel=hep-ex&arxiv_sel=he
p-lat&arxiv_sel=hep-ph&arxiv_sel=hep-th&arxiv_sel=math&arxiv
_sel=math-ph&arxiv_sel=nlin&arxiv_sel=nucl-ex&arxiv_sel=nucl
-th&arxiv_sel=physics&arxiv_sel=quant-ph&arxiv_sel=q-bio&sim
_query=YES&ned_query=YES&adsobj_query=YES&aut_logic=OR&obj_l
ogic=OR&author=&object=&start_mon=&start_year=&end_mon=&end_
year=&ttl_logic=AND&title=blue+shifted+quasars&txt_logic=AND
&text=blue+shifted+quasars&nr_to_return=200&start_nr=1&jou_p
ick=ALL&ref_stems=&data_and=ALL&group_and=ALL&start_entry_da
y=&start_entry_mon=&start_entry_year=&end_entry_day=&end_ent
ry_mon=&end_entry_year=&min_score=&sort=SCORE&data_type=SHOR
T&aut_syn=YES&ttl_syn=YES&txt_syn=YES&aut_wt=1.0&obj_wt=1.0&
ttl_wt=0.3&txt_wt=3.0&aut_wgt=YES&obj_wgt=YES&ttl_wgt=YES&tx
t_wgt=YES&ttl_sco=YES&txt_sco=YES&version=1
3.http://vaksdynamicuniversemodel.blogspot.in/2012/05/blue-s
hifted-quasars-in-ads.html
4.Algorithms - Emission and absorption line fitting of SDSS http://www.sdss.org/dr7/algorithms/speclinefits.html
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Robert L. DeMelo wrote on Oct. 27, 2012 @ 03:52 GMT
An alternative model for all of cosmology exits in self-similar fractal scale-invariant cosmology between quantum and macroscopic cosmology, or simply fractal scale cosmology. The term for this field of research is more specific and can be considered a branch, or sub-field, of the more generic field of fractal cosmology which includes fractal patterns in matter distributions between all...
view entire post
An alternative model for all of cosmology exits in self-similar fractal scale-invariant cosmology between quantum and macroscopic cosmology, or simply fractal scale cosmology. The term for this field of research is more specific and can be considered a branch, or sub-field, of the more generic field of fractal cosmology which includes fractal patterns in matter distributions between all cosmological matter objects. This field of research is not simply fractal cosmology. My research into this field, into a specific model, directly correlates a scale relation between atomic quantum systems and macroscopic cosmological systems through a uniquely explicit framework. The framework reconciles many disparaging differences between the two scaled systems and is fairly intuitive (simple). The results have been thus far very interesting.
Click here for latest details on this modelClick here for older details on this modelIn this specific sub-field of research in fractal cosmology, there are actually very few individuals doing remotely similar research. The notable few that are, besides myself, are Robert L. Oldershaw and Laurent Nottale. Our specific models are currently fundamentally different though the premise is loosely the same, that macroscopic cosmological systems are a scale invariant self-similar representation of quantum systems through some form of scale transforming framework, and that subsequently other macroscopic systems have quantum scaled relatives. I urge you to explore our individual models to get a fulsome perspective of all the research being done. Notably the quality of research material differs. I concede I have not been as polished as the others, but in response I turn the focus to my results.
My own research into my specific model has derived very interesting results which have been my only driving motivation to pursue this research and my model. Whether or not this line of research is correct or not is inconsequential as the importance lies in exploring the possibility to either validate or invalidate it. My current belief is that this field of research will be fruitful, through I maybe proven wrong, my results indicate otherwise.
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Israel Perez wrote on Feb. 5, 2013 @ 07:22 GMT
Hi all
I have a question about cosmology, I would be grateful if anyone, preferably a cosmologist, could answer it and perhaps make some comments about it.
I have studied the foundations of cosmology and as far as I understand the so called concordance model of cosmology (popularly known as the big bang model) is based on a strong principle, namely: space expands as function of time. This simple assumption can account for the cosmological redshift and the temperature of the cosmic microwave background radiation which are considered two of the most important experimental evidences favoring this model (of course the abundance of the elements and the distribution of galaxies are important too, but not fundamental as space expansion). The idea of space expansion led astronomers and physicists (Lemaitre, et al.) in the 1930s to propose the idea of the universe having a beginning in the past. The Big Bang and the stationary models both assumed space expansion as a fundamental ingredient and without it they wouldn't be able to explain Hubble's law and more specifically the cosmological redshift. Hence, the key in any of these models is the mechanism used to make light to change its wavelength as it travels long distances. I think that my point has been clear, if space is not really expanding the whole concordance model won't be able to explain cosmological phenomena and the whole edifice of modern cosmology would fall. Do you agree on this?
If so, do you know any other alternative model (where space expansion is not considered) to account for the cosmological redshift and the CMB?
Cheers
Israel
report post as inappropriate
Pentcho Valev replied on Feb. 5, 2013 @ 12:35 GMT
Israel Perez wrote: "I have a question about cosmology, I would be grateful if anyone, preferably a cosmologist, could answer it... (...) ...do you know any other alternative model (where space expansion is not considered) to account for the cosmological redshift..."
You expect a cosmologist to answer this question and automatically become an unperson?
Halton Arp Victim Of Rational Scientific SocietyGeorge Orwell: "Withers, however, was already an unperson. He did not exist : he had never existed."Pentcho Valev
report post as inappropriate
Israel Perez replied on Feb. 5, 2013 @ 22:56 GMT
Hi Pentcho
Thanks for the links. I'am aware of the controversy with Halton Arp. Unfortunately, the second link didn't work.
Regards
Israel
report post as inappropriate
Nainan K. Varghese replied on Nov. 13, 2014 @ 16:16 GMT
Kindly see a small essay on CMB Radiation at http://vixra.org/abs/1404.0056
Nainan
report post as inappropriate
Steve Agnew replied on Nov. 25, 2014 @ 04:31 GMT
There is certainly a great deal of evidence to support the notion of an expanding universe, a la, the red shift.
There are other cosmologies, however.
A contracting universe is also consistent with these observations. However, a contractin universe is completely different from an expanding universe...actually, not so different as just oppostite.
Contraction as a means of universal force makes much more sense...and so I like contraction.
report post as inappropriate
hide replies
Peter Jackson wrote on Feb. 5, 2013 @ 11:26 GMT
Israel,
Yes. And it's actually worse than that. The Concordance model (If an 'observational' cosmologist view will do) was just the 'closest approximation' that could be agreed. It's highly inconsistent with current findings, including CMBR anisotropies.
You refer to; "the mechanism used to make light .. change its wavelength as it travels long distances." Unbelievably No! According...
view entire post
Israel,
Yes. And it's actually worse than that. The Concordance model (If an 'observational' cosmologist view will do) was just the 'closest approximation' that could be agreed. It's highly inconsistent with current findings, including CMBR anisotropies.
You refer to; "the mechanism used to make light .. change its wavelength as it travels long distances." Unbelievably No! According to current 'Baryon Acoustic nonsense theory' light 'decouples' in the early universe, so no change on the journey is allowed for in redshift theory except in the local emitter area. It quite beggars belief really as that conflicts with most other astronomy! There are in fact many effects that could add to redshift. I listed them on an APS blog page recently (can't find it right now) but the very expansion itself on the 12bn yr journey is one!
A few of the inconsistencies are officially admitted, such as here;
Ostriker & Nabb 2012 (specifically on galaxy evolution, but way behind mine here which resolves the anomalies);
Helical CMBR asymmetry and also; giving the complex and unique 'anomalous' CMB Anisotropic pattern precisely predicted by the DFM;
Copi et al 2010 Large-Angle Anomalies in the CMB.But it's 'head in the sand' as editors wont publish any other theory. You have to smile!. The DFM give pre 'big bang (not!) conditions, resolves around 9/10 of the anomalies, and logically derives slowly decelerating expansion with 'joined up' cosmology.
I've taken the 9 page strait jacket off my essay, which now more readably explains the foundations.
Academia.edu Jan 2013 It's only just lodged, do please give me your thoughts (The main paper including the full list of effects not allowed for is still in draft).
So most admit current theory is quite inconsistent, but wont look at any alternatives as they're different from current theory! Bring back Spock I say.
Best wishes
Peter
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Israel Perez replied on Feb. 5, 2013 @ 23:26 GMT
Dear Peter
Thanks for your reply. Indeed, that's why cosmologists called it "concordance", so far this model represents what most cosmologists agree on. As you rightly point out there are still several anomalies that seriously challenge the model. No theory is perfect, they all have anomalies, so we should understand that finding an explanation of the universe is not an easy task. As far as I know this is the best available description of cosmological phenomena and despite certain inconsistencies cosmologists will hold the model until a more powerful one appears on the scene.
I'll take a look at your documents but it'll take some time to give you a reply since the material is considerable. I'll let you know as soon as possible.
Best Regards
Israel
report post as inappropriate
Ken Seto wrote on Feb. 16, 2013 @ 21:43 GMT
The paper in the following link describes a new theory on the origin of our universe.
http://www.modelmechanics.org/2011universe.pdf
Also please visit my website for more papers on my theory:
http://www.modelmechanics.org/
Ken Seto
report post as inappropriate
Yuri Danoyan wrote on Feb. 17, 2013 @ 03:57 GMT
Welcome to http://vixra.org/
report post as inappropriate
Ken Seto wrote on Feb. 18, 2013 @ 16:02 GMT
A New Theory on the Origin of Our Universe
A new physical model of our Universe, called Model Mechanics, has been formulated. The current state of our Universe as interpreted by Model Mechanics is as follows: Space isoccupied by a stationary, structured and elastic light-conducting medium called the EMatrix.A mass-bearing particle called the S-Particle is the only fundamental particle...
view entire post
A New Theory on the Origin of Our Universe
A new physical model of our Universe, called Model Mechanics, has been formulated. The current state of our Universe as interpreted by Model Mechanics is as follows: Space isoccupied by a stationary, structured and elastic light-conducting medium called the EMatrix.A mass-bearing particle called the S-Particle is the only fundamental particle existsin our Universe. The different absolute motions of the S-Particles in the E-Matrix gives rise
to all the observed particles such as the electron and the different quarks. Also, the absolute motions of the S-Particles or S-Particle Systems give rise to all the forces and processes of nature. Model Mechanics leads to a new theory of gravity called Doppler Theory of Gravity(DTG) and DTG unites with the electromagnetic and nuclear forces naturally [1, 2]. It alsoleads to a new theory of relativity called Improved Relativity Theory (IRT). IRT includes
SRT as a subset. However, unlike SRT, the equations of IRT are valid in all
environments….including gravity.
In cosmology, Model Mechanics provides natural solutions to the following problematic cosmological observations of the current theories:
1. The observed accelerated expansion of the far reached regions of the universe disagrees with the predictions.
2. The observed rotational curves of galaxies disagree with the predictions of current theories.
3. The observed paths of travel of the spacecrafts Pioneer 10 and 11 disagree with the predictions of current theories.
4. The observable universe appears to have a much larger horizon than it is allowed by its observed age.
5. The GRT description of gravity gives rise to the observed flatness problem of the universe.
6. Dark matter....this is the free S-Particles that are not in orbiting motions around the E-Strings.
7. Dark energy....this is a repulsive effect arises from the interacting objects following the divergent structure of the E-Matrix.
The above Model Mechanical description of our current Universe leads to a new interpretation for the origin of our Universe. This new interpretation provides explanation for the following mysteries of our universe:
1. How the electrons and up quarks were produced during the Big Bang.
2. Why is there a preponderance of matter over anti-matter in our universe.
A paper entitled "The Origin of the Universe as Interpreted by Model Mechanics" is available in the following link:
http://www.modelmechanics.org/2011universe.pdf
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Eckard Blumschein replied on Sep. 11, 2013 @ 07:55 GMT
Isn't a stationary light-conducting matrix at variance with Michelson 1881 and Michelson and Morley 1887?
Eckard
report post as inappropriate
mutasim wrote on May. 13, 2013 @ 22:24 GMT
hi
I am interested in astronomy ,and I knew from some sources that there are about 7000 blueshifted galaxies,but another source said that the number is only 100.
so if possible if any one is an expert in this field please tell me which number is correct.
best regards
report post as inappropriate
Stuart Marongwe wrote on Sep. 10, 2013 @ 16:21 GMT
INTRODUCING NEXUS: A QUANTUM THEORY OF SPACE-TIME, GRAVITY AND THE QUANTUM VACUUM
Hie
It is well known that it is notoriously difficult to quantize gravity. I have proposed an alternative approach to Quantum Gravity which has provided answers to fundamental questions such as Dark Matter and Dark Energy without resorting to exotic particles and hitherto unknown scalar fields. You can download my paper from this website www.scirp.org/journal/ijaa and provide a constructive critique
Best regards
Stuart Marongwe
report post as inappropriate
Stuart Marongwe replied on Sep. 12, 2013 @ 07:15 GMT
MOND ACCELERATION DERIVED FROM NEXUS
Here is something that is bound to raise your eyebrows. If you read the published version of my paper you will find that I derive Hubbles law from Nexus in form v=H/k which is the induced constant rotational velocity by a graviton (Dark Matter).H is the Hubble constant and k is graviton wave vector in the nth quantum state. it can also be expressed as v=H/nK where K is the ground state wavevector K=H/c and c=speed of light.
Therefore the acceleration induced by a graviton in the nth state on a test particle is v^2xk or H^2/nK. Thus the highest induced acceleration is by the ground state graviton where n=1. This is H^2/K = Hc ~ MOND acceleration.
report post as inappropriate
Peter Jackson wrote on Sep. 10, 2013 @ 18:00 GMT
Mutasim, (& Stuart)
There are ~7000 blueshifted galaxies, most in two groups nearby and around a plane tilted wrt the Milky Way. Ave velocity is 200km/s, highest 8000km/s. Many are quite small (satellites). There are many more with a blushifted half (rotating towards us).
The full list can be found on the JPL's NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED). A good analysis from 2009 is here;
Blogspot; Fitted Planes.The peculiar pattern is consistent with the predictions of a cyclic cosmological model which also predicts the CMB peculiar anisotropies, just confirmed by Planck, described in a model of 'discrete fields' (DFM) and in my essay here three years ago (2020 vision). Similar cyclic cosmologies have been suggested by Dicke, Peebles, Einstein, Penrose and Turok among others, many which the findings support, resolving the 'pre Big Bang' problem.
Stuart,
I'll try to find some time for a quick look and comment. Do check out and cemment on my well supported essay this year revealing an apparently powerful QM aspect of the DFM. http://fqxi.org/community/forum/category/31419?sort=communit
y
'The IQbit'.Best wishes
Peter
report post as inappropriate
Stuart Marongwe replied on Sep. 10, 2013 @ 19:27 GMT
I am checking it now. Its good to share different views of reality.
Stuart
report post as inappropriate
Peter Jackson replied on Sep. 12, 2013 @ 09:49 GMT
Stuart,
You'll see I find manipulating symbols only approximates nature so use a very different dynamic geometrical approach to model how reality evolves. I can't then comment on your formulations, but it's more interesting to see where we've ended up from the very different routes taken. I liked your paper and found some broad areas of agreement, though also differences to...
view entire post
Stuart,
You'll see I find manipulating symbols only approximates nature so use a very different dynamic geometrical approach to model how reality evolves. I can't then comment on your formulations, but it's more interesting to see where we've ended up from the very different routes taken. I liked your paper and found some broad areas of agreement, though also differences to falsify.
For me, gravity emerged unheralded from a dynamic logic resolving the differences of SR and QM. SR is implemented by scattering at c from simple condensed fermion conjugate pairs (high coupling constant but low EM profile; n=1) and protons, with various fractions of bound molecular gas. Collectively 'plasma', which has interesting qualities including a '2-fluid' state.
The condensation of the matter, directly related to orbital or rotational velocity as you say, creates the quantized G potential. So 'gravitons' are in that case ions, which are quite handy, also being Dark Matter and implementing 'curved space time' due to refraction, including the kinetic effects found due to relative plasma motion (as my prev. essay and recently confirmed by the VLB Array).
Plasma density distribution of course relates to massive bodies, and also relative motion through the QV (shocks). I've tended to favour the Yukawa potential as it's sharper cut of matches the model and observation, but I'd take your advice on the implications of your proposal. There was too high a 'symbol density' for me to be confident about conceptual harmonics.
To get a better glimpse of the 'discrete field' model I've derived you'd need to see my last 3 essays, starting with '2020 Vision' (estimating no change to doctrine before 2020). It's far from complete, but you'd better comment on it because if you think it's entire claptrap there's little point exploring further! Look at the conversations on the 'other' "Alternative Models" blog, or a more comprehensive joint paper published on the quantum optics foundations is open access here;
arXiv; Resolution of Kantor and Babcock-Bergman Emission Theory Anomalies.
Best wishes
Peter
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Michael Helland wrote on Sep. 19, 2013 @ 23:45 GMT
Can two electrons exchange a photon at unlimited distances?
This paper examines what the universe would look like if there was a distance limit to the quantum electrodynamic absorption and emission of photons.
It uses Hubble's limit as the limit and the results are a very plausible alternate history of the universe.
http://monadpad.com/bigbang.pdf
report post as inappropriate
Richard Lewis wrote on Oct. 5, 2013 @ 14:17 GMT
I would like to propose an alternative model of the origin and evolution of the universe. It starts from the assumption that the universe is finite with a spacetime boundary. In the Big Bang model we implicitly assume the existence of a time boundary. The general theory of relativity introduces the concept of spacetime so that time and space do not have a separate independent existence. This...
view entire post
I would like to propose an alternative model of the origin and evolution of the universe. It starts from the assumption that the universe is finite with a spacetime boundary. In the Big Bang model we implicitly assume the existence of a time boundary. The general theory of relativity introduces the concept of spacetime so that time and space do not have a separate independent existence. This implies the existence of a space boundary as well as a time boundary.
All that exists in the universe lies with this spacetime boundary so it makes no sense to talk about "before the beginning" or "outside of the space boundary". It is the expansion of space at the boundary which is the cause of the general expansion of space which is observed. Going back in time towards time zero in this model means that we are contracting towards a zero volume, zero energy universe which is more satisfactory than the hot big bang singularity which proposes higher and higher energy densities as you approach time zero.
In this expanding universe the total energy must remain at zero so that the change in spacetime curvature associated with the expansion of space must lead to matter formation. Another way of looking at this is to consider the Schwarzschild relationship between the amount of mass in a region and its radius: r = 2Gm/c
2. As the universe expands there is a requirement for the formation of matter arising from the gravitational potential energy of space.
This matter formation appears from observations to have taken place when the universe was 378,000 years old since the cosmic microwave background radiation has a redshift of z = 1,100. In this model the CMBR is directly associated with matter formation. The process of galaxy formation is proposed as the initial formation of galactic black holes due to the release of tension in the fabric of spacetime. Then star formation follows as a result of the galactic black-hole formation. The material in the disk or sphere of the galaxy causes the motion of stars in the galaxies to be as observed. No dark matter. No dark energy.
This idea is explained a little more fully in:
universeRichard
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Richard Lewis replied on Oct. 5, 2013 @ 14:29 GMT
The website link in the previous post did not work:
This one does:
Universe
report post as inappropriate
Richard Lewis replied on Nov. 6, 2013 @ 17:06 GMT
Akinbo Ojo replied on Nov. 6, 2013 @ 18:47 GMT
Richard,
I may reply more fully later as I have myself being fooling around with this idea.
You said, "...Changes in spacetime curvature can lead to matter formation with the total energy of the universe remaining at zero".
One of my proposals is that the matter-energy content of the universe has been increasing with its radius. Since increase in radius translates to reducing spacetime curvature which you propose can lead to matter formation this appears to agree with my thinking.
You did not consider another guide to our cosmological beginnings which is thermodynamics. If the second law applies, then in the beginning entropy must be zero, which also agrees with your model's "in which energy density tends to zero as time tends to zero". In agreement with the third law, temperature too will be zero at time zero even if hot immediately thereafter.
Lastly, if you add an infinitesimal drop or fluctuation in energy to a system at absolute zero, i.e. T = 0, what could happen considering the thermodynamic equation dS = dE/T?
My calculation indicates an initial temperature 10
32K in accord with the Big bang model and an increase in entropy to an equilibrium value which seems to tend towards infinity.
Akinbo
report post as inappropriate
Richard Lewis replied on Nov. 7, 2013 @ 16:59 GMT
Hi Akinbo,
In the spacetime boundary model, spacetime is defined to exist within the boundary so the origin point of time zero, volume zero does not lie within the defined universe. We can talk about an evolution from any point within the spacetime boundary but at time zero, volume zero the rate of passage of time is stopped so that no event could occur.
Now the way we have to treat...
view entire post
Hi Akinbo,
In the spacetime boundary model, spacetime is defined to exist within the boundary so the origin point of time zero, volume zero does not lie within the defined universe. We can talk about an evolution from any point within the spacetime boundary but at time zero, volume zero the rate of passage of time is stopped so that no event could occur.
Now the way we have to treat the concept of energy in this closed system of the universe is to consider a conservation law which includes mass, energy and spacetime curvature. The equations of general relativity equating mass energy distribution to spacetime curvature can be turned into a conservation law. The total of mass, energy and spacetime curvature must always equate to zero.
At a time before matter formation we have an expanding empty space due to the expansion at the boundary. Before matter formation we do not have any meaning to the concept of temperature or any forms of energy related to matter so we have an expanding universe where the only present energy form is the changing spacetime curvature due to the expansion at the boundary.
As described in the document
The evolution of the universe this ultimately must lead to matter formation to balance the total energy equation. As I see it the laws of thermodynamics would only start to apply when matter exists within in the universe. The cosmic microwave background radiation was emitted during the matter formation era and has a redshift of z =1,100. This implies that the initial period during which there was no matter within the universe lasted approximately 378,000 years.
Can we apply the laws of thermodynamics to a galaxy formation era in which galaxies are formed directly from the stored energy of spacetime curvature? Before any galaxy formation event we would have zero entropy and zero energy and zero temperature. After the formation of a galaxy we can give meaning to the thermodynamic concepts of energy, entropy and temperature.
If we exclude energy components due to spacetime curvature from our energy definition for the purposes of thermodynamic calculations then the galaxy formation event would appear as a sudden jump in energy and an increase in entropy. The evolution of the universe from a thermodynamic perspective can be viewed as a continuing process of energy release from spacetime towards the formation of mass and energy with a corresponding increase in entropy.
Richard
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Akinbo Ojo replied on Nov. 7, 2013 @ 19:15 GMT
Richard,
From your paper: "As the universe continued to expand the mass of each galaxy will then increase", "The implication of the spacetime boundary model of the universe is that there is a definite relationship between the volume of the universe and the mass contained within the universe. This relationship is modelled using the Schwartzchild Radius", "Taking the boundary of the universe to be at the Schwartzchild radius implies a linear relationship between the mass in the universe and the radius of the universe following the initial formation of galaxies"...
I cannot but agree with your model. You may want to view my humble contributions on this
A and
B. A "little voice" tells me we are right.
Akinbo
report post as inappropriate
Richard Lewis replied on Nov. 8, 2013 @ 12:46 GMT
Akinbo,
Thank you for taking the time to look at my paper and comment. I had a look at your paper A to see the different approaches that arrived at a similar conclusion.
The main starting point for the spacetime boundary model has been an instinctive rejection of the finite with no boundary hypothesis underlying the big bang theory. How can a finite universe with an increasing volume have no space boundary? I have read all the explanations of this and none of them make sense to me.
So I adopted a finite plus spacetime boundary assumption to see where it leads. This first thing that this does is to invalidate the cosmological principle since a universe with a space boundary could not be spatially homogeneous and isotropic. This means that the Friedmann equations cannot be used as these equations assume that the universe is spatially homogeneous and isotropic.
However, the advantage of the space boundary hypothesis is that it gives us an explanation for the expansion of space and also it allows the consideration of variation in spacetime curvature as a component of the total energy equation comprising mass energy and spacetime curvature. I do not think one could apply this approach to total energy conservation if the assumption is that the universe is finite with no boundary and spatially homogeneous and isotropic.
There is also a different perspective on the nature of mass and spacetime which fits well with the spacetime boundary model.
This can be found at:
The unification of physicsThe nature of massRichard
report post as inappropriate
Richard Lewis replied on Nov. 9, 2013 @ 15:36 GMT
I updated the paper on the unification of physics and its new address is:
The unification of physicsRichard
report post as inappropriate
hide replies
Richard Lewis wrote on Nov. 20, 2013 @ 08:23 GMT
Inflation, Dark matter and Dark energy has been added as a new section to the paper:
The evolution of the universeThe section describes how these adaptations to the big bang model are treated in the Spacetime Boundary model.
Richard
report post as inappropriate
Richard Lewis replied on Nov. 27, 2013 @ 13:55 GMT
The acceleration of the expansion of the universe is explained in the context of the Spacetime Boundary model of the universe.
The evolution of the universeAlso, given the existence of a spacetime boundary it brings with it the possibility of identifying the centre of the universe and the position of our galaxy in the universe.
Richard
report post as inappropriate
Hasmukh K. Tank wrote on Mar. 13, 2014 @ 08:55 GMT
Dear Friends,
Your authentic comments, and suggestions on my attemt titled: Seven possible alternative interpretations of the 'cosmological red shift' (Attached with this post)will be highly valuable for our arriving at correct understanding of the cosmos.
Hasmukh K. Tank
attachments:
1403.0005v1.pdf_Seven_Possible_Alternative_Interpretations_of_Cosmological_Red_Shift.pdf
report post as inappropriate
Alan Lowey wrote on Apr. 11, 2014 @ 08:49 GMT
Most sensitive dark matter detector reaches critical phase. I'm predicting that high energy particles will be detected coming from dark matter annihilation at the center of the earth, other planets and sun as well as beyond.
Dark matter hunt: US LUX experiment reaches critical phaseAlso, I'm predicting that astrophysical neutrinos are also created from dark matter annihilation in a similar way to cosmic radiation.
Exotic Space Particles Slam into Buried South Pole DetectorCosmic rays themselves are a mystery. The most energetic among them are thought to originate in the same processes that spawn astrophysical neutrinos. Yet because cosmic rays (which, despite the name, are actually high-energy particles) are charged, they travel curved paths, shaped by magnetic fields, through the universe. As a result, they do not preserve information about where they came from. Studying neutrinos is a way to try to understand the origin of high-energy cosmic rays, which are somehow sped up to nearly light-speed in some sort of cosmic particle accelerator. Just how this happens is an open question that shows just how much we do not know about the most violent processes in the universe. “This is the biggest mystery of our century,” says Toshihiro Fujii, a cosmic-ray researcher at the University of Chicago’s Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics. Fujii was not involved in IceCube, but says its findings will aid his goal of understanding cosmic rays.
report post as inappropriate
John C Hodge wrote on May. 7, 2014 @ 19:17 GMT
Israel Perez and Peter Jackson from Feb. 5, 2013
Yes. It’s called the STOE.
The Scalar Theory of Everything (STOE) is a self-consistent model that was derived from considerations of galaxies and galaxy clusters. The STOE explains many mysterious phenomena from diverse observational disciplines. The STOE is simpler and more encompassing than other models. An important part of the...
view entire post
Israel Perez and Peter Jackson from Feb. 5, 2013
Yes. It’s called the STOE.
The Scalar Theory of Everything (STOE) is a self-consistent model that was derived from considerations of galaxies and galaxy clusters. The STOE explains many mysterious phenomena from diverse observational disciplines. The STOE is simpler and more encompassing than other models. An important part of the STOE is to show the
correspondence to general relativity and quantum mechanics. This allows the successes of the current models to be incorporated into the STOE while explaining problem observations.
The STOE posits spiral galaxies are sources and elliptical galaxies are sinks of our universe. The sources are continually injecting the constituents of our universe and sinks are continually ejecting the constituents of our universe. This explains the cooling flows and the differing observations between spiral and elliptical galaxies. The infall of matter in spiral galaxies is modeled as a cooling flow, also.
The simplest structure that can conceptually produce a wide range of differing observations is an interaction of two different types of entities. The simplest form of the small is light. Light in experiments suggests two types of behavior, particle-like and wave-like. Therefore, the STOE posits two components and their interaction produce differing structures, more complex objects, and the diverse behavior observed in our universe. One component that can produce wave-like behavior is a plenum named after Descartes' plenum. The plenum is infinitely divisible and ubiquitous. The density of the plenum produces a scalar potential $\rho$ field.
The particle-like component of our universe is called a hod. Hods cause a static warp in the $\rho$ field in accordance with the Newtonian spherical property. ``Static'' such as caused by a stationary electron in a stationary electromagnetic field because hods are neither a Source nor a Sink of energy. Hods merely modifies the $\rho$ field. Because the $\rho$ field near hods must attract other hods, the hods decrease the $\rho$ field. Only the divergence of the plenum density acts on only the surface of the hod. The Michelson-Morley experiment indicates the flow of the plenum has no effect on the hod perpendicular to its surface. The Michelson-Morley experiment is also why the Lorentz Ether Theory and gravitational ether developed. Therefore, the plenum is not a fluid. The limit of the speed of light implies the hod is two-dimensional because that presents a zero cross section in the direction of travel through the plenum. The minimum plenum density is zero. Therefore, the hod surface marks a discontinuity in the plenum of zero $\rho$.
The forces are applied by contact rather than action-at-a-distance. The forces are hod to plenum, plenum to plenum, and plenum to hod.
Supporting this conjecture is the observation that there are two types of physical energy, potential and kinetic. Hods cause potential energy. The plenum causes kinetic energy. The interaction is a third form of force in our universe that may be likened to ``spirit'', which is what Liebniz was attempting to show the “spirit’s” existence.
The hods' influence on the plenum implies some plenum is ``bound'' to the hod and causes close hods to be bound to other hods. This structure is matter. The plenum content of matter causes the inertial characteristics. The hods cause the gravitational effects. The equality of potential energy and kinetic energy in matter results in the weak equivalence principle. The STOE speculates the amount of plenum bound to hods depends on the $\rho$ environment of the matter. The relative amount of plenum per hod determines the equivalence principle.
Matter or bodies are structures of hods and plenum. The divergence of the $\rho$ field on the surface of a hod then causes matter attraction according to established gravitational physics and causes the frequency change of electromagnetic signals.
The $\rho$ at a point in space is the heat equation solution for point sources, sinks, and matter in a three dimensional space.
My book (self published) describes the history and current STOE. My Chapter 14 of “Black Holes and Galaxy Formation”, 2010, eds. A. D. Wachter and R. J. Propst, Nova Science Publishers, Inc. (New York, USA) lists several speculations for future investigation.
I am an independent researcher and am the only one working on the STOE.
My next efforts are to examine QSOs and the interference pattern for single photons. If QSOs are as H. Arp [“Seeing Red: Redshifts, Cosmology and Academic Science”, Aperon, (Montreal, Canada)] suggests, then they should improve the redshift-Cepheid distance correlation according to the STOE.
A key to understanding the small is to understand light. The Fractal Principle suggests the understanding must be consistent with everyday world understanding. The wave-particle duality and Schrodinger’s cat ideas fail the Fractal Principle. The STOE model of photon interference patterns produced good correlation to light observations. Its weakness was explaining experiments with one photon at a time in the experiment. The current calculation needed several photons at a time in the experiment even if only one passed through one of the slits at a time.
Afshar et al. (2007) used a low intensity light such that only one photon at a time could be in the experiment. I think this is because the photon interacts with the mask and screen. Photons are obeying Bohm and the TIQM model of quantum mechanics. Because the plenum waves travel much faster than photons, The backward-in-time wave of TIQM may be the reflection of the induced plenum wave from the mask and screen.
Hodge
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Peter Jackson replied on May. 7, 2014 @ 21:14 GMT
John,
Yes, and DFM; recursive quantum gauge theories. The EPR paradox is resolved classically (though those too close to Bells theorem can't see it yet) as my essay shows. The Gluck essay also gives an interesting fresh perspective of it.
I've just read Hasmukh Tank's essay and it is quite excellent and almost completely consistent. Not complete by any means but exploring new aspects. The initial model of discrete field dynamics we as well outlined in my 2011 essay 2020 vision, estimating that it WON'T be recognised until at least ~2020. It's on track!
My last 2 essays explore different angles. Essentially it's fractal yin yang helical wave/particle corropondese all the way down. It pulls together the amplituhedron, string theory dimensions, Feynman-Weinburg QG, Chaos theory, Godel n-value logic etc etc, though not so as any of the faithful disciples of each would immediately recognise it! Unification is just it's immediate effect.
Very well spotted. Here's hoping for some 2020 vision soon. Theoretical intellectual inertia is beyond my worse nightmares. So much for the Scientific Method of assessment. Physics seems more 'belief' based than religion!
Anyone who can see any new angles or links please do jump in.
Best wishes
Peter
report post as inappropriate
Angus McCoss wrote on Jun. 6, 2014 @ 17:12 GMT
Dynamic Dimensionality
Zeeya, Fellows, I write as a keen tenderfoot in your fascinating discussions,
Alternatively... imagine the nascent Universe which, at its point of inception, has zero dimensions. Next imagine an initial extremely rapid early expansion (inflation?) of that point universe (singularity), through a closed unit interval [0,1] fractional dimensionality, into a...
view entire post
Dynamic Dimensionality
Zeeya, Fellows, I write as a keen tenderfoot in your fascinating discussions,
Alternatively... imagine the nascent Universe which, at its point of inception, has zero dimensions. Next imagine an initial extremely rapid early expansion (inflation?) of that point universe (singularity), through a closed unit interval [0,1] fractional dimensionality, into a Universe which fleetingly has integer-one spatial dimension. Now imagine that one dimensional universe seamlessly continuing to expand, but with decelerating expansion, through a second sequential closed unit interval [0,1] fractional dimensionality, momentarily establishing a Universe which has integer-two spatial dimensions (surface of last scattering?). From that transient two dimensional state, imagine further continuous expansion of the Universe being realised through a third sequential closed unit interval [0,1] fractional dimensionality, creating a Universe which has integer-three spatial dimensions.
Consider; might this have been how the current state of our universe emerged (unfurled) into its three spatial dimensions? For a visual metaphor, kindly reflect on the unfurling of a fern from a seed, through a growing sprout (koru), then revealing a frond surface, to become a fully formed space-filling plant? Applying Occams razor, is this imagined continuous progression of dynamic dimensionality (seamlessly from 0 to 1, to 2, to 3 spatial dimensions) not more physically and mathematically less complicated than a cataclysmic and instant short-cut leap from 0 to 3 spatial dimensions at the Big Bang (and why did it immediately settle at 3 dimensions)?
Consider further; might the closed unit interval [0,1] fractional dimensionality, be what we perceive as the illusion of Time as it is counted or clocked between successive integer spatial dimensions? Perhaps our current Universe, which has three clearly revealed spatial dimensions, is continuing to undergo dynamic dimensional and cosmological co-expansion, with dimensional unfurling through Time (closed unit interval [0,1] fractional dimensionality) continuing towards four revealed spatial dimensions and beyond in the future?
Consider; might there be a reservoir of furled dimensionality which is revealing itself through unfurling from 0 dimensions at the point of inception, through 0 to 1, to 2, to the present 3 spatial dimensions and beyond in the future to 4, to 5, to 6, to 7, to 8, to say 9 or 10 spatial dimensions with late accelerating expansion? Perhaps such an unfurling reservoir of 9 or 10 furled dimensions is related to those multiple dimensions postulated in the foundations of String Theories?
Intriguingly; in such a Universe with fundamentally dynamic dimensionality, the furled equal factors of revealed space would represent the furled capacity constrained to a revealed scale. Such dimensional and cosmological co-expansion may thus be proportional to a very simple radical expression, where the radicand is the number of revealed dimensions and the index is the remainder of furled dimensions where total dimensionality is fixed. Interestingly, modelling with this simple radical expression, the ensuing extent of dimensional and cosmological co-expansion appears to exhibit characteristics of early inflation, intermediate decelerating expansion, nearly linear expansion and late accelerating expansion. For those interested in graphic numerical illustrations of this simple radical expression, kindly look at this short paper http://figshare.com/articles/Dimensional_and_Cosmological_Co
_Expansion_through_Dynamic_Dimensionality/1036499
Hoping to get some scientific feedback and perhaps even develop joint author traction on these ideas with esteemed forum members...
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Jonathan J. Dickau replied on Jun. 6, 2014 @ 19:19 GMT
Hi Angus,
This sounds like something I'd enjoy discussing with you, having considered similar approaches before. You might want to look up Rainbow Gravity, Quantum Einstein gravity, and CDT, to see what some other folks have done in this vein. I will follow up on this question, and your paper, after the essay contest rating period has ended.
All the Best,
Jonathan
report post as inappropriate
Vladimir Rogozhin wrote on Aug. 23, 2014 @ 08:50 GMT
The crisis in the fundamental physics, including cosmology - the "crisis of interpretation and representation" (T.Romanovskaya), the "crisis of understanding" (K.Kopeykin), it is the crisis of the philosophical foundations, especially in understanding of space and time.
The way to overcome the crisis - is a further deepening of the Geometry, but rather in the "origin of Geometry"...
view entire post
The crisis in the fundamental physics, including cosmology - the "crisis of interpretation and representation" (T.Romanovskaya), the "crisis of understanding" (K.Kopeykin), it is the crisis of the philosophical foundations, especially in understanding of space and time.
The way to overcome the crisis - is a further deepening of the Geometry, but rather in the "origin of Geometry" (E.Husserl) and the dialectico - ontological unification of matter, search for
the absolute foundations of physics and knowledge, the absolute generating structure. Necessary to consider limiting (absolute, unconditional) states of matter: absolute motion (rotation, "vortex", discretuum) + absolute rest (linear state, continuum)) + absolute wave ("figaro" of states = discretuum + continuum).
The geometrized basis, the triune Universum: "universum-sphere" + "universum-cube" + "universum-cylinder". Each limit (absolute, unconditional) state of its way - the absolute vector, the vector of the absolute state. This "triangle" of absolute states of matter - the ontological representation of the triune foundation - "origin of geometry", the beginning of physics, the beginning, framework and carcas of knowledge. This is what David Gross calls - "general framework structure" (
D.Gross, an interview "Iz chego sostoit prostranstvo-vremya/What is in the space-time) the same for the QM and for GM. Today QM and GM are parametrical theories without ontologic justification.
Semantically poor picture of the world "In the beginning was the Big Bang" should be replaced with a picture of the world "In the beginning was the Logos (MetaLaw, the "law of laws")...", the base of which the "General framework structure" or the "Absolute generating (maternal) structure" . This is the «Cosmic Origin».
Should always be keep in mind the philosophical covenant of John Wheeler:
"Philosophy is too important to be left to the philosophers".
It would be nice if FQXi will hold the new contest of cosmological models: «Cosmic Origins». In the world today there is a lot of
alternative views and models , other than «the classic big-bang model».
Carlo Rovelli made a good conclusion in the article
SCIENCE IS NOT ABOUT CERTAINTY: PHILOSOPHY OF PHYSICS :
"This is a standard idea of how science works, which implies that science is about empirical content, the true interesting relevant content of science is its empirical content. Since theories change, the empirical content is the solid part of what science is. Now, there's something disturbing, for me as a theoretical scientist, in all this. I feel that something is missing. Something of the story is missing. I've been asking to myself what is this thing missing? I'm not sure I have the answer, but I want to present some ideas on something else which science is.
This is particularly relevant today in science, and particularly in physics, because if I'm allowed to be polemical, in my field, in fundamental theoretical physics, it is 30 years that we fail. There hasn't been a major success in theoretical physics in the last few decades, after the standard model, somehow. Of course there are ideas. These ideas might turn out to be right. Loop quantum gravity might turn out to be right, or not. String theory might turn out to be right, or not. But we don't know, and for the moment, nature has not said yes in any sense.
I suspect that this might be in part because of the wrong ideas we have about science, and because methodologically we are doing something wrong, at least in theoretical physics, and perhaps also in other sciences." So, in the search for primordial structure of the Cosmos (Universum). The first step: from science formulas to science forms.
Regards,
Vladimir Rogozhin
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Blair Macdonald wrote on Sep. 22, 2014 @ 09:21 GMT
Hello,
I have no direct business with cosmology, but I have a deep interest in fractal geometry and have recently made discoveries about their properties that are seem to only point to and have direct business with QM and cosmology.
Yesterday I published my findings.
I heard Max Tegmark mention this forum and am hoping it is the right place to introduce different...
view entire post
Hello,
I have no direct business with cosmology, but I have a deep interest in fractal geometry and have recently made discoveries about their properties that are seem to only point to and have direct business with QM and cosmology.
Yesterday I published my findings.
I heard Max Tegmark mention this forum and am hoping it is the right place to introduce different perspectives.
Blair
Fractal Geometry a Possible Explanation to the Accelerating Expansion of the Universe and Other Standard ΛCMB Model Anomalies Abstract:
One of the great questions in modern cosmology today is what is causing the accelerating expansion of the universe. It has been recently discovered this property is not unique to the universe; trees also do it and trees are fractals. Do fractals offer insight to the accelerating expansion a property of the universe and more?
In this investigation the classical (Koch snowflake) fractal was inverted to model and record observations from within an iterating fractal set and at a static (measured) position. New triangles sizes were held constant allowing earlier triangles in the set to expand as the set iterated.
Velocities and accelerations were calculated for both the area of the total fractal, and the distance between points within the fractal set using classical kinematic equations. The inverted fractal was also tested for the Hubble's Law.
It was discovered that the area(s) expanded exponentially; and as a consequence, the distances between points – from any location within the set – receded away from the observer, at exponentially increasing velocities and accelerations. The model was consistent with the standard ΛCMB model of cosmology and demonstrated: a singularity Big Bang beginning, infinite beginnings; homogeneous isotropic expansion consistent with the CMB; an expansion rate capable of explaining the early inflation epoch; Hubble's Law – with a Hubble diagram and Hubble's constant; and accelerating expansion with a ‘cosmological’ constant. It was concluded that the universe behaves as a general fractal object. Thought the findings have obvious relevance to the study of cosmology, they may also give insight into: the recently discovered accelerating growth rate of trees; the empty quantum like nature of the atom; and possibly our perception value of events with the passage of time.
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
John Brodix Merryman replied on Sep. 22, 2014 @ 10:44 GMT
Blair,
It is interesting that you describe this as acceleration, when according to theory, it is deceleration from that initial expansion of the early universe. Now if it is actually an optical effect, compounding on itself, then your perception of an outward acceleration would be more valid. Also there would be no need for dark energy to explain why that deceleration flattened out, as it gets closer to our location.
Suffice to say, we are getting into crackpot territory here, if the thought police catch up to us.
Regards,
John M
report post as inappropriate
Peter Jackson replied on Sep. 22, 2014 @ 17:15 GMT
Blair,
Interesting model. Much compatible fractal theory exists which you don't cite. A few with close similarities (but also different conclusions) are Penrose's Conformal Cyclic Cosmology, The 'Amplituhedron', Quantum Gauge theories etc. See also my essays and discussions here and also Bill McHarris's of last year.
Your link was dead, a common problem here as the system is very fussy about addresses and repeated colons etc. This one should work;
https://www.academia.edu/8415112/Fractal_Geomet
ry...etc.
I invoke a fractal 'Helical' hierarchy and spread function consistent with Helmholtz vortices and experimental quantum optics. In terms of cosmology I disagree with your conclusions and derive a cyclic model more consistent than the 'Big Bang', which is ever less supported anyway. Infinite accelerative expansion is also problematic, but then trees also have a cycle, and I note you correctly identify some of the theoretical problems (though far from all).
I hope you don't expect too many to actually read your paper. That's not always how it's done in these parts (or it seems anywhere really!) But I do hope you may read mine and also question or comment. This Penrose video is interesting, incorporating an analogy of your hypothesis (and closer one of mine).
Penrose CCC video..
You'll find most of mine with yours here;
Academia.edu./link].
Peter
report post as inappropriate
Akinbo Ojo wrote on Oct. 3, 2014 @ 12:28 GMT
The house in general and Peter, John M, Steve and Tom in particular,
I still need help on this CMBR. We, i.e. Peter, John M and I just had some discussion on the 'Black hole' thread but I think it would be more appropriate to discuss here and not distract on the black hole topic.
For such an important evidence as CMBR it would appear we are not yet clear about certain things. I...
view entire post
The house in general and Peter, John M, Steve and Tom in particular,
I still need help on this CMBR. We, i.e. Peter, John M and I just had some discussion on the 'Black hole' thread but I think it would be more appropriate to discuss here and not distract on the black hole topic.
For such an important evidence as CMBR it would appear we are not yet clear about certain things. I thought I was right about what I know but I may be wrong and also need doubts clarified. IF a smoke analogy is appropriate, regarding the CMBR...
(1) Is this to be seen as a fog present everywhere in the universe or (2) is it a smoke streaming towards us from all directions or (3) is there a third model?
In some accounts I see different statements that make it difficult to be clear. For instance, it is said not to have any discernible direction or source, in which case it would resemble a fog (model 1) since smoke would have a direction from a source, but in other descriptions it is said to bear the imprints of what happened in earlier epochs, suggesting that it has been travelling towards us carrying those imprints (model 2).
On the view that is propagating towards us, it makes sense that the imprints of what it encounters on the way are on it enabling us to glimpse scenarios from earlier epochs. But there doesn't seem to be a discernible direction in space that one can say points towards the edges of the universe or point towards the past, which would have been the case for radiation coming from such a direction.
John M in reply, says
"The surface of last scattering is wherever that light emanates from, be it the sun, stars and planets, or the walls of the room and the people in it, that provide us with the information about them. Now this background radiation has no such apparent source of 'last scattering'", which as I pointed out would seem to imply that we reading this are also part of that 'surface of last scattering'.
Some clarification is therefore appreciated given the importance of the CMBR evidence to cosmology…
Regards,
Akinbo
PS. John, M, it would seem there is a difference between light been redshifted because it is being cooled by some mechanism like reducing energy density and light being redshifted because the source is moving away.
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Akinbo Ojo replied on Oct. 3, 2014 @ 12:49 GMT
As I dig deeper I now realize the last word has not been heard about the CMBR. See
.. I guess the origin of CMBR is not a closed case afterall.
report post as inappropriate
Akinbo Ojo replied on Oct. 3, 2014 @ 12:51 GMT
Peter Jackson replied on Oct. 3, 2014 @ 18:45 GMT
Akinbo,
The data and interpretive flaws Fahr found seem irrefutable but where his solution invoked 'scattering photons off photons' it departed from those or any logical foundations I know. That's a shame because with the one small logical addition that
"clouds of particles can move" his scattering off matter would work just fine on it's own. The axiom is; 'c is localised wherever it...
view entire post
Akinbo,
The data and interpretive flaws Fahr found seem irrefutable but where his solution invoked 'scattering photons off photons' it departed from those or any logical foundations I know. That's a shame because with the one small logical addition that
"clouds of particles can move" his scattering off matter would work just fine on it's own. The axiom is; 'c is localised wherever it goes'.
It's almost as if your grey aliens have put a 'block' on anyone with a PhD understanding that key dynamic relationship!
For the CMBR there are 2 basic assumptions to pick from; 'Ether' or 'no ether'. With ether we can have just waves, probably of smaller 'particles', quantised to big ones at detections, or with 'no ether' we must have quanta, which can be constituted by OAM at some wavelength. So both can have both! Choose your preference, but in both cases it's irrefutable that all radiation is absorbed and re-emitted by condensed particles of matter from fermions upwards. So it can ONLY propagate at c wrt the local dielectric medium rest frame (once all has interacted with the medium particles) what other possible logic fits findings!?
Now where that radiation first 'came from' is the ONLY other relevant matter. I've studied it from when the brilliant Bob Dicke predicted it and Penzias and Wilson first found it by accident. Dicke was no fool and spot on. It is ALL emissions, from EVERYWHERE. The BB stuff was just a 'hijack' by the troglodytes as those emissions might just be long gone considering we were there!!
If we all lived on planet 'Dimwit3' in a galaxy doing 0.5c wrt Earth, and found light coming from all directions at 'c', would we be arrogant enough to think it did c wrt 'US' on all OTHER planets too rather than c wrt each planet? I suspect anyone with half a brain would realise we were NOT quite that important!!
I' expect science officer Spock's giant eyebrows would have lifted so much they'd have got caught in the light fittings! (shame he couldn't laugh). Can you explain to me, as if I'm Spock, what it is that suggests some other 'logic' than that? Then we can dissect it.
Many thanks
Peter
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
John R. Cox replied on Oct. 3, 2014 @ 23:35 GMT
Photons scattering photons;
IF a particle form periodically forms in each wavelength event, the notion is quite plausible. The real cross-section would likely be quite small and very brief, so the probabilities of interaction would also be very slight. Witness if you will the classical spread of coherent (laser) light, being significantly more compacted than mixed wavelength photonic streams. jrc
report post as inappropriate
Akinbo Ojo replied on Oct. 4, 2014 @ 12:31 GMT
Peter, thanks for replying. We have agreed on the 'domestication' of light speed to the medium rest frame, it is only our mechanisms that are not aligned. With regard to "
For the CMBR there are 2 basic assumptions to pick from;… Choose your preference…". Please help me with my choice.
I came across this very simple e-book today, Einstein for Everyone, by JOHN D. NORTON. I highly...
view entire post
Peter, thanks for replying. We have agreed on the 'domestication' of light speed to the medium rest frame, it is only our mechanisms that are not aligned. With regard to "
For the CMBR there are 2 basic assumptions to pick from;… Choose your preference…". Please help me with my choice.
I came across this very simple e-book today,
Einstein for Everyone, by JOHN D. NORTON. I highly recommend it for clearing quite a lot of misconceptions about Einstein's theory. Same author writes a simple to understand account about
preferred frame for motion Wikipedia does not do enough justice to the topic but I went through all the same before later coming across this experiment by
Silvertooth , which claims to have detected a 378km/s motion of the earth through space by a mechanism quite different from the CMBR observation. Please criticize this experiment and let me know whether it is of any significant value. Although the experimenter published a
letter to Nature.
With all these and on that topic, I can now ask you again if the CMBR can be used as a global preferred frame of reference (i.e. not a local like the Earth, Sun, Galaxy, etc), but a global one by which absolute rest and motion can be defined? In answering, take note of this from John Norton's e-book: "No experiment
can reveal the absolute motion of the observer. This is a consequence of the principle of relativity. Another way to see it is to recall that the principle of relativity leads us to conclude that absolute motion cannot figure in any law of physics. But if it is not in the laws and the laws determine what can be, then absolute motion cannot be. So
no experiment could detect it!Now, if experiment now detects an absolute motion, what next for our physics?
Best regards,
Akinbo
PS. I recommend Pentcho to also read John Norton's book. Really useful to comprehend if it is desired to Rip Einstein Apart.
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Peter Jackson replied on Oct. 4, 2014 @ 13:31 GMT
Akinbo,
There is much we can't directly detect which we infer exists, and some we CAN infer may exist. In a hierarchical model the 'centre of universe' rest frame can be inferred but can never be measured or utilised locally.
I'm quite familiar with Norton and agree much of his analysis, including space and time as very different, but he stops when he hits the logical paradox (as only the hierarchy resolves it).
Your use of the word 'global' betrays the common limit of thinking. 'Global' only refers to EARTH as 'everything'. We must substitute 'Galactic' and 'Universal' for the greater scales. This means that when we invoke 'domestication', we must invoke it consistently, that means at ALL scales!!
i.e. Light speed is localised to OUR galaxy on arrival (c wrt the AGN).
light speed is ALSO then localised to OUR solar system on arrival!! (c wrt the sun) (which NASA well knows from probe radio signals).
It also applies consistently at SMALLER scales, where the two frames become Maxwell's near and far fields. Now THAT is enough to make many mainstream physicist blow a fuse! but it resolves the 'Maxwell ether and KRR paradoxes and also at last recovers Snell's Law at the moving refractive plane. The 'proof of the pudding'.
I recall I also agree Silvertooth (he's not alone) , but have to dash now, Mum's 90th, but I'll catch up with the other links later.
Best wishes
Peter
report post as inappropriate
Steve Agnew replied on Oct. 4, 2014 @ 16:33 GMT
You have framed the CBMR issue quite nicely with the three basic cosmologies.
"(1) Is this to be seen as a fog present everywhere in the universe or (2) is it a smoke streaming towards us from all directions or (3) is there a third model?"(1) This cosmology assumes a plasma aether fills space and that is what makes things happen. The actions that we see from the past are...
view entire post
You have framed the CBMR issue quite nicely with the three basic cosmologies.
"(1) Is this to be seen as a fog present everywhere in the universe or (2) is it a smoke streaming towards us from all directions or (3) is there a third model?"(1) This cosmology assumes a plasma aether fills space and that is what makes things happen. The actions that we see from the past are affected by the plasma aether in between us and the action. This universe is steady state and has tired light.
(2) The expanding universe is what I hope you mean since that is the mainstream. In an expanding universe, the CMBR is a lucky accident of time since it is now moving at 99.998% of c and will go over the event horizon in a billion years or so. Future astonomers will only see black sky...and then try to figure out why.
(3) The shrinking universe is what I like, but no one ever talks about a shrinking universe except of course locally. The CMBR in a shrinking universe is blue shifted with a gamma of 546, so that means the actual temperature is 2.7 / 546 = 4.9e-3 K. There is still an event horizon, but the universe decay rate is what defines force and so astronomers will see a similar CMBR in a billion years and deduce a similar cosmology. By then, we will have figures this stuff out...I hope.
The CMBR noise ripple is a wonderful gift of time. The multipolar noise spectrum makes sense for either an expanding big bang or a shrinking from full size universe. The plasma aether guys are in trouble, though, and the noise spectrum just does not seem to be consistent with any kind of aether story. It takes a lot of "spin" to get the CMBR consistent with plasma aether.
The CMBR dipole does indeed show us where we are in the cosmos, moving toward Virgo/Leo at 371 km/s. That comoving velocity gives us a proper time, which is absolute...or at least 99.9998% absolute and within the 28 ppm ripple of our 2.7 K background. Even though our local atomic time is frame dependent a varies, our proper time is tied to the CMBR frame and therefore the same for the whole universe.
The one endearing mystery in the CMBR is the large scale structure, the cold spots and the great attractors. These are the quadrupole and octupole noise peaks that there is a lot of argument about right now.
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Steve Agnew replied on Oct. 4, 2014 @ 19:41 GMT
Thanks for the Silvertooth link, that was very interesting.
"...I went through all the same before later coming across this experiment by Silvertooth , which claims to have detected a 378km/s motion of the earth through space by a mechanism quite different from the CMBR observation. Please criticize this experiment and let me know whether it is of any significant value."Of course, here is the real reason. The measurement was an artifact of day to night room temperature changes.
Reproducing SilvertoothI liked Silvertooth's bi-interferometer, a ring interferometer coupled with a linear interferometer. However, anyone who has done interferometry knows that the data just does not look like Silvertooth's hand drawn sine waves. That made me a little suspicious.
So when Marett reproduced Silvertooth's result with real looking data with noise, I thought great, this is real. Then when Marett went on to show that the effect went away when the room temperature did not vary from night to day and had nothing to do with Leo, the experiment made perfect sense as an artifact.
Coupling a ring (i.e. Sagnac) interferometer to a linear interferometer is a good idea and should first of all measure earth's rotational velocity. The ring interferometer is sensitive to optical rotation effect and the linear interferometer is much less sensitive to rotation. So Silvertooth's gismo should first of all recorded the earth's rotation velocity, ~300 m/s at that latitude, then maybe earth's orbit, 30 km/s, but never in your dreams the 371 km/s CMBR velocity. The optical rotatary effects are just too small to measure in this manner.
report post as inappropriate
Akinbo Ojo replied on Oct. 5, 2014 @ 11:27 GMT
Thanks Steve. I will trust your judgement on this and throw Silvertooth in the trash can.
I had already suspected that no optical experiment with the light source and light path on Earth surface can detect the Earth's motion (being in the same ship -Galilean relativity). However, light paths from beyond and outside the ship can reveal the ship's motion hence the CMBR revealing a velocity 370km/s.
You like 'The shrinking universe' but I don't agree with it. The CMBR temperature is now 2.7K. In a shrinking universe it must then have been even colder in the past since energy density was lower and you say it is now increasing (shrinking volume).
What do you think about the CMBR being a preferred frame of reference for motion and rest? I have been begging Peter to accept that it is but he would not bulge.
Peter,
Happy 90th birthday to your Mum. Hope she shared the secrets of her longevity with you, which I am sure would not include 'absorption and emission at local c'
Regards,
Akinbo
report post as inappropriate
Steve Agnew replied on Oct. 5, 2014 @ 17:36 GMT
It is true that optical experiments cannot show linear motion, but they can show rotation since rotation changes inertia. The question is can optical experiments show gravity waves and the Ligo results will be coming over the next couple of years.
I do not think that gravity waves distort space any more than light does and so these efforts will prove futile. However, there are other experiments with particle physics that should show our direction and velocity, like IceCube, Cuore, DMIce, etc. There is a way to measure our motion...
