Newton was wrong Einstein was wrong. E does not = mc^2. This is not a crank site.
82The internet says: "And I also have an idea for a space ship that could get us out of or solar system in 45 days which is shit and getting."
Wow - it's shit and getting. I never would have thought it. What does that mean anyway? Also - a quick calculation. Assuming the distance from Earth to what we might mark as the edge of the solar system is about 9 billion miles (but you could argue for as much as 27 billion miles). This is about 223,500 km/hour but only if you could instantly launch at that speed. Taking acceleration into account, and the associated fuel and g-forces, it's looking somewhat unlikely to say the least. But then, it is shit and getting... so you never know.
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... and now I have your attention...
Newton was wrong, Bohr was wrong, Heisenberg was wrong (But we are uncertain of that), Feynman was wrong, Hoyle was wrong... and the list goes on. All the scientists and physicists were wrong.
At least, that's what the crackpots and cranks would like you to believe, and shortly, I'll illustrate the twaddle and BS that is all too easily found on the Internet. Correcting facts, recognising misconceptions is easy, making those corrections stick seems all but impossible, but what I puzzle over is the personality behind those who deliberately miscommunicate. I don't know why they do it.
Was Newton Wrong? Was Einstein wrong? Was Bohr wrong?
Yes. They were - kind of. Well, not really. It's just that the realm of applicability is bounded.
The Bohr model of the atom holds no modern useful model of the atom beyond a nice description of the periodic table.
Newton's laws don't work at great speed or in strong gravitational fields; and Einstein's general relativity cannot be unified with the electromagnetic, electroweak and strong forces. Furthermore, his theory is under pressure from recent careful experiments with neutrinos. Apparently, it looks like they can beat the cosmic speed limit. (This is a really big deal and it's by no means a done deal at the time of writing.)
Although all these theories are "wrong", it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because in a sense all theories are either wrong because they don't work under some special conditions, or they are blatantly provably totally wrong because observation won't back them up. But herein lies an important distinction. To advance science, you observe, wonder how, why, and essentially make a guess. Then you find a way to test the guess. First, it has to be self consistent. Then it has to agree with accepted laws of physics. It has to be free, or usefully free of 'infinities' where the equations essentially break down at a singularity. And it needs to be peer-reviewed, and tested by experiment. Then it needs to be further tested, and tested again in different ways, by independent researchers, and this cycle continues until the theory is so far away from wrong, that it makes sense at some point to call it a discovery. Some of these ideas are so solid and immutable that they become laws. Examples of laws are those of thermodynamics, carrier capacity of information channels, the equivalence principal, conservation of momentum, energy, information and so on.
Even with that status, as in Newton's laws, there is an opening to break the 'status quo' as in the case of Einstein's relativity.
This 'status quo' for some reason is one of the things that pseudo science BS artists latch on to. For some reason, anyone who supports the disgusting 'status quo' has limited imagination, is brainwashed, stuck in a mind-set and hampered by their advanced education. The supporter of the 'status quo' is seen as a co-conspirator of evil governments or a blind puppet or stupid sheep. Apparently large organisations inevitably seek to suppress revolutionary technology. Apparently the oil companies execute inventors or send them broke, or alternatively pay them off handsomely. The loan-inventor using kitchen equipment, a few magnets and no idea what is a differential equation... is waaaay smarter than those idiot mainstream scientists and physicists (what is it about magnets?).
Not even wrong
If you are brave enough to try and counter one of these nut-jobs, then it really is like pushing shit up hill. Actually that shit is more like diarrhoea, and your only tool is a toothpick. Here are a few examples:
"IE by adjusting the resonant frequency of particles or clusters, the speed limit of the speed of light can and will be exceeded through exponential resonant acceleration."
BS, BS, BS, mumble mumble rhubarb rhubarb. TA-DAAAH ! Faster than light.
"we are taught that the opposite of division is multiplication but this is not true. the opposite of division is singularity which is not multiplication. Multiplication is the reverse of division! this needs to be understood to do the maths to test this equation."
Oh dear. Where to begin? Firstly, 'opposite' in this context should be 'inverse'. I have no idea what is meant by "the inverse of division is singularity". It seems that reverse should be inverse, but reverse is not opposite, or opposite is not reverse. Cripes - I need to understand all that before testing this equation. No wonder all the real physicists can't do it.
"Albert Eisenstein also bent light with magnets."
Really? With magnets? Since the photon has no electric charge, that's not possible. Who is this Eisenstein character anyway and why have I never heard of him? I guess that's one of those conspiracy things. All the textbooks and all the lectures, and all the professors in the world are secretly collaborating to hide this dirty little secret from the masses. Unless... he means the gravitational attraction of a magnet can bend light. Yes - I'm happy with that. It's true too, marginally. If the magnet was super big so you could actually measure the effect.
