# Alternative Interpretation (split from What is Space made of?)

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In trying to figure out what space is made of, there is this interesting clue.  The speed of light c shows up in special relativity equations, the Einstein equations, DeBroglie wavelength and the basic wave equation c = lambda*f.  One might infer the existence of a mechanism that has the speed of light built into, in such a way, that it leads to modern physics equations and spacetime geometry.

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deBroglie wavelength is h/p, and waves follow v=lambda*f; it’s just that the waves are traveling at c.

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17 hours ago, POVphysics said:

One might infer the existence of a mechanism that has the speed of light built into, in such a way, that it leads to modern physics equations and spacetime geometry.

It’s not a mechanism, but a fundamental symmetry - the invariance of the spacetime interval.

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30 minutes ago, Markus Hanke said:

It’s not a mechanism, but a fundamental symmetry - the invariance of the spacetime interval.

I actually have an interpretation of the underlying structures that cause physics to work, but tonight I'm tired and won't get around to explaining it until maybe this weekend.  Perhaps I don't have enough appreciation for "fundamental symmetries" because I haven't encountered them that often in empirical physics.  But I do have a very deep appreciation of the fundamental physics constants.  Since no mechanism has been put forward to explain why they are what they are, then I just assume the physics constants are built into the "carriers of physics".  And obviously if a carrier carries the speed of light c, then it has to behave accordingly and do "something" at the speed of light that is related to the progression of time and existence of distance.

The only point I was trying to make was that, whatever mechanism has the speed of light built into it, it facilitates physics in both modern physics and general relativity.

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4 hours ago, POVphysics said:

I actually have an interpretation of the underlying structures that cause physics to work, but tonight I'm tired and won't get around to explaining it until maybe this weekend.  Perhaps I don't have enough appreciation for "fundamental symmetries" because I haven't encountered them that often in empirical physics.  But I do have a very deep appreciation of the fundamental physics constants.  Since no mechanism has been put forward to explain why they are what they are, then I just assume the physics constants are built into the "carriers of physics".  And obviously if a carrier carries the speed of light c, then it has to behave accordingly and do "something" at the speed of light that is related to the progression of time and existence of distance.

The only point I was trying to make was that, whatever mechanism has the speed of light built into it, it facilitates physics in both modern physics and general relativity.

Such a view was studied by mid 19th century scientists, in particular Stokes, searching for an aether.

After Maxwell the relationship

$c = \frac{1}{{\sqrt {{\varepsilon _0}{\mu _0}} }}$

was found.

We have a more sophisticated view today.

Also, of course, the aether was never considered as 'space' itself, but something that pervaded all space.

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18 minutes ago, studiot said:

Such a view was studied by mid 19th century scientists, in particular Stokes, searching for an aether.

After Maxwell the relationship

c=1ε0μ0

was found.

We have a more sophisticated view today.

Also, of course, the aether was never considered as 'space' itself, but something that pervaded all space.

I do not favor superstrings or quantum loops as a good model to describe what spacetime is made of.  What I prefer is to take a parsimonious view, the minimalist way to achieve the laws of physics by using properties from quantum mechanics, SR/GR and big bang cosmology.  I also prefer an experiment that looks at quantum entanglement in a new way.

The luminferous aether would be replaced with a mechanism that "broadcasts" the physics constants from every EVENT (spacetime interval definition of EVENT).  When I look at the derivation of special relativity and the spacetime interval, I see these carriers of the physics constants.  I am interpreting "virtual particles" a little differently.  The way I interpret these things, it's like assembling a puzzle in a way that looks like empirical physics.  I also resolve the "spooky action at a distance" conundrum with an interpretation of what quantum operators really are.  I will also make an argument that the holographic principle is not so different from the image created by an old fashioned projector reel.

I'm going to make several very logical assumptions, enough to explain these physics carriers; what I get out of this approach will explain a lot of things that we don't understand now, and will result in an experiment that leads to all the fun technology we watched on Star Trek... except transporters;  you'll just have to get used to a controlled drop from orbit to the surface using a tractor beam.

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21 minutes ago, POVphysics said:

What I prefer is to take a parsimonious view, the minimalist way to achieve the laws of physics by using properties from quantum mechanics, SR/GR and big bang cosmology.

Half arse it, is what you prefer; parsimoniously...

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1 minute ago, dimreepr said:

Half arse it, is what you prefer; parsimoniously...

By parsimonious, I mean stingy.  https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/parsimony

The pieces have to fit in the most minimalist way.  Properties have to explain experimental observations without creating impossible to test situations like the many world interpretations or wait 10^100 years for a black hole to evaporate or a proton to decay.  If I'm right, this physics leads to experiments that can be tested right away.

