Hi Ted Erikson,
Well, elapsed time is in reality always positive as is distance too. Ws = Nm.
I just do not yet understand how your comment relates to my essay. In particular, I would never state "no consciousness for future time" or "now time is zero". To me, consciousness does not matter in objective physics.
Eckard
Hello Steve,
What you means with determinism is perhaps causality and the possibility to reduce anything to the laws of nature if only something like Laplace's demon is available. You should ask yourself whether or not all possible influences can be taken into account. It depends from this pre-mathematical decision whether you are a theorist like for instance Tom Ray or someone with common sense like for instance me.
Best regards,
Eckard
John,
I see you quite right. What has not yet occurred is not yet fully decided. We only can attribute some probability to it. I wonder if Tom or someone else could refute your argument. I consider Tom's view at the heart of illusions that affect not just modern physics but already modern mathematics.
Best,
Eckard
Hello Eckard,
:) I sort always the things. I need always to select the determinism. I don't affirm whenit is irrational or if it is not already proved. In fact , it is objective and precise the sciences. The confusions are not really a good partner when the illogism is the main conductor of the line of reasoning.
The causality and the effects are always rational in fact simply. Thje proportions are always an universal evidence.
Best Regards
Eckard,
Tom is a true believer in the Gods of Math. There is a particular, essentially theological assumption built into that faith, that I've been trying to point out; There implicit assumption that a fundamentally objective knowledge of reality is possible, now referred to as a TOE. I keep arguing that knowledge is inherently subjective. It requires a specific frame, perspective, model, etc. Tom knows this, as he says we have nothing without models, but he cannot accept those models he holds dear, are not the "face of God." Such as that a dimensionless point is a mathematical contradiction, since anything multiplied by zero doesn't exist, so it is just a modeling convenience, but the desire for theoretical perfection of measurement would rather a contradiction, than the conceptual fuzziness of requiring points, lines and planes some minimal width/depth.
Not to mention that the "fabric of spacetime" must be "physically real."
Eckard
You analyse shortcomings in physics well, but the page limit makes a comprehensive list impossible. I was pleased to agree with all, and strongly with most, particularly the need to recognise 'concrete' meaning in concepts, and that 'points' are inadequate in doing so.
I develop these key points in my own essay to find some important results and implications, particularly the quantum mechanical derivation of the observed relativistic effects by analysing particles as non zero spatially and interactions being non zero temporally. Reading your essay I was increasingly surprised you seem not to have gleaned this from mine, or at least not commented.
The minor typo's and grammar errors count for nought (i.e; 'has a correlate..', 1920th, et cetera), as the content excellent. Perhaps as disjointed at times as mine is 'over dense' in it's layers, but it read smoothly none the less.
Figure 5 was no surprise and I'm surprised it was a surprise for many, because it was in a medium not 'the vacuum'. I assert there is no distinction, where most assume one. But, more importantly, were observations also taken and analysed from the rest frame of the air?? or, to look at it another way. If the air were at rest and both emitter and 'mirror' moving in unison sideways. With 'light' the findings would then be different (Kinetic Reverse Refraction). I find that this is a massively important fact, not assimilated into theory, which then allows the non-zero particle interaction to produce observed 'Stellar Aberration', which is in the opposite direction tofindings from the emitter frame (as with your Fig 5 from sound).
Perhaps you may re-check my essay as I think we are far more compatible and complimentary that you appeared to recognise.
Well done, and best of luck.
Peter
Peter,
I have to react to a reply by Lawrence Crowell. Therefore I will only briefly tell you nthat i do not understand your questio n concerning Fig. 5.
You wrote: "Figure 5 was ... in a medium not 'the vacuum'. I assert there is no distinction ... . But, more importantly, were observations also taken and analysed from the rest frame of the air?? or, to look at it another way. If the air were at rest and both emitter and 'mirror' moving in unison sideways."
Feist's car was moving with 120 km/h relative to the air being at rest re ground. The signal was emitted as well as received by the 220 kHz distance finder E which moved together with reflector R "in unison sidewards" because E and R were arranged on the roof of the car with the line ER perpendicular to the direction of motion. Measurement in a wind channel would also be possible but not so easily feasible.
