A Self-Gravitational Upper Bound on Localized Energy

John,

Since even the venerable Stephen Hawking reversed himself on whether information is lost, won't you even consider opening your mind by one slight crack, and paying attention to what is being said in the forum in which you are so willing to hold forth -- and so unwilling to actually participate?

Steven Kauffmann's result implies that quantum mechanical rules which prevent an actual singularity at the Schwarzchild radius also guarantee that no information is lost.

My point is, there's room to debate only when one's opinion is informed. It's just irresponsible otherwise.

Tom

Tom,

You are right that I'm not addressing the topic and should at least stick to threads more closely approximating my interests. This particular thread started with your discussion with Rob over the conceptual foundations of math, ie. whether it is inherently deductive, or evolved inductively. I suppose I should extricate myself.

I would like to again point out that while I fall in the crank category, I don't come to these discussions promoting any particularly woowoo ideas. I'm not a scientist, mathematician, electrical engineer, technician, etc. and don't pretend to be any more than I am. That said, I do have a fair amount of experience with nature and human nature and have long felt, since I was a child, that there is something seriously wrong with how we function. After years of trying to figure out what was wrong, it seemed every problem grew out of underlaying conditions and the solutions were to patch it over and kick the can a little further down the road, until things blew up and we started over again. Which, at the ground level, has a great deal to do with basic physics. Yet when I try finding ways to discuss how these basic interactions manifest into ever more complex results, either no one is interested, or I get treated like an idiot by people obsessing over things like multiverses. Maybe you are right. Maybe all information, events, thoughts, actions, etc. are swirling away into some eternal white light of infinite knowledge. Unfortunately it is useless for what I'm trying to figure out. At least until I die and join that flow.

Edwin,

I tried to see if I did use analogous in relating time to temperature, but could only find my use of the word "similar." As in more similar to temperature than space. Would you say time is "analogous" to space?

I would probably think of myself as more of a Don Quixote. Now if I were to fall into a wormhole and wind up back in the seventies, then I'd have to admit I was wrong. In which case, I'd probably stay out in California and not go back to the farm.

Edwin

Am I right in assuming then that whatever is 'actioning' (pardon the phrase) is whatever fundamentally comprises, or at the very least determines, a physically existent state. Only in several series of exchanges with John, I made the point that the concept of thinking that there is something, which is then acted upon (which must be by something else) is at best misleading. Any given physically existent state at any given time is a function of what is causing it. That is, the state is whatever causes action, or there is some 'inert' entity which has properties which are the cause of the action. Either way, it is whatever causes action which is, or in effect is, the determinant of any given physical reality. Time being concerned with the rate at which any given physically existent state alters (by action) to the next physically existent state. Physical existence only being able to occur in one physically existent state at a time, in sequence, as whatever comprises any given physical reality cannot be in different physically existent states at the same time.

Paul

Steven/Rob

Have you got a response to my replies from a couple of days ago please. I ask because in a short space of time there was a sudden burst of postings in this thread covering various topics. Whereas the start point was a general comment from me to Steven, an aspect of which was picked up by Rob.

Paul

Paul,

The universe acts. What is acting is debatable, but not the fact that action occurs. The equations and experiments imply the action is quantized. To you this seems to imply a 'sequence of states', like a motion picture frame, one after the other. I don't see it that way. Until you take a calculus class and develop some idea of the continuum, I don't think we're going to be able to communicate any better than we have in the past. Trying to phrase these things in words leads to the endless debates we see here. Those who speak math can agree on behaviors while they may disagree about the words. That's why everyone (pretty much) agrees on Schrodinger's equation but there are at least eight verbal interpretations of what's going on.

Some of these debates have been going on for years, and nothing is ever resolved. Nor does anyone ever change his mind. [Not quite true; Tom changed his mind about Joy's ideas.] I don't want to get in the middle of the debates. Steven and Rob offer new perspectives and that's what I find exciting.

Best,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Edwin

It is not a matter of "implies". I am approaching the question at a generic level, because as you indicate, and as I have always stated, I have no background. So the real question becomes, and it is where the real work starts, how does what is generically true, actually manifest itself in the physical existence being investigated.

But considering the circumstance generically is a good start, and has the advantage of establishing what is the form of the physical existence being considered, and hence what characteristics does it have, and not have. And could stop these debates going on for more years. For example, as per a current exchange with Georgina, it points up the fallacy in the concept that observation (or indeed any form of sensing) can have an effect on physical existence.