As for our shrinking universe, you are correct in that the actual temperature of the CMB would be 0.0049 K instead of 2.7 Kelvin. However, that is not inconsistent with the observations. Moreover, having the speed of light define the collapse rate of the universe has a very appealing symmetry. If all objects are actually comoving at the speed of light, all mass = E/c2 is clear without the Higg's boson. All motion is a decrease in velocity and an increase in inertial mass and it is as if light were standing still and we are moving.
I agree that the CMBR is a perfect absolute reference, at least to within 99.9998% anyway. Everyone in the universe measures the exact same CMBR and so you simply cannot get any more absolute than that.
report post as inappropriate
Akinbo Ojo replied on Oct. 5, 2014 @ 19:03 GMT
Dear Steve, thanks for being forthright in your reply. In response...
"As for our shrinking universe, you are correct in that the actual temperature of the CMB would be 0.0049 K instead of 2.7 Kelvin. However, that is not inconsistent with the observations."Although your idea was interesting, I think it is now my grim professional medical duty to pronounce 'collapsing...
view entire post
Dear Steve, thanks for being forthright in your reply. In response...
"As for our shrinking universe, you are correct in that the actual temperature of the CMB would be 0.0049 K instead of 2.7 Kelvin. However, that is not inconsistent with the observations."Although your idea was interesting, I think it is now my grim professional medical duty to pronounce 'collapsing universe' dead.
Unless of course you come up with urgently needed oxygen, I should be inviting Eckard, John M, Tom, Peter and co as the pall bearers. LOL :)
Part of the success of the Big bang model is the relative abundance of the elements (primordial nucleosynthesis). Those with stronger bonds able to be stable under the high ambient energy conditions are more in abundance, e.g. hydrogen, helium, etc. Structure formation and abundance follows quarks, atoms, molecules in that order. With starting ambient temperatures of 0.0049K, almost everything including humans would be stable and would exist at the beginning. The evidence says otherwise.
"It is true that optical experiments cannot show linear motion, but they can show rotation since rotation changes inertia"I think no need complicating with gravity waves. The motion of the Earth about the Sun is not linear! It is rotational and optical experiments (notably M&M) did not see it. It is only when the light path is from a distant source (like Lunar laser ranging, Pulsars, GPS, etc) that the Earth based observer sees BOTH his linear and rotational motion (against Einstein's SR postulate that electromagnetic, e.g. optical phenomena CANNOT be used to discern Earth motion).
I look forward to the results and interpretation of IceCube, Cuore, DMIce, etc. There is a way to measure our motion... YES, We Can! CMBR already shows the way optical experiments can measure the motion of the Earth.
"I agree that the CMBR is a perfect absolute reference, at least to within 99.9998% anyway. Everyone in the universe measures the exact same CMBR and so you simply cannot get any more absolute than that'.
Peter J. is yet to concede. I think Newton deserves our post-humous apology. Despite various arguments from
effects, causes and properties, we appear to have been late in catching up. I have linked these previously. I do so again. Read also the Scholium. We have allowed Mach and Leibniz to lead us astray. Now that CMBR is showing us the way, why can we not go back to the fork in the road to rediscover our physics.
Best regards,
Akinbo
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Steve Agnew replied on Oct. 6, 2014 @ 02:36 GMT
Ahh, you doth protest too much...
I look for observation that the collapsing universe cannot explain, and I have not yet found any.
"Although your idea was interesting, I think it is now my grim professional medical duty to pronounce 'collapsing universe' dead."What my analysis shows is that there is a conspiracy of equivalence between the expanding and collapsing universes. That is, they both predict the same isotope ratios and the same hydrogen to helium rations and they both are consistent therefore with observation. A collapsing unverse actually needs fewer constants to explain the amounts of hydrogen, helium, and lithium.
So elemental abundances should not dissuade you, it is only the truth with which you should you align.
report post as inappropriate
Akinbo Ojo replied on Oct. 6, 2014 @ 08:19 GMT
Okay Steve. Will stop protesting. I actually woke up thinking that perhaps global warming is due to collapsing universe rather than to environmental pollution. Just a foolish idea...
Regards,
Akinbo
report post as inappropriate
Peter Jackson replied on Oct. 6, 2014 @ 16:05 GMT
Steve,
A "plasma aether" seems a contradiction in terms. 'Aether' was conceived as a sub-matter medium, conventionally with a single 'universal' rest frame, so equivalent to a 'dark energy' condensate rest frame. Plasma on the other hand is specifically the free fermion pairs and free protons condensed FROM the ether into 'matter'.
Plasma forms 'clouds' in space (invariably around...
view entire post
Steve,
A "plasma aether" seems a contradiction in terms. 'Aether' was conceived as a sub-matter medium, conventionally with a single 'universal' rest frame, so equivalent to a 'dark energy' condensate rest frame. Plasma on the other hand is specifically the free fermion pairs and free protons condensed FROM the ether into 'matter'.
Plasma forms 'clouds' in space (invariably around matter moving wrt the 'aether') each matter 'cloud' can move wrt each other. (Whether or not local aether regions also 'move' is entirely 'at large' and a separate question). If you're proposing some different understanding of plasma can you explain what it is, exactly how it differs, why? and relying on what evidence?
As EM waves couple strongly with fermions, constantly re-emitted at c in the local fermion rest frame (Pearle et al's CSL) the fact that clouds of fermions move wrt each other means that the CMB can NOT represent a single 'universal' rest frame datum applicable everywhere. Sure a metre rule at rest in the local cloud rest frame will measure local 'c' wherever it is, but the real point is that ALL SUCH METRE RULES CAN AND DO MOVE WRT EACH OTHER.
That needs you to stop and think and visualise for a moment; All clouds are at rest. All clouds move wrt each other. Light does local c within each. The constant change of speed at domain limits is what CSL by the fermions there implements. That 'discrete field' model is the only logical mechanism which does not fail in logic when tested against observations. light is localised to c on ALL interactions ("measurement situations"; Gell-Mann) with all systems of matter. 'Observers' are simply a system of matter, so however fast they move they will find all light at c.
That's Akinbo's option 3; 'Other'. It resolves the final issues identified by Scott & Smoot. If you see any apparent paradox or anomaly please just say where and I'll show where your understanding is incomplete or not consistently applied. I'd like to understand why it seems so difficult to rationalise and hold.
And by the way I've found no empirical or logical objections to a contracting universe. Indeed a cyclic cosmology requires almost as long a contraction as expansion phase.
Best wishes
Peter
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Peter Jackson replied on Oct. 6, 2014 @ 16:30 GMT
Akinbo,
Your devotion to Newton is admirable but as misguided as any religion. You are not consistently applying what you've already seen and agreed. If light SPEED is localised then it's DATUM must be localised! Perhaps you're not discerning between the uniform 'metre rules' of my post above, all reading the same, by ALSO realising that all metre rules in the universe can move wrt each other!
There can be no SINGLE background 'frame' with any validity. The reason the CMB radiation is continually Doppler shifted is that on arrival in ALL those rest frames it changes speed to the local c. It takes a little intellectual effort to rationalise and remember that. You're being lazy any reverting to your old religion (To suggest I'm; "yet to concede" is absolute delusion!).
Have a look and think about the rules of brackets in arithmetic. Nothing in ANY bracket can be directly computed against anything in another, but we can have infinitely many be brackets within brackets. THAT is 'Truth Function Logic' the only paradox free form of logic!
Silvertooth; His experiment was fine, his analysis as poor as any! There are TWO cases of rotating interferometers, The 1st where the medium moves (in a glass disk or fibre optic cable) the 2nd where the mirrors etc. move THROUGH the background medium (air/plasma etc). The results are different. The Sagnac case of a tubular waveguide rather than fibre optics gives different results (see Wang). Then the emitter itself may either rotate or be 'fixed', also changing the results, confounding all analysis that forgets to distinguish (unfortunately all except my own!!; http://arxiv.org/abs/1307.7163)
I'm sure you can visualise the difference between a mirror moving THROUGH a medium and a mirror and medium 'moving' as one! Well you need to start applying that to ALL CASES to rationalise logically!
Best wishes
Peter
report post as inappropriate
Steve Agnew replied on Oct. 7, 2014 @ 04:13 GMT
Plasma clouds? What is really amazing is that you truly believe that what you say makes sense...and in a perverse way, you do make sense.
”Plasma on the other hand is specifically the free fermion pairs and free protons condensed FROM the ether into 'matter'.”Plasmas are plasmas…electrons and protons bound into a gas like state by charge force. Most plasmas in space are...
view entire post
Plasma clouds? What is really amazing is that you truly believe that what you say makes sense...and in a perverse way, you do make sense.
”Plasma on the other hand is specifically the free fermion pairs and free protons condensed FROM the ether into 'matter'.”Plasmas are plasmas…electrons and protons bound into a gas like state by charge force. Most plasmas in space are electrons and protons but you avoid saying electrons, and that makes what you say very confusing jiberish. You seem to be inventing a plasma without electrons. Plasmas are so unique that they are often called a fourth state of matter. They have both electron and ion temperatures and emit and absorb light readily.
I have worked extensively with 1 eV plasmas at 1e20/m3 or so and it was lots of fun. We did spectrosopy, magnetic confinement, rotation with electric field, and succeeded in separating large amounts of ions by their masses. But plasmas are very, very voracious little buggers and we needed several megawatts just to sustain our baby as a steady state at several tens of cubic meters.
In fact, plasmas decay by emission of light and eventually emission cools them to the ground state of the hydrogen atom by a final series of excited state emissions called the Rydberg energy, which is the binding energy of hydrogen. There are a bunch of selection rules and parity issues with these processes, but the energetics are straightforward. Collision, obviously, can also cool the plasma.
Aether is an old term for the imagined working fluid of space and has a long history. What you keep talking about is a plasma that is like a cloud and so it is you who have defined a plasma aether, not me. I am just trying to use words that express what you seem to be saying. If you invent a new kind of plasma, you really cannot call it plasma without confusing everyone, so you need to call it DFM plasma or just plasma aether works for me.
As far as I know, there is no aether that fills all space and there is no plasma that fills all space, and that is because there really is nothing that is space. The nothing of space is just that…nothing at all. You gotta love our language!
However, there are clouds of plasma in space that emit and absorb light and there are clouds of neutral hydrogen that emit and absorb light and there are clouds of cold neutral hydrogen that only absorb light,and there are clouds of dust. Plasmas always emit light and therefore eventually decay into the ground state of the hydrogen atom unless there is sufficient reexcitation to reionize and maintain the plasma electron and ion temperatures, which are usually different.
”As EM waves couple strongly with fermions, constantly re-emitted at c in the local fermion rest frame (Pearle et al's CSL) the fact that clouds of fermions move wrt each other means that the CMB can NOT represent a single 'universal' rest frame datum applicable everywhere.”Matter of all kinds, not just plasmas, absorb and emit light at c. All clouds of matter absorb light, but only hot clouds of matter emit light. If the cloud of neutral matter is cold, we only see its absorption as a result of some background source. We are just such a cloud of hot and cold matter in our galaxy and we are moving wrt the CMB. Every other galaxy in the universe can see the same CMB and measure their movement wrt the same CMB even if they cannot see our galaxy and therefore know our motion.
Therefore the CMB represents a single universal frame that travels at 99.9998% of the speed of light wrt to every other rest frame. We can imagine that the CMB is a rest frame, but we only measure motion and so we must express all spatial metrics in the universe in units of h, the Hubble constant. In this epoch, our metric is H = 69 to 77 km/s/Mpc depending on how you interpret the data. This means that space has so many galaxies per Mpc and so much luminosity per Mpc as well.
It is beyond me why you mention papers that don't even support your thesis.
Scott and Smoot have a very nice paper that says absolutely nothing about recycling. Moreover, a direct quote is:
"The dipole is a frame dependent quantity, and one can thus determine the ‘absolute rest frame’ of the Universe as that in which the CMB dipole would be zero. Our velocity relative to the Local Group, as well as the velocity of the Earth around the Sun, and any velocity of the receiver relative to the Earth, is normally removed for the purposes of CMB anisotropy study."So even Scott and Smoot support the notion of an absolute frame of reference. Game on...
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Steve Agnew replied on Oct. 8, 2014 @ 07:05 GMT
Funny you should bring up global warming...
"I actually woke up thinking that perhaps global warming is due to collapsing universe rather than to environmental pollution. Just a foolish idea..."The quantum gravity of a collapsing universe results in coupling between stars in the galaxy, what I call matter waves. The proximity of stars to the sun effect the sun in different ways. Matter waves are kind of like gravity waves, but a little more general in that matter waves affect both gravity and charge.
My analysis shows that the two binary stars, Procyon and 61-Cygni, are largely responsible for the sunspot cycle. Both binaries are at 11.4 lyrs in different directions, but their motions and luminosities fit the sunspot cycle. Some other star distance coincidences also contribute.
The resonance represents over 400 years of sunspot observations and even fits the Maunder minimum, the mini ice age in 1670 where sunspot activity disappeared for 40 years.
Correlation of Solar Sunspot activity with Procyon and 61-CygniI think that a quantum gravity will enable many useful predictions just like this.
report post as inappropriate
Akinbo Ojo replied on Oct. 8, 2014 @ 19:54 GMT
Peter,
In reply to your post on Oct. 6, 2014 @ 16:30 GMT...
"Your devotion to Newton is admirable but as misguided as any religion".Feel free to call devotion to Truth a religion. Newton himself said something like "Plato is my friend, Galileo is my friend but my greatest friend is Truth". That implies devotion is not to be to authority or persons, Newton...
view entire post
Peter,
In reply to your post on Oct. 6, 2014 @ 16:30 GMT...
"Your devotion to Newton is admirable but as misguided as any religion".Feel free to call devotion to Truth a religion. Newton himself said something like "Plato is my friend, Galileo is my friend but my greatest friend is Truth". That implies devotion is not to be to authority or persons, Newton inclusive.
This whole question of 'local' or 'localized' was VERY well known to Newton and Galileo before him. However, you hide too much under your 'local c'. c can vary due to many reasons in different localities, so it is not a constant and global value, except in absolutely free space. That is space free of fields, of which that on Earth is NOT FREE in any sense. It is polluted by electromagnetic and gravitational field. Even Einstein mentioned the strength of the gravity in the environment as a condition affecting the value of c.
Perhaps you're not discerning between the uniform 'metre rules' of my post above, all reading the same, by ALSO realising that all metre rules in the universe can move wrt each other!I am not disputing that.
"There can be no SINGLE background 'frame' with any validity".That is your opinion. So many terms are used to describe almost the same thing. 'background frame', 'preferred frame', 'immobile aether', 'preferred frame' are similar with a little difference. Newton preferred 'Absolute Space'.
"The reason the CMB radiation is continually Doppler shifted is that on arrival in ALL those rest frames it changes speed to the local c".
This goes to my original question of what is the most appropriate description of CMB. What does 'arrival' mean? Where is the CMB coming from, and where is it going? Is it a 'smoke' coming from some burning or shining place or is it a 'fog' that is just present without a discernible source? I guess, since you don't agree with the Big Bang, you regard CMB as a smoke?
Then, what do you mean by 'continually Doppler shifted, and in what direction? Our motion through the CMB frame gives both a RED and a BLUE shift. The other shift you may be talking about I don't regard as Doppler. That is, if you mean the reducing ambient energy now at microwave frequency. That is not due to observer motion but to an expanding universe ( in contrast to the collapsing one that Steve prefers).
To suggest I'm; "yet to concede" is absolute delusion!You will concede before 2020 and we can bet a bottle of fine wine when the bet is lost and won.
Have a look and think about the rules of brackets in arithmetic. Nothing in ANY bracket can be directly computed against anything in another, but we can have infinitely many be brackets within brackets. THAT is 'Truth Function Logic' the only paradox free form of logic!An infinite number of external brackets or an infinite number of brackets within is only in the Mathematician's mind. As I told Tom, zero 0 and infinity ∞ are not part of the physics world.
"Silvertooth; His experiment was fine, his analysis as poor as any!"From the reference Steve linked, the results may have been cooked up or the inference drawn overenthusiastic. I will leave Silvertooth alone.
I'm sure you can visualise the difference between a mirror moving THROUGH a medium and a mirror and medium 'moving' as one!Of course, I can and what I see does not require absorption and re-emission at local c. What local c do you use anyway? Is it the mirror's or that of the medium? The correct one is that in the medium and not the electron in the mirror determining at what c to emit light.
Regards,
Akinbo
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Peter Jackson replied on Oct. 9, 2014 @ 10:30 GMT
Akinbo,
The way I go about analysis is with logical progression based on the evidence. You seem to prefer a different method, involving 'opinions', which is fine as all methods should be tried, but it does mean we get different results. As you wish to stick with your own prior assumptions (commonly held) and not test them, then my explanations are rather a waste of time.
On the subject of commonly held false assumptions. id you know by the way that it was not Newton who derived F = ma. The whole formulaic concept of acceleration was introduced rather later by Euler. If you prefer a universe in which water thrown from a spinning bucket can only drop vertically then it's not my universe. Committed followers of ALL doctrine claim theirs is the only truth.
The CMB is nothing other than low level radiation at a number of frequencies propagating at c in the LOCAL background rest frame. There is NOTHING mysterious about it, and the rest frame of the sun only applies locally to OUR star as each has it's own. If or when you're able or prepared to understand and accept that AND it's logical implications, then we may discuss again.
Best wishes
Peter
report post as inappropriate
Akinbo Ojo replied on Oct. 9, 2014 @ 19:39 GMT
RE:
The CMB is nothing other than low level radiation at a number of frequencies propagating at c in the LOCAL background rest frame. There is NOTHING mysterious about it, and the rest frame of the sun only applies locally to OUR star as each has it's own. If or when you're able or prepared to understand and accept that AND it's logical implications, then we may discuss again.There...
view entire post
RE:
The CMB is nothing other than low level radiation at a number of frequencies propagating at c in the LOCAL background rest frame. There is NOTHING mysterious about it, and the rest frame of the sun only applies locally to OUR star as each has it's own. If or when you're able or prepared to understand and accept that AND it's logical implications, then we may discuss again.There appears to be some difficulty in swallowing this...
First, "light propagating at c in the LOCAL background rest frame", instead of at c+v or c-v would not show a Doppler shift due to motion of the observer's frame. When compared to peer-reviewed opinions, CMB is found to simultaneously show c+v and c-v, depending on the direction we look. The value 370km/s is the sum-total or 'resultant velocity' of ALL the motion of the Earth (i.e. wrt to Sun, Sun wrt to galaxy, Galaxy wrt to Local Group, etc).
Second, although true that "CMB is low level radiation at a number of frequencies", according to peer-reviewed opinions, the CMB has a thermal black body spectrum, strongest in the microwave region. This appears to suggest it is not just a
random mixture of light at a number of frequencies.
The irony of the CMB for physics is that findings about it very much contrary to Einstein's relativity are this time not suppressed by mainstream as one would have expected. Among these are that (1) It is no longer true that electromagnetic phenomena cannot be used to discern an observer's motion, very much contrary to the postulate of SR and on which Einstein expressly rested the validity of his theory.
"But ALL experiments have shown that electromagnetic and optical phenomena, relatively to the earth as the body of reference, are not influenced by the translational velocity of the earth... The validity of the principle of special relativity can therefore hardly be doubted" - Einstein in 'The Meaning of Relativity', p.29.
Can we now express our doubt more forcefully?
(2) A preferred universal rest frame seems to have been found vindicating Newton against Leibniz and Mach. Einstein, following Mach also agreed that the existence of such a preferred rest frame would invalidate his theory. It is therefore an irony that while mainstream are prepared to accept the CMB but play the ostrich of what these portends, on the other hand some against mainstream do not accept and seize on the features of CMB that show glaring fundamental discrepancy for mainstream theory.
Regards,
Akinbo
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Peter Jackson replied on Oct. 10, 2014 @ 10:55 GMT
Akinbo,
How can an 'observer' remotely measure a Doppler shift, i.e. of light that hasn't yet ARRIVED!?
I can only do c+v when it a can't be measured. There is a mass failure of intellect here that you're also locked in to.
The instant it "arrives" in the observers rest frame it Doppler shifts DUE TO the speed change to local c.
Is it not delusional to imagine we can measure ANY quality of light without interacting? (except trigonometrically via reflected OTHER light also propagating at c)
That's why your dismissal of the importance of understanding "propagation" is such a major error.
You agree the 'localisation' concept each time you read it, but then fail to apply it! (i.e. my 'Much Ado..' essay). Once you apply with some some consistency you'll escape all the fog and confusion. A 'preferred universal rest frame only "seems" to have been found by those who fail to do so.
best wishes
peter
report post as inappropriate
Akinbo Ojo replied on Oct. 10, 2014 @ 12:42 GMT
There are certainly still unresolved issues about CMBR for me which was why I asked for help. Peter and Steve have tried their best.
Peter,
What you seem to say about it increases the confusion since you seem to disagree about what is already 'known' about it like its origin seeming not to have a discernible direction or source. In my opinion, I better endure the remaining little...
view entire post
There are certainly still unresolved issues about CMBR for me which was why I asked for help. Peter and Steve have tried their best.
Peter,
What you seem to say about it increases the confusion since you seem to disagree about what is already 'known' about it like its origin seeming not to have a discernible direction or source. In my opinion, I better endure the remaining little confusion about CMBR than compound it with DFM.
On
"The instant it "arrives" in the observers rest frame it Doppler shifts DUE TO the speed change to local c.". How does 'it' know how to Doppler shift? Towards RED or BLUE, since when the light arrives, all it does is change speed to the SAME local c for both cases of observer moving away and towards the source?
Still on my confusion with CMBR, whether it is an all present fog in the room or a smoke streaming in from without. Following the principle of relativity (both Galilean and SR), what is in the room (i.e. in the same frame like in Galileo's ship) cannot be Doppler shifted by the ship's motion, which would suggest that CMBR is not originating from within the room but is coming from outside since a red-blue Doppler shift is observed.
Then, on the other hand if it is from outside why does it not have a direction?
Or are we having a mixture whereby the CMBR in the room is not Doppler shifted but the one from without is Doppler shifted?
I think I give up for now.
Regards,
Akinbo
More for you Peter... In answer to how water will drop from a spinning bucket see
Galileo's 1632 thought experiment.. You can also have a look at
this.
Newton also derived the scenario from the laws of motion, stated as Corollary V:
"When bodies are enclosed in a given space, their motions in relation to one another are the same whether the space is at rest or whether it is moving uniformly straight forward without circular motion". (1726, p. 423.)
I have not finished reading but you can check
section 2.2 here. That may help us resolve our "quarrel".
NB. Replace the drops of water with drops of light. Motion does not affect arrival time below deck. This does not require absorption and re-emission at c but it requires a co-travelling matter medium or Plasma which we are both agreed on is present.
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Peter Jackson replied on Oct. 10, 2014 @ 13:39 GMT
Akinbo,
I agree with all that's 'known'. How on Earth could we identify more than nearby individual sources!? I can't comprehend how you're confused that it has more than 'one direction'!! Do distant galaxies not surround us? Does each not emit in ALL directions!?
When the clergy looked at Galileo's new rationale they said; "I prefer to endure the remaining confusion about the cosmos...
view entire post
Akinbo,
I agree with all that's 'known'. How on Earth could we identify more than nearby individual sources!? I can't comprehend how you're confused that it has more than 'one direction'!! Do distant galaxies not surround us? Does each not emit in ALL directions!?
When the clergy looked at Galileo's new rationale they said; "I prefer to endure the remaining confusion about the cosmos than compound it with anything different."
I'm pointing out that you are precisely as wrong as they were, and until you bother to put that little effort into understanding it's consistency you will reamain so.
"How does 'it' know how to Doppler shift?" It doesn't need to. It's the same way your body 'knows' how to change speed when jumping on to a moving bus (in ANY direction. The moment it interacts it is 'accelerated' to correct it's speed to the 'new' c (one wave at a time, thus the (Doppler) wavelength change).
Do forget both fog and smoke entirely. It's just radiation (as 'light' waves but all wavelengths).
"what is in the room (i.e. in the same frame like in Galileo's ship) cannot be Doppler shifted by the ship's motion, which would suggest that CMBR is not originating from within the room but is coming from outside since a red-blue Doppler shift is observed."
At last some sense, but now put it in the right context. There are many LOCAL ships on the ocean ALL co-moving. but they are SOLAR SYSTEMS, and PLANETS, and all within different GALAXIES. So 'from outside' is always "outside the LOCAL system' which is then always from some greater rest frame/system which is also ITSELF in motion. Light will then have Doppler shifted (changed to local electron rest frame c) many times en route from it's source. The spectroscopic effect of those shifts is what's called the 'Lyman-Alpha forest.'
You only need to visualise "small space 's' moving within space S" multiplied like many nested Russian dolls. If you're at rest in any one you may consider it's always "EVERYTHING ELSE" that's moving at different speeds. Bother to think about it and the fog lifts.
Peter
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Peter Jackson replied on Oct. 10, 2014 @ 14:13 GMT
Akinbo,
You'll have to point out what's valid as I find no issues. I've agreed Galileo's ship since at school, though find many still misapply it.
Section 2.2 correctly identifies THERE CAN BE NO SINGLE ABSOLUTE 'PRIVILEGED REST FRAME! (i.e. Newtonian) which is what you're now yet again proposing with your flawed 'CMBR' understanding! There CAN BE 'MANY'! but
NOT 'JUST ONE'.
The big error in throwing out the dirty water of a SINGLE preferred frame was in also throwing out the baby, which was MULTIPLE LOCAL background frames. So it went from Newtons to Einstein's incomplete descriptions! Returning to Newtons is NOT the answer!!
You clearly didn't read my words about the spinning bucket properly. It has nothing to do with Galileo or his ships. Newton's proposal (proved false) implied in the rotating case that there were only the water and bucket 'rest frames'. There clearly is not. There is a local background rest frame OUTSIDE BOTH.
We don't have a 'quarrel' Akinbo. That would require different 'opinions'. I don't have 'opinions' as they are unscientific. The only issue is, as Galileo's pope, that you're unwilling to countenance, so attempt to comprehend, what is a clear logical progression and consequence. You haven't yet even got to challenging the progression! I've warned many times it's not initially as simple as most assume. A little more effort is needed!
I'm here to learn, explore and discuss scientifically not, with respect, to be a personal tutor on fundamental Akinbo.
best wishes
Peter
report post as inappropriate
Thomas Howard Ray replied on Oct. 10, 2014 @ 14:33 GMT
" ... your body 'knows' how to change speed when jumping on to a moving bus (in ANY direction. The moment it interacts it is 'accelerated' to correct it's speed ..."
Peter, can you rephrase that in a way that makes sense to a sane person?
"You only need to visualise 'small space 's' moving within space S' multiplied like many nested Russian dolls. If you're at rest in any one you may consider it's always 'EVERYTHING ELSE' that's moving at different speeds."
You might, unless you understood relativity and Lorentz transformations.
Because
all motion is relative, a body at rest relative to another is moving at the same speed as the other. At nonrelativistic speeds, this is trivial -- only if one is traveling at the same speed as a moving bus, can she be considered "at rest" relative to the bus, in which case the lateral motion of boarding is not affected one whit by the vector of motion, because there is no acceleration involved. There is a very, very simple way to understand this, as the solution to the projectile problem, that goes back to Galileo:
A projectile in free fall, released at the same height simultaneously with a projectile having an initial velocity, falls at the same rate and impacts the ground at the same instant as the impelled projectile. This is because there is no horizontal acceleration to the gravitational plane shared by the bodies (exactly the same case as the moving bus and the boarder).
report post as inappropriate
Peter Jackson replied on Oct. 10, 2014 @ 15:27 GMT
Tom,
I specifically addressed Akinbo's question, so I agree the concept of the body needing to 'know how' to accelerate or waves 'how' to Doppler shift' is nonsense. Clearly if another body with a different rest frame is interacted with an 'acceleration' results. If waves interact sequentially while a body of dielectric medium is in motion through the ambient medium then clearly the wavelength will change (red or blue shift) without needing to "know how", which is simple optical science.
I suspect Einstein, whose it was specification I gave, may have understood relativity and the LT as well as you and I. I've always agreed the Lorentz factor always applies, and have even derived a consistent physical mechanism producing the non-linear curve as wavelength blue-shifts to the minimum at gamma. But I suspect you may again also infer the "interpretation" not just the theory itself which he specified. Perhaps best no go there again?
Clearly she is not 'travelling at the same speed' as the bus as it's 'co-moving' when she jumps on, which is why she's accelerated. An 'inertial frame transformation' is then essentially simply an 'acceleration' (K < K'). (Unless of course we prefer myth and belief to science and logic!)
I would point out that your last paragraph should agree my description but is just a wee bit flawed. It MAY be read as the 'initial velocity' being on the same vector as gravity, where you will have meant 'horizontal' velocity, which of course I agree.
Best wishes
Peter
report post as inappropriate
Thomas Howard Ray replied on Oct. 10, 2014 @ 16:23 GMT
"Clearly if another body with a different rest frame is interacted with an 'acceleration' results."
Clearly not.
Bodies that share a rest frame share the same velocity. If one body accelerates, the bodies no longer share a rest frame. Again, an understanding of the projectile problem prevents confusion:
A body accelerated horizontal to the plane compared to a body in free fall are not at rest relative to one another. Consider an unpowered bomb dropped from an airplane flying at constant velocity -- if the plane does not accelerate when the bomb is dropped, the bomb remains directly below the plane its entire trip to the ground, because there is no horizontal acceleration. Should the plane speed up or slow down following the drop, the projectiles are no longer interacting.
This is exactly equivalent to the person at rest relative to a moving bus boarding the bus without being accelerated.
report post as inappropriate
Thomas Howard Ray replied on Oct. 10, 2014 @ 17:41 GMT
Akinbo, I wasn't going to get into this; however, since I replied to Peter I guess I'm into it already. The thing is, the topics you and Peter are addressing are already exhaustively explained by classical physics.
You write: "(1) Is this (cosmic microwave background radiation) to be seen as a fog present everywhere in the universe or (2) is it a smoke streaming towards us from all directions or (3) is there a third model?"
The conventional explanation for background radiation is big bang cosmology -- the radiation permeating space is consistent with what happens when a hot fire burns down to embers. It isn't appropriate to refer to the CMBR as "fog" because the universe is transparent, not foggy.
The reason that the radiation appears isotropic (coming from all directions) is that the universe appears to be uniformly expanding. (The same would be true if it were uniformly contracting.) What direct measurements appear to show, however, is there there is just enough non-uniformity (anisotropy) to account for small quantum fluctuations in the early universe that correspond to the anisotropies we observe, given the size of today's universe.
The big bang model is pretty safe from falsification. It just doesn't explain the nature of the quantum fluctuations, which is what the fuss over classical vs. quantum cosmological models is primarily about.
report post as inappropriate
Steve Agnew replied on Oct. 10, 2014 @ 18:30 GMT
Good synopsis. Only thing that I would add is that the expanding universe CMB at 2.7 K is a partially ionized plasma at 3,000 K in its rest frame. In a contracting universe, the CMB is actually a lot colder than 2.7 K by the same factor of 1100 or so, but still partially ionized and force at the CMB has just grown large enough to freeze electrons and protons from gaechron.
The really nice thing about contraction is that it is the acceleration of light that determines electron and proton and other isotope masses, charge force, gravity force, and the universe contraction rate. You do not need any other constants than the three of c/alpha, m_dot, and m_gaechron...and of course matter, time, and action.
The DFM plasma seems to suggest that the CMB is actually emitting at 2.7 K and has no particular origin or frame of reference. So the CMB would not be a plasma at all, just a neutral gas expanding randomly and thermally. Neutral hydrogen at 2.7 K would for course be very transparent if it were not plasma. That was one of the original hopes...to be able to see back to the future by picking up recycled light echos.
report post as inappropriate
Thomas Howard Ray replied on Oct. 10, 2014 @ 19:06 GMT
Digging up this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=na6QspKHt48
I can see one possible source of Peter's confusion. It is indisputable that bodies fall at the same rate in a gravity field, whether in a straight trajectory or a curved trajectory. It is indisputable that bodies that start in the same state of relative motion end in the same state of relative motion. However:
That the final speed of the body in the curved trajectory is greater than that of the one in the curved trajectory results not from an extra acceleration of the latter body, as Peter claims (the "accelerated bus boarder") -- it's a consequence of time symmetry. The same symmetry is inherent in Kepler's second law of motion, in which planetary orbits sweep equal areas in equal times.
report post as inappropriate
Akinbo Ojo replied on Oct. 10, 2014 @ 20:03 GMT
Yes. A good synopsis by Tom.
However, I wonder what Tom (and Peter) make of the observed red-blue Doppler shift interpreted as due to the motion of the observer vis-a-vis the statement that
the validity of Special relativity and as well Lorentz transformation require that it be
impossible for an observer to determine whether he was moving or at rest by observation of...
view entire post
Yes. A good synopsis by Tom.
However, I wonder what Tom (and Peter) make of the observed red-blue Doppler shift interpreted as due to the motion of the observer vis-a-vis the statement that
the validity of Special relativity and as well Lorentz transformation require that it be
impossible for an observer to determine whether he was moving or at rest by observation of light.
Peter, I'm also here to learn, explore and discuss scientifically...
The section 2.2 DOES NOT SAY THERE CAN BE NO SINGLE ABSOLUTE 'PRIVILEGED REST FRAME! What IT CLEARLY SAYS supported by the excerpts below is that IN THE ABSENCE OF an observer's motion OR rest being experimentally discernible by observations of electromagnetic phenomena and capable of influencing such optic phenomena, then Galilean relativity MUST be revised and the possibility of a single privileged frame discarded.
Excerpts:
"
The attempts to measure the effects of motion relative to the ether (interpret as medium capable of transmitting light waves) commanded considerably more attention"; "...the abandonment of the ether —
following the failure of attempts to measure velocity relative to the ether and, more generally, the
apparent independence of all electrodynamic phenomena of motion relative to the ether (light carrying medium)— did not vindicate the Newtonian inertial frame, but required a dramatically revised conception..."; "But as Einstein also pointed out, the invariance of the velocity of light and the principle of relativity, at least in its Galilean form, are incompatible. It simply makes no sense, according to Galilean relativity, that any velocity
should appear to be the same in inertial frames that are in relative motion".
There are now uncountable observations of optic and electromagnetic phenomena on which the effects of motion of the observer have a bearing (Therefore NO MORE APPARENT INDEPENDENCE). As at the time SR and Lorentz transformation were formulated there were not that many showing 'DEPENDENCE'. Indeed, one such experiment FAILED to find any significant effect due to Earth motion (the Michelson-Morley experiment) making Galilean relativity INCOMPATIBLE with light observation. That is, in Galilean relativity arrival time for INCOMING light
can be influenced by observer's motion as it is for bullets. If light arrival times
cannot be similarly influenced then as section 2.2 says Galilean relativity will be incompatible for light, unlike it is for bullets. However, now that experiments are turning up significant influences and effects on light DUE TO Earth motion then the original rationale for discarding Galilean relativity which says velocity
should NOT appear to be the same in inertial frames that are in relative motion fails. This is the point I am stressing and why I call for its re-instatement.
Even, if you don't agree with privileged frames, and prefer multiple frames that is okay. But I have pointed out the reason why a single preferred frame was once ruled out, which reason is no longer valid since there are now instances where observer motion CAN influence optical phenomena.
See the Einstein quote I posted above on Oct. 9, 2014 @ 19:39 GMT and if you want to verify it is
here (end of p.28-29). Please bold 'ARE NOT' and let me know if that can NOW be replaced with 'CAN BE', then we can lay this to rest. Sorry for asking for free tuition :)
Thanks,
Akinbo
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Thomas Howard Ray replied on Oct. 10, 2014 @ 21:23 GMT
Akinbo, a preferred reference frame is no problem for Galilean relativity or Newtonian mechanics. In fact, we use the preferred frame of Earth to send personnel to the moon using Newtonian physics alone.
It is only when speeds approaching the speed of light are involved, that we need to adjust our calculations to include the effects of Einstein relativity. At the absolute speed of light, spacetime geometry is coordinate-free -- i.e., no privileged inertial frame -- such that every observer's frame of reference is equally valid. This means that physical relations are causally limited to local interactions. ("All physics is local" ~ Einstein)
You write, "Special relativity and as well Lorentz transformation require that it be impossible for an observer to determine whether he was moving or at rest by observation of light."
No. You've got relative motion confused with the constancy of the speed of light. An heuristic that Einstein used to explain the equivalence principle (equivalence of gravity and acceleration) is the example of a person in deep space, negligibly influenced by a gravity field, in a sealed box, like a elevator, such that she has no external reference. It is impossible to tell whether the elevator's floor presses against her feet to exert a gravity-like effect, or if the elevator is in free fall. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbSxxsb30_E
Also, http://www.newtonphysics.on.ca/einstein/chapter10.html. See particularly figs 10.2 a & b
report post as inappropriate
Peter Jackson replied on Oct. 11, 2014 @ 12:20 GMT
Tom,
"a preferred reference frame is no problem for Galilean relativity" That's good progress. The next step is to agree that Earth's is not unique, so ALL planets (bodies) have their own local preferred background rest frame. I've always agreed adjustment by the Lorentz Factor where acceleration (frame change) brings speed close to c
relative to that local background frame....
view entire post
Tom,
"a preferred reference frame is no problem for Galilean relativity" That's good progress. The next step is to agree that Earth's is not unique, so ALL planets (bodies) have their own local preferred background rest frame. I've always agreed adjustment by the Lorentz Factor where acceleration (frame change) brings speed close to c
relative to that local background frame. Your other comments simply show misunderstanding of my hypothesis. A change from state of motion K to K' (forget gravity, imagine just 2 spaceships) requires 'an acceleration', but that only happens on INTERACTION with matter 'at rest' in that new frame. The speed of the other car is only RELATIVE and v+v, until they interact, then they are "accelerated" (even slightly 'Doppler shifted' if not rigid!)
"Science is about finding new ways to look at familiar things"The 'Relativity of Simultaneity' however wrongly precluded ANY such background frame, local or otherwise, because it DIDN'T CONSIDER the option of co-moving local background systems as 'frames'. All it NEEDED to do was preclude the "SINGLE & ABSOLUTE" preferred ('aether') frame to achieve it's correct aim. An aether like our atmosphere, with local co-moving currents and clouds, each a local rest frame, (like Earth's) is perfectly acceptable to simply explain and verify the SR postulates. However the bits others 'added on' have to be limited in domain to WITHIN each discrete 'inertial system' or field rather than assumed 'infinite'. That's all the Discrete Field Model is.
Akinbo,
If you understood the above you'll see where the logic you proposed fails. It fails for the very reason that caused all the angst in physics for centuries, because one single 'absolute' rest frame for measuring c is untenable. Because SR retained paradoxes thousands have gone back many times to try to resurrect the (one fixed frame) aether. Each time they've just hit the same old wall, and the CMBR (even as rather hijacked and turned nonsensical by the BB believers) has not helped to that end, only added more confusion due to the poor understanding. The only paradox free answer lies elsewhere, as I've described. It's not simple to understand, but it's worth the effort.
I know I may still be bashing my head against a brick wall here, but I have to find a way of explaining the complex dynamic. Imagine Einstein's small space moving within bigger space moving within bigger space etc. Reading my post to Steve below carefully should help.
Best wishes
Peter
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Thomas Howard Ray replied on Oct. 11, 2014 @ 13:26 GMT
"I've always agreed adjustment by the Lorentz Factor where acceleration (frame change) brings speed close to c relative to that local background frame."
Since all physics is local, that's a non-starter. You have been informed many times that you are adding unnecessary assumptions to an already complete theory.
report post as inappropriate
Peter Jackson replied on Oct. 11, 2014 @ 17:23 GMT
Tom,
Perhaps more the only finisher than a 'non-starter'. It is entirely local. Just repeating you own familiar viewpoint won't help as you're thinking about it the wrong way to understand the hypothesis. Bragg again; "Science is about finding new ways of thinking about familiar things". Try this. It won't hurt;;
Axioms;
1) A system or 'body' of matter with a bulk rest frame may be assigned a LOCAL inertial rest frame K. Think of a dense gas cloud.
2) Many such systems may exist (K'
report post as inappropriate
Thomas Howard Ray replied on Oct. 11, 2014 @ 18:38 GMT
"Perhaps more the only finisher than a 'non-starter'. It is entirely local."
Jeez, Peter, what does 'all physics is local' mean to you?
report post as inappropriate
Peter Jackson replied on Oct. 11, 2014 @ 20:28 GMT
Tom,
Precisely as specified in Einstein's postulates, including c within all inertial systems. So nothing like your own view. The current interpretive paradigm offers no physical mechanism to go with the purely mathematical model contrived to reproduce the predictions. Mine does, and actually 'localises' the spatial domain of the equations from 'infinity' to the physical domain boundaries of each inertial system.
Those boundaries are defined by the most distant matter at rest in that system (Earth's ionosphere, the Galaxy halo, and Maxwell's near field boundary Transition Zone. Are you familiar with where that is physically? I can provide you with the full set of equations if you wish, but all are just approximations due to the well understood magnetohydrodynamic turbulence.
I don't really expect you to understand or accept the new interpretation Tom, just giving you every opportunity for valid falsification as specified above.
Best wishes,
Peter
report post as inappropriate
Thomas Howard Ray replied on Oct. 11, 2014 @ 21:56 GMT
"I don't really expect you to understand or accept the new interpretation Tom ..."
Good. Then I won't have to disappoint you.
report post as inappropriate
Peter Jackson replied on Oct. 13, 2014 @ 10:52 GMT
Tom,
"I don't really expect you to understand or accept the new interpretation Tom"
TR; "Good. Then I won't have to disappoint you."
OK. But I'm still; "giving you every opportunity for valid falsification as specified" which I note you're still unable to do scientifically. That's fine. Nobody has, but my rigorous attempts continue, as they should. The invitation remains open.
Best wishes
Peter
report post as inappropriate
Akinbo Ojo replied on Oct. 13, 2014 @ 12:17 GMT
A little constrained from being online for a while...
Peter,
I think this summarizes the final position, i.e. I know I may still be bashing my head against a brick wall here, but I have to find a way of explaining the complex dynamic. Imagine Einstein's small space moving within bigger space moving within bigger space, moving within bigger space, moving within bigger space, moving within bigger space, moving within bigger space,moving within bigger space, moving within bigger space,moving within bigger space,moving within bigger space, moving within bigger space,
ad infintum.
In other words there is no end to the 'bracketing' on both the large and small scale. This is good because it represents a falsifiable position, especially on the smallest scales. My position is that the bracketing has a finite limit on both the smallest and largest scales.
Tom, thanks for the link on the other thread, although you only quoted the reference. You didn't say if you agreed with my description of the Action-Reaction principle. Is the 'Mathematical Universe' infinite in size?
Regards,
Akinbo
report post as inappropriate
Thomas Howard Ray replied on Oct. 13, 2014 @ 15:03 GMT
Peter, no one can falsify a "heads I win, tails you lose" proposition. An "interpretation" of a theory is not a closed logical judgment -- e.g., special relativity could be falsified by experimentally measuring less or more energy in a given quantity of mass subjected to conditions that account for the complete energy content. Your model has no such falsification potential.
report post as inappropriate
Thomas Howard Ray replied on Oct. 13, 2014 @ 15:06 GMT
Akinbo, you write: "You didn't say if you agreed with my description of the Action-Reaction principle. Is the 'Mathematical Universe' infinite in size?"
Of course I agree with Newton's third law. What that has to do with the size of the universe, though, is something you'll have to explain to me.
report post as inappropriate
Peter Jackson replied on Oct. 13, 2014 @ 19:05 GMT
Tom,
It's logical consistency that's falsifiable, plus correspondence with observations. I've provided both. No theory can do more.
The only theories doing so that can't be falsified are correct ones. My hypothesis agrees SR, which all the evidence supports, but shows up the limitations of the 'interpretations'. Interpretations have been shown (as you agree) to be removable or improvable without damaging the theory. In this case I propose it makes it stronger.
Only too strict adherence to entrenched beliefs prevents objective analysis and advancement of understanding Tom. As Einstein said; "we must never stop questioning". It seems you have.
Best wishes
Peter
report post as inappropriate
Thomas Howard Ray replied on Oct. 13, 2014 @ 19:43 GMT
Peter, give me an example of how to falsify logical consistency.
You write: "It's logical consistency that's falsifiable, plus correspondence with observations. I've provided both."
Even if that's true, it's the same logical consistency of which relativity is constructed, accompanied by the same observations consistent with the theory of special relativity. What's new?
report post as inappropriate
Peter Jackson replied on Oct. 13, 2014 @ 20:48 GMT
Tom
"give me an example of how to falsify logical consistency."
A proposition or logical progression is self consistent or it isn't. For instance the interpretations attached to SR fail. E=mc^2 uses one kind of mass and M=E/c2 requires another, violating the laws of arithmetic. The slight change removes the issue, only requiring E_o=mc^2 in all cases.
Also no amount of switching to and fro can escape the twins paradox, if the two are not entirely equivalent in their own frame then the postulates fail, or they are both older than each other. I suggest that's just a hint of a logical inconsistency! Again the slight adjustment removes that issue. They both stay the same age, only the SIGNALS are (Doppler) contracted or expanded.
Infinities are also removed, and NASA's "Beyond Einstein" division, set up to try to explain why probes don't obey SR, can be abandoned under the adjusted interpretation. Signals propagate at c in a LOCAL background and these LOCAL background frames can move wrt each other.
The Ecliptic Plane problem is also resolved by the new 'interpretation' but not the old. Light and telemetry CHANGES SPEED on reaching the ionosphere and does c wrt our atmosphere. Logic is more consistent throughout, as is correspondence with data.
Time to face up honestly Tom, or find a flaw!
Best wishes
Peter
report post as inappropriate
Thomas Howard Ray replied on Oct. 14, 2014 @ 00:49 GMT
"Time to face up honestly Tom, or find a flaw!"
I think you can chase your own tail without my assistance.
report post as inappropriate
hide replies
Peter Jackson wrote on Oct. 7, 2014 @ 10:39 GMT
Steve,
Bulk diffuse plasma shocks moving wrt each other is fundamental astrophysics, and I specify 'fermion' pairs as electron/positron pairs, which with free protons constitute 'pure plasma'. I agree 'earth bound' plasma conventions are a little different (I too have studies plasmas as well as optics and am a member of the APS Plasma Physics group) so can't be directly transferred....
view entire post
Steve,
Bulk diffuse plasma shocks moving wrt each other is fundamental astrophysics, and I specify 'fermion' pairs as electron/positron pairs, which with free protons constitute 'pure plasma'. I agree 'earth bound' plasma conventions are a little different (I too have studies plasmas as well as optics and am a member of the APS Plasma Physics group) so can't be directly transferred.
In recent years we have greatly increased knowledge about space plasma coupling characteristics, density, distribution and motions (including far higher density and positron fraction that theorised!). I use that latest data not old inconsistent assumptions and theory.
You seem incredulous about 'plasma clouds' refracting light (including localising it's speed to the electron rest frame c). I'm not surprised. It's a new analysis, and it's predictions have been met; as soon as the VLB Array came on line! i.e. (worded rather carefully);
"We report on the first detection of the theoretically-predicted rare phenomenon of multiple parsec-scale imaging of an active galactic nucleus induced by refractive effects due to localized foreground electron density enhancements, e.g., in an AU-scale plasma lens(es) in the ionized component of the Galactic interstellar medium." Pushkarev A.B., et al., VLBA observations A&A 2013.The 'Smith Cloud' is a rare unattached plasma cloud in rapid motion wrt our galaxy. Within the Smith Cloud (subject to extinction distance) light and CMB radiation does c wrt the Smith Cloud bulk rest frame. That's how it refracts and lenses images!; by absorption and re-emission (Compton/Raman atomic scattering).
Now if you propose that the electrons of an identical plasma cloud or planetary shock elsewhere doing say 0.5c wrt Earth re-scatters light at anything OTHER than the local 'c' then perhaps your 'single absolute rest frame' for the universe may have a theoretical basis. Otherwise it still fails on simple logic, as it did 200 years ago. I've found the 'hierachical' (small system within larger system) model is the only one which doesn't. Do you understand it?
Lastly; You site Smoot, but did you know even his website has 'ether' in the title!? He found and specified a hierarchy of local system speeds building up to the 'axis of evil' but his analysis ended with the paradox unresolved so he suggested 'local' variable expansions! Also
"The dipole is a frame dependent quantity" is entirely consistent with inertial systems (frames) as real Lagrangian bulk 'flow' rest frames. Do you refute that all bodies have surrounding plasma shocks in the bodies rest frame, and/or that bodies (and shocks) all move wrt each other? and/or that propagation speed in all systems isn't 'c'? (SR).
Best wishes
Peter
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Steve Agnew replied on Oct. 8, 2014 @ 06:46 GMT
Oh, this is crazy. Plasmas on earth are the same as astrophysical plasmas...these are the plasmas that I know. The DFM plasma seems to behave differently and so I am not sure what a dfm plasma is like.
Of course plasmas have a different refractive index and therefore lower speed of light. All materials do. Plasmas also have reflectivity and color and luminosity. When light reemerges from...
view entire post
Oh, this is crazy. Plasmas on earth are the same as astrophysical plasmas...these are the plasmas that I know. The DFM plasma seems to behave differently and so I am not sure what a dfm plasma is like.
Of course plasmas have a different refractive index and therefore lower speed of light. All materials do. Plasmas also have reflectivity and color and luminosity. When light reemerges from the plasma, though, it then reacquires the vacuum c and light does not slow down in vacuum. There is no need to patch the Schrodinger equation with CSL. It works just find as it is. You seem to want to fix things that are not broken.
Light journeying through any semitransparent medium like a plasma undergoes lots of potential processes, but if the light does not reflect or scatter or absorb, it is not changed and emerges from the plasma cloud with velocity c unchanged albeit delayed. If the light reflects from the surface of the plasma, it is also not changed by the plasma or the plasma motion.
All electrons and protons in a plasma are in motion all the time, either thermally or effusively. Once entering the plasma, the light might be scattered either elastically (Compton or Rayleigh) or inelastically (Raman or Thompson). This is a very short time process and makes images fuzzy and only depends a little on the velocity and temperature of the plasma particles.
The light also might be absorbed and reemitted by the plasma. This is a very long time process and can dephase the light and depends a lot on the temperature and velocity of the plasma.
I am not the one who cited Smoot...you are. It is true that his website uses the aether moniker...so what? Smoot's work is very mainstream as is his Nobel prize.
You seem intent on fixing things about space time that are not broken and totally ignore the important issues at hand. Dark matter, dark energy, and black holes are issues that need fixing, not how plasmas and light interact, which is all very well established.
Your DFM plasma evidently red shifts light without a cosmological Doppler shift and supports a steady state universe. In fact, a shrinking universe has a different explanation for the Doppler shift from an expanding universe. But a shrinking universe has light and plasmas behave the same on earth as in heaven.
Look, plasmas are cool and do lots of neat stuff, but they simply are beside the point. The point is how black holes collapse or not and what that has to do with dark matter.
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Peter Jackson replied on Oct. 8, 2014 @ 12:31 GMT
Steve,
Thanks for clarifying what you believe. It did sound a little like you were trying to lecture me on 'facts', but I'm sure you understand too much to make that error. Your agreement with Lord Thompson that very little needs 'fixing' was worrying but I believe all opinion should have proponents, and I agree your last line, which is far closer to my hypothesis then you...
view entire post
Steve,
Thanks for clarifying what you believe. It did sound a little like you were trying to lecture me on 'facts', but I'm sure you understand too much to make that error. Your agreement with Lord Thompson that very little needs 'fixing' was worrying but I believe all opinion should have proponents, and I agree your last line, which is far closer to my hypothesis then you realise.
My plasma research has included both space plasma and nuclear tokamacs. The latter appear to be an excellent model of black holes; Accretion ('gravity') and helicoil acceleration ('heating' and re-ionization). But then (and this is why tokamacs so far fail) ejection of the free protons in the jets (collimated bipolar outflows). When the fuel runs out so does the OAM, and the AGN dies. So there is your 'collapse' (leading into the next cycle).
Now the 'dark matter'. It's well documented that (check the standard SPIM), the 'electron density' (simplified plasma measure) around a celestial body can reach 10^14/cm^-3, higher in a collimated bow shocks (such as Earth's) and up to 10^22/cm^-3 in jet pulse collimation shear surfaces and at the nose of probes on re-entry (as the plasma's you'll be more familiar with on Earth). But these then spread out in space as the varyingly diffuse free proton/fermion 'pure' plasmas we detect, which evolve to CO, molecular gasses and 'dust'.
Now (after checking Clausius's virial theorem and Lagrangian bulk motions) ask yourself; Are these 'clouds' of particles somehow special in having zero gravitational potential? I simply suggest not, which all evidence supports. And when you do the sums (including the gas and dust) you'll find that they likely contribute somewhere between 50% and 150% to the potential we attribute to 'dark matter'.
Now lets go into the excellent research on the optical qualities of diffuse pure space plasma's a bit more. I'll post a link to one recent paper on free access to help, but please DON'T IMAGINE that glimpse in s anything more!;
Bégué & Vereshchagin MNRAS 2014 Firstly, plasma DOES couple strongly with EM radiation (proton and fermions coupling peaking at different frequencies) but it does NOT "slow light down" as you suggest! It has a refractive index of n~1, same as the vacuum!! That makes it what's commonly referred to as 'transparent' or invisible spectroscopically (though all this seems beyond most mainstream limitations).
Now you need to employ your brain at full stretch. If the plasma medium has a 'bulk velocity' (as the moving 'cloud' in the VLBA paper) the coupling will transform the propagation speed to c in the cloud rest frame, which has the detectable effects reported even though it reverts to c in the GALAXY HALO bulk motion frame on exiting the cloud. In fact that's really just simple refraction. The effect is found in the halo's of other galaxies as the curvature of the light path we know as 'gravitational lensing', the ubiquitous (in astrophysics!) kinetic Sunyaev Zeldovich effect and the red and blue shifts from galaxy halo rotation.
So I suggest if we DO study the data we have and read 20+ papers a week for many years the coherent picture that emerges might just offer resolutions to ALL problems, whether we recognise them as problems or not! The real problem seems to be that those who DON'T study the data somehow "already know" how everything works!
Best wishes
Peter
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Steve Agnew replied on Oct. 9, 2014 @ 01:34 GMT
You seem to be suggesting that a window (made of dfm plasma or anything transparent) in our galaxy or any window at any velocity further red shifts the frequency of the light from an origin galaxy to a destiny galaxy, which is simply not true. The destiny galaxy will measure the same velocity or z for the origin galaxy light whether or not the light from the origin galaxy light goes through a window of any transparent material or dfm plasma at any velocity.
Your say that your dfm plasma has enough invisible and undetectable mass to account for dark matter, which is an invisible and undetectable mass...is this explanation progress?
Your mantra is that DFM plasma is consistent with all observations, but you can say that qualitatively of any model. Your need to show how the predictions of your model are quantitatively consistent with observations that do not have other explanations. Thus far, you have not done that.
report post as inappropriate
Peter Jackson replied on Oct. 13, 2014 @ 10:44 GMT
Steve,
"consistent with observations that do not have other explanations" rather misses the point that many 'explanation' are offered to almost ALL findings. What I suggest is important is finding logically consistent explanation coherent with explanations of OTHER phenomena. THAT is where we have a great shortage, including I agree, with 'expansion'.
You suggest; "Thus far, you have...
view entire post
Steve,
"consistent with observations that do not have other explanations" rather misses the point that many 'explanation' are offered to almost ALL findings. What I suggest is important is finding logically consistent explanation coherent with explanations of OTHER phenomena. THAT is where we have a great shortage, including I agree, with 'expansion'.
You suggest; "Thus far, you have not done that". I have done so for the above cases, but apparently you haven't read or 'taken in' those parts, many actually summarised as a list! I've referred elsewhere but a short list of the top of my head is;
Formation of galaxy bars.
Halo rotational 'decoupling' (perpendicular to disc).
Formation and age distribution of dwarf satellite spheroids.
GRB's and strong X ray emissions from quasars.
CMBR large scale Helicity.
The full range of WMAP and Planck peculiar large scale anisotropies.
The Pioneer, voyager and flyby anomalies.
The relativistic Ecliptic plane problem.
'Electron heating' at Earth's bow shock (Cluster data) and shock creation.
Kinetic reverse refraction (KRR).
The failure of Snell's Law and Fresnel Refraction between co-moving media.
Stellar Aberration for waves.
Elliptical polarisation of light.
Faraday Rotation, the Kerr effects (still 'anomalous!), the kSZ effect etc.
A classical physical cause of the effect quantified by the Lorentz Factor.
The list goes on, and I've discussed each one in detail, shown how it improves on present theory and how it all fits perfectly together like a jigsaw puzzle. Indeed a contraction 'phase' is implicit, but NOTHING is required to be 'infinite', even the cycle itself.
So far only a handful of people have bothered to check the evidence rigorously and follow the logical progression. All those agree the model is consistent. I don't expect a great rush of others but falsification continues. Whether of not it's 'true' or not is quite another matter. I can say I'm quite certain it's far from 'complete'!
