The Universe and Photons by Emmanuel Moulay

Emmanuel,

Very interesting essay.

Just as a rhetorical question, what happens to photons at very low temperatures?

As you point out, waves are continuous photons, so presumably if these waves were "entangled"/ synchronized, than multiple photons would function as one.

So what happens if we stretch that wave as far as it will go, to near infinity/chill it down to near absolute zero? Does it break down at some point into particle photons and as waves, curl up in themselves?

I raise this issue because, if space is ultimately flat, then gravity balances the expansion of space, so there would be no additional expansion and thus the universe is stable. Since mass does heat up and break down, radiating out light, it would seem the gravitational collapse is counteracted by the expansion of radiation. So my question is whether light can turn back into mass at very cold temperatures. Fission is hot. Is fusion very cold?

It seems to me that Inflation is an extremely ad hoc and frankly preposterous explanation for why cosmic background radiation is so smooth. A more logical explanation is that this is some sort of phase transition level. Such as that due to the quantum limits of light, it cannot expand to infinity and at a certain point, after it has traveled for 13-14 billion years and fallen off the infrared end of the spectrum, it starts to break down the wave aspect and the particle functions remaining start coalescing and the whole process of gravitational collapse begins.

In your essay on time, you conclude with the observation that: Moreover, what we usually call time is not fundamental in the General Relativity and comes from the time variable.

I also think time is not fundamental, but for more prosaic reasons. Consider: If two objects hit one another, it causes an event. While the physical entities go from past events to future ones, these events go from being in the future to being in the past. Thus there are two directions of time. The physical present going from past to future, while the conformational states of these events go from future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth rotates. This raises the issue of what is more fundamental. Currently the assumption is of time moving past to future, so this implies the series of events are foundational and the present moves along them. It seems more logical though, that the manifest physical presence is more fundamental and these events are the transitional effects. So it would seem the present is the constant, which the events come and go, from future potential to past circumstance. We still see the sun moving across the sky, but know we know it is the earth that moves.

Since the full range of input cannot be determined before the occurrence of an event, it is this collapsing of possibilities that leads to the occurrences we register as the series of temporal events, so future is cause and past is effect. It is only when we examine events in the past tense that we order them as the series and list prior events as cause to subsequent ones, even though any prior event can only be a partial explanation for any subsequent event.

The conclusion then, is that time is an effect of motion, not the basis for it. It would be the sequential ordering of change, much like temperature is an effect of motion, that of the level of activity.

So it makes sense that every clock records its own time and similar clocks will record different rates of change under different conditions, but this is not due to following separate time vectors, only different "burn" rates.

Rather than refining the clock function down to its most precise measurements and considering this the more valid measure of time, time is an effect of all change, not just the most calibrated.

A logical consequence of this is that there can be no dimensionless point in time, as that would negate the very motion causing it, much like trying to take a picture with the shutter speed set at zero.

The only absolute time would be the cessation of all motion, just like the only absolute temperature is the cessation of all motion.

This means that there is no such thing as absolute position and an entity cannot be isolated from its motion. It is both particle and wave, whether it's a photon or a car.

Emmanuel,

Thanks for the reply. I'm not really thinking in terms of quantum fluctuation per se. Though I wouldn't rule out a positive vacuum fluctuation as source of expansion/explanation for dark energy.

I was picking your brain on the issue of "pair production in two-photon collisions", because I think there is a more unified cosmology hiding in our ideas about light.

While Big Bang cosmology seems to have to keep adding patches to survive, I keep finding tantalizing hints, in everything from the fact that they keep finding ever more distant galaxies that push the age boundaries of BBt to the correspondence of redshift with a cosmological constant. Part of this is the idea, not originally mine, that light is the source of what appears to be expanding space.

Since the overall universe appears to be flat, with expansion balanced by gravitation, I fail to see the logic of why the universe is supposed to actually be expanding. Wouldn't that require expansion to exceed the contraction of gravity?

If the space between galaxies expands at a rate identical to which space is falling into them, how does the overall universe expand?

I do think the idea of the geometry of space actually expanding, contracting, curved, etc, is something of a misnomer, since space has no physical attributes and is necessarily neutral, but use the terminology because it is accepted.

That, as a vacuum, it might fluctuate, could be a disequilibrium, but to the extent it is a positive effect and cause expansion, it is still pulled back into equilibrium by gravity, since overall space is flat.

Since they are so finely tuned, it seems far more logical that there is some form of cycle balancing these two sides of the equation, not coincidence of being balanced between the Big Bang and the Big Crunch, or fade to black. I do go into this somewhat in my own essay, but since the question is about digital vs, analog, only slightly.