In respect of its fundamental form, it must be existential sequence. In the form of existence we can know, as opposed to what we can dream up to fit a theory, something which is physically existent cannot be in more than one physically existent state at a time. Neither can physically existent states of that something which occurred at different times, co-exist. We know there is something which exists independently of the mechanisms which enable its detection. We know this something alters. The only way in which this can occur is one definitive physically existent state at a time, with the predecessor ceasing so that the successor can exist and the sequence progress. The questions then become, what constitutes a physically existent state, and what causes its alteration. I think the differentiation between 'substance' and state is critical here. It may be that our notion of substance is misconceived, and really it is just an artefact of what does exist, which is what causes alteration. I do not know, but the important point is to adhere to the rules, and then identify how they can be fulfilled. Not start with a philosophical 'take' on existence and then develop a theory.

It may be that the 'practice is as per your developing theory, or what Florin is saying, etc. All I can say is that, considering what physical existence, for us, must constitute, and how that must occur, there are therefore some fundamental 'rules' which must not be contravened in practice. Which is what relativity, space-time, and the Copenhagen Interpretation, all do.

Paul

Paul

"All I can say is that, considering what physical existence, for us, must constitute, and how that must occur, there are therefore some fundamental 'rules' which must not be contravened in practice. Which is what relativity, space-time, and the Copenhagen Interpretation, all do."

You are right that I didn't understand what you are driving at. The above passage finally makes it clear that what you are driving at is rejection of both special relativity and orthodox quantum theory. Perhaps I'm being presumptuous, but I would strongly venture to guess that Newtonian physics doesn't, for you, upset the "fundamental 'rules' which must not be contravened in practice".

I don't think anyone, including Einstein and Heisenberg themselves, were very delighted to find themselves setting forth non-Newtonian ideas. They didn't have any strong desire to do that, and they were certainly very respectful of Occam's razor (unlike the cavalier disrespect for or even ignorance of that principle which so many theorists have manifested since the 1950's). Robert Millikan (a believer in the utter primacy of experiment) claimed that Einstein had NO CHOICE but to put forth his first postulate that the speed of light is independent of the (uniform) motion of observer or source in view of the Michelson-Morley experimental result. Einstein's second postulate was an Occam's razor effort to preserve as much of Galilean (Newtonian) relativity as his first postulate could permit. The two postulates together imply the Lorentz transformation, which is something that presumably contravenes the "fundamental 'rules' " which you say "must not be contravened in practice". The Lorentz transformation, which permits the temporal order of events that have space-like separation to be different in different inertial frames of reference, is certainly not intuitive -- Galilean-Newtonian absolute time in all such reference frames is far more intuitively comfortable. But the Lorentz transformation can be shown to still be consistent with a sensible notion of causality.

Einstein and Heisenberg wrestled with experimental facts and concluded that these very unfortunately simply do not seem to PERMIT preservation of the "fundamental 'rules' which must not be contravened in practice". They didn't throw out those "fundamental 'rules' " without regret or as a matter of caprice (as SUSY was conceived as a matter of utter caprice in order to "cook up" a completely physically-ungrounded smart-aleck "counterexample" to the Coleman-Mandula theorem -- note the stark contrast of SUSY to SU3, which grew out of trying to fit empirically-known particle properties into family patterns). Einstein and Heisenberg only regretfully abandoned those "fundamental 'rules' " after intense thought and consideration. And that intense thought and consideration has been vetted by other thoughtful physicists, and further empirical conclusions that flow from Einstein and Heisenberg's careful considerations have been quite exhaustively verified over a very long period. At the end of the day, physical theory simply IS NOT necessarily constrained by "fundamental 'rules' which must not be contravened in practice". One always tries to respect Occam's razor, and one absolutely tries to avoid gratuitous departures such as have become far too commonplace since the 1950's, but new empirical knowledge CAN SHIFT the ground rules. In the case of quantum theory the basic shift in the ground rules is the quantum-caused inability to collect ENOUGH information about a physical system to have in hand the Newtonian theory's required initial conditions. Heisenberg's "gamma-ray microscope" gedankenexperiment beautifully points out this QUANTUM-caused "information dearth" vis-a-vis Newtonian theory. In the quantum case, one can insist what one wishes about the "true nature" of a system, but because of quantization one simply can't ever have access to enough information to ADEQUATELY VERIFY a classically detailed description, so a theory with not firmly predictable, probabilistic aspects rather unavoidably emerges as the most useful description of that state of affairs.