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38 minutes ago, POVphysics said:

I do not favor superstrings or quantum loops as a good model to describe what spacetime is made of.  What I prefer is to take a parsimonious view, the minimalist way to achieve the laws of physics by using properties from quantum mechanics, SR/GR and big bang cosmology.  I also prefer an experiment that looks at quantum entanglement in a new way.

The luminferous aether would be replaced with a mechanism that "broadcasts" the physics constants from every EVENT (spacetime interval definition of EVENT).  When I look at the derivation of special relativity and the spacetime interval, I see these carriers of the physics constants.  I am interpreting "virtual particles" a little differently.  The way I interpret these things, it's like assembling a puzzle in a way that looks like empirical physics.  I also resolve the "spooky action at a distance" conundrum with an interpretation of what quantum operators really are.  I will also make an argument that the holographic principle is not so different from the image created by an old fashioned projector reel.

I'm going to make several very logical assumptions, enough to explain these physics carriers; what I get out of this approach will explain a lot of things that we don't understand now, and will result in an experiment that leads to all the fun technology we watched on Star Trek... except transporters;  you'll just have to get used to a controlled drop from orbit to the surface using a tractor beam.

I really have not the time for those who respond to a genuine offer of some mutually informative discussion by preaching back at them a whole load of nonsense.

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2 minutes ago, studiot said:

I really have not the time for those who respond to a genuine offer of some mutually informative discussion by preaching back at them a whole load of nonsense.

I'm not preaching.  I am telling what the simplest of assumptions can lead to.  You can only blame me for being excited about my approach.  Please try to be open minded.

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2 minutes ago, POVphysics said:

By parsimonious, I mean stingy.

I'm not sure you know what you mean...

For instance, Occam's razor is not your simplest explanation... 😉

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17 hours ago, POVphysics said:

The pieces have to fit in the most minimalist way.

Why? There is no principle of nature that requires the laws of physics to be ‘simple’ or ‘minimalistic’ (though many of them are) - whatever those terms actually mean in this context. They do, however, need to be internally self-consistent, and of course produce the correct results.

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27 minutes ago, Markus Hanke said:

Why? There is no principle of nature that requires the laws of physics to be ‘simple’ or ‘minimalistic’ (though many of them are) - whatever those terms actually mean in this context. They do, however, need to be internally self-consistent, and of course produce the correct results

Well, the way I look at what spacetime is made of, the more a graviton that does everything, comes to mind.  In that sense, it's parsimonious because the graviton is responsible for everything in physics.  It's just the details of the graviton that are important to discover. But, it also means that a single graviton has QM/GR/SR everything else, built into it, then it's parsimonious (one additional particle), but very detailed and complicated.  The important thing is that such an expanding graviton is everything you ever need to consider if you want to discover new experiments and technology.  And we all day dream alot about new technology.

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23 hours ago, POVphysics said:

In that sense, it's parsimonious because the graviton is responsible for everything in physics.

No it isn’t. The strong, weak, and EM interactions are distinct phenomena and not mediated by gravitons.

23 hours ago, POVphysics said:

but very detailed and complicated

Actually, a QFT for a spin-2 massless graviton (such as would be required to obtain GR in the classical limit) is straightforward enough to write down. The problem is that the result is physically meaningless, since it can’t be renormalised. So this evidently isn’t the right way to go, because it doesn’t work.

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16 minutes ago, Markus Hanke said:

Actually, a QFT for a spin-2 massless graviton (such as would be required to obtain GR in the classical limit) is straightforward enough to write down. The problem is that the result is physically meaningless, since it can’t be renormalised. So this evidently isn’t the right way to go, because it doesn’t work.

I want to acknowledge that calculations and stable equations that don't blow up are important to physicists.  But performing calculations are not the only way to do physics.  I'm talking about a way to disturb the quantum states for momentum and position, in a local way, in a low energy way that doesn't rely upon the stress-energy tensor.  The idea I have in mind is a NON-EQUILIBRIUM event.  I agree with you that it's too hard to do the calculations of a graviton field because the scientific community doesn't have a good handle on what a graviton really is.

It would be much easier to assume, for the purposes of preparing an experiment, that Expanding Gravitons have quantum states built into them, and that gravitons are quantum entanglements, and we can capture gravitons with quantum entangled photons, because the "thing" between the entangled photons IS a graviton.

It's easy to create a quantum entanglement field.  It's significantly harder to charge it with gravitational potential energy, but with dedication...

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2 hours ago, POVphysics said:

But performing calculations are not the only way to do physics.

Yes this is true some physical science cannot be done mathematically, and we had a really good example of this in homework help just recently.

Using such (rational) processes are also used to develop hypotheses which are later discarded if they are later found to be at odds with a mathematical one when such these become available.

Both rationally proposed hypothesis and mathematical methods have to pass a further test, that of conformity with observation or they may still be discarded until further work is performed.

