New bet:
Against the chance that "data compression" is renamed to "information compression" before "sign language" is renamed to "hand gesture meme language": I will pay $20.00 CDN if data compression is renamed first.
On Whether or Not Non-Gravitational Interaction Can Occur in the Absence of Gravity by Shawn Halayka
[deleted]
In spite of all that has been written about gravity over the years we still do not really know exactly just what gravity is. When it comes to motion we haven't a clue. Here is somewhat different approach to the subject of gravity.
Einstein, who, more than anyone else gave us our current view of the nature of gravity, said that gravity is not a force and yet in most of contemporary physics gravity is treated as if it were. It appears that the presently held view of gravity is that it does not pull you into the chair in which you are sitting but rather, because of the curvature of space-time, it pushes you into the chair. This is a bit absurd; Gravity is either a force or it isn't, it simply can't be both.
Einstein used the example of a man jumping from a building. The man would feel no force pushing or pulling him. The only way he would know he is moving is by the motion of the building that seems to be moving up and the friction of the wind. While nobody challenges this it seems to be almost universally ignored. The example of the man falling is a good one but gravity can be proved to not be a force by use of a very simple, basic physical law.
Suppose I hold a ball of a given weight stationary in the air. The understanding of vectors tells us that a force equal to the force I am supplying must be pushing down on the ball. Vector analysis also tells us that a resulting vector will appear in a direction opposite the acute angle formed by the two vectors. The acceleration of the resultant vector, if the forces are constant, is dependent upon the sine of the acute angle formed by the two vectors. In the case of my holding the ball the angle formed by my pushing up and the alleged force of gravity pushing down is 180°. The sine of 180° is zero so the resultant vector is zero. It is important to remember that the force and acceleration of both vectors is still very real.
Newton's second law of motion says that Force is equal to Mass times Acceleration - F=ma. If I hold a ball ten times heavier the force I supply must be ten times stronger as well. In order to the stationary position of the ball I must also increase the downward force ten times. Herein lies the problem.
Acceleration is dependent on force and mass. The only way acceleration can be changed is to alter either the force or the mass. We know that acceleration in a gravitational field is a constant. On the earth it is 32 feet per second squared. If the gravity of the earth is a force and created by the curvature of space-time then this force too must be constant. The only thing that is a variable is the mass however, if we change the mass we change either the force or the acceleration. Thus either heavier objects fall more slowly than lighter objects or the acceleration changes as a result of the change in mass. We know empirically that this cannot be true as both force and acceleration are constant. Therefore gravity cannot be a force.
The ball is now ten times heavier and thus the gravitational field (if indeed that is the correct term) is ten times as strong. The curvature of the space-time created by the ball is greater and so, if gravity is a force, the ball is pulling the earth with a stronger force. Actually the acceleration of the earth toward the ball has increased and so the earth is falling toward the ball at a greater velocity. We can see this in Newton's other formula: F = G(m1m2/r2) While this does not exactly hold in GR it is sufficient for this argument. The increase in the apparent attraction of the earth and the ten pound ball is so small as to be virtually immeasurable.
If gravity is not a force why do we feel our weight when sitting in a chair? Consider a situation where two opposing vectors are both forces, such as two cue sticks pushing on a billiard ball at two points in direct opposition.
The change in the position of the ball is zero and we can state that this is the resultant force of the two primary vectors. We have the mass of the cue ball and the force applied by the cue sticks. This means that there is in both cases an acceleration. An object can have any number of independent motions and in this case the ball is moving in two directly opposite directions but the ball is moving. The second law of motion states that force and mass will produce an acceleration. These two opposing accelerations do not 'cancel each other'. They create a vector with zero acceleration. Perhaps it may be more correct to say that they produce no vector.
Since gravity behaves much like a force, we feel our weight in a chair because we are still falling. Just because the chair stops a change in position does not mean we are not still falling. Our feeling of weight comes from momentum. A falling body has a certain momentum even if it does not actually change its position. It is this momentum we feel when sitting in a chair.
