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originally posted by: Arbitrageur
Yes I've misquoted Einstein by saying something like "If you don't believe in gravity then go jump off the roof of a tall building", but what Einstein actually said in 1907 was "For an observer falling freely from the roof of a house, the gravitational field does not exist":

einstein.stanford.edu...

Einstein's happiest thought (1907): "For an observer falling freely from the roof of a house, the gravitational field does not exist" (left). Conversely (right), an observer in a closed box—such as an elevator or spaceship—cannot tell whether his weight is due to gravity or acceleration.

1907 is early Einstein, I suppose his thoughts evolved from then but perhaps not...

Would the scale of weight not increase from the elevator being stationary on the ground, compared to the elevator moving upward? Or I suppose, if at all, only for a moment.

As you can take a ball in one hand and pass it back and forth between hands horizontally;

lets say you were in space away from all major gravity field/masses, and you had a stable ball that was incredibly massive (like the mass of a school bus on earth or a building, something that would weigh a lot on earth), and this was stable or if we dont need to imagine that mass being the size of a ball, just imagine being in space next to either of those actual objects;

Would there be no weight, to begin accelerating the object in one hand toward the other? Would you easily be able to move the massive object from Point A toward point B, but then when trying to catch the object, then you would have given it momentum, so you would feel its weight, as you try to resist its momentum?

Or, the momentum would be equal to the little amount you give it, tossing from one hand to the other, and so if you are able to from rest force the mass to begin moving, you can counteract that force by stopping, and so theoretically away from massive gravity fields, you can pass between your hands a massive object of any degree, and it will be 'weightless'? Or no.


And yeah, Einsteins 'happiest thought' (one of the more debatable declarations ive come across) is incorrect;

In free fall is one of the best examples of feeling the gravity field; Attempting to lift a weight off the ground, is attempting to fight the gravity field, the gravity field is pushing everything down, when you have lifted the weight and then you let go, the weight feels the gravity field, as the fact of it being forced to the ground.

An elevator, is just smoothly (if it was joltingly moving you would feel the differences) raising the ground, energy is still expended to do this, and that energy is fighting the gravity field, which is pushing it down.

The movement of mass, absolutely has an important role with our comprehension of the nature of gravity, as...all of our attempts at comprehension occur amidst and as a part of moving masses. The consideration of masses movement is vital to comprehending how and why gravity works.

Is there a device that can detect/capture an image of all the types of EM waves?

Like there are infrared and x ray and visible light images, but if one were looking during the day, anywhere, there would be wavelengths of EM that they could not see; is there any device that can detect all possible em wavelengths, that truly exist surrounding such a person, that can present an imaging of what that reality surrounding the person likely appears as?

I guess part of this is the difficulty of quantum mechanics in general; that being that the detection of EM, is always an 'imprinting', it does to a degree suggest 'what is, or was, out there', but it is difficult or impossible to attempt to say, how all the wavelengths of light move around, and how it appears as itself?

I guess what I am attempting to get at is;

It is posited in reality, the world, is 'full' of EM of many kinds of wave lengths, always moving about; what we see is only a fraction of what exists in terms of EM about earth; So we do not see how reality truly exists; I suppose I am wondering, if a device could capture all wavelengths of EM, which truly exist and hit the detector, would this be a better representation of what truly exists?

Now first, one might say, it would be worse, because things would overlap and be blurred out and see through or maybe even overloaded and just come out pure white; but I suppose a distinction to attempt to prevent that, would be that the detector would have to detect in 'batches' or like 'the idea of photographic images', instead of just continuously open long exposure. But still this is an interesting thought maybe.

I suppose it also might come down to the ultimate size of particles, my question might be like asking can an image be taken which shows clearly every atom of the human body at once. It might be an issue of resolution. Im also thinking about the interestingness of the fact that a person can stand on a mountain and see so much 'physical information', to imagine how many photons must be entering the eye each pico second, and from so relatively far away, to so very near, and all continuously entering the eye and providing the relatively perfect image, I suppose it has to do with the concave of eye from many different photons reflecting off an object at different angles do not result in a continuously wonky distortion of the object? Well that might have more to do with 'bulk representation' of some sort, where a photon does not need to continuously reflect off of every atom of a distant rock and then for every photon to continuously be reflected off of eery atom to enter your eye for you to continuously see the rock.

originally posted by: ImaFungi
Would the scale of weight not increase from the elevator being stationary on the ground, compared to the elevator moving upward? Or I suppose, if at all, only for a moment.