You speculated: "With 'light' the findings would then be different (Kinetic Reverse Refraction)." Wouldn't refraction require different media?
Eckard
John,
I consider Tom's view in agreement with mainstream mistakes. He and all the others do not understand that even obviously matching denotations for elements of reality are subject to possible changes that may put the chosen identification in question. Roger Schlafly stated: "Nature has no faithful mathematical representation."
Presumably, not even Tom will deny that this is correct for the entity of all aspects. On the other hand, Tom argues that there is no reason to doubt that some well confirmed observations and laws of nature are true. He, Lawrence, and many others even refuse to question Einstein's special theory of relativity, and set theory (ST). ST was correctly still called a belief by Hilbert is now established as if it was a fact. Let me call the mainstream (which was called by Weyl the rats who followed the piper Hilbert like the children of Hameln) naive which means too ready to trust in something merely intuitively founded and now at odds with other intuitions. Some most questionable intuitions behind modern mathematics and physics are addressed in my essay. They are typical human fallacies, in particular driven by the desire for rigor and generalization.
Eckard
With the suggested Cauchy-modified Euclidean notion of number, sinc(x) has no singularity at all. Pebble mathematics declares sinc(0) a removable or cosmetic singularity. I see the latter denotation indicating a wrong notion of number.
I would like to clarify: Kept for appropriate descriptions of physical phenomena must not include any singularity. Of course, the electric or magnetic field of a point charge or line conductor have poles for r=0. However, these poles are artifacts of models that are invalid for r=0.
I anticipate disbelief and hope for objections from theoreticians. Please tell me an example of an experimentally confirmed physical correlate to a mathematical singularity.
Eckard
The issue with negative frequency is not hard to understand. First off if I were to build a band-pass filter if this were to select for negative frequencies it would mean I need an inductor with a negative inductance. This frankly does not make sense. How one construct a device to measure or that would admit a negative frequency? Of course one can construct any type of mathematics with a negative frequency, but that is not the same as physics.
It is the case of quantum mechanics a negative frequency does correspond to negative energy. The energy of a photon E = ħω has sign dependency with the angular frequency ω = 2πν. Suppose we have a particle with mass 0 > m. Suppose this particle decays into photons, then the photons clearly have negative frequency
mc^2 --- > 2ħω,
and of course if we have negative frequency photons we can have the converse process. As a result we may generate a negative mass particle.
Negative mass particles are quirky. For one thing Newton's law of gravity F = ma = GMm/r^2 indicates that if we have M positive and M negative with
Ma = -GMm/r^2
ma = GMm/r^2
that the two masses are accelerated in the same direction. In fact if the two mass have the same magnitude the two race off indefinitely to "infinity."
This is related to the issue of tachyons. What is the problem with tachyons? The relativistic momentum-energy interval is
m^2 = E^2 - p^2
where I have set c = 1. The magnitude of the momentum is greater than the energy and so m^2 is less than zero. The energy E = sqrt{p^2 m^2}defines the velocity
v = ∂E/∂p = p/E
which since p > E is greater than unity. This has the meaning that the particle moves faster than light. The interval defines the Klein-Gordon equation ∂_t^2 - ∂_i^2 = □ so that □ψ = m^2ψ. The term m^2ψ comes from the potential V(ψ) = (1/2)m^2ψ^2, and the gradient of the potential ∂V(ψ)/∂ψ = m^2ψ is less than zero. Hence the vacuum state is not stable.
The relationship between the negative mass particle and the tachyon is seen if we consider the extreme boosted situation with p^2 = p_x^2 p_y^2 p_z^2 and p_z much larger than the other components. We may then write the energy as
E =sqrt{p_x^2 p_y^2 p_z^2 m^2 }
~= p_z sqrt(1 (p_x^2 p_y^2)/p_z^2 m^2/p_z^2}
and binomial theorem gives
E =~ p_z (p_x^2 p_y^2)/2p_z m^2/2p_z)
And p_z plays the role of a Lorentz factor. This is a very classical appearing equation and the last term is interpreted as a mass μ = m^2/p_z that is negative. So the negative mass physics is related to the tachyon physics in this extreme boosted situation.
