Readers' Choice: Much Ado About Nothing

Hi Jason

An interesting and perceptive view in your wiki reference. I'm surprised the relativist regime hasn't noticed it and censored it out! The preferred reference frame is the only answer to the gas jet 'anomaly' meeting observation and coming anywhere near Occams razer, but it's not consistent with the Equivalence mechnism assumed for SR.

You're right, using the DFM mechanism lets it all work, very simply, and unifies it with QFT.

But it doesn't seem to matter how good a solution is, as Ghandi and others have said; First they ignore you, then they try to fight you, then you win.(if you're still alive by then!).

You asked; "Transitions between frames of reference follow what rules?"

Good question. Lets think what they are;

1. 'c' is certainly constant to both frames as that's the whole basis.

2. The Doppler shift is obviously proportional to the relative motion of the frames.

3. The boundary 'cloud/shock/halo' density/size is obviously similarly proportional.

4. The rate of particle oscillation/spin is also directly proportional.

There should also be some kind of constant relating to the position of the boundary layer wrt to mass density/spread characteristics, but that'll need some working out from the empirical data. That's about all I can think of off the cuff, it's so simple. Can you think of any more?

Peter

It's 'Model' Jason; 'Discrete Field Model' (DFM) rather than 'theory'. That's because it simply arranges what we already know to build something that works better, rather than postulating any unfalsifiable 'ideas'.

The other key is that, uniquely, it predicts things that the old SR without the DFM mechanism does not, and all those predictions are borne out, solving a few anomalies.

That space always follows mass/energy is pretty well the basis of GR, which the DFM modified SR, allowing quantum fields, does indeed work far better with.

Don't be concerned at not understanding dark energy! It's a bit like the Greeks not understanding electricity. The more we learn about it the better we'll know it, but we may never anyway fully understand it!

Frankly, considering the rut we're stuck in, the chasm between Relativity and QFT, unless the present powers that be in physics can eshew old 'belief' based science we'll probably run out of time before we have a chance to get to know dark energy!

Peter

Hi Peter,

I would think that space has to be continuous. Rips, tears and gaps are fun to think about in terms of science fiction, but it hasn't been observed. We should require space to be continuous until proven otherwise.

Also, I don't know how to express this mathematically, but I would think that the speed of light c at location 1: c(1) would have some energy difference versus some different location c(2). Positions (1) and (2), separated by some distance L, should suffer a difference in energy. We would expect c(2) - c(1) to equal zero. If they do not, then there should be some relationship c(2) - c(1)/L = an energy term. Transitioning across that energy term would solve the problem, I would think.

Dear Peter,

I don't think we're going to run out of time. I think we're going to be stuck here for as long as it takes to figure this out. If physics was logical, we would have figured it out by now. But it's not. It's mathematical, we think.

M87 is far away, luckily. So if the image of the universe was going to become skewed in someway, then the whole galaxy would be deformed and scaled to 6c. Instead, the galaxy obeys c, but the jet appears to cross space at 6c. On the same link, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superluminal_motion, what is being described just isn't rational. It's not logical that c should be the speed limit, but the jet travels at 6c.

If you have a frame moving within a frame, multiple times, then something has to give. Transitioning between a 6c frame and a 1c frame has to involve a cost of some kind.

Ultimately, frames have to pass photons back and forth to tell each other that their there. If they didn't, we wouldn't see the jet at all. It would be invisible.

Since people and planets could not survive long enough to observe the oncoming jet, let's just imagine a proton in the eye of some unlucky alien astronomer who is looking at the black hole through his telescope on some space station. He is watching the black hole. And then, without any visual warning, he and his space station are vaporized by the 6c jet of energy.

The proton from his now disintegrated eye happens to observe extreme blue shifting. The proton would begin to experience extreme forces of acceleration as it is accelerated from a 1c frame to a 6c frame. As luck would have it, the jet struck at a slight angle, and kicked the proton to the side, back down to a 1c frame. In falling back to a 1c frame, the proton experienced massive red shifting for a short time.

Technically, the inside of the event horizon should be faster than light. However, anything that falls in should remain within a 1c frame, locally. Even if that 1c frame is very brief.

Does this help?

Hi Jason.

"I think we're going to be stuck here for as long as it takes" - But, as Hawking says, we have to be bright enough to deal with what the universe may throw at us, and if we're stuck in a rut we're not that bright!

