Alternative Models of Reality

Zeeya Merali

If you have an unconventional, alternative model of reality, then this is the place to discuss it. (This is for contributors who have preliminary ideas and would like feedback, but do not have an academic paper or arXiv preprint and have not given a conference talk based on their ideas.)

Edited on 31 August to add: Thanks to Peter and John for commenting on my recent Nature article: "The Origins of Time and Space," which surveys some of the recent ideas on reality, and could serve as inspiration for this thread. :-)

Peter Morgan

Hi Richard, I don't dispute your claim that if there's a wave that propagates there must be something that waves, not as much as would some, because it is possible for a dynamics to be Lorentz invariant, as experiment quite strongly indicates it must be, but I feel a "so what?" reaction. What consequences does it have for a detailed mathematical description/model if there is a material ether? A 100 years ago, a material ether was felt so little to suggest Lorentz invariance that it was felt to be incompatible. After the event, and a 100 years, we know that Lorentz invariance can emerge in special states of condensed matter physics (for example, see Volovik's "The Universe in a Helium Droplet"), but it's not a commonplace. Given that, how confident can we be that suggestions that come from a particular material ether hypothesis will turn out to be experimentally useful, unless experiment has played an overwhelming role in choosing the hypothesis?

My second reaction is to ask how exactly do the waves move? I see on your "Waves in Space-Time" page an example motion that seems to require some kind of nonlinear wave equation, but I don't begin to be content unless there is a likeable motivation for a particular nonlinearity of an equation, and happiness only follows if the mathematics is tractable and turns out to be experimentally useful. Lastly, most importantly by far, what about the apparent stochasticity of our experimental results, the wave-like nature of the statistics of recorded discrete events, rather than there being a directly wave-like phenomena?

Richard Lewis

Hi Peter, Thank you for your reply. I will try to respond to your points.

What consequences does it have for a detailed mathematical model? I prefer to use the term 'medium of spacetime' rather than 'material ether' to describe the medium for wave propagation. This highlights the point that the detailed mathematical equations describing wave propagation in the medium must be derived from General Relativity. The main consequence in getting the description correct at the top level is that when we come to apply the mathematics we understand the link between the description and the maths. The most important consequence is the 'follow on' hypothesis that (since light is emitted when an electron changes state) an electron must comprise spacetime wave energy in a closed loop.

The waves in spacetime page is explaining how a spacetime wave (wave of changing space curvature) also has wave variation in the time dimension and this accounts for the property of electric charge. How do the waves propagate? The idea is that the energy in the wave comprises local changes in spacetime curvature which propagate at the speed of light. I have a reference from the book "General Theory of Relativity" by P.A.M Dirac (p64) in which a solution to the GR equations is found which satisfies the d'Alembert equation and its solution will be waves travelling with the velocity of light.

Regarding the stochasticity (the quality of lacking any predictable order or plan) of our experimental results: The key point here is that the wave motion is fully predictable. It is only when we try to detect something or make a measurement that the probability effects come into play. The outcome of an experiment is the interaction between the wave and the detector. The quantum nature of light is not conceptually incompatible with the wave nature since we can have wave quanta comprising specific energy and wavelength.

Richard

Peter Morgan

Zeeya, it would seem that it might be a small fix for the login gremlins would be to show the username with which a post will appear next to the comment entry box, or else to show "Anonymous". It seems reasonable to log someone out after a period of time, but to do it silently seems to cause problems, three times on this topic alone. Best, PeterWM.

Zeeya Merali

Hi Peter,

Sorry, I don't know why that's been happening. Let me see if I can get it sorted.

Richard Lewis

I would like to say a little more about the Spacetime Wave theory treatment of the property mass.

The General Theory of Relativity (GR) provides a nearly complete analysis and means of calculation for the property mass. GR covers the concept of gravitational mass and inertial mass. These are the two types of mass that we can measure. The only thing that is missing for a complete explanation of the property mass is an explanation of how mass curves spacetime. If we could describe how an electron curves spacetime then we can be sure that a proton and a neutron would curve spacetime in a similar way. We know that the effects of gravitational mass and intertial mass are additive so that we can add together the effects of any number of electrons, neutrons, protons and therefore atoms, once we have solved the basic question: How does an electron curve spacetime?.

The Spacetime Wave theory describes an electron as a looped spacetime wave. A variation in spacetime curvature is propagating in a closed loop. This wave is an actual disturbance of the local geometry of spacetime propagating within the loop at the speed of light c. It is not hard to imagine that such a looped disturbance in the medium of spacetime would have a non-zero net spacetime curvature at a distance and this spacetime curvature is all that is needed for the electron to have mass.

This approach to the property mass seems much more satisfactory than the idea of a field (i.e. the Higgs field) giving mass to particles.

Richard Lewis

I would like to say something about the Spacetime Wave theory treatment of the property force.

We are told that there are four fundamental forces namely: gravitation, electromagnetic, strong nuclear and weak nuclear. Why are there four forces and what is the underlying cause of these forces?

We need to start with the force of gravity and use the ideas of General Relativity (GR) to think through how the geometry of spacetime results in this force. The force of gravity appears to be a force acting between two bodies somehow pulling them together; a sort of action at a distance. GR tells us that it is the geometry of spacetime that results in the force of gravity.

The Spacetime Wave theory asserts that all fundamental forces arise as a result of the geometry of spacetime acting on objects in spacetime. This assertion seems surprising at first since the magnitude of the gravitational force is much less than the other forces. How can we understand how the electromagnetic and nuclear forces arise from the geometry of spacetime? The key point is to note that the presence of a force will be accompanied by a difference in energy levels between two states. If a force is present, this implies an energy difference between the current state and any physical movement in the direction of the force. So the magnitute of the force will be related to an energy difference between two states.

In the case of the strong nuclear force the energy difference is the mass deficit. When a proton and a neutron are in close proximity, the energy (mass) is less than the energy (mass) of the individual proton and neutron widely separated. The explanation for this phenomenon lies in the looped spacetime wave nature of the neutron and electron. The energy of the spacetime wave in a closed loop is affected by the close proximity of another looped spacetime wave.

Similarly the electrostatic force and the magnetic force can be seen to arise from differences in energy levels once we have grasped the Spacetime Wave theory as related to electric charge.

This approach to the property force seems much more satisfactory than the idea of a force arising from a continuous exchange of particles.

Richard

Richard Lewis

I would like to say something about the Spacetime Wave theory treatment of the property charge.

What is the cause of the property charge? We can measure electrostatic charge in the laboratory by measuring the associated electrostatic force. In our consideration of the cause of fundamental forces we were looking for an explanation as to why the energy level for two electrons in close proximity is higher than if they were moved apart.

The Spacetime Wave theory describes an electron as a looped wave in the medium of spacetime. We can think of a looped wave in space where the progression of the space curvature in the loop leads to local compression and expansion of the medium. Then superimpose on this a variation in the geometry of the time dimension with the same frequency and in phase with the space geometry wave. The effect will be that the compression phase and expansion phase of the space wave will not be symmetrical (because of the difference in time due to the variation in the rate of passage of time) so that the effect will be a general expansion of space in the vicinity of the electron. So two electrons will repel each other because the expanded space associated with each electron will mean a lower total energy level when the electrons are further apart.

The charge is spread throughout the looped wave. In the Spacetime Wave theory we have moved away from the idea of the electron as a point particle and all the associated problems in calculations leading to infinite results.

This approach to the property charge seems much more satisfactory than the idea of charge as just a fundamental property of particles without any further explanation or cause.

Richard

Richard Lewis

This is a repeat of an earlier post with a correction (proton instead of electron in 5th paragraph).

I would like to say something about the Spacetime Wave theory treatment of the property force.

We are told that there are four fundamental forces namely: gravitation, electromagnetic, strong nuclear and weak nuclear. Why are there four forces and what is the underlying cause of these forces?

The Spacetime Wave theory asserts that all fundamental forces arise as a result of the geometry of spacetime acting on objects in spacetime. This assertion seems surprising at first since the magnitude of the gravitational force is much less than the other forces. How can we understand how the electromagnetic and nuclear forces arise from the geometry of spacetime? The key point is to note that the presence of a force will be accompanied by a difference in energy levels between two states. If a force is present, this implies an energy difference between the current state and any physical movement in the direction of the force. So the magnitude of the force will be related to an energy difference between two states.

In the case of the strong nuclear force the energy difference is the mass deficit. When a proton and a neutron are in close proximity, the energy (mass) is less than the energy (mass) of the individual proton and neutron widely separated. The explanation for this phenomenon lies in the looped spacetime wave nature of the neutron and proton. The energy of the spacetime wave in a closed loop is affected by the close proximity of another looped spacetime wave.

Similarly the electrostatic force and the magnetic force can be seen to arise from differences in energy levels once we have grasped the Spacetime Wave theory as related to electric charge.

This approach to the property force seems much more satisfactory than the idea of a force arising from a continuous exchange of particles.

Richard

Richard Lewis

The referenced documents can also be found at:

The unification of physics

The nature of mass

Richard

Richard Lewis

The unification of physics document is now located at:

The unification of physics

Richard

[deleted]

OK, I'll bite. I have a paper that I was thinking I would post to arXiv next week (that will likely generate no response by e-mail or otherwise), and that I currently intend to submit to Foundations of Physics, perhaps in a few weeks. It's not clear to me if this is the kind of thing you were thinking of, but you can let me (and the world) know if it's not OK.

Title: A U(1)-gauge invariant Dirac spinor test function formalism

Abstract: Dirac spinor test functions are used to construct a class of U(1)-gauge connections, which are used to construct U(1)-gauge invariant Dirac spinor test functions and U(1)-gauge invariant bivector test functions, resulting in a quantum field formalism of weakly nonlinear functionals of the Dirac spinor test functions, parallel to the informal nonlinear dependence of quantum electrodynamics on Lorentz invariant test function wave-number properties such as Mandelstam variables that determine the renormalization scale.

PDF attached.

For here, I'll note that this is intended to be a relatively empiricist approach. It's not so much a model of reality as an attempt at a model of our real shared experience. Part of what I'm attempting to do, however, is to get a better handle on renormalization as mathematics, which IMO gets in the way of interpretation of quantum field theory, so that I would hope that the approach I take here might enable more attempts at interpretation of quantum field theory. Thanks in advance for any feedback. Peter Morgan.Attachment #1: U1g.pdf

adel sadeq

Hi Peter,

Nice to see you active again, we had some correspondence 4 years back. Whatever happened to your random fields, is there any connection to your new idea? I wonder if you had seen Philip Gibbs idea in the new FQXI contest, he also seems to be talking about a similar idea called random graphs and necklace lie algebra.

I cannot remember at what stage my theory was when you kindly reviewed it and commented on it, but I feel I have made much progress since. One of the main points of my theory is that reality follows a simple math (Your original criticism was that it has no great math in it). Your criticism of lacking presentation is still true, but that is because I have spent a lot of time on the simulations to get some really good results. However, the FQXI contest entry has a somewhat better presentation than the original website. And you can get much better idea from the people who commented on my theory, including Shirazi and Torsten.

One of the greatest results that I get from my theory is the mass of the electron from a renormalization curves like in my theory(actually the graph shows the proton/electron mass ratio at the simulated scale). So I think you are very correct in emphasising the renormalization issue. Again, my theory might seem to you (and others) an amateurish, crackpotish and underdeveloped for its lack of standard physics presentation, but I cannot help that ,it is what it is (for now). The important thing which I hope people can see is the results.

