The Gravity Theory
island
Subject: Re: Gravity Theory
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Date: 2001-03-16 13:47:18 PST
> The path of a photon defines the metric. Photons travel
along geodesics by definition. There is nothing straighter (shortest
distance between two points.
What about, "absolutely" flat space-time?
3)Light that is moving on a curved geodesic, moves toward a massive
object with respect to "more-prounounced" curvature that is surrounding
the mass that is affecting, ("more-flat"), space-time, so that light,
(and all massive objects), has a tendency to converge into wells, a
simple tendency along the path of least resistance, toward unified
motion of all objects in absolute motion as one... mass-less, or
otherwise.
The universal tendency is toward absolute line motion, via pre-existing
curvature.
g = curvature = length > zero
m=l>0, where length equals space-time curvature.
m0=l=0, is an idealization.
island
Subject: Re: Gravity Theory
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Date: 2001-03-16 13:47:18 PST
> ...the path of a photon defines the metric. Photons travel
along geodesics by definition. There is nothing straighter (shortest
distance between two points...
Except that the metric defines the photon's curved path as we measure
it.
We can't directly measure a photon that isn't moving between ideal
euclidean points, over a curved period... and that spells I N T E R F E
R E N C E ...ONLY.
island
Subject: Re: Gravity Theory
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Date: 2001-03-16 13:47:18 PST
> ...the path of a photon defines the metric. Photons travel
along geodesics by definition. There is nothing straighter (shortest
distance between two points...
Mr. Einstein said that 'the speed of light is constant in a vacuum..."
from any frame, etc...
Einstein's constant speed of light in a vacuum is a euclidean
idealization for a photon that is moving at equally constant speed and
velocity in an absolute vacuum, a human perceived description for light
that is moving over the abstract ideal of absolutely flat space-time
where gravity is "absolutely" not a factor.
Light that is moving through "outer-space" cannot adhere to this
idealization, due to the universal effect of gravity, and by that hard
reality, directly measured light is never observed to move in a straight
line between ideal euclidean points, because the geodesic is curved,
away from the ideal of absolutely flat space-time, and we can only
measure those, less-than-absolute effects.
Mr. Einstein gave us the equation for it:
Einstein himself derived the change of the velocity of light in a,
(local) gravitational field. Mr. Einstein replaced the velocity, c in an
absolute vacuum, with...
c(1 + f^3/c^2)
...and from this, he concludes that the path of light will be bent by a
given local field, but "local" has no absolute meaning for gravity in
Newtonian physics, since distance doesn't ever eliminate the tenacous
strong side of the weak force of gravity.
Even by Mr. E, the entire fiber of space-time gets affected to some
infinitessimal "LEVEL"
Just an FYI but the euclidean concept for inertial mass, makes for a
darned good comparative argument for this view as well, because how else
will you better explain a long distance connection?... better than this
"non-ideal", combined-level of cumulative-curvature that all mass
"together" depresses into otherwise absolutely flat space-time, that is.
eric_...@compuserve.com
<bobk...@email.com> wrote:
>andysch wrote:
>
>> Will you now argue that the Mercury perihelion advance, explainable simply
>> by using a more precise value of n in Newton's 1/r^n, somehow demonstrates
>> the existence of gravity waves?
>
>If the precession of the perihelions was the only issue, your argument
>might hold water, but GR predicts not only the precession of the
>perihelions,
GR was designed with the Mercury perihelion precession figure in mind.
Einstein didn't consider the theory to be finished until to generated
the correct Mercury result.
>but also the gravity red shift
Einstein "did" gravity-shifts in 1911, from general principles,
without using special relativity or even the principle of relativity.
The general argument for shifting of a high-gravity-star's light to
the weak end of the spectrum was published by John Mitchell in 1784.
>and the bending of light in the vicinity of a massive body.
Qualitatively a very old prediction. GR's prediction is stronger then
the simple Newton-type space-curvature prediction because of
gravitational time dilation (giving space/time/ curvature).
> It also predicts/explains "gravitational
> lensing" (same thing as the bending of light).
Pick apart Newton's descriptions of the gravitational deflection of
corpuscles, Newton also calculated the analogous case of atmospheric
lensing effects way back (he tried to describe a gravitational field
as a diffractive medium). Gravity-lensing ain't much of a surprise,
Einstein published his "lensing" prediction under protest only because
he was being nagged, models after 1911 probably should predict a
stronger effect than those pre-1911 because of the time dilation
effect.
GR is a post-1911 theory, so it makes a stronger prediction.
>The nifty thing is that
>at all follows from a simple sounding principle with profound
>consequences, to wit the Equivalence Principle. So a relatively
>simple basic principle predicts all this stuff.
Yep, equivalence principles are good. But GR is a particular
implementation of those principles, it doesn't have exclusive
ownership of them.
>That is much better
>than fiddling Newtonian gravity. What is also interesting is
>that Newtonion Gravity matches GR to the first order of
>approximation which is what you would expect by a theory
>that corrects defects in another theory.
>This is much the
>same thing as quantum theory matching classical physics for
>large/heave macroscopic systems.
Hawking radiation also shows up as a purely classical effect under
some models. GR is a notable exception.
>When the only way to "fix" a theory is diddling with constants
>and constantly fiddling it to match new observations it is
>time for a new theory.
Dark matter ... muons with or without mass ... Hawking radiation ...
>This was the problem with the Ptolemaic
>geo-centric theory. Whenever a discrepancy occurred add another
>epicycle. Highly unsatisfactory.
Nowadays we add "dark matter" to make the sums come out right. How
much dark matter? As much as it takes to get the right answer. What
evidence do we have for the existence of dark matter? If it didn't
exist, our sums wouldn't be correct. Hmmm.
Don't get me wrong, I love most of the ideas behind GR, I just get
nerked when people over-sell it, or try to give the impression that
gravitational physsics is a finished project. It ain't.
=Erk=
http://arxiv.org/find/gr-qc,physics/1/au:+Baird_E/0/1/0/all/0/1
"an ephemeral set of equations" -- Einstein, on GR
Chris Hillman
On Sun, 18 Mar 2001 eric_...@compuserve.com wrote:
> GR was designed with the Mercury perihelion precession figure in mind.
This myth, or mabye I should merely say "misemphasis", has already been
debunked in this thread. It is unfortunate that you persist in repeating
it--- misinformation doesn't advance anyone's understanding, although it
certainly advances the agenda of the troll(s).
> Einstein didn't consider the theory to be finished until to generated
> the correct Mercury result.
That is a much more fair assessment--- I doubt that anyone would quarrel
with the suggestion that Einstein badly wanted to explain the
extra-Newtonian precession (I already quoted his own account of his
excitement and finding that gtr correctly predicted the previously
inexplicable extra-Newtonian precession), and indeed, at time he published
the theory, this figure gave the -only- direct observational evidence in
favor of gtr. But it was enough to make astronomers start to take
Einstein's work on gravitation theories seriously enough to arrange the
famous 1919 eclipse expedition which tested another prediction, the
prediction of light bending, and as everyone no doubt knows, this lead to
many tests of other specific predictions, down unto the present day.
(And yes, if you look back at my post you'll see that I -did- mention that
it is true that some have suggested that the 1919 Eddington-Dyson
obervations were flawed. However, as I added, many such obervations have
since been made which have been correcly analyzed, and they confirm
Einstein's light bending formula to an ever greater precision. Of course,
I doubt that anyone denies the reality of light bending anymore--- indeed,
as many readers no doubt know, gravitational microlensing is now being
used as a -tool- to examine other astronomical problems, particularly the
dark matter mystery. Nothing circular here, of course, just the usual
monotonically increasing complexity of a mature scientific field!)
> Einstein "did" gravity-shifts in 1911, from general principles,
> without using special relativity or even the principle of relativity.
Precisely my point: even the "great name" of Einstein was not enough to
persuade astronomers to try to check this out until AE came up with gtr
and the first self-consistent theoretical explanation of the previously
inexplicable precession of the perihelia of Mercury.
For other readers: note that Eric is now talking about a -distinct-
effect, gravitational redshifting, which was first confirmed in
observations of a white dwarf star in... 1933, IIRC. Of course, many
further tests/observations have since confirmed this prediction many times
over.
> Pick apart Newton's descriptions of the gravitational deflection of
> corpuscles, Newton also calculated the analogous case of atmospheric
> lensing effects way back (he tried to describe a gravitational field
> as a diffractive medium).
?!!!
Gtr could hardly explain light bending in more different terms from the
notion of "a diffractive medium".
> Gravity-lensing ain't much of a surprise, Einstein published his
> "lensing" prediction under protest only because he was being nagged,
> models after 1911 probably should predict a stronger effect than those
> pre-1911 because of the time dilation effect. GR is a post-1911
> theory, so it makes a stronger prediction.
I have no idea what the point is supposed to be here. I assume everyone
knows that Einstein's 1911 argument gave a forumula which predicted values
too small by factor of two. Fortunately, by the time astronomers got
around to testing the prediction, he had derived the gtr light bending
formula.
> Yep, equivalence principles are good. But GR is a particular
> implementation of those principles, it doesn't have exclusive
> ownership of them.
At least you have that right--- other readers might begin with the web
page I already mentioned:
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/RelWWW/tests.html
and continue with the paper by Will:
http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/gr-qc/0103036
> Don't get me wrong, I love most of the ideas behind GR, I just get
> nerked when people over-sell it, or try to give the impression that
> gravitational physsics is a finished project. It ain't.
I have no idea why you think anyone was trying to "give that impression".
Indeed, I suspect most of the people you are arguing with have a far
better grasp of the outstanding current problems in the field of
gravitation physics than you do--- your posts have contained significant
amounts of misinformation and have mostly been concerned with irrelevant
nonissues :-(
Again, I would urge you to study the paper by Will.
Chris Hillman
Home Page: http://www.math.washington.edu/~hillman/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
NOTE TO WOULD-BE CORRESPONDENTS: I have installed a mail filter which
deletes incoming messages not from the "*.edu" or "*.gov" domains, but
also deletes messages from some bad actors whose emails happen to be in
the "*.edu" domain and "passes" messages from a few friends with email
addresses in other domains.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ken Moore
eric_...@compuserve.com writes
>muons with or without mass
That's a new one to me; or did you mean neutrinos?
--
Ken Moore
k...@hpsl.demon.co.uk
Web site: http://www.hpsl.demon.co.uk/
island
<the usual good stuff>
Hi Chris, I thought that you'd never get here ;-)... you don' ev'a call,
and you nev'a come ov'a anymore... no note... no explanation!?! ?;-)
Do you like my theory?
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
NOTE TO WOULD-BE CORRESPONDENTS: I have installed a mail filter which
deletes incoming messages not from the "*.edu" or "*.gov" domains, but
also deletes messages from some bad actors whose emails happen to be in
the "*.edu" domain and "passes" messages from a few friends with email
addresses in other domains.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It wasn't me... honest! ;-)
Richard Herring
> On Mon, 12 Mar 2001 22:18:41 -0600, "Robert J. Kolker"
> <bobk...@email.com> wrote:
> >andysch wrote:
> >
> >> Will you now argue that the Mercury perihelion advance, explainable simply
> >> by using a more precise value of n in Newton's 1/r^n, somehow demonstrates
> >> the existence of gravity waves?
> >
> >If the precession of the perihelions was the only issue, your argument
> >might hold water, but GR predicts not only the precession of the
> >perihelions,
> GR was designed with the Mercury perihelion precession figure in mind.
It was a previously-known fact which had to be predicted by any
candidate theory of gravity, certainly.
Or are you suggesting that GR was somehow tweaked to fit Mercury?
--
Richard Herring | <richard...@baesystems.com>
Glird
>From: Uncle Al (Uncl...@hate.spam.net)
>Subject: Re: Gravity Theory
> ...
>> ...the path of a photon defines the metric.
>
Not so. MAN defines which metric he wishes to use.
>> Photons travel along geodesics by definition.
>
Photons only exist as a reaction between light and atoms. They don't travel
anywhere at all except inside the atoms with which a light is interacting via
quantities (called "quanta") of the ability to do work (called "energy").
>> There is nothing straighter (shortest distance between two points...)
>
The metric of GR is curved. Its "geodesic" lines are similarly curved.
A straight line between any two points is always shorter than a curved
geodesic line, regardless of the Relativists' present failure to understand
either correct semantics or physical reality.
glird
Etherman
<eric_...@compuserve.com> wrote in message
news:3ab537a9...@news.compuserve.com...
> On Mon, 12 Mar 2001 22:18:41 -0600, "Robert J. Kolker"
> <bobk...@email.com> wrote:
>
> >andysch wrote:
> >
> >> Will you now argue that the Mercury perihelion advance, explainable
simply
> >> by using a more precise value of n in Newton's 1/r^n, somehow
demonstrates
> >> the existence of gravity waves?
> >
> >If the precession of the perihelions was the only issue, your argument
> >might hold water, but GR predicts not only the precession of the
> >perihelions,
>
> GR was designed with the Mercury perihelion precession figure in mind.
>
> Einstein didn't consider the theory to be finished until to generated
> the correct Mercury result.
And he wasn't the first one to come up with a theory that explains it.
> >but also the gravity red shift
>
> Einstein "did" gravity-shifts in 1911, from general principles,
> without using special relativity or even the principle of relativity.
> The general argument for shifting of a high-gravity-star's light to
> the weak end of the spectrum was published by John Mitchell in 1784.
It's basically conservation of energy.
> >and the bending of light in the vicinity of a massive body.
>
> Qualitatively a very old prediction. GR's prediction is stronger then
> the simple Newton-type space-curvature prediction because of
> gravitational time dilation (giving space/time/ curvature).
Newton's gravity theory doesn't give us much help here. If
light is massless (as all evidence points to) then there'll be
no deflection. This really isn't a surprise since we didn't
even have a decent theory of EM back then.
> >The nifty thing is that
> >at all follows from a simple sounding principle with profound
> >consequences, to wit the Equivalence Principle. So a relatively
> >simple basic principle predicts all this stuff.
>
> Yep, equivalence principles are good. But GR is a particular
> implementation of those principles, it doesn't have exclusive
> ownership of them.
I think they suck :)
> >That is much better
> >than fiddling Newtonian gravity. What is also interesting is
> >that Newtonion Gravity matches GR to the first order of
> >approximation which is what you would expect by a theory
> >that corrects defects in another theory.
> >This is much the
> >same thing as quantum theory matching classical physics for
> >large/heave macroscopic systems.
>
> Hawking radiation also shows up as a purely classical effect under
> some models. GR is a notable exception.
There are classical (or rather semi-classical) black holes. That's
all that's really needed.
> >When the only way to "fix" a theory is diddling with constants
> >and constantly fiddling it to match new observations it is
> >time for a new theory.
>
> Dark matter ...
Totally agree with you. And dark matter doesn't even work.
