After studying about 250 essays in this contest, I realize now, how can I assess the level of each submitted work. Accordingly, I rated some essays, including yours.
Cood luck.
The Aether Medium Is Made of Waves by Jason Mark Wolfe
Hi Jason ,
I don't know if you have yet read the essay by Benjamin Thomas Solomon. His interest is interstellar travel and I thought that since you two have that interest (and determination) in common, you might be able to have some fruitful discussion. I told him I would mention his essay to you.
Hi Georgina,
Sure, I'll take a look at Benjamin's paper.
Jason
Hi Vladimir,
If you change the permittivity, you change the electric field strength and the voltage. We've sent probes beyond the earth's gravity. If the permittivity was changing, it would mess up the circuitry in these probes. Since there are probes (satellites) that still work beyond earth's orbit. then the permitivity isn't changing.
If you do not understand why your rating dropped down. As I found ratings in the contest are calculated in the next way. Suppose your rating is [math]R_1 [/math] and [math]N_1 [/math] was the quantity of people which gave you ratings. Then you have [math]S_1=R_1 N_1 [/math] of points. After it anyone give you [math]dS [/math] of points so you have [math]S_2=S_1+ dS [/math] of points and [math]N_2=N_1+1 [/math] is the common quantity of the people which gave you ratings. At the same time you will have [math]S_2=R_2 N_2 [/math] of points. From here, if you want to be R2 > R1 there must be: [math]S_2/ N_2>S_1/ N_1 [/math] or [math] (S_1+ dS) / (N_1+1) >S_1/ N_1 [/math] or [math] dS >S_1/ N_1 =R_1[/math] In other words if you want to increase rating of anyone you must give him more points [math]dS [/math] then the participant`s rating [math]R_1 [/math] was at the moment you rated him. From here it is seen that in the contest are special rules for ratings. And from here there are misunderstanding of some participants what is happened with their ratings. Moreover since community ratings are hided some participants do not sure how increase ratings of others and gives them maximum 10 points. But in the case the scale from 1 to 10 of points do not work, and some essays are overestimated and some essays are drop down. In my opinion it is a bad problem with this Contest rating process. I hope the FQXI community will change the rating process.
Hi Jason,
I find what you write in the essay quite interesting. I've rated the paper quite highly. It may be worthwhile to consider your proposal of the origin of gravity further.
One might recast the olden concept of aether (as something with physical characteristics) into something more aligned with the concept of fields. Fields, as conceived by Faraday and Maxwell were not at all liked by Maxwell's mentor Lord Kelvin (William Thompson). He considered them entirely meta-physical. And maybe Lord Kelvin had a very valid point. Fields would seem to be an abstraction of something that complies with a structure and set of mathematical rules. What the fields represent physically is force and energy, i.e., the fields encode the relationships between the application of force and the existence and movement of energy.
With that in mind, the concept of aether seems to be an acknowledgement of the structure and rules governing the behavior and evolution of energy and force. My essay investigates some of those mathematical rules in regard to the origin of relativity and may have interesting parallels to ideas in your essay.
Thanks for your contribution,
Steve
Hi Stephen,
Thank you for taking the time to read my essay. I think you are om the right track in that you see the logical connection between fields (measurable) and the aether medium (the ontology). That makes you one of the most keen observers in the physics community.
I gave you a high score. I wish you luck in the contest.
Jason Wolfe
2 months later
Gravity Generator Experiment Tonight!
It's a very busy night where I work. However, I hope to have time to perform the frequency shifting experiment I've been talking about for the last couple of years. I'm going to test two frequency sweeps,
(1) 1GHz to 2GHz every microsecond,
(2) 100MHz to 2GHz every microsecond.
I'm using an arbitrary waveform generator to generate the frequency sweep. If you've ever looked at gravitational redshift, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_redshift
I'm going to try to generate that wave one million times per second. I hope to be able create a time dilation field and the associated gravity field. This is a direct assault on conservation of energy; I am looking for a loophole. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. So where did the energy of the big bang come from? Well, I think that gravity is the anti-energy that, when combined with the energy of the big bang, nets to zero. So if my experiment works and I create a little bit of energy, that new energy will also have a gravity field to balance it to zero. This is known as the Zero Energy Universe hypothesis. You've all heard of particle-antiparticle creation/annihilation, right? I have this idea that there exists an Energy-anti-energy mechanism where gravity is the anti-energy.
I believe that the idea will work. However, I am less hopeful that my frequency sweep will have sufficient quality or ampltitude to produce a measureable change in the acceleration field measured by an electronic scale. We'll see what happens.
