A Self-Gravitational Upper Bound on Localized Energy

Constantinos,

Stirred up the silt in my brain;

It reminds me of the quote by Nietzsche, "I was staring into the abyss, when I realized it was staring back."

We observe the process as a sequence of events, pointing to the future, while it observes back, by carrying our lives along into the past.

John,

Don't misunderstand me. Your insights are most interesting and very relevant. Your comments are anything but boring. Without the bias of physicists, you are able to see what others can't even feel, let alone think.

Your observations on 'time' are very insightful. The problem is they point in directions few are yet willing to journey. Ahead of your time? Possibly. And this is perfectly alined with you intuition time flows from future to past! And so also our thinking flows from 'future' to 'past'!

Constantinos

Constantinos,

Thanks. I try not to make an issue of it anymore than is opportune. It doesn't have any obvious effect, but it is more sand in the gears of the current system. There are a lot of societal institutional structures, based on often centuries old thinking, that are getting ever more unstable and science is one area where people are actually supposed to think and not just reflexively support the system, so it is one idea that might actually have some effect eventually.

"There can be no presumption, and probably no actual likelihood, that the physical effect known as light provides a completely comprehensive and/or accurate representation of the existential sequence."

Nothing about either physical theory or other ways we humans attempt to acquire knowledge about our surroundings can be expected to be "completely comprehensive and/or accurate". In the case of light, for example, that probe provides no view at all of the inside of opaque objects of interest, such as our bodies. Also the cosmological redshift would seem to effectively blind us to anything outside of or earlier than our own particular universe -- and that deficiency would apparently apply to all conceivable physical probes, not only light.

But unattainable "completely comprehensive and/or accurate representation" aside, we do certainly possess a large, impressive and detailed body of knowledge about the interaction of light with other objects (including basic building blocks such as atoms), we have learned to employ other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum (e.g., X-rays immediately let us visualize our internal bones), and we have been able to marshal some non-electromagnetic probes. The formidably detailed state of our knowledge base concerning the functioning of the physical probes we use quite belies the very pessimistic tone of Paul's post: we have even been able to press some of the outright "deceptive" aspects of light-produced images into the service of yielding useful information, as with astronomers' use of gravitational lensing.

The use of the word "light" in the passage Paul has partially quoted from my arXiv:1212.0426v3 article did not, in any case, refer at all to the use of light as a physical probe. It referred to using "the speed of light" as a scale factor to crudely convert a current estimate for the age of our universe to a "radius" for that universe, having in mind a rough, simplistic physical model directly suggested by Hubble's Law.

Steven

Steven

My point was a lot simpler than I think you have understood it as.

First, the physical existence we are investigating is definitive. That is, leaving aside practicalities(!), potentially it is entirely definable, either as a result of direct experience or hypothesis based on that. Because we can only investigate what it is possible for us to know (ie as opposed to invoke a belief about). And we know as the result of a specific independent physical process. So, it is attainable, ie there is no metaphysical problem, just a practical one, if it is properly understood what physical existence can be.

Now, the end result of that physical process is that we, and all sentient organisms, receive a physical input, in just the same way that the brick wall behind you, or your knee, does. The subsequent processing of the input, where it is possible to do so, is irrelevant. What you receive though, is a physical representation of what actually occurred. In the case of the sense of sight, this is known as light.

The differentiation between the physical phenomena received, and those which caused them, is critical, as:

-what is received is only a representation of what physically existed

-the phenomena involved in capturing and transmitting this representation have physical properties of their own which influence the extent to which they can effect this acquired functional role

-there is always a time delay between physical occurrence, and the receipt of any representation.

In respect of these phenomena being fit for the functional purpose acquired by evolution, there are three types of issue:

-non receipt: despite existence having occurred, no representation thereof has yet been, or ever will be, received. That is, no recipient sentient organism was in the line of travel of the effect, or it ceased to exist en route due to interaction with another existent phenomenon, or it has not yet reached any known organism. Another possibility is that the existent reality had a property which did not interact with the phenomena, ie nothing was generated as a result of an interaction.

-deficiency: this revolves around the occurrences in any given physically existent sequence being too many, too small, too frequent, etc, for the phenomena to cope with, ie they are unable to properly differentiate all that occurred, and hence the resultant representation in its original form is deficient in some way.

-alteration: the representation has been altered in some way en route, ie it is not in its original form when received. This could involve delay, distortion, partial elimination, diversion from the original line of travel, etc.

