Pentcho,

it was an interesting article. It is true that scale relativity is not dealt with by Einstein and yet it is everyday experience that the output from the sensory data we receive does show difference in observed size depending on distance from source. Perspective has been known in art since the Renaissance yet seems ignored in physics. That fact of apparent size variation makes it obvious that the observed object is an image manifestation and not the object itself. Yet somehow that is forgotten when observations are dealt with within special relativity. It was really interesting to hear that they can reproduce Einstein's results using shape dynamics. I also think it a really interesting and important realization that shape has a stability that size does not, when considering distance from an observer. Though thinking about perspective I don't think that stability is retained in the output image of an observer, if the triangle is rotated about different axes and then observed. So it definitely it depends upon whether it is a triangle object of fixed shape who is angles can not change or an image fabrication that can vary according to how the sensory data from which it is constructed is received, that is under consideration .- though I suspect that Julian might still say that it is neither but a triangle in abstract shape space.That the triangles are being considered for tiling space and thinking about black holes just surprises me but it isn't absurd, merely seeing what the idea can do.

Luboš Motl repeats my argument against Julian Barbour:

http://motls.blogspot.fr/2016/01/space-dynamics-and-antirelativistic.html

"The first problem with Mercati's "replacement" is that the "relativity of simultaneity" isn't a postulate or axiom of relativity. It is an unavoidable derived consequence of the postulates. One may be interested in this question or not interested in this question (whether the simultaneity is absolute or relative). One may emphasize or suppress this question. But the point is that we may talk about it and once we do, relativity gives an unequivocal answer: different observers must differ in their notion of simultaneity of two events. Otherwise the equivalence of the observers (principle of relativity) must be violated; or (like in Newton's theory) the speed of light will depend on the motion of sources and/or observers."

Correct. And the speed of light does depend on the motion of sources and observers.

Pentcho Valev

Aargh. Can you never read what you cut and paste and come to the correct comprehension? The time you waste!

Motl said the very opposite of what you concluded.

Pentcho,

I found the full article, though it would have been much easier if you provided proper links. I am dismayed that the author took the time to write such a lengthy exceedingly scathing, vitriolic diatribe. I am somewhat dismayed with myself for reading such worthless, uncouth, shameless rubbishing of other people. Lubos Motl is extremely insulting, actually going beyond insult to extensive verbal abuse.I thought of giving some examples of that to demonstrate but I would be too ashamed even to quote it. Why channel all that energy into such a mean critique, has he nothing better to do with his time? Some physics perhaps? Julian Barbour is perusing his passion. At 87 why shouldn't he? I don't much like Picasso's work but he was passionate about it, doing something very different and unconventional and it is now highly regarded. There is a significant difference between constructive criticism intended to be helpful and personal attack presumably for some kind of ego inflating self gratification. I think Lubos Motl should lay off criticizing others and do some introspection.

Julian Barbour and his protégés want to abandon Einstein's relative time without discarding Einstein's relativity. This is impossible - my argument above explains why:

"Einstein's relative time is a deductive consequence of Einstein's 1905 two postulates - you cannot abandon it without abandoning (as false) a postulate."

Then Luboš Motl repeated essentially the same argument:

http://motls.blogspot.fr/2016/01/space-dynamics-and-antirelativistic.html

"The first problem with Mercati's "replacement" is that the "relativity of simultaneity" isn't a postulate or axiom of relativity. It is an unavoidable derived consequence of the postulates. One may be interested in this question or not interested in this question (whether the simultaneity is absolute or relative). One may emphasize or suppress this question. But the point is that we may talk about it and once we do, relativity gives an unequivocal answer: different observers must differ in their notion of simultaneity of two events. Otherwise the equivalence of the observers (principle of relativity) must be violated; or (like in Newton's theory) the speed of light will depend on the motion of sources and/or observers."

Barbour's "relative time" mistake is the only thing I intended to report here. Please let us not discuss Motl's personality - I am by no means his fan.

