Author Anton W.M. Biermans wrote on Mar. 1, 2011 @ 03:36 GMT
Dear Dan,
I admit that I haven't understood you essay completely because my knowledge of GR is very limited. I do see that your FPC in some respects is equivalent to a Self-Creating Universe. However, as in a SCU the grand total of everything in it, including space and time itself, remains nil, it cannot have a beginning as a whole, so if with cosmic time you mean the time since the bang,...
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Dear Dan,
I admit that I haven't understood you essay completely because my knowledge of GR is very limited. I do see that your FPC in some respects is equivalent to a Self-Creating Universe. However, as in a SCU the grand total of everything in it, including space and time itself, remains nil, it cannot have a beginning as a whole, so if with cosmic time you mean the time since the bang, then you've lost me. A universe which as a whole has a beginning must have been created by some outside intervention, is a caused universe. The flaw of causality, however, is that if we understand something only if we can reduce it to a cause, and we can understand this cause only as the effect of a preceding cause etcetera, to end at some primordial cause which cannot be reduced to a previous cause, then causality ultimately cannot explain anything. For short: a universe which as a whole has a beginning cannot by definition be understood rationally, so any bigbang scenario must be wrong, however much observations seem to be in favor of it. You propose that
"mass-energy doesn't actually "fall into" a BH, as orthodox BH theory indicates, because it ceases to have any distinguishable meaning at the event horizons. [..] as it expands the mass-energy that was lost to BH's is eventually recovered in the new cycle"-
I don't believe that there's mass/energy lost to BH's. As it eats a star, the mass of the BH increases, its energy exchange with all other objects within its interaction horizon, so there's no mass lost, taken out of circulation, whereas the energy which is radiated away as the star is consumed likewise isn't lost. To explain what I mean, I'm afraid I have to sketch the mechanism of self-creation (see also the UPDATE 1 post at my thread).
If in a cloud of gas particles behave in such a manner that they always feel an equally strong force from all directions, then the force on a particle from its own cloud can only increase if it increases as much from the opposite direction, from neighboring clouds, so stars in statu nascendi only can contract in concert. The force between the particles within the stars then increases as much as it does between the stars. The result is that the energy of the particles increases, the frequency they exchange energy at, so the mass of the stars should increase as well. Though this agrees with the uncertainty principle, this is contrary to official lore according to which the mass of the cloud decreases as it contracts to a star, which agrees with the (false) assumption that the mass of particles doesn't depend on their interactions but only is their source. Whereas before contracting, the position of the mass centers of the clouds was ill-defined so the force between the clouds is weak, as they contract to stars the distance between the (mass centers of the) stars becomes less indefinite. As the force between them increases (and is as attractive as it is repulsive), their mass increases. However, if the gravitational field also increases as a cloud contracts to a stare and the field is an area of contracted spacetime, then as measured within their field, the distance between the stars in statu nascendi increases, expanding as they contract, so there's spacetime created as well as energy. So any increase, any creation of mass/energy IS a creation of a proportional quantity of spacetime: one cannot increase, be created without the other, so the contraction of matter, the creation of mass/energy powers the creation, the expansion of the universe and vice versa. However, since we calculate their distance from their positions with respect to surrounding stars, we find a smaller value than if we could measure their distance within their field, so we underestimate their mass. Though the effect of this expansion is small at the scale of stars and even galaxies, it is observable in the motion of clusters of galaxies with respect to each other, in the continuous creation of spacetime between them. This expansion then isn't a remnant of the velocity particles got at the hypothetic bigbang, but is powered by the contraction, the creation of mass/energy inside the clusters, in galaxies and stars, by the increase of the mass of more or less virtual particles to real ones as they contract to stars. This also explains why the expansion of the universe doesn't decelerate under the influence of gravity as the bigbang scenario predicts, but keeps accelerating. So in a SCU there's no need for dark energy. It is because we assume the mass of particles to be only the source of their interactions that we've come to believe that stars burn their mass, loose mass even if we ignore things like solar flares. It is the energy exchange between the particles, combined with the fact that an energy increase tends to conserve itself in time (unlike a decrease), which powers this combined contraction and expansion. Since in a SCU particles (stars, galaxies ...) move, contract in such a manner that the force they feel is equal from all directions, this automatically produces the homogeneity and isotropy we see, so here there's no need for the far-fetched cosmic inflation hypothesis the bigbang tale needs to appear to make sense itself.
Though a galaxy contracts in the sense that its stars slowly spiral towards its central BH, it is not that it starts out with a definite, finite quantity of matter as the bigbang tale has it. As stars go down the galaxy's 'drain', new particles 'crystallize' (UPDATE 1) where the gravitational field is strong enough to separate real particles from their more virtual siblings, restricting their behavior, forcing them to assume more discreet properties, energies. Whereas virtual particles have much freedom to act as they like, making their position and behavior less definite so they only interact weakly, keeping their mass small, to become real particles, to increase their rest energy to the required level, they must coordinate their behavior, limit their energy exchange to certain discrete values. By radiating the associated, disorderly frequencies, they loose much of the freedom they had as virtual particles. The same happens in as their star implodes to a neutron star or BH, though as their freedom of behavior then becomes much more limited, they'll radiate away much more energy at the supernova, in much higher frequencies.
So it is not that a part of the mass which disappears into a hole is converted to energy: this radiation actually destroys order elsewhere, while the mass of the hole increases, its energy exchange with all other masses. In the water-drain picture of a galaxy, real particles (water) then are created, separated from virtual particles (vapor) where the field is strong enough, contracting to stars, forming a 'head of foam' circling around the drain, new ones appearing as old ones go down the drain.
