md65536

In all spacetime diagrams speed is an angle.

How do you get that speed is an angle?

According to your diagram with c as an angle you get tan( c ) = T/D (opposite over adjacent).

I think you want that c = D/T... a speed... the distance D that light travels in time T, such that c = tan( pi/2 - theta ) where theta is the angle you currently label as c.

Or simply c = tan( theta ) if you use the angle off of the time axis rather than the distance axis.

The tangent of an angle is not an angle.

In this diagram, speed is a ratio. I don't know enough about spacetime diagrams, but if they do represent speed with a proper angle, I don't think this diagram corresponds to them (as you do to get eq 4).

In Minkowski diagrams, the vertical axis is "ct", which is the same units as the distance axis, so uh... well I dunno, but I guess you can do different things with it and have it make sense, where the same thing wouldn't make the same sense with your diagram.

"Evaporation typically involves an energy input."

 

And it is an essential part in the movement of water though a tree. However, here it does not aid in the movement. (I did get one machine to drip, and then submerged it in water. It continued to drip for 10 days.)

Evaporation can use energy to extract liquid from a capillary, freeing it to draw up more liquid. If your device is indeed cycling through the same energy states (which I don't think it is but it could be), this could allow it to do so.

"I think that it is very unlikely that you can break a law of science without first understanding it enough to know where (and only IF) it can be broken."

 

What I meant by this... perhaps I should clarify -- I'll restate it:

It is VERY UNLIKELY that you can

1. set a goal of breaking a well-established law of science,

2. undertake that goal without understanding the law you're trying to break, and

3. succeed.

Or in other words: It's very unlikely that you can design a device specifically to break laws that you don't understand, and have it work.

PERHAPS if you understood the law and came up with a theoretical way to circumvent it (ie. to falsify it),

MOST LIKELY you'd still be wrong, but you might not be. It happens and it will continue to happen... it is part of scientific process.

However, laws that are confirmed by hundreds of years of experimental confirmation tend to very rarely be false.

PERHAPS if you already HAD a device which SEEMS to break the laws of physics (say if you had a device that ran on 2 car batteries and unexpectedly kept running after you removed them),

even then it is very unlikely that it breaks existing laws of science, or requires new ones. It is more likely that there is some explanation that you're missing.

I don't want to discourage you from trying to do the impossible, but there's a fine line between attempting something new without knowing exactly what you're doing, and devoting your time to a hopeless project (like a PMM) while refusing to understand it. (To your credit, you are attempting to understand it, despite refusal to accept the key principles that would let you understand it.)

Yes, conservation laws are falsifiable. Your device could be considered an experiment which supports the well-known conclusion: They are not false.

I'm sorry this experience has been an unpleasant one for you.

No, the apologies are mine. Discussion can always be beneficial though my negativity may not. And you seem to be committed to truly understanding your device; it should not be my concern what route you take to get there.

My guess is that the fluid part of the ferrofluid evaporates, leaving a greater concentration of suspended solids, and so they act more like a collection of solids than a fluid.

Evaporation typically involves an energy input.

Stable state. The capillaries are saturated with ferrofluid and surrounded by ferrofluid at their bases.

 

Cycle. The ferrofluid spikes out of the capillaries. The ferrofluid breaks off and drips. The ferrofluid moves to the strongest part of the next magnet and joins the ferrofluid there at the base of the other capillary.

 

Stable state. The capillaries are saturated with ferrofluid and surrounded by ferrofluid at their bases.

 

(That is, of course, assuming that I'm right in that as the fluid is pulled out of the capillary that more fluid will move into the capillary (thus keeping it saturated) due to cohesion. I'm open to the discussion. Why would more fluid not move into the capillaries at their bases, as fluid spikes out at the tops?)

Exactly! This is the key to understanding your device! How can any system perpetually cycle through the same states without requiring any new energy, and while losing (a tiny amount of) energy due to friction? Conservation of energy is what you need to research. If you can extract a certain amount of energy going from state A to B, it will take at least that much energy to go from state B (through any states C etc) back to state A.

Some additional points:

- A system can cycle for a very long time if it is very efficient. A pendulum won't swing to the bottom and then immediately stop, even though it has the lowest potential energy there, because potential energy is constantly being converted to kinetic energy and vice versa (with some lost to inefficiency), in accordance with conservation laws.

- Having a device drip for a long time is meaningless if you're extracting very little energy from it. See: http://www.emoti.com...ag/00/0417.html Tar can continue dripping extremely slowly for a century but no one would consider it a perpetual motion machine. The longer your machine runs, the easier you're making it to fool yourself (and possibly others).

- You have not shown how or even speculated that your machine circumvents conservation of energy laws. There is no reason to believe it does, other than that it's a puzzle to figure it out.

On the plus side: You may consider this device among the best "perpetual motion machines" ever designed and built, some of which might be considered "famous".

On the bad side: None have ever worked, and there is scientific proof of that, and a lot of time has been and continues to be wasted.

On a related note... I finally discovered the "Stop watching this topic" button which has improved my life! I keep fooling myself into thinking that I can help resolve something with a reply.

In contemporary physics, is time suppose to exist as an actual thing, or is it just a system of periodically measuring things? Because all those equations with time only assume time is true, which hasn't been proven to be a thing that actually exists as something.

I am not an expert, but...

It is simply a measurement, exactly like distance is. It's not a "thing" with substance.

"Distance" is real but it's not a physical thing. You can say distances exist, but you intuitively think of them as properties of a system, or as aspects of other things in a system, ie as measurements. They are not "stuff". Similarly, space-time is not "stuff", like an aether.

Space-time doesn't exist independently of other things. In the sense that it's a measurement, it's a measurement between other things. It can also be a measurement between imaginary locations in space and time, where those locations are also not things.

Time is a physical property defined between any locations in spacetime.

"Don't give up though …"

 

Thank you. I won't.

