My essay is a part of a larger body of work. This is the fourth part enterred into FQXI essay competitions. While each essay attempts to accomplish some main point, not one stands alone. Furthermore, the full body of work is a work in progress. The goal of the work is to remove the assumptions of theoretical physics.

I have argued that the first such assumption was to make mass an indefinable property. Thereore, that is the first assumption done away with. Mass is defined in the same terms as is the empirical evidence from which its existence was inferred. All other assumptions are to be done away with in favor of establishing equations of physics that retain direct connection to emirical evidence. In this sense, it is a work of removing theory from physics.

In my current essay, and in my essay in the last contest, I speak of a photon model. That model is very simple. It is treated as a type of very short pliable wire. A photon is of course not a piece of wire. The reason the wire type model even exists is that in order to remove the assumptions of theoretial physics I must start at the beginning. That beginning is simple and kept simple until empirical evidence requires complication to be introduced or added.

I am still working through redefining the fundamenals of physics, therefore, the work, the model, and the math is simple and not representative of a completed work. Although, it is looking possible that with all the results that I have achieved thus far, that the model may not change much. Time and work will tell.

James

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  • Post #81

James,

Understand. It is necessary to limit how many related issues that go in a paper to keep it in a readable size.

You might find Ed Unverricht's essay "Framework for a Classical Model of the Neutron, Proton, Electron and Photon" interesting in the way he presents the photon, page 8.

Framework for a Classical Model

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  • Post #82

True. Moops are subsets of tazzies and tazzies are subsets of fazzies. Were you actually looking for an answer, or did I let my naivete suck me into something, again? :-)

Tom

Tom,

I was looking for an answer. My daughter marked the answer as true, but, then came and asked me what I thought. After a moment I said that word 'definite' makes me hesitate, I think it may be false. She went off. I was still thinking it over and went to her to say that the examples I had thought of all satisfied the true answer. I was still searching for an exception. Meanwhile, she had changed the answer to false and submitted the application on the computer. Then she was concerned that she had it correct and I made her change it. I had to scramble to come up with some exceptional example. Here it is, does it work?:

moops are letters of the alphabet that are also words.

tazzies are letters of the alphabet.

fazzies are all things with 26 parts.

I told her that when the employer said she got the question wrong to give her or him that example as a response. What does anyone think?

p.s. Tom, When she mentioned this problem to me it reminded me a a recent discussion, that should not be revived here, about a=b, b=c, therefore a=c. Ring a bell? That thought prompted me to think that it may be false.

James

To all who choose to rate my work,

My opinions about and votes for the essays of others are unrelated to evaluations by the others of my own work. That is the way I always do it. Any opinions expressed are invited to be forthright. Those are the kind that count. Thank you all.

James

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  • Post #85

James, your example makes the statement true. All words are made of letters of the alphabet, which has 26 elements. In that infamous example, even though it's always true that if A = B and B = C, then A = C, which is saying A = B = C, the application of the reasoning in that case was false. The actual algebra would be that when A = B, B = C. That's not the same statement, because the value of C is not dependent on the value of A, that is -- not linearly dependent, which is a requirement of the first case.

The difference between "when" and "if" obviates simultaneity. An example would be, using your illustration, that if moops are random letters of the alphabet that do not form words, they are tazzies only when they do form words. Then even though a moop is always a member of the set called tazzy, and both are members of fazzy, a moop takes dichotomous values dependent on whether it forms a word or not when we shake all the letters and output a string. The ouput, IOW, is a discrete nonlinear result, from a range of continuous values.

Tom

Tom,

I said letters that are also words. I was thinking of single letters just A and I. I guess I need to tell her 'single letters that are also words. You are helping.

James

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  • Post #87

James,

The problem as the employer phrased it, is linearly dependent. The state of being, of all three terms, implies equality: A = B, B = C, therefore A = C.

One has to change the problem (A = A IFF A /= C). That is, when one says that a Moop is a random string and not a word, it is not a member of C (Fazzies). It is still a member of B (Tazzies).

In other words, when one says a "set of 26 things" to include the letters of the (English) alphabet, they don't have to be ordered; neither do they have to be ordered to be Tazzies. They DO have to be ordered to be words, so only "Moop" (word) belongs to both B & C.

