Oh I forgot to add...
This reworking of Einstein means that the speed of light in our local universe is set by the total mass of the universe, or at least that within our Hubble-radius bubble. I.e. - the speed of light would be unbounded in a universe with no massive substance but is slowed by the presence of matter in the local universe, as it is in water or glass.
All the Best,
Jonathan
And one more thought...
Amitabha Ghosh wrote in one of his books, that the mass of the universe as a way to account for the slowing of light works out 'about right.' I think he was implying the relation above. But as Alan says; nobody wants to mess with Einstein's assumptions from SR, and they seem to feel they should be ported to GR intact. His teacher Minkowski wrote of the death of space and time subsumed in spacetime. So there is some weight behind these ideas - but something has to give, in order to make progress.
More later,
Jonathan
You might like my comment below Alan...
My first mention of inverting Relativity was in '97, and I explicitly set out that one could solve c^2 = E/m and let m go to 0, showing that light in a massless realm would have unbounded speed, and suggesting that the current value of c is set be the weight of the universe. But even years later; I've been too timid to bring that up. Now it seems to yield meaningful answers.
JJD
Edwin Eugene,
"We cannot perform measurements in the moving frame from our observation point in our frame, so relativity is not an empirical model and does not lie within the domain of science."
For a 'physically' set mind it is no doubt a major leap to elevate the observer frame over those moving relative to that frame. From a philosophical point of view it is only a first step in the right direction, however.
To begin with, I don't think that it is the impossibility to make physical measurements in other than the observer frame rendering special relativity 'non-real'. Einstein's relativistic "juggler" is a misconception inasmuch Gallilean relativity results from millennia-old human experience that the PHENOMENA (here: juggling!!!) hold in frames of uniform motion, which in turn is sufficient to know that also the laws of physics hold. In other words, all frames in which the phenomena hold are equivalent. Which PHENOMENA - if any - would prevail in a spaceship moving at 90% speed of light we simply don't know. The consequence is that we can't know whether the laws of physics hold under such conditions and we will never know as long as we believe in E=mc2.
Why phenomena are important: while your energy-time theory rests on other assumptions than special relativity, it yet harks back to physical notions and concepts. It may make certain 'cracks' of special relativity go away (and cause others?), but anyway remains physico-tautological and thus an irresolvable matter of controversy. It doesn't change anything in the world, does it?
In my various contest contributions I have tried to argue that there is no positively knowable relation between the phenomena and the laws of physics. Then, if it is true that the laws of physics are related to the phenomena by nothing but Absolute non-falseness, there is a non-tautological reference not of physical TRUTH, but of non-contradiction, adequacy and ultimately practicability. Only under this condition becomes Popper's falsification as an armchair job (the judgement of assertions) viable and meaningful. In sum: the step beyond your theory yet to be taken is the step from the priority of the observer frame to the observer as the speaker of a language, that is, to the phenomena.
good luck for your mainstream-erosive essay!
Heinz
Dear Alan M Kadin,
Thanks very much. I too look forward to your essays every year. We are on the same path, although we often differ in the fine details. You say in your essay:
"Taking these definitions into classical mechanics allows one to reproduce all the standard tests of GR, at least to first order in phi: gravitational red shift, bending of light, and rotation of the perihelion of Mercury. No reference to 4D space-time is necessary."
I fully agree with you that no reference to 4D is necessary. The 10 page limit prevented me from fully developing special relativity, for example the fact that I derived time dilation from absolute space and time last year. Since I believe that time dilation is the thing that makes most people accept relativity, it's significant that there is a non-relativistic explanation for it.
Anyway, I am now moving from SR to GR, and my approach is that 'curved space' is simply an alternative encoding of energy density in flat space. The relevant physical info is gravitational energy density in flat space. Flat space coding carries no info. Remove the local energy density, as the equivalence principle demands and where does the information go? The physical info is now encoded in the coordinates. They are equivalent formulations. Only a mathematician could love the energy-less formulation, but as Hossenfelder points out, some are more driven by 'mathematical beauty' than by physical reality.
So thanks again and good luck.