In a nutshell, empirical knowledge has been at the root of causing special relativity and quantum theory to outright disrespect intuitive "fundamental 'rules' which must not be contravened in practice". And at the end of the day, if it comes to "fundamental 'rules' " being well and truly at loggerheads with well-established empirical facts, then it is those "fundamental 'rules' " which must -- as conservatively as is feasible -- be rethought and reformulated.

Steven

Steven and Paul,

Having read some of Paul's comments in other blogs and threads, I do not think that Steven's last post is quite on the mark, about what Paul is saying.

Paul is, in effect, (incorrectly) saying that physics *should only* concern itself with the "source" of a "message", and not with either the message itself, or the mechanisms by which the message is detected/observed. In Newton's time, that was how physics was thought of. But people like Einstein and Heisenberg realized that there is no clear dividing line, between the observations of the source of a message, the message from the source, and the observer of the message.

Existentially they are different, which is Paul's point. But observational, they are not so distinct. Paul seems to think they should be. In classical physics, they were.

Consider Paul's statements:

"So the real question becomes, ... , how does what is generically true, actually manifest itself in the physical existence being investigated."

"We know there is something which exists independently of the mechanisms which enable its detection."

Now consider Paul's earlier example:

"To my left there is a waste basket, and a chair with a dog on it. A photon based representation of whatever constitutes the physically existent state which we are referring to as waste basket is currently being received by the chair, and vice versa. In just the same way as the dog and I are receiving such physical input. The physics is the same. The dog and I can subsequently process what is received, indeed, we do it differently. But that is irrelevant to the physics. The processes certainly need to be known, so that we can understand how the output from that processing relates to the input.

But that input was an independent physically existent entity. However, it was not the existential reality (ie what is usually referred to as reality), it was created as a result of an interaction with that."

Paul's "A photon based representation" = Rob's "message".

Paul's "input" = Rob's "source"

Paul seems to think that only the "source", the wastebaskets etc, are the proper subject matter for physics. The message is not, nor is the detection process. But photons themselves also exist, as a physical reality, and thus can be another proper subject of physics. But unlike the wastebasket, which does not directly interact with the detector, photons do interact with detectors. Hence, describing how photons behave, is proper physics. In other words, Paul does not seem to be considering that "A photon based representation", is not *just* a "representation", it is also "something which exists independently of the mechanisms which enable its detection", but also, independently of its source.

Sets of photons are just as real (whatever they may be) as sets of wastebaskets, chairs, dogs and people, independently of their possible interpretations as representations.

Rob McEachern

John,

I think you are trying to challenge the Robertson-Walker metric and related orthodox cosmological ideas. Unfortunately, my knowledge of orthodox cosmology is weak to nonexistent beyond the extreme basics of Hubble's Law and the like. Maybe I should read the relevant basic orthodox cosmology sections in Steven Weinberg's celebrated 1972 textbook on General Relativity and Cosmology, which is referred to in my article. Maybe you could benefit even more from studying the basics of orthodox cosmology, given your interest in it, coupled to your apparent desire for an alternative.

One (naive, perhaps?) picture I do have in my mind is that of the Big Bang hurling out matter isotropically and with ALL SPEEDS (aside from light, which, of course, has only one speed), a speed spectrum naturally cut off, however, by the speed of light. In that picture, the straightforward Doppler effect would give rise to the Hubble Law for luminous matter (such as galaxies).

The source of the outward pressure for the early universe' explosion has long seemed mysteriously opaque. Various "special-purpose" quantum fields have been specifically postulated to "account" for the celebrated very rapid cosmic inflation of the early universe -- such "explanations" would seem very uncomfortably ad hoc. My article raises the possibility that quantum fields generally, encompassed by any universe, supply that outward pressure. At first blush such a pressure appears infinite, given the formally infinite minimum energy of quantum fields. But the thrust of my article is that their innate self-gravitational correction causes localized energies to have a specific FINITE UPPER BOUND which is related to their maximum dimension. These rough considerations seem to give at least the right order of magnitude of the observed outward pressure on our universe at the present time.

That outward pressure on a given universe is roughly inversely proportional to its maximum dimension squared. So it would be much greater for the much smaller early universe, raising the possibility that that pressure also caused the early universe' rapid cosmic inflation.

I guess the difference of the above picture to the considerations you present is that quantum fields generally represent a very DIFFERENT sort of energy that permeates the universe, i.e., DIFFERENT from galaxies, their motions and their gravity wells that you have mentioned. That DIFFERENT sort of energy is as well ENORMOUS, if one bears in mind that the crudest approximation to it is INFINITY, because of the formally infinite ground-state energy of quantum fields. Self-gravitational effects wipe out such infinities, but leave BIG numbers behind in any event.

