Georgina,

You've said the same thing for years, but never so well before. Congratulations.

One reason this essay is so cogent is that you focus on the 'objective world' and 'image reality', both of which exist as physically comprehensible phenomena, and you have not mentioned (except implicitly) the 'subjective world' (that we know interprets the images).

Your sequence of presentation is superb. Your explanation of 'current time' vs. 'present now' superb, and you make many sorely needed observations, such as:

"...the medium...must exist to account for observations...without having to resort to many worlds supernatural interpretations of reality or the belief that hypothetical constructs [wave functions] formed from mathematical equations without real counterpart in the object universe control the position and momentum of real particles, or that nothing is real."

You have laid it all out so clearly that I believe you may wish to look at the Maxwell-Einstein gravito-magnetic aspect of gravity [that I call 'the C-field'] --the gravitic *analog* of the magnetic B-field induced by moving charges-- as a physical field that can do duty as your 'unseen medium'. The C-field is induced locally by moving mass. It's 'wave like' existence accompanies every electron and photon with momentum and interacts with other mass/momentum in the neighborhood, including 'two slit' apparatus. It is a 'real' field, not a mathematical construct like the wave function, but it has the same mathematical description as the wave function. See figure and function at top of page 6 here.

I intended to just compliment your fine essay, but since you have 'set up' things so well I cannot resist trying to show how well the C-field fits your need for unobserved 'medium'. The existence of the C-field is not in argument, but its strength and significance is debatable.

You have, in essence, made the argument that [something like] the C-field is needed. I hope you will give serious consideration to the reality of a field that behaves as you say 'a medium' must.

You have also held up for closer examination such ideas as space-time, wave-functions, many worlds, and extra dimensions and found them lacking objective reality. That's a lot to accomplish in nine pages.

Edwin Eugene Klingman

    Hi Tom,

    I spent time trying to trace the original source of the quote used but despite finding countless occurrences of the quote attributed to Einstein I did not find where or when it was uttered.I could have spent longer but it did not seem a very constructive use of time. It is succinct and serves to illustrate Einstein's opinion well.It is not listed among false or mis-attributed quotes on Wikipedia.Someone may know its source and enlighten us.It was perhaps just one of many things that he said in various ways.

    He did write a letter of condolence to the family of a good friend Michele Besso in which he said "for us believing physicists the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." This is quoted in E=Einstein edited by Donald Goldsmith and Marcia Bartusiak, Sterling New York/London, in the section Einstein's dilemma by Shimon Malin.

    Einstein does assume space-time to be an objective reality which makes our individual experience of reality and the passage of time an illusion, in his opinion.

    I do not regard space-time as an objective reality. The data in the environment(potential input allowing production of observed reality) exists in the uni-temporal reality and so does itself have objective reality.However the image or reconstruction that it enables, space-time reality, is dependent upon the subject intercepting that data and frame of reference so is a subjective image reality only.

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    • Post #15

    Georgina

    Wonderful, even better than I expected. Thank you for making me feel so good and less alone. And I'm very impressed with your courage in speaking out about the king's new clothes.

    I believe you'll find Edwin's C field is an excellent approximation of the medium needed to convert from object to received reality. ..Wow, perhaps there really IS a chance we might help finally drag physics out of this deep conceptual rut!

    I have 3 points. Just one alone to take you to task on, and two I hope will help, all related.

    1/ I'm not sure how carefully you considered c being affected by gravity. Of course light does c in a vertical vacuum on earth as well as deep space. It may well of course be red shifted (going up)as EA suggested. But of course time dilation does that job, or does it? There is a lot going on here, but I think I've unravelled the complex puzzle to offer an answer. - viz;

    2/ You correctly identify "the greater the mass the greater the inertia", but how do we explain that a '100 ton' asteroid exerts more gravity passing Earth at 0.3c as 0.1c. (Equivalence of Grav v Inertial Mass) Yet to someone travelling alongside it, it does not??!

    OK, firstly our ether is needed, oops! ..I'll call it our dark energy 'C' field. Now, when our rock flies through it it can condense the plasma of ionised particles that we know it does.

    http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0019-1035(79)90092-7

    Stokes parameters for Thomson scattering in a cold magnetized plasma Astrophysics and Space Science Volume 218, No 1, 87-100, DOI: 10.1007/BF006580680Diffuse Ion Scattering in front of the Earth's Quasi-Parallel Bow Shock.American GPhysUnion. SOA/NASA

    2010. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010AGUFMSM51B1806K

    http://iopscience.iop.org/1475-7516/2011/01/009

    Ooops, sorry, ..got carried away, but, quantitively, they found 2' of arc diffraction through a comet coma tail recently. These particles of course have inertial mass, and, .. now wasn't there something that inertial mass equals?!