> muons with or without mass ...
I think you mean neutrinos. But this doesn't really have anything to do
with GR.
> Hawking radiation ...
Not sure what kind of diddling supposedly goes on here.
> >This was the problem with the Ptolemaic
> >geo-centric theory. Whenever a discrepancy occurred add another
> >epicycle. Highly unsatisfactory.
>
> Nowadays we add "dark matter" to make the sums come out right. How
> much dark matter? As much as it takes to get the right answer. What
> evidence do we have for the existence of dark matter? If it didn't
> exist, our sums wouldn't be correct. Hmmm.
Exactly. And even then they can't get any theory to agree with all
the data. Physicists should stop wasting their time on this bogus
idea.
> Don't get me wrong, I love most of the ideas behind GR, I just get
> nerked when people over-sell it, or try to give the impression that
> gravitational physsics is a finished project. It ain't.
I'm less enamored with GR and the ideas behind it, but I definitely
agree.
--
Etherman
AA # pi
EAC Director of Ritual Satanic Abuse Operations
bhan...@my-deja.com
> > >and the bending of light in the vicinity of a massive body.
If the massive body has an EM field surrounding it, is there
any reason anybody has ever provided why it should *not* be
expected to deflect an EM wave?
Richard Herring
An EM field is not expected to deflect an EM wave, according to
classical electrodynamics. The fields superpose linearly.
There's a 4th-order QED effect, but that would require very
strong fields.
On the other hand, the *gravitational* field should deflect
anything passing at finite speed, regardless of its mass. That
includes light.
--
Richard Herring | <richard...@baesystems.com>
Richard Herring
> <eric_...@compuserve.com> wrote in message
> news:3ab537a9...@news.compuserve.com...
> > On Mon, 12 Mar 2001 22:18:41 -0600, "Robert J. Kolker"
> > <bobk...@email.com> wrote:
> > >and the bending of light in the vicinity of a massive body.
> >
> > Qualitatively a very old prediction. GR's prediction is stronger then
> > the simple Newton-type space-curvature prediction because of
> > gravitational time dilation (giving space/time/ curvature).
> Newton's gravity theory doesn't give us much help here. If
> light is massless (as all evidence points to) then there'll be
> no deflection.
Think again. Write down Newton's law of gravitation and his
2nd law of motion. Equate the forces. Note what cancels.
--
Richard Herring | <richard...@baesystems.com>
bhan...@my-deja.com
> In article <3AB63C33...@my-deja.com>, bhan...@my-deja.com wrote:
> > Etherman wrote:
>
> > > > >and the bending of light in the vicinity of a massive body.
>
> > If the massive body has an EM field surrounding it, is there
> > any reason anybody has ever provided why it should *not* be
> > expected to deflect an EM wave?
>
> An EM field is not expected to deflect an EM wave, according to
> classical electrodynamics. The fields superpose linearly.
That's not quite right. Two fields will superpose,
and so will two waves.
But there is no such "superpositon" in the
case of fields and waves traveling within
that field. If the entire field is moving,
the wave should move with it. A wave is not
the same as a linear field affecting
another field. In fact, a wave is not
a field at all, it is a pattern of disturbance.
Even a wave on water is not water,
it is just a pattern. You can't apply
the laws of water to it.
island
You tell em Jerry! :) ... No, better yet, go to sci.physics and tell
that to Al.
mARK bLOORE
"Richard Herring" <r...@gmrc.gecm.com> wrote in message
news:995kf4$l0n$2...@miranda.gmrc.gecm.com...
if m = 0, then should one really divide both sides of the equation by m?
Steve Carlip
> On Mon, 12 Mar 2001 22:18:41 -0600, "Robert J. Kolker"
> <bobk...@email.com> wrote:
>>If the precession of the perihelions was the only issue, your argument
>>might hold water, but GR predicts not only the precession of the
>>perihelions,
> GR was designed with the Mercury perihelion precession figure in mind.
I don't think this is quite right historically, in the sense that there were no
free parameters to tune to get the precession right---either it worked or
it didn't. But in any case, GR cetainly wasn't ``designed'' to get the precession
of Icarus's perihelion right, but it does.
It's also a good idea to keep in mind other GR predictions that certainly
weren't built in, or even known,
at the time the theory was written down:
-- the Shapiro time delay;
-- the contribution of gravitational binding energy to gravitational mass,
as observed in the Earth-Moon system (note that this implies that
gravity is necessarily nonlinear, and rules out any simple fiddling
with Newtonian gravity);
-- the de Sitter precession of the Earth-Moon system;
-- frame dragging (confirmed weakly by LAGEOS satellite observations.
Gravity Probe B will be launched in a bit over a year; want to bet on the
results?);
-- the ``strong field'' tests in binary pulsar PSR 1534+12 of parameters r
(``range of Shapiro delay'') and s (``shape of Shapiro delay'');
-- the absence of a variety of effects predicted by alternative theories
(e.g., the anomalous tides predicted by Whitehead's theory);
-- and, of course, the incredibly accurate quantitative agreement, tracked
over 26 years so far, of the observed orbital decay of two binary pulsar
systems with prediction.
> Don't get me wrong, I love most of the ideas behind GR, I just get
> nerked when people over-sell it, or try to give the impression that
> gravitational physsics is a finished project. It ain't.
Agreed. But it's important to start with an understanding of just how
successful GR is. That sets the bar---it tells you how good an alternative
is going to have to be to compete. Frankly, the only way I can imagine that
happening is if the alternative reduces to GR as a limiting case, just as GR
reduces to Newtonian gravity.
Steve Carlip
island
> Agreed. But it's important to start with an understanding of just how
successful GR is. That sets the bar---it tells you how good an
alternative is going to have to be to compete.
> Frankly, the only way I can imagine that happening is if the alternative reduces to GR as a limiting case, just as GR reduces to Newtonian gravity.
> Steve Carlip
Bingo.
Please tell me what you think Steve:
Somebody said:
Subject: Re: Gravity Theory
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Date: 2001-03-16 13:47:18 PST
> ...the path of a photon defines the metric. Photons travel
along geodesics by definition. There is nothing straighter (shortest
distance between two points...
Except that the metric defines the photon's curved path as we measure it
too. We can't directly measure a photon that isn't moving over a curved
period between ideal points in three-space, and that spells
"interference-only".
We can't measure light that isn't effectively delayed between ideal
points in euclidean space, and we can't directly measure light that
isn't overlaid, transposed, skewed, or otherwise LAYERED.
Curvature represents effective delay in the form of interference from
any frame that moves at less than c.
The geodesic is, therefore, curved on a grand scale by the collective
effect that all mass, (interconnected by Newton's gravity, and by
flexible space-time), has on space-time.
[This is not speculation, it is required by all valid gravity theory!]
Massive objects are "said" to create depressions, wells, or curves of
their own in space-time. If this curvature near to massive objects
causes the gravitational interaction with light, then it is the "grand"
curvature of the geodesic which causes the same delaying effect that we
measure.
This represents a higher level gravity theory, because it proves that
light can only move at constant c between points in an absolute
idealized euclidean vacuum, or over absolutely flat space-time, an
idealization too(!), since we can't directly measure light whose
trajectory isn't curved over the geodesic.
[That is NOT speculation either, as the facts speak for themselves.]
By this theory, gravity is the universal tendency toward unified linear
motion over absolutely flat space-time via the path of least resistance,
(aggregation), where the "grand" curvature of the geodesic is the
collective effect of all mass.
[Now that's just plain ole common sense.]
Richard Herring
> > In article <3AB63C33...@my-deja.com>, bhan...@my-deja.com wrote:
> > > Etherman wrote:
> >
> > > > > >and the bending of light in the vicinity of a massive body.
> >
> > > If the massive body has an EM field surrounding it, is there
> > > any reason anybody has ever provided why it should *not* be
> > > expected to deflect an EM wave?
> >
> > An EM field is not expected to deflect an EM wave, according to
> > classical electrodynamics. The fields superpose linearly.
> That's not quite right. Two fields will superpose,
> and so will two waves.
> But there is no such "superpositon" in the
> case of fields and waves traveling within
> that field.
You need to review the definition of "field" in physics.
The waves don't travel "within" the field; they *are* a field.
> If the entire field is moving, the wave should move with it.
You're confusing "field" with "medium".
> A wave is not the same as a linear field affecting another field.
It most certainly is.
> In fact, a wave is not a field at all, it is a pattern of disturbance.
A pattern of disturbance *of a field*.
> Even a wave on water is not water, it is just a pattern.
A pattern of disturbance of the height of the water surface
expressed as a function of position. Which constitutes a perfectly
good field.
> You can't apply the laws of water to it.
True, but irrelevant. You *can* apply the laws of fields (aka
vector calculus, differential geometry etc.)
--
Richard Herring | <richard...@baesystems.com>
Richard Herring
If it's the *same* m, you can legitimately exchange the order of
division and taking the limit. This isn't one of those 0/0 problems
where the two zeros represent limits of different quantities.
It's how we define 'g', after all. Objects near a massive body
experience a (Newtonian) gravitational acceleration g=GM/r^2
regardless of their mass. Why should zero mass be a special case?
--
Richard Herring | <richard...@baesystems.com>
bhan...@my-deja.com
You are confused. A wave can be a pattern of disturbance
in molecules of air or water. It can also be a pattern of
disturbance in a field. Even if you can treat a wave as a
field, it would be a different kind of field from the field it
is disturbing, and superposition of fields would be irrelevant.
In other words, if a wave is disturbing an electrical field, the
wave is not itself an electrical field. So superposition priciples
of two electrical fields are irrelevant. Though it is easy to see
why this can be confusing when working with a wave that
is disturbing a field. (It might be easier to keep the concepts
separate by working with waves in sound or water, and
when the concepts are clear, proceeding to waves in fields.)
Richard Herring
> You are confused.
No, you're doing your best to confuse me, but it is still *you*
who are confused.
> A wave can be a pattern of disturbance in molecules of air or water.
Yes.
> It can also be a pattern of disturbance in a field.
This vague terminology is at the root of your misunderstanding.
Yes, a wave can be a fluctuating electromagnetic field. No, it isn't in
any meaningful sense a "disturbance" in some other field. It does not
depend in any way on the existence of some other field. Take away the
other field, and the wave will behave just the same.
> Even if you can treat a wave as a
> field, it would be a different kind of field from the field it
> is disturbing, and superposition of fields would be irrelevant.
That's what is confusing you. The wave is not "disturbing" any kind
of field, different or similar. If the wave is mechanical,
it's disturbing the *medium* in which it travels. If it's
electromagnetic, it just *is*.
> In other words, if a wave is disturbing an electrical field, the
> wave is not itself an electrical field.
Vacuously true, since electromagnetic waves don't "disturb"
other electromagnetic waves. They merely add linearly to them.
> So superposition priciples
> of two electrical fields are irrelevant.
They explain why one electromagnetic wave doesn't "disturb" another.
That's relevant to the original question.
> Though it is easy to see
> why this can be confusing when working with a wave that
> is disturbing a field.
If such a wave existed, yes, it would be.
> (It might be easier to keep the concepts
> separate by working with waves in sound or water, and
> when the concepts are clear, proceeding to waves in fields.)
You're talking about waves *in* (EM) fields as though the field
were some kind of medium carrying the wave, in the way that air
carries sound waves. And that is the problem. EM fields are
not the medium carrying EM waves, any more than pressure is the
medium carrying sound waves.
--
Richard Herring | <richard...@baesystems.com>
bhan...@my-deja.com
> > It can also be a pattern of disturbance in a field.
>
> This vague terminology is at the root of your misunderstanding.
> Yes, a wave can be a fluctuating electromagnetic field. No, it isn't in
> any meaningful sense a "disturbance" in some other field. It does not
> depend in any way on the existence of some other field. Take away the
> other field, and the wave will behave just the same.
It makes a lot more sense to see it as a disturbance
in a field of strength zero. Otherwise it is easy to
lose sight of the disturbance and the medium.
> > Even if you can treat a wave as a
> > field, it would be a different kind of field from the field it
> > is disturbing, and superposition of fields would be irrelevant.
>
> That's what is confusing you. The wave is not "disturbing" any kind
> of field, different or similar. If the wave is mechanical,
> it's disturbing the *medium* in which it travels. If it's
> electromagnetic, it just *is*.
Sure it is disturbing it. Are you claiming if it travels
through an electrical field, the electrical field
is not changing due to this travel? (Forget about
the superposition principle for a while, we can
get back to it, just deal with the facts of the matter
here.)
> > In other words, if a wave is disturbing an electrical field, the
> > wave is not itself an electrical field.
>
> Vacuously true, since electromagnetic waves don't "disturb"
> other electromagnetic waves. They merely add linearly to them.
Of course. Waves of the same kind superimpose.
As do fields of the same kind. That is indeed
the correct view of superposition.
But you changed my "electrical field" to "other
electromagnetic waves" in your response.
Are you saying every electrical field is an
electromagnetic wave?
Randy Poe
>You are confused. A wave can be a pattern of disturbance
>in molecules of air or water. It can also be a pattern of
>disturbance in a field
You missed the point. "Field" is not used in this sense of "medium" by
most people. You are creating a new usage for field.
For instance, I am sitting in a room filled with air. What is the
"field" according to you that is disturbed if somebody makes a sound
in this room?
Do the air molecules in this room constitute a field? If so, that is
your own private meaning of field. Most people would use the term
"medium".
> Even if you can treat a wave as a
>field, it would be a different kind of field from the field it
>is disturbing, and superposition of fields would be irrelevant.
>
>In other words, if a wave is disturbing an electrical field, the
>wave is not itself an electrical field.
The wave is a propagating electromagnetic field.
> So superposition priciples of two electrical fields are irrelevant.
If you've got an background electromagnetic field and a propagating
electromagnetic field, how is it superposition of electromagnetic
fields is irrelevant to the addition of these two electromagnetic
fields?
- Randy
bhan...@my-deja.com
> On Tue, 20 Mar 2001 12:37:19 GMT, bhan...@my-deja.com wrote:
>
> You missed the point. "Field" is not used in this sense of "medium" by
> most people. You are creating a new usage for field.
>
> For instance, I am sitting in a room filled with air. What is the
> "field" according to you that is disturbed if somebody makes a sound
> in this room?
You misunderstand. I wasn't saying all waves propagate in a field.
In this case, there is no "field", there is only a wave in the medium
of air.
I am not trying to create a new usage of the word "field".
I am indeed using field in the sense you understand. All I
am saying that a medium doesn't have to be air. It can
be water. Or a steel wire. Or a "field". Anything that
can propagate a periodic disturbance.
> Do the air molecules in this room constitute a field? If so, that is
> your own private meaning of field. Most people would use the term
> "medium".
Me, too. I am not into neologism. Only into clarity. You are
reading into it something I didn't write.