As you can see from the theory, matter is made up of many random lines (which their lengths interpreted as energy) and their start and end points are space points. That unifies space and matter in such a simple way! The laws of physics naturally arise. I hope I can explain more in coming days. Thank you.

http://www.fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1877

the simulations can be run and they are in the website

http://www.qsa.netne.net

Adel

Peter Morgan

Hi Adel. In some sense I have made peace with QFT, so that random fields have become merely background thinking. I found, in particular, that although I could construct a random field equivalent for the quantized electromagnetic field, I could not construct a random field equivalent for quantized Dirac spinor fields, and I couldn't prove that it's not possible, so that I felt that I had to give up that line of thinking for now. I also gradually realized some parts of why the nature of the relationships that I could construct between random fields and quantum fields would not be convincing for physicists, but without enough clarity to be able to publish that realization.

Nonetheless, QFT can peacefully coexist with classical stochastic fields by taking QFT to be a signal analysis formalism, and taking the empiricist line that what the causes of the signals are is not so important insofar as they are inaccessible (if a cause isn't inaccessible, then it's a signal, so it can be analyzed, together with its relationships with other signals). If all our measurements are noisy, to the same extent, then signal analysis is relatively difficult and somewhat counterintuitive, with Hilbert spaces and noncommuting operators being a naturally useful mathematics for models of experimental apparatus. As a single sentence summary, state preparations in QFT are modulations of the vacuum state, and measurements identify how similar a given state is to a reference modulation (or, for a mixed state, to a collection of reference modulations).

I regret to say, Adel, that I can't make much contact with the paper that you link to. I feel that you've fed more assumptions into your modeling than you think you have, and that unpicking those assumptions is something that it may take you a while to do. In particular, I note that a collection of points randomly chosen is not a simple thing, since the choice of a random process to provide those choices already encodes a lot of information; saying something like "of course it should be Gaussian", for example, puts you on a direct course for something like a quantized harmonic oscillator. As another possible point of departure, although it sadly introduces much more complexity, it might help if you think carefully about how your ideas would apply in Minkowski space, insofar as working in a more general setting is one way to help one realize where unacknowledged assumptions have crept in.

Peter Morgan

For anyone who is reading the math, there is an embarrassing error at the bottom of page 5 (the "alternative way", which I will delete, is plain wrong), which has consequences for the first paragraph of subsection 3.3, the content of which will be modified and moved to Appendix C, and for the final sentence of subsection 3.4, which allows a straightforward fix. There is also a minor mistake in Appendix B (the placing of the "c.c"). Sadness, but good to fix.

Peter Morgan

And, with those changes, for anyone reading carefully, here is a modified PDF. I will likely make a few more changes before posting to arXiv. PeterWM.Attachment #1: U1gSept3rd.pdf

Peter Morgan

I've uploaded a current version, as attached here, to the arxiv; I'll comment later to give the arxiv link.Attachment #1: U1gSept19th.pdf

Peter Morgan

The link to the arxiv version is: http://arxiv.org/abs/1309.4995. I won't be checking back here often from now on, so e-mail me if you have any comments.

Peter Morgan

I thought I was logged in. I've had that problem with the FQXi commenting system before. In any case the PDF has my e-mail address, but this comment is posted with FQXi telling me:

"ALERT

You are now logged in!".

But, just in case, Peter Morgan is I.

angel lily

Hello everyone

i am new here and want to know about some physics topics please tell me here

Dissertation Writing Service

Georgina Woodward

I think you want to promote your writing service, yet you use no punctuation. It doesn't look good or read well. There are lots of articles and discussions on this site. Why don't you read some of those instead?

John Merryman

Zeeya!!!!!

That's more of a contest topic, than a blog posting!

Any way it could be a little more limited? Like what is your pet peeve with current models?

Is "modeling reality" even a coherently conceivable notion? At least in less than book length?

My Theory of Everything?

"Stuff Happens."

Regards,

John M

Zeeya Merali

Hi John,

You're right! But unfortunately there's no prize for the best theory on this thread -- other than the satisfaction of having solved all of the problems in physics. :-)

I opened this thread because I get a lot of requests from people who want feedback on their ideas, but having (yet) published or released them in any formal way, in an academic setting. In that case, I can't really open a single thread dedicated to their ideas alone. But I wanted to open a space where people can discuss their ideas and invite feedback about ideas they are formulating.

There's a similar thread on Alternative Models of Cosmology kicking around somewhere.

John Merryman

Zeeya,

I understand the opportunity you are offering, but the fact is that every participant on these forums does have some form of model, or improvement on an existing model, that they have been using every other thread to advance and debate the virtues over other's models. So being given a thread specifically dedicated to the purpose should engender enthusiasm, but the sense is more that it removes what little padding there is on the wall we have been banging our heads against. Not to say I'm ungrateful for the chance, but it begs some larger questions, such as how could there be any form of objective consideration, since even the pros have resorted to anthropic multiverses to explain reality?

You are a journalist, not a judge, so it is your job to report the state of the discipline, not make judgements, but as a journalist you still have to do some editing and narrating. This can go in any number of directions. Necessarily the normal route with science reporting is simply to report whatever cutting edge experiment, theory, or discovery has happened recently and leave larger context to those writing books. Yet it must be occurring to the members of your profession that cutting edge might just be a little far out over the edge. So at some point journalism will also have to turn around and try to figure out where the train did leave the tracks, or else step off the edge into the multiverse.

I suspect you have read some of my more repeated points, so I won't bother you with them here and the other participants in these discussions have heard and given their opinions in no uncertain terms. In the long run though, we will most likely have to let the dust settle somewhat and see what is still standing.

Thank you very much.

Regards,

John M

Thomas Ray

John,

You want Zeeya to report honestly on leading edge research, but censor anything you disagree with, such as the multiverse hypothesis, which is part of leading edge research?

If you don't have an ethical problem with that, I think you should.

Because my first career was journalism (not restricted to science) I have first hand experience with powerful people who control media resources (think Rupert Murdoch and his ilk) shaping news and opinion to suit their religion or philosophy, tastes, or just plain whim. I've been subpoenaed for testimony before the FCC with other Young Turk journalists of that day (the early 70s) who were reprimanded, fired or otherwise punished for reporting news not to the liking of owners and advertisers. We lost the battle, of course -- there are no more FCC standards that mean anything, and commercial news today both national and local is hardly anything more than sad or silly, even though still unduly influential. Thank God for public broadcasting and the BBC.

So ask yourself that if you had the power, would you publish only those science theories or anything else, that suit your worldview or whimsy?

Academics serve at the pleasure of institutions, John. They are not powerful people. They do their research and communicate the results, for university public relations departments to report to the public. And the institutions are hardly going to support research that tarnishes their reputation for what they *perceive* as a leading edge organization, because that perception feeds their funding stream of corporate and alumni largesse.

So you would dare ask a courage freelance journalist like Zeeya to become a functionary for your -- or anyone else's -- opinions of what science should be? There are already too few Zeeyas, and too many Murdochs. When the ratio is reversed, the world will be safe for informed opinions.

Best,

Tom

John Merryman

Tom,

I think you may be projecting your own experiences onto this situation a little too emphatically. It is safe to say that I have no power over what Zeeya writes and if using multiverses offends you, I will gladly switch to some other example, such as supersymmetry, which has been publicly faltering. There are lots of ideas put forth and I will readily admit there are a number I feel to be arrived at through erroneous logic and am will to offer my two cents on the subject. Would you alternatively feel that I have no rights to express my thoughts? Wouldn't that amount to censorship as well? There will alway be conflicting viewpoints on any number of subjects and those where there are none, tend not to elicit much discussion. If you read back through what I did write, you might notice my main intent is to try to explain to Zeeya the tactical position of those of us in these conversations. I don't think it really qualifies as directing her reporting to observe there is a natural give and take to the process, such that not all ideas are viable and someone, somewhere has to make some decisions as what to focus on.

Regards,

John M

Thomas Ray

"I think you may be projecting your own experiences onto this situation a little too emphatically."

I think you are dismissing the point.

John Merryman

Tom,

I very much am dismissing your point. You compared me to a press baron!!!

I would like to think I had some influence over Zeeya, or you, or anyone else in these discussions, but that could only happen through my writing, not by any financial, professional or political pressure or leverage, for the simple reason that I have none, even academic.

Regards,

John M

[deleted]

John,

That was too subtle.

The question is, whether or not Zeeya's job is, as you aver it is, to " ... try to figure out where the train did leave the tracks, or else step off the edge into the multiverse" (or into supersymmetry or whatever other part of "mainstream science" you don't like). Why would you suppose that, and what is the moral impact of your decision? Yes, I know that you don't have the power to order journalists around in order to give your beliefs and others a "tactical" advantage. The relevant issue is, what if you did? Would you, like the media barons, judge the news by your own set of beliefs? ... and what does that have to do with science journalism, anyway?

Fact is, science journalism *has* a standard of judgment that separates "mainstream" thinking from speculation, independent of anyone's personal beliefs. Science is rational. However imaginative a theory, it has to meet that test, whether in thought experiment or by direct observation.

It's arguable whether rationalism has a general moral obligation apart from science. Sean Carroll thinks so, however, and I agree with him:

"There are real moral questions that confront us every day, and as a society we're still burdened with a slapdash pre-rational way of answering them. I look forward to the day when there is a consensus theory of secular moral philosophy that forms a basis for democratic discourse ..."

A tactical advantage for independent journalism is democracy for us all -- or as Jefferson put it, "If given a choice between government without newspapers or newspapers without government, I would not hesitate to choose the latter." (from memory, so the quote may not be verbatim.)

And this, from a man who was regularly pilloried in the early American free press.

All best,

Tom

John Merryman

Tom,

I fully understand the point you are trying to make, but even it is based on assumptions that need context. Yes, democratic freedom is an ideal we all prefer, but there are very real reasons why it isn't always universal. The ancient Athenians were democrats before the tyrants took over and the Romans were republicans before the caesars took over. Now we seem to be spiraling into some similar vortex. Understanding questions like this are what truly interest me about physics. There are quite a number of dynamic processes at work here, such as that gravitational vortex pulling all our carefully constructed structures into something far harder and denser than any of us would wish for and killing that real spark of growth in the process. The worms are eating away the old oak tree and it will eventually fall, but the world is not going to the worms.

Early on in life I very much had the opportunity to try and climb that greasy pole of success and be the one both standing on and leading my fellow beings. Since it did seem like such a " slapdash pre-rational way," I instead opted to sit back and observe. Had I been one to climb to the top and use whatever tools at my disposal to control what I could, I would be a different person than I am.

Now as to what I said to Zeeya; "at some point journalism will also have to turn around and try to figure out where the train did leave the tracks, or else step off the edge into the multiverse."

It is still reportage of conflicts as they are rising, not creating and leading them, but necessarily and professionally following them. Otherwise, she would not be doing actual journalism, but flacking for the status quo.

Regards,

John M

Thomas Ray

(reposted in correct thread)

"There are quite a number of dynamic processes at work here, such as that gravitational vortex pulling all our carefully constructed structures into something far harder and denser than any of us would wish for ..."

John, you do realize that none of that is supported by any actual physical evidence, don't you?

" ... she would not be doing actual journalism, but flacking for the status quo."

As opposed to flacking for some fake science? Just what is it you want?

Tom

John Merryman

Tom,

What physical evidence are you referring to? The evidence we are finding, the hard way, is that democracy is not always a default political condition.

Where does "real"science end and "fake" science begin? Testability? By what criteria are multiverses "real science," while questioning whether physical blocktime is valid, is "fake science?"

Whether one is being promoted by the status quo and one is not?

Obviously it is up to her to judge what constitutes reporting and what is opinion, so our arguing over it is moot.

Regards,

John M

Thomas Ray

I'm talking about physics, John. What do you mean by " ...gravitational vortex pulling all our carefully constructed structures into something far harder and denser than any of us would wish for ..."?