"Waite if you move a conductor threw a magnetic field it becomes charged magnetism is def the secret to life and space and time"
I guess this is one of those 'not even wrong' cases. I mean, how the heck can you counter an argument like this? It's hardly even a sentence. There are no magnetic charges. Maxwell's equations say so, and masses and masses of experimental attempts show not even a hint of a real magnetic monopole. The closest you get is a theoretical construct by Dirac. In this idea, it's an infinitely long magnetic object with one end visible. It's called a Dirac String. Some theories don't exclude them, some rely on them. There is no experimental evidence for one. The other is a similar thing found in spin-ice, but this is just an approximation. The models of monopoles in spin-ice are still dipoles in practice.
Yup - this is def the secret to life. NOT!
"But i will tell you this there is no such thing is perpetual motion and if and one thinks they can achieve it there wrong and it tell me they don't know what gravity is it a electric charge to be precise. but when u have a charge and electron move u have a magnetic field so the electric charge or magnetism could be gravity"
True - there are no perpetual motion machines. True, people who think they can make one are wrong.
We know what gravity is, at least in the context of general relativity (It's a warping of spacetime). What we don't know is why. False, gravity is not an electric charge (to be precise).
True when an electron moves there is a magnetic field. I don't know why you need a charge and an electron, since an electron is charged anyway. How he comes to the conclusion that this means electric charge or magnetism could be gravity is quite puzzling. Accidentally, it's sort of right in the sense that everything exhibits a gravitational attraction - even a photon, but this is not the context in which he writes. He is trying to assert/reason that gravity and magnetism are one and the same.
"In the case of a Black Hole, the velocity of photons flowing inwards must equal the velocity of dark particles flowing outwards - hence why all we see is BLACK. This is PERFECT EQUILIBRIUM or the true ZERO STATE."
I have no issue with wild speculation in the right context, or playful intellectual dancing with silliness to get the creative juices flowing, but stating such garbage as if it were a legitimate explanation is incredibly saddening. Is this a reflection of our education system? Have these people been failed by the system or are they unteachable?
"It seems to me that all viable light is created from fiction (heat) and invisible light is the last stage of this process"
I had to include that one... just because of the serendipitous typos.
"A black hole, whilst it has little or no mass, defines an enormous amount of space, it even defines light and therefore holds more energy than light despite being of relatively small field of matter."
This is the first time that I've read someone state that a black hole has little or no mass. I am not sure whether he means 'defines space' or simply 'occupies space'. What 'defines light' means, I have no clue, and why this means that a black hole has more energy than light totally escapes me. To top it off, suddenly, he introduces something called a field of matter. The level of confusion here is un-freaking believable, and totally impossible to unwravel.
"Add entropy into the mix, and you're on you're way to prove Newton and Einstien wrong about gravity. So far, this postulation carries a potentially vast signifigance."
And then we get the troll who has done a bit of scientific lexicographic stamp-collecting, displays them in a leather-bound presentation book and places it in full public view as a psudo-scientific potential noballs prize ripe for the picking. Roll up, roll up. Get your oven mitts on and start baking that entropy mix. Be sure to only half-bake it. The path to fame, wealth and riches awaits.
Here come the crowds...
"Hmmmmmmmmm. Interesting. You do realize that if you're right, that many physicists will object to you and this wonderful work. They should jump on board and explore the realm of what your saying, but many will be mad for their inability to see something so obvious sitting right in their faces. I commend you for the guts you have."
I quote, "many physicists will object". Ahem. How about all of them? And many normal people too.
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Am I pissed off?
You bet. It's not only the level of ignorance. It's not just the total lack of comprehension. It's not just the complete and utter tangle of confusion about very basic scientific ideas. It's not wholly the unbelievable failure of an education system. It's not even the lack of proper sentence structure and spelling.
I am pissed off because these people DO NOT WANT TO LEARN. I wasted my time trying to help some people understand. Instead, it was like peeing gasoline onto a fire, with all the concomitant ramifications. It's a tar-baby. Helping these people is not only impossible, helping it makes it worse. Like cutting the head off a hydra it's one step forward, and two back. They suck in perfectly good facts, barf up a load of dice-carrots, peas and corn (even though that's not what went in), and put it on display like contemporary art in the grand unified museum of BS.
But what really pisses me off is that these people somehow find a way to draw in and dazzle intelligent people who are legitimately seeking knowledge. It's hard enough sorting out the misconceptions which exist as artefacts of superseded mainstream science - like the Brontosaurus or the Bohr model which should, in my opinion be taught in history, not science.
I got called a bully, was told I had no imagination, am brainwashed, short-sighted, a member of the 'status quo', a fool and could never advance and think outside the box. Maybe I even work for an OIL COMPANY.
I'll leave you with one fact to take away:
"Astronomers do not know what causes seasons." (Apparently)
... and one piece of advice. Don't believe everything you read. I wish I had the Internet when I was starting out. But I also wonder how much more difficult if would be with so many frogs and so few suitably gendered eligible members of a royal family.
