Dear En,

I saw your post at Ken Wharton and would like to answer your questions, but because they had nothing to do with his essay I will post the answers here.

"I wonder whether you would be willing to pose your question in an FQXi blog accessible to a larger audience"

Thank you for considering this issue sufficiently important to suggest this, but I am not sure the audience that I would potentially reach in this format is the audience I want to reach. For better or for worse, I have the impression that most of the people who frequent them are not professional physicists, but it is they who have to consider this argument. At any rate, I am working on this problem both from the relativity and from the quantum theory side, and the puzzle is by no means yet complete. Perhaps when I have more pieces together people will start paying attention.

"You are right, any inconsistencies in accepted theories must be investigated (if uncovered by qualified people)."

Well, just to be clear, I am not claiming that this issue is an inconsistency but that it is an apparent wrong prediction of the theory: A reasonable interpretation of the extrapolation of the theory to objects characterized by v=c should have led us to predict that there are no such objects, but in fact there are.

The claim that it is only "apparently" wrong, however, is based on my own ideas on how to resolve the problem, and definitely non-standard. But I don't want to force my own ideas on anyone: Anyone who wishes to do so, can try to resolve it on their own, but before this happens people first have to see that there is a problem. The bottom line, however, is that I do not take this to be grounds for rejecting special relativity. It is important for me to emphasize this because the argument could be co-opted by those who deny relativity, and I do not wish to be lumped together with the anti-relativity crowd.

"...such inconsistencies need to be looked at again regularly and not just "papered over."

Well, correcting again for the fact that this is not an inconsistency but an apparently wrong prediction, you saw Ken's response, which is a typical denialist one, as seen by the following:

a) He said "1) I think in terms of fields, not particles, *especially* when it comes to light,..." implying that my argument applies only to particles, not fields. Well, go back and check, I did not use the word "particle" even once, the argument is general enough to encompass both particles and fields, so that implication is false.

b) Even though I expressly said that my aim was only to convince him that there was a problem, and not to convince him of my ideas, he said nothing about whether he thought there was a problem or not (i.e. ignoring in his response the central issue I was talking about) but only "I'm the last person to tell anyone that a crazy idea isn't worth exploring, if you think that a promising topic has been unfairly neglected..."

So yes, this is disappointing but not unexpected. I think to a great extent this is because the problem is being pointed out by an unknown person. If it had been, say, Hawking or Witten, who pointed this out, then people would pay attention, as evidenced by the fact that theoretical physicists are willing to seriously consider ideas like 6 extra dimensions and/or a multiverse, even though there is absolutely zero evidence either in nature or in our established theories which implies this. The problem I am pointing out, on the other hand, is straightforwardly implied by what many physicists consider one of our best established theories of science.

"Just for my own curiosity, what is the evidence that such objects exist (v=c), and what is the duration of their existence, and how is that measured?"

Well, there are at least two kinds of objects associated with v=c, photons, the force carriers of the electromagnetic force in Quantum Electrodynamics, and gluons, the force carriers of the strong force in quantum chromodynamics. The indirect evidence that these exist is that they play an essential role in these theories, and these theories have very successfully withstood experimental challenge.

The direct evidence can be obtained by setting up an experiment in which a photon source is aimed at a detector a distance r away, emits photons at time t=0 and the detector indicates a detection at time t=r/c later. At a microscopic level, the emission event at the source and the absorption event at the detector are due electrons going from a higher energy level to a lower one, and vice versa, respectively. This is all well understood.

The "duration of existence" is a little tricky in relativity, because there are two time parameters, coordinate time and proper time. Proper time is the time measured in a clock at rest relative to the object you are observing. Coordinate time is the amount of time you assign based on a clock at rest relative to the observer. If the observer is at rest with respect to the thing that is being observed, the two are the same, otherwise they are related to each other by

[math]\tau=\frac{t}{\gamma}=t {\sqrt{1-v^2/c^2}[/math]

where tau is the proper time and t is the coordinate time, and gamma is the Lorentz factor. You can see that if v=c, you get tau=0, so a hypothetical clock in the rest frame of the object would stand still from the moment the object comes into existence until it goes out of existence, even if t could be billions of years (for example, light coming from galaxies billions of light years away). All this is also well understood and not controversial. However, as I mentioned in Ken Wharton's blog, it does imply a problem that is currently not recognized by physicists because, again, if we did not already know that such objects exists, this would have surely have led us to believe that a prediction of the theory is that they don't exist.

