Aetherial and Dark Matter Discussions

a reply to: delbertlarson

What's the difference between 'aether' and another quantum field in the SM?

As far as I understand QM is incompatible with *local* realism, not realism generally.

I'm OK to abandon that. Non-local effects in 3-d macroscopic space doesn't necessarily seem so bad to me: entangled particles may still yet be 'local' in the metric of an incomprehensible high-dimensional functional space, giving effects which are non-local in ordinary 3+1 space, the famed spooky correlations.

originally posted by: mbkennel
As far as I understand QM is incompatible with *local* realism, not realism generally.

That might be true in the Copenhagen interpretation but despite that interpretation appearing in so many textbooks, there doesn't seem to be any real consensus on interpretation.

Authors claim that in the Everett interpretation, locality is still possible. For example:

Bell on Bell's theorem: The changing face of nonlocality

In our view, the significance of the Bell theorem, both in its deterministic and stochastic forms, can only be fully understood by taking into account the fact that a fully Lorentz-covariant version of quantum theory, free of action-at-a-distance, can be articulated in the Everett interpretation.

Quantum nonlocality does not exist

I show that quantum nonlocality is an artifact of the assumption that observers obey the laws of classical mechanics, whereas observed systems obey quantum mechanics. Locality is restored if observed and observer both obey quantum mechanics, as in the many-worlds interpretation (MWI). Using the MWI, I show that the quantum side of Bell’s inequality is entirely local. Thus, experiments confirming “nonlocality” are actually confirming the MWI.

Of course, the only thing that physicists seem to agree on about the interpretations of QM is that nobody is really sure which interpretation is correct. So, whether locality has to be abandoned or not is still up in the air, all I'm saying is under the Everett interpretation, entanglement can be explained as a local phenomenon. I think I understand the argument, but, who knows if it's right or who knows if Everett's interpretation is right? I do see part of the problem with the Copenhagen interpretation seems to be hanging on to some aspect of classical thinking as mentioned in the second source above.

originally posted by: mbkennel
a reply to: delbertlarson

What's the difference between 'aether' and another quantum field in the SM?

Each aether substance (there are two) is a solid, physical substance occupying a flat, Euclidean, 3 space. Time is a fully independent parameter that serves only to order events temporally. There are four aetherial fields: tension, pressure, delta and gamma. Each aether substance can be divided infinitesimally down into smaller and smaller volumes. When you do so, your volume contains less and less aether. The amount of aether inside scales with the your analysis volume, and we can shrink our volume down as far as we want and achieve limiting values. (Classical vector calculus.) However, we can only do this analytically. Were we to try to actually squeeze the aether into smaller and smaller volumes (or measure it to such small volumes) eventually we would hit quantum behavior, and as we squeeze down we'd eventually either have one aetherial quantum in our volume or we'd have none. If we do have one, and we keep squeezing, the energy will rise. (It would be in a 3D square well.).But even as the energy rises, it is still assumed to be continuous matter on the inside.

I believe that is is a lot different from present understanding of the SM fields, which are relativistically covariant fields in a curved, four dimensional (or more) space time and may contain internalized attributes like spinors, charge, mass, and so on. Indeed, my modeling is based on classical notions of space and time, along with a quantum mechanics assumed to result from real and continuous wave functions. Entities are not point-like things within wavefunctions, but rather, they are continuous bodies of finite extent represented by the real wave functions.

originally posted by: mbkennel
As far as I understand QM is incompatible with *local* realism, not realism generally.

I'm OK to abandon that. Non-local effects in 3-d macroscopic space doesn't necessarily seem so bad to me: entangled particles may still yet be 'local' in the metric of an incomprehensible high-dimensional functional space, giving effects which are non-local in ordinary 3+1 space, the famed spooky correlations.

In the flat, Euclidean space with an independent time parameter of the aether model, QM results are explained by an instantaneous collapse of the wave function. The entanglement issue is just one such collapse, but the simple two slit experiment is a good enough example of the problem of SRT, and since simple experiments are often the most instructive, let's look at that.

