Why Quantum?

John Cox

Pete,

Do you mean, to rotate one mirror so that it's plane surface is at 90 degrees to the first? jrc

pjackson

jc,

Yes, around the signal axis. My post to Georgina said 57.5o but for a refractive index of 1.55 the angle should be 57.2o.

It's the Brewster angle, but anomalous because, contrary to the laws of physics in all other cases, the whole Cartesian 'co-ordinate system' needs to be rotated to come up with any 'explanation'. The implications of that are irresolvable (unless you believe in time reversal etc.)!

The implications of the effect itself are not irresolvable and are free of anomaly if different starting assumptions are used (the same ones used in but limited to optical sciences in fact - founded on Huygens Principle).

That's an example of what I mean by suggesting we need 'joined up physics'.

Best wishes

Peter

pjackson

Lorraine,

"I contend that all views of reality are subjective." I agree, even from any point 'outside' the universe and fixed wrt it's centre of mass. I also propose we can rationalise observer states hierarchically to better define 'observation'. For consistent logic the definition 'AT REST' must always be wrt some local background system/frame (as the one I defined above). A rationale emerges, answering Johns question;

John,

"..redshift is, the expansion between waves. The question is whether this is due to the source receding, or is there some equivalence principle at work.."

It can be both due to the source OR observer receding if we define detection as an interaction, which then changes wavelength prior to 'measurement' (finding 'f' by computing against 'time'). In astronomy redshift is ALWAYS y/y, which is a pure wavelength effect, even if it's Earth's orbital recession around the sun There is no other logic. The tension with SR that implies is simply ignored and the anomalies remain, under the carpet.

In a nutshell, light entering our atmosphere changes speed to c wrt EARTH's centre of mass rest frame, which is essentially relativity as Einstein defined ("the postulates") but with domain limits less than infinity in all cases.

Or do we prefer the old physics free of such logical rationale?

Best wishes

Peter

John Merryman

Peter,

Further up this thread, Aug. 25, 2014 @ 17:38 GMT, I posted a link to an article mentioning photon to photon interaction and I'm wondering whether that over billions of lightyears travel, there isn't sufficient interference that redshift is a form of 'tired light,' but from interaction with other sources of light, not dust or gas.

As it is, I keep trying to point out to Tom, among others, that this presumed expansion of space can't be considered relativistic, if the speed of light isn't increasing in order for it to remain constant to this expanded space. That, in fact, by assuming these distant galaxies will recede in terms of constant lightyears, it does in fact assume a stable dimension of space, as measured in lightyears, just an increasing distance in these terms. So if it's actual recession, it would otherwise mean we appear as being at the center of the universe. Which if this is an optical effect, is entirely logical. You could say the measure of space swells between galaxies and contracts into them and the light we receive from the most distant galaxies is that which mostly travels this intergalactic field.

It is safe to say that if Tom had an explanation for why I'm wrong on this point, I'd have heard it and not just be posting links to descriptions of Inflation theory.

Regards,

John M

John Merryman

Steve,

I don't know that it has to be entirely due to usefulness. Lots of things happen, not due to linear cause and effect, but thermodynamic pressures. It is safe to say the physics community is in a speculative bubble of significant proportions and the trigger to pop it could be another theory, but at this point it is simply that it is hard to come up with anything much more fantastical than multiverses and unless you can keep the crowd moving forward, it loses momentum and starts going off in other directions.

The wave has crested and so rather than some larger wave coming along, I think it's more of a downward slope and in this instance, will mean re-examining lots of what is currently being taken for granted. Necessarily it will start off slow and just question those points still clearly in the speculative category, before really turning inward. While it isn't currently open to question, I think they will eventually realize the "fabric of spacetime," as an explanation for relativity, falls in the category of giant cosmic gearwheels as an explanation for epicycles. Blocktime doesn't physically exist. It is just a narrative effect. I suspect another ten years, minimum, before enough of the old guard loses sufficient influence/dies and the new generation grows sufficiently disillusioned with chasing their ghosts, that a proper revolution occurs. I hope I'm wrong on that timeline, because I'm getting old, but academia is slow.

Regards,

John M

Akinbo Ojo

John M,

Peter will probably reply you appropriately. You said, "You could say the measure of space swells between galaxies..."

Why must this 'swelling of measure of space' only be between galaxies alone? Why can 'measure of space' not swell between a planet and the Sun or between an orbiting electron and its atomic nucleus?