Best wishes
Peter
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
hide replies
Peter Jackson wrote on Oct. 9, 2014 @ 11:10 GMT
Steve,
A logical explanation of 'superluminal jets' is "quantitatively consistent with observations that do not have other explanations". As is 'kinetic decoupling', dwarf spheroid formation, the recovery of Snell's Law at the near'far field transition and the dozens of other predictions. But I agree if you ignore all those and assume that refractive index is frame invariant then the model...
view entire post
Steve,
A logical explanation of 'superluminal jets' is "quantitatively consistent with observations that do not have other explanations". As is 'kinetic decoupling', dwarf spheroid formation, the recovery of Snell's Law at the near'far field transition and the dozens of other predictions. But I agree if you ignore all those and assume that refractive index is frame invariant then the model offers nothing.
That would be interesting, as a beam of light passing through identical glass lenses on the ISS and Earth would do so at different speeds! Now that IS a novel prediction! I suspect you simply didn't understand that all I axiomise is light passing through at the SAME speed in each lens rest frame irrespective of relative motion. Thus the relative v, which is the Earth/ISS v. The axiom may be too simple to comprehend.
I do NOT then suggest some 'red shift' just due to 'passing through' a lens. There is a red OR blue shift dependent on the direction of that relative medium v. That's as found by observation. Indeed we can precisely estimate galaxy rotational velocities from the shifts. The 'lensing' time delays found are then also logically derived).
Plasma (normal space plasma not 'dfm') has what's termed an 'optical depth'. It simply behaves like a giant lens, but because n=1 it is 'spectroscopically transparent'. The only way we can detect it is than from the effects of it's bulk motion, which is precisely what Atlas 3D analysed and the VLBA confirmed (though theoretically problematic without understanding the rather hidden kinetic implications of 'atomic scattering')
"...plasma has enough invisible and undetectable mass to account for dark matter, which is an invisible and undetectable mass...is this explanation progress?" I'm not sure if that data itself can be "progress", but it certainly leads to more coherent understanding. It's only very recently we've discovered that the densities of 'plasma >> dust' particles are a number of orders of magnitude greater than the 'weak field approximation' assumption, partly due to the 'transparency' of plasma. If you have preconceptions which disagree with the actual densities you're not alone, but just look them up, or I can provide plenty more links.
The ontology is like that giant jigsaw puzzle. The very fact that it all fits into place and gives a beautiful coherent picture is evidence supporting it's veracity. Of course there may be other ways it fits, but the current SM is certainly not one! It's been well proved however that it can be successfully denied by avoiding looking at it (that needs no more re-verification!) which avoids the trauma of challenging fundamentals (in the same way as cosmic contraction I surmise!).
Best wishes
Peter
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Anonymous replied on Oct. 10, 2014 @ 13:55 GMT
You state that light undergoes a red or blue shift passing through a window of transparent matter. Since this is demonstrably not true, that falsifies your approach. I don’t know why you substituted lense for window, since lenses throw more complication into the DFM plasma. Lets stick with DFM plasma as a window.
”I do NOT then suggest some 'red shift' just due to 'passing through' a...
view entire post
You state that light undergoes a red or blue shift passing through a window of transparent matter. Since this is demonstrably not true, that falsifies your approach. I don’t know why you substituted lense for window, since lenses throw more complication into the DFM plasma. Lets stick with DFM plasma as a window.
”I do NOT then suggest some 'red shift' just due to 'passing through' a lens. There is a red OR blue shift dependent on the direction of that relative medium v. That's as found by observation. Indeed we can precisely estimate galaxy rotational velocities from the shifts. The 'lensing' time delays found are then also logically derived).”If a transparent window of silica at any relative velocity were to shift light due to its motion, we could easily determine our CMBR motion since all we would need to do is look at a star along the CMB dipole at 371 km/s with and without the window and then another star perpendicular to that direction with and without the window to deduce our CMBR motion.
Obviously, there is no dispersion of light with a window either in this galaxy or in any other galaxy that might be watching and we cannot measure our CMBR motion or any motion by this means. There is a time delay in the light phase due to the dielectric dispersion of the window that is refractive index, but not a frequency shift because there is no scattering or absorption. It is a mystery to me why you propose something that is demonstrably not true, but it is clearer now why you do not believe in a CMBR frame.
You seem to be confusing dielectric dispersion with atomic scattering and these are two very different albeit related phenomena. Dielectric dispersion is purely elastic and does not heat the material and so the light does not change frequency. A photon’s electric field is continuously affected by dielectric dispersion and dispersion delays a light pulse due to slower c.
However, scattering is an atomic event for a photon with some probability. The photon either scatters off an atom or it does not and Rayleigh or compton scattering has typical cross sections in the visible like one in a million scattering events per encounter with an atom. Elastic scattering does not heat or change frequency, but scattering does fuzz up images. Inelastic scattering makes images fuzzy and also heats or cools a material. The light frequency can shift both ways and will cool the matter if it gains energy from the Boltzman population of the material as anti-Stokes Raman scattering, with exactly the same cross sections as Stokes Raman scattering, which heats the material.
Your DFM plasma seems to behave differently than ordinary plasma in order to have the properties that you claim it has and DFM plasma would seem to result in a much different universe than the one we have. You simply cannot say doppler shift on the one hand and then have light change speed on the other. Light changes speed due to dielectric dispersion and that does not depend on motion. Light changes frequency when it emits from a material at a given velocity. Light scatters differently for a moving material, but elastic scattering does not doppler shift the light frequency, but the scattering cross sections are dependent on rest frame frequency.
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Steve Agnew replied on Oct. 10, 2014 @ 14:17 GMT
This has been an interesting exercise for me since you obviously passionately believe in your DFM plasma and pose many contrasting viewpoints.
I really do not like to use invisible and undetectable matter to explain observations since once you go down that road, you can “predict” any action after the fact since that is what strings and multiverses and black holes and religions are all about.
Note that despite the fact that I believe in the large body of evidence for the Lorentz invariance of c, in the contracting universe, c is not constant and increases very slowly over time by mdot = 0.283 ppb/yr, butthis does not violate Lorentz invariance. The acceleration of light, mdot*c = +88 km/s/Mpc, corresponds to a contraction rate of -9.6%/Byr for the matter time universe and is the universal acceleration that determines both charge and gravity forces in this epoch.
The current expansion rate is 7.6%/Byr and simply depends on new Hubble and inflation constants. Forces in space time have there own separate sets of constants but in matter time, forces come from the contraction rate of the universe.
So in a contracting universe, the variation in c with time does mean that looking back in time is just like looking back through a graded index lense. All of our past universe appears progressively magnified by our current assumption of a constant c. So your DFM plasma does seem to do a similar thing, which is intriguing. A galaxy of the distant past will appear larger and brighter than it actually is in that rest frame.
report post as inappropriate
Peter Jackson replied on Oct. 10, 2014 @ 15:00 GMT
Steve,
If I'm wrong wrong attributing the above post to you I apologise as it's rather less scientifically based or consistent than yours.
I make clear; "I do NOT then suggest some 'red shift' just due to 'passing through'.." some transparent dielectric medium, ..but the response was;
"You state that light undergoes a red or blue shift passing through a window of transparent...
view entire post
Steve,
If I'm wrong wrong attributing the above post to you I apologise as it's rather less scientifically based or consistent than yours.
I make clear; "I do NOT then suggest some 'red shift' just due to 'passing through'.." some transparent dielectric medium, ..but the response was;
"You state that light undergoes a red or blue shift passing through a window of transparent matter. Since this is demonstrably not true, that falsifies your approach.
It then goes on to ignore the fundamentals of EM (J.D Jackson, extinction distances, etc. etc.) to suggest that light propagating in any local medium rest frame does NOT propagate at c (or c/n) with respect to that local frame, so violating SR and just about all experimental findings! That seems to be why the 'analysis' that followed was confused and invalid, suggesting
I'm confusing things! If it challenges SR then of course it should state so and say how and on what evidence.
If that weren't enough, in response to my specification (and citation) of space plasma as purely what's actually found, so the standard astrophysical understanding, it then repeats it's assumption that 'dfm plasma' is somehow 'different'. It isn't.
But what I DO describe is indeed a different (more consistent with data in fact) rationalisation of the "effects" of the passage of light through a medium. If the author wishes to challenge and discuss that, then that's fine. I can wield overwhelming evidence and identify a stream of anomalies it resolves.
Even at CERN the analysis requires TWO rest frames for the propagation of light when meeting particles; The 'moving' rest frame, and the particle 'centre of mass' (CofM) rest frame. (one of which often being the 'lab frame'), performing a transform between them. Light then propagates at c in the NEW CofM rest frame. All I do is describe a rationalisation of that without the paradoxes of current interpretations. Doubless that will cause confusion to anyone embedded in any old doctrinal belief system rather than applying the SM.
I'm sure you agree the concept of light passing through a number of identical co-moving dielectrics (of greater optical depth than the extinction distance) at DIFFERENT SPEEDS wrt that local medium rest frame is not only entirely empirically inconsistent but rather laughable. The refractive index of any medium, say glass, is the same whatever speed it travels wrt anything else!
Perhaps the post was in jest and I've risen to the bait, but the points did anyway need addressing as the model does challenge current understandings. A bit like your 'contraction'. But as Jaynes pointed out; "Physics goes forward on the shoulders of doubters, not believers."
Best wishes
Peter
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Steve Agnew replied on Oct. 10, 2014 @ 15:56 GMT
I was simply stating the way I understand the universe is without DFM plasma. I am not sure to what paradoxes you refer since all of the examples that you repeatedly cite have standard explanations with Lorentz shifts and constant c. You claim that observations that suggest constant c in all frames are instead explicable by DFM plasma motion that changes c and results in the same set of observations.
You are fixing something, SR, that is not broken and it still is not clear what quantitative predictions DFM plasma allows you to make. You believe that any window motion results in light doppler dispersion due to the dielectric effect, but you do not cite any evidence that that is true. I believe in the body of evidence that suggests otherwise. We can just leave at that.
report post as inappropriate
Steve Agnew replied on Oct. 10, 2014 @ 17:00 GMT
Light scattering off of moving atoms does result in doppler shifts as well as polarization dispersion. Light propagating through a moving dielectric window does not undergo a doppler shift, but dispersion due to the refractive index of the window affects the frequency of light in that frame and therefore the dispersion.
report post as inappropriate
Peter Jackson replied on Oct. 10, 2014 @ 18:07 GMT
Steve,
"I am not sure to what paradoxes (and anomalies) you refer." The many I identified and analysed, but 'skimming' a paper doesn't commit them to memory. The apparent SR paradoxes of course, which won't go away until logically dismissed, then a catalogue of over 20 of the well known anomalous astronomical findings, many I've repeated above. And I repeat yet again I both agree and...
view entire post
Steve,
"I am not sure to what paradoxes (and anomalies) you refer." The many I identified and analysed, but 'skimming' a paper doesn't commit them to memory. The apparent SR paradoxes of course, which won't go away until logically dismissed, then a catalogue of over 20 of the well known anomalous astronomical findings, many I've repeated above. And I repeat yet again I both agree and describe a complete mechanism able to derive the Lorentz Factor.
I agree that there have been many 'suggested' resolution to many, but none consistent, though most are quite happy that their favourite one 'solves the issues' John Bell called it 'sleepwalking'. The ignored evidence agrees.
I mentioned the ecliptic plane issue (se my 2012 essay) and apparent superluminal jets (I have a discussion at the linked in APS page at present) but let me pick just one other out for you;
"Kinetic Decoupling" of galaxy haloes; It's quite common, where the halo rotates on a perpendicular axis to the disc. Absolutely NO other credible explanation has been found. Yet there are many sleepwalkers in astronomy too so it's just ignored.
Of course if, as you suggest, all such matters 'don't need fixing' then my full derivation of the dynamic is a waste of time! Most would say exactly the same to you about expansion. It's perfectly explained so why try to fix it. I agree that is an equally stupid comment, but no more so.
I you disagree why don't you give me your solution for orbital decoupling and we'll perhaps compare them with the evidence.
The one thing that I must admit quite astonishes me is your adherence to the old unspoken assumption that "Light (entering and) propagating through a (co-)moving dielectric (medium) does not undergo a (D)doppler shift, (while doing so)" I put it to you that is absolute nonsense. just think about what you're saying. I suspect you're considering it AFTER IT EXITS and reverts to the original background frame, which in NOT the case specified!
It does take careful thought I agree.
Best wishes
Peter
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Steve Agnew replied on Oct. 10, 2014 @ 19:24 GMT
Of course, apparently superluminal jets, like M87, have been explained and modeled quite extensively. Counter rotating and differential motions of stars and gas within galaxies are usually associated with past galaxy collisions. These phenomena are certainly not well understood and even have anomalies, but are hardly a paradoxes requiring a new world order.
However, if you can explain quantitatively galaxy rotation and dark matter and dark energy and what a black hole is really like with DFM plasma and tie gravity and charge forces together, that would be useful. It is not that there are not anomalies out there...there are.
I am glad that you now agree that a moving dielectric does not result in doppler shifts for an external observer. You created DFM plasma to do the heavy lifting of Lorentz invariance instead of just leaving c constant in all frames. Since the net effect seems to be the same, why complexify with DFM plasma. In a moving DFM plasma, c changes, but in a stationary dielectric, c changes as well. So now we get changing changes in a moving dielectric...and this is simpler than constant c?
All you seem to be saying is that the moving DFM plasma doppler shifts light instead of light doing it all by itself. Is this useful?
report post as inappropriate
Peter Jackson replied on Oct. 11, 2014 @ 11:26 GMT
Steve,
'Explained and modelled' but not relativistically rationalised. Same for the Ecliptic Plane problem discussed in my essay. USNO Circ.179 2005 on the IAU 2000 resolutions states; "The apparently familiar concept of the ecliptic plane has not yet been defined in the context of relativity resolutions. A consistent relativistic theory of Earth rotation is still some years away;"...
view entire post
Steve,
'Explained and modelled' but not relativistically rationalised. Same for the Ecliptic Plane problem discussed in my essay. USNO Circ.179 2005 on the IAU 2000 resolutions states;
"The apparently familiar concept of the ecliptic plane has not yet been defined in the context of relativity resolutions. A consistent relativistic theory of Earth rotation is still some years away;" 14 Years on a 'relativistic theory' still hasn't emerged, or rather "been adopted" because the DFM is it, consistent with the postulates AND the LT, but in clarifying the interpretation by removing an assumed 'infinity' in it's spatial domain. So yes. It is 'useful'. The problem is that too many fools say; "it aint broke so leave it be", so it's swept under the carpet with all the others and remains there.
The paper explained how ALL of the anomalous Planck CMBR 'SM inconsistencies' are predicted and derived by the model. The formal Planck report was carefully termed but most now forget it included the phrases;
"challenge the very foundations of cosmology". "serious anomaly", "significant discrepancy of the CMB signal", "bringing with it new challenges about our understanding of the origin and evolution of the cosmos.", "evidence of anomalous features in the CMB is more serious than previously thought, suggesting that something fundamental may be missing from the standard framework", "..some aspects of the standard model of cosmology may need a rethink." and that
"...the anomalies seen by Planck highlight that the model should be at the very least extended, if not radically modified." etc. etc.
But no coherent solution has been 'found' so they too are now in the heap 'under the carpet' which now resembles the foothills of the Himalayas so all go round it rather than keep tripping up. Many outside astronomy ignore it exists entirely!
'Usually associated with past galaxy collisions' sums it up. It's crock, a grasp at straws with ZERO evidence. An FLRW universe is naturally cyclic and a galaxy scale model of that dynamic process reproduces the decoupling as the old outer halo isn't accreted and ejected in the bi-polar jets so retains it's original perpendicular rotation. 'Dark' matter (unobservable as you agreed) is shown as a natural consequence.
I see you blame your misunderstanding on me ("now agree that a moving dielectric..") and still misunderstand; " created DFM plasma.." though I explain I only invoke a) what we've found there, and apply b) what we know it does. But sure, that wasn't previously done!
What you've
missed is the scenario effect I actually specified; Where the medium BEHIND the glass (say air) is at rest with the glass i.e. WITH THE OBSERVER IN THE [B]SAME[/B] FRAME', the Doppler shift due solely to the 'frame change' element remains. (inside the car or spacecraft behind the glass). That is the 'new physics' which our intellectual evolution has fallen short of seeing and which resolves the whole (Himalayan!) gamut of anomalies. So yes, it's VERY useful! Can you make the intellectual leap separating the effects of delta 'n' from speed change K-K'? (I don't suggest it's easy.)
Best wishes
Peter
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Steve Agnew replied on Oct. 11, 2014 @ 18:27 GMT
You gotta love language...language is so much easier than math because language allows you to turn on a dime and say contradictory things in the same sentence. That what makes most of the world go around...politics.
"'Explained and modelled' but not relativistically rationalised. Same for the Ecliptic Plane problem discussed in my essay."Okay, I thought that falsification was your mantra, but now your standard has slipped from falisification to relativistic rationalization. The truth be known, your diatribes are teaching me quite a lot about the nature of fringe science.
I understand DFM plasma completely from what you have said and have read your papers. I then point out why that DFM plasma inconsistent with most observations and data. You then pull various
rabbits out of your hat with some neat anomalous observation. I will grant you that no theory will ever be completely consistent with all observations.
All that is ever possible is that some theories will be more useful than others for predicting action in the universe. If a theory is useful to science, it will be used despite its flaws. If a theory is not useful to science, it will not be used. Since DFM plasma has not been useful for anyone else on the planet for prediction of action, it matters little that DFM plasma seems to be the bee's knees for you.
I kind of like the idea of counterpropagating invisible and unmeasurable DMF plasmas. That DFM plasma has dielectric properties that are so unusual and unmeasurable is also quite nice. You can explain many things with invisible and unmeasurable objects and you are not alone in your quest. However, trying to quantitate this qualitative relativistic reasoning with math does not seem to be possible.
report post as inappropriate
Thomas Howard Ray replied on Oct. 11, 2014 @ 18:31 GMT
Peter Jackson replied on Oct. 11, 2014 @ 20:38 GMT
Steve,
Are you familiar with the large scale cyclic nature of the FLRW cosmology? Your knowledge of Astronomy does seem limited as unlike me you don't seem interested in still learning so you simply dismiss or ignore the information I impart that doesn't suit your own beliefs and agenda. That's ok as it's quite ubiquitous, but still rather disappointing.
If you wish for links to anything I cite do just ask, but I suspect you may not. That's fine and expected too. But you haven't yet responded with the sound evidence I expressed my interested in for your own hypothesis.
Best wishes
Peter
report post as inappropriate
Steve Agnew replied on Oct. 11, 2014 @ 21:38 GMT
...but you didn't say please...
"But you haven't yet responded with the sound evidence I expressed my interested in for your own hypothesis."Matter time papers are pretty technical, so if you do not like math, you will not like these papers. So you are not the only one with rabbits in your hat.
I have tried several times to publish this, but the editors of four...
view entire post
...but you didn't say please...
"But you haven't yet responded with the sound evidence I expressed my interested in for your own hypothesis."Matter time papers are pretty technical, so if you do not like math, you will not like these papers. So you are not the only one with rabbits in your hat.
I have tried several times to publish this, but the editors of four different journals just were not the least interested. So these papers were not even rejected by peer review, but that is coming I am sure. I do have a wide range of research interests outside of cosmology and astronomy.
Universal_Quantum_Action_in_the_Matter-Time_Univer
seSo far, I have three analyses that show the utility of matter time. These are all quite technical and still in draft form.
GALAXY_ROTATION_WITHOUT_DARK_MATTER_IN_THE_MATTER-TIME_
UNIVERSECorrelation_of_Solar_Sunspot_Cycle_with_Nearby_Stars
_Procyon_and_61-CygniDecay_of_the_International_Prototype_Ki
logramAnd I have a number of further analyses in preparation:
Condensation of hydrogen pairs and isotopes in the early matter time universe
Diameter of the neutron in matter time
Reinterpretation of the Higgs boson in matter time (it actually scales with the classical electron spin velocity, c/alpha)
Matter decay correction for muon hydrogen spectrum that that is consistent with hydrogen: There is no anomaly with the proton radius
Liquid drop model of nuclear structure revisited with matter time
Distortion of quasar and galaxy numbers and luminosities by the time lensing of matter time
Aware matter and the quantum function of consciousness in matter time
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Peter Jackson replied on Oct. 13, 2014 @ 10:20 GMT
Steve,
Not yet "relativistically rationalised" is the IAU/ USNO Circ.179 (p.6) quote I gave you on the Ecliptic Plane problem condensed. It's not my description, but it's entirely consistent with the data. 'Atmospheric Refraction' (recognised even before and by Newton) extends to the ionosphere, and localises light speed to c wrt Earth, wearas signal speeds from probes such as the Voyagers and Cassini-Huygens propagate at c wrt the barycentric frame (the Sun).
That data implies a speed change to local c along with the Doppler shift on reaching Earth's local orbiting rest frame. It is only THAT DATA which can't be rationalised using the present 'add on' interpretations of Einstein's Relativity. ALL interplanetary probes using just SR have been initially 'lost', including 3 Mars Probes and Cassini-Huygens and the Pioneers and Voyager craft are millions of miles 'off track'.
Interpreting using Einstein's 1952 "space s in motion within S" and local spatial 'domain limits' more literally based on MATTER centred virial inertial systems to each frame resolves all the issues, but using present methods it almost certainly won't be adopted. Perhaps in the next century if we get there.
"passionately believe.." Hmm. Yes, we do have a language thing. To me belief belongs to religion. I've just taken a heap of data sets and tried many ontological constructions to rationalise them, finding just one that works way better than any others, so needs deeper falsification. That's what I'm doing. The problem is that many OTHERS tend to use their 'beliefs' to judge it, which is unfortunately methodologically invalid.
Proper falsification takes research, an open mind and objectivity and all is very welcome. I'll do the same for you as I try to do for all hypotheses.
Best wishes
Peter
report post as inappropriate
hide replies
John Prytz wrote on Nov. 10, 2014 @ 11:46 GMT
DARK ENERGY AND EXPANDING SPACE
The expansion rate of the cosmos is apparently accelerating which is contrary to not only common sense but what generations of cosmologists would have bet the family farm on; a decelerating cosmos is what any sane astronomer would have predicted. So something is screwy somewhere, but there are so many problems with an accelerating Universe and what drives...
view entire post
DARK ENERGY AND EXPANDING SPACE
The expansion rate of the cosmos is apparently accelerating which is contrary to not only common sense but what generations of cosmologists would have bet the family farm on; a decelerating cosmos is what any sane astronomer would have predicted. So something is screwy somewhere, but there are so many problems with an accelerating Universe and what drives that acceleration that cosmologists might not have to worry about losing their family farms.
We have been aware that our Universe has been expanding for going on nearly a century now. Of course we are also aware, from a quite considerable earlier time that what goes up must come down. In other words, gravity grabs. The Universe has lots and lots of gravity, so presumably, what goes up (i.e. – the expansion rate) must come down (i.e. – the expansion rate must at least slow down, maybe even stop and reverse). Cosmologists were very interested in finding out exactly what the rate of deceleration was. How fast was the Universe’s expansion rate decreasing? It’s like you car might be going uphill, but at an ever slower and slower rate.
Okay, so, several teams of astronomers did the relevant observations and crunched the numbers and guess what – the Universe’s expansion rate was accelerating, gravity be damned. That’s sort of like driving your car uphill and having it go faster and faster without you putting the pedal to the metal. Well, that surely was an unexpected result. So, they needed an explanation. The astronomers (team leaders anyway) got the Nobel Prize, but that was for the discovery, not for the explanation. You see, there wasn't any explanation. So, what do we want – an epicycle. When do we want it – now! What was the ad-hoc epicycle to be? It was called “Dark Energy”, a sort of anti-gravity that was pushing the Universe apart faster and faster and faster. Trouble is, nobody then, or now, has the foggiest idea what Dark Energy is, yet in order to account for what this epicycle does, it must represent some roughly 70% of what makes the Universe up. That’s a lot of epicycle that lacks any plausible explanation. Did someone mention rabbits and hats?
When considering all things cosmological, it’s become apparent that astronomers only observe about 4% of the matter plus energy that should be present. That is, about 96% of the matter plus energy that should be present and detectable to account for the observed behaviour of our observable universe is missing! Now 1% might be understandable given measurement uncertainty (error bars), but hardly 96%! So, cosmologists have postulated concepts termed ‘Dark Matter’ and ‘Dark Energy’ to make up the deficit. However, nobody has the foggiest idea what exactly ‘Dark Matter’* and ‘Dark Energy’ actually are. Neither has actually been detected, either out there, or in the laboratory down here – obviously. The anomaly here is that ‘Dark Matter’ and ‘Dark Energy’ are both ad hoc theoretical concepts to make sense of various astronomical observations, but without benefit of any actual observation of ‘Dark Matter’ and/or ‘Dark Energy ’to back things up. That’s a rather slight-of-hand trick, and until cosmologists put actual observational money on the board where their theoretical mouth is, it’s all an anomalous pie-in-the-cosmic-sky.
Further, there is a quintet of really big problems with Dark Energy.
Problem One: Conservation laws – the bedrock of physics that are rammed down your throat in high school science - are violated. Apparently the density of Dark Energy remains constant while the volume of the Universe expands. Expanding space creates additional Dark Energy which further expands space which creates additional Dark Energy; round and round in an endless cycle. That’s something from nothing. That’s a free lunch. Of course the phrase “Dark Energy” was just tacked on to ‘explain’ the accelerating universe, though it explains nothing. We, to repeat my earlier observation, still haven’t a clue what Dark Energy actually is, even though the concept has now entered its mid-teenage years, enough time you’d think for cosmologists to pin this anomaly down.
Problem Two: If Dark Energy is real energy, and it has to be in order to provide universal oomph, expand the universe and accelerate the cosmos; and energy can be converted to matter (Einstein’s famous equation), what kind of matter can Dark Energy turn into – traditional stuff like standard matter and antimatter or something exotic?
Problem Three: Space, IMHO, is a not-thing. You can’t hold it, measure it, or detect it with your senses. Space cannot clobber you over the head. It has as much reality as the concept of Wednesday. Space is not a physical something. Space has no effect on anything else. Energy is a thing. You can measure it and detect it and note the various effects it has on other things. A thing (energy) cannot be a property of a not-thing; a not-thing cannot contain properties that are things.
Problem Four: Ultimately, if space really is a thing, a thing that’s a something, then space apparently has the property of elasticity. If space is expanding and carrying matter (i.e. – anything from individual atoms through entire galaxies and clusters of galaxies) along for the ride piggyback style (as opposed to individual atoms through to entire galaxies and clusters of galaxies expanding throughout existing space) then one would expect to observe our Sun-Earth distance getting greater; the Moon-Earth** distance expanding more rapidly than tidal forces allow for; our entire solar system’s diameter increasing; ditto the diameter of entire galaxies. Alas, there’s no such evidence. Galaxies that we see today that existed billions of years ago (because it took their light that long to reach us) have the same sort of geometrical size and structure as galaxies that are much closer (hence more recent in age) to us. Galaxies don’t expand so the space within them isn't expanding either. That just leaves the voids between galaxies, or between clusters of galaxies to do the expanding. But that begs the question of why the discrimination between the space that’s between Earth and the Moon (not expanding) and the space between our galaxy and Andromeda Galaxy (not expanding) or the space between our local cluster of galaxies and our nearest other cluster of galaxies (expanding). It’s all nonsense. If space itself is expanding; all of space is expanding, not just select bits or areas.
Problem Five: Despite promoting expanding space via an intrinsic property of space, the Dark Energy, as the greatest thing since sliced bread, no scientist can give you the equation; the actual recipe for creating space, especially the creation of space out of absolutely nothing. Wouldn't we all like to create some extra space in the home out of absolutely nothing? Just spray some Dark Energy out of a can and you've instantly added an extra bedroom or pool-room to your abode. It’s easy to say that space is constantly being created via Dark Energy, but hardcore equations speak louder than waffle-words.
Something is really screwy somewhere!
*The requirement for Dark Matter to explain gravitational anomalies goes back to the early 1930’s, so cosmologists/particle physicists have had eighty years to figure this out, but without (to date), any runs on the board.
**The Moon-Earth distance can be monitored to extreme precision, as in down to inches, thanks to the mirrors left on the lunar surface by the Apollo astronauts.
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Akinbo Ojo replied on Nov. 10, 2014 @ 18:39 GMT
Since I have time to spare and nothing else to blog about at the moment...
"However, nobody has the foggiest idea what exactly ‘Dark Matter’... actually are. Neither has actually been detected, either out there, or in the laboratory down here – obviously"Not true, sir. What earth-bound matter medium do you think prevented Michelson and Morley from observing earth motion...
view entire post
Since I have time to spare and nothing else to blog about at the moment...
"However, nobody has the foggiest idea what exactly ‘Dark Matter’... actually are. Neither has actually been detected, either out there, or in the laboratory down here – obviously"Not true, sir. What earth-bound matter medium do you think prevented Michelson and Morley from observing earth motion using optical phenomena in their laboratory? Just the same way an earth bound medium (air) prevents us from observing earth motion using sound.
"Problem One: Conservation laws – the bedrock of physics that are rammed down your throat in high school science - are violated"If you were the Supreme programmer why would you prefer to create ALL your matter in ONE day? Why can you not make your program to evolve gradually such that with increasing radius the matter content increases in tandem? This avoids the flatness headache, which we are suffering by wanting to eat and have ALL our cake at once at the big bang. If you recall, inflation was invented because it is desired that all the 10
52kg of matter in the universe be all present from the beginning. Were this not so, there would have been no flatness problem and therefore no need for 'inflation analgesic'.
"That’s something from nothing. That’s a free lunch."Why must lunch always be on the table? Unless a something must be eternally existing, looking back in time even beyond when the 'Supreme programmer' came to be, there must have been nothing. Is this impossible? A deeper topic is what 'something' means. This has been addressed by our predecessors like Newton, etc.
"...then one would expect to observe our Sun-Earth distance getting greater; the Moon-Earth** distance expanding ...; our entire solar system’s diameter increasing; ditto the diameter of entire galaxies. Alas, there’s no such evidence".
Suppose, something is obliterating the evidence when it has the opportunity to do so, (especially when within the grasp of its escape velocity)? Can gravitational (and electromagnetic) attraction neutralize such evidence? Looking at it from the 'attraction side of the accounts book', and modifying your words, "then one would expect to observe our Sun-Earth distance getting smaller; the Moon-Earth** distance reducing as it falls ...; our entire solar system’s diameter reducing; ditto the diameter of entire galaxies. Alas, there’s no such evidence". Why? Further, is there evidence of a tug-of-war between the two tendencies? When gravity has the upper hand objects fall to the ground. When spatial expansion has the upper hand, we see what you describe between galactic clusters. When there is a balance of forces, we see a vibration like a spring. A balance between extension and compression. At perihelion, we have maximum point of compression and at aphelion maximum point of extension. If you check the mathematics you will see a relationship resembling Hooke's law and a stiffness, s of the harmonic motion looking like s = GMm/r
3 = mω
2. Recall that when you have harmonic motion, at least two return forces must be operational to maintain the motion. We know gravity in the Sun-Earth orbit, we know the electromagnetic attraction force in atomic orbits, what is the unacknowledged return force?
Let me stop here before going too deep into my own simulated universe!
Regards,
Akinbo
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
John Prytz replied on Nov. 11, 2014 @ 12:00 GMT
Greetings Akinbo,
Regarding Dark Matter, I understand that there are theoretical ideas about what it might be, WIMPS and MACHOS and such, but no Dark Matter has yet to be placed on the slab in the lab and put under the microscope. I find the idea that Dark Matter still has physicists 'in the dark', some 80 years after it was first postulated or required to explain rotational anomalies in...
view entire post
Greetings Akinbo,
Regarding Dark Matter, I understand that there are theoretical ideas about what it might be, WIMPS and MACHOS and such, but no Dark Matter has yet to be placed on the slab in the lab and put under the microscope. I find the idea that Dark Matter still has physicists 'in the dark', some 80 years after it was first postulated or required to explain rotational anomalies in galaxies, given that it should be here on Earth too, inside you and me, and just everywhere, not just out in deep space, deeply anomalous. It can't be that difficult to find a gram or two of the damn stuff!
Of course there is the idea that the reason gravity is so weak relative to the other three forces is that it can escape our four-dimensional space and time and travel through higher dimensions - the Bulk I believe it is called. Dark Matter, or rather the gravity it apparently has, is just the gravity that surrounds us in higher dimensional space - in the Bulk. I believe this is one of those String Theory theories. Therefore, if this idea is true, there is no Dark Matter at all.
In my Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe hypothesis, there is one type of software that simulates gravity. There's other software types that simulate other aspects of classical physics, like rotation, and alas, the two (gravity and rotation) haven't been melded together on a galactic scale. It's just one of those 'oops' or anomalies that arises from trying to create a virtual universe. Such a cosmic construction is complicated and mistakes happen. Uncovering those mistakes, or anomalies, is a clue that we do live in a simulated landscape. The need for Dark Matter is just one of those 'oops'.
For another example, there's this ever ongoing quest for a Theory of Everything (TOE) otherwise known as the quest for quantum gravity. Despite thousands of the brightest minds working on the problem over many, many decades, no TOE. My solution is that there is no TOE, there never will be a TOE, because the quantum forces and the gravitational force, are two separate and apart sets of software that jointly, but apart, run the cosmos, just like you have multiple sets of software that collectively operate your PC.
As far as Dark Energy is concerned, if one opts for a really real cosmos, then I reject that the expansion rate of the Universe is accelerating for reasons I've already outlined. The alternative is that perhaps we just don't understand type 1A supernovae as well as we think we do, and/or perhaps the speed of light isn't constant but has changed over cosmic aeons.
But, in a Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe, well violations of basic physics can easily be accomplished via software's 'special effects'. It's akin to explaining how Joshua commanded the Sun and the Moon to stand still in Biblical times. It's a pure violation of physics, but easily simulated. There's no need for Dark Energy because the accelerating Universe is just a special effect programmed in for reason or reasons unknown - maybe another 'oops'.
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Steve Agnew replied on Nov. 11, 2014 @ 14:15 GMT
Well...have I got a universe for you! Matter time is a contracting universe and in a contracting universe, there is another term, a matter decay term, in the mass-energy equivalence and the virial theorem that explains galaxy rotation without dark matter.
It sounds like you already have a universe in mind, though. What are your axioms? Does matter exist? Time? What is your action equation? Is space still the infinitely divisible nothing that it is now?
report post as inappropriate
Akinbo Ojo replied on Nov. 11, 2014 @ 19:22 GMT
John Prytz says,
"...given that it (dark matter) should be here on Earth too, inside you and me, and just everywhere, not just out in deep space, deeply anomalous. It can't be that difficult to find a gram or two of the damn stuff!"I agree, given the theorized abundance, but that is if you look for it in the way Galileo and Newton would have. From the modeling of our solar system's...
view entire post
John Prytz says,
"...given that it (dark matter) should be here on Earth too, inside you and me, and just everywhere, not just out in deep space, deeply anomalous. It can't be that difficult to find a gram or two of the damn stuff!"I agree, given the theorized abundance, but that is if you look for it in the way Galileo and Newton would have. From the modeling of our solar system's formation within a proto-galaxy, dark matter was abundant and present, along with the normal baryonic matter. Taking note that dark matter particles interact with each other and with normal matter ONLY gravitationally, while normal matter interacts by other means like electromagnetically, strong force, etc in addition to gravitational attraction, I think it is reasonable to speculate that:
1) Baryonic matter will be capable of forming more complex structures.
2) Baryonic matter can aggregate into denser particles, which given the ambient energy will therefore be slower moving than lighter particles.
3) Starting from a cloudy mixture of dark matter and normal matter, and given a programming instruction, "Go ye and aggregate into celestial bodies, like planets"! What will this cloudy mixture throw up?
I suspect that in an aggregating clump under this programming instruction, the denser and slower moving particles will aggregate to form the core and mantle because they have additional attraction forces between them, while the lighter and faster moving particles will form the atmosphere. The atmosphere will therefore be composed of the faster moving normal matter (in gaseous form) and the dark matter particles.
So likely contrary to your speculation, IMHO dark matter will significantly not be inside you and me, and just everywhere. It will be in the Earth's atmosphere.
Finally, in the simulated universe scenario, what prevented Michelson and Morley from observing earth motion using optical phenomena in their laboratory? Is it Lorentz invariance, and can this be simulated and how?
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
John Prytz replied on Nov. 12, 2014 @ 12:38 GMT
Akinbo,
Regarding Michelson and Morley and the Lorentz invariance, well I have to resort to the equivalent of the theological cop-out phrase "God works in mysterious ways" by noting that anything that can be imagined can be simulated.
I like to think of the simulation hypothesis not as a video game but akin to a 'what if' experiment. Our Supreme Programmer constructs various software programs (a gravity program, a quantum program, a this bit, a that bit), enters them together, hits "run scenario", then sits back to watch what happens.
What happens is pretty much what history records.
report post as inappropriate
hide replies
Peter Jackson wrote on Nov. 11, 2014 @ 19:53 GMT
Steve,
You questioned fermion density in dark plasma coupling. An important new paper carries an interesting proof consistent with that model, extending it to be consistent in general terms with the full DFM hypothesis with 'dark fermions'. It's an MNRAS paper but also web archived;
Dark matter in the SO(5) × U(1) gauge-Higgs unification. I'd be interested in your views on it.
On the compatible helical dynamic interactions, this short Stanford report on findings follows up e+/e- pair production from high energy light and photon-photon interactions varying with relative helicity. Fascinating stuff! They both do show my foundations are quite solid, if certainly not familiar to most.
Helcity relation in GAMMA-GAMMA COLLIDERS.Best wishes
Peter
report post as inappropriate
Peter Jackson replied on Nov. 14, 2014 @ 13:17 GMT
Akinbo,
The above links for Steve may also help alleviate your own expressed doubts about some aspects I described.
If you're still low on electricity apparently it's really only magnetism! But the suggestion that Doppler shift is the same as rigid body contraction is nonsense!
VideoFermilab staff web post.Wikipedia.Best wishes
Peter
report post as inappropriate
Akinbo Ojo replied on Nov. 14, 2014 @ 15:13 GMT
Peter,
I visited the links you posted. Too full of equations, so I got lost...
I also read the post and the Wikipedia entry you linked. Those were more familiar territory.
I asked you a question about Lorentz factor and you said you were too busy to answer. However, when you became less busy you still didn't answer.
What is your equation for Lorentz factor?
What is the 'v' if it is also present in your equation?
I am happy at least that you deny rigid body contraction. But that same factor is what determines time dilation and mass increase with velocity, which you seem to agree to (from our recent electron mass increase discussion). If Lorentz factor is in your Doppler equation, can you write it out?
If the thread can still be found, it would seem better if we can continue from where we were discussing.
Regards,
Akinbo
report post as inappropriate
Peter Jackson replied on Nov. 14, 2014 @ 21:16 GMT
Akinbo,
Sorry, 'v' is relative velocity between inertial systems which are constituted by any matter which can be assigned a 'centre of mass' rest frame. That takes in about everything, but we can define the spatial limits of each as Maxwell's near/far field transition zone, (TZ) physically formed by the '2-fluid plasma' around all matter 'moving' in it's surrounds, which we know as...
view entire post
Akinbo,
Sorry, 'v' is relative velocity between inertial systems which are constituted by any matter which can be assigned a 'centre of mass' rest frame. That takes in about everything, but we can define the spatial limits of each as Maxwell's near/far field transition zone, (TZ) physically formed by the '2-fluid plasma' around all matter 'moving' in it's surrounds, which we know as 'surface charge', 'astrophysical shocks' and haloes.
As speed and background medium density increase shock density and frequency increases as wavelength blue shifts to the limit gamma. It predicts that if we throw a large rock or Shuttle at Earth it will form a dense hot shock and eventually even radio waves won't pass through. That's why the LT is 'gamma'. The plasma density limit of around 10^23/cm^-3 occurs at gamma (no more room to oscillate!) The e+/e- cancel each other out quickly as they pop up and crash into each other en mass. They have to! But each re-emits any light at it's own 'c' first. The 2 fluids form, and are each side of, the TZ. Quite like the 'torque converter' of your automatic gearbox really.
I expect the Lorentz Factor equation and curve describe the process quite adequately, except they give us no hint of 'process', and completely lack any coherent 'interpretation'. There are too many stochastic variables to worry about precision!
As it's wavelength lambda that changes a Doppler shift equation for lambda/lambda should be used in theory to more closely model the mechanism as it does in astronomy for redshift.
Don't ask me to play Poker, Tarot cards or manipulate ancient Arabic symbols to try to predict the future. I learnt the latter long ago (they called it 'mathametrics' or something) but I prefer studying nature so gave it up. If you can find a combination that works some magic do let me know!
I hope that helps a little? The new model of cosmology emerges, but do re-post this wherever you wish.
Best wishes
Peter
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
John Prytz wrote on Nov. 12, 2014 @ 12:52 GMT
A PARALLEL ANALOGY BETWEEN SUPERNOVAE & COSMOLOGY
Parts of the current standard model of the origin of our Universe (the Big Bang event) violate nearly every principle of physics there is – from causality to the conservation laws. There’s got to be a better answer. Fortunately there are cosmological alternatives (not detailed here) including perhaps my own variation on the theme (which...
view entire post
A PARALLEL ANALOGY BETWEEN SUPERNOVAE & COSMOLOGY
Parts of the current standard model of the origin of our Universe (the Big Bang event) violate nearly every principle of physics there is – from causality to the conservation laws. There’s got to be a better answer. Fortunately there are cosmological alternatives (not detailed here) including perhaps my own variation on the theme (which is detailed here). Supernovae gave me a possible clue to a cyclic Multiverse.
Cosmology is the study of the evolution of our Universe as a whole – from birth to death, or maybe birth to death to rebirth. Stellar objects and events, like nova and supernovae are in the cosmic scheme of things almost insignificant in comparison. It’s like comparing the life and times of an individual insect to the life and times of Planet Earth. Still, there might be a lot to be gleamed from comparing the life and death of our Universe to the life and death of the stars within that Universe.
A cyclic universe – one with birth, death, rebirth, death, rebirth, death, etc. is a far more philosophically satisfying universe than a one-off born, live, and fade-away universe, which is what our Universe appears to be. A cyclic universe is probably more pleasing because such a concept more closely mirrors nearly all local reality – the cyclic four seasons endlessly repeating; day-night-day-night; New Moon – Full Moon – New Moon – Full Moon; evaporation – rainfall – evaporation – rainfall; the carbon cycle; the nitrogen cycle; you name it, it recycles. Okay, maybe you don’t. You maybe are like our Universe – born, live yet doomed to fade-away. But the broader human species continues to recycle – birth, death, birth, death, etc. The names and the faces change, but the human cycle continues. Actually all of your stuff will recycle too. Part of you today might be part of a cockroach 100 years down the track! That aside, the Big Question is how can you generate a cyclic universe, one which eventually goes from initial Big Bang expansion to one which contracts into a Big Crunch then rebounds again? How do you generate that from a Big Bang universe that’s apparently doomed to keep expanding, ever expanding, forever, and ever, amen?
The standard model of cosmology suggests that our Universe had a one-off moment of creation (the Big Bang) and will over trillions of years surrender to entropy (the evolution of a state of order to ultimate disorder) and die an eventual “heat death” (where the temperature – heat energy, the ultimate end product of all other forms of energy conversion – is exactly uniform throughout). So we go from Once Upon A Time/In the Beginning through to Cosmic Evolution through to The End. But that’s the narrow view. What if there were many universes, and they could interact? Then there might not be an overall Once Upon A Time/In the Beginning and ultimately The End. The parallel analogy with supernovae explains all.
THE STORY OF THE SUPERNOVAE: We've all heard of supernovae, and while quite rare, there has been one visible to the naked eye recently that occurred in the Large Magellanic Cloud (SN 1987A), a nearby companion mini-galaxy to our own visible from the Southern Hemisphere. It was first witnessed on Planet Earth after the light flash travelled thousands upon thousands of years, traversing intergalactic and interstellar space, to arrive locally on the 23rd of February 1987. It was the first visible naked eye supernovae event since 1604 – rare indeed.
Their cosmic story and cosmic significance is fairly straight forward. Stars form out of interstellar gas, dust and perhaps larger debris. This mix of stuff slowly but surely contracts, all under the mutual attraction of their individual gravities that eventually brings it all together in a lump sum – if massive enough an embryo star forms. The intense pressures heat up the interior, and if the embryo star is indeed massive enough, the heat and pressure will be enough to cause the gas, etc. to start to fuse, usually starting with hydrogen fusing to helium and releasing [solar] energy in that conversion – nuclear fusion is what powers the stars.
Now interstellar gas and dust clouds are not all uniform in size. So, some stars fire up with the bare minimum of stuff, other stars fire up with a lot of stuff in their core bellies, but not too much. These are sort-of like Goldilocks stars; stars like our Sun. A few stars formed from such a thick region of gas and dust that they were ‘born’ obese.
How massive newborn stars are will determine their lifespan and their fate. The relationship tends to be that the thinner you are at birth, the longer you’ll live. Very skinny stars are very frugal with their fuel. These misers have stellar life-spans perhaps measured in roughly a trillion or so years. When their fuel finally runs out, they just slowly, ever so slowly, fade away into a white dwarf then finally as a dark and cold black dwarf cinder. Average stars, like our Sun, are less thrifty, but even so manage a lifespan of roughly ten billion years. Average stars will go through a more complex evolution, but ultimately they too will settle down to a long retirement, cooling, ever cooling when the fuel is exhausted. They too will go out not with a bang but with a whimper.
However, some stars are born just plain fat! Some stars can also put on weight after-the-fact by stealing mass from a nearby companion star via their stronger gravity and close proximity. However the star gets fat, fat in a stellar sense (lots and lots of mass), the more massive a star is, the greater the temperatures and pressures in that star’s core, and the faster nuclear fusion reactions go. Really massive stars live life in the fast lane; they live fast; they die young. And they don’t go out with a whimper, but with a bang – sometimes endlessly hiccuping or burping or vomiting – novas; sometimes imploding due to massive gravity when their core fuel gets close to empty (leaving a bit of a void) which causes a massive rebound and a super-ultra-violent explosion called a supernovae. That really does spew their stellar guts back into the interstellar winds. While there are several different types of supernovae that have ultimately different origins, that’s of no concern in this context. The important bit is that stuff gets spewed back into space and eventually recycled.
Exploding stars, the novae but especially the supernovae return not only gas and dust and debris back to the interstellar medium, but enriched gas, dust and debris since the enormous temperatures and pressures cook up the heavier elements (elements more complex than helium), elements that are essential for life to ultimately grace the cosmos with its presence.
Gas and dust from one star’s ‘burp’ intersect with gas and dust from another star’s ‘hiccup’ and maybe intermingle with the ‘spewing vomit’ from a supernovae, all ultimately contracting again under mutual gravity to form a second, even third generation star and stellar planetary system. Our Sun is at least a third generation star and is made up of former spewed stuff, some of which is now heavier than just hydrogen and helium; ditto the Sun’s family of planets, including Planet Earth. If it weren't for supernovae, we wouldn't be here. The late astronomer, Carl Sagan, said it best when he stated that we are indeed the end product of “star-stuff”.
So the basic cosmic cycle is stars form from interstellar gas and dust; stars live; some stars spew their guts of gas and dust back out into interstellar space, providing the raw materials for the next generation of stars. You get creation – destruction – creation – destruction, over and over again, albeit at different times in different places.
THE PARALLEL COSMOLOGY ANALOGY: So what the hell does the above have to do with cosmology? There’s lots of stars; only one Universe – or is that really the case?
One set of assumptions has to be made from the get-go. I postulate that the cosmos, all that is and ever will be, is infinite in both space and in time. This assumption is more philosophical than scientific. If you ever postulate a finite cosmos, a cosmos with a boundary, a fixed volume, you must, of necessity, deal with that maverick who asks, “Well, what exists beyond that boundary?” If you postulate a beginning and/or an end, that same maverick will annoy you with, “Well, what happened before that or after that?” It’s just easier to wrap your head around a cosmos that is infinite; a cosmos that had no beginning and will have no end. Unfortunate, the standard model of cosmology postulates a beginning, and a fade-away ending and a finite amount of stuff and space to stuff it into.
We all know the standard scientific spiel to the creation of our Universe – no, not the Biblical Book of Genesis, but the Big Bang event. Well, already we have a parallel analogy – supernovae are mini big bang events.
Now the Big Bang and other associated real time events like an additional oomph of an in the beginning “inflation” have resulted in our Universe expanding, ever expanding. There’s lots of observational evidence for the Big Bang and the expansion. So, lots of stuff has been vomited out into the cosmos from a unique point in time – 13.7 billion years ago. But if there was a finite Big Bang, then there must also have been a finite amount of space to stuff that vomit into. That violates my philosophical ideals of not only no boundary in time, but no bounds in space for our Universe to strut its stuff in.
Anyway, we have expansion of stuff spreading out through space. Well, that’s a parallel analogy with the spewing out of gas and dust via stars going nova and supernovae. Now common-sense might suggest that the original oomph of the Big Bang would eventually run out of puff as the one-way attraction of gravity would slow the expansion down, and down, and down and eventually cause the expansion to come to a grinding halt – then reverse, as gravity would cause everything to contract once again back into the configuration from which the Big Bang arose from. In other words, the expected fate of our Universe was to be born from a Big Bang, live and evolve, and die in a Big Crunch.
Alas, life isn't that simple – Mother Nature is a baseball pitcher with a wicked curveball or knuckleball. Mother Nature’s a real Hall-of-Fame bitch. A bunch of astronomical party-poopers discovered that the expansion of the Universe isn't slowing down; it bloody well accelerating! Thus, no Big Crunch is on the horizon in the far future, only a “Heat Death” as entropy ends up ruling the roost. So runs the standard spiel. So how are you going to eventually generate a second or third or one-hundredth generation universe out of that mess? But that’s the limited view. Let’s climb the cosmic mountain for the grander picture.
What comes now to the rescue is that there is more than one Big Bang (maxi nova or supernovae) universe; more than one expansion event, because, there’s more than one universe, more than just our Universe, within that infinite (in space and time) cosmos referred to above.
And so, while from our limited point of view there is our Universe, and thus we assume the one-and-only-Universe, in fact there is more – much, much more. If you have a lot of universes in the infinite cosmos, all of which started off with a supernovae-like Big Bang, then, sooner or later, the spew of one (or more) will intersect with the spew of another (or more).
Thus, a lot of expanding regions of individual universes will intersect, eventually. That intersect region will, under combined gravities, start to slow things down. That region will slowly, but surely, start to contract. That contraction will eventually collapse into a Big Crunch. It seems something cyclic has happened. Lots of Big Bangs have generated a Big Crunch – actually a lot of Big Crunches when you look at the total 3-D picture. Big Bang A’s expansion might intersect with Big Bang expansions B, C, and D in one direction, say left. Big Bang A’s expansion might intersect with Big Bang expansions E, F and G in the opposite direction. Big Bang A’s expansion might intersect with Big Bang expansions H, I, J and K in the up direction; Big Bang A’s expansion might intersect with the L, and M Big Bangs in the downward direction, and so on and so forth. The Big Crunches (resulting in the Mother of all Black Holes) will be symmetrical, turning inside out into newly vomiting Big Bangs, or White Holes.
And so the endlessly cycling of stellar nova/supernova (expansion) to intersecting clouds of interstellar gas/dust (contractions) thus forming new stellar objects, some of which will in turn vomit up their quota of interstellar gas/dust has a parallel though many orders of magnitude on up the line. Endlessly cycling Big Bang expansions intersect to form high gravity regions which contract (in Big Crunches) to form new regions where conditions are ripe for a new Big Bang event. And so we have an overall cyclic cosmos or Multiverse (because there is more than one universe). There’s not just one expanding universe slowing down and contracting to ultimate reform that one expanding universe again, but a whole pot-pourri of universes that are all just expanding, intersecting and contracting, comings and goings at different times and places – night and day; Full Moon to New Moon; evaporation to rainfall; etc.
In fact, if you think about it, the idea that there are many expanding and contracting universes is but the next logical step in what was already proven to be a natural progression. Once upon a time Terra Firma (Earth) was the centre of the Universe. Now we know better. Then the Sun and solar system were elevated to that centre. Now we know better because there are lots of suns and planets that have eliminated our uniqueness. Once upon a time our galaxy was considered to be the be-all-and-end-all of the Universe. Today we know better. There are billions and billions of other galaxies out there and our galaxy occupies no special place in space or time and has no special appearance. So, I suggest that our Universe is now not the centre of the universe (or cosmos to avoid confusion). We have a Multiverse! And we have a cyclic Multiverse that should satisfy that philosophical idealistic need referred to at the start.
Now it could already be the case that part of our expanding Universe has recently (even as in multi-millions of years ago) intersected part of another expanding universe. However, we wouldn't be aware of that because it’s going to take billions of years for the visuals and the gravitational effects to reach us from such vast distances.
There is at least one interesting consequence inherent in this cyclic Multiverse. Even if there is only a finite amount of mass and energy in this infinite volume (and that doesn't have to be the case since you can fit an infinite amount of mass and energy into an infinite volume), that finite mass and energy has been recycled an infinite number of times in the unending past and will be recycled an infinite number of times in the unending future. The upshot of that is that anything and everything that can happen, everything that is not forbidden by the laws, principles and relationships inherent in nature, has happened an infinite number of times and will happen again an infinite number of times. Translated, you have and will exist again, and again, and again in all possible permutations. Although the ‘you’ that is reading this in the ‘now’ will fade away (that sounds nicer than kicking-the-bucket), take comfort in that another ‘you’, somewhere and somewhen else, will carry on carrying on the ‘you’ tradition.
JOHN’S COSMOLOGY-SUPERNOVAE ANALOGY IN SUMMARY FORM
Cosmology 1) Contracting Universe
Cosmology 2) Big Crunch (Black Hole forms)
Cosmology 3) Transition to…
Cosmology 4) Big Bang (White Hole spews)
Cosmology 5) Expanding Universe
Cosmology 6) Intersection with another expanding universe
Cosmology 7) Gravity rules, brings stuff together
Cosmology 8) New universe forms
Cosmology 9) New Universe contracts
Supernovae 1) Contraction of interstellar gas/dust
Supernovae 2) Massive star forms
Supernovae 3) Star undergoes normal stellar life span
Supernovae 4) Supernovae happens
Supernovae 5) Expulsion of supernovae gas/dust into interstellar space
Supernovae 6) Interaction with other interstellar gas/dust
Supernovae 7) Gravity rules, brings stuff together
Supernovae 8) Contraction of interstellar gas/dust
POINT AND COUNTERPOINT: Now your standard run-of-the-mill, everyday professor of cosmology at your local leading university will tell you if you show her this scenario that it is all total nonsense and I should be consigned to the pseudoscientific rubbish bin. The Big Bang event was a one-off; it was unique; a one-of-a-kind; a fluke; just one of those interesting things that happen for no apparent reason at all. The Big Bang event created time and space, therefore time and space cannot be infinite.
But – and you’ll read that non-observation (since there was no one around including any lady cosmologists to observe at the Big Bang’s ground zero) in any standard book on the subject – it’s nonsense, a scientific fabrication if you really stop and think about it. You cannot create something, anything, without having the space already available to create it into. That applies to the creation of our Universe as much as it applies to creating widgets in a factory! To claim otherwise is to suggest all of ultimate creation was kick-started in no space at all! How absurd is that! Consider the reverse: how can you cram everything into nothing?
Now if the Big Bang event did not, could not, create space way back then, then space is not undergoing continuous creation today contrary to the standard spiel. Translated, space is not expanding into some non-space region of non-existence. Expanding space either means that space is getting thinner and thinner (less dense) like an expanding balloon skin stretching (and that’s nonsense – how can space decrease in density?), or new space is being created out of nothing to fill the void as space expands. You can’t create something out of pure nothing; not then (at the Big Bang); not now. That’s a violation of all the basic conservation laws that are the bedrock of physics.
So, the obvious alternative is that what’s expanding is the stuff vomited out by the Big Bang event into pre-existing space and the vomit just keeps thinning out as it expands throughout an ever wider volume of that pre-existing space. Now fortunately for me, and unfortunately for those cosmology professors, there’s no actual observational test or experiment that can be done to distinguish between the two possibilities and settle the matter. If there were such observational evidence that proved that space itself was expanding (and thus being continuously created even as I type this) that evidence would be given in the textbooks. But it’s not there. All you get is just the standard scenario: “the Big Bang created space; space is expanding and therefore space is still being created today”. The unwritten sentence is “just take my word for it” because I can’t back it up with any evidence, far less proof. The only evidence is that something is expanding. That something could equally be Big Bang stuff spewing out into pre-existing space like an exploding firecracker will spew its contents outward bound and ever expanding.