If we postulate the reality of the wave function, then the two-slit experiment can be understood by a single photon going through both slits. When it does so, its real wave function either collapses to the combined region of both slits, or it collapses on the wall containing the slits. For a photon that collapses to both slits, the two parts of the photon travel to the distant wall, interfere, and collapse there. One can work out the math, and it agrees with the observed interference pattern. But the collapse at the second wall must be instantaneous, so that it can't also occur somewhere else. Now, SRT says an observer moving parallel to the second wall would have a different concept of what is instantaneous, and that is why SRT is incompatible with QM under this very simple physical philosophy.

originally posted by: Arbitrageur
I do see part of the problem with the Copenhagen interpretation seems to be hanging on to some aspect of classical thinking as mentioned in the second source above.

I believe both the multiple worlds and the extra dimensions can achieve an explanation for QM. I've just always believed that such proposals are considerably more objectionable than the original Lorentz-Fitzgerald length contraction and the Larmor time dilation. For the latter, we're just supposing that familiar objects are affected by their motion through the aether, while for the former we are introducing radical concepts that are there predominantly just to satisfy QM observations. I'd prefer to hang on to the classical thinking about a single universe in three spatial dimensions with time as an independent parameter ordering events.

originally posted by: delbertlarson

originally posted by: mbkennel
a reply to: delbertlarson

What's the difference between 'aether' and another quantum field in the SM?

Each aether substance (there are two) is a solid, physical substance occupying a flat, Euclidean, 3 space. Time is a fully independent parameter that serves only to order events temporally.

Is it relativistically covariant?

What are the conserved quantities, and do the match experiments?

What does it mean to be 'solid, physical' substance? Are waves possible? Is there a dispersion relationship? Does it gravitate being 'physical'?

And finally, what observational issues does this theory satisfy that QFT doesn't, and how do you explain the immense quantitative success of QFT or even plain QM?

originally posted by: delbertlarson

originally posted by: mbkennel
As far as I understand QM is incompatible with *local* realism, not realism generally.

I'm OK to abandon that. Non-local effects in 3-d macroscopic space doesn't necessarily seem so bad to me: entangled particles may still yet be 'local' in the metric of an incomprehensible high-dimensional functional space, giving effects which are non-local in ordinary 3+1 space, the famed spooky correlations.

In the flat, Euclidean space with an independent time parameter of the aether model, QM results are explained by an instantaneous collapse of the wave function. The entanglement issue is just one such collapse, but the simple two slit experiment is a good enough example of the problem of SRT, and since simple experiments are often the most instructive, let's look at that.

If we postulate the reality of the wave function, then the two-slit experiment can be understood by a single photon going through both slits. When it does so, its real wave function either collapses to the combined region of both slits, or it collapses on the wall containing the slits. For a photon that collapses to both slits, the two parts of the photon travel to the distant wall, interfere, and collapse there. One can work out the math, and it agrees with the observed interference pattern. But the collapse at the second wall must be instantaneous, so that it can't also occur somewhere else. Now, SRT says an observer moving parallel to the second wall would have a different concept of what is instantaneous, and that is why SRT is incompatible with QM under this very simple physical philosophy.

Since SR has never been observed to be broken, I think this is indication that the simple interpretation of QM up there isn't correct.

There is no conservation law on photon number, and what is a photon (a basis function expansion of wavefunctions of EM field) sort of depends on your representation. The fields are more fundamental.

I'm not convinced that 'collapse' is literally instantaneous as that has relativistic problems.

originally posted by: delbertlarson
I believe both the multiple worlds and the extra dimensions can achieve an explanation for QM. I've just always believed that such proposals are considerably more objectionable than the original Lorentz-Fitzgerald length contraction and the Larmor time dilation. For the latter, we're just supposing that familiar objects are affected by their motion through the aether, while for the former we are introducing radical concepts that are there predominantly just to satisfy QM observations. I'd prefer to hang on to the classical thinking about a single universe in three spatial dimensions with time as an independent parameter ordering events.

