Can Gravity Be Quantized? by Vesselin Petkov

Vesselin, I agree. It's been difficult for me to get that "feeling," yet I do grasp intellectually that it is an essential component of understanding inertia.

Best,

Tom

Vesselin Petkov,

"Unfortunately, what you wrote - "We do not feel acceleration if it is applied evenly to a body" - is simply not so, if by "We do not feel acceleration" you mean "We do not feel resistance" (what you wrote after this sentence indicates to me that you meant precisely that). ..."

Yes I did mean that.

"... Not only does this statement contradict all existing experimental evidence, but it contradicts even everyday experience. For instance, the acceleration of a car is evenly applied to the body of a person in the car, but the person tangibly feels the acceleration, i.e. the resistance his/her body offers (sometimes in cases of sudden deceleration that feeling is tragically tangible). "

We feel a push in the back or front because it causes uneven acceleration resulting in deformation of our shapes. The example given is not an example of evenly applied force or acceleration. It is an example of unevenly applied force and acceleration.

"... A piece of all existing experimental evidence (mentioned above) is the resistance individual particles (e.g. electrons) offer when accelerated in particle accelerators."

This resistance demonstrates that particles have mass. We also have mass. My point is that objects with mass will not feel force or acceleration if it is applied equally over the entire body. The experience of undergoing evenly applied force or acceleration will not cause a feeling by which to know it.

I can let this go. It is your blog. I made my point and I stick by it. Good luck to you also.

James

Vesselin Petkov,

"If every single atom of the body of a person in an accelerating car accelerates with the car's acceleration (in your terminology acceleration is evenly applied) the person will still feel the resistance due to the acceleration."

No they are not accelerating evenly. The car pushes against the back. The body transfers the force forward to the other parts of the body. That transfer is not instantaneous. Right from the beginning the acceleration was not evenly applied. If it was evenly applied there would be no distortion of the body. If there is no distortion, then, there is no feeling. Gravity makes this point clear.

Thank you for your reply.

James

James, I think that all one needs to understand Vesselin's reply is that " ... the particles' acceleration in the curved spacetime surrounding the Earth is zero ..." which is simple Galilean physics. That is, there is no other source of particle acceleration than gravity. How do we know? -- because we can test it.

An observer in an airplane that drops an unpowered bomb and travels without accelerating for a certain distance while the bomb falls will find that the bomb remains directly beneath the plane for the total time of its fall. In other words, there is no horizontal acceleration component acting on the bomb; the plane and the bomb are both experiencing zero acceleration in the curved spacetime. Another way to test this hypothesis is to fire a cannonball in a flat trajectory, and drop another cannonball from the same height simultaneously. One will find that the fired projectile and the dropped projectile impact the ground at the same moment, even though the fired projectile follows a curved trajectory in its descent, and the dropped projectile a straight trajectory -- again illustrating that there is no horizontal acceleration to the common plane, only the acceleration of gravity acting on each cannonball.

Now when this Galilean theory is extended to Newtonian mechanics and finally to relativity, one gets not only the beautiful mathematics by which we understand relative motion, one can also physically *feel* what it means to have no resistance to motion. I know this from long years of studying Einstein, and have known that one cannot truly grasp relativity without having this sensation. Vesselin brings the subject to life by reminding us that unquantized motion is one continuous quantum, that every particle is as free of resistance as every other.

Tom

Tom, I understand those things. They do not address the question of why does the freely falling person not feel the force of gravity. It is not because gravity is no force. The persons feeling is not evidence for that conclusion. I gave the reason why there is no feeling. The reason is because there is almost equal application of force to all parts of the body and almost equal acceleration for all the parts of the body. There is no reason to feel pulled or pushed whatever.

The orbiting example does involve acceleration in the vertical direction. The reason it accelerates toward the Earth is because is is being acted upon by the force of gravity. That force is acting in the vertical direction.

The Relativity arguments do not apply to solving this matter because of the level at which you are using them. It is the assumptions and choices that led to the development of the theory of relativity that apply. It is at that level, I can diffuse concepts such as space-time. When you use space-time as the crux of your argument, you are relying upon a theoretical concept as if it is real.

