Some people do not appreciate Hawking changing his mind. Kind of sad.

January 27, 2014

Stephen Hawking's Blunder on Black Holes Shows Danger of Listening to Scientists, Says Bachmann

Posted by Andy Borowitz

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2014/01/stephen-hawkings-blunder-on-black-holes-shows-danger-of-listening-to-scientists-says-bachmann.html

    Wow. This reaction is *serious* and in some ways very understandable:

    "Actually, Dr. Hawking, our biggest blunder as a society was ever listening to people like you," said Rep. Bachmann. "If black holes don't exist, then other things you scientists have been trying to foist on us probably don't either, like climate change and evolution."

    Rep. Bachmann added that all the students who were forced to learn about black holes in college should now sue Dr. Hawking for a full refund. "Fortunately for me, I did not take any science classes in college," she said.

    It only goes to show how important it is for the science community to really have a light bulb moment about quantum mechanics being at odds with general relativity. For me the answer is easy. It's general relativity which is flat wrong. Newton's idea of gravity working equally in all directions without a mechanism being required is flat wrong. Einstein never changed this ludicrous premise. A particle model of a graviton, a spinning Archimedes screw, is the ONLY model to bridge the gap between a theory of gravity and quantum mechanics. It's easy AND common sense! Gravity then becomes directional, like the other forces. Baryonic gravity of everyday matter then becomes an average radiation of gravitons equally in all directions, which is why his simple equation is so effective.

    Science must be saved from scientists themselves so a very understandable reaction from politicians. This is to be expected when scientific criticism is stifled and opposing views are systematically shut out without bothering to discredit them on merit. See this effort aimed at avoiding this kind of future embarrassment of science by politicians. How should humanity steer the future? Look up to politicians, not scientists the way things are going.

    Akinbo

    Akinbo,

    Thank you so much for the link to 95 Years of Criticism of the Special Theory of Relativity (1908-2003).

    Here's a taster of what the research project have to say:

    [quote]The public in Germany has been cheated since 1922 and is cheated by the influential scientific community until today. Academic physics exert strong pressure on newspapers, journals, publishers and congresses not to accept any criticism of special relativity for publishing. Critical papers are suppressed, critical persons are excluded from any participation in the scientific dialogue.[end quote]

    a month later
    • [deleted]

    Here is the interesting article that may shed a light on the information paradox.

    Suppose you store information of a book in the z-directional spin states of stream of electrons. Then later, in order to extract the information, but by mistake, you measure their spin states in x-direction. So you mess up the information stored in the stream of electrons. But conventional interpretation of quantum mechanics does not insist this measurement destroys the information, because the wave function of an isolated system evolves smoothly by unitary process of Schrodinger equation. In other words, the information is not destroyed becasue the wave function of an isolated system never collapse.

    This article shows that the wave function of an isolated system should be able to collapse without external observer. It means that, if the collapse of wave function is fundamental, the quantum information of an isolated system can be destroyed by ordinary quantum process.Attachment #1: isolawave.pdf

    8 days later

    They used Quantum field theory explains how all known particles interact with the fundamental forces (except gravity, that is). The information could go to the exception, into a gravity field. Perhaps, we need to reconsider what gravity is or, rather, how it functions. This is more than combining QM and GR. This is forming a completely new model that can correspond to both QM and GR with appropriate, but different, approximations. STOE correspondence to general relativity and quantum mechanics develop this idea a little. There is a long way to go.

    Hodge

    a month later

    It gets a little confusing commenting on an article by one person, Anil Ananthaswamy, about what another person, Steve Giddings, says about gravity force and black holes and what Giddings says about what even other people say.

    Giddings wrote even more on Edge.org,

    "Naive modifications of locality--as often proposed by physicists "on the fringe," generically lead to disastrous collapse of the entire framework of quantum field theory, which not only has been experimentally tested to a very high degree of accuracy, but underlies our entire physical picture of the world. If such modification must be made, it must be subtle indeed."