Edwin Eugene Klingman
Dear Heinz,
Thanks for reading and thinking about my essay. Your points are well taken, but I disagree, for example, that it is "a major leap to elevate the observer frame over those moving relative to that frame."
Petr Beckmann [Einstein Plus Two] points out "the laws of physics...must hold regardless of any observer, who should do nothing but observe." The behavior of electrons, for example does not depend on the observer but the local field with which it interacts. He says:
"In all experiments the observing instruments have always been nailed to the local field,so they could not reveal whether the observed effect was associated with an observer-referred or a field-referred velocity."
His is a powerful book that I only came upon after finishing my study of special relativity.
It's reasonable to assume that in fixing "cracks" in special relativity I might introduce some of my own. In fact, the physics is associated with the inertia factor gamma, while the paradoxes that are associated with the Lorentzian "mixing" of time and space disappear. Your doubts are reasonable, but I believe they are misplaced.
As for "not change anything in the world", energy-time theory makes different predictions. For example the observer can establish his own frame velocity, impossible in SR. More important, I believe, is restoring a sense of physical intuition, which has been lost in modern physics.
I will read your essay again before I comment on your approach.
Thanks again, and for your 'mainstream-erosive' comment.
Edwin Eugene Klingman
What Special relativity did was to change the coordinate system from the intuitive xyzt to xyzc. Therefore, the Shapiro delay had to be calculated with a standard of c which suggests a calculation of time dilation. The standard of measure was from rods and clocks to rods and speed. So, the math may work compared to measurements (be careful to NOT use clocks).
Thus, the speed of light is the fastest MATTER can travel and the Lorentz transforms are on Measurements. So, for experiments such as quantum eraser or entanglement, a speed of an ether wave can be much greater than light. And van Flandern measured gravity's speed and millions of times faster than light. But if an experiment is done relying on General Relativity (the left side of the field equation) the maximum speed that can be calculated is c.
I think it hubris to consider humans can know ontology. But we can predict and use our model for helping us.
Dear John C Hodge,
Hi John, and thanks for your comments.
I believe the speed of light is the fastest anything can travel. The colliding neutron stars implied that gravity and light travel at the same speed (as I would expect). I believe Bell's theorem based on Stern-Gerlach is incorrect and no entanglement is implied. The experiments showing entanglement are based on light and a different analysis is required.
I'm not quite sure what you mean about "the Lorentz transforms are on Measurements." I think they are on the models, which predict or are compared to measurements.
Relativity has two major types of experiments: time dilation and speed of light. In most cases they are entirely separate, but the time dilation experiments are still xyzt-based.
I don't think it's hubris to consider that humans can know ontology, but I'm quite sure that 4D and (3+1)D are conflicting 'ontology'.
It's not expected that all FQXi participants will believe the same things.
Thanks again,
Edwin Eugene Klingman
Dear Dr. Klingman,
Sensational essay!! Not speaking for you but putting my opinion forth is that: Your essay by a professional physicist is hopeful for a much needed wrenching of the control of physics from theoretical physicists. A less confrontational appearing restatement of this is: It is hopeful for the much needed return of physics to being the science of measurements.
James
Hi James,
Great to hear from you. Thanks for the very kind words. I hadn't seen your name yet, I hope you're entering this year.
I really am glad that you enjoyed the essay. I thought you might.
Take care, my friend.
Edwin Eugene Klingman
Jonathan,
I tried to reply earlier, but got knocked off the net.
Looking forward to any comments after you've read it.
If you're still in NY I hope you're not traveling on subway.
Have fun,
Edwin Eugene Klingman
Dear Edwin,
Thanks for your comments .
I fully agree that:
"In current approaches the question of ontology (if it even arises!) is often left up in the air; efforts are focused on mathematics. For those who believe that physical reality arises from mathematics, this probably makes sense. For the rest of us, physical reality (ontology) is a given, which we attempt to model with mathematics. This makes sense and has worked well for centuries".
Your presentation presentation is also very superb:
"With experimental evidence of particle plusreal wave, and a path to Schrödinger's equation of quantum mechanics, we now ask how real physical waves provide abstract probability amplitudes?"
