The errors of our ways

Posted on February 3, 2018 by

One of the small pleasures of the mind is the discovery, in an unexpected place, in another discipline, even, of support for a concept that you might have thought original, but, it turns out had been anticipated 500 years before. That was my recent pleasure in the pages of Walter Isaacson’s monumental biography of Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo, of course, is the epitome of what we have come to call a Renaissance Man, a true generalist who excelled in whatever he set his mind to. In his world renowned paintings, in the science he developed for that work, in his keen observations of nature in all its particulars, he still challenges us to be clear and articulate. Here, in this quote from Isaacson, is his insight into physics, particularly into the question of what is real and what is perception, a standard to which all physics thinking should be held, clearly articulated 500 years ago.

Shapes without lines* (p. 268)

 Leonardo’s reliance [as a painter] on shadows rather than contour lines to define the shape of most objects stemmed from a radical insight, one that he derived from both observation and mathematics: there was no such thing in nature as a precisely visible outline or border to an object. It was not just our way of perceiving objects that made their borders blurred. He realized [as a scientist] that nature itself, independent of how our eyes perceive it, does not have precise lines.

 In his mathematical studies he made a distinction between numerical qualities which involve discrete and individual units and continuous quantities of the sort found in geometry which involve measurements and gradations that are infinitely divisible. Shadows are in the latter category; they come in continuous seamless gradations rather than in discrete units that can be delineated. “Between light and darkness there is infinite variation because their quantity is continuous,” he wrote.

 That was not a radical proposition. But Leonardo then took it a further step. Nothing in nature he realized, has precise mathematical lines or boundaries or borders. “Lines are not part of any quantity of an objects surface nor are they part of the air which surrounds the surface,” he wrote. He realized that points and lines are mathematical constructs. They do not have a physical presence. They are infinitely small. “The line has in itself neither matter nor substance and may be rather be called an imaginary idea then a real object; and this being its nature it occupies no space.”

*Walter Isaacson, “Leonardo da Vinci,” 2017

You, faithful readers of these pages, will, I’m sure, recognize the parallels to many of my prior assertions. There is a real world out there, separate from our perceptions and frequent misinterpretations of those perceptions. We see an apparent edge and interpret it as a line. We assume, because Democritus, Lucretius, et al, said so that everything is made of particles. We invent a measurement and, suddenly, say it exists as an object. The separation between object and description disappears, and then, and then, a whole discipline grows up about this new “object.” The classic, for me, is the quantum. Can anybody tell me what a quantum is? Invented by Max Planck and popularized by Einstein, the best I can tell is that Planck needed a measurement unit to plug into his equations about black body radiation, so he invented (not “discovered!”) a unit that became a monument used to reify every mysterious phenomenon hypothesized by scientists for the next century. Other questions: What is a quantum computer? a quantum leap? a quantum theory? Calling something a “quantum” something makes it less mysterious? or just beyond questioning or explanation. What about “relativity”? A close reading of the conceptual notion of relativity reveals that neither Galileo or Einstein were describing real physical things or events. In both instances, they were describing theories of perception. I am convinced that we will find, eventually, that the world is rough and analog and that only mathematics is precise and, perhaps, digital. Who said that first? Plato, of course.

A second pleasure from Isaacson’s biography of Leonardo is the reminder of how many scientific insights he had, years, even centuries, before they were rediscovered and published. His failure was that he never published them, but there they were in his notebooks, in his drawings, and his backward script.

Enough of my ranting. Suffice it to say: We will never have a real physics, that is, a physics untainted by extraneous verbal or philosophical meanderings until we become rigorous about the separation between the real world and our mostly defective perceptions of it. “Orders of abstraction” (Korzybski) and “logical types” (Russell) need to be clear and clearly stated if we are to make it out of this jungle and make real progress.

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The Accidental Universe (Apologies to Alan Lightman°)

Posted on January 6, 2018 by

*Alan Lightman’s book with this title, a collection of thoughtful essays on the universe was published in 2013. In it he lays out an assortment of ways of looking at and interpreting the universe, some according to the standard models of physics and cosmology, some in more philosophically, even poetic ways. My concern, and my use of the title here, is more in the sense of the real, physical basis of how this universe that we perceive, and of which we are a part, may have actually come into existence as a real accident, one that may have occurred only once, or perhaps many times, something we may never really know.

The current, accepted by most in the field, standard model of the origin and growth of the universe is the Big Bang, inflationary model is that originally proposed by Alan Guth, now at MIT. Lightman describes Guth’s revision of the previously accepted big bang model in this way. “We now have a great deal of evidence suggesting that our universe began as a nugget of extremely high density and temperature about fourteen billion years ago and has been expanding, thinning out, and cooling ever since. The (Guth’s) theory of inflation proposes that when the universe was only about a trillioth of a trillionth of a trillionth of second old, a peculiar type of energy caused the cosmos to expand very rapidly. A tiny fraction of a second later, the universe returned to the more leisurely rate of expansion of the standard Big Bang model.” Guth’s modification of the standard model, it seemed, cleared up some serious gaps in the standard model, like the perceived homogeneity of the observed universe today.

If looked at with a truly critical eye, however, a number of unanswered questions arise, like:

“Whence cometh that original nugget?”