    I would certainly agree with Giddings assessment that science is now very confused about gravity and charge forces and knows that something is very wrong, but does not yet know even exactly what is wrong. My favorite take on this is that an object under gravity force has just a single future while the same object under quantum force has many possible futures. This absurdity is particularly revealing when an experiment where the two forces end up being of identical magnitudes for the same object.

    The key to a quantum gravity force is to describe objects both as matter waves with more than one possible future and as particles with a single future. The particle-wave duality of quantum mechanics is very familiar to practitioners, but obscure and difficult to communicate to civilians. It seems very likely that QM will be the way forward for gravity as well.

    Discrete matter exists as both ballistic particles with particular locations and as matter waves with many phases, which means many possible locations or paths. Unlike a Cartesian particle, a relational matter wave can persist in more than one phase as a coherent state related to its source for an arbitrary time.

    This means that discrete matter literally exists as a matter wave simultaneously in more than one phase or possible location or path. Eventually a matter wave somehow dephases into the single phase of a ballistic particle and it is only then that the matter wave is a particle at a single location or on a single path (still subject to uncertainty). So only when a matter wave dephases from the universe into the single phase of a ballistic particle does that matter become ballistic and therefore subject to our familiar Cartesian causality. Before dephasing into a single phase, a matter wave is subject to the relational quantum causality where a number of futures or phases are possible.

    Thus, the possibilities for an object from an action evolve from the many possible futures of a relational matter wave into the single Cartesian future of a ballistic object subject to uncertainty. However, even though many phases or paths are possible and are correlated, only one phase results from an action. Dephasing into one place or path does not cause the other object possibilities to disappear just as the not-objects at the other places or paths do not cause the object to appear where it does appear. The dephasing among places or paths into a single place or path is simply subject to the quantum probabilities.

    Now it will be fun to see what matter waves tell us about black holes...

    2 years later

    Retiring Einstein's Spacetime

    https://edge.org/response-detail/26744

    Steve Giddings, Theoretical Physicist; Professor, Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara: "For the 2014 Edge Question, I wrote that apparently our fundamental concept of spacetime is ready for retirement, and it needs to be replaced by a more basic quantum structure. There are multiple reasons for this."

    https://edge.org/response-detail/25477

    What scientific idea is ready for retirement? Steve Giddings: "Spacetime. Physics has always been regarded as playing out on an underlying stage of space and time. Special relativity joined these into spacetime... (...) The apparent need to retire classical spacetime as a fundamental concept is profound..."

    Can special relativity's spacetime be retired without retiring at least one of Einstein's 1905 postulates? Einsteinians?

    Pentcho Valev

      "Can special relativity's spacetime be retired without retiring at least one of Einstein's 1905 postulates? Einsteinians?"

      First of all, it's boring and misguided to hear you repeat, "the speed of light postulate is false," because there is no such thing as a false postulate.

      Second, while general relativity does substitute one of the postulates (5th) of Euclidean geometry -- with one from two choices of non-Euclidean geometry -- there is no inconsistency with special relativity.

      Third, special relativity is mathematically complete, "contained entirely within its postulates." There's no reason to doubt this -- the law of least action is sufficient to the case.

      Now do some real work:

      Drop the postulate and explain the theory of optics without it.

      'nuff said.

      Hi Tom and happy new year...

      Yes, by definition "there is no such thing as a false postulate". From various sources, we can quote and say: A postulate is an assumption. A postulate or axiom is laid down as self-evident or taken for granted. It is a proposition or prerequisite assumed without proof. So you are correct in your statement.

      Where there is problem is where such postulate leads to absurdity. To quote one:

      Which of two clocks in uniform relative motion does the special theory require to work more slowly? Do you have an answer to this?

      As Dingle put it, "failing an answer the theory clearly becomes untenable, for, as Professor J. L. Synge has said after long consideration, either the theory or the conception that a regularly running clock cannot work both faster and slower than another must be abandoned". This is pretty obvious.

      Regards,

      Akinbo

      *I doubt though that this is the best forum topic under which the matter can be discussed in detail.