> > Even if you can treat a wave as a
> >field, it would be a different kind of field from the field it
> >is disturbing, and superposition of fields would be irrelevant.
> >
> >In other words, if a wave is disturbing an electrical field, the
> >wave is not itself an electrical field.
>
> The wave is a propagating electromagnetic field.
Well, I think the current understanding is vague, so we
have things like superposition of waves with fields.
> > So superposition priciples of two electrical fields are irrelevant.
>
> If you've got an background electromagnetic field and a propagating
> electromagnetic field, how is it superposition of electromagnetic
> fields is irrelevant to the addition of these two electromagnetic
> fields?
Again, there is the confusion of a "wave" with a "field".
A wave may indeed be considered a field. But there
is a subtle distinction here.
Every electrical field is not an electromagnetic wave.
Electrical fields are a different entity from electromagnetic
waves. So if you were to consider an electromagnetic
wave as a field, you would have to consider it as an
entirely different kind of field. This is clearly confusing
to many people, so in any kind of teaching, waves
and fields should be differentiated. (Of course, assuming
the teacher isn't already an inextricable part of and source of
the confusion.)
Randy Poe
>You misunderstand. I wasn't saying all waves propagate in a field.
>In this case, there is no "field", there is only a wave in the medium
>of air.
OK. I could have sworn I read the statement that all waves are
disturbances in a field. But I'll take your word for it that you
didn't say that.
>I am indeed using field in the sense you understand. All I
>am saying that a medium doesn't have to be air. It can
>be water. Or a steel wire. Or a "field". Anything that
>can propagate a periodic disturbance.
In what conditions does a field propagate a disturbance? That isn't
the case with a propagating EM wave. If you say it is, I'm going to
ask the same question I asked about the roomful of air: Before the EM
wave gets there, describe the field that's about to be disturbed.
>> The wave is a propagating electromagnetic field.
>
>Well, I think the current understanding is vague, so we
>have things like superposition of waves with fields.
In what way is it vague? What concepts do you find not clear?
>
>> > So superposition priciples of two electrical fields are irrelevant.
>>
>> If you've got an background electromagnetic field and a propagating
>> electromagnetic field, how is it superposition of electromagnetic
>> fields is irrelevant to the addition of these two electromagnetic
>> fields?
>
>Again, there is the confusion of a "wave" with a "field".
>A wave may indeed be considered a field. But there
>is a subtle distinction here.
>
>Every electrical field is not an electromagnetic wave.
That doesn't contradict. An EM wave is a special case of a
time-varying field. That does not imply every field is a wave, and
nobody said it does.
If I say a rectangle is a special case of a square, I am not
"confusing" rectangles and squares, nor am I implying that "squares
are rectangles".
You're "clarifying" something that is not confused for most people.
Maxwell's equations describe both static fields and propagating EM
waves very well. Other equations of motion perfectly well describe
both static and dynamic situations. What confusion do you think is
created by that fact?
>Electrical fields are a different entity from electromagnetic
>waves. So if you were to consider an electromagnetic
>wave as a field, you would have to consider it as an
>entirely different kind of field.
Static.
Propagating.
There, I handled the differences.
>This is clearly confusing to many people,
Where have you run into the confusion? and what was confused?
> so in any kind of teaching, waves and fields should be differentiated.
I don't think anybody points to a static electric field and says "this
will propagate as an EM wave." So what do you mean about
differentiating that isn't being done now?
- Randy
bhan...@my-deja.com
> In what conditions does a field propagate a disturbance? That isn't
> the case with a propagating EM wave. If you say it is, I'm going to
> ask the same question I asked about the roomful of air: Before the EM
> wave gets there, describe the field that's about to be disturbed.
Well, let us start with the simple case -- let us consider a field
of some given strength X. Now is there any reason why
this field cannot be minutely disturbed?
Supposing you agree that this field can be disturbed,
is there any reason why a pattern of periodic disturbances
may not be embedded in this field and propagate itself?
Supposing you argree that this is possible, would
you agree that in that case we have a wave motion
using this field as a medium?
Now since fields can have positive and negative values,
I think you should agree that the field strength X
can be less than the amplitude of the wave motion.
And as long as it can be less, it can be zero.
I hope that describes the field that is about to be
disturbed, to your satisfaction.
> >> > So superposition priciples of two electrical fields are irrelevant.
> >>
> >> If you've got an background electromagnetic field and a propagating
> >> electromagnetic field, how is it superposition of electromagnetic
> >> fields is irrelevant to the addition of these two electromagnetic
> >> fields?
> >
> >Again, there is the confusion of a "wave" with a "field".
> >A wave may indeed be considered a field. But there
> >is a subtle distinction here.
> >
> >Every electrical field is not an electromagnetic wave.
>
> That doesn't contradict. An EM wave is a special case of a
> time-varying field. That does not imply every field is a wave, and
> nobody said it does.
>
> If I say a rectangle is a special case of a square, I am not
> "confusing" rectangles and squares, nor am I implying that "squares
> are rectangles".
Right. But you cannot necessarily apply rules of
rectangles to squares.
Similarly if a wave is embedded in a field, you cannot
necessarily apply laws of that field to that wave. The
two are distinct.
In the case of waves and fields serving as mediums for
those waves, there is much less relation than between
squares and rectangles.
What confuses people even more over this, is that
waves themselves may be treated as fields. This
seems to cause people to immediately lose sight of
the EM wave vs electrical/magnetic fields distiction.
> I don't think anybody points to a static electric field and says "this
> will propagate as an EM wave." So what do you mean about
> differentiating that isn't being done now?
Well, if you agree that they are different, why would
you expect them to hold to superposition of fields?
Do you expect a gravitation field and water waves
to hold to superposition of fields? Superposition
applies to similar fields/waves, it says nothing
about different fields or waves.
That's exactly what I refer to when I claim the
current understanding is vague and confused.
Paul Lutus
> You are confused.
No, you are.
> A wave can be a pattern of disturbance
> in molecules of air or water. It can also be a pattern of
> disturbance in a field.
Here is the essence of your confusion. In the water case, the water is the
medium that supports the field, not the field itself. The "field" in this
case is the pattern of energy distributed through the water. In the
electromagnetic case, the medium is spacetime. The field is the
electromagnetic energy itself. No energy, no field.
> In other words, if a wave is disturbing an electrical field, the
> wave is not itself an electrical field.
You are confusing two definitions of "field." In one, a static electrical
field can be measured, say, around a charged object. In another, a field
propagates through space from, say, a radio-frequency antenna. These two
examples differ in that one is an alternating electromagnetic field that can
propagate great distances.
In both examples, the wave is the field, not the medium.
--
Paul Lutus
www.arachnoid.com
Paul Lutus
news:3AB78382...@my-deja.com...
> > For instance, I am sitting in a room filled with air. What is the
> > "field" according to you that is disturbed if somebody makes a sound
> > in this room?
>
> You misunderstand. I wasn't saying all waves propagate in a field.
But they do. That is how "field" is defined for our purposes.
> In this case, there is no "field", there is only a wave in the medium
> of air.
Those waves are the field. You are confusing medium and field.
> I am indeed using field in the sense you understand. All I
> am saying that a medium doesn't have to be air. It can
> be water. Or a steel wire. Or a "field".
Randy is right -- you are using your own, private definitions. You are
confused about the distinction between medium and field.
--
Paul Lutus
www.arachnoid.com
bhan...@my-deja.com
> <bhan...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
> news:3AB78382...@my-deja.com...
>
> > > For instance, I am sitting in a room filled with air. What is the
> > > "field" according to you that is disturbed if somebody makes a sound
> > > in this room?
> >
> > You misunderstand. I wasn't saying all waves propagate in a field.
>
> But they do. That is how "field" is defined for our purposes.
Surely you mean that all waves _are_ fields, not that all
waves propagate _in_ a field?
Or are you a supporter of the (apparently popular) viewpoint
that there is no difference between these two?
Ken Cox
> If the massive body has an EM field surrounding it, is there
> any reason anybody has ever provided why it should *not* be
> expected to deflect an EM wave?
You mean, other than that an EM field does not deflect
an EM wave in classical EM field theory?
--
Ken Cox k...@research.bell-labs.com
Ken Cox
> eric_...@compuserve.com wrote:
> > GR was designed with the Mercury perihelion precession figure in mind.
> Or are you suggesting that GR was somehow tweaked to fit Mercury?
What about it could be tweaked? It hasn't got many
free parameters.
--
Ken Cox k...@research.bell-labs.com
Richard Herring
> Richard Herring wrote:
> > eric_...@compuserve.com wrote:
> > > GR was designed with the Mercury perihelion precession figure in mind.
> > Or are you suggesting that GR was somehow tweaked to fit Mercury?
> What about it could be tweaked? It hasn't got many
> free parameters.
Precisely.
There seems to be a school of thought, if that's not too dignified
a word for it, which believes that GR has an array of adjustable
parameters that can be tweaked to fit every anomaly.
Of course, they haven't actually looked at the theory. That might
contaminate their open-mindedness with facts.
--
Richard Herring | <richard...@baesystems.com>
bhan...@my-deja.com
I don't think it is proper to place motivations of earlier
scientists in doubt. However, it is very reasonable to
question methodologies and theories.
Einstein and Hilbert arrived at GR almost simultaneously.
So any doubts of GR being designed with only Mercury
precession in mind, should be put to rest.
However, an "open minded" study of GR should also
clearly indicate that it was the result of equation mangling
until things started coming out right. (Not mercury
precession, but everything.) Nothing wrong with
mathematical speculation, of course. But when used
in physics, the interpretation of the mathematics
should be clear. Just arriving at working equations
is not sufficient. A clear interpretation may show
the equations to be much less significant than originally
thought, or may show them to be simply approximations.
But lack of clear interpretation coupled with intense
weight of status can lead to philosophies like "physics
should not be concerned with meanings of equations".
(Fortunately, these philosophies did not spread to fields
that were having success with interpreting their data.)
Ken Cox
> There seems to be a school of thought, if that's not too dignified
> a word for it, which believes that GR has an array of adjustable
> parameters that can be tweaked to fit every anomaly.
How bizarre. Would it be the value of pi that could be
tweaked, or perhaps the value of 8?
It reminds me of that feeble math joke, "1 + 1 = 3, for
sufficiently large values of 1."
--
Ken Cox k...@research.bell-labs.com
Vincent Maycock
Richard Herring wrote in message <99a0gm$bm9$2...@miranda.gmrc.gecm.com>...
Yes, Einstein was adamant about this. He was like, "Hey, if my theory
doesn't agree with observation, I'm going to be up shit creek, because
there's not much I can do to modify it." But his approach, typical of his
way of seeing things, was that being up shit creek like that was definitely
a *good* thing!
--
Vince
bhan...@my-deja.com
Instead of repeating arguments others already made
in the very same thread, why not read the thread first?
Ken Cox
> Ken Cox wrote:
> > bhan...@my-deja.com wrote:
> > > If the massive body has an EM field surrounding it, is there
> > > any reason anybody has ever provided why it should *not* be
> > > expected to deflect an EM wave?
> > You mean, other than that an EM field does not deflect
> > an EM wave in classical EM field theory?
> Instead of repeating arguments others already made
> in the very same thread, why not read the thread first?
I was not repeating the arguments, merely stating a fact
independently. Having read the thread after posting that
fact, I see that you may have some confusion about what
a classical field is, but that doesn't change the answer
to your above question. It is a *fact* that in classical
EM theory, EM fields do not deflect EM waves.
--
Ken Cox k...@research.bell-labs.com
Ken Moore
<r...@gmrc.gecm.com> writes
>Vacuously true, since electromagnetic waves don't "disturb"
>other electromagnetic waves. They merely add linearly to them.
I believe that is consistent with such experiments as we can do at
present. Have we theoretical reasons for believing it holds for all
amplitudes? What if the energy density is such that GR effects come
into play?
--
Ken Moore
k...@hpsl.demon.co.uk
Web site: http://www.hpsl.demon.co.uk/
rich hammett
> In article <997qhi$ka3$1...@miranda.gmrc.gecm.com>, Richard Herring
> <r...@gmrc.gecm.com> writes
>>Vacuously true, since electromagnetic waves don't "disturb"
>>other electromagnetic waves. They merely add linearly to them.
> I believe that is consistent with such experiments as we can do at
> present. Have we theoretical reasons for believing it holds for all
> amplitudes? What if the energy density is such that GR effects come
> into play?
I don't think that EM waves add linearly in the general case.
rich
--
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/ hnoa...@eng.spamauburn.edu
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/ synthesis in sport of intelligence, precision, courage,
\ audacity, anticipation, artifice, teamwork, elegance,
/ and grace. --Carl Sagan
brian a m stuckless
Ken Cox <k...@research.bell-labs.com> wrote
in article <3AB8D6BA...@research.bell-labs.com>...
> Richard Herring wrote:
> > There seems to be a school of thought, if that's not too
> > dignified a word for it, which believes that GR has an array
> > of adjustable parameters that can be tweaked to fit every
> > anomaly.
The biggest part of the GR-tivity budget is spent ''tweaking'',
editing, and stockpiling calculations, as you say, to match
the latest significant observations, and for example, to match
the latest 'trial & error' fine tuning of say atomic clocks, etc,
--AFTER the 'trial & error' fine tuning, etc, adjustments.
Never 'before', --unless it's another identical test example,
--(which is often the case). The greatest claim of any of any
GR-tivity-'fruitcake' is that ''it matches observation''. That's
all they do. They ''match observations'' !!
It's hard to refute ''predictions'' like that.
> How bizarre. Would it be the value of pi that could be
> tweaked, or perhaps the value of 8?
How do you know what the magnitude and definition of pi
ought to be, in GR-tivity ?
Yours truly,
`````arcsign````` mar 2001
> It reminds me of that feeble math joke, "1 + 1 = 3, for
> sufficiently large values of 1."
That joke is very very GR, --that's the GR-nak !
You're hired !!
> --
> Ken Cox k...@research.bell-labs.com
>
bhan...@my-deja.com
And I take it you are still not repeating the argument,
merely stating a fact several times independently?
Ken Moore
<k...@research.bell-labs.com> writes
>Would it be the value of pi that could be
>tweaked, or perhaps the value of 8?
That used to be standard in Fortran. Has it been stopped yet, or is it
still an option?
Ken Cox
What I was emphasizing in my first line above was that I
had not read other messages in the thread before stating
that classical EM fields do not deflect EM waves; thus, I
was not simply repeating such an argument, as you hinted.
I was offering it independently.
I then went on (in the above) to repeat the fact that EM
fields do not deflect EM waves a couple of times, with
different phrasings, in the vague hope that one of the
phrasings would get through. Let me try again:
The answer to your question, "is there any reason anybody
has ever provided why an EM field should *not* be expected
to deflect an EM wave?" is "yes". The physicists who worked
out classical EM theory analyzed what would happen in that
case, and found that there is no deflection. You can read
any of several texts on the subject to see the reasons, and
should also note that this result is borne out by experiment.