This energy, which pressures the universe to expand, is presumably the celebrated "dark energy", which actually rather heavily dominates the universe' energy -- about 70%. It could be even MORE than that if "dark matter" is merely a manifestation of LOCAL INHOMOGENEITY of the dark energy, as I speculate at the end of my article. Anyway, this "dark energy" is in a very DIFFERENT energy ballpark indeed from the galaxies, cosmic rays and the like that you have mentioned.

Steven

Rob

First, thanks for addressing what I said, in some detail.

However(!), you are still not representing what I am saying. I have a feeling that this is because I am explaining physical existence, as is, and not how it is generally presumed to be. But I am stuck with the language which inherently reflects the latter.

The first point is that physics, as a science, should only be concerning itself with the form of existence which is knowable to us. This may or may not be what existence is 'all about', but we are trapped in an existentially closed system. Knowable is a function of an independent physical process, not some philosophical babbling. We receive physical input. Knowable does not presume only that which is directly confirmed as experienceable (confirmed relates to the simple fact that reception is at the individual level). There are many identifiable reasons why this process is not perfect. So knowable includes that which is discerned on the basis of proper hypothesis (proper relates to as per the process, ie what we could have experienced had there not been a problem, not belief).

Secondly, "Paul seems to think that only the "source", the wastebaskets etc, are the proper subject matter for physics. The message is not, nor is the detection process."

I do not. Indeed you say in the next sentence that what is received (the message) is physically existent, as I did. So I am not sure how you gained this impression. My differentiation is between what might be termed the existential sequence, and the physically existent representations of that which result as a consequence of the interaction of certain physical phenomena with it as it progresses. These resultant representations will have an existential sequence of their own, as they are existent. But, the characteristic which sentient organisms can process, if received, physically remains the same (or nearly so). Otherwise sensory systems would never have evolved in the first place, as they would be useless. They are representations because, with evolution, they have acquired a functional role.

The "detection process", or more precisely, the receipt and subsequent processing process, is certainly not the subject of physics. Obviously we need to understand how this works, so that we can extrapolate what was received (ie override individualism and how the sensory system/brain generically works). But this subsequent processing can have no effect on the physical existence of the representations (other than they cease to exist in that form on receipt), nor on what occurred which caused them. The processing is concerned with creating a perception of what was physically received, which is not physics. Unfortunately(!), it has to be the start point.

A nuance here, a detector is in effect a surrogate eye.

Put simply. There is an existential sequence, which as it progresses results in existential representations thereof. In the case of sight, for example, we have what occurred, and light. Einstein failed to make this distinction (Steven, Einstein defined his second postulate, but that was not what it was in practice, because he had no light with which entities could become observers-there is an essay on my essay blog explaining this, posted November. I do have an updated version). Observation has no effect on physical existence, QM assumes it does. It also assumes, incorrectly, that physical existence has some form of indefiniteness. Space-time is incorrect as physical reality is only spatial, it alters over time, the rate at which it does so being the basis for the concept of time. Apart from that...

Paul

Steven, Jonathan, Fred:

Now we're having fun. :-)

Fred, so long as the iron of this dialogue is hot as they say, and you brought up the Planck length question -- I've been working for some time on a multiscale model of Lebesgue measure zero that subsumes Planck length at the classical scale. I'm verifying the mathematics at the moment, so I'm not ready to trot it all out -- yet I want to share the part with you all, that leads to Joy Christian's main result, and which ties into Steven's result. (Attached.)

Steven, I sympathize with your difficulties at the stone wall of academic indifference. I think it won't be long before we see the ArXiv lose its credibility altogether. There are just two many fora with knowledgable contributors dispersed over a wide range of venues, than a few gatekeepers can manage to control.

All best,

TomAttachment #1: A_continuum_theory_that_contains_an_unmeasurable_though_physical_element.docx

Dang it. Meant to attach as PDF.Attachment #1: A_continuum_theory_that_contains_an_unmeasurable_though_physical_element.pdf

Paul

Heisenberg basically claims that the physical measurement tools that can possibly exist (Nature having quantized aspects such as -- as an example -- the Planck-Einstein characteristics of electromagnetic radiation) cannot be used to predict "what happens next" as definitely as was thought in Newtonian theory (which effectively idealizes those quantized aspects of the physical universe, including all measurement tools, to the limit hbar = 0). In other words, Heisenberg tells us that physics methods are NOT as POWERFUL a PREDICTIVE TOOL of "what happens next" as what they were thought to be under the Newtonian paradigm, which is theoretically recovered with a hbar = 0 assumption (such technical math "limits" can in certain instances be highly nonuniform and ugly, but there are always physically-motivated smoothing tricks which can get around that).