Whereas the rest energy of particles increases as they subsequently are part of a star, neutron star, BH, IMBH and SMBH, there's an equal energy flow in the opposite direction as in every subsequent step they radiate more disorder away. This radiation keeps empty space empty, restoring its potencies. So we have a spectrum with SMBH's at one end, where the rest energy of particles increases towards its center, the energy difference between neighboring particles smaller as their density is greater, without ever becoming zero as the hole keeps absorbing mass, at the same time by radiating disorder away, keeping empty spacetime empty. As the oscillation of the particles in a BH is more stringently coordinated as its mass is greater, it may behave in many respect as a Bose Einstein condensate. Anyhow, as far as I can see, there's no need for a cycle in this perpetuum-mobile like self-creation process. A cycle suggests (bigbang) that there's a finite quantity to go around, which it is not in a SCU which cannot stop creating itself.
The problem of black holes is that they are the product of our belief that particles have been created, that they only are the cause, the source of their interactions, which they would be in a bigbang universe: only then the force between them can become infinite. As in a SCU the force between them also is the product of their interactions, it never can become infinite, so there's no singularity at the center of what for this reason I've called Black-Hole Like Objects (BHLO's) in my essay. So there also is no infinite curvature of spacetime: though there's no limit to the curvature, to the mass and mass density of a BHLO, it always is finite: there are no singularities in a SCU. Black holes then are the product of our naïve belief that the mass of particles depends on nothing, that it only is the source of the force between them, and hence becomes infinite at infinitesimal distances.
If (as I argued in the UPDATE 2 post at my thread), the speed of light isn't a velocity but rather a property of spacetime, then we cannot say that photons cannot escape from behind the 'event horizon' of the BH, so it cannot have such a horizon either. If it would have a horizon, then gravitons similarly wouldn't be able to escape the hole and express the mass inside of it as gravity outside of it, implying a zero horizon radius. Another objection is that if the hole's field contains mass (as I argue in my essay), then the Schwarzschild equation for the horizon radius should contain a term for the distance the hole is observed from, which it doesn't. Perhaps this field mass of objects, consisting of the more or less virtual (that is: non-baryonic) particles discussed above causes the effects we summarize as dark matter?
So to me terms like 'black/white hole', 'dark energy/matter' and 'singularities' belong to the language of fairy tales, not physics. A problem with calling a quantity infinite(simal) is that this requires the speaker to omit to state with respect to what that quantity is infinite(simal). As any measurement is a comparison to some arbitrarily chosen unit, we should abstain from using these terms in physics. If they pop up in a text, then you know for sure that you've entered wonderland.
Our present confusion comes from the assumption that the mass of an object is an objective, interaction-independent property, that we treat it like a mathematical quantity, a number the size of which is undisputed, that is, doesn't depend on the 'calculation' it is used in. Though we can use the mass 'number' of an object in our equations, we too easily forget that the physical quantity mass only exists in its expression, in the interactions between objects and not as something which has a reality on its own. This is why I insist that the universe as a whole has no physical reality, why a statement like "The mass of the Universe is 1.8x10^54 kg" doesn't mean anything. As to your question
-"is the universe in a continual mode of creation? I came to the conclusion that it had to be cyclical due to 1) constancy of a finite velocity of light for all observers in the universe, 2) the simplest explanation for redshift is cosmic expansion, 3) the isotropic distribution of unusual astronomical objects only at high red-shift"-
As indicated above, the speed of light is not a velocity (see UPDATE 2). As to the redshift argument, I have argued above that this doesn't necessarily prove any expansion (other arguments can be found in the (short) chapter 1.2 'Mass: a quantum mechanical definition' at my Quantumgravity.nl site). As to 3) and "the two separate sets of empirical correlations between SMBHs and their galaxies", I have no idea as yet. As a universe in which particles have to create each other paints a totally different picture of the universe, many phenomena (CMB, BH's, quasars, GRB's, dark energy and matter) need to be rethought before we may accept observations as proof for one hypothesis or the other.
-"The SMC views the CMB as the signature remnant of the expansion at the beginning of time, but has not adequately been able to explain the events leading to this expansion, especially the singularity. Our model incorporates the singularity as a limit in cosmic time of the previous cycle. " -
As to the CMB, this indeed is no fossil, remnant radiation but is produced at present (see UPDATE 2) As to the origin of the CMB, it obviously cannot explain any singularity if there are none. As to "not adequately been able to explain the events leading to this expansion", this seems an understatement as the bigbang model doesn't explain anything at all: it only tries to infer the state we get if we extrapolate back in time. That is, if we assume that the particles have been created at the bang with all their properties they have today, if they only are the source of their interactions.
However, if we extrapolate back in time assuming that particles create each other and don't causally precede stars and galaxies, then we get a completely different scenario, along the lines sketched above. As far as it makes sense to speak of a beginning in a SCU, this would be an indefinite state where particle masses are extremely small, their position ill defined, as would be spacetime itself.
-"Extrapolation of the expansion of the Universe backwards in time using GR yields an infinite density and temperature at a finite time in the past. This singularity signals the breakdown of general relativity."- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang 28-2-2011 In a SCU there's no break down of spacetime nor of the laws of physics: they always apply. Spacetime only is ill-defined until the energy of particles begins to increase as they contract to form more massive objects, as their mass increases, objects which in their field make positions physically different, defining, creating, expanding spacetime.
Regards, Anton