Is Manna in the wild ...
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Lol. A web is just a bunch of holes held together by thin lines anyway. :-)
Sigh.. it truly is "shit and getting". I can't argue against that.
It may very well be that we are way off in our understanding - sometimes a new discovery does put giant cracks in old certainties. But IF that happens, it will come from the world of hard science and it will matter.
I can't help thinking of the Rossi E-cat thing. I've been trying to figure out where the scam is and haven't yet found it, so I'm willing to give it some very tiny chance of being something that could "change things". I doubt it - it is almost certainly going to be a scam or just optimistic insanity, but there is always that tiny chance of a hole in our present thinking.
It wouldn't make anyone "wrong". It would be new evidence that would have to be worked in with everything we know is "right" and we'd have to make sense of it. That's what science is - making sense of observations.
Most of this "getting and shit" stuff wants to take some apocryphal observation and toss out all the real observations because of it.
Another way to think of it is like magic tricks. The woman obviously didn't get sawed in half, so if it looks like she did, we have to fit that observation into the things that we know are true - such as, there she is, still in one piece! The "shit and getting" crowd invokes magical healing instead of thinking about two people in a box.
among all the flotsam and jetsom of the universe, Manna, yours is the best.
I wonder if mankind will ever evolve to the point of being able to understand physics - especially the infinite variations of directions to go in. I don't see things as being "right" and "wrong", but rather as things that are true or false. Assigning right and wrong to anything is a judgement call and depends on esoteric reasoning.
Either an idea is true or it is false. It is neither "good" nor "evil" (right or wrong).
Nice work Austinstar. What you are actually saying is one of the foundations of mathematics and reasoning: that the definition of a statement is something that can be evaluated as either true or false. This is the basis of mathematical reasoning, and scientific discovery.
In some ways, if we ever totally understand all of physics, then it will be a bit of a let down for many!
A bit of a letdown? I think it might be closer to total annihilation!
I just posted on another site about the Christian "end of times" being proof of God. It's more like drinking poison to prove that it can kill. Silly me, the Christians want everyone to drink the poison!
Isn't "poison" also a brand of perfume?
On another note, I see I am 38% Brontosaurus, and 38% pissed off... which means that it's lucky I am not a meat eater.
I know the feeling Manna! It's the same one I get trying to reason with creationists. Like trying to push diarrhea uphill with a toothpick is right. It's one of the reasons I don't spend much time on hubpages any more. It got too frustrating. Much more pleasant (and productive) hanging out in my ivory tower, at work with smart, clear-thinking colleagues advancing the "status quo" theory of evolution.
On ya Joyus Crynoid - "advance the status quo". That's a wonderfully caustic quip. I like it.
Good stuff, great job ... thanks!
Please send me your list of all the major sources of BS on HubPages so I can adjust my BS detector ... :)
Let me ask you where you come down on these questions:
1 - Does the Big Bang point in the direction of a universal reproductive system just on a larger scale?
2 - How do natural processes follow the laws of nature?
Are there some qualities to all forms of energy and matter which assures such laws are being followed or how do you see this playing out in the real world?
Hi f_hrutz. A list of the major BS sources would be a long list. It's better to hone your BS detection kit. Try John Baez for that one.
on 1) I don't know what you mean. Can you re-phrase?
same for 2). I don't quite understand the question. (probably because I am still 30% Brontosaurus.
Thanks for the reply. Have you had a chance to read some of fatfists idea of science? He started this idea whereby math is only to be used to confuse people and to make things more complicated.
Let me just ask you about this first:
Does it make sense to see the big bang and the beginning of our universe as part of super cosmic birth process like I was hinting at in my hub "Coping with Reality"?
If energy and matter can not be destroyed or created, and the only constant is continuous change, then maybe all these various stages of change are all part of a highly interlinked reproductive system?
Are you saying the universe reproduces itself? By means of Big Bangs? Do you mean that the universe intentionally reproduces itself?
It's more likely in my mind that the matter of the universe constantly expands and contracts - more like a respiratory system. This happens over trillions of our yearly measurement system, but it is no time at all to the actual matter that is expanding and contracting.
I encountered fatfist a while ago but don't really align with his views or agree with all of his logic.
It's not clear at all that the big bang is a beginning. All we have been able to do so far is wind back the physics deduced from present-day observations, and conclude that all "this" used to be a lot more dense, and a lot hotter, and a lot more uniform. There is nothing to say about time=0. We can get to t="a really tiny value" but not t=0. And that's the best of observational results so far. Theoretical fancy proposes various things like cyclic universes, universes bifurcating continuously, clashes of branes from multi-dimensional space and so on.
Does it make sense to see the big bang as the beginning of our universe? Yes, if you mean the universe as we know it, but "No" if the state at t=0 is defined for all time leading up to inflation. Is time quantized?
