The Faster Than Light Issue

a reply to: Harte

You know, that wouldn't take much force. Light slows when it passes through any medium (like through water.) We don't talk much about how much force still water has though, do we?

Light doesn't actually slow down when it passes through clear water. It just appears to do so.

If I want to get from point A to point B, which are separated by exactly one mile, I can drive straight between the two points and at 60 mph it will take exactly one minute. Or, I can drive a zigzag course, traversing a total of 1.5 miles at 60 mph and it will take me 1.5 minutes. A person who measures my speed without considering my path would think I was moving at a speed of 40 mph instead of 60 mph, even though i maintained 60 mph throughout the entire course.

Inside materials, the space surrounding particles is warped, causing the light to move in a zigzag course instead of a straight line. That causes the light to appear to slow down, even though it is always moving at velocity c. The only 'force' required for this to occur is the force that all matter exerts upon space... i.e. gravitational lensing on a microscopic level, which is a side effect of the force we call 'gravity.'

TheRedneck

a reply to: Zelun

No need to be dismissive. You know very well that shade is different than singularity.

I warn you, this is something that, unfortunately, one must accept when posting mathematical principles on an Internet forum, even including ATS. Some time back, I posted a mathematical proof that the amount of solar energy received by the planet could not physically cause the amount of warming predicted. However, instead of refuting my assumptions, the biggest complaint seemed to center around people not understanding that the 2-D projection of a sphere is a circle.



Best to ignore things like that. Just a heads-up.

TheRedneck

a reply to: TheRedneck

Good advise, and well received. In this case I was taking offense on behalf of another poster. I know, very democratic of me. Sometimes I just can't help myself.

Turns out, though, this respondent seems to have a pretty solid knowledge of physics. I really hope they refute my points and teach me something. Mostly I hope they don't embarrass me too much in doing so, but thems the breaks.

v/r
zelun

a reply to: Zelun

Yeah. I see where you're going, and it's really cool how we're sort of converging on the same idea from totally different directions.

Well, one has to consider that all mathematical models are simply that: models. They may describe reality, but they are not reality themselves. A good example is the traditional explanation of the gravitational well around a black hole being described as an indention in the space-time surrounding it - objects orbit because their centrifugal energy counters the force pulling them down into the indention. But now consider that, in space, there is no up or down... so the entire concept is inherently flawed.

It does serve as a reasonable explanation of how gravity affects orbiting bodies, though, despite not really doing justice to the why. It is a model that makes use of everyday experience to allow others to understand it.

I have been considering your theory and I cannot at this time debunk it properly. It may well be that our two concepts of the nature of space-time are simply different models describing how from our own perspectives, yet both having an underlying consistency pertaining to the why. So instead of a rebuttal, I think it more proper to post a simplified version of how I came to my conclusions. Understand that this is by necessity grossly oversimplified; I have begun writing an actual book describing in detail the conclusions I speak of, and this will be compressing three chapters into a single post.

My theory begins with an examination of Einstein's famous "space elevator" thought experiment. In it, he discovered that there can be no difference between inertia and gravity, because there is no experiment that an observer inside the space elevator can perform that does not yield identical results to the same experiment at relative rest in a gravitational field. Ergo, gravity and inertia are the same. It can then be theorized that a person standing on the surface of the earth could consider themselves as subject to a constant acceleration of the appropriate magnitude instead of being in a gravitational field... in other words, they could determine that there is no gravity, but rather that the earth is expanding beneath their feet and their own inertia is forcing them to feel attracted to the surface.

Of course, this is ludicrous. If it were true, the surface of the earth would be expanding at many times the speed of light after all the millennia the planet has existed. Neither does it explain the attraction between all matter, unless all matter was similarly expanding. That would be quite noticeable.

However, force as well as velocity is relative. That is, after all, the difference between our impressions of gravity and inertia. With inertia, our own acceleration is creating the force; with gravity, it is not. So if the planet is not expanding outward, perhaps something else is expanding inward toward the planet. That something else is space-time itself.

The Michelspn-Morley experiment proved the non-existence of a "space ether" in the context that the experiment was designed to detect. That context, the primary assumption of the experiment, was that a space ether was separate from and not affected by mass. If this assumption is not considered, the experiment becomes flawed... and indeed, the assumption is incorrect.

If one hypothesizes that matter does not directly attract other matter, but instead exerts a force on the space-time around it, the resulting observations are the same: matter would appear attracted to other matter just a two people pulling on an invisible rubber band would appear to be pulling toward each other. Thus, I envision gravity as a force not on other matter, but on space-time. Since all matter exerts a similar force on the same space-time, the result is the same as our present observations of gravity.

