For these reason, while digital might be helpful, reality is observably analog.
Jason,
I enjoyed your discussion.
While I agree with characterization of the nature of reality, I didn't follow how you posit it "observably" analog. What did I miss?
Jim Hoover
Hi Jim,
There are lots of measurements that have to be converted into digital voltage before the measurement can be processed digitally. There are voltage ranges for digital, CMOS, TTL, etc. The advantage of converting physical world measurements into digital is that digital is quicker and much easier to calculate. Analog to digital converters are used to convert measurements in the real world into digital. When digital to analog converters are used to synthesize a signal, there is still a "digital" appearance to the output signal; at least until the signal has spent some time in the enviroment where it begins to lose this digital appearance.
Light is said to obey particle-wave duality. We know from experiments with lenses that light has wave behavior. The fact that an atom might absorb or emit one photon is presented as the argument for particle behavior of light. Yet it is impossible to isolate a photon down to a point. If we try, we merely increase our odds of missing the photon.
Does that answer your question sufficiently?
Jason,
Because of your interest in 'all things photon' I want to make you aware of some good news on the C-field front!
The 12 Mar 2011 issue of 'Science News' has two articles on the C-field:
The first (p.14) states that the C-field generated by a spinning Black Hole imparts (detectable) angular momentum to photons passing through the field, circularly polarizing the light. Martin Bojowald suggests upgrading most telescopes to search for more of this.
The second article (p.20) on quantum vortices has Kerson Huang of MIT speculating that the vortices in the (C-field) 'superfluid' after the big bang may be responsible for the gaps of empty space between galaxies.
From 'Fly-by' mysteries to spinning Black Holes to the Big Bang, the C-field is being recognized as having physical reality responsible for observable effects.
Edwin Eugene Klingman
Jason,
Busy day with my mail. Not only did I find the C-field info (in 'Science News') mentioned in my last comment, but I found info in the 4 Mar 2011 issue of 'Science' Vol 331 that will be of interest to you.
On page 1142 there is an overview titled, "Toward Synthesis of Arbitrary Optical Waveforms" which summarizes an article on page 1165 by Chan et al, titled "Synthesis and Measurement of Ultrafast Waveforms from Five Discrete Optical Harmonics"
As an example they show both synthesized square waves and triangle waves. This is pretty much what you proposed, so I thought you might find relevant data here.
Best regards,
Edwin Eugene Klingman
Edwin,
That's amazing. I would suggest they try synthesizing a sawtooth wave; since the derivative with respect to x is a force,
[math]F = -\frac{dU}{dx}[/math]
I haven't yet found a free copy of the article. I might have to go down to the library.
I am glad that you also found something related to C-fields. I hope it turns out to be helpful to you.
Hi Edwin,
You said,"The first (p.14) states that the C-field generated by a spinning Black Hole imparts (detectable) angular momentum to photons passing through the field, circularly polarizing the light. "
That is very interesting. I was toying with the idea of synthesizing a shift photon in such a way that the polarization of the next frequency starts where the polarization of the previous frequency ended. The hope is to produce corkscrew gravity forces. However, it sounds like spinning black holes already cause something like that to happen.
From reading the abstract of that article, it sounds like all five frequencies are being produced simultaneously. Do you think they will try to produce them sequencially at a high repetition rate? That is the idea of a shift photon.
Jason,
Today's been very busy and I just read enough to know that you would be very interested. I'll study the articles later.
Edwin Eugene Klingman
Jason
Well done for squeezing in. I hope you apologise nicely to Tom!
I have a present for you. Some spectroscopy speed and photon density images of the Black Hole jets in HH34 (the photo in my essay). This should remove any retained doubts you've had.
This shows the turbulent speed and density grades. I do also have better ones somewhere but have had computer issues and info overload!
Just open the PDF and scroll to the appendices; http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0611/0611865v1.pdf
Best wishes
Peter
Dear Peter,
I haven't forgotten about you; and I will read the article after I finish various mundane chores, involving mundane things like budgets, laundry and errands...oh my.
Jason,
Congratulations, on making a late charge and getting in under the wire. I have to admit being a little nervous toward the end, since my essay seemed like it was "on the bubble" the whole time. BTW that Jerusalem video was pretty cool. Did you notice the flash of light (off to the right side) before the quick ascension? It makes you wonder if that was us or them. I didn't hear any percussion, though. I saw another copy of the same video on CBS online, there was no light flash. Curious, huh?
As for your gravity beam, just remember when a physicist says "it can't be done", an engineer says "how do we do it".
