Ask any question you want about Physics

originally posted by: Arbitrageur

""Would you agree that fundamental reality is a law abiding system of quantity and quality?" - me

I'm pretty sure there are natural laws. We may not know exactly what they are, but they exist. "System of quantity and quality" isn't well defined enough to agree or disagree,

If we do not agree that "system of quantity and quality" is well enough defined to claim it exists, then you are claiming the belief it is possible that right now, absolutely no system of quantity and quality exists.


"There is only something and nothing, and only something is something." - me

This statement might have made sense in the 19th century, but today, not so much. We still have a lot to learn about the vacuum but what we do know is that it's not really nothing, so you seem to be trying to put your description of nature into a box that experiment after experiment tells us isn't such a good approach to understanding nature. Just as we discovered that lines between matter and energy are fuzzy when looking at the mass of a proton, we also see the lines between something and nothing are fuzzy when looking at the vacuum.

'Nothing' as the nature of distance between 'something', "exists" but its existence is the very lack of existing. It is not 'that which exists', which is, substance/something. It is is 'the fact that there can be 'area' that does not contain 'that which exists'.

There is still only ever actual existing something substance, and the relative empty distances between them which is literal lack of stuff. But this is a very gnarly subject and topic. Because it is not known who much exact substance is equal to the area the substance takes up when we point to only the dark stuff which surrounds our planet.

Maybe, but not the way some people think. For example we have people who make statements like that who don't seem to realize that Young's double slit experiment won't work on a bowling ball. But for people who understand the science there's no conflict between the fact that experiment works on an electron but not on a bowling ball.

So this is saying, the interacting source points of all events, are not necessarily completely the interactions of the tiniest particles in the universe. To be more explicit, atoms, molecules, biological systems, planets; are these things 'anything other than' just the smallest quanta, subatomic particles? What is that otherness? It is the interaction of the fields? Which still must be a somethingness/substance/fields cannot be nothing. Its like imagine just different sized marbles, imagine 999999999999999999999999999999 of them. The only difference is they are different sizes, imagining making a reality out of that.

originally posted by: dragonridr


PS one more gravity is a field and even if we don't measure it it's still there.

There is tons of light around earth at all times too even if we dont measure it, as what is seeing the black night sky. The black night sky is full of light, it is just not being reflected into our eyes, besides from off the moon.

originally posted by: ImaFungi
So this is saying, the interacting source points of all events, are not necessarily completely the interactions of the tiniest particles in the universe. To be more explicit, atoms, molecules, biological systems, planets; are these things 'anything other than' just the smallest quanta, subatomic particles? What is that otherness? It is the interaction of the fields? Which still must be a somethingness/substance/fields cannot be nothing. Its like imagine just different sized marbles, imagine 999999999999999999999999999999 of them. The only difference is they are different sizes, imagining making a reality out of that.

When the sun fuses 600 tons of hydrogen into 596 tons of helium every second, there are 4 tons of matter converted into energy as the atoms become larger. However in fission we make the atoms smaller instead of larger to convert mass into energy.

So do we add something to make smaller things into larger things, or do we take something away?

The only way to understand this apparent paradox is to stop trying to oversimplify concepts of ill-defined "somethings" and learn why nature behaves this way. Be more like Richard Feynman and just try to understand how nature reveals itself to us in experiment, instead of constantly trying to hammer a square peg into a round hole in your attempt to force it to fit your preconceived notions of logic, as discussed in this video from 2:16 until about 3:16, so that's one minute. Keep playing it over and over until it starts to sink in, or maybe it will never sink in. It's probably the one minute message you really need to hear the most if you want to adopt a more logical approach to understanding nature.



You have too many preconceived notions. Let them go and listen to what Feynman says in that one minute.

i read somewhere long ago that the energy liberated in fusion actually has something to do with the proton radius. the more protons the smaller the protons get even though you'd think this would result in a loss of mass which would seem to be impossible because protons innards iz quanticized. but none the less what i read was the energy liberated comes from a reduction in the radius of the proton. which is odd for both the quantum problem and the fact that bonding strength and therefore energy gets larger and the distance between the bonded items decreases. so let alone subnuclear quark bonding being closer together the protons are bonded closer together too. both would take energy rather than liberate it. thinking about it that would be a better explanation for fission. perhaps my poor old memory has it backwards.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

Ok. The direction of thought my last few questions have been focusing on is this specific area and aspect of wonder.