So there are a number of strikes against this idea of negative mass and negative frequency. Ashoke Sen has found that tachyons can form condensates in D-brane physics. These are special cases, such as the M2-brane in a black hole interior, where the tachyons are not free to propagate.
Cheers LC
Lawrence,
Negative mass particles are not quirky. They are the result of neglecting pre-mathematical issues. Strikes against the idea of negative frequency are only reasonable if this idea claims to attribute the negative frequency to physical reality. My essay tried to explain this as understandable as possible to all those who are ready to read it step by step. Negative frequencies are a must with complex function of elapsed time. They vanish with correct inverse transformation back into reality.
The most compelling reason to doubt the existence of absolutely negative mass, energy, pressure, temperature, tachyons, etc. is not that they were not experimentally confirmed. They will certainly never be found in reality if they are just artifacts of faulty pre-mathematics. I see no justification for the intuition that every mathematical object has a correlate in physical reality. On the contrary, It reminds me of the likewise naïve idea that thunder must be made by Thor who was imagined like a man.
You may believe in tachyons. I see them more fiction than science and perhaps meaningless. Do you see any possibility to refute my perhaps more important hint that the mirror symmetry of past and future time, which puzzled Hermann Weyl, can easily be explained as the failure to be aware of a tacit transformation with a complex "ansatz" and perform the due inverse transform after calculating in complex plane based on assumed physically correct only positive frequency. While I am also among those who are too lazy to each time perform all steps of transformation and return, I tend to know what I do and how to immediately interpret results I got in complex domain.
Eckard
Hello Eckard, thanks for your comments on my essay, and sorry I took some time to comment on yours, am on holiday and on the road with my partner at present. I found some of your essay interesting - one thing, you say that Einstein's:
"...obviously unrealistic denial of past and future in theory is a consequence of a very old fallacy which is hidden within the assumption that our commonly agreed event-related time scale is a basic physical quantity."
The reason he thought there was no distinction between past and future is that Minkowskian geometry leads to that conclusion, and we often believe our old school teachers. But people are beginning to question Minkowski's work, as I have done in my essay. There have even been some rather desperate attempts to get rid of the lack of distinction between past and future, while keeping spacetime intact. I've argued that these don't work, because in spacetime, the distinction between past and future is purely observer-related, and depends on relative motion only. So it can't be about the collapse of the wave function, or other things that people ascribe it to, if spacetime is right. I've argued that there must be an error in the spacetime geometry, and that we have to look deeper to remove the problem.
I disagree that time strictly cannot be measured at all - a time rate can be measured in relation to another time rate. We don't know what causes these relative time rates, but they can be measured in relation to each other.
Anyway, best wishes, Jonathan
Dear Eckard Blumschein,
In a comment to John, you appeared to disagree with several essayists who "seem to intuitively believe in the correctness of the very foundational assumption that reality has been built on mathematics."
For this reason I'd like to make you aware of a comment that I posted [to all FQXi'ers] on this topic:
"This essay contest presents a number of contradictions, yet it is enlightening and eye-opening. My thoughts at this stage, after reading most (but not all) of the essays is stated in a comment I posted on Edward J. Gillis' excellent essay. The gist is as follows:
Despite the assumption that Bell's inequality is valid, an assumption I reject, I agree with you that "in order to make current theory logically coherent, we need ... indeterminism...".
You say our brains, "figuring out what we can control" bias intuition in favor of determinism. Yes, but free will does not fit a deterministic view and my intuition is comfortable with it.
As I recall Bernard d'Espagnat noted that our world is based on three assumptions: realism, inductive reasoning, and locality (linked to speed of light). Believers in Bell tend to retain logical inference at the expense of local realism. Perhaps this should be reconsidered.
Several essays in this contest suggest that space-time, locality, unitarity, and causality are "emergent", that is, not fundamental, but artefactual, emerging from deeper fundamentals, akin to temperature emerging from statistical ensembles of particles. Yet they apparently assume that logic and math survive even when space-time, locality, and causality have vanished (coming 'as close to "nothing" as possible').