"So quantum mechanics is based on real local particle-plus-induced-wave, not on mystical non-local superposition of non-real wavefunctions of the kind Bohr, Feynman and others insist "no one can understand." Recall that John Bell was inspired by de Broglie's theory and noted that the wave is just as real as Maxwell's fields, stating "No one can understand this theory until he is willing to think of as a real objective field rather than just a 'probability amplitude'." 16ΨBell also noted "...two particles interact at short range and strong spin correlations are induced which persist when the particles move far apart." This is entanglement, a very fragile resource,17 but just how far can one particle interfere with another or with itself?"
I hope that my modest achievements can be information for reflection for you.
Warm Regards,
Dr. Klingman,
I was anxiously waiting for your essay to appear. I know you work very hard to advance science and you remain one of very few people have helped me.
Your review of relativity literature was impressive. Like others I was run over by the train but eventually recovered. It takes deep insight and courage to uncover the assumptions, especially those of AE.
It sounds like you, after all the work, talk and a century of confusion, are ready to move on. Alan Kadin's essay was similar. He says he wants to help create a neo-classical re-formulation of QM. Like you, he appears to agree that time is everywhere the same. Admittedly I don't have the background you have but nature appears to have uniform laws that incorporate energy and energy is just E=hv. As you point out, we should not trust velocity additions. I think everyone agrees that energy is conserved but it is foolish to add velocities and then expect the addition to represent energy (the V^2 problem). But it goes deeper, velocity appears to be "in the mind of the beholder" (it also has a zero problem). Yes, we all know that velocity is represented by a shift in energy. The problem we seem to be having is how does time shift and stay the same at the same time? My essay was about that.
I know my diagram are confusing, but:
This represents Probability 1 throughout the universe. The neutron is the manifestation of laws that are everywhere the same. It is duplicated everywhere (Pauli's exclusion principle?). Time is the same everywhere based on the right hand side. Total energy=0 =Total M+ke+pe -Total Field Energy.
But outside the constant mass of the neutron, there is energy labelled "average of all outside energy". There can be large puts and takes from the average (I call this a reservoir in my essay). When a particle takes energy, it displays velocity. There is an energy shift and a time shift but the energy came from somewhere else. The average is maintained and it does not affect the totals in the bottom line.
The reservoir is not hard to explain but difficult to accept. P=1 is actually the ratio P=exp(180)/(exp(90)*exp(90)). Each exp(90) is the information that specifies the neutron in the first place. According to this, it is all one system of exp(180) neutrons. The system is built on zero and you can't fool zero. If something doesn't add up, it is simply somewhere else.
I know you are a believer in reality and easily recognize "non-physical". I guess I don't know or remember where you stand on wave function collapse and the observer.
Dear Gene Barbee,
Thanks for your kind remarks. I think there are two issues. First one must see what's wrong with the current physics. A number of impressive books, from Smolin to Hossenfelder and others have noted that we've been stuck for almost half a century, but the establishment, like any and all establishments, not knowing where to go, keeps going in the same direction. After all, we have to keep bread on the table, and there are psychological issues as well. Smolin, in his last book, says he can't wait to retire, since one can't do anything new in academia.
After realizing that there is no market for a new theory, I decided that it's necessary to find and point out the false premises built into the old theories, to show the need for new theory. Alan Kadin has, I believe, seen the same thing.
But after realizing that things are definitely wrong, there's still the problem of finding what's right. I think that an understanding of what's wrong moves one into the same neighborhood, which, for lack of a better term, I'll agree to call neo-classical. I think Alan and I are definitely in the same neighborhood, but we're not next door yet. There are other essays in this contest that see to be moving into the neighborhood.
I'm thankful that FQXi has played this game for a decade. I've learned from the great essays, and hopefully contributed to others.
I'm glad to see you hanging in there. It's difficult to work with no positive feedback, and the formalism that you've developed prevents most from appreciating your work, since it's too offbeat. But I admire the willpower it takes to keep plugging along without much positive feedback, so I hope you keep plugging. You do seem to extract a few jewels from your model.