Since gravity is not in any way a force it has none of the properties of a force. It does not propagate. It would only propagate if it were a force. Contemporary physics not only thinks of gravity as a force but appears to think of it as an electromagnetic force. Many, many hours have been spent by really brilliant people trying to reconcile the 'force' of gravity with such forces as magnetism. The mass of an atom does not create the curvature of space-time any more than the nucleus creates the electron. The curvature is an integral part of the atom that was created when the atom was created. It cannot be modified nor removed.
Newton, when he worked out his gravitation theories, was concerned with action at a distance. Even though gravity is ubiquitous through the universe there is no action at a distance because there is no action. Gravity does not do anything, it simply is. It is not one of the elementary forces as it is not a force. There is no need for energy mediating bosons to mediate the force ergo, thus there is no graviton. I seriously doubt that the Large Hadron Collider will find any evidence of a massless, spin-2 boson.
It has been said that if the sun were to suddenly disappear we would not be aware of it for eight and a half minutes. That is true but has nothing to with the curvature of space-time and thus gravity. If the sun were to disappear instantly the curvature would disappear instantly as well. We would not sense this in any way, since the path of earth around the sun is a geodesic nothing would have changed; we would still be traveling in a straight line. Eight and a half minutes later everything would become instantly dark and start to quickly become very cold. That we would certainly sense and then we would know that the sun had disappeared.
The extent of a gravitational field appears to be limitless. It diminishes as described by the inverse square law but never completely disappears. Thus the entire universe is one large structure formed of a myriad of space-time curvatures.
Finally; since gravity is not a force why it is considered along with magnetism, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force to be one of the primary force interactions of physical reality? Gravity is not a force, it is a condition.
If indeed gravity is not a force, are we correct is thinking that gravity functions at the quantum level? Does an elementary particle warp the space-time or is the concept of space even valid at the quantum level. It seems quite possible that gravity at quantum level may be a mathematical concept that would only be valid if gravity is a force.
[deleted]
It is intersting Mr Wagner,
You know, all spheres turn .The force of gravitation exists,it is evident.
They turn so they are Mr Wagner.in fact the gravitation is proportional with the rotations of spheres.Furthermore the system can be fractalized towards the quantum scale cosidering a cosmological sphere for example. It quantification is correlated.
ps the light and mass turn in opposite sense....see the comportment of the gravitation with the volumes of spheres, their finite serie and the finite number, the rotations spinal, the rot.orbital,the motion linear(hv)..... the evidence appears.:)
Regards
[deleted]
Hi Thomas,
First off, I'd like to say that I liked your essay a lot. I absolutely love music, but I did not know a single technical thing about it. I believe that I've learned a lot from the essay.
Secondly, I'm not entirely sure where you're coming from with the sine calculation that you're talking about. Could you elaborate further? Usually when I "do" Newtonian gravity, I do something like
- Get the vector pointing from my position to the gravitational source position:
[math]\vec{D} = P_{\textrm{src}} - P_{\textrm{me}}[/math]
- Get the distance:
[math]r = length(\vec{D})[/math]
- Normalize D (this step can be avoided if you really must, but should be compensated for later):
[math]\hat{D} = \vec{D}/r[/math]
- Calculate the acceleration vector from the source mass M (divide by r^3 if you don't pre-normalize D):
[math]\vec{A} = \hat{D} GM/r^2[/math]
And then I just add the acceleration vector to my velocity vector. It's kind of sloppy, but it works.
As for what gravity really is... Yeah, I have no idea for sure, but I have read on the web somewhere that the shrinking of the orbits of binary stars over time is due to gravitational radiation, and that the rate at which the orbits shrink is definitely affected by the speed at which the gravitational radiation propagates. Here's the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_gravity#Possible_experimental_measurements
Likewise, according to this theory, if the Sun were to vanish then this would lead to a change in the metric of spacetime, and this change would propagate at whatever speed the gravitational radiation travels at because it's all effectively the same thing (a metric that is not constant in time).
Whether you buy into that is up to you, but most people are satisfied by it.
In any case, some people think that it's possible that gravity emerges from the electromagnetic/weak/strong interactions (ie. Sakharov, Jacobson, Verlinde), and so gravity is not a force per se. I like that idea, mostly because it simplifies the big picture. I'm not sure about the idea's validity though (I'm not an expert in anything, really).
Once again, thanks for sharing your essay. It's quite great.