It's interesting that you raise the issue of the word "a" as a single letter, as a member of the ordered sequence that we call "words," This is a problem that mathematicians have dealt with by introducing the axiom of choice (also known as Zorn's lemma among other things). If one allows a 1-letter word, your proposition is true in what is called the ZFC (Zermelo-Fraenkel plus the axiom of choice) set of axioms; it is untrue in what is called PA (Peano arithmetic). We always have to go back to our set of basic assumptions to answer "true-false" when using formal logic.

It's pretty easy to get wrapped around the stem with this stuff.

Tom

Hi James,

It's always good to see you participating in these contests. I hope that a number of other regulars are working on their entries for this year, as well as new participants.

You probably know this, but the Pound-Rebka experiment at Harvard accurately measured light falling from the top of a tower to the bottom. Sometimes its hard to find data to test our theories against, but I think that this might be a good place for you to look, if you haven't already. Of course their goal was detecting the effect of gravity on the photon and they assumed the constant speed of light, but data is data, and I expect that the numbers they produced will fit into your own equations and can be interpreted in terms of your own assumptions.

Aside from that fact, congratulations on the number of comments you have received on your essay. Are you trying to set the record this year?

Edwin Eugene Klingman

    Hi Edwin,

    I included the results of the Pound-Rebka experiment right from the start. I address it at my website. It showed only that frequency changes. It could not show whether or not light was constant or if it varied and if it varies which direction it varied in. The experiment, if done before general relativity, could have been used as evidence that light speed varies. I think that even today it could be interpreted as either proving or disproving general relativity. That's enough of what I think. You wrote a very diplomatic message, thank you. :)

    James

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    • Post #90

    James,

    The Pound-Rebka experiment showed that, if f waves pass the emitter (on the top of a tower of height h) in a unit of time, f'=f(1+gh/c^2) waves pass the receiver on the ground in a unit of time. If the wavelength, L, has remained constant, we have c'=Lf'>c=Lf, that is, the speed of light has increased. A different conclusion can only be reached on the assumption that the wavelength varies in some way or another.

    Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.com

    Pentcho,

    The Pound-Rebka experiment said nothing about waves or frequency. It had to do with measuring photon energy and its change due to distance above the Earth. And then also motion of a material object. Your analysis or anyone's analysis is attached to discussions of but is not part of the experiment.

    James

    Hi Steve,

    In response to your message concerning my understanding your theory. I do not understand your theory. If anything I say sounds to you to be related to it, it is just coincidental or more likely is your imagination. I don't use spheres for building up the universe or for containing the universe. I work solely from the perspective that empirical evidence consists of information about patterns of changes of velocity. I accept only what properties are inferred from that evidence.

    The two properties inferred from that evidence are force and resistance to force. The evidence does not tell me what force is or what resistance to force is. But, those two are real and for those two one can treat them in a theoretical manner such as saying that electric charge gives rise to force or saying that resistance to force is something called mass. I don't use electric charge in my work because I found it to be unnecessary. Its magnitude without its electric charge interpretation is a universal constant that works wonders to achieve unity.

    Even in the treatment of force and resistance to force, I am restricted to working with one cause for both. I am also restricted to defining both of them in the same terms as is the evidence from which their existence is inferred. No additional assumptions are allowed to enter into their definitions.

    That act is for the purpose of keeping the inventions of theorists at bay. Adding extra forces or separate causes for mass are theoretical additions that I avoid to this day or until forced to acknowledge their need. None of this has to do with spheres or the properties of spinning spheres or your equations.

    I do not know what your theory is about. My chosen path is very different. Take credit for what you have done. Nothing that I have done is credited to learning your theory. I haven't learned your theory. I don't understand your theory. I am not using your theory.

    James

      Pentcho,

      If you wish to converse further about the Pound-Rebka experiment please consider posting here. thank you.