Markus is offering lots of good, cogent thoughts and advice here. +1

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9 minutes ago, studiot said:

Yes this is true some physical science cannot be done mathematically, and we had a really good example of this in homework help just recently.

Using such (rational) processes are also used to develop hypotheses which are later discarded if they are later found to be at odds with a mathematical one when such these become available.

Both rationally proposed hypothesis and mathematical methods have to pass a further test, that of conformity with observation or they may still be discarded until further work is performed.

Markus is offering lots of good, cogent thoughts and advice here. +1

It's one of those situations where, if I had the expertise to do the experiment myself, I would.  The mathematics is not the appropriate tool to use in this situation.  It's more of a situation where the definition of gravitons is incomplete.  In order for quantum gravity to be discovered, it's necessary to figure out what quantum mechanics and gravity have in common.  There are also situations where parts of physics are not being talked about, namely, the physics constants.  Natural units is equivalent to sweeping them under the rug.  While proponents of Intelligent Design use physics constants to support their position, it simultaneously scares away atheists, which is the dominant ideology of the physics community.  For reasons that I can explain later, I decided that there need to be carriers of the physics constants; and those carriers would be gravitons.  And if I'm wrong, it won't effect anything.  But the physics community has this idea that gravitons are just like other particles - points moving around; but if they were, we wouldn't need them.  There are reasons to believe that a graviton should be an expanding sphere of radius r = ct, like it's exploding outward.  When I made that assumption, then suddenly I could explain what spacetime really is, I could explain lots and lots of things in physics.

But I wanted to know that I was right, on the right track.  If I couldn't do superstring theory mathematics, then I would have to trump it's mathematics with an experiment.  Since quantum entanglements are the only thing in physics that is experimentally readily available, and also "spooky action at a distance" I mean, someone would have to be brain dead not to wonder if there is more to a quantum entanglement than just "correlation".

I mean, shucks!  The idea that a quantum entanglement field could exist is just impossible because nothing else in nature behaves like a field!

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On 11/29/2020 at 8:16 AM, POVphysics said:

I agree with you that it's too hard to do the calculations of a graviton field because the scientific community doesn't have a good handle on what a graviton really is.

It’s the other way around, actually - we know perfectly well what the properties and dynamics of gravitons need to be in order to be consistent with gravity as we observe it; but if you write all this down, you will find that the mathematics simply don’t work out. That’s why ‘gravitons’ are a dubious concept - more than that, there are good reasons to believe that this is simply not the right way to quantise gravity.

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26 minutes ago, Markus Hanke said:

It’s the other way around, actually - we know perfectly well what the properties and dynamics of gravitons need to be in order to be consistent with gravity as we observe it; but if you write all this down, you will find that the mathematics simply don’t work out. That’s why ‘gravitons’ are a dubious concept - more than that, there are good reasons to believe that this is simply not the right way to quantise gravity.

You're more familiar with the mathematics of gravitons than I am.  If you say it doesn't work, I believe you.  But the difference between the gravitons that you are using in your calculation and the expanding graviton that I am proposing, is that my gravitons expand, just like the whole universe did at the big bang.

Do you remember how the Michelson-Morley experiment convinced the whole physics community that no spacetime medium is possible?  Well, I am proposing a medium that has the derivation of time dilation built into it.  Instead of spacetime being made of a single object that expands from a point, there were 10^100 gravitons all expanding at the speed of light.

You don't have to believe what I say.  You only have to look at the physics itself.  I got the idea from the big bang, causality traveling outwards at the speed of light from an event, time dilation derivation, line cone, two slit experiment.

Edited by POVphysics
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56 minutes ago, POVphysics said:

But the difference between the gravitons that you are using in your calculation and the expanding graviton that I am proposing, is that my gravitons expand, just like the whole universe did at the big bang.

Elementary particles do not expand, since they have no volume.

1 hour ago, POVphysics said:

You only have to look at the physics itself.

Well, that’s the problem - the physics aren’t compatible with what you state.

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4 minutes ago, Markus Hanke said:

Well, that’s the problem - the physics aren’t compatible with what you state.

Did you see the picture I posted of the 2 slit diffraction pattern?

31 minutes ago, Markus Hanke said:
1 hour ago, POVphysics said:

Gravitons are  the carriers of gravity; since gravity is caused by curvature of spacetime, I simply drew the conclusion that gravitons have volume.

That conclusion does not follow, and even the premise is somewhat faulty - gravitons, were they real, would only mediate changes in the gravitational field. Setting String Theory and other unproven conjectures aside for now, no elementary particle has any kind of volume; they behave as point-like objects.

It is appropriate to set string theory aside because it is not empirically based.

When you say that particles don't have volume, what do you call this?

Maybe you don't see it, so I'll tell you what I see.  From every point along the distance "a" there is a wavefront that starts from a point.  All these wave fronts undergo interference patterns.  Here is another picture with interference patterns.

