Quark Stars and a New State of Matter?

Reading further about pulsars led me to pulsar glitches:

[quote]A glitch is a sudden increase (up to 1 part in 106) in the rotational frequency of a rotation-powered pulsar, which usually decreases steadily due to braking provided by the emission of radiation and high-energy particles. It is unknown whether or not they are related to the timing noise which all pulsars exhibit. Following a glitch is a period of gradual recovery where the observed periodicity slows to a period close to that observed before the glitch. These gradual recovery periods have been observed to last from days to years. Currently, only multiple glitches of the Crab and Vela pulsars have been observed and studied extensively.

While the exact cause of glitches is unknown, they are thought to be caused by an internal process within the pulsar. This differs from the steady decrease in the star's rotational frequency which is caused by external processes. Although the details of the glitch process are unknown, it is thought that the resulting increase in the pulsar's rotational frequency is caused by a brief coupling of the pulsar's faster-spinning superfluid core to the crust, which are usually decoupled. This brief coupling transfers angular momentum from core to the surface, which causes an increase in the measured periodicity. It is thought that the coupling could be caused by a breaking of the pulsar's magnetic dipole, which would apply a torque to the crust causing a brief coupling between the two parts. [end quote]

I read this as a strange quark matter innercore coupling and decoupling possibility. When a pulsar moves perpendicular to it's jet, then the innermost core has aligned itself with the spin axis. When a pulsar moves in the same direction as it's jet, then the innermost core has swung more dramatically to align itself with the spin axis.

Pulsar schemtaic

Why it is more common for the larger swing is the next mystery to be solved.

Alan

The pix in attachment may explain why a supernova can explode twice; what lies at earth centre; the source of planetary and stellar magnetism; the reason behind celestial bodies spinning on the one hand (which matters more to Alan), and on the other hand (the aspect that matters more to me), why Michelson-Morley type experiments on earth surface are null (isotropy of light speed despite the earth's motion), while in contrast light arriving to observer from beyond the earth shows anisotropy and dependence on observer's motion (like CMBR and the need to correct for observer motion when studying Pulsar light); why the frequency of light should vary vertically with height as if there was a medium varying in density with height; why light grazing the surface of a celestial body should undergo refraction in the process. All these, in addition to resolving why outer lying stars do not escape from galaxies given their high rotational velocities as if galaxies contained more than the observed luminous matter, the major reason why dark matter was discovered in the first place. There may be more that the pix can explain.

AkinboAttachment #1: FQXi_pix.doc

Akinbo,

I appreciate the diagram and the consideration of strange quark matter at the core of celestial bodies. I don't quite see why there has to be a significant mixture on the surface though and also existence in the interstellar medium. Just having gravitationally anisotropic exotic matter at the inner cores of planets and stars would be enough to explain observations imv.

The null result from the M-M experiment is an interesting point of discussion. It is considered to show that a stationary aether doesn't exist in which light waves travel, analogous to waves on water. Yet we've ended up with a stationary "fabric" on which gravitational waves travel. Isn't the concept of space-time much the same thing as the aether?

Alan

Here's an interesting snippet on the first measurements of the speed of light:

View From Mars Hill: Jupiter key to estimating the speed of light

[quote]So what of this constant rate of light's speed on which the above numbers rely? In our Earthbound lives, light seems to travel extremely quickly, virtually instantaneously. How did we ever accurately determine the speed of light, and what does Jupiter have to do with any of this?

Soon after Galileo pointed his telescope at the heavens and discovered the four largest moons of Jupiter (known today as the Galilean satellites, in his honor), he attempted to measure the speed of light by setting up lanterns on distant hills. Galileo's plan was to flash his lantern and as soon as his assistant on the other hill saw this light, he was to flash his own lantern. Galileo would measure the amount of time between the two flashes and, knowing the distance between the two hills, could then determine the speed at which the light traveled. This crude experiment left Galileo without any conclusions, except that light travels much faster than sound.

Years later, in 1676, the Danish astronomer Ole Roemer observed that the eclipse times of Jupiter's moons correlated to the relative distances between Earth and Jupiter (and its satellites). When Earth was at its closest point to Jupiter, the eclipses occurred earlier than expected; when Earth was at its most distant point, the eclipses were later than expected.