“If such a thing actually existed, what caused it to explode?”

“What was the nature of that ‘peculiar type of energy’ that caused the “expansion?”

“Why did the expansion then stop after a fraction of a second?”

There are more questions than we can count as to the verification of the “Big Bang” and its “inflation” modification, but it answers many questions researchers have expounded on for many years. But here is my main question. What if the logic underlying those “questions” has itself been based on faulty assumptions? For example, the principal evidence assumed to confirm the Big Bang theory was the discovery. by Wilson and Penzias in 1964, of the so-called CMBR, the cosmic microwave background radiation, that could be interpreted, if you assume, without evidence, as the echo of a great explosion, some 13.8 billion years ago, the “aha” of the Big Bang theorists. But that discovery itself ignited inconsistencies in the original theory that required Guth’s “expansion” insight to explain away.

But let’s imagine that Georges LeMaitre had not, in 1927, speculated that the apparently expanding universe could, if one traced that expansion back in time, be led to an imaginary beginning? What then would the discovery of a cosmos filled, the same in all apparent directions, with an almost but not quite uniform level of energy, be attributed to? Is there another theory, another model of the universe in there somewhere? One in which such an energy field might fit and where it might answer some other questions that physicists and cosmologists have long been seeking answers for? Like, for instance, what is the explanation for the constancy of the maximum speed of light? Why is that also a constant for all forms of electromagnetic radiation? How is it that we are detecting the effects of something that for want of a better term we are calling “dark energy”? Dark matter? If those exist, what are they made of?

Le Maitre’s scheme needed an assumption, one that, of necessity, could not be proved. I have a friend who, whenever I explain the origin of some aspect of physics or cosmology, invariably responds with, “But where does that come from? What preceded that?” I have finally given up and tend to respond with, “Well, of course, it’s turtles all the way down,”after the apocryphal story quoted by Steven Hawking in “A Brief History of Time”. The real answer is that in any model there must have been a state or condition of origin , perhaps, at a scale such as that of the origin of the universe, must be an assumption. For example, in the Big Bang theory, there was something called spacetime, an invention by Einstein out of the three required spatial dimensions which are the minimum needed to describe an object, an event, or a phenomenon, along with a fourth, that of the time or duration of such an entity. (see “How many dimensions make a universe”, ) However, the problem with these is that none of them, taken by themselves, is actually a real object, event, or phenomenon, and are only invented tools for the description of such values. So the Big Bang has its origin in a non entity. Then it begins as this “nugget” of intense mass and energy with no known predecessor. It is described variously as a quantum fluctuation in “spacetime” (that again), as a “singularity” (meaning which, I suppose, as something which happened once and will never happen again), another assumption unsupported by any antecedent, that explodes or expands or both, together or in sequence, all by means unexplained or unexplainable by reference to any of what we know as the laws of physics. This is explained by saying “Oh, those did not exist before this.” But what did?

Oh! One other thing. This was all created out of nothing! This seems to violate one of the earliest laws of physics. Think Democritus, Lucretius, Aristotle.

So let’s back up and start over. If we assume (easily checked, based on what can observe all around us) that the universe was made from something, what could that something be? It’s another reasonable assumption that whatever it was made from must be still around. Well, there are one or two constants of modern physics that we have learned to rely on. One is the speed of light in a vacuum. We’ve observed and tested for generations and that one seems safe. The second is what may turn out to be Einstein’s greatest single contribution, E= mc2. That may not be as certain but seems reliable enough. The second of these tells us that matter, that is, what makes up what we perceive as solid, physical stuff, is, in some form, equivalent to energy. They can be converted, one into the other. And what is here now, in sufficient quantity, and that might have been here at the beginning of this, our universe? What exists in all directions as far as we can detect both from here on earth and from satellites that we have sent out to detect it? Why that CMBR, of course. Energy, as far as the detector can see, in every direction. At low levels, of course, about 2.7° Kelvin, but unlimited in extent. And once we get past the notion that it is just the echo of a hypothetical big bang, we can see it as a source. It was here at the beginning, is here now and will probably be here as long as we can imagine.

How, then do we get from here to an accidental universe? That sea of energy, of course, is its source. Limitless in extent, turbulent as any sea, constantly tossing up orderly events in the midst of its chaos, orderly events that sometimes reverberate, reinforce and resonate. Each time creating higher energy foci that become points of stability causing higher energy density distortions in the field. Finally, we see order arising in the field, and ultimately what we call matter and masses, planets, stars, galaxies, clusters of galaxies as far as light can travel and the eye can see.

And, in at least one case, in a remarkable, real, unimaginably vast, rich, beautiful , dreamlike instance, an accidental universe.

 

 

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New eBook publication notice

Posted on January 6, 2017 by

After avoiding the challenge for almost a year, I’m happy to announce that both of my 2016 books, “the picnic at the edge of the universe,” and “imagine darkness,” have now been published as epub documents and are now available on Apple’s iBookstore and via iTunes. They can be accessed here:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id1191698375 (the picnic at the edge of the universe), and here:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id1192508382 (imagine darkness)

They are now available through Apple (iBook), Amazon (both paperback and Kindle versions), and directly through Createspace (Paperback)

The new ebook versions feature full color graphics not possible in the print editions but are otherwise identical as far as text and content.