It’s the unanswered question that remains in fact unasked in the standard textbooks – what exactly is our Universe’s expanding space expanding into? What is our expanding space shoving out of the way as it expands, ever expands? It can’t be pre-existing space according to the standard model since the Big Bang event created all of space; the entirety of space in the beginning 13.7 billion years ago. Perhaps space is pushing into a theoretical higher dimension (whatever that really means), but that would be an ad hoc pull of the rabbit out of the proverbial hat where nobody advocating that could provide any evidence that either the rabbit or the hat exists at all. Besides, all those extra dimensions predicted by the purely mathematical and hypothetical string theory (if string theory is to work) are compactified; curled up into super-ultra microscopic foetal positions; they are tiny. They aren't the sort of higher dimension you can expand a universe of space into. So it’s back to the drawing board for our standard lady (and gentlemen) cosmologists.
The other bit, the creation of time, is equally absurd. The Big Bang was an event. It was an effect. If causality has any meaning at all, and it’s one of the foundations upon which all of science rests on, then an effect has a cause. Causes must precede effects when cause and effect are intimately related (there are of course lots of causes and lots of effects that have no connection). Therefore, whatever caused the Big Bang event (or effect), must of necessity have happened before (preceded) the Big Bang event. Therefore, there must have been an already existing time prior to the Big Bang event and therefore the Big Bang event did not, could not, create time. Since there was a before the Big Bang, since cause always precedes effect, then again time could not have been created – time has always been, is, and always will be.
Fortunately for me, and unfortunately for those professors of cosmology ramming down the standard ‘creation of time and space’ scenario to their students, all equations (that which usually substitutes for lack of ways and means to do actual observations) that try to describe the Big Bang event; ground zero when space allegedly equals zero and time allegedly also equals zero, totally break down. So the standard ‘create time and space’ model is pure extrapolation (running the film backwards from today’s data) and ultimately a best guess. So while I've no doubt the Big Bang scenario is correct in the broad-brush generalities, there is a lot of observational evidence that something really big happened 13.7 billion years ago that kick-started our Universe off on its evolutionary path, when it comes to some of the nitty-gritty details, like that ‘create time and space’ detail, well I just think that is plain wrong – pure and simple.
So why is that ‘Big Bang created time and space’ the only accepted scenario? It is beyond me, except it probably has a lot to do, not with science, but the sociology and the office politics of science – peer pressure. Science, like the church and other formal institutions does not approve of mavericks that go against the grain. So if you want a Ph D., a job, research funding, a career with promotions, publications, etc. you don’t rock the boat. Science, and that includes cosmology, for all its self-correcting ways and means and methods and ideals is still, ultimately, a human endeavour. As such, you tow the party line; go with the flow; parrot to your students what your professors parroted to you.
Now there are a few bold cosmologists who do acknowledge that the Big Bang event still has some kinks to be ironed out and that there was a “before the Big Bang”. That’s not to say they would endorse my scenario. They probably wouldn't in a pink fit!
Heading back on track, even if my supernovae analogy is wrong, there still had to have been an existence both of time and space prior to the creation of our Universe via the Big Bang event, and that alone suggests that all things are still cyclic or re-cyclic in the cosmos.
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
John Prytz wrote on Nov. 12, 2014 @ 13:01 GMT
THE BIG BANG’S METAPHYSICAL BAGGAGE
The Big Bang event is the leading scientific cosmological theory when it comes to explaining the origin and evolution of life, the Universe and simply everything. While the Big Bang event is the leading candidate and the standard model, it’s not the only one. That’s fortunate, because while a fair bit of once theoretical now verified observational...
view entire post
THE BIG BANG’S METAPHYSICAL BAGGAGE
The Big Bang event is the leading scientific cosmological theory when it comes to explaining the origin and evolution of life, the Universe and simply everything. While the Big Bang event is the leading candidate and the standard model, it’s not the only one. That’s fortunate, because while a fair bit of once theoretical now verified observational evidence supports that standard cosmological model, it also comes as well with a fair bit of metaphysical baggage. It’s mainly that metaphysical baggage that concerns me.
When anyone ponders the origin and evolution of our Universe, the science of cosmology, one is confronted with the Big Bang theory – the Big Bang event. So, what did the Big Bang do, or didn't do; what was it, or wasn't? And, most importantly, should you put any credibility into the Big Bang scenario seeing as how 1) nobody was around to witness the event, and 2) the scenario, as given by the standard model, is grossly in violation of the very laws, principles and relationships of physics that you’d expect cosmologists to support. Are their any solutions that are out-of-the-box that can reconcile the Big Bang event without violating what scientists should hold most dear? I can think of two!
For those of you unacquainted with the Big Bang scenario, in the beginning (13.7 billion years ago) the Big Bang event created our Universe – all of space and time; all of matter and energy; all from a volume less than a standard pinhead! Now for the objections!
THE BIG BANG VIOLATES BASIC PHYSICS
1) Standard Big Bang violation number one - the Big Bang didn't create time:
The concept of time is nothing more than a measurement of rate-of-change. If nothing ever changed, the concept of time would be meaningless. Now change suggests there must be at least two events. Event One happens; Event Two happens. The change is that difference between the state of play identified with Event One and the state of play identified with Event Two. That change equates into a time differential. Event One happens at a time separate and apart from that of Event Two. Event One if it’s the cause of Event Two, must have happened prior to Event Two. Event Two in turn, can act as the cause of Event Three, and so on. Translated, there was no first event; there was no first cause. There was no first event because there had to be a prior cause that caused that event. There was no first cause because there had to have been an earlier event that caused that cause.
Now the Big Bang event was both a cause and an effect. As a cause, the Big Bang caused the subsequent event, the kick-starting of the evolution of our Universe. As an effect, well something prior to the Big Bang must have acted as a cause of the Big Bang effect. Translated, that cause must have been prior in time to the Big Bang; therefore there is such a thing as a before the Big Bang and therefore the Big Bang event could NOT have created time. Taken to its logical conclusion, there could never have been a first cause; there could never be a first effect, therefore time is infinite since the chicken (cause) and egg (effect) paradox is only solvable by postulating infinity.
2) Standard Big Bang violation number two - the Big Bang didn't create space:
This supposition is easily disposed of. Can any handyman reading this think of any possibility of how they could create something, anything, be it building something from scratch, or writing words on paper, or even thinking those words or thinking about building something, without there being pre-existing space, be it space in your garage, space that exists in your exercise book, or the space that exists between your ears that conceives of building X or writing Y? No? Nothing, but nothing, springs into reality, even if only a nebulous mental reality, without there being pre-existing space. The Big Bang is a reality. It had to have been created in a reality. Any reality has a space or volume component. Therefore, the Big Bang (creation of our Universe) event happened in pre-existing space or volume; therefore the Big Bang event did not, could not, have created space. You can not create your own space, the space you yourself exist in. It’s sort of like giving birth to your own self. It’s a paradox.
3) Standard Big Bang violation number three - the Big Bang didn't create matter/energy:
One of the most cherished conservation principles, drummed into every science student, from junior high through university, is that matter can neither be created nor destroyed, but only changed in form. Also, energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but only changed in form. Post Einstein, the two have been combined, since matter can be turned into energy and vice versa. However, the central bit is creation. Creation from nothing (or destruction into nothing) is not allowed – except for some unfashionable reason at the Big Bang according the standard model of cosmology. Why this should be the sole exception to the rule is quite beyond me.
Now there is such a thing as creation of virtual particles from the vacuum energy (quantum fluctuations). However that’s not a free lunch (something created from nothing). It’s the conversion of energy to mass (as per Einstein’s famous equation) and the virtual particles can annihilate each other and return back into energy. I just thought I’d better mention that in case some bright spark considered that process a mini version of the Big Bang. It’s not as in this case the creation (and annihilation) of virtual particles would be just a very, very tiny bang that violates nothing in terms of the conservation of matter and energy.
4) Standard Big Bang violation number four - the Big Bang wasn’t a pinhead event:
The Big Bang wasn't a quantum event: The Universe is expanding, ever expanding. That’s not in doubt (see below). Standard model cosmologists now play that expanding Universe ‘film’ in reverse. Travel back in time and the Universe is contracting, ever contacting. Alas, where do you stop that contraction? Well the standard model says when the Universe achieves a volume tinier than the tiniest subatomic particle! When (according to some texts) the Universe has achieved infinite density in zero volume – okay, maybe as close to infinite density and as close to zero volume as makes no odds.
Translated, in the beginning the Universe was something within the realm of quantum physics!
Now just because you can run the clock backwards to such extremes, doesn't mean that that reflects reality. How any scientist can say with a straight face that you can cram the entirety of not only the observable Universe, but the entire Universe (which is quite a bit larger yet again) into the volume smaller than the most fundamental of elementary particles is beyond me. Either I'm nuts for not comprehending the bloody obvious, or the standard modellers are collectively out of their stark raving minds. Actually I suspect the latter because they are caught out in a Catch-22. They are between the proverbial rock and hard place.
Now if cosmologists really believe the entire contents of our Universe was crammed into a small space, even one larger than quantum-sized, then of necessity you have our embryo Universe nicely, and tightly, confined within a Black Hole! Nothing can escape from a Black Hole (except Hawking radiation, but that leakage is so slow it’s like having just one drop of water come through your roof over the duration of a category five hurricane). So you can’t have a Big Bang that releases our Universe from its Black Hole prison. So there! The Big Bang had to have been of such a size that a Black Hole was not part of the picture.
CORRECTIONS TO THE BIG BANG STANDARD MODEL
1) Correction number one - the Big Bang was a macro event:
I’m not out of my stark raving mind, so it’s the standard modellers that are totally nuts. Now that’s easy to say, but basic everyday logic backs me up. Let’s start with the notion that it is impossible to achieve infinite density. There is a limit, a finite limit, to how much stuff you can cram into how much space there is available (which is what density is – mass per unit volume). Once that limit is reached, any more stuff added on will not increase the density any further, just increase the volume. Keep on keeping on piling on the stuff and it won’t take very much stuff that’s value added to increase the volume beyond the realm of the quantum. Once beyond that boundary, you’re in the realm of the macro, and macro means sizes above that of a pinhead.
In this case, I suggest the ultimate size was multi-billions of pinheads worth. Regardless, macro rules the Big Bang. In our reverse-the-expanding-universe film, try imaging doing that with an expanding hot air balloon. If you reverse that inflation, do you stop when the balloon is devoid of air (the sensible thing to do), or do you continue the contraction until the balloon is smaller than the full stop at the bottom of this sentence’s question mark? Of course you don’t go beyond the point of common-sense, yet that is what the standard modellers have done. Further, they insist we swallow their lack of common-sense (not of course that that is actually suggested by them), hook, line and cosmological sinker.
2) Correction number two - The Big Bang spewed out matter/energy into existing time and space:
If the Big Bang event was a ‘spew’ event, an event which must have had both pre-existing space and time coordinates (if you spew, you do so at a particular place at a particular time), and if matter/energy can neither be created or destroyed, then of necessity the Big Bang spew (of matter/energy) happened I repeat in already existing space and time. Nothing could be more obvious.
BIG BANG EVIDENCE
If the Big Bang is so apparently wrong on so many fundamental counts, then what’s the positive evidence for it? What prompts cosmologists to advocate the standard model?
1) Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR): If you have a massive hot explosion (like the Big Bang), and all that heat energy expands and expands, then you’d expect the temperature of the area occupied by that energy to drop, the temperature ever decreasing as the volume that finite amount of energy occupies increases. As the energy expands it gets diluted and thus cools, but can never reach an absolute zero temperature. And that’s just what we find on the scale of the Universe. There’s a fine microwave energy “hiss” representing a temperature a few degrees above absolute zero that’s everywhere in the cosmos. That’s the diluted heat energy of the very hot Big Bang – well it has been a long time and is now spread throughout a lot of volume. That microwave “hiss”, called the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR), was predicted way before it was discovered, and one bona fide way of confirming evidence for a theory is to make predictions that are born out by experimental observations.
2) Composition of the Universe: At the theoretical but expected temperatures and pressures of the Big Bang, you might expect a certain amount of some interesting nuclear chemistry to take place and generate various substances. Particle physicists used to calculating such things predicted the relative amounts and types of stuff the Big Bang event would generate, and the theory matches observations to a high degree of accuracy – nearly all hydrogen and helium will be created by a ratio of roughly three to one. All the rest of stuff (very, very minor amounts relative to hydrogen and helium) that we know and love (like oxygen and iron and gold, etc.) was synthesised via the conversion of hydrogen and helium to those heavier elements by nuclear fusion processes – cosmic alchemy – in stars and often resultant supernovae, not in the Big Bang.
3) Expansion: If you have a large explosion, a really big bang, a violent vomit event, you’d expect the bits that received the most oomph, the bits with the most energy would be expelled the fastest; other bits with less energy would lose the race (if this were a track meet). And thus the bits of spewed stuff spreads out – fastest in front, like a marathon run. A bacterium on one of these bits would see every other bit moving away from it. Some faster bits are outpacing the bacterium inhabited bit; the bacterium occupied bit is outpacing and leaving behind the slower bits. If the bacterium assumes it is standing still, then both the faster and slower moving bits appear to be receding away from it. The bacterium observes all other bits moving away from it at speeds proportional to their distance from it. The bacterium might assume from all of this that its bit was a special bit – the centre bit – but we can see that’s not so. Any bacterium on any of the bits would conclude the same thing. They too would be wrong. Does that mean there was no centre? Of course there was. Equally incorrect would be the conclusion that there was no centre – there was, the site of the original big spew.
Substitute our local gravitationally bound cluster of galaxies as the bacterium’s bit; all other external galaxies and clusters of galaxies that have no connection to our local galactic group are the other bits, and there’s your analogy. Do we observe these other galactic bits to be moving away from us at velocities proportional to their distance from us? Yes indeed; you bet we do; spot-on!
As an alternative, let’s look at a marathon analogy. We have this long distance marathon that starts off with say 1000 runners at a specific point in time and space. The finishing line is at a 150 mile radius out and the runners can run in any direction they choose. They, for the sake of this analogy, run at 15, 12, 9, 6 or 3 miles per hour. Let’s look at the relativities from the point of view of the middle runner, the one running at 9 miles per hour. After one hour he sees the 15 mph runner six miles ahead running at a relative velocity of 6 mph; the 12 mph runner 3 miles ahead with a relative velocity of 3 mph; the 6 mph runner 3 miles behind also at a relative velocity of 3 mph; and the 3 mph runner 6 miles behind with a velocity relative to our 9 mph runner of 6 mph – that’s assuming all took off and headed in one direction.
But if the 9 mph runner looks at those running in the exact opposite direction, the anti 3 mph runner is 12 miles behind with a relative velocity between them of 12 mph; the anti 6 mph runner is 15 miles away with, you guessed it a relative velocity difference of 15 mph; the anti 9 mph runner is 18 miles distant, relative velocity 18 mph; the anti 12 mph runner is 21 miles away at 21 mph relative velocity; the anti 15 mph runner is 24 miles away and moving away at 24 mph. Translated, there is a direct correlation between how far away the various runners are, and how fast they are running, which you can graph for verification. After two hours the distances between any two runners moving at different velocities will have doubled; after three hours trebled; after four hours quadrupled, and so on, though each runner is maintaining their respective velocities. Again, the relationship holds for each runner; each runner might think themselves in the centre as all other runners appear to be moving away from that runner’s point of view, yet it’s not the case that any runner is the centre – yet there was a centre when the starting gun went off.
Now kindly note that there is nothing in that trilogy of evidence for the Big Bang that requires that event to have: 1) created time; 2) created space; and 3) to have been a quantum-sized happening.
WHERE’S THE RECIPE BOOK?
The ultimate recipe book that would support the Big Bang event’s causality with the creation of time and space; the origin of matter and energy, has yet to be written by those advocating that very point of view.
There’s no recipe to the best of my knowledge for how to cook up a batch of time!
Equally there’s no recipe for how to bake a cake of space!
How do you mix up a quark salad or a neutrino soup when there’s nothing in the pantry to start off with? Can anyone please give me the recipe?
From an equally empty supermarket you apparently can produce a kinetic energy pie. I want to see the recipe for that!
The Universe, it has been said, is the ultimate free lunch. But a lunch still needs a recipe book. When physicists, astrophysicists and cosmologists can actually write and publish such a cookbook, well then its Nobel Prizes all around. Till then, I think they should veer away from statements about the creation of time, space, matter and energy from nothing. Till then, my mantra remains “there is no such thing as a free lunch”.
BEFORE THE BIG BANG
While I’m convinced there was a before the Big Bang, the nature of that ‘before’ is vague at best since the transition between before the Big Bang through the Big Bang to after the Big Bang is unknown (at present anyway), since the relevant equations break down into pure nonsense under those extremes. What’s probably reasonable is to call whatever existed pre Big Bang a ‘universe’, maybe a ‘universe’ within a larger Multiverse. If conservation laws have any meaning, that ‘universe’ (within a Multiverse perhaps) contained the same amount of stuff (matter and energy) as ours does though the mix might have been different. This pre Big Bang ‘universe’ certainly consisted of volume (space) and change (time). What’s less certain is whether that ‘universe’s’ laws, principles and relationships of physics were the same as ours. If not, just about anything goes. It’s probably more reasonable and constructive to assume their physics is our physics. Translated, to answer Einstein’s famous question, God, or Mother Nature, had no choice in the matter about how to construct or arrange a universe.
WHAT CAUSES EXPLOSIONS?
What caused the Big Bang explosion? Okay, we have a pre Big Bang ‘universe’. Something happened there that caused our Big Bang explosion. What causes explosions (ultimately a lot of kinetic energy) and could they be up to the task of causing our Big Bang spew?
Well fine particulate matter like coal dust or equivalents when in the presence of oxygen and ignited can violently explode and expand. Still, that’s hardly a sufficient means to create our Universe. However, that’s a form of chemical energy, and under the right conditions, chemical energy can be released quickly enough that for all practical purposes you have an explosion – think of gunpowder, a firecracker, sticks of dynamite, hand grenades or their mature equivalents, conventional bombs dropped from aircraft, or even the mini controlled explosions that drive your automobile engine and hence your car. You also have other explosive mixtures, like when sodium hits water, and there are lots more to boot, often the staple of high school chemistry classes. However, chemicals are very inefficient in terms of being converted to energy. Hardly any of the matter gets converted to energy. Chemical energy is not the way to proceed to generate a really big, Big Bang.
Then there is nuclear energy. Atomic energy can be controlled, released steady-as-she-goes, as in electricity-generating nuclear power plants or facilities. Or, nuclear energy can be released in real quick-smart fashion, as in uncontrolled reactions that result in ka-booms that produce mushroom clouds as in thermonuclear weapons; the A-bomb, the H-bomb, etc. Energy is released when atomic nuclei are split apart (fission) or rammed together (fusion). It’s the former that produces our electricity; both can power up those mushroom clouds. Its fusion that powers our Sun (and all the other shinning stars), which in simple form is just one gigantic bomb continuously going off. Only the Sun’s immense inward gravity contains the explosion (outward radiative pressure) keeping it confined to the circular disc we observe in the daytime sky. Alas, fuel eventually runs out, in petrol tanks and in stars. In stars, when the fuel is finally consumed, gravity wins. Stars collapse slowly, or if originally massive enough, really suddenly. These massive stars implode; rebound and explode – a supernova is born. But even a supernova pales in comparison to what the Big Bang must have been like, for even supernovae in particular, and nuclear energy in general, while more efficient in converting matter to energy relative to chemical energy, still would fail any efficiency audit.
If you want to pass the matter-to-energy efficiency exam, there’s only one game in town: matter meets antimatter! Matter-antimatter reactions produce the most efficient means known to humans of generating explosive energy – 100% efficiency to be precise. Translated, 100% of the matter (and the antimatter) gets converted to energy. No leftovers. If a little bit of matter can generate a massive amount of energy in ultimately what amounts to a relatively highly inefficient nuclear fusion process, imagine what a massive amount of matter meets antimatter could generate!
One could image a super-lump of matter merging with an ever-so-slightly-less super-lump of antimatter. That would in theory result in a super-ultra violent explosion (the Big Bang) but giving us, our Universe, its matter dominance (over antimatter) that we observe. However, I strongly suspect that such super-sized lumps would have to be so massive that they would turn into Black Holes first, and the merger of two Black Holes, even one each of matter and antimatter, just gives you a larger Black Hole. All annihilation hell might be going on inside, but since the explosion can’t escape the pull of a Black Hole’s gravity, it’s of no consequence.
Still, as the most efficient means of generating explosive kinetic energy, getting the biggest bang for your buck, matter-antimatter annihilation needs some further thought and consideration. Is there a way of generating a Big Bang via the matter-antimatter component of a prior, pre-Big Bang ‘universe’ without the massive lumps?
AN ALTERNATIVE PROPOSAL
So what if there is more than one expanding pre-Big Bang ‘universe’, say a pre-Big Bang Multiverse that contains lots of expanding ‘universes’. Some of these ‘universes’ are, like our own Universe, matter dominated. Some however are antimatter rich. Now say one of each start to intersect at their expanding boundaries. There will be very little direct meeting of the two minds since the matter (and antimatter) is spread thinly. It’s like you can have two galaxies collide without there being any actual collisions between the stars contained in each, because the distance between those stars is vast relative to the sizes of the stars. What does rule the roost however is the gravitational force. Slowly, but surely, the intersection starts the slow but sure collapse of all the stuff. Eventually, the bits get close enough where a few matter-antimatter annihilations take place, but that oomph drives more bits into each other’s arms and so you quickly get a chain reaction yet one that transpires in a medium still tenuous enough and a region without sufficient density to form a super-sized lump and a harmless Black Hole. Might that matter-antimatter chain reaction manifest itself as a non-quantum, macro Big Bang - our Big Bang?
Whether this scenario is plausible or even possible I know not, but it has a nice feel to it; it just might be. Even if not, it might suggest a seed for the next generation of cosmologists, or those currently more cosmologically savvy, to pursue.
YET ANOTHER ALTERNATIVE
Lastly, here’s a wicked curve ball. What if the Big Bang is a theoretical impossibility of physics pure and simple, despite the observational evidence? There’s only one way I know of to generate convincing impossibilities – virtual reality; a simulated universe where there need be no connection at all between what you observe and what theoretically caused the various things that you observe. My scenario: the expansion; the CMBR; the ratio of hydrogen to helium, are all simulated.
Our reality, our Universe including the Big Bang (and ultimately you) is nothing but a computer-generated program, software created by some entity, probably extraterrestrial. Having set up the parameters, it’s just a matter of hitting the ‘start program’ key and seeing what happens. We humans have already done this sort of activity so there’s nothing implausible about this possibility.
Now I've often wondered if some great extraterrestrial computer programmer specializing in generating virtual reality worlds and universes would leave enough clues to his (its) ‘subjects’ that they in fact were just software generated virtual beings in a simulated universe. One such type of clue would be no way those virtual creations could reconcile observation with theory, as in the case of the Big Bang.
For another example we have observations of four physical forces yet no theory which unites the three quantum forces (electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force) with the one classical force – gravity. There is no viable theory of quantum gravity despite thousands of physicists searching for one over many generations now. It’s like there are two sets of different software running the Universe.
One of the many Big Bang ‘in the beginning’ predictions of theoretical things is magnetic monopoles – magnets with either a south pole or a north pole, but not both. Alas, we've never ever found and confirmed the reality of even one monopole. So strange is that that a new concept states that the very early Universe underwent an additional oomph of very rapid inflation which so diluted the created monopoles that there are no longer any monopoles in our neck of the woods. That does appear a bit like clutching at straws.
You have a 120 order-of-magnitude (that’s one followed by 120 zeros) discrepancy between the observed vacuum energy and the theoretical value of the vacuum energy.
You have particles that behave both as a wave and as little billiard balls – observed but theoretically impossible in classical physics.
Speaking of particles, there are three fundamental properties of particles (like the electron, neutrinos, the numerous quarks, etc.) and their anti-particles (like the positron). They are charge, spin and mass. Despite the relatively large number of particles (including the equal and opposite anti-particles), there are only a few allowed values for charge and spin, values pretty much confined to the infield. But, for some reason, the mass (usually expressed in equivalent energy units – Einstein’s equation again) of the various particles are not only scattered throughout the ballpark but are all over the map. They take on values (albeit one value per type of particle) over many orders of magnitude without any apparent pattern or regularity or relationship between them – and nobody has the foggiest idea why, not even a validly theoretical idea. Nobody can predict from first principles what the masses should be. It’s like someone just drew a few dozens of numbers out of a hat containing multi hundreds of thousands of values and assigned them to the few dozens of particles willy-nilly. Something is screwy somewhere because something so fundamental shouldn't be so anomalous.
In the real world, the macro world, the classical world, no two things are identical down to the last microscopic detail – you are unique; every bacterium is unique; every house, den, nest, and ant hill is unique; so is every baseball and grain of sand. In the unreal world, the micro world, the quantum world, all fundamental particles of their own kind (i.e. electrons or positrons or up quarks or photons) are identical to the last measurable detail. Why? Who knows! But a possibility from the simulated universe is that there is one software code or sequence of bits and bytes for each type of fundamental particle. So every time that sequence is used, you get that type of entity and only that type.
There are constant reports of physical constants that aren't – constant that is. That’s totally nuts!
Then you have observations of quasars with vastly differing red-shifts (measurements of their recessional velocities) yet quasars which appear to be causality connected.
In physics, time travel to the past is theoretically possible – though damned difficult in practice. However, that means that those time travel paradoxes are possible, even likely. Paradoxes like going back in time, say ten years, and killing yourself (which is a novel way of committing suicide), means you couldn’t have existed to go back in time in the first place in order to kill yourself, which means you’re not dead so you can go back in time and murder yourself, etc. What kind of physics is that? Curiouser and curiouser.
Any and all miracles, Biblical or otherwise, are explainable as easily as saying “run program”.
More down to earth, you have multi-observations of things like the Loch Ness Monster, those highly geometrically complex crop circles, and ghosts, yet there’s no real adequate theory, pro or con, that can account for their observed existence or creation.
All up, perhaps some cosmic computer programmer/software writer whiz with a wicked sense of humour (a trickster ‘god’?) is laughing its tentacles off since we haven’t been able to figure it (our virtual reality) out. Of course maybe the minute we do, the fun’s over and ‘Dr. It’ hits the delete key and that’s the way the Universe ends – not with a Big Crunch, nor with a Heat Death, but with a “are you sure you want to delete this?” message! “Yes”.
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
John Prytz wrote on Nov. 24, 2014 @ 13:10 GMT
OUR EXPANDING UNIVERSE: IN SPACE OR BY SPACE?
You will frequently encounter in astronomical and cosmological texts the idea that space or space-time is a thing, a flexible membrane type of thing that can influence the motion of objects, in fact carry the flotsam and jetsam of the Universe around. This flexi-space is increasing over time, expanding, and by carrying the bits and pieces that...
view entire post
OUR EXPANDING UNIVERSE: IN SPACE OR BY SPACE?
You will frequently encounter in astronomical and cosmological texts the idea that space or space-time is a thing, a flexible membrane type of thing that can influence the motion of objects, in fact carry the flotsam and jetsam of the Universe around. This flexi-space is increasing over time, expanding, and by carrying the bits and pieces that comprise the Universe, provides the reality behind the common phrase ‘the expanding universe’. Unfortunately, space is not a thing and the consequences arising means the common mechanism for an expanding universe is nonsense.
In just about any introductory textbook on astronomy or primer on cosmology, you’re bound to read that the Universe is expanding (true enough) because space itself is expanding, and like dots painted on a balloon being blown up, the flotsam and jetsam of the Universe is spreading apart, somehow ‘glued’ to that expanding space. How any astronomer or cosmologist can write such claptrap with a straight face is quite beyond me.
My basic premise here is that if space itself is expanding, then space itself is a thing. Common sense tells you that space is not a thing. You cannot see it, hear it, touch it, feel it or taste it. If you think space is a thing, well grab hold of some of it and try to stretch or expand it (but do it in private or others will doubt your sanity). Whether you talk about 3-D space (volume) or the four dimensional space-time (time being the fourth dimension), it is just the empty stage, IMHO, where the drama of real things is played out.
To my way of thinking, not-things (like space, time and dimensions* in general) can be subdivided indefinitely. They are continuous. No matter the length, area or volume, whatever you have can be divided in half and in half again and again and again and you still have a length, area or volume. Things have a built-in limit as to how far that thing in question can be divided down before you hit fundamental bedrock. Sooner or later you hit and enter the realm of the electron, those quarks, neutrinos, photons, gluons, gravitons and other force and matter particles that cannot be divided down any farther. These are things.
EXPANDING SPACE
So if space itself is expanding, well that’s nonsense because…
There’s space between your ears, but that doesn't mean you’re getting a swelled head!
You move through existing space when going from home to the office, to the supermarket or going to a foreign city on business or vacation. When commuting to the office, the distance between home and office doesn't increase on a daily basis.
The Moon orbits the Earth through existing space. The Moon is getting farther away of the Earth on a daily basis. Even there’s a lot of space between the Earth and the Moon, and the Moon is getting further away from the Earth, that’s not because space is expanding, but because of tidal forces.
The Earth/Moon pair orbits the Sun through existing space. There’s a lot of interplanetary space between the Earth/Moon system and the Sun, but the Earth/Moon to Sun distance hasn't changed in thousands of millennia.
The Sun (and solar system) orbits around the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy though existing space. There’s a lot of interstellar space between the Sun and the galactic centre but the Sun isn't getting any more distant from that centre.
So far, so good: even astronomers and cosmologists will agree with that assessment. But all of a sudden, with a snap of their fingers, once out in intergalactic space things move apart, or rather galaxies (of which our Milky Way is one of billions and billions) move apart from other galaxies as if being carried piggyback on an expanding intergalactic space (which however is the same space as interplanetary and interstellar space).
Actually there’s an exception of every galaxy moving away from every other galaxy – clusters of galaxies that are cheek-by-jowl are bound together by their mutual gravity, and sometime in such a cluster galaxies can approach each other. A case in point has our own Milky Way Galaxy, and the Andromeda Galaxy on a collision course, but rest easy, the intersection won’t happen for another five billion years – give or take a million.
But wait, isn't every galaxy in the observable universe bound or attracted by gravity to every other galaxy? I mean the force of gravity doesn't extend outwards and then at some point fall off a cliff, or get shut down and off.
If space is expanding, then space is a thing with properties. What are the properties of a thing that expands?
Most common are 2-D structures. You put extra air in your tires, it’s the rubber that expands; while blowing up a balloon, well it’s that membrane-like surface that stretches; you have stretching fabrics (like the elastic in your underwear). The oft used cosmology textbook analogy is painting dots (representing the galaxies) on the surface of an expanding balloon (representing expanding space), and as the balloon expands the ‘galactic’ dots get further apart. But the analogy fails because the balloon’s expanding surface is a something. Besides, all 2-D analogies aren't worth the paper they’re written on since 1) the actual Universe is 3-D and 2) there are 3-D analogies available.
So there are pretty common 3-D analogies. An entire rock will expand, not just the surface, sitting out in the hot sun; a rising cake or soufflé or baking raisin bread are common examples in the kitchen. The analogy oft given is that of baking raisin bread, where the raisins are the galaxies and the expanding bread is akin to space, and thus the ‘galactic’ raisins get further and further apart as the bread expands. But this analogy fails too because the raisin bread is a something.
Now when something expands, it gets thinner or more dilute. As you keep putting on weight, the elastic in your underwear stretches thinner and thinner. In the case of the raisin loaf, if you start with a 500 gram mass of dough in a container of say 300 cubic centimetres, what you end up with is 500 grams in say a volume of 500 cubic centimetres. The same amount of stuff, in a larger volume, means that the stuff has been diluted.
If space is a something, and space itself is expanding or stretching, then space must be getting thinner and/or more dilute over time. If however, this space-as-a-something remains constant over time, even though it’s expanding, then you’re getting a free lunch – something from nothing. That extra space is being manufactured by forces unknown out of nothing at all. Claptrap!
SPACE-TIME
Anyone who is anyone who knows a bit about gravity and General Relativity knows that space-time is flexible. Mass ‘tells’ space-time how to flex; how space-time flexes ‘tells’ mass how to move. However, that also implies that space-time is a thing, a physical medium that can be manipulated.
Matter and energy and associated forces and force particles are two sides of the same coin as related by Einstein’s famous equation. So, that should be sufficient for any and all actions, reactions, interactions, etc. to be explainable without resorting to warped space-time. However, let’s look at the most well known illustration of alleged warped space-time, the experimental observation that proved Einstein’s prediction that Mass indeed ‘tells’ space-time how to flex and how space-time flexes ‘tells’ mass how to move. The case in point was the deflection of photons of light emitted by a star whose light passed very close to our Sun. That deflection meant that observers on Earth saw the star ever so slightly out of position while the Sun was in the line-of-sight vicinity. (All this was observed during a solar eclipse; otherwise the starlight would have been drowned out by the Sun’s light.) The explanation: starlight photons (mass or energy) want to go straight but space-time was warped and thus those photons got deflected from the straight and narrow. Well, that’s one way of looking at it.
On the other hand, the starlight’s light-wave photons are things; the Sun is a thing; the Sun’s gravity is a thing. So objects, matter and energy, things existing in space and time that pass within the Sun’s gravity, should be affected, in this case deflected from their straight and narrow path. Why invoke warped space-time? It might be a nice way of looking at things, but airbrushing isn't confined to just the fashion industry!
Roll an iron ball past a magnet and you’ll get a deflection from the straight and narrow – like with the photon and the Sun. But roll a marble past the same magnet and the marble will continue on straight and true. So, the trajectory of the iron ball or the marble vs. the magnet (part of the electromagnetic force) has nothing to do with warped space-time, though the action took place in space-time.
Take your basic trilogy of quarks (in a neutron or proton) who love each other so dearly that they can’t stand to be apart. If you force them apart, the strong nuclear force which normally keeps the quarks cheek-by-jowl will just get stronger the farther apart you pull the trio of quarks apart – like a rubber band being stretched. When you release your hold on this threesome, they snap back together. Their path deviates back from what you dictated – nothing to do with warped space-time though the action took place in space-time.
Or take the decay of an unstable atomic nucleus. The castoff particles hit other unstable nuclei cascading off more bits and pieces which hit more unstable nuclei on the brink, etc. You get a chain reaction, even perhaps a nuclear blast. That’s the weak nuclear force in action. Again, that’s not dependent on warped space-time though the chain reaction takes place in space-time.
But let’s back to the warping of space-time which seems allegedly to be the providence of gravity and just gravity.
But what kind of flexing, or space-time warping could account for most (not all) galaxies running away from most (not all) other galaxies – actual observations of the expanding Universe. None that is obvious and leaps to mind other than a sort of infinite Mexican sombrero type structure where all large clumps of matter (most galaxies) start off at the top of the hat and roll off, to the north, south, east and west, and all points of the compass in-between, down to the – well the ‘down’ doesn't end. But somehow you have to picture that in 3-D since the surface of the ‘sombrero’, where all the action is, is 2-D.
CONSEQUENCES
Once you accept the idea that the notion of space itself is expanding – space itself creating more space out of nothing – is total nonsense, then certain consequences follow. One is that the stuff of the Universe is expanding through existing space rather than the stuff of the Universe being carried piggyback on the back of space. If the stuff of the Universe is expanding through existing space, the stuff of the Universe has always expanded through existing space. Existing space was present throughout the Universe’s expansion right back unto the beginning – that Big Bang event. If space existed at the time of the Big Bang event then space existed before the Big Bang event, as the Big Bang event needed space to bang into, just like any other explosive event you can think of, from a firecracker to an H-Bomb to a supernova has to happen in existing space. Therefore there was an existence before the Big Bang. There was a before the Big Bang and whatever cosmology accounts for the Big Bang needs to take that into account.
IS THERE AN OBSERVATIONAL TEST?
Is there any actual observational evidence that proves conclusively that it is space expanding and not flotsam and jetsam moving apart through existing space? No. But I can think of a possible test or two that might conclude the issue. If space is expanding then objects that are approaching each other (like the Milky Way Galaxy and the Andromeda Galaxy) due to mutual gravity or because of intrinsic motion, should be fighting against the grain and be approaching each other more slowly than would otherwise be the case. Or, on the other hand, two objects receding apart, like the Earth and the Moon (due to tidal forces) are going with the grain and should be separating more rapidly than otherwise would be the case. I've yet to read any account of this sort of measurement and observational confirmation which would only arise if the velocities of the Milky Way/Andromeda pair or Earth/Moon pair were indeed anomalous. The latter experiment, the increasing Earth/Moon separation should be a relatively easy experiment to do. Due to the reflective mirrors left on the lunar surface by the Apollo moon-walkers we know the Earth-Moon distance to extreme precision. It should be straightforward whether the Moon is receding from the Earth faster than tidal forces can account for.
CONCLUSIONS
There’s a very solid principle in science known as Occam’s Razor, which pretty much states than when faced with a pot-full of competing ideas or explanations, bet the family farm on the one which makes the least assumptions and seems the most straightforward. In other words, “keep it simple, stupid!” Applying Occam’s Razor, there’s a very easy and common-sense answer to this claptrap. All objects at any scale move through existing space. Space just is – it contains things from the energy of the (not so perfect) vacuum, to interplanetary/interstellar/intergalactic gas and dust, to solar systems, to quasars, to the largest of galactic clusters. Therefore, if now, then way back when. The origin of the Universe also took place in existing space. The Big Bang event did not create space for space is not a tangible thing that can be created. Further, there’s no astronomical, observable test (apart from the possibilities I suggested above and variations on those themes) that can distinguish between expanding space, and matter expanding through space.
And if you are of a religious frame of mind (and I'm not), well God couldn't have created the heavens and the earth; life the universe and everything, unless God had some existing space in which to work. God Himself took up space.
P.S. That space is not a thing was demonstrated back in the late 1880’s by the famous Albert Michelson and Edward Morley experiment. The idea was that since light or rather light-waves travelled through space (i.e. – from the Sun to the Earth), they had to be carried along by a something, just like water-waves are carried along by the medium we call water and sound-waves need air, liquid or a solid to propagate them. So light-waves, by analogy, needed a medium to carry them, which was called the ether or the ether wind, which was space. Now the idea was that the Earth, in orbit around the Sun, would sometimes be moving with the ether grain and sometimes against the ether grain. The speed of light should therefore vary when measured on Earth depending on whether light was moving parallel with the ether grain, parallel against the ether grain, or crossing perpendicular to the ether grain as Earth was orbiting through the ether grain. Of course the null results shocked the physics community for it showed no variation at all in the velocity of light regardless of the time of year it was measured; therefore no ether; therefore waves were being transmitted through nothing. The null result eventually led a young Einstein into his radical proposal that the speed of light was constant anywhere and everywhere to any and all observers, but that’s another story. The Michelson/Morley experiment has been repeated many times with ever more accuracy – still a null and void result.
*Space, a 3-D volume, is composed of a trilogy of dimensions – up/down, back/front, left/right; or latitude, longitude and altitude. Area is two dimensional (2-D); length is 1-D or just one dimension. Now, are dimensions a thing? If not, then volume (space), area and length are not things either.
ADDENDUM
BINGO!
In an effort to explain about the concept of expanding space, astronomer Philip Plait inadvertently presented the exact opposite argument which is that space can’t be expanding (and therefore the expanding universe must be expanding throughout existing space), a point of view I've been advocating seemingly forever. Here’s Plait’s extract.
“Space expands, but this expansion can be countered by gravity. You might expect that, say, two stars orbiting each other will get farther apart as space expands between them. However, that’s not the case. Since the two objects have gravity, and they are bound to each other – that is, their gravity holds them together – space doesn't expand between them.” [Plait’s emphasis.]*
*Plait, Philip; Death from the Skies! These Are the Ways the World Will End…; Viking, New York; 2008; p.278:
So, taken to its logical conclusion, space is not expanding between the Earth and the Moon. Space is not expanding between the Earth and the Sun. Space is not expanding between the Sun’s solar system and the triple star Centauri system. Space is not expanding between the Sun and the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy, space is not expanding between the Milky Way Galaxy and the Andromeda Galaxy, space is not expanding between the local group of cluster of galaxies (containing the Milky Way and Andromeda) and the nearby Virgo Cluster of galaxies, etc. Any two bits of matter have mutual gravity and so therefore there can be no expanding space anywhere, since gravity is everywhere.
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Akinbo Ojo replied on Nov. 24, 2014 @ 16:15 GMT
"Unfortunately, space is not a thing..."Says who? A simulation called John Prytz? I challenge you to prove your statement. IMHO, Sir Newton and I should be able to convince you otherwise.
"My basic premise here is that if space itself is expanding, then space itself is a thing". Correct. It is expanding. IMHO, Edwin Hubble and I should be able to convince...
view entire post
"Unfortunately, space is not a thing..."Says who? A simulation called John Prytz? I challenge you to prove your statement. IMHO, Sir Newton and I should be able to convince you otherwise.
"My basic premise here is that if space itself is expanding, then space itself is a thing". Correct. It is expanding. IMHO, Edwin Hubble and I should be able to convince you.
"To my way of thinking, not-things (like space, time and dimensions* in general) can be subdivided indefinitely. They are continuous. No matter the length, area or volume, whatever you have can be divided in half and in half again and again and again and you still have a length, area or volume. Things have a built-in limit as to how far that thing in question can be divided down before you hit fundamental bedrock".
Correct. In other words, IF there is a limit to the divisibility of space, then it is a 'thing'. IMHO, Euclid, Proclus, Aristotle, Zeno of Elea and my humble self can formulate paradoxes, the headache which you will suffer may then allow you to accept that space is not infinitely divisible.
"I mean the force of gravity doesn't extend outwards and then at some point fall off a cliff, or get shut down and off."No, the force of gravity diminishes as the inverse square of the distance according to Sir Newton. Then you have escape velocity to think about at each distance.
"If space is a something, and space itself is expanding or stretching, then space must be getting thinner and/or more dilute over time..."If you listen well, the Great Simulator would have told you, "in my cosmological model, there is more where that thing is coming from"! And at the end of the program, everything will disappear to nothingness. Get your cosmology right.
"Therefore there was an existence before the Big Bang. There was a before the Big Bang and whatever cosmology accounts for the Big Bang needs to take that into account."You have not been listening to the Great Simulator. Nothing, not even the Great Simulator was existing before the Big Bang. I can understand your difficulty in appreciating this. Many sighted people find it difficult to appreciate what blindness is. Blindness is not 'everywhere appearing dark'. Blindness is seeing Nothing, not even darkness. Similarly, a complete absence of space can be difficult to contemplate or imagine by those who have experienced what space is.
"That space is not a thing was demonstrated back in the late 1880’s by the famous Albert Michelson and Edward Morley experiment."Sir, that is my territory. Please don't say what you don't know. A null and void result does not lead to your conclusion. Replace light with sound and you also get a null and void result.
"Since the two objects have gravity, and they are bound to each other – that is, their gravity holds them together – space doesn't expand between them - Philip Plait".Sir Isaac says to tell you: "...instead of you and Philip to thank space for preventing the relentless tendency of the Moon to crash on your heads, like the apple that crashed on my head while I was pondering the
Principia at Cambridge in 1687, you have not been extremely ungrateful to space. Space has been doing a difficult job preventing the earth vs. sun from crashing into each other, same for earth vs. moon. Indeed, even right up to the atomic level. Who do you think has been preventing the proton and the electron from sealing their romance with a wedding? You truly think a principle (Pauli's) is enough to have done that? Perhaps, if space had sent you a bill to pay for keeping all those attractive forces at bay, a bill to pay for transmitting light waves to you from distant light sources without any matter-based wiring, you may have been more appreciative. You simulated humans rate strength based on how much noise or disturbance caused. But you see, when you are truly powerful (omnipotent) and all pervasive (omnipresent) you don't need to make noise. As the saying goes, empty barrels make the loudest noise. Space is silent but if you want to "see" it, you will. One of the areas you will see my the tug of war between gravity and I is the nature of the harmonic motion in orbits. You may recall that Hooke (of Hooke's law fame), with whom I had some disagreement about priority, showed that where such a motion exists, two forces at least must be at play. That is why, one restoring force preventing escape comes to play at aphelion (gravity) and another force who is unacknowledged by you comes to play at perihelion to prevent collapse. All this I have calculated, although I can't readily lay my hands on where I wrote the calculations"
Regards,
Akinbo
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Eckard Blumschein replied on Nov. 25, 2014 @ 09:57 GMT
Akinbo,
http://www.aip.de/~lie/Lectures/Michelsonkeller.e.htm
l may tell you that Albert Abraham Michelson performed the decisive experiment already in 1881 in Potsdam near Berlin (because Berlin was too noisy).
A. Abraham M. was not just born in the Prussian province Posen where the language was German but he also visited Berlin, Heidelberg, and Paris during his sabbatical.
When he didn't agree with Einstein's SR, he did perhaps not agree with the given argument about observed aberration.
You wrote: "Replace light with sound and you also get a null and void result."
Is this correct?
Eckard
report post as inappropriate
Anonymous replied on Nov. 25, 2014 @ 13:05 GMT
Akinbo,
Space is a not-thing, just an abstract mental concept that we deem useful as a sort of container in which we place real things, like stars and galaxies.
I call space a not-thing because space has no structure and it has no substance. You cannot detect space with any of your sensory apparatus - you cannot see space; you cannot hear space; you cannot touch space; you cannot taste space; you cannot smell space. Space has no properties like mass and colour and associated things that you associate with things.
Not even instrumentation that augments your senses can detect with any greater accuracy or in any greater detail any properties that space could potentially have.
You cannot create space. There isn't even a theoretical equation that could tell you how, in principle, to create space. That makes sense if space is a not-thing.
It is stated that space has a property we call "dark energy". Space expands because of the anti-gravity or repulsive nature of dark energy which creates more space which in turn creates more dark energy which creates more space which creates more dark energy, and so on and so on until infinity. It should be clear that this scenario is in total violation to those conservation laws you had to learn in high school. If space is a thing and space is expanding then you are getting a free lunch - something for nothing.
Finally, there is no observational test that can distinguish between matter (like galaxies) expanding in space, being carried piggyback style by space, or expanding through the nothingness of existing space.
Thus I conclude that space has all the reality of Wednesday.
John Prytz
report post as inappropriate
Peter Jackson replied on Nov. 25, 2014 @ 13:35 GMT
John,
Your description of space rather pre-dates space travel and present physics. Sure it's not visible to spectroscopy and can't 'change' EM propagation speed (so is NOT the old 'ether', and is OK with SR), but we now have far more sophisticated methods!
Concepts like dark energy, the ISM, IGM, QV, pair production, the Higg's Field etc etc are all there because there's good evidence for some sub 'matter' condensate, and we find effects not otherwise rationalizable.
You're right in that its' not 'condensed' matter of course, but claiming more than that is now less well supported than otherwise. It's 'existence' rationalises many findings. A more detailed rationalisation is in my 2012 finalist essay. Do ask if you feel the need for any more references.
Much Ado About Nothing.Best wishes.
Peter
report post as inappropriate
Akinbo Ojo replied on Nov. 25, 2014 @ 15:15 GMT
Thanks Eckard for that link to the 1881 experiment as I am seeing it for the first time.
What I meant by saying replace light with sound is because with sound, we also do not observe drifting of air or sound reaching us quicker or with a Doppler blue shift in the direction of the motion of the earth around the sun. This is also a null finding like that for light. I propose this to guide...
view entire post
Thanks Eckard for that link to the 1881 experiment as I am seeing it for the first time.
What I meant by saying replace light with sound is because with sound, we also do not observe drifting of air or sound reaching us quicker or with a Doppler blue shift in the direction of the motion of the earth around the sun. This is also a null finding like that for light. I propose this to guide towards a solution for the dilemma we have with light.
I didn't quite get the aspect about aberration and its relevance.
John Prytz,
Space is a not-thing, just an abstract mental concept...
- Well, you didn't say what has been preventing the moon from falling on our heads. And talking about apples in a figurative way, how tall will its imaginary tree have to grow that the apple no longer feels inclined to fall on our heads? Can an apple on a tree 1 light year tall fall on our heads or does gravity give up the struggle at some point? What point or altitude could this be?
- Then earlier in one of your responses, you agreed that a Simulated Universe would likely be digital and that the pixel cannot be of zero dimension. You also agreed that it would be impossible to build an arena where simulated activity was taking place from zero-sized pixels, neither can the humans, machines be built from zero-sized pixels.
If this position is correct and our description and study of space which we call geometry has much to learn from Euclid's 'Elements' (definitions 1-7?), then the 'point' the basic unit of space will not be abstract, it will not be of zero size and it will not be infinitely divisible into parts (i.e. it will be 'partless', unlike other things than can have parts). It will therefore satisfy your definition of what a 'thing' can be. It will be the pixel of a digital universe!
And if the Great Simulator was as economical as Mother Nature is known to be, it would not make the container from some type of things and the contents from another type of thing. It will use that one thing in various possible configurations to create the illusion of many things. See the first few lines of Leibniz Monadology for some of his thoughts on the most fundamental unit of nature. Structure and Arena can be economically built from the same type of 'atom', just as the fishes and the oceans can be constructed from basically the same fundamental units.
Forget about using sensory apparatus to decide. Only your brain and reductio arguments can. After all, viruses cannot see, cannot hear, don't taste, don't smell. Neither do neutrinos have mass or colour.
I have already pointed out some deciding properties in my first post.
Does space vibrate and transmit waves? Do you believe in GR and its hypothetical gravitational waves? They are said to be vibrations of space-time. If space-time can vibrate, surely the components of the amalgam in the GR construct must also be capable of vibrating. And how come vibrations of this nature, i.e. light waves and gravitational waves, both travel at c? Does that co-incidence not say something?
And talking about, "There isn't even a theoretical equation that could tell you how, in principle, to create space.". There appears to be. Looking at the definition of entropy, S as the logarithm of the number of different possible arrangements, W (S =klogW) and the second law proposition that S under certain circumstances can be increased. If S can be increased by some process, W must increase in tandem. On the screen you are using for your simulation, when all the possible arrangements have been exhausted, the equations of the second law COMPEL that the digital screen must increase in size.
So before calling Space a Wednesday solve some of those paradoxes. You may take a first look at Zeno's Dichotomy paradox and offer what solution would work in a Simulated, digital universe.
Peter,
I read the paper you mentioned and commented. Is the electron's orbit in the atom elliptical with the nucleus at one focus? I read long ago, that Arnold Sommerfeld believed it was before Quantum Mechanics came to town.
Regards,
Akinbo
(I made some typos in my post because of typing in a hurry. In a real universe, not a simulated one, electricity can be in short supply)
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Eckard Blumschein replied on Nov. 25, 2014 @ 17:52 GMT
Akinbo,
Michelson tried and failed to measure what was called aether wind, i.e. the motion of earth relative to a hypothetical light-carrying medium. Air is a sound-carrying medium to which the velocity of sound relates. Maxwell had suspected that there is a light-carrying medium - the aether - too. There are still experts who prefer to imagine such medium attached at the earth. This would explain Michelson's null result. Michelson himself early concluded: There is no aether that is fixed on the space in which the earth moves around the sun. In his 1887 paper with Morley, he nonetheless approximately calculated the expected effect of the hypothetical aether wind with a "correction" that was added already in Paris 1881 and also by Lorentz.
Obviously he didn't trust in his own conclusion. Lorentz and before him FitzGerald tried to rescue the aether with the hypothesis of length contraction.
In case of sound in air no corresponding null result can be measured. The time that sound requires to travel from A to B depends on the velocity v of wind, not just on the constant velocity c for air.
I reiterate that the velocity of light in empty space does not depend on something else than the distance between B at the moment of arrival minus A at the moment of emission divided by the time elapsed between emission and arrival. Notice, I refer just to the difference between the positions A and B, not to absolute values. There is no universal natural reference for space available.
What about aberration, Paul Marmet might have explained it well.
Incidentally, Michelson's birthplace Strelno near Gnesen is not far away from Prinzenthal near Bromberg where my grandmother was born before Posen got Polish.
Eckard
report post as inappropriate
Akinbo Ojo replied on Nov. 25, 2014 @ 18:50 GMT
Eckard,
I agree with what you posted, except some areas for you to think about...
Maxwell had suspected that there is a light-carrying medium - the aether Aether is not the only light carrying medium. Glass is a light carrying medium, same as water. Both of which are 'normal' matter. Then empty space free of matter also carries light. Could there be other forms of matter in the universe that can carry light and be abundant in the cosmos?
In case of sound in air no corresponding null result can be measured.Why do you say this? Assuming still air, with "Air is a sound-carrying medium to which the velocity of sound relates", since as you "imagine such medium attached at the earth. This would explain Michelson's null result", it means if Michelson used sound, instead of light for experiment he would get a null result too.
Notice, I refer just to the difference between the positions A and B, not to absolute values. There is no universal natural reference for space available.Let us leave light for measuring distance between A and B. Will a metre rod measure different distances in different parts of the universe? If not, what forces the distance to be the SAME measure everywhere? IMHO therefore there is ' a universal natural reference for length (space) available.
John Prytz,
Perhaps you may be inclined to do us one of your beautiful posts on: WHAT IS A THING FUNDAMENTALLY?
In doing this, note that taste, smell, visibility are not fundamental. Decompose a bowl of soup into its fundamentals and all taste, flavor and appetizing look are lost. Yet, it remains a thing. Even mass, can be lost via E = mc^2. Newton seem to have narrowed it down to: A thing is what can act and can be acted upon also. Others, say what has the property of 'extension' is a thing and what does not is a not-thing. More later...
Akinbo
report post as inappropriate
Eckard Blumschein replied on Nov. 25, 2014 @ 23:10 GMT
Akinbo,
Aether was not just thought as universal light carrying medium in empty space but also as having somewhere at least one natural point of reference.
There is a decisive difference between such medium and a limitless line, area, or space without such reference.
The air within a flying air plane exemplifies how a dragged medium with boundaries or other points of reference on the line of motion would work. Norbert Feist even measured the effect of relative velocity between a car and the air localized with respect to it. Physicist like Lorentz argued convincingly against the dragged aether idea. In case of light there are alternatives that explain the null result:
- Mysterious length contraction or
- There is no universal point in empty space to which one could the velocity of light propagation refer to in case of just linear motion.
Yes, "there is a universal natural reference for length (space) available." However, the meter can only measure length, i.e. differences between points, not absolute coordinates with reference to a non-arbitrarily preferred point. Einstein failed to clearly explain what was wrong with the aether, and he gave to Lorentz gamma an unfounded interpretation.
Eckard
report post as inappropriate
Akinbo Ojo replied on Nov. 26, 2014 @ 09:59 GMT
Eckard,
Aether as formulated has its shortcomings.
When you say, "In case of light there are alternatives that explain the null result:
- Mysterious length contraction or
- There is no universal point in empty space to which one could the velocity of light propagation refer to in case of just linear motion".
Can a matter medium like dark matter bound to earth like air is bound, do for the case of light what air does for the case of sound be an alternative? If it can't why not?
Akinbo
report post as inappropriate
John Prytz replied on Nov. 26, 2014 @ 11:46 GMT
Peter,
Thanks for your comments. Here are a few more of mine regarding the nature of space. Is space a thing, or is space a not-thing?
If space were really a thing you should be able to detect some resistance as you try to move through it. Even if the 'density' of space is too low for you to detect personally, sensitive instrumentation should. Alas, no resistance factor has been...
view entire post
Peter,
Thanks for your comments. Here are a few more of mine regarding the nature of space. Is space a thing, or is space a not-thing?
If space were really a thing you should be able to detect some resistance as you try to move through it. Even if the 'density' of space is too low for you to detect personally, sensitive instrumentation should. Alas, no resistance factor has been detected, which just gives further credibility to the Michaelson-Morley Experiment which first gave rise to observational evidence suggestive that space was a not-thing. To repeat, there is no actual evidence in support of the idea that space is a thing.
Well what about that famous prediction by Einstein and confirmed by experimental observation about the bending of light in a gravitational field. Well, light is a thing, and gravity is a thing, so it is no surprise that gravity can have an influence over light. That doesn't require the concept of space-as-a-thing; space to be a sort of flexible membrane in order to accomplish this.
When a cosmologist gets up in front of an audience of their peers and actually creates some space, or provides observational evidence or at least puts up an equation that shows how it could theoretically be done - well till then the concept of space-as-a-thing is nonsense, virtually pseudo-science.
And therein lies a tale of the double standard. When confronted by pseudo-scientific claims, if they don't duck and run for cover first, most scientists shrilly scream out "show me your evidence; show me your Evidence; show me your EVIDENCE!". Okay cosmologists, your turn. Show me your evidence that the concept of space-is-a-thing has validity. Show me your evidence that requires cosmic expansion BY space as opposed to cosmic expansion THROUGH space.
The consequences of all of this is that if the Big Bang event did not, could not, create its own space-as-a-thing, then the Big Bang event happened in pre-existing space and therefore there was a before the Big Bang.
Given all that I have now said on this subject, if you were to apply Occam's Razor to the question, which side of the fence seems to have the greener grass?