My point in addressing what Vesselin said regarding Einstin's elation about no feeling of force of gravity is that that recognition is not an example of some great discovery. The lack of the feeling of being pulled or pushed down is exactly what anyone sould expect to be the case.

James

James,

"I understand those things. They do not address the question of why does the freely falling person not feel the force of gravity."

Yes they do. No particle or system of particles is in a privileged inertial frame. Think about it.

"It is not because gravity is no force. The persons feeling is not evidence for that conclusion. I gave the reason why there is no feeling."

A person is a system of particles. The external evidence is not contradictory of the internal evidence.

Tom

Vesselin Petkov,

"Divine Einstein" is enough - no need for "Divine Minkowski". The difference between the two deities is that the former, being a physicist, tries to give some phisical justification to relativistic absurdities from time to time while the latter is just a mathematical juggler. Look at this:

http://minkowskiinstitute.org/mip/MinkowskiFreemium,%20MIP%202012.pdf

Hermann Minkowski: "I want to make it quite clear what the value of c will be with which we will be finally dealing. c is the velocity of the propagation of light in empty space. To speak neither of space nor of emptiness, we can identify this magnitude with the ratio of the electromagnetic to the electrostatic unit of the quantity of electricity. (...) According to Lorentz every body moving at a velocity v must experience a reduction in the direction of its motion... (...) This hypothesis sounds extremely fantastical. Because the contraction is not to be thought of as a consequence of resistances in the ether, but merely as a gift from above, as an accompanying circumstance of the fact of motion. I now want to show on our figure that the Lorentzian hypothesis is completely equivalent to the new concept of space and time, which makes it much easier to understand."

Now compare Minkowski's text with Banesh Hoffmann's text below. You may find that one of the texts is honest and the other extremely dishonest:

http://www.amazon.com/Relativity-Its-Roots-Banesh-Hoffmann/dp/0486406768

Relativity and Its Roots, Banesh Hoffmann: "Moreover, if light consists of particles, as Einstein had suggested in his paper submitted just thirteen weeks before this one, the second principle seems absurd: A stone thrown from a speeding train can do far more damage than one thrown from a train at rest; the speed of the particle is not independent of the motion of the object emitting it. And if we take light to consist of particles and assume that these particles obey Newton's laws, they will conform to Newtonian relativity and thus automatically account for the null result of the Michelson-Morley experiment without recourse to contracting lengths, local time, or Lorentz transformations. Yet, as we have seen, Einstein resisted the temptation to account for the null result in terms of particles of light and simple, familiar Newtonian ideas, and introduced as his second postulate something that was more or less obvious when thought of in terms of waves in an ether."

Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.com

Vesselin, I don't blame you for declining debate with relativity deniers. We both know that relativity is controversial nowhere else where science is discussed, and there's no basis for debate.

I've been fascinated by the apparently unlimited capacity in these forums to gin up alternative explanations for known physics in the name of "thinking outside the box," while ignoring that the box is part of the physics, too. Unless one has, like Einstein, built up a complete program of logically closed and experimentally validated judgments, from the earliest ancient knowledge of mechanics and geometry to Minkowski space and Riemannian geometry, I think one is unlikely to get the full import of what "the box" contains.

That said, I know James to be honest in his efforts to deny every mechanical explanation of reality. I don't buy it, and I agree that such denial deprives one of the beautiful experience of comprehending a physically real spacetime.

Best,

Tom

Tom and Vesselin,

"...That said, I know James to be honest in his efforts to deny every mechanical explanation of reality. I don't buy it, and I agree that such denial deprives one of the beautiful experience of comprehending a physically real spacetime."

There is no empirical evidence for the existence of space-time. There has never been an experiment or effect observed that involved only space or only time or space and time together. Your belief in the 'real' spacetie is based upon effects observed to occur to objects that are neither space nor time.