The next issue with this theory is that a sphere exerting such a force will, by physical necessity, create an area of movement of the space-time surrounding it. The velocity of the space-time would increase with distance for the sphere in an inverse-squared relationship. At some distance from the particle, the velocity of space-time will equal the speed of light, which is an impossibility.

Or is it?

Einstein did not directly state that things could not move faster than light... he rather implied it, since at the speed of light, observed mass (and thus observed inertia) would be infinite. An infinite mass would require an infinite energy to accelerate it further, which is of course an impossibility. The Lorentz factor describes this observance in mathematical terms, allowing us to calculate observed versus rest observations using a square root of the difference of squares function. At v=c, velocity equal to the speed of light, the factor reduces to the square root of zero, which is of course zero (or infinity when used as a reciprocal function).

Now, what happens when v>c? We get an impossible real solution... there is no real value for a negative square root. There is, however, a solution: a complex number (sometimes referred to as an "imaginary" solution... a misnomer, but one I still use... old habits and all that). At velocities beyond the speed of light, the solution is imaginary... but what does that mean? it means a 90-degree shift in the solution, placing velocity into the imaginary plane... another dimension.

This is what happens at the event horizon of a black hole... all space time shifts into another dimension. For each spatial dimension (X, Y, Z) there must be another imaginary dimension (iX, iY, iZ). The shift into these imaginary dimensions is not limited to black holes, however... all particles of matter have an event horizon. The thing that makes black holes unique from other matter is that the event horizon of a black hole extends farther out than the size of the particle itself... the event horizon exists outside the matter rather than inside it.

Quantum entanglement (spooky action at a distance) appears to violate the speed of light barrier. Two particles entangled (as in, created at the same time, one matter, the other anti-matter) can be positioned as far apart as one wishes in X-Y-Z space and yet, if an attribute such as spin of one particle is changed, the other changes attributes at the exact same time. This allows for violation of the speed of light barrier observed in X-Y-Z space.

(A recent experiment has shown that the interaction is not instantaneous... it simply takes far less time than would be expected. The time required also varies with the two particles being considered. The report is published in paid-subscription physics journals which I had access to during my college career and is behind a pay-wall.)

What is actually happening is that the shift from the X-Y-Z planes into the iX-iY-iZ planes create a 3-D wormhole that connects the particles. Space-time flows into matter in the X-Y-Z planes, shifts into the iX-iY-iZ planes, flows into the corresponding antimatter particle, and shifts back into the X-Y-Z planes again where it flows out of antimatter and back toward the nearest matter again.

Dark matter and dark energy are simply the result of these currents of space-time flowing through the X-Y-Z planes.

Out of characters... to be continued.

TheRedneck

a reply to: TheRedneck

Inside materials, the space surrounding particles is warped, causing the light to move in a zigzag course instead of a straight line. That causes the light to appear to slow down, even though it is always moving at velocity c. The only 'force' required for this to occur is the force that all matter exerts upon space... i.e. gravitational lensing on a microscopic level, which is a side effect of the force we call 'gravity.'

Nope. Gravitational lensing plays no role in "slowing down" of light in matter(refraction). It is way too weak. Besides refraction is wavelength dependent, gr lensing is not. The slow down in matter happens due to absorption and re-emission of light by electrons. The re-emitted light is phase delayed compared to the original light, causing the slow down.

a reply to: moebius

If you say so.

TheRedneck

They say that mass increases greatly as you get closer to the speed of light. What I never hear discussed is that gravity must also increase. Perhaps there is something here that craft use to open a type of wormhole or enter hyperspace ?

originally posted by: TheRedneck
a reply to: moebius

If you say so.

TheRedneck

It is not just me who says so. Ask any physicist, telecom engineer, or read a book about electromagnetism.

originally posted by: bluemooone2
They say that mass increases greatly as you get closer to the speed of light. What I never hear discussed is that gravity must also increase. Perhaps there is something here that craft use to open a type of wormhole or enter hyperspace ?

The mass increase (relativistic mass) concept is avoided nowadays because it is misleading.

As an approximation you can compare it with electric charges. When an electric charge is moving it does not increase. Instead a stationary observer will see a magnetic field.

When a mass is moving it does not increase either. But a stationary observer will see a change in the gravitational field, akin to the magnetic fielld of a charge.

Both changes depend on the relative velocity of the observer.

a reply to: moebius

It is not just me who says so. Ask any physicist, telecom engineer, or read a book about electromagnetism.

