Essay Abstract

The Standard Model of particle physics is built upon the implied assumption that non-gravitational interaction can occur in the absence of gravity. This essay takes this implied assumption at face value and then considers the alternative assumption -- non-gravitational interaction cannot occur in the absence of gravity. The alternative assumption is then discussed in terms of the dark sector of the Universe.

Author Bio

A non-professional who spends time playing around with software development, physics, and art.

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  • Post #2

More babble: I wonder if gravitation could be related to a UV cutoff pertaining to photon creation and annihilation. For instance, if the cutoff value decreases with increasing distance, and a lower cutoff value translates to increased or decreased virtual photon emission, would a form of "virtual" propulsion arise because of the cutoff gradient? Just a thought.

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    • Post #3

    Thank you to FQXi for giving a platform to the "crackpots" and professionals alike. There are a lot of great essays about block universe, the limits of mathematics, quantum (and "unquantum") gravity, and many other interesting topics. It's quite awesome.

    An extra reference that did not make the final "cut" in my essay:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_gravity

    And, hi to EB. :)

      To add a little bit more "rigour", just in case some eyebrows are raised:

      Using a calculation of E_max = E_p * -2U/c^2, where U = 2/3*pi*G*rho*(-3*r*r) is the gravitational potential at the centre of the Earth (based on a simplifying assumption that the Earth has uniform density -- rho), a photon of energy E = 4.0 J would be able to pass directly through the core of the Earth. As mentioned in the essay, a photon of energy E = 2.7 J would pass through us on the surface of the Earth (where U can be taken to be -G*M/r). Hopefully my calculation for the centre of the Earth has been correct. It was a small detail that naturally leads to more complicated calculations using a non-uniform density, which naturally leads to...

      In other words, this calculation was a small thread in a very large sweater that would have only cluttered the essay, so I snipped it off instead of tugging on it. I hope that it doesn't affect anyone's judgement too much. Thank you.

      5 days later

      Dear Shawn,

      Your hypothesis is that "non-gravitational interaction cannot occur in the absence of gravity". I essentially agree with you-- recall that Einstein said there is no space "empty of field" and it was the gravitational field he was referring to. My own model of the universe begins with a 'free lunch' big bang in which the (positive) outgoing kinetic energy of the expanding gravitational energy/mass exactly balances the (negative) potential energy of the gravitational self-attraction, thereby achieving zero net energy required for Creation. A brief synopsis of this is in my previous FQXi essay.

      However not only do you hypothesize that such interaction cannot occur, you then propose a limit to allowable interaction energy depending upon the local gravity. This is both novel and ingenious. While I doubt it is true, it is the kind of idea that many physicists wish they would have, and many could probably milk quite a bit out of an idea this novel. Your application of the idea to dark energy is well thought out and reasonable, and your application to renormalization is interesting too. The fact that the limit is variable and location-specific makes it even more so.

      I'm quite sure there's more in the water up there than Pickerel.

      Best Regards,

      Edwin Eugene Klingman

      Hi Edwin,

      Thanks for stopping by to leave a comment. I sincerely appreciate your kind words.

      I do have serious reservations about the physical validity of the model presented in my essay, though at the very least it does make for a nice toy. Even if the mechanism is not useful for physicists, perhaps it could be somehow useful in a (video) game. I guess the main point of the exercise was to find an assumption, overturn it and see what falls out, all the while keeping things as absolutely simple as possible. I'd like to think that the essay at least does that one job well enough to stand up on its own -- it's what the essay contest was about, after all.

      I hadn't seen your analog-digital essay before, and I will read it in its entirety over the next week and let it really sink in. Just by peeking/skimming through it now, I've already come across quite a few interesting things related to the topics we've been discussing on Robert and Lorraine's pages. I notice that the essay also has some things to say about dark energy and dark matter, and so I'm looking forward to digging into that part. Needless to say, I've been in a total learning frenzy since all of your essays have come out, and I really appreciate all of the new thoughts that I've been able to have because of everyone here. I also notice that your essay mentions D. Sweetser. I really like how that guy has put a lot of effort into teaching people about mathematics. About 8 or so years ago I started writing an open source software to generate quaternion fractals, and I learned all of the math for the trig functions from the examples that he gave on his website. The dude is awesome.

      Aside from all of this, your comment reminds me of one other time when someone said something very nice about another simple idea that I had. I had been thinking about how the interference pattern shows up in the double-slit machine even when individual particles are sent through the machine one at a time, and barring the possibility that the effect had something to do with interaction between the particles and the edges of the slits, I was left with the impression that perhaps the particles were leaving behind some kind of semi-permanent trail in space that would affect the particles that would subsequently pass through the machine. Like skiers in snow, leaving behind trails that affect the runs of subsequent skiers, I suppose. I was wondering then if we could somehow wipe away these trails by filling the machine with a hot gas and then re-evacuating it, after each time a particle is sent through the machine. Like recovering the ski hill with fresh snow after each time a skier makes their run, I suppose. The hot gas idea sure is a simple way to prove or disprove the trail hypothesis, regardless of its physical validity (no need to rely on lofty arguments for or against dissipative gravity, etc). I decided to write to a very prominent, vocal and respected physicist to see what they thought of the idea that such trails could occur, and they said "not according to our current interpretation of quantum physics, but that's an ingenious troubleshooting method" -- which is basically the same thing that you're saying. It's nice to know that there are people with experience and knowledge who are realistic enough to critique the validity of ideas, but do it in a nice way. It doesn't happen this way often at all, in my experience. Thank you for indirectly reminding me of this other time that someone said something very nice too. :) In any case, I'm now leaning toward Robert's interpretation of the double-slit experiment -- I won't be filling any double-slit machines with hot gas to satiate my curiosity anytime soon. :)

      I spent several years fixing computers, so maybe this is why I have a habit of breaking things down into the simplest terms and then troubleshooting them.