"Every revolutionary idea seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases: 1- It's completely impossible. 2- It's possible, but it's not worth doing. 3- I said it was a good idea all along." -- Arthur C. Clarke
Good luck in the next round, and better luck with your idea,
Dan
Hi Dan,
I think that video might be a "special effect". Which only means that it was a cool video, but not necessarily an example of physics.
I would rather work with engineers who ask: "how do we do it". I can answer that. I've been trying to reconcile this "curvature of space-time" stuff with gravitational potential energy. To tell you the truth, curvature of space-time seems to clunky. I hope you will argue of why it makes sense.
Thanks for being there, Dan.
Jason
Jason,
Unfortunately, the "curvature of spacetime" is "clunkly". I'm trying to teach myself tensor algebra, and it's not too fun. As for Gravitational P.E., even the experts don't like to think of it in those terms. For example, take a look at world re-known phyicist George Ellis' "nature of time" forum, where someone repeatedly asks for his opinion and he keeps dodging the question, saying it was "off the subject":
"Which brings us to the "dynamic dark energy" and -- inevitably -- to the "non-tangible" (Sir Hermann Bondi) gravitational energy, without which we cannot say anything on its "dark" counterpart, in both DDE and CDM.
To make your task easier, please put aside the driving force of the cosmological time (DDE), and focus on its mundane counterpart -- the "non-tangible" gravitational energy. The task is on the table since 1918.
Have you found a way to disentangle time from energy?"
So you see, there not an easy answer. If energy and time are complementary (Heisenberg) and GR involves time dilation, how do you obtain a exact definition of GPE? Without a complete theory of QG, you probably aren't going to get one.
Have a great day!
Dan
Jason,
BTW I wanted to point out Jim Hoover's essay bio that he is a retired Boeing systems engineer and that: "my personal interests and studies include particle physics, cosmology and UFO engineering"
Makes you wonder whether Boeing had a team working on any of that.
Dan
Dan,
"Have you found a way to disentangle time from energy?"
That's just it. You're not supposed to disentangle time from energy. If energy is in the form,
[math]E=hf[/math]
where f is in cycles per second; and time dilation changes the duration of one second for a photon that travels from A to B, then time is forever connected to energy. Gravity (gravitational time dilation) and energy (photon frequency)are inseparable.
Can you think of a reason why I that argument won't fly?
Jason,
You're exactly correct. You're unable to untangle time from energy, but this has consequences for the geometry. Remember the RHS of Einstein's EQ is the stress-energy tensor. If it changes the geometry must follow, so GR doesn't handle large changes in energy and thus dynamically changing spacetime very well. The only two cases that I'm aware of are gravity waves and the Lense-Thiring effect, but our universe is a very dynamically changing place, especially early in cosmic time and near strongly gravitating objects, but also wrt its very expansion throughout its entire life cycle. This is why the mainstream community has difficulty with explaining the galactic jets that Peter uses as a example. It's not that the jets are breaking the light barrier, but the spacetime that they are embedded in is. Dynamically expanding spacetime isn't restricted to light speed. It just so happens that these jets represent a highly non-uniform expansion of spacetime that the relativity experts aren't equipped to deal with.
Quite amazingly, I had one of the authors contact me yesterday on my essay forum. He seemed thrilled to find my essay and wanted for me to read his essay and a paper on his web page. His essay was fairly unorganized and nearly but not quite incomprehensible, but it included a part re. the growth of galaxies from BHs that seemed very similar to the mechanism in my essay. This was just enough for me to check out his internet paper (something I normally would spend time with). After reading his internet paper, I understood why his essay didn't make much sense. His internet paper has a theory of QG that contains 68 pages worth of material. No wonder his essay was in disarray, he was trying to squeeze so much in that none of it made much sense.
Believe or not, I actually read all 68 pgs. and think he may be onto something. Of course, it's hard to tell with just one reading and it did progressively get more involved. He described the QG field as an exponentially varying acceleration field that is intimately connected to the logarithmic or growth spiral, which is what I used to renormalize spacetime in my model. I had always suspected that the LS would have some kind of quantum effects, you can imagine my surprise when someone turned up with a complete theory built around them. Needless to say, I'm very interested in the details of his theory. It just seems too much of a coincidence that we arrived at similar conclusions re. galactic evolution; he from QG concepts, and me from contemplation of the nature of time and GR.
I plan to study his theory in more detail to see if I can substantiate it on my own and suggested that he tighten it up in order to submit it to a peer reviewed journal which seems like he is going to do. It's a fairly accessible paper until he starts talking about the tensors with 48 and 64 components, although it is quite long. You can access his paper here if you want to take a look.