Could it not be that this 'swelling of space' keeps the Earth/Sun or Electron/Nucleus from marrying each other despite the longstanding affection between them?

Akinbo

Georgina Woodward

Thank you Peter for another interesting conundrum.( Not my mirrors.) Peter why is time reversal necessary? The unpolarised light reflected from the first mirror is polarized, the reflection from the second is also polarized but out of phase with the incoming light. Because the mirror has been turned to be 90 degrees to the ray there is perfect reflection back along the line of arrival. So destructive interference should cancel out the waves so the disturbance is smoothed out and isn't there for other light to be scattered from that would enable the ray to be seen.( As when we see the ray we are not actually receiving the light that is the ray itself, or the apparent light making up the image seen.) I'm missing something, I don't see why you say it is iresolvable. I should think that it isn't that photons aren't any longer arriving and being reflected its just that it can't be seen as a light ray. Which could be shown by having a photon detector incredibly quickly put in the path of the unseen ray reflected from the second mirror.

[deleted]

Akinbo,

Here is an interesting conversation on that idea.

"Now it's true that if you take a proton and you put it together with an electron, you get something that we call a hydrogen atom. But what that is, in fact, is a self-consistent solution of the two waves interacting with each other. They want to be close together because one's positive and the other is negative, and when they get closer that makes the energy lower. But if they get too close they wiggle too much and that makes the energy higher. So there's a place where they are just right, and that's what determines the size of the hydrogen atom. And that optimum is a self-consistent solution of the Schrodinger equation."

Peter is pointing out another interesting facet of space further down the thread, that our three dimensional Cartesian coordinate system maps space, rather than being some structural foundation for it and when you have different coordinate systems operating in the same space, they really are distinct systems and not necessarily frames within some larger frame. Think of that in terms of how people, or even countries relate. We all think we have this objective view and can't understand why everyone else doesn't see it in our terms, but our perspective is unique and subjective and coordinating different points of view involves necessary compromises between them, not finding some higher frame in which both the smaller frames are right.

The absolute is the essence from which we rise, not an ideal from which we fell. Space is both absolute, as that universal neutral state, as well as infinite. This sets the parameters of all that happens in it. We are drawn together in equilibrium and pulled apart by infinity.

Regards,

John M

Thomas Ray

John, that's gibberish. You apparently got nothing from this link I posted earlier.

Lorraine Ford

Peter,

Re observation:

I would contend that observation/measurement is about acquiring information, and that information always exists in some sort of relationship to other information e.g. at the particle level information exists in law-of-nature relationship to other information.

Re hierarchy:

I'm thinking that while light frequency might be a category of information at the particle level, living things further categorize this information into e.g. red and blue light. So there's a sort of hierarchy of information categories. A particle could not experience "Red", but a living thing could.

Cheers,

Lorraine

pjackson

Steve,

I disagree with your post. The single CMB dipole rest frame is inconsistent and an over simplification. It gives rise to a number of anomalies. Scott and Smoot tried to resolve them in their 2004 Nobel winning paper by invoking localised expansion rates but recognised that didn't resolve.

What I suggest DOES resolve the apparent hierarchical 'speed' changes is a version of Stoke's 'dragged ether' (never properly falsified) where inertial systems simply have domain boundaries defined by the (otherwise anomalous) astrophysics shocks ('two-fluid' plasmas). These shocks then perform the exact function of Maxwell near/far field transition zone, and are positioned proportional to mass and speed. At a lens they constitute the surface fine structure. Any Radio antenna engineer will tell you exactly how far they are from an antenna for any wavelength. For visible light it's within 1 micron. For a star it's around 100 AU's (as Voyager 2 is now finding).

That model, dividing space into 'discrete fields' (real virial inertial systems) is very unfamiliar at first, but I've found it highly consistent. A solution to QG is suggested. Do identify any flaws you perceive (check out my recent essays).

Peter

John Merryman

Jeez Tom,

To repeat myself for the umpteenth time;

" When astronomers say that the universe is expanding, they're talking about the rather abstract concept of space-time."

If this is expanding SPACETIME, why. doesn't. the. time. increase. as. well???????

Have you ever heard the term "constant" applied to this relationship between space and time, as measured by the speed of light? That it means no matter what happens to the space, light crosses it at a constant rate???? So if the space is EXPANDING, WHY DOESN'T THE SPEED OF LIGHT INCREASE IN ORDER FOR IT TO REMAIN CONSTANT TO THIS EXPANDING SPACE??????

