From Bit to It, From the Observer’s Information to Space Theory by Henry H. Lindner

Edwin,

I very much enjoyed your essay too--you added much fuel to my assertion that QM is an ad hoc system of description--fine-tuned to get the numbers right--just like the Ptolemaic system. We have got to get physics out of this observer-dependent hole!

I'm not sure why you singled out gravity. I think that all fundamental physical phenomena are just as real: inertia, electromagnetism, etc. They are real, we are made of them, we are real too. The question then is what does it mean to be real? As all these phenomena exist and interact coherently, they must all be produced various motions or distortions within some one substance. That substance must have some smallest parts. I think that your logico-mathematical representation is on the right track--first because it begins, like Newton's theory, by describing what exists independent of any observer or measurement. I think it will work as long as it accurately describes this primordial substance and/or its manifestations.

The nervous systems of animals and of humans both must work by logic. Both are, after all, parts of the Cosmos and would perish quickly if their functioning did not accord with reality. Animals' brains have only neuro-logic. We have that system and on top of it we run a system of linguistic logic. Layers. If we use our linguistic representation system carefully we can create a rich understanding of the Cosmos. If we use language carelessly, we remain stupid, or worse.

Regarding flowing space, I hope you'll read the paper I wrote on it. It was recently published in Physics Essays as per the footnote. It fits the facts, others have presented it mathematically in great detail. It doesn't separate gravity from space, it explains gravity as something matter does to its surrounding space. Consider Newton's absolute space as the seat of inertia. Think too of Einstein's gedanken about how sitting on the Earth's surface is just like being accelerated relative to space by a rocket. I say that the two situations seem the same because they are exactly the same, physically. Both observers are in a state of forced acceleration relative to inertial space, they feel this as weight. So gravity is just Newton's space accelerating Earthward. The predicted velocity of this flow is Newton's escape velocity--and behold it explains the "relativistic" aspects of gravity like time-dilation and black holes--perfectly. Every mass has inertia because it has gravity--it has an energetic, accelerational interaction with its surrounding space. Try to accelerate an object that has gravity relative to it surrounding space and one creates tension in space, which we call inertia.

I'm not sure where space goes either, but I do think that hadrons and the strong force are the cause of the flow. I don't believe that there is any evidence that every form of "energy" creates gravity--not light, motion, heat, etc. That is one of many subjects I've explored in a follow-on paper I've written.

Henry

Robert,

I appreciated your skewering of the simplistic notion that the Cosmos is a computer and everything is "information". It is interesting that your background in software and information processing led you to the idea that space is the substance that encodes and runs "reality".

You can substitute "aether" for space indeed. I think that space is a slightly better term. We already know space, we just have to realize that it's not emptiness but as substance. It is basis of Cosmic reality. but we can only see its manifestations, not space itself. An aether can instead be some stuff that exists in space or moves through space, but then one can have two realities--aether and space. I think that since we only know space, we should just describe what it is and what it does. It is just hard for many people to think of space physically as they are so used to thinking of space mathematically--as a coordinate system in which things move. I think space itself moves, its parts move relative to one another. The evidence is consistent with the idea that it flows like a fluid into all inert matter.

Everything refutes Relativity--Relativity is a subjectivistic system that does not work at all, hence paradoxes. Paradox is a euphemism for contradiction. Admit contradiction and you destroy philosophy. Anything can be anything. Physicists think that they believe in Relativity, but only because they do not actually understand it. They were children when it was imposed upon them, they had to profess belief in order to enter the academic priesthood, and now being the experts, they don't think that they need to listen to anyone else.

Regarding the physical frame, the theory that gravity is the radial sink-flow of space into or out or celestial bodies leads to the conclusion that these large masses, the celestial bodies, determine the local spatial frame. Yes, the Earth is the local reference frame, but its rotation does not pull its surrounding space into rotation with it. The much more massive Sun and stars with their extended gravitational spatial flow-fields control the spatial milieu in which the Earth rotates with obvious effects. The GPS master clock is sitting in the 11.2km/s spatial flow into the surface of the Earth, and is slowed by the Lorentz transformation for that velocity. It is also being spun around in space with the Earth's surface--a horizontal aether-drift of 0.4 km/s, producing an additional small slowing.