I disagree with that advice. I'd recommend researching a bit more so that you understand why these machines don't work, instead of trying multiple times to build them.

I think that it is very unlikely that you can break a law of science without first understanding it enough to know where (and only IF) it can be broken.

You requested and listed possible explanations for why your machine doesn't work, but you've skipped the suggestions given to you.

Here is your flaw: You are starting your machine in one state (capillaries empty; relatively high amount of potential energy) and then letting it run to another state (capillaries saturated) at which point, for some reason you expect it to keep running.

Once you get to a stable state, there are not really any "new states" for the machine to get to. You are claiming that the machine is in one state, the liquid drips, the capillaries suck up more liquid, and you are back at a state very similar to the previous state.

So answer this: What form of energy is used to return the machine to a previous state?

If you can answer that realistically, then you've identified an energy input to your machine.

It's nothing special that the machine would go from its start state to a stable state, even if that involves the liquid dripping and moving across the magnet, even cycling for days or whatever else it might do. However I don't think you've shown that your machine goes from a stable state, through a cycle, and returns to a stable state. Without energy input this is impossible. Yet you're ignoring this, and looking for other excuses for why the machine stops working.

But if you wanted to return to 2010, you can still somewhat do it, for 2010 was just a certain configuration of matter in space, and not an actual time so if you reconstructed the way everything was in 2010 down to the atomic scale, that would be the best way to time travel and strictly speaking you could consider it returning to 2010 for it was the exact same configuration and with no time, nothing truly separates that 2010 and the original 2010 amazingly.

In that case, our memories and experience would likely be part of the "state of the universe."

If we returned to a "2010 state", we wouldn't have a memory of 2011, but instead restore a memory of the past up to 2010.

So if as you conjecture it's possible to return to such a state, then imagine that time is, right now, running in reverse. As you suggest, time isn't something that "flows" but rather the experience of a changing state of the universe. As we go back in time and proceed from one state to a previous state, we restore previous memories of time moving forward. If we experience the universe only in its current state, then ... we could actually be moving backward in time right now and never realize it!

We're not experiencing moving through time, only a single state that encodes the experience of moving forward through time.

It may be a game for the mind to try ponder that, but I don't think it's a realistic idea at all. The laws of entropy say that returning to a former state is more difficult as time passes... if not impossible. Some new understanding of time might make that law work in reverse for "backward time", but without any reason to suggest that there is something or some process by which previous states are restored, there's no reason to think that it happens.

The idea of random quantum fluctuations coupled with the idea that any possible reality will be expressed as a reality, somewhere in the multiverse... may suggest that it's possible and thus certain that a universe "pops" into existence with a randomly configured state that is identical to any other given state, such as one where you exist with memories and a history. It could be that the universe exists only in random moments. It seems like you're existing "over time" but really that's just an illusion caused by the single instantaneous random universe happening to encode a memory of past experiences...

However I think that I'm just complicating an already overcomplicated idea. Maybe there's some value in thinking about these things, but I think that the true nature of time and the universe is a LOT simpler than all these ideas. It is basically a discussion about what color the scales of a dragon that lives past the edge of a flat Earth might be.

I've said before on these forums that "Why does mass curve spacetime?" was the last puzzle piece for myself having even the vaguest understanding of how gravity works.

Finally I have an idea. So I retire from science.

Assumptions:

1. Time and distance are perceptually defined. They appear different depending on how they are observed. At the speed of light, they are unobservable... they essentially disappear. I assumed that it's possible to describe a viewpoint or model in which they don't exist at all. I conjecture that they are not fundamental aspects of the universe, but only observational side-effects of a consistent, 2-dimensional universe.

2. This pretty much implies that geometry is a perceptual effect. I assume the universe can be defined topologically without geometry.

3. Earlier I posted... http://www.sciencefo...ely-impossible/

mentioning an idea that the amount of distance between everything is related to entropy.

I think this might be related to the way that the surface of an imaginary sphere of radius r around an observer is able to "intersect more stuff" the larger that r is.

If the radius of a sphere is determined by time t (ie. it grows at a fixed rate), then as it grows, the total possible entropy might be relative to the surface area of the sphere... it represents a measure of the possible states of something moving away from the observer at fixed speed. For example, if you have N photons leave a point at time 0, then at time t, the total possible locations for those photons are spread across an area of pi*t2 oops lol I mean 4pi t².

Blah blah blah, yada yada yada, and you have yourself a different description of the holographic principle, which to paraphrase suggests that the total entropy of a volume is proportional to the surface area around that volume.

See also:

4. If geometry is nothing more than a consistent 3-dimensional perception of a 2-dimensional universe, then length and time and the shape of spheres and the way things appear smaller the farther they are away are all side-effects of this.

Then you have the following principle: If the total entropy of a volume is limited by a factor of the square of its radius, yet the total perceivable entropy of a volume is a factor of the cube of its radius, then the more "stuff" you perceive in a given volume, the smaller it's radius must be perceived.

Thus, for consistency, more mass requires contracted space. Ie... space-time curvature.

In other words, space-time curvature is a perceptual product of a consistent universe, just like time and distance etc. The reason that everything appears as it does, is that reality is one of many (or the only?) possible consistent interpretations of the underlying universe. It may even be that any consistent mathematical consequence of the universe will be observed as a "real" aspect of it, and can be measured. Eg. even if distance is an illusion, it is consistently describable by any number of observers, and so something like our eye (which consists of a large number of individual observers working together) can perceive it.

Well, okay this doesn't prove anything, it's just a vague idea. Perhaps I'll figure out the math over the next 10 years, and then I'll post a follow-up.

What is it that you are speculating? Do you have some theory involving aliens or a government coverup?

Please note that all posts that are not baseless in scientific fact or not outside of mainstream physics should not be in the Speculations forum.

Readers come here looking for absurd opinions and ridiculous conjecture, and don't expect to be confused by facts.

Reminder: The rules of the Speculations forum:

No maths.