My best regards and wishes,
Edwin Eugene Klingman
Heinz,
Having re-read your essay, I now better understand your comment.
You conclude your essay: "The only reality there is, is a timeless present."
I won't say that you are wrong. Back in the day I got very excited about Marshall McLuhan, Hayakawa, and languages. I certainly like your relation of Absolute non-contradiction to orthogonality.
But, aside from cocktail conversation, I'm not sure where one goes with this. Using metaphor, it's as if your universe is somewhere between the all encompassing connectedness of a cross between an LSD experience and solipsism.
I'm all for both, but on normal days I have numerous 747's fly over my ranch on the VOR radial descending into SFO, and I don't think that happens under LSD or designed by solipsists.
My essay pushes (3+1)D-ontology, also called presentism, and it is a functional model that approximates the reality you describe, but far more useful, in my opinion, than going overboard about the reality of time. I do thing category errors are worthwhile indicators of heretofore unseen error, and I believe you have applied it well toward QM, but I'm not sure categories are good for much else.
My two cents.
Thanks again for reading my essay and commenting. I did enjoy your essay.
Edwin Eugene Klingman
Dr. Klingman,
I appreciate your feedback and agree it is off beat. I couldn't stop thinking about your essay and wanted to share some previous work.
Reformulation of QM.
Basis of Pauli exclusion principle: The superposition of exp(180) identical wave functions that are positioned outside one another (the basis of the Pauli exclusion principle).
Wave particle duality: Wave function collapse of the Schrodinger equation can be represented on a unit circle. The collapse point at 1 is a particle and the circle itself is a wave. With Et/H=1 for the gravitational component, space is defined by R=hC/E and time is around the circle of radius R. The ratio is R/t=C.
This reformulation is not complete until we understand our perception of nature. Our brain is based on electromagnetic energy shifts associated with the electron's orbit of the proton. Specifically the shift from quantum number 2 to quantum number 3. But this shift is further modulated by probabilities. When light enters the brain, our brain understands the probabilities involved with the shift. They are fundamental to nature and fundamental to perception. Memory is based on the following:
Probability associated with light energy received (ke)
Proton-electron wave function that collapses every unit time
Probability associated with light energy deficit stored (ke)
When light is received, it is opposite and equal the light energy stored. This is recognized as a match and a probability equation fires (The Feynman absorption equation). If the match is perfect, P=1 fires. This has a specific meaning. "I see that frequency of light". If it is not perfect, it fires as a probability and we see hues. The brain learns and stores based on storing probabilities in molecules based on feedback from the Feynman equation.
The measurement problem:
Many don't understand the double slit experiment; specifically why does measurement cause interference to disappear? The brain expects a match. When the match occurs, it says "I see that" and shuts off further information. This means that the brain is an efficient detector. We are built out of these detectors.
The brain becomes part of the system through evolution. One can think about the brain/observer as a peephole into reality that proceeds us since our perception is several billion years late.
Why does nature do this? I suggest that information processes that separate energy "pave the way" for us to follow. We evolve by "logging into" this aspect of nature (become the observer). We evolve through a "red tooth and claw" system that preserves information. But this would not occur without a way of storing and reproducing the system. Again:
Probability associated with light energy received (ke)
Proton-electron wave function that collapse every unit time
Probability associated with light energy deficit stored (ke)
But this time, the energy deficit is stored in a molecule. The molecule evolves into DNA. Over time it is what Bohm called an implicate order. Enfolded, we see a molecule but when it unfolds it produces information that reconstructs the body. It has done this billions of times and we evolve into a powerful perception system that looks back and wonders:
Where did energy come from and why is E=hv? Why can mass receive energy and move (velocity)? How can time be the same throughout nature and at same time allow velocity associated with time changes? What is the size and future of the universe? Where did the energy come from that expanded the universe? Is everything really based on simple circles (waves and particles)? The questions go on and on....discussion goes on and on.....no one will ever agree. That is the system. Its purpose appears to be "ongoing creation".
Nevertheless. We owe society more than we are giving them. I recall promises that we will "have a unified theory by 2020". Now many of the FXQI's essays now say never.