I have presented logic and math as emergent from real structure (in 'The Automatic Theory of Physics') and if I am correct, then one cannot assume that one can banish space-time, locality, and causality and yet retain logic and math. [To do so one must be a 'Platonist', having a religious belief in some realm of 'math' not unlike religious belief in a 'Heavenly realm'.]
My intuition and my experience tell me that reality is both 'real' and 'local' while they also inform me that logical coherency is *not* universal. For instance this FQXi contest contains a number of 'logical maps' that span various regions of the 'territory' [physics], but they are logically inconsistent with each other [and potentially contain logical inconsistencies within themselves.] If anything, this problem grows worse daily, as new math and new physics ideas branch in new directions. Despite the claims of various schools of physics, there is no coherent 'Theory of Everything', nor does one seem to be in sight. Many deny even the possibility of such. Given this state of affairs, I am ever more inclined to believe that the Bell'ists have made the wrong bet, trading local realism for logic, and losing on both counts.
Perhaps a new understanding that 'logic is local' needs to replace the [probably faulty] assumption that 'logic is universal'. My essay is one approach that assumes local realism is fundamental."
As I hope to aggregate arguments on this topic, I invite your response on my thread.
Edwin Eugene Klingman
Hello Jonathan,
Lawrence just illustrated implications of the question you raised. Although Minkowski was a teacher of Einstein, he credited Einstein for the basis of his spacetime. I read this in German. There is definitely a good translation into English. I do not even blame the idea of spacetime for useless. Maybe, the divine bird's view on past and future is about as clever as the obviously only approximative linearizing of pressure in acoustics.
I tend to rather blame the not very well educated Dirichlet, G. Cantor and Einstein for bringing naive intuition into science. Minkowski called Einstein a lazy dog who often skipped his lessons on mathematics. I see a clever logical split in Einstein's thinking; he merged the divine perspective looking over all past and future with the perspective of a real observer.
Einstein made a related mistake when he used Poincaré synchronization. This view effectively binds the distinction between past and future to the observer instead to the object it relates to. I hoped Georgina did find out this flaw more clearly.
In all, we may resort in case of Einstein too to the Lessing quote Ebbinghaus made in his textbook "numbers" when he dared to admit indirectly that G. Cantor was horribly wrong:
If someone by an obvious mistake came to a valuable truth ...
Best wishes,
Eckard
Eckard
You'd need to understand 'Kinetic Reverse Refraction' (KRR) to understand my question. KRR is well known in optics but not well enough known outside as not rationalised into present theory. All good optics text books cover it, or this is one good link; 'Refraction between moving media'. http://mathpages.com/rr/s2-08/2-08.htm
Essentially, to an observer at rest in the air, the emission axis rotates in the OPPOSITE direction to that 'observed' from the 'car' frame.
You already agree remember that there IS a change in 'medium' (ambulance siren) from the emitter to the air; consider a siren inside the cabin as a headlight bulb, and the windscreen as the lens, the sound and light change propagation frame (co-moving medium) just AFTER emission. Observers inside the cabin, or the light lens, see the light first emitted in the emitter frame NOT the frame of the outside air. Ergo refraction has to occur before any Doppler shift of wavelength (thus derivative f) can be found by any other observer (where the process repeats in reverse). But do read the link, because it's easy to forget again when applying it due to unfamiliarity.
If you then look at my own figure 5 you can see the mechanism which explains both KRR and the findings of your own figure 5.
In a vacuum this becomes the 'Light Box' paradox. A light pulse bounces up and down, but when in relative motion to an observer it would appear to have an angled path so be superluminal. Tat's why Einstein needed Length Contraction. He said the box must then contract to conserve c.
So why would the light pulse not stay bouncing up and down when the box and it's mirrors moved off sideways!!??
KRR and my Fig 5 explain this without contraction of the box, and if the sides of the box were removed then the pulse WOULD stay vertical when the box moved away. Therefore intuition and logic is reclaimed. (as well as Snel's Law in KRR.