“the picnic at the edge of the universe” was my first attempt to lay out a new way of looking at how the cosmos, the universal electromagnetic field, the “ether,” was the likely source of all that we now perceive as “ponderable matter,” as well as what the mystical wing of modern physicists like to refer to as “dark energy” and “dark matter.” My continuing (and still ongoing) researches led me to the more complete and detailed work documented in “imagine darkness” which built on (and sometimes corrected) assertions of the first book. It is all a work in progress, that despite all my attempts to falsify it, continues to surprise with its logic and consistency, and its ability to explain more and more of the “mysteries” that still plague the so-called “standard models’ of modern physics. I will continue to document this work here in this blog.

I hope you will look at them and challenge my assumptions and conclusions as time goes on. Thank you for your comments and support.

cs 1/6/2017

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What we’ve learned, so far

Posted on November 1, 2016 by

The first two paragraphs of post number 1 of this blog, in June of 2011, laid out a set of goals for this publication.

“The aim of this blog is to be the home of enquiries of a particular type, those that take something we think we know,  some subject on which there may be a lot of information and many findings, studies, conclusions, questions that seem almost fully answered but still not quite complete, not quite satisfying, a little vague; that perhaps, by employing a different point of view, a different perspective, a new look, may yield different results. As Will Rogers is supposed to have said, (or Mark Twain or Groucho Marx, who knows for sure?) “It ain’t what you don’t know that hurts you, it’s what you know that jes’ ain’t so.”

Our history is full of insights, unique new views of previously accepted ‘knowledge’, or ‘facts’, that after being examined in a new light, turn out to be so obvious that people say, “Why didn’t we see that before?” And as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “How many centers have we fondly found, which proved soon to be circumferential points!””

In his book, Investigations, Stuart Kauffman relates a probably apocryphal, possibly plausible assertion that when the Conquistadores first arrived off the shores of the new world, their galleons were not seen, were invisible to the native populations, because those peoples had never seen any such, had no conceptual basis for what had appeared before their eyes. I have had a similar experience while sailing in these northern waters when suddenly, with no sound, a massive mound, the dorsal form of a gray whale arose out of the water on my port side and just as silently disappeared again, leaving no trace of its passing. “Did I see what I just saw?” I asked myself before the associative regions of my cerebrum kicked in and I knew what I had just seen. A similar thing occurs when one puts on a pair of colored glasses, or polarized sunglasses. Different things in the environment appear, or common impressions are suppressed, letting new images, impressions, enter our consciousness.

In the universe of scientific model building or theorizing the same thing can occur. Replacement of a prior paradigm or model is sometimes generated by new data or experiments, or by the failure of some important element by new information or test result. The accepted scientific method is observe , correlate, postulate, test, accept or reject, but continue testing But sometimes a new theory can arise out of looking at previous observations and test results through new filters, different colored glasses, so to speak, and suddenly seeing the possibility of a new model for the same, old data. I’m not sure if there is a current word for this kind of process, but it happens.

In Cosmosapiens, John Hands’ book on the origins of first, the universe, and then, of sentient life on this part of it, he defines science as:

The attempt to understand and explain natural phenomena by using systematic, preferably measurable, observation or experiment, and apply reason to the knowledge thereby obtained in order to infer testable laws and to make predictions or retrodictions.

He then defines retrodiction as:

A result that has occurred in the past and is deduced or predicted from a later scientific law or theory.

 Hands uses these definitions, for the most part throughout his book, to point out the deficiencies and incompletenesses of currently accepted theories, but offers no replacements or additions that might improve their completeness or consistency with current observations or results. Retrodiction comes close but seems too passive a term to allow for the notion that such a new look at old data or results might lead to actual abandonment of an old model and its replacement with one that more completely covers both the old data and the new observations. Suggestions would be welcome.

Anyhow, as I look back, I sense that this is what I have been led to, in the 5+ years of thinking and writing. In some instances, I have asked the question directly, “Is this something we thought we knew and are only now wondering if we were correct? Do we know enough now to change what we thought? or is there more work to be done? On the other hand, these explorations have led to the notion that a new model actually exists and have laid out, first in sketch form and then more completely in two books a more complete description of that replacement model. So far, I have, in my own mind, successfully abandoned some old terminology that either once or still permeates scientific discourse. Forces have already been replaced by the word interactions, a more general but also more ambiguous description of what hold the parts together. A new word or concept seems necessary. The old concept of cause and effect, as in Newton’s F=MA now seems to apply only here in the zone of middle dimensions. At the submicroscopic level of the beginnings of universes and their continuous growth into complete entities with, in one at least, a working biosystem, “cause and effect” should be replaced with the concept within which structure and rules “enable” the development of order out of chaos rather than “cause” it. Old notions (as in quantum field theory and quantum electrodynamics) with their multiplicity of particles and associated fields, need to be replaced with a simpler, single universal field, turbulent but generative, of what the ancients called “ponderable matter”.