You might enjoy Lovelock's writings. Search for Gia.
I am intrigued by Roger Penrose's theory, based on general relativity and the second law of thermodynamics, that the universe develops to an end that is indistinguishable from its beginning--a state of maximum equilibrium, where time and space have no meaning:
Here's a review of Penrose's recent book "Cycles of Time":
Yes - I've seen that too Joyus C. RP takes a bit of flack about his ideas on conciousness, but he's a good thinker and his ideas are thought provoking.
He deserves all the flak he gets on consciousness. But so does almost everyone else. Minds are just machines. No magic.
I'll worry about the Universe AFTER we have a real understanding of physics.
You make a good point Pcunix. With luck, the universe will continue to be mysterious...
Minds are NOT just machines. But that fact does not imply or require any magic.
Sorry Manna, but PC and I have had this argument elsewhere, and I will not belabor it here. Instead I will recommend a new book on the subject, which does a really good job of clarifying the relevant issues, in a way that has not been done before. The book is "Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter" by Terrence Deacon (http://books.wwnorton.com/books/Incomplete-Nature/ ).
I would venture to say that this book is the most important advance in biological thought since Darwin's "Origin of Species", and goes a long way toward explaining the origin of life and cosciousness in terms of known physics. It also explains, very clearly, why it is wrong to think of mind as a machine.
Thanks for the book reference Joyus C. I'll look into it.
Joyus, we've been down that road before. Minds are nothing but machines, there is no "emergence" and every bit of that nonsense comes from self centered conceit of the machine itself. There is nothing to "explain".
That's utter nonsense PC. If what you say is true then we wouldn't have been haunted with the specter of Cartesian dualism for the past 400 years. Your solution to the problem (and yes it is a problem) is to explain it away, which allows you to pretend it does not exist.
Perhaps, however, I am mistaken. If so please tell me how a machine can think imaginatively, about itself and the world. Moreover, how does efficient cause give rise to final cause? I only ask because it seems you have solved those problems, which have puzzled me my whole life, I would like to be enlightened.
BTW, the book that I mentioned above defines emergence in a way that I think even a hard-core reductionist like you can relate to and find useful.
We've been "haunted" by it only because of foolish people who think there is something mystical where there is not. Note that we've been "haunted" by religion even longer and THAT is the primary force that drives this ridiculous "mind body" dualism that is inherent in all "problem of mind" nonsense.
Define "imaginative" and you'll realize that no person ever has or ever will "think imaginatively". Go ahead: imagine a color that doesn't exist.
That "efficient cause" stuff has always made me laugh. Is there "efficient cause" in a computer program? More nonsense made up because of duality. There's no problem to solve - just nonsense words made up by self important minds.
That's bulshit PC. And until you either answer my question (as opposed to simply making arrogant unsupported assertions), you don't have a leg to stand on.
I will give you an prime example of imaginative thinking: the invention of "0" by Arabian mathemeticians. That revolutionized math, allowing us to do things that the Romans et al never imagined.
It is interesting that before that happened, it was taboo to even think about representing the concept of absence numerically. Much like your mental taboo against thinking about the non-mechanistic (as Deacon would say "absential") qualities of mind.
There is nothing mystical in my thinking, and I am insulted by your implying that there is. The problem of mind is real. Dualism is a failed attempt to resolve the problem that plays right into religion's hands (in fact Descartes arguably used it to placate the Church). I suggest that rather than giving me knee-jerk reactions devoid of substance, that you read the book I referenced above and get back to me.
P.S. Of course there is no efficient cause in a computer program. It is a mental construct. The efficient cause is in the machine that runs the program. But until you can tell me how a machine, which is a deterministic entity (i.e. entirely attributable to efficient cause) comes up with a computer program without the help of a teleological mind, I'm afraid you are just blowing steam.
Let's say, each human being represents a mini universe which gets started at point t=0 ... then obviously they didn't exist before the moment of fertilization, but time existed before, during and after birth of that growing and expanding mini universe - and before IT existed a much larger reality containing many reproductive systems, with the potential, not only to cross-fertilize, but to also host new lifeforms within itself ... and a lot more!
There are so many moments when one could say, that's when t was 0 for this living entity. Just think of IT as being yourself, or as you being a single cell life form with in you, or as you being part of the universe.
I'm sure it's not a man-made god driving the wagon to make all of this work. The thing I'd like to know, where does nature get this potential from to let all this unfold before us while giving us the ability to draw on all that intelligence on demand by simply learning how to think in abstract terms, create structured thoughts which reflect how nature actually functions, and apply it in scientific ways so we can compare notes ... :)
@f_hruz: One major difference between the birth of a human and the big bang is that the human expands into something, consuming resources from that something on the way. With the big bang there is no 'into'. It is not described as an explosion into some medium, and there is no centre as there would be with an explosion. The growth of the universe is not consuming an external medium.