Yes your apparent weight on a scale would change momentarily when the elevator starts up or down. On the express elevators in the tallest building in Taiwan which travel at 16 meters per second, it better take more than one second for the elevator to reach that speed when it starts its descent because if it only took one second, your feet would leave the floor since acceleration from Earth's gravity is only 9.8 meters per second squared.

lets say you were in space away from all major gravity field/masses, and you had a stable ball that was incredibly massive (like the mass of a school bus on earth or a building, something that would weigh a lot on earth), and this was stable or if we dont need to imagine that mass being the size of a ball, just imagine being in space next to either of those actual objects;

Would there be no weight, to begin accelerating the object in one hand toward the other? Would you easily be able to move the massive object from Point A toward point B, but then when trying to catch the object, then you would have given it momentum, so you would feel its weight, as you try to resist its momentum?

Since your scenario apparently posits that you weigh less than the mass you're trying to move, you would be doing most of the moving, not the much heavier mass you're trying to move. The larger mass may not have significant "weight" in space but it still has inertia so the mass of a school bus wouldn't be easy for you to toss between your hands.

An elevator, is just smoothly (if it was joltingly moving you would feel the differences) raising the ground, energy is still expended to do this, and that energy is fighting the gravity field, which is pushing it down.

Yes and it is this simple concept of work that we would like to see performed by so-called "over-unity" devices because it's hard to misinterpret the amount of work required to lift a 1kg mass by 1 meter in Earth's gravity, but it's very easy and in fact quite common to misinterpret electronic meter readings of unusual waveforms that the electronic meters were not designed to accurately measure.

The movement of mass, absolutely has an important role with our comprehension of the nature of gravity, as...all of our attempts at comprehension occur amidst and as a part of moving masses. The consideration of masses movement is vital to comprehending how and why gravity works.

Newton explained the movement of mass by describing the properties of gravity without ever claiming to understand the true nature of gravity so until someone figures out that true nature I can neither agree nor disagree with your ideas on how it will be determined. Once we progressed from classical observations to quantum observations, nature has thrown us a lot of curve balls in the way we observe its behavior that we probably wouldn't have predicted, so keep that in mind when you make your predictions about how we are going to make a new discovery about the nature of gravity.

originally posted by: ImaFungi
Is there a device that can detect/capture an image of all the types of EM waves?

It depends on how you define a device. If you put 10 different detectors in a box that can each measure 10 different ranges of EM radiation, do you call that box with the 10 different detectors inside a "device"? What about EM radiation with a frequency of 1 Hz? Since light travels at about 300,000,000 m/s the wavelength of a 1 Hz frequency is about 300,000,000 m, and an antenna to detect that would need to be a substantial fraction of that size.

if a device could capture all wavelengths of EM, which truly exist and hit the detector, would this be a better representation of what truly exists?

This sounds like a tautology that if you have more data about what you're trying to measure then you'd have more data about what you're trying to measure. So it's hard to say that tautology is false but why do you care about measuring 1Hz frequencies of EM waves? It really depends on what you're trying to do. The lowest frequency I've been interested in is 7.8 Hz because when lightning strikes, Schumann resonance can occur at about that frequency. I'm not sure why you'd be interested in lower frequencies and I guess there could be reasons but it would be challenging to construct larger and larger antennas.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

Il try to respond to that another time but wanna ask this before I forget.

I am wondering about the rotation of earth, so I am posing a hypothetical scenario which is obviously impossible, but if the sense it is trying to make can be approximated with imaginative thought, it can bring some understanding to what I am attempting to wonder about.

It is said Earth rotates about 1,000 mph.