      Hello Akinbo,

      and me I have not a happy new year :)

      happy new year Akinbo and be the force with you

      "there is no such thing as a false postulate"

      I suspect only Tom and Akinbo believe in this. For the rest of the world the potential falsehood of any physical postulate is something obvious:

      http://www.amazon.com/Trouble-Physics-String-Theory-Science/dp/0618551050

      Lee Smolin, The Trouble With Physics, p. 226: "Einstein's special theory of relativity is based on two postulates: One is the relativity of motion, and the second is the constancy and universality of the speed of light. Could the first postulate be true and the other false? If that was not possible, Einstein would not have had to make two postulates. But I don't think many people realized until recently that you could have a consistent theory in which you changed only the second postulate."

      Pentcho Valev

        There will be no more discourse with you, Pentcho, until you explain the theory of optics without the speed of light postulate.

        Smolin is wrong and he knows it. Two postulates are necessary because relative motion is always referred to -- i.e., relative to -- absolute motion.

        There is no such thing as a "false postulate". Every mathematician in the world knows this.

        A theory of optics without the speed of light postulate:

        http://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/wtundwg/Forschung/tagungen/OWR_2006_10.pdf

        Jean Eisenstaedt: "At the end of the 18th century, a natural extension of Newton's dynamics to light was developed but immediately forgotten. A body of works completed the Principia with a relativistic optics of moving bodies, the discovery of the Doppler-Fizeau effect some sixty years before Doppler, and many other effects and ideas which represent a fascinating preamble to Einstein relativities. It was simply supposed that 'a body-light', as Newton named it, was subject to the whole dynamics of the Principia in much the same way as were material particles; thus it was subject to the Galilean relativity and its velocity was supposed to be variable. Of course it was subject to the short range 'refringent' force of the corpuscular theory of light --which is part of the Principia-- but also to the long range force of gravitation which induces Newton's theory of gravitation. The fact that the 'mass' of a corpuscle of light was not known did not constitute a problem since it does not appear in the Newtonian (or Einsteinian) equations of motion. It was precisely what John Michell (1724-1793), Robert Blair (1748-1828), Johann G. von Soldner (1776-1833) and François Arago (1786-1853) were to do at the end of the 18th century and the beginning the 19th century in the context of Newton's dynamics. Actually this 'completed' Newtonian theory of light and material corpuscle seems to have been implicitly accepted at the time. In such a Newtonian context, not only Soldner's calculation of the deviation of light in a gravitational field was understood, but also dark bodies (cousins of black holes). A natural (Galilean and thus relativistic) optics of moving bodies was also developed which easily explained aberration and implied as well the essence of what we call today the Doppler effect. Moreover, at the same time the structure of -- but also the questions raised by-- the Michelson experiment was understood. Most of this corpus has long been forgotten. The Michell-Blair-Arago effect, prior to Doppler's effect, is entirely unknown to physicists and historians. As to the influence of gravitation on light, the story was very superficially known but had never been studied in any detail. Moreover, the existence of a theory dealing with light, relativity and gravitation, embedded in Newton's Principia was completely ignored by physicists and by historians as well. But it was a simple and natural way to deal with the question of light, relativity (and gravitation) in a Newtonian context."

        Pentcho Valev

        Let me make this simpler for you:

        Light refracted through water makes it appear as if a straight stick is bent. Explain this effect.

        Steve Giddings rejects Einstein's absurd spacetime but so do, more or less explicitly, many other Einsteinians (even though they continue to worship the underlying premise, Einstein's 1905 false constant-speed-of-light postulate):

        http://fqxi.org/community/articles/display/205

        "If you'd asked Einstein, he would have told you that time is another dimension, much like the three dimensions of space. Together they knit together to create a spacetime fabric that pervades the universe. This notion of time as a dynamic, flexible dimension forms the basis of his immensely successful general theory of relativity, which explains how gravity manifests on cosmic scales as matter warps spacetime. On the other hand, however, the equally celebrated theory of quantum mechanics, which governs the nanoscale behavior of atoms and subatomic particles, says that time is unaffected by the presence of matter, serving as an absolute background reference clock against which motion can be measured."