As we now know, light travels too fast to be detected across the short distances of Earth, explaining why Galileo's experiment failed. However, when observed across the much vaster distances between bodies in space, as Roemer had done, the speed is detectable. Roemer used his discovery to measure the speed of light for the first time and prove that light moved at a finite speed. While his estimate was on the low side, due to imprecise estimates of related measurements, he still came up with a fair approximation of the modern accepted value of 186,000 miles per second.[end quote]

Alan,

This may not be your forte. RE: "The null result from the M-M experiment is an interesting point of discussion. It is considered to show that a stationary aether doesn't exist in which light waves travel, analogous to waves on water".

Let's leave the aether out for the moment. The greater importance of the M-M experiment vis-a-vis other experiments indicating on the contrary that earth's motion can influence light arrival times was that an earth-bound medium, not necessarily the aether must be present to explain the discordant light findings. In the absence of such a transparent medium Galilean relativity MUST be abandoned and another type of relativity (Lorentz transformation/Special relativity) MUST take its place. No feasible transparent candidate medium capable of being earth bound to influence earth surface experiments was found until long after the drama of 1887, 1905 and 1916. It was only from about 1932/1933 that a new actor previously unrecognized as a possible member of the cast came into reckoning and in my thinking it has come to rescue Galilean relativity from the strangle hold of Special relativity as the long sought earth-bound medium. See also the references in the pix I attached.

Akinbo

Akinbo,

I read the Wikipedia entry, Michelson-Morley experiment and it's quite clear that until the experiment an aether was widely accepted as the medium for light waves.

Why can't light be Archimedes screw shaped particles moving through space without the need for any medium?

Alan

Akinbo,

my apologies. Yes, I see what you mean now. Einstein's idea of relativity with frames of references *is* groundbreaking, yes. I always think of his thought experiment of someone bouncing a ball on a train. A stationary observer from outside would see the ball move differently to the person who was doing the bouncing.

[quote]Say you're standing on an open-sided rail car tossing a ball up in the air. Even when the train is moving, to you on the train the ball appears to be going up and down. But think about someone standing on the ground watching the train go by. To the stationary observer, because the train is moving, the ball appears to go on a diagonal path. Think about that a moment. If you're looking straight at the ball the moment it leaves the thrower's hand, you would have to move your eyes (or your head) in the direction that the train was moving to keep the ball in the center of your vision. Compare the position of the ball with respect to you when it leaves the thrower's hand with the position at the peak of the toss, and you should see what I mean when I say the motion of the ball is diagonal to the observer on the ground.

Now imagine instead that instead of a ball, the train rider was shining a pencil-beam of light at the ceiling of the rail car. On the train, the beam would appear to go straight up. But to the observer on the ground it would take a movement of the eye or the head in the direction that the train was moving to keep track of the beam of light as it went up to the ceiling. OK, you really wouldn't have to move your head or eyes because the light is traveling so fast, but this is a thought experiment.

Here's where special relativity comes in. Einstein said, "What if the speed of light were a constant no matter what?" In other words, if you shined a light, no matter how fast you were moving, the light traveled at the same speed. That creates a paradox. To the person on the train, the light goes straight up and hits the roof of the rail car. But to the person on the ground, the light goes on a diagonal to reach the roof of the car. The diagonal path of the light is like the hypotenuse of a right triangle, made by drawing a line from your eye to the roof of the car when the light was switched on to the point off to the side where the light hit the roof of the car from your point of view.

And you surely remember from your trigonometry class, that the hypotenuse of a right triangle is longer than the other two sides. So the light must have traveled a longer distance, and traveling a longer distance takes more time. But for the person on the train and the person on the ground, light is moving at the same speed -- but it traveled farther on the train. How can something traveling at the same speed travel along paths of different length and get there at the same speed?

The solution to the paradox, Einstein said, was that for the person on the moving train, time was moving more slowly. Not that it would seem to be moving more slowly to the person on the train, but compared with the speed of time for the person on the ground, it actually would be slower.[end quote]

My point is this: Why does light *have* to have a constant speed no matter what?

