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Tom,

In that pop physics book, it made the point that light doesn't register time because it has no internal action, thus no clock. If it did, then it would combine with velocity to exceed c. On the other hand, for those of us not traveling at c, it makes a very good yardstick of inter-stellar and inter-galactic distances. As you say, space and time are not physically independent, so why, if space is expanding, doesn't the propagation rate, time, increase as well?

As Peter points out, in various mediums, light moves slower than in a pure vacuum, but so does the clock. Why then, if the medium is expanding, wouldn't the "clock" also increase, so that it still records the same rate of propagation, relative to the dimensionality of the medium? You say the spatial dimensionality is stretched, but you use a non-stretched temporal yardstick to measure it against. It seem you are trying to separate time and space, by saying the spatial frame can grow, while the temporal yardstick remains constant.

John,

"... why, if space is expanding, doesn't the propagation rate, time, increase as well?"

Because *space and time and not independently real physical quantities.* One cannot assume a linear "propagation rate" independent of a scalar expansion rate.

"It seem you are trying to separate time and space, by saying the spatial frame can grow, while the temporal yardstick remains constant."

*Relatively* constant. Like Peter, you assume a privileged rest frame. That is not a physically real property of a relativistic world.

Tom

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Tom,

" One cannot assume a linear "propagation rate" independent of a scalar expansion rate."

That's my point. How can the propagation rate remain constant when the scalar dimension is expanding? It's like space is a rubber band that stretches, but you have this ruler along side it, called "lightyears," that remains constant.

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" ... It's like space is a rubber band that stretches, but you have this ruler along side it, called "lightyears," that remains constant."

Sigh. John, are you just messing with me?

Tom

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Tom,

No. According to theory, all the galaxies are moving away from one another and this is presumably calibrated in lightyears. A lightyear is about six trillion miles. That is a general distance. How can it be described as expanding space, if we have a stable unit of distance against which to measure it? Wouldn't the stable unit be considered the constant and the expanding frame the variable? The universe is assumed to have a radius of 13.7 billion lightyears, so presumably it had a smaller radius, in lightyears, x billion years ago. These lightyears are being used as a stable measure against an expanding frame. What frame is the basis of that stable unit?

Tom, John.

No Tom. How soon you forget, I DO NOT assume "A privileged rest frame"!

I'm a bit low on hair, please let me keep some.

Do you know anything of fluid dynamics? or Lagrangian Coherent Structures? (LCS). There's a good easy intro on p41 of this months Physics Today. It's mainly about 2D (surface) not 3D but identifies the MAJOR error in the Eulean (vector) approach you and most theorists make. See Para 2 on p42 about 'objectivity', or frame invariance under time dependant frame motions, inc. rotations. Think 'virial entities' or 'systems', not 'vectors.' You'll then understand that LOCAL backgrounds are ESSENTIAL, and NOT 'absolute' in the sense precluded by SR.

When armed with that knowledge and broader view, then please at least try to do what all have failed so far, which is find any actual fault of flaw in my description of nature. The only attempts so far (including yours!) are only in the class; "Er... no it must be wrong as it's not the same as what I believe".

And John; agree with the acid, but NO! the clock, and the quanta that form it, stay the same size. For intuition look at quasar jets, re-ionizing accreted disc matter and blasting it back out until it's all used up. Now scale that up to Universe size and envisage us off centre half way up the jet 'arm' as the activity slows, The core is now only doing 370km/sec wrt our star's frame (towards Leo).

This gives a very complex pattern of asymmetric CMBR anisotropies. The very same very complex pattern predicted by the DFM. (Tom's 100 year old beliefs include an isotropic and homogenous space!!) This lack of knowledge is all well known, TO THOSE WHO DON'T BELIEVE THEY ALREADY KNOW - SO LOOK!! It's well described here; Large-Angle Anomalies in the CMB

Thanks guys.

Peter

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John,

If you're serious, there are many good books on relativity. None of them will suggest, as you do, that space and time can be treated independently of each other. If it's not worth it to you to learn the mathematics that will help you understand this, then we're both wasting our time.

Try and look at it this way: if by magic, the distance between every point in the universe suddenly increased by exactly the same amount, we wouldn't know it. That is, our senses and our measuring instruments would still record the same results.

We can observe galaxies moving apart, and we can measure the rate at which the universe expands as changing the scale of the universe -- the whole scale, not just the observer's frame. You're assuming an absolute reference frame that exists only at relative rest.

That there are anisotropies, as Peter points out, does not obviate the principle, nor even alter it very much. The shape of spacetime is still mostly flat.