- Shawn
[deleted]
Jedi,
Your powers are no match for the dark side. Just kidding. I've just wanted to say that for a while now. :)
- Shawn
Some links about entropy (information) in physics:
http://ls.poly.edu/~jbain/physinfocomp/lectures/03.BoltzGibbsShannon.pdf
">http://galileo.phys.virginia.edu/classes/752.mf1i.spring03/DensityMatrix.htm
](https://galileo.phys.virginia.edu/classes/752.mf1i.spring03/DensityMatrix.htm
">http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~vazirani/s07quantum/notes/qinfo.pdf
](https://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~vazirani/s07quantum/notes/qinfo.pdf
From what I have read, the calculation of the von Neumann entropy essentially boils down to an equation that is of the same form as the ones in the theory given by Boltzmann/Gibbs/Shannon. Also from what I've read, a mixed state consists of many distinct pure states, and the probabilities of those distinct pure states are used to calculate the entropy. If the probabilities are entirely balanced, then it's referred to as a "maximally mixed state", in which case the entropy is just S = ln(number of distinct pure states in the mixed state).
My language may be sloppy, but I am not in any way trying to say that ALL physicists and ALL biologists are wrong. I'm saying that the ones that are wrong are the ones who do not recognize that the Shannon entropy and von Neumann entropy are effectively measuring the same thing -- probabilities of distinct states. Whether a state is defined by spin, charge, etc or by a fixed size block code (ie. ASCII), or by a variable-bit Huffman code, or whatever. A distinct state is a distinct state is a distinct state.
So, it stands to reason that the entropy of a single pure state, as a whole, alone, is S = ln(1) = 0.
This is just like how the letter-state 'a' all by itself has an entropy of S = ln(1) = 0.
Entropy emerges only when there are multiple, distinct states under consideration.
How informative would English be if it only had one letter? Not informative at all -- it would tell you that the person you're communicating with is there, making sounds or scribbles on paper, but that's about it.
We were talking about how the universe is or is not like a computer, and I had mentioned 't Hooft's model of a black hole from his paper Dimensional Reduction in Quantum Gravity. I have no idea if it's a correct model or not, but it does illustrate a good point about the higher orders of entropy.
Essentially, the black hole's event horizon is made up of N spin-like Boolean degrees of freedom (bits), where N is related to the number of distinct microscopic states by N = ln(number of distinct states)/ln(2). Barring some topology differences, this means that the black hole's event horizon is effectively the same thing as an N-bit integer, which also has 2^N distinct states. Of course, the probabilities of the distinct states in both the black hole model and the integer model are assumed to be all the same -- 1/(2^N) -- which is why the calculation of N is so simple (no summing required, the answer is already known).
To be clear: The measure N is the first order entropy (in binary units). In the black hole model it's the von Neumann entropy, in the integer model it's the Shannon entropy. They're effectively measuring the same thing -- the logarithm of the number of distinct equiprobable states.
This is not the end of the story though, because 't Hooft continues on in his paper to describe the beginnings of a cellular automaton rule that would govern the evolution from state to state. He also uses the word data a whole lot. Bonus.
What does his assumption of the requirement of a cellular automaton rule immediately tell me, without even looking into the technical details of it? It tells me that he assumes that the higher orders of entropy are likely NOT maximal. Look at it from the opposite point of view: If the evolution from one state to the next was entirely random at all orders, then all possible combinations of time-adjacent states (pairs, triples, etc) would have equal probability, and so the entropy would be maximal for all orders. This kind of randomness is the definitive anti-rule, and so you would not actually need a cellular automaton rule for it to occur -- for each bit you could simply ignore all of the neighbouring bits (again, neighbours depending on the topology) and just randomly flip the bit. That's the definitive anti-cellular automaton, in which case you entirely ignore the neighbours.
It seems to me that determinism in this model would be indicated by less-than maximal entropy for some or all of the higher orders of entropy. I don't think he states it quite like that, but it seems to be true.
Of course, entropy is information.
Surely I am not the first to try this line of reasoning in order to illustrate the general importance of the second and higher order entropy. I just am not aware of it because I do not read every single paper that comes out, and I would love to read about it if someone has shown the reasoning to be true or false. This kind of thing is used very often to analyze English, where each state is a distinct letter from an alphabet, so it's not like it's an alien thought.