John Merryman

Tom,

It has been my experience that the more complex manifestations of nature necessarily comply with the more basic principles. Human culture is a complex manifestation of nature.

Consider that in the spring, as plants absorb energy, they expand, ie. grow and when the weather gets colder, this growth is condensed down and otherwise edited to what can be sustained. Democracy is far more supportable when there is sufficient energy to grow the organically whole society, but as this energy becomes less available, then the various parts of this structure begin to condense into themselves and even feed off other parts. There is a certain gravitational dynamic to this, as it is not so much a particular force, but overall effect. Now to the extent society is a reflection of biological processes, the state is a singular entity, generally defined by geographic boundaries, which are far more basic than corporate functions, that generally evolved to support functioning of the economy as a whole. If you look at it in biological terms, the state is like an individual body, while individuals and corporations are the biome, both internal, external and "transternal," if such a word might be considered. The group imperative will tend to supersede individual prerogatives, because sustaining the group is more evolutionarily necessary than the life of any particular individual. Yet there is the dichotomy that the group cannot survive without healthy individuals. Thus the need for balance.

I could build further on this idea, but I suspect I better let you get in some rejections first.

Besides which this is so completely off the topic, but then Zeeya did ask for our models of reality and human civilization is part of the picture.

Regards,

John M

Thomas Ray

John,

Why don't you just answer my straightforward question?

Tom

John Merryman

Tom,

You may have to restate your straightforward question, because I thought it was as to how gradually collapsing legal structures and cultural norms can be explained in physical terms.

Regards,

John M

Thomas Ray

John,

You originally said, "There are quite a number of dynamic processes at work here, such as that gravitational vortex pulling all our carefully constructed structures into something far harder and denser than any of us would wish for ..."

To which I replied: "... you do realize that none of that is supported by any actual physical evidence, don't you?"

Point is, the metaphors you use for physical phenomena are disconnected from the real events that we measure. Then you disdain the leading edge research that is so connected, as if the metaphors were the science and the science is rubbish.

Your later question -- "Where does 'real'science end and 'fake' science begin? Testability? By what criteria are multiverses 'real science,' while questioning whether physical blocktime is valid, is 'fake science?' -- I had already answered previously. The criterion is rationality. Yes, there is rational correspondence between the multiverse hypothesis and quantum mechanics; there is rational correspondence between the blocktime model and general relativity.

Where, in your theory, is the rational correspondence between your metaphors and the real physical phenomena?

Best,

Tom

John Merryman

Tom,

I would contend that modeling time as a vector from past to future, is a metaphor, in that a spatial concept is being used to model a dynamic process.

What is metaphor, but relating similar effects, concepts, etc. and seeing what the correspondence can teach us. If you were to completely remove that as a tool, where would science, or knowledge in general, be?

As for leading edge, it seems to contend that all is information and energy seems to be left back in the 19th century. Where will our advanced civilization be, when the fossil fuels run low?

Regards,

John M

Thomas Ray

"What is metaphor, but relating similar effects, concepts, etc. and seeing what the correspondence can teach us."

John, a metaphor is correspondence of language to imagination. A scientific theory is correspondence of language to physical phenomena. Though both relations are recursive, only the latter leaves a measurable physical trace. That is what we call a rational correspondence.

Can a non-rational correspondence be true? Yes. Can a non-rational correspondence be scientific knowledge? No.

Best,

Tom

John Merryman

Tom,

You haven't convinced me that blocktime isn't a product of the imagination and if it is, then so are the myriad extrapolations of this dynamic geometry, such as much of current cosmology.

Time is a measure of action, such as the rate waves pass a marker. Giving this dynamic process some form of linear extension is quite useful, because it allows us to mentally order sequences of events, but it is still imaginative. You cannot physically have sequential events co-exist. As the old saying goes, "You can't have your cake and eat it too." Now I can draw a series of pictures, or write a book, where one page is about making the cake and the next is about eating it and these pages in the book do co-exist. Theorists like books, but that doesn't mean reality is a book. The energy content of that cake goes into propelling you. As another old saying goes, "You are what you eat." The wave that hits the beach no longer exists, because its energy content is scattered.

Frankly it seems silly to me that I have to keep making this same basic point over and over again, but I do realize how much of current theory depends on it not being true, so I will just have to keep banging my head on this wall.

Regards,

John M

Thomas Ray

"You haven't convinced me that blocktime isn't a product of the imagination ..."

It is a product of the imagination. Since it seems unlikely that you are going to learn the math that it takes to understand the correspondence between this imagined world and the real one, you'll "... just have to keep banging your head on this wall."

Best,

Tom

John Merryman

Tom,

There are quite a few things that I and every other human being, you included, will never learn in detail, but can appreciate in general. The fact remains that no matter how complex the math, blocktime is a modeling of narrative. The record of a sequence of events.

The irony here is that Einstein used causal sequence(light cones) to disprove the primacy of temporal sequence, yet in all the complicated math, measures of duration somehow come out as primary, yet duration is temporal sequence!

To refresh, temporal sequence is the rate waves pass a marker. Causal sequence is the wind hitting the water and creating the wave. Now causal sequence cannot be blocktime, because it requires the transfer of energy. Cause creates effect. The wind has to give up energy to create the wave, so both stages of this relation cannot co-exist. Meanwhile temporal sequence, the frequency of the waves, is simply an effect of the various factors causing the water to build up, recede, then repeat the process. Duration is simply a measure of the rate at which all these factors are occurring between wave peaks. It is no more, or less, fundamental than the amplitude of the waves, a scalar measure of how high, thus how much energy is carried by them.

Regards,

John M

Ps,

I've heard the myth of dragons grew out of pre-historic peoples discovering skeletons of megafauna and creating stories to explain them. How is that so much different than what physics does from a few measurements? Yes, some are accurate, but the ones that are not, get dismissed as "anomalies" and we have inflation and dark energy and dark matter and supersymmetry and strings and multiworlds and multiverses to match theory with observation. The ancients were pikers when it came to imagination.

Thomas Ray

"There are quite a few things that I and every other human being, you included, will never learn in detail ..."

You can say that, John, but you don't really know that it's true, do you? You simply believe it, and it forms the major part of your reality. If our power of objective knowledge is limited by imagination, however, where is the limit? Further, how would one even begin to define such a limit?

I can guarantee -- and I do mean, guarantee -- that if you undertake to understand the mathematics that supports our physical knowledge and theories, you will stop using your personal beliefs to limit your capabilities. Or anyone else's.

Best,

Tom

John Merryman

Tom,

Afraid I do believe it. There is an old saying I took to heart many years ago; "The more you know, the more you know you don't know." To wit, as our horizons expand, so to does our appreciation of what lays over them. More volume=more surface area.

I don't doubt the power and necessity of imagination, but then we test such speculation against what is possible. Having had my share of dreams dashed, I am somewhat conservative in what I get my hopes up over. Possibilities collapse into actualities.

I'm sure if I studied the world of financial derivatives, I'd have more respect for how well they have been constructed, in order to support over a quatrillion dollars worth of financial side bets, on a 60 trillion dollar world economy, but I think I will just sit back and consider it in general terms.

Regards,

John M

Thomas Ray

"More volume=more surface area."

Prove it.

You'll never win your argument with a physicist, John. She starts with a possibility space. You always begin with an impossibility space.

Tom

John Merryman

Tom,

I'm trying to find a little clarity. You seem intent on proving anything I say wrong. I don't really mind it, but it seems unproductive. In what circumstance doesn't greater volume mean greater surface area?

Regards,

John M

Thomas Ray

"In what circumstance doesn't greater volume mean greater surface area?"

That's easy to answer, isn't it, John? The hard question is why you're convinced it *couldn't* be true otherwise. Try the important questions for a change. You will thank yourself.

Best,

Tom

John Merryman

Tom,

I'm not convinced it couldn't, that's why I asked. If it isn't obvious, I am a fairly basic sort of person and tend to see the reasonable. While things are not always so simple, it is a fairly reliable assumption, but I am certainly capable of accepting there will always be a lot I don't know.

Regards,

John M

Thomas Ray

" ... there will always be a lot I don't know."

Is that quantity identical to what you can't know?

John Merryman

Tom,

No. I don't know what color your eyes are, but it's not like I can't know it.

Regards,

John M

Thomas Ray

Good example, John. My eyes are brown. My wife's eyes are brown. Our daughter's eyes are blue -- what you might call an "anomaly" in terms of physics, since blue eyes are recessive.

If you also knew, however, that my wife's father and my mother both had blue eyes -- you could calculate a significant probability that a child of two brown eyed parents would have blue eyes (it's been too long since high school biology for me to bother with a gene chart, so take my word for it).

I hope you remember your example the next time you rant about "anomalies." The theories we construct to try and explain those anomalies are based on information you probably don't have, but could if you learned it.

Best,

Tom

John Merryman

Tom,

I actually do know somethings about genes. Remember I'm in the animal husbandry business.

The larger point is about the nature of knowledge and specifics vs. generalized. Would it be possible for me, or any one person, to learn the color of the eyes of every other person on the planet? Yet there will always be someone who knows the color of the eyes of any particular person. As I argued in my contest entry, knowledge is a function of making distinctions and connections. We just can't combine knowledge anymore than we can just combine colors and still paint the sort of picture we can by making them distinct. To define is to limit, as to limit is to define. If you were to try to remember the colors of the eyes of just every person you ever met, it is safe to say this information would start to blur and run together. We have this religious assumption of an all-knowing singular deity, but I would hold it is a contradiction. You push information to infinity and it all flattens out, like detail on the horizon. Everything added together is just about the same as nothing at all. Either way, you have a flatline. So knowledge is by its nature limited. We can focus on the general, or some specifics, but they cancel out in combination.

Here is a very interesting article on ant intelligence and one of the main points it makes is that their knowledge functions are distinct, but networked. I would argue we operate in the same fashion and that when we combine too many functions at once, it becomes something of an emotional meltdown state. That we think most clearly when we can keep different brain functions reasonably separate, like different colors in the same picture. Our sense of self then is what is most prominent and concentrated. In our subconscious dream states, there is more ambiguity as these various parts tug at each other. Having some degree of neural mis-functions over the years, I've a bit of personal experience sorting this out. I was thinking of putting this article up as a discussion topic to the moderators.

Regards,

John M

Ps, Mine are brown as well. So are my daughter's, though her mother's were more greenish.

[deleted]

John,

"Would it be possible for me, or any one person, to learn the color of the eyes of every other person on the planet?"

In principle? Yes.

An algorithm based on a general theory of biological inheritance can predict from sufficient data the distribution of past and future eye color by population domains, and correct for anomalous variables when these domains interact. Sure, I knew that you're involved in breeding horses, which is the reason I thought this a good example.

Thoreau said that some circumstantial evidence is compelling, " ... as when one finds a trout in the milk." Suppose one of your mares gave birth to some spotted foal unknown in the genetic line of horses that you are raising. Will you jump to the conclusion that someone tampered with the semen tube? Maybe. More likely, you'll want to do some forensic investigation (and certainly the breeder's attorney will demand it) that establishes some nonvanishing probability for this birth from data of a sufficient number of generations back.

In foundational physics, though, the appearance of anomalous data *never* has a sufficient past to make a closed judgment on whether the anomaly is organic to a general theory of origins or a genuine anomalous and unexplained discovery. The best we can do is compare a comprehensive theory (a mathematical structure) to an experimental result.

I get aggravated in these discussions (probably more than I should, but my left brain dominance gets away from me) when so many -- not just you -- claim they have found a trout in the milk when it's easy to show that they really haven't.