Where did Everett ever claim "multiple worlds"? As far as I know, when he mentioned that it was to say that wasn't his idea, see below. But there is plenty of literature that tries to imply it's Everett's idea; it's not.

arxiv.org...

It seems clear that DeWitt and Graham consider that the multitude of branching worlds are “real” in the ordinary sense of the word. In this sense, their Many Worlds perspective certainly departs from Everett’s intent.

In a 1976 philosophy paper on the interpretation of quantum mechanics, Levy-Leblond offers critical comments on the many worlds interpretation and compared it to his understanding of Everett’s theory.

Now, my criticism here is exactly symmetrical of the one I directed against the orthodox position: the “many worlds” idea again is a left-over of classical conceptions. The coexisting branches here, as the unique surviving one in the Copenhagen point of view, can only be related to “worlds” described by classical physics. The difference is that, instead of interpreting the quantum “plus” as a classical “or”, De Witt et al. interpret it as a classical “and”. To me, the deep meaning of Everett's ideas is not the coexistence of many worlds, but on the contrary, the existence of a single quantum one.The main drawback of the “many-worlds” terminology is that it leads one to ask the question of “what branch we are on”, since it certainly looks as if our consciousness definitely belonged to only one world at a time: But this question only makes sense from a classical point of view, once more. It becomes entirely irrelevant as soon as one commits oneself to a consistent quantum view.

In a letter to Levy-Leblond (Barrett 2011), Everett indicated that he quite agreed with Levy-Leblond’s argument and emphasized that the many worlds terminology was not his. I’m sympathetic with this view.

His idea was that the problem with interpretations like Copenhagen have a quantum system being observed by observers which seem to be more classical than quantum. That's a problem because even the observers are quantum, so what's needed is a "universal wavefunction" that includes not just the system being observed, but also the observers, according to Everett. The "Many worlds" interpretation of Everett's work according to that paper may be yet another example of the problem of still trying to think classically in a quantum world which appears to have resulted in a distortion of Everett's work.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

Of course my statement about many-worlds still stands, but thanks for more on Everett's thoughts, as I should not confuse the two. My thoughts remain that there is an absolute time and an instantaneous collapse. Measuring sticks shrink absolutely, and clocks slow down absolutely, as they move through the aether. It is the original Larmor-Fitzgerald-Lorentz interpretation.

When I get my paper done past my own checking, I hope you can find the time to look at it in detail. Your knowledge of present theories is great, and mine is not as encyclopedic. When the time comes, I would appreciate any comments.

originally posted by: mbkennel

originally posted by: delbertlarson

originally posted by: mbkennel
a reply to: delbertlarson

What's the difference between 'aether' and another quantum field in the SM?

Each aether substance (there are two) is a solid, physical substance occupying a flat, Euclidean, 3 space. Time is a fully independent parameter that serves only to order events temporally.

Is it relativistically covariant?

What are the conserved quantities, and do the match experiments?

What does it mean to be 'solid, physical' substance? Are waves possible? Is there a dispersion relationship? Does it gravitate being 'physical'?

And finally, what observational issues does this theory satisfy that QFT doesn't, and how do you explain the immense quantitative success of QFT or even plain QM?

My thinking is quite divergent from the present status quo. My thinking is close to classical, although it includes a quantum mechanics, so it is not purely classical. Some of your questions are likely best answered once the paper is ready, but I can provide some initial comments here.

My theory is an absolute one, and there is no effort made at making it relativistically covariant. I have not looked into a dispersion relation.

The aether properties include inertial and gravitational mass densities. Those masses are determined by the strength of the fields (tension, pressure, delta and gamma) and the gravitational potential within each aetherial analytic cube. Some additional definition is required; this is not yet complete.