Yes, I know. I hold a BSEE with a strong background in math and physics. I've read more books on electromagnetism that you have likely seen.

TheRedneck

a reply to: TheRedneck

This is fascinating. I can't wait to read more, and I would definitely buy that book. Now, I believe the EEP(space elevator) is true, but in a limited sense. I think acceleration due to gravity is indistinguishable from acceleration due to inertia from the perspective of an individual mass-bearing particle. However, as the force of gravity is reduced as the inverse square of distance, a very sensitive accelerometer should be able to detect a slight difference in the force of gravity from the floor to the ceiling of the elevator. The same experiment conducted in a windowless box being thrust through space should measure no difference.

Permit me to quote my thread:

Okay, now we're in that orbit around the Earth. The first thing to note is that we're in freefall. We can detect no inertial forces. If we were in a box with no windows we wouldn't be able to tell if we were stationary or in motion. This is known as the Einstein Equivalence Principle. Now. The Earth is getting bigger, so we know we're approaching perigee, which means we must be accelerating. However, we feel nothing. Still in freefall. Now we're past perigee so we must be decelerating, yet still no sensation of inertial forces. Furthermore, since we're in orbit we know we're experiencing an inward acceleration causing our path to be curved but there is no sensation to indicate so. The most sensitive accelerometer would read 0 gees.

Now, that last sentence isn't quite right, and my thinking on that has changed. The most sensitive accelerometer WOULD detect a slight variation between a measurement nadir and a measurement zenith within the spacecraft, as well as measurements taken at perigee versus apogee. But, if the orbital path were to be inertially simulated way out in deep space, away from any gravity wells, using thrusters or whatever, I think there would be some pretty significant inertial forces detected throughout the orbit, as compared to the OG orbit. And those measurements would read the same no matter where in the spacecraft you took them. Know what I mean?

Back to your post:

What is actually happening is that the shift from the X-Y-Z planes into the iX-iY-iZ planes create a 3-D wormhole that connects the particles. Space-time flows into matter in the X-Y-Z planes, shifts into the iX-iY-iZ planes, flows into the corresponding antimatter particle, and shifts back into the X-Y-Z planes again where it flows out of antimatter and back toward the nearest matter again.

Now this is REALLY interesting to me. The whole entanglement thing remains a headache for me. On one hand, particle/antiparticle pairs created directly from energy are entangled. But what happens when one of them is annihilated by a member of a completely different pair? Do the orphaned particles now exist in a sort of hybrid entanglement, consisting of the states of both pairs? I kind of love that idea, that you could create entanglement "chains." I bet computationally that would be a useful thing to be able to do.

Your idea here about dark matter and dark energy being related to this underlying dimensional web of entanglements is incredible. An admittedly weak point in my theory is how to get charge to be a thing, and the way I'm doing it currently is imagining that a particle possessing the property of charge has a stable resonant dimensional arrangement, like all fermions, but that the wave's e/b field oscillation happens to dip out of physical(xyz) reality into nonphysical(i[xyz]) reality with a bias toward the positive charge co-axis(quadrant I, basicically) for positive, and quadrant III for negative. Doesn't really matter which is which. Point being, I, too, rely on energy being able to sort of wink in and out of what we call "existence" periodically. Euler is my jam.

Hurry up and write that book so I can buy it!

best,
z

a reply to: Zelun

I think acceleration due to gravity is indistinguishable from acceleration due to inertia

Acceleration due to inertia?
I thought inertia resists acceleration. Silly me.

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: Zelun

I think acceleration due to gravity is indistinguishable from acceleration due to inertia

Acceleration due to inertia?
I thought inertia resists acceleration. Silly me.

No, it does. But that resistance to acceleration is also an acceleration. Just like how your car has three accelerators: the gas, the brakes, and the steering wheel.

a reply to: Zelun

But that resistance to acceleration is also an acceleration.

No it isn't.

Acceleration is a change in velocity. Inertia is a property of matter.

a reply to: Phage

Inertia is a peculiar property of matter which resists a change in velocity. Resists acceleration. Inertia is a force, so its SI units are kilogram meters per second squared, identical with linear acceleration. Rotationally, inertia is harder describe generally because a body may or may not be rigid, and the axis of rotation may not be intersecting the object's center of gravity, but we can generalize by looking at the point particle again. A rotational force is called a torque, and we can get rid of the distance terms of torque(because we're not interested in the source of the impulse, only its effect on the rotating body) to settle on radians per second squared, for SI uses. Awesome. What do you suppose an intrinsic resistance to an angular acceleration in SI terms comes out to? You guessed it! Radians per second squared.