Dear Edwin Eugene Klingman,
I first of all appreciate your energy based LT as a key explanation. Thank you for making me aware of FoP. Having looked into Thyssen's "Conventionality and Reality" I was disappointed because nobody seems to deal with the undeniable difference between past and future and belonging causality. In the end you and me will certainly converge in support of Alan Kadin's reasoning up to a prediction that is at least as unwelcome as is your essays.
My time is since Covid19 more limited. In previous contests you provided accurate summaries of valuable contents over many essays while omitting criticism. Instead of showing due gratitude for your strong support of my current essay, I looked for a minor discrepancy. You wrote on p.1: "... absolute space means that a preferred local frame exists." Are you aware of my unfinished comments on Cusanus?
My best recommendations for you, Alan, Bee, and all other supporters
Eckard
Dear Edwin Eugene,
thanks for trying to unterstand my approach! Of course I'm no more naive about being able to convince you as you are to convince academic physicists...
In your reply to my essay you say: "But, aside from cocktail conversation, I'm not sure where one goes with this [my ideas]."
Answer:
Away from the fairy tails of physical modeling back to laws of nature...
or
Away from trying to answer questions back to giving answers causing novel questions.
again, good luck
Heinz
Dear Eckard,
I'm very pleased that you appreciate energy-time (3+1)D versus 4D spacetime. I also am glad that you are now aware of Foundations of Physics. It was founded by t' Hooft, who, I believe, is more open to questioning orthodoxy than many Nobel laureates. And I was not aware of your comments on Cusanus. Can you point me to them?
I too have been surprised that the causality aspects of multiple time dimensions are mostly overlooked, or at least largely undiscussed. As Smolin noted, after learning relativity people mentally organize the world in a new way.
I do think that we are gaining traction and more commonality in the 'neo-classical' approach that some of us seem to be converging to. I also think that you have played an important part by examining significant math issues such as the Fourier analyses you have focused on. Students are so overwhelmed with absorbing the flood of math and physics information that they have no hope of spotting troublesome aspects. And many, for one reason or another, never find time or inclination to wonder about such things, and anyway lack a platform to do much about it. FQXi has certainly been valuable by allowing us, year after year to refine our work and place it before our peers.
I have learned a lot from your essays over the years, and your erudition, and am pleased when you find mine worthwhile.
My best regards -- take care of your health in these crazy times.
Edwin Eugene Klingman
Hello Edwin,
I'm glad to finally see your essay. I am puzzled by your statement: "In relativity, in the frame of the station, we observe the railcar; and we cannot observe the interior." If we are a stationary observer at the station, and the railcar has glass walls, surely we could observe and measure the kiddie cart moving at 0.994c as easily as we could observe and measure the railcar at 0.9c, by using rods and a clock within our stationary framework. Measurements define our empirical description of the system with respect to the station's time and space framework. Our empirical model includes the observation (empirical law) that nothing can exceed the speed of light.
How do we go from an empirical model to a conceptual (ontological) model of physical reality? In my essay, I assert that physical reality is contextually defined by perfect measurement with respect to a system's fixed time and space framework (I also include ambient temperature, which SR and GR take to be zero kelvins). A perfect observer must be in equilibrium (i.e. at rest) with respect to that framework. I believe this describes your ontological model of physical reality with respect to absolute time and space.
However, I also see no conflict with SR. SR's conceptual model asserts that perfect empirical measurements by a perfect inertial observer provides complete and objective information for the system's physical reality. The Lorentz transformation allows transforming the complete and objective description as would be described by a different time and space framework, such as the rail car. From the rail car's framework, the kiddie car is moving at 0.9c. The empirical descriptions may differ between frameworks, but the information they contain is conserved by the transformation, so the information and the physical reality it describes is independent of the particular time and space framework.
You correctly state, in a response to Heinz Leudiger, that "the observer can establish his own frame velocity." But you then state that this is impossible in SR. I find this confusing, based on my interpretation of SR as stating that the empirical description of physical reality (but not physical reality itself) explicitly depends on the observer's space and time framework.