A corollary to the above is that the deflection of light by
the Sun (or by remote galaxies) is *not* due to the Sun's
EM field. So there must be some other effect that causes the
measured deflection.
The fact that the measured deflection is equal in magnitude to
that predicted by general relativity supports that theory, just
as does the fact that the measured difference in GPS satellite
clock rates is equal to that predicted by general relativity.
--
Ken Cox k...@research.bell-labs.com
Ken Cox
> Ken Cox <k...@research.bell-labs.com> wrote:
> > How bizarre. Would it be the value of pi that could be
> > tweaked, or perhaps the value of 8?
> How do you know what the magnitude and definition of pi
> ought to be, in GR-tivity ?
It's *pi*. It's a constant. Asking "what is the magnitude
of pi in GR" makes as much sense as asking "what is the
magnitude of 8 in GR", which is to say, none.
--
Ken Cox k...@research.bell-labs.com
bhan...@my-deja.com
Ok, I am claiming that a disturbance in a field will move
with the field. You are saying there is experimental evidence
that directly refutes this. In that case, I would like to
know more about the experimental evidence. So far,
I have only seen usage of superposition principle, which
is not applicable in this case for reasons I pointed out
in the thread. So experiments verifying superpositon
are not relevant. The experiment would have to actually
use waves vs fields and verify that a wave travelling
in a field doesn't move with that field (e.g. for instance
solar magnetic waves getting left behind as the Sun
moves away with its magnetic field...)
Ken Cox
> Ken Cox wrote:
> > The answer to your question, "is there any reason anybody
> > has ever provided why an EM field should *not* be expected
> > to deflect an EM wave?" is "yes".
> with the field.
Yes, as others have pointed out you are confusing "field"
with "medium".
Perhaps this will help -- consider again your original
question, about the deflection of light passing a body
that has an EM field. In what sense is that body's field
moving, analogously to the movement of a medium? It
doesn't. If the body moves, the field (probably) moves
with it, but when the body is just sitting there, the
field is not moving.
--
Ken Cox k...@research.bell-labs.com
brian a m stuckless
Ken Cox <k...@research.bell-labs.com> wrote
in article <3AB93208...@research.bell-labs.com>...
> bhan...@my-deja.com wrote:
```snip```
> -- So there must be some other effect that causes the
> measured deflection.
Said deflection seems due to a density gradient around the sun.
> The fact that the measured deflection is equal in magnitude to
> that predicted by general relativity supports that theory, just
> as does the fact that the measured difference in GPS satellite
> clock rates is equal to that predicted by general relativity.
The Gravity Theory --and the ''tweak''-tivity budget
The biggest part of the GR-tivity budget is spent ''tweaking'',
editing, and stockpiling calculations, as you say, to match
the latest significant observations, and for example, to match
the latest 'trial & error' fine tuning of say atomic clocks, etc,
--AFTER the 'trial & error' fine tuning, etc, adjustments.
--Never 'before', --unless it's another identical test example,
(which is often the case). The greatest claim of any of any
GR-tivity-'fruitcake' is that ''it matches observation''. That's
all they do. They ''match observations'' !!
Yours truly,
`````arcsign````` march 21, 2001
p.s. Note ambient media reference below.
> --
> Ken Cox k...@research.bell-labs.com
>
Nature abhors ''NO medium''
As per conservative anaylsis(with interstellar space data added):
a. The calculated medium of intergalactic deep space has atoms
which occupy a space of approximately 10^3 m^3 / atom, each.
[0.001 atoms per cubic meter]
[= 10^-3 atoms / m^3]
b. The calculated medium of interstellar space has hydrogen
atoms which occupy a space of approximately 10^-6 m^3 / atom,
each.
[1,000,000 atoms per cubic meter]
[= 10^6 atoms / m^3]
c. The measured medium achieved by hanging a plate off the
back of the space-shuttle was approximately 10^-9 m^3 / atom,
each.
[1,000,000,000 atoms per cubic meter]
[= 10^9 atoms / m^3]
d. The very least medium achieved on earth is approximately
10^-12 m^3 / atom, each.
[1, 000,000,000,000 atoms per cubic meter]
[= 10^12 atoms / m^3]
e. The very least medium on earth --in which light has ever been
actually measured-- has approximately 10^-16 m^3 / atom, each.
[10,000,000,000,000,000 atoms per cubic meter], rangeing up to
[1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms per cubic meter]
[= a range of 10^16 ~ 10^21 atoms / m^3]
f. The international standard molar gas medium has atoms with ~
10^-25 m^3 / atom, each.
[10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms per cubic meter]
[= 10^25 atoms per cubic meter]
NOTE: The very least measured medium on earth in which light
has ever been actually measured had:
~10^7 times MORE atoms / m^3 than the space-shuttle test medium,
~10^19 times MORE atoms / m^3 than deep space and that's at least
~10^10 times MORE atoms / m^3 than interstellar space. --However,
that's only ~10^6 times LESS atoms / m^3 than the density of the
international standard molar gas medium(~air).
Therefore, with a density spread of 28 orders of magnitude, the
very least medium --in which the speed of light has ever actually
been measured-- on earth, is a medium 7 orders of magnitude closer
to the international standard molar density than it is to deep space
density(which is still not a vacuum), and 10 orders of magnitude
MORE atoms / m^3 than interstellar space, and finally, that's still
a full 7 orders of magnitude MORE atoms / m^3 than the space
shuttle test medium --all clearly demonstrated as follows:
a. Deep space:
[0.001 atoms per cubic meter]
[= 10^-3 atoms / m^3]
b. Interstellar space:
[1,000,000 atoms per cubic meter]
[= 10^6 atoms / m^3]
c. Space suttle:
[1,000,000,000 atoms per cubic meter]
[= 10^9 atoms / m^3]
d. Very least test medium achieved on earth:
[1, 000,000,000,000 atoms per cubic meter]
[= 10^12 atoms / m^3]
e. Light test range(as-measured on earth):
[10,000,000,000,000,000 atoms per cubic meter], --to:
[1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms per cubic meter]
[= a range of 10^16 ~ 10^21 atoms / m^3]
f. Molar gas standard:
[10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms per cubic meter]
[= 10^25 atoms per cubic meter]
These mediums also contain already-in-transit electromagnetic
energy in the form of radiation, and already-in-transit phonons.
In the beginning was the phonon.
Yours truly,
`````arcsign````` march 21, 2001
Ken Moore
<bast...@avalon.nf.ca> writes
>How do you know what the magnitude and definition of pi
>ought to be, in GR-tivity ?
In GR, where standard maths still applies, pi (= 2 * Arcsin 1, where the
capital distinguishes the principal value) is constant; the ratio of the
circumference to the diameter (c/d) of a circle varies, since, in
general, space has curvature. c/d also varies on the surface of a
sphere (= 2 for a great circle, -> pi as d -> 0).
Richard Herring
> In article <997qhi$ka3$1...@miranda.gmrc.gecm.com>, Richard Herring
> <r...@gmrc.gecm.com> writes
> >Vacuously true, since electromagnetic waves don't "disturb"
> >other electromagnetic waves. They merely add linearly to them.
> I believe that is consistent with such experiments as we can do at
> present. Have we theoretical reasons for believing it holds for all
> amplitudes?
On the contrary, we know that there's a fourth-order QED effect
for large enough amplitudes. But that's not relevant in the context
of this thread.
--
Richard Herring | <richard...@baesystems.com>
Richard Herring
> Ok, I am claiming that a disturbance in a field will move
> with the field. You are saying there is experimental evidence
> that directly refutes this. In that case, I would like to
> know more about the experimental evidence. So far,
> I have only seen usage of superposition principle, which
> is not applicable in this case for reasons I pointed out
> in the thread. So experiments verifying superpositon
> are not relevant.
Nonsense. What you persist in calling a "disturbance in a field"
is the superposition of a perturbing field on another field.
Superposition is therefore directly relevant, and easily verified.
> The experiment would have to actually
> use waves vs fields and verify that a wave travelling
> in a field doesn't move with that field
There is no such thing as a wave travelling "in" a field.
> (e.g. for instance
> solar magnetic waves getting left behind as the Sun
> moves away with its magnetic field...)
Now you're *really* confusing medium and field. What you call
the solar "magnetic field" is a magnetohydrodynamic fluid,
a medium which will couple electromagnetic and mechanical waves.
Waves in that fluid will indeed move with the medium.
--
Richard Herring | <richard...@baesystems.com>
bhan...@my-deja.com
> In article <3AB9396F...@my-deja.com>, bhan...@my-deja.com wrote:
>
> > Ok, I am claiming that a disturbance in a field will move
> > with the field. You are saying there is experimental evidence
> > that directly refutes this. In that case, I would like to
> > know more about the experimental evidence. So far,
> > I have only seen usage of superposition principle, which
> > is not applicable in this case for reasons I pointed out
> > in the thread. So experiments verifying superpositon
> > are not relevant.
>
> Nonsense. What you persist in calling a "disturbance in a field"
> is the superposition of a perturbing field on another field.
> Superposition is therefore directly relevant, and easily verified.
There is no such thing as a theory of superposition between
fields that are not identical. They may affect each other or
not, as the case may be.
You are trying to add inches to pounds and claiming that
is the right thing to do according to the laws of addition.
bhan...@my-deja.com
> Yes, as others have pointed out you are confusing "field"
> with "medium".
>
> Perhaps this will help -- consider again your original
> question, about the deflection of light passing a body
> that has an EM field. In what sense is that body's field
> moving, analogously to the movement of a medium? It
> doesn't. If the body moves, the field (probably) moves
> with it, but when the body is just sitting there, the
> field is not moving.
>
That is not relevant at this point, first we must sort
out the fundamental questions. Since you didn't
address those, I assume I wasn't able to explain
carefully, so let us go more slowly:
1) Does a "medium" for a wave *have*
to consist of molecules?
2) Can you conceive of a "field" as a medium
for another wave?
3) If a field is a medium for a wave, are the
wave and the wave-medium identical?
4) Is there a classical electrodynamic principle that
says the wave and wave-medium will hold to
superposition in this case?
I am saying that all this is the result of bad teaching,
since the wave-in-a-medium can be treated as a field,
and that immediately confuses the wave with the medium
when the medium is also a field. That's why people go around
claiming superposition applies in this case.
But if it did, there would be no magnetic waves in a magnetic
field. The waves would get left behind (as the earth or
the sun moved, for instance.) So any observations of
magnetic waves are direct experimental refutation for
the logically challenged.
Ken Cox
> Ken Cox wrote:
> > Yes, as others have pointed out you are confusing "field"
> > with "medium".
> out the fundamental questions.
Actually, it is quite relevant, and (at least as I see
it) the fundamental question is "Do you know what an
EM field is?" The answer, so far, appears to be "no".
However, to perhaps help you understand, I will answer
your questions.
> 1) Does a "medium" for a wave *have*
> to consist of molecules?
No. However, to go beyond your question (and return to
your fundamental misunderstanding), some kinds of waves
can propagate without a medium. EM waves are one such
type of wave, and an EM field is *not* a medium.
> 2) Can you conceive of a "field" as a medium
> for another wave?
Possibly, but there is no point in doing so for EM,
since an EM field is not a medium.
> 3) If a field is a medium for a wave, are the
> wave and the wave-medium identical?
Irrelevant, since an EM field is not a medium for an
EM wave; EM waves (photons) can propagate without a
field being present.
Even if we consider a case where a wave does require a
medium, such as sound waves, the wave is not the same
as the medium. The wave is a distribution of energy,
the medium is matter (in the sound wave case).
> 4) Is there a classical electrodynamic principle that
> says the wave and wave-medium will hold to
> superposition in this case?
In what case? As your last two questions have been
totally off-the-wall with regards to EM theory, it is
meaningless to ask what EM theory would say if they
were true.
> I am saying that all this is the result of bad teaching,
> since the wave-in-a-medium can be treated as a field,
I think I've spotted where the bad teaching is.
--
Ken Cox k...@research.bell-labs.com
bhan...@my-deja.com
I wasn't talking about any preconceptions you might
have about EM fields in particular. I was talking
about fields and waves in general. Of course, if
afterwards you want to make a claim that EM
fields and waves are special, that is a separate issue.
But normally, claims of special properties are
expected to accompany valid reasons.
So there are two issues here, first of all whether
you believe that a wave in a field will be
independent of that field or if the superposition
principle is valid to combine the two.
Secondly, if you have reason to believe EM
waves/fields are extra-magical and would not behave
like any other waves/fields.
Ken Cox
> I wasn't talking about any preconceptions you might
> have about EM fields in particular. I was talking
> about fields and waves in general.
That's nice, but the question you originally asked was
about the behavior of light passing through the Sun's
EM field. To answer that question, we *must* consider
the ways in which EM waves differ from waves that need
a medium, and the ways in which an EM field is not a
medium.
--
Ken Cox k...@research.bell-labs.com
bhan...@my-deja.com
Ok, so can we take it that you are not disagreeing that
my analysis of waves and fields in general, only
about EM waves.
So what is the reason for assuming that EM waves
would be different from any other waves? (Discounting
"cause it says so in this here book" reasoning.) Any
experimental proof, any logic that stands valid upon
examination, anything at all?
[Some of the logical analysis of why this is not so
and why logic claiming this is not correct,
is present at http://www.mukesh.ws/ so we might
not have to rehash it again, this way we can
concentrate on anything new.]
Ken Cox
> Ken Cox wrote:
> > bhan...@my-deja.com wrote:
> > > I wasn't talking about any preconceptions you might
> > > have about EM fields in particular. I was talking
> > > about fields and waves in general.
> > That's nice, but the question you originally asked was
> > about the behavior of light passing through the Sun's
> > EM field. To answer that question, we *must* consider
> > the ways in which EM waves differ from waves that need
> > a medium, and the ways in which an EM field is not a
> > medium.
> Ok, so can we take it that you are not disagreeing that
> my analysis of waves and fields in general, only
> about EM waves.
Not quite. First, I wouldn't call it an analysis; you
have some qualitative arguments, but nothing in the way
of either experiment or theory to show if they are valid,
much less estimate magnitudes.
Second, and more importantly, it *still* seems that you
don't understand the difference between a field and a
medium. Your qualitative arguments all deal with the
behavior of waves passing through a medium, such as sound
waves or ocean waves. That tells you *nothing* about what
waves in a field do. Thus it is improper to call your
"analysis" an "analysis of waves and fields"; it is an
"analysis of waves and mediums" (or would that be media?).
--
Ken Cox k...@research.bell-labs.com
Ed Keane III
<bhan...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:3AB8B13B...@my-deja.com...