"Transitioning between a 6c frame and a 1c frame has to involve a cost of some kind."

True. Each transition is an FM process of wave particle interaction, Doppler shifting the signal. But remember; The information being transmitted to us is about position, it doesn't contain the information in the signal whose relative positions over time we're observing. It's the same as observing a shadow line retreating on a curve. It can do so at well over 'c' without being Lorentz invariant. But the human race is not quite bright enough to perceive that yet.

"..without any visual warning, he and his space station are vaporized"

But as you say, the 'c' stream will have to reach him before the stream doing 'c' wrt the first, so he'd be 'gradually' accelerated. He'd eventually get back into a rest frame, then slowly decelerate (though the jet is over 100 light years long!).

The interesting thing about Discrete Fields is that they actually prove the SR postulates correct - the error was in the assumed mechanism for Equivalence, - which then demanded length contraction and Sagnac invariance! It's really just unifying a dark energy medium with local EM and gravity fields, to unify SR with QM. Perhaps it's all just tooo simple for us! - but I'm impressed you've grasped the concept.

Peter

Dear Peter,

"Perhaps it's all just tooo simple for us!" I would be laughing my butt off if my head didn't hurt from thinking about it. Simple? Simple to who? Or what? The more I think about it, I think discrete fields makes sense. I'm trying to wrap my brain around some kind of virtual photon like mechanism that transmits information (probability) between particles. The concept is bigger than my head is; but I think entropic gravity, space, and wave functions have more to do with each other than we suspect. It's as if Information (yes or no/definitiveness) travels at the speed of light; however, maybies and perhapses travel much faster. Perhaps you call it discrete fields, but the way I visualize it, it's like another kind of photon emission/absorption; such that it transmits and receives information.

Dear Peter,

The Discrete Field Model basically says that physical matter generates its own space, right? If so, then the hyper-drive becomes simple. Let's call physical matter: matter A. Let's called hyper-space matter, matter B. So B matter generates B hyper-space, and A matter generates space-time.

I build my spaceship with material from both A and B matter. I have some kind of A to B interconnecting matter/force. The inside of my spaceship, computers, Captain's chair, etc., are made out of A matter. The outside hull and the engines are made out of B matter. If the A matter is completely cutoff from the rest of the physical universe of A matter, then B matter (hyper-space matter) can reach multiples of the speed of light (our speed of light).

For such an arrangement, we can now go trekking across the galaxy!

Warp 9 Mr. Sulu.

Hi Jason

Interestingly 8year olds seem to understand it quickest!

They know if they ride their bike on a bus they can't ride it faster, but will get there faster than their freind riding on the road.

Just think of each EM field as a bus that EM waves can only do 'c' through.

The FM process of getting on and off the bus through the turnstile (Doppler shifting) is simple too. We all have FM radio's. If an EM wave has to get past the oscillator it can only do so at the oscillators frequency. We know that already!

Feynman was spot on; "nature will always find a simpler way than man can imagine." and "the answer will at first look complicated but then very simple."

Actaully we could 'anagram' the first to say something like; "Nature can't imagine how simple man will always be found."

It's probably our belief system that's at fault, and that we call it 'science'.

No, sorry, it doesn't support your hyperdrive mechnism. If you really want to chase that you must Focus on M87, Ted J's columnar motion, and fields within fields, and don't be distracted by fools gold or red herrings.

Best wishes

Peter

Hi Peter,

"It's probably our belief system that's at fault, and that we call it 'science'."

Perhaps nature is just very very strange. And perhaps we are all slow and hesitant to admit the truth.

I find myself a little bit obsessed by the Discrete Field Model. I keep thinking there is a constant flow of information between particles/waves. Information would transmit, at the speed of light, from the source to the receiving particle. The only constant speed of light would be the signaling that occurs. The speed of light is only relative to the particle or wave that emitted it. This "information flow" is space itself. It's not black body radiation that is causing space. If there were wave function interactions at work, would they go unnoticed? I'm still trying to pin down the difference between information and probability. Physics information really should be definitive (1's and 0's); yes or no...right? Probabilities are really just "maybies", dice...

For the Messier 87 jet, it probably really is accelerated to 6 or 7c. The front end of the jet, traveling at 7c, is also emitting a wavefront at one more c.