Yes, the aetherial solid can support waves. I derive Maxwell's equations from the field and mass density properties along with a flow law. And Maxwell of course leads to the wave equation.

Gravity arises in a way that is similar to how the Coulomb force arises. In the former, energy reduces the force parameters of the tension and pressure, which in turn leads to aetherial displacements. In the latter, detached aether leads to the aetherieal displacements. In both cases, Poisson's equation results.

The list of things that my alternative brings has already been mentioned above, but here it is again:

... there are many points to the aether effort: ... 2) All the original proponents of QED agreed that QED was foundationally bankrupt due to its need for renormalization. Present proponents believe things are OK, but I share the founders view. 3) The cosmological constant is off by 80-120 orders of magnitude. 4) There is a need for dark matter and dark energy to explain experiments, yet no underlying dark particles have been found. 5) The sheer complexity of the Lagrangian. With 90 free parameters, and an excess of 150 terms, surely we can fit every experiment, but have we really understood things? Or just cataloged them? 6) At its heart, relativity is a point-like theory, which leads to singularities. 7) A main overarching goal is achieving an underlying physical model, rather than only a mathematical one. 8) And probably the most important reason of all is that if an aether does exist as being proposed, we may be able to eventually manipulate it in ways heretofore not known possible. (We already manipulate it via telecommunications.) Such manipulations could bring great benefits to mankind.

You've commented already on point one so I've removed it from the above.

Update time. I finally got through the first draft. All the way to the end. The consistency checking found that none of the equations relating the various new constants were contradictory to one another, although two of the four electromagnetic flow constants came out negative which indicated a potential problem. The consistency checking left only three unknown fitting parameters for the whole theory. With the first draft complete, I began the first checking process of the then-225 page paper containing over 2600 equals signs.

Things went quite well (only typos, grammatical corrections, and explanatory improvements) until I hit the flow laws. I never liked what I did with the flow laws. When my son reviewed the E&M portion 2-3 years ago, he also stated that everything looked good except for the flow laws. And when I hit them this time it was clear they needed improvement. Between four and three years ago I had thought about it for a full year and I finally came up with a kludgy and complex set of laws that led to Maxwell and the Lorentz force equation but they were confusing at best. I had then moved on to gravity, which itself had several topics to cover, and the first pass on the gravity work took about two years.

Over the course of the past three years I would occasionally get further ideas that might improve the flow laws, and I'd jot them down in notes at the end of the write up. This time, after about a month, I believe the flow law is now correct. I used to have four flow constants; now there are two. And importantly, it all makes sense now.

Where things are now is that checking continues. If anything else pops up, it could be another significant delay, but I don't recall anything bothering me as much as the flow laws. I am over half way through the first checking effort now.

In the past three months I also came to the conclusion that I was perhaps being a bit hard on myself regarding the "ad hoc" self-criticism. In reality, the light bending and Shapiro proposals aren't completely ad hoc. There needs to be a flow law for energy through the aether, and there needs to be some definition of what the gravitational and inertial masses are. It is through defining those things that light bending and Shapiro are determined. It's not really "ad hoc". They just each ran against my initial prejudices on how these things should be, but one should never let prejudice impact our eventual judgment. If initial guesses are wrong, we should admit it and move on.

My best guess on completion is sometime in 2022. After the present checking of the electronic version, I plan another checking of the electronic version, since the present checking is resulting in many improvements. And finally, I should do a checking of a version printed on paper. It is all very tedious, as the paper is quite long.

-

Arbitrageur, I saw your fusion conspiracy thread. From 2001 to 2013 fusion was my focus. I hope to return to fusion once the aether work is done. (That was always the plan, but I thought the aether work would take at most two years). Yes, there are certainly problems within mankind's pursuit of fusion.

originally posted by: delbertlarson
My best guess on completion is sometime in 2022.

Nice to hear you're making progress. It's nice that your som is able to help review your work, he's trained in physics if I recall.