"If you were to try to remember the colors of the eyes of just every person you ever met, it is safe to say this information would start to blur and run together."

No it isn't safe to say that! If the object is to remember discrete colors of eyes, it's ridiculous to conclude that everyone you ever met has the same blurry eye color!

I'm familiar with the ant intelligence complex systems model (have actually had the pleasure of listening to E.O. Wilson lecture on it) -- complex systems is my primary research interest.

"I would argue we operate in the same fashion ..." and you would be wrong.

The author quotes Herbert Simon (who did groundbreaking research in this area) " ... the ant's path is irregular, complex, and hard to describe. But its complexity is really a complexity in the surface of the beach ..." and then tries to obviate Simon's argument by saying, "We now know that the path produced by a navigating ant is based on sophisticated mechanisms.

"Ants use a variety of cues to navigate, such as sun position, polarized light patterns, visual panoramas, gradient of odors, wind direction, slope, ground texture, step-counting ... and more."

You bet. However, that only *extends* Simon's argument to a more complex "beach" of added dimensions and more complicated topology.

"Indeed," says the author, "the list of cues ants can utilise for navigation is probably greater than for humans."

Doubtful. As made apparent in the subhead of the article, "Unlike humans, ants don't build a unified map of the world." Yaneer Bar-Yam's theory of multi-scale variety* answers the author's claims, using the principle of self similarity at multiple scales; human complex neural networks allow us to choose the scale at which we make decisions, while ants apparently cannot. (Bar-Yam also solved Herbert Simon's problem of bounded rationality, showing how laterally-distributed information in a complex network is more robust than the conventional hierarchical model).

Best,

Tom

* Bar-Yam, Y. [2004]. "Multiscale Variety in Complex Systems." Complexity vol 9, no 4

Bar-Yam, Y., [2004] *Making Things Work.* NECSI, Knowledge Press.

Thomas Ray

Sigh. Yes, it was I.

John Merryman

Tom,

Heck, why not just get the NSA to do it. They probably have most of them on file and already have the algorithms to extract the data. ;-)

As usual, you are focusing in on how to best solve the specific point, not drawing back and looking at the larger context, which is that eye color is only an analogy for all possible information. What are all those billions of eyes looking at, the moment. What thoughts are trailing through the connecting neural systems, from what they were looking at previously. What is going on around them, that they are not noticing. What is going on in all the non-human brains, deep geology, atmospheric conditions, other stars and their planetary systems, etcetc.

" "Unlike humans, ants don't build a unified map of the world."

Yes, they lack the imagination to tie all that disparate data together. No religious ants.

Tom; "human complex neural networks allow us to choose the scale at which we make decisions, while ants apparently cannot."

Article: "Thus we have evidence that ants can also take into account what they have recently experienced in order to modulate their behavior. What's more, we have shown that the ant's navigational modules are not purely isolated. In the case of backtracking for instance, the experience of familiar visual scenery modulates the use of sky compass information.

Evolution has equipped ants with a distributed system of specialised modules interacting together. These results demonstrate that the navigational intelligence of ants is not in an ability to build a unified representation of the world, but in the way different strategies cleverly interact to produce robust navigation."

How do you know the "modulator" isn't a primal sense of self, focusing in on the specific problem at hand? Thus choosing the scale to which the problem is best suited, rather than getting all philosophical about the nature of problems and rocks and grass and sun and how sometimes they are good and sometimes bad and just trying to tie it all together in some unified representation of the world/belief system.

"showing how laterally-distributed information in a complex network is more robust than the conventional hierarchical model"

Isn't swarm intelligence an example of lateral distribution, while hierarchical models are how our governing processes focus information into a central processing unit/decider? Which then extends to top down systems to deal with broader applications, as our sense of identity extends beyond the local, because we are no longer an indigenous group of hunter-gathers? What we gain in size, we lose in efficiency.

Hasn't recent work in neurology shown our brain function more as a distributed network of various nodes, sections, hemispheres, etc, having their specialized functions, yet working together?

Regards,

John M

Thomas Ray

"... eye color is only an analogy for all possible information."

LOL! John, I'm getting used to your stream of consciousness eruptions, but they still make no rational sense.

"Hasn't recent work in neurology shown our brain function more as a distributed network of various nodes, sections, hemispheres, etc, having their specialized functions, yet working together?"

Absolutely. Which makes the brain's neuronal connections a complex network of its own, and why I have said that brain science is the next great frontier of scientific research. If a common self similarity in all complex network functions mirrors brain function, we have a computable correspondence between how we think nature behaves and the ways in which we validate that behavior. (My current essay deals with this possibility.)

Best,

Tom

John Merryman

Tom,

As I am used to your automatic dismissals, even when any reason is apparently lacking.

Networks are ecosystems, entities are organisms. The ways in which the process can mutate between one and the other seems endless.

Regards,

John M

Thomas Ray

John, how can you say that I dismiss you when I keep replying? Yes, I agree that organisms interact with ecosystems. And?

Tom

John Merryman

Tom,

And for the correspondence I'm thankful, but I would qualify "no rational sense" as a dismissal.

Our brains function as an ecosystem, as do our guts, yet in a linear direction. This organism then exists as a component in a larger ecosystem. Sort of like a river is an ecosystem, yet flowing in one direction while part of a larger convective cycle.

And? Just offering feedback in the larger process...

Regards,

John M

John Merryman

Zeeya,

Thank you for getting the log in fixed!

Regards,

John M

Thomas Ray

John,

" ... I would qualify 'no rational sense' as a dismissal."

And if you demonstrate to me that the statement you made is rational (in the scientific meaning) I will surely apologize.

"Our brains function as an ecosystem, as do our guts, yet in a linear direction."

Not if a brain network is a complex system. If the process were linear, we would already know everything about the brain that is possible to know. Brain functions, and ecosystems and guts for that matter, obey exceedingly nonlinear equations that are notoriously difficult to solve.

Best,

Tom

John Merryman

Tom,

I'm not even sure which statement you are referring to and if every speculative statement has to pass a true/false test immediately, where does that leave science? Weren't you the one who was just castigating me for being so judgmental about things like multiverses?

So its more of a scalar system. We do tend to use terms like "pressure" and "hot/cold" to refer to how we feel. Time is the linear, sequential function.

Regards,

John M

Thomas Ray

John, you don't remember what you said just yesterday? -- how is it even possible to have a meaningful dialogue with anyone? That doesn't bother you? Here is your statement:

"... eye color is only an analogy for all possible information."

There is a saying among statisticians: "Stand with one foot in the fire and another in a bucket of ice, and on the average you'll be comfortable." (yes, of course, it's a joke.) You're saying. "Stand long enough in a crowd of people of different eye colors, and you'll have no eye color at all."

Convince me that's rational.

Best,

Tom

John Merryman

Tom,

I was referring to the information storage capacity of the average human mind. (and when it comes to remembering details, mine is slightly below average.)

Unless you happen to be a complete foodie, or have an exceptionally photographic mind, can you remember what you had for lunch 7, 8, 9, and 10 days ago, or does it start to run together?

Generally our minds are designed to erase otherwise useless information, because it provides to survival benefit.

We recycle the effects of time.

Regards,

John M

Thomas Ray

" ... can you remember what you had for lunch 7, 8, 9, and 10 days ago ..."

No, but I can remember what color my eyes are.

Tom

John Merryman

Tom,

Does this mean you accept that the amount we can know is extremely finite?

If so, apologies accepted.

Regards,

John M

Thomas Ray

"Does this mean you accept that the amount we can know is extremely finite?"

No, of course not. What you mean by "we" I assume is a finite population at a given time. I don't know that that can be said of the aggregated knowledge of a population approaching infinity in the far future -- in which case what "we" can know is certainly not "extremely finite."

All which has absolutely nothing to do with your statement that all human eyes in any population at any time are the same blurry color -- understand my frustration?

Best,

Tom

John Merryman

Tom,

"All which has absolutely nothing to do with your statement that all human eyes in any population at any time are the same blurry color -- understand my frustration?"

What I actually said; " If you were to try to remember the colors of the eyes of just every person you ever met, it is safe to say this information would start to blur and run together."

My statement wasn't that the actual eye colors would run together, but that the information about them would. Your english comprehension skills seem lacking in this instance. Information about something and the thing in question really are not the same thing.

Regards,

John M

Thomas Ray

"My statement wasn't that the actual eye colors would run together, but that the information about them would."

Uh-uh. Eyes come in discrete colors, as does information.

"Your english comprehension skills seem lacking in this instance."

Nothing wrong with my English, John. Nor my comprehension of information theory.

"Information about something and the thing in question really are not the same thing."

Only in your warped and uninformed reasoning. What you mean by "information" does not resemble how scientists use the term.

Best,

Tom

John Merryman

Tom,

So "brown eyes" is materially the same as the light reflecting off your irises?

You know, I have a very good edition of the Brooklyn Bridge for sale. Some of the details maybe slightly edited, but only for the convenience of scientists. Willing to let it go at a reasonable price. Interested?

Regards,

John M

Thomas Ray

"So 'brown eyes' is materially the same as the light reflecting off your irises?"

No -- the brown reflected is the only color of the visible spectrum not absorbed by the iris. And again, it is a discrete bit of information not related to your nutty claim about all eyes having the same blurry color. Give it up, John.

Best,

Tom

John Merryman

Tom,

You are obsessed with the idea I said all eyes have the same blurry color. Where do I say it?

If you don't think information doesn't blur, try blowing up a digital image.

Your interpretation of what I said is extremely blurred.

Regards,

John M

John Merryman

blur (blûr)

v. blurred, blur·ring, blurs

v.tr.

1. To make indistinct and hazy in outline or appearance; obscure.

2. To smear or stain; smudge.

3. To lessen the perception of; dim: "For street children . . . drugs offer the chance to blur their hopeless poverty" (Alma Guillermoprieto).

v.intr.

1. To become indistinct.

2. To make smudges or stains by smearing.

1. A smear or blot; a smudge.

2. Something that is hazy and indistinct to the sight or mind.

Consider n.2

Thomas Ray

Okay, John, I got your point and I appreciate that you think it's relevant.

John Merryman

Tom,

FQXI has had two contests on the nature of information; Whether reality is discrete, or analog and it, vs. bit. It is important in these forums how one relates information to reality. Sometimes everything is not always clear. That's why we have statistics.

Regards,

John M

Thomas Ray

John, we don't have any statistics that transform discrete information (such as eye color) into a meaningless "blur."

Best,

Tom

John Merryman

Tom,

Ok. It's starting to reach my frustration level.

What is "blurring" in the first place? It is not a consequence of the transmission of information, but the reception of it. If you have one person try to remember the eye color of 7 billion other people, it would very likely overwhelm their processing and memory capacity. How difficult is that to understand?

Not to confuse you further, but why is "blurring" meaningless? It is another form of information. If you were to leave the shutter of a camera open to catch the sense of motion, it would blur. Impressionist painting was something of a revolt against the increasingly conformist realism that proceeded it. You mix primary colors and you get secondary ones. Frequently broad perspective requires some blurring of detail. As in where would history books be, if there wasn't some cramming of entire epochs into a few sentences. Do generals know what every person under their command is doing?

Math doesn't much like blurring, but then it edits out much of the dynamics and ambiguities. It reduces reality to the skeleton, not the seed. If you want to understand the seed, you might have to accept the blurring inherent in trying to understand a dynamic reality.

Regards,

John M

Thomas Ray

" ... why is "blurring" meaningless? It is another form of information."

Not in the context of scientific rationalism, John. The way you are using the term is actually antithetical to the meaning of information

"If you were to leave the shutter of a camera open to catch the sense of motion, it would blur."