Finally, I did look over your short paper. It is rather informal. Although I tend to sympathize with what I perceive to be your main point, that the essential thing that distinguishes math from physics is that the latter uses numbers to express relationships between things characterized by physical qualities, let me just mention that one could mount a counterargument: In mathematics, there is a mathematical object called a measure, and the measure can represent any physical quality you want: Length, time, mass, apples, oranges, even probabilities. While often measures are used without dimensional units, they are used with dimensional units even in some areas of mathematics, for example length measures in geometry.

Hope you found my comments useful.

Best,

Armin

    En,

    Thanks for your comments on my essay and the spirit in which they were offered. Those 11 pages of unused white-space in your own essay would certainly have come in handy!

    Now: Given the similarity of our conclusions and the rarity of such challenges* to Wigner's position, I'd welcome any deeper and more critical analysis of my work; especially given your facility with English versus us non-English engineers!

    * For easy comparison, here's my conclusion (from the piece that you cited):

    3.6. We therefore close with a happy snapshot of Wigner's (1960:14) views and our own:

    ... "The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve."

    ... Nature speaks in many ways, from big bangs to whispers [like the whisper of an apple falling], but just one grammar, beautiful mathematics, governs all her languages: thus all her laws.

    Here's yours: "There is no mystery. Whenever you find a consistent (repeatable) observation, it automatically means that you can use math to make utilitarian sense of it."

    So on this small but important point, it seems we agree: There is no mystery.

    [...] added for clarity. Cheers; Gordon Watson: Essay Forum. Essay Only.

    Hi Jon,

    Sure, put me on the spot. Couldn't you just ask me a simple philosophy question instead, or something?

    Your questions are about subjects in which I claim no expertise. Answering such questions would be like filling out a polling questionnaire. Unless you are a respected authority, nobody cares about your opinions.

    Only one question relates to my essay, and that is the one I will answer. (Yes, a couple of the other questions tangentially connect.)

    Re: "Whenever you find a consistent (repeatable) observation, it automatically means that you can use math to make utilitarian sense of it." Why do I think this is true? It is not based on any theory but rather on informal observation of both nature and science. If something happens consistently (is repeatable), then its behavior usually depends on mechanisms that obey some principles. It seems to me that math can model any repeating process, while attaining at least some compression. The claim could be false, but if so, only in rare cases.

    Yes, I will look at your essay.

    En

    Dear Armin,

    I will move this discussion to your essay page. The apparently "wrong" prediction of SR is your project. That's all I need, to have Pentcho Valev go after me.

    Please don't mention this Mensa thing. I am already embarrassed enough. I wrote my essay on the last day just before the deadline, and as I was filling out the form, they sprung this Bio requirement on me. Knowing that I had zero math or physics credentials, I tried to put something in there to gain "respectability." If I had more time, I would not have said anything besides that I am interested in this subject.

    En

    Gordon,

    Since this is about your essay, I will transfer it to your page (just wait, I will copy the necessary parts).

    In the meantime, if you have time and the inclination, you can look up two comments that I have made on other people's pages. They will give you a strong indication of the reasons that motivate my essay, and (potentially) provide philosophical "grounding" for all realist views.

    One is on Peter Martin Punin's page, so if you go there, look for En Passant wrote on Apr. 6, 2015 @ 04:55 GMT.

    The second one is on Marc Séguin's page. You should look for En Passant wrote on Apr. 3, 2015 @ 18:20 GMT. I intend to continue the discussion (which did not end with Marc alleging that we both make comparable assumptions, but I let him off the hook) on Punin's page. His position, being Platonist, subsumes the MUH. Being an engineer, you should like my comment on Marc Séguin's page, as it involves a bicycle chain analogy. (I am just getting you back for your sarcasm - from your comment above: "...especially given your facility with English versus us non-English engineers!...")

    That's all I will say on my page.

    En

      "There is no mystery"

      Have you heard about the connections between Monstrous Moonshine and String Theory? Dont worry about understanding the details. There are some short popular accounts that give the general idea. Don't worry if you dont regard string theory as physics. You just have to accept that it was developed out of physics rather than pure maths. Dont you think the connection is a little mysterious?