Incomprehensible.

You must contradict accepted science.

No evidence.

Obvious errors.

It's not science.

Okay this post is in jest, but the serious part of it is: Elsewhere in the forums there are rules about what should and shouldn't be posted... why is Speculations treated as a joke or a dumping ground? This thread is about news, and is not even science related. If there's anywhere on this site where the post belongs, it might be the Lounge?

But anyway... now that the thread is already here, please ignore my curmudgeonly post and carry on the discusion...

As an example let us consider an event involving 2 particles A and B, moving away from a point or planet P, perhaps after an explosion. Let us consider it from the perspective of A moving relative to P, from which we observe that B is also moving away from P.

The notion of “universal time” suggests the idea that if time were to be “reversed”, then every process involving time would be reversed. A would move back toward P, as would B, and they would do so consistently along a single “time line”.

However, we know that universal time is not real, and that time is in fact relative. The aspect of that which is important in this example is that time according to A is not the same as time according to B.

Suppose that A did in fact reverse direction and began moving back toward P. Suppose that it's possible to consider this in a way where we can't distinguish between the reversal of time between A and P, vs a simple reversal of direction of travel of A relative to P. For all intents and purposes, a simple enough particle A moving back toward a simple enough particle P might be considered time travel backwards.

However, the time defined by A and P is independent of the time between B and P. What is done to affect the former does not necessarily affect the latter. So while time can be considered going in reverse for A and P, particle B is continuing to move away from P, which we would call “forward in time”.

The same applies to any particles C, D, etc. So suppose we define a clock at P between particles P and C (or any set of particles that we wish). Manipulation of the relative time between A and P would not affect the relative time measured by P and C etc. So while A can be considered moving back in time toward P, that doesn't affect the time measured by the clock at P. A can move back in time and return to a former state of P relative to A, yet it cannot return to a former state of P relative to B, C, etc. According to A, P has continued moving forward in time according to everything else, including its own clocks.

Thus the effect of any sort of time travel involving A and P will have no noticeable effect in a complex enough system involving multiple particles, or particles with their own internal time-related processes.

In conclusion, I submit that effective time travel would not involve manipulation of a single variable called “time”; it would require manipulation of countless variables of time defined between all of the particles involved. In other words, time travel is possible, but only relatively, not universally.

To get more complicated, we might say that time is related to entropy in this way: When you have any 2 particles split from a single location, you introduce distance between them, which effectively defines a measure of time between them. The greater number of independent locations of particles relative to each other that you have, the harder it is to get everything back to the way it was previously.

I'm no expert on relativity but I have spent a lot of time thinking about ideas that sounded eerily similar to your questions, starting about 7 months ago.

Yes there are alternative interpretations that work. I'm trying to write a paper on it, and it's too complicated to try to explain here, and anyway it would belong in the speculations forum. I wrote about it here -- http://www.sciencefo...nce-relativity/ -- but what I wrote is old and too vague and mostly incorrect.

The traveler begins his 100 light year journey now at light speed, and maintains it throughout the journey until he reaches his destination. Einstein says, to best of my understanding, that our traveler experiences his journey as an instantaneous event. Furthermore, he does not really experience it as a journey. Space dilation for our traveler means he has not traveled any distance whatsoever. Our traveler is not really a traveler now at all. He was simply in one place, and then he was in another.

 

Except that's not completely accurate either, is it? He was simultaneously at the starting flag and at the finish line, and every point in between.

In the traveler's frame (which isn't really a possible one), the universe is flat, and every point on his journey is the same point. So yes, he's at all those points (ie. at that one single point) at the same time (according to his frame).

If his ship were a light source and earth was the destination, we would observe exactly that, in a way: The light from his ship at the beginning of his journey would reach earth 100 years years latter, at the same time that the ship arrived. At every point of his journey, the light from his ship would arrive at the same local time for the observer on earth. Perhaps we would see a luminescent line 100 light years long across the sky.

No... if we see light from the start of his journey take 100 years, that means the start of his journey is 100 light years away from us. This can pretty much only happen if he is in a straight line away from us, so we would not see any lateral movement at all. What we might see is something like:

1. We observe that he is 100 light years away. Perhaps we are watching someone wave a flag that tells him to go.

2. Something happens that is a physical impossibility but it doesn't really matter, because it only takes an instant, so we can't describe what we'd see, anyway.

3. He is now here at Earth.

It is like saying "Imagine you are watching someone on the moon turn on a flashlight, and at that same instant, you see the light arrive from the flashlight." The moon is about a light-second away, but the flashlight's light (aka the Traveler) arrives at the same time that observations of the start of its journey arrive. But observations travel at the same speed as light (in this case they are light), so you would see the same thing if light traveled instantly, or if it traveled at c, or at any other speed.

But other observers would not see the same thing nor the same timing (observation of arrival at the same time as observation of departure). To make it consistent for all observers is a bit more complicated than "light travels instantly".

Specifically, an observer who sees the Traveller's journey at all "from the side", eg. so that the path of the journey looks like a line across the sky, will not see the start and end of the journey appearing simultaneous.

So my question is this: What if what we interpret as light speed is not really a velocity at all?

If you interpret things so that velocity doesn't apply to light, then what does it apply to?

How do you change things so that velocity still makes sense when speaking of moving matter? How is moving matter so different from light?

I realize that my argument holds about as much water as a Zeno's paradox, and I also understand that it isn't really an argument as much as a thought. So I'm not really asking if this idea is correct. What I'm asking is could there be a scenario where this interpretation would work, and what would it mean about the nature of the universe?

If you figure out the math and the logic to make it work, and then figure out what it means, it might tell you some truly fascinating things...

I'm going to take what you wrote about time, and write something similar about distance.

For some reason, most people reason about distance differently than they do about time.