Thus Heisenberg partially throws in the towel on the predictive power of physics measurements and methods vis-a-vis what that predictive power was conceived to be under the Newtonian paradigm.

Do you want to argue with Heisenberg concerning the diminished predictive power of physical measurements and methods in a universe with finite hbar vis-a-vis one that has hbar = 0? Do you in fact think Heisenberg's nonzero hbar constraints on physical prediction can be beaten?

If you think they can be beaten, you can formulate a different theory, and test some of its predictions empirically against the theory of Heisenberg, Schroedinger, etc. I submit that the Bayesian chance that a different theory wins out is extremely small, given the enormous mass of experimental data already in existence concerning similar tests. If you agree that the theory of Heisenberg, Schroedinder, etc. is extremely unlikely to empirically lose out to another theory, all these discussions are simply a waste from the point of view of a physicist. For philosophers, it is perhaps somehow a different matter, but I'm a physicist.

Ken

Steven,

In re " ... QUANTIZATION of gravity ITSELF is essentially IRRELEVANT ..."

did you happen to catch Vesselin Petkov's essay in the last competition? One of my favorites. Dr. Petkov and fellow esteemed founders of the Minkowski Institute also symbolize one of the bold new alternatives to traditional academic venues.

Tom

Paul,

"My differentiation is between what might be termed the existential sequence, and the physically existent representations of that..."

The problem is that, the "differentiation" you refer to, exists only in your mind. It does not exist outside of your mind. Your "existential sequence" and "physically existent representations" are all just part of what exists.

Light does not behave as a "representation", Only *You* behave *as if* it is. You and only you are the physical entity that "created" your representation. Photons bouncing off a wastebasket, by themselves, do not "represent" anything anymore than rocks bouncing off wastebaskets.

Rob McEachern

Thank you Tom,

I looked over Vesselin Petkov's essay. I understand what he is trying to say, but I'm skeptical. His rejection of the famous slowing-down of the orbital period of a certain binary pulsar as being due to gravitational radiation is certainly controversial, as indeed is his idea that there can be no such thing as gravitational radiation.

In my paper,

http://arxiv.org/abs/0908.3024

I don't reject gravitational radiation nor the possibility that it can be quantized in principle (i.e., into "gravitons"). This quantization gives a terribly non-renormalizable theory, however, when treated using perturbation theory in powers of G, as is very well-known. When people run into that kind of frightful behavior, they throw up their hands and are prone to speculate quite wildly as to its cause. The usual "conclusion" is that gravity and quantum theory are "incompatible", and therefore that "a whole new approach is clearly needed". Of course such grand pronouncements are nothing but emotional venting, based on absolutely NO substance or understanding.

A much better thing to do than to wax so blustery is to try to look under the HOOD of this breakdown for possible clues as to what might have caused it. Quantization is based on classical entities which have the dimension of action (or energy). Now the gravitational-potential tensor (metric tensor) is dimensionless, so to build up from it something with the dimension of action (or energy), one is obliged to DIVIDE by G. ALREADY one glimpses why the perturbation expansion in powers of G of quantized gravity is doomed to catastrophic failure -- one should expect NO LESS if one so foolishly attempts a power-series expansion in G about a point of MANIFEST NON-ANALYTICITY in G, which is what G = 0 rather obviously IS.

Perturbation expansion of quantized gravity in powers of G is thus clearly purblind stupidity; the best hope to treat that quantum theory is a semi-classical approach, CERTAINLY NOT a perturbation one. In fact, a very slightly deeper analysis into the matter allows one to see that the extreme smallness of G will REINFORCE the smallness of hbar in quantized gravity theory, so that a semi-classical approach will be SPECTACULARLY GOOD (see my paper for the detailed argument). Indeed, the semi-classical approach to quantized gravity can be expected to be SO GOOD that ACTUALLY PURSUING IT would almost certainly be a SEVERE WASTE, because an OUTRIGHT CLASSICAL TREATMENT ought to be QUITE GOOD ENOUGH.

In other words, the BOTTOM LINE here is that the quantization of gravity theory can be expected to be of precious little value, and is not worth bothering with.