Try as you might, you will be hard-pressed to rigorously defend the notion that the inertial resistance to acceleration is a distinct "kind" of force as compared to a force due to an incident collision, or the force due to gravity, or to electric charge potential, etc... But it IS distinct! You've pretty much zero'd in on the central flaw in conventional physics which I'm trying to resolve. Inertia, and by extension momentum, are conserved properties because they are intrinsic to the nature of matter. But what would this look like?

Using the EEP(shown above) I've demonstrated that force due to a gravitational influence is distinct from force due to an inertial acceleration(thrust). Remember, you feel heavy on the surface of the Earth ONLY because you don't continue falling, but are rather held up by the ground. Similarly you would feel heavy in a windowless box being accelerated in flat spacetime at one gee because the floor of the box is stopping you from just being left behind. The heaviness you feel is due to the inertia of your body resisting that change in velocity.

Did I help at all?

a reply to: Zelun

Inertia is a force, so its SI units are kilogram meters per second squared

Perhaps you are thinking of moment of inertia? The SI units for that are kg/m^2. No time parameter and it's an expression of the amount of force required to change the angular velocity of a mass. Applying a force will cause acceleration. Inertia does not.

What do you suppose an intrinsic resistance to an angular acceleration in SI terms comes out to? You guessed it! Radians per second squared.

That is an expression of acceleration, not inertia.

Try as you might, you will be hard-pressed to rigorously defend the notion that the inertial resistance to acceleration is a distinct "kind" of force

It isn't a force at all.

Using the EEP(shown above) I've demonstrated that force due to a gravitational influence is distinct from force due to an inertial acceleration(thrust).

No you haven't. Inertial acceleration is not a thing.

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: Zelun

Inertia is a force, so its SI units are kilogram meters per second squared

Perhaps you are thinking of moment of inertia? The SI units for that are kg/m^2. No time parameter and it's an expression of the amount of force required to change the angular velocity of a mass.

Not even in the slightest. When I stated "inertia, and by extension momentum" it should have been apparent. The SI unit of force is the Newton, dimensionally (kg*m)/(s^2). In an angular form. The SI unit for angular acceleration is radians/(s^2).

What do you suppose an intrinsic resistance to an angular acceleration in SI terms comes out to? You guessed it! Radians per second squared.

That is an expression of acceleration, not inertia.

Perhaps you could enlighten me, what is the proper expression for the effect of inertia?

Try as you might, you will be hard-pressed to rigorously defend the notion that the inertial resistance to acceleration is a distinct "kind" of force

It isn't a force at all.

It absolutely is, the only way we observe it is in terms identical with that of force in the conventional sense

Using the EEP(shown above) I've demonstrated that force due to a gravitational influence is distinct from force due to an inertial acceleration(thrust).

No you haven't. Inertial acceleration is not a thing.

It has to be, otherwise my simulated orbit example wouldn't make sense. But it makes complete sense.


Look. Let your preconceptions go and just read what I quoted here again. How can astronauts aboard the ISS be in freefall when orbiting the Earth, but if they were to be moved in the same path without the influence of Earth's gravitational field, but rather with thrusters, they would be pinned against whatever wall happened to be zenith at the time. Or put them on a space tether for that matter. Doesn't matter. The result is different, so acceleration due to gravity is different than acceleration due to thrust. Forgive me the very slight abuse of notation when I say inertial acceleration. It's very real, and very important, important enough to be qualified with distinction opposed to gravitational acceleration, specifically.

a reply to: Zelun

The whole entanglement thing remains a headache for me. On one hand, particle/antiparticle pairs created directly from energy are entangled. But what happens when one of them is annihilated by a member of a completely different pair? Do the orphaned particles now exist in a sort of hybrid entanglement, consisting of the states of both pairs?

Sort of. Again, heavily simplified, let me use an example:

All matter/antimatter is created in pairs. For every particle of matter that exists, an inverse particle of antimatter exists. The reason we do not detect this antimatter is pretty simple really... all matter attracts matter, because all matter exhibits a 'pull' on space-time. Similarly, all antimatter repels all antimatter, since all antimatter exhibits a 'push' on space-time. The result is that matter tends to 'clump' together in various configurations, while antimatter tends to spread out. The antimatter is located primarily at the farthest extents of the universe (and could perhaps be seen as the 'boundary' of the universe).