His conclusion that 'time' would be moving more slowly on the train doesn't make any sense, especially when we've already worked out that pendulum clocks tick more slowly in a lower gravitational field contrary to faster ticking atomic clocks.

Incidentally, Speed of Light May Not Be Constant, Physicists Say (April 2013)

Alan

Something I just read:

This second following quote is from a letter Einstein sent to Erwin Finley-Freundlich dated August 1913.

[Quote]:"If the velocity of light is only a tiny bit dependent on the velocity of the light source, then my whole theory of Relativity and Gravitation is false". [Unquote]

I just read this too:

[quote]The key logic behind Special Relativity was that Maxwell's equations for electromagnetism looked like exact, universal laws of physics, and their solution gives light waves with a universal speed.[end quote]

The difference here is Maxwell's "universal speed" and Einstein's "constant speed no matter what". Did Maxwell's equations require light to have a "constant speed no matter what"? I assume not.

I can imagine light to be emitted from baryonic atoms at the same speed independently of what atom it is. But I can't imagine time slowing down in a train because a laser beam is used instead of a bouncing ball.

Akinbo,

having read through your last post with more scrutiny, I see where the problem lies. You say "In the absence of such a transparent medium Galilean relativity MUST be abandoned and another type of relativity (Lorentz transformation/Special relativity) MUST take its place." but I believe this to be an incorrect point of view. Just because light rays behave on Earth irrespective of it's 30km/s orbiting the Sun is just the same as if I was kicking a football against a wall northward or to the east. There's no perceptible difference, just like there's no perceptible difference with light. The experiment shows that there is no need for any kind of medium to explain the travel of light imv. There is no need for your hypothesis of dark matter to be the mystery candidate for such a medium.

Incidentally, I didn't realize that it was Galileo who first comprehended relative motion, see Galilean invariance. His idea of someone below decks of a ship on a calm sea not knowing whether the ship is sailing or not is a direct starting point for Einstein's open-sided train. Einstein just introduced the idea of a distant observer.

Alan

Alan,

I, Peter Jackson, Eckard in the main have had a couple of exchanges on the Faster than light blog. We are not 100% in agreement but my position is closest to Peter's. There was also a mention of Galileo's ship hidden away somewhere in the exchanges. I also made some posts on the Testing Reality in Space blog.

The major issue for determination is whether or not movement of an observer can hasten or delay light arrival time. Special relativity says no. Arrival time based on your position at the moment of emission cannot be influenced by your subsequent motion before the light arrives. And surprisingly experiments confirmed this to be true in certain circumstances as with M-M type experiments, the motion of the stationary earth based observer towards or away from incoming light on earth surface does not seem to affect light arrival time. Imagine yourself in the centre of a cross with equidistant light sources at E, W, N, S, since the earth is rotating counterclockwise as seen from the North and also orbiting it is reasonable to expect the light from the East to reach you first and the light from the West to reach you last, but they all reach you at the same time. Why?

However, as you must be aware since you (and Peter J) have much interest in astronomy, exotic stars and pulsars, that your motion influences the pulsar timing measurements and these have to be deducted to obtain the accurate pulsar periods.

Akinbo

*If you don't want to populate your blog you can move the discussion elsewhere on this site where Peter J, Eckard, Pentcho and I have had some exchanges.

Sorry Alan,

Just to add. You posted, "Why can't light be Archimedes screw shaped particles moving through space without the need for any medium?" Can you resolve the dilemma through these screw-shaped particles of light? That is, you at the equator and four sources of screws at E, W, N, S positions, equidistant from you at the centre and all to fire just one screw simultaneously. If earth rotates counterclockwise, i.e. at the equator from West to East and you are stationary on the earth, how come all the screws from the four directions reach you at the same time?

In a similar rotational experiment, this time that of Sagnac, the screw fired from the East arrived first and that from West last.

Again in another experiment with you stationary on earth, the screw towards which you are moving arrived earlier and that away from which you moved arrived later. You see the dilemma? So not so easy for screws to resolve this or what do you think.