No it wouldn't. The image -- not the shutter -- captured on the surface of whatever medium you are projecting it to, would appear blurry, indistinct. That wouldn't give you any information, however, about how motion works or even if there is such a thing as "motion." On that scale, by your reasoning, either motion doesn't exist, or reality is nothing more than one big blurry blob of motion. If you accept those contradictory notions and decide that one or the other has to be true, you still don't know anything about motion -- because you are mistaking the image you project, for the external reality in which objects and their relative motions are distinct.

Think pinhole camera.

Best,

Tom

John Merryman

Tom,

Yes, in its own right, everything is as clear as you can define it, but what is the nature of information? In its own right, everything is just quanta of energy doing their own thing. In order to extract anything resembling information, there has to be some interaction and contrast. Otherwise no measurement. Then you start to put all the relationships together.

As that Santa Fe conference, leading to complexity theory, came to understand, reality exists on that boundary between order and chaos. Though another way of looking at it might be between the linear and the non-linear. Or between energy and structure. As in how do you precisely locate a moving object? Doesn't that go to issues of position, vs. momentum?

You need distinctions, but what are they without the connections? And once you truly connect something, then where does one end and the other begin? If we are what we eat, where does the chicken end and the fox begin?

While some of us like to look at whatever we are looking at in excruciating detail, some of us also like to step back and look at the bigger picture. They don't always agree with what is, but that is the nature of information. It is subject to point of view. There is no such thing as absolute knowledge, as absolute is the state at which everything is balanced/combined/one. Which does blur all the detail. So the need for that middle ground between exact and entirety.

Order+chaos=complexity.

Regards,

John M

John Merryman

Or between an ordered past and chaotic future.

John Merryman

Tom,

Think of it this way; Is there some logical reason why mathematicians don't run anything other than mathematics departments? Why they are a tool within the larger scheme of things?

Regards,

John M

Thomas Ray

" ... what is the nature of information?"

Discrete events.

" ... where does the chicken end and the fox begin?"

In the outcome of discrete events.

John, instead of simply lecturing on what you think information theory and complex systems and chaos and the like are, why don't you undertake to actually study those disciplines and learn how they work instead of blurring it all together? You have a fine mind -- like a wild horse, strong and magnificent. Don't you think it would serve you better if you put a rein on it? Do you think you would be less free if you did?

"Is there some logical reason why mathematicians don't run anything other than mathematics departments? Why they are a tool within the larger scheme of things?"

Isn't that another version of the argument, "If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?"

Would it surprise you that some of us are more content to be tools (actually, research mathematicians are the tool-makers, and plenty of people with educations in mathematics do "run things") than to run things and be ignorant of how they work? Plenty of harm, mostly unintended consequences, has come of that, wouldn't you say?

Best,

Tom

John Merryman

Tom,

What is an "event?"

I know you don't much appreciate my methods of learning, but I consider there to be both advantages and disadvantages to being part of the system.

In case you haven't noticed, I am neither rich or powerful and I don't really mind. I find the more you have, the more you have to worry about and I am rather organically connected to my reality. This does involve some significant blurring of the lines as what is me and what is my context. When your life depends on being able to read another creature's mind, a little blurring goes a long way.

In case you haven't noticed, the people presumably in charge are doing little more than precariously riding history's biggest cultural wave and one which looks destined to crash within our lifetimes. I wouldn't want to be in their position of having to decide whether to kick the can a little further down the road, likely creating even larger problems, or trying to decide how best to essentially crash the system. Stop printing money, start a war.....

The point is that bottom up/detail oriented and top down/generalized big picture, are a natural dichotomy. There is no overall viewpoint, other than sitting way off in the distance, like a historian.

Even mathematicians make assumptions,

"In the outcome of discrete events."

So just where is that discrete point between the chicken and the fox?

Sort of like the issue of where life begins; birth, conception, or 4 billion years ago.

The fact is that you are mortal and the only way to see outside the bubble of your mortality is to let a little of what's outside seep in, because eventually everything inside will seep out.

Regards,

John M

Thomas Ray

John,

You're right, of course. There is value in all points of view. You've ably explained what drives your own. What drives mine is what I often quote from Jacob Bronowski, "All science is the search for unity in hidden likenesses."

You say, " ... bottom up/detail oriented and top down/generalized big picture, are a natural dichotomy." That's a nice observation which summarizes why I think so highly of George Ellis's essay two competitions ago (second place winner). His elegant resolution of the dichotomy is an important contribution to complex system science, because it generalizes quite neatly to the cosmological limit. That's the ultimate goal of every scientific theory.

"There is no overall viewpoint, other than sitting way off in the distance, like a historian." And that should tell you why your trying to generalize discrete eye color to a blurry sameness is not viable. If you understand that, you'll also understand why your time-temperature model, built on the same principle, also doesn't work.

You write, "Even mathematicians make assumptions,

'In the outcome of discrete events.'

So just where is that discrete point between the chicken and the fox?"

It depends. On what scale of observation at what discrete moment?

And here is where you really put your finger on the difference in how we think:

"The fact is that you are mortal and the only way to see outside the bubble of your mortality is to let a little of what's outside seep in, because eventually everything inside will seep out."

I'm not concerned with mortality as other than another point on the continuum.

All best,

Tom

John Merryman

Tom,

Don't go too far in that agreeing business, or we won't have anything to argue over.

" On what scale of observation at what discrete moment?"

So the point depends on the observation? What if it's a dynamically shifting observation?

Where do you keep coming up with this mixing peoples eye color? The issue is trying to remember who has which color. It isn't a matter of blurring the color, but keeping an effectively infinite amount of data points organized. Otherwise your mind just puts up its own little spinning wheel.

Regards,

John

John Merryman

The issue being the limits of what we can know and overwhelming the system is one way to reach those limits.

John Merryman

And what is an "event?" How can it be discrete, considering this would depend on the scale of the observation?

Thomas Ray

"What if it's a dynamically shifting observation?"

Describe what you were you doing when you last experienced a dynamically shifting observation.

John Merryman

Tom,

That wasnt an appropriate example on my part. I was thinking in terms of doppler shifting affecting frequency. How does the scale of observation affect when the protein shifts from being chicken to being fox?

And how do you define an event that it is discrete from other events?

Regards,

John

John Merryman

Come to think of it, what is an observation at a discrete moment? Wouldn't it also be that "point on a contiuum?"

Thomas Ray

" ... was thinking in terms of doppler shifting affecting frequency."

Doppler shift does not affect frequency. The motion of the wave source affects how the observer measures frequency, that we call the Doppler effect.

" ... how do you define an event that it is discrete from other events?

By a single exchange of energy in a specified interval.

" ... what is an observation at a discrete moment?"

See above.

"Wouldn't it also be that 'point on a contiuum?'"

It would have to involve at least two points of the continuum, wouldn't it? That's why we have quantum bits and complex analysis.

Trust me, John, it's a lot easier just to learn the mathematics than to wander around, wondering.

Best,

Tom

John Merryman

Tom,

"The motion of the wave source affects how the observer measures frequency, that we call the Doppler effect."

Isn't the point that the "observer" is also relative? And it isn't just that the source could be moving, but the observer as well.

"By a single exchange of energy in a specified interval."

I understand your bottom up point, but just this once, can you think top down. What is the "classic reality," but all those single quanta of energy operating in mass, like pixals creating a larger picture. From which we then select a point of view.

The problem is that its not just a point or two on a continuum, but lots of points in a field. Try thermodynamics if you want some grasp of it.

I like wandering around. It teaches me more than just the straight and narrow.

Regards,

john M

Thomas Ray

"I like wandering around. It teaches me more than just the straight and narrow."

If that suits you, fine.

John Merryman

Tom,

Put it all in motion.

Regards,

John

Peter Hahn

Foamy Ether Theory (FET) proposes that the Big Bang did not explode separate particles (or strings) into the vacuum of empty space. Rather, the explosion resulted in a continually expanding foam (or three dimensional web). FET is based on the assumption that the entire universe is comprised of foamy ether that is expanding in a void. The curvature of space-time is the manifestation of distortions in the foamy ether and atomic particles are kinks (or knots) in the foam.

FET is a model that works extremely well in explaining many of the conundrums that persist to this day (i.e. wave-particle duality, gravitational-inertial mass equivalence, GR and QM incompatibility, nonlocality). For more conundrums, see FQXi article: The Persistent Failure of a Two Substance Paradigm.

A complete description of FET can be found at: www3.telus.net/foamyether/ This site contains many images and actual computer simulations that show how foamy ether works in explaining all of the forces of nature. FET also makes a bold prediction that current interferometer based gravitational wave detectors (such as LIGO) will fail, and offers an alternate design that will work.

Peter Morgan

You might look at Zeeya's article in Nature of a few days ago, which I believe to be free to view, at least as of now, http://www.nature.com/news/theoretical-physics-the-origins-of-space-and-time-1.13613. She lays out several of the current approaches to tackling space-time, some of which I take to make the distinction between space-time and matter relatively minimal. I find the devil in such things is in the construction of both tractable and beautiful mathematics and in proving or calculating enough that other people can see that there is some hope of it being useful.

John Merryman

Zeeya should have made that the article to this comment thread, since it seems very much what she is working on. Though there might be some proprietary issues.

This is the post I put on the comment thread there, since it gives a thumbnail sketch of my model of reality, or rather where I think the current model leaves the tracks. (Stuff I've said here many times.);

"I think the most significant problem in physics is its treatment of time. We exist as points in space and experience activity as a sequence of events, thus we model time as a progression from past events to future ones. In the broad context though, it is just a sea of activity and this creates change, such that potential becomes actual, ie, it is the future becoming past. For instance, the earth does not travel either Newton's flow or Einstein's fourth dimension from yesterday to tomorrow. Rather tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth rotates. Quantum mechanics uses the external vector of time and ends up with multiworlds, as it goes from determined past into probabilistic future, yet it is the actual occurrences which determine the cat's fate, as probability collapses into actuality.

Causality is not due to temporal sequence, but energy transmission. Yesterday didn't cause today, nor does one wave cause the next. The sun shining on a spinning planet and wind across the waves are cause of these sequences.

Time then is an effect of action, not the basis for it. Much like temperature arising from quantities of action, time arises from change caused by action. We are just one of those molecules of water, bouncing from one point of contact to another. The narrative effect is what our minds record. Flashes of insight, like a movie camera taking a series of stills and reconstructing reality from them."

Tom,

It makes some interesting comments about thermodynamics;

"A provocative hint comes from a series of startling discoveries made in the early 1970s, when it became clear that quantum mechanics and gravity were intimately intertwined with thermodynamics, the science of heat."

adel sadeq

Hi Hahn,

May I ask a few starting questions,

1 what is your ether made of?

2 Why does it bend, and what is the law for its bending?

3 I don't see them behaving in a quantum manner. How does the hydrogen atom look like?

Thanks.

Adel

Zeeya Merali

Hi Peter,

Thanks for linking to my Nature article. :-)

John, now you mention it, perhaps I should add it to the initial post!

Peter Hahn

Adel,

In answer to your questions:

1. I think that it is futile to ask what ether is made of. If I said that ether was made of substance 'x', you could then ask what is substance 'x' made of. (String theorists are not concerned with what strings are made of; they are primarily interested in their properties). Ether is THEE fundamental substance and a foamy or web like structure makes for an excellent model of reality.

2. Because the ether is elastic, it is subject to distortions. A knot or kink will cause the surrounding ether to distort. The stickiness of the ether (similar to a spider web) keeps the knot from unfolding. The laws I use in the computer simulation use Hooke's Law for calculating spring distortion.