Diligent readers, perhaps even casual ones may have noted that I have also abandoned the term “laws of nature.” This use of “laws” has always seemed to me to carry excessive overtones of intention, perhaps brought over before the enlightenment started the trend away from divine, god-like notions about nature itself. What science has done is to uncover, not laws, but patterns, correspondences, that have led to some, but not all, predictabilities. All of this is because I believe, strongly, that for clarity of communication, a writer must consider not just a simple meaning of a term but also its related, sometimes ambiguous associated meanings in the minds of his readers. This is not all, but represents some of my current thinking. I will continue down this path. I am currently rereading at the suggestion of a friend, the work of Stuart Kauffman of the Santa Fe Institute about the origins of complex systems. Kauffman is exploring complexity in the origins of life here on earth and possibly in other parts of the universe as well, in search of a new “general” biology. Parts of his quest parallel my own, and parts diverge, as in his acceptance of the big bang, but as he says repeatedly, he is not a physicist, so I forgive hime for this deviation.

Thanks to all who read these meditations and observations. I hope they sometimes stir up some new lines of thought.

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In the beginning was energy

Posted on September 18, 2016 by

“….during the 1820s, when explaining magnetism, Michael Faraday inferred a field filling space and transmitting that force. Faraday conjectured that ultimately, all forces unified into one.

In the early 1870s, James Clerk Maxwell unified electricity and magnetism as effects of an electromagnetic field whose third consequence was light, travelling at constant speed in a vacuum. The electromagnetic field theory contradicted predictions of Newton’s theory of motion, unless physical states of the luminiferous aether—presumed to fill all space whether within matter or in a vacuum and to manifest the electromagnetic field—aligned all phenomena and thereby held valid the Newtonian principle relativity or invariance.” (Wikipedia, Fundamental interaction)

In contrast, today’s physicists look at nature, the universe, the cosmos in a fundamentally more complex way. For them the world behaves very differently. It is made up of a large number of distinct and different entities or substances, at last count at least 61 “particles,” of what substance no one claims to know, along with multiple hypothetical others that have not been actually discovered but which must exist to explain the behavior left unexplained by the first sixty-one. These “fundamental particles” of some substance interact as the result of four “fundamental” forces in the classical, Newtonian, sense, expressed as “interactions” in the more modern terminology. The interactions operate differently depending on the scale of the investigation, that is, whether we are referring to the submicroscopic world of particles or the macroscopic world of cosmology and the interactions of stars, galaxies and the other unreachable entities.

Wikipedia has a chart of these interactions, reproduced below:

interactions-from-w

As one can see from the chart these have been precisely defined, their strength and basic connections measured or calculated, so someone, or many someones, have agreed that this is the way the world works, and that the missing parts and relationships just remain to be discovered. And there are missing and contradictory parts. For example, the greatest question of the whole of modern physics is how the first of the four, gravitation, relates to the others. And what is the origin, the causation of these four, that is, where did they come from? and why are there just four? and how is it that some work concurrently on more than one particle and some are only tied to a single one? And, my most important question, how, exactly have these forces’ existence, strength, behavior been determined at this level, where no one has actually seen a particle? How are these entities described? Well, there is a great deal of redundancy involved here. Let’s look at one or two. A proton, for example, is described as being made up of three quarks. A quark is described as being one of three constituent parts that make up a proton. That’s neat, but—what does it tell us about what a quark is, or a proton?

Basically, it appears that as soon as a “particle’ has been discovered, its place in the pantheon of particles is determined by the energy required to generate its appearance. It is then assigned a value based on that energy level and how it is deemed to fit in the “standard model” of the universe of small things, the hadrons and fermions of existence. If there appears to be no particle to explain a certain phenomenon, a new one is hypothesized to be the one that provides the explanation. Then enormous sums are allocated to “find” this imagined entity and a great hullabaloo arises if a new one appears, or is even thought to have appeared.

I have a colleague who is, to my mind, a strict reductionist, whose favorite question at this point is, “And where did that one come from?” or , “What came before that?” Fundamental questions, to be sure. Modern physics, in its “standard model” incarnation has no answers to these questions. OK, matter is made up of particles, 61 of them, count ’em. But what are the particles made of ? Well, “we don’t know yet,” or, “they just are, accept it.” And those little babies are held together by forces, four of them. And what causes there to be forces? Again, “we don’t know.” Still, whenever I have suggested that there might be gaps or contradictions in the standard models, a great outcry arises, “These are the most tested and confirmed models in scientific history! How can you question this?”

Is there a way out of this conflict? Is there a way to simplify these models? How can we give rest to William of Ockham, the first ambassador of parsimony, whose dictum is that the more simple model of science is more likely to be the most correct, who must be spinning in his grave even as we speak? I think there is. And we can start by setting the “standard models” aside for a moment and going back to Einstein’s first theory and linking it to Faraday’s and Maxwell’s insights.

When we link those together, it seems likely that before there was matter, there must have been energy. In no creation model is there ordinary matter without a source, with the exception, of course, of the various creation myths that preceded the advent of scientific enquiry. (and, of course, the big bang) The step following then becomes simple: we must assume that:

The basic, fundamental stuff of the universe is energy.