      James

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        • Post #94

        Hi James,

        Indeed you do not understand it, you know don't be too much frustrated, it is logic, you know only perhaps 50 persons on this earth are able to understand the gnerality of my theory. I don't offense you, I just put your sciences at their rational step. You are a thinker, a kind of philosophe.In fact like the most of persons making the essays here, you need a kind of recognizing, probably that you think that you are special.You know me also I need a recognizing from the sciences community. But no James, you are not special,we are not special, indeed we are all unique and preious, and with a real humility when you listen the wind , isn't it ?

        In fact James, you are too much vanitious and too much jealous perhaps even and too much limited for a real understanding of my gneral works.I am obliged to speak like this.Sorry but I must show you your foundamental errors.

        An ocean of essays for a kind of vanity.....and who is the winner ? who ?

        Each year you make an essay, and now it is the decreasing of light , in fact you make like a lot of people a kind of false general copycats for this recognizing cited above.

        Don't be too much frurstated, each person at his place , no?

        How can you understand a thing if you have not studied the gnerality.You know a theory or rational idea do not fall down from the sky like that. In fact a real searcher learns real sciences and accept the general ideas.if not it is just a probelm of vanity.And frankly the essays shall be better if the vanity was in the pocket.

        I find your ideas , interesting in a pure philosophical point of vue. That is all. You do not really learn the generalities.I invite you to study the maths, the biology, the ecology, the astronomy and the pure thermodynamics, Zemanski have made good works.And put your vanity in the spherical pocket ok James !

        Your ideas are not bad ,but it lacks the generalities of our universal laws.

        Buy better books please !

        After perhaps you shall see the real universal proportions due to rotating spheres.Quantum spheres.....cosmological spheres.....UNIVERSAL SPHERE. IN 3D !!!

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        • Post #95

        James Putnam wrote: "The Pound-Rebka experiment said nothing about waves or frequency."

        Quite to the contrary, James:

        http://student.fizika.org/~jsisko/Knjige/Klasicna%20Mehanika/David%20Morin/CH13.PDF

        David Morin (p. 4): "They [Pound and Rebka] sent gamma rays up a 20m tower and measured the redshift (that is, the decrease in frequency) at the top. This was a notable feat indeed, considering that they were able to measure a frequency shift of gh/c^2 (which is only a few parts in 10^15) to within 1% accuracy."

        The receiver at the top measures frequency f', speed of light c' and wavelength L': f'=c'/L'. If the wavelength has remained constant (L'=L), the speed of light has decreased as predicted by Newton's emission theory of light: c'=c(1-gh/c^2).

        Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.com

        Pentcho,

        You are informing me of a theoretical view of what the experiment meant. I spoke to what the experiment demonstrates on its own. It only demonstrated that a photon would not be absorbed under very exacting circumstances if that photon changed its distance from the Earth. And also, that adding motion will compensate for it. It does not demonstrate what happens or doesn't happen to the speed of light.

        Frequency, wavelength, and thereby the common reference to red-shift is interpretation by us. If you wish to attach that interpretation to the results of the experiment, it has proven to be theoretically useful. If you wish to attach your own interpretation, then you are on your own. I attach my own personal interpretation and I am on my own. The experiment stands for what it did period.

        I have received no feedback on my derivation of the Universal Gravitational Constant presented in my essay. It follows along with many other results from my breaking severely with tradition and making mass a definable property. If that step makes no sense to the reader, then what is the reader's opinion about my putting it to the test immediately in the mentioned derivation? Is demonstrating that it may not be a 'given' property not worth consideration? Or, is it dismissable as being an error?

        James

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        • Post #98

        Hi James,

        This is probably going to hook me into a longer discussion than I am prepared to carry on, so I can't promise to stay with it. However, the question of a universal gravitational constant derived from Newton's gravity seems a good place to start.

        You note that Newton's two-body gravity formula (eqn 36) incorporates two terms for mass, while his energy formula (eqn 37) has only one. The reason is that gravity describes a curvilinear relation between spatially separated points of mass changing in time, and force describes a point of mass changing linearly in time.

        Taking the moon in relation to Earth, Newton found that the body is accelerating sufficiently in a curvilinear path to avoid colliding with Earth, yet not so fast as to escape orbit. The energy of acceleration, therefore, is countered by the negatively valued presence of Earth's mass; the inertia of Earth's rest mass, IOW, is sufficiently large to keep the inertia of the moon's accelerated mass falling in a curved path, rather than continuing in a straight line. Galileo had earlier found that objects in a gravity field fall at the same rate whether in a straight line or a curve, so Einstein recognized that it makes no difference calculationally whether the moon is accelerating toward Earth or Earth accelerating toward the moon -- gravity and acceleration are equivalent.

