Dear Colin,

Thank you for your response. Just a couple quick comments:

1. "I believe a paradigm shift in cosmology ought to come about from the failure of a second order test of general relativity in an experiment such as the proposed LATOR mission."

I hope that a second order test of GR will be performed soon. I suspect that most people are too tied to the expectation that any new test will just end up confirming GR, but since at this point we really do not know where its boundary lies, I would be more flexible in my expectations.

2. "Under this assumption, arrival times would vary because of differing path lengths. The variability of arrival times might be interpreted as variability in the speed of light. "

This is exactly what I meant when I was asking about a "change in lightspeed". My expression was sloppy and I thank you for correcting me. Like you, I would not expect the constant c itself to change based on what you presented. Again, I mentioned this because it seems to me that it might be a way of testing the tied light hypothesis.

3. "The section on gravitons was particularly interesting. I can't help wondering if gravitons might involve the quantum energy Hh."

Yes, this interpretation of gravitons is totally unexplored since it completely goes against the current paradigm. If I did not already have all my hands full with my current research program, this subject matter is what I would work to develop. While I do have some ideas about how I would go about exploring this, I must admit that the connection to Hh is not obvious to me (unless perhaps you mean the connection to gravitons as usually conceived, spin 2 particles traveling in space at c?). Care to elaborate?

Best wishes,

Armin

I don't have a specific graviton model in mind, but it is among some possibilities for the redshifted energy. If in each photon cycle pairs of "particles" are emitted, each with energy Hh/2 and opposite spin, then any spin is possible. Spin zero could fit well with a role as the smallest Higgs boson.

For spin 2, Clifford Will gave a formula for the speed of a graviton as a function of the ratio of graviton equivalent "rest energy" to graviton energy. If they are the same, the graviton speed is zero. That is an interesting possibility if one thinks of the redshifted energy that would accumulate around sources of radiation as dark matter. On the other hand it is likely that the concepts of zero-point energy and rest mass are fundamentally incompatible in which case it would be reasonable to take the graviton mass to be zero with speed c.

That's about all I've got.

Best to you

Colin

12 days later

Dear Colin Walker,

Your essay is over all the most important that I have read so far. And it is well spoken. My following comments are meant to be constructive. The negative you have already addressed for the most part.

Concerning your comment, "MacMillan's ether, Nernst's zero-point energy, and perhaps all potential energy including the Higgs field can be identified as being the same thing. The demon, it might be said, is in the details." I would like to offer some critical details.

I do believe that 'MacMillan's ether', 'Nernst's zero-point energy', and the 'Higgs field' are more or less about the same "stuff." I am convinced that the vacuum is constructed of charged matter which produces the Higgs field configuration at the background temperature which standard theory attributes to 'a big bang.' And that this solid structure, the Higgs field, and temperature are locked in a permanent phase state by pressure of surrounding charge. We become aware of this dark matter where it is warped or drawn toward large collections of mass in stars and galaxies. And a final bit of detail: This solid universal structure yields normal matter when excess energy dislodges even a few of the bits of charged stuff to cluster together with the "holes" left in the vacuum.

I addressed this and the relationship with time in my essay for the first FQXI contest, The Nature of Time.

Thanks,

Sherman Jenkins

    Dear Sherman Jenkins.

    Thank you for your interest and helpful comments. It had not occurred to me that the microwave background radiation might be associated with the Higgs field. The idea of charge leading to mutual repulsion seems like a natural way to account for the rigidity of the vacuum. Also, the idea of dark matter as concentrated Higgs field is appealing. Many good ideas!

    Best wishes,

    Colin

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