"The beetle represents anything within space, such as baseballs, spaceships or photons. When the beetle burrows through the bread, he is moving relative to the dough, and all the other raisins."

So what or where does this measure of space, which the beetle/photon is measuring, "relative to the dough," come from???

It seems there is this stable space inside the expanding space, but mathematically, if you are measuring this expansion in terms of the stable unit, then that stable measure is the denominator and so the expansion is only the numerator. That would make it increasing distance, ie. more of the stable units. If the expansion was the denominator, then everything would be defined in its terms, ie, the beetle, the photon, the space crossed by the photon, etc, would have to spatially increase proportional to the expansion.

Regards,

John M

Thomas Ray

"A particle could not experience "Red", but a living thing could."

In fact, Lorraine, only particles -- not living things (assuming you mean biological entities) -- experience "red" or any of the other colors of the visible spectrum. They even experience many more "colors" of the spectrum not visible to us. This is due to the photoelectric effect in whose properties Einstein was a pioneer.

Important to remember is that when you or I experience "red," we are seeing in a red object every color except red. That is, we are seeing the color that the object rejects, while all the other colors are absorbed.

Thomas Ray

"If this is expanding SPACETIME, why. doesn't. the. time. increase. as. well???????"

Because all physics is local.

You apparently didn't get to the last paragraph:

"So, while the speed of light remains an unbreakable barrier for those of us within the universe, it can't limit the expansion of space-time itself. The universe keeps right on expanding, but the speed of light limits how much of it we can see, and how fast we can move. It may not be fair, but that's physics."

pjackson

Georgina,

It takes 180 degrees not 90 to reflect back along the arrival axis. But if you read my specification more carefully you'll see the rotation of the 2nd mirror is also around the BEAM axis. That is, around the "axis" of say a laser beam arriving at a 57.2 degree incident angle. The beam will then STILL arrive at the same incident angle but now be reflected 'SIDEWAYS' to your eye.

Except that it wont. The beam entirely disappears. There is no interaction with the incident light! ('time reversal' among other nonsense can explain it as the light didn't then arrive!)

Past analysis, i.e. Ference 1956, suggests this proves light has ONLY lateral 'waves', inconsistent with almost all other physics! (The first mirrors glass absorbs (refracts) y axis light, (so it's 'plane polarised), the second absorbs the z axis light, so there's none left, so there can be no longitudinal (x axis) wave component!.

However, by using the same assumptions as the DFM a consistent logic is possible, where oscillations can retain the full 3D spherical freedoms found elsewhere. Longitudinal components are simply absorbed or reflected by proportion to angle.

The 'moving mirror paradox' is akin to the Dynamic Casimir Effect, itself apparently fatal to the 'Wonderland' interpretation of SR. It's logical resolution uses the same foundations. Maxwell's near/far field transition is simply a speed and wavelength change at the 'two-fluid' plasmon surface fine structure. 'Virtual' electrons are REAL! just in the 'other' frame, continually propagating and annihilating (a well known process at the Debye length).

Light hitting the mirror moving in the vacuum is then modulated to c in the mirror frame on arrival, reflected, then instantly modulated back to c in the ('far field') 'vacuum' frame. At an antenna and for longer wavelengths this 'transition zone' is well known to vary subject to lambda.

That means you're right about subjectivity. At a lens light's speed and wavelength are modulated to local c by each observer's lens TZ, giving the 'personal' Doppler shift found. Quite simple really, just a bit different to some current assumptions. See the logic?

Best wishes

Peter

pjackson

John,

You're not crazy, there's certainly a paradox, but the original interpretation of SR has long developed soft shoe shuffles to sidestep each one so challenging it is like pinning down an ice cube. It'll go in circles forever till it melts. I prefer Einstein's final (1952) version which allows anomaly free interpretation.

Even the fundamental ecliptic plane transform anomaly of astrophysics still has no consistent relativistic explanation, but is just fine in SR if the transform is one of inverse speed and wavelength between the inertial systems to conserve local c. All physics is indeed then genuinely local.

Tom will of course disagree. But I think I've seen through Tom's ploy. He used to be in the army 'misinformation' section to keep the public and Ruskies in the dark, but has been doing it so long he can't stop! I suggest it's useful to hear that view, as all views, as it's flaws and limitations become clearer each time.