Could relative motion be an illusion? the question is, do we travel from "here" to "there", or does "there" come to us? either way in which objects move relative to others, there is a problem:

 

here is always here, yet we can always be moving from where we are to someplace else. (paradox)

 

I think the resolution to such a paradox is looking at is as this:

 

1m = behind 2m

1m = here at 1m

1m = in front of 0m

 

so a single location can be behind, here, or in front depending on where here is, yet here is always here and so how can...

Alright at that point you lost me a bit but hopefully that's enough to get my point across, where my point is to offer an analogy so you can reconsider your questions using something that is somehow "easier" to conceive.

Note that whether you consider one frame moving relative to another, or vice versa, doesn't matter; each perspective is equally valid. This is the principle of relativity, that there are no privileged frames of reference. Just like distance and relative movement are relative, so is time.

Moving "backwards through time" to me is the same as moving to a negative distance relative to something. No matter which direction you are moving, your distance to everything else is positive, where distance is defined only relative to other locations. Similarly, you can only "move forward" in time, where time is defined only relative to other locations.

I would say that time is real exactly to the same degree that distance is real.

But to discuss this we must leave science behind and move into philosophy (metaphysics, to be specific). It's not just that "science isn't concerned with these questions", as some might argue. It's because to answer your questions, we have to discuss the meaning of the word "real". What we describe as "reality" or "exists" is defined by us, based on existing understandings of space, time, matter, etc. You would have to define and redefine a lot of things, to say a lot of meaningful statements on this topic.

However, we can kind of side-step all that and get to the heart of what you're talking about, which is the idea that "reality isn't quite like our classical understanding of it suggests". This is certainly true. Since most people don't "get" special relativity as an intuitive description of their world, let alone general relativity and quantum mechanics and all that -- and likely no one can explain it all -- you can say that in some ways, reality is an illusion, where illusion is "An erroneous perception of reality," and our perception is certainly not perfect, complete, and error-free.

I agree though with your principle, and personally I believe that there is a possible, yet-unknown sciencey description of the fundamental nature of the universe, in which time (and distance) are nothing but perceptual side-effects. We won't be able to figure it out until we can express it mathematically, and I'm not able to yet. In a year though... maybe 10...

Personally, one of the biggest challenges I've had with relativity involves keeping all the different frames of reference straight.

As a thought experiment, lets have our traveler make a 100 light year journey from earth to a distant star in our galaxy, at speeds very close to the speed of light. Space-time shortens, or dilates, but only for the traveler, not for us earthbound observers. From our point of view the traveler's journey takes over 100 years to complete. From his point of view, though, only 50 years have passed, and when he comes to his journey's end, he has traveled over 100 light years in 50 years of his time... or, to put it another way, he has traveled, from his point of view, at NEARLY TWICE THE SPEED OF LIGHT.

You're using time from one frame (50 years have passed according to the moving traveler's clocks) and distance from another frame of reference (rest distance from basically anyone's point of view while at rest).

Think of it this way: You can either determine the traveler's velocity using a rest frame, or using the traveler's moving frame.

In the former, just over 100 years have passed, and 100 light years have been traveled, and v is near c.

In the traveler's frame, 50 years have passed, but he has only traveled just under 50 light years (due to length contraction), and v is the same value: near c.

The key mistake to avoid is this: If I'm traveling relative to other locations, the time at those locations relative to me will be passing at different rates relative to my own time (that is, clocks on my rocket ship can appear to pass "normally"). If you're measuring change in relative distance, you must use relative time (not traveler's local time) to measure speed.

Yes, if I can move at near-c speeds, I can cover great rest distances in what appears to be a short amount of time to me, but relative to anywhere I travel, great amounts of time must also pass.

Interesting, so this is much older news than I expected. And your second link says pretty much exactly what I stated above, slightly disappointing.

No, I think that your interpretation is different from the one described by "Relativity of simultaneity" according to SR.

Specifically I think you are suggesting that events separated by "light-like intervals" be treated as simultaneous to an observer who sees the 2 events appearing to be simultaneous (IE someone colinear to the 2 events and closer to the 2nd event), while SR treats 2 such events as separated by a time equal to d/c, where d is the spatial distance between the 2 events.

So, SR would still say that the Earth observes the sun disappearing 8 minutes after it ceased to exist, according to Earth's reference frame, but that other observers (in frames with different relative velocity, or in different gravitational fields according to GR) will determine a different time difference between the 2 events.

Let's say thereis a person floating in space some distance between the Sun and Earth. Theywould see the Sun disappear some number of minutes before we do on Earth,thus they would tell us that they saw the Sun disappear some number of minutesbefore we saw it disappear, thus we know from the reference frame on Earth theSun must have actually disappeared before we observed it.

 

If this person signaled you at the same instant that it observed the sun disappearing, then that is an example of a "light-like interval" (between the sun disappearing and them signaling you).

I think that if you were to fully develop this idea, you would encounter a lot of inconsistencies that could be resolved by a reformulation of time, but doing so would result in some bizarre requirements, such as the speed of light not being invariable and finite, and stuff like...

But then inone reference frame it takes light no time to get from the Sun to Earth, and inanother it takes light sixteen minutes, how is that possible?

I've been developing a theory which claims that this, and most of the rest of your interpretation of simultaneity, is literally true. I've posted about it on these forums before, but I stopped because the theory was full of holes and I was unable to answer questions about it. Hopefully within a month I'll be able to post again, and explain it...

But yes, I think your idea is good (probably even correct), but not consistent with the definition of time used by special relativity (which by the way is literally the definition of time that we use by standard, in which even the unit of time -- the second -- is defined in terms of c).

If " … The "room for more water" left by the drip won't be replaced by more water due to capillary action ..." is true, then you may have found actual reason why my machine won't work. But is it? When the sun heats up the water in the leaves of trees, and that water evaporates, doesn't the water in the capillaries of the trees move upward due to capillary action, and thus leaving more room for water at the roots, which is then filled in with more water from the surrounding soil due to capillary action in the roots? Or have you found my idea's fatal flaw?

