John,

Assumption of 'nothing' ends in paradox. Starting from a 'ground state' which acts as a valid datum has no theoretical problem. The problem imagined as an 'add on' to SR causing all the problems, is simply removed by letting these datums be spatially limited and move, which is exactly what we find in nature.

Something is in the 'absolute' vacuum, with known qualities, including the 2.7 degrees! Even current theory can't work without 'dark energy' and 'dark matter'. If you don't like those names think of another i.e. The 'condensate'. Assigning that a 'state of motion', which is what present doctrine won't do, is the only way to resolve all the theoretical issues faced.

A wave on the surface of the ocean is not all 'up', it's half up and half down. The ground state is 'flat', but it cannot be 'zero'! Why would you want it to be?

Peter

Tom,

Try as I might, I'm just not seeing how all this resolves the issue. If two galaxies are moving away from each other, such that it will take light longer to travel from one to the other in the future than it does now, how is this materially different than the two people walking away from each other, with flashlights?

The argument is that this is a four dimensional expansion that just can't be modeled in three dimensions, yet the space between any two points is still one dimension and that can be modeled very simply.

Regards,

John M

" ... If two galaxies are moving away from each other, such that it will take light longer to travel from one to the other in the future than it does now ..."

What future? Is your friend on the other end of a flashlight signalling you from the future?

Consider the light from a star far away that takes, say 100LY to reach your eyes. In your frame of reference, the light from that star originated long before you were born and spent 100 years of *your* time on its journey. You call that the past. From the reference frame of a hypothetical observer near the star, however, who receives light from our sun, *you* lie in *her* past.

Best,

Tom

Tom,

Remember the presumption is that eventually these other galaxies will no longer be visible, because they will have moved too far away. That is the future I'm referring to.

As I keep pointing out, mathematically, galaxies are not inert points of reference, but "space sinks," so that while the space between them can "mathematically" expand, it then falls into these wells at and equal rate and there is no overall expansion, thus resulting in the overall flat space that is observed.

Physically, it is that radiation expands and mass contracts, in a cosmic convection cycle.

Regards,

John M

Peter,

"Something is in the 'absolute' vacuum, with known qualities, including the 2.7 degrees!"

2.7k is still not absolute zero. We can't reach absolute zero, but does that have to mean space emerged from a point, 13.8 billion years ago? Why can't space just be space, even if it always has some level of energy?

Regards,

John M

" ... eventually these other galaxies will no longer be visible, because they will have moved too far away. That is the future I'm referring to."

Whose future?

"Physically, it is that radiation expands and mass contracts, in a cosmic convection cycle."

If you say so. How would you go about showing that, in a physical experiment?

Best,

Tom

John,

Space IS 'space'. It's just not 'nothing'! You're only using an ingrained assumption that it is, which never has consistently corresponded with any evidence, even back to Pascal.

And it is of ultimate importance in allowing a logical universe that is is the 'something' we find. I ask again, why do you wish it to be nothing?

If you like we can have 'nothing' between the many universes. Does that help?

Peter

Tom,

Presumably the future of the universe, as galaxies move apart.

We see those distant stars, lightyears away and galaxies up to billions of lightyears away because they radiate light and other spectrums of energy, which is fueled by the mass falling into them. The only real question is how would the radiant energy cool and coalesce back into the most elemental forms of mass. M=e/c2

Given what the alternative has to explain, from what gave birth to the singularity, inflation, dark energy, etc, it seems a minor proposition to consider.

Regards,

John M

Peter,

As simple dimensionality, sans the physical matter and energy occupying it, it would lack any properties to bound or move. Which leaves it with the properties of infinite and absolute.

Regards,

John M

John, you were so close in asking the right questions. Now you've reverted back to a naive "stuff happens" view. E = mc^2 describes the rest state of matter/energy. Stuff doesn't happen.

Best,

Tom

"As simple dimensionality, sans the physical matter and energy occupying it, it would lack any properties to bound or move."