> Nothing wrong with
> mathematical speculation, of course. But when used
> in physics, the interpretation of the mathematics
> should be clear. Just arriving at working equations
> is not sufficient. A clear interpretation may show
> the equations to be much less significant than originally
> thought, or may show them to be simply approximations.
> But lack of clear interpretation coupled with intense
> weight of status can lead to philosophies like "physics
> should not be concerned with meanings of equations".
> (Fortunately, these philosophies did not spread to fields
> that were having success with interpreting their data.)
>
>
In physics just arriving at working equations is enough. One would assume
that a clear interpretation would be helpful in creating such equations but
the functionality and accuracy of the equation is the measure of its worth.
A clear interpretation demonstrating that an equation is simply an
approximation would need a more accurate equation to be significant.
With GR Einstein did start with a clear principle and spent a decade looking
for a mathematical framework to fit it. His rejection of quantum mechanics I
think demonstrates an agreement with your philosophy but a more current view
is expressed by Steven Weinberg when he says, "Scientists would be in a bad
way if they had to limit themselves to notions that had been satisfactorily
formulated by philosophers".
My own opinion is that an action at a distance theory is necessary to form a
quantum theory of gravity because fields are really only mathematical
constructs and not "real". Or at least not real in the sense that some of
the people in this thread seem to think.
-Ed Keane III
bhan...@my-deja.com
> Second, and more importantly, it *still* seems that you
> don't understand the difference between a field and a
> medium. Your qualitative arguments all deal with the
> behavior of waves passing through a medium, such as sound
> waves or ocean waves. That tells you *nothing* about what
> waves in a field do. Thus it is improper to call your
> "analysis" an "analysis of waves and fields"; it is an
> "analysis of waves and mediums" (or would that be media?).
And the reason to differentiate?
What if I were to find a population trend is a combination
of several small wave motions? Just because it is not a
more familiar wave motion in molecules of a "thing", does
that mean it is suddenly a new kind of wave motion with
magical properties?
I am willing to ascribe magical properties, but there
has to be evidence for it first. A-priori attribution
of magical properties is nothing but superstition.
In absence of evidence for magical properties, it is
normal to assume a wave motion in population
data or in a field is not mathematically different
from a wave motion in molecules.
Ken Cox
> Ken Cox wrote:
> > Second, and more importantly, it *still* seems that you
> > don't understand the difference between a field and a
> > medium. Your qualitative arguments all deal with the
> > behavior of waves passing through a medium, such as sound
> > waves or ocean waves. That tells you *nothing* about what
> > waves in a field do. Thus it is improper to call your
> > "analysis" an "analysis of waves and fields"; it is an
> > "analysis of waves and mediums" (or would that be media?).
> And the reason to differentiate?
Because a field is different from a medium. Don't you
think that's a good enough reason to differentiate
between the two?
An EM field is not a medium. Any argument that, as a
critical step, says "If we pretend that an EM field is
a medium" is at the least suspicious. If the argument
then comes up with predictions that are contradicted by
observations -- for example, predicts that an EM wave
will be deflected by an EM field -- then it is more than
suspicious, it is *wrong*.
--
Ken Cox k...@research.bell-labs.com
bhan...@my-deja.com
> bhan...@my-deja.com wrote:
> > Ken Cox wrote:
> > > Second, and more importantly, it *still* seems that you
> > > don't understand the difference between a field and a
> > > medium. Your qualitative arguments all deal with the
> > > behavior of waves passing through a medium, such as sound
> > > waves or ocean waves. That tells you *nothing* about what
> > > waves in a field do. Thus it is improper to call your
> > > "analysis" an "analysis of waves and fields"; it is an
> > > "analysis of waves and mediums" (or would that be media?).
>
> > And the reason to differentiate?
>
> Because a field is different from a medium. Don't you
> think that's a good enough reason to differentiate
> between the two?
Air is different from water which is different from
population data which is different from a magnetic
field which is different from steel. A wave motion
can occur in any of these. When a wave occurs
in water, we don't say "...because water is different from
a medium". When a wave occurs in steel, we
don's say "...because steel is different from a medium".
Though some people may indeed have difficulty
conceptualize anything as a medium
except material items, that is hardly liable to affect
waves, mediums, fields and such.
Chris Hillman
(Newsgroups mercifully trimmed)
On Wed, 21 Mar 2001, rich hammett wrote:
> In sci.astro Ken Moore <k...@hpsl.demon.co.uk> allegedly wrote:
> > In article <997qhi$ka3$1...@miranda.gmrc.gecm.com>, Richard Herring
> > <r...@gmrc.gecm.com> writes
> >>Vacuously true, since electromagnetic waves don't "disturb"
> >>other electromagnetic waves. They merely add linearly to them.
>
> > I believe that is consistent with such experiments as we can do at
> > present. Have we theoretical reasons for believing it holds for all
> > amplitudes? What if the energy density is such that GR effects come
> > into play?
>
> I don't think that EM waves add linearly in the general case.
I missed the OP, but according to the Einstein-Maxwell equation (which
combines but does not "unify" Maxwell's theory of EM and Einstein's theory
of gravitation), strong EM waves in general do not in general superimpose
linearly. This is because EM waves possess field energy, and therefore
gravitate, and in gtr, gravitation is governed by a highly nonlinear field
equation, the EFE. The purely gravitational effects of the field energy
in turn influence the propagation of the EM wave--- this is why in general
we need to use the full Einstein-Maxwell field equation. (I should stress
that in practice, in realistic astrophysical applications of gtr, purely
gravitational effects due to the field energy of an EM field are almost
always negligible!)
One simple example of the nonlinearity is a simple principle I have
pointed out here previously: "you can't see a wave train entering the
station, but you can see it leave!" That is, if you study either a
conformally flat sandwich plane wave ("purely nongravitational massless
radiation sandwich plane wave") or a vacuum, linearly polarized, sandwich
plane wave in gtr ("purely gravitational and linearly polarized sandwich
plane wave"), if you look directly through the oncoming wavefronts at
objects behind the wave train, you will see no optical distortions (if you
-could-, you'd have "advance warning" that the wave was coming!), but if
after the wave train has passed you turn and look directly through the
-departing- wavefronts at objects ahead of the wave train, you will see
their images distorted in a dynamic (time varying) manner. Indeed, in the
first case ("purely nongravitational") you will see a characteristic
expansion and/or shrinkage without shape change; in the second ("purely
plus polarized gravitational") you will see shearing (but not rotation) as
well as magnification and/or demagnification. This is clearly a nonlinear
effect, and is due entirely to the effect of the passing wave on the
geometry of spacetime. (In the first case, it is the field energy of the
massless nongravitational radiation which distorts the spacetime geometry;
in the second, well, gravitational radiation -is- perturbations in the
spacetime curvature which propagate as a wave.)
-Weak- EM waves and weak gravitational waves are however governed in gtr
by linear approximate field equations (Maxwell's equations and the field
equation of linearized gtr, respectively).
Chris Hillman
Home Page: http://www.math.washington.edu/~hillman/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
NOTE TO WOULD-BE CORRESPONDENTS: I have installed a mail filter which
deletes incoming messages not from the "*.edu" or "*.gov" domains, but
also deletes messages from some bad actors whose emails happen to be in
the "*.edu" domain and "passes" messages from a few friends with email
addresses in other domains.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
brian a m stuckless
Ken Cox <k...@research.bell-labs.com> wrote
in article <3AB933F3...@research.bell-labs.com>...
> brian a m stuckless wrote:
> > Ken Cox <k...@research.bell-labs.com> wrote:
> > > How bizarre. Would it be the value of pi that could be
> > > tweaked, or perhaps the value of 8?
What is the definition of pi, in GR-tivity ?
> > How do you know what the magnitude and definition of pi
> > ought to be, in GR-tivity ?
> >
> It's *pi*. It's a constant. ```snip```
Is pi the circumference to diameter ratio of a circle, in
GR-tivity ?
How do you determine the magnitude of the constant pi,
assuming 8 = 8, and 1 + 1 = 2, in GR-tivity ?
Yours truly,
`````arcsign````` mar 22, 2001
''In vacu'' means ten million billion particles per cubic meter;
10^16 parts / m^3 = 10,000,000,000,000,000 particles / m^3.
p.s. Note sci.math added to the post addresses above,
and reference posts below.
> --
> Ken Cox k...@research.bell-labs.com
>
^^^^^^^^^^^^^reference 1 follows:
1. Re: The Gravity Theory --and the ''tweak''-tivity budget
Ken Cox <k...@research.bell-labs.com> wrote
in article <3AB8D6BA...@research.bell-labs.com>...
> Richard Herring wrote:
> > There seems to be a school of thought, if that's not too
> > dignified a word for it, which believes that GR has an array
> > of adjustable parameters that can be tweaked to fit every
> > anomaly.
The biggest part of the GR-tivity budget is spent ''tweaking'',
editing, and stockpiling calculations, as you say, to match
the latest significant observations, and for example, to match
the latest 'trial & error' fine tuning of say atomic clocks, etc,
--AFTER the 'trial & error' fine tuning, etc, adjustments.
Never 'before', --unless it's another identical test example,
--(which is often the case). The greatest claim of any of any
GR-tivity-'fruitcake' is that ''it matches observation''. That's
all they do. They ''match observations'' !!
It's hard to refute ''predictions'' like that.
> How bizarre. Would it be the value of pi that could be
> tweaked, or perhaps the value of 8?
How do you know what the magnitude and definition of pi
ought to be, in GR-tivity ?
Yours truly,
`````arcsign````` mar 2001
> It reminds me of that feeble math joke, "1 + 1 = 3, for
> sufficiently large values of 1."
That joke is very very GR, --that's the GR-nak !
You're hired !!
> --
> Ken Cox k...@research.bell-labs.com
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^reference 2 follows:
How to spot a GR-tivity-'crackpot'
GR-tivity-'fruitcake' crackpots have certain distinguishing
features in common, including some such as the following:
a. --revels in the the use of the old Classical notion
of ''invariant mass'', --a gross misnomer for GR-tivity
''invariant-velocity''.
b.--seem to know instinctively what the magnitude of pi
''ought to be'', and can instinctively discern perfect circles
from any other closed curve, --even in a curved space.
c. --have often measured ''NO medium'' and found no aether.
d. --cannot objectify GR-tivity, and are themselves, ''in GR'',
as they say, --and IT shows.
e. --can strangely somehow killfile some posters over and over,
and never read their posts again and again, and again.
f. --will enforce GR-'fruitcake'-tivity with the stunted passion,
clownish vigor, and misguided direction, of Yosimite Sam.
g. --can clearly distinguish one ''NO feeling'' from another, in
a GR-tivity 'gedanken-equivalence freefalling elevator'. Some
concluding that it is distinctly ''freefalling up'', while others
counter that ''actually'' space-time curvature is falling down,
--but little observer imps inside the elevator convinced the
GR-'fruitcake'-tivity buffoons that these two ''NO feeling''s
were both identical, --and so, ''lo-and-behold'', the GR-tivity
Principle of Equivalence(the PoE), --was born !!
h. --and when they're not fudgeing(i.e. tweaking) calculations
to fit the as-measured data(--''matching observations''), they're
spamming and trolling the newsgroups with a self-winding
spitball selvedge of cliche.
`````arcsign````` mar 23, 2001
^^^^^^^^^^^^end of post.
Ray Vickson
brian a m stuckless wrote:
>
> Re: The Gravity Theory
> Ken Cox <k...@research.bell-labs.com> wrote
> in article <3AB933F3...@research.bell-labs.com>...
> > brian a m stuckless wrote:
> > > Ken Cox <k...@research.bell-labs.com> wrote:
> > > > How bizarre. Would it be the value of pi that could be
> > > > tweaked, or perhaps the value of 8?
>
> What is the definition of pi, in GR-tivity ?
>
> > > How do you know what the magnitude and definition of pi
> > > ought to be, in GR-tivity ?
> > >
> > It's *pi*. It's a constant. ```snip```
>
> Is pi the circumference to diameter ratio of a circle, in
> GR-tivity ?
No, not if the geometry is non-Euclidean. But, pi is still pi. Nowadays,
pi can be regarded as a mathematical constant that appears over and over
again in many places and contexts. The fact that the Greeks discovered
it to be the ratio
of thecircumference to the diameter of a circle is a fact of history,
not relevant to whether pi has some kind of independent "existence".
Anyway, your poorly-expressed posts leave me wondering what on Earth
your point is. I can't tell if you are for GR or against it; and if you
are against it, what SUBSTANTIVE arguments, evidence, etc., do you have?
Of course, we should never believe in the absolute truth of any current
theory, as "scientific truth" is a malleable thing, changing and
evolving as new empirical evidence comes in or new concepts are
proposed. So, without claiming GR is "true" just because Einstein said
so we have to fall back on observation, etc. AFIK, GR passes all tests
to date, and is even used in modern global-positioning technology. Maybe
someday it will be overthrown, but there will have to be good reasons,
not just some half-baked philosphical objections that appear to be based
on misunderstanding.
--
R. G. Vickson
Department of Management Sciences
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA
Ken Cox
> Though some people may indeed have difficulty
> conceptualize anything as a medium
> except material items, that is hardly liable to affect
> waves, mediums, fields and such.
You have the problem exactly backward. The problem is not
that some people have difficulty imagining that a field is
a medium; it is that some people -- *you*, in particular --
have difficulty imagining that a field is NOT a medium.
A wave does not imply a medium. In particular, EM waves
can occur without any medium, or even any field. An EM
field is not a medium.
--
Ken Cox k...@research.bell-labs.com
Ken Cox
> What is the definition of pi, in GR-tivity ?
It's a mathematical constant, like 0 or 1 or 8 or sqrt(2).
Your question makes no more sense than asking "What is the
definition of 1 in GR?"
--
Ken Cox k...@research.bell-labs.com
Alan Morgan
Ken Cox <k...@research.bell-labs.com> wrote:
>brian a m stuckless wrote:
>> What is the definition of pi, in GR-tivity ?
>
>It's a mathematical constant, like 0 or 1 or 8 or sqrt(2).
>Your question makes no more sense than asking "What is the
>definition of 1 in GR?"
Recent experiements show that it is between 1.00031 and 0.999704,
which jibes well with theory.
Alan
Bennett Standeven
"brian a m stuckless" <bast...@avalon.nf.ca> wrote in message
news:01c0b387$f0a3d700$LocalHost@default...
> Re: The Gravity Theory
> Ken Cox <k...@research.bell-labs.com> wrote
> in article <3AB933F3...@research.bell-labs.com>...
> > brian a m stuckless wrote:
> > > Ken Cox <k...@research.bell-labs.com> wrote:
> > > > How bizarre. Would it be the value of pi that could be
> > > > tweaked, or perhaps the value of 8?
>
> What is the definition of pi, in GR-tivity ?