Both Lorentz's theory of actual length contraction and clock-slowing and Stokes theory of an entrained aether are sufficient to explain the null M-M experiment. I think that that aether-space field that Earth creates moves with it, so that there is no 300km/s wind at the surface. But if there were no entrainment and such a 30 to 300km/s wind existed, we still may not be able to detect it as per Lorentz's theory. Even the GPS would work as it does in such a spatial wind, as explained by GPS expert Ronald Hatch.

Henry

For those who are interested, I have been able to make my papers available online.

Beyond Consciousness to Cosmos: Beyond Relativity and Quantum Theory to Cosmic Theory http://henrylindner.net/Writings/Cosmism/Trilogy1.pdf

An in-depth exploration of the philosophical issues and history. Published in Physics Essays, 2002 15, 113) Physics Essays is currently the only journal that publishes theories about the physical world and criticisms of our observer-based "modern" physics.

Beyond Newton and Einstein to Flowing Space http://henrylindner.net/Writings/BeyondNewton.pdf

Published in Physics Essays, 2012, 25, p.500. A presentation of the Flowing Space theory of gravity

A QED-Based Wave Theory of Light, Electrons, and their Quantized Interactions http://henrylindner.net/Writings/PhysEssSpacePhysics2.pdf

Submitted to Physics Essays. Feynman's approach to QED requires a wave-theory of light. The evidence contradicts the idea that light is composed of particles. This false photon theory of light leads to the quantum paradoxes and all the quantum "spookiness".

Implications of Flowing Space http://henrylindner.net/Writings/PhysessImplications.pdf

Unpublished. An exploration of the new physics implied by the Flowing Space theory of gravity

John,

Right, the problem with theoretical physics is philosophical; it's about assumptions, meaning, and approach. It is not a scientific problem; it's not a matter of better measurements, equations, or mathematical models. Physicists are schooled, trained to use observer-based Relativity and QM and are not allowed to question them. They are forced to suppress their own curiosity about the questions listed early in my essay. This is why they consider asking these questions and trying to answer them as "unscientific", somehow bad. They couldn't do it, neither should we! Their indignation is all the greater because they do not actually believe in the metaphysics or epistemology of their "modern physics". They are stuck in a hole, confused, and just keep struggling to make these obsolete models "work".

Einstein was brilliant and added many important ideas to physics, however he was misled by the philosophical--actually the anti-philosophical--ideas he imbibed from the culture of the time. Physicists are not philosophers, and academic philosophers do not dare to question Einstein (Man of the Century!) or today's physicists. So no one in academia has been able to grasp the problem or fix it. It's past time to move on. We no longer believe in relating reality to observers, or that space is a void.

I am happy that FXQi was created--apparently the experts realize, at some level, that something is wrong and they need new ideas. They are looking for quick fixes, however, not the major revolution that space theory will bring.

Henry

John,

First, what is the best theory? I think that much evidence indicates that light does travel at c in the substance of space. LET says that light travels at c in a single, Euclidean Cosmic frame corresponding to Newton's absolute space. I think that this substance is not a Euclidean solid but flows and is distorted in gravity. The simplest explanation of black holes is that space is flowing into the mass at >c, so light waves cannot propagate outward against the flow of the medium. The position and motion of space is determined by the distribution of matter. So in general, light really travels at c relative to the local and distant distribution of matter in the Cosmos.

What we measure is another question. The same light, of course, does not actually travel at c relative to every observer, but if Lorentz is right, it may appear to do so. Einstein stumbled upon a strange fact, some have called it the conspiracy of light. That is that every observer may measure the speed of light to be c, so it could be used as a "law" for certain prediction purposes, but not for the purpose of understanding the Cosmos (without magic and paradoxes). The reason it may work is Lorentz's--that as the observer moves through physical space, his physical measuring rods are actually contracted (length contraction) and his atomic clocks are actually slowed (time-dilation). Both occur as per the Lorentz transformations, which are nothing but the Pythagorean theorem. These 2nd order v2/c2 effects conspire to hide the changes in the first-order speed of light. Einstein generalized the redshift of atomic spectra to a "time dilation". It is not. The redshift of spectra due to motion is well-established. Whether there is truly a length contraction of every physical object with higher velocity in space is not well established experimentally, but it does make sense that the electronic shells of atoms, being themselves EM phenomena, would contract in the direction of motion in the EM medium, therefore causing the material to also contract in that direction.