If you stand on Earth and look in any direction everywhere looks the same. If an alien, say, 10 billion light years away did the same, it would find everything the same too. But we would have different horizons because of the time it takes information from the big bang to reach our observations.
Your last paragraph contains deep and perplexing questions. Feel free to speculate.
I don't think it is appropriate to continue our arguing here. I'll write a hub about it and you can blow smoke there if you want. I apologize that you are insulted, but mystical thinkers always are.
Agreed PC. I look forward to blowing smoke your way. I expect however that the chances of me changing your mind are about as good as the chances of me convincing a creationist of the reality of evolution. The use of disparaging terms like "foolish" and "mystical thinking" smacks of intellectual laziness, and is the mark of a True Believer who recognizes, deep down, that they don't have a leg to stand on.
Sorry Manna, I'm done. Thanks for your indulgence on this exchange, which at least was somewhat in the spirit of your hub!
Voted up. No discussion of elementary physics is complete without my warped humor.
Have you heard about the new high-tech embalming fluid?
It's called Perpetual Lotion.
Oh, bad Larry! The devil made me do it.
Oh - go get a good Christmas!
@f_hruz "I'm sure it's not a man-made god driving the wagon to make all of this work."
All that is in the "universe" exists, it has always existed and will infinitely exist in the future. This includes cognitive thought, whatever that is. Perhaps "time" is the magic ingredient. Or perhaps not. Just sum it up in your mind as "it is what it is" and move on.
Happy holidays to ya'll!
Manna in the wild,
There are certain claims I can understand - that all of matter is expanding into empty space that lies outside of (say) a ringlike circle of matter.
What I cannot envision is something totally irrational, such as a 0D particle or something that IS both particle and wave because we can't explain why something may appear to act like a particle and wave or how space (nothing) can curve even when combined with time (a non-thing).
Because we cannot explain observations does not to me make a case for claims that lie outside of our ability to use reason.
That never seemed irrational to me. Waves that are constrained (atomic structure) interact with other constrained waves, rejecting some and accepting others, creating solidity and chemistry. It doesn't seem irrational. Free waves interact with constrained waves also, and sometimes look "solid" and sometimes do not, depending upon the specific physics that applies to their interaction. We call some of those interactions chemistry and others particle physics and radio and gravity or whatever, but it's all the same thing.
(Waves that are constrained (atomic structure) interact with other constrained waves,)
Hi, Pcunix,
We should be able to agree that a wave is not an object but a description of a type of movement, a pattern, i.e., the water moves in wavelike fashion and only when individual water droplets combine to move in this fashion do we identify the pattern and call that relationship a wave.
An object (a marble) could follow a wavelike tract and look like a wave if we traced its path on graph paper, but its path on paper does not transform the marble into "a wave".
The claim of light being both a wave and a particle is a claim that a concept (wave) can alter its form into an object (particle), does it not?
This, to me, is an irrational claim. I don't dispute that it appears to move that way to the observer - I dispute that the solution is that a concept can become an object and vice versa.
There must be an explanation, as yet unfound, that explains this paradox.
"There must be an explanation, as yet unfound, that explains this paradox."
It is indeed a nasty pill to swallow. Table-top experiments are very conclusive: A single electron can be experimentally shown to act wave-like and yet has particle-like abilities. The closest classical example I can think of (and every classical analogy is badly flawed in QM) would be to imagine a flexible stick, anchored at one end to a glowing vibrating object. At the other end is a translucent projection screen. On the other side, an experimenter. The projection of the free-end of the excited stick would be a fuzzy image with a maximum resolution imposed by the geometry of the setup and there would be nothing the experimentor could do to sharpen the image. Some experiments would conclude that the object under observation (the projection) is a vibration (wave), yet an interaction of two of these sticks would conclude these things can clash and become localised, which is a property of a particle. So the experimenter *knows* it's a particle, yet it behaves like a wave.
Incidentally, this opens up a massive can of worms: the argument of 'hidden variables', for and against. I don't think the door is completely closed on that one. But it does illustrate the allure of invoking extra dimensions.
On your idea of 0D I agree and who wouldn't. It seems that the 0D thing comes up repeatedly in pseudoscience texts. But often, a point (0D) as a mathematical tool provides a useful approximation.
"There are certain claims I can understand - that all of matter is expanding into empty space that lies outside of (say) a ringlike circle of matter."
I don't understand that. The expansion of space is more like what a bug would experience on the surface of an expanding balloon. There is no empty space outside to expand into. In fact space is not empty anywhere.
(I don't understand that. The expansion of space is more like what a bug would experience on the surface of an expanding balloon)
Manna,
The ballon has to be in a room or in some place enclose by enough room so it can expand. Put the ballon in a ballon-shaped box and it cannot expand.