The discussion about the reason for not feeling the force of gravity when falling freely has no need for disdain or denial. The fact is that there never was a reason to predict or expect or think that a freely falling person would feel uncrutched or undistorted or undisturbed.

James

Hi Vesselin:

Thanks for your response. Some additional questions below.

Are you saying that the following Einstein's Equivalence Principal of General Relativity is wrong? :

"In the physics of general relativity, the equivalence principle is any of several related concepts dealing with the equivalence of gravitational and inertial mass, and to Albert Einstein's assertion that the gravitational "force" as experienced locally while standing on a massive body (such as the Earth) is actually the same as the pseudo-force experienced by an observer in a non-inertial (accelerated) frame of reference."

Even while standing on earth, the accelerometer reads zero. Does that mean there is no pull force of gravity on any bodies resting on earth? Then why the bodies resting on earth not fly away in all directions away from or tangent to earth? What holds them clinging to earth?

Another question - if there is no force, then what makes a falling body fall - what causes the motion of falling? What determines the direction of fall - why does the body not fall backwards? What determines the amount of acceleration - why is it constant and not some other value than g??

Could you please explain the answers to above to clarify your conclusion that gravity is not a force or gravitational potential energy does not exist?

Please also look into another posted paper - -" Does Gravitational Collapse Lead to Singularities?" that recommends adding the potential energy (implying force) to the energy tensor -

"According to conventional modelling by general relativity the collapse of radially symmetric gravitating objects may end in a singular state. But by inclusion of potential energy into the energy tensor, which is required to guarantee global energy conservation, the occurrence of singularities is avoided. Instead the final states of the collapse of mass concentrations of arbitrary size are nuclear matter objects, from which jets of matter can be recycled into space. The mysterious dark energy, supposed as the main constituent of the universe, may even be the potential energy of matter itself."

I welcome and look forward to your answers and explanations.

Regards and best of Luck

Avtar

James,

"There is no empirical evidence for the existence of space-time."

Of course there is. If Minkowski space were not physically real, light would not follow a curved path in the presence of a gravity source, and Einstein lensing would not be observed.

Tom

Tom,

"If Minkowski space were not physically real, light would not follow a curved path in the presence of a gravity source, and Einstein lensing would not be observed."

Yes the would. It would be the theoretical explanation that would change. The evidence remains what it is. The current theoretical explanation is based upon concepts that are empirically unsupported such as deformations of space and time. My message explained that neither space nor time have ever been parts of physics equations including those of relativity theory. The correct explanation will speak about objects and their behaviors. In other words, the correct explanation will be directly tied to actual empirical evidence.

James

James,

Spacetime most certainly is described by Minkowski space; that's what Minkowski space *is.* You are correct in some sense that " ... neither space nor time have ever been parts of physics equations ..." in that neither space nor time independently are physically real. Only the Minkowski space model, which supports relativity, preserves space and time, and only by combining them. Spacetime is physically real, both theoretically and demonstrably. "By 'physically real,'" said Einstein, "we mean 'independent in its physical properties, having a physical effect but not itself influenced by physical conditions.'" (The Meaning of Relativity, 1956.)

Tom

Tom and Vesselin,

And by 'physically real', I mean both the effect observed and the cause of it. Neither are naturally theoretical. Neither require nor should involve theoretical speculations. Neither involve space and time as cause nor as intermediaries between cause and effect.

Either empirical evidence is the source of understanding or we become vulnerable to of flights of theoretical fancy. In my essay, I gave the first error of theory and showed that it is also the first error of relativity theory.

Einstein did not explain the nature of the universe to us. He explained his theory. His abduction of space and time into his theory has no empirical justification. The correct explanation will have direct continuous connection to empirical evidence. It won't just fit with the patterns observed in empirical eidence. It will be rooted right from its start in empirical evidence.

It will be expressed in the terms in which the empirical evidence is expressed. Those terms are the units of empirical evidence. The units are those of distance and duration. Everything that follows, in order to remain uncorrupted by theoretical inventions, will continue to be expressed in units of distance and duration no matter how complex the equations become.

James