    There goes that thing that looks just like duck again - now in every detail.

    (It tasted good too, so the paper went in yesterday - but will almost certainly be rejected like the last one, as it challenges relativity).

    3/ Dammit, I knew I should have written it down! Anyway. You've done a brilliant job further and very eloquently expose the shortcomings of our interpretation of Relativity, but it will never be superceeded till we find how things really DO work. I hope now you'll far better understand my own essay than last year.

    The key experiment can be done with a glass of beer or plasma in a bar. If you could see a light pulse being scattered through it; Does the subjective apparent speed you see change by c/n or c/n +/- v when your friend Hendrik slides it at ever faster v past you along the bar?

    Oh and thanks for the credit! I have a horrid feeling you got squeezed out of mine on the cutting room floor! My sincerest apologies, ..but highest rating!

    Peter

      Dear Edwin,

      thank you so much for your very kind comments.

      I did want to write something really foundational, that answers the foundational questions and paradoxes as well as the essay question but is also comprehensible and interesting.I am really glad to hear that you think I have succeeded in that.

      Rather than just repeat everything I have said before I have also tried to extend the ideas to show how they could be useful to practical situations, conducting experiments and understanding observations, rather than being mere philosophy.

      I thank Peter Jackson for his advice on fqxi blogs to highlight the non conscious aspect of image reality formation. The subjective human interpretation is a bit of "a minefield" and immediately distracts from the simple physical process that is occurring.

      I will read your essay with much interest.

      Peter,

      thank you very much indeed for your very kind comments.

      Time dilation does not "do the job". It is an interpretation of the observed image reality. So although it is an explanation that fits the evidence it is not a cause of anything. Time does not exist as a dimension in object reality and therefore can not stretch but the distribution of the data that gives the input for image reality formation can be perturbed by the trajectory of the mass through space.

      Thank you very much for all of the references to look at. I have read your essay through and found it very interesting. (Also your video.) As you said I need to take time with it, which I sincerely intend to do before commenting further.

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      • Post #18

      Dear Georgina,

      Soon after I posted my essay I thought about you. I considered posting a message in the blogs section encouraging you and Tom to submit essays. Before I did that your essay appeared. We enterred on the same day. I printed your essay off but have not yet read it. I just wanted to say that I am glad that you enterred, but, not quite so glad to see that you quickly burried me in the ratings. Really, my message is one of 'good luck to you'.

      James

        Hi James,

        thank you, I appreciate your good wishes. I too was glad to see that you had entered the competition. Your essay is among the first I have read. I enjoyed reading it. There are now a lot of essays posted and I do not think I will manage to read them all.

        It is good to have people's ideas collected in one place for future reference rather than just scattered over numerous blog and forum threads. I also think that all of the essays will receive more public attention than the various blog posts. So that in itself is a good thing. Good luck to you too.

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        • Post #20

        Georgina,

        Excellent essay. It says something about the state of physics that such a clear and well reasoned description of the relationship between objective and subjective concepts of reality bumps enough sacred cows off the road that it likely won't get the attention it deserves. We can always hope though.

        Good luck and thanks for the mention.

        Hi John,

        thank you very much indeed. This was my third attempt to produce something that was readable to the end and not indigestibly content rich. It did mean leaving out other things that I would also have liked to talk about. I feel that I have said enough to make a reasonable argument.

        Our discussions on FQXi blogs, of various topics, have been helpful.In particular you have made me think hard about the direction of time, and what that means, and the concept of absolute space. What ever the outcome of the competition the ideas contained in our essays will receive wider attention. Which is progress imo. I am delighted with the feedback so far.

          Dear Eckard,

          thank you for reading my essay and for your support. I do hope that my essay proves to be relevant and useful to others.

          I have read your own essay but as it is largely concerned with mathematics, I will have to take time to gradually assimilate its content.I admire your knowledge and abilities and have no doubt of the very good sense with in it. Though our essays are very different in their approaches, we both share the desire to de mystify physics and restore realism. Let us hope that others will grasp the many reasons, you and I have given, for it to be so.

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          • Post #23

          Georgina,

          It's nice to see someone giving the idea of space as absolute some consideration. By it's nature, it's much harder to conceptually pin down than the point about time, but instinctively it fills a very large void in the theories. Pun intended.