Arbitrageur, I saw your fusion conspiracy thread. From 2001 to 2013 fusion was my focus. I hope to return to fusion once the aether work is done. (That was always the plan, but I thought the aether work would take at most two years). Yes, there are certainly problems within mankind's pursuit of fusion.

You know more about it than I do in that case, since I'm just an interested outside observer. But, the old joke about commercial nuclear fusion always being 30 years away doesn't seem so funny as it does true, and it's still happening:

Many jokes have been told about why nuclear fusion energy is always 30 years away.

“I’ve heard all the jokes,” said Don Spong, a fusion energy researcher at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in a recent talk to Friends of ORNL.

Spong noted that both the European Union and the United States are projecting that the first commercial fusion power plants may come online around 2050. That’s 30 years away.

Anyway my thread was aimed at the layperson who hears output will be ten times input in 2025 and thinks we are getting close, but the scientists who work in the fusion field know very well how misleading that is. I suspect they knowingly perpetuate the misleading format for reporting optimistic-sounding progress to assist in securing more funding from the not so well informed people who make funding decisions. With your inside knowledge I'm sure you realize they will still not be close to commercial viability in 2025, even if the much hyped misleading plasma Q does tun out to be 10 as hoped.

If you finish your aether paper next year, maybe you can get back into fusion. It seems like there's some renewed interest in Thorium reactor research now too, I don't know if you ever looked into that. I've tried, but I end up with more questions than answers.

Version One of "The Quantum Luminiferous Aether" is now posted on my website. You can download a copy of the pdf by clicking on the link near the top of the "Aether" page. I plan to post a new thread about it before long. I wanted to first give a shot to those few that follow up on this older thread, especially Arbitrageur and also mbkennel. Then we can open it up for more commentary.

The posted version is not ideal for a journal. It instead is very thorough and contains many intermediate math steps. Somewhat like a text book, with maybe even more detail. It essentially contains all the math I used to get to the conclusions. As such it got quite long, but on the other hand the math is all there.

The reason I call it "version one" is that I expect there will be a version two. I spent a couple of months checking it and found thousands of improvements. The vast majority were equation number corrections, hyphens, and typos. The main equations almost all were unchanged, but there were three rather significant improvements even there. While I went through it four times, I suspect some typos may still exist. Also, one of the team I work with was kind enough to offer some suggestions, and some additional explanations may be necessary.

I look forward to any substantive comments you may have. I believe this is a very important work.

a reply to: delbertlarson

I hope it's okay to asked questions here. References within your own work or someone else's is fine too.

Can you describe the term "fermionic" within the context of your model? On page 8, you described your model as:

A.4.2. The Assumed Physical Model. It is postulated that in the absence of sources and waves, a
homogeneous, isotropic, continuous, fermionic, two-component solid-aether occupies space.

Is it a fermionic field? Does the Pauli Exclusion Principle fit in here somewhere? Would the term "bosonic" also fit your model? Not sure how to think of this. Thanks.

a reply to: delbertlarson

It's so good to see you around my friend.

a reply to: Phantom423

The fermionic assumption is so that no two aetherial quanta of like kind will occupy the same volume element. (Pauli exclusion is assumed.) Neighboring quanta form a three dimensional square well surrounding each quantum, which is used on page 12 to determine the nominal quantum energy of an elemental quantum cube. Bosonic quanta will not work to achieve that goal.

It can be useful to think of the negative aether as being made up of electrons, and the positive aether of positrons, although it is entirely possible it is comprised of quanta with a different mass, and less likely, a different charge. For the electron/positron example, the electrons form into a different state than we are used to, as they form a solid under tension. In such a solid, electrons are attached to neighboring electrons and tension provides a restoring force if one electron is moved with respect to its neighbors. (Same idea holds for the positrons.) See the full paper for details.

Swanne - Haven't seen you here much lately - great to see you back!

a reply to: delbertlarson

Thanks for the explanation.