Pentcho Valev

    Einstein's work should not be a straight jacket that prevents any exploration around his ideas. Perhaps if anything is changed it is strictly speaking no longer Einstein's relativity. As Tom has pointed out to me there is no alternative interpretation to be made as what it is follows precisely from how it is formulated. That said, it doesn't mean the investigators are throwing away everything, declaring Einstein wrong and trying to usurp the model with their provisional explorations.Its more like 'what if we think about it this way?',and 'there are some interesting similarities', that's how I read it anyway. I would have thought that you, Pentcho, would actually support people looking into alternatives rather than jumping on Motl's snide bandwagon. Personally I don't see why just as Einstein thought of placing clocks in space, meter sticks could not be placed in space and then relative size can be compared to local size. Motl seems to think that scale in-variance of substantial objects precludes there being relative size, I think he is wrong about that, and wrong to ridicule people with greater insight than his own. Why not have a stick and a clock for goodness sake. What exactly Julian Barbour and team are doing is beyond my ken but live and let live, why not?

    Clearly a meter stick image that is seen as a result of received EM radiation is NOT a meter stick object made of atoms. Yet mental object recognition capabilities allow the received and processed information be associated with such an object. That object recognition capability is useful for an organism navigating and surviving within its environment. However to equate the output image with the object made of atoms is a category error. There is no way a seen car(image) that I can measure to be 1 inch in length with my near ruler is a car object in which full sized people made of atoms can fit. It follows, the distant image meter stick length can be measured by comparison with the length of the image of the near object meter stick.The seen length being a relative measurement. The distant image size varies like the size of the elephant mentioned in the article. One has to consider which space the shape is in. Is it an invariant object shape in external space or a scale variant output image that appears in a space-time image environment.( Or is it in an abstract mathematical space in which case 'objects' might be scale variant or invariant depending on how they are modelled to be. Lubos Motl seems to have been solely considering the first kind of space and object. Either that or he was falling into the category error of equating image with object and mentally applying the material object's full size to the image of smaller size and claiming the image size to be invariant-it is clearly not.)

    I discussed the same problem with Julian Barbour a few years ago:

    http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1495

    Pentcho Valev replied on Sep. 23, 2012 @ 11:03 GMT

    Author Julian Barbour wrote on Sep. 29, 2012 @ 08:41 GMT

    Barbour claims that absolute simultaneity and Einstein's 1905 constant-speed-of-light postulate are compatible and I disagree of course. Any reasonable scientist knows Barbour is wrong and yet... the prize went to him while I had to leave the contest.

    Pentcho Valev

      Pentcho,

      Whether Barbour is right or wrong, his program is compatible with Einstein. In fact, shape dynamics is an attempt to explain all physical constants. It is no more reasonable to reject the empirically measured constant speed of light, than it is to reject the first principle of thermodynamics.

      How are you coming on that refraction problem?

      20 days later
      2 months later

      • [deleted]

      • Post #37

      JULIAN BARBOUR AND TIME聽

      I do not deny existence of time as Barbour is doing. He wins FQXI research on origin of time few years ago. His article was published at Arxiv. Barbour tries to abolish time from physics, so in his article there is no symbol t for time.聽

      This is funny and shows Barbour did not get the point regarding what is time. It is true time does not exists as a physical reality in which changes take time. Barbour got that point, but he went in another extreme thinking that time does not exist at all. He is wrong. Time is not fundamental physical reality in which changes take聽place, time is merely numerical order of changes taking place in space.聽

      FQXI spend about 1,5 millions聽of Dollars for advanced research on time and Barbour article is the main result of this investment. It is sad to see to spend so much money for such a meaningless result as is Barbour paper. I also apply but I did not get 1 Dollar. Because I do not belong any official scientific organization. What a nonsense is this. About time there was written so much crap from the side of established scientist with no result.聽

      Now FQXI will spend few millions for research on the origin of the observer. I also apply, I send him my papers, but they answer me I'm not coming in consideration for grant. Again a lot of money will be spent with no result. Because this so-called 聽"established" scientists are "chewing" in their minds this old paradigm of physics with "space-time" (where time is 4th dimension" which is pure failure in which physics cannot progress.聽