I would put it this way (though I may be wrong):

An empty capillary has a certain potential (energy) for lifting a liquid. A saturated capillary has no additional potential.

That potential might be for example "enough liquid to saturate the capillary, plus 20 drops". So 20 drops might drip from the capillary in what appears to be free energy, but it has used the potential energy of the empty capillary. I don't know exactly why a capillary can become over-saturated and allow drips in the first place. When it drips, you have gravity (or magnets) overcoming the force of the capillary action. That's fine... there's no law of physics broken. There may even be an "oscillation" in the system so that it overshoots equilibrium... but without energy input, it will certainly tend towards equilibrium. In other words, even after the drip, the capillary is still saturated and can't pull up more liquid.

Another way to think about this is that if potential energy is used to get the liquid into the capillary, then it will take at least that much energy to get the liquid out. Falling (due to gravity or magnets) involves using potential energy. In the case of trees, energy (input) from the sun can be used to pull water out, allowing more water to be drawn up.

In summary I'd say that the potential energy of the empty capillaries powers your device through for however long it drips, but that potential energy gets used up and the device stops.

I think that if you want to build a true PMM (by the way, don't, cause it's a waste of time) then you'd be better off first proving that the laws of thermodynamics are wrong and then exploiting that, rather than trying to piece together things that are known to obey the laws of thermodynamics and somehow end up with an end result that doesn't. I think the siren lure of attempting PMMs is that the Rube Goldberg-style complexity of the combination of the machines' parts makes the simple reasoning behind their flaws harder to see.

Edit: It's a pretty cool device, and an interesting puzzle, but the reasoning behind why all PMMs are impossible is really solid.

Over and over on these forums I'm seeing something I will call "Proof by 'I don't understand it'", which is that some theory doesn't make sense to me and therefore it must be wrong. Relativity, crop circles, 9/11... it all "can't be a certain way cause it's unimaginable." This is the same type of evidence used to support creationism.

I would advise balance. It's not ideal to either accept something you don't understand and move past it while questioning nothing, or to reject something you don't understand and remain blocked by it. If you learn about all these things, you'll see why they're believed to be right, and then you can focus with a better understanding on fixing something you think is wrong.

Unfortunately I don't know much about the topics you mentioned. I once read on wikipedia something about how thermodynamic systems can be described as having topology but no geometry. As usual, I can't seem to find the link, now. But I have a feeling that if you gained a thorough understanding of topology, you would be able to conceive of all the puzzling things you mentioned, without having to compare them to geometric analogies like a loaf of bread. That's not an answer, but I think it's a clue.

If you are going to believe in the "big bang" then you need to believe in inflation to justify how big the universe is today, it doesn't mean anything is going faster than light, space it's self is expanding faster than light not the matter in it.

In special relativity, there is nothing that says that extremely rapid acceleration is impossible. Say you are 1 lightyear away from Earth, and "instantly" accelerate to about 0.866c (gamma = 2). Then Earth is now 0.5 lightyears away from you. It hasn't "moved half a light year", but rather space in between you and Earth has contracted.

Is that exactly the same principle as space inflating without anything moving faster than c?

I'm assuming this isn't a perpetual motion machine, but the question is "why isn't it?"

I would guess either it would reach a state of equilibrium, or it would be using some small external energy input to remain perpetual (like evaporation or something).

According to your diagram, it appears that everything "flows downhill" thus not requiring violation of the laws of thermodynamics, except for the capillary action part.

A simpler "machine" using the same concept might involve a cloth hanging over the edge of a pot filled with water. Water "climbs" up the cloth and can saturate the part of the cloth hanging over the edge, and drip. Most of us have experienced this happening. If the drip is higher than the level of water in the pot, then the dripped water has gained some potential energy which can be extracted as you return the water to the pot.

This also won't work as a perpetual motion machine, if for no other reason than that such things are impossible.

I don't know much about capillary action but I think it's usually mistaken for "energy flowing uphill" in PMMs. I think in the case of a wet cloth, capillary action soaks up water and it becomes saturated, and it can drip. But then it reaches equilibrium. The water has "extracted energy" in a way, to be able to climb, and that energy is no longer available for more water to be lifted. Either through the changing shape of the cloth fibers as they soak up water (they don't return to their original shape after the drip), or the simple fact that the cloth now has water in it... it will reach a point where it cannot lift any more water. The "room for more water" left by the drip won't be replaced by more water due to capillary action.

I think your machine suffers from the same problem, and will in fact reach equilibrium and stop dripping.

I think I already said this, but I don't see why you would say that a black hole has no size because it's center is defined as a singularity. Why aren't you considering the entirety of the BH's gravitational field as its size?

I'm speaking only of the singularity.

Other masses would attract the rest of the black hole due to gravity, but the singularity would be "free" from the influence of even the rest of the black hole.

In a sense, the black hole as a whole would have to go where the singularity goes. The singularity can "pull along" the rest of the BH's matter, but the rest of the BH can't change the velocity of the singularity.

Except by modifying geodesics, as you also mention later in your post...

When I speak of "size" i'm speaking of particles I guess, or more to the point I'm speaking of objects that can be treated as a whole with respect to the conjecture involving oscillating energy. The energy inside a black hole's singularity wouldn't oscillate in the area outside the singularity (I guess???); to the energy inside the singularity, it is confined to a single point. The energy has no size.

Similarly, the size of an object like a table wouldn't make a difference, because the energy of its matter oscillates on the size scale of particles, not the table as a whole.

This of course fits reality: Larger objects don't fall faster.

However the conjecture does say that if energy oscillates through a bigger volume, the force of gravity on it will be larger.

This suggests that larger particles have more mass.

This also suggests that particles that are smaller due to length contraction should have less mass -- I think SR claims the opposite will happen?, so that might be proof that this conjecture is wrong?