That is why Feist's findings are no surprise at all once the real process is understood. Only retained assumptions about how things work prevent this understanding.
Peter
Peter,
Thank you for guiding me to "At the end of my Latin". I agree on that "Feist's findings are no surprise at all once the real process is understood". Be sure, I carefully selected and designed each of my five figures with the intention to enforce an important reconsideration.
Admittedly, I failed to understand on the first glance what message you intended to offer with your figures. You mentioned your Fig. 5; I only found four of your figures.
What about kinetic reverse refraction KRR, "a phenomena not yet assimilated into
physical theory" you did not yet explain to me how it may relate to my Fig. 5 where the wave propagates in only one medium with always the same refractory index. All explanations of KRR I found refer to refraction at a boundary between two media with different indexes.
I agree with Don Johnson's arguments in Galilean Electrodynamics 2006, 3-7 against Wheelers SR related illustration of transverse motion.
I will read Shtyrkov's 2011 paper in Russian on the Michelson experiment and have a look at Dowdye's 2006 Introduction in the Extinction Shift Principle you made me aware of. While my Fig. 5 shows reemission, I do not see this a justification for the implications ascribed to emission theories so far.
Eckard
Dear Edwin Klingman,
Just a few spontaneous lines. I will follow your invitation later.
As I wrote in 3rd contest, the claimed freedom of mathematics contradicts to the belief that "reality has been built on mathematics".
In my 4th essay I revealed my view that Hilbert prematurely subordinated meta-mathematics and logics to mathematics, and that I am admitting reality ultimately as a fictitious intangible model of what agrees without exception with observations, experiences and predictions in contrast to illusions, speculations, and mysticism. Any organism without such model is doomed to die.
I do not see any reason why this model should obey merely intuitive conclusions or take theories for finally confirmed. For instance, Ohm was wrong when he concluded that a missing fundamental cannot be heard.
Do foundational question reasonably include doubts in reality? Well, several essays demonstrate readiness to even question such notions like causality and locality in order to save theories that were accepted. I see it already an attack on common sense if causality and limited speed of light are put on the same level with spacetime and unitarity.
While I do not know any evidence against causality, I see complete determinism a naive intuition and at variance with the possibility of a potentially infinite world. To me, free will is just a metaphor for a not yet decided future.
Engineers like me tend to put the 'as close to "nothing" as possible' into the drawer of signal to noise ratio.
While reality is necessarily 'real', I do not share your pessimistic guess that logical coherency is *not* universal. Maybe, it cannot be easily enforced. We all will hopefully contribute to the removal of unnecessary obstacles.
Best tegards,
Eckard
Dear Eckard,
I always enjoy your replies, and particularly your mastery of mathematical history, which you use to illuminate many areas.
I agree that "complete determinism [is] a naive intuition and at variance with the possibility of a potentially infinite world."
As for "While reality is necessarily 'real', I do not share your pessimistic guess that logical coherency is *not* universal. Maybe, it cannot be easily enforced" I see the 'logical ideas' we have as due to essentially separate logical structures that exist in our brains, some learned from playing baseball as children, some learned from sitting in calculus class, and these structures are not wholly integrated and fully unified, nor are they universally correct and compatible. The question is then whether these separate maps, or combinations thereof, can 'cover' reality coherently. Maybe, maybe not.
Of course this depends upon the correctness of my view that logic is structural in nature as opposed to mystical in nature, and also to the degree that structures (neural nets) that are connected uniquely in each of us can 'rise above' this dependence on individual experiences to be isomorphic with those of others. It's amazing that a few simple theories like Newtonian mechanics, special relativity, and quantum mechanics can bridge these differences in most physicists minds, but to expect it to do so for the "potentially infinite world" you mentioned seems to me to expect a lot. And this does not even take into account the dimensions of reality of which Kyle Miller speaks.
Thanks for sharing your insights,
Edwin Eugene Klingman
Dear Eckard
My submission have been refused, but if you want to read mail me please. yuri@danoyan.net
I can send you for discussion.
All the best
Yuri
Dear Yuri,
You make me curious. I think my own essay has been radical enough. Maybe, your English was not convincing?
Al the best,
Eckard