I understand the idea of the balloon and the bug, but into what is the expansion occuring? Space - if defined as a void - cannot expand rationally.
The only way this idea makes sense is to think of the ballon's contours as an imaginary surface of the limits of matter (a boundary, so to speak, although imagined) and the ballon is expanding into the surrounding void.
That is the only way I can conceptualize how matter could be moving away from a central point - as space cannot itself be moving.
(The projection of the free-end of the excited stick would be a fuzzy image with a maximum resolution imposed by the geometry of the setup and there would be nothing the experimentor could do to sharpen the image.)
Manna,
This again describes the difficulty I have with this notion - it appears to be an observer-centric model of the universe. What the vibration appears to be to the observer should in no way affect the reality of the occurence. What is being done is a description of an observation, not the explanation of what is actually occurring.
The relationship between objects is a description, an abstract concept. Abstract concepts cannot turn into objects because they have no reality-based qualities. An real physical object has two inherent qualities: shape and location. That a particle moves really fast and appears as a wave does not mean it has actually turned into a thing called "wave".
For me, reasoning should trump observation as observation is the more fallible of the two. We can reason that an abstract concept cannot become an object, even if it appears to do so.
Thanks for listening.
@AKA Winston I need to make something really clear: All these analogies are flawed and all you are doing is (correctly) pointing out the flaws in the analogy. I'm not suggesting that the balloon model should be used as anything more than an illustration that it is possible to have a dimension expand without expanding into anything (in this case that of the surface of the sphere). That's all it's used for. Beyond that the analogy falls to bits and it's not the same as having a theory. Space is not expanding from a central point; the whole lot is expanding everywhere.
" reasoning should trump observation as observation is the more fallible of the two."
No, no no no no. This is perfectly backwards. Whatever theory you reason should tumble or be modified in the light of observation.
I sympathise, because you are effectively separating the 'how' questions from the 'why' questions. This is a great way to progress, but the 'why' questions typically exist long after the 'how' has been resolved, and once you answer one of the 'why's, there is another, deeper more fundamental 'why' to answer, and you can keep on asking 'why'. A good example is gravity. We have a very workable 'how' - that of curved space-time and relativity, but nobody knows they 'why'. We have the how in QED with the fine structure constant, but nobody knows the 'why'.
Manna is right about the analogies. That's the problem - the only analogies we can use employ things that are one thing or another - particles or waves and therefore we loop back upon ourselves and fail perfection.
So reality is not like this. It's something different and when and if we get to understand it, maybe we can draw an analogy that resolves the contradictions. Until then, I find my piss-poor view satisfactory :-)
Manna,
I sincerely do not want to draw you into an argument, but at the same time I cannot help but at least ask, how the heck can space (which is surmised to be a void) curve? How can time - which is a scaler invented by man - change shape?
These ideas describe an observer-centric viewpoint. I would think science should try its best to explain an observer-independent viewpoint. After all, reality did not start with sentience.
Then don't think of it as a curve. Think of it as in imposition imposed by the underlying physics.
Pcunix,
It is impossible for me to think in that fashion when the claims are a reification of abstractions into real objects. In my opinion, the thinking is skewed.
For example, I watched a noted physicist on television state that time either speeds up or decreases relative to obeserver's positions, and that is a claim about what, to the observer, apparently happens, but his claim that it is what actually occurs does not follow, as that would mean that a scaler idea created by man (time) that has the purpose of measuring changes of events can actually change its shape - when it has no shape to begin with.
It seems to me to be an attempt to blend the physical with the metaphysical. The stumbling block is our reasoning ability. To accept these claims means we accept that ideas can spontaneously turn into objects, capable of transformation of their shape or size dependenet upon the POV of an observer.
This confusion between what appears apparent to an obsever and what can happen in reality creates IMO irrational claims such as curved space and shrinking and expanding time. It seems to me that relativity can only be explained from an observer-centric point of view, i.e., of what appears to happen, but to two rocks circling each other in orbit, time never shrinks or expands, and space does not curve.
Reality IMO is observer-independent.
AKA, I have to ask: how is it possible to have an observer-independent point-of-view? To think that that is even possible is to conflate a model with the actual world.
It seems to me that what you are doing is conflating human intuition (which is, of necessity, constructed metaphorically) with rationality. I think you are having the same difficulty that many of our ancestors had several hundred years ago when confronted with the notion that the earth is round and orbiting the sun. To the mind of those folks such a notion was considered 'irrational', because it conflicted with their commonsense (metaphorically informed) intuition.
That being said, I am in complete agreement with Manna's point above--the problem is one of inadequate metaphors that are stretched past the breaking point. That's why we need math to gain real insight into the workings of nature--metaphor-based language doesn't cut it.
Joyus Crynoid,
The only way for a sentient being to have an observer-independent POV is through his reasoning abiltiy, i.e., in a sense we can imagine it; however, as matter predates human sentience, reality must be observer-independent, so if we want to understand reality it is reasonable to assume we must rid ourselves of the observer as much as possible.