Akinbo

Akinbo,

You are understandably confused with this thought experiment of yours:

"Imagine yourself in the centre of a cross with equidistant light sources at E, W, N, S, since the earth is rotating counterclockwise as seen from the North and also orbiting it is reasonable to expect the light from the East to reach you first and the light from the West to reach you last, but they all reach you at the same time. Why?"

It is essentially the same experiment as the M-M. Getting back to the M-M set-up. The laser beam travelling north also has a velocity to the east due to the rotation of the earth, which is transferred to the apparatus emitting the laser beam. Seen from the moon, for example, the laser beam travels in a diagonal line up and to the right, then bounces off the mirror and travels in a diagonal line back down to the right. The laser beam directed eastward similarly has the same velocity of the rotation of the earth when it is emitted. Seen from the moon, the beam travels eastward exactly at the same rate as the northward beam. Both hit the mirrors at the same time and both return at the same time.

Thanks for the Sagnac effect connection.

[quote]The Sagnac effect in a circular loop can be understood as follows. When the loop is rotating, the point of entry/exit moves during the transit time of the light. The backwards-propagating beam covers less distance than the forwards-propagating beam and arrives earlier.(Fig. 3) This creates a shift in the interference pattern. The shift of the interference fringes is thereby proportional to the platform's angular velocity. [end quote]

This experiment confirms that light behaves like anything else imv just as the M-M experiment does.

@Peter: do you agree with this?

Alan

Alan,

Yes, the thought experiment is essentially the same as the M-M experiment. I am not confused. Replace light with sound in the experiment. What makes sound from the equidistant sound sources at E, W, S, N arrive at the same at the earth's equator despite the fact the earth is rotating in the direction of one source and in a direction opposite the other, i.e. rotating W to E?

But something more relevant to your interest just occurred to me so I will get back on the supposed confusion.

Given on the one hand the hydrogen atom's parameters, the charge, classical radius and the formula for the attraction force between them which must balance the repulsive force between them, whatever its mechanism (i.e. exclusion principle, stationary waves, etc),

And on the other hand, given earth's mass of 6 x 1024kg, can the hydrogen atom remain stable and unsquashed by the gravitational attraction force between two halves of the earth if it lies at its core between them?

A preliminary calculation shows an electromagnetic attraction (and therefore repulsion) force of 9.2 x 10-8N for the unlucky hydrogen atom lying between two halves of the earth, which two halves at that atomic radius have a gravitational attraction force of about 2.4 x 1059N between them.

This very large difference which you may calculate with another atom like iron suggests that anything at the core may not have an atomic structure as you suggest, as this will be squashed under the intense gravitational force.

Akinbo

*This is just a thought out of the blue for now.

Akinbo,

Someone else has asked the same question about using sound instead of light for the M-M experiment:

Use something that slower than light in Michelson-Morley experiment

[quote]if you use something like sound you aren't measuring the speed of the aether because sound propagates as disturbances in air not in the aether. Using sound would measure how fast the air is moving relative to your equipment. This would work fine, though there are easier ways to measure wind speed.[end quote]

* I can't help you with the hydrogen atom at the center of the earth idea I'm afraid.

Alan

Alan,

Take a second look at the atom at the core topic. It quantitatively supports the quark matter at the core hypothesis. If no atom can remain an atom at the earth's core, then another form of matter must be there.

On your using sound instead of light, air, gravitationally bound to earth forms a matter medium that makes all the sound waves arrive simultaneously, whether from E, W, S or N. Space or the historical aether, could not do same for light by providing a logically consistent medium that can be so bound to explain the M-M result. Hence the resort to displacement contraction and time dilation in Special relativity. In Galilean relativity, an earth-bound transparent medium will do for light what air does for sound, thereby explaining the M-M experiment logically. My question: what disqualifies non-baryonic dark matter, given its suggested abundance, transparency and ability to be gravitationally bound?

To clinch it, light coming from beyond earth, that is from outside the cabin in Galileo's ship will arrive earlier or later depending on which direction the ship is moving. This is seen in the anisotropy of CMBR and in Pulsar timing measurements. Special relativity has no explanation for this, while Galilean relativity does explain the scenarios above and below deck.

Akinbo

Akinbo,

We are going in circles. The Earth's core is a mystery to mainstream science because it is seismically anisotropic and it also produces the Earth's magnetic field which protects us against harmful cosmic rays. The temperatures and pressures can't be replicated in the lab. It's a big problem.