Put simply, what we see (or hear, feel, etc) is not what was, which is what we strive to know. It is a representation of that, based on the ability of phenomenon involved to capture and convey a representation.

Paul

Paul

Those observationalists/experimentalists who use physical probes to try to gather information tend to be highly aware of pitfalls such as the delay, non-receipt, deficiency, and alteration issues that you point out (although they might use different jargon such as "signal-to-noise", "distortion", "resolution", "interference", "bandwidth", etc.), and constantly try to think of ways to ameliorate and/or compensate for such. And humans can sometimes be extraordinarily clever and subtle indeed in finding "end runs" around such issues: again as an example consider the "alteration en route" issue of gravitational lensing, which astronomers now frequently actually turn to their advantage in terms of information gleaned.

You seem to invoke the pessimistic tone of a philosopher, solemnly ticking off for anyone who will listen your list of presumably insurmountable barriers to constructing an accurate picture via physical probing. But the immense data base of the detailed subtleties of the physical probing methods in use that has been built up, and the endless ability of human minds to rise to terrifically knotty challenges, strongly suggest that the pessimistic position you have staked out is not tenable. Think, for example, about the fact that only a few years ago it seemed almost inconceivable that hypothetical planets orbiting other stars could be reliably detected. Then the the first gas giant planets of some other stars could be discerned, but it still seemed almost inconceivable that much smaller rocky planets of other stars could actually be detected. Now hundreds of "exoplanets" of a considerable variety of types have been reliably detected and we are growing really jaded and (unrealistically??) fussy, not to be satisfied until we detect one with Earth-like temperature and gravity!

Contemplating that manner of mind-boggling progress in physical probing over a few short years, wouldn't you concede that attempting to creatively pit one's mind against the issues and pitfalls of physical probing seems to work out to be greatly preferable to merely enumerating those issues in a sepulchral tone that suggests they are insurmountable?

Steven

Paul and Steven,

I think you are both missing a crucial point.

Paul stated that "-what is received is only a representation of what physically existed". This is not quite correct. An intelligent observer can only receive what "physically existed"; they subsequently *create* the representation. Simply put, such an entity, unlike an "elementary particle", can *choose* to react symbolically to a received input, as well as responding physically to it.

*ALL* such choices *necessarily* exploit a priori information, unavailable to simpler entities.

Consequently, even though physicists have become aware of the fact that what the observer does makes a difference to an observable outcome, the physical theories developed to date, have only been designed to describe physical interactions of entities devoid of a priori knowledge. But they utterly fail to correctly describe what happens when they observe such entities *symbolically* rather than *physically*.

The double slit experiment is the classic example of this problem. The entities passing through the slit do not know, and hence, cannot behave as if they knew, that they all were created with the same energy. But the experimenter who designed the experiment does know this. If he/she exploits this a priori knowledge in the interpretation of the experiment (and they always do), then they are behaving symbolically rather than physically, and that is not correctly modeled by quantum theory. So *OF COURSE* the interpreted result is weird.

Communications Engineers have made great progress in developing techniques to correctly describe what observers actually do. But the physics world remains almost entirely ignorant of such techniques, and is only now starting to reinvent techniques like "weak measurements", that have been used in the communications world, for half a century.

The "laws" of physics do not forbid observers to exploit a priori information. But they also do not describe what happens when the observers *choose* to do so.

Rob McEachern

Steven,

I've often wondered how the speed of light can be used as a scale for expanding space. Doesn't a stable speed of light necessitate a stable dimensional medium? Say two galaxies are x lightyears apart and by whatever means, they were to grow to 2x lightyears apart. Wouldn't that be an increased amount of a stable dimension of space, rather than "expanding" space?

What seems to be overlooked is that galaxies are not simply inert points of reference, but gravity wells, so that whatever is the medium of measure expanding between galaxies, is balanced by the medium of measure being contracted by them. The result being the overall flat space that is observed.

Einstein proposed a cosmological constant to balance the effect of gravity, so it would necessarily imply that space not being contracted by gravity is expanding in inverse proportion. Which is exactly what Hubble discovered.

Gravity is the contraction of mass points, but what is the expansion? What escapes from gravity is light. Now we treat light as a point photon, but what if it actually expands when traveling and only contracts on absorption? Various of the essayists here have delved into ways light exists continuously, but has to be measured discretely.

So mass contracts, while light expands. There is a lot of light energy in mass; E=mc2. What if the equation were reversed; M=e/c2. It would seem that when released from mass, the resulting energy creates enormous pressure, as it expands. Wouldn't the opposite then be true; That as energy condenses into mass, it creates a vacuum?