Unlike in Petkov's paper, there is NO controversial assertion here about the total absence of gravitational radiation. NOR is the idea of orthodox quantization of such radiation rejected out of hand. However, by looking at how extremely small G is, one readily comes to the conclusion that that quantization is simply not worth bothering with. Furthermore, one can quickly see WHY the witless perturbation expansion of quantized gravity in powers of G breaks down so catastrophically.

With best regards, Steven

Steven,

The very simple observation that necessitates my trying to explain cosmological phenomena in a non-standard form is that we include the time factor as a foundational dimension, in spacetime, thus giving space the property of variability.

Now rather than viewing time as the present moving from past events to future ones, along a narrative dimension, if we treat it simply as an effect of action, then it is the events being created and replaced, ie. going future to past. Think of it as two objects, cars, subatomic particles, whatever, hitting each other. This creates an event. While the physical objects go from prior events to succeeding events, thus past to future, these events form and disperse, ie. go future to past. Only what is present is physically real.

Ask yourself which is a more efficient explanation: Does the earth travel a fourth dimension from yesterday to tomorrow, or does tomorrow become yesterday because the earth rotates? If you are willing to consider the latter as a more viable explanation, as many here are loath to do, it necessarily points physics in another direction, because then time is not some mysterious flow, dimension, whatever, but a measure of rate of change, which is due to action. This would make it more like temperature, than space. Think of time as frequency and temperature as amplitude, of whatever activity is being measured.

This then means spacetime is correlation, not causation, so there is no theoretical foundation for an expanding universe cosmology. There is no blocktime, wormholes, inflation, dark energy and no multiverses. We would need to go back to the drawing board and develop a cosmology that doesn't need increasingly fantastical patches to make it fit increasingly divergent observations. In normal science, when you keep patching the theory to match observations, you have thrown out the most elemental rule in the book of science and have entered the realm of belief, because the theory can never be proven wrong. Much like epicycles, it just needs another cosmic gearwheel and all is well.

As I see it, space has no physical attributes, but this gives it two properties. It is inertial and infinite, since it has no moving parts and no boundaries. Consider the spacestation in 2001; A Space Odyssey; The gravitational effect of the centrifugal force of its spin is due to the relation of that spin to the inertia of space, not outside points of reference. The speed of light is constant, because the inertial drag slows the moving clock. Consider that the clock rate on a GPS satellite and one on the ground move at different rates. They are not traveling different time vectors, the one on the ground is simply slowed by the drag of gravity. Why does gravity slow light? That goes back to my prior point about gravity being an effect of energy coalescing into mass, rather than just a property of mass.

I'll leave it at this, as prior experience tells me you have likely jammed on the emergency break some time ago.

Regards,

John

Brake, not break.

Steven

Ah, now, is it just a matter of needing a better method in order to predict more correctly what happens next. Or is it a case of changing the conception as to how it occurs, and hence how one predicts what happens next.

Frankly, physical existence is so complex and alters at such a speed, that I would venture to suggest we could never isolate one physically existent state from the subsequent one. Apart from anything else, we receive a physically existent representation of that physically existent state. So we need to understand the exact relationship between light (in the context of sight) and whatever constituted the physically existent state. As per a previous post, there are all sorts of reasons why light may not convey accurately and comprehensively what actually occurred. And that is having sorted out, and eliminated, the effects of processing what was received (ie light). That is the differential between the physical input (light) and the resultant depiction of what we think was received.

One underlying point here being that the physical existence as knowable to us does not occur in different forms dependent on 'size'. Humans, understandably, have an ontologically incorrect conception of physical existence. There is a tendency to conceptualise it as things. But this is really a function of the higher level at which existence is being understood. These things are differentiated on the basis of what are actually superficial physical traits. And the thing is regarded as continuing to exist, so long as those traits are manifest. Indeed, we consider it persists even when it has changed! We only accept that it no longer exists when all, or most, of the superficial traits have ceased to manifest. In other words, physically, there is no such thing as St Paul's Cathedral. Existentially, it is a sequence of physically existent states, which at a higher level appear similar.

Physical existence occurs in one physically existent state at a time, in a sequence. There is no form of indefiniteness in what occurred, the problem is with our ability to isolate it. Neither does observation/measurement alter what occurred. The physical question is what constitutes a physically existent state and what causes the alteration. The two 'whats' may well be the same entity (or more likely range of entities). In other words, if there is some substance (or different forms thereof), in effect, it is 'inert' because it is the properties of that which are defining any given physically existent state it is in and causing the alteration.

Paul