Let S be the set of all periods of the exponential function. Let
T be {|x|: x e S}. Then pi is the least non-zero element of T. (The
demonstration that pi exists is left as an exercise for the reader.)
> > > How do you know what the magnitude and definition of pi
> > > ought to be, in GR-tivity ?
> > >
> > It's *pi*. It's a constant. ```snip```
>
> Is pi the circumference to diameter ratio of a circle, in
> GR-tivity ?
>
No.
> How do you determine the magnitude of the constant pi,
> assuming 8 = 8, and 1 + 1 = 2, in GR-tivity ?
Pi can be calculated to arbitrary accuracy using the following
formula:
Sum(k = 0...oo) (-1/5)^k/(2*k+1) + (-1/239)^k/(2*k+1)
bhan...@my-deja.com
Please consider us (me at least) duly impressed by your
rote memorization abilities.
However, to move on, the question is why can a
field *not* serve as a medium for a wave?
Is there something that stops a field from
being disturbed minutely?
And when you are done with that, will you
please also explain why it is not possible for
raw population data to be a good medium
for a wave?
franz heymann
<bhan...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:3ABCC755...@my-deja.com...
[Snip]
> However, to move on, the question is why can a
> field *not* serve as a medium for a wave?
> Is there something that stops a field from
> being disturbed minutely?
(1) There is no necessity to insert the existence of a static field
of any description anywhere in Maxwell's equations as a condition for
finding wavelike solutions.
(2) EM waves will propagate inside a conducting tube , so your field
cannot be electric.
(3) A magnet does not affect the path of a ray of light so your field
is not magnetic.
(4) Lighting equipment still function inside a spacecraft so your
field cannot be gravitational
What else do you have in mind?
Franz Heymann
[Snip]
Ken Moore
<be...@worldinter.net> writes
>Pi can be calculated to arbitrary accuracy using the following
>formula:
>
>Sum(k = 0...oo) (-1/5)^k/(2*k+1) + (-1/239)^k/(2*k+1)
I seem to be doing rather better with
4 * sum (-4 * (-1/5)^(2*k+1)/2*k+1) + (-1/239)^(2*k+1)/2*k+1))
The QBASIC program to evaluate this is:
a = -1! / 5!
b = 1! / 239!
s = 0
FOR k = 0 TO 10 REM good enough to the default print precision
d = 2 * k + 1
s = s + (4 * a + b) / d
a = a / -25!
b = b / -(239! * 239!) REM too lazy to work it out
PRINT 4 * s
NEXT k
Note that the exclamation mark denotes a floating point constant and is
nothing to do with factorials.
eric_...@compuserve.com
wrote:
>In article <3ab537a9...@news.compuserve.com>,
>eric_...@compuserve.com writes
>>muons with or without mass
>
>That's a new one to me; or did you mean neutrinos?
quite possibly! :-)
=Erk= (Eric Baird)
Farmyard Physics:
"Neutrinos" are a kind of sheep,
a "mu-on" is a quantised cow,
"quark"'s a noise that ducks make, and
they fit together (God knows how).
eric_...@compuserve.com
<car...@dirac.ucdavis.edu> wrote:
>In sci.astro eric_...@compuserve.com wrote:
>> On Mon, 12 Mar 2001 22:18:41 -0600, "Robert J. Kolker"
>> <bobk...@email.com> wrote:
>
>>>If the precession of the perihelions was the only issue, your argument
>>>might hold water, but GR predicts not only the precession of the
>>>perihelions,
>
>> GR was designed with the Mercury perihelion precession figure in mind.
>
>I don't think this is quite right historically, in the sense that there were no
>free parameters to tune to get the precession right---either it worked or
>it didn't. But in any case, GR cetainly wasn't ``designed'' to get the precession
>of Icarus's perihelion right, but it does.
Well, I don't have first-hand knowledge of this, but I do remember
reading that Einstein produced several gravitational papers before
1916 that weren't quite "there", with the Mercury prediction only
appearing in [I think, maybe] the last two versions. I think he's
supposed to have managed to get the Mercury result in his penultimate
version (which was still flawed), and once the flaw was fixed and the
nice Mercury result was found to be still in the corrected version, he
considered the thing to be finished.
The impression that I got was that the Mercury result was on
Einstein's "wish list" of things that he wanted his final theory to
predict.
>It's also a good idea to keep in mind other GR predictions that certainly
>weren't built in, or even known,
> at the time the theory was written down:
>
>-- the Shapiro time delay;
This one's fairly basic, as soon as you model gravitation as a feature
of a variable-density metric, you end up with the result that a
lightbeam passing through a more intense gravitational field takes a
different amount of time to get to the other side.
Newton's early attempt at describing gravitation as a variation in
refractive index would have been expected to generate this sort of
effect (but since Newton inverted the frequency/energy relationship,
and the relationship between lightspeed and deflection, his model
would have wrongly predicted an inverse Shapiro effect).
The Eighteenth-century attempts at curved-space models would
presumably have generated "proper" Shapiro effects, but perhaps not as
strongly as GR.
I guess that "3+1"D curvature models probably generate a stronger
effect than 3D ones, but qualitatively, the effect would (with
hindsight) seem to be fairly general.
>-- the contribution of gravitational binding energy to gravitational mass,
> as observed in the Earth-Moon system (note that this implies that
> gravity is necessarily nonlinear, and rules out any simple fiddling
> with Newtonian gravity);
>-- the de Sitter precession of the Earth-Moon system;
I can't comment on these.
>-- frame dragging (confirmed weakly by LAGEOS satellite observations.
> Gravity Probe B will be launched in a bit over a year; want to bet on the
> results?);
Rotational frame-dragging is similar to an old "failed" aether effect
-- Oliver Lodge went looking for lightspeed-dragging effects inside a
rotating massed cavity in the late Eighteenth Century and couldn't
find it (too small an effect).
Regarding Gravity Probe B, we apparently don't need GR to predict the
"GR" result to the correct order of magnitude ... if we have some idea
of the field intensity at the gyro orbit due to the background mass of
the universe, and the corresponding field intensity contribution due
to the presence of the Earth, we can then use that ratio to weight our
selection of an intermediate rotational frame.
John Wheeler has helpfully published this "Machian" calculation, in:
John Archibald Wheeler "A journey into gravity and spacetime"
(Scientific American Library, NY, 1990 & 1999) p232-233.
It /looks/ fairly straightforward.
>-- the ``strong field'' tests in binary pulsar PSR 1534+12 of parameters r
> (``range of Shapiro delay'') and s (``shape of Shapiro delay'');
>-- the absence of a variety of effects predicted by alternative theories
> (e.g., the anomalous tides predicted by Whitehead's theory);
Yep, knocking down alternative models does increase GR's credibility.
>-- and, of course, the incredibly accurate quantitative agreement, tracked
> over 26 years so far, of the observed orbital decay of two binary pulsar
> systems with prediction.
>> Don't get me wrong, I love most of the ideas behind GR, I just get
>> nerked when people over-sell it, or try to give the impression that
>> gravitational physsics is a finished project. It ain't.
>
>Agreed. But it's important to start with an understanding of just how
>successful GR is. That sets the bar---it tells you how good an alternative
>is going to have to be to compete.
It can be difficult to assess how "successful" GR is supposed to be if
we don't have anything proper to compare it with -- books don't always
present the simpler general calculations that can (sometimes? often?
always?) give us equally decent predictions without requiring
complicated math.
IMO, the principles themselves are good, the parts of GR that reflect
those principles are probably nice, but the parts of the theory that
extrapolate too far beyond those initial principles (eg "black" black
holes) are less trustworthy (Einstein's not supposed to have ever
accepted GR's black hole predictions).
The thing that actually impresses me about general relativity is not
so much that it matches up nicely to reality within current
experimental accuracy, but that somebody managed to tie all those
effects together into a single geometrical description and make it all
work.
>Frankly, the only way I can imagine that
>happening is if the alternative reduces to GR as a limiting case, just as GR
>reduces to Newtonian gravity.
I think that a GR-replacement would probably have to most of the
initial design criteria that were used to construct current GR, and
would therefore have to produce most of the same basic results.
Making the theory a /complete/ superset of special relativity might
not be necessary, though. Special relativity gives an efficient
framework containing some major relativistic relationships, but might
not have to be an intrinsic part of the final model. If we are
building a cathedral, the initial scaffolding can have much of the
shape of the final building, but also has features that are artifacts
of the construction process, and which don't neccessarily have to
exist in the final structure.
Regards,
=Erk= (Eric Baird)
brian a m stuckless
```snip```
> In particular, EM waves can occur without any medium,
EM waves have never ever been measured or witnessed,
outside of a medium. (see note below)
> -- or even any field.
You can't see any of those EM waves NOW ''in-transit''.
> An EM field is not a medium.
You can't even see any of those EM waves, NOW crossing
your own line of sight, or even any approaching ON your own
line of sight, until they get there, --let alone all the others,
silly.
Every ''in vacu'' medium ever measured anywhere contained
~ 10^12 particles / m^3 = 1,000,000,000,000 particles / m^3
= One Thousand Billion particles per cubic meter, --not to
mention ''in-transit'' photons, etc.,.
Seeing is recieving. You can't see Aether for the media.
Yours truly,
`````arcsign````` mar 24, 2001
p.s. Note sci.physics.particle and sci.physics.electromag added
to the post addresses above.
> --
> Ken Cox k...@research.bell-labs.com
>
Steve Carlip
> On Tue, 20 Mar 2001 00:42:04 +0000 (UTC), Steve Carlip
> <car...@dirac.ucdavis.edu> wrote:
> I do remember
> reading that Einstein produced several gravitational papers before
> 1916 that weren't quite "there"
That's true, but the problems had to do with internal consistency,
not primarily with observation.
>>It's also a good idea to keep in mind other GR predictions that
>>certainly weren't built in, or even known, at the time the theory
>>was written down:
>>-- the Shapiro time delay;
> This one's fairly basic
And yet wasn't noticed until the early 60s!
> as soon as you model gravitation as a feature of a
> variable-density metric, you end up with the result that a
> lightbeam passing through a more intense gravitational field
> takes a different amount of time to get to the other side.
The issue is quantitative. Physics is fundamentally a quantitative
science; a theory that says ``light will slow down'' without saying
how much, and without agreeing with observation, is no substitute
for one that does.
>>-- frame dragging (confirmed weakly by LAGEOS satellite observations.
>> Gravity Probe B will be launched in a bit over a year; want to bet on the
>> results?);
> Rotational frame-dragging is similar to an old "failed" aether effect
> -- Oliver Lodge went looking for lightspeed-dragging effects inside a
> rotating massed cavity in the late Eighteenth Century and couldn't
> find it (too small an effect).
Once again, the issue is quantitative.
> It can be difficult to assess how "successful" GR is supposed to be if
> we don't have anything proper to compare it with
It's standard in the field to look at a general class of models that have GR
as a special case, and to use observations to constrain the parameters.
Statements that an observation ``agrees with GR at the .1% level'' are
almost always statements that some set of parameters of this sort agree
with the GR values at that level. Look at the PPN (``parametrized post-
Newtonian'') formalism, e.g. in MTW or in Will's book _Theory and
experiment in gravitational physics_; or Damour's parametrized post-
Keplerian approximation for binary systems with strong fields; or the
T-H-epsilon-mu formalism for testing the equivalence principle.
> -- books don't always present the simpler general calculations that
> can (sometimes? often? always?) give us equally decent predictions
> without requiring complicated math.
I'd have to say ``sometimes'' at best. It's easy to give simple post hoc
explanations of a result if you're only interested in qualitative features.
But there are only a very few cases I know of in which ``simpler general
calculations'' give quantitative results. And the touble is that even
then, there's no guarantee that these results for distinct phenomena
fit together into a single coherent model.
Steve Carlip
Ilja Schmelzer
> I think that a GR-replacement would probably have to most of the
> initial design criteria that were used to construct current GR, and
> would therefore have to produce most of the same basic results.
You can start with very different design and obtain GR in some limit.
Examples are spin 2 fields on Minkowski background (Feynman/Deser) or
my GET (get.ilja-schmelzer.net) which starts with classical condensed
matter theory.
Ilja
--
I. Schmelzer, <il...@ilja-schmelzer.net>, http://ilja-schmelzer.net
Richard Herring
> Richard Herring wrote:
> > > It can also be a pattern of disturbance in a field.
> >
> > This vague terminology is at the root of your misunderstanding.
> > Yes, a wave can be a fluctuating electromagnetic field. No, it isn't in
> > any meaningful sense a "disturbance" in some other field. It does not
> > depend in any way on the existence of some other field. Take away the
> > other field, and the wave will behave just the same.
> It makes a lot more sense to see it as a disturbance
> in a field of strength zero.
Since it is a field, that means a disturbance *added* to a field
of strength zero. Adding zero is an identity operation, so we might
as well not bother.
> Otherwise it is easy to
> lose sight of the disturbance and the medium.
There *is* no medium.
> > > Even if you can treat a wave as a
> > > field, it would be a different kind of field from the field it
> > > is disturbing, and superposition of fields would be irrelevant.
> >
> > That's what is confusing you. The wave is not "disturbing" any kind
> > of field, different or similar. If the wave is mechanical,
> > it's disturbing the *medium* in which it travels. If it's
> > electromagnetic, it just *is*.
> Sure it is disturbing it. Are you claiming if it travels
> through an electrical field, the electrical field
> is not changing due to this travel? (Forget about
> the superposition principle for a while, we can
> get back to it, just deal with the facts of the matter
> here.)
If an electromagnetic wave travels through some other electric
field, then the *total* electric field is trivially changing in a way
determined by simple addition. An equally trivial subtraction
partitions that back into the original "other" field and the
field of the wave.
> > > In other words, if a wave is disturbing an electrical field, the
> > > wave is not itself an electrical field.
> >
> > Vacuously true, since electromagnetic waves don't "disturb"
> > other electromagnetic waves. They merely add linearly to them.
> Of course. Waves of the same kind superimpose.
> As do fields of the same kind. That is indeed
> the correct view of superposition.
> But you changed my "electrical field" to "other
> electromagnetic waves" in your response.
OK, change it back:
Vacuously true, since the electric fields of electromagnetic waves
don't "disturb" other electric fields. They merely add linearly to them.
> Are you saying every electrical field is an
> electromagnetic wave?
No. (Only those which obey a wave equation.)
But every electromagnetic wave consists of coupled fluctuating
electric and magnetic fields. The electric part of every electromagnetic
wave is an electric field.
--
Richard Herring | <richard...@baesystems.com>
Richard Herring
> > In article <3AB9396F...@my-deja.com>, bhan...@my-deja.com wrote:
> >
> > > Ok, I am claiming that a disturbance in a field will move
> > > with the field. You are saying there is experimental evidence
> > > that directly refutes this. In that case, I would like to
> > > know more about the experimental evidence. So far,
> > > I have only seen usage of superposition principle, which
> > > is not applicable in this case for reasons I pointed out
> > > in the thread. So experiments verifying superpositon
> > > are not relevant.