      I hope you're having a nice weekend. Take care!

      - Shawn

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      • Post #7

      More babbling: Would Angry Birds be more fun/challenging if your bird would fly right through a pig if the bird was moving too fast?

      You could make the model from the essay even simpler by eliminating the dependence on the gravitational field and just base it on the pig mass alone. King Pig would be more massive than the normal pigs, so you would be allowed to hit him at a higher speed. Those normal pigs would require more finesse to take down.

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      • Post #8

      I like induced gravity theory

      http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1413

      Dear Shawn,

      You make an assumption : < The maximum allowed energy scale of non-gravitational interaction is dependent on how much the metric deviates from the metric of at spacetime.> In connection with your assumption I can add that I tried to solve the problem of interrelation of mass and charge of proton. Can the charge of proton be more then well-known elementary charge? The result is the next: the charge of proton is the charge which is maximum possible for proton. For solution of the problem the process of neutron star creation was studied with the charge. A condition of the creation is that density of zero electromagnetic energy can not exceed the density of gravitational energy otherwise the star can not be created by gravitation. The proton at the level of atoms is similar to neutron star according to the Theory of Infinite Hierarchical Nesting of Matter (see my essay). I found a lot of your paper at vixra.org , for example: http://vixra.org/abs/1002.0009 , about dark matter. I have there a paper too about dark matter: Fedosin S.G. Cosmic Red Shift, Microwave Background, and New Particles. Galilean Electrodynamics, Spring 2012, Vol. 23, Special Issues No. 1, P. 3 - 13.

      Sergey Fedosin

        Hi Sergey,

        Thanks for your comment, and for pointing our your vixra paper and your essay. I have to admit that there are many different points of view when it comes to gravity, dark matter and dark energy, but I don't have the experience to quickly judge which viewpoints are more realistic than others. I suppose I can hazard a guess that since the neutron is similar to the neutron star, and you take this to mean that there is an infinite nesting structure to the Universe, that the Universe is some kind of fractal. I'm not sure if this leaves us with the possibility of a Big Bang? Please feel free to explain your model a little more, if you like. It will take me a while to read through your papers completely and grasp the subtler points.

        Indeed, my essay takes part of my old vixra paper from 2010, chops off a part of it and then replaces that with photon creation and annihilation. To be fair, I did list the old paper in the references section of the essay.

        Well, I hope things are going well for you, and good luck in the essay contest.

        - Shawn

        Hi Yuri,

        I'm glad that you like the idea of emergent/induced gravity. I do too. That doesn't mean that the idea is necessarily right, but it is at least appealing in its relative simplicity.

        - Shawn

        Dear Shawn,

        I am sure Big Bang is not necessary to explain the cosmology. There are many other explanations of red shifts of remote galaxies, Microwave Background and other effects. I prefer other idea that not only stars and galaxies are collapsed with the time but the Metagalaxy itself is collapsing as a whole. See the book: Fedosin S.G. Fizika i filosofiia podobiia ot preonov do metagalaktik. Perm, 1999, 544 pages. ISBN 5-8131-0012-1.

        Sergey Fedosin

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        • Post #13

        Hi Sergey,

        Thanks for the extra information.

        - Shawn

        Another great book on the dark sector of the Universe is:

        "Dark Side of the Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Fate of the Cosmos" by Iain Nicolson. (2007, Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press).

        Lots of pictures and equations.

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        • Post #15

        Did you read Matt Wisser article about sakharov elasticity of space?

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        • Post #16

        奥献

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        • Post #18

        Shawn

        What do you think about variation gravitation constant?

        my opinion here

        Appendix 1 Cosmological picture of one cycle

        Big Bang; Present; Big Crunch

        c=10^30; c=10^10; c=10^-10

        G=10^12; G=10^-8; G=10^-28

        h=10^-28; h=10^-28; h=10^-28

        alfa =10^-3; 1/ 137; 1

        e=0,1 ; e=e ; e=12

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          • Post #19

          Hi Yuri,

          Why do these numbers change? Is e the base of the natural logarithm? How are electromagnetism and gravitation related (ie. is gravity emergent)?

          - Shawn

          Hi Shawn. I tried to understand your essay on annotations and comments. Official physics, you can interact without gravity to justify the Higgs particle. Your thought is correct: any interaction can occur only under conditions of gravity. At my metaphysical theory, all forms of energy and matter come from heat and information. Heats and information (structure) gravity does not. Gravity is going to heat and the real world. (This excludes Big Bang.) The real world has a mass and gravity. According to this, any interactions can take place only under the force of gravity of matter and gravity of the universe.