Wrong. Didn't I link this sometime previously? From David Weinberg at Ohio State.

Best,

Tom

Tom,

"Although he didn't think of it this way, Einstein's modification was equivalent to adding a form of

energy with constant density and negative pressure."

In my admittedly simple and naive model, that "energy with constant density and negative pressure" is light. Though I would think gravity would be "negative pressure," so light would have positive pressure. It is the expansion to balance the contraction of gravity, which Einstein though would collapse space to a point. Which was why he added the CC.

Rushing off to work...

Regards, John M

Would it be possible to think of light as not just being massless, but having negative mass?

John, you're confusing radiation pressure -- which describes the interaction of electromagnetic waves with the surface of a particle -- and gravity, which describes the interaction of matter with spacetime.

If light were shown equivalent to gravity, Einstein's unified field theory would be standard physics today.

Best,

Tom

"Would it be possible to think of light as not just being massless, but having negative mass?"

Only if photons have zero momentum. The unreduced form of E = mc^2 is E^2 = m^2c^4 (pc)^2, which means that a particle with mass and zero momentum has negative mass.

Photons are massless and they do possess momentum.

John, why don't you believe me that it is easier to learn the math than to keep asking the worng questions?

Best,

Tom

Tom,

What really is mass?

Conventionally we think of it as substance, something anything called a "particle" would naturally have, but what the Higgs supposedly imparts is drag. Anti-drag would be "lift." Which is about what photons impart on those electrons they boost to higher energies.

What is math? As conceptual reductionism, it accelerates and magnifies our thought processes, but the caveat is it limits them to previously elucidated concepts and the direction which they are pointed. One way to refute an argument is reductio ad absurdum. To carry it out to the point where it becomes nonsensical. As I keep pointing out, the current models have started to devolve into absurdity, so the usual solution is not to continue, but to reset to some prior point, or otherwise examine all assumptions built into the model. While I may be wrong in my ideas as well, I would be in good company in that.

Regards,

John M

"What really is mass?

"Conventionally we think of it as substance, something anything called a 'particle' would naturally have ..."

No we don't. We conventionally think of it as equivalent to energy.

" ... but what the Higgs supposedly imparts is drag."

Huh? The Higgs field and the particle associated with it are simply predictions of the standard model of particle physics. The origin of mass-energy only completes the model.

"What is math? As conceptual reductionism, it accelerates and magnifies our thought processes ..."

When you show me one theorem you've proved, I'll listen to what you say about math. Your opinion as it is doesn't even come up to the level of hot air.

Best,

Tom

John,

"As simple dimensionality, sans the physical matter and energy occupying it, it would lack any properties to bound or move. Which leaves it with the properties of infinite and absolute."

Why would it lack those properties? There is no theoretical bar. There is of course one on Tom's universe, where if it existed it couldn't 'move' so causes problems. If it's more like the oceans, then all theoretical bars are lifted and a good number of paradoxes are resolved.

Light does ~140,000 miles/sec in water wherever the water is. Flowing in a river heading east, flowing in one heading west, At rest in the space station, flowing past the Statue of liberty, or flowing down the Ganges.

Light always does c locally. If you can point out any problems you think that 'Discrete Field' model doesn't solve, or even 'causes', I'll point to and explain where your understanding is incomplete.

Peter

Tom,

Ok. Why don't I predict the universe "began" 13.8 billion lightyears ago, expanded out from? in a fraction of a "moment" until it was billions of lightyears across, then slows down to mere lightspeed(the speed of light being something gifted from that platonic realm of "pure math" to this expanding space). This creation continues to extend on the fourth temporal dimension back to that immaculate conception and on into the "future" as those other galaxies disappear over the horizon line of how far light can still be discerned. Then everyone would have to believe me, because it is = to what is the received wisdom.

Do we make bets on how long before current cosmology goes the way of string theory?

Peter,

Do you think all of space originated from some point, 13.8 billion years ago? If not, how do you perceive the universe, if not spatially infinite?

Regards,

John M