Now consider two pairs of matter/antimatter particles, designated as A+/A- and B+/B-. A+ and A- are entangled, as are B+ and B-. both through the iX-iY-iZ dimensions. Now bring the A- and B+ particles together. They will, of course, annihilate each other, releasing energy equivalent to their matter-energy equivalence. The result is that the connections now merge, and A+ will be entangled with B-. The time delay associated with this new entanglement should be approximately equal to the sum of that associated previously with A+/A- and B+/B-, since the length of the connection between them in the iX-iY-iZ dimensions has been summed from A+/A- and B+/B-.

Euler is my jam.

I may steal that line from you. Euler was indeed quite brilliant. Einstein gets all the attention (he was a pretty colorful character, unlike Euler) but Euler contributed at least as much to our understanding of reality as he did.

Lorentz was another such contributor... but I digress. I could go on for days about all those who contributed to our understanding in massive ways, and probably still miss a few. We truly stand on the shoulders of giants.

Anyway... there are multiple possibilities for the configuration of a standing wave. A standing full wave, for example, could exhibit the configuration 0:-:0:+:0, 0:+:0:-:0, +:0:-:0:+, -:0:+:0:-, or an infinite number of other states in between. A standing half-wave is even more interesting: it could exhibit the configuration 0:-:0 or 0:+:0. Recall from physics that a reflection can be an inverse of the reflected waveform.

That explains the existence of positively- and negatively-charged particles. Even more interesting is that mass has an energy equivalence, and so does frequency... but where mass has that energy equivalence, it is proportional to the mass, whereas the frequency has an energy equivalence inversely proportional to frequency. The result is that a particle containing more mass is physically smaller than a particle containing less mass. We see models of atoms based on Bohr depicted as large spheres in the nucleus (protons and neutrons) with tiny electrons orbiting... but the inverse it closer to the truth. The nucleus is composed of tiny particles, surrounded by relatively huge electrons.

Indeed, part of me wonders of an electron can really be considered a true 'particle'... it can exhibit the same particle/wave duality as a photon under the right conditions.

Another interesting aspect of my theory is that magnetic charge exclusively manifests itself as a dipole... yet gravitational and electrical charges manifest as monopoles. In reality, all occur exclusively as dipoles. Gravity becomes a dipole phenomenon when the iX-iY-iZ dimensions are included, existing in both sets of dimensions, and electrical charge, which exclusively occurs as a result of electrically active particles, also appears as a dipole. The difference is that magnetic energy exists in the X-Y-Z dimensions, electrical energy exists in the iX-iY-iZ dimensions, and gravitational energy exists in the interaction between all of the dimensions, being the 'flow' of the medium in which the other two types of forces exist. While I am still working out the mathematics to correctly describe the interactions, this means that gravity exists as an aspect of electromagnetic energy and electromagnetic energy exists as a result of gravity.

Hurry up and write that book so I can buy it!

You'll have to be patient, I am afraid. I find myself in what I consider an interesting social situation. As a research engineer, I am well-versed in physics and work daily with developing ways to use physical phenomena to create useful devices... but that also means I am not considered a "physicist" (as in, not a member of any physicist societies) and am unable to publish a paper exclusively on physics and have it receive any serious attention. I can do this on any electrical material, but not on physical material. Therefore, my push to publish my theory in book form.

The idea is that the book will be dual-use... the main section devoted to a layman explanation of the principles, targeted at the college-educated (or equivalent) person, with appendi devoted to mathematical proofs targeted toward those with extensive physics backgrounds.

The downside is that the theory must be quite advanced before even public pressure is capable of garnering the attention of physicists. Such is the way our society works today, unfortunately. I have gone so far as to leave instructions that, should I not survive long enough to finish the book, whatever is ready is to be published upon my death so perhaps others can carry on with it.

But who knows? Maybe the scientific muses will smile upon me and I will finish it sooner than expected. I hope so.

TheRedneck

a reply to: Phage

Inertia is a resistance to change in velocity. In that sense it can be seen as analogous to friction, which is a resistance (a force which opposes) a change in position. Friction only exhibits itself as an opposing force during a change in position, whereas inertia only presents itself during a change in velocity. Both are indeed forces in that respect.

TheRedneck

originally posted by: TheRedneck
a reply to: Phage

Inertia is a resistance to change in velocity. In that sense it can be seen as analogous to friction, which is a resistance (a force which opposes) a change in position. Friction only exhibits itself as an opposing force during a change in position, whereas inertia only presents itself during a change in velocity. Both are indeed forces in that respect.

TheRedneck

Easier to think of it as a "stored" force - the force that originally accelerated the object.
Similarly, momentum can be thought of as "stored" energy.

Harte