 Without energy, nothing would exist. This truism is manifested by the concepts of entropy, “heat death, ” and a multitude of similar physical “laws.” Einstein expressed this in his most brilliant conception as E= mc2. In this equation, “E” is the measurable entity we call energy. “m” is the measurable entity we call matter. And “c” is the measured constant we call the speed of light. This equivalence of matter and energy is an accepted standard throughout most of the scientific world. Particle physicists express this principle in describing the “mass” of their tiny entities in the values of energy, in electron volts. Again, without a basic level of energy, nothing could exist. That energy, that basic stuff, is manifested to us as a turbulent but generally consistent electromagnetic field, its energy level hovering around a temperature of 2.72 degrees Kelvin (2.7° K.). To the professionals in the field, that number looks suspiciously like the measured temperature of the current “evidence” of the big bang, the CMBR. That is no coincidence. If there were no big bang, an idea that is slowly taking hold throughout the world of cosmology, then that observed value must belong to some other phenomenon. This is my candidate.

Are there other evidences of the existence of that field? Here are a few. 1) The limit on the velocity of light, c, and other EM radiation, from gamma rays up to long wave radio transmission, all requiring some medium in order to exist (The standard answer to this is simple denial “Electromagnetic radiation does not require a medium for its propagation.”; 2) The fact of the transmission of those phenomena through what is otherwise perceived as “the vacuum,” or “empty space.” 3) the observable fact of gravitational and magnetic attraction, and, in the case of magnetism, repulsion, invisible but clearly observable phenomena. I could cite others, like the curvature of light by gravitation, or by magnetic fields, called “gravitational lensing.” All of these , in the presently accepted models of physics and cosmology, the so-called “standard models,” have exceedingly complex, even contradictory explanations. The existence and universal presence of a field make all of these phenomena more simple and easy to explain.

A second justification for the presence of the field is that it makes clear that whatever was present at the beginning of what we see as our present universe is still here and observable today in and all around us. No hypothetical big bang, expansion, acceleration, element creation, even divine purpose, is needed to describe how it came to be and is in continuous creation as we speak. The evidence is all around (and in) us. All of the “standard models” require “singularities,” events that happened once but can never happen again, making them conveniently unavailable to observe or test, like the “virtual particles” modern physicists seem fond of, that must be there but don’t exist long enough to observe. Or entities that must be there but cannot be actually seen like black holes, neutron stars, Higgs bosons, waveforms.

The universe is simpler than we have been made to think. All of the 61+ “particles” and their anti- cousins are really just misperceived phantoms, “wrinkles in a mist.” Instead of 61+ fields, there is one, turbulent, subject to distortions and disruption, things we are familiar with in our oceans, our atmosphere, in the behavior of nearly all observed phenomena.

This model is also simpler in that its description does not require different, “extra” dimensions. These phantom entities are the result of the fantastic illusion that if something shows up in a mathematical equation, it must be a real, physical entity. A “dimension” is not a first-order point event but a second (or higher) order abstract descriptor. dimensions are conceptual entities we use to describe the things we observe in the real world. We use them to locate one thing in relation to another or to a reference point in “space.” And we use them to describe the size and form of things we have so located. “How many dimensions are there?” As many as we need for any particular descriptive task, but they are not mysterious forms out there in the mist demanding that we conform to their rules or laws.

Richard Feynman was correct. We have wrestled for close to 100 years with incomplete models of the structure and origin of the universe. Because there has been no way to resolve of their contradictions, we have begun to see it as an intractable problem. Several modern physicists have drifted off into poetry and philosophy, where the rigor of scientific investigation need not be applied. Speculations and hypotheticals have taken the place of logic and realism. A step back and a new look has become essential.

 

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The Missing Sentence in Einstein’s General Relativity

Posted on August 7, 2016 by

“Many—perhaps most—of the great issues of science are qualitative, not quantitative, even in physics and chemistry. Equations and measurements are useful when and only when they are related to proof; but proof or disproof comes first and is in fact strongest when it is absolutely convincing without any quantitative measurement.

Or to say it another way, you can catch phenomena in a logical box or in a mathematical box. The logical box is coarse but strong. The mathematical box is fine-grained but flimsy. The mathematical box is a beautiful way of wrapping up a problem, but it will not hold the phenomena unless they have been caught in a logical box to begin with.”

—John R. Platt, Science,1964

Albert Einstein’s canonical 1916 paper titled “The Foundation of the Generalized Theory of Relativity” contained many implied assumptions. His concept of “spacetime” (Raumzeit in the original German) was based on an understanding among scientists that the terms “space,” “time,” and “dimensions” had a clearly understood meaning. They were primarily mathematical meanings, space being the hypothetical container of all physical things in the universe, time the measure of the duration or persistence of those things, and dimensions, the measurable qualities of space and time. Of course, no one had ever experienced space, in and of itself, it couldn’t be seen, felt, or tasted. Time could only be measured as whatever fraction one chose of certain regular variable of experience, passage of the sun across the heavens, the cycles of day and night, the seasons in certain parts of the world. And dimensions were how one located objects relative to some reference point, or determined their size and shape relative to other “things.” Again, no one had seen, tasted, felt, or perceived in any way any physical substance of space, time, or a dimension. They were seen as not measurable, not perceivable qualities of the universe.

So why did Einstein choose to use them to describe the workings of that special phenomenon we call gravity. We may never know, but one reason might be that they were conveniently available mathematically and had been used by other mathematicians to relate to actual physical entities, notably by Poincaré, and Minkowski. They ended up as fundamental assumptions in his mathematical theory of gravity, and were accepted as fundamental, with few, if any questions as real, physical entities with real, physical characteristics.