I wish there were pictures of something getting engulfed by the jet. That would tell us something about how FTL events interact with everything else.

I hope you don't mind me thinking out loud. So particles of matter basically broadcast to each other using virtual photons perhaps. They broadcast their position and motion to everything else around them. Together, they reach a consensus about what their group motion should be, thus establishing a frame of reference. When something flies by at larger than the speed of light, such as M87, gravitational forces prevent anything from violating the local speed of light requirement. I'll try to articulate that a little better.

I have a spaceship, but I build its hull out of a fast-space-time material, such that this material has virtual hyper-fast photons. This fast-hull material prevents the atoms/particles of the spaceship from broadcasting/receiving position/momentum information from stuff that is outside. The spaceship is isolated. The fast-hull material, interfaces with a coexisting hyper-space, and obeys that hyperspace's laws of physics. If the spaceship is traveling at .5c' where c' = 100c, and someone exposes the spaceship to standard space-time, there will be massive gravitational forces that slow the spaceship down to sub light speed.

Playing around with this example might make it possible to understand the physics of M87.

Dear Peter,

Oh, I'm not giving up on the hyper-drive. I'm just trying to grasp what the laws of physics are really saying to us; what the experiments, like M87, are trying to tell us.

"Imagine you're floating in the ocean, at any one moment your position may be anywhere on any wave, both your position and the likelihood of water being over your head will depend on where you are and whether youre going up or down. " Are you talking about probability waves? Or electromagnetic energy waves. In my opinion, probability waves really are electromagnetic waves when there are too few photons too go around. It's like the universe shooting the dice to decide which bill collector to hand the money (energy) to.

Dear Peter,

So when we use a Discrete Field Model, we mean space A moving at some velocity v_A compared with space B moving at v_B...Discrete reference frames.

OK, I have a question. Why are black holes black? It sounds like I'm making a joke, but I'm serious. Answer: the speed of light, c, is just too slow to escape the gravitational force of the black hole.

Here is another question: is the event horizon black all the way down until an observer is centimeters from the event horizon? The reason I ask is because I'm exploring a possible scenario. For a photon of energy E=hf_1, doesn't it give up energy trying to escape out of a gravity well?

If I drop your car into a blackhole (how could I be so mean) as it crosses the event horizon, every particle in your car gets converted into energy, gamma rays, right? After all, shouldn't protons and neutrons give us back gamma rays as energy? But we only see X-rays, which don't have as much energy as gamma rays.

I'm trying to make the argument that photons loose energy when they climb out of a gravity well. I'm also trying to make the argument that two inertial reference frames, A and B, will differ by some gravitational potential energy. I want to use this idea to figure out what happens when that 6c jet comes into contact with some slow moving particles. Yes, I remember what you told me about the slowly changing reference frame. I am trying to relate that to a gravitational potential energy. Basically, some kind of Doppler shifting.

In a deSitter universe, even if we start off with zero temperature, the system will converge to the deSitter temperature. There's no globally timelike Killing vector in deSitter space, and so, no state with minimum energy.

Consider a patch of a deSitter universe with some volume, and let the universe expand twice in size, and now subdivide the volume into two. Does the entropy double? The entropy of each half remains the same as the original entropy, but the total entropy of expanded volume is the sum of the entropy of the individual parts plus the "mutual entropy" describing correlations. In quantum theory, because of quantum entanglement, this mutual entropy can be negative. So, the sum could actually remain constant despite the expansion.

Peter,

I think I've figured out how hyper-drive physics is set up, and how to unify GR and QM. OK, I'm still excited and haven't entirely thought it through, but it's very simple.

The speed of light c, is absolute. Whether you are an M87 jet traveling 6c or a hyper-drive space ship going 30c, you can still shine your headlights. Now remember, there is no time travel allowed. No matter how fast you go, you can't violate causality.

So you're Captain Pickard, and you're shining your laser ahead of you. Whatever comes out of the HeNe laser, it's moving away from Captain Pickard's head, and is being received by the observer at the speed of light, c. But something funny happens. As Capt Pickard passes the observer, moving 30c, the wave front from the laser are striking the detector at speed c. However, the energy from each peak is going to be smeared out. What was once a laser point is now going to have its energy smeared out into a line, an energy per unit angle (or unit length). Does "smearing" sound familiar? Doesn't quantum mechanics, in effect, smear the location of the particle?