        You speak of an "awkwardness" between eqns 36 and 37, and propose to convert Newton's linear f = ma, which is easy to solve, to a differential equation (eqn 38) which is not only diffcult to solve but to which you want to make Newton's also easy to solve 2-body gravitation relation equivalent (equation 39). I have to ask -- why? It appears to me you are trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist.

        Relativity already describes mass-energy relations in terms of momentum. The rest energy equation E = mc^2 is quoted so often that one forgets its derivation: E^2 = m^2c^4 (pc)^2 where p is momentum. The unreduced equation tells us that a relativistic particle of zero momentum contains negative mass. (That's what allows me to speak of "negatively valued" mass in relation to Newton's theory above as a convenient fiction, a relativistic convention.)

        I appreciate that you are motivated by the idea that mass is not a "given." That mass is made of space and time alone. That is what continuous field theories already tell us, though -- energy densities that vary from point to point of spacetime are massless when considered, as you put it, from the POV of a remote observer.

        You're right that a variable speed of light eliminates the gravitational field -- but then, one also loses the measurement standard by which we determine that energy varies point to point. So your result (eqns 61/62) ends up saying that gravity does not vary in time, because the universal acceleration of gravity is constant (though in relation to what, since acceleration describes the rate of change of the rate of change?) and the universe is therefore static. I don't know how you reconcile that with an expanding universe, which is the same problem Einstein had when he introduced the cosmological constant. We believe today that the cosmological constant does not significantly differ from zero.

        As near as I can understand you, James, you have substituted a hypothetical variable speed of light for the variation of energy densities in the spacetime field. I can't see a problem with this, relativistically speaking, and I don't have to check the math to agree with the idea in principle -- yet what is gained? We were always free to see mass as "slow light." This only works in one direction, however -- (initial photon veolcity is always the speed of light, the speed at which photons are created) -- when you start treating nuclear particles (eqns 51 - 55) in terms of positive acceleration, you are contradicting your original proposal to convert Newtonian mechanics to quantum mechanics. You identify no limit nor mechanism by which photons accelerating negatively become mass that accelerates positively. If photon acceleration degenerates to zero (as it must in your model) how does that differ from the singularity of general relativity?

        What am I missing?

        Tom

        Tom,

        "What am I missing?"

        You aren't missing anything. You have been the first ever to put some meat on the bone of conention. Thank you. What is missing, beyond the possibility that I am just plain wrong, are two things. One is the parts I have not mentioned. The other is the host of parts I don't know yet. In discussions of established theory one can very often jump around in discussion by refering to known work. I can't do that. So, I find things to say that sort of work well in their own limited context. I rely on results to say for themselves that "Nonsense cannot produce us." That doesn't prove that my extensive radical changes to theory are correct, but, I think it may say something important to theoretical physicists.

        Thank you for both reading and critiquing the essay. No you shouldn't put in more of your time on this. You have already provided excellent input. I can't accomplish much in forum messages either. I will wait for the next opportunity. In the meantime, you have helped. One last note, just for the purpose of mentioning it, one of the main missing parts that I have avoided introducing is that, in the work presented at my website, mass is not only positive acceleration. It is also negative acceleration. In short, protons have positive acceleration of light and electrons have negative acceleration of light. Polarity is a property of mass.

        The absolute magnitudes of the accelerations of light identified with protons and electrons are not equal. They do though combine into nuetrality. Neutrality is represented by C. I am not making nor can I make the argument in favor of this at this time. Still though, it has had me searching for empirical evidence to support it. I haven't yet found it but I expect my treatment of electrons to be either supported by or debunked by evidence that the speed of light is or is not greater than C in the presence of electrons only. I need greater than C. Ideally, if the electrons formed a dense gas with no other influences from other matter present, the increase in the speed of light would be many times higher.

        You have done enough and I thank you for it.

        James