        Philip,

        I think we use the word "mystery" slightly differently. When I believe that there is a rational (in this case mathematical) explanation for something then I don't call it a mystery. (We just don't yet know what that explanation is.)

        With this in mind, to me the connections between Monstrous Moonshine and String Theory are "interesting" (but not mysterious). I am nearly 100% certain that eventually someone will figure it out.

        When you say that it (ST) was developed out of physics rather than pure maths, it makes me wonder about all the stuff I read about it elsewhere. The consensus seems to be that ST is pretty much all math (and no physics). I am also led to believe that the people who developed it were mathematical physicists, and that they started with mathematical representations of "strings," and "ran with it mathematically from there." If this is true, then a natural insight would have to be that the properties initially ascribed to the "strings" already "mapped" to Monstrous Moonshine (or at least to something from which MM can be derived).

        In any case, once you establish parity between math and physics in a given area, it is only natural to expect math to continue to apply to the same physics (viewed differently) as you develop it. The physics part follows its internal physical logic, and the math just mirrors it. You see it the other way around, and I can conceive of a sense in which your view of things is right.

        En

        Dear En,

        I just put on my forum an answer to your last post; if you wish, the ultimate and final. But it would be regrettable.

        Best regards

        Peter

          Dear Peter,

          I have not yet looked at your page to see the answer you refer to here. But I would welcome our discussion to continue beyond the confines of this forum (which will "expire"). For that (if you don't mind), please indicate an email address (on your essay page) to which I can write.

          I will reply to your latest comment today or tomorrow.

          Have a nice weekend.

          En

          4 days later

          Thanks En, I'll address the issues and continue this discussion on my page.

          But please note: There was no sarcasm in the piece that you quote! The genuine call for help should had been clear (to you, of all people) from the tortured Title of my essay and your own call for me to: "Please have mercy and consider the reader."

          With best regards; Gordon Watson: Essay Forum. Essay Only.

          Dear En Passant,

          Your essay is short, but sound on many points.

          Few have raised the case of categories (not in the mathematical sense, more in the spirit of Eleanor Rosch or George Lakoff), your qualities.

          The connection you express between mathematics and physics states clearly the basic idea of empirical knowledge, with only a pragmatic criterion, under conditions of repeatability or reproducibility.

          I won't paraphrase everything, I'd be longer than you.

          Very good points.

          Regards

            Dear En,

            This is nice and to the point. Your writing displays an interesting personal stance and I'm sure you enjoyed the exercise. I think that you're right when you're saying, in the third paragraph, that Wigner's expression should not be taken literally as it was more a metaphorical way of encouraging new lines of thought and maybe a feeling of delight in the face of the best known parts of the natural world.

            Warm regards,

            Alma

              Dear En

              I just posted on my forum a reply to your last comments.

              Best regards

              Peter

              Dear Vincent,

              I am glad you understood what I was saying.

              And I thank you for reading my essay. You already know that I could not care less about winning anything.

              But I am not only studying physics - I have to understand everything. If you would be so kind, could you tell me where your last name comes from?

              If I were to place it on a map, it would be somewhere in Western France (similar names also occur somewhere between Turkey and Eastern Europe). If you don't want to share this info, that's OK.

              En

              Dear Alma,

              I actually have many contacts with Romanians. They are extremely good at programming, and (in fact) BitDefender (the best antivirus program) is programmed by Romanians.

              Don't worry, the NSA can "get in" anyway. But their interests are not what we worry about (banking, etc.).

              En

              Dear Sujatha,

              Your last name (in Sanskrit) means something like "the man who has unstoppable force."

              It is simply impossible to take Vedic (Sanskrit) wisdom, and think it is applicable to modern day physics.

              I know you would like to make that case, and those people were very wise. But you need experimentation to do science. That did not develop until not that long ago in Europe. Yes, I am aware of Ramanujan and Sun Tzu, and they were brilliant in their way.

              Your paternal line is likely to be R1a (possibly Brahmin).

              En

              En,

              I suspect that someone is conducting a Turing test. Many of her comments simply do not make any sense.

              Regards,

              Gary Simpson