          On my previous comment about what modern physics would look like if it has originally evolved in the east, it occurs to me that it wouldn't even be called physics, but possibly "contextuality." With physics, we isolate the object and then try to place it back in context by finding an opposing particle to balance it. With an eastern view the balance wouldn't be hidden. It's yin and yang. Positive and negative. Black and white. Left, right. The opposites don't cancel each other out, they give each other dimension and balance. They not only exist in everything, they are everything.

          I'm not confident of getting any attention yet. The politics is a function of complexity. Like what's going on in the Middle East, it won't be a rational evolutionary change, but a breakdown of a system under increasing pressure. Far too many people have far too much invested in the whole multiworlds/multiverses meme to drop it willingly. Given the willingness to accept all the far fetched ideas that are being taken seriously, it's safe to say their logical integrity is compromised. Having seen it in many other aspects of life, I find people are all too willing accept whatever pays the bills.

          The older I get, the more bizarre the world gets and I suspect we "ain't seen nothin yet."

          John,

          I don't agree with you on all of your technical points, but I do agree with your last paragraph (and with your last sentence.)

          It appears to me that many of the people who thoroughly reject God as the creator of the universe are in process of getting ready to believe in the Computer that created the universe.

          Go figure.

          Edwin Eugene Klingman

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          • Post #25

          heoh dear friends, she is already married hihihih

          they become crazzy Georgina, you saw now .They take gloves,hihihi they are real gentlemen wawwww

          Don't be grumpy or angry ,I am laughing I am laughing.

          Steve

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            • Post #26

            I speak as a child but in fact it's true your essay is very interesting.Your relativistic vue of the space time is relevant.

            Regards

            Steve

            Hi Georgina, thanks for your essay. Could an Archimedes screw be the visualisation of a particle/wave duality which is currently referred to as a paradox? Do you see what I mean?

              Hi Steve,

              it is good that you feel like laughing again.

              Thank you for reading my essay and commenting. I am glad you think it is a relevant view point as we have disagreed in the past. That was perhaps because of my choice of description, which did not express clearly enough what I meant. I have avoided using those terms that seem divisive.

              I am also glad that you found it interesting. A lot of what I said will not have been new to you but I have tried to extend the ideas to show how they can be useful to practical science.

              I think I have managed to show that there most definitely is a place for relativity and that it will continue to be relevant to the observations that are made.Though it is only part of a greater reality that exists without observation. Without both aspects of reality we are left with paradox, superstition, mystery, quasi reality or non reality of everything. I suspect that some people who love the mysterious will not approve of a simple physical mechanisms that overcome the need to accept unscientific notions.

              Hi Alan ,

              did you read the essay? What did you think? I am a little disappointed if it only made you think of a screw.

              We can of course visualise whatever we like. Visualising the particle as an Archimedes screw is still trying to retain the mysterious duality without admitting a medium.If I place a beach ball on the sea and it bobs up and down on the waves and forward and back on the tide I do not say the ball has ball/wave duality.

              I was going to say more about the movement of planets and galaxies which leads on to gravity. However I avoided talking about that in the essay as it was not particularly relevant to the competition question and so is not particularly relevant now.

              If you would like to -tell me- what you mean then please go ahead.

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              • Post #31

              Hi Joseph,

              thank you for your feedback.I am glad you liked it.

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              • Post #32

              Edwin,

              If you look at spirituality as bottom up, that of the essence of awareness slowly evolving ever more complex forms, rather than the monotheistic top down version, in which we represent a fallen copy of a moral and intellectual ideal, the computer makes an extremely insightful metaphor. The primary biological control is the attraction of the beneficial and repulsion of the detrimental. Amoebae act on on this and it is the basis of our primal concept of good vs. bad. We intellectualize it as yes and no and then on to the on/off switches of computers.

              The classical concept of God, no matter how much power and transcendence we assign it, is fundamentally weak, since it cannot prevent injustice, keeps having to retreat into the woodwork as we gain knowledge, allows the amoral to prosper, etc.

              On the other hand, if we view it as that continuously striving raw awareness, it explains these ambiguities of elemental striving and yet ever evolving knowledge to repair the damages encountered and inflicted. Death is not evil, not a necessary resetting of the system and way to clear out old ways and gain energy, so that while we become biologically and intellectually complex, we are not encased by the implicit structures, but must constantly push against all forms.

              Computers are a tool and extension of this awareness, just as the simple tool is an extension of the hand and the hand is an extension of the mind.

              This isn't stated as clearly as I'd like, but it's a germinating idea that I'm working through.

              Sorry to highjack your thread, Georgina.