Tom

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Peter,

It seems to me that to resolve the redshift issue, without assuming everything is flying away, then light does travel as a wave and only collapses to a point when absorbed, much as the two slit experiment shows. So it would collapse and the resulting vacuum is gravity, much as when mass turns back into energy, it causes pressure(Boom).

Are you saying the entire visible universe fractals up to a larger spiral type structure? Whoa! You first have to clear away all the current theoretical debris to start another model.

Tom,

I keep pointing out the same scales expanding between galaxies are collapsing into them. That seems well contained within basic relativity. Its inflation and dark energy that are the real Hail Mary passes.

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Hi Tom,

I wanted to track you down and thank you for the nice compliment that you paid to me regarding my article on Quantum Discord on a now closed thread. Just to say that I did notice it -- but only after I closed the thread. Thank you!

Now I will stop because this is technically off-topic!

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"I keep pointing out the same scales expanding between galaxies are collapsing into them."

John, I don't even know what means.

"That seems well contained within basic relativity."

It does? Exactly what do you mean by "scales" in this context?

Tom

Hi Zeeya,

The compliment is sincere and well deserved. My first career was journalism; I left it many years ago when it seemed inevitable that commercial journalism -- at least, in the States -- would descend into the sorry state we find it today.

Here is where we return to the topic of the thread, if you will bear with me:

John Horgan's controversial book *The End of Science* is one of my all-time favorites. And I hated it. I hated it so much that I read it cover to cover three times in a row -- never bringing myself to agree with the premise of "ironic science." (I still don't.) What John did, though, was to let the science speak for itself, through masterful interviews with the scientists who researched it, and ethical reporting of the results. Let one decide for oneself whether it is "ironic science."

If not for the honest journalism that FQXi supports, research like Andreas Albrecht's would never get to the point of public debate. It would be shouted down and marginalized by the prevailing force of opinion blogs and talking heads. Indeed, it fits John Horgan's description of ironic science. Were Horgan a lesser journalist, like those who pollute the commercial media these days, he would leverage his position to lead a torches and pitchforks parade on ironicscienceblog.net or some such.

Journalists can and do have opinions. Good journalists, ethical journalists, don't let themselves become the message -- even one with such a strong opinion as Horgan steps out of the way of the reporting.

You and your colleagues have earned my trust. It's not something I give lightly -- thank you.

Tom

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Tom,

This seems like the movie Memento, because I have to keep repeating the same basic arguments over and over.

A scale is a standard against which we measure quantity. In this case, contraction is a function of the gravitational attraction of mass points, while expansion is premised on theredshift of the light from distant galaxies. To describe the relation, one could provide a model, or delve into the underlying physical reasons. To keep it simple and clear, I will just use the comparison of gravity to a ball on a rubber sheet and how it is deformed. Now lets us assume for a moment that rubber sheet is laying on a container of water, so that when the ball weighs down on it, the surrounding sheet is pushed upward, proportional to the deformation of the ball. Now when light travels vast distances across the universe, it must do so mostly across the "raised/expanded"areas,since what "falls" into the gravity wells is absorbed into these mass structures. So it creates the impression the distant galaxies are expanding away from us, because the balancing effect of gravity seems to have been left out of the equation.

So that balance between gravity and expansion that makes the universe appear flat on the local level isn't just due to coincidence or inflation blowing the universe up so much it is just local, but because they are opposite sides of a cycle of contracting mass and expanding energy. Now that gets into the underlying physical reasons and since I'm typing this on a phone, I will leave you to throw up your hands in incomprehension over this first.

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Zeeya,

I happened to go back and read your interview with Julian Barbour in Discover. I hope you keep exploring the alternative directions physics might have taken over the last hundred years, because it is becoming increasingly obvious the current model is pushed beyond testability, so future generations of physicists will have to examine every detail of what has been done, to solve the many problems. The anthropic principle is just not an answer.

" ... I will leave you to throw up your hands in incomprehension ..."

I comprehend it, John. It's simply wrong.

Einstein did not leave gravity out of his theory of gravity -- that's probably the most outrageous thing you've said yet.

" ... balance between gravity and expansion that makes the universe appear flat on the local level isn't just due to coincidence or inflation blowing the universe up so much it is just local, but because they are opposite sides of a cycle of contracting mass and expanding energy."

Besides Einstein's field equations of gravity that extend Newton's theory of gravity, Einstein did a little something prior to his generalization -- perhaps you've heard of the special theory of relativity? It concludes the equivalence of mass and energy, in probably the most famous equation in the world.

I'm looking forward to your description of how a quantity expands and contracts at the same time. Doing it without mathematics will be especially interesting.