Did I answer your question?

Hoang,

Thanks for commenting. Your Absolute is what I call "Cosmos"--it is what actually exits, apart from our observations or measurements which are always indirect and self-referential. Your method is the broader, more intellectually complete method of natural philosophy--as opposed to this observer-based ideology I call "Science". Definitions are important. Healthy sciences are branches of philosophy--of our attempt to understand all of reality and guide our actions. Science is a decorticated remnant of philosophy, refusing to use our most powerful intellectual capacity, the ability to theorize about what exists and what causes of all things. Berkeleyen-Machian Science has corrupted theoretical physics and is corrupting our understanding in all fields of study. This is the reason for the steady intellectual decline that we are witnessing in all fields of study.

Henry

Anthony,

Thanks for reading my essay. My view of Nature is fundamentally physical, as opposed to mathematical. I think that the efficacy of math is limited and rests upon the fact that all things are made up of spatial quanta--space is composed of "cells" and all more complex phenomena are composed of these "bits". These cells are Nature's "integers". The Fibonacci sequence will be found in various aspects of Nature, as will other mathematical relationships. However, the Cosmos doesn't have 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 or 11 dimensions; dimensions are tools of description. Descartes invented them with his xyz coordinate system. While the evolution of complexity will have aspects that are mathematically-describable, math simply does not explain the Cosmos or its evolution. Just think of how Copernicus and Darwin revolutionized our understanding of the Cosmos with explanatory hypotheses that better explained the facts. Likewise we must also use words, theories, to explain what space is, how it transmits light, mediates gravity, and becomes organized into subatomic particles, how these particles self-organize into atoms, atoms into molecules, into living cells, multicellular organisms, nervous systems, etc. It is best not to base one's approach to physics on these artificially limited, observer-based quantitative models, Relativity and QM, that will end up in the dustbin of history just like the Ptolemaic system and creationist biology.

Henry

Akinbo,

I'm inclined to agree with you and Leibniz that it's impossible to talk about their shape for the reasons you mention. They collectively do produce volume, what we call space, but just how they do it is impossible to say at this time. A "cell" may be a certain collection of various kinds of smaller "cells" and this repeated configuration may be sufficient to give rise to the basic physical phenomena and the evolution of complexity.

I don't believe any real, Cosmic space exists apart from these spatial elements. So if they are not in contact, between them is only a void, nothing. Outside them also is a void. If nothing is between two things, then they are, literally, contiguous. The real space we know is this substance and we know nothing of any other space. Mathematical space is just an imaginary coordinate system, an imaginary void.

Henry

Robert,

I'll respond after your comments:

R: Scientific realism involves more than just simple cause and effect... the rule of sufficient reason requires that the effect be no greater than the cause; there is nothing in the effect that is not potentially in the cause. Evolution violates sufficient causality, when inanimate atoms evolve into animate life forms... and, even more so, when humans evolve immaterial faculties of mind from the material brain...

Then maybe we have to adjust our belief in this "scientific realism". It may apply to the interactions of a system of ball-bearings, or of simple charges, but not to Cosmic evolution. We may need need to extend our imagination to understand the evolution of complexity as opposed to the evolution of simple systems that contain no possibility of new interactions. The problem appears easier to understand if we look only at one small step in evolution--say at how subatomic particles can combine to produce 100 naturally-occuring elements, or these elements combine to form molecules, or DNA to form and then become self-replicating. How about he different primitive cells combine to form a new organism in which each contributes specialized abilities. The evolution of consciousness is no different than any other step in this process: a new form of interaction arising from lower-level entities and processes.

R: What rules out a continuum of space/aether, Henry?

If space is a continuum, the nothing can have definite, repeatable size and shape. Every electron or proton would be of a different size. Nothing would be what it is.