(hypothetical) Imagine a sheet of paper was wrapped around the earth not touching the ground, and imagine this paper did not rotate with the earth at all;

So lets say you can stand up outside and look right above your head and see the band of paper;

Lets say you make a marking where you are standing on the ground, and you reach above your head and with a marker mark the paper; considering that the earth is rotating, and this hypothetical paper which would not rotate with earth, but stay perfectly still;

what would 1,000 mph look like in relation to that depiction? Does it mean in an hour the marking on the ground and marking on paper would be at a distance of 1,000 miles?

a reply to: ImaFungi

If you want to know how fast we move take the Earth’s circumference at the equator of 40,075 km. And the length of time the Earth takes to complete one full turn on its axis is 23.93 hours.

Look here you can see the stars relative to earths motion.
en.m.wikipedia.org...

a reply to: ImaFungi
If you've ever seen what hurricane winds of far less than 1000 miles per hour do, you'd realize the sheet of paper wouldn't survive so let's make it a hypothetical metal ring that could withstand 1000 mph winds and magically didn't rotate with the Earth. Yes in an hour at the Earth's equator, you'd move about 1000 miles from a mark on the magically non-rotating metal ring.

Don't forget the Earth is moving even faster than that through space as it orbits the sun.

Newton explained the movement of mass by describing the properties of gravity without ever claiming to understand the true nature of gravity so until someone figures out that true nature I can neither agree nor disagree with your ideas on how it will be determined. Once we progressed from classical observations to quantum observations, nature has thrown us a lot of curve balls in the way we observe its behavior that we probably wouldn't have predicted, so keep that in mind when you make your predictions about how we are going to make a new discovery about the nature of gravity.

What I intended by masses movement being significant to gravity is this;

(and this is a major point to my understanding, which I have tried to explain to you before)

Mass warps space-time (first of all, you must agree space-time, must be some physical/material somethingness...nothingness cannot be warped, nothingness cannot have geometry, nothingness cannot be a stress energy tensor)


It is agreed there is a difference between how an actually stationary mass warps space-time

And how a moving mass warps space-time.

This can be proven by saying;

2 separate masses exist, which take up a 3d area of 4 units each, imagine the masses are cubed shaped, and so to label the masses when stationary, we can use a,b,c,d,e,f,g to represent the 8 corners of a cube. You can imagine space time being represented on a 3d grid of numbers. For the first trial, you have completely stationary mass, and you think you might have enough evidence to state how a truly stationary mass would effect the space-time which surrounds it (and is potentially 'in it' in porous way);

Now the second trial, would be using an identical mass, a,b,c,d,e,f,g being equal to the first one in stationary trial, amidst the space-time coordinate system, but this time, when you enter the cube into the same view of the coordinate system, you do so with a momentum of an arbitrary quantity and direction, and I would posit that one must conclude, that the effect this would have on space-time would be different than in trial 1;

The only difference being, movement; thus I say, the nature of mass moving, has an undeniable relation to the phenomenon of gravity, especially since our relation to the phenomenon of gravity, is in relation to masses already very much so moving.

I believe this realization, compels one, to not so flippantly rule out the possibility that things like rotation of earth, play a role in our relation and desired understanding of the phenomenon of gravity.

Also I can go back to my wondering about objects falling to earths surface, which has not been resolved for me, according to others statements at least, I have my own imperfected thoughts, but would like to hear how others reason these phenomenon are forced to occur;

So perhaps we can agree that earth is traveling in a relatively 'forward' direction, if we can bring back our non rotating metal band that encircles the earth, and we can imagine the sun is traveling in a particular direction around the center of galaxy, and we draw an F for Forward on the metal band, of which that F always points the direction the sun is traveling around the center of galaxy; and directly opposite F, we draw, T for Tail, which is the behind of Earth;

If you were standing directly at T, and looking straight up (an analogy would be like if you were facing the back window of a car facing the cars behind the car you were in);

And you took a ball and threw it straight up, if there was no such thing as gravity (our experience of objects falling towards masses) the ball would keep going we would think, though if you were standing at F, and did the same thing, the ball might fall towards earth;

but we would think if there were no gravity, and especially with the earth rotating, eventually all loose things on the surface, would fall off;

So, what must the physical circumstances be, so that things do not fall of the surface of earth.

There can only be so many conceivable physical mechanisms which could do such a task, and after all, only truly really 1 (meaning, there is an exact way things are, there is an exact physical reason why things are forced towards earth when tossed in air).