It is thought that, say we have a mouse trap, this mouse trap is composed of molecules; are molecules anything other than atoms? What are molecules besides atoms? Atoms are made of subatomic particles (and yes force fields which keep them in each others vicinity), are atoms made of anything besides subatomic particles and the force fields which mediate their movements to one another? So then does it follow, that the mouse trap is anything other than subatomic particles and the force fields between them? If so, what else is a mouse trap besides subatomic particles and the force fields between them?

Consider this mouse trap has been set. When the mouse trap is triggered and begins to go off; are subatomic particles triggered? Do you get what I am asking? I suppose I can use a better classical analogy if I could think of one, something mechanical, lets say a zipper. When one pulls a zipper handle up wards connecting two sides, are subatomic particles all that are being touched and moved, by sub atomic particles? Do you get what I am trying to ask?

a reply to: BASSPLYR

I think the world needs much more research money on experimental gravitation and non-standard limits thereof.

It's important to fund some projects which have 0 < p(being true) < < 1, if p(being true) * importance(if true) = O(1)

a reply to: BASSPLYR

I think the world needs much more research money on experimental gravitation and non-standard limits thereof.

It's important to fund some projects which have 0 < p(being true) < < 1, if p(being true) * importance(if true) = O(1)

duplicate delete

Wonder if there is any prototype to show that the concept works in those 2 patents.
a reply to: mbkennel

Electrons aren’t the only particles to consist of localized vibrations of a field; all particles do. There is a photon field, an up quark field, a gluon field, a muon field; indeed there is a field for every known particle. Back to how we know its a case of subtraction really. the electric field E at a point G in empty space is a vector quantity which can be measured by placing a small test charge q at that point, measure the force on q due to all other charges. The electric field at that point is given by the difrence between are charge and our readings.

a reply to: dragonridr

wow... now you guys can manipulate a single charge somehow ? and measure the forces on that one charge? how ??
how do you guys take an electron and place it into an field ??
is it created somehow in a distinguish place at a certain moment or how is this test charge coming into life ?
...or, do you mean move a single electron inside this field ?
wait...
I think I know what happens here, this charge is a fiction, right ?
Like all numbers between 0 and 1, right ?

originally posted by: ImaFungi
Do you get what I am trying to ask?

I think so, but remember when I said that English alone was insufficient for physicists and that math is also a language of physics?

With questions like these you get into semantics and the inadequacies of English.

You can say in English that the zipper works because the the mechanism forces the two halves. You could even say the parts are "touching" which when you use just English is a true statement.

But if you were to examine the process in quantum field theory, the issue of "touch" becomes one of semantics because the particles that make up the zipper are excitations of their respective fields and those excitations interact according to quantum field theory. On an atomic/molecular scale our models suggest that our macro idea of "touch" isn't a very good representation of what happens when molecules interact, because their fields interact before the particles actually "touch" each other. Smashing protons in the LHC can force the protons to "contact" each other because they have more than the amount of energy needed to overcome the coulomb barrier, but zippers don't have that kind of energy, so I don't see zippers as having actual particle contact, but merely interaction of the fields.

So in some sense if you set a rock on top of another rock, while they "touch" on a macro scale, the top rock could appear to be "hovering" at some atomic scale distance due to field interactions.

PS I omitted the word "million" from my previous post but that doesn't change the point.

originally posted by: Nochzwei
Wonder if there is any prototype to show that the concept works in those 2 patents.
a reply to: mbkennel

What was posted were one patent application and one patent. I haven't seen anything for the application which is from 2008.