R: Why, if space is independent of time?

Our words are so inadequate. Nothing in this Cosmos is "independent" of anything else in this Cosmos. It is a singe, self-evolving organism. Time and space are certainly not "co-dependent" in the relativistic sense, however. There's no substitute for a working theory of what exists and how it produces what we see. Without that theory we are lost in abstractions.

R: Except..... the astronomical clock is not.

I don't know what you mean--the rotation of the Earth?

R: Newton never identified the locus of absolute space. The bucket frame was not, since the laws of physics(centrifugal force) were not obeyed by a bucket observer. But the Earth frame was a candidate, since all laws of motion are obeyed.

He believed it was a single, Euclidean "solid" and everything had some definite velocity in it but we could not tell what it was. His theory was inadequate for sure, as one really has to relate the inertial frame everywhere to the distribution of matter--the celestial bodies.

R: In the Earth's lab frame all matter has a definite velocity.

All matter has a definite velocity in any frame you chose, the question is whether the frame is the physically-relevant frame or not. The Earth-centered frame that is not rotating with the Earth is indeed the physical frame for Earth-surface and near-Earth motion.

R: The fixed aether of LET was disproven by the Fizeau water tunnel test, which supports the Fresnel aether drag theory.

I don't believe in the fixed aether of LET, I do believe that aether-space is dragged into uniform motion with matter--in its near-vicinity. I'm not sure that the Fizeau experiment involves this effect. Light moving in water travels

from molecule to molecule, constantly being absorbed and then re-emitted. That is why light moves slower through water than through the vacuum. Now if we speed the flow of the water in that direction, then the velocity of light in the moving water will approach, but never surpass the velocity of light in the local vacuum--aether frame. The motion of the water compensates for the slowing caused by absorption-re-emission.

R: Are there one or two aethers/spaces, Henry?

I believe that there is one space, but it has parts and flows like a fluid into all inert matter. This physical space does not move in some other space. Where there are no spatial cells, there is no space.

R: How does aether entrainment explain relative rotation(Mach's principle)?

See my paper on the Implications of flowing space linked below in my post.

R: Fizeau and Sagnac showed that aether is entrainable... dragged by local matter in motion.

The Sagnac effect shows that space is not dragged into rotation with any matter, does it not? I think matter can only drag the near-surrounding space into its own uniform motion in space. And because motion slows atomic clock rates we know that this entrainment cannot extend beyond, say, a Cesium atom's outer electrons otherwise they would not "feel" the motion through space and would not be redshift. On the contrary, it appears that a mass like the Earth entrains the surrounding space into its own free-fall motion for many hundreds of thousands of kilometers.

re: Admit contradiction and you destroy philosophy. Anything can be anything.

R: Anything can be proven true ..or false.... which therefore proves nothing - the road to agnosticism and then nihilism.

In science, this is worse than being wrong...

AMEN!

R 1- What of pushing gravity, Henry .....Fatiou/Lesage's ultramondane particles?

Doesn't work to explain the phenomenon.

R 2- Doesn't the inflow of space pile up inside celestial bodies?

The "cells" of which space is made are unique, unlike any of the phenomena we know which are products of those cells. We cannot ascribe to them shape, maybe not even size.

R 3- Doesn't the outbound flow counterbalance the inbound flow?

I think that only stars create an outflow--nuclear reactions seem to create space. See the "Implications" paper again for my description of the data that suggest that nuclear reactions create space. So the Solar system would be a massive spatial source, orbited by some small spatial sinks. If all stars are sources, so are all galaxies, and we would have an explanation for "dark energy".

R: Is there an empirical test of Earth's rotation... and a uniqueness proof of its necessity and sufficiency?

See my papers "Beyond Newton and Einstein to Flowing Space" and "Implications". Short answer, the Foucault pendulum, the GPS system, the Coriolus effect.

R: 1- The Sun and the stars rotate at different rates ... about 4 min/day. How can both be the frame in which the Earth rotates?