John Prytz
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Eckard Blumschein replied on Nov. 26, 2014 @ 18:20 GMT
John P, Akinbo,
It is not my business to tell you the in principle more than a century old but still valid arguments against hypotheses like dragged aether and expanding space. After I distrusted Michelson's null result of 1881 and later, I looked for a reasonable explanation and arrived at the overlooked role of the missing point of reference instead of a medium of reference like air which has of course such a point. Akinbo seems to dislike my finding because he loves his intuition that dark matter might constitute an aether that is dragged with the earth.
I am sorry, I don't have an alternative model of cosmology. I am just dealing with possible logical inconsistencies with current tenets.
Akinbo,
What paradox do you attribute to Euclid? I rather blame Parmenides and his pupil Zeno for imprecise thinking.
Eckard
report post as inappropriate
Eckard Blumschein replied on Nov. 26, 2014 @ 18:24 GMT
"with current tenets" should read "within current tenets".
report post as inappropriate
Akinbo Ojo replied on Nov. 27, 2014 @ 10:10 GMT
Eckard,
I did not really attribute paradox to Euclid, but paradoxes come from misinterpretation of his definitions. I discussed this a bit in my 2013 essay, "On the road not taken".
What imprecise thinking do you attribute to Parmenides and Zeno? Do you have a precise thinking solution to Zeno's Dichotomy Argument and his Arrow paradox? I am not talking of the mathematical solutions that lead to the imprecise infinitely reaching nearer and nearer a target.
Regards,
Akinbo
report post as inappropriate
Eckard Blumschein replied on Nov. 27, 2014 @ 17:30 GMT
Akinbo,
We left the topic. Nonetheless I will clarify what I consider wrong in perhaps all of Zeno's paradoxes. If he didn't live already from 490 to 430 i.e. before Euclid (325-275) I would blame Zeno for not understanding that a point is what has no parts and a line is therefore not composed of points. Incidentally, for the same reason I am not a presentist.
Don't keep me for arrogant. I am aware of making mistakes too. However, Zeno tried to defend the inability of Parmenides to distinguish between concrete reality and abstract notions.
Eckard
report post as inappropriate
hide replies
John Prytz wrote on Nov. 27, 2014 @ 11:29 GMT
MORE ABOUT DARK ENERGY AND THE EXPANSION OF SPACE-AS-A-THING
Why is the modern standard model of cosmology a pseudo-science? Basically because it is advocating something akin to a perpetual motion machine - even worse. A standard pseudo-scientific perpetual motion machine operates at 100% efficiency. Energy input equals energy output and energy output is recycled back into energy input....
view entire post
MORE ABOUT DARK ENERGY AND THE EXPANSION OF SPACE-AS-A-THING
Why is the modern standard model of cosmology a pseudo-science? Basically because it is advocating something akin to a perpetual motion machine - even worse. A standard pseudo-scientific perpetual motion machine operates at 100% efficiency. Energy input equals energy output and energy output is recycled back into energy input. There is no waste energy; no heat loss. The cosmos is even worse. Energy output exceeds energy input. The cosmos is way more than 100% efficient! Toss in 100 units of energy and you get 200 units of energy output (invented figures but it conveys the idea). In the case of the cosmos, the energy in question has been termed "dark energy", and dark energy is created by space-that-is-a-thing and dark energy in turn creates more space-that-is-a-thing, and the cosmic perpetual motion machine just keeps on keeping on.
How does space-which-is-a-thing create ever more dark energy and how does dark energy create more space-which-is-a-thing and where the heck does all of this stuff come from? Who knows! But the concept IMHO is pseudo-scientific nonsense. How do you get around the paradox of creating something from nothing?
While on the 'how' questions, how did the Big Bang event create space - assuming space to be a thing of substance and structure. Again, who knows! And a 'what' question: What is space-that-is-a-thing composed of? Who knows! Space clearly has no relationship to the standard model of particle physics. It's not composed of fermions or bosons nor any of the standard four forces associated with particle physics.
But here's an oddity. One needs to get away from the idea that space is just out there - it is up close and personal too. Space-that-is-a-thing however is not only around you but is inside of you, so it shouldn't be too difficult for some bright spark to 'capture' some and put it to the standard laboratory tests. How can something that's literally in front of your nose be so unknowable?
Is space-that-is-a-thing and dark energy the same thing? If not, what is dark energy and what is it composed of and how does it relate to the standard model of particle physics? Just calling something "dark energy" doesn't explain it. And like space-that-is-a-thing, dark energy should also be all around and inside of you. It can't be that difficult therefore to isolate some. It's not as if you have to travel into intergalactic space to get a beaker full of the stuff.
Here's another nail hammering down the coffin containing the space-that-is-a-thing concept. We've all seen the analogy of space-that-is-a-thing being a rubber sheet with a bowling ball distorting the flat shape of the rubber and a marble sent rolling across the rubber sheet in the direction of the bowling ball. The straight path trajectory of the marble is altered. The marble curves into 'orbit' around the bowling ball assuming it doesn't just curve around and fly past. If the former, the marble will eventually go 'crashing' into the bowling ball and not maintain any orbit for very long. In any event, the marble heads inward toward the bowling ball. By analogy, shouldn't our Moon be spiralling in towards the Earth much like our artificial satellite orbits eventually decay? Alas for the rubber sheet analogy of space-that-is-a-thing, our Moon is moving away from the Earth a few centimetres per year, not moving closer.
I do think at times that modern cosmologists have gotten so wrapped up in their technical essays of complex mathematical equations and jargon that they have totally forgotten much of what they were taught in their high school science classes, like there's no such thing as a cosmic free lunch.
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Akinbo Ojo wrote on Nov. 28, 2014 @ 20:27 GMT
SPACE, AN UNSUNG PARTICIPANT IN THE UNIVERSE?
"I wish we could derive the rest of the phenomena of nature by the same kind of reasoning from mechanical principles; for I am induced by many reasons to suspect that they may all depend upon certain forces by which the particles of bodies, by some causes hitherto unknown, are either
mutually impelled towards each other, and cohere in...
view entire post
SPACE, AN UNSUNG PARTICIPANT IN THE UNIVERSE?
"I wish we could derive the rest of the phenomena of nature by the same kind of reasoning from mechanical principles; for I am induced by many reasons to suspect that they may all depend upon certain forces by which the particles of bodies, by some causes hitherto unknown, are either mutually impelled towards each other, and cohere in regular figures, or are repelled and recede from each other; which forces being unknown, philosophers have hitherto attempted the search of nature in vain; but I hope the principles here laid down will afford some light either to that or some truer method of philosophy" - Sir Isaac Newton.
It is human to acclaim only participants that are noisy or shiny or have a good or bad smell. But only near super-humans like Newton know that the most important participants may not fall into this category, which is why he says in the quote above that these participants can only be apprehended by the inner senses using the power of reason.
It is true that space has no taste, it has no smell, it has no colour and makes no noise. But can its participation in the drama unfolding in the universe be discerned using the same kind of reasoning from mechanical principles? The view that space is not a nothing comes broadly under the label 'substantivalism'. There are sub-groups, some of which include General relativitists, for whom the substance is then 'space-time', and not just space. Newton, himself in many respects was the arch-priest of this view. In his
Scholium and the
Principia, he put forward his views using causes, effects and properties for
argument, section 5.
I have a substantivalist tendency and with good scientific reasons of my own. This thread is for cosmological topics, but as it has been alluded here that space is nothing, I think it necessary to make some counter presentation to the rational and lucid but IMHO misleading arguments claiming space is nothing. Not to repeat Newton's arguments, I present here evidence from what we can see and evaluate with our eyes – evidence from gravitational orbits, which if interpreted dispassionately indicate the possible roles space may be playing, aside the cosmological roles ascribed to it.
1. THE SHAPE OF ORBITS
Motion according to Newton's first law can continue perpetually unless a frictional force acts to bring the body to rest. Orbital motion was desired to be analogous to the linear motion of Newton's first law of motion in a straight line and would consequently be circular in shape (the form that preserves an equi-potential orbit) and continue perpetually without being driven (a sort of perpetuum mobile?). Alas, orbits are not circular but elliptical in shape. Kepler also desired a circle, but Mother Nature presented us with the ellipse. Perhaps, there is a puzzle in this elliptical gift?
Reasoning from mechanical principles implies such a shape of orbital motion is not according to Newton's first law. The motion is under action of a force or of forces.
2. CENTRIPETAL/ CENTRIFUGAL FORCES
In gravitational orbits, Newton mathematically showed that a centripetal force equal in magnitude to
mrω2 was operational, where
m is the mass of the orbiter,
r its radius from the hub and
ω its angular velocity. A centripetal force, like all forces has direction, which is radially inwards to the centre of the circle.
From the laws for circular motion in which a centripetal force is present, there must necessarily be a centrifugal force which will be equal and opposite in effect to the centripetal force so that no resultant force is acting and the body can keep moving with uniform motion equivalent to a state of rest. Switching off the centripetal force makes the orbiting body spiral away and switching off the centrifugal force makes the orbiting body spiral inwards under its momentum collapsing ultimately into the hub.
Unfortunately, in gravitational orbits this centrifugal force that prevents collapse of the circular motion is ghostly and not easily discernible.
Newton seemed to also realize the compelling need for this centrifugal force to balance the effect of gravity and maintain the planets in their circular paths. Seeing no other source, he suggested that the centrifugal force must be arising directly from the motion of the planets themselves. The difficulty and illogicality of this however becomes apparent on three grounds. Firstly, since the centrifugal force must be acting on the body to oppose the centripetal action of gravity which also acts on it, it would appear unusual for the generator of the force, i.e. the orbiting body, to be the subject of the force as well. The idea from Newton’s third law is that an object experiences force because it is interacting with some other body or agency and not with itself. Therefore a body cannot give rise to an action force which also serves as a reaction on it. Secondly, a force arising directly from a circularly moving body must be in a tangential direction to the orbit, being a vector like velocity. To balance and be equal and opposite to the centripetal force however, we see that the centrifugal force or its component must act radially outwards on the orbiting body, while the centripetal force acts radially inwards on it. Whatever momentum or force arising from the orbiting body’s motion can therefore not be the source of the centrifugal force since it would be acting tangentially at right angles to the orbital radius and cannot have any component in a radial direction to oppose the centripetal force, in the way the centrifugal force would be required to do. Thirdly, a body moving in accordance with Newton’s first law of motion as planets are deemed by some to move, while it can be subject to forces whose resultant on it must then be zero, cannot generate force from its own motion or state of rest which would be contributory to the same resultant state of rest or uniform motion. Conclusion: The motion of the planets is not the source of the centrifugal force, whose source must then lie elsewhere.
3. THE MOON KEEPS FALLING BUT DOES NOT REACH THE GROUND!
Newton got deserved acclaim by showing that the acceleration with which objects fall under gravity at the earth’s surface was related to the centripetal acceleration towards the earth of the moon in orbit, taking the inverse square law into account. In other words, like objects here on earth the moon is also falling under the influence of the same force of gravity.
Assuming the inverse square law and therefore an acceleration due to gravity on the moon due to the earth to be approximately 0.0027ms
-2 instead of the terrestrial value of 9.8 ms
-2, we will expect from the most optimistic view of a constant and non-inverse squarely increasing acceleration of 0.0027 ms
-2 and using s = ut + ½ gt
2 that the moon will fall and reach the ground in about 6 days, if it is indeed falling under the earth’s gravity as Newton demonstrated, given that the moon is about 3.8 x 10
8 metres away and is being acted on by gravity alone and no other force. Unlike the historical apple however, it is long overdue for the moon to fall on our heads, yet something prevents it from doing so. Who or what is this benevolent agent preventing this?
4. MORE CONTRAVENTIONS TO NEWTON'S SECOND LAW OF MOTION
Newton’s second law of motion states categorically that acceleration due to force A must take place in the direction of that force. This implies that observed deceleration of an accelerating body acted on by a force A must be due to another force B acting in the opposite direction and cannot be due to the continuing action or stoppage of action of force A. Furthermore, Newton’s law of gravitation stresses that although gravitational force can vary in magnitude according to the inverse square law, it has a constant direction of attraction which cannot change. Therefore any change in the direction such as observed repulsion between masses must be due to the presence of another force.
In gravitational orbits, the sun-earth for example, we see the satellite respond to gravity and move closer to the hub as it approaches perihelion. However instead of continuing in that direction, moving closer to the hub, what we see is a kind of repelling action at perihelion. It is as if the direction of gravity has changed. Instead of attraction, we get repulsion.
To simplify and illustrate, we can use the simple pendulum with a visible bob but an invisible string as an example. We expect things to proceed in an orderly manner and for the pendulum to swing from side to side, which is what happens. However, an observer oblivious of the string because it is invisible must be baffled by the ordinary course of events. This observer knowing about gravity is not surprised by the downswing but he must indeed be alarmed if on reaching its lowest point, instead of continuing downwards in the direction of gravity, he sees the bob swing upwards. He must therefore question, whether gravity can reverse its direction, thereby repelling the bob upwards. As the bob accelerates downwards, increasing in velocity, by what means does it stop accelerating and instead start reducing in velocity and decelerating to gravity? The observer cannot be blamed for suspecting a ghost at work. It must however be an orderly ghost, since the pendulum has a period which remains regular. A less superstitious person would however acknowledge that a force yet to be identified but whose characteristics we can discern from our observations is at work and acts on the pendulum bob in a manner opposite to gravitational action thus preventing what will amount to a contravention of Newton’s second law and his proposal of a universally attractive nature for gravity.
Analogously, reasoning with these mechanical principles we can suspect that a force opposed to gravity is at work in orbits. It is this force that will prevent contraventions to Newton’s laws that will occur and explain the mysterious deceleration to gravity at perihelion. The observed deceleration to gravity will represent a contravention of Newton’s second law and his law of universal gravitation if no force is deemed responsible. Newton’s second law therefore, compels the presence of another force in addition to gravity to serve as one of the return forces operating the orbit as with oscillations of the simple pendulum.
5. ANGULAR MOMENTUM CONSERVATION DOES NOT WORK AS AN ALIBI
Although using considerations involving angular momentum conservation, angular velocity can increase when the radius of the orbit reduces, it cannot be used to contravene Newton’s second law and convert angular acceleration to angular deceleration without the intervention of a force.
A further reason for the non-attractiveness of angular momentum conservation as an explanation for the seeming contraventions of Newton’s second law and the universally attractive nature of gravity is somewhat of a mathematical nature.
Angular momentum is given by
mr2ω, where
m is the mass of the orbiter,
r is the radius of orbit and
ω is the angular velocity. If the angular momentum is exactly conserved and mass is constant,
r2ω will be a constant and
ω will be inversely proportional to
r2. This will result in disharmony with the inverse square law and Kepler’s third law, both of which have the relationship between angular velocity,
ω and radius,
r as
ω2 = k /
r3, where k is a constant.
If angular momentum conservation is to be used in explaining the reduction in angular velocity with increasing radius and the sequential increase in angular velocity with reducing radius, then (1) Kepler’s third law will be invalid and T
2 will be directly proportional to r
4 instead of r
3, where T is the period of oscillation and (2) the inverse-square law will be invalid and instead will be an inverse-cube law, with gravitational force proportional to 1/r
3.
There is also nothing in the laws of momentum conservation compelling momentum conservation in the direction of deceleration at perihelion as it can be equally conserved in the direction of continuous acceleration and continuous reduction of orbital radius as the orbiter spirals inwards. The angular deceleration seen at perihelion must therefore be the outcome of an orderly force.
Kepler’s first and second laws, imply that what we observe in the motions of planets is governed by law and cannot be attributed to random perturbations. That is, even in the absence of perturbation, Kepler’s first and second laws with the alternating increase and decrease in angular velocity and the alternating acceleration and deceleration of planets to the sun’s gravity will hold. Conservation of angular momentum features prominently in the quantum scenario, but as we cannot observe directly what is occurring, we refrain from using it for argument.
6. CONTRAVENTIONS TO THE LAWS OF ENERGY CONSERVATION – ANY FREE LUNCH?
When the radius of orbit of a satellite reduces, the kinetic energy (K.E.) increases while the potential energy (P.E.) reduces as P.E. is converted to K.E. and the satellite is speeded up.
However because P.E. decreases by twice as much as the K.E. increases by applications of the known dynamical equations below, there is on the whole, a loss of energy when the orbital radius of a satellite reduces.
Assuming the zero of potential energy in the gravitational field of the hub is at infinity by convention,
P.E. of mass in orbit = - GMm/r
while
K.E. of satellite in orbit = GMm/2r
where G is the gravitational constant, M is the mass of the hub, m is mass of the satellite and r is the radius of the orbit.
Einstein’s General relativity similar to Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory (for charges) says that acceleration of masses in gravitational orbits leads to loss of energy which is radiated away as gravitational waves.
The consequence of the above is that when the satellite accelerates to gravity, it should spiral and the gravitational orbit progressively collapses. Contrary to what physics predicts, orbiting bodies alternately gain and lose energy, with energy and potential being lost as perihelion is approached and energy and potential being regained after perihelion and as aphelion is approached. Ordinarily we could explain away what we see in orbits as conversion of potential energy to kinetic energy and back but for inability to account for the energy loss and the force that makes the orbiter rise to the same height in aphelion as in previous orbital cycles.
The loss of energy and potential due to the effect of gravitational force is comprehensible. What is not accounted for is the source of the energy that makes the orbiter to regain the same potential since the initial energy lost must have radiated away as heat or gravitational waves and is not available for re-conversion to potential energy after perihelion.
Also generally speaking, inter-conversion between potential energy and kinetic energy requires a force to effect the conversion. The simple pendulum once again is a good example that illustrates this inter-conversion. While gravitational force effects conversion of the potential energy of the bob to kinetic energy as it downswings from one end, a different force will be needed to convert the kinetic energy at its lowest point back to potential energy in the upswing. This is provided by the tension force in the string. In gravitational orbits, the force that converts the maximum kinetic energy at perihelion to the maximum potential energy at aphelion is mysterious but it must exist. If we could identity the force then all would be well and if there is no force, then at least we must identify the source of the energy replenishing the orbit.
Putting this quantitatively, from equations for P.E. and K.E. above,
Total energy of a satellite in orbit in joules (J) is given by
P.E. + K.E. = - GMm/2r
Using the sun-earth system as an example and given the mass of the sun as 2x10
30kg, mass of the earth as 6x10
24kg, the earth’s perihelion distance as 147x10
9m and aphelion at 152x10
9m, we have:
Total energy of earth in orbit at aphelion (P.E.and K.E.)= - 2.63x10
33J
Total energy of earth in orbit at perihelion (P.E. and K.E.)= - 2.72x10
33J
Therefore, total energy at perihelion is less than at aphelion by 8.94x10
31J as expected from orbital dynamics. This is energy lost per cycle between aphelion and perihelion which represents 3.4% of initial energy at aphelion. If no new energy is added, the next aphelion will occur at a distance of 147x10
9m instead of the previous 152x10
9m.
Also although the rate of energy lost is likely to increase more rapidly, if we optimistically assume a steady loss, the orbit is expected to collapse after 29.4 cycles (100/ 3.4 ), that is after about 30 years, but this has not happened billions of years, since the earth formed and started orbiting the sun. Rather what we see is that approximately the same quantity of energy lost is replenished and the aphelion distance is fairly maintained at least for more than thirty cycles. Who is the replenisher and provider of this free lunch?
7. SOME POSSIBLE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE UNKNOWN AGENT PRESERVING THE ORBIT
i. Must be invisible
This is obvious as we cannot visualize the agent responsible for maintaining the orbit. It is certainly not matter, but may be anything else.
ii. Must possess force that can oppose gravity.
The agent must provide force capable of opposing centripetal force of gravity and give the balancing centrifugal force. It must therefore tend to oppose gravity and instead promote spreading tendencies for gravitational masses in space.
iii. Must be able to supply energy
The agent must be capable of supplying energy to replenish the orbit and prevent collapse. In doing this, it must at a stage in the orbital cycle intervene to prevent collapse by causing deceleration of the orbiter to gravity and increasing its potential.
iv. Must be omnipresent in time and place
The agent must always be available to carry out its functions. Since all the orbital cycles are prevented from immediate collapse, the agent must not be a temporary one but present all the time, for all the cycles and as well throughout the visible universe wherever orbits either of stars, planets and galaxies occur.
8. PARTICIPANT IN MOTION IN DIGITAL OR SIMULATED UNIVERSES
In Simulated Universes, the space between objects can be represented, e.g. by pixels on the computer screen for example. When we observe objects move on the screen, the pixels representing the object change to the character of those representing space, while the pixels representing space in the direction of motion, change to the character of pixels representing the moving object. In other words, the cooperation of the pixels representing space is required for motion to take place. It is my opinion that something similar happens in a real digital universe, with slight difference.
This is responsible for my frequent reference to Zeno's Dichotomy Argument and his Arrow paradox, both of which try to show that in some sense motion cannot occur without the fullest cooperation and participation of that which we call space. The Dichotomy paradox suggests motion cannot commence without the cooperation of the first pixel, nor will it end without the cooperation of the last. While the Arrow paradox says something similar, that the Arrow would not even leave the pixels constituting it in the first place unless our concept of motion undergoes a revolutionary review.
Akinbo
(This post are mainly excerpts from an old unpublishable paper of mine in response to John Prytz insistence that Space is Not-thing).
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
John Prytz replied on Nov. 29, 2014 @ 13:24 GMT
Akinbo,
I still fail to see why the shape of orbits, centripetal/centrifugal forces, laws of motion, angular momentum, etc. REQUIRE space to have substance and structure. Most of the parameters in your equations are things, like energy, gravity, mass etc. but I fail to spot anything in your equations that stands for space. Your essay would be far more credible if you could give an equation for the creation of space-as-a-thing. I'll be looking forward to that equation that says Space = XYZ where X, Y, and Z are things of structure and substance.
John Prytz
report post as inappropriate
Akinbo Ojo replied on Nov. 29, 2014 @ 17:56 GMT
John Prytz,
I agree space is difficult to "see" directly. Were this not the case the historical dispute starting from ancient times, to Newton-Leibniz would not have persisted this long. A very stubborn persistence.
Firstly, the fundamental meaning of
'substance' is not liquid, solid or gas but something that can act and be acted upon is substance.
Ref: "…it is clear...
view entire post
John Prytz,
I agree space is difficult to "see" directly. Were this not the case the historical dispute starting from ancient times, to Newton-Leibniz would not have persisted this long. A very stubborn persistence.
Firstly, the fundamental meaning of
'substance' is not liquid, solid or gas but something that can act and be acted upon is substance.
Ref:
"…it is clear that they (philosophers) would cheerfully allow extension (space) to be substance, just as body is, if only extension could move and act as body can", p.8 - Newton.
If you want me to elaborate more on substance I can.
Then talking of
'structure', I am happy we both share the idea that there is nothing like a zero-dimensional point and dimensionless particles. Euclid and others before him define the 'point' as the fundamental unit of geometry. If it is not of zero dimension then infinitely divisibility is unlikely as you also rightly pointed out, probably a limit exists at about 10
-35m.
As to your request:
"...if you could give an equation for the creation of space-as-a-thing. I'll be looking forward to that equation that says Space = XYZ where X, Y, and Z are things of structure and substance."In thermodynamics, there is an equation possibly answering your demand, i.e. Entropy, S = k lnW. I can only make a poor attempt, but going by your demand I will say Space is proportional to W, W being the number of different possible arrangements available. k is Boltzmann's constant.
Certainly, even from our opposing view points I think we can agree that the concept of space has something to do with the number of arrangements available in a system.
The Second law of thermodynamics, tells us how entropy, S and therefore W also can be increased, e.g. by introducing energy, E at a temperature, T. That is,
dS = dE/T
Therefore when you introduce energy into a system made of ice of a given size for example, it breaks down into water till it attains equilibrium. After equilibrium, if you add energy again, it turns to steam, till it again attains equilibrium at some high temperature. If you add energy again, it breaks down into H and O, which makes for even more possible ways of arranging the system. (number of possible arrangements, W depends on the number of constituents and the number of positions that can be 'occupied'). If you continue, the system continues to obey the second law till you get to quarks, if they are the most fundamental matter. If you pump in more energy into this soup of quarks at equilibrium they cannot break down further. The best they can do is to move faster and faster. Now, if in addition to a finite lower limit to divisibility, there is a finite higher limit to speed and yet the system must obey the second law, how does it or how can it do this? IMHO, if the second law cannot be disobeyed, the only way is for the system size to increase, so that more ways of arranging the system can be available to the constituents. Space appearance and increase is therefore compelled, even if that space was not previously existing. Do you have an alternative way, the second law may still be obeyed after finite divisibility and speed limits?
I do not wish to digress at this point, but later on contemplate what possibility might exist if absolute temperature was zero at the time of energy introduction, i.e. T = 0. You might see way back in time to the lowest possible entropy state as well, which some may call the Big bang.
I see somewhere, where you wrote: "
There has to be some nothing as well as some something. If everything were something, then nothing could move as all the Universe would be chockablock – ...You couldn't push anything out of the way as there would be no nothing to push it into!" This is brilliant thinking. I was here before! Only something that has mass can according to Newton's third law be pushed out of the way. Space cannot therefore be pushed out of the way, as it has no mass. But can it disappear and appear? If 'virtual' particles can appear and disappear, if a whole universe can appear and disappear, is it such an impossible task for units of space to disappear and appear that motion be made possible?
Finally, one sure way you can help me out is to tell me the store (like a spring) or source of the energy replenishing the orbit after perihelion, (see the values I gave in section 6 of the post). If you do this in a way consistent with reasoning from mechanical principles, I might give be giving up the idea that space is something capable of acting and being acted upon and therefore capable of storing energy in a coded form.
All the best,
Akinbo
*You may want to check my 2013 Essay where I elaborate more on this my view of space.
By the way I very much share your views about superposition and entanglement but I take your UFO with a heavy dose of salt.
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
John Prytz replied on Nov. 30, 2014 @ 12:44 GMT
Akinbo,
Actually I note in your earlier (28 November) post about "Space, an unsung participant in the universe?" that much of your discussion revolves around motion. IMHO, you can have motion through absolute nothingness (the not-thing that is space) just as you can have motion through things (like oceans and atmospheres). So I fail to see how motion distinguishes space-as-a-thing from...
view entire post
Akinbo,
Actually I note in your earlier (28 November) post about "Space, an unsung participant in the universe?" that much of your discussion revolves around motion. IMHO, you can have motion through absolute nothingness (the not-thing that is space) just as you can have motion through things (like oceans and atmospheres). So I fail to see how motion distinguishes space-as-a-thing from space the not-thing.
Substance is basically the standard model of particle physics. Structure is basically the 3-D geometry that substance takes.
If space is a not-thing, the number of possible arrangements that can take is zero.
Thermodynamics, entropy, etc. all relate to things that have substance. You can have things of substance (fast-moving, slow-moving, etc. particles) that can exist in a not-thing, like space.
Of course there is both something (substances) and nothing (the abstract container we place our substances in which we call space and I clarify by calling it a not-thing).
Virtual particles don't appear and disappear. Conservation laws rule, OK? There is a one-on-one exchange between matter (the virtual particles) and energy (which created the virtual particles which annihilate returning back into energy). The entire universe, even blocks of it, can't appear and disappear. There's just exchanges between states of matter and states of energy. Those exchanges can happen in space that happens to be a not-thing.
Regarding energy and orbits, surely you have heard of the slingshot effect that NASA (for example) uses to give added oomph to space probes and cut down on transit times. By slinging the probes around another planet(s), the probes pick up extra energy, but in doing so the planet loses some energy. The Moon for example is slowly robbing Earth of energy and thus Earth's rotation is very so gradually slowing down and the energy the Moon picks up is increasing the size of its orbit. The Moon is moving away from us. As I've stated time and again, there is no such thing as a free lunch.
Well I've asked you to give me the recipe for creating space-as-a-thing. You haven't done it - and you can't do it IMHO because space is NOT a thing that can be created. Thermodynamics isn't really a recipe for creating anything - what can you create out of thermodynamics? OK, thermodynamics has substance, but used as a ways and means of creation? Well perhaps heat is used to create new things, new substances from existing things, but it's not creating anything out of nothing.
The flip side would be for you to give me the recipe for creating dark energy, since space-as-a-thing allegedly creates dark energy. That should be relatively easy for you to do since we create energy (out of matter - which is a thing) all of the time. However, I have a nagging feeling that you wouldn't be able to give me that recipe either.
Well then, perhaps you can give me one actual cosmological observation that requires space-as-a-thing to exist; that is a cosmological observation that cannot be explained by my theory that space is a not-thing.
All for now.
John Prytz
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Akinbo Ojo replied on Dec. 2, 2014 @ 13:04 GMT
John Prytz, (and thank you to Georgina),
As I was contemplating what other stroke to use in replying a different folk, Georgina seemed to have given me a hint.
So, John as you keep telling me to prepare you various recipes that Space is not a Nothing, which when I do you declare that they are not tasty, can you return the favor and prepare a recipe for Action-at-a-distance? Newton...
view entire post
John Prytz, (and thank you to Georgina),
As I was contemplating what other stroke to use in replying a different folk, Georgina seemed to have given me a hint.
So, John as you keep telling me to prepare you various recipes that Space is not a Nothing, which when I do you declare that they are not tasty, can you return the favor and prepare a recipe for Action-at-a-distance? Newton himself declined doing this, with his famous statement, "hypotheses non fingo".
You may also read Georgina's post on the Faster than Light thread on Dec. 2, 2014 @ 07:25 GMT and the quote attributed to Newton (one of my favorite quotes from the man).
Thanks for pointing to the slingshot effect. I read it and it is interesting. It is an outcome of good reasoning from mechanical principles. The Wikipedia refers to it as
Gravity Assist.
In the relevant physics, the applicable equations are time-reversible, so if I am correct, in reverse motion the Moon can also sling backwards and donate energy to the Earth. IMHO, this slingshot effect does not fully address how come orbits are stable and behave like a perpetuum mobile.
Now, one figure says more than a thousand words, so let me give you more figures to contemplate.
Given the Moon's distance at apogee as 405400km and at perigee 362600km, with the Total energy in orbit (potential and kinetic) as
-GMm/2r,
putting in the Earth's mass, M and Moon's mass, m
At Apogee, the total energy of the orbit = -3.628 x 10
28J
At Perigee, the total energy of the orbit = -4.056 x 1010
28J
Therefore, we have a difference of 4.28x1010
27J of energy, either lost as heat or otherwise radiated away and replenished by the Simulator after perigee,
Or Stored somewhere by the Simulator for re-use every cycle, which Store may not be classified as a nothing.
In one of your posts I was delighted to see, "That is because there is an ultimate limit to how small length (hence volume) can get. The smallest possible length is known as Planck length and anything less than that space ceases to exist. Planck length is 1.6 x 10
-35m". I think we can build on this, as something that has a finite limit to divisibility must have structure of some kind.
Regards,
Akinbo
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
John Prytz replied on Dec. 3, 2014 @ 13:21 GMT
Akinbo,
Action-At-A-Distance? I assume you mean how does gravity work? Well, gravity and the electromagnetic force are very much akin - sort of like brother and sister. Both extend outwards (theoretically) to infinity. Both observe the inverse square relationship. When it comes to the electromagnetic force, it is the photon that conveys that force. When it comes to gravity, it is the graviton that conveys the force of gravity. Newton couldn't have been expected to know about the graviton. Of course the fly-in-the-ointment is that the graviton hasn't been found yet. However, it is postulated to exist, much like the Higgs Boson was expected to turn up eventually - and did. It is expected that when gravitational waves are detected, well that will put the icing on the graviton cake.
John Prytz
report post as inappropriate
Akinbo Ojo replied on Dec. 3, 2014 @ 17:02 GMT
Thanks John for the reply and sharing your interesting alternative perspectives.
Yes, by Action-At-A-Distance, I meant what mechanism(s) exists to implement the observation. I was going to ask you a follow up question before reading your reply. That follow up, was to ask how the Moon manages to steal energy from the Earth and move to higher orbit after perigee without touching the Earth,...
view entire post
Thanks John for the reply and sharing your interesting alternative perspectives.
Yes, by Action-At-A-Distance, I meant what mechanism(s) exists to implement the observation. I was going to ask you a follow up question before reading your reply. That follow up, was to ask how the Moon manages to steal energy from the Earth and move to higher orbit after perigee without touching the Earth, and if your slingshot analogy applies, how the Moon manages to return this energy so that its orbit reduces as it does after apogee? Is there evidence of lowering in Earth temperature after a Moon-theft, or perhaps this will be too small? I actually tried to calculate using Q = mcφ, with c being specific heat capacity of Earth and φ, temperature change but appears tiny.
Your reply here suggests Action-At-A-Distance may be by means of particles? Do these particles have mass? Any idea of there numbers? Are they radiated into space in all directions, or only in the direction of the Moon? Even, if the Moon was not there will these particles still be emitted by Earth, and if so could the Earth survive 4.5 billion years of such continuous emission?
This force particle mechanism which you seem to support is one of the ways to deny Space any role as a participant in the drama taking place. Sometime ago, I asked Steve Agnew, how come magnets on opposite sides of a thick slab, opaque to visible light and maybe made of lead so that higher frequency rays don't pass, yet the magnets on opposite sides still influence each other. Can this still be via exchange of photons?
Then, how can bombardment with photons cause attraction instead of repulsion in the logical way you have been showing in your posts?
How come, when the Moon is at perigee and probably facing its highest amount of bombardment with gravitons said to mediate attraction, it is then it decides to escape and actually does so, till it is dragged back again at perigee? (This may apply as well to the atomic orbit if elliptical).
I will implore that you continue in your logical way and not join the bandwagon of Higg's Boson and other such ideas not in accord with Newton's reasoning from mechanical principles.
My main reason for this post before I was distracted to do this reply, was to ask what is your take on the Electromagnetic wave model. The little I know and hear is that in a region of space devoid of matter and charge, an electric field changes into a magnetic field, which in turn changes back to an electric field and this alternating change manages to propagate over vast distances. In the space between a source and a destination, how can such change from electric field to magnetic field and back again take place? There is no wire or coil, no charge and no magnet. This is part of the reason why a little voice tells me that Space has a hand in what is going on. I however, admit that there may be other explanations like yours that are against 'substantivalism'. This is a debate that has been going on for centuries. Did you manage to read Newton's views that I linked? Did you manage to simulate motion on your computer screen without allotting any pixels to Space since it is nothing and has no role to play in the simulation? I would be interested to know.
You seem to be disagree that things being in two places at once, superposition of states, etc, which are IMHO good reasoning from mechanical (classical and quantum) principles. However, your mention of Photon here makes me ask: Do you have any quarrel with the 'Photon' picture, or do you agree with all that has been said about it? Are you aware that the indivisibility of the photon, (if such a thing exists to replace the wave picture) is central to quantum mystery? Bohr and Feynmann say we should believe as sacred that a photon is indivisible and make this a postulate in quantum mechanics.
Of course, if light is not particle but wave, it must be waving in something that is not a nothing. I am not talking here of the aether.
Regards,
Akinbo
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Anonymous replied on Dec. 4, 2014 @ 12:56 GMT
Akinbo,
You may wish to direct some of these questions to an actual professional physicist, which I am not, and/or read up on the standard model of particle physics.
Action-at-a-distance is apparently conveyed by actual particles associated with the four forces - EM, gravity, the strong and the weak nuclear forces.
Actually, when you stop and ponder the issue, as you have, all of the four fundamental forces are mysterious. You can read textbook after textbook written by prominent particle physicists filled from beginning to end with equations and all you will find is what happens or what will happen in any given scenario. The textbooks and the authors and the equations never tell you how the forces actually operate and especially why what happens, happens. Of course things are way less mysterious if all this forceful activity is just software programming. Perhaps action-at-a-distance is just a feature of our virtual landscape, part of the overall Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe.
P.S. - don't forget that when it comes to the Earth-Moon system, or any two objects with mass, that the gravitation attraction between them is a two-way street. It's not just Earth that attracts the Moon, but equally the Moon attracts the Earth. And obviously the gravity of any object with mass isn't directed outwards in a specific direction. The Moon goes around the Earth and is always 'feeling' Earth's gravity. Therefore, Earth's gravity isn't unidirectional.
John Prytz
report post as inappropriate
Akinbo Ojo replied on Dec. 4, 2014 @ 18:20 GMT
"You may wish to direct some of these questions to an actual professional physicist, which I am not, and/or read up on the standard model of particle physics".
No use doing that. In the first place, many will not answer. Some that do will give incoherent and inconsistent answers, one would wish that one ever bothered to ask. You have yourself pointed to some of the absurdities in quantum theory. The few that give the kind of answers you and I would like and understand as illuminating would hardly want to be quoted as saying anything. From time to time, we however get to see slips of the tongue, some of which Pentcho and others draw attention to.
On whether or not, space is a participant, thanks for your views but keep an open mind still just in case.
Regards,
Akinbo
report post as inappropriate
John Prytz replied on Dec. 5, 2014 @ 11:00 GMT
Akinbo,
I've had a mixed bag when emailing scientists about some issue or other. Some have been extremely kind and replied; others have totally ignored me. Sounds like a reflection of the general human condition to me.
Now some further thoughts about gravity and related as per your earlier post.
Firstly, here's a paradox. Nothing can readily escape from inside the Event...
view entire post
Akinbo,
I've had a mixed bag when emailing scientists about some issue or other. Some have been extremely kind and replied; others have totally ignored me. Sounds like a reflection of the general human condition to me.
Now some further thoughts about gravity and related as per your earlier post.
Firstly, here's a paradox. Nothing can readily escape from inside the Event Horizon of a Black Hole*, not even photons of light and other EM radiation can flee from a Black Hole once trapped inside. But obviously gravity and gravitons can escape from a Black Hole since a Black Hole has gravity which extends beyond the Event Horizon. So photons can't and gravitons can so IMHO something is screwy somewhere. Perhaps this is just another cosmic oops made by our fallible Supreme Programmer!
Somewhat akin, there has to be a fixed number of gravitons in the cosmos if there is a fixed amount of mass (hence gravity). Since all mass attracts all other mass, there must be a constand exchange of gravitons between masses. So, yes, the Earth must lose gravitons over time (which would be like you shedding a few dead skin cells - hardly of much consequence) but it also gains gravitons from other objects external to it. There's a comsic give-and-take balance overall.
Gravity is the one long distance force you cannot shield yourself from. Of course you can't shield yourself from the strong and the weak nuclear forces either since they operate everywhere including inside your own body. You can't shield yourself from neutrinos either, but they aren't a force particle (though there is no doubt about its particle status). You could shield yourself from all EM (including magnetic fields) apart from your own infrared body heat generated from within.
One logical reason why a magnetic field goes right through some barrier of matter placed in its way is that matter is mainly empty space. The anology is such that the nucleus is the size of a grain of sand in the middle of a football field and the electrons are a few spectators located in the stands. There's plendy of wide open space for magnetism to ooze on through a 'barrier'. Some things are just more transparent that others. Neutrinos for example can pass through light years worth of solid lead.
As far as space-is-not-a-thing is concerned, I can't see how that hinders the operation of any forces or fields or things of substance and structure. For example, take a standard laboratory Bell Jar. The gravity inside of it doesn't alter one whit before or after the air (stuff) is sucked out of it. A light beam still travels through the extremely rarified vacuum. Radioactive stuff will still go poof at the same rate regardless of how much air is in the Bell Jar. Magnets still do their magnetic thing. Okay, sound requires space-as-a-thing, but as the tag line goes, "in space, no one can hear you scream".
One final though about "Twilight Zone" physics. Never mind what it means, it works doesn't it? So just shut-up and calculate. Nothing succeds like success. So when you're on a good thing, stick to it, or in other words, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
*Excepting of course Hawking Radiation but that's like a slow dripping faucet compared to a gushing fire hose. In any event, when it comes to a Black Hole, one can easily say that incoming matter and energy exceeds outgoing matter and energy - except for the anomaly of the graviton.
PS - I can recommend the two books by Professor of Theoretical Physics at Harvard University, Lisa Randall. The first is "Warped Passages: Unravelling the Universe's Hidden Dimensions" (2005) and "Knocking on Heaven's Door: How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World" (2011). She's also very easy on the eyes, if you know what I mean.
John Prytz
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Akinbo Ojo replied on Dec. 5, 2014 @ 14:01 GMT
That photon-graviton-black hole paradox is an interesting one. More so, as both graviton and photon share the same speed,
c. If it is original to you, then you deserve the kudos and should make it more popular in physics community. Perhaps, 'Prytz paradox'? :).
You seem willing to give 'Graviton' a chance to exist. If that is the case, then
Gravitational waves also exist. And Wikipedia and other sources tell us that Gravitational waves represent alternating deformities in Space, something that you had said is certainly a Nothing. In other words, a 'Not-thing' is capable of vibrating, which vibration is propagated at speed,
c.
According to Wikipedia, as a gravitational wave passes,... distances between free objects (not acted on by any force), increase and decrease rhythmically as a gravitational wave passes.
Akinbo
report post as inappropriate
Akinbo Ojo replied on Dec. 5, 2014 @ 18:05 GMT
John P. (to differentiate from John M), I just took a nap and part of my 'day dreaming' activity was what else to tell you. Peter J., seems to have partly beaten me to it in his recent post on this thread on on Dec. 5, 2014 @ 14:38 GMT. But let me still go ahead...
Actually our debate extends to the historical one, whether motion was an absolute or relative phenomenon? Recall Newton vs...
view entire post
John P. (to differentiate from John M), I just took a nap and part of my 'day dreaming' activity was what else to tell you. Peter J., seems to have partly beaten me to it in his recent post on this thread on on Dec. 5, 2014 @ 14:38 GMT. But let me still go ahead...
Actually our debate extends to the historical one,
whether motion was an absolute or relative phenomenon? Recall Newton vs Leibniz & Mach. Do things move because another thing is looking? Analogous to your arguments with Georgina about whether the Moon was there if no one is watching. Or do things move irrespective of whether things are looking?
Our Earth spins on its axis. We know this because we observe day and night. Suppose the Great Simulator were to remove the Sun and all other things in the universe leaving the Earth alone, will the Earth continue to spin? Note that in a simulated universe the Sun can be inserted and extinguished depending on the whims of the Simulator.
I actually wanted to use quantum mechanical particle spin, but the concept appears incomplete and flawed in places. But the question still applies, will a lone electron in the universe spin?
I think it is agreed to Leibniz, Mach and Newton that the phenomenon of motion can only take place when there is a 'thing' to do the looking and agree that motion took place. In a lucky universe, the Sun and Stars may be there so motion can be said to take place.
In an unlucky universe, without Sun and Stars, will there be Earth motion?
If the Earth would still continue spinning, despite removing the Sun and every thing, including quantum vacuum particles, then by our definition Something must be doing the looking, even if that Something is still regarded as a non-participant and a nothing. Without anything whatsoever capable of testifying to it, the Earth would stop moving and only continue again when something is introduced to look.
Regards,
Akinbo
*Actually, I wonder if I made myself coherent or just blabbing.
*Peter, J. used ISM, which I presume is interstellar matter and I was wondering if in the theoretical considerations, this could also be eliminated leaving only empty matter-free vacuum.
*I am not sure you have found time yet to read the links to Newton's arguments in an earlier post.
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
John Prytz replied on Dec. 6, 2014 @ 10:50 GMT
Akinbo,
Rather than address your specific post about the lone Earth, I've already done some pondering about the lone electron, which I copy here for your amusement.
THE WORLDVIEW OF THE LONE ELECTRON
One way of coming to terms with the cosmos is to do thought experiments and keeping things simple. When you come to terms with the simple picture, then you can gradually build up...
view entire post
Akinbo,
Rather than address your specific post about the lone Earth, I've already done some pondering about the lone electron, which I copy here for your amusement.
THE WORLDVIEW OF THE LONE ELECTRON
One way of coming to terms with the cosmos is to do thought experiments and keeping things simple. When you come to terms with the simple picture, then you can gradually build up the complexity until you start to model the real cosmos. There’s nothing much simpler than to imagine an entire universe that contains one and only one electron – absolutely nothing else: just the Lone Electron. What sort of worldview would our Lone Electron have or we have of it? Actually it would be Boring with a capital B.
With respect to a Lone Electron universe, let’s consider…
ACCELERATION/DECELERATION: None. The same argument applies as with velocity.
ARROW OF TIME: If there is no time experienced by the Lone Electron, then there can be no arrow of time either. In short, the Lone Electron has no experience of a past, present, or future.
CHARGE: Yes, the electron has a charge of minus one or in other words a negative charge of one unit. However, in order for charge to be meaningful, it has to be acting with or against another charge of which there is none. So, does our Lone Electron have charge in this context or doesn't it?
COLOUR: An electron is colourless. In any event you need photons, electromagnetic energy, light waves, to transmit (wavelength and frequency) what we (our brains) interpret as colour. Our drab, bland, colourless Lone Electron has no photons to transmit any information about itself, and there are no eyeballs and brains to interpret that information in any event.
ELECTROMAGNETISM: The electron is most associated with electromagnetism and the electromagnetic force. The associated force particle is the photon and electrons can absorb and emit photons (absorb and emit energy). However, in this scenario, there are no photons, so therefore there is no electromagnetic force. In any event, a force is only a meaningful concept if there are two of more particles involved, since, if you are the sum total of things, you can’t give off or receive a force.
ENTROPY: Entropy is a statistical concept where over time, left to themselves, things tend to go from an ordered state to a disordered state, like before-and-after pictures of a wild party. One electron does not make for statistical analysis, so the electron’s state of order or disorder is what it is. It doesn't increase nor decrease. In fact it’s rather meaningless to philosophize over it.
EQUILIBRIUM: The Lone Electron is in a state of equilibrium with respect to its surroundings. It could hardly be otherwise since there are no other surroundings except nothingness.
EXISTENCE: Yes, it would be incorrect to say our Lone Electron didn't exist. However, there’s nothing else around it to verify that existence or give any meaning to it.
GRAVITY: Since the electron has mass, it must have gravity. However, gravity only has real meaning between two (or more) objects with mass, like the Earth – Moon – Sun trilogy; or, in the most traditional of traditional scenarios, the Earth – falling apple scenario that, according to mythology, inspired Isaac Newton. So, in the Lone Electron scenario, it’s pretty meaningless to talk about gravity. In fact it might be meaningless to talk about gravity since gravity is equivalent to acceleration as shown by Einstein. Acceleration implies motion or velocity which in the context of a one electron universe is meaningless. Further, the (hypothetical) particle associated with gravity, the graviton, would be conspicuous by its absence in this Lone Electron thought experiment.
MASS: Yes, the electron has mass. However, it’s yet another particle, known as the Higgs Boson that gives particles with mass, their mass. The Lone Electron has no Higgs Bosons around to give it muscle.
MOMENTUM: None. The same argument applies as with velocity.
PHASE: There is no phase. One electron does not a solid, liquid, gas or plasma make. An electron, all by its little lonesome, cannot undergo any phase change, like say from a liquid to a solid.
SENSE OF IDENTITY: Our Lone Electron doesn't have a sense of self-awareness since it isn't conscious and in any event it has nothing else around it to provide a contrast to itself.
SPACE: Since the Lone Electron exists in this universe, it has to exist in some sort of realm, a concept we call space. However, space is not a thing, and the electron is, so while the two share a common existence, its all apples and oranges.
SPIN: Our electron will either be spin-up or spin-down. However, orientation, as with velocity, is always with respect to something else. If you removed all of the rest of the Universe (stars, planets, constellations, the Sun, etc.) just leaving the Earth, well the labels North and South Pole become meaningless. There no longer is anything that’s up or down or sideways that one can orient the Earth’s axis to. We know north because that’s where the North Star is located. No North Star. We know south because the Southern Cross is overhead. No Southern Cross. A compass isn't any help because it’s only an arbitrary convention what we call north and south and in any event the compass is an example of that ‘something else’.
STRONG NUCLEAR FORCE: The strong nuclear force only applies in keeping an atomic nucleus together. Protons, with a positive charge, would like to repel each other. That they are held in check – confined to quarters - is due to the strong nuclear force. There is no atomic nucleus in a one electron universe, therefore there’s no strong nuclear force.
TIME: An electron is a fundamental particle, a basic building block. It doesn't change any spots and there’s nothing else around to cause the electron’s spots to change or to ‘witness’ change. No change means the concept of time is meaningless, so therefore, no time unit need apply here for a job.
VELOCITY: No, the concept of velocity is meaningless in this context. Velocity only has meaning when measured relative or compared to something else. If you drive along at sixty miles per hour, that’s relative to the landscape you are driving past, like the surface of the road. The Lone Electron has no landscape for its velocity to be measured against.
WEAK NUCLEAR FORCE: The weak nuclear force governs radioactivity, or the decay of unstable atomic nuclei into more stable forms. One type of radioactivity (Beta decay) can emit an electron, but in the absence of any nuclei, unstable or otherwise, our Lone Electron has no connection with the weak nuclear force since in this, our electron’s universe, there ain't no such critter.
So we see how much more meaningful it is to have more than one item per universe. Fortunately, our Universe satisfies that criteria. But the real interesting bit, at least from a philosopher’s point of view, is how some of our most take-it-for-granted concepts that form our worldview, disappear or have no meaning when applied to just one entity. It’s impossible for us to imagine a worldview without there being time, the arrow of time (past, present, and future) or entropy. It’s impossible for us to imagine a worldview without mass or gravity. It’s impossible for us to imagine a worldview without motion. Yet it is entirely possible to imagine a Lone Electron universe where exactly that worldview has to apply!
John Prytz
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
John Prytz replied on Dec. 8, 2014 @ 12:01 GMT
Akinbo,
Regarding your 5 December (14:01) post...
What do gravity-waves wave in?
Here's a rather long list of all those laws, principles and relationships of physics that require space-as-a-thing (of structure and substance).
??????????? Oops!
It turned out to be a rather short list of absolutely nothing at all.
Once upon a time light-waves (and other electromagnetic photons waving in the cosmic breeze) were thought to require something to wave in, but that proved not to be so, so I rather suspect gravity-waves (gravitons waving in the cosmic breeze) won't require space-as-a-thing either. Just a hunch.
By the by, the graviton, though undetected to date, is considered to be part of the standard model of particle physics.
John Prytz
report post as inappropriate
Akinbo Ojo replied on Dec. 8, 2014 @ 14:22 GMT
John, P
Your hunches are generally good, but when it comes to Space perhaps not as sharp.
You said: "Once upon a time light-waves (and other electromagnetic photons waving in the cosmic breeze) were thought to require something to wave in, but that proved not to be so, so I rather suspect gravity-waves (gravitons waving in the cosmic breeze) won't require space-as-a-thing...
view entire post
John, P
Your hunches are generally good, but when it comes to Space perhaps not as sharp.
You said: "
Once upon a time light-waves (and other electromagnetic photons waving in the cosmic breeze) were thought to require something to wave in, but that proved not to be so, so I rather suspect gravity-waves (gravitons waving in the cosmic breeze) won't require space-as-a-thing either".
You are mistaken in that regard because light is wave and IMHO not particle. What light is waving in may not yet have been put to rest in the physics community, but for those of us who believe space is something, we don't need to look too far to see that space can be waved in.
If you have a circular arrangement of beads arranged as 'O' for example and a "disturbance of space" passes by, say through the centre of the 'O' - here is what you will observe:
VIEWEven, though I am of the view that GR has shortcomings, this prediction has implications that can help cure shortcomings in SR and GR regarding what role space can play in energy transmission. This becomes more significant when gravitational waves are accepted to represent disturbances in space as a thing (as you can visualize in linked diagram) and their velocity is
c.
It was on the basis that electric and magnetic fields propagate at a velocity with a SAME value
c that made light also come to be termed an 'electromagnetic' wave. If what is good for the goose is good for the gander, using the 'same reasoning from mechanical principles', if light travels at same velocity
c that gravitational waves travel, then light can be regarded as a belonging to a part of the spectrum of which gravitational waves belong; and my own hunch tells me that this being so light must also be capable of propagating as a disturbance in the same 'space as a thing'.
I think enough has been exchanged, if you were ready to give benefit of doubt to space you would have done that already. But as you are bent on not allowing it to exist, there is not much hope for it in your Simulated universe.
Regards,
Akinbo
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
John Prytz replied on Dec. 9, 2014 @ 12:25 GMT
Akinbo,
I'd better clarify one thing first. I like to have a foot in each camp - one in the virtually real landscape camp; one in the really real landscape camp. In the latter I state that space is a not-thing. In the former everything is bits and bytes.
And by extension, in the really real landscape, time is also a not-thing without structure and substance. Time is another of our mental creations. The Big Bang did not create time in the same way that it did not create space. So if space is a not-thing and time is a not-thing, then space-time is a not-thing.
Actually there is one construction that would prove that space-is-a-thing. That is the concept commonly called a wormhole. That would have to exist in something, that something being space-as-a-thing. Alas, wormholes are to date just pure speculation, a postulate, an abstract theoretical construct, a 'what if' object. Wormholes would have a bit of credibility if there was just one tiny bit of experimental evidence for them. No such evidence.
Modern physics and science are awash with speculative, postulated, theoretical 'what if' flotsam and jetsam, from string theory to extra dimensions to super-symmetry to the Multiverse to dark matter to a Big Bang that could create time and space (not to mention matter and energy), even extending so far to any verification of the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence despite over fifty years of searching. The history of science is littered with thousands of theories than didn't pan out. Many scientists talk-the-talk; few walk-the-walk.
IMHO one such bit of theoretical talk-the-talk nonsense that won't pan out is space-as-a-thing. I really require one shred of experimental evidence for space-as-a-thing. It appears to be too much to ask for.
John Prytz
report post as inappropriate
Akinbo Ojo replied on Dec. 9, 2014 @ 14:45 GMT
John,
RE:
IMHO one such bit of theoretical talk-the-talk nonsense that won't pan out is space-as-a-thing. I really require one shred of experimental evidence for space-as-a-thing. It appears to be too much to ask for.It is not too much to ask for. Several have been given to you but you turned them down without even looking at them or discrediting them.
If you are still interested in continuing the dialogue, the only other way therefore is for you to give your own one shred of philosophically, physically and mathematically absolutely incontrovertible experimental evidence for space-as-a-nothing.
I believe there is not one you can bring up that cannot be controverted by reasoning with Newtonian wisdom.
Akinbo
report post as inappropriate
Georgina Woodward replied on Dec. 9, 2014 @ 21:33 GMT
John, Akinbo,
Re no evidence for space as a thing: What about the evidence from "curvature of space-time" in the proximity of gravitational bodies? This has been accurately measured by space probes and is presented as confirming Einstein's theory. Whereas it is actually just not contradicting his theory.
Space-time
is the output of sensory data processing. Space-time is not being deformed by gravity in founadtional, external,Object reality reality because it does not exist in external reality. With this viewpoint, curved space time is not deviating the light paths. Something else is. It can be proposed that the light paths are deviated because of the effect of gravity on the medium of
space and those altered light paths give an output Image reality showing curved space-time.
report post as inappropriate
Akinbo Ojo replied on Dec. 10, 2014 @ 10:29 GMT
Georgina,
I marvel at the unique terms/tools that you use to apprehend the truth. I say unique because the general physics community does not use tools and names like Object reality, Image reality, Sensory data processing, etc to do physics. I don't either but while not supporting adoption of those unconventional tools, it does help in revealing certain unclear aspects and can be used to...
view entire post
Georgina,
I marvel at the unique terms/tools that you use to apprehend the truth. I say unique because the general physics community does not use tools and names like Object reality, Image reality, Sensory data processing, etc to do physics. I don't either but while not supporting adoption of those unconventional tools, it does help in revealing certain unclear aspects and can be used to debate as you have been doing with John on the question of super-position. In that area, I however support the simpler and clearer way John Prytz has discussed the quantum mystery. Physics will take place whether or not there is a sensor of reality.
On your latest post, I agree substantially with your reasoning and I may have the following questions/ additions for General relativitists to address:
- More or less, in GR space-time is a thing. It can be curved. It can vibrate, as gravitational waves traverse it. Now if the amalgam of space and time is a thing, how can the quality of being a thing be absent in its components, specifically the space component?
- On the "curvature of space-time" in the proximity of gravitational bodies, does this curved space-time accompany the body in its motion or does the body newly curve previously flat space-time that is encountered in motion (like the common ball on rubber sheet depiction)?
- If velocity of light is measured between points A and B, within the 'curvature of space-time in the proximity of gravitational bodies' (Peter J recently prefers to use 'bubble', so within the bubble), will the value obtained have the same value for light velocity between points A and B, same distance apart but now outside the 'bubble' or in flatter space-time? Already, GR seems to suggest from experimentally observed delay of signals traversing a celestial body that the velocity of light will have a higher value outside the bubble and slower within the bubble due to effect of gravity.
- If what GR suggests and seems to be experimentally found is correct, can that value of light velocity obtained within the Earth's bubble or curved space-time (299792458m/s) be elevated to a universal or global status obtainable everywhere in the cosmos and for all time?
THEN for 'Quantum Machinists' and 'Photon theorists':
When particles approach gravity they are hastened and move faster (acceleration to gravity). If this is a hallmark of particle behaviour, and contrary to this hallmark light slows down as it approaches gravity, should the idea not be questioned that having contravened this hallmark, the idea of light being particle should be seriously reviewed, if not abandoned entirely?