3. FET has quantum behavior build in because the foamy cells are the size of a Planck length so everything gets grainy at that scale. Because I am not a particle physicist, I can't give you exact pictures of atoms, but I'm assuming they are knots that are very similar to orbitals already calculated using current QM maths. In FET, these images would represent knots in the foamy ether instead of probability clouds of orbiting electrons.

Peter Hahn

John Merryman

Zeeya,

Exciting times to be a science journalist. The barbarians are at the gates and the old order is mostly bickering amongst themselves. All foam and bubbles and little forward momentum. Recipe for change.

Regards,

John M

Brian Balke

Peter:

What is the state of this work? I've been considering similar ideas.

Brian

Quantum Antigravity

Hello,

I have made a theoretical as well as an empirical scientific discovery of quantum gravity and quantum antigravity.

Present quantum gravity theories suffer from too many space dimensions, and from too few experiments that could provide conclusive verifying, or falsifying empirical evidence. On the contrary, my hypothesis is simple, clear, and easily empirically verifiable:

https://quantumantigravity.wordpress.com

Should anybody need clarification, I am more than happy to answer any questions.

Naturally, I am also open to meritorious criticism, and any suggestions for improvement.

I am sure other researchers could greatly contribute to further development of this hypothesis (almost a theory).

Thank you so very much! :)

Peter Jackson

Adel,

You said you read my essay 'many times' and would get back. I hope you do. Your site address only led to 'cache file' (whatever that is) with no simulations. Can you post a live one one using the 'link help page' link above?

Peter WM,

From what I could understand of your paper I agree you're in an important part of the forest and on one of the right non-linear tracks. I point to quantum and laser optics and plasma physics for a fast (still non-linear) track the right way. If you've read any of my last 3 essays you'll know my own method digs down and roots out the deepest of hidden assumptions. If not I hope you'll return the compliment and do so. I hope you'll find good support, though the medel described is rather more fundamental.

Peter CMH,

I still support your model in principle as a valid partial description (see your blog Aug 22nd last year) and my comments to PM above re plasma/ionization apply. Again I hope you'll also read mine this year, which 'points' the DFM dynamic at QM and the tangled web seems to unravel to expose the postulates of SR. (Which as Einstein said in '52 that SR is "entirely contained within". I'd appreciate your views.

John,

Not to ignore you... I agree our treatment of time is wrong, but as discussed and not quite as you propose. i.e. Time 'signals' one emitted are only EM signals (fluctuations) not 'time' itself, and may be altered by interactions, including as Christian Doppler discovered.

Zeeya,

Nice idea, and nice little Nature review. I can't really describe the discrete field model here as key elements have been both published and web archived on arXiv. Of course now the science data flow has surpassed the (Shannon) channel capacity available it's reached 'optical breakdown mode' (an information overload state) so two effects emerge, It is no longer 'joined up', and, as Peter M points out above, new theories, however superior, have virtually zero impact, lost in the 'noise'.

My essay this year does describe a way of 'decoding' the noise with a more intelligent 'IQbit', but even a high place in peer voting here may not overcome the 'theoretical inertia' indicating a possible end to our evolutionary cycle. However, I commend your sentiments in starting this blog so much that I would like to describe at least one key aspect not so far specifically presented, opening one of the doors to the rest and unification; Dark Matter. Please let me know if I may do so without breaching your conditions.

Many thanks

Peter

John Merryman

Peter,

Not sure what you mean by "time itself." By my view, time is simply a form of measurement, like temperature. Whether we are measuring electromagnetic signals, rotations of the planet, a swinging pendulum, or waves hitting the beach, it is a way to compare/measure the rate of activity/change. Just as temperature could be molecular, atomic, or the employment rate.

The conceptual problem is that our brain functions by producing a sequence of insights/thoughts and this too is a similar progression, but it is only one thread in a tapestry of thoughts and actions, all serving to balance one another, not all going in the same direction. Thought is a form of action and for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. That's why we have wives and girlfriends. ;-)

As well as liberals and conservatives, capitalists and communists, etc.

Regards,

John M

Peter Morgan

Hi Peter J. I remember seeing your FQXi competition papers in the past; in any case, I looked again at your last three. How would you think they might affect the mathematics of the paper I posted? Does your way of thinking suggest any critique? Alternatively, how would you think its mathematics might affect your approach?

Peter Jackson

Peter WM.

As I showed why mathematics can't yet model nature I'm afraid I'm the wrong man to try to analyse yours. I point to recursive sets, equivalent to 'sample spaces', as a way to chase down and at least reduce the gap between manipulation of symbolic cardinalisations and the evolution of nature itself.

It's the non-linearity that's important, as recognised by the non linear Schrodinger (NLS) equation. The spread function is what gives the continuously dualistic effects of EM energy propagation.

I get the impression your derivation is well on the right tracks but you would have a much better Idea than me of how compatible the maths is with the geometrical and empirical approach founding and guiding my own route to truth. Thee are some concepts I describe which I don't think you've yet recognised. But what I do think is that if our work IS compatible then it's power should emerge as the CUBE of the parts.

Peter Morgan

PeterJ, do you have a link to your "I showed why mathematics can't yet model nature"? Perhaps you could indicate here whether we can have classes of approximate models, several examples of which I suppose we do have already (Newton, Maxwell, GR, QM, LEGO, Meccano, etc.), in which case I'll be happy enough not to care what you say about "perfect" models. Despite the mathematics of the paper I attached above, I'm no "mathematicist", useful engineering is good enough for me.

Nonlinearity has become awkward in QM since it became clear that the nonlinear schrodinger equation is problematic, very briefly put because of "unitarity". I wonder if it's clear to you how the kind of nonlinearity I introduce in the paper I attached above is careful to avoid that issue? I have a feeling that it may be obscure to someone not steeped in QFT, so I'd like to know. Thx. PeterWM.

Peter Jackson

Peter WM,

The most recent essay with the logic is in 2nd pos'n. here;

THE INTELLIGENT BIT.' and yes, of course maths can provide useful approximations, but all the confusion, paradox and inconsistency emerges from the gap and looms large, so we should stop ignoring it!

The inconsistencies can be reduced in stage by recursive quantum guages, though they'll never disappear. Nature will always retain some uncertainty ('non-linearity'). We don't need to chase this down with sophisticated mathematics but must understand it conceptually, as both Einstein and Wheeler said.

No, it's not clear to me; "how the kind of non-linearity I introduce in the paper I attached above is careful to avoid that issue?" I have re-derived 'QFT' from 1st principles to produce quantized gravity so have 'unlearned' almost all the QFT I studied. If you read my last 3 essays you'll see how it's reconstructed in a unified fashion, apparently producing SR (without the paradoxes) direct from a QM. It appeared your maths led to the same exit from the forest, but I don't speak that language (I studied it but also had to unlearn it!). Mine is English so you may better follow it, do let me know. (see also my post to Tom with the limit of my current maths below.)

Best wishes

Peter

Peter Jackson

John,

I suggest certainly not like temperature! That is my point. Where temperature is the quantification of a real physical property, which changes with changes to the measured 'oscillation rate', time is NOT! If we change that oscillation rate (where emitted by what we call a 'clock') we do NOT measure a change in some mystical property called 'time', only a change in a local oscillation rate. That is the important difference missed.

Time itself is only metaphysical and stays the same, whereas the physical EVIDENCE of an emission somewhere which was 1 second long, can be tampered with as much as you please as you're only tampering with the 'evidence', not the original fact.

I'm not sure you'll be able to discern the subtlety easily as you are, with all apologies, highly 'entrenched' in your own way of looking at it which may be partially valid but does seem to exclude many other with validity forming the holistic picture. I'm suggesting that time cannot be likened to 'anything' else because it is not a 'thing'. It IS a universal measure of duration, but no light or noise emitted necessarily has any faithful relevance to the period at the emitter once 'at large'. i.e. What we currently CALL 'Time' CAN BE DOPPLER SHIFTED! What we measure in some other frame is not then of course 'time' itself, which is invariant.

I'm sure you'll at least see and agree an analogy; 'Time' on the clocks of 3 people is co-ordinated and equal. But if one was approaching another at high speed the 'signals' from the other watch would simply be Doppler shifted, so the rate changed. We then need a new term 'apparent' time, which then defines SR's 'co-ordinate' time. But the rate of time (and watches) for all observers is unaltered. This very simple fact entirely eludes current theory and causes untold havoc and confusion.

Did any sense emerge from that?

Peter

John Merryman

Peter,

" If we change that oscillation rate (where emitted by what we call a 'clock') we do NOT measure a change in some mystical property called 'time', only a change in a local oscillation rate. That is the important difference missed."

I agree there is no mystical property called time.

"'Time' on the clocks of 3 people is co-ordinated and equal. But if one was approaching another at high speed the 'signals' from the other watch would simply be Doppler shifted, so the rate changed. We then need a new term 'apparent' time, which then defines SR's 'co-ordinate' time. But the rate of time (and watches) for all observers is unaltered. This very simple fact entirely eludes current theory and causes untold havoc and confusion."

The problem with this point is that the effect is not just doppler shift. Since nothing can exceed the speed of light, when you accelerate a clock and its observer to close to the speed of light, their internal atomic activity is in fact slowed, since the electrons are vibrating/cycling at nearly the speed of light to begin with, so when you combine both external velocity and internal activity, it still can't exceed C, so everything in that frame is slowed proportionally. I think though that this goes to the inherent inertial effect of space, rather than some spacetime geometry being a causal property. The fact is that the concept of time as part of this foundational math is simply based on measures of duration and how they are affected by context, such as velocity, gravity, acceleration.

Duration emerges from action. As you seem to agree in the first paragraph, time is simply the change caused by activity, such that if it goes faster, so does its "clock." Duration being what is physically happening between points of reference. So it is the slowed activity which results in slowed time, not time as the frame causing activity to slow.

So no time as mystical property, only measure of change caused by action.

Regards,

John M

Eckard Blumschein

John M,

"nothing can exceed the speed of light" ??

The speed with which two wavefronts, that are propagating in opposite directions, increase their distance is 2c.

I would rather say, the speed of energy propagation cannot exceed the value c. Light propagates with from emitter to the receiver. Let's clarify the question what does the speed of light refer to?

It does not refer to the emitter alone, not to the receiver alone, not to an observer, not to an absolute space. Read my endnotes.

Eckard

John Merryman

Eckard,

Doesn't "The speed of light" refer to a measurement?

So if your measuring device is traveling at the speed of light, all internal action is stopped, thus its clock is stopped, so it measures everything, even light going the other direction, as zero time.

Only an external viewer would see them as approaching each other at 2c.

I'm asking, but this had been my understanding.

It is my own sense that this implies an absolute space, since it is only against this completely inertial frame that any of this makes sense. Otherwise you could have two frames approaching each other at the speed of light and each of those frames would contain motion within them, as though they were stable, but then they would both contain activity that exceeded C in an outside frame.

I think we will eventually need to rethink space, but I can't even get anyone to consider time as an effect of action and it is the future becoming past, so I don't want to start an even bigger argument.

Regards,

John M

[deleted]

John,

I think you need to dig down another two levels beyond Poppers mud to root out the hidden assumptions and find solid foundations to rebuild on.

I disagree with your assumption that;

"Since nothing can exceed the speed of light, when you accelerate a clock and its observer to close to the speed of light, their internal atomic activity is in fact slowed, since the electrons are vibrating/cycling at nearly the speed of light to begin with, so when you combine both external velocity and internal activity, it still can't exceed C, so everything in that frame is slowed proportionally."

The key to my solid foundation is in; "when you accelerate...", which is correct. but you then it falls apart as you fail to renormalise to inertial motion in the new frame!!