The do not pull their surrounding space into rotation with them. No rotating dense collection of matter does this for reason I propose in "Implications". They do pull their surrounding space into their free-fall motion in the galaxy,

therefore it is the Earth's rotation relative to their positions/motion that produces all the measured effects. I argue that the free-fall motion of all stars in galaxy pulls all of galaxial space into rotation, explaining the "dark matter" problem.

R: 2- Just curious - what excludes the motion of gravity (actually, a gravitational aether) from explaining the 'obvious effects' ...the astronomical observations?

Not sure what you mean there.

re- The GPS master clock is sitting in the 11.2km/s spatial flow into the surface of the Earth, and is slowed by the Lorentz transformation for that velocity.

R: 1- Isn't the CMB dipole flow 368 km/s?

Yes, I think that the Sun-Earth system appears to have that velocity in the CMB frame according to the Doppler shift, but we cannot detect that velocity on Earth, in Earth-surface experiments. I believe that Earth completely determines the motion of its inflowing space out to several hundred thousand kilometers. That space flows into the Earth from all directions, radially, with a terminal velocity of 11.2km/s--exactly what our atomic clocks tell us. Due to entrainment, there is no physical 368km/s spatial velocity wind at the Earth's surface or Sun's surface. I think that to be exposed to this wind, one would have to get outside of the Sun's entrained aether-sphere.

R: 2- If everything refutes relativity, why are Lorentz transformations even relevant?

Because they do describe at least some physical effects of motion in physical space--atomic clock slowing for instance. They do work, but not for the non-reason given by Einstein.

R: So the rotation of Earth in the aether causes a horizontal drift at the equator of .47 km/s .... but that makes the aether the preferred ref. frame, not the Sun and stars..??

The Earth determines the local aether-space frame. Space is flowing radially into the Earth from all directions, but is not pulled in rotation by the Earth. It would not rotate with the Earth no matter how fast the Earth was spun up as the Sun and stars are much greater masses and control space's state of motion.

R; 1- What test confirmed length contraction independent of the communication time delay between ref. frames?

I don't think that length-contraction has ever been independently confirmed. I do suspect it exists as it would be strange if motion through space at high velocity did not distort an atom's electronic shells--shortening them in the direction of motion. I say this I guess because I think of electrons as EM wave-structures, and they must be distorted with high velocity in the EM medium. It the length-contraction exists, it would cause a null M-M result, and therefore obviate the so-called "requirement" of no-aether Relativity to "explain" the null M-M result, yet Relativity also includes length contraction! The history of thought is full of irony.

R: 2 - If aether is entrained by the Earth's rotation, why did Michelson-Gale detect a relative aether drift?

I think you see from what I've written above that the M-G result is in line with all other evidence that Earth does not cause its surrounding space to rotate with it. Earth rotates within the space controlled by the Sun and local stars. Just as does a bucket of water here on Earth.

R: 3 - My essay suggests the 'null' MMX is really caused by using media with n ~= 1, which will always produce low S/N ratios.

I don't think that there is an "aether wind" at the Earth's surface of 30km/s or 368km/s. I think that we have enough null M-M-like experiments done in vacuum now to rule out media effects, do we not?

R: Reg Cahill documents several non-vacuum MMX and non-interferometer tests that approximately measure the speed and direction of the CMB dipole source. So a 350 km/s aether wind has been detected at least 5 times... at the surface.

I don't believe those experiments are trustworthy enough, not enough to cause me to jettison all other experiments and the theory that seems to me to work best--that of entrainment of space by celestial bodies. I have the mainstream with me on this one--but that is little consolation!

R: So Cahill's analysis calls the Lorentzian theory into question.... as does the Fresnel aether drag verified by the Fizeau water channel test.

Right, if MM-like experiments, done in high-vacuum with very sensitive instrument show an aether wind in a given direction in space caused by the Earth or solar system's or galaxy's motion, then it would mean that the Newtonian concept of a single absolute space unaffected by the position or motion of matter is correct, and that there is also no length-contraction. I really don't think that the evidence supports this view. It is not impossible, however. Ronald Hatch has shown that even the GPS system would work as it does of the Earth had a high velocity in the aether-space frame. It is amazing how clock-slowing and signal velocity changes conspire to hide the EM frame.

Henry