Emmanuel,

You state: "Energy models the geometry of the space-time: here is the main idea of the General Relativity. I think that we can forget the idea that gravitation is a force or something fundamental. [and] Concerning the space, things are quite similar. It is possible to find a mathematical justification to the fact that there are 3 space dimensions, but I don't think that it is really interesting. We observe that there are 3 space dimensions."

I agree with you about 3-space. And on 31 Dec 2010 I received my Phys Rev Lett 105, with an article (231101) that seems to indicate that General Relativity does not predict the results of the most accurate study yet performed. The GR predictions are off by 0.2%, and the difference appears to be attributed to the C-field (rotational aspect of G-field) on which my essay is based.

As long as we did not know whether the universe was open, flat, or closed, then I believe that we needed general relativity as the only theory capable of describing all possible cases. But, if we know (as we think we now know) that the universe is flat, then I'm not sure that we need general relativity to describe the universe; we may need it only to describe certain highly 'curved' situations such as black holes and neutron stars. In this case general relativity becomes simply the preferred description. Doug Sweetser has diagrammatically illustrated this in striking fashion, as I show in my essay.

As for gravity, I'm not sure why you feel that you can write it off as not fundamental. As I note, and as Calabi conjectured back in 1953, the gravitational field itself has energy, and hence mass, and therefore is uniquely qualified to be the "original stuff" from which a universe forms. Not only that, but the gravitational field can interact with itself, leading to far more possibilities for evolution than the electromagnetic field, which interacts with charge, but is itself uncharged.

I do believe that it's unlikely that 'gravitons' exist-- they do not in my theory. And the 'gluons' that have never actually been seen, and postulated 'color' that never has or never will be seen, are mechanisms that can be provided by the C-field. Even Wilczek admits that Yukawa pion exchange fails at the hard core limit. The consensus explanation is that QCD achieves only about 5% accuracy because "it's so complicated", but it is entirely possible that it is simply wrong. When the Higgs fails to show up, maybe physicists will consider other possibilities.

Although my theory provides a mechanism for charge and EM-fields to appear, and even derives the fine structure constant, it is probably the one part of my theory that I am least satisfied with.

So I do agree with you that photon's appear to be in a class by themselves, and very fundamental.

I hope that you will read my essay and respond in some manner.

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Edwin, Emmanuel,

Is it possible that electromagnetic fields do interact among themselves at very low levels, possibly having an effect on vacuum fluctuation.

As a hypothetical question, what if light has traveled much further than the current 13.7 billion years considered and it was redshifted as an optical effect. Wouldn't all the radiation redshifted to the very end of the infrared end of the spectrum show up as black body radiation?

What would happen if this radiation started to exceed certain levels, such as 3.7k. Could interactions start to occur?

An interesting study to keep an eye on:

http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-12-statistical-cosmic.html

Emmanuel,

I understand vacuum energy as that which permeates space and cosmic background radiation as the black body radiation emanating from the edge of the visible universe.

I guess it's obvious that I'm one of those who thinks Big Bang Theory, Inflationary Cosmology, or any other versions of the model are wrong and am looking for insights into how to otherwise explain the observed phenomena. Since it rests on the assumption that the only way light can be redshifted is by recession alone, this involves considering the nature of light and why I'm bothering you about it.

A question I would raise for you to think about, since you do seem to have been educated within the school that Big Bang theory is past the point of debate:

Originally it was assumed to be a normal expansion, but since it is observed that redshift is proportional to distance and there is no lateral motion to match redshift, it appeared that we are at the center of the universe, so the theory was changed to say that space itself expands, such that everything is pushed away from everything else, resulting in the isotropic appearance of every point being the center of its own view of the universe.

The problem I have with this is that the speed of light remains constant. According to the BBT, if two sources are x lightyears apart and the universe doubled in size, they would be 2x lightyears apart.

What, if the very fabric of space is being stretched, determines lightspeed? It provides a constant measure of distance. If space is being stretched, how does this measure remain constant?

Consider that with the normal Doppler effect, space is not being created by the train moving. It is simply putting space that was in front of it, behind it. Same for those galaxies. If they are redshifted according to the Doppler effect, they are not creating space, but moving away in it.

This then gets back to the problem of our position appearing as the center of the universe. If there is some sort of optical effect, rather than the actual recession of these galaxies, it would be quite logical that redshift is proportional to distance and there is no lateral motion to match.

Consider the effect of gravity bending light. This is an optical effect. That distant star, as it moves beyond the sun, does not actually shift back and forth. Merely the path of its light is bent. It makes far more sense that these distant galaxies are not actually moving away because we observe their light to be redshifted. So my quest is to consider what other factors could cause this light to become redshifted over such enormous distances.