Dan
Hi Dan,
There seems to be a lot of interest in the circulating gravity fields of galaxies.
D: "It's not that the jets are breaking the light barrier, but the spacetime that they are embedded in is. "
I'll go along with that. I just wish I knew how space-time A and space-time B (with v >> c between them), were related to each other.
D:"He described the QG field as an exponentially varying acceleration field that is intimately connected to the logarithmic or growth spiral, which is what I used to renormalize spacetime in my model. "
Exponentially varying acceleration related to logarithmic spiral growth? Wow! That's a bit out of range for me, but it could be correct. It's all very exciting.
But can you make the money shot? Can you tell me if it's possible to make a patch of space-time move by using that which we have an abundance of and have lots of skill working with? Light?
Dear Jason,
Sorry to have not commented on your essay before, but I am so busy with my research and the current research grant. Our point of view is very similar to mine and I think that we both think that photons are very important for solving current problems in Physics. Based on the comments of my essay, I have written a new version available online here http://cel.archives-ouvertes.fr/cel-00530098. I have corrected some mistakes I made concerning bosons. Rather than fundamental, I now think that photons are the primordial elements of the physical evolution of the universe. It leads to a natural definition of masses (without Higgs bosons) and an explanation for inflation (without inflatons). This new version is very subversive but it is more coherent.
Photons can be seen as particles and it leads to the Quantum electrodynamics (QED). In your essay, you are interested in the wave properties of photons. I agree that this point of view can lead to space and time. As you, I think that the subtle relation between light and matter (perhaps more general than light and gravity) is the key of the unity of Physics. A problem I encountered is that most of people think that you are mad when you say that photons (or light) are primordial. But we have to remember the special relativity and the fact that the speed is defined relative to the speed of light. I think that it is very difficult to accept that we cannot go faster than the speed of light. But there is no doubt that this is true. I understand that it can be difficult to accept that particles with their masses are defined relative to photons. Somehow, I think that space and time are defined relative to light (photons as waves) and masses and particles relative to photons. But this is the same relativity due to the wave/particle duality. In your essay, you want to explicitly develop this link between light and gravity and this is interesting. I stop here because it is already too long.
Feel free to contact me during or after the contest. My email is in my essay.
Best,
Emmanuel
Jason,
I thought you had that problem all worked out :-) I personally like your idea and I just realized that I think that was the first time I told you so. For that, I apologize. I think you've done a good job with your argument, yet it's one of those high risk, high reward type things. To tell you the truth, it doesn't really matter what I think, it's "how much do you believe in it?" I already know the answer to that because you've spent your hard earned money on buying lasers. Until you actually do an experiment with results that can be demonstrated, nobody *really* knows. Just look at it this way, if your right, and you can build the device as you envision it, not only are you an immediate multi-millionaire, you'll go down in history as having created something useful for all mankind. I'd say that's more than just a high reward. I just want my 10% consultation fee. OK, I might settle for 5%. :-)
Dan
Hi Dan,
Yes, I got the laser, but it doesn't work. I have to send it back.
"I thought you had that problem all worked out :-)"
Actually, I was hoping for some confirmation. I still think I'm right about shift photons.
There are reasons why we suspect that space-time itself can move:
1. frame dragging;
2. The Lense-Thirring effect
3. The M87 FTL jet that was clocked at 6c
4. ...
Particle B, in reference B, will always observe an incoming photon to be traveling at c, locally;
particle A, in reference frame A, will always emit a photon traveling at c, locally.
So what is the relationship between reference frames A and B? What happens if they're moving apart at 10c? I would have thought that if reference frame B is moving faster than c, that the photon can't catch up. But somehow, the M87 jet contradicts that.
Jason,
The M87 jet is an unusual event that we're able to observe mostly on edge. If it was on more of an angle toward us, there would exist a differential blueshift between the jet and M87, the galaxy. If the effective velocity difference is 10c, this would be quite a large shift in the observed wavelength/frequency. Quasars and distant galaxies fairly often are observed with redshifts > c just from the expansion of the universe. It's not that unusual. What makes M87 and its jet unusual is they're so close to each other (cosmologically speaking) with this tremendous expansion between them. If an observer perpendicular to the jet was closer to the moving frame, and started moving toward it, they would end up moving sideways along with the local frame. They probably wouldn't want to get to close, since there's undoubtably a lot of energetic particles in the jet itself.
You can't really think of a photon "catching up". The photon is available to all observers in our cosmos. Any velocity changes, from frame to frame, always shows up as a red/blue shift. Even if you were a hypothetical observer in the jet looking back at M87, you would see M87's photons but they would be redshifted corresponding to the velocity 10c.
Dan