But just imagine how, if Einstein had made these assumptions clear at the beginning, if he had opened his paper with the following sentence, what might have been the intellectual consequences?

“Let us assume that the hypothetical entity we designate as “space” is, in and of itself, a real physical entity, and that it possesses three unique characteristics we will call spatial dimensions, themselves possessing real physical characteristics, designated as “up-down,”, “right-left”, and “to-from,” measuring its value in spatial units; and further, that the hypothetical entity we call “time” is a real physical entity, and that it possesses as a unique characteristic a fourth dimension, measuring its value in time units “forward and back.” If we accept these assumptions, then the source and origin of the phenomenon we call “gravity” can be explained as follows.”

On reading the full paper it is clear to the reader that these assumptions are implicit in the words that follow, else the published text would not have physical meaning and would constitute only a hypothetical exercise in mathematics. However, the text is explicit in asserting that it constitutes a generalization of the assertions of the prior work, Special Relativity (On the electrodynamics of moving bodies, 1905), in order to include gravity in its purview. Einstein was a consummate mathematician. His formulae are elegant, consistent, and complete, but because of their non-physical assumptions they fail to reflect a physical, even a logical, reality. Rather, they are derived from a geometry, not from observations of the physical world.

To understand the theory’s assertions in full it is necessary to define its terminology as clearly as possible. The two key questions of course are: What is space? Is it a true physical entity that we can identify, locate? Can it or portions of it be described as to its nature and composition? Or is it alternatively like other real things, a magnetic field, for instance, only describable and its existence inferred from, its effect on other entities? Can we measure its intensity, direction or substance? is there proof that it is “real,” either logical or mathematical?

And what is time? Is it a force, moving one direction? Is it malleable independently of objects, events, phenomena? Like the question concerning space, can we examine a portion of it and determine its physical characteristics? None of these questions have generated an unequivocal answer. “It’s just there, everybody knows that!” is a common answer. And “everybody knows what time is!”

The most generalizable definition of space seems to be that it is the hypothetical container of all of the identifiable entities contained in what we call the universe. Its physical characteristics are hard to define except that it is unmeasurable in its extent and unfathomable in its depth. Descriptions of “outer space” usually specify that it is essentially “empty” except for the identifiable heavenly bodies like stars, planets, galaxies, etc. and clouds or nearly invisible wisps of hydrogen gas, cosmic dust, or in the most extreme sense, something called “quantum fluctuations,” an unknown substance, that participates in also unknown behaviors and causations. It is also referenced as “the vacuum” with the admonition that it is not really the same as the technical definition of a vacuum, that is, a space within a container that has been mechanically evacuated of all air, etc. It is, in astronomy, most usually considered to be that empty space between the stars “out there.”

In recent years, based primarily on anomalous observations of the behaviors of planetary and galaxial movements, what has been called gravitational lensing and the like, and on calculations of the numbers and assumed mass of what we can actually see in the night sky, space is also thought to contain mysterious substances thought to play a part in these anomalies. These have been named “dark energy” and “dark matter” and their total contribution to the mass of the universe has been more or less precisely calculated. So, space is not just an empty container, not a true vacuum. But what exactly is it then? And how can we best understand it?

When Isaac Newton was developing his mathematical models of the behaviors of the planets, he found that solving the relative gravitational influence of three or more planetary bodies was extremely difficult using the mathematical tools of his time, so he conveniently chose to ignore the effect of the moon on the orbit of the earth around the sun to obtain a useful approximation. Later, when Albert Einstein offered an newer model of the structure of the universe, he assumed that empty space was, in fact, actually empty. While earlier scholars and cosmologists felt the need for space to be a substance, to account for the transmission of light, for example, Einstein’s mathematical model of the universe had no need of substance, so an early assumption of an all-pervasive “ether” could be left out of his equations. Even though he later conceded that there must be something filling his “space” for the things he said were happening there to actually exist, he never made allowance for them in his equations. On the other hand, he left in place the assumption that the hypothetical “space” itself had physical characteristics, that is, it could be stretched, curved, distorted, etc. in the neighborhood of massive objects like planets that Newton earlier had assumed were exerting a force of attraction on other nearby and distant bodies. This force was called gravity.

In Einstein’s new construction of the universe, all is contained in what he called a spacetime continuum. A continuum in mathematics is considered a smooth, unbroken entity without interruptions or breaks. In one definition, it expressed as: a continuous sequence in which adjacent elements are not perceptibly different from each other, although the extremes may be quite distinct. In General Relativity’s continuum, there are no indicated or assumed limits. There exists an entire branch of mathematics for these entities called continuum mechanics.

To make his mathematics of the universe work, Einstein drew on the prior efforts of two other geniuses, Henri Poincaré and Hermann Minkowski who had developed systems that added a fourth variable, time, to the three accepted spatial dimensions. Adding time was important in describing systems in motion. But adding time was also problematical, because time, like space, was an entity that lacked real, physical attributes. It was not something you could see, taste, smell, touch. All it’s necessary attributes for a role in the physical world had to be arbitrarily added to it.