I don't see why a BH's gravitational field wouldn't interact with other gravitational fields as it changed position relative to them. If, say, a comet suddenly shrank into a black hole for some reason, it's gravitational field could still interact with the gravitational field of the star it was approaching, no? Wouldn't its geodesic path shift according to the interaction between its own gravitation and that of the star it was approaching? Wouldn't this occur with any two gravitationally significant bodies as they approach each other?

Yes, if something with zero size follows a geodesic, its path can still be controlled by curving the geodesic. However, even in that case it is not being accelerated... it is just acting on inertia. I don't really know what I'm talking about enough to express it clearly.

Imo, if the observed universe was the product of spacetime expansion within a black hole, I would think all incoming matter/energy would be concentrated at the moment of the big bang. I don't see how matter/energy entering a black hole would coincide temporally/spatially with its appearance in the universe within. Where would such matter/energy suddenly appear if it were to enter the universe from outside?

As for location: The holographic principle suggests that every point on a black hole's event horizon maps to every point inside the black hole, and vice versa (someone correct me if that's wrong),

so the energy entering a black hole may appear everywhere within the black hole... perhaps as vacuum energy, or quantum fluctuations or dark energy.

As for time: ... Actually I can't conceive of the meaning of time for a singularity that exists for more than an instant as seen from outside the singularity. Perhaps similar to the holographic principle, energy that enters the singularity at any specific time outside the singularity, would map to all time inside the singularity??? I'm completely detached from reality on this idea, now, but I do like the idea that any energy that enters the singularity from outside, at any outside time, could show up inside as energy of the big bang, or in other words as energy that is there for all of known time within the singularity. I don't know though. This is beyond my ability to reason about it. I can't conceive of a mapping from external time to internal time. Time inside or outside of the singularity I would think is "non-existent" or something from the other's perspective.

All points within the universe are supposedly moving away from the initial moment of the big bang through spacetime expansion. Do you imagine some radiant center of the universe where matter/energy captured outside the universe is consistently emitted into it like a gushing fountain of fresh input?

I prefer to think of it this way: All points in the universe are the location of the big bang. From any point's perspective, from the big bang until now, that point has remained stationary relative to itself. This makes sense when we consider the big bang to start with a singularity; all locations in the universe had the same location at the start. Also, from any point's perspective, the rest of the universe appears to be expanding outward from that point. So I would say that all points in the universe are its "center"??? (or something with the same "feel" as that but expressed more precisely), which at least is compatible with the holographic principle I think.

After reading some of these posts and related information on several of the internets, I think I have a comprehensive explanation of 9/11.

1. It was a training exercise. This much of it was planned and coordinated by multiple levels of government.

Repeatedly, there are descriptions of different terrorist attack training exercises planned at the pentagon, in new york, etc. These are always treated as "coincidence", and something that lead to the confusion of the day, as various people were unsure about whether or not it was "real-world" or an exercise.

A training exercise would necessarily require secrecy on all levels (if everyone knows what's coming, then what's the value in the exercise?), and would be a legitimate reason for secrecy and "A joining or acting together". It would be like a conspiracy without the criminal aspect of it.

2. Someone had secret motives to make the exercise into something more serious, involving citizens and real-world risk.

The driving factor behind this may have been innocent (mistakes, misunderstandings, miscommunications), or cold-hearted (it may have been an exercise with real-world risk that wasn't expected to fail so spectacularly) or downright criminal (it may have been designed to fail as it did).

The blame may lie with the pilots, possibly trained to enact a hijacking exercise, but using it as an act of sabotage and treason.

The blame may lie with a small number of government officials, who secretly gave different orders to different organizations, so that they would treat it as a training exercise while other groups or individuals treated it as real-world.

My first suspect is Dick Cheney.

He had the motive to do this. There were plans or studies or whatever investigating the idea of creating a disaster in order to seize power or unite the country against some enemy (might be considered "manufactured disaster capitalism").

He had the right government connections, and secrecy, and all that... he had the means to do it.

He had ties to businesses that benefited from 9/11 (Enron, Halliburton).

His heart is a lump of black coal.

One question is, if 9/11 was planned, then did it go according to plan? My instinct is that something(s) went wrong, and it was intended to be less damaging. Something like, "Let's get rid of these buildings my friends want disappeared, let's test our personel and our citizens, let's create a disaster and panic to let us seize power and go to war, all in one shot. The people will be evacuated and the demolition will be controlled, and there will be a minimal loss of life." But then I wonder, "how far would Cheney go to gain power?", and based on my extensive judgement of his character, I think that he'd have no trouble killing a lot of citizens in the name of creating a bigger disaster, the bigger the better.

So, I think most of the planning of 9/11 involved training exercises, where the conspiracy required was just enough to "swap the blanks for real bullets".

I think the secret aspects of this exercise were to test the following:

- The government's ability to control information about the event.

- The willingness of the people to unquestioningly cooperate with government in a crisis.

Dick Cheney did 9/11. QED.

First of all, in what sense does a geodesic "appear" to be a straight line except in the sense that some object, particle, or light is traveling as an expression of its own momentum without changing course due to force-additions? My understanding of geodesics is that objects/particles can be doing figure-8s but for them it is a straight line because they're not undergoing a change of direction relative to their natural momentum.

Yes, that sounds right.

A geodesic appears straight from any point on the geodesic, and can appear curved from other locations.

For example, if you were on a rocket heading toward a galaxy whose light is gravitationally lensed on its path to Earth, some remote observer might see that you appear to be curving.

You would observe that you traveled in a straight line the entire trip. The destination galaxy would always appear directly in front of you (you'd never have to turn), and Earth would always appear directly straight behind you.

An observer on Earth who is also on the same geodesic would also observe that you appeared to constantly move straight toward the galaxy.

Is this because no energy/matter can interact with the BH in a way that produces reaction-force in the black hole? So you're basically saying that nothing can push or pull the BH so how can it move? What about its velocity relative to other things prior to becoming a BH?

