Akinbo,

"James in his essay has questioned the concept of mass."

As must physicists since it remains an indefinable property. The status of lack of definition means lack of knowledge of what mass is. No one can tell you what mass is. Even though this is the case, mass is one of three properties used to define all other properties of mechanics. The continued indefinable status of mass passes that fundamental lack of knowledge into all those other properties. Circular 'definitions' and indirect explanations are the result.

James Putnam

James, Steve et al.

"(Mass)... remains an indefinable property. The status of lack of definition means lack of knowledge of what mass is. No one can tell you what mass is."

But this we can tell. ALL without exception that has mass occupies some region of space. Thus 'extension' is fundamental to having the property which we call 'mass'.

The next logical question is to ask what and what could be happening in a region of space to confer it with the attribute of mass, when another region of similar size has no such attribute?

In my theory, and I think Rene Descartes and Newton say similarly, it is the activity, specifically the manner of motion of the parts in a region of space that confer the attribute of mass. Matter and Space are both substance.

To quote Newton in his uncompleted paper, De Gravitatione, which relied heavily on Descartes thoughts:

"...it is clear that they (philosophers) would cheerfully allow extension (space) to be substance, just as body is, if only extension could move and act as body can", p.8.

"...space is capable of having some substantial reality. Indeed, if its parts could move..., and this mobility was an ingredient in the idea of vacuum, then there would be no question about it - parts of space would be corporeal substance".

"And my account throws a satisfactory light on the difference between body and extension (i.e. between a body and a region of space). The raw materials of each are the same in their properties and nature, and differ only in how God created them...",, p.18

I find Newton's reasoning here impeccable, if not complete. Give the man some respect. I wonder which aspects you may want to fault.

The relevance of the above to this discussion is that if you want to understand Mass, first understand Space and give it also its due respect.

Regards,

Akinbo

Akinbo,

I think that I have made it very clear repeatedly what it means to define a property and to define its units. Newton did not define mass and talking about ideas is not the same as rigorously forming physics equations. Mass in Newton's f=ma needed fixing and I fixed it. The fix was to define its units in the same terms as its empirical evidence is expressed. This message is not for the purpose of informing you any further. Its purpose is to make the meaning of my previous message clear for other readers.

James Putnam

Careful...you have implicitly assumed that space first exists for mass to occupy. First, define space, then define matter. There is no reality for an empty universe.

Akinbo Ojo replied on May. 28, 2015 @ 09:58 GMT: "But this we can tell. ALL without exception that has mass occupies some region of space. Thus 'extension' is fundamental to having the property which we call 'mass'."

What if it was matter that existed before space? Space would then simply emerge as a container for matter, right? The universe of matter changes in time. It is not possible to define matter or time or action as anything else than what they are: axioms. In a closed universe, matter, time, and action reflect each other and represent the limits of what we can know. Matter is the time differential of action, time is the matter differential of action, and action is the path integral of the product of matter and time.

However space emerges from matter time delays and motion emerges from matter changes. So space and motion are very flexible notions and can have lots of different definitions. The incommensurate definitions of space and motion between gravity (and Newton) relativity and quantum action are what preclude any unifying notion.

Akinbo Ojo replied on May. 28, 2015 @ 09:58 GMT: "I find Newton's reasoning here impeccable, if not complete. Give the man some respect. I wonder which aspects you may want to fault.The relevance of the above to this discussion is that if you want to understand Mass, first understand Space and give it also its due respect."

Space and motion simply cannot be the continuous and infinitely divisible notions of any of Zeno or Newton or Einstein if we are ever to resolve the paradoxes of relativity and derive a quantum gravity. A simpler universe with just matter and time conforms to MEE and gravity time delays, which is consistent with observations. We do need to recognize that space and motion simply emerge as whatever they need to be (like constant c) to keep track of objects and predict their futures. Frames of reference become objects of reference; an object that is very slowly changing we call at rest. Another object that changes much faster we call moving.

Thus, first understand matter and time and action and then space and motion will follow, not the other way around. There is no a priori reality to the lonely dark nothing of empty space.

Steve,

Be careful, too, in assuming space is nonexistent. There is no experimental means to solve the emergent question, 'what came first - the chicken or the egg?' The common misconception of what spacetime means rests on the taking of time and space separately, as macroscopically apparent, post a break in symmetry. While it is quite true that Minkowski did not identify at what scale that break occurs, which leads to singularity without an empirical limit applied, that is no different than QM applying an empirical limit to the zero point particle.

But spacetime is *particle-like* as Tom iterates. Its a chicken and egg salad sandwich. Energy is the mayo. The big bang scenario just puts the mayo in the mixing bowl first and then adds the other ingredients marketed as the Emergent brand. Even Quantum Machinists at Cern admit that following the Higg's celebration, the search is still on for how the break in symmetry might be found. So Quantum Gravity is very much like Minkowski gravity, the difference being that in Minkowsi the field is a physical extension the zero point particle not a probabilistic extension of where, when and why it might be found next. Spacetime properly construed, is 'many energy time-like spaces', it does not mean a priori background space with time. It does none good to argue against another paradigm by changing what that paradigm is, to fit the argument. I'm sure you would agree.