      How is possible that after for more than hundred years in physics is still believed time is the 4th dimension of space? - ResearchGate. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_is_possible_that_after_for_more_than_hundred_years_in_physics_is_still_believed_time_is_the_4th_dimension_of_space#56f57fce40485402e96b27ff [accessed Mar 25, 2016].Attachment #1: 6_On_the_origin_of_the_observer.pdfAttachment #2: 2_Observer_as_a_Component_of_Health_Care_Psychic_Teleporting_and_Telepathy.pdf

        I encourage you to avoid the sour grapes and yet I also encourage you to keep jousting against the windmill's of pedagogy. You have model, I have a different model, and there are a large number of other people with different models.

        Mainstream science realizes that uniting gravity and charge forces will require a very different approach and that mainstream science remains trapped in a blind alley of its own pedagogy. However, if it were so easy to find a path out of the local minimum in which science currently finds itself, it would have happened long ago.

        I like your DQV (dynamic quantum vacuum) approach since it comes down to an aether and that is my approach as well in aethertime. However, since you still believe in both time and space, your DQV aether will necessarily have all of the same pathologies as does the current quantum foam of spacetime. Also, it is not clear what role phase and coherence has with DQV aether, which of course is how any aether will be a quantum gravity as well as quantum charge. In other words, where is the Schrödinger equation?

        Let's face it. You have not really made a very strong case for the usefulness of DQV aether for addressing the issues of cosmology that don't already have explanations. In other words, simply saying that DQV explains dark matter is not as useful as actually doing a calculation that shows that DQV aether shows how a galaxy rotates. Replacing dark matter with another equally mysterious substance called DQV aether hardly seems that useful.

        3 months later

        DQV aether ? I named gravitoetherton super fluid. Can it be the dark energy and dark matter, we are looking for. If we assume our space is an exotic super fluid consisting of many dark /white particles swirling and whirling and creating curves of Einstein around matter ? The water around a sink hole rotates with corks floating and near the sink hole, we see straight flow to wards the hole. The planets are just happened to be their and rotating in the fluid after correcting their placement from rotational centrifugal. No Newtonian force or curvature of space-time , simply flowing with the fluid. Are basically making mistake with force of gravity. Gravitons exist with a mass in the super fluid. Galactic rotation curve is due to non isotropic distribution of gravitons from center of galaxy to outer periphery. Because rotational centrifuging may distribute the gravitons in the fluid to sustain the disk and produce a curve as seen by Dr. Rubin. If gravity is not potential and not fundamental but emergent , then in my opinion it is emergent at two levels. Molecular push give us classical gravity where as reaction with color quarks inside protons and neutrons can give rise to quantum gravity. It may be worthwhile to qualify quantum gravity as strong nuclear force without assuming it a new fundamental force. We may not need strong nuclear force. Planck level action and reaction is not very much known and experiments in LHC can bring out the properties of graviton. However , I have produced a paper giving some ideas of our universe and parallel universe etc etc for scientific community to explore further. THE PAPER IS ATTACHED HEREWITH.Attachment #1: 2_New_Physics_with_Emergent_Gravity_Mechanism.pdfAttachment #2: 5_I_Think_Dr._Datta_Makes_A_Valid_Point_-_an_Astronomy_Net_Blackholes_Forum_Message22.htm

        You Know Amrit, it is just that people must eat..It exists jobs,funds, responsabilities,....The life is not easy and people must publish pappers.Of course the FQXI community is a kind of private team but they are transparent and permit to all to put their ideas for the first X on a totally transparent Platform.It is revolutionary in fact.The grants or this or that are not really important you know Amrit,the sciences ,them, yes are important.All deterministic work or theory one day is always recogised by the generalists and rationalists.It is the most important.The grants are a tool of dynamization of systems of research and it is well like that.Of course sometimes the competition is well, sometimes no.Thecomplementarity is better.Best Regards

        Sometimes I imagine the potential if scientists were focalised on global problems without competition but just to find global adapted deterministic and universal solutions.We could solve this planet in some years....

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