A very early writer on almost every subject, St. Augustine of Hippo, in the 5th century wrote, “I think I know what time is, until someone asks me to explain it. If nothing had ever occurred, the there would be no need for a concept of past time. If nothing were yet to occur, there would be no need for future time. If nothing were, there would be no need for present time.” And Newton said, “In another sense, time might be considered as simply duration.”

The concept of time is inextricably tied to the existence of “things,” their persistence, their duration. In the words of the joke, “Time is just one damn thing after another.” What time is not is a mysterious giant clockwork out among the stars measuring out our days.

So, Einstein’s physical universe, it’s observable behaviors, motions, forces had to be derived from those of two, until now, nonexistent entities, space. the hypothetical container, and time, the hypothetical measure of continued existence. Spacetime, is then a construct meld together by something called dimensions, but dimensions, in the real world, are simply systems of measurement, not physical entities in and of themselves.

So, if Einstein had made his assumptions explicit, instead of leaving the impression that, somehow, space and time were real entities, with physical characteristics enabling them to be bent, curved, compressed. extended, how would we today be explaining the orbits of the planets and stars, how would we be explaining the phenomena of gravitational lensing. Would we still be looking at Newton’s laws of motion? Or would we be seeking a new approach, looking at our last hundred years of observations and emerging patterns with different eyes, perhaps? Or would we have found a new paradigm, re-examining another concept to explain the speed of light, gravity, magnetism? Would there still be a search for the link between relativity and quantum mechanics, say, or would QM also be looking in other directions (It has it’s own contradictions to resolve, of course)?

Make no mistake, Albert Einstein was a true genius, in conceptual thinking, in mathematics. And he sensed that there was something missing in his theory. He hinted at that in his talk at Leyden in 1920, when he said , in effect, “the presence of an ether is essential for the theory of relativity to work..” So why do we still see “space” as empty? How do we explain how light and other electromagnetic phenomena are transmitted ? What is the reason light has a fixed speed limit? How can we speak to our friends instantly, so to speak, across the world? Surely there is a medium that bears those signals. General Relativity, that is, Einstein’s theory, has been useful, but why have we ignored its faulty assumptions? General Relativity is an elegant mathematical box. The corresponding logical box is, unfortunately, a poorly constructed container based on unprovable, unsupportable assumptions.

Space is not a thing. Time is not a thing. Dimensions are not things. They cannot be observed, manipulated, bent, curved, deflected, or managed in any way by human action or by cosmological or gravitational forces. They cannot be isolated in the laboratory, examined in the field, tested, or potentially disproven. Their existence or nonexistence cannot be objectively shown. And yet. . . . one of the principal “standard models” of physics and cosmology rests on the exactly opposite assumptions, that these hypothetical man-made concepts, measuring systems, imaginary constructs, are in fact, real things. I think 100 years is long enough to depend on this illusion.

Posted in 2 Being and Nothingness | 3 Comments

Is “something” out there?

Posted on July 27, 2016 by

In 2012, the well-known science writer Jim Holt produced a fascinating book titled “Why does the world exist.” In it he explores what some philosophers have called the prime question of philosophy, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” Now, I have always had a problem with the use of the word “why.” For me it always implies causation or intent, as if some entity, conscious or not, faced a choice, “should there be something? or just nothing?” and came down on the side of something. A scientific question should be more in the form of, “How did it come about that there is something rather than nothing,” but we won’t quibble in this case, particularly since the author goes on to invoke the whole range of the religious, the philosophic, the literary, and the scientific for answers to his question. The principal argument in many of these cases seems to be whether “something” can arise out of nothing. Unfortunately not just the religious and philosophers assume that possibility, but many who claim to be scientists. Some modern physicists have written entire books based on the claim that the universe, that is, our universe not only could but did arise out of nothing, by means of a great explosion of nothingness, or something they call, without definition, a “quantum fluctuation.” I’d like to start from the position that, regardless of what, that the great mass of something that we presently inhabit and are a part of, had to itself start with something.

As with any creation myth, the question will remain, “How and from what source did that primal something itself come into being ?” Perhaps, in the words to come, we will come to some agreement about possible answers to that question. But, of course, perhaps not.

There are a few, perhaps just now in what some call the information age, that actually appear to believe that that the world, that is, our universe, may not actually exist. That what we see, taste, touch out there is something created by us, only in our heads, or alternatively, that this entire assemblage, ourselves included, is no more that a vast complex simulation, a computer model, so to speak, by an author in another (real?) universe. For the sake of this argument we will say, “If you choose to believe that, then this discussion is not for you, so you may leave the room. Please close the door as you go, and report directly to the principal’s office for reassignment. You will not receive credit for this course.”

Others, who actually accept that there is a real world outside our heads are almost universally in agreement that, whatever existed before this world, that there must have existed something that had the potential of becoming the universe we are part of. That potential, in the same sense that Newtonian physics calls potential energy, contained in itself the possibility of becoming “something.” Personally, I am convinced that this “potential” substance or phenomenon, there at the supposed beginning of our universe did not mysteriously disappear but is still here, doing its work of creation and sustenance of this (temporarily) existing construct. Therefore, there should be evidence of its existence and presence. Two questions remain: what does it consist of? and what is the evidence of its presence?