While Capt Picard is approaching, his laser would be massively blue shifted. Likewise, as he passes by and moves away, massively red shifted.

My comment about energy from each wavefront being smeared out, it has a quantum mechanics feel to it.

I'll have to sit down with a pencil/paper and see if I can't quantify it a little better. But I think this way, c remains absolute.

Dear Anonymous,

I looked up Killing vector; the definition has something to do with preserving the metric. I think what that means is that a Killing Vector preserves the distance from Boston to Seattle (3000 miles or so), no matter how you travel it. But you said that there is no globally timelike Killing vector for deSitter space. I think that means the distance between two points, I assume two far away points, is not absolutely required to be preserved.

I have suspected that some forms of FTL travel might change the perceived distance, but I am not sure exactly how.

I'd like to take another stab at hyper-drive physics. Let's say that my spaceship has a mass of 100 metric tons. I need to calculate the entropy of my spaceship, basically, the number of protons, neutrons, electrons, ... Each of those particles has to be coupled to its existence in space-time an interface with hyperspace (one for each particle). I have to multiply that times some coupling energy. I have to be able to generate such a coupling field, one for space-time and one for hyperspace. If I reduce my coupling energy for space-time, then my spaceship vanishes into hyperspace.

Phew! There's a lot there Jason.

J;"In my opinion, probability waves really are electromagnetic waves"

Probability waves are of course a metaphysical description, but seem an obvious probabilistic analogue of the fluctuation of properties in real em waves. The simple model of condensed 'particles' works well with both, perhaps as concentrations of the energy of the dark energy/EM field. If they're propagated by perturbation there's another uncertainty analogue relating to their existence at any particular time and position.

J;"the speed of light, c, is just too slow to escape the gravitational force of the black hole." Sorry Jason, very naieve. If we look properly at nature we find gravity red shifts light rather than violates CSL. This certainly saps its energy, sometime to below what our eyes can register. Ergo; Black Hole.

The event horizon is therefore only a function of our eyes. To a hawk it will be in a different place. It may be that getting closer to it will also shrink it as our eyes can pick up the energy a little better. In relativistic theory of course it also contracts and time slows down. I wonder if the shinking waves turn blue again?

J;"If I drop your car into a blackhole .. as it crosses the event horizon, every particle in your car gets converted into energy, gamma rays, right?"

Wrong. The event horizon is etherial. If the star is near the limit - once we get close the event horizon may shrink till it disappears and we could see a red giant.

J;"I'm trying to make the argument that photons loose energy when they climb out of a gravity well. I'm also trying to make the argument that two inertial reference frames, A and B, will differ by some gravitational potential energy.

Unarguable, except that wave bundle 'photons' as such are probably absorbed back into the feild with energy loss. It's also largely unrecognised mainstream physics that more vlocity as well as more mass gives more gravity, so A and B will always differ. More relevant however is the quantum boundary process between the two, physically keeping velocity and frequency inversely constant. Doppler shifting in QFT is the key to resolving the issues with SR.

J;"Whatever comes out of the HeNe laser, it's moving away from Captain Pickard's head, and being received by the observer at the speed of light, c.

Sorry Jason, you've forgotten the root process; When Pickard sends a (normal) radio message it propagates across space at an absolute speed 'c' "irrespective of the speed of the emitter." i.e. If she's at rest it takes the same time for the signal to cross space as when she's heading that way at warp 0.9. And here it is; The Enterprise has it's own em field. The signal goes at 'c' with respect to (wrt) the Enterprise for a very short distance. It then crosses the boundary shock into the background 'dark energy' field and crosses space wrt that - slowing down wrt the Enterprise.

What else in the Universe could the Enterprise be doing 0.9c wrt? than a background field?? We now know it's there. We're just a bit slow with logic!

Enterprise would have a crescent of blue shifted/gamma ray light ahead of her track. If we look though Hubble we can see some, Orionis for example (look it up on the NASA site) visible as it's going through the gas nebula. It will have a similar signature to the wavefront of the M87 jet and our planetary shock, all dependant on relative speed.

I suspect you'll need to invent something hyperthetical for hyperdrive, or go back to Ted's columnar motion for an M87 type hyper'tube'. String theory has lots of spare dims, perhaps use one of those?