Is the Earth the centre and only reference point of the universe you use for your above description? It must be! Think hard, you are only allowing the ONE background frame for the speed of light! This is human homecentric thinking, which is at the root of all confusion.

Try this; Wherever we live, whatever galaxy our planet's in and whatever star it's orbiting in whatever direction at whatever local speed wrt whatever else, when not accelerating it is in an equivalent INERTIAL frame to ALL other planets in ALL other relative states of motion.

So if 1,000 identical particles are at rest in 1,000 different inertial frames they will ALL oscillate at the SAME IDENTICAL rate. How can anything else possibly logically be the case? That is the proper holistic viewpoint, and conforms to Special Relativity as c is c in all inertial frames.

TIME is universal. it is the same in all inertial systems (frames) anf also all the BACKGROUND frames those systems may be moving through. Simple.

Acceleration is then just a special case for un-bound systems, because it produces the APPARENT temporal change due simply to evolution of interaction which Christian Doppler found, so we call 'Doppler shift'. NOTHING NEEDS TO CHANGE 'TIME' ITSELF AS TIME CANNOT BE CHANGED!!! Oscillation rates of free oscillators will change under accelerative motion but the change will then stop. In a 'particle' the energy is in the homogenous oscillator, so it has well more than adequate energy (mc^2) to recover it's inherent state. I suggest it's horrendously arrogant and homocentric of humans to consider that if we change the oscillation rate of a physical oscillator which we decide to name a 'clock' that we have the power to somehow change 'TIME' itself!!

We can change the emitter, and we can change the emitted signals, but those mean nothing and just fool us, the important thing is that identical bodies will still behave identically in each inertial frame, once there and back 'at rest' (not accelerating) I think that is entirely irrefutable. Can you logically refute it? (leaving your beliefs behind!)

The results in application remove all paradox and anomaly from our understanding of nature as observed. Try it and report back.

Drive your car onto a moving ferry with the throttle fixed at a constant 30mph. There will be a disturbing moment of acceleration, then it will revert to 30mph in the NEW frame. I can also tell you that the precision crystals at the heart of modern missile control systems do NOT get thrown our of sync if someone accelerates the missile rapidly between rest frames - in whatever direction (two may go opposite ways) I promise you they accelerate them in all directions all the time and they all behave identically and find their targets!!

Best wishes

Peter

[deleted]

John M,

I appreciate you using the letters M behind John. Avoiding confusion is more important than politeness. I am signing my posts because the login is not reliable. A distinction between Peter J and Peter M is certainly also recommendable.

I will not discuss with Richard Lewis because his terminology "Spacetime Waves" is considerably at variance with the notions I am using. I wonder if he seriously dealt with Michelson.

You asked: "Doesn't "The speed of light" refer to a measurement?"

I see c as a measurable spatial distance divided by the measurable within the same system time of flight and also as a basic constant that relates epsilon_0 and my_0.

You argued: "if your measuring device is traveling at the speed of light, all internal action is stopped, thus its clock is stopped, so it measures everything, even light going the other direction, as zero time."

Measuring the speed of light requires a known distance between the emitter at the moment of emission and the receiver at the moment of arrival. Yes, if the receiver does never receive the signal then there is neither a measurable distance nor a measurable time of flight. Infinity divided by infinity is undefined, not zero.

You added the question: Wouldn't "Only an external viewer"..."see them as approaching each other at 2c"?

You did almost get my point. I wrote: "The speed with which two wavefronts, that are propagating in opposite directions, increase their distance is 2c." In my understanding, the speed of light has nothing to do with any observer unless the notion observer means the receiver, and each of the both wavefronts in line belongs to a different receiver. Einstein's rather anthropic notion "observer" is unnecessary and should be avoided. The speed I referred to is a fiction. The propagation of the two light signals can be imagined but not be seen at all.

The limitation to c does only apply for the propagation of something real from one emitter to one belonging receiver.

One has to arbitrarily choose only a single frame of reference in space to which all other points must be related. That's why only relative positions in space are relevant. Michelson disproved the absolute space. See my endnotes.

Regards,

Eckard

[deleted]

Peter,

This reminds me of an observation I made yesterday; For every thought, there is an equal and opposite thought. ;-)

We seem to be on opposite sides of this issue. I see space as foundational and time as emergent. As you are firmly set in your model and you have heard my arguments about time more than enough, I'll not belabor the issue, other than to give a plea for more respect for space;

Everyone wants to dismiss it as some abstraction, or emergent, or just a product of measurement, or action or some other such reason, yet look out at the sky at night! The distances involved, the volume manifest reduce entire galaxies and galaxy clusters to nothing more than smudges.

We think we explain it as all popping out of some hat less than 14 billion years ago, but as I keep pointing out, how can we say "space expands," yet retain a constant speed of light? Isn't "Space what you measure with a ruler?" If we are still going to denominate the distance between expanding points of reference in the constant of lightspeed, then that is only increased distance, not expanding space. The denominator is the unit of measure. What it is "denominated" in!! How hard is that to figure out?

You say it is only the frame, so could we have two frames, both holding dynamic realities, passing each other at the speed of light?

What about the space station in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey; It is a frame and it is not accelerating, so where does the centrifugal force causing the gravitational effect come from, if not because of the movement of that frame relative to some more elemental inertial space/unbounded frame?

No, space doesn't have anything we can really hold onto and focus on and we really like things that get our attention, but is that an issue with us, or with space?

Eckard,

I think you and I are on the same page here, but my brain gets tied in so many knots, trying to figure out what others are saying, what their assumptions and or models are, how they are interpreting me, etc, that it's wonder I can still think.

I see it as infinite, inertial space, with stuff moving about. Positive/negative, expanding/contracting. Most everything else is effect and aspect.

I wish they would change the logout until one actually logs out.

Regards,

John M

Eckard Blumschein

E. to John M,

Your entire post addressed me too. I reiterate my argument that the so called inertial frame is always arbitrarily chosen and excludes to simultaneously choose one more frame. This does not mean that the chosen frame is a priori a preferred one. Every choice is equally possible.

Accordingly, it seems to me not justified to imagine space like a sphere that can expand. I support your argument: "how can we say "space expands, yet retain a constant speed of light? Isn't space what you measure with a ruler?" Maybe, we are both too stupid as to understand the mainstream. However, I doubt this possibility because the theories that Tom failed to understandably defend did obviously arise from quite ordinary but questionable reasoning.

I reiterate my hope for revelations of embarrassing mistakes like in case of NSU in Germany.

Regards,

Eckard

John Merryman

Eckard,

It seems a fact of nature that crowds of people can get away with stuff that would not be tolerated, or at best laughed off, if it was just by one person. The feedback loops can created some powerful social weather systems, but eventually they cool and fade.

Regards,

John M

Peter Jackson

John,

You'll see no-one has more respect for space than I by re-reading my last years essay!! You certainly need to read my posts more slowly to avoid jumping to assumptions that aren't there, and to derive the main point, which you didn't do.

Accepting space as 'real' and so 'distance' as a fundamental in no way conflicts with my highly falsified derivation of universal time. A close colleague of mine owns a company supplying weapon crystal oscillators. In your universe the oscillators would change speed if the missile is doing some 'different' speed (to the plane, air or hangar??) in which case the telemetry would be seriously compromised. The fact is that they DO NOT! The Hafele-Keating result has been falsified John. It WAS false, as Hafele himself said. (Basudeba reproduces a full explanation in his essay blog).

You said; "As you are firmly set in your model... ...I'll not belabor the issue, other than to give a plea for more respect for space;"

I've shown the 2nd assumption is wrong. So is the first. The model is evolving all the time entirely in line with empirical evidence. As I've sad before what I'm trying to do is to falsify it, i.e. to test all parts to destruction SCIENTIFICALLY! It's a little frustrating when people just come back and say their beliefs are different and think that's somehow the same. It isn't. Very VERY far from it.

I've cited endless empirical and epistemological evidence and derived consistent logic. I also study and analyse all apparently conflicting evidence offered. None has stood up. Just a touch of respect for that might be nice! i.e. comment on the actual evidence I offer instead of just repeating prior beliefs, which you wrongly accuse me of. You may feel you can ignore apparent evidence. I don't. I don't understand why that is dismissed. Am I wrong?

Two more interesting findings supporting discrete field ontology have just been published; Fists findings of 'apparent' superluminal motion, from NASA Mayer HST 2013 superluminal confirmation paper, and Fermi; MNRAS Paper confiming up to apparent 46c.

Also findings from the new VLBA of lensing in the ISM via refraction from moving plasma, exactly as the DFM predicted (see 2011 essay; '2020 vision').

Any comments on the important actual implications for science?

Peter

John Merryman

Peter,

I certainly mean you no disrespect and am sorry if I misinterpreted you. I've spent the afternoon cutting down and up some large dead oak trees and dragging them halfway across the farm to serve as jumps. It's the sort of thing I do for a living and while it gives me a healthy respect for basic physics, it doesn't leave me alot in the way of energy to really process the more complex aspects. I've said it many times and I'll say it again, I didn't get into studying physics for any other reason than my own enlightenment and only then did I get the impression there is far more head in the clouds thinking than anyone cares to admit. This hasn't changed the fact that I still see and think on a fairly basic level and while I do put some degree of effort into trying to understand what others are thinking, I am certainly willing to admit when I see my mistakes, or when it's over my head. That said, I still don't get too emotional about it, other then some mild frustration when I think the obvious is being ignored.

I have no problem with your discrete fields theory. One of my arguments has been that three dimensional space is really nothing more than a coordinate system and there are many coordinate systems defining the same space. All of the actual physical fields effectively bound up as their own gravitational systems, which do affect any light propagating through or within them. I still think space itself is an underlaying reality to all these fields, actions, effects, relationships etc. Such that while these fields might be moving around, they are ultimately bound by the speed of light relative to that inertial space. Given that light is extremely fast, this does give quite a bit of maneuvering room. Yes, around the edges, there are any number of ways it seems possible to perceive light in different ways, it does seem ultimately grounded to something more than just particular fields. So that these fields mediate between C and inertia. Otherwise, without one, the other doesn't make sense. What is to stop these fields moving past each other at multiples of the speed of light? I should go read your paper again and not just ramble on, but the mind is just on autopilot at the moment.

Regards,

John M

John Merryman

Peter,

"So if 1,000 identical particles are at rest in 1,000 different inertial frames they will ALL oscillate at the SAME IDENTICAL rate. How can anything else possibly logically be the case? That is the proper holistic viewpoint, and conforms to Special Relativity as c is c in all inertial frames."

Identical cause yields identical effect?

TIME is universal. it is the same in all inertial systems (frames) anf also all the BACKGROUND frames those systems may be moving through."

I'm not trying to be rude, but we really are looking this from opposite perspectives. You see time as universal in all inertial frames. I see only one inertial frame. Anything, like the space station, is moving relative to it. Because all motion in that frame is affected identically, its clocks are identical.

" In your universe the oscillators would change speed if the missile is doing some 'different' speed (to the plane, air or hangar??) in which case the telemetry would be seriously compromised.'

What about clocks on gps satellites? What if that missile was traveling at some significant fraction of the speed of light?

Can both space and time be universal(Newton), or is it the combination(Einstein) maybe it's just time(Jackson), or maybe it's just space(Me)rryman)?

Regards,

John M

Peter Jackson

John,

You again build straw men as you haven't re-read and understood the model. On all satellites AND missiles at 0.5c the oscillators oscillate at the same speed while not 'accelerating' in the local rest frame. Only their emissions, or non-coherent or 'elastic' matter systems change (Doppler shift).

You postulate 4 options as if they're all logically and empirically possible, but of course the truth is quite different in both cases. Only one meets ALL observation and logic! It's just that you're misrepresenting it so it appears not to.

