Alternative Models of Reality

Eckard Blumschein

Georgina,

I still consider your topic (objective) reality a most crucial one: What does physical reality mean? For some consequences see my current discussion with Rob McEachern. One has to decide whether one does or doesn't share Einstein's denial of the distinction between past and future.

Akinbo's speculations around a suggested space-carrying medium seem to be futile. I see Dedekind not justified when he abandoned Euclid's notion of number.

Eckard

Steve Agnew

Your thesis is all about what space is, but the void of empty space is the nothing that we do not sense. We sense objects, not space, and we only imagine space.

Akinbo Ojo

Steve, Eckard, et al

Steve,

Do you accept that light is a transverse wave and if so how so, and if not how so?

Even if you don't agree do you know that light and gravitational waves share the same characteristics? Both transverse, both travelling at 'c', both capable of travelling interstellar distances devoid of matter, etc.

If two things share these characteristics would there means of propagation not be similar? Gravitational waves are propagated by deformations in space-time. Would light not likely share similarity with that model?

I will look for more literature on the transverse wave nature of gravitational waves.

Eckard,

It seems you agree with Euclid. If so, what constitutes a line and can a line be cut? You pointed me to C.S. Peirce during a discussion, but Peirce too finds that "if a line is cut into two portions, the point at which the cut takes place actually becomes two points...", which contradicts Euclid's definition that a point cannot be cut into two.

Regards,

Akinbo

Steve Dufourny

Hello dear Eckard,John,TH,...

I don't know what I must do, all my net is checked,hacked.

Regards

Steve

Steve Agnew

Transverse is a notion of space and light is better understood as a bond between object dipoles and quadrupoles. Charges bond to each other and when those bonds are in their ground state, a photon exchange between the charges is that bond.

In an excited state, that emitted photon represents a bond with an absorber and that bonding action is the basis of all force.

Akinbo Ojo

Eckard, in particular (being an electrical engineer) and All (in general),

Given the equation for force, F between charges, Q and Q', i.e.

F = (1/4ПЂОµ)QQ'/r2

In my limited understanding I define Permittivity, Оµ as the degree to which a separation, r, be it material or not, hinders the expression of force between charges, Q and Q'.

A "NOTHING" in this sense will therefore constitute either

- No hindrance at all, i.e. hindrance = 0 (zero) and permittivity, Оµ = в€ћ (infinity)

- A complete hindrance, i.e. 100% hindrance and permittivity, Оµ = 0.

But in our terrestrial vacuum*, the permittivity has neither 0 or в€ћ value. It has a value of 8.85 x 10-12F/m.

Can something that does not exist and is Nothing have a physical attribute that has a finite value?

That is, can an imaginary thing or a Void (as Steve calls it) provide a measurable and non-imaginary hindrance to the expression of force between charges?

If something provides a measure of hindrance can we still call such a thing a Nothing but a mere relationship between things?

Regards,

Akinbo

*In my opinion, the possibility that earth vacuum is contaminated by its share of the abundant ponderable matter (dark matter) in our Milky Way galaxy is very real.

Eckard Blumschein

Akinbo,

C. S. Peirce, while reportedly often drunk, was nonetheless certainly often right with his critical arguments. My essay "Physics suffers from unwarranted interpretations" ascribes notorious inconsistencies in mathematics to the currently inappropriate notion of number. Instead of considering the one-dimensional line consisting of zero-dimensional points, already Euclid preferred the argument that the ideal line has no limit of divisibility and may therefore be considered consisting of likewise one-dimensional parts, no matter how small. Euclid's end-point of a part of line has no measure that could be split. It belongs to the considered and referred to zero part of the line. May we refer to two zeros at a time or just change the direction? I don't think so and see your Dedekind-related question answered.

You are wondering about forces without a tangible carrier. This enigma caused Otto Gericke, who therefore got nobility as Otto de Guericke, to perform experiments that led to steam engine and electricity. EEs accept electric and magnetic fields without ascribing them to something tangible.

Electromagnetic waves are not just transversal dipole ones but they consist of two dual components. Sorry, I admit being ignorant of how Einstein did specify them. Wasn't Bicep premature?

Eckard

Steve Agnew

Augmenting our notions of continuous space, motion, and time with a discrete matter exchange and time delays, allows us to unify gravity and charge forces and removes the problematic voids and singularities of space and time.

Akinbo Ojo replied on Aug. 5, 2015 @ 13:11 GMT, as "Can something that does not exist and is Nothing have a physical attribute that has a finite value? That is, can an imaginary thing or a Void (as Steve calls it) provide a measurable and non-imaginary hindrance to the expression of force between charges? If something provides a measure of hindrance can we still call such a thing a Nothing but a mere relationship between things?"