        http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2015/08/05/science.aac6498

        "In Einstein's general theory of relativity, time depends locally on gravity; in standard quantum theory, time is global - all clocks "tick" uniformly."

        http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blogs/physics/2012/11/whos-on-first-relativity-time-and-quantum-theory/

        Frank Wilczek: "Einstein's special theory of relativity calls for radical renovation of common-sense ideas about time. Different observers, moving at constant velocity relative to one another, require different notions of time, since their clocks run differently. Yet each such observer can use his "time" to describe what he sees, and every description will give valid results, using the same laws of physics. In short: According to special relativity, there are many quite different but equally valid ways of assigning times to events. Einstein himself understood the importance of breaking free from the idea that there is an objective, universal "now." Yet, paradoxically, today's standard formulation of quantum mechanics makes heavy use of that discredited "now."

        https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22730370-600-why-do-we-move-forwards-in-time/

        "[George] Ellis is up against one of the most successful theories in physics: special relativity. It revealed that there's no such thing as objective simultaneity. Although you might have seen three things happen in a particular order - 
A, then B, then C - someone moving 
at a different velocity could have seen 
it a different way - C, then B, then A. 
In other words, without simultaneity there is no way of specifying what things happened "now". And if not "now", what is moving through time? Rescuing an objective "now" is a daunting task."

        http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/jun/10/time-reborn-farewell-reality-review

        "And by making the clock's tick relative - what happens simultaneously for one observer might seem sequential to another - Einstein's theory of special relativity not only destroyed any notion of absolute time but made time equivalent to a dimension in space: the future is already out there waiting for us; we just can't see it until we get there. This view is a logical and metaphysical dead end, says Smolin."

        http://www.bookdepository.com/Time-Reborn-Professor-Physics-Lee-Smolin/9780547511726

        "Was Einstein wrong? At least in his understanding of time, Smolin argues, the great theorist of relativity was dead wrong. What is worse, by firmly enshrining his error in scientific orthodoxy, Einstein trapped his successors in insoluble dilemmas..."

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U47kyV4TMnE

        Nima Arkani-Hamed (06:11): "Almost all of us believe that space-time doesn't really exist, space-time is doomed and has to be replaced by some more primitive building blocks."

        http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026831.500-what-makes-the-universe-tick.html

        "...says John Norton, a philosopher based at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Norton is hesitant to express it, but his instinct - and the consensus in physics - seems to be that space and time exist on their own. The trouble with this idea, though, is that it doesn't sit well with relativity, which describes space-time as a malleable fabric whose geometry can be changed by the gravity of stars, planets and matter."

        http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727721.200-rethinking-einstein-the-end-of-spacetime.html

        "Rethinking Einstein: The end of space-time (...) The stumbling block lies with their conflicting views of space and time. As seen by quantum theory, space and time are a static backdrop against which particles move. In Einstein's theories, by contrast, not only are space and time inextricably linked, but the resulting space-time is moulded by the bodies within it. (...) Something has to give in this tussle between general relativity and quantum mechanics, and the smart money says that it's relativity that will be the loser."

        Pentcho Valev

          Does Giddings ever get around to explaining the 'strong force' as anything other then a mysterious 'force' that counteracts the known repulsion parameters of like sign electrostatic charge? Now they find 'pentaquarks' so the quants probably need to invent another spin characteristic (I imagine they're pretty much all out of Charm) and to prevent any chance of a causality from showing its ugly face, it should be sufficiently ambiguous - how about "empathy"? like between an Up quark and a Down quark? they already had three quarks and now five so they'd need another additive plus=minus arbitrary value. Problem solved. jrc

          Addendum;

          If a Down quark has more empathy for an Up quark, like Browns fans have empathy for Jimmy Haslam where Haslam has NONE for working folk, that empathy has to be conserved in the cumulative spin that quants put on a particle. What ever they need it to be...a whole value or a half value. That's how the subatomic realm is governed by spin.