What Is Reality In the Context of Physics? by Georgina Parry

Okay, sorry, I think I got mixed up with another essay I had read. My problem is that you start with the assumption that Einstein's spacetime continuum is written in a tablet from god. What I'm saying is that if you take a step back, a particle model of gravity from Newton's era would negate the need for his spacetime continuum. This has been overlooked imo. You won't agree with me of course, which is okay. Good luck in the competition Georgina.

Basudeba

I hadn't heard the Eddington story and loved it, as very appropriate to Georgina's and to my propositions. I now can't recall what I have and havent read, but if I haven't read yours yet I will.

Georgina

I see we're no longer side by side in the community list, so I shall give yours the exceptional rating it deserves, - against the criteria of course.

Best wishes

Peter

Dear Georgina,

Certainly we will agree on that the question of synchrony is worth clarification. Because my reasoning led me to suspicions, I will collect and check related arguments. I already put some questions to Peter and I guess he will need some time for an easily understandable and convincing reply.

What about Basudeba, I am disappointed because I found in his essay much less than in his comment here.

Unfortunately my command of English is perhaps too poor. What did you mean with "discounted": rejected, ignored, or made cheaper?

You are using the expressions "object universal position" and "object universal perspective". I know "the object" and "to object". Could I read your "object" as the adjective "objective"?

Given I observe a process, then I am of course as real as is the process. Let's consider Cebel seconding a duel on pistols between Abel and Bebel. The time of flight from Cebel to Abel or to Bebel must not give Abel a chance that is different from Bebel's chance to fire first. Do you agree? Do we need an universal perspective?

Regards,

Eckard

Hands-up Georgina, you're right and I'm wrong! I've now read your essay more slowly and thoroughly I can see the error of my ways. I only have 2hrs a day of internet time via the library and so I tend to glance and skim read without thinking about it anymore! Okay, I see that you say:

"Gravity is not due to curvature of space- time, as space time is an image reality, an "illusion", and not object reality with concrete realism. The curvature of space-time is an interpretation fitting the observation of

image reality, not underlying object reality. If space-time reality is an illusion, as confessed by Einstein, there must be other cause for gravitation than curvature of a non existent space-time manifold. Mass does not

cause gravity merely by its stationary presence in space-time but because the body is following a trajectory through space and affecting the environment through which it passes, causing the observed gravitational

field effect."

What I'm sayting is that the term "mass" is the problem. Object reality has the property of structure and not "mass". If object reality was thought about a little more by Newton and his contempories then a structural image with ORIENTATION would have been devised. This is the only object reality which allows a force of attraction at a distance to be achieved. It's the analogy of the helical screw, and so would have been accessible to Newton and others. It can also easily explain dark energy, if a wraparound universe is envisaged. Now, if you will be kind enough to keep an open mind despite my poor introduction to your essay, will you spend some time to consider my point of view please??

Jason,

as if, :-D

Anyone who uses the term "mass" is unwittingly subscribing to a spacetime continuum worldview imo.

Madam,

While addressing you, we were not referring to your persona, which is very private to you. We were addressing your intellectual acumen, which is very much in the public domain and which must be respected. It has no name.

By discordant notes we mean the tendency to follow the herd and jump where the earlier of the species jumped, even when such a jump may not be necessary and may prove fatal. The founders of modern science were great men, but they were not blessed with the tremendous advancement made by current technology. Thus, what they thought were not wrong in their context (except for some very serious mistakes, where novelty overtook correspondence to reality and manipulation overtook logical consistency). Personal standing of the scientist also became more important than theoretical deductions. We will give you a few examples to prove this statement:

1) Poincare deduced the equation e = mc^2 in 1900, but Einstein, who derived the same equation 5 years later, got the credit for the same.

2) Eddington publicly humiliated Subrahmanium Chandrasekhar thereby delaying Noble Prize for the same work by 50 years.

3) Eddington's "proof" of the victory of Einstein's theory over that of Newton was not based on facts, but because of his public standing with the media. There has been much comment on this subject lately.