The following video I believe shows a prototype device related to Dr Woodward's patent with him explaining it. While the prototype does something, my understanding is that there are alternate explanations for what it does besides what he claims, so that's apparently why it's not yet convincing and still somewhat controversial:

Mach effect: warp drives and stargates by Jim Woodward
vimeo.com...

a reply to: Arbitrageur

Wanted to extend a thanks to both Arbitrateur and MBKennel. It's absolutely a joy to be able to talk to REAL physicists and bounce questions off of them. I thank the both of you gentlemen for taking the time to answer my questions.

a reply to: MystikMushroom
Awesome game BTW. Well, except the ending on 3.

I want to know what happens to matter after it falls past the event horizon of a black hole.

I thought matter is energy and vice verse, and cannot be destroyed. Where does it go? How does something just get sucked up into a black hole and ... cease to exist?

a reply to: MystikMushroom

Although I have no scientific basis for this, I believe it goes to another universe.

originally posted by: MystikMushroom
I want to know what happens to matter after it falls past the event horizon of a black hole.

I thought matter is energy and vice verse, and cannot be destroyed. Where does it go? How does something just get sucked up into a black hole and ... cease to exist?

The mass and energy of the infalling matter is added to the mass of the black hole. The mass is still there.

What causes a theoretical problem is the apparent loss of information and the experts are still debating this topic:

Black hole information paradox

originally posted by: Arbitrageur
The mass and energy of the infalling matter is added to the mass of the black hole. The mass is still there.

what about the charge ? does it get added too?

What causes a theoretical problem is the apparent loss of information and the experts are still debating this topic:

if the cause for bending light is not gravity but electric field density which is slowing down time, or better said propagation speed, so called black hole seeming to be a time frozen region in space.

originally posted by: KrzYma
what about the charge ? does it get added too?

If there are an equal number of protons and electrons falling into the black hole, the all that charge gets added but the net charge is zero in that case. If for some reason the number of protons and electrons is unequal then whatever charge imbalance exists will be added to the black hole's existing net charge.

if the cause for bending light is not gravity but electric field density which is slowing down time, or better said propagation speed, so called black hole seeming to be a time frozen region in space.

So when the NIST lab moves one of their clocks up a meter and it runs faster, are you saying that results from a change in electric field? Electric fields are much stronger than gravity so it would be very easy to test this electric field idea. You can e-mail NIST and ask them if they tried moving their clock in a region of varying electric field density. They seem pretty convinced their resutls are consistent with relativity meaning gravity would be affecting it, not an electric field.

According to relativity the passage of time is relative, so from Earth's perspective, the time passage may be very slow near the event horizon, but if you were falling into a supermassive black hole and could live through it, you could fall right past the event horizon and time would seem to pass normally for you.

"a time frozen region in space" sounds like an absolute statement but there is no absolute time. Time is relative.

originally posted by: Arbitrageur

originally posted by: KrzYma
what about the charge ? does it get added too?

If there are an equal number of protons and electrons falling into the black hole, the all that charge gets added but the net charge is zero in that case. If for some reason the number of protons and electrons is unequal then whatever charge imbalance exists will be added to the black hole's existing net charge.

So when the NIST lab moves one of their clocks up a meter and it runs faster, .

Aha, but why do the clocks run faster is of essence and not GR. No one has given a thought why these clocks run faster, when the ambient time actually runs slower due to reduced gravity, which is opposite to GR

originally posted by: Arbitrageur

originally posted by: MystikMushroom
I want to know what happens to matter after it falls past the event horizon of a black hole.

I thought matter is energy and vice verse, and cannot be destroyed. Where does it go? How does something just get sucked up into a black hole and ... cease to exist?

The mass and energy of the infalling matter is added to the mass of the black hole. The mass is still there.

What causes a theoretical problem is the apparent loss of information and the experts are still debating this topic:

Black hole information paradox

There is no paradox black holes do indeed exchange infirmation. People just were not thinking how particles exchange information.Interactions between particles can range from gravitational attraction to the exchange of mediators like photons between particles. To Put It Simply The fact that I can use what comes out of a black hole to tell us what's inside a black hole means there is no loss of information. Take the black hole at the center of our universe we know lots about it we know it's mass is 4.1 million suns. We know it's 6.2 light hours across. Than we have other interactions going into Hawkins radiation as well. So this stuff just doeant disapear or travel to another universe it's still here effecting our universe.