I have already mentioned the generalities of the most glaring candidate, as einstein outlined it, and I did some coloring in (though others have too of course,... but I dont know why there are so many problems with theories...)many times throughout this thread, and all the pieces are in this reply to put together, to get the picture.

This sounds like a tautology that if you have more data about what you're trying to measure then you'd have more data about what you're trying to measure. So it's hard to say that tautology is false but why do you care about measuring 1Hz frequencies of EM waves? It really depends on what you're trying to do. The lowest frequency I've been interested in is 7.8 Hz because when lightning strikes, Schumann resonance can occur at about that frequency. I'm not sure why you'd be interested in lower frequencies and I guess there could be reasons but it would be challenging to construct larger and larger antennas.

I guess all I was trying to get at is; What does reality really look like (which I believe is at least the direction towards which science is ever headed away from, considering we begin at having no idea about reality; as ignorant animals, as babies)

But I brought up the potential difficulty of the fact of scale in regards to this, as reality may really look like subatomic particles and galaxies and the same time, and it seems there is no way to 'see' the top to bottom truth of how reality exists; though we try to do it bit by bit, level by level;

But even if it cant all be seen at once, we do still try to know 'how things area', we cannot see ultraviolet ray with our bare eyes, but because we detect evidence of such existing, we must posit that such exists even when we are not detecting. So it is true that particles of light exist that we cannot see with our eyes, before mankind knew of such particles mankind had a lesser understanding and vision of the truth of reality. I guess all I was wondering was, if all particles and energy that existed could be known, what would reality look like, because, that is how reality is.

I guess I was wondering, if you were standing on a mountain over looking a view, I know we can only detect by that which exists beyond us, hitting into the detector, so on this view, we would be looking towards a ton of events with light particles that do not hit the detector, that none the less are real and exist; I was wondering, I cannot say if we could detect all of those interactions, but I suppose this is what is done through math and theory, by working out how many interactions of various types of light particles must be interacting with earth at various times, if such imagery could be made of the supposed truth of all of realities physical existence and motions. There are radio waves, and wifi waves, and microwaves, and light waves (which we cant see the waves existence filling the air we only 'see' the result of the wave entering our eye), I just think it would be interesting to attempt to know or experience how reality might truly exist as.

originally posted by: ImaFungi
It is agreed there is a difference between how an actually stationary mass warps space-time

And how a moving mass warps space-time.

You lost me right there because all I have to do to make a moving mass stationary is place myself on the reference frame of the moving mass. The mass which appeared to be moving from another reference frame then appears stationary to me, thus your distinction is unclear.

How would the electric potential of an atom change during photon absorption and emission?

a reply to: dashen
How are you defining electric potential?

Electrons in different orbitals can have different shapes of the wave function probability plot, so in different orbitals the electron could have higher probability densities in certain orientations affecting the electric potential in those orientations accordingly. This source shows some of the eigenfunctions for hydrogen orbitals and how the probability density plots of the orbitals vary, which might give you some clue about electric potentials though since these are quantum effects you don't have classical electric potential:

The Hydrogen Atom

a reply to: Arbitrageur

Would the quantum effect of photon absorption say, of a sodium ion in solution change its electric potential briefly?

a reply to: dashen

Meaning, since an electron would be occupying a higher valence shell briefly, would its electric potential, in all meanings be effected.

a reply to: KrzYma

Which sensors are these exactly? I posed to you before that you have no idea how any of the detector systems at the LHC work, and this comment essentially proves so

a reply to: ImaFungi

Well if we want to get technical mass doesn't effect space time. What does is stress-energy tensors, which is energy, momentum, pressure and shear stress-energy tensors. So matter being energy you know E=MC2 the two are interchangable, So its really energy that distorts space time. As for how well know one knows what we do know is there is nothing we can detect that energy can interact with to cause this. I have read one theory I liked in a paper. And it was discussing not so much a bend in space time but time dialation caused by the presence of energy. So what we perceive as bends in space is actually fluctuations in time. Ill have to fond the paper it was interesting read.

But to the point space time doesnt have to be made of anything we can have stress energy tensors effect quarks for example. Granted this is just moving gravity to the next step because then we have to find out how quarks cause this. But at least if that were true then we will someday be able to manipulate gravity itself and from that remove any restrictions gravity palaces on us.

originally posted by: dashen
a reply to: Arbitrageur

Would the quantum effect of photon absorption say, of a sodium ion in solution change its electric potential briefly?