Now they haven't discovered any halo of dark matter around galaxies, but there is significant amounts of excess cosmic rays. What if gravity is not simply a property of mass, but the vacuum effect of energy condensing into mass? Starting with the outer perimeter cosmic rays into interstellar gases, then all the first generation stars, then the second generation ones, as the metals become ever more dense, etc. Until eventually it falls into that central galacitic cyclone and it hurled back out across space as enormous jets of electrons.

So we then have what amounts to a galactic convection cycle, rather than the current cosmology that needs all the various patches, from inflation to dark energy. It seem whenever the current model doesn't mathc observations, it gets a pass on whatever patch is required to make it work, rather than the more objective alternative of re-considering the validity of the model.

Ps,

Redshift being predicated on light traveling as a point particle, thus the only way for it to be redshifted in a vacuum is by recession of the source, but if light expands out, redshift could be explain by optical means.

Steven/Rob

I am sure potential 'issues' are factored into calculations when using light in the sense of a measuring reference. Neither am I pessimistic, because having identified relationships/circumstances, which can be done, then these adjustments can be done.

My point, as picked up by Rob, is somewhat obvious, but more fundamental. That is, what we receive is not the existential physical reality, it is a physically existent representation of it, resulting from an interaction with it. I say somewhat obvious, because when expressed in simple terms, it is. But Einstein, for one, failed to differentiate these, which is why he attributes the time differential to physical existence when it is in the receipt of light, and attributes c with influences it does not have. c is a determinant of light reality (for want of a better phrase), not the existential reality. Ever wondered why the physical phenomenon known as energy should happen to have a relationship with the speed at which a physical effect in photons travels? Other than that effect is what enables sentient organisms to 'see' existential reality.

However, Rob misinterprets what I said. I keep having exchanges about this, the most recent was Constantinos, previously Jonathan, etc. And am getting fascinated as to why this, again somewhat obvious, point is not just accepted.

Rob states: "Paul stated that "-what is received is only a representation of what physically existed". This is not quite correct. An intelligent observer can only receive what "physically existed"; they subsequently *create* the representation"

What is received is the representation (ie light, vibration, noise, etc). Received means exactly that, ie was in the line of travel and interacted with. Inanimate entities receive light, so does your mouth, but they can not then subsequently process it. An ability that has been acquired with evolution, ie light, etc, pre-existent physical phenomena have acquired a functional role in the context of sensory systems with this development. This subsequent processing is irrelevant to the physics of the circumstance. Indeed, it is a positive nuisance, because, as Rob intimates, that processing can result in 'enhancements'. However, it is, unfortunately(!) the only start point available, ie we need to discern what was received and then what occurred which that represents.

In respect of what Rob then writes, I will just say this. Observation, or indeed any form of sensing, cannot affect physical existence, which occurred previously. By definition, otherwise it cannot be received (!). I never say anything complicated. And is not what is received anyway. So any theory that involves such a notion is incorrect. Know any??

Underneath all this is my real point, currently being made in an exchange with 'Hello Vera'. The physical existence which we can investigate has a definitive form, and unless physics recognises that, then it will continue to generate theories which are reliant on an incorrect, philosophical 'take' of what it is and how it occurs.

Paul

Paul,

I don't think I misunderstood what you said. I disagree with what you said.

When you "receive" an image with the color yellow, displayed on your computer screen, you have *not* in fact "received" yellow light. The screen *cannot* even emit yellow light. The color yellow, that you see, is *created*, within your visual system, from the red and green light that the screen does actually emit. *ALL* color is in fact a "false-color", that is only indirectly related to the physical characteristics of the entity that is received.

In a like manner, when you "hear" a deep-pitched male voice on the telephone, you do not in fact "receive" any low frequency inputs, telephones are incapable of transmitting low frequencies. What you hear, is a creation, created by your auditory system, from the input signal.

"Inanimate entities receive light, so does your mouth, but they can not then subsequently process it"

This statement is false. A camera does process it. In fact, it is designed to process the spectrum of light, to mimic the three color processing performed by the human visual system. If it failed to do so, color photography would not exist. Color photographs *DO NOT* reproduce, or simply reflect, the spectrum of the light that they receive, like a mirror. They process the light into something very different from what was actually received.

"This subsequent processing is irrelevant to the physics of the circumstance."

That is true. However, it is *highly* relevant to any attempt to "interpret" any observation of that physics.