Our notions of continuous space, motion, and time are not really wrong...they are just incomplete and do not represent all objects in the universe. Augmenting the notions of continuous space, motion, and time with discrete matter exchange and time delays among objects results in a perfectly predictable universe that now resolves the issues with those pesky voids and infinities and singularities.

The notions of matter exchange and time delay conform to our quantum reality and show that gravity and charge as simply scaled versions of each other. The dephasing or decay of universe matter is founding principle of discrete matter and time delay. There are many existing measurements of the predicted matter dephasing rate, but all have been dismissed as artifacts of one kind or another by mainstream science.

My hope is that the Lisa Pathfinder satellite will unequivocally show this matter decay by precisely weighing two 2 kg Au/Pt cubes at the Lagrange1 point between earth and the sun. The 18 month mission should be plenty long enough to show the expected matter decay of 0.51 ppb/yr...or maybe that measurement will show that my notion of a discrete matter universe is after all not valid.

I look forward to this and other gravity wave measurements.

Peter Coin

Hey everybody :)

I'm a little embarrassed to say this, as one who typically values mainstream science, but I got my own crazy ass theory. Usually when I have a crazy idea, I find out it's either wrong or being talked about. I've seen some hints of it online, but rather little and never in a summing document that attempts to outline implications. This is my first time sharing it with anyone else.

I wrote a brief "paper" on it. Please take a look at it.

I'd love to get some feedback on the paper and the ideas presented, especially helpful would be:

1. Relevant reading materials

2. Critiques and criticism

3. Finding Appropriate venues to share and discuss this

Anyways here's the abstract:

"A popular objection to the Many-worlds interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is that it allows for quantum suicide where an experimenter creates a device that instantly kills him or leaves him be depending the output of a quantum measurement, since he has no experience of the device killing him he experiences quantum immortality. This is considered counterintuitive and absurd. Presented here is a speculative argument that accepts counterintuitiveness and proposes it as a new approach to physical theory without accepting some of the absurd conclusions of the thought experiment. The approach is based on the idea that the Universe is Fragile in that only a fraction of the time evolved versions retain the familiar structures of people and planets, but the fractions that do not occur are not observed. This presents to us as a skewed view of physics and only by accounting for this fact (which I propose calling the Continual Anthropic Principle) can we understand the true fundamental laws"

And here's a link to the "paper".

http://vixra.org/abs/1508.0056

What do you fine folks think?

Richard Lewis

Hi Peter,

The fragile universe is an interesting idea but it is based on the many worlds interpretation of quantum theory.

From Wikipedia we have the definition: The many-worlds interpretation is an interpretation of quantum mechanics that asserts the objective reality of the universal wavefunction and denies the actuality of wavefunction collapse. Many-worlds implies that all possible alternate histories and futures are real, each representing an actual "world" (or "universe").

There is another interpretation of the nature of reality which exists within the Spacetime Wave theory.

To illustrate my point, consider the dual slit interference experiment with light, operated at one photon at a time. In the many worlds interpretation an individual photon may strike the detector screen at any number of possible positions corresponding to the interference fringes. The many worlds interpretation would say that all possible positions on the detector are real corresponding to different alternative histories and the hit on the screen that actually occurs is just one of the possible histories. All of the possible paths of the photon considered as a point particle are real and do occur in the many parallel worlds.

In the Spacetime Wave theory the photon is a real physical wave being a wave disturbance of spacetime that passes through both slits. The wave is dispersed in space as it passes through the apparatus and on arrival at the detector matches the pattern of the interference fringes. It is only upon detection that the photon interacts with an electron of an atom in the detector screen to be absorbed. So the collapse of the wave function is a real physical process of an interaction between a photon and an electron.

This in my opinion is a better interpretation of physical reality than either the many worlds interpretation of the probability interpretation of the wavefunction.

The unification of physics

Richard

Richard Lewis

Having made the post at the top of this thread I realize that the links are now out of date.

Here are the new links for my papers:

The unification of physics

The evolution of the universe

Richard

Akinbo Ojo

Hello Richard,

Your comments above appreciated. I have had a brief overview of your two linked papers and find that we have a few things in common, most important of which is an interest to tease out the truth from the myriad of hypothesis that currently abound in physics. However, I think you place too much confidence in Special and General relativity as evidenced by your use of Spacetime, instead of just Space.

In your search for the truth, you may find these two masterpieces useful, both now free to read on the internet.

Nineteenth-Century Aether theories by Kenneth F. Schaffner

and

The Ether of Space by Oliver Lodge

Both books would be invaluable in fine-tuning your pet theory.

I may suggest however that you mentally replace 'Aether' with just 'Space', and 'dragged along or earth-bound aether' with 'gravitationally earth-bound dark matter', wherever you encounter these in both books.