First, I think we can dismiss and abandon all candidates for this role for which there is no conceivable test. Among those I first place all “big bang,” “something from nothing,” “chaotic expansion,” “quantum fluctuation” candidates. As soon as there exists a “something from something” possibility, all of these others become discards. So also do those who pose “something as yet undiscovered,” possibilities, like Hoyle’s “C-field,” a substanceless hypothetical without a hint of what it might consist of, but is only a filler for a blank, empty place in his theory. So, too, all of those theories that demand an arbitrary “constant,” that can be changed as desired to fit a preconceived outcome. What’s left? The trash bin is already spilling over the edge. Well, I don’t think it can be particle-based. As you know, I’m convinced that the particle approach is , while not a dead end, is more a terminally open-ended situation, characterized by an unending string of new, mysterious “particles” streaming out from the LHC.

In one sense, of course, the “prime question” is moot. Unless you are one of those we just sent out of the room, there is agreement that there actually is “something.” So we can move on to ask what it might be, even if we can’t determine where it cam from. As some of you already know, I have a prime candidate. Let’s start from the evidence. Staring from the nearby, the local, I am sitting at my desk facing my computer screen, typing the letters that appear in front of me. But I am not directly connected to that screen, by wires, mechanical linkages, strings, or sound waves. My keyboard is what is called “wireless,” meaning there is no “physical” connection to effect this messaging, but it is sent and received remotely via some medium I cannot see taste. or touch. Now I long ago gave up my belief in magic in favor of a conviction that there existed some physical cause for every physical phenomenon, so I must believe that this messaging miracle is making use of a physical medium that my frail sensory system cannot detect, except through its effects on things I can detect. Is this the medium we are looking for?

Let’s step away a little further. Near my right hand lies an iPhone, model 4s, also not physically attached to any wire or box or other device. But I can touch its face in a particular spot and after a moment’s delay speak to and actually see an image of, my twelve-year old grandson at a distance of 3000 miles away in New York State. Through a system that sends my message to an antenna, then to an orbiting satellite and back to earth, all of the time maintaining clarity, consistency and completeness, via a similar medium as the one between keyboard and screen. Is this the same medium?

A leap further, beyond the limits of this planet and its earth-bound devices. At a nearby observatory, I can “see” by means of light in the visible range, as well as by energy in the range of gamma rays, x-rays, radio waves, the images of and behavior of phenomena we have come to call stars, galaxies, and clusters of galaxies, at distances estimated to be billions of miles from us, in the reaches of outer space. Slightly closer at hand I have just seen images from a device sent to orbit the planet Jupiter, millions of miles away, those images also transmitted via a medium that must fill the space from there to here. Again, are these all the same medium? From the fact that they successfully use the same methods and systems and devices, it seems they must be the same.

To me, the inescapable conclusion is that there exists a single medium, both nearby and distant, that has the same character and structure, the same useful features, that it can be made use of both near at hand and at great distances. It is not air, because we know there is none of that out in the starry regions of space. The “standard models,” unfortunately, posit mysteries, “dark energy” and “dark matter” and seem comfortable with those characterizations. Others seek yet more “particles,” even virtual ones, meaning they don’t exist for long enough to be detected.

My choice is something that we have detected and make use of every day. And what is that? Let’s approach this logically.

We know from Maxwell’s Equations, tested and proven, that the presence of a moving magnetic field generates an accompanying electric field. And vice versa, a moving electric field generates a magnetic field. And since we also know, at the scale of fields (and, if they exist, of particles), everything is in perpetual motion, Voila! where there is one there must be the other. The second important premise is that, in the probable event that a Big Bang never happened, whatever something that was present when this, our local universe, had its birth, must still be around. What was there then is still here today, or by the commutative property of mathematics, what is here today must have been around then. An electromagnetic field is here today and is the medium for light and all the other coherent EM radiation we live with and make use of, that is, in fact one the most important tools of modern life. Perhaps that is the medium that enabled and still enables the creation and persistence of what we call the perceptible universe, from the tiniest perceptible entities out to the distant and magnificent stars and galaxies we search out and study so assiduously. Perhaps that is the answer to the question of “how is it that the speed of light has the limit it has?” And how is it that there is something rather than nothing.

The supposition follows, that, Yes, there is an existent electromagnetic field, detectable in what has until now been known as the CMBR, mistakenly assumed to be the echo of a big bang. And detectable as the origin and medium for light and all other EM radiation. And as the source of gravity, planetary magnetic fields, the condensations we call stars and galaxies, even the perceptible phenomenon we call matter. Remember, E = mc2. If this is true, then the universe , its origins and history, suddenly becomes a simpler narrative, more accessible and clear, with new doors and windows opening for our research and our use, Perhaps?

This alternative to the so-called “standard models” is something I have tried to document in two books and nearly six years of articles in my website at enquiriesnw.com, first sketched out in the picnic at the edge of the universe in 2011, followed by imagine darkness in 2015, as well as continuing discussions online. This has been mostly the result of looking at current science and by what John Hands calls retrodiction, the examination of prior research outcomes and discoveries, from the point of view that those results might have been misattributed to existing theories, not examined independently as potentially resulting from other causes. As I search for alternatives and test my model, this may change, of course, but it seems to be holding up, so far.

Posted in 6 General | 2 Comments