4) The "proof" of time dilation of atomic clocks that was taken around the globe is a manipulated one that can be verified from the documents relating to original readings that are still available in archives.

5) The value of G measured precisely is not the same as that measured earlier. But the theories using the earlier value is still accepted without any question.

Since many theoretical scientists are leading a cozy life at public expenses by dishing our fantasies in the name of science (LHC up-gradation is one example, while Tevaton is closing down). They have a vested interest in what they call "main stream physics" and term any one deviating from that as "dirtying" their "clean" thread. This loot of public money pains us.

The need of the hour is to dump the whole of physics, list out the data made available from latest observations and reformulate the theories from the scratch. No amount of patch work will help. We are happy to find out that you have come out with some original ideas. The discordant note related to the few links in your essay to the "official" physics, some of which does not bear scientific scrutiny.

We have formulated an alternative model deriving from fundamental principles that can explain most interactions without relativity and by demystifying quantum physics. But then we are not an academician nor a research scientist.

Thanks and regads,

basudeba

Dear Eckard,

I am sorry for the delay in replying to your queries.I am also sorry for the ambiguity in my previous reply to you. It is helpful to me too, to discover these ambiguities that make my explanations less clear than they might be.I can then try to avoid them.I am glad that you brought it to my attention.

I mean by discounted, in this case, ignored. The observer is as real as the object. But the observation made by the observer is of the image not the object itself. Object as I am using it, refers to a material thing with full realism even without the possibility of direct observation.It is not dependent upon observation or conscious experience to bring it into existence. Like the magician's rabbit, it does not have to be seen to be real. So the observer perspective can be ignored when this facet of reality is under consideration.

I am using the term Object as a substitute for objective (which has the counterpart subjective.) As I do not wish to discuss in this essay only subjective human experience but a physical process occurring irrespective of consciousness. It has been argued by some quantum physicists that conscious awareness is necessary for decoherence to occur but I am saying this is not necessarily so. As there can be inanimate image reality generation. (It requires only a reality interface such as a photographic plate.)

Image, as I am using it,is a generated representation of the object. It has some similarity to the object or source of the data used to form the image. It is not formed from the same material. It could be an image on film , a sound recording, a visual experience generated by the visual cortex of the brain for example.

When we are referring to the Object reality, then a universal perspective is not necessary. Objects have actual, ever changing position, that do not rely upon frame of reference. That is the "really real" non relativistic reality. If it was possible to instantly measure distance between each particle and object as you have said A to B must be equal to B to A, it could be mapped. However such measurement is not possible.

When object and observer are spatially separated and measurements are made it is the appearance of reality, the image, that is observed not the underlying reality. There is delay in transmission of the data and a temporal distortion creeps in to the measurement. Only with an Object universal perspective could the absolute trajectory be ascertained and a non relativistic position at which an object existed in the universe be known.

We also do not have that universal perspective. Therefore we must be content with a "half way house". A super relative position which is obtained from trajectory observation of a number of observers in different frames of reference. By finding the overlap of those trajectories a position can be found that the object must have occupied in order to generate all of the different trajectory observations. The different observers are seeing the object at different times due to differences of data transmission time.

I am using the term Object universe to distinguish it from the space-time image reality universe. I has no time dimension but exists as a uni-temporal structure.

I have not yet read Basudeba's essay but will do so soon.I am also mindful that I must also re read and consider your own, Ewin Klingman's and Peter Jackson's essays.It is too much to accomplish all at once.

Best regards, Georgina

Hi Georgina,

I don't see how you can speak of a "reality interface" (which you allow can be either organic or inorganic) without implying that there is something special about the sensing mechanism that differentiates it from the observer effect in quantum mechanics. Indeed, you take pains to describe the mechanics of sensation -- biological sensation. Quantum mechanics, however, already identifies the observer with the act of observation and makes no differentiation between the reality interface of the human observer and the particle detector.