Needless to say, when I read a sentence such as that from http://cfpm.org/jom-emit/1998/vol2/wilkins_js.html :
... "Memes are those units of transmitted information that are subject to selection biases at a given level of hierarchical organization of culture. Unlike genes, they are not instantiated in any exclusive kind of physical array or system, although at base they happen to be stored in and expressed from neurological structures."
I come to realize that people are confusing data with information. A meme (symbol/sign) is a unit of data, not a unit of information. The information arises only in the context of multiple memes, their probabilities of occurring, their probabilities of being time-adjacent, etc.
Perhaps I'm misreading the intent of the author, but as soon as I hear unit of information, I have to wonder...
At least the guy acknowledges, indirectly, that the data content per meme is flexible, and it's all but independent of the information content ... up to the point where there's a defined less-than operator, which is all that's needed to produce a Boolean test for equality/non-distinctness vs inequality/distinctness.
If you do not understand my meaning about the less-than operator, then look up the use of the STL 'set' container and encapsulation/blackboxing via classes and private data members in C++.
[deleted]
:) that the force be with you.
Here's a cool link about information and energy:
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/428670/entangled-particles-break-classical-law-of/
I left this message for Robert McEachern on his essay page:
Hi Robert,
Here's another attempt at answering your question... "So what is the big deal? What makes this so significant?"
After reading:
- Your essay
- 'The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and the Nyquist-Shannon Sampling Theorem' by Pierre Millette
- 'An Introduction to Information Theory: Symbols, Signals and Noise' by John Pierce
- 'Communication in the Presence of Noise' by Claude Shannon
I am left with the impression that Shannon and Piece predicted that the holographic principle would become a naturally accepted concept in physics. They detail how the volume of the signal space "creeps" away from the origin of the space as the dimension of the space increases; how there is dimensional reduction in the message space when compensating for phase "differences" (same message, different phase) that can arise when sampling of the signal. Seems at first glance to be hint at how to get rid of singularities at the centres of black holes.
Perhaps it's not quite the same thing. On the other hand, if it's the same thing, then that's quite significant. In any case, I note that Shannon was not directly referenced in 't Hooft's first paper called 'Dimensional Reduction in Quantum Gravity'.
- Shawn
P.S. The book 'An Introduction to Information Theory: Symbols, Signals and Noise' by John Pierce makes the distinction that I was making earlier by referring to the difference between the information (referred to as bits) and the data in the message (referred to as just "binary digits").
Let's give the content sent as "binary digits" a name: data.
So, you send x bits of data, it has y bits of information, and the redundancy in the data is x - y.
Now, if someone wishes to say that "the information is physical", and wishes to take that to the extreme, then you can say that the redundancy will never be greater than 1 bit. In that case, nature automatically would implement variable-length quantum Huffman codes.
What they call a message, I would call a composite datum (a symbol, made up of binary symbols0.
Dear Shawn,
This is a very interesting idea you are proposing. I have two questions.
1. Have you thought about inflation in the early universe in this context? It immediately comes to mind after reading your essay as something your ideas could possibly explain. Some physicists have proposed an as-of-yet unidentified "inflaton field" that drove inflation but seems to be absent today. From the perspective of your idea, one could hypothesize that the decrease in energy density (and hence gravitational interaction) "turned off" or "damped out" the inflaton field after the initial expansion.
2. There is a theoretical energy limit (called the GZK limit) for cosmic rays from distant sources, based on the hypothesized interaction of the particles with background radiation along their trajectories. However, cosmic rays have been observed with energies above this limit. This seems to be another piece of data your idea could possibly explain: along most of their trajectories, cosmic rays from distant sources would be in regions of low gravitational interaction, and hence would not interact with the background radiation. Thus, they would preserve more of their energy than conventionally predicted. Have you thought about this possibility?
If you like, take a look at my essay On the Foundational Assumptions of Modern Physics. It has a completely different viewpoint, but it's possible you may get some interesting ideas from it as I did from yours. Take care,
Ben Dribus
Hi Ben,
It's really hard to say for me whether the model is just a toy or would have a desirable effect on the real phyiscs. I have tried to think of how things would have been like near the Big Bang in the context of the model, but I haven't any crystal clear thoughts on the matter.