AKA Winston: obviously--that is the purpose of science. But "as much as possible" is the key phrase of your statement. An observer-independent POV is an abstract ideal, and hence an impossibility. While I agree that reasoning ability is key to obtaining an "objective" view of reality, I would argue that mathematical abstraction is part and parcel with that ability. The problem with your critique of "reification of abstractions into real objects" is that it is based on reification of models that are constructed linguistically (i.e., metaphors), and so is subject to the same criticism.
(The problem with your critique of "reification of abstractions into real objects" is that it is based on reification of models that are constructed linguistically (i.e., metaphors), and so is subject to the same criticism)
Joyus Crynoid,
This is where one runs headlong into the definition problem. In order to separate real objects from imagined objects requires a specific definition that applies consistently. This is the stem of the idea of using this definition for exist, shape + location = physical presence=existence.
Utilizing this definition does not allow me to make the claim that time expands because by definition time does not exist to expand. Instead, we have to actually say what we mean, such as, because of such and such our concept of time appears to expand...
Although it is correct that all words are concepts, what these concepts resolve to is different, and thus the ideas cannot be challenged on similar linguistic grounds. A physical object does not require a word - I can simply point to the object. On the other hand, an abstraction requires a concept and a definiton. Obviously, all words are concepts but not all concepts are abstract concepts. And abstract concepts do not resolve to real physical objects that can be expressed by pointing at them.
If someone could explain how a scaler abstraction such as time can physically alter its shape to either expand or contract I sincerely would like to hear or read that explanation; on the other hand, if the expalanation instead is simply a description of appearances from an observer's perspective, don't bother as that is not what I am asking for.
Again, I am not offering my ideas as an expertise, but simply explaining the reasons I have for questioning these notions. Thanks.
Manna
What a great hub, and I like comments good, bad or any type. It shows interest by the reader and even if you don't agree you have some feedback.
Anyway, my viewpoints may not make the Manna threshold but I have some to make here.
As for perpetual motion, if nothing stops a photon it continues forever. Light from the furthest part of the universe made it here.
As for particle or wave, maybe the problem is in our classification. We are trying to put something in boxes that we created to hold them based on our idea of how we should classify things.
Maybe there is a better classification that would not cause a problem like, wave or particle. Maybe there is a more precise classification that doesn't have a question attached to it. Maybe the wave and the particle are wavicles, or parwaves.
My point is that we may need to restructure our classifications if they don't give a meaningful or complete answer.
The use of zero certainly helped mathematics, but are constants a good example for solving equations. They work for applied accuracy but is there never ending decimal really meaningful.
Thanks
my opinion
"If someone could explain how a scaler abstraction such as time can physically alter its shape to either expand or contract I sincerely would like to hear or read that explanation"
This comes from the very heart of the intractable problem that we know of as 'measurement'. There is no absolute value for length or time.
Time is a dimension, space has 3 dimensions. GR abandons the notion of absolute time and space, and instead unifies the two into a single space-time and it is this space-time, that warps. If you conclude for any of many reasons that there is an upper speed-limit to information-transfer, then the only way to accommodate this is to allow measurements. That is what imposes time dilation, and space dilation. Without it, information could travel at any speed, and it does not do this.
Try thinking about a pair of scissors. At small scales, and light weight, you don't need relative measurements to calculate the speed of the tips as the scissors are closed. You can treat time as absolute in this case.
But as those scissors become as long as you care to imagine, the rate at which the tips close will not be directly proportional to the handles. You can kind of 'feel' this idea. There has to be a limit. You can also see that these scissors would get very heavy, so let's thin out the blades to a string of atoms. Now you can easily see that a very long pair of scissors would still be unable to close at the tips in proportion to the handles. Each atom when it moves will need to 'tell' the next that it moved, and so on. It does this at some upper limit which is a function of space itself.
"As for perpetual motion, if nothing stops a photon it continues forever. Light from the furthest part of the universe made it here."
That photon is a useless machine if nothing stops it. You can't draw energy from it, or even look at it.
"Light from the furthest part of the universe" is not a statement that anyone can make with a high degree of certainty. You first need to assume that the universe is not geometrically closed, and then assume it is infinite. If that is the argument, then there is light which has not yet reached us. Actually we know this to be the case from observation - our so called 'observable universe' increases day by day.
Why do you think zero helped mathematics?
Manna,
The scissors example is good. I have heard of a theory that atoms connect with each other via e/m threads or ropes under torsion - the delay from the handles of the scissors to the tips would then be a function of the distance the torsion had to travel.
Btw, the scissors example is describing an event - a chain action from atom to atom. Time is the measurement of that relationship, from handle to tips. That the distance traveled increases the time it takes to get there does not mean time increased, but the time it took to reach the destination increased.