To one extent or another, all observations are "false-colored", by the apparatus used to make the observations. There are *no* exceptions to this fact. Hence, if one wishes to discover the "underlying reality", then one must learn to distinguish between those attributes of the observations "caused" by what is being "received", from those attributes that are "caused" by what is doing the "receiving".

The failure to do this, is what has produced all the so-called weirdness in modern physics.

Rob McEachern

"*ALL* color is in fact a 'false-color', that is only indirectly related to the physical characteristics of the entity that is received."

That's a rather loose statement, Rob. Spectroscopic analysis depends on knowing the true wavelengths of light -- the visible color spectrum being only a narrow range -- that characterize the discrete quantum properties of continuous phenomena.

Just as Steven Kauffmann makes the case, " ... the Schwarzschild radius never lies in free space, making the Schwarzschild singularity physically unrealizable ..." if we wish to speak of any quantum property at any scale we have to realize what sets the upper bound of local measurement in the continuum of spectra. That is identical to " ... the physical characteristics of the entity that is received."

Paul's Aristotle-like observation that "existence exists" doesn't have any technical meaning, which is why we haven't done science according to Aristotle for about 500 years.

Tom

Tom,

I agree with your statement that:

"That's a rather loose statement, Rob."

It would require a rather large "download" to give anything other than a loose statement of the problem. But let me restate the problem this way:

Systems like the visual system, the auditory system, spectrometers and Fourier Analysis do not even *attempt* to measure "frequency" or wavelength" directly. The things they *actually* measure don't even have the units of frequency and/or wavelength. They all merely measure something like energies, amplitudes and particle-counts, detected by band-limited detectors. The frequencies and wavelengths are then *inferred* from the quantities actually measured; that is, they are "false-color" creations.

Physics has sought for "Theories of Measurement", but neglected "Theories of Inferences derived from those Measurements"

All of the weirdness in modern physics is related to the latter. The former has nothing useful to say about the latter. Assuming that it does is *the* problem with modern physics.

In regards to the statement that:

"we haven't done science according to Aristotle for about 500 years."

I disagree. Unwittingly returning to the method of Aristotle is exactly what many physicists have done. That is the problem. It would be another long download to get into that, but let me just say this:

Aristotle's method is based on Greek "math", not "science"; *Assume* some beautiful, elegant (what did Einstein say about math and physics?) logic/math based description of reality, then seek for a *few* observations that "verify" it. Bacon et. al. pointed out the flaw in this approach centuries ago. Science must be based only on observations, not assumptions about what is being observed. But as Socrates noted 25 centuries ago, observations are deceptive; "what is actually observed" is never quite the same as "what actually exists".

Rob McEachern

Rob,

While I agree with you entirely, it should be emphasized that this "false color creation" is the classic world we inhabit.

How about a term for math as religious belief; Mathematology.

John,

Math is unlike religious belief. But it is also unlike science.

Aristotle is often viewed as the father of formal logic. Math employs this logic as follows:

State some "starting points", such as axioms or postulates.

Use "deduction" to derive some logical consequences of those axioms.

The axioms, as such, are neither true nor false. They are merely "interesting" or "uninteresting", depending upon whether or not they lead to interesting deductions.

Science, for Aristotle, was much the same:

State some assumptions, like "the cosmos is perfect", "the most perfect form is a perfect sphere", then deduce that the moon etc. must be a perfect sphere.

Unfortunately for Aristotle, and modern physicists that make the same mistake, in science, unlike math, the "truth" or "false" of the "starting points", are of interest. That is the most important distinction between math and science.

The truth/false question about the starting points cannot be resolved, ever, via deduction. So attempts to demonstrate their truth via induction, were made. But all such attempts failed.

Consequently, the "scientific method" rejects all such assumptions, axioms etc., as valid "starting points". In their place, it simply uses observations as the "starting points".

Observations are what they are, and like the "starting points" in math, they are neither true nor false.

But unlike math "starting points", the "starting points" of science, have other problems; they might be "repeatable" or not. They might be subject to misinterpretation or not. And attempting to use them, in science, is impossible, without dealing with the "Problem of Induction", as described by David Hume, a couple of centuries ago; "repeatable" observations necessarily assumes that the future will resemble the past.

From these scientific "starting points", theory merely "fits" mathematical equations to the observations, to create a concise, quantitative description of those observations. Then, as Karl Popper noted, good science, as opposed to pseudo science, makes risky predictions about yet-to-be made-additional-observations, collected under different circumstances (in the distant future, at very different temperatures, pressures, energies etc.), that can be falsified, or not, by future observations.