2 months later
[deleted]
Hi Jason,
this does no relate to you post as I am completely lost with the subject. I am hoping you are the Jason Wolfe I was close to at WPI. We graduated in 1991 so your graduation date in 1993 surprises me but anyway thought I would try my luck. email me at muslimactuary@yahoo.com or find me on facebook (hassan scott). Would love to catch up...
a month later
[deleted]
I have an opinion. As a spiritualist by faith - I believe in the existence of the soul and spirit entities. I've been trying to figure out how to reconcile these things with the laws of physics, particularly quantum mechanics. Neurobiology seems to be able to explain a whole range of cognitive events and behaviors as just parts of the brain that interact with each other in this electrochemical storm we know of as consciousness. Since the brain can become non-functional and die, it is a real downer to an otherwise good life. Ever optimistic, the question becomes: how could quantum mechanics save our consciousness in some disembodied spirit existence? Well, if you're OK with some loss of cognitive precision, there is a way.
As human intelligences, we are very accustomed to our states of consciousness (joy, love, anger, curiosity, annoyance, serenity). To emphasize, those are just states of consciousness. Of course if we died and became a spirit, but couldn't remember uncle Lewie who died when we were young, but was so fun to be with when he was alive, then it just wouldn't be as blissful as all those near death experiences that people describe. Thus a spirit has to encode some memories (even if they are a bit fuzzy). It's the particular emotions that you want to recall as a spirit entity.
Quantum entanglement suggests that wave-functions might have a real existence (be part of reality) even if they are not physically detectable. This is good news. If small things like particles were made of hard spheres, there would be no wiggle room. But every quantum system has a wave-function that describes its collection of states that a particle might be detected in. The mathematics of describing a two particle quantum system is difficult; if we wanted to describe a quantum system (like a brain) with 10^26 particles, it might be impossible. Nevertheless, there is probably a naturally occurring wave-function for it anyway.
A spirit, if such a thing exists, could be thought of as an elaborate wave-function. We worry about whether or not we have free will. That's equivalent to a spirit choosing a particular state to be in (which is all about mental discipline and will power). An electron will generally fall into a particular quantum state in some random way. But a spirit might be able to resist the whimsical choice based on how it feels, and choose to do what is right (for example) instead of what is easy or convenient.
It might be impossible to prove the existence of a soul or a spirit just as it is impossible to prove the existence of a wave-function. The soul and spiritual entities would simply be more intricate patterns of wave-functions just as particle physics/atomic physics/chemistry/organic chemistry/biochemistry and biology are more intricate patterns of quantum particles.
The wave-function is a naturally occurring phenomena that makes available a bunch of states that energy (photons or other quantum particles) can occupy. Presumably, there is another naturally occurring phenomena of nature that can influence the likelihood that a particle will transition from state 1 to state 2. At the most basic level, that's you're space-time. There are probably unimagined ways (extremely advanced technology) to compel the particle to move to the state you want. We'll probably get into designer forces to overcome entropy.
Hi Jason, we are in the same kind of interpretation of our "spirit".
In my essay "THE CONSCIOUSNESS CONNECTION" I have tried to glue together our physical knowledge of today with my own spiritual thoughts. Indeed we are just in the beginning of a quest that will evolve our "mind" properties and even be able to chanfe of time lines.
greetings (I await your post on my thread so that I am warned)
Wilhelmus
4 days later
[deleted]
Hi Wilhelmus,
Things like consciousness and the soul are easier to make sense of when you solve the riddle of the Uncertainty principle. Why should science be able to predict which quantum state the particle will take, when it is the unseen hand that reserves the right to choose.
a month later
Does the Higgs particle turn physics into alchemy? If matter is caused by the Higgs field, and all matter/energy/fields are made of a growing list of fundamental particles, then particle physics must be turning into alchemy. By alchemy, I mean that strange and mysterious components transmute one into another to produce seemingly magical effects (like a Higgs field). With huge quantities of dark matter in the universe that cannot be accounted for by known standard model particles, one could imagine the existence of entire branches of new fundamental particles that make up forms of matter invisible to photons.
Perhaps the stories of UFO's shutting down nuclear missile silos are true encounters with dark matter lifeforms that coexist with us (dark as in dark matter).
Is it possible for there to be dark matter ecologies, lifeforms and even civilizations that we share the earth with. They would constitute an alien civilization without any need for a warp drive. Could this explain the grays (the gray aliens)? Could this explain the stories of alien abductions?