Let's get back to the Michelson-Morley experiment. It is directly analogous to the laser beam fired upwards in the moving train scenario. Please read this copied passage carefully:

[quote]Say you're standing on an open-sided rail car tossing a ball up in the air. Even when the train is moving, to you on the train the ball appears to be going up and down. But think about someone standing on the ground watching the train go by. To the stationary observer, because the train is moving, the ball appears to go on a diagonal path. Think about that a moment. If you're looking straight at the ball the moment it leaves the thrower's hand, you would have to move your eyes (or your head) in the direction that the train was moving to keep the ball in the center of your vision. Compare the position of the ball with respect to you when it leaves the thrower's hand with the position at the peak of the toss, and you should see what I mean when I say the motion of the ball is diagonal to the observer on the ground.

Now imagine instead that instead of a ball, the train rider was shining a pencil-beam of light at the ceiling of the rail car. On the train, the beam would appear to go straight up. But to the observer on the ground it would take a movement of the eye or the head in the direction that the train was moving to keep track of the beam of light as it went up to the ceiling. OK, you really wouldn't have to move your head or eyes because the light is traveling so fast, but this is a thought experiment.

Here's where special relativity comes in. Einstein said, "What if the speed of light were a constant no matter what?" In other words, if you shined a light, no matter how fast you were moving, the light traveled at the same speed. That creates a paradox. To the person on the train, the light goes straight up and hits the roof of the rail car. But to the person on the ground, the light goes on a diagonal to reach the roof of the car. The diagonal path of the light is like the hypotenuse of a right triangle, made by drawing a line from your eye to the roof of the car when the light was switched on to the point off to the side where the light hit the roof of the car from your point of view.

And you surely remember from your trigonometry class, that the hypotenuse of a right triangle is longer than the other two sides. So the light must have traveled a longer distance, and traveling a longer distance takes more time. But for the person on the train and the person on the ground, light is moving at the same speed -- but it traveled farther on the train. How can something traveling at the same speed travel along paths of different length and get there at the same speed?

The solution to the paradox, Einstein said, was that for the person on the moving train, time was moving more slowly. Not that it would seem to be moving more slowly to the person on the train, but compared with the speed of time for the person on the ground, it actually would be slower.[end quote]

Alan

Alan,

"@Peter: do you agree with this?" It's not quite consistent Alan. Any 'velocity' must be assigned a datum rest frame. But your analysis IS a slight improvement on current doctrine. Did you know Michelson's later better (1926 Chicago) experiment with Gore and Pearson found quite differently, but was equally poorly interpreted. Dayton Millers were streets ahead, but the increasing velocity with altitude not coherently interpreted until atmospheric refraction and extinction is applied.

Looking fundamentally; It was clearly Stokes/Fresnel/Heaviside/Planck who were closest with 'dragged aether' except 'aether' is not the dielectric medium, so they were eclipsed by SR,- itself still inconsistent.

To take an overview, we still think 'homocentrically', believing our view is important, and that we can affect light propagation speed by moving through the ambient dielectric medium towards the source!! That's massive arrogance. I say again, we need a new Copernican/Galilean revolution;;;

We do NOT affect light propagating at c somewhere else by simply deciding to move at v towards the source. We DO however modulate it to out own 'c' (change it's speed by v) the instant it ARRIVES, and before "computation" (DFM). Current theory forgets the detector is part of the system so gets that wrong.

It seems to need Bragg's 'new way of thinking'. If you can find that way; here is a way it all works consistently, converging QM and SR to unity; Why and how moving mirrors reflect at c in the vacuum frame not wrt the mirror!

Best wishes. Peter

Peter,

To me the situation is crystal clear. Einstein made an *assumption* that the speed of light is constant w.r.t. any observer or any frame of reference. It was a whimsical assumption that is counter-intuitive and goes against common sense. He managed to convince the world that it was a correct assumption which now leaves modern physics in a nonsensical mess.

Akinbo is confused because he can't accept 100% that Einstein's special relativity is flat wrong. It took me years to come to this conclusion with absolute clarity.

Alan