No, the conjecture is that energy (or particles) need size in order to be affected by gravity. Basically the energy needs to travel along different geodesics in order to accelerate.

A black hole singularity in particular has no size, so accordingly it would not be affected by gravity (and may or may not be affected by the curvature of space caused by external mass -- this is where I'm confused though).

I guess that when a singularity is formed, it basically "escapes" the influence of the universe. I guess it might continue traveling on the course it had when it formed, never accelerating.

Now, to throw in even more confusing ideas:

Imagine we consider the known universe to be a black hole according to any external observers.

The conjecture suggests that we inside the black hole would not be influenced gravitationally by anything outside the universe,

however, the "exo-universe" can still be gravitationally affected by our universe (a black hole to them). As for the two interacting, we could receive energy from outside, but no energy could escape our universe (except as Hawking radiation?).

This is a far-fetched conjecture but I think it might be potentially relatable to our current understanding of the universe?

If a large star in a galaxy collapsed into a black hole, why would it suddenly stop moving relative to its gravitational surroundings? I think your "fat man pulling the table cloth" analogy just makes a case for framing all motion relative to a black hole instead of vice versa, but I think that you have the freedom to frame any motion in any frame you want, regardless of whether a black hole is involved or not.

Yes, there's a problem with my reasoning but I'm not sure where. The relativeness of motion would suggest that if a black hole singularity can't move relative to us, then we can't move relative to it. Doesn't make sense.

Let me try to rephrase my question.

Light cannot escape a black hole because space around it is so severely warped that "straight lines" (geodesics) appear to external observers to curve back toward the black hole.

My conjecture is that black hole singularities would not be affected (accelerated toward) external gravitational masses.

If a singularity does not accelerate, then it should travel in a straight line. The singularity should travel along a geodesic.

I guess I'm just confused about how to describe a black hole traveling through space that is so severely curved. It seems to me that the only place a singularity could move to (like its light), is back toward itself.

Perhaps this is just me confusing relative motion and the "fabric" of spacetime, which to me is just a measurement. Perhaps what I'm saying is nothing more than "an object cannot move to any location relative to itself; it is always stationary relative to itself"... fairly vacuous.

As an aside...

I think of "gravitons" as an analogy or an effect of measurement rather than a fundamental physical reality, but...

If light cannot escape a black hole, how do gravitons escape it? Wouldn't they travel along the same geodesics?

In GR, gravity is spacetime curvature.

Isn't gravity an effect of spacetime curvature? It's expressed as a force. Spacetime curvature can't be expressed as a force, can it?

 

 

Particles with mass and particles with zero mass like photons follow a geodesic path through curved spacetime.

Hrm, I don't know where I read about the mass of a photon (somewhere on wikipedia), but I seem to have mixed up mass and maybe "relativistic mass" http://www.weburbia.com/physics/photon_mass.html.

If a particle with mass is accelerated due to gravity (which is due to to spacetime curvature) then its path isn't a geodesic.

[citation needed]

Citations:

Destruction of evidence: http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/groundzero/cleanup.html

Stifling of investigation, destruction of evidence, and coverup: http://www.wanttoknow.info/9-11cover-up

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_Commission#Government_deception

Yes, of course it was suspicious, and it was by definition a conspiracy (it wasn't individuals acting alone).

However:

1. The explanations given for what happened that day (the tower "pancaking" collapses, the vanishing of the "plane" that hit the pentagon, etc) are extremely dubious.

2. The US government stifled objective investigation of 9/11. They destroyed evidence and kept findings classified. So yes, there was also a government coverup.

This doesn't prove there was government involvement of the planning of the attacks, or if the coverup was done to protect their interests (or even the interests of the people), or to hide negligence, or whatever... It just proves that the US government can cover up a major attack on one of its cities because the people (or majority) won't demand a full explanation.

I have a bunch of questions and ideas... please point out any statements that are false.

Since reading of the concept in GR that gravitational attraction is a kind of inertia more than a force,

I've been trying to build a conceivable understanding of it.

Since then I've tried to "correct" anyone who speaks of light following a curved geodesic as if the light is being affected by gravity, as if gravity is "pulling on the light".

I recently read in wikipedia that photons have mass, so does that mean they are affected by gravity? So I'm wrong???

But then I read here http://everything2.com/title/Geodesic that geodesics are paths of zero acceleration (in the case of light, this would only be a change of direction). This means light is not "pulled" by gravity, only that its path can be curved by mass.

So I did some thought experimentation.

Suppose you have some photons traveling along a geodesic (which is curved, by a large nearby mass, according to some remote observer).

Suppose you have 2 mirrors at arbitrary positions along the path, which reflect the light back along the same geodesic.

Then the light will continue on that path indefinitely. It will not accelerate towards the gravitational mass.

However, I realized the same can be said about a ball or a planet: If it is bounced (perfectly with no energy loss, assume) off a mirror back from the direction it came, it will follow the same path it took to get to the mirror, even though it is being accelerated by gravity. Similarly, in a perfect orbit it will remain on the same path indefinitely. So this thought experiment says nothing about how light and matter are different when it comes to gravity.

Here now is my speculative explanation of how gravity works without treating anything as a "force":

Suppose again that you have photons traveling a single curved path near a gravitation mass, reflected between 2 mirrors.

Now say that at one of the mirrors, you shift the photons one unit of length toward the gravitational mass as it's being reflected.

It will follow a slightly different geodesic, one which seems "more curved" to a remote observer, because it is closer to the gravitational mass.

So when the photons reach the other mirror, they will be more than 1 unit away from the original geodesic.

Suppose at the second mirror you shift the photons one unit away from the gravitational mass, and then reflect them.

The photons will now follow a geodesic somewhere in between the previous 2 geodesics it had followed.

If you keep repeating this (shifting the photons 1 unit toward the mass at one mirror, and 1 unit away from the mass at the other mirror), then the photons will move toward the gravitational mass, even though no force has acted upon them -- other than the fact that something needs to shift them. But what if they were already shifting like that on their own?...