Regards,

Akinbo

Steve Agnew

Don't leave out Larmor for goodness sake...

Aether and Matter, Joseph Larmor, 1900

That one is a favorite of mine...and you should not neglect the pathologies that aether theories introduce to continuous space, motion, and time.

...Einstein-Aether Theories... 2012

Reviving Gravity's Aether in Einstein's Universe, 2010

Once again, discrete aether does offer a viable alternative to continuous space, motion, and time. However, aether suffers from the same limitations as GR does with the notions of continuous space, motion, and time.

Akinbo Ojo

Steve, et al.

The Larmor link appears outdated but managed to google and found a write up on Wikisource. I do not really appreciate your fascination with this work unless you point out exactly what has fascinated you.

The Einstein-Aether theory link was long in equations but short in common sense in my opinion. For example, so much is said about "flat space", "flat background", "flat space-time", etc. Is this flat spacetime in heaven or on earth? Where are we to find it because certainly our laboratory experiments are conducted in earth's gravitational environment and by that alone, the results obtained therefrom are not in flat space or flat space-time? If as some say, space or spacetime on earth is actually an approximation to flat space, how then can a value obtained for light speed within this approximation be labelled as being exact, ref. "light speed is *exactly* 299,792,458m/s", so says the BIPM!

The third link seems promising. Niayesh Afshordi who appears to have done some work at the Perimeter Institute concludes thus, "Unifying general relativity and quantum mechanics, the two great physical theories of the twentieth century, has fascinated and puzzled theoretical physicists for many decades. As bizarre as it may sound, recycling discarded ideas of the 19th century might provide a way forward!" I also see something of cosmological interest in the paper. Penrose and Hawking boxed themselves into a corner (a sort of devil's trap) and found that unwanted singularities with infinite densities are inevitable in the future and past of general relativistic dynamics, simply because they hold on rigidly to the dogma, tending towards religious belief that the mass of the universe is constant. If both the mass of the universe and its radius are increasing from zero (and in Steve Agnew's reverse model, both decreasing to zero), there will be no infinite densities in the future or past.

The statement, "aether suffers from the same limitations as GR does with the notions of continuous space, motion, and time." is lacking in specifics. What exactly are these 'same limitations'? If specified, are they beyond remedy?

Akinbo

Steve Agnew

The more significance with the two recent aether papers is more that aether is back in the literature again...and that aether in space still has issues...

Akinbo Ojo replied on Aug. 15, 2015 @ 09:51 GMT, "The statement, "aether suffers from the same limitations as GR does with the notions of continuous space, motion, and time." is lacking in specifics. What exactly are these 'same limitations'? If specified, are they beyond remedy?"

The limitations of aether should be qualified a bit better. Applying the concept of discrete aether in continuous space, motion, and time does not avoid the basic conundrums that limit continuous space, motion, and time for quantum and GR. The limitations of continuous space are at very large and very small scale where the singularities that we argue about endlessly confound both reality and the math.

That is why discrete aether, matter exchange, and time delay without continuous space and time represent a discrete universe that avoids the singularities that plague science like the locusts of ancient time. When you look very closely, the pesky singularities of continuous space and time showi up at the center of every particle as well as at the event horizon of every black hole.

Don't know if you have seen Crothers stuff, Black Hole Catastrophe, but Crothers, despite his often acerbic tone and sometimes overreaching conclusions, does present many of the warts of GR. Enough so that Crothers has drawn some trolls Bridgman on Crothers, which is always a good sign of fringe science.

Frankly, it would be nice to see these kinds of discussions more on Fqxi, with moderation of course to avoid the silly denigrations that complicate reasoned debate.

Akinbo Ojo

I have exchanged correspondence with S.J Crothers in the past. In many areas he makes sense but is not open to criticism in those areas where his position can be clearly faulted. I don't however see Bridgman clearly faulting him though. To fault something it is good to look at an issue that all clearly agree on. One of which is that "Special relativity is a subset of General Relativity", and the spacetime of SR is Minkowski spacetime which is flat spacetime.

Now, was the experimental foundation of Special relativity laid in flat spacetime? To be specific was the Michelson-Morley experiment conducted in flat spacetime, or did the Earth temporarily lose its gravity during the duration of the experiment?

If the answer is No, then Michelson and Morley's experiment cannot be said to provide an experimental foundation for SR.

Quoting from Crother's paper, "It is alleged that General Relativity predicts that a rotating ,body such as the Earth, drags spacetime around with it. This

is called 'frame dragging' or the 'Lense-Thirring effect'", is this not the same hypothesis proposed to explain the null findings in the Michelson-Morley experiment, thus representing a re-invention of the wheel? If the earth can "drag spacetime around with it", any experiment like that of Michelson and Morley conducted within that dragged along spacetime cannot discern the earth's motion in the universal spacetime. This is clearly Galilean relativity (if you recall Galileo's ship. If you don't google it).

