StringJunky

Douglas Adams playing with Pink Floyd

This sort of stuff used to drive me nuts but it sounds ok now.

What constitutes 'reality' is the result of intersubjective consensus and those that have a different internal mental construct from that consensus are considered to be outliers.

Definitely. it would be useful to you as well in consolidating what you've learnt in communication terms as well as the physics. i think it would be good if you aim for the same sort of audience and in the spirit that Sean did in that video but in written form. I'm sure you are quite capable of writing for a mathematically-capable audience as well but I think they are probably well catered for.

Perhaps you might write something in durable form, some time, so that others may appreciate your clarity. All other other treatments of this subject I've seen require quite extensive prior knowledge. You and Sean Carroll's video have made it a lot easier for us neophytes. I would call it "The Neophytes Guide to Fields". Put me down for a copy. Volume with nothing in it is nothing. It is defined by what's in it or the space it occupies. You can't have 'length' without something having length. It's a property of things. 'Space' has something in it, be it only fields.

Volume is defined by whatever occupies it. Whatever occupies it defines the boundary. It is a parameter and does not exist by itself.

It's all good. You do a fine job introducing people to the idea of fields in an accessible way.

Yes, I understand that not all extend, potentially, infinitely.

Up to now, space has not been quantised so we can only assume it's volume. Scientists did an experiment that went on the basis that if space was granular, red frequencies would travel faster than blue ones since their velocity might be impeded less because of the granularity. The distances required went to billions of light years but both ends of the spectrum arrived, effectively, at the same time.

But - I assert - fields permeate the whole universe; gravity/spacetime extends everywhere.

This is how I think. The existence of space - which is just volume - is dependent on the existence of fields. On that line of thinking, empty spaces full of nothing (?) can''t exist.

1.35m years until the next one.

So far, space has not been found to be quantised; It's smooth AFAIK. It's just volume with things in it.

The more you look into it the more you realise that 'we' are as much the bacteria we host as our bodies. When you think of the Earth, you think of everything in it and on it, as well as its geology; that's what people are: mini-Earths. That's how I see it.

Yes, it interests me. It's called the Gut-Brain Axis.

The definitive reference.

Your perpetual superior/sarcastic tone gets on my nerves. Why do you bother posting?

Cool. It's helped me as well. Sean Carroll is a talented guy for communicating for what seems - at first sight - a nebulous and quite obscure subject.

This video would be a good pointer in the philosophy section when people ask "What is real?"

The idea of virtual particles being less than a quanta and not being actionable individually has been a key thing for me to learn that you've mentioned recently. Also, fields vibrating into other fields has been useful too that I learnt from the video. I think i shall be watching this a few times as Carroll seems to have painted a nicely coherent picture of the different levels and relationships between all the particles and fields. Seems like a good basic springboard to look deeper into parts of atomic theory which I've wanted to get into for a while. The field thing was always the sticking point for me. Swansont has mentioned Carroll quite a few times over the years and i've read a few things by him, so that video caught my eye and his name piqued me to watch it. I'm minded to get one of his books.

The first 50 mins of this excellent Sean Carroll lecture will give you a good overview of the scientific evolution of the first ideas of particles through to them being seen as fields and how they work, including an explanation of what the Higgs Boson is about that gives things mass. Beyond the 50 minutes he goes into where physics is going. You don't need much prior knowledge to understand what he's saying.

Today I learnt that olive oil is 91% the weight of water and if you tried to swim in it would be like having a lead belt around you that was 9% of your bodyweight.