First. The one thing the relativity and all it;'s proofs DID prove and has proved beyond all and any doubt is that THERE CANNOT BE JUST 'ONE' ABSOLUTE BACKGROUND FRAME! That was the whole point of SR, the postulates, and the relativity of simultaneity, and it is borne out because we find c can never be exceeded as a PROPAGATION speed locally, even though relative speeds are NOT so constrained.

But this is where interpretation went wrong and caused all the paradox. Theory assumed that meant there could be NO background frame at all! But what I've found is that it did NOT mean that. We must imagine LOCAL background frames, each within it's own greater local background frame, hierarchically, and ONLY limited to c in IT'S OWN background. One we can visualise that, which you've not yet managed, all the confusion then lifts.

in practice then you're totally wrong about the Space Station. As we well know, has a maximum speed wrt Earth's ionosphere, NOT with respect to ANY other planets ionosphere! Do you really suggest different? The background datum frame for the limit c is only ever 'LOCAL'!! It works as smoothly as silk in all cases. Earth's speed is c wrt the heliosphere NOT any other heliosphere! The speed of light on a train and in the ISS is c respectively wrt the train and ISS NOT vice versa, or any OTHER train or space probe!

What possible scenario can you dream up where this heirarchical model (derived in great logical detail in my last years essay!) doesn't work perfectly?? Einstein also arrived at it in 1952; ("space 's' in relative motion within larger space 'S'). i.e. A lens is a small 'space' which may be in any arbitrary state of motion through the background frame of the local space. The evidence of it's speed is the Doppler shift of what it detects. Let me give you an example you'll better understand; If you get your best horse up to a full gallop, what speed is it doing wrt Jupiters moon Io? ...Correct. It's entirely arbitrary and irrelevant! Yes? All datums vary, so are 'local'.

I propose there is simply no logical or empirical comparison between this model (dead simple once understood) and all others which remain paradoxical and illogical. Why not give it a test run!

(and once you comprehend it do please tell me why it seems so difficult)

Best wishes

Peter

John Merryman

Peter,

"We must imagine LOCAL background frames, each within it's own greater local background frame, hierarchically, and ONLY limited to c in IT'S OWN background."

If the local background frame is then within a greater frame, isn't that frame then hierarchically within an even larger such frame, until everything visible(traversed by light), at least, exists in the largest such background frame?

Peter Jackson

John,

Yes, to always a local background. But remember that all 'frames' are REAL spaces, so it is ONLY that 'next up' LOCAL background system that has any relevance to propagation speed.

The jet plane in our atmosphere cares not a jot about how fast Earth is moving round the sun, or the sun is moving through the galaxy, or the galaxy within the local group etc etc. How could logic ever suggest anything else anyway?

If the Mars Rover does max 30mph, would you expect that to be 30mph with respect to yourself? (whether at home or on a train), or wrt Saturn?, or our spiral arm?? or wrt our local group of galaxies? If EM signals do c in her optical waveguide systems, is that c wrt you?, or wrt the systems own local rest frame.

All I'm saying is that, though I know you and all others may think I'm crazy, it is 30mph wrt the surface of Mars, and then c wrt the local optical waveguide medium. To me it's all the other assumptions that are a bit arrogant and possibly crazy!

The only implication is that light changes speed at the frame ('domain') limits by being absorbed by the shock plasma, then re-emitted to the new local c. That is the simplest bit, just like sound, giving the Doppler shifts we find.

There will of course be some 'ultimate' rest frame for the universe, but I suggest it can have no relevance for propagation speed c within any of the many the systems in the systems in the systems within it. So your horse is only ever galloping at one valid speed!

Peter

John Merryman

Peter,

Isn't C the speed of light in a vacuum? Meaning that, yes, it potentially travels slower in various other mediums and under different conditions, such as in a frame that is also moving. The caveat being that any clock in that frame is also affected. So yes, you are measuring it in its own frame, with a clock in that frame, and if with a clock outside the particular frame, transmission factors also apply.

The point that gets to me, is that "in a vacuum." What is a vacuum, other than just space? So what if different clocks measure different rates, because they are explicitly a measure of action; atomic, photonic, horses, rovers, whatever. There is no need for a dimension of time. It is a measure of the effects coming into being and dissolving, like waves hitting the beach. The reason there is this concept of simultaneity is because everything that happens can only happen as it is physically present, yet trying to correlate how they are all connected is complicated and since time itself is just the rate things occur, there is no giant cosmic clock on the wall to relate everything that happens.

That's why I think differentiating between the vector of past to future, as opposed to this just coming into being and fading, ie, future becoming past, is so important. If you think of time as that giant cosmic clock, then relativity does seem crazy, like funhouse mirrors. On the other hand, if you only see stuff happening, it makes perfect sense that some stuff happens faster than other stuff.

Peter Jackson

John,

"The point that gets to me, is that "in a vacuum." What is a vacuum, other than just space?"

I think we're now going round in pointless circles John.

We'e long established the local 'vacuum frame' which is the datum for motion and maximum speed of any entity within it. it can be formed by ether if you like ether, or simply by the rest frame of the 'absorber' particles we know and have found there (at

John Merryman

Peter,

What if the vacuum isn't "ether," or absorber particles? What if space really is just space?

John Merryman

Peter,

There is the assumption that space is just measurement between points and that it expanded from a point, but why are points more valid than space? It goes to the question of how do you get something from nothing. Now space does seem to be nothing, no frame, no references, no action. So why do we need to explain it as coming from something, ie. the motion of points? Logically wouldn't the question be how do we derive points from space, ie. something from nothing?

Regards, John M

Peter Jackson

John,

Even if it's just 'space' then space is still 'something', otherwise an inch would be the same as a mile. I agree space isn't 'matter', but to assume only 'matter' exists is naive.

Einstein wasn't being naive when he said; "space without ether is unthinkable". He had a very good point. It's just us dimwits being limited in our conceptual power. We now call it 'Dark Energy' and know it can't be less that ~80 per cent of the total matter/energy of the universe.

Now we have space exporation in fact we know far more. We've found every bit of space we've been in is full of (invisible to the eye) particles (free electron/positron condensed fermion pairs and protons etc, we call 'plasma') and activity, i.e. they come and go with disturbances. Densities found are is up to 10^14 particles/cm^-3. They can also move about 'hydrodynamically'. This is the ISM IGM, QV, Higgs field, call it what you will, but it cannot be 'nothing'.

But the real point is that they have a local rest frame, or 'state of motion'. So our probes have a designated 'speed' through them. This is the point of the big row between science and old philosophy, which ignores what we find and still wrongly considers space as nothing. See the intro to my last years essay. Your horse can then have a logical TRUE speed wrt Earth, but then also infinitely many arbitrary 'relative' speeds wrt other planets, the space station, trains etc etc. It would just have to experiment do do it's true speed in a passing train, as does light to propagate at c. The evidence of that is Doppler shift. How more logical do you need it.!? That's the key unlocking logical truth. You only have to try it in the door.

Peter

Peter Jackson

John,

''Man alone measures time. Man alone chimes the hour. And, because of this, man alone suffers a paralyzing fear that no other creature endures. A fear of time running out.'' Mitch Albom, The Time Keeper

A good quote I've just seen. I think it shows we're pretty arrogant thinking our semantic conception has any importance. What we call the 'time' we see is really just some physical disturbances propagating away from a glorified metronome we call a 'clock'. If we head towards them we meet them more rapidly, but being stupid we think that makes our invention 'time' go 'faster'!!

Peter

John Merryman

Peter,

Dark energy came to be because gravity was supposed to slow the rate of expansion, but it doesn't.

Einstein originally proposed the cosmological constant to balance the effect of gravity "contracting" space.

According to our best measurements, the visible universe is flat, ie, gravity and expansion do balance out.

These three points are not mine, but accepted conditions.

So now gravity does exist and does contract our measure of space, yet the light from those distant galaxies is redshifted such that they appear to be moving away, relative to distance. One point to keep in mind though, is that we can only observe light which hasn't been absorbed by these intervening gravity fields and what is lensed around them would have been light much more spread out, but is only focused by passing close to them. So the only thing which appears to expand is the most undisturbed light. Virtually everything else in the universe, from the densest to the lightest mass and all light drawn into these gravity wells, falls inward. Then remember the only source of this light is what is being radiated away from these gravitational vortices in the first place.

Now the assumption that light can only be redshifted by recession is based on the presumption that quanta of light do travel as point particles, yet it would seem evident from that two slit experiment that they actually travel as waves and are only absorbed at points by atomic structure. So it would seem quite likely that light expands when released from mass and contracts when absorbed by it. In fact, it seems mass is essentially contracted light/energy.

Now wouldn't the quanta of light having expanded be a very good reason for light to be redshifted?

As I keep pointing out, the expanding universe theory still assumes a constant speed of light, ie. lightyears, against which to judge this expansion and as Einstein said, "Space is what you measure with a ruler." So if the ruler, ie the units space is denominated in, remain constant, against this expansion, where is the basic mathematical logic in saying space expands, rather then they are moving away in space????

It seems to me what really exists is a cosmic convection cycle of expanding radiation and contracting mass. Which then either burns off, or is ejected out the poles, radiating for billions of lightyears. Then we don't need those enormous patches of inflation and dark energy, or, I think, dark matter, since gravity would be an effect of mass condensing out of energy, rather than just a property of mass, but that is a longer story.

The cosmic background radiation would simply be the solution to Olber's paradox, the light of ever distant sources, redshifted off the visible spectrum.

Instead the attention is now on whether you would burn up, or be stretched out, falling into a black hole. Fighting over the details, while the big picture makes no sense.

Regards

John M

Peter Jackson

John,

I'm of the Sherlock Holmes ilk. I spend my time examining then follow the evidence wherever it leads and pay scant heed to assumptions and guesswork.

I've found the big picture only 'makes no sense' if we don't do that. Like doing a jigsaw puzzle without studying all the pieces. The RAS monthly notices alone has dozens of new papers, and that's just one of many. I don't think it can be done without addressing that information overload that's compartmentalised science to the extent it's not 'joined up writing' any more. People now prefer to speculate or rely on beliefs than research. I think that's retrograde. If they read as I read they'd find a quite different picture emerges.

The trouble is, having seen vastly more bits of the puzzle than most, when a coherent picture does emerge it's very different to that imagined by any others, so is mostly just dismissed. Real evidence now counts for nought. Did you read and understand the implications of the papers I posted to you?

What you describe above is 2/5ths consistent with the evidence I've studied, but you then do a guessing game. I can explain it coherently, show the picture and cite the consistent evidence, but it seems most can't be bothered to look, so assume it's just similar 'guessing' as it's different to the beliefs which they prefer. All pertinent points made just get ignored. So there's human nature, theoretical physics and cosmology in a nutshell!

Is that fair? Is there any other way to get across the coherent 'sense' that does appear to emerge to others?

I't's just that I may be dead before 2020, which would be a shame.

Best wishes

Peter

John Merryman

Peter,

I will have to go back and study your work better, but rushing off now.

Consider for a moment though, that convection pretty well describes much of the planetary and stellar activity. So why not consider how it might model galactic activity? We have mass falling in and radiation expanding out. We know mass breaks down, releasing radiation, as more dense aspects coalesce even further. It seems evident that whatever actually falls into the center of a galaxy is ejected out the poles, not falling into some bottomless black hole. So what is the opposite side of the cycle? Are there ways which radiation contracts into cosmic rays/neutrons/etc. and these start the process over again?

I don't see how this conflicts with measuring c as dependent on the particular frame. It would be that gravitational contraction overriding other forces.

Regards,

John M