PS. I suggest all Cartesian systems should be 3D 'boxes' not 'wire frames'; as AE specified. Also AE in 1952; "..small space 's' in motion with larger space 'S'." As Earth and Venus's atmospheres have different motions through the heliosphere. Is that really that hard to visualise?

Lorraine,

I think more fundmentally. Humans, including lenses, are made of particles. And the concept 'red' is only a correspondence to some wavelength. All particles have a centre of mass rest frame which then represents a 'medium' rest frame. Thinking beyond the effect of relative motion on the scalar 'wavelength' before rationalising the delta of media motion then only confuses. i.e.;

Physical 'detection' can only be by 'matter'. The interaction itself modulates wavelength subject to the relative motion. Once that basic mechanistic truth is assimilated I find all the mists of confusion start to lift. Give it a try?

John Merryman

Tom,

The basis, the actual evidence of expansion, is redshift of light from those distant galaxies. Now we say the light travels further, because the same light is redshifted. So you say "all physics is local,"

So where is the split between the 'space' defined by the speed of the light and the redshift of the same exact light?????

Also that doesn't answer the second question, if the 'non-local' space expands, what is the basis of the 'local' space? In this theory, it is still the denominator, what distances like the size of the beetle, the distance traveled by light in a year, etc, are [i:]denominated in! That still makes the expansion the numerator, the amount of these stable units.

What is 'local' is your frame of mind.

Peter,

And all these frames and their relations are bottom up. The neutral state is empty space, not the zero point in some grand Big Bang 3D coordinate system.

Regards,

John M

Thomas Ray

"So where is the split between the 'space' defined by the speed of the light and the redshift of the same exact light?????"

There's no "split," John. Redshift simply means that light waves arrive later -- are shifted toward the red end of the visible light spectrum -- from objects farther away.

John Merryman

Tom,

Exactly. That's distance. Doppler effect is due to the source moving away in stable space. The train moving away from you doesn't stretch space. The tracks are not being pulled apart. The train is simply moving away and the sound takes longer to reach you, so it is shifted to a lower frequency in your frame. The reason they try to say space itself is being stretched, is to explain why we appear at the center of this expansion, with all those distant galaxies moving directly away from us and at rates increasing proportional to distance. Now if there was some optical effect causing redshift, rather than actual recession, this factor would be entirely logical, because we are the center of our view of the universe and it would compound on itself, eventually to the degree the most distant visible sources would appear to be receding at the speed of light, which would create a horizon line for visible light. Then it would all be shifting down to black body radiation, which we do detect as coming from the edge of the visible universe, otherwise known as cosmic background radiation.

The problem is that Relativity has already defined the measure of space as the speed of light. So saying there is an increasing distance, in terms of lightyears, contradicts the argument that it is relative, because in order for this expansion to be relativistic, the speed of light would have to increase proportionally, in order to remain constant with it.

Now with gravity, we already have an equivalence principle; That the effect of gravity is equivalent to the effect of acceleration, yet the surface of the planet is not actually accelerating upwards, in order for you to remain in pressed to it. So could there be an opposite equivalence principle at work here, that those distant galaxies only appear to be accelerating away from us?

Remember that gravity and this expansion are inversely proportional, resulting in the effect of overall flat space, as measured by COBE and WMAP. The result is that the measure of space between mass points/within galaxies contracts, while the measure of space between waves of light/between galaxies expands and these two effects are balanced, which would make perfectly good sense, if they are opposite sides of some larger cycle of expanding radiation and contracting mass/structure.

Regards,

John M

Georgina Woodward

Peter,

I was going to say can you explain more clearly what you mean but then thought I would go with what I thought you meant. IE the mirror turned so that it is at 90 degrees to the incident ray. So yes the ray deflected 180 degrees back where it came from.But you meant turn the second so it is 90 degrees to the first. So in my mind I'm still turning the mirror in the same way but now to give a different angle of incidence.

You wrote -Past analysis, i.e. Ference 1956, suggests this proves light has ONLY lateral 'waves', inconsistent with almost all other physics! (The first mirrors glass absorbs (refracts) y axis light, (so it's 'plane polarised), the second absorbs the z axis light, so there's none left, so there can be no longitudinal (x axis) wave component!."

It sounds a reasonable explanation to me because this isn't about physics of waves in general but a very special case of what happens when light that has hit a mirror at the Brewster angle and then hits another mirror at a particular angle. Is this total internal reflection of the remaining light or something else?

(I wonder if there really would be destructive interference cancelling out the waves when reflected back along incoming path.)

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