Tom

Peter,

I enjoyed your comment above at Feb. 12, 2013 @ 10:31 GMT. I received my copy of Physics Today this morning and found the article on Lagrangian Coherent Structures to look quite interesting, though I haven't had a chance to study it yet. I also appreciated the link to the Copi et al. "Large-angle anomalies in the CMB". I've been tracking that since their 2006 article, and the solar system correlation appears to be still unexplained. If you have a convenient link to your DFM predictions of these patterns, please post it.

I'm working on some calculations you might find interesting, but only if they produce the numbers I'm hoping for.

Hang in there.

Edwin Eugene Klingman

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Tom,

Your reaction to "The End of Science" is typical of all 'true believers' discovering the real truth: The Metaphysics of Physics.

Kostas

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Tom,

I do respect your talents and appreciate the fact you are willing to carry on this conversation, when you clearly think I'm clueless, but would it really be asking too much to try to put some thought into your resposes, if not for me, then for respect for your own time spent. Consider the following; "I'm looking forward to your description of how a quantity expands and contracts at the same time."

Obviously I'm referring to gravity contracting and space expanding, so this, if I may put it so bluntly, is an idiot remark.

I try not to make any pretence here. I realize in the social strata of the physics community that I fall well within the crank category, but it doesn't bother me. I follow it because basic physics is very useful in making sense of how the emergent reality of everyday reality functions. It is just that in studying it, I find indications of the same myopic herd behavior prevalent in other social dynamics.

Einstein's equation, E=mc2, symbolizing the energy contained within mass and famous because it defined the nuclear age, was epitomized by the force of the atom bomb. Energy released expands. Can we agree on that one simple observation? If that is so, would it be reasonable to suppose that energy becoming thus contained, would contract? Thus energy released from mass expands, while energy condenced into mass contracts? fission vs. fusion.

I know the fuses have to be popping at the moment, so I'll just leave it at that for now.

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If there is Space, and there is Matter, and there is Energy, and if the tendency in physics is to eqaute one entity to another to another, etc., then where is the bridge equivalency in mainstream theories equating mass to space? And how does this transition occur? And, if the Universe is expanding, then, if the vacuum has energy, and the spatial volumes get bigger and bigger(assuming expansion is correct, as is presumed), doesn't this violate conservation of energy?

CIG Theory conserves the conservation laws.

CIG Theory does not masqerade [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwoLNtUuCVk ]

the concept of time dilation. It offers it as the unfolding of Space. But somehow we must preserve time travel, to account for pyramids!

OK - I'm going to check the "Large-angle anomalies in the CMB"

Pssst...CIG Theory grows hair too....

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" ... Consider the following; 'I'm looking forward to your description of how a quantity expands and contracts at the same time.'

Obviously I'm referring to gravity contracting and space expanding, so this, if I may put it so bluntly, is an idiot remark."

John, until the chemist Lavoisier discovered that fire is a process of rapid oxidation, scientists believed that combustion is caused by a substance called phlogiston. They continued to believe it, even when it was observed that "negative" phlogiston caused matter to lose substance (burning), and "positive" phlogiston caused matter to gain substance (rust).

That's the position you're in. Gravity is not a force that contracts anything; gravity is the curvature of spacetime. So it is quite impossible that "positive" gravity contracts while "negative" gravity expands.

" ... would it be reasonable to suppose that energy becoming thus contained (by the rest mass equation E = mc^2), would contract?"

No. It's already contracted, as rest mass.

"Thus energy released from mass expands, while energy condenced into mass contracts? fission vs. fusion."

Fusion doesn't "condense energy into mass" any more than fission "expands energy from mass." Binding energy is released in both types of nuclear reaction.

"I know the fuses have to be popping at the moment ..."

I'm way past that point. Now I'm making bets with myself on how long you'll continue to rant that science makes fantastic claims, while adhering to a standard of ... nonsense claims.

Tom

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Tom,

I'm presenting an argument. I think spacetime is a mathematical model, not physically real, so I'm offering an alternative reason for gravity.

I know fusion releases energy, but there is some process going on that ultimately binds hydrogen into heavy metals. Volumewise, an equivalent weight of metals takes up less space than hydrogen. How much of this relationship of energy to mass has yet to be fully discovered?

"It's already contracted, as rest mass."

And how did it come to be?

Or I can just give up and accept the whole wormholes/blocktime/multiworlds scenario.

I suspect we will find future generations of physicists are not going to spend their careers studying the untestable. They will study what they can and some of that will be a re-evaluation of prior assumptions.