THEN a few comments/queries for 'Image-Object realists':
I agree with the viewpoint that
"curved space time is not deviating the light paths and that Something else is".
But what could this something else be? You have in the past suggested that this 'something else' must have altered properties varying with altitude but you have refrained from going further. What do you mean by effect of gravity on the medium of space? Can space have a variable property with altitude? Does Space have mass that it can be affected by gravity or is it the 'something else' that has the mass and is affected by gravity and giving us "Output Image reality"?
Regards,
Akinbo
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
John Prytz replied on Dec. 10, 2014 @ 12:18 GMT
Akinbo / Georgina,
My physical evidence that is suggestive that space is a not-thing is that it cannot be detected by any apparatus possessed by or known to humans. There is no recipe for the creation of space. You cannot create something from nothing, and that includes space-as-a-thing, via the Big Bang. A not-thing requires no apparatus to detect it and no recipe to create it. Get up in front of an audience of your peers and create some space-as-a-thing from scratch, from nothingness and win yourself a trip to Stockholm and a Nobel Prize. I'm not going to hold my breath however waiting for this miracle.
I've already pointed out that things like gravity influencing light; gravity influencing space-probes, can take place in nothingness. You don't need a curvature of space-time to get light and space probes to curve under the influence of gravity.
John Prytz
report post as inappropriate
Akinbo Ojo replied on Dec. 10, 2014 @ 14:21 GMT
Okay John, I think Georgina and I can pin you to the ground now. But wont use a 'choke hold' method hoping you don't get too slippery...
You say that, gravity can influence light and that you don't need a curvature of space-time to get light to curve.
Very well. Can you reveal the precise mechanism how gravity influences light so that it curves without the necessary mediation of space or space-time?
I believe that is not too much to ask. You earlier passed some of the responsibility to particle physicists and the standard model, but I want you to take responsibility. You earlier mentioned gravitons, if that is your mechanism can you say exactly how the graviton interacts with the photon, and what the experimentally observable consequences will be?
Akinbo
report post as inappropriate
Akinbo Ojo replied on Dec. 10, 2014 @ 17:52 GMT
Further to previous post...
In Newtonian view, gravity acts only between things that have mass, while in General relativity gravity acts on the nature of spacetime.
Photon has no mass and in the particle view is not a vibration of space or spacetime nor does it emit gravitons.
Therefore how does graviton act on a massless photon?
If action-reaction holds and cannot be violated, can there be any effect on a photon which does not emit gravitons and which can therefore not exchange gravitons with a celestial body?
report post as inappropriate
Georgina Woodward replied on Dec. 10, 2014 @ 20:42 GMT
Akinbo, All,
What is out there is either space or space-time, the terms can not be used interchangeably. An observer receives sensory data, lets say just light for now, EM radiation. The data that arrives together can have taken different lengths of time to get there. So the data is amalgamated into an output that has a time component within it. Does that mean that the external reality...
view entire post
Akinbo, All,
What is out there is either space or space-time, the terms can not be used interchangeably. An observer receives sensory data, lets say just light for now, EM radiation. The data that arrives together can have taken different lengths of time to get there. So the data is amalgamated into an output that has a time component within it. Does that mean that the external reality shares the same temporal spread? No because the sensory data from which images are formed can be distributed within a space that has no time dimension,just space. However old or young the data it exists -Now together in space.
The potential sensory data distribution is altered in the proximity of a gravitational body. It is known that the speed of light is affected by the medium it travels through. Air and water are an example of two substances with different refractive indices demonstrating the phenomenon of refraction.A varying refractive index curves light in a way that is in appearance similar to curved space-time. I don't think this is a new idea. Perhaps then, it is not flexible space-time that is causal but a medium affecting the distribution of the data in space that can be used to from a space-time output reality.This is
evidence that the space is not empty because empty space can not cause varying refraction.That is in contradiction to John's statement that there is no evidence. Whether the alternative model is considered acceptable is another matter.
It is necessary to propose uni-temporal foundational space as it overcomes the temporal paradoxes, allows absolute space and relative space-time to 'co-exist' as different facets of reality, without contradiction,it makes relativity intuitive and the perceived arrow of time,despite non simultaneity of events, explicable.
It can not be that flexible space-time is causal because it is not space time that exists in the external, foundational Object reality.What is causing gravity then? Something happening in space. My hunch is that it is to do with the result of all absolute motion through space. That is what is missing in a model where a static three dimensional reference frame is moving through time.
Akinbo, re terminology. I am using terms necessary to describe what is going on.They relate to the explanatory framework for physics that I am using. Two diagrams and link to web site recently uploaded to the Alternative models of reality forum page. I could use full description of each of the terms I want to use each time instead of just the specific new term but it makes the communication unwieldly. Would you have said to Einstein ' I don't support the use of Calculus because that's not how we do physics.'
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Georgina Woodward replied on Dec. 10, 2014 @ 21:09 GMT
John wrote,
"I've already pointed out that things like gravity influencing light; gravity influencing space-probes, can take place in nothingness. You don't need a curvature of space-time to get light and space probes to curve under the influence of gravity."
There is a difference between not requiring something in your model of reality and there being no evidence for it.
report post as inappropriate
Akinbo Ojo replied on Dec. 11, 2014 @ 08:28 GMT
Georgina, it is difficult not to agree with almost all what you have stated here, including inventing your own mathematical/ physical tools.
I zero in on,
"This is evidence that the space is not empty because empty space can not cause varying refraction".
This appears to imply that we can have 'empty space' that does not cause varying refraction and 'space that is not empty'.
The next task is what could that space that is not empty contain that is causing the refraction? I suggest 'dark matter' but I wont dwell on it so as not to distract from the conversation.
Regards,
Akinbo
report post as inappropriate
Eckard Blumschein replied on Dec. 11, 2014 @ 10:10 GMT
Akinbo,
Georgina quoted in "Faster than light" from Wiki: "Von Guericke sidestepped the vexed question of the meaning of "nothing" by asserting that all objective reality fell into one of two categories - the created and the uncreated. Space and Time were objectively real but were uncreated, whereas matter was created. In this way he created a new fundamental category alongside Aristotle's category of substance, that of the uncreated. His understanding of Space is theological and similar to that expressed [a bit later] by Newton in the Scholium to the Principia".
Georgina misspelled him Guerricke, perhaps because of similarity with the French word guerra. He was born Gericke and honored by nobility in French: de Guericke. The reason for me to mention him again is that his experiments on empty space led to steam engine as well as to electricity.
It is demonstrably possible to evacuate space from air and also shield it from electric and other fields.
Eckard
report post as inappropriate
John Prytz replied on Dec. 11, 2014 @ 11:55 GMT
Akinbo,
Gravity can influence light (photons) just like gravity can influence electrons, neutrons and protons. I think the correct term is that photons have no "rest mass". But a photon can still convey a force. An ultra-violet (UV) photon can do your skin a mischief; an X-ray photon can damage your cellular DNA; an infra-red (IR) photon can heat up a rock and cause it to expand, and we've all probably seen those scientific 'toys' of rotating panes of metal that go round and round inside a glass ball when light (photons) hit them. A similar analogy applies to gravitons which also have no "rest mass" but which can do you a mischief if you try to parachute out of a plane but forget to put your parachute on first. So, gravity and EM can interact. They are both things. The what is not in doubt. But as I mentioned in an earlier post, the how and the precise why what happens when what happens is still mysterious. I don't feel guilty for lack of an exact explanation since you won't get one anywhere or from anyone else either.
Can you explain exactly why the south pole and the north pole of a magnet attract? Or why and how the north pole of a magnet repels another north pole? You know what happens, but the how and why is beyond you to explain. You know an electron and a positron will annihilate upon contact. You know what happens but not the how and exact nature of why what happens. You know that the electric charge on a proton is equal and opposite to that on an electron. Can you tell me why? Neither can anyone else. Can you actually tell me what electric charge actually is? You know what it does but how does it do it and why does it do it?
Maybe it's all just programmed software - bits and bytes!
John Prytz
report post as inappropriate
Georgina Woodward replied on Dec. 12, 2014 @ 02:15 GMT
Q. "Can you explain exactly why the south pole and the north pole of a magnet attract? Or why and how the north pole of a magnet repels another north pole? You know what happens, but the how and why is beyond you to explain. You know an electron and a positron will annihilate upon contact. You know what happens but not the how and exact nature of why what happens. You know that the electric charge on a proton is equal and opposite to that on an electron. Can you tell me why? Neither can anyone else. Can you actually tell me what electric charge actually is? You know what it does but how does it do it and why does it do it? " John Prytz
Magnetism is explicable if in foundational reality, rather than output Image reality, there is a medium that is disturbed by the synchronized vibration of many electrons. With all /most of the electrons aligned, the electron spin at each end of the magnet is opposite, producing a different disturbances. The recognizable magnetic field being the detectable output of that disturbance of the medium. Not the same disturbance caused by electromagnetic radiation so not detectable as light but detectable when same or opposite poles are brought close together or iron filing s are scattered around or a compass is brought close.
As for charge I have speculated that the vibration of charged particles might set up tidal forces. Same tidal force will act against each other. Imaging push against push and pull against pull. Whereas opposite tidal forces will enhance each other leading to attraction.Pull with push and push with pull.I can also speculate that these kinds of interactions might also act within atoms giving the strong nuclear force. I find it hard to satisfactorily comprehend magnetism and charge without these kinds of consideration.
report post as inappropriate
Akinbo Ojo replied on Dec. 13, 2014 @ 19:45 GMT
According to John and Peter from their recent discussion on the Alternative Models of Reality thread, there are 195 countries. These make up our 7 continents.
If there was Not-thing between them we will have One continent, a Pangaea. Thankfully, we have Something between them, water in the form of oceans so we have Many continents, not One.
In a simulated or real universe, we have Many things. If there was Not-thing between them, we will have only One thing in the universe. Again, thankfully, we have Something between them, even if we are ungrateful to that Something and call it a Not-thing.
If Not-thing is between things then we have only One existing thing and not Many. Only what exists can separate things. A void cannot separate things.
On a computer simulation or screen, Space is given its respect and depicted as doing separation of things. If no pixels are allocated to it in a picture, the screen will show only One thing.
Let me round up with one quote from an internet source:
"The problem of finding the one thing that lies behind all things in the universe is called the problem of the one and the many. Basically stated, the problem of the one and the many begins from the assumption that the universe is one thing. Because it is one thing, there must be one, unifying aspect behind everything. This aspect could be material, such as water, or air, or atoms"There is a lot to ponder on the subject. Just Google One and Many in philosophy.
Space is not a Not-thing, but one of the two Great separators, the other being Duration or 'Time'.
He or she who hath ears to hear let him hear.
More later, if need be.
Regards,
Akinbo
report post as inappropriate
hide replies
Georgina Woodward wrote on Nov. 29, 2014 @ 01:11 GMT
It makes far more sense that the Object universe, what is, is not expanding but merely continuously recycling itself. What is being observed expanding then is the Image reality created from processing of received EM radiation. Radiation that persisted in the environment, after the configurations of objects forming events, from which it scattered, ceased to be.So the Object universe is not all...
view entire post
It makes far more sense that the Object universe, what is, is not expanding but merely continuously recycling itself. What is being observed expanding then is the Image reality created from processing of received EM radiation. Radiation that persisted in the environment, after the configurations of objects forming events, from which it scattered, ceased to be.So the Object universe is not all that is seen but something else. The Earth is not a stationary observer of the whole universe expanding away from it but moving as it orbits the sun and with the motion of the solar system and motion of our galaxy which takes it away from the origins of the majority of the sensory data being received. The Earth is the center of the fabricated Image reality visible universe but has no preferential position within the unseen Object universe.
Experiment Space-time in the output image reality is a nothingness because no sensory data was provided by it from which to create an Image reality representing it. However that does not mean that foundational space is just an emptiness. To show this it might be possible to create turbulence in a vacuum, using various kinds of apparatus.For example spinning food processing or blender type blades or something on a much, much smaller scale as the effect may be extremely small. That turbulence should affect the way in which light travels through that space. It maybe that it is very difficult to produce turbulence if it is a super fluid that wants to move as a whole but it could be tried. Surely overcoming inertia the fluid resisting change of trajectory must be moved or altered in some way, which may be detectable using changes to EM passage in proximity as an indicator. Compare before motion and after motion light paths.The turbulence should persist even if for a very short time after the motion has stopped. So disturbance of the light directly can be discounted and any disturbance can be attributed to disturbance of the vacuum filling medium.
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Georgina Woodward replied on Nov. 29, 2014 @ 03:26 GMT
What about a microscopic version of an old style washing machine paddle which mixes things up one way and then the other? That has a chance a churning up something, if its there to be churned.
report post as inappropriate
Peter Jackson replied on Dec. 5, 2014 @ 14:38 GMT
Georgina,
Any motion at all wrt the local ISM rest frame, linear as well as angular, creates twin vortices (fermion pairs), with density increase subject to speed. Thus a rock rapidly nearing the sun or an ionosphere becomes a comet.
But John's view may be none the less valid if we properly discern condensed 'matter' from the dark energy condensate, which doesn't itself couple with EM (unlike 'ether'). All particles are on the sum of their spin states. John's 'no-thing' is fine as long as 'thing' is constrained to condensed matter (which does not produce the Casimir force).
Momentum is conserved, so the 'spin is continuous not reversing. But if you observe a particle simplified to a sphere spinning clockwise (electron), then observe it from the rear, what spin does it have?
To also comply with conservation laws; focussing energy to local vortices (which then DO couple with EM fluctuations as we know) leaves a condensate density gradient around it. (The process is quite well approximated by QED and QCD).
Are such cross-discipline coherent descriptions becoming more intuitive? Does anything leap out which they don't immediately appear to offer resolutions for?
Best regards
Peter
report post as inappropriate
Georgina Woodward replied on Dec. 5, 2014 @ 20:52 GMT
Hi Peter,
Paragraph 1. Your conjecture? or accepted theory?
2.You wrote "But John's view may be none the less valid if we properly discern condensed 'matter' from the dark energy condensate, which doesn't itself couple with EM (unlike 'ether')." You refer to John's view, what view would that be? He has written copious amounts,expressing numerous points of view on many different...
view entire post
Hi Peter,
Paragraph 1. Your conjecture? or accepted theory?
2.You wrote "But John's view may be none the less valid if we properly discern condensed 'matter' from the dark energy condensate, which doesn't itself couple with EM (unlike 'ether')." You refer to John's view, what view would that be? He has written copious amounts,expressing numerous points of view on many different discussion pages. Far more than even I am prepared to read as it would consume my life completely at the rate he is uploading it. Well if he wants his no thing to mean just no condensed matter that's what he should specify. And that makes the whole visible universe no thing because the objects seen are outputs of EM data processing not condensed matter things.
Dark energy is something required to be added to the model of the expanding universe to account for that apparent expansion. If it, the material (Object) universe, made of all these particles, is not expanding but the Earth is moving away from the sources of the radiation being received, there is no dark matter in the Object universe.
3.You write "all particles are the sum of their spin states." Is that in quantum theory or in actual fact? A handy assumption can be made because their spin is unknowable prior to measurement but that does not mean that that is what is in Object reality.
you wrote "Momentum is conserved, so the 'spin is continuous not reversing. But if you observe a particle simplified to a sphere spinning clockwise (electron), then observe it from the rear, what spin does it have?"
You have just flipped from talking about quantum effects to talking about a relative perspective of something concrete. What spin does it have if it is both simultaneously. Leonard Susskind explains that the spin vector of an electron can be pointing in any direction in space. Obviously which would depend upon how you look at with eyes it if it was possible to do that. Its not possible. Measurement can be made using a magnetic field but the field causes the electrons to become aligned. Either releasing a photon in the process, called spin up or not releasing a photon called spin down.Are the electrons actually both spin up and spin down prior to measurement -no because it is the measuring apparatus, the position of the magnets in space that affects the orientation of the electron causing the alignment. It actually makes more sense tome to think small motion to become aligned no photon,just called spin down relatively large motion to become aligned photon release,just called spin up.
4.You write"To also comply with conservation laws; focussing energy to local vortices (which then DO couple with EM fluctuations as we know) leaves a condensate density gradient around it. (The process is quite well approximated by QED and QCD)." If you say so Peter but I haven't done the research or come across this, so I know nothing about it.
No these things as you describe them are not intuitive.
Was the double coat of the Samoyed a chance mutation and how cold were they before it occurred?
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Georgina Woodward replied on Dec. 5, 2014 @ 21:01 GMT
Correction: If it, the material (Object) universe, made of all these particles, is not expanding but the Earth is moving away from the sources of the radiation being received, there is no dark
energy in the Object universe.
I don't know why but I am only sometimes able to edit posts.
report post as inappropriate
Georgina Woodward replied on Dec. 6, 2014 @ 22:17 GMT
I previously wrote -'It actually makes more sense to me to think small motion to become aligned no photon,just called spin down relatively large motion to become aligned photon release,just called spin up.'
As the decay to spin up has a half life the spin down, no photon detected, group should include both undetectably small motion to alignment and not yet persuaded to align. Perhaps not yet persuaded are the ones caught between the forces to tilt up to gain alignment and tilt down to gain alignment. This gives a rater different picture of what spin up and spin down might actually represent.
report post as inappropriate
hide replies
John Prytz wrote on Nov. 29, 2014 @ 12:34 GMT
COSMOLOGY: IN THE BEGINNING, AND AFTERWARDS TOO
Gravity rules the cosmos. You can’t come to terms with the origins, evolutions and ultimate fates associated with cosmology or astrophysics without understanding gravity and the theory of relativity. Quantum theory also has to apply to cosmology (and astrophysics) any time you run across micro phenomena where quantum effects need to be...
view entire post
COSMOLOGY: IN THE BEGINNING, AND AFTERWARDS TOO
Gravity rules the cosmos. You can’t come to terms with the origins, evolutions and ultimate fates associated with cosmology or astrophysics without understanding gravity and the theory of relativity. Quantum theory also has to apply to cosmology (and astrophysics) any time you run across micro phenomena where quantum effects need to be considered and where they apply. Unfortunately, there are circumstances where both gravity and quantum physics need to be simultaneously considered - singularities. Unfortunately gravity and quantum physics aren't compatible.
The Alpha: In the beginning was the Big Bang event origin of our Universe – 13.7 billion years ago. The origin of the Universe (the Big Bang) was a quantum event because the initial size of our Universe was such that quantum effects dominated. At least that’s what the standard model dictates. It was also a time of extreme gravity, since all the mass of the cosmos was situated at the same time and place. But the relevant and separate equations of relativity and quantum mechanics break down as one approaches such extremes as would of applied at the Big Bang Alpha, giving rise for the necessity of a new theory of quantum gravity in order to come to terms with the Alpha object.
There are two main pillars of modern physics – relativity (part of classical physics) and quantum mechanics or quantum physics. Alas, the two pillars aren't compatible, and thus, a Holy Grail for physicists is to find a ‘Theory of Everything’ (TOE) that merges the two. Now in the day-to-day life of physicists, a TOE isn't essential, because relativity deals with the very big (the macro-universe) and quantum mechanics the very small (the micro-universe), and rarely do the twains meet. But, meet the two do in exceptional circumstances. Relativity deals with gravity (in the main), and on quantum scales, gravity is so weak that gravity can safely be ignored. But, there are objects that are very small, yet very dense – that is, tiny objects that have high gravity. There are basically two such objects – the Alpha Big Bang object or singularity and Black Hole singularities, or, to be honest, singularities in general regardless of where or when. And thus, to come to terms with the physics of singularities (immense gravity; micro size), the relativity and quantum worlds need to combine. So, TOE is basically a search for a theory of quantum gravity, and there are various highly complex and theoretical scenarios that fit the bill (though not yet even remotely experimentally confirmed).
Now while theories of everything or theories of quantum gravity are, in the final analysis, necessary (it just doesn't wash that relativity and quantum mechanics can’t be made compatible – you can’t have two separate software packages governing the overall Universe), it is my opinion that they aren't necessary to come to terms with singularities, which are usually described as an object of zero (point) dimensions and infinite density.
However, it is my opinion that it is absurd, in the extreme; to even slightly entertain the idea that a (Big Bang or Black Hole) singularity even remotely approaches such limits, far less acquires them. One cannot have a zero (point) dimensional object; one cannot have an object of infinite density. A singularity must have some sort of volume, and must have a finite density, even if the volume is very tiny, and the density is extremely extreme.
The basic logic is that a singularity has a finite volume and finite density. As you add more stuff to the singularity, the volume might remain the same but the density increases. However, as more and more stuff gets added, ultimately the density reaches the maximum possible, and from that point onwards, the volume of the singularity increases, finally increasing beyond the point where quantum mechanics can play any useful role, and gravity alone is the lone player left standing in the game.
Thus, a singularity could be large enough in volume that relativity theory alone can deal with the extreme gravitational conditions. The Big Bang object, containing the mass of the entire Universe, would be (the ultimate as) such a singularity. Massive (Galactic) Black Hole singularities, ditto. Singularities aren't quantum objects. If you continue to add mass to a Black Hole, it gets bigger; the singularity at the centre gets bigger. To believe otherwise is, IMHO, entering the realm of scientific fantasy.
The upshot off all this is that the Big Bang was not a quantum event, nor would a future Omega Big Crunch be, and likewise, Black Holes are not quantum objects.
The Omega: In the beginning was the Big Bang event origin of our Universe – 13.7 billion years ago. Now what? It’s taken 13.7 billion years to get to ‘now’; what’s the state of play in another 13.7 billion years, or even 137 billion years hence?
What’s the ultimate fate of our Universe? Our Universe is currently expanding post Big Bang – ever increasing in volume like a balloon blowing up and up. Now either our expanding Universe will one day cease to expand as gravity slows things down to a crawl, then a stop, then a reversal – a contracting Universe, or our Universe will keep on expanding forever and ever and a day, ultimately terminating in a Heat Death. A Heat Death is when the temperature of the entire Universe becomes uniform. Every place has the same temperature, and that’s going to be cold – as close to absolute zero as makes no odds. Thus the Heat Death is the death of heat. That’s the Universe ending not with a bang (or even a very Big Crunch) but with a whimper. I really don’t like that ending at all.
Assuming that the Universe will ultimately contract into a Big Crunch, what will happen? Well, as one gets ever closer to the Big Crunch, density increases (but will not, can not, become infinite) and temperature increases (but again, not infinitely so) and the volume of space decreases (but will never become infinitely tiny) and time just keeps ticking on. Further, we know there are lots of Black Holes out in the cosmos; both small and massive (such as exists at the centre of our own galaxy). As the Universe contracts, these Black Holes will get closer and closer, not only to each other, but to the rest of non-Black Hole stuff as well. Ultimately, all the non-Black Hole stuff will get ingested into existing Black Holes as the Universe shrinks and matter’s density increases. Of course large Black Holes will also ingest smaller Black Holes, until ultimately, at the time approaching Big Crunch; there will be one ultimate/universal Black Hole left containing all that was.
Then what happens? The conditions inside a Black Hole are still unknown, beyond the equations of current physics, but whatever parameters are present, infinities aren't among them (which might put me at odds with most astrophysicists). My reasoning is that no matter what, there’s only a finite amount of stuff comprising the universal Black Hole. Squeezed into a tiny area, the density will be extreme, but not infinitely so. The volume will be tiny, but not infinitely so. That is because there is an ultimate limit to how small length (hence volume) can get. The smallest possible length is known as Planck length and anything less than that space ceases to exist. Planck length is 1.6 x 10 to the minus 35 meters. Gravity might be so intense that not even light can escape, but it doesn't take an infinite amount of gravity to do that. And there can’t be a time equals zero, either at the beginning (Big Bang) or at the end (Big Crunch). Because time exists in discrete quantum units (Planck-Wheeler time units), one must go from a minus one (contracting phase) time unit directly to a plus one (expanding) time unit, as there can be no time unit where time equals zero. In other words, you go from a Big Crunch directly to a Big Bang, contraction to expansion, endlessly cycling or recycling. Or, the universal Black Hole ingesting in all matter and energy (approaching the Big Crunch) turns inside out and becomes a universal White Hole (the Big Bang) spewing out stuff (matter and energy).
That’s sort of akin to having four cars approach an intersection, on each from the north, south, east and west. If each car is one kilometre from the intersection, and each car is travelling at say 50 kilometres per hour, then it is clear this contraction of automobiles will result in a Big Crunch. However, it might be difficult to then go to an automobile expansion as the cars will be a wreck and in no condition to go anywhere! That’s one possibility.
The other possibility is that it might be unrealistic to expect in a contracting Universe that each and every bit and piece will meet at exactly the same point in time and space. Using our car analogy, what if each car was one kilometre away from the intersection, but say the north car was going 46 kilometres per hour, the east car 48 kilometres per hour, the south car 50 kilometres per hour, and the west car 52 kilometres per hour. Then, we can go directly from automobile contraction to automobile expansion as each car passes through the intersection while only having near misses with the other vehicles.
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Darius M wrote on Nov. 30, 2014 @ 17:25 GMT
Theory of Everything based on Kant and German idealism:
http://www.academia.edu/8991727/Phenomenal_World_as
_an_Output_of_Cognitive_Quantum_Grid_Theory_of_Everything_us
ing_Leibniz_Kant_and_German_Idealism
report post as inappropriate
John Prytz wrote on Dec. 1, 2014 @ 12:28 GMT
COSMOLOGY AND THE MULTIPLE YOU
The quantum mantra revolves around the theory that in physics, anything not forbidden is compulsory - given enough time and/or space. While there is nothing forbidden about an identical twin(s) of yourself existing elsewhere in the cosmos, how compulsory that is depends on what sort of cosmological model you adopt.
You are unique, aren't you? There...
view entire post
COSMOLOGY AND THE MULTIPLE YOU
The quantum mantra revolves around the theory that in physics, anything not forbidden is compulsory - given enough time and/or space. While there is nothing forbidden about an identical twin(s) of yourself existing elsewhere in the cosmos, how compulsory that is depends on what sort of cosmological model you adopt.
You are unique, aren't you? There never has been a person exactly like you before, there isn't now, and there never will be. Maybe! Depending on what's really real in all things cosmological, the odds that there are identical copies of you out there can range from plausible if improbable, to plausible and probable, to in fact near certainty, even certainty. The key issue revolves around the concept of infinity, or near infinity. If one has an infinite number of universes to play around with, and/or infinite time, then every possible history is, sooner or later, somewhere, compulsory.
The idea of a duplicate you or two or three isn't that far-fetched. Even on Planet Earth, this tiny speck within the cosmos, you have had, do have, and will have doppelgängers. But those are just look-alikes, not actual duplicates of you down to the nittiest-grittiest detail.
From the outset, some definitions are in order. We have the 'observable universe' which is that part of the entire Universe we can actually see in the here and now. Parts of the Universe that exist, but which light hasn't yet reached us, aren't part of our 'observable universe' - yet. The 'Universe' is all that we can ever know about, regions seen, and regions as yet unseen. Then there is the 'Multiverse' which, if it exists, are a conglomerate of separate Universes, each of which exists as a discrete entity in a three dimensional arena and which we could potentially interact with. Think of separate houses along a street you can visit in turn as separate universes. An overall analogy could be the nucleus part of a liver cell (our 'observable universe'), the entire cell (the Universe), and the grand collection of liver cells - the liver Multiverse as it were. Apart from those, there are parallel (mirror/shadow/alternate) universes which 'exist' - for lack of a better phrase - in other planes of existence and like houses that exist in a time instead of a special sequence, say on the same block of land, one can't easily travel from one to another. There's also the Many Worlds Interpretation variation of parallel universe, and simulated universes.
Firstly, could there be another you or multiple copies of you in the existing Universe? That's plausible, but probably unlikely.
Discussion: The existing Universe could be as near to infinite as makes no odds. It obviously can't be infinite, because it would take an infinite amount of time to expand the Universe to an infinite volume, and we know the Big Bang took place less than 14 billion years ago. And, the Universe can't contain an infinite amount of stuff; otherwise it would have to have an infinite volume to house it all. The fact that our night sky is dark, suggests that there can't be an infinite number of stars and galaxies in our observable universe, otherwise, no matter in which direction you looked, you'd see a star or galaxy and the night sky would be as light as the daytime. However, from our point of view, while not infinite, the Universe is still BIG! And it does contain a lot of stuff. It is within the bounds of possibility that within such a vast space, by chance, there could be a duplicate(s) of you, even more identical to you than any identical terrestrial twin you might happen to have. The odds aren't very high to be honest, but they aren't zero. However, even if an identical copy of you exists elsewhere out there, the probability is far greater that they already have, or someday will. The odds that two copies of you exist right now multiply the odds against by many orders of magnitude. Finally, even if another copy of you exists somewhere out there now, they are in all probability way to far away for the both of you to ever shake hands.
Secondly, could there be another you or multiple copies of you in a cyclic Universe? That's not only plausible, it borders on near certainty.
Discussion: Current cosmological observations suggest that our Universe began some 13.7 billion years ago in a Big Bang. Alas, the expansion of our Universe appears not only not slowing down, but ever accelerating due to something cosmologists and astrophysicists are calling dark energy - which they admit they don't really understand. Anyway, despite dark energy, many cosmologists cling to the concept that eventually the expansion will slow down, halt, and reverse, resulting in ultimately a Big Crunch billions of years in the future. That Big Crunch leads directly to another Big Bang - expansion - contraction - Big Crunch - Big Bang, etc., etc. Thus one has an ever oscillating or cyclic Universe with no beginning and no end. Ah, the concept of infinity (this case in time) rears its head. Since the Universe has already gone through an infinite number of these cycles, as surely as night follows day follows night, anything that could have happened, has happened, and happened an infinite number of times. That includes in infinite number of you, and the life your leading now right down to the last detail an infinite number of times, as well as leading differing lives in every possible variation from the major (marriage, career, children, lifespan, etc.) through to the relatively minor, right down to the highly trivial (like an infinite number of lifetimes absolutely identical to the current one except for one morning when you had an ever so slightly different breakfast cereal). Just think, somewhere in the infinite past, there was a version of you who lived an entire lifetime driving a car and never hit a red light! Again, anything that is within the realm of possibility, even if improbable in the extreme, has happened, and has happened again an infinite number of times. Such is the nature of infinity. The other nice thing about an infinite Universe (whether in time or space) is that all those unsuccessful eggs and sperm, all those failed or un-germinated seeds, all those spores and pollen that never bore fruit, all those lives that never were, all now get their moment in the sun!
There's an interesting variation on the above theme. Most of us are probably familiar with the sci-fi idea of being caught in a time-loop. You repeat an interval of time over again and again, probably until some weird sense of deja vu alerts you that something's not quite right. Expand the idea to the grandest scale possible. Big Bang - expansion - contraction - Big Crunch - Big Bang - expansion, etc. but each cycle isn't a new cycle with a new history and new possibilities rather each cycle is absolutely identical to the one that came before, and the one before that, etc. So, there will be an endless number of you, but there will be no wild new things in your lives, just the same old life, again and again. Maybe that's where we get our now and again sense of deja vu from.
Of course in a cyclic universe, one universe dies before the next is born, so a copy of you in a previous universe is kaput before your universe comes into being, and you will be kaput before the next cycle starts, so there's no meeting of identically like minds.
Thirdly, could there be another you or multiple copies of you in the Multiverse? That's not only plausible, but much more likely than if only our one Universe exists.
Discussion: We live in a Universe that is very friendly to life-as-we-know-it (life-not-as-we-know-it is another can of worms that need not concern us here). That is, it seems that the various physical laws and physical constants are fine tuned to allow our kind of life. If any of those values were slightly greater or slightly lesser, the biophysics and biochemistry that allow organic life forms to exist wouldn't be possible. For example, if gravity were ever so slightly weaker, atoms/molecules wouldn't coalesce into macro-bodies like galaxies and stars and planets. If gravity were ever so slightly stronger, stars would be far more massive on average, and the more massive a star, the shorter it's lifespan, to the point where there wouldn't be enough time for life in a young solar system to develop before the parent star went poof! So, that fine tuning leads to a trio of possibilities.
The first is that we (meaning the Universe's life forms) are just incredibly lucky that our one and only Universe just happened to meet all the Goldilocks criteria that allow us to exist. The second is that there is indeed, an intelligent designer responsible for those conditions. For want of a better word, let's call this intelligent designer "God". (There's an interesting variation on this theme and that is this Universe was created by an extraterrestrial intelligence in another Universe, a feat which might be relativity simple to a highly advanced technology able to manipulate the basic forces of physics.)
The third possibility is that there is a Multiverse. We can all agree that our Universe is a Goldilocks universe. We can also all agree that we can imagine other universes, while superficially akin to ours (it would at least have space and time), have differing values for some of all of the physical properties we associate with ours - differing values for the physical constants, the types and numbers of physical forces and particles, the physical laws that are part and parcel of physics, etc. It's akin to humans - we're all superficially similar, yet each one of us (past, present and future) is unique (even identical twins differ and the same applies to clones as well as nurture affects us as well as nature). So, like we have a multiverse of humans, we could have a multiverse of universes (the Multiverse), some of which, like ours, will be Goldilocks universes, although most won't be because some critical constant(s) or force(s) or particle(s) or law(s) will be different enough not to allow the complexity we associate with life-as-we-know-it.
In other words, there exist dozens, hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe multi-millions or billions (or more) of universes where the physical laws and constants may well be different. That being the case, most universes will be barren of life because their physics, hence chemistry, aren't compatible with life-as-we-know-it. But a few, by chance, will be Goldilocks Universes. It wouldn't surprise anyone that because we exist, our Universe must be a Goldilocks Universe.
How exactly a Multiverse would come about is neither here or there. But there is at least one theory. To help explain various observational cosmological anomalies that would follow a traditional Big Bang, several decades ago the idea was floated that immediately following the Big Bang came a period of ultra-rapid inflation, before the expansion settled down to a far slower rate. Today, inflation is widely accepted as part and parcel of the Big Bang model. However, inflation need not have ceased at the exact same nanosecond everywhere. That is, if inflation continued on at one point, another Universe would quickly form, and if inflation didn't shut down exactly at the same moment, another bubble or pocket or baby universe would bud off, and so on and so on, resulting in a sort of bubble/foam collective of universes - the Multiverse.
The upshot is that lots of universes (a Multiverse), could mean a lot of you! However, distances separating the various copies of you are now even vaster, so again, getting together for dinner and drinks isn't possible.
Fourthly, could there be another you or multiple copies of you in Parallel Universe(s)? It's plausible, but perhaps not all that probable.
Discussion: We've all seen various sci-fi shows where our heroes get propelled into some sort of parallel or mirror universe. The characters they meet are close to, but not identical to themselves. The history they encounter is similar to, but not identical to the history they know. Of course that's for the sake of the plot. A parallel universe could easily contain a parallel you. Unfortunately, sci-fi aside, while there's theoretical reasons to postulate parallel universes, there's no known way of getting to them (and therefore no way of meeting yourself - assuming another yourself exists). But like in the Multiverse concept, if there are multi-billions of parallel universes, that increases the odds of a duplicate you.
Fifthly, could there be another you or multiple copies of you in the 'Many Worlds Interpretation' of quantum physics? That's taken as given!
Discussion: There is a theory known as the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum physics that each time anything, from fundamental particle to human being, comes to a fork in the road as it were, and has to make a choice(s), both/all forks are taken (something can be, and not be at the same time). To accommodate both/all alternatives, this quantum decision making (in the case of the micro), or macro decision making (in the case of scales we're familiar with), the entire Universe splits, and where we had one Universe, we now have two (or more), one for each fork. Of course when you consider the number of forks that the Universe encounters, well it's been calculated that every second, some 10 to the 100th power of Universes need to be created. (Just think how many hundreds, perhaps thousands of decisions (usually quite trivial, often subconsciously) you make every day. There has to be a new Universe to accommodate every alternative. Of course that means that when you add up all these collected Universes, there must be a lot of you, and a lot of everything else, each one ever so subtly different. In the case of deciding between wearing a green dress or a red dress there are now two Universes - one with you in a green dress; one with you in a red dress. And as in the case of parallel universes, there's no known, even theoretical, way of getting from this (say green dress) one to say another one of them (say red dress) and thus exchanging greetings with your identical self or selves.
Lastly, could there be another you or multiple copies of you as a Simulation? That too is as close to certainty as makes no odds!
Discussion: Do you exist? I mean really, really exist and have a physical reality? That's a pretty dumb question you'll probably ask! The answer is an obvious 'yes'. But, what if I were to suggest that the odds are very high that you have no actual physical reality, and that I have no actual physical reality, and that in fact all terrestrial life, Planet Earth, perhaps the entire observable universe has no actual physical reality! In other words, what if we are a computer simulation!
Let's suppose, for argument's sake, that in the real physical Universe, there exists some tens of thousands of extraterrestrial civilizations which have evolved technology our equal or better; even more advanced than we can conceive of. The odds are high that most would have invented computers - hardware and software. Any one civilization, such as our own, have (to date) produced multi-thousands of computer programs, many of which simulate life forms - think of the hundreds, indeed thousands of computer or video games. No doubt these programs will grow, over time, ever more complex and lifelike until they simulate reality to the same degree as reality itself.
If one advanced civilization produces multi-thousands of individual computer programs that simulate an actual, or imagined, reality, what are the odds that we aren't one of those simulated thousands vis-à-vis being that advanced civilization that actually exists in real reality? How could you know if you were real (hardware), or imaginary (software)? I maintain there's no way of you knowing, at least for absolute sure.
There's only a relatively few actual civilizations, but untold numbers of created false (simulated) realities - what odds we are one of the real ones and not one of the imaginary/simulated many?
Perhaps our concept of 'God' is nothing more than a mythological version of some advanced, but hardly supernatural, extraterrestrial computer programmer! Now as long as nobody hits the delete key!
But of course if there are multiple copies of that computer program containing you then that equates to a lot of you! You could exist hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands of times over, all leading perhaps identical, but more likely as not, similar 'lives'. Now you quite obviously could not meet yourself as each piece of software is akin to a one universe - the collection of all the units of that software is akin to a type of Multiverse!
Is the idea really so way out in left field that there's not a snowball's chance in hell that it could be right? We have to look to advances in our own terrestrial computing power to determine that. Computer generated simulations are already realistic enough that they are used to train pilots and MDs and other humans in professional activities where mistakes in training, if done in real situations, could be disastrous. Our cinema industry has already produced computer generated virtual reality films, bypassing real actors and real scenery. It's entirely possible to bring back in a sense dead actors to star again in new productions. We've all be awed by computer generated special effects in films that are so realistic that if you didn't actually know better, you'd swear they were real.
Walk into any DVD store and you'll find thousands of video (computer) games and/or simulations that you can run on your PC. Most have 'humans' in various role-playing guises that are software generated and which you interact with. The reality factor is increasing by leaps and bounds. At what point will the software become complex enough such that these simulated 'beings' are advanced enough to have self-awareness? What happens when the computer software programming these virtual 'humans' becomes equal to the software (brains) that program us? What happens when the computer software complexity exceeds that of the human brain? Far fetched? Methinks not. Now just replace our virtual 'humans' with ourselves, and maybe, just maybe, we're the virtual reality in somebody (something) else's actual reality.
That theory is testable. While I can think of no way to prove I'm not a simulated being, one can find evidence that we do live in a simulated universe, and by implication, we too are simulated beings. No software (computer or human wetware - brains) is perfect. If there are any glitches, or software upgrades, they might be detectable as anomalous phenomena in some context or another. Like say one of the physical constants were tweaked and altered ever so slightly (and there is some evidence for that - the fine structure constant for example or the proton-electron mass ratio has apparently changed over astronomical time periods), or say the expansion of the Universe began to accelerate for no real apparent reason (that sounds familiar - recall dark energy). Computer software - from our experience - is always being upgraded and updated. If the same applies elsewhere, we could perhaps notice it if we're a product of that software.
Even though there could be multiple copies of a video game that contains you as a character, it's one you per copy, so again, no meeting yourself. That's not to prevent the creator of the game from including multiple copies of you within the one game - if so; well a conversation between you and copies of you won't be very interesting since you each know what you're going to say before you say it!
Finally, one bright note is evident. Even as you approach your own demise, take heart and rejoice, for somewhere out there, there is another you(s) to carry on, and on, and on, and on, and on! As the sun (once upon a time) never set on the British Empire, so to will the sun never set on you.
By the by, if you want to split hairs, you could insist that any copies of you aren't really identical in that the elementary particles, atoms and molecules making up your twin aren't the same elementary particles, atoms and molecules making you up. The flaw in that argument is that all fundamental particles, like say all electrons, are identical to as many decimal places as you care to measure and calculate.
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
John Prytz wrote on Dec. 2, 2014 @ 12:30 GMT
THE BRANES AND THE BULK AND THE BULK OF THE BRANES: THE BRANE NEW WORLD OF BRANEWORLDS
For millennia, New Age devotees have related observations of nebulous exotic entities from apparently alternative realities like Parallel Universes that have made a crossover into our reality. Rational people suggest that’s just so much bovine fertilizer. Or is it? Perhaps theoretical physics and String...
view entire post
THE BRANES AND THE BULK AND THE BULK OF THE BRANES: THE BRANE NEW WORLD OF BRANEWORLDS
For millennia, New Age devotees have related observations of nebulous exotic entities from apparently alternative realities like Parallel Universes that have made a crossover into our reality. Rational people suggest that’s just so much bovine fertilizer. Or is it? Perhaps theoretical physics and String Theory might just support such an exotic scenario, the scenario of the Braneworld.
Question: Might 3-Braneworlds equal Parallel Universes (or in mystic-speak Astral Planes; Alternative Realities; Spirit Worlds; Parallel Realities; Higher Planes of Existence; Higher Dimensions; Portals in Space-time, as well as a host of related New Age claptrap phrases that non-New Age squares indeed call claptrap) from which come ‘higher beings’, ‘astral entities’, our ‘enlightened space brothers’ or even plain ordinary everyday run-of-the-mill aliens.
You cannot have nebulous otherworldly beings, or alternate reality entities, without having an alternative place or reality or an other-world(s) from which they come from visiting from and call home. Higher planes of reality and associated phrases have been called so much poppycock and confined to the rubbish bin, but perhaps prematurely.
Well, String Theory comes to the rescue, if not for the benefit of New Age gurus, then for cosmologists and theoretical physicists. But perhaps we can kill the two birds with the one stone as it were.
It all starts with String Theory. Now you probably think of the elementary particles, if you think of them at all, as very tiny little billiard balls. However, some bright sparks decades ago came up with an alternative. Instead of a zoo full of different types of little billiard balls, there were tiny vibrating strings. How they vibrated determined what kind of elementary particle it was – one good vibration/second might be an electron; two good vibrations/second a positron; three good vibrations/second equate to a neutrino, etc.
Strings could either be open (like an ordinary piece of string) or closed loops like a circle or ellipse; somewhat like a doughnut.
Now these strings are one-dimensional. But there can be two-dimensional Stringy objects, called Branes, short for Membranes. In fact, Branes became the generic name for all structures in String Theory, usually identified as p-Branes (weak pun) where the “p” stood for the number of spatial dimensions. So a 1-Brane was a string; a 2-Brane was a membrane; a 3-Brane was akin to our own version of reality. A 3-Brane is commonly referred to as a 3-Braneworld.
Oh, there’s a catch. In order for String Theory to theoretically work, there has to be extra dimensions (I can hear New Age mystics cheering now), in fact nine spatial dimensions all up, plus the one dimension we call time. So, in fact you could go all the way up to a 9-Brane. Again all p-Branes have an extra time dimension as well tagged on. All up, that’s six more spatial dimensions than we are comfortable with, but they tend to be out-of-sight and out-of-mind. Most extra dimensions are extremely tiny and curled up and hiding in-between the bits and pieces, the flotsam and jetsam of the quantum realm. But one extra dimension could be extremely large indeed providing the space all else, like 3-Braneworlds, is housed in.
Now 3-Braneworlds have to exist in higher dimensional space, like a 4-Brane which we can’t traverse. It’s just akin to how a fridge magnet is ‘trapped’ on a 2-D fridge surface (a 2-Brane plus extra time dimension) yet resides within a 3-D (3-Brane plus additional time dimension) space. Or, to use another analogy, a 2-D shower curtain hangs in 3-D space but the water droplets are confined to the 2-D shower curtain surface. We’re confined to a 3-D universe ‘surface’ (3-Braneworld plus one time dimension) but that resides in a 4-D (4-Brane plus one time dimension) volume. To cut to the chase, lets just call that what our spatial 3-Braneworld universe reside in a realm of five space-time dimensions. That realm has been given a name – it’s called the Bulk. Why it is called the Bulk I have no idea, but that’s what it is named.
I've notched the Bulk up to being a five dimensional space-time (out of a possible ten), but it could just as easily I guess be the tenth space-time dimension (9 spatial and one of time). It doesn't really matter since we can’t directly see it, taste it, touch it, hear it or smell it, be it a 4-Brane or a 9-Brane. But regardless, the absolute key point is that gravity can connect 3-Braneworlds via the Bulk whether the Bulk has a 4-Brane, 5-Brane, 6-Brane, 7-Brane, 8-Brane or 9-Brane spatial dimensionality.
So much for the background theory: now, the interesting bit is what if our universe were in fact, in reality, really a 3-Braneworld (plus a single dimension of time) residing in 4-Brane spatial volume, or the equivalent, a five space-time dimensionality (the Bulk). What if in fact there were other 3-Braneworlds (each with a time dimension) residing in that same 4-Brane (plus time dimension) volume of five dimensional space-time (the Bulk). Because of that residing (or hiding) in a higher spatial dimension, two 3-Braneworlds could exist within millimetres of each other, unseen, separated by the Bulk. Why unseen? It’s back to those tiny open and closed strings and where they call home.
Closed strings are confined to our own 3-D or 3-Braneworld universe (like water droplets on that shower curtain) where they appear as those elementary particles that are associated with electromagnetism like photons and electrons, as well as those particles part and parcel to the strong and weak nuclear forces. These three forces are the quantum forces that rule our roost. If closed strings are the case for neighbouring 3-Braneworlds, then we can’t see them because their electromagnetic (light) particles, photons, are forever confined and trapped to that 3-Braneworld and never reach us. Other 3-Braneworlds are invisible to us. That leaves the fourth force, the non-quantum force, gravity.
Open strings are the force particles of gravity, called gravitons. Open strings can exist with one string end attached to our 3-Braneworld, the other string end to an alien 3-Braneworld. Open strings, in other words, could cross the Bulk from our 3-Braneworld to another 3-Braneworld and be attached to both. In other words, gravity is our best bet means of detecting other nearby 3-Braneworlds. But you can’t see gravity, so our neighboring 3-Braneworld is for all practical purposes is still invisible to us. However, you can ‘see’ the effects that gravity has on objects you can see. You can’t see the gravity that controls the flight of a baseball, but you can see the effect of gravity on the baseball.
Postulating a nearby 3-Braneworld explains a trilogy of puzzlements. One is Dark Energy, one is Dark Matter; the other third is why gravity is so weak relative to the other three fundamental quantum forces (electromagnetism; weak and strong nuclear)
The Mystery of Dark Energy: If two 3-Braneworlds are in close proximity, attached by gravity, then they could have a close encounter of the ka-boom kind. We might term that ka-boom a ‘Big Bang’. If the Big Bang was an actual collision between two 3-Braneworlds (known as the Ekpyrotic Universe scenario), causing a ripple and expansion effect, then Dark Energy is that left over residual oomph, the continuing shock wave of the Big Bang which comes to the fore and dominates the Universe when the initial radiation dominated epoch and the following matter dominated epoch begin to thin out or dilute as the Universe expanded. In this scenario however, we have to have Dark Energy eventually thin out, dissipate and fade away too.
The Mystery of Dark Matter: In order to explain various rotational anomalies of the galaxy, ours and others, additional but unseen matter with associated gravity has got to exist – it’s either that or we have to drastically revise the laws of gravity as we currently understand them and no scientist is wiling to tilt at that windmill. Unfortunately, this postulated additional matter isn't akin to normal matter which you can detect because you can see it. We can’t see this additional matter which is postulated, indeed nearly required, to exist. That’s why it is called ‘Dark Matter’, though a better term might be ‘invisible matter’. However, if a nearby 3-Braneworld universe shared its gravity with us, via those open graviton strings that transverse the Bulk, well that explains the ‘need for extra gravity’ to explain rotational anomalies and thus eliminates the need for the theoretical un-matter-like ‘Dark Matter’.
The Mystery of Weak Gravity: Gravity is the 98-pound weakling force relative to the trio of Charles Atlas quantum forces. Why has always been a total mystery that theoretical physicists have had to deal with. Open (gravity) strings in the Bulk explain why. Closed strings are confined to our own 3-Braneworld. We feel their full strength. However, our open string gravitons aren’t confined to our 3-Braneworld. Our gravity is diluted by spreading out into and throughout the Bulk and also attaching to other 3-Braneworlds. That’s why it’s the 98-pound weakling.
Another mystery is to answer the question, if our 3-Brane universe is expanding, what is it expanding into? Well, it’s expanding into that five space-time dimensional Bulk.
Anomalies aside, another 3-Braneworld could be, well millimetres away from our 3-Braneworld along with their ‘shadow entities’ or ‘higher beings’ or ‘aliens’ and we’d never know it except through their gravitational contribution, what we call ‘Dark Matter’ which, because it doesn't actually exist in our own 3-Baneworld universe, can never have its identity ‘discovered’ in our labs or high-energy particle accelerators like CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.
It should be pointed out that even though two 3-Braneworlds could be millimeters apart, they are not intersecting, just as your home and your next door neighbor’s home don’t overlap.
So another question obviously arises. If our 3-Braneworld in that five dimensional space-time Bulk is in extremely close proximity to another 3-Braneworld also in that five dimensional space-time Bulk, and there’s gravity twixt them and us, well, what happens when two 3-Braneworlds collide in the higher dimensional Bulk?
If two 3-Braneworlds are attached by sharing gravity via those open strings, then they in fact can collide. It’s our Big Bang event of 13.7 billion years ago explained. The Big Bang was just a massive supply of kinetic energy supplied at one location; one set of coordinates, caused by our 3-Braneworld impacting another 3-Braneworld at that one specific point. The two 3-Braneworlds then rebounded, but of course could collide again at a later (unpredictable) date. It’s an interesting variation on the concept of a Cyclic Universe.
The standard 3-Braneworld model likens them to very flat and thin rubbery membrane sheets parallel to each other, sort of like thin LP albums cheek-by-jowl with only tiny separations between them on a shelf. They can approach (under gravity), collide (not everywhere at once as they are not 100% mirror smooth due to random quantum fluctuations if nothing else) then rebound. I think that’s imposing a rather artificial and rigid set of conditions though I gather if you crunch the numbers two membrane thin and parallel 3-Braneworlds are the most likely and stable geometric configuration you can get (but I still think that’s unsatisfactory). Normally when you think of something like the Universe, and something that’s expanding, you think of round things – not flattish membrane sheets. So how about an elastic balloon-ball analogy?
Say we have two 3-D elastic balloon-balls in 4-D ‘space’ (I think they actually call this hyperspace as well as the Bulk) or a five dimensional space-time realm. There could in reality be a dozen 3-Braneworld balloon-balls all in close proximity, but two’s enough for now to illustrate things. These 3-D elastic balloon-balls in collision can expand and contract and ripple, though they remain tethered together by those spring-like inter-brane forces (those open string gravitons).
Each 3-Braneworld balloon-ball has a mix of radiation, matter and Dark Energy which dominates that balloon-ball in turn as the 3-Braneworld evolves cyclically by experiencing a collision, the Big Bang; an expansion; dilution of each component element in turn – otherwise called entropy; cooling; and contraction back to its original state ready for another collision and Big Bang. That term entropy is nothing more than the concept that order tends towards disorder, or in other words, all that original high ordered radiation, matter and Dark Energy becomes more disordered and all ends up ultimately as a uniform but very dilute ‘soup’ until the next injection of kinetic energy – the next collision and Big Bang in an endless cycle.
So, the story thus far: Two 3-Braneworld balloon-balls in higher dimensional space-time (the Bulk, which isn't a static ‘observer’ but an active participant in these events), slowly, ever so slowly start to gravitate towards each other, slowing but surely picking up speed over time. Okay, so they approach each other under their joint mutual gravitational attraction. They hit (that’s our Big Bang); they ring or reverberate like a bell; they compress and each balloon-ball heats up die to that initial compression and expands; the two balloon-balls rebound but quickly slow, stop and set the evolving conditions in each balloon-ball recycle back for a repeat performance.
Another way of putting that evolution is that the kinetic energy of motion resulting in the Big Bang event at time and point of collision was converted to radiation, matter and Dark Energy which then dilutes over time as the 3-Braneworld expands, finally cools, slows down, contracts back to it’s original balloon-ball configuration.
Those extra-dimensional spring-like dynamics keeps the 3-Braneworlds apart but tethered though both are individually expanding or contracting or rippling and both are on the rebound from the other. When things settle down, and maximum entropy rules the roost, they can come together again still connected to its neighbouring counterpart by those open graviton strings.
Fly-In-The-Ointment #1: Even if other entities are just millimetres away in their 3-Brane Universe, they are as separated from us by the five-dimensional space-time Bulk as we are from them. How can they use gravity to get from their 3-Braneworld to its next door neighbour 3-Braneworld (that’s us) through higher dimensional space-time? One can’t just hike across gravity like it was a bridge. There’s gravity between the Earth and the Moon but you can’t walk-the-walk between the two.
How then does an other-world, a 3-Braneworld ET or the ‘higher beings’ that exist there get to our 3-Braneworld and then appear as those New Age ‘shadow beings’ from those mystic Never-Never Lands they like to go on, and on, and on about? Well, about the only viable scenario I can think of is excessive gravity translates into Black Holes which can, in theory, translate into Wormholes (for lack of a better word or concept) and Wormholes can be used, in theory, as a transit system. On the plus side, entities intelligent enough to manipulate gravity to create a wormhole transit system with entrance and exit portals will have no need of intergalactic or interstellar spaceships and million year journeys.
Fly-In-The-Ointment #2: String Theory, Branes (“p” or otherwise), the Bulk (or hyperspace), etc. well it’s all just pure (and highly technical) mathematical theory. There’s not one shred of experimental evidence; there’s not one single run on the board that Strings and Branes exist. Till some theoretical physicist turns experimental physicist and hits a home-run, well I'm afraid all of the above will have to reside in New Age La-La Land, however fascinating the scenarios are.
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
John Prytz wrote on Dec. 3, 2014 @ 12:56 GMT
AN INFINITE COSMOS: ISSUES ARISING
The nature of, the size, the shape and the duration of our Universe has been speculated and debated upon ever since humans gazed in wonder at the night sky. Though ideas have waxed and waned, and though modern cosmology is more focused than ever on actual observations, speculations, well that’s still the case today. My take, albeit slightly more...
view entire post
AN INFINITE COSMOS: ISSUES ARISING
The nature of, the size, the shape and the duration of our Universe has been speculated and debated upon ever since humans gazed in wonder at the night sky. Though ideas have waxed and waned, and though modern cosmology is more focused than ever on actual observations, speculations, well that’s still the case today. My take, albeit slightly more philosophically inclined, is that our Universe is just part of an overall infinite in space and infinite in duration cosmos.
In the infinite beginning there was something rather than pure nothing – a finite amount of something in an infinite void of nothingness. This scenario eliminates the philosophical quandary of what’s beyond the boundary - that only other alternative. This eliminates the philosophical quandary of how much stuff there is. An infinite amount of stuff doesn't leave you much elbow room.
In the infinite beginning, well there was no beginning; there can ever be an end. No Alpha – no Omega. This eliminates the philosophical quandary of what comes before the ‘beginning’ and what comes after ‘the end’.
Okay, having postulated an infinite cosmos in space and in duration, well, other certain and not so philosophical issues come to the fore. If they can be addressed, well that’s all to the good. If not, well it’s back to the drawing board.
I’ll start with…
Olber’s Paradox
The night sky should be as bright as the daytime sky since in whatever direction you look, sooner or later you should see a star or galaxy that’s in your line of sight. That’s Olber’s Paradox because the night-time sky isn't as bright as the daytime sky. One resolution is that our observable Universe is finite and there are only a finite number of stars and galaxies and thus, there will be lines of sight that do not intersect with an object that’s emitting light.
But what if the cosmos is infinite in size and has existed for an infinite amount of time? Does that resurrect or reinstate the validity or viability of Olber’s Paradox? Not necessarily.
Why is there something rather than nothing? That’s been a prime philosophical question that has raged for aeons. But, on reflection, overall, there is a great deal more of nothing than of something. If everything was something, it would be rather difficult to move. There would be no elbow room. In other words, just because the cosmos is infinite in duration and in volume doesn't mean that there has to be an infinite amount of something within.