It was actually the GZK limit that got me started on this. It started out as a numerology (centred around the energy scale 10^19 eV) and then came the creation and annihilation idea a while later. I have thought about how this would affect the propagation of cosmic rays, but again, nothing crystal clear.
To be honest, it's been a month now since I thought about the whole thing for more than a couple of minutes at a time. I'm bored with it.
At worst, it is a toy model that can make for a possibly useful video game idea.
- Shawn
Oh yeah... do notice how the data bits x per message is always an integer, and that y and r are not necessarily so unless the number of messages is a power of two and all messages are equiprobable.
Notice that when you analyze the classical binary messages that the mean radial distance increases, but the standard deviation decreases.
It does kind of seem, at first glance, like a "spherization" of the positions in the message (state) space.
The C++ code is attached.
In the following list, the "max message size" is the number of bits per message. So the first in the list analyzes just the two 1-bit messages, the second in the list analyzes the four 2-bit messages, etc, etc. I have to redo the code so that it does not store the radii in an array, since it inevitably runs out of memory on this system when the "max message size" gets to about 25. I can just analyze the radii twice; the first time to get the mean, the second time to get the standard deviation.
The n-bit messages of course "live" in a discrete n-dimensional space that has only two positions (0, 1) for each dimension.
max message size: 1
min radius: 0
max radius: 1
mean radius: 0.5 -/+ 0.5
max message size: 2
min radius: 0
max radius: 1.41421
mean radius: 0.853553 -/+ 0.521005
max message size: 3
min radius: 0
max radius: 1.73205
mean radius: 1.12184 -/+ 0.491409
max message size: 4
min radius: 0
max radius: 2
mean radius: 1.33834 -/+ 0.456989
max message size: 5
min radius: 0
max radius: 2.23607
mean radius: 1.52183 -/+ 0.428974
max message size: 6
min radius: 0
max radius: 2.44949
mean radius: 1.68313 -/+ 0.408759
max message size: 7
min radius: 0
max radius: 2.64575
mean radius: 1.82867 -/+ 0.394921
max message size: 8
min radius: 0
max radius: 2.82843
mean radius: 1.96247 -/+ 0.385622
max message size: 9
min radius: 0
max radius: 3
mean radius: 2.08713 -/+ 0.379348
max message size: 10
min radius: 0
max radius: 3.16228
mean radius: 2.20439 -/+ 0.37503
max message size: 11
min radius: 0
max radius: 3.31662
mean radius: 2.31552 -/+ 0.371968
max message size: 12
min radius: 0
max radius: 3.4641
mean radius: 2.42143 -/+ 0.369719
max message size: 13
min radius: 0
max radius: 3.60555
mean radius: 2.52281 -/+ 0.368006
max message size: 14
min radius: 0
max radius: 3.74166
mean radius: 2.62022 -/+ 0.366657
max message size: 15
min radius: 0
max radius: 3.87298
mean radius: 2.7141 -/+ 0.365562
max message size: 16
min radius: 0
max radius: 4
mean radius: 2.80482 -/+ 0.364652
max message size: 17
min radius: 0
max radius: 4.12311
mean radius: 2.89268 -/+ 0.36388
max message size: 18
min radius: 0
max radius: 4.24264
mean radius: 2.97793 -/+ 0.363215
max message size: 19
min radius: 0
max radius: 4.3589
mean radius: 3.0608 -/+ 0.362634
max message size: 20
min radius: 0
max radius: 4.47214
mean radius: 3.14148 -/+ 0.362121
max message size: 21
min radius: 0
max radius: 4.58258
mean radius: 3.22012 -/+ 0.361665
max message size: 22
min radius: 0
max radius: 4.69042
mean radius: 3.29689 -/+ 0.361256
max message size: 23
min radius: 0
max radius: 4.79583
mean radius: 3.37191 -/+ 0.360886
max message size: 24
min radius: 0
max radius: 4.89898
mean radius: 3.44529 -/+ 0.360552
max message size: 25
min radius: 0
max radius: 5
mean radius: 3.51713 -/+ 0.360246Attachment #1: radius.txt