A major problem in modern physics, is that many physicists have reverted to using "starting points", other than observations (as in mathematics), and/or fail to make risky predictions (as in pseudo science).

As George Santayana said "Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness... Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to fulfill it."

Rob McEachern

Rob,

As one might expect, I don't agree with you on what is "wrong" with physics, because my philosophy of science is conventional. Yours, I claim, is not.

For example, you say, "Science must be based only on observations, not assumptions about what is being observed."

In fact, assumptions about what is being observed is *exactly* the basis of theoretical science, which becomes successful as a scientific theory when what those assumptions predict are tested against the outcome of physical measurements. The whole content of science is theory and result. Your view of the scientific enterprise is entirely inductive.

"But as Socrates noted 25 centuries ago, observations are deceptive; 'what is actually observed' is never quite the same as 'what actually exists'.

Fine, but that isn't science.

You write, "Physics has sought for 'Theories of Measurement', but neglected 'Theories of Inferences derived from those Measurements."

This isn't true. We don't infer anything from measurements -- we infer by correspondence of *theory* to measurement results. This is exceedingly easy to see, when one considers data in the absence of theory -- the best example I know, is that of the cosmic microwave background radiation, a precisely measured value. Unless explanation is supplied -- most popularly, at the moment, by big bang theory -- the data are absolutely meaningless.

Tom

Rob,

Keep in mind monotheism is just one religious sub-set and a logically flawed one at that, since a spiritual absolute would be the essence of being from which life rises, not an ideal form from which it fell. It is politically convenient though, as it validates top down authority.

Religion is a society's vision of itself and nature, as government is how it manages itself within nature. This is a very old dichotomy. Think Chieftains and Shamans. Of the three monotheistic religions, Christianity was an undergound movement long before being co-opted by an empire in decline and thus has a significant split between religious vision and government management. On the other hand, Islam was a very successful social movement for the first seven hundred years and coasted the next six hundred, before being eclipsed by the industrial west in the last hundred. Thus has an integrated vision of and management of society. Not that it always works in practice. Judaism has had two thousand years of developing ideal social views and now has to incorporate them into the actual governance of a country.

So what you are saying is that math is the vision of what knowledge should be, while science is how it is actually acquired.

Tom,

You have to have induction before you can have deduction. We are mortals, not Gods.

Tom,

"my philosophy of science is conventional. Yours, I claim, is not." I agree. I merely point out the recent essay contest was about "Which of Our Basic Physical Assumptions Are Wrong?" To which I respond, your current, perverse, philosophy of science that has become conventional.

"the data are absolutely meaningless"

Regardless of whether or not data is "meaningless", it may be useful.

Consider the distinction between "precision" and "accuracy", as those terms are used in engineering.

"Precise" means that repeating the measurement will yield precisely the same result. It has nothing to do with how closely the measurement approximates some supposed "true" value.

"Accurate", on the other hand, is concerned with how closely the measurement approximates the "true" value.

"False-Color" visual perception is *always* precise. But it is only accurate under special circumstance. Its usefulness is *entirely* due to its precision, not its occasional, startling accuracy.

Now consider:

What is more important to an observer's continued survival, "accurate" measurements of the solar spectrum, or "precise" measurements of the manner in which the solar radiation is "modulated" when it is reflected off other entities in the observer's environment?

In this situation, as in most situations, Accurate measurements are about the source, but precise measurements are about the modulator.

Now here is the catch-22. Precise measurements can be made with little or no a priori information about what is being measured, But accurate measurements cannot; How would you know whether or not it even is "accurate", if you do not already know the "true" answer?

Physicists frequently confuse these two types of measurements.

Consider the double slit experiment. Does it measure anything you do not already know about the "emitted" signal? Or does it merely measure the manner in which that signal is spatially modulated by the two slits?

In other words, what are these measurements even about, the source or the modulator? Physicists have assumed they are about the source, even though they already know, by experimental design, what the source is doing. The measurements are *actually* about the modulator, not the "carrier" emitted by the source.

"We don't infer anything from measurements -- we infer by correspondence of *theory* to measurement results."

How then, does the color-vision system, infer the existence of non-existent yellow light, given that it has no theory whatsoever? You are confusing precision with accuracy, in which the "theory" is assumed to yield the "true" value.

Rob McEachern

John,

"So what you are saying is that math is the vision of what knowledge should be,while science is how it is actually acquired"

No, they are both knowledge. But they are about different things. Science is about knowledge of the world.

Math is about knowledge about math.

Rob McEachern