I don't subscribe to spacetime. But for sake of discussion, if something can be dragged along with earth motion it means it is gravitationally coupled to the earth. And for something to be capable of gravitationally interacting to the extent that it can be coupled, our physics tells us that that thing must have mass. Do we have a candidate for such a thing? The answer is a loud Yes - dark matter.

Akinbo

Steve Agnew

Continuous space, motion, and time are good enough notions for the limited ranges of the universe for which they apply. Railing against GR and SR is like fighting over the nothing of empty space...space is simply whatever it needs to be up until its limits of validity. Once you realize that space is just a convenient vessel of consciousness in which we carry the many objects of reality, there is no need for dark matter or dark energy.

I concur that Crothers actually has many good points about the limits of GR and Bridgman ended up defending the indefensible intangibles of spacetime singularities. The proper response should have been,

"Yes, there are many conundrums in GR, but GR makes quite useful predictions as long as you carefully isolate its singularities with special math."

And there is no need for Crothers to get so nasty...he has some valid points about singularity math and then he overreaches and denigrates the parts of GR that actually work quite well. I like to focus on mass-energy equivalence as you know in any discourse about GR because it is MEE that is the key and the nothing of empty space simply becomes whatever it needs to be for MEE to work.

Akinbo Ojo

I checked up the current dictionary meanings of 'railing' and 'conundrum'.

I do not think that pointing out an emperor's nakedness amounts to railing. And a conundrum is something that appears logically consistent, but I have raised specific queries, which when examined will reveal that the emperor is indeed naked. In this particular situation, within the context of GR, I have asked whether or not Michelson and Morley's experiment were carried out within 'a dragged frame' ('Lense-Thirring effect')? If yes, what will be the expected experimental result for light paths originating and ending within the dragged frame?

If the experiment was not carried out within the dragged frame, what do we then make of this so-called 'Lense-Thirring effect'? Is it something that came to exist after 1887?

It would be seen that by reductio ad absurdum type arguments, the Emperor is not wearing clothes.

Akinbo

Steve Agnew

Arguing about nothing amounts to a whole lot of nothing.

The nothing of space is whatever it needs to be and nothing more, nothing less.

Plus, I have found yet another interesting aether book.

"The Necessary Structure of the All-Pervading Aether: Discrete or Continuous? Simple or Symmetric? Peter Forrest, 2012, Verlag."

This is a purely philosophical treatise with very little math, but it really does make a lot of good points for what an aether must be...and it is free from Google or a lot of places I think.

There is simply no need to bring up Michelson and Morley's experiment. What is important is to augment your reality with aether to get beyond the limitations of continuous space and time.

Eckard Blumschein

Steve,

You are definitely an expert and will hopefully explain to me as a layman how a solution that is valid for vacuum, i.e. for r larger than R, justifies the silly idea of a physical singularity.

Admittedly my main reason to doubt is the fact that the past differs from future, and this cannot be seen in time-symmetric models. I am courious.

Eckard

Steve Dufourny

Hello,

Interesting philosophical ideas dear scientists.

Mr Blumschein, I am recognizing your objectivity. Indeed they are rational and proportional our physics.

If I can ,That said,The singularity is purely linked with the entropy in evolution and the singularity is in all in fact , paradoxal but so evident.

The Big Bang is from this singularity, the main central black sphere.....

thoughts for souls.....ad the spherisation makes the rest. A singulaty is also in all quantum entanglement.....it is so evident when we link the physicality and the philosophy in a pure rationality.

You are right Mr Blumschein the past differs from the future. The relativity is sometimes bad explained but it is the life. The GR curves the space time but is it a reason to curve the time .....

Best Regards dears thinkers

Eckard Blumschein

I intended to address Steve Agnew, not Steve Dufourny.

Eckard

Akinbo Ojo

Steve Agnew,

Thank you for referencing Peter Forrest's book. As I don't earn much, if I get a free copy I will read. I am also trying to write my own little book and if you don't mind I would like your criticism of it, even if negative.

In it I argue that Space itself, not aether, possesses the required solid and elastic properties necessary for it to act as a medium of optical activity.

Akinbo

Richard Lewis

Hi Akinbo,

I completely agree with the idea of light as a wave disturbance of space and I also agree that it must be a transverse wave because of the effects of polarisation.

I agree with the concept of the fabric of space having a tension and this fits in well with General Relativity concepts. I was interested to note that Paul Dirac in his book on Relativity showed that the equations of General Relativity have a wave solution with waves propagating at the speed of light. He was directing his analysis at gravitational waves but the general result that space supports wave propagation stands and can be applied in the case where the wave disturbance is a light wave.

Richard

« Previous Page Next Page »