It takes longer to drive from Dallas to Chicago than in does from Dallas to Denton, if travelling a constant speeds. The issue is the constance of the speed and the distance traveled, no?
L,W,H are static measurements - time is not - time is an event.
In special relativity, L,W,H are not absolute measurements either.
The scissors example is quite instructive. I've seen that 'torsion' idea before. It's terrible.
One atom communicates with the next via mediators and the whole lot operates in a field. Try looking at Casiopea videos on youtube - they do a good job of describing it.
Manna
The photon is perpetual but not repetitive as an engine,
I agree it is useless for that purpose, but photons coming from the farthest observable end of the universe does mean that nothing has stopped it before getting here.
Zero is important because it acts like a real number. It is a valuable reference point for the number system.
It separates positive from negative numbers and it is useful as a place holder.
It can be used in addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of whole numbers. Division by zero has no answer, so it is infinity.
"I agree it is useless for that purpose, but photons coming from the farthest observable end of the universe does mean that nothing has stopped it before getting here."
What if the photon got absorbed and then re-emitted?
"Division by zero has no answer, so it is infinity."
No, the problem is that division by zero has any question. It is not simply "infinity".
Take y = mx , where x is independent and variable. Let m be a parameter. 'division' is the answer to the question, what will I multiply x by to give y. So when x is zero, you can choose any value for m and it works. This is why division by zero is simply 'undefined', there are too many questions that give the same answer.
When you look into limits, then you can draw conclusions about where a function is headed as the variable tends towards zero, and sometimes this is infinity, sometimes zero, and sometimes something else, depending on the equation.
e.g. what is sin(x)/x, when x is nearly zero, approaching from the positive or negative side?
Manna
Very interesting comments.
mw//What if the photon got absorbed and then re-emitted?
ib\\ What would cause it to be re-emitted?
mw//No, the problem is that division by zero has any question. It is not simply "infinity".
ib\\ It is interesting that as the number gets closer to zero, the answer gets larger and larger. At some point the answer gets so large that it is unusable.
Because zero is a real number in the system, it has to be able to fit into the math properties of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. But, is division by zero meaningful in any physical applications?
Thanks
"What would cause it to be re-emitted?"
When a photon strikes an atom, excites an electron to a higher energy, the photon is completely absorbed. When that electron relaxes again, the excess energy is re-emitted as a new photon. This is how light travels through glass. I'm not suggesting there are huge chunks of glass out in the universe, but other atoms in the way could do the same kind of thing.
"is division by zero meaningful in any physical applications?"
Suprisingly yes! In amplifier, filters, oscillators and control theory, there is the concept of a "pole" which is effectively when the theory produces equations (transfer functions) that tend rapidly to infinity as the parameters approach a denominator of zero in a quotient. It's not of course a real exact mathematical model of reality because you cannot make something that shoots off to infinity. But the point is, it's a good approximation and permits the analyst/engineer to make predictions about the stability and behaviour of the system depending on where these "poles" land in the complex plane. The corollary of that are "zeros" which is when the same equations equal zero. You will notice that I have to say "tends to infinity", but it's ok to say "equals zero".
Did you work out the limit of sin(x)/x as x tends to zero?
Manna
ib\\ Frankly, I never considered that possibility of the photon re-emission without having some visible distortion. But, that is interesting. With the enormous numbers of photons coming to us, it has to be a possibility.
ib\\ I must admit that I was unaware of that use of zero. It never came up in my electronic classes.
mv//limit of sin(x)/x as x tends to zero
ib\\I would assume it would tend to get closer and closer to 1. But actually never reach it, sort of like a tangent curve never actually gets to the line, it only gets closer.
Thanks, I appreciate your tutorials.
You would be correct that a re-emitted photon distorts the original information. In interstellar space, dust clouds have this effect.
Your evaluation of the sin(x)/x limit is perfect.
AKA Winston, are you trying to develop a concept of how to deal with unobserved reality which requires no language versus observed reality which has to be described using language?
Even in an unobserved reality you'd be able to have objects on this planet such as air and water forming clouds, lakes, wind and the sea. If you don't agree that wind or clouds are objects on their own, they clearly represent a specific quality of air, or a definable condition of air to be dealt with quite differently in our observed reality from still air at rest.
It's quite obvious that time also exists as a dimension of change in an unobserved reality but without any numerical value since all measurements, right or wrong, are only used by observers to quantify their observations.
I don't see how anyone can reasonably say, a tornado moving at 150km/h through the country side is any less of a clearly defined object than any tidal wave or water fall ... these are simply concrete representations of matter in a specific state just like any galaxies or black holes are other, but very specifically different objects in the representation of space ...
Manna
Thanks for the information and the kind comment.
diogenes 4 months ago
If those poor old world scientists had just known all about QM, they might have made a few more conclusions. Now we know the whole thing is just one web of complicity - or don't we!?
Great article Bob