Do you mean something like a sodium chloride solution? In that particular case, as far as I know the chemistry of the sodium ion solution would dominate, and any changes in the electric potential of the sodium cation due to excited electrons wouldn't alter the chemistry of the solution in applications I can think of. Just moving an electron to a higher orbital won't change the fact that the sodium ion is still positively charged and the negatively charged chlorine atoms and the water molecule dipoles will still be attracted to the sodium cations.

What I think happens in that case is the electron orbitals of the sodium are already distorted by interaction with surrounding charges of the water and chlorine molecules so you won't see the same wave function probability plots for the electron position that you would for an isolated atom. When the electron reaches an excited orbital it too will be distorted in a similar fashion by surrounding charges, and this is why I don't think you'll see a significant chemistry effect from such an excitation in such a solution, but if you know of any examples otherwise I'd be interested to see them.

originally posted by: ErosA433
a reply to: KrzYma

Which sensors are these exactly? I posed to you before that you have no idea how any of the detector systems at the LHC work, and this comment essentially proves so

KrzYma was also asking questions about some early experiments which used emulsion stacks to find particle tracks so I don't see any logic in trying to explain away LHC detector technology without also explaining tracks in emulsion stacks. However I'm still not sure KrzYma knows what an emulsion stack is either.

Hello again. I have another question for you brilliant folks.
In the Banach-Tarsky Paradox, the points within a solid sphere can be disassembled and reassembled to construct 2 solid spheres identical to the first. In a purely mathematical construct.
The Electron Black Hole Theory posits that if the arbitrary values of renormalization in QED can be discarded, an electron can be said to have the same values as a singularity of the physical area of the electron is small enough.
If this can be applied to other particles, could it not be viewed as an inverse function of the Banach-Tarsky Paradox, with all matter essentially consisting of perhaps Planck - length singularities?
Ok, last step...
If the above conditions could be true, would this not be a theoretical argument for the False Vacuum Theory? Our iteration of the universe could be existing in a singularity, or bubble, of a much greater universe. And at some point the matter-energy phase will equalize with that of the parent universe. Thus wiping out of existence everything which we now perceive.
This is just a thought experiment I have been playing with, and I thought I would ask your opinions on it.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

what if that sodium ion was on the surface of a free nerve ending, where a very delicate balance of electric potentials inside and out of the cell regulate "nerve spiking".
would several excied ions change the electric potential across a cell membrane enough to push them through a voltage gated sodium ion channel?

a reply to: dashen

In neural signalling we are talking about tens of millivolts across the cell membrane. This is a very robust differential, not a delicate balance at all. Well yes, the potential is small compared to the mains voltage from the wall plug, but compared to the signalling of voltage-activated gates there is a good safety margin. You need to change the ion concentrations in the cell plasma and the intercellular fluid significantly. Just changing the radius of one or even a few dozen ions by a minuscule fraction will not change the electric field configuration to any noticeable degree. Changing the ion radius is all a photon excitation can do; it will not change the overall charge balance of the ion.

The signalling between neurons is chemical. The signalling molecules are present in large quantities, multiples of the amount needed to trigger the signal on the other side of the synapse. Even if you were to disrupt one or even a few dozen of them by photon excitation or even ionization, the robustness of the physiology is not affected much.

a reply to: pfishy

Banach - Tarsky decomposition is, as you rightly say, a purely mathematical construction. The Banach - Tarsky operations require infinitesimally fine slicing and dicing, in the true mathematical sense of infinitesimal.

I am pretty strongly convinced that the universe we know is granular in the sense that it can not be continuously subdivided to infiniesimals. Placnk lenght, tiny as it is to our everyday perception, is infinitely large compared to the B-T topological infinitesimals.

I can not comment on other merits of your argument. The idea does not seem completely implausible in some sense at least.

a reply to: Pirvonen

I do understand that the points in the B-T theorem are almost infinitesimal. As I said, it is just a thought experiment sparked by a conversation with a physicist friend of mine. But if the Planck length is the smallest increment in reality, as some theorize, could it not serve the same purpose? Again, just spitballing.
And thanks for your reply.