Peter

Dear Peter,

I do appreciate you patience with me on these topics. When I think about what's happening around black holes, it warps my head. My gut tells me that geodesics will diverge wildly, like rays of light through a glass sphere. I will tread with humbleness around black holes. Before I can trust my intuition, I have to make sure I understand the universes priorities: local speed of light comes first, conservation of energy, ... global speed of light, killing vector, perhaps?

"If we look properly at nature we find gravity red shifts light rather than violates CSL. This certainly saps its energy, sometime to below what our eyes can register. Ergo; Black Hole. " I agree with that.

"The event horizon is etherial. If the star is near the limit - once we get close the event horizon may shrink till it disappears and we could see a red giant. " I suspect that you're right. But, it is here that space itself starts to warp, severely, and my assumptions need closer examination.

"When Pickard sends a (normal) radio message it propagates across space at an absolute speed 'c' "irrespective of the speed of the emitter." Certainly so if the enterprise is traveling .9c. If it's traveling 9.0c, like that M87 jet, then it looks like the light leaves the enterprises emitters at c, but falls behind again, and eats the enterprise's 9.0c dust.

"It will have a similar signature to the wavefront of the M87 jet and our planetary shock, all dependent on relative speed." I remember looking up Bow Shock for the earth's magnetic field...mmm...

Peter, I can come up with inter-dimensional hyper-drive mechanisms all day long. However, I think it can be a lot simpler. The laws of physics really only care about waves, energy, entropy, conservation laws, stuff like that. Here is what I want to do. An alien spaceship lands outside of the MIT physics department. Aliens come out, enter the building, walk into a physics lecture, and wrestle the chalk away from some college physics professor. He pulls a control device out of his pocket, presses a button, and a silvery box appears out of nowhere. It has smooth edges, and is hovering above the ground.

The alien scrawls on the chalkboard: Trans-Space Coupling Field Generator. The alien begins to speak:

If you wanted to transport one hydrogen atom from earth to Alpha Centauri, here is what you must do.

First, you must acknowledge that the atom is coupled to this physical universe, what we will call standard space-time. The entropy of a hydrogen atom can be quantified as two particles, a proton and an electron. Each of those particles is already coupled to standard space-time with a coupling constant of K_std; std is short for standard space-time. The coupling energy for the hydrogen atom is E_std = 2 K_std. If there were N particles in your system, then the coupling energy is E_std = NK_std.

If you want to travel around the galaxy using this form of hyper-drive, then you must provide the additional energy cost necessary to couple the hydrogen atom to fast-space, what you would call hyper-space. The coupling coefficient for fast-space is K_fs. The energy necessary to couple the two particle system, the hydrogen atom, is E_fs = 2K_fs. For this example, we will not count quarks, photons, or neutrinos, but will absorb their energy cost into K_std and K_fs.

Conservation of energy also requires that you put in an additional amount of energy, E_G which would be the energy required to remove the hydrogen atom completely from the gravitational field. The result would look like the silvery field generator that you see before you. Technically, you must also include the gravitational energy for whatever exists within fast-space, but we will ignore that for the moment.

The field generator allows you to vary the degree of coupling and also the degree of gravitational compensation.

Let us perform an example. Let us say that you wanted to travel to another star system, many light years, but within a short period of time, perhaps a week or two. You would use energy to compensate for both the standard space-time's quantity of particles, their coupling; you would also supply energy to compensate for gravity. If you do nothing else, then your spaceship will vanish from standard space, and, in fact, not exist anywhere.

Next, you will accept the energy that comes from coupling with fast-space (hyper-space). In doing so, the particles of your spaceship will become interfaced with the faster space-time, complete with all of the rights and privileges of existence in fast-space; including the use of a faster speed of light.

Did I forget to mention that a small amount of coupling energy must be used to sustain the existence of a minimal amount of standard space, enough to allow the spaceship to exist and evolve in time. Thank you for your time. Have a nice day.

The alien presses a button, and everything vanishes...

OK Peter, maybe the aliens were a bit over the top. I was using them as a communication prop. But I guess that didn't go over very well. I thought of a simpler way to accommidate a hyper-drive, I'm tyring to figure out an easy way to explain it. I am wondering if gravity potential and/or gravity flux lines might prove useful.