Let’s say that pure nothing is a perfect vacuum. Then something within that nothing makes for an imperfect vacuum. One could image a cosmos so dilute that there could literally be gaps of pure nothingness between the bits and pieces of something. Or, one could imagine a universe that contained just one final cosmic Black Hole that had over all the infinite aeons gobbled up everything else that had been a something within the cosmos, and thus 99.99999% of that cosmos would contain absolutely nothing.
That aside…
Stars, like people, are born, and thus their light may not have yet reached us.
Stars, like people, die, and thus their light has ceased to reach us. It has all now passed by.
In an infinite space, stars maybe so far distant that by the time their light reaches us, it’s so diluted or spread out that only one photon per hour hits the eye and that threshold is too low to stimulate the optic nerve and thus register.
Ever present cosmic Black Holes have gobbled up a lot of the radiation that is emitted and reflected. In fact, in a cosmos that’s infinite, why haven’t those astronomical Black Holes sucked up everything that can be sucked up thus terminating any and all evolving universes within that cosmos? Well the answer is Hawking radiation which theoretically predicts, on pretty substantial grounds, that eventually Black Holes will radiate away their mass. Once input is less than Hawking radiation output, the Black Hole will slowly, ever so slowly, radiate away, giving back to the cosmos what it once took away. There will be more on the significance of that shortly.
Entropy and Cosmic Recycling #
Another concept that needs addressing is entropy or the Second Law of Thermodynamics, otherwise known as the ‘arrow of time’ or sometimes as ‘time’s arrow’. If one considers an infinite universe to be a closed box or closed system, then over time, and we have an infinite amount of it, that closed box should reach absolute equilibrium and no further cosmic evolution would be possible. There would be a maximum amount of disorder, and there would be no further energy available to reverse that level of disorder.
It should be noted from the outset that in any closed box or closed system, entropy rules. Things will go from a state of order to a state of disorder without outside interference, that being an external source of energy to reverse the natural trend. The commonly cited example is if you have a closed box (the kitchen), and you turn off the fridge, the kitchen and the fridge will eventually reach absolute equilibrium, the same temperature. The kitchen warms up the fridge; the fridge cools down the kitchen, until both are at the same temperature – maximum disorder. It takes an outside energy source – electricity – to keep the fridge colder than the kitchen and thus in a state is disequilibrium or a state where entropy has not been maximized. Trouble is, once energy is evenly spread out throughout a closed system (like the fridge in the kitchen), no matter how much of it there is, it’s useless in terms of doing useful things – like initiating change.
Another example: Your own body is a closed system. Your body’s energy is in equilibrium. You are at 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit from head to toe. Within that state of affairs, your body can not do useful things. Fortunately, there’s a larger closed system that your body is a part of (like the fridge is part of the kitchen) that enables you to disrupt your body’s equilibrium and thus provide the means for your body to initiate change. Your outside energy source is food, which is good since once you invoke that larger closed system that contains you, that larger system absorbs your body heat that gets radiated away into it. So the fridge needs outside energy to replenish its supply of cold; you need energy to replenish your body heat and to provide the ways and means to keep you keeping on. Of course as we all know, that’s just postponing the inevitable. Sooner or later the fridge breaks down with wear; ditto you too. But in the meantime, and for a little while, you can keep your body’s entropy under control.
Now any attempt to tunnel around various laws, principles and relationships of physics might be in vain, but not a total waste of time. The laws, principles and relationships of physics are constantly being refined, even overturned as in Einstein refined Newton’s gravity; the Sun going around the Earth got overturned by Copernicus. However, anyone attempting to tunnel over, around, or through the Second Law of Thermodynamics should abandon all hope. If you try to butt heads with entropy you’ll just end up with a sore head. You’d have better luck patenting a ‘perpetual motion’ machine, itself a violation of the ways and means of the entropy concept. In fact entropy is why you can’t construct a perpetual motion machine and why any patent officer worthy of the name would refuse you a patent for one.
Still, in an infinite cosmos, a cosmos that keeps on keeping on, there probably needs to be a way to go from a state of disorder (high entropy) back to a state of order (low entropy).
As we noted in the example of the fridge and your body, it takes energy to reverse entropy or at least hold it at bay. A reversal of entropy is sort of like that closed box with Maxwell’s Demon (representing energy) that controls a slot that the Demon can either open or close that’s in the middle of that closed box that’s of a uniform temperature. The Demon opens the slot whenever a rapidly moving (hot) molecule heads toward the left side or when a slower moving (cold) molecule heads toward the right side. After a while, the left side of the box will be containing just hot stuff (rapidly moving molecules) and the right side cold stuff (slowly moving molecules). Maxwell’s Demon is like a kid expending energy sorting a bag of 1000 various coloured marbles (maximum disorder) into piles of reds and greens and blues and yellows (maximum order). Of course our infinite cosmos contains no demons, and marble-sorting kids need not apply if there’s ever a job ad for restoring order to an infinite cosmos.
Okay, without demons (or entropy reversing kids), our infinite cosmos heads towards a state of maximum entropy or maximum disorder or maximum uniformity. The cosmic temperature will be the same everywhere; matter will be evenly distributed. But, can an infinite cosmos ever reach such a state? It could or should take an infinite amount of time, but that’s also assumed.
Yet alas, what even an infinite cosmos needs is a Maxwell’s Demon. The cosmos, if it is to retain a state of vitality for an infinite duration, needs something that recycles stuff that’s at maximum entropy (maximum disorder) back to the basics of minimum entropy (or minimum disorder) where useful things can continue to happen.
* The Role of Gravity
Gravity seems to be a Maxwell Demon’s kind of force that keeps on keeping on. As long as you have two bits of matter, even just two electrons, you have gravity. Radiation (electromagnetism) could be dispersed evenly in infinite space over infinite time, but it is hard to imagine that situation with gravity. The only real way gravity could be rendered inert and useless as an energy source would be if it was 100% concentrated in just one place – like a super ultra mother of all cosmic Black Holes. The only other way gravity could be nullified would be in matter were distributed so absolutely evenly such that every bit of matter were being gravitationally pulled on absolutely evenly in each and every direction. But the slightest nudge or deviation from this ideal theoretical state (inevitable given quantum fluctuations) would throw everything out of equilibrium. But because matter is energy and energy is matter, if gravity can disrupt the distribution of matter from a state of near perfect uniformity, then energy will follow the short and curly material bits. Light (photons) reacts to gravity as much as electrons do. Further, the one extra nice property that gravity has is that it can’t be blocked. You can block out light or shield yourself from electromagnetic effects, but nothing will shield you from gravity.
* The Recycling Role of Radioactivity
Fortunately, there are several basic ways of recycling complex cosmic stuff back into the cosmos in the form of simple stuff. The first of these however has issues. Gravity can contract and pull together interstellar gas and dust into a proto-star which will ignite under pressure via thermonuclear fusion to form a radiant star. Stars however fuse lighter elements into heavier elements, and when a star goes nova, or becomes a supernovae, those heavier elements increasingly form the next generation of interstellar gas and dust. Eventually, after many generations of enrichment, interstellar gas and dust is lacking in those lighter elements (mainly hydrogen and helium) which easily undergoes fusion. Heavy elements, like iron, just won’t fuse any more and so the continued formation of radiant stellar stuff grinds to a halt. But, there is an escape clause.
Among the heavy elements; elements that stars manufacture, are radioactive elements with unstable atomic nuclei. Radioactive decay re-releases back into the cosmos those fundamental bits and pieces that can reform into those lighter elements that are the basic building blocks for forming radiant stellar objects. There is cosmic recycling from the simple to the complex and back to the simple again.
* The Recycling Role of Cosmic Black Holes
The second way of cosmic recycling is, believe it or not, via cosmic Black Holes. Astronomical Black Holes, via the vacuum energy (quantum foam or fluctuations) and quantum tunnelling, can release elementary particles back into the cosmos. As mentioned earlier, this is known as Hawking Radiation, after theoretical cosmologist/astrophysicist Stephen Hawking. Complex stuff can go into a Black Hole, but just very simple stuff ultimately comes back out again.
* The Recycling Role of Life
Life can be an entropy buster as in the case of Maxwell’s Demon, the kid who sorts the marbles, the mum who does the housework, the bird or beaver who gathers up forest debris to make a nest. But, it takes outside energy to accomplish these things and at the end you haven’t decreased complexity – the marbles are still marbles; twigs are still twigs. But microbes like bacteria, etc. can break down complex stuff (like twigs) and turn it into less complex stuff which can be recycled into hundreds of new and different complex things. So, when our home planet eventually meets its Waterloo, and gets scattered back into the cosmic winds, thanks to bacteria, there will be more simple stuff floating around than would otherwise be the case
So complex stuff gets recycled back into simple stuff, all brought together again by gravity to ultimately form complex stuff again. The cosmos receives recycled stuff back, from which it can keep on keeping on!
* A Fly in the Ointment
In a cosmos that’s both infinite in space and infinite in duration, here’s an interesting ‘angels on the head of a pin’ question. There are two forces which in theory can extend their influence indefinitely, that is, unto infinity. They are electromagnetism (of which light is a prime example) and gravity. So, can the influence of a force cross an infinite space if it has an infinite amount of time to do it in?
Perhaps Maxwell Demon’s ‘closed box’ isn't really an appropriate ‘container’ for an infinite cosmos. If the cosmos is infinite, can it be described as a closed system?
The Multiple You
And so finally, consider and reconsider the quantum mantra: “Anything that isn't forbidden is compulsory; anything that can happen will happen”. That’s even more the case when you have infinite time and space to play around with! So, I add to that mantra “and will happen again and again and again, an infinite number of times”. That actually means, or at least very strongly suggests that every possible scenario, every possible history, and every possible variation on each and every scenario or on any theme that you care to think of or think up will happen again and again and again. That, by the way, includes you. You are a scenario, and you, and every possible variation of you and your history will transpire numerous times; actually an infinite number of times. If that isn't spooky, I don’t know what is, but it’s a logical consequence of having an infinite cosmos.
# There are other ways and means of cosmic recycling too.
Stars are of course spewing out photons, as well as a whole stream of other bits and pieces from cosmic rays to neutrinos collectively called the solar wind, augmented by solar flares and coronal mass ejections. Interplanetary and interstellar space is full of this flotsam and jetsam that stars are giving off. In fact, the Universe tends to be a pretty active place: bits coming together via gravity only to be ejected back into space again be it radio waves (photons) from pulsars or gamma-ray bursts from high energy objects deep in the cosmos.
I understand that even seemingly stable subatomic nuclei aren't really stable in the ultra long term. After trillions of years even the elements we think of as everlasting will disintegrate and go poof with their own half lives.
On a smaller scale, an isolated neutron will decay into a proton, and electron and an anti-neutrino. However, since a neutron is already pretty fundamental, further breakdown isn't all that additionally useful.
Some variations on the standard model of particle physics require protons to decay (into a positron and a pion) albeit with an extremely, extreme half life. Experiments have been conducted to verify this proton decay but to date without success. No matter, a proton (like the neutron) is already pretty fundamental.
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
John Prytz wrote on Dec. 7, 2014 @ 12:45 GMT
OUR UNIVERSE AS A COSMIC FISH TANK
The Big Bang origin-of-our-Universe event was not the be-all-and-end-all of things. The Big Bang event was but a minor event in the larger cosmic scheme of things. If the elementary particles that comprise your mind and body could talk, what a tale of eternity they would tell!
THE SETTINGS
Setting Number One - Time is infinite in scope....
view entire post
OUR UNIVERSE AS A COSMIC FISH TANK
The Big Bang origin-of-our-Universe event was not the be-all-and-end-all of things. The Big Bang event was but a minor event in the larger cosmic scheme of things. If the elementary particles that comprise your mind and body could talk, what a tale of eternity they would tell!
THE SETTINGS
Setting Number One - Time is infinite in scope. ‘Once upon a time’; ‘in the beginning’, are two standard openings to the stage setting where ultimately, our Universe, plays its part. Alas, although there was an ‘in the beginning’ to our Universe, ultimately, IMHO there was no such thing as an ultimate ‘in the beginning’ in the broader cosmic context. In the broadest of broadest viewpoints, time stretches infinitely from cosmic horizon to cosmic horizon. Unlike all we know of regarding beginnings or creations, from our Universe, to our Solar System; to Earth; to terrestrial life, down through the ages to us, there is no ultimate beginning; there is no ultimate ending to the broader cosmic setting we find ourselves in. ‘Once upon a time’, should really read, ‘once upon an eternity’.
Setting Number Two – Space is infinite in scope. In the broadest or broadest viewpoints, there’s no such thing as an edge or a border or a boundary. Space stretches infinitely from horizon to horizon. Again, that’s not the case when just considering our Universe, our Solar System, our home planet. But, this infinite space is again part of the overall stage where our Universe acts out a role – along with probably lots of other universe actors.
Let’s call this larger context an infinite cosmic fish tank, and our Universe a fish.
Setting Number Three – There is no shape to the infinite cosmos. Why propose an infinite in space and infinite in time fish tank cosmos or cosmic setting in which to plunk our Universe - where our Universe is one of the fish? Because it does away with those awkward questions of what came before; what comes after; what lies at the farthest reaches? There is no before in the fish tank. There is no after either. There is no farthest away, only something even farther away, ad-nauseam. It also does away with the need to define an overall shape to our fish tank cosmos. An infinite volume has no shape!
That said, it must be repeated and made clear that our Universe (a fish in the infinite tank) did have a beginning, and therefore one can legitimately ask what came before. Our Universe does have a finite size and therefore a shape – probably spherical. What defines the (ever expanding) size and shape of our Universe is how far out light (the speediest thing we know of) has been able to travel since our Universe’s creation, some 13.7 billion years ago. That’s the boundary to our Universe. Again, our Universe is probably a sphere, with a radius of 13.7 billion light years (a light year being the distance light travels in one year – which, at 300,000 km per second, is a long way). Or, a diameter of 27.4 billion light years.
Setting Number Four – The laws, relationships, and principles of physics (and ultimately chemistry, etc.) are universal throughout the fish tank cosmos. All the fish may not be of the same species and even those that are of the same species may have differing ages, sizes, sexes, etc. but they are ultimately all fish, subject to the universals that govern all things fish; the cosmic ‘water’ is uniform throughout.
Setting Number Five – Those fishy laws suggest that fish universes, each and every one (assuming more than just our Universe fish is in the infinite tank) are unstable – which real fish are – unstable that is. The same fish on two separate days is not the same fish, any more than you are the same you from one day to the next. You grow, you age, your cells and their components get replaced, etc. Translating to real universes, universes are unstable in that they must evolve; either expand, or contract. If there is one thing they can not be is static and unchanging. So, our infinite cosmic fish tank is a dynamic one. Fish come and go, but the tank is forever.
BEFORE THE BIG BANG: THE BIG CRUNCH
Once upon a time there was this universe, but not our Universe. This universe existed way before our Universe existed. For some reason(s) this universe had sufficient matter/mass and thus gravity to slow down its expansion rate, halt same, and reverse the flow. Slowly, but ever so surely, this universe contracted, grew ever hotter and denser, until, like thousands of cars converging at an ever higher rate of speed, came together at an intersection. You have, in effect, the Big Crunch!
What happens when all the stuff that comprises a universe comes together? Well, what happens when you concentrate a lot of stuff into a small space? You get a Black Hole. There are probably going to be already in existence a lot of Black Holes in this collapsing universe, if our Universe is any guide. So, existing Black Holes will have a feeding frenzy as matter around them gets confined into a smaller and smaller space; Black Holes themselves can merge creating a bigger Black Hole, until finally, all mass will be inside a super Black Hole, the product of smaller Black Holes gobbling up matter and ultimately combining until a super Black Hole is all that remains of that universe. But wait, there’s more!
Think of the mass of an entire universe, all coming together at a single point in space and in time, at velocities that make Formula One racetrack driving look like a snail ploughing through molasses on a frozen winter’s night! This is going to be the Mother of the Mother of the Mother of all collisions. No Hollywood special effects team could want for more! The upshot is going to be, just prior to the finale, the existence, as noted above, of the Mother of all Black Holes. There’s going to be one hell of a massive distortion of space and time, or, space-time. The sheer momentum of such a collision, a Big Crunch, will turn space, or space-time, inside out. All that momentum can’t just come to a screeching halt in a nanosecond. What’s the result of a super collapsing Black Hole? A super massive explosion – a White Hole – a Big Bang.
BETWEEN THE BIG CRUNCH AND THE BIG BANG
Once upon a time there was this brief, but extremely intense transition between another universe’s Big Crunch and our ‘in the beginning’ Big Bang event. I've already suggested that pure momentum of this runaway freight train will be, as an analogy, a sock turning inside out. That ‘inside out’ event will be a pretty quick-smart happening. What happens in that brief interval of time has to do with several parameters. One is of course time - how quick – well, quick – probably several seconds to minutes. The other is space – how small – well small. But is small classically small or quantum small? Classically small refers to the minimum size of the Big Crunch vs. the original size of that universe. Classically small could still be a ‘point’ many light seconds/minutes/hours in diameter. Quantum small means a ‘point’ that is within the realm of the quantum – say atomic sized, probably way less. Logic: can you squeeze the contents of an entire universe down to the size of an atom, or elementary particle? Or, perhaps it is more logical to suggest that the ultimate squeeze is somewhat larger. Now ‘larger’ may still be tiny relative to the universe’s original size, but still one hell of a lot bigger than what’s implied by the word ‘quantum’. Yet, cosmologists would have one believe that our Universe started out as ‘quantum small’, not ‘classically small’; that quantum small somehow ruled the roost when our Universe went the way of the Big Bang event – the origin of our Universe. To me, that’s too big an ask to ask.
Any standard cosmology text will tell you about the conditions that existed within nanoseconds of the Big Bang event when the Universe was less than the size of your common cold bacterium. It was very, very super hot. It was very, very super dense. That’s what the equations say (no cosmologist was around at the time to actually observe and measure), but equations are abstractions and Mother Nature doesn't deal with abstractions. Now both hot and dense are two logical Big Bang environmental parameters just nanoseconds past that event - but what of volume?
One can of course take any contracting object and extrapolate down to where it shrinks to a point of zero dimensions and thus have an infinite density (which therefore would be a Black Hole). But, does that reflect reality? IMHO: not on your Nellie. There must be (well, should be) some ultimate state of matter that when compressed, can’t be compressed any further. It would take an infinite amount of gravitational force to do it and the Universe, any universe, doesn't possess infinite gravity.
What’s the minimum size our Universe (or any universe in general) could be squeezed down to? If you asked that question to any reasonably educated adult, even a kid, while you’d get a range of answers, gut feeling tells me that – unless they were well versed in cosmology – that that volume wouldn't be within the range that couldn't be seen with the naked eye. Now, it is dangerous to apply common sense when it comes to sussing out nature’s hidden secrets, but I'm now going to throw caution to the wind and applying this common sense dictum – The Universe, any universe, was never, repeat never ever the size that we would describe as microscopic!
Okay, so here we have this universe contracting down, getting hotter and hotter; denser and denser, and smaller and smaller as it slides into the Mother of all Black Holes, and immediately, within nanoseconds (or close to nanoseconds as the actual size allows – maybe seconds, maybe minutes) spew its guts out via a White Hole. Those guts form the contents of our Big Bang Universe. That midpoint – what was the minimum size of that transitional post Black Hole / pre White Hole event? All I'm prepared to say is that it was visible to the naked eye – assuming naked eyes were around 13.7 billion years ago! It was certainly not microscopic!
However, the really real important bit here is that our Big Bang, the product of a previous Big Crunch, happened in pre-existing time and space. The Big Bang did not, repeat, did not, create time and space. The question, ‘what happened before the Big Bang?’ has now a perfectly logical answer. The Big Crunch happened before the Big Bang.
OUR BIG BANG ALPHA
Once upon a time there was this Big Bang origin of our Universe. Any Big Bang worthy of its salt results in an expanding Universe. What’s the evidence for the Big Bang, that our Universe is expanding (exploding?) from a point back in time (and therefore by running the film backwards contracting back to that point in time). Well, there are four lines. The first is theoretical. All universes are unstable (as noted above) and must either expand or contract. The second is observational – the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR). An explosion – something hot – expands and cools off. The CMBR is the Big Bang’s heat that has now cooled after 13.7 billion years of expansion. The third is also observational – distant objects in space exhibit a red-shift – they look slightly redder than they actually are because they are moving away from us. The farther away, the faster they are moving, the redder they are. If they were moving towards us, they’d appear slightly bluer. The relationship between distance from us and velocity is what you’d expect from something that went ‘bang’. Lastly, also observational, is the distribution of objects out there. If there were no ‘bang’, then the distribution of objects (galaxies and clusters of galaxies) in space would be more evenly distributed than what’s observed.
Ah, but where are the coordinates – that place in space – we can point our telescopes towards and literally see the remains of that Big Bang explosion? I mean we see the after affects of stellar (supernovae) explosions like the Crab Nebula which occurred in 1054 AD. Well, there’s a vast time difference between 1054 AD and 13.7 billion years ago! By analogy, say you have a fireplace, and on a cold winters night you fire up same, and thus warm up you home to a comfortable level. But after a while, the fire burns out. If you leave the house, but return after a few hours, you will note that your fireplace is still a tad warmer than the rest of the house. That’s like the 1054 AD event. But, now say you go on vacation and don’t return for say a month after-the-fact. When you do, will your fireplace be any warmer than the rest of your home? No! Well, that’s equivalent to the 13.7 billion years. We can’t place those Big Bang coordinates because they have cooled to such an extent as to be the same temperature as the rest of the house, or Universe in this case. The place, those coordinates, of the Big Bang event no longer has any distinguishing features our telescopes can pick up on.
NOW
Once upon a time, a time we collectively call ‘today’ or ‘now’ or ‘the present’ is all we have to measure what came before and what will come after. What we currently believe is not what was believed a century ago; a thousand years ago; ten thousand years ago. Probably, a century from now; a thousand years from now; ten thousand years from now, what we believe about the Alpha and the Omega of our Universe, and its place, if there is a place, in an even larger context, will probably be as different. Knowledge evolves. The cosmology I learned as a teenager is already vastly different than the cosmology I read about today as a retiree. However, today is all we have to work with, but keep in mind it’s a work in progress. So what do we believe now? One – our Universe had a beginning. Two – our Universe won’t go out with a bang (or a crunch), but with a whimper, just slowly fading away getting thinner and thinner as if our Universe is on some sort of eternal diet. Three – our Universe is the be all and end all of all there is. What can we however speculate on now? One – There was a ‘before’ before our Universe began. Two – our Universe may have a different fate in store, and it could end in a bang (or crunch), not a whimper. Three – there may be far more to the cosmos than has yet been dreamt of in anyone philosophy. In fact, if one looks at the history of the size of our cosmic neck of the woods, the trend has always been towards a vaster and vaster cosmos. If our ancestors could only know then, what we know now, their minds would have been so boggled as to probably defy description. So, if we could know now, what our future generations will know, no doubt our heads would hurt too!
Part of our ‘now’ is the presence of something called ‘dark matter’, of immense importance to things cosmological, that cosmologists can’t yet explain or identify. Okay, I’ll make an heroic speculative effort to explain it in the light of what I've postulated above.
Now, it has been speculated that matter that gets sucked into a Black Hole undergoes a phase change into a new form of matter, sort of like ice to water to steam, or steam to water to ice. What exactly the nature of that inside-the-Black-Hole phase change is – well, your guess is as good as mine. However, I have come up with an idea. The matter sucked inside a Black Hole has been transformed into ‘dark matter’! Now ‘dark matter’ has mass and gravity, but doesn't interact with any electromagnetic forces. We know that because ‘dark matter’ exists within our Universe; not of necessity hidden exclusively within Black Holes. So, how does ‘dark matter’ get out of a Black Hole and into our Universe at large? It doesn't, at least not as ‘dark matter’ but maybe a Hawking radiation. Well, that doesn't explain the ‘dark matter’ all around us. So there has to be an exception, and I suggest that exception was the transformation of a previous universe’s Big Crunch – forming the Mother of all Black Holes – so warping space-time that it turned itself inside out and emerged as a While Hole, spilling out its contents and forming our Universe in the process. The Mother of all Black Holes transformed much of that universe’s ordinary matter into ‘dark matter’, but the process of Black to While Hole transformation happened so rapidly that not all matter got so converted before the spewing. So, what was vomited as our Universe was a lot of ‘dark energy’, but not quite 100%, keeping in line with what we observe, or rather detect but don’t directly observe, today.
THE FATE OF OUR UNIVERSE OMEGA: HEAT DEATH & THE BIG RIP
Once upon a way, way, way future time, our Universe will be drastically different than the one we know today. There are three possibilities. Firstly, the total amount of gravity (a pull force) will be enough to cause our Universe to slow down, stop, and reverse direction, to ultimately result in a Big Crunch. That’s unlikely based on current observational evidence. Secondly, the Universe’s gravity could be just enough to slow the expansion rate of the Universe down, such that it reaches zero velocity after an infinite amount of time. That sort of knife-edge balance is unlikely. Way too many factors have to balance each other out. It’s like tossing a ball at a ceiling hundreds of metres high, and having the ball just stop its upward trajectory just as it ever so barely caresses the ceiling. That’s way too unlikely a scenario. Thirdly, the Universe’s gravity won’t be enough to stop, far less reverse the expansion, and thus our Universe will forever, and forever, and forever (amen) grow ever bigger, ever decrease in mass/energy density, until overall, there’s so little energy available per volume of space that even one minute of warmth will be worth thousands of times what the price of gold is today. In fact, it will be priceless. That’s what is known as the Heat Death fate of our Universe.
Current observational evidence suggests the third option as the likely option. Contrary to expectations, our Universe’s expansion rate is not slowing down (under gravity’s pull force), but is instead accelerating under a currently postulated but mysterious ‘Dark Energy’ (push) force. Now this ‘Dark Energy’ push force is a function of space itself. The more space, the more ‘Dark Energy’ there is. Space is of course expanding, so ‘Dark Energy’ is becoming ever more dominant. Eventually, ‘Dark Energy’ could be powerful enough to push clusters of galaxies apart; push the components of individual galaxies apart; then the stars that comprise those galaxies and the solar systems that surround those stellar systems. ‘Dark Energy’, as it grows more powerful, could then push apart stars and planets; hence the molecules than make up those bodies into atoms. In turn, those atoms could be pushed apart into their fundamental particles – quarks and electrons and photons, etc. Whether or not quarks and electrons and photons can be further torn apart – well, that’s pushing the boundaries of current particle physics. Anyway, all this pushing apart is collectively termed ‘The Big Rip’.
The interesting bit is that if there is an outside of our Universe, then in theory, humans – assuming there are humans around trillions of years hence – or other intelligent life forms will be able to escape the Heat Death and/or Big Rip.
One obvious question rears its ugly head. If our Universe originated from another Big Crunch universe, and if our Universe is not fated to end in a Big Crunch, that breaks any sort of expected oscillation or cycle. Our Universe in turn can’t generate another universe further on down the track. Yet it should since we presumably inherited that previous universe’s full compliment of matter and energy and thus should be fated to ultimately Big Crunch as well. Presumably, something happened during the Big Crunch – Big Bang transition to perhaps siphon off some of the matter/energy and send it to an else-where or else-when. The extreme physics that would operate during such a transition aren't well understood and I have to leave open the possible that something more relevant to “The Twilight Zone” can happen. Of course perhaps something further on down the track might revise the current expectations for the fate of our Universe – the pendulum could swing back towards a Big Crunch scenario.
So, how do we get Big Crunches?
There are two possible ways. One is a universe that’s massive enough to collapse, generate a new universe, which then collapses and the cycle repeats. No “Twilight Zone” weird physics happens within the transition, or at least not enough to alter the outcome. The other is to have one ever expanding universe intersect another ever expanding universe. The area of intersection would increase (double) the mass/energy content within that area. That then might be enough to cause that area to start contracting and ultimately Big Crunch. This is similar to, say one supernova spewing out dust and gas; another supernova – ditto. The intersection of part of the two expanding regions of gas/dust is then enough to cause a local contraction of the combined gas/dust, ultimately forming a new, next generation, star, probably an entire stellar system (star + planets).
DOES THE COSMOS CARE?
In our Universe, stars are born; stars die. Their matter and energy get recycled into new stars. In our cosmic fish tank, universes are born; universes die and their matter and energy get recycled into new universes. It doesn't really matter whether a universe dies in a Big Crunch or in a Big Rip/Heat Death. The elementary bits and pieces, electrons and quarks and photons are eternal or immortal. They, unlike us, don’t age. And so, in the broadest of broadest of points of view, our Universe comes to some sort of end, but ‘life’ goes on. The fish tank cosmos doesn't concern itself with the end of our Universe, any more than our galaxy gives a stuff about the end of our solar system, nor does our Sun concern itself with the petty affairs on one of its planets – Earth.
Humans may care – all else is indifferent.
AN ULTIMATE TRUTH
Whether or not there was some sort of ultimate beginning; whether or not there will be some sort of ultimate ending, the bits and pieces that currently make up you, were there and will be there. That, in one sense, makes you as immortal as the cosmos itself.
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Lyle wayne Moss wrote on Dec. 9, 2014 @ 04:03 GMT
Akinbo,
If gravity acts similar to an electromagnetic wave, like light, wouldn't gravity then be subject to similar restrictions that light is subject to.? I'm thinking that there should be some kind of limitation to the "amount of gravity" that could saturate a particular piece of real space...?
report post as inappropriate
Akinbo Ojo replied on Dec. 9, 2014 @ 14:37 GMT
Lyle,
Gravity is a force and not a wave in my own reasoning. So I would rather your statement was, "If gravitational waves acts similar to an electromagnetic wave, like light, wouldn't gravitational waves then be subject to similar restrictions that light is subject to.?"
If that rephrasing is correct, I would agree. Since theoretically, both waves have the same speed, c, one could infer that they are waves of the same kind belonging to different parts of the spectrum. Just as radio waves and X-rays are inferred to be waves of the same kind but belonging to different parts of the spectrum.
Regards,
Akinbo
report post as inappropriate
John Prytz replied on Dec. 10, 2014 @ 12:05 GMT
Akinbo,
A wave can have quite a punch behind it. A sonic boom (sound wave) can shatter glass and the human voice can shatter a wine glass and didn't those trumpets bring down the walls of Jericho! A tsunami can beat the heck out of infrastructure, and even a surf wave can send you to the hospital!
And I should point out that the standard model of particle physics makes a clear distinction between a graviton and a photon. Any standard physics text will illustrate that there are four forces, not three. There would be only three forces if you're right that gravity and EM were one and the same. Perhaps you should point out the error of their ways - "their" meaning particle physicists.
John Prytz
report post as inappropriate
John Prytz wrote on Dec. 10, 2014 @ 13:29 GMT
MULTI-ROADS TO THE MULTIVERSE
If Mother Nature can create one Universe (ours), Mother Nature can create more than one universe – a Multiverse! The concept of a Multiverse, that there exists more than one universe, that is our Universe – perhaps an infinite number of them existing sequentially in time, or at one go in space, maybe both, is one of the hottest topics in current...
view entire post
MULTI-ROADS TO THE MULTIVERSE
If Mother Nature can create one Universe (ours), Mother Nature can create more than one universe – a Multiverse! The concept of a Multiverse, that there exists more than one universe, that is our Universe – perhaps an infinite number of them existing sequentially in time, or at one go in space, maybe both, is one of the hottest topics in current cosmology.
At the outset, there’s no law of physics (or even of God) that says that there can be (or must be) one and only one universe, our Universe.
Three questions arise – the mechanism for the origin and evolution of other universes; what types of Multiverses can be generated; and what can the concept of a Multiverse explain that the existence of our sole Universe cannot explain?
Ways, Means and Mechanisms That Generate a Multiverse:
In the infinite beginning, there existed from square one, more than one universe. No origin event(s) are required. However, those universes will evolve and ultimately morph into other universes.
The Many Worlds Interpretation of all things quantum states that when anything within our Universe is forced to make an either/or decision, between two or more pathways or alternatives, each and every pathway or alternative is taken – because Mother Nature cannot make up Her mind between equal probabilities! Thus, to accommodate each and every possible choice, the Universe splits into as many other universes as is necessary to cater for all possible outcomes. Thus, where there existed initially one universe – our Universe – now there must exist an extra one, or two, or three, or whatever number of universes because our Universe had to make a decision between two, three, or whatever number of choices confronted it. Multiply that by how many crossroads our Universe comes to each and every microsecond, and you have the beginnings of a Multiverse in real quick-smart fashion.
Baby Universes via Black Holes: An advanced extraterrestrial technology might be able to create or manufacture baby universes by creating or manufacturing Black Holes. The recipe itself is simple – take a lump of matter and squeeze it down to such a density that its gravitational escape velocity exceeds that of the speed of light. Such is the text of ‘Universe Manufacturing 101’. Of course one doesn't of necessity need ET. A universe with the sort of physics that permit Black Holes to form will ‘breed’ because those Black Holes will produce baby universes, presumably with the sort of suitable physics that will allow for further Black Holes, etc.
Bubble Universes via Inflation: To adequately explain various observational properties of our Universe, the concept of a rapid period of inflation around the time of the Big Bang event (I've seen inflation invoked both just before and just after the ‘bang’ itself) has been proposed. For the briefest of times, the Universe’s expansion accelerated at a fantastic pace before running out of puff. The fly in the ointment is that if inflation didn't stop at the exact same nanosecond everywhere, then you’d get smaller pockets or bubbles of inflation continuing, and that each separate inflating bubble wouldn't stop at the exact same nanosecond, creating more bubbles, etc. Each separate pocket or bubble would inflate so fast and break off from the parent inflationary event to form another universe. An analogy is to shake up a say, 1/3rd empty bottle of fizzy soft drink and open the top cap. What do you get – rapid inflation, that’s what! Bubbles form and expand and give rise to other bubbles which create new bubbles. Each bubble is its own separate universe.
Quantum Fluctuations: The vacuum energy can give rise to virtual particles, which can turn into actual particles under suitable conditions. It’s possible for the energy to come together intensely enough to perhaps create not just a pair of virtual particles, but an entire universe of particles. That could happen again and again, a multitude of times.
Video Games Analogy: There are a Multiverse of videogames within our Universe (i.e. – Planet Earth) – in two ways. One is the collective set of the thousands to maybe hundreds of thousands of individual video games within the marketplace. Each video-game equals one possible universe. The other is that each individual video-game has hundreds to hundreds of thousands of identical copies. So the video-game Multiverse has both individuality, and sameness. Perhaps our Universe is one copy of one individual ‘video game’ or ‘computer simulation’, within a sea of thousands of identical copies of that game, within a sea of thousands of other individual games/simulations!
Types of Multiverse:
Parallel / Shadow / Alternative / Mirror / Many Worlds / Higher Dimensional (String Theory’s Branes perhaps) universes – collectively, these universes would have the same laws and principles of physics that we know and love (unless you’re a physics student at exam time), although the ultimate nature and evolution of each and every one might differ. In other words, all these universes will be bio-friendly, though that doesn't mean of necessity that all will contain life. Basically, these universes are all variations on a theme of our own Universe.
Simulated / Video Games Universes – Okay, within these universes, anything goes. A computer program does not have to follow or obey or simulate the existing laws and principles of physics. You want faster-than-light-travel? You got it! You want anti-gravity? You can have that too! Do you want your heroine to survive travel through wormholes and Black Holes? Fine! All the terrestrial superheroes and superhero powers – a Superman, a Spiderman, a Green Lantern, the list is near endless – all is possible. You can botch an operation – the patient survives. You can crash a plane – no causalities. You can make the Sun stand still; perform miracles like the resurrection; create new life forms and new civilizations, and boldly go where in our Universe, no one can every go! You can have a Heaven and/or a Hell, or live unprotected upon the surface of Venus (which is the same as Hell only worse).
Bubble / Baby / Quantum Fluctuation Universes / Cyclic or Oscillating Universes (standard Big Bang expansions followed by Big Crunch contractions followed by Big Bang expansions, etc.) – collectively, these universes could be as different as chalk and cheese in that the laws and principles of physics could vary to a greater or lesser extent – but vary, well these universes just might. Think of all the laws, relationships and principles in physics and vary them to your heart’s content. While each universe might be unique, the rules and regulations for each and everyone one is fixed.
The Multiverse Solves These Puzzles:
In reality, the idea of a Multiverse is more a logical outcome of current thinking and evolving understanding of various discoveries and trends in modern quantum/particle physics and cosmology, relative to being a tool used to explain actual data or anomalies or observations. The basic reason is that other universes, if existing, will tend to be so far away from us in time and/or in space as to exert no influence on what we observe; what data we collect. That’s not to say that the concept of a Multiverse, in one guise or another, can’t be used to help account for actual or philosophical anomalies.
For example, if the computer simulation of our and by extension any Multiverse is correct, that accounts for why there are apparently two sets of independent and incompatible software physics (quantum and classical) running the cosmos.
A computer generated Multiverse (lots of different computer generated simulations coupled with possible multiple copies of each) is in one sense a cop-out in that it can be used to explain anything. You can account for all data, all anomalies, all weirdness, everything natural and everything supernatural, everything logical and illogical, everything possible, and for that matter impossible. In a computer generated and simulated universe, you can indeed believe six impossible things before breakfast – ‘Alice in Wonderland’ or rather ‘Through the Looking Glass’ rules – OK? The existence of ‘impossible things’ does not of necessity invalidate the possibility however.
The concept of a Multiverse does provide the ways and means of examining other possible origins for our own Universe, which currently is (the standard Big Bang event) that first there was nothing and the there was something.
The there’s the Anthropic Principle: In order to explain why our Universe is so fine-tuned in terms of the laws and relationships of physics that make our universe life-friendly, it is necessary to either postulate one hell of an incredible luck of the draw, or a supernatural creator being who exists outside of space-time. The Multiverse solves the quandary by postulating that with so many universes in existence, with so many combinations of possible laws and relations of physics, that at least one universe, based on sheer chance alone, would be life-friendly. Since we can only exist in a life-friendly universe, the Multiverse helps explain our very existence, without having to resort to bucking incredible improbability or relying on the supernatural.
Double Slit Experiment: If you fire one photon, say one every minute, at two parallel slits with a photographic plate behind them, you might expect that plate to show, eventually, two blobs of light – one behind each slit, as each individual photon bullet passed through one, or the other, slit. However, what you get is instead a classic interference pattern – alternating light bands with dark bands. Why is this so? Rather, how can this be? Since the one per minute photons aren't apparently acting like individual bullets, and yet since the only thing that can possibly cause classic wave interference is the presence of other, in addition to these one per minute photon bullets, photons, then where did these other photons come from? A logical explanation is that these photons are photons that enter or interact with our Universe from another parallel universe(s).
Time Travel Paradoxes: If time travel to the past is possible, and there is only one universe, our Universe, then paradoxes can arise. You can go back in time and murder your mother before you were conceived, which means you were never born, so you couldn't have gone back in time and murdered your mother, which means you were born… However, if you travel back in time to another universe, part of the Multiverse, and kill what for all appearances looks exactly like your real mother, but is in fact a parallel universe copy or look-alike, then there is no paradox, because your real biological mother, in the universe in which you were born and raised, remains alive.
Variations on the Many Worlds Interpretation Theme:
There’s a variation that could apply to the Multiverse theme via the Many Worlds Interpretation of all things quantum. In the Many Worlds scenario, absolutely all possibilities are realized within any given ‘moment’ within the timeline. Each universe within the Multiverse has the additional complication (or added attraction) of having to jump through the Many Worlds hoops. So, to use a simple example, in one universe (A) within the Multiverse, you flip a coin and its heads. Coming to that fork in the road, a choice of heads or tails, that universe then splits into two, and you have flipped tails in the counterpart (B). Both possibilities have been realized. However, it is just as probable that there are enough universes within the Multiverse such that there was another universe (C) where you performed the identical flipping exercise and the coin came up tails (as in universe B). Postulating a Many Worlds Interpretation where there’s a split and you toss heads (universe D), well that’s already something that’s happened (in universe A) – not in a Many Worlds scenario, but in another actual physical universe. Therefore, what need for any Many Worlds interpretations at all?
I'm not however entirely sure this apparent equivalence will sit well with quantum physicists, because I'm not entirely sure this is what quantum physicists mean by the phrase ‘Many Worlds’ (indeed, lots of quantum physicists deny any such interpretation at all exists – it’s too big an ask for them). However, it seems to deal with the issue of That Cat! In two separate physical universes you have Schrodinger’s Cat (in the box which has been constructed to have a 50/50 chance of killing it within one hour) experiment. Identical cats; identical set-ups; identical observers (and they can be identical because the fundamental bits that make them all up are identical – all electrons (neutrons, protons, etc.) are 100% clones of each other – absolutely identical). In one universe, the observer observes the cat alive after one hour; the other universe, well it’s the demise of the feline. Neither universe has to split into two to cater for both possibilities of a living cat, and a dead cat. All possibilities have been exhausted without resorting to the requirement of a Many Worlds either/or split.
While I have little difficulty coming to terms with an infinite (or as close to infinite as makes no odds) number of universes (the Multiverse) that have collectively existed since the get-go in order to cater for all possibilities, I have some trouble coming to accept the idea that (Many) Worlds are created in an ongoing manner, as spin-offs, in response to evolving events that require this choice or that choice or the next choice. The difficulty, which I've never seen addressed in any books I've read on the subject is, where does all the additional matter/energy for the extra world – actually universe - come from? If a whole new universe is created to allow for the existence of both a cat that’s alive and a dead cat (in that cat-in-the-box thought experiment), that additional universe (to cater for the other option) seems to be a free lunch – something created from nothing. That seems to be a violation of the conservation of matter/energy. That’s much too big an ask for me to swallow! Therefore, I vote solely for the Multiverse, which because of the sheer numbers involved, allows for the incorporation of the Many Worlds Interpretation as a bonus. The only real difference I can see between the Multiverse and the Many Worlds Interpretation is that with Many Worlds, the outcomes (all possibilities realized) is certainty; with the Multiverse it’s only probable or possible.
Further recommended readings:
Carr, Bernard (Editor); Universe or Multiverse?; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge; 2007:
Gribbin, John; In Search of the Multiverse; Allen Lane, London; 2009:
Kaku, Michio; Parallel Worlds: The Science of Alternative Universes and Our Future in the Cosmos; Penguin Books, London; 2005:
Rees, Martin; Before the Beginning: Our Universe and Others; Free Press, London; 2002:
Vilenkin, Alex; Many Worlds in One: The Search for Other Universes; Hill & Wang, New York; 2006:
Wolf, Fred Alan; Parallel Universes: The Search for Other Worlds; Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, New York; 1988:
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
John Prytz wrote on Dec. 11, 2014 @ 11:59 GMT
SPACE IS NOT A THING: SUMMATION
Premise: Space is NOT a thing. Space has no structure or substance. Space is a mental concept of the human mind that we use to picture the imaginary container real stuff resides in. I find no credibility in the alternative, that space-is-a-thing with structure and substance. Why?
Every experiment has failed to show evidence for space-as-a-thing....
view entire post
SPACE IS NOT A THING: SUMMATION
Premise: Space is NOT a thing. Space has no structure or substance. Space is a mental concept of the human mind that we use to picture the imaginary container real stuff resides in. I find no credibility in the alternative, that space-is-a-thing with structure and substance. Why?
Every experiment has failed to show evidence for space-as-a-thing.
But the big no-no is that space-as-a-thing violates the First Law of Thermodynamics. If the standard model of cosmology is correct, then the Big Bang event created space-as-a-thing from scratch; from absolutely nothing. Though postulated as a given, no one has yet to come up with a adequate or even credible how that happened or even could happen. Worse, that process is ongoing. Recall that the late Sir Fred Hoyle was bucketed for advocating the Steady State Universe which required the creation of matter from nothing - something like one atom of hydrogen per cubic mile per year or some such order of magnitude figure akin to that. Hoyle could give no mechanism. Of course his retort was that the alternate Big Bang event created everything from nothing all at once, again without any mechanism given, but that was apparently okay while his creation from nothing wasn't. Well creation from nothing is NOT okay in any cosmology.
I really have to admire the audicity of some cosmologists in their popular writings. In one chapter they will state the First Law of Thermodynamics about how energy (hence matter) cannot be created or destroyed but only changed from one form into another. In other words, there is no such thing as a cosmic free lunch; you can't create something from nothing. Yet in another chapter they will note how the energy density of the cosmos is unchanging or how it is a constant, even though the Universe is expanding. That immediately contradicts the First Law of Thermodynamics. Since space-as-a-thing translates into the creation of dark energy and dark energy translates back into the creation of space-as-a-thing (each creating more of the other out of absolutely nothing) that's a free cosmic lunch. They - cosmologists - contradict themselves. If they don't realise they've done it, they don't deserve to be in academica. If they realise this contradiction without commenting on same, they deserve to be kicked out of academica.
So if you are advocating space-as-a-thing then you are advocating the creation of something from nothing therefore advocating that the First Law of Thermodynamics is being negated even as I write and as you read. Good luck with that premise.
Motion, and variations thereof (acceleration, decelleration, momentum, rotation, etc.) is entirely independent of space-as-a-thing or even of space-as-a-not-thing. Recall that famous early 20th Century "New York Times" editorial that rocket travel was pure bunk on the grounds that in space there was nothing for the rocket's exhaust to push against. That editorial was retracted on the day of the Moon landing! So space travel via rocketship is possible even if space is NOT a thing since all relevant forces operate independently of the existence or non-existence of space. If one persists in trying to link motion and space-as-a-thing, find an equation that involves motion that also has space-as-a-thing as one of the required parametres.
Twenty Questions (give or take): If space-is-a-thing...
Why the phrase "the vacuum of space"? What 'thing' do you have to remove from space in order to achieve a perfect vacuum? What is the 'thing' composed of? What is its chemistry? Since it is right in front of your nose, what does it smell like? Could you stick out your tounge and tase the 'thing' that makes space a thing? What other properties does it have that you (or instrumentation) can detect? What are the associated particles, forces and fields that make space-as-a-thing strut its stuff? What is the density of space? If space has a density then could we in theory fly like a bird to the Moon if we could construct a pair of wings large enough? How does space-as-a-thing alter the standard model of particle physics? Would the Universe be any different today if the thing-ness of space had never existed? If so, how would it be different and if that were the case might you not even be here to worry about it? In other words, is the thing-ness of space required or vital for your own existence? Could we with our advanced technologies change the nature of that 'thing' property of space by some physical process or other? Is the thing-ness of space a resource that we could make use of akin to how we could mine the asteroid belt for resources? The speed-of-light is slower in glass than in water, and slower in water than in air and slower in air than in space, so if space is a thing would the speed-of-light be even faster than it is now if you could remove the thing-ness from space?
Anyone who advocates that space-is-a-thing has to wear the burden of proof on their shoulders and provide at least some solid slab-in-the-lab evidence. Either that or they should cease prattling on about it as if the concept of space-as-a-thing was set in stone and the matter of the nature of space was now settled for all eternity. It's not settled.
John Prytz
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Georgina Woodward replied on Dec. 12, 2014 @ 01:43 GMT
Too many questions to address in one go John. One or two questions at a time would be sufficient in a single post."Anyone who advocates that space-is-a-thing has to wear the burden of proof on their shoulders and provide at least some solid slab-in-the-lab evidence. Either that or they should cease prattling on about it.............." John Prytz.
Unfortunately you are not...
view entire post
Too many questions to address in one go John. One or two questions at a time would be sufficient in a single post."Anyone who advocates that space-is-a-thing has to wear the burden of proof on their shoulders and provide at least some solid slab-in-the-lab evidence. Either that or they should cease prattling on about it.............." John Prytz.
Unfortunately you are not prepared to accept the evidence provided. Varying refraction of light due to change in consistency of the external medium of space provides just as good explanation of the observed effect of gravity, as curved space time fabric. The effect of the motion at all scales of a gravitational body deforming the external medium in space(not space-time) is as good an explanation of the cause of gravity as curvature of space-time. Actually better because space-time is the emergent reality and can not itself be deformed by forces in external foundational reality. It only gives the output Image showing that it apparently has. Something else, in uni-temporal space has been deformed.
Q."Why the phrase "the vacuum of space"? What 'thing' do you have to remove from space in order to achieve a perfect vacuum?" John Ptytz.
A.Neither Einstein's space time continuum not the Image reality of the RICP explanatory framework require that space-time is a thing. As the output of EM sensory data processing it is an emergent reality, not the foundational reality where things exist.
Q." What is the 'thing' composed of? What is its chemistry?" John Prytz.
A. In both space-time and Image reality it is a true nothing as it has no representation. It is difficult to say what it is in foundational Object reality without evidence. However it is possible to speculate that it may be some kind of non viscous super-fluid, that does not adhere to the surface of bodies,so not resisting constant motion. Though it still has bulk that must be shifted for an object to change trajectory; accounting for Inertia; (without providing a force that would slow a body in constant motion.)
Q." Since it is right in front of your nose, what does it smell like? Could you stick out your tounge and tase the 'thing' that makes space a thing? What other properties does it have that you (or instrumentation) can detect?" John Prytz.
A. As the medium of space provides no sensory data by which to detect it, transmitting rather than reflecting or emitting light it is not a part of the output Image reality. All of the sensations you are asking for are outputs of sensory data processing. It provides no sensory data being neither the source of data nor data itself.
Q."What are the associated particles, forces and fields that make space-as-a-thing strut its stuff? What is the density of space? If space has a density then could we in theory fly like a bird to the Moon if we could construct a pair of wings large enough? How does space-as-a-thing alter the standard model of particle physics?"
A.Particles, I don't know if it is particulate matter or not, without evidence it is only possible to speculate.It may be some kind of superfluid offering no resistance to constant motion but still with bulk that needs to be shifted for change of trajectory , accounting for inertia. Associated forces and fields Inertia and gravity. Re.density I don't know how it can be measured since it is ubiquitous and our scales are set assuming there is nothing there so zero and it offers no resistance to constant motion, otherwise the heavenly bodies would be slowed.
Q."Would the Universe be any different today if the thing-ness of space had never existed? If so, how would it be different and if that were the case might you not even be here to worry about it? In other words, is the thing-ness of space required or vital for your own existence?" John Prytz.
A. Yes without it we wouldn't have gravity and Inertia. We wouldn't have the behavior of the galaxies and star systems that exist and we could not have evolved.
Q. "Could we with our advanced technologies change the nature of that 'thing' property of space by some physical process or other? Is the thing-ness of space a resource that we could make use of akin to how we could mine the asteroid belt for resources?"John Prytz.
A. I have no idea whether we can change it and how, no idea why that would be desirable. There is no need to mine it as it is ubiquitous. We do make use of it in transmitting signals wirelessly.
Q. "The speed-of-light is slower in glass than in water, and slower in water than in air and slower in air than in space, so if space is a thing would the speed-of-light be even faster than it is now if you could remove the thing-ness from space?" John Prytz
A. It does account for the speed of light in a vacuum but taking it away would not make the speed of light faster as waves can not be transmitted without the medium that carries them.
"If one persists in trying to link motion and space-as-a-thing, find an equation that involves motion that also has space-as-a-thing as one of the required parameters." John Prytz.
Not requiring something in an explanation is not the same as there being no evidence for its existence. Remember that both the Space-time continuum and the RICP Image reality do not contain a medium of space and do not require it. It is necessary to fist decide which facet of reality is being considered, the foundational Object reality where things are and interact or the output Image reality produced from sensory data processing. Classical physics and relativity is based upon what is observed, which I hope I have explained is not the same as what is in foundational reality. Diagrams showing relationships of various aspects of physics to the facets of reality can be found recently uploaded on the alternative models of reality page.
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Georgina Woodward replied on Dec. 12, 2014 @ 04:34 GMT
John, I have a question for you. Is there any region of the visible universe devoid of absolutely everything including background cosmic radiation? The inside of black holes are not providing any sensory data whereby to produce a representation of what is there.A hole in the data produces a hole in the processed image reality. So I won't accept that as proof of nothingness in underlying reality. Where else is there there the apparent utter nothingness of space that you demand?
report post as inappropriate
John Prytz replied on Dec. 12, 2014 @ 12:17 GMT
Georgina,
Absolutely. There is a massive amount of the visible Universe that is devoid of absolutely everything. The space between photons that comprise the cosmic microwave background radiation. The space between photons in general. The space between gravitons. The space between any and all of the things that comprise the standard model of particle physics. The space between electrons in 'orbit' around a nucleus. There has to be those regions that are devoid of everything in order for actual things, like photons, to move around. Nothing could be clearer.
John Prytz
report post as inappropriate
Akinbo Ojo replied on Dec. 12, 2014 @ 12:58 GMT
John Prytz,
Georgina has surely given these matters a lot of thought using her 'trademark' image/object reality and sensory data processing, etc technology.
My favorite in her last post was: "As the medium of space provides no sensory data by which to detect it, transmitting rather than reflecting or emitting light it is not a part of the output Image reality. All of the...
view entire post
John Prytz,
Georgina has surely given these matters a lot of thought using her 'trademark' image/object reality and sensory data processing, etc technology.
My favorite in her last post was:
"As the medium of space provides no sensory data by which to detect it, transmitting rather than reflecting or emitting light it is not a part of the output Image reality. All of the sensations you are asking for are outputs of sensory data processing..."In addition, you should realize smell, colour, taste, etc come from composite substances. The fundamental of which they are composed cannot have those properties. You can check here the first 7 paragraphs of Leibniz
Monadology to see a relationship between composite and fundamental substances.
Although Georgina doesn't want to stick out her neck on whether space has density, I am prepared to stick out mine. Space has no density and has no mass. Mass (kilograms) is a derived not an absolute quantity or measure as E = mc^2 has shown.
Two areas, I may add to are on "So if you are advocating space-as-a-thing then you are advocating the creation of something from nothing therefore advocating that the First Law of Thermodynamics is being negated" and "Can you explain exactly why the south pole and the north pole of a magnet attract? Or why and how the north pole of a magnet repels another north pole?"
On the first, which has to do with cosmology, the first law is not rigid that energy forms remain as they are. What it says is that energy cannot be created or destroyed but can be changed from one form to another. It also says, for a closed system, the total energy sum is a constant value, zero being one such possible value. So a system whose total energy is zero must always have zero energy balance. Suppose the universe borrowed 10J of energy from you with the right hand and lent you 10J of energy with the left, has it contravened the first law of thermodynamics? No, since its total energy sum is still zero.
Without going into too much detail, when expansion and increase in radius occurs of a system without work being done, this is a contravention of the first law. To avoid this, change in the energy of the system in the form of matter and radiation must prevent this contravention. If increase in radius belongs to the debit side of the accounts ledger and increase in matter and radiation to the credit side, using Joules as our currency, an increase in the universe's radius by ~ 10
-35m is balanced by an increase in its mass by ~10
-8kg (Planck length and Planck mass respectively. Total ledger balance always zero, in the beginning, now and forever more! That is the trick the universe seems to have been playing on us. When you check the thermal history of the early era in the Big bang you will find it obedient to this form of the first law.
On attraction and repulsion between magnetic poles: Suppose when a North pole comes into contact with a South pole, the space between them is destroyed, what you see = attraction.
When a North pole comes into contact with a North pole, the space is created between them and destroyed without them, what you see = repulsion.
I had earlier linked this
diagram, which depicts how attraction/ repulsion is mediated by changes in the nature of space-as-a-thing.
I don't share the belief in space-time, nor do I fully understand the need for dark energy.
I think these are the two areas Georgina did not cover or where I may have differences with her.
One area that may aid resolution of the argument, is to decide whether light is particle or wave. Since the particle picture fits your view that space-is-nothing, while light as wave supports space-as-a-thing in which waving can take place, what do you say about what would happen to a SINGLE photon at a half-silvered mirror or in the two-slit diffraction experiment? Surely, if you find illogicalities with the particle picture here, you find indirect proof again that space-is-a-thing.
Regards,
Akinbo
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Georgina Woodward replied on Dec. 12, 2014 @ 21:17 GMT
John P,
though I wrote '
too many questions to address in one go, I spent a considerable amount of time answering them. See Georgina Parry replied on Dec. 12, 2014 @ 01:43 GMT. Some kind of response to those answers would be nice.
You may also like to take a look at Georgina Parry replied on Dec. 12, 2014 @ 02:15 GMT in which I address your questions regarding magnetic fields and charge. A medium in space allows easy explanation of how magnetism and charge function to give the observed forces but empty space requires belief that magnetic fields and charges just act in nothingness.
At least Einstein tried to give a cause of the gravitational field. Deformation of space-time has been accepted by the mainstream physics community and general public. Even though it is an inadequate explanation, being emergent appearance rather than source. For consistency one might argue that magnetic and electric fields deform space-time but it isn't space-time that exists in foundational reality but just space. For the deformation to occur the space can not be a void as a void can not be deformed.
I hope this reply also answers your reply to me, in which you talk about the space between fundamental particles.
report post as inappropriate
John Prytz replied on Dec. 13, 2014 @ 11:41 GMT
Georgina,
I posed those questions as part and parcel of my summation of why space is not a thing. I never stated anywhere that I wanted, desired or even expected a reply. That you chose to do so was a decision made entirely by you and I am under no obligation to make a further reply. I stated my bit; you stated your bit. Others will benefit from both our posts but I see no reason to keep on...
view entire post
Georgina,
I posed those questions as part and parcel of my summation of why space is not a thing. I never stated anywhere that I wanted, desired or even expected a reply. That you chose to do so was a decision made entirely by you and I am under no obligation to make a further reply. I stated my bit; you stated your bit. Others will benefit from both our posts but I see no reason to keep on dragging this out day-after-day.