Now instead of mirrors and shifting photons, imagine energy oscillating say in a circular or spherical path.

This is how I imagine for example electrons around an atom.

I assume that all matter can be described as energy (according to e=mc²) -- I saw a posting somewhere here that says that's an incorrect way to view it... is it? --

and that all energy travels at the speed of light,

and also that all traveling energy follows the same geodesics that light does.

So if matter is made up of energy oscillating in at least 2 dimensions (one of which is roughly parallel to the direction toward the gravitational mass and one which is roughly perpendicular), then you have energy that is constantly moving in slightly different geodesics, which cause it to move toward the gravitational mass, and as it gains momentum the constant movement toward the mass results in gravitational acceleration.

Digression: Here is why I think that math is so fundamentally important.

As a crackpot I might say "This completely explains gravity" and end there. That's the extent of my understanding and that's as far as it will ever go.

But a vague idea that shows one mass will move toward another gravitational mass when treated as oscillating energy does not fully explain gravity. Gravity can be described with specific mathematical values, and if my theory can't match them, then my theory does not explain gravity.

But another reason that math is important, is that there are lots of different ways to do the math. If I model this oscillating energy idea, there are many variables to work with. Does the size of the oscillation only work with a specific value? Does that correspond to existing measurements of particles? Does it work if the oscillation is treated as completely random in 3 dimensions? Or uniform oscillation in 2 dimensions? Finding ways to make the math work can tell you a LOT about the details of the idea.

One day I might try to figure out the math involved with this idea. For now, I can't conceive of the math, and consequently I can't conceive of the possible related ideas that the math might suggest. Without math, all these ideas of how the oscillating energy might be more precisely described, are lost.

Back to the speculation...

This idea suggests that "size" is what lets a mass be accelerated in curved spacetime (IE accelerated by gravity).

So this suggests that a black hole singularity is not affected (accelerated) by gravity. Does this relate to any other existing theories that you know of?

I figured this means that singularities, like light, follow geodesics.

A black hole can still be "steered" by external mass, because that external mass can define the curvature of geodesics.

So I have this vague idea of 2 black holes on a collision course, would not so much "pull on each other", but rather curve space so that they end up headed straight for each other.

BUT WAIT, i says to myself...

If a black hole can travel along a geodesic, that means that there is a geodesic "pointed away from it."

If that's the case, then light could travel along that geodesic and escape the black hole.

This lead to the idea that black holes don't "move through space". Once you have a singularity, it is where it is. It could be treated as an absolute position in space, perhaps??? This doesn't really matter so much, because they can curve space around them, essentially devouring it or something, and 2 black holes can merge by shrinking the space between them to nothing.

It's like a fat man at a table, too big to lean over and reach for another helping of turduckpizpizburgon (bacon stuffed in a burger stuffed in a pizza stuffed in another pizza stuffed in a duck stuffed in a turkey and then double deep-fried to perfection), but he can bring the food to him by pulling on the table cloth.

I realize these ideas get confused and convoluted by the end. In the future I might try to explore this properly (with some math and maybe even some research of existing theory, who knows). Does anyone know of some related info or ideas or corrections? Thanks.

Yes people can still make MASSIVE discoveries alone, and come up with very analytical and complex understandings of what ever it is they're working on.

Also, some people don't tell their peers everything because people like to steal idea.

I agree. Another aspect is that often when individuals share their ideas with others, they feel that others don't "get" their ideas. Individuals outside of the mainstream are often unable to express their ideas clearly and understandably. Ideally an individual would work with others to educate their self on how to express the idea scientifically, while also sharing smaller parts of their idea to get help validating or developing the theory (rather than trying to convince others that the entire thing is correct). Instead what happens is the individual feels that their idea is more important than learning about existing stuff, so they focus on it while avoiding learning how it's been done before, AND they feel ostracized by those they shared their ideas with. So they want to work in isolation until they can present their idea in a way that will convincingly prove to others that they're right.

That has been my experience as a crackpot, at least.

Not all new and good ideas require difficult math or a thorough understanding of a field, but such ideas are probably exceedingly rare. There is a natural tendency, when working on a new idea, to assume that it's never been thought of and that it's immensely important. So crackpots "appear to regard themselves as persons of unique historical importance". I think it's the same type of belief that a very rare situation applies to oneself, that many lottery players feel.

I'm starting to feel like Galileo, and this place is the catholic church.

Out of curiosity, have you calculated your crackpot index? http://math.ucr.edu/...z/crackpot.html

"35. 40 points for comparing yourself to Galileo, suggesting that a modern-day Inquisition is hard at work on your case, and so on."

Not that the index is authoritative, or that a high score means anything, but that's a lot of points you racked up right there!

Sometimes crackpots are right. I find it valuable to try to avoid typical crackpot "mistakes" and other quirks that make it easier for others to not take you seriously. Historically, if the church would execute you for your ideas, you work on them in secret... which nowadays means hiding crackpot behavior.

Since space is infinitely divisible, we can repeat these 'requirements' forever.

"Forever" is entirely misleading, because it suggests a span of time, when the sum of time it takes to meet the infinite "requirements" is finite.

It would be like saying that it would take an infinite amount of time to describe this part of the problem, when really you described it in a single sentence.

But that's just semantics. The real answer to your question is...

Thus the runner has to reach an infinite number of 'midpoints' in a finite time. This is impossible,

That's where the argument breaks down. Of course it's possible. There's not even a justification for why it might be considered impossible. With any movement, no matter how small, you would pass through an infinite number of "midpoints". This is related to the concept of there being no smallest positive non-zero number. Any real number can be divided into smaller numbers, just as (as you assumed) any distance can be divided into smaller distances with midpoints.

The argument would be similar to saying "Any number is infinitely large," -- which is obviously not true -- "because it can be divided into an infinite number of smaller numbers" -- which is true.