On another topic, what happens in your decay scenario when you plug in the mutual exclusivity of permeability and permittivity. Both operate as proportionate to c but in opposite sign, the product thus being c^-2. It occurred to me some while back, that mutual exclusivity only exists theoretically in computing measure but both are physical properties that must be taken as states in coexistance of action. So the empirical limit applied to either the Quantum, or Minkowski, zero point particle would be in the proportional factor of c^2. What do you think? Take your time. jrc

5 days later

That space and motion are emergent versus matter and time as emergent is indeed a chicken and egg proposition. However, normally matter and time are not conjugate variables and so space and momentum take precedence in both intuition and science. A two dimensional time is what allows time to then have expectation values of time delay and decay and decay time is therefore one of those time dimensions from which space emerges.

As regards to permeability and permitivity, the magnetic and electric responses of space to current and charge, their product is as you say proportional to c^-2. Space emerges from the product of electron spin velocity, alpha/c, and matter decay, mdot. The electron charge and spin are therefore where electromagnetism emerges as fields in space...both from the classical electron charge radius. The product of matter decay and electron spin velocity is charge force with charge cross section and the much smaller gravity cross section unifies gravity with charge.

This makes gravity a scaled version of charge force with the scaling factor of atomic to universe time periods. Although it is very convenient and useful to suppose there are EM and gravity fields in space, our quantum world invents virtual states with matter exchange representing fields. That is also from where a quantum gravity will eventually emerge as well even though science just has not been able to connect the dots quite yet.

2 months later

It is very useful to go back and refine my ideas of a discrete matter universe after the many fruitful discussions on these blogs, however chaotic.

Continuous space, motion, and time form the basic paradigm that rules GR right now, although these notions are limited and do not apply everywhere in the universe. Those places in the universe that result in singularities and infinities and voids of nothing limit how we describe our reality. Quantum math is much more flexible than GR math and allows for many different conjugate variables besides space and momentum.

Augmenting the notions of continuous space, motion, and time with discrete matter exchange and discrete time delays unifies all force as quantum force. Gravity and charge simply become scaled versions of each other and the notions of continuous space, motion, and time are perfectly valid within certain limits of very large and very small scales.

Once measurements confirm the universal matter dephasing rate that has already been repeatedly measured in many contexts but dismissed as artifact in all cases so far. Perhaps Lisa Pathfinder will finally confirm the universal matter dephasing constant in the next two years of measurements at the Lagrange1 point between earth and sol.

What we observe when we look up into the night sky are dots of light that represent objects with time delays all of the way back to the CMB. The CMB represents a hard stop for observing the universe it would seem and the universe evolves from the CMB into an increasing order. The CMB accretes into electrons and quarks, quarks accrete into atoms, atoms into stars, stars into galaxies, galaxies into clusters, clusters into superclusters, and superclusters into large scale structures.

Despite the paradigm of an ever expanding space and that resultant chaos, what we observe is an ever shrinking matter into ever increasing order. Instead of reforming that reality, science invents invisible dark matter and dark energy to make it all better.

Perhaps it would be better to reformulate the universe into a shrinking working fluid like a discrete aether, which along with discrete time delay augments the limitations that science now faces with continuous space, motion, and time. In a universe driven by shrinking aether, attractive force makes perfect sense and gravity and charge become versions of photon exchange scaled by the time delay of the universe size.

Discrete aether would not then exist in space, discrete aether would exist along with time delay and matter exchange instead of continuous space, motion, and time. Discrete aether would then simply augment the limitations of space and motion and allow science to unify gravity and charge and quantify the notions of dark matter and dark energy in space.

A shrinking or dephasing aether introduces new terms in the virial equation for gravity and momentum. In effect, the matter changes of stars represent a new force in space that couples stars to each other and shows how galaxies bond. This new force eliminates the need to patch GR with dark matter.

...and of course, just in time, the decay that I have been waiting for...

Universal Decay

I love it when science reports the decay of the universe but calls it dying instead of decay. Go figure...

The dying universe represents a universal decay that is very similar to my decay constant, 20% over a Byrs. The paper is available as draft Galaxy and Mass Assembly...at Low z and is quite technical.

The paper reports a trend for three times, 2.25, 1.50, and 0.75 Byrs as 2.5, 2.25, and 1.5 e35 W/Mpc3 for Hubble constant of h70. This trend means an even colder universe today. In fact, the Virgo supercluster is only 0.32 e35 W/Mpc3 given its 0.11 Byr time size while the Sloan survey shows the universe at 11.5 Byrs peaked at 41 e35 W/Mpc3, 128 times that of today.

Boy it looks like winter is coming for the expanding universe...but science has dark energy to keep us warm instead. Except that if the universe is shrinking instead of expanding, the opposite is true and there is no need for dark energy to keep things warm.

a year later
  • [deleted]

Sounds promising Thanks

But reading the remarks It IS confusing HOW COULD AN EVERLASTING AND ENDLESS UNIVERSE DIE?

2 months later

EXPERIMENTAL quantum Anti-gravity -- https://quantumantigravity.wordpress.com

I have made a theoretical as well as an empirical scientific discovery

of quantum gravity and quantum antigravity.

Present day quantum gravity theories suffer from

too many mathematical space dimensions, and from

too few conclusive experimental results.

My hypothesis is simple, clear,

and subject to easy empirical verification :

https://quantumantigravity.wordpress.com

Should you have any questions or need clarification,

I am more than happy to answer.

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