Okay, so I've given my side of the story; you've given your side of the same story, now IMHO it's time for all those bystanders out there in cosmology and/or quantum land to judge the issues for themselves, ideally by thinking through the issues for themselves and not relying on the absolute word of anyone posting here.
However, many thanks for your personal explanation of the whys and wherefores about magnetism, but I'm afraid that you missed the point about the "why" of things - the "why" question. There is a much deeper "why' question that you're missing here. Why should EM (whatever that actually is) opposites attract and EM sameness repel? Why isn't it the opposite or why for that matter either case? It's the question that Einstein asked which was whether or not God had any choice in the matter when creating the laws, principles and relationships of physics, or, as hawking put it, "what breathes fire into the equations".
Explanations are all well and good but fail to come to terms with why does it have to be this way and not some other way. That's the "why" that can't be explained or answered.
Consider for example some made-up bizarre properties regarding the north pole (NP) and south pole (SP) of a magnet. Why not have NP to NP result in nuclear fission and SP to SP result in nuclear fusion and SP to NP result in superconductivity. Or place some chemicals between NP and NP and get an exothermic reaction; between the SP and SP you get an endothermic reaction but between SP and NP no chemical reaction takes place at all.
Put another way, can you imagine that if you reset the clock back to the Big Bang and start over again or imagine another universe entirely, where NP and NP attracted and ditto SP and SP but SP and NP repelled each other. If not, why not. Or, to put it another way as per Einstein's question, can there be more than one set of physics?
John Prytz
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Georgina Woodward replied on Dec. 13, 2014 @ 20:09 GMT
Forgive me, John. Of course you are under no obligation to reply to me. I just said that it would be nice.I said that because I had spent a considerable amount of time writing my answers to the questions you asked.
You wrote "I never stated anywhere that I wanted, desired or even expected a reply. That you chose to do so was a decision made entirely by you." Yes I agree, I actually dedicate a lot if time to reading and considering what others have to say on this web site and have perhaps mistakenly extended you the same courtesy. To make the situation clear you could have written here are 20 rhetorical questions I don't expect you to answer.
I thought you were here as a new member of the community to have people consider what you have to say and join in conversation, not just upload copious amounts of personal opinion. You have asked further questions and without clarification, and to avoid annoyance I will assume they are also rhetorical. As you explicitly point out, you have not stated that you want, desire or expect reply so I will not trouble you further.
report post as inappropriate
John Prytz replied on Dec. 14, 2014 @ 12:55 GMT
Georgina,
If I had directed that summation to a specific person and they had taken the time to respond in depth, then of course there would be a sense of obligation to deal with that. But in this case it was a sort of 'to whom it may concern' post.
As far as posting copious amounts of personal opinion, well I sort of thought that's what these forums were for, a place to put your two cents worth in.
I'll explain my philosophy this way that it is better to toss out 100 ideas (or personal opinions) and have 99 out of 100 of them wrong, dead wrong, absolutely wrong, than never to have tossed out anything at all. So, as long as I continue to live long and prosper, or until I run out of ideas, I'll keep on piling on copious more amounts of personal opinion. Everyone is free to read or ignore completely what I post as they wish. At least the price is right - that you can't raise a fuss about!
John Prytz
report post as inappropriate
Akinbo Ojo replied on Dec. 15, 2014 @ 08:23 GMT
John Prytz,
You have yourself stated you don't believe in free lunches. Therefore,
you cannot eat your cake and have it. By this I mean, if you understand what is at stake in the physics, you cannot reject super-position and wave function collapse (which I also reject) and hold on so tightly to light as particle. The two must go together, but perhaps you don't realize...
view entire post
John Prytz,
You have yourself stated you don't believe in free lunches. Therefore,
you cannot eat your cake and have it. By this I mean, if you understand what is at stake in the physics, you cannot reject super-position and wave function collapse (which I also reject) and hold on so tightly to light as particle. The two must go together, but perhaps you don't realize this.
What happens to a single photon in a two-slit experiment and a half-silvered mirror can only correspond to what is experimentally observed by resorting to super-position and wave function collapse. On the other hand, light as wave does not require wave function collapse or super-position to explain what is observed experimentally. And light as wave will require something to be 'waving' in.
In the particle picture, the single photon will pass through both slits at the same time, no matter how far apart. Giving rise to a particle being in two places at once and absurdity that is difficult to swallow. At a half-silvered mirror, the photon will 50% of the time pass through as a whole and 50% of the time be reflected as a whole, thus introducing probability into quantum mechanics since a photon is indivisible.
So, you either swallow what you have earlier vomited (superposition and wave function collapse) and better digest the fact that space is a thing that can carry waves.
Talking of cosmology and your question, "how do you cram the cosmos down to that size?", IMHO, I don't think you have reviewed the evidence properly and in particular I don't think you have read my replies on the subject. Only, 10-8kg worth of mass was present when the universe was of Planck size. This has been increasing with the universe's increase in radius.
Lastly, talking of continuous and discontinuous, when absolutely nothing is between a possible packet 1 and 2, they are continuous with each other. They are not separated. If something is between them, they are discontinuous (discrete). Your English is good so I believe you know the meaning of absolutely nothing.
Almost lastly, I am not so old on this blog, but Georgina is right that there is an unwritten code that posts are supposed to be responded to if one has something to contribute. It is indeed a privilege for others to comment because posts can just be ignored, which does no good to science, the poster and the reading public bystanders. One might as well, own a website and post his thoughts there if it is a 'To whom it may concern'.
Regards,
Akinbo
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
John Prytz replied on Dec. 15, 2014 @ 11:55 GMT
Akinbo,
I'm sure you're thrilled that I am replying to your post!
I'm sure that you are aware that experiments have shown that light can 'wave' without benefit of space as a thing. That's what led Einstein down the path towards relativity theory. Perhaps you might want to brush up on your science history.
No double-slit experiment shows BOTH wave behaviour AND particle...
view entire post
Akinbo,
I'm sure you're thrilled that I am replying to your post!
I'm sure that you are aware that experiments have shown that light can 'wave' without benefit of space as a thing. That's what led Einstein down the path towards relativity theory. Perhaps you might want to brush up on your science history.
No double-slit experiment shows BOTH wave behaviour AND particle behaviour at the same time. One slit open and two slits open are two separate experiments. The former shows particle behaviour; the later wave behaviour. The question is how to explain the duality which seems paradoxical. Even Richard Feyman by his own admission couldn't explain it. IMHO programmed software does the trick rather neatly!
If the cosmos only started out with just 8 to 10 kg of stuff, where the hell did all the rest come from? What magician waved a magic wand and with a snap of the fingers created all the rest of the stuff we see (all 5% of it) and don't see (all 20% of it) in the visible Universe. Magic or the supernatural or a software generated simulation is the only way you can explain the creation of something from nothing. The minute you can demonstrate the creation of something from nothing is the moment I will take your claims seriously. Till then, please keep Alice company in Wonderland or read up on the First Law of Thermodynamics!
Further, it is currently impossible for cosmologists to see any further back in time than 380,000 years post the Big Bang event because there was just too much stuff in the way blocking the view - just like you can't observe the core of the Sun because there is too much stuff between you and the Sun's core. So, there is no way cosmologists can state with certainty what was the state of play at the exact time of the Big Bang. Equations can be misused if carried to unwarrented extremes. For example, I could blow up a balloon and you could film that and calculate the expansion rate of the balloon and then run the film or the equation backwards through to the point where the balloon was the size of an atom. But would you be justified in carrying that calculation to such a conclusion? Hell no! It's no different for cosmologists. Between time equals zero and 380,000 years post Big Bang cosmologists are guessing pure and simple, educated guessing to be sure, but ultimately guessing.
Your logic on the quanta packets is screwy. Two quantum packets are by definition discontinuous. They are separate and apart. They are separated by absolutely nothing. There's no requirement that they be in actual contact, in fact they can't be and still be separate and apart and a quanta. If there was something between them they wouldn't be separate and apart but joined by that something inbetween them. Or to use the other example I posted elsewhere, if you have two photons separated by two Planck Lengths, what is between them? Absolutely nothing.
John Prytz
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Akinbo Ojo replied on Dec. 15, 2014 @ 16:11 GMT
It appears you didn't quite get my question. What will happen to a SINGLE photon when both slits are open. Or if you don't want to consider that, what happens to a SINGLE photon at a half-silvered mirror?
You are wrong what led Einstein to relativity. If you read his 1905 paper no mention of light as particle is there that I recall but experiments regarding whether earth motion affects light arrival time. But let's leave that for now.
Akinbo
report post as inappropriate
Akinbo Ojo replied on Dec. 15, 2014 @ 17:04 GMT
John, without distracting from my earlier post one can speculate whether the discrete picture seen on the screen when one slit is open is supportive of the medium that light is waving in having the capability of exhibiting discreteness. You may leave this out of your reply.
Why do you say I should be thrilled that you are replying my post? You may not answer that as well.
Akinbo
report post as inappropriate
John Prytz replied on Dec. 16, 2014 @ 11:23 GMT
Akinbo,
Ah, the $64,000 question! One photon, or electron, or bucky-ball or whatever, that is faced with an either/or choice when approaching two side-by-side slits, exhibits a dual personality and goes through both thus resulting in a classic wave interference pattern. That of course is Twilight Zone physics. Of course if Richard Feynman didn't understand this, I'm not sure I should be...
view entire post
Akinbo,
Ah, the $64,000 question! One photon, or electron, or bucky-ball or whatever, that is faced with an either/or choice when approaching two side-by-side slits, exhibits a dual personality and goes through both thus resulting in a classic wave interference pattern. That of course is Twilight Zone physics. Of course if Richard Feynman didn't understand this, I'm not sure I should be expected to either, but here goes a few possibilities.
The first is that perhaps there might be leakage of photons, etc. through micro-wormholes from parallel universes such that while the experimenter thinks there is just one photon in the picture, there actually isn't. Okay, thumbs down.
The second is what happens in the delayed double-slit experiment? Well apparently if one allows the single photon or electron or bucky-ball or whatever to pass through the double-slits, but then pulls a swift switch and removes the broad screen detector revealing instead two detectors that are aligned with each of the two slits, then one or the other detector will detect the photon, etc. each and every time. In other words, after the photon, etc. passed through the double-slits, it somehow realised the gig was up and changed its mind and thus passed through just one of the two slits. How is this explained? Either the photon, etc. has awareness and a limited amount of free will (panpsychism), or else it time travels back into the past to the starting point and hence travels through one or the other slit. Harking back to the standard double-slit experiment with a both slits open scenario, the photon, etc. passes through one slit, then doubles back (in time) and then passes through the other slit. You have just crossed over into "The Twilight Zone".
Thirdly, and probably the traditional explanation, is that at point of emission and detection the photon or electron or bucky-ball is a particle, but in-between its alpha and omega it is a wave. That is of course unless there is only the single-slit option open when the wave fails to manifest itself which again implies consciousness or awareness on the part of the photon, etc. It knows in advance whether or not one or both slits are open and shape-shifts accordingly. IMHO that's also nuts.
Fourthly, it is all a computer simulation. Be it Hollywood special effects, or software programming, the required illusion or paradox can be easily achieved. I've gone on record as saying that the anomalies that are part and parcel of quantum physics can best be explained via the Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe scenario.
Harking back to the state of absolute nothingness between quanta energy packets, one further example crossed my mind. You have one electron in 'orbit' around a nucleus - that's one quanta. You have another electron in a higher 'orbit' - that too is a quanta. The question is, what can exist in the forbidden territory between the two 'orbits' which by definition are a no-man's land? Of course that raises another Twilight Zone question - when an electron quantum jumps from one 'orbit' to another' where the hell is it between orbits? It can't be an instantaneous jump for that violates the finite speed of light. It can't be in-between since that corresponds to a forbidden energy state! Specials effects perhaps courtesy of simulation software?
PS - I suggested that you must be thrilled with my reply since I've come under heavy criticism for ignoring unsolicited replies.
John Prytz
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Akinbo Ojo replied on Dec. 16, 2014 @ 15:24 GMT
John Prytz,
Pointed responses:
Starting from,
"I've come under heavy criticism for ignoring unsolicited replies"I find that sometimes ladies can be touchy. I may say Georgina is an exception IMO. When, I started here on FQXi 2012/2013 I asked what I felt was an innocent question (coming from a different cultural background) and a participant, Lorraine Ford caught me...
view entire post
John Prytz,
Pointed responses:
Starting from,
"I've come under heavy criticism for ignoring unsolicited replies"I find that sometimes ladies can be touchy. I may say Georgina is an exception IMO. When, I started here on FQXi 2012/2013 I asked what I felt was an innocent question (coming from a different cultural background) and a participant, Lorraine Ford caught me unawares with a good 'tongue' lashing. I apologized but don't know if she really accepted it. By the way in your Simulated Universe, why should there be behavioral differences between the sexes. Is it an evolutionary trait in a real universe or a Supreme simulator playing games?
"Of course if Richard Feynman didn't understand this, I'm not sure I should be expected to either"It has been nice exchanging views across the divide, Space-is-not-a thing and Space-is-a-thing. I think we have about exhausted all the angles without the case being settled one way or the other to my satisfaction. But one day, "We must bring down" this wall. I may just add that the headache that you and Richard Feynman are suffering appears to be self-inflicted, by not wanting to consider the possibility that I am advocating, or that advocated by General relativitists(substantivalism, with space-time not space as the thing). In your suggested solutions, no possibility is given to that option. In your third 'traditional explanation', you refuse to look at the possibility that right from alpha to omega, light is a wave. Rather, you entertain the nutty possibility of light having free-will and intelligently changing to and fro from particle to wave.
Then on your interesting question,
"…what can exist in the forbidden territory between the two 'orbits' which by definition are a no-man's land? … - when an electron quantum jumps from one 'orbit' to another' where the hell is it between orbits? It can't be an instantaneous jump for that violates the finite speed of light. It can't be in-between since that corresponds to a forbidden energy state!"Ponder the following, although speculative:
If a forbidden territory between two orbits can actually vanish and disappear, call it magic if you want, does an electron still need to jump to get to another orbit? Note that, if an electron can 'move' this way, it will not suffer the headache of violating light speed. It will not also suffer the flu of being in-between in a forbidden state or a no-man's land.
Of course, only a territory that is a thing can disappear (move) in this manner, so you may find this difficult to digest. I had earlier referred you to Zeno's paradoxes. Take a look at the Arrow and Dichotomy when you have the time.
I think that's all for now.
Akinbo
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Georgina Woodward replied on Dec. 17, 2014 @ 07:01 GMT
John Prytz,
Unsolicited replies? For future reference: I take questions that are not addressed to a particular person to be asked of the FQXi community in general and open for all to contribute replies. As replies were not wanted I think it would have been helpful to say these questions are rhetorical or something like "please don't answer its just food for thought".
It has been, as long as I've been here, a bit of a free for all; with people jumping in and out of conversations over multiple pages and threads. It sort of works in a clumsy, generally friendly, ruff and tumble way. Everyone having their own perspectives, interests and particular 'drums to beat'.
Heavy criticism? I just said a reply would be nice, (after the time I had taken reading and resounding). My mistake, as I said earlier, I am sorry.
report post as inappropriate
Georgina Woodward replied on Dec. 17, 2014 @ 07:09 GMT
I meant to say ....reading and responding.)
(I don't know why some days I can edit my posts and other days I can't, today I can't.)
report post as inappropriate
John Prytz replied on Dec. 17, 2014 @ 12:03 GMT
Georgina,
It was unsolicited in that I did not actually ask anyone and everyone here to comment. If I had actually requested a response(s) that would be a different horse of another colour. It seems pretty clear that everybody does not respond to everyone else's posts 100% of the time. I'm sure that sometimes people post something here and nobody responds. I mean if I post here that 2 + 5 = 7, what would be the point in anyone replying?
John Prytz
report post as inappropriate
John Prytz replied on Dec. 17, 2014 @ 12:26 GMT
Akinbo,
You asked about the photon and the double-slits and I gave you my two cents worth. I have little more to add except that quantum physics is full of examples where one would have to be tempted to allocate some degree of awareness and limited free will to fundamental particles. That's the Twilight Zone of quantum physics for you. Of course you can exchange that Twilight Zone for the Twilight Zone of the Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe. That latter option is one reason I don't have a headache over quantum physics. It's all just bits and bytes.
My summation of the double-slit experiments is as follows. If you have two slits open and you stand back and do nothing you will get a wave-interference pattern, regardless if you shoot off one photon per minute or thousands of photons per second. If you try to pin the 'wave' down to determine if both slits have in fact been travelled through then you will find out one and only one slit is breached whether before or after it reaches or has passed through the options given it. In other words, any time you interfere with that stand back approach to determine which slit the 'wave' went through, you will in fact discover what you expected to discover - only one slit was passed through. The particle or 'wave' somehow knows you are peeking. The particle or 'wave' is self-aware and knows what you are up to and behaves accordingly. There are many more examples of self-aware quasi-free will particle behaviours. That's why one has the subject of panpsychism to deal with. There is a section with interviews on panpsychism over at the "Closer to Truth" website for your edification.
So, you have your choice of Twilight Zones - Panpsychism or the Simulation Hypothesis!
As to behavioural differences between the sexes in the Simulation Hypothesis, well let's just say the Supreme Programmer has his / her / it / their own agenda.
John Prytz
report post as inappropriate
hide replies
John Prytz wrote on Dec. 12, 2014 @ 12:11 GMT
PROOF THAT SPACE IS NOT A THING
If space were a thing, then nothing could move. A state of nothingness has to exist, along with a state of some things (the standard model of particle physics and resulting emergent stuff like atoms, molecules and human beings), in order for those some things to get from Point A to Point B unhindered. If space were a thing then the some things part and parcel of the standard model would be akin to 100 people jammed into a standard elevator (or lift), or say 200 people crammed onto a what would have to be defined as a crowded bus. You couldn't move from the back of the elevator to the front; from the back of the bus to the front door of the bus. There's no state of nothingness for the people at the back to move through. You can only move because there is some nothingness for you to move into or shove other stuff into to make room for you. If space is a thing then there is no nothingness at all in the Universe; the Universe is entirely full of stuff (the standard model plus space-as-a-thing) and no motion is possible.
report post as inappropriate
Akinbo Ojo replied on Dec. 12, 2014 @ 13:02 GMT
How do things move on your digital screen since there are pixels jamming up the whole screen? Surely, if a Simulator made of flesh and blood can simulate motion, how much more old, imaginative and wise Mother Nature.
report post as inappropriate
John Prytz replied on Dec. 12, 2014 @ 14:27 GMT
Akinbo,
What is actually impacting on your digital monitor or TV screen? Electrons! The electrons cannot be cheek-by-jowl (i.e. - no space between them) since electrons have a negative charge and negative charges repel. Thus, there must be some degree of space between the electrons that are impacting on your digital screen! Thus the stream of electrons can move around without getting in each others way and thus you get a moving picture or image.
If you magnify the pixels or dots that make up the images on your newspaper, you'll see spaces between them. In any event those dots are molecules of ink composed of atoms composed in turn of electrons, neutrons and protons and there is empty space between them.
John Prytz
report post as inappropriate
Georgina Woodward replied on Dec. 12, 2014 @ 21:31 GMT
John Prytz, the question is not whether there is space or not but is the space utterly empty.Can a space be utterly empty? A superfluid would also allow things to be separated and move through it without resistance. If it provides no sensory data whereby to detect it may appear to be a nothingness. However its presence allows explanation of such forces as gravity, magnetism and charge.Importantly not taking the observed effect (apparent deformation of space-time) to be the cause and repudiating the idea of those disembodied fields.
report post as inappropriate
John Prytz replied on Dec. 13, 2014 @ 11:33 GMT
Georgina,
Of course there can be regions of space absolutely empty. Say you have two photons two Planck lengths apart. What could exist between them?
You state that a superfluid (a thing) could separate and thus would allow other things to move through it. When you separate the superfluid, what are you shoving it into to allow that something to pass through?
By the way you will have noticed that I've stated that time is also a not-thing either. If time is a not-thing then space-time is a not-thing too since it takes takes two (things) to tango.
John Prytz
report post as inappropriate
hide replies
John Prytz wrote on Dec. 14, 2014 @ 13:03 GMT
SECOND PROOF THAT SPACE IS NOT A THING
Energy, hence matter, comes in discrete packets called quanta (hence quantum mechanics or physics). You can have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. packets of energy, but not 1.9 or 4.7 or 2.5 packets of energy. Question: if energy is not a continuous thing, but a discontinuous thing with required breaks between those discontinuous packets, what lies between those energy packets; between one quanta energy packet and the next? The answer has to be absolutely nothing.
report post as inappropriate
Peter Jackson replied on Dec. 18, 2014 @ 11:27 GMT
John,
It's clear that space can have 0 'condensed 'matter', but you've not shown any evidence the condensate doesn't also exist. John Bell called that syndrome a 'failure of imagination', perhaps unfairly as we must first 'try before 'failing' and many may not even have tried.
Those who look find the evidence for a condensate overwhelming, and the anomalies and paradoxes resolved to be extensive. The anomalies may include you and I. A very simple coherent mathematical and physical adjustment to rationalise our view of nature is here;
Short Krauss video inc. Nobel Prize work.You might also look up the solid evidence for the proposed Unruh effect. Writing vast reams is fine, but I found that time spent researching is 100 times as valuable. I know that's a bit of a 'professional' view, but I do strongly recommend the method, which also informs the output!
Best wishes
Peter
report post as inappropriate
John Prytz wrote on Dec. 14, 2014 @ 13:05 GMT
THIRD PROOF THAT SPACE IS NOT A THING
Cosmologists tell us that at the time of the Big Bang event the cosmos started out within a volume less than that occupied by that of a pinhead. Now I don't personally swallow that cock-and-bull tale for a nanosecond, but let's take them for sake of argument at their word - that the Big Bang was a quantum event. The question is, how do you cram the cosmos down to that size?
Even if roughly 75% of the cosmos has been created after that Big Bang event (i.e. - dark energy) that still leaves roughly 25% of the cosmos (5% matter plus 20% dark matter) that was present and accounted for at the time of the Big Bang. That's still a lot of stuff to occupy a volume of a pinhead. So in order to squeeze roughly 25% of our cosmos down into a volume less than that of a pinhead must require there to be an awful lot of nothingness in which to cram that 25% down into! Nothingness would have to account for 99.9999% of the cosmic volume in order to get something-ness down to pinhead size.
It's also interesting to read that when breaking up the cosmos into bits, you get roughly 5% matter, 20% dark matter and 75% dark energy. 0% is allocated to space itself - funny 'bout that. Recall that dark energy does not equal space. Dark energy creates additional space (creates nothing from something) and in turn space creates more dark energy (nothing creates something). IMHO cosmologists proposing this read too much science-fantasy and/or they like to smoke the good stuff!
report post as inappropriate
John Prytz wrote on Dec. 17, 2014 @ 13:13 GMT
MY TOP ASTRONOMICAL ANOMALIES: A LIST
The Universe is filled with mystery. There are a myriad of things that are, but shouldn't be, or probably shouldn't be. Adequate explanations are not only lacking, but even the wildest possible theoretical explanations are rather thin on the ground. There often tends to be a massive divide between observation and theory. These anomalies run the range...
view entire post
MY TOP ASTRONOMICAL ANOMALIES: A LIST
The Universe is filled with mystery. There are a myriad of things that are, but shouldn't be, or probably shouldn't be. Adequate explanations are not only lacking, but even the wildest possible theoretical explanations are rather thin on the ground. There often tends to be a massive divide between observation and theory. These anomalies run the range from the Universe as a whole, down to your local neck of the woods, down in fact to the realms of the microscopic. Here are a few of my favourite astronomical anomalies.
ACCELERATING UNIVERSE: The anomaly here is quite straightforward in that there’s considerable observational evidence that the expansion rate of the Universe is accelerating. However, logic dictates that because of the overall gravity that the Universe has, the expansion rate of the Universe should be decelerating. The ‘anti-gravity’ energy required to accelerate the Universe’s expansion has to come from somewhere, and in ever increasing amounts to keep on keeping on the ever increasing rate of acceleration, yet, the Universe, almost by definition, already contains all there is and ever will be. If extra ‘anti-gravity’ energy is being created, it’s being created out of nothing. Something from nothing is a clear violation of the basic conservation laws and principles that form the bedrock of modern science.
DARK ENERGY & DARK MATTER: When considering all things cosmological, it’s become apparent that astronomers only observe about 4% of the matter plus energy that should be present. That is, about 96% of the matter plus energy that should be present and detectable to account for the observed behaviour of our observable universe is missing! Now 1% might be understandable given measurement uncertainty (error bars), but hardly 96%! So, cosmologists have postulated concepts termed ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’ to make up the deficit. However, nobody has the foggiest idea what exactly ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’ actually is. Neither has actually been detected, either out there, or in the laboratory down here – obviously. The anomaly here is that ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’ are both ad-hoc theoretical concepts to make sense of various astronomical observations, but without benefit of any actual observation of ‘dark matter’ and/or ‘dark energy ’to back things up. That’s a rather slight-of-hand trick, and until cosmologists put actual observational money on the board where their theoretical mouth is, it’s all an anomalous pie-in-the-cosmic-sky.
MATTER-ANTIMATTER RATIO: In our Universe, there should theoretically have been equal amounts of matter and antimatter created at the time of the Big Bang, but there’s not – equal amounts that is. We observe a Universe made out of matter. Our antimatter has gone walkabout. Why is it so? That question illustrates a big anomaly that doesn't have a really satisfying answer. Mother Nature should not favour one form of matter over the other, yet apparently that’s the case. [However, see the section on “Parity” below.] Perhaps that’s just as well. A Universe that’s 50% matter and 50% antimatter would ultimately become a Universe of just 100% radiation or energy, and thus no material you and no material me could exist to ponder the issue.
MONOPOLES: We all know about magnetic fields having two sides, whether it’s a bar magnet or the Earth’s magnetic field (or those part and parcel of many other astronomical bodies) – there’s a south pole and a north pole; a positive and a negative. It will probably come as a surprise that there should also be a monopole – a magnet with just one pole, north OR south; positive OR negative. That’s because one of the many Big Bang ‘in the beginning’ predictions of all things theoretical is the existence of magnetic monopoles – magnets with either a south pole or a north pole, but not both. Alas, we've never ever found and confirmed the reality of even one monopole, so theoretical prediction and observation are not in harmony. In other words, an anomaly exists.
QUASARS: Quasars are ‘quasi-stellar objects’. They are ‘stellar’ because they aren't all that large (like a galaxy). They are ‘quasi’ because they give off energy way, way, way more times greater than any star known in any astronomical catalogue. They seem to be primordial objects – they formed long ago and are now far away. Quasars, like stars or galaxies, are their own entities and if two or more show a very close and special causality relationships then they should show identical recessional velocities (since the Universe is expanding and they are part of the Universe and that expansion). Recessional velocities are measured by an object’s red-shift. Theory identifies red-shift with velocity. However, you apparently have some observations of causality connected quasar pairs with vastly differing red-shifts (measurements of their recessional velocities). The anomaly, in an analogy, is that you can not have a runner running at 15 miles per hour holding hands with another runner running at 3 miles per hour!
NEITH: Neith is, or was, the now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t. now-forever-lost satellite of our twin planet (in size if nothing else), Venus. The anomaly here is that bona-fide professional astronomers, not one but numerous celebrated astronomers, including Giovanni Cassini (1625-1712), sighted, noted and logged the existence of the damn thing and wrote up their findings in their professional journals. Okay, the time period was the mid-1600s to mid-1700s, but the professional eyeballs and the professional equipment was good enough to verify one way or the other the presence or absence of a reasonably sized natural satellite in orbit around Venus.
Of over thirty sightings of Neith, the best known and verified were in 1645, 1672, 1686, 1740, 1759, 1761 and 1764 (multiple sightings on numerous days in March). Observations over that stretch of period would seemingly rule out the ‘satellite’ being a faint star or asteroid or outer planet like Uranus or Neptune that just happened to be way beyond Venus but in the direct line of sight. Sometimes the observed phase of Neith matched the phase of Venus, which again suggests that the object was in close proximity to the planet.
Venus, inward and closer to the Sun than Earth, is a very visible and prominent celestial object when viewed from Earth, commonly called the Morning and Evening ‘Star’. We've all seen Venus; in fact if you know exactly where to look it can be seen in the daytime sky. Venus is far enough away from the Sun that the Sun’s glare doesn't drown out reflected light from Venus, and presumably any objects near or in orbit around Venus. A natural satellite of Venus of any reasonable size should be readily detectable with the astronomical equipment available at the time. And so it really didn't raise any astronomical eyebrows when Neith was in fact discovered. The anomaly here is that all and sundry were wrong. Neith doesn't exist. Venus has no natural satellite(s). Now either all and sundry were totally incompetent and wouldn't know one end of a telescope from the other, or else Neith really existed but somehow exited the local neighbourhood. If that’s the case, then Neith wasn't natural at all but under intelligent control, and not by any terrestrial intelligence. What Neith was, and where it disappeared to, are major anomalies.
THOSE ANOMALOUS MARTIAN ROCKY ARTEFACTS: One of the many things you expect in planetary exploration is to expect the unexpected. However, there’s the unexpected and then there’s the downright ridiculous! Mars is continuing to provide not only the unexpected but the ridiculous as well. Mars is awash in anomalies, most of which fall into the category of anomalous rocky artefacts; rocks on the surface that appear to be anything but a standard rock. Something is screwy somewhere and needs an explanation, even a ridiculous one.
One of the many things you expect in planetary exploration is to expect the unexpected, and the list of unexpected phenomena is quite a long one. However, there’s the unexpected and then there’s the downright ridiculous! Mars is continuing to provide not only the unexpected but the ridiculous as well. Mars appears to be up to its ‘armpits’ in anomalies, most of which fall into the category of anomalous rocky artefacts; rocks on the surface that appear to be anything but a standard rock as most of us would picture one. Something is screwy somewhere and needs an explanation, even a ridiculous one.
Mars has provided us with no shortage of anomalies initially presented by the scientific establishment from those ‘canals’ (where it turned out the intelligence was on the terrestrial viewing end of the telescope) to those ‘hollow’ Martian moons that weren't – hollow that is.
Viking (1976) of course is well known for its orbital discover of the ‘face on Mars’ which turned out to be a trick of the lighting, but a very convincing trick it was until photographs were taken later on down the track by other orbiting probes under differing lighting conditions.
The ‘face’ hasn't been the only anomaly photographed from orbit as both the Mars Express Orbiter and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took a snapshot of a profile of ‘Mahatma Gandhi’.
What about all those on-the-ground and up-close-and-personal anomalies?
The Spirit robotic-probe or rover has several anomalies credited to it.
* There was a ‘skull’ was discovered in 2006, but not to be outdone…
* There was also a ‘human figure’ that was sighted in 2007.
The Opportunity robotic-probe or rover came up trumps too.
* Opportunity found the ‘jelly doughnut’ that appeared out of nowhere – first you didn't see it and several days later you did see it – in January 2014.
* Opportunity also found a ‘bunny rabbit head’ in March 2004.
The Curiosity robotic-probe or rover has several more anomalies credited to it.
* There was that ‘finger’ discovered in 2012.
* Some flora was found in the form of a ‘flower’ in 2012.
* There was that ‘iguana’ from January 2013.
* More fauna came to pass with ‘the rat’ in March 2013.
* We have ‘the helmet’ from 2013.
* We also have a ‘door handle’ from 2013.
* That was topped off with the most recent discovery of the ‘thigh bone’ in August 2014.
All of these anomalous rocky artefacts have been complemented by observations of anomalous lights-at-a-distance both stationary and in motion, for example a flash-of-light photographed by Curiosity in April 2014.
Now while one might expect one or two such unusual artefacts to appear in the images taken on the Martian surface, they are beginning to appear just a bit too frequently. Something is beginning to appear to be a bit screwy somewhere.
If you were to walk an equivalent area and distance, not a difficult thing to accomplish, across an arid (vegetation free) and rocky landscape, what are the odds that you would spot as many anomalous rocky artefacts as these Martian robotic rover-probes have?
If you extrapolate from the number of anomalous rocky artefacts found in the relatively tiny surface area covered by these robotic rover-probes, to the entire Martian surface, well that would have to translate or amount to multi-millions of such anomalous rocky artefacts on Mars if scattered at random on the Martian surface.
Now I don’t really think the ‘iguana’ was a real iguana nor the ‘rat’ a real rat or the ‘thigh bone’ a real thigh bone. They are in all probability just rocks. But, and there’s always a but, despite the propensity for humans to see design in things where there is no design, the pure number of these anomalous rocky artefacts is in itself become anomalous.
Here’s my way out on a limb explanation. The pantheons of human mythologies are near universal in being populated by a number of ‘trickster gods’. In modern translation, these pantheons were aliens, and they still are aliens since they haven’t departed. Some of these extraterrestrials have a sense of humour – why should humans be unique in that regards? One can almost imagine some ET prankster out of sight of our robotic-probes placing a deliberately moulded ‘rock’ in the obvious pathway of the probe for no other reason than just to play a practical joke.
But one shouldn't pick on Mars alone. Anomalous rocky artefacts on Mars wouldn't be the first anomalous structures we've spotted in our local neck of the solar system woods, from spires and bridges on the Moon (as well as those well verified transient lunar phenomena – TLP) including the recently brought to light ‘alien’ in profile on the lunar surface.
I shall predict that anomalies of the unexpected and of the ridiculous kind will continue to make the news headlines, provider fodder for the conspiracy theorists, and just maybe, bring a chuckle or two to those trickster ‘gods’.
P.S. And those Martian anomalies just keep on keeping on!
To add to the growing collection, the Curiosity rover in the month of September 2014 photographed a 'traffic signal light' in stone, and also a perfectly round ball of rock. The latter looks very anomalous indeed relative to the irregular shaped rocks around it. It's almost looks like someone just placed a bowling ball (minus the finger holes) on top of ordinary rocky outcrops. It's all the more odd since wind and water erosion on Mars are negligible.
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Keith Jason Carlock wrote on Dec. 18, 2014 @ 00:40 GMT
Hello,
I'm new to this site and am not completely sure of the rules.
I really admire the holographic principle but, according to my theories, invisibility and holography are inverse forms of the same thing; if you turned one inside-out or outside-in, you'll have the other.
I think a complete principle would be an invisible/holographic principle of the universe. Two sides of the same coin.
Please check out my facebook group and read the "about" section first.
I act a little off-topic in my group, sometimes, but I try to keep members and myself entertained. I don't post anything pornographic, I just post music and act like an idiot.
Facebook group: Invisibility (adaptive camouflage) and Holodeck (virtual immersion) Theory
This is the url: https://www.facebook.com/groups/229849683808284/
report post as inappropriate
Georgina Woodward replied on Dec. 18, 2014 @ 02:07 GMT
Hi there Kieth,
there used to be a list of rules including not using bad language, personal criticism , advertising or excessively lengthy posts. I tried to finds the rules for you but couldn't find them. Any way its really just courtesy to others. Also comments posted are meant to relate to the topic or introductory article for that page but that is only loosely adhered to. Links are supposed to be made using the format found by clicking the link help page link, found under reply to this thread. People post comments or ideas, as you have, and others read and sometimes respond. No guarantees.Welcome.
report post as inappropriate
John Prytz wrote on Dec. 18, 2014 @ 11:02 GMT
COSMOLOGY: THE STATE OF THE UNIVERSE
The answer to life, the Universe and everything isn't really “42”. Okay, so here are the real answers (well, my answers anyway) to life, the Universe and everything cosmic! Over the past 2000+ years, three undeniable trends have emerged in our on-going studies of life, the Universe and everything. It’s probably worth while keeping these in mind...
view entire post
COSMOLOGY: THE STATE OF THE UNIVERSE
The answer to life, the Universe and everything isn't really “42”. Okay, so here are the real answers (well, my answers anyway) to life, the Universe and everything cosmic! Over the past 2000+ years, three undeniable trends have emerged in our on-going studies of life, the Universe and everything. It’s probably worth while keeping these in mind when pondering the cosmos and what future discoveries are likely to reveal.
Firstly, our place in the central scheme of things has gone from be-all-and-end-all uniqueness, a unique life form created in God’s image, the cream of all there is and ever will be, to, well, just another life form in the Darwinian scheme of things. Detection of extraterrestrial life, especially extraterrestrial intelligence will be the final straw (nail) in that scenario (coffin).
Secondly, we've shrunk in potential significance because the size of the Universe keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger as instrumentation and observations get better and better. We've become displaced as well. Earth is no longer all there is (the be-all-and-end-all of real estate) and the centre of everything (we've been moved from the CBD to the boonies several times over) as well. We’re not located at the centre of things and as our visions of the size of the Universe has ever increased over time, will there ever be an end to it?
Thirdly, cosmological common sense has decreased, given way to weirdness. Or, depending on your point of view (POV), weirdness has increased over time in all things cosmological. The well ordered and common sense cosmology of Genesis or the ancient Greeks was pretty straight forward. Even up through the life and times of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Brahe and Newton that was still pretty much the case, albeit with the invention of the telescope things did get a little weirder (and more unsettling) with respect to Genesis (and the Church) and the ancient Greeks (and other ancient societies like the Chinese). Then, ever accelerating, the weirdness quotient, the scientific fertilizer, really hit the fan! In fairly short order, uncommon sense descriptions of the cosmos and the stuff in it. Concepts like relativity, space-time, quantum mechanics, black holes, wormholes, dark matter, dark energy, antimatter, atomic structure, and string/superstring theory. Nothing made much common sense any more. I suspect that’s a trend that’s also likely to continue. In fact, you can probably bet on it.
Now on to the Big Questions (and little answers):
Q: Did God or Nature Create the Universe or Multiverse?
A: Here I opt for nature. If God can create one universe, God can create more than one universe (but what would be the point of doing so?). If nature can create one universe, then nature can create more than one universe. Since nature isn’t intelligent, creation of multi-universes (the Multiverse) is more like to be a natural than a supernatural event. That is, it’s probably illogical to create more than one universe where one will do – so that eliminates the God hypothesis since we assume that a God would be logical. Nature however tends to be prolific. Since nature, that is the laws of physics as we understand them, can adequately explain the creation of a universe(s), there is no need to appeal to a supernatural being or higher authority or universal designer, or whatever.
Q: Is There A Universe or A Multiverse?
A: Here I opt for the Multiverse. But the background to the Multiverse, that which contains the Multiverse, is something I call the “Superverse”. There is, always has been and always will be a super vast expanse (call it the all being “Superverse”) of nothing – that is, the vacuum (lowest possible) energy (state) which seethes with quantum activity and pervades everything. That’s the bottom line. I don’t know how big the Superverse of vacuum energy is, maybe it’s infinite (but cosmologists, physicists and I too like to steer clear of the can-of-worms that is infinity), but when I consider the following progression, logic suggests ‘pretty damn big’. Just as an atomic nucleus is tiny relative to an atom; an atom is tiny relative to you; you are tiny relative to Planet Earth; Planet Earth is tiny relative to our solar system; the solar system is tiny relative to the Milky Way Galaxy; our galaxy is tiny relative to the super-cluster of galaxies of which it is a part; our super-cluster of galaxies is tiny relative to the observable universe. That’s as far as knowledge can take us, but if the progression continues, then our observable universe will be tiny relative to our Universe; our Universe is tiny compared to the Multiverse, all of which resides with the Superverse energy vacuum!
Q: What is the Origin and Fate of Our Universe? Is the Universe Open or Closed? Will There Be A Heat Death or A Big Crunch? How Can A Universe Be Created?
A: I opt for death by Big Crunch despite all the evidence currently against it! I reason as follows – we know matter can create energy. The reverse is also possible – energy can create matter. That’s because, as per Einstein’s famous equation, matter and energy are opposite sides of the same coin. And thus the all pervasive, all surrounding, vacuum energy, seething with quantum uncertainty (albeit certain quantum activity), will now and again produce particles, thus reducing the overall energy of the vacuum. This energy debt must eventually be repaid, so said particles usually decay (annihilate actually) back into pure energy and rejoin the vacuum pretty quick-smart. But, it’s possible that those particles, could, by chance, evolve into an entire universe. Particles, if they exist long enough, will be subjected to all manner of quantum effects and thus evolve into a universe instead of being immediately reabsorbed back into the energy vacuum. The energy debt however still must be eventually repaid, but who’s to say how quickly that is required? So, ultimately, in order to repay that energy debt, our Universe will need to ultimately collapse (undergo Big Crunch) back into the Superverse energy vacuum from which it originally came and pay the energy debt. The Universe (our Universe) begins and ends as pure energy – energy borrowed from the vacuum; energy returned to the vacuum. How exactly that Big Crunch is going to come about I know not, I’m just convinced it will happen.
So, why aren't new universes being created from scratch in our backyards (where the energy vacuum holds sway as it does everywhere)? Because, for any given tiny area (like your backyard), under the relatively low probabilities of the exact circumstances coming together just so, it’s going to take trillions of years for it to happen. But, given the vast acreage of the Superverse, new universes probably pop into (and out of) existence on a fairly regular basis. It’s like you are fairly unlikely to have a meteor land in your backyard tomorrow, but somewhere tomorrow a meteor is likely to hit our planet.
Now, what if the vacuum energy (Superverse) can not produce a universe? Well, the next best (second) option I suggest is the black hole as a universal motherhood idea. That is, the extreme conditions that produce a black hole in one universe ends up producing a new universe in a different place (obviously), maybe in a different time. Our black hole connects us to that new universe, but no physicist would advise you to make the trip! At least this origin-of-a-baby-universe doesn't rely on a Big Crunch ending.
The third best option is the Big Crunch of one universe producing the Big Bang of the next, but from observations, the prospect of a Big Crunch is dicey at best. But, I like to give the prospect of a Big Crunch the benefit of the doubt. Further, there’s nothing to say that option two, black holes, couldn't produce a baby universe that would end up cyclic – Big Bang – expansion – contraction – Big Crunch – Big Bang, etc. Reproduction and reincarnation!
Lastly, albeit unlikely in the extreme yet I'm sure sci-fi writers have a ball with this idea, is that advanced E.T. could manufacture a universe using the laws of physics, especially quantum physics, to do so. If nature can manufacture a universe, could not intelligence also manufacture a universe? Call it the mother of all engineering achievements. Now this differs from God creating universes, in that presumably God knows He/She/It can do so and knows the outcome to the Nth degree, but to E.T., this is just a scientific experiment. Whether an E.T. created universe would take on a life and evolution of its own, who knows? Now you’d think that creating a rapidly expanding universe in the laboratory would end up destroying said lab and surroundings. Of course maybe the physics of baby universe creation dictates that the universe forms elsewhere and/or elsewhen! One other scenario is that once universe creation becomes so routine as to end up being part and parcel of the science lab curricula at E.T. Junior High School, then it’s going to be universes galore – maybe that why we have a Multiverse!
Q: Does Our Universe or Multiverse Have an Existence that’s Finite or Infinite in Time?
A: The philosophical answer here is ‘infinite’. One can never get away from the question “Well that’s fine, but what happened before that?” Even if our specific Universe had a beginning, there was a before the Big Bang that extends the timeline back, and back, and back. If our Universe continues to expand forever, well forever equals infinity. If our Universe ends in a Big Crunch that kick-starts off the existence of another universe, then the timeline of the cosmos continues onward, ever onward.
Q: To Quantum or Not to Quantum the Big Bang?
A: Here I opt for the Big Bang as a non-quantum event. I just can’t figure out how you can cram the entire contents of our Universe into a space smaller than an atom at the point of origin. In any event, if the point of origin of the Big Bang were a singularity, then because singularities can’t have zero dimensions and infinite density – that just makes no sense at all – then said singularity could have been large enough to exceed the volumes commonly associated with quantum physics.
Q: Are the Laws of Physics the Same or Different in Various Universes?
A: The answer here is unknown and probably unknowable. However, I suspect that there is only one type of physics possible – as Einstein is quoted, ‘did God have any choice in the matter?’ – or maybe not. Anyway, my reasoning is that assuming that all universes arise from a common cause, say the Superverse vacuum energy or via Lee Smolin’s black holes as universe generators, or the budding off of universes via chaotic/eternal inflation, with no evidence to the contrary, it’s probably more logical to suspect that only one type of physics exists, and each universe will be the same – physics wise. But, what if you introduce extraterrestrial intelligence into the picture? Maybe, just maybe, intelligence advanced enough to create universes, may be intelligent enough to tweak the laws of physics and alter them. That certainly would be easy enough to do if you created computer software that simulated universes, each software package having different physics programmed in! So, maybe it’s just as well to fence sit on this issue.
Q: Is our Universe (Hence Ourselves) Really Real or Simulated?
A: The odds overwhelmingly favour our reality as being a simulated one. If that could be proved, it would also be likely proof of the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence. If all terrestrial life is simulated, who else is left to simulate us but extraterrestrials? I just bet we’re some alien’s Ph.D. thesis. The possibility of course exists that humans from what we would term the future have simulated us and the running simulation has only reached a simulated early 21st Century. Of course this is a fairly unpalatable theory, so I’ll just conclude here that the odds are overwhelmingly in favour of my being wrong.
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
David Pinyana wrote on Jan. 6, 2016 @ 02:21 GMT
May we consider SCALE FACTOR in the classic dynamical laws?
"Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) is a theory that proposes a modification of Newton's laws to account for observed properties of galaxies. Created in 1983 by Israeli physicist Mordehai Milgrom, the theory's original motivation was to explain the fact that the velocities of stars in galaxies were observed to be larger than...
view entire post
May we consider SCALE FACTOR in the classic dynamical laws?
"Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) is a theory that proposes a modification of Newton's laws to account for observed properties of galaxies. Created in 1983 by Israeli physicist Mordehai Milgrom, the theory's original motivation was to explain the fact that the velocities of stars in galaxies were observed to be larger than expected based on Newtonian mechanics. Milgrom noted that this discrepancy could be resolved if the gravitational force experienced by a star in the outer regions of a galaxy was proportional to the square of its centripetal acceleration (as opposed to the centripetal acceleration itself, as in Newton's Second Law), or alternatively if gravitational force came to vary inversely with radius (as opposed to the inverse square of the radius, as in Newton's Law of Gravity). In MOND, violation of Newton's Laws occurs at extremely small accelerations, characteristic of galaxies yet far below anything typically encountered in the Solar System or on Earth.”
“And Tensor–vector–scalar gravity (TeVeS), developed by Jacob Bekenstein in 2004, is a relativistic generalization of Mordehai Milgrom's Modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND) paradigm.”
In the same way that the theories of MOND are proposing alternatives to the laws of Newton and SR-GR for very high spatial scales (> 10 e+20 m), there are also other QG theories proposing alternatives for very small (or very high energy) spatial scales. For example the DSR (= Doubly or Deformed SR) theory which proposes that GR is not valid for High Energies (Planck scale), and it forecast that light speed could increase till infinite for Planck Energy (c = f (E))
Scale relativity and fractal space-time: theory and applications (Laurent Nottale, 2009): “…during the last decades, the various sciences have been faced to an ever increasing number of new unsolved problems, of which many are linked to questions of scales. It therefore seemed natural, in order to deal with these problems at a fundamental and first principle level, to extend theories of relativity by including the scale in the very definition of the coordinate system, then to account for these scale transformations in a relativistic way.”
The Dynamic Laws of Physics (and Universal Gravitation) have varied over time, and even Einstein had already proposed that they still has to evolve:
ARISTOTLE: F = m.v
NEWTON: F = m.a
EINSTEIN. E = m.c2
MOND: F = m.a.(A/A0)
NEXT ?: F = f (scale) = m.a.(scale factor)
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Steve Dufourny replied on Jan. 6, 2016 @ 08:04 GMT
I have inserted the gravitation in the equation of matter energy.E=mc²+ml² with the spherons like particles of gravitation.Gravitational forces are so weak ....at quantum scale.
report post as inappropriate
David Pinyana replied on Jan. 17, 2016 @ 12:13 GMT
That is good !
And what do you think about to include the SCALE FACTOR to Newton-Einstein equations.
MOND, TEVES, Scale Relativity consider this option !
There are other studies or theories in this direction ?
report post as inappropriate
David Pinyana replied on Jan. 23, 2016 @ 19:15 GMT
May Gravity "constant" (G) vary with scale factor ?
report post as inappropriate
Steve Dufourny replied on Jan. 24, 2016 @ 17:48 GMT
Hello,Sorry for my late answer, I don't come all the days on FQXi.The scale factor is important indeed.I beleive that more the scale decreases, more the volume increases for the serie of uniqueness(primes correlated with volumes,this serie and spherical volume encode bosons, and spherons .But on the other side, the particlesproduced by our cosmological sphères, so bosons and spherons , them decrease when we go towards the central universal sphere where the smallest and speedest spherons are produced.They are encoded in the nucleis with also a proportions with spherical volumes.That is why the scales and spherical volumes become universalkeys for the quantizations of this gravitation.Iconsider this gravitational energy different than our electromagnetism and thermodynamicl energy.The bosons, these scales of our standard model is just for the heat and the dynamics, specific.This gravitation is different and relevant considering the entropyicreasing.The higgs seem bizare givi ng mass.The mass and gravitation arelinked, so itis the spheron which gives mass.Their velocity and the number become an interesting key.The probalm is how to check this energy different.How to see it and to analyse it.These particles produced by our BH composing the dark matter are more speed than c and more numerous in fact.You imagine the possibilities with the disponible énergies.The sphères can answer and the rotations also more the volumes and the motions, orbital, linear and spinal.If itexists spherons of different volumes due to their BH.So indeed it becomes a big puzzle with different pzrticles and speed.Complex is a weak word:)
report post as inappropriate
hide replies
Amrit Srecko Sorli wrote on Jan. 14, 2016 @ 18:37 GMT
Branko L Zivlak wrote on Jan. 15, 2016 @ 22:35 GMT
Amrit
I read it. It is remarkable!
Regards,
Branko
report post as inappropriate
David Pinyana wrote on Jan. 17, 2016 @ 12:32 GMT
What about FRACTAL COSMOLOGY ?
Please, read this paper from one of the best specialist on fractal cosmology (40 years working on it):
A Fractal Universe? (Robert L. Oldershaw, 2002, A Fractal Universe?)
ABSTRACT: From subatomic particles to superclusters of galaxies, nature has a nested hierarchical organization. There are also suggestive hints that self-similarity, the idea...
view entire post
What about FRACTAL COSMOLOGY ?
Please, read this paper from one of the best specialist on fractal cosmology (40 years working on it):
A Fractal Universe? (Robert L. Oldershaw, 2002, A Fractal Universe?)
ABSTRACT: From subatomic particles to superclusters of galaxies, nature has a nested hierarchical organization. There are also suggestive hints that self-similarity, the idea of similar form on different size scales, might be a fundamental property of the cosmological hierarchy. These features are the hallmarks of fractal structure. Could nature, as a whole, be a fractal system?
POSSIBLE IMPLICATIONS OF COSMOLOGICAL SELF-SIMILARITY
If the dark matter is composed of ultra-compact stellar scale objects with a mass spectrum that is approximated by predictions of the self-similar hypothesis, then it would appear that discrete self-similarity is a newly identified global property of nature. This would certainly change our current understanding of the cosmos. Firstly it would provide a new approach toward a more unified understanding of nature, since cosmological self-similarity implies analogous physics on all observable scales. It would also imply that the usual assumption that the universal hierarchy has cutoffs at about our current observational limits, an assumption that has always seemed suspiciously anthropocentric, should be questioned. If cosmological self-similarity is verified, then it would seem more likely that additional scales underlie the atomic scale and encompass the galactic scale. According to the new paradigm the Big Bang does not involve the expansion of the entire universe, but rather just one metagalactic object with dimensions far exceeding our current observational limits. Also, a new fractal geometry of space-time-matter would appear to be called for.
If microlensing experiments verify the unique predictions mentioned above, however, we would still be faced with some important and very difficult questions. How many scales are there in all, a finite number or "worlds within worlds" without end? How strong is the degree of self-similarity between analogues? Why is nature self-similar, and why are scales separated by a factor of about 5x1017? Like past discoveries, this one too would come wrapped in enigmas.
Some might argue that the self-similar cosmological paradigm is too fantastic to be true, that it is too speculative to deserve serious attention. But is it more fantastic or speculative than Alice In Wonderland theories like cosmic strings, shadow matter, Higgs bosons, the "many worlds" inter-pretation of quantum mechanics, etc. Probably not, if judged objectively, and at least the self-similar model can make definitive predictions and point to actual observational support. It is possible that nature really does involve the "worlds within worlds" structure of a fractal system. Certainly there is enough supporting evidence to warrant serious consideration of discrete cosmological self-similarity. And soon, via microlensing experiments, we will learn nature's own verdict on this hypothesis.
view post as summary
report post as inappropriate
Steve Dufourny replied on Jan. 25, 2016 @ 09:27 GMT
Hello,in fact if wesee the serie of uniqueness relativelly speaking, we have so a kind of foto for this serie giving a road of understanding unifying the cosmological scale and the quantum scale.The central sphères become relevant.
report post as inappropriate
Steve Dufourny replied on Jan. 25, 2016 @ 09:41 GMT
If all the central quantum spherical volumes are linked in a dance of rotations around the central universal spherical volume.It becomes relevant when the number is finite for the serie of uniqueness(probably created at this hypothetical electromagnetic Big Bang.A gravitational Big Bang seems more rational.
report post as inappropriate
Steve Dufourny replied on Jan. 25, 2016 @ 10:00 GMT
These central sphères are instantaneously connected with these gravitational particles implying an universal kind of newtonian gravitational aether of spherons.The sphere of gravitation is more important than the photonic sphere.The age of our universe is it really 13,7 billions years?
report post as inappropriate
Mike Holden wrote on Apr. 2, 2016 @ 13:26 GMT
A couple of years ago, after writing an article on a new way of looking at Gravitational and Electrical interactions, I came across the idea of negative mass, I know many people have toyed with this concept, but looking at it in, I think, a new way I wrote the article at mike-holden.org.uk/negmas. This article traces the evolution of the Universe from a Big Bang, when equal numbers of positive and negative mass particle came into existence, to the present day, when only positive mass seems to exist. If anyone would like to look at it I would appreciate your comments.
report post as inappropriate
Mike Holden replied on Apr. 3, 2016 @ 11:32 GMT
Aplologies: The proper address is www.mike-holden.org.uk/negmas.html
report post as inappropriate
David Pinyana wrote on Apr. 17, 2016 @ 16:14 GMT
Please, read following book concerning Scale relativity, Fractal Space-time and Emergence:
http://www.amazon.com/Fractal-Rainbow-Beyond-Unive
rse-English/dp/1519376146/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&q
id=1460909354&sr=1-1-fkmr0&keywords=David+Piñana
Attached abstract article:
"A book that could revolutionize the future of Cosmological Physics: Aristotle, Newton, Einstein, …" The author presents a vision of the Universe from a totally different point of view, and in a disclosure way, and very easy to understand. It is a journey from the smallest (the dimension of Planck) to the largest (Our Universe boundary). And he also shows, in a clear way, which may be behind these limits. The new proposals on Scale Landscape and Scale Relativity raised in this book could be a breakthrough in the current "state of the art" of the cosmology, showing a new outlook for a better understanding of the Universe. This book will change our view about some common concepts (Energy, Matter, Time, Vacuum ...) and also about other “unusual” concepts (Dark Matter and Energy, Quantum Fluctuations, Uncertainty Principle, Wave-Particle Duality,...), based on recent studies and theories (Emergence, Fractal, Scale Relativity, Holography, String-Branes, Quantum Gravity, …). Required reading for both: physics-cosmological experts, to explore an innovative proposal, as well as general public, that just would like to learn more about the Universe from a different and original point of view.
I would like to discuss it with people interested !
report post as inappropriate
David Pinyana replied on Apr. 17, 2016 @ 16:16 GMT
David Pinyana wrote on Apr. 17, 2016 @ 16:19 GMT
David Pinyana wrote on Apr. 17, 2016 @ 16:27 GMT
Attachment added (< 1MW). Please, delete previous 2 failed attachments !
attachments:
LANDSCAPE_V.1_I_foro_1_MG.pdf
report post as inappropriate
Mike Holden wrote on Apr. 18, 2016 @ 14:42 GMT
To David Pinyana.
I have just read the LANDSCAPE pdf.
I cannot comment on much of the content but, regarding the discussion on the velocities of stars in a galaxy, you may be interested in my article at www.mike-holden.org.uk/stagal.html
Regards.
report post as inappropriate
David Pinyana wrote on Apr. 19, 2016 @ 14:34 GMT
What do you mean by Disc Galaxy ?
Are these velocities actually measured ? and your calculus actually confirmed ?
Why you do not consider:
The Dynamic Laws of Physics (and Universal Gravitation) have varied over time,