Do we really understand all the properties of light to construct such a fantastical model of the universe and keep adding even more fantastical patches, from Inflation to Dark energy, in order to hold it together. It seems like a fairly classical case of herd behavior causing mass delusion. As has happened all to often in human history.

Emmanuel,

Thanks for your reply. When I said we may only 'need' GR for highly curved situations I did not mean that it wasn't useful for things like GPS, only that GPS can probably be handled with 'weak field' approximations. And that was my point. As Sweetser shows, we can describe the world via potential in 'flat' coordinates or by distorting the coordinate space. In 'weak field' cases (such as GPS) the choice may be optional. Or not?

We agree that it's good to be speculative in approaching physics. Because QCD generally yields 4 or 5% accuracy, QED lately yields 4% accuracy on muonic hydrogen and is off by 120 orders of magnitude on vacuum energy, and GR is off by 0.2% on LAGEOS pericenter precession, I believe that conceptual issues, not just mathematical issues, need rethinking.

I also offer a number of very specific examples in my essay that serve as 'test cases' for theories, and that, so far, no current theories can explain. This is, in my mind, more appropriate than speculating on theories based on Planck energies that we will probably never reach. I believe that it is physics when we treat real known anomalies that demand explanation, and mathematics when we treat speculative scenarios which may never be achieved. Today, things seem more focused on the latter.

Finally, you state that Bell tests show hidden variables to be false. Based on Anton Zeilinger's excellent book, Dance of the Photons, I believe that this conclusion is premature, as I explain in my essay.

I agree with the logic of your last statement concerning QM and SR, but do not yet see how photons alone can satisfactorily evolve our universe.

Thanks for your perspectives.

Edwin Eugene Klingman

John,

As Emmanuel points out below, linear interaction leads to interference. Non-linear interaction, such as gravity is capable of, leads to new phenomena.

I am aware of your arguments against BBT and I think about some of the things you say, but the Big Bang fits very well with my theory, and lack of a Big Bang would mess up my theory really badly. Since I believe my theory actually does the best job of explaining 'known' physics, including anomalies that other theories overlook or ignore (they *are* awfully inconvenient) I am not ready to throw out BBT because you are unhappy with it.

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Dear Emmanuel,

You wrote: "Unfortunately, there is a large discrepancy (of 120 orders) between the observed value of the dark energy and the estimated value of the vacuum energy."

While I do not share the common belief that theories, which are accepted and seemingly confirmed with very high accuracy, are necessarily correct, I consider it extremely unlikely that such a discrepancy does not matter. Even 120 dB is a lot. Did you really you mean 10^120?

To me as an EE, photons are electromagnetic waves. Do you deny purely electric and purely magnetic fields?

While speculations may endlessly find admirers who are trying to add even more exciting stories, I expect facing frosty rejection to the perhaps disappointing revelation of fundamental mistakes in mandatory tenets.

Eckard

Emmanuel,

I agree the photon makes a good candidate as the primordial particle, but as a particle, could it be emergent from some field effect/vacuum fluctuation/radiant wave properties?

I ask because it seems to me that photons are created out of some field like condition as an interaction between fields, or contact with mass. Radiant energy expands, while mass contracts, yet it seems photons emerge as that initial contraction/measurement of the radiant energy. Thus we think of light as photons because it is the foundational quantity, yet is this quanta an irreducible particle of light, or is it the smallest measurable quantity of light?

Hi all,

In fact the photon is an entanglement and when the gravity acts, this entanglement is fraclized for a fusion of spherical volumes.

After it's the sense of rotation that explains the difference.

The photon is not a single particle....

Regards

Steve

Emmanuel,

I understand they are two different descriptions of the same thing. Since you are making the argument that light is the fundamental element, then it not only must have the ability to expand as radiation, but contract as mass. My question is whether the particle manifestation is the initial state of the contraction stage.

Dear Emmanuel,

I mainly objected against your word "unfortunately", and I am not sure whether or not science really needs a primordial particle. Do we really need inflation as to get the universe real, isotropic, and flat? Are such questions really fundamental? Why not making our homework more carefully? I would appreciate those who are in position and willing to reveal mistakes. May I ask you to comment on the essay by Peter Jackson?

Eckard

Dear Emmanuel,

Congratulations for a thought-provoking essay.

However, if we are to assume that the photon is a fundamental element of the universe, and assumedly the most basic building block of everything, then we must re-evaluate our big-bang theories as well, because it is inconceivable to have even a single photon in the emptiness (and most likely pitch-dark), of the pre-big-bang space, and yet we are certain that the seed(s) of everything was/were there already, or we wouldn't exist today. Are we to assume that before everything, there was light? It is very possible of course, but then we must re-evaluate a lot of other ideas as well.

Best Regards

Pantelis