> >
> > Nonsense. What you persist in calling a "disturbance in a field"
> > is the superposition of a perturbing field on another field.
> > Superposition is therefore directly relevant, and easily verified.
> There is no such thing as a theory of superposition between
> fields that are not identical. They may affect each other or
> not, as the case may be.
Presumably by "identical" you mean identical in whatever it is
that makes an electric field an electric field, or something of
the sort?
Please explain how the electric field of an electromagnetic wave
is not "identical" to any other electric field, or its magnetic
field is not "identical" to any other magnetic field.
> You are trying to add inches to pounds and claiming that
> is the right thing to do according to the laws of addition.
You'll have to explain what it is that you allege I am measuring
in "inches", and what I'm measuring in "pounds". The only quantities
I have added are all measured in volts per metre.
--
Richard Herring | <richard...@baesystems.com>
Charles Francis
<bast...@avalon.nf.ca> writes
> Re: The Gravity Theory
>Ken Cox <k...@research.bell-labs.com> wrote
>in article <3ABBA9FB...@research.bell-labs.com>...
>```snip```
>> In particular, EM waves can occur without any medium,
>
>EM waves have never ever been measured or witnessed,
>outside of a medium. (see note below)
Don't be silly! No medium has ever been observed for the transmission of
em waves. What medium do you observe in empty space? And how do you
propose to observe it?
--
Charles Francis
Charles Francis
<car...@dirac.ucdavis.edu> writes
>I'd have to say ``sometimes'' at best. It's easy to give simple post hoc
>explanations of a result if you're only interested in qualitative features.
>But there are only a very few cases I know of in which ``simpler general
>calculations'' give quantitative results. And the touble is that even
>then, there's no guarantee that these results for distinct phenomena
>fit together into a single coherent model.
I don't disagree, but I do think that simple qualitative arguments can
give more physical insight than strict mathematical calculations - of
course one wants to be sure that the qualitative arguments and the
precise calculations refer to the same model. That is not always
obvious.
--
Charles Francis
Ken Cox
> brian a m stuckless <bast...@avalon.nf.ca> writes:
> >EM waves have never ever been measured or witnessed,
> >outside of a medium. (see note below)
> Don't be silly! No medium has ever been observed for the transmission of
> em waves. What medium do you observe in empty space? And how do you
> propose to observe it?
His claim is that even empty space has a few atoms in
it, and those atoms provide the medium for the EM wave.
(At least, that's his claim if I've got the various
crackpots straight.)
I don't think he's answered the question that another
person posed: We are able to get very good vacuums in
the lab, such that they would have on the order of one
atom per cc or less. We can send EM waves of length
much less than one centimeter through these vacuums.
What is the medium for the wave, when it is between
the particles?
--
Ken Cox k...@research.bell-labs.com
Ken Cox
> > that some people have difficulty imagining that a field is
> > a medium; it is that some people -- *you*, in particular --
> > have difficulty imagining that a field is NOT a medium.
> Please consider us (me at least) duly impressed by your
> rote memorization abilities.
At this point we are just repeating our respective claims,
so your own posts are equally impressive.
Would you care to move beyond the rote "a field is a medium"
"a field is not a medium" into the theory and experiments?
My own side of the argument becomes *much* more impressive,
if you actually want to look at the evidence.
--
Ken Cox k...@research.bell-labs.com
Gregory L. Hansen
Not to mention, how in the world are those few atoms able to carry a
polarized wave at speeds greater than the speed of sound in that dilute
medium...
There's a reason the aether was invented! Early electromagnetists knew
the medium couldn't be the air.
--
"'No user-serviceable parts inside.' I'll be the judge of that!"
Gordon D. Pusch
In fact, we can now produce vacuums that are _SO_ good that we had
no measurement technology good enough to measure them accurately,
prior to CERN's trapping of low-energy antiprotons and measuring
their annihilation rate against the residual gas. Before then,
all one could say was ``the pressure was less than a nanotorr.''
Furthermore, Bob Forward has pointed out that at sub-milliKelvin
temperatures, it's straightforward statistical mechanics to show that
we can now produce macroscopic volumes containing an expected number of
atoms that is _MUCH LESS THAN ONE_, because each atom that that hits the
wall has a higher probability of ``freezing'' and sticking to it than
of bouncing off or dislodging another atom. Hence, macroscopic volumes
containing ``nothing'' most of the time are now technologically achievable,
and will in fact be required to support several proposed experiments
involving long-term storage of antiprotons...
-- Gordon D. Pusch
perl -e '$_ = "gdpusch\@NO.xnet.SPAM.com\n"; s/NO\.//; s/SPAM\.//; print;'
Steve Carlip
> eric_...@compuserve.com writes:
>> I think that a GR-replacement would probably have to most of the
>> initial design criteria that were used to construct current GR, and
>> would therefore have to produce most of the same basic results.
> You can start with very different design and obtain GR in some limit.
Yes, indeed.
> Examples are spin 2 fields on Minkowski background (Feynman/Deser) or
> my GET (get.ilja-schmelzer.net) which starts with classical condensed
> matter theory.
Other examples are
-- spin 2 fields on an arbitrary background (you get a consistency condition
that the background has to obey the Einstein equations, *and* that the spin 2
field propagates exactly like a small disturbance in the background metric);
-- almost any quantum field in a curved background (no matter what the
original dynamics of the background, you get an induced term in the action
that's equal to the Einstein-Hilbert action);
-- strings propagating in a background;
-- local supersymmetry.
In general, you need to start with general covariance (in the strong sense of
no fixed ``background structure'') and local Lorentz invariance; then you will
find that you can avoid general relativity as an effective low-energy theory
only by fine tuning. Of course, the same arguments generically give you a
large cosmological constant that you have to get rid of somehow, and I think
it's fair to say that no one knows how.
Steve Carlip
Richard Perry
But then again according to QM every subatomic particle in
the walls of the container has a real probability of being
found somewhere in that evacuated space. Add all of these
probabilities and that space is teeming with matter, even
though the classical c.g. of the particles is considered to
be locked into the container walls.
In classical terms (non-quantum) the evacuated space is
permeated with field which is indistinguishable from matter.
Any way you look at it, the phrase "empty space" is a
misnomer:)
Regards,
Richard Perry
Charles Francis
<rp...@cswnet.com> writes
>But then again according to QM every subatomic particle in
>the walls of the container has a real probability of being
>found somewhere in that evacuated space. Add all of these
>probabilities and that space is teeming with matter, even
>though the classical c.g. of the particles is considered to
>be locked into the container walls.
>
>In classical terms (non-quantum) the evacuated space is
>permeated with field which is indistinguishable from matter.
>Any way you look at it, the phrase "empty space" is a
>misnomer:)
It depends what "empty space" actually means. I believe the original
concept of a void was really empty, absolutely without properties,
devoid even of coordinates such that one point in empty space could be
described differently from another. If we cannot describe one point in
empty space differently from another, then it is not space in the sense
in which we normally think of it, and that idea can be used to explain
the mathematical property of the wave function.
Certainly this argument leads to a similar conclusion, that the idea of
"empty space" is wrong. But it also denies the notion that was being
proposed earlier, that there is a medium through which e.m. radiation
passes. Either way the laws of qm do not provide for the notion that the
wave functions of particles are a medium for the transmission of e.m.
radiation.
--
Charles Francis
Richard Perry
I agree for the most part, but space "is" real (quantifiable
and having properties) and it "is" the medium. Every point
in space can be uniquely identified as a force vector. Any
charge moving through that point will experience a non-zero
net acceleration, and statistically no two points will exert
precisely the same vector of force on the same charge.
In an earlier argument I hypothesize that "field" and
"space" are interchangeable terms, and that the "structure"
of space is defined by the instantaneous superposition of
all e-m fields. And then I go one step further in stating
that a particle "is" its field. This may seem a little
abstract at first, but it neatly solves a number of age old
philosophical paradoxes, while simultaneously fitting the
empirical evidence:-)
Regards,
Richard Perry
for a corrected model of the e-m field visit:
http://www.cswnet.com/~rper
Ilja Schmelzer
> Other examples are
> -- spin 2 fields on an arbitrary background (you get a consistency condition
> that the background has to obey the Einstein equations, *and* that the spin 2
> field propagates exactly like a small disturbance in the background metric);
> -- almost any quantum field in a curved background (no matter what the
> original dynamics of the background, you get an induced term in the action
> that's equal to the Einstein-Hilbert action);
> -- strings propagating in a background;
> -- local supersymmetry.
Thanks. Can you give some references (best on LANL)?
Steve Carlip
> Thanks. Can you give some references (best on LANL)?
Not on LANL---this is mainly ancient stuff.
>> -- spin 2 fields on an arbitrary background :
Start with S. Deser, Class. Quant. Grav. 4, L99 (1987).
>> -- almost any quantum field in a curved background (no matter what the
>> original dynamics of the background, you get an induced term in the action
>> that's equal to the Einstein-Hilbert action);
Sakharov's old idea; for a review, see S. Adler, Rev. Mod. Phys. 54, 729 (1982).
>> -- strings propagating in a background;
Standard string theory result; see section 3.7 of Polchinski's textbook.
>> -- local supersymmetry.
Any book or review paper on supergravity should have this. Try, for example,
Van Nieuwenhuizen's lectures in the 1983 Les Houches proceedings (_Relativity,
Groups, and Topology II_).
Steve Carlip
Charles Francis
Space is only quantifiable and having properties to the extent that we
can measure it. But we cannot measure it. Even a simple measurement of
"which slit did an electron pass through" corrupts the result of a
Young's slits experiment.
There is another issue too, how do we distinguish "real" in the sense of
being an entity from real in the sense of being a relationship between
real entities? Space could be real (and in my view is real) only in the
latter sense. In other words it is not a pre-existent entity in its own
right, independent of the existence of matter - that statement is
empirically proven in the case of gtr, but in my view is also
fundamental to the interpretation of qm.
>Every point
>in space can be uniquely identified as a force vector. Any
>charge moving through that point will experience a non-zero
>net acceleration, and statistically no two points will exert
>precisely the same vector of force on the same charge.
You can only say (even in classical electromagnetism) "Any
charge moving through that point WOULD experience a non-zero
net acceleration". This is hypothetical not real; there is not a charge
at every point. This denies your premise. Every point in space cannot be
identified as a force vector, or in any other way.
--
Charles Francis
Richard Perry
Non-measurable?? Do you own a yardstick? Stick it out at
arms length. You have just measured the space located
between your hand and the end of the stick. If you think
not, then just throw out the yardstick, its useless for
anything, in fact it doesn't exist since it has no
extension:)
Property-less?? Tell that to the charged particles whose
motions are influenced by it. Tell that to the e-m waves
that propagate through it. It is polarizable, has impedance,
and keeps matter from slamming itself instantaneously into
an infinitesimal point. Which of these is not a property? :)
> There is another issue too, how do we distinguish "real" in the sense of
> being an entity from real in the sense of being a relationship between
> real entities? Space could be real (and in my view is real) only in the
> latter sense. In other words it is not a pre-existent entity in its own
> right, independent of the existence of matter - that statement is
> empirically proven in the case of gtr, but in my view is also
> fundamental to the interpretation of qm.
I have stated this in several recent posts. Matter and space
are the same stuff.
>
> >Every point
> >in space can be uniquely identified as a force vector. Any
> >charge moving through that point will experience a non-zero
> >net acceleration, and statistically no two points will exert
> >precisely the same vector of force on the same charge.
>
> You can only say (even in classical electromagnetism) "Any
> charge moving through that point WOULD experience a non-zero
> net acceleration". This is hypothetical not real; there is not a charge
> at every point.
Yes there is. Infact every charge, via its field (which
comprises the charge) extends through and contains every
point in space.
This denies your premise. Every point in space cannot be
> identified as a force vector, or in any other way.
Points in space are relative to the FOR of the particle. A
given point in the field (space) of one particle will be
found to be in motion through (WRT) the fields of all other
particles. IMHO this geometrical interplay "is" the reality.
Regards,
Richard Perry
Charles Francis
<rp...@cswnet.com> writes
>Charles Francis wrote:
>>
>>
>> Space is only quantifiable and having properties to the extent that we
>> can measure it. But we cannot measure it. Even a simple measurement of
>> "which slit did an electron pass through" corrupts the result of a
>> Young's slits experiment.
>>
>
>Non-measurable?? Do you own a yardstick? Stick it out at
>arms length. You have just measured the space located
>between your hand and the end of the stick.
No, you have just changed the situation. There is no empty space between
your hand and the end of the stick, for the simple reason that there is
a stick in the way.
>If you think
>not, then just throw out the yardstick, its useless for
>anything, in fact it doesn't exist since it has no
>extension:)
The stick has its own extension. That does not imply that empty space
has extension in the same way. Only a material boundary of an empty
space has extension.
>
>Property-less?? Tell that to the charged particles whose
>motions are influenced by it.
The aren't. That is not physical law.
> Tell that to the e-m waves
>that propagate through it.
They do not. As we know photons behave just like other particles.
>It is polarizable
No, only photons are polarisable.
>, has impedance
Do you mean permittivity? It is merely a conversion constant between
natural units and charge. Impedence is a property of matter, not of
empty space. If there were a current, space would not be empty.
>and keeps matter from slamming itself instantaneously into
>an infinitesimal point.
A strange notion! As we know the electromagnetic interaction can do that
quite well.
>Which of these is not a property? :)
They are properties of matter. None are properties of space.
>> There is another issue too, how do we distinguish "real" in the sense of
>> being an entity from real in the sense of being a relationship between
>> real entities? Space could be real (and in my view is real) only in the
>> latter sense. In other words it is not a pre-existent entity in its own
>> right, independent of the existence of matter - that statement is
>> empirically proven in the case of gtr, but in my view is also
>> fundamental to the interpretation of qm.
>
>I have stated this in several recent posts. Matter and space
>are the same stuff.
I'm afraid I don't get to read all posts. But matter is a stuff whereas
space is a property of matter. That does not seem quite the same.
>> >Every point
>> >in space can be uniquely identified as a force vector. Any
>> >charge moving through that point will experience a non-zero
>> >net acceleration, and statistically no two points will exert
>> >precisely the same vector of force on the same charge.
>>
>> You can only say (even in classical electromagnetism) "Any
>> charge moving through that point WOULD experience a non-zero
>> net acceleration". This is hypothetical not real; there is not a charge
>> at every point.
>
>Yes there is.
What a strange world you live in. How do you keep from being
electrocuted in every movement?
> Infact every charge, via its field (which
>comprises the charge) extends through and contains every
>point in space.