Assuming that nonhuman particle detectors do not analyze and interpret data, then there must be something different in the biological mechanism by which one creates the personal picture of reality that you describe.

You write: "We can only 'see' what we choose to observe and are capable of observing." That's absolutely true. That's what the quantum mechanical observer effect describes.

You write: "The time dimension does not pertain to Object reality, only Image reality." That's also true, and also subsumed by (nonrelativisitc) quantum mechanics. The phenomenon of nonlocality, without which quantum mechanics is incoherent, assures us that quantum configuration space (object reality) cannot map to local space (image reality) without a nonlocal model. The time operator in quantum mechanics is unity.

You don't need to deny relativity, however, to affirm the truth of quantum mechanics. They are two different things, and in every case put to the test, are both true.

In my forum, you emphasized the importance of encouragement along with criticism. You have forgotten, however, that I long ago encouraged you, in the forums, to pursue your ideas in terms of brain mechanics and the physics of consciousness. Here and elsewhere, I have spoken of brain science as the next great frontier of human knowledge.

You along with others often accuse me of not having read what you have written. There is bitter irony in this for me. If you all knew the extent of my lifelong disorder -- the compulsion to read everything intensely and repeatedly, not just literature, but instructions, laundry tags, road signs, warnings, logos, tattoos, everything -- you might feel differently.

I wish you the best. In this contest and every other aspect of your life, whatever you make of reality. I can't do more than that.

Tom

Dear Georgina,

I have responded to your post on my essay page.

Best regards,

Tejinder

Hi Georgina,

I didn't make any arguments about absolute time and space. That's the Newtonian model. In relativity, it is only spacetime--the combination--that is absolute and physically real in general relativity.

My objections to Edwin's theory are clear enough and I won't rehash them. However, I can't see why you keep insisting that I didn't read your paper when I explicitly cited points you made that are subsumed by quantum mechanics. And now you've just brought up the same points again. Let me see if I can explain it another way:

In quantum mechanics, time is unity. That is, it drops out of the equations. Why not set it to zero, then? -- because the dynamics of quantum mechanical interactions, unlike general relativity, do not allow space collapsed to a point (singularity) which is where the physics of general relativity ends. (That's why we use 2 dimensional mathematics in the Hilbert space to calculate the outcome of quantum events.)

So your "uni-temporal" time is identical to the way time is treated in quantum theory, and observer dependent as you allow, with incomplete information on the state of a particle as measured. "Distorted spacetime" is how time is treated in general relativity, i.e., warping caused by the presence of matter. The observer dependency here is that the warping or distortion we measure is only the result of measuring changes in position among mass points, never spacetime points. That's why information about the state of spacetime is incomplete in quantum mechanics but reconciled in general relativity by Lorentz invariance, the physics of "empty space."

I appreciate that you seem obsessed over the grandfather paradox in general relativity, but this is really more science fiction than science. It comes about as the alternative to what was once thought a paradox, but is not. This is the so-called twin paradox, where a fast-travelling twin ages slower than one who stays at home. Because the physics is not symmetric, however, we know that it's not true time-reversed symmetry and thus no paradox. The grandfather paradox on the other hand is based on the classical requirement of time symmetry, the fact that the equations operate as well backward in time as forward. While this is true, the popular implications of "tinkering with the spacetime continuum" are not physically justified. Einstein's (Minkowski's) spacetime continuum is constrained by 3 1 dimensions. A four dimension (indeed, any even dimension) model that includes time, is orientable. This means that one direction is just as good as the other, whether forward or backward in time; the trajectory may be differently oriented, but the passage of time is the same. IF it is possible to travel to meet one's grandfather in a singularity, and IF it possible to kill one's grandfather at that point (real big IFs where the physics is unknown) even that event would not affect the "real" 3 1 spacetime outside the singularity. It would only imply what quantum mechanics already knows, that in Eddington's words "Something unknown is doing we don't know what." That's not paradox. That's nature.

I'm familiar with Julian Barbour's work. I plan to leave a note.

Best,

Tom