One should study the interpretation of quantum mechanics for a good long
time before entering into these speculations. A field does not have such
a definition in a rigorous treatment. As an interpretation of qft what
you say is a commonplace, but bear in mind that it is an interpretation,
and one should not try to interpret qft without first interpreting qm.
That is not generally regarded as a solved problem, so to interpret qft
like this is speculative at best. The laws of quantum mechanics can be
interpreted as the laws of particles in the absence of background space,
and no other valid interpretation has been found in nearly a hundred
years.
--
Charles Francis
General L. Bradford Jr.
motions are influenced by it. Tell that to the e-m waves
that propagate through it. It is polarizable, has impedance,
and keeps matter from slamming itself instantaneously into
an infinitesimal point. Which of these is not a property? :)"
Keeps matter from slamming itself instantaneously into an infinitesimal
point? Think about what you said. Infinitesimal and infinite are relative
solely to where you stand, two sides of the same coin. Matter can never be
slammed into an infinitesimal point, or singularity, because of the other
side of that same coin, the infinite (or naked singularity). What allows any
measure, any defining, any existance between the infinitesimal and the
infinite? The relative horizon. The relative string. The relative
string-horizon.
It takes three dimensions to describe a point-singularity. It takes two to
describe a string-horizon. It takes a 2-dimensionally flat universe to
describe a 1-dimensional string-horizon. Gravity can only be described in
three dimensions. It takes a 3-dimensional ether (or aether) to describe
gravity. What it describes is a 0-dimensional.
Hyper-dimensionality out of a base two.
Brad
Richard Perry
Say what?
Regards,
Richard Perry
Richard Perry
Charles Francis wrote:
>
> In article <3AC375B6...@cswnet.com>, Richard Perry
> <rp...@cswnet.com> writes
> >Charles Francis wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> Space is only quantifiable and having properties to the extent that we
> >> can measure it. But we cannot measure it. Even a simple measurement of
> >> "which slit did an electron pass through" corrupts the result of a
> >> Young's slits experiment.
> >>
> >
> >Non-measurable?? Do you own a yardstick? Stick it out at
> >arms length. You have just measured the space located
> >between your hand and the end of the stick.
>
> No, you have just changed the situation. There is no empty space between
> your hand and the end of the stick, for the simple reason that there is
> a stick in the way.
There is always something in the way, even if it is a very
low density particle gas. The only relative distinction
between the gas and the yardstick is their respective mass
densities.
>
> >If you think
> >not, then just throw out the yardstick, its useless for
> >anything, in fact it doesn't exist since it has no
> >extension:)
>
> The stick has its own extension. That does not imply that empty space
> has extension in the same way. Only a material boundary of an empty
> space has extension.
There is no material boundary:)
> >
> >Property-less?? Tell that to the charged particles whose
> >motions are influenced by it.
>
> The aren't. That is not physical law.
Yes, it is called "Ampere's Law".
>
> > Tell that to the e-m waves
> >that propagate through it.
>
> They do not. As we know photons behave just like other particles.
Other particles do not propagate through space?
>
> >It is polarizable
>
> No, only photons are polarisable.
Wrong.
>
> >, has impedance
>
> Do you mean permittivity? It is merely a conversion constant between
> natural units and charge.
No, I meant impedance. Permittivity "is" a conversion
constant.
Impedance is a property of matter, not of
> empty space.
Very true. But since space has it, then space must be an
extension of matter.
If there were a current, space would not be empty.
Space "isn't" empty.
>
> >and keeps matter from slamming itself instantaneously into
> >an infinitesimal point.
>
> A strange notion! As we know the electromagnetic interaction can do that
> quite well.
Yes, and it does this by virtue of the "field", which as I
stated "is" space.
>
> >Which of these is not a property? :)
>
> They are properties of matter. None are properties of space.
Now your catching on.
>
> >> There is another issue too, how do we distinguish "real" in the sense of
> >> being an entity from real in the sense of being a relationship between
> >> real entities? Space could be real (and in my view is real) only in the
> >> latter sense. In other words it is not a pre-existent entity in its own
> >> right, independent of the existence of matter - that statement is
> >> empirically proven in the case of gtr, but in my view is also
> >> fundamental to the interpretation of qm.
> >
> >I have stated this in several recent posts. Matter and space
> >are the same stuff.
>
> I'm afraid I don't get to read all posts. But matter is a stuff whereas
> space is a property of matter. That does not seem quite the same.
What do you base this statement on?
>
> >> >Every point
> >> >in space can be uniquely identified as a force vector. Any
> >> >charge moving through that point will experience a non-zero
> >> >net acceleration, and statistically no two points will exert
> >> >precisely the same vector of force on the same charge.
> >>
> >> You can only say (even in classical electromagnetism) "Any
> >> charge moving through that point WOULD experience a non-zero
> >> net acceleration". This is hypothetical not real; there is not a charge
> >> at every point.
> >
> >Yes there is.
>
> What a strange world you live in. How do you keep from being
> electrocuted in every movement?
The induced emf's are negligible on the Earth's surface, but
I'll grant you that they do occur.
If you could move fast enough through the Earth's magnetic
field you could induce an emf strong enough to send bolts of
lightning arcing from your fingertips (While this was meant
to be semi-amusing it is nonetheless a true statement).
>
> > Infact every charge, via its field (which
> >comprises the charge) extends through and contains every
> >point in space.
>
> One should study the interpretation of quantum mechanics for a good long
> time before entering into these speculations. A field does not have such
> a definition in a rigorous treatment. As an interpretation of qft what
> you say is a commonplace, but bear in mind that it is an interpretation,
> and one should not try to interpret qft without first interpreting qm.
> That is not generally regarded as a solved problem, so to interpret qft
> like this is speculative at best. The laws of quantum mechanics can be
> interpreted as the laws of particles in the absence of background space,
> and no other valid interpretation has been found in nearly a hundred
> years.
Until qft is altered to produce the "single field" described
in my paper it is as wrong as the classical electromagnetic
model.
Regards,
Richard Perry
Soon to be added to the above site: A discourse on the
Doppler effect. A comparison between my Galilean model and
SR.
I would greatly appreciate any input on actual experimental
results pertaining to two-way light transmission such as
that utilized in radar detectors and ranging instruments. I
would also appreciate info on the highest degree of
red-shift yet observed, in particular the precise red-shift
of that object.
General L. Bradford Jr.
of the obvious (not so obvious to some) that he made, "It takes three
dimensions to describe a point." Internal to anything must be its proper,
its right, description. It must contain its description. A 0-dimensional
point-singularity, or hole, contains 3-dimensions (a 3-dimensional
description).
An atom of matter occupies space, it also contains space, the space in
which its component sub-particles exist, or the medium of the wave, it
matters not which. The component sub-particle, or even component sub-wave --
if there is such -- either occupies and contains space or the medium of the
wave. An infinitesimal point-singularity occupies and contains within itself
an infinity of space, the wave moving through and containing within itself
an infinite medium.
A blackhole is a collapse of complexity to primaries, to the primeval, to
primary or primeval dimensions, base two, 0-d and 1-d. It cannot collapse
further than the non-linear 0(0)(infinitesimal)(infinite)-dimensional
primary and the linear 1(+-)(finite)-dimensional primary (it cannot collapse
further than the 3-dimensional primary and the 2-dimensional primary). It
cannot collapse to nothingness excepting its ceasing to exist with the
ceasing to exist of the complexity in primary dimensional elements.
Try to measure the non-linear space-time of a non-linear 0-dimensional
point-singularity primary. Try to measure the linear space-time of a linear
1-dimensional string-horizon primary. Nothing but the one can measure or
take the measure of the other. Nothing but the one can describe, or rather
draw out of it the description, of the other.
All space-time is already closed up to a point (a naked singularity), an
infinitesimal-instantaneous point of space-time and therefore
infinite-eternal in space-time. This infinite singularity (naked
singularity) is the grand total of all of an infinite number of primeval
singularities existing. It (the infinite or naked singularity) is a separate
entity from the component singularities, and it always attracts to itself.
It is divisive rather than uniting. It is anti-gravity rather than gravity.
It attracts or pulls outward to itself, as being perversely inward.
Centrifugal force points to it, points out its existence. The supposed
expansion of the universe, always accelerating in expansion out from any
local point whatsoever, can be turned on its head to describe an attraction
or pull (always accelerating exactly like the attraction or pull of gravity)
to the infinite singularity, the naked singularity of an infinite number of
singularities, always outside any local point-singularity, and all local
point-singularities, in every direction there is, pulling apart rather than
together because the infinity of the grand total of all is always farthest
outside (farthest inside) the finite.
Brad
"Richard Perry" <rp...@cswnet.com> wrote in message
news:3AC4B7BB...@cswnet.com...
Richard Perry
Without the math its only a "philosophy", which translates
in the physicist's dictionary to "opinion".
Looks like Kant to me. I'm sure his ramblings made sense to
him, but my copy was quickly file-thirteened :-)
However, there are those who swear by Kant (who knows why,
or "how?" for that matter) and so I suppose that you may
also gain a following, but you lost my support when you said
"black hole":/
Regards,
Richard Perry
General L. Bradford Jr.
can only try to describe that dimension (point-singularity or hole),
essentially, in [still inadequate] words or visualizations.
Yes, you have hit upon it that I am more an amateur philosopher than
amateur physicist. But Stephen Hawking lamented the fission of physics,
philosophy, and cosmology into three fields rather than one. That hasn't
happened really. Every time I read a "popular" physics book, I have to wade
through the physicist's mindset, the physicist's philosophical leanings, the
physicist's ideological bias, the physicist's physics according to the
physicist's subjective, relative perspective. I've found Michio Kaku so far
to be the worst perpetrator.
Stephen Hawking also said that you don't really have to be a mathematician
in order to visualize many aspects of physics, or perceive the nature of
things, including the "Cosmic All" (E. E. Doc Smith) at largest and
smallest.
Einstein puts a final kibosh, absolutely final knockout, on string
theory's many dimensions (with the possibility of infinite number) theory
with just his one statement that "it takes three dimensions to describe a
point." That "point" is the beginning and the end. There cannot be more than
three dimensions because three dimensions equals zero dimensions, equates to
zero, the attainment of infinite (contains infinity). All other dimensions
are simply the progressive complexity of the base, building with the blocks,
the base block of the base two, or as Chaos Theory would have it, the
"fractal." This third dimension of the base two, the synergistic dimension
of the base two, is the "hyper-dimension" of the base two, allowed and
implied by the absolute infinite reality inherent in the 0-dimensional,
always modified by the absolute finite, invariant relativity, inherent in
the 1-dimensional. The result is a progressive order to the infinite
(large), and to the infinitesimal (small). Therefore, as 3-dimensionality
reduces to 0-dimensionality, 4-dimensionality reduces to 1-dimensionality,
5-dimensionality to the hyper 2 (the synergistic third dimension of 0 and
1), 6 reduces to 3 reduces to 0, 7 reduces to 4 reduces to 1, 8 reduces to 5
reduces to the hyper 2, and so on, progressively in overall aspect, if not
in fine detail, maintaining the absolute order and stability (the "finite"
order and stability inherent to the 1-dimensional) of the base throughout
all progression to infinity and the infinitesimal (the infinite inherent to
the 0-dimensional).
The science of complexity, and the theory of chaos, predicts that tyranny
predicts anarchy, absolute tyranny predicts absolute anarchy. Relativity
predicts its own downfall. Closed worlds, closed systems, complexities
seizing up, implode in on themselves, turn to and in upon themselves, as
"blackholes." Structure breaks down, infrastructure breaks down, and the
breakdown can be complete if the closure still holds, still rules, all the
way to the primeval, to primaries (the primary individuals), but never
further. Thus a blackhole is in no way a counterpart or equal but opposite
to a wormhole. A blackhole is a whitehole, the two existing at once as one.
The Big Crunch is the Big Bang, in the blackholes, in the whiteholes, the
two, the countless many, existing at once as one (+-). The infinite primary,
the infinitesimal escapee, having a self-contained, built in, escape route
to the infinite (infinitesimal) that makes a blackhole at once a whitehole,
is the other to it, the wormhole. The blackhole (whitehole) is a "process"
of complexity and chaos, a "process" of growing uncertainty, a "process" of
seizure, a reductionist "process" in and of the hyper-dimensional: In no way
a "primary" dimension. The non-linear space-time, 0-dimensional
point-singularity "wormhole," and its corresponding 3-dimensional
descriptional dimension, the "ether (aether)," is a "primary" dimension
entitized only for visualization, just as the linear space-time,
1-dimensional "string" event-horizon, and its corresponding 2-dimensional
descriptional dimension, the "universe," is a "primary" dimension entitized
solely for visualization. These are the only two primaries there are. They
are base, basing the hyper-dimensional.
String theory has before claimed there is just a single base, just one
base, the 1-dimensional string only, thus an absolute tyranny at base, thus
an absolute anarchy of "possible" impossible dimensions. Thus continuing
problems working with gravity which only a 0-dimensional point-singularity
can define without horrific distortion. I don't know if it (string theory)
still makes the absolute claim for the string, but it had. There can't be a
base of only one dimension, the 1-dimensional "linear." there has to be a
base of two, one of the two "non-linear," thus 0-dimensional. Two base
space-time (two base space, 0 and 1, two base time, 0 and 1, two base
space-time, 0 and 1) dimensions anchoring the third and synergistic
hyper-dimensional. There must be, and there is, an "other" base dimension,
an "other" primary entity, an "other" primeval entity, co-existing with the
string (the event-horizon). It cannot be anything other than the
point-singularity (the wormhole). "finite" is the property of "string."
"infinite" is the property of "singularity." "Relativity," including the
philosophic of "relativism," is the property of "string." "Reality,"
including the philosophic of "realism," is the property of "singularity."
And on, and on, ad nauseum. The base of dimensionality is two: Base 2. The
base of everythingness is two: Base 2.
Almost all the physicists that I've read are fanatically opposed to the
idea of base of two, regardless of the absolute of anarchy that builds upon
a base, a basic, of only one dimension. Fanatically opposed because of
philosophy, because of ideology. A tyranny of anarchy is out of a base of
only one dimension. A frontier of freedom is out of a base of two
dimensions. Freedom is the weakest force of all, having the longest reach
for the greatest grip on order. Tyranny is the strongest force of all,
having the shortest reach for the worst grip on order. Does this remind of
forces in physics, of forces in nature?
Brad
"Richard Perry" <rp...@cswnet.com> wrote in message
news:3AC64C9C...@cswnet.com...
>
> Without the math its only a "philosophy", which translates
> in the physicist's dictionary to "opinion".
> Looks like Kant to me. I'm sure his ramblings made sense to
> him, but my copy was quickly file-thirteened :-)
>
> However, there are those who swear by Kant (who knows why,
> or "how?" for that matter) and so I suppose that you may
> also gain a following, but you lost my support when you said
> "black hole":/
>
> Regards,
>
> Richard Perry
>
>
> >