What is special about the 2 slit experiment is that individual photons land on the screen as if they were waves.  I am arguing that gravitons are those waves that behave like spacetime geometry because they are spacetime geometry.  Do you notice the geometry of distance D, theta and y?

•
36 minutes ago, Markus Hanke said:
1 hour ago, POVphysics said:

You said there was a problem with spin-2 bosons not being able to fill all space; can you please help me understand what the problem is?

They would be point-like objects, just as all other elementary particles - these entities do not possess a property such a ‘volume’.

Markus, I have to ask you:  do wave functions have volume?

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On 11/27/2020 at 2:22 PM, POVphysics said:

I do not favor superstrings or quantum loops as a good model to describe what spacetime is made of.  What I prefer is to take a parsimonious view, the minimalist way to achieve the laws of physics by using properties from quantum mechanics, SR/GR and big bang cosmology.  I also prefer an experiment that looks at quantum entanglement in a new way.

The luminferous aether would be replaced with a mechanism that "broadcasts" the physics constants from every EVENT (spacetime interval definition of EVENT).  When I look at the derivation of special relativity and the spacetime interval, I see these carriers of the physics constants.  I am interpreting "virtual particles" a little differently.  The way I interpret these things, it's like assembling a puzzle in a way that looks like empirical physics.  I also resolve the "spooky action at a distance" conundrum with an interpretation of what quantum operators really are.  I will also make an argument that the holographic principle is not so different from the image created by an old fashioned projector reel.

I'm going to make several very logical assumptions, enough to explain these physics carriers; what I get out of this approach will explain a lot of things that we don't understand now, and will result in an experiment that leads to all the fun technology we watched on Star Trek... except transporters;  you'll just have to get used to a controlled drop from orbit to the surface using a tractor beam.

There's no need to explain the carriers, because universal constants don't have to be broadcast. Otherwise, there would be particles/fields out there not fully "aware" that the speed of light is $$c$$ or the charge of the electron is $$e$$, or Newton's constant is $$G$$, using their own local value; and we would be able to tell on account of phenomena at the interfaces where this information hasn't been updated yet.

As Markus said, it's not a mechanism; it's a symmetry. And it's hardwired in every piece of physics that we know of.

Think of fundamental constants, not as really constants, but as different funny ways of writing the number 1. That's what they are. It's our human yardstick that makes them look funny.

56 minutes ago, POVphysics said:

Markus, I have to ask you:  do wave functions have volume?

Bound states of elementary particles can be said to have volume because they have parameters with dimensions of length with a meaning related to spatial extension. Really elementary particles, like quarks and leptons, don't really have a volume. They do have characteristic length parameters. For example, the Compton wavelength of the electron is,

$\frac{\hbar}{m_{e}c}$

This doesn't mean the electron has a volume. It simply means that if you want to look at the electron at a scale the order of its Compton wavelength (or smaller), your electron no longer looks like a one-particle state, but a many-particle state. You start seeing a cloudy thing made up of many virtual particles.

Edited by joigus
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11 minutes ago, joigus said:

There's no need to explain the carriers, because universal constants don't have to be broadcast. Otherwise, there would be particles/fields out there not fully "aware" that the speed of light is c or the charge of the electron is e , or Newton's constant is G , using their own local value; and we would be able to tell on account of phenomena at the interfaces where this information hasn't been updated yet.

As Markus said, it's not a mechanism; it's a symmetry. And it's hardwired in every piece of physics that we know of.

Think of fundamental constants, not as really constants, but as different funny ways of writing the number 1. That's what they are. It's our human yardstick that makes them look funny.

Each graviton broadcasts the speed of light and other physics constants, continuously.  That's why their values don't drift over time.

I don't know if you looked at the pictures of the double slit experiment waves.  That was another clue that lead me to believe that spacetime is broadcast, from a point, by expanding gravitons.

Why do we have to write 1 for the physics constants?  That's exactly the same as sweeping them under the rug.  Are physicists afraid of the physics constants?  I hope not.  Because I really want humanity to get past these obstacles so that we can contemplate interstellar travel and also meet other races from other worlds that have overcome these challenges.

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1 hour ago, POVphysics said:

Markus, I have to ask you:  do wave functions have volume?

Well the short answer is yes and no.

I assume you are asking about quantum wave functions and not particles?  ?

Like all wave functions they have variable physical units depending upon whether we are considering one two or three dimensions.

In which cases the 'dimensions' are

$\sqrt {\frac{1}{L}}$  ;     $\sqrt {\frac{1}{{{L^2}}}}$  ;  $\sqrt {\frac{1}{{{L^3}}}}$

respectively.

These can be related to a dimension called V alone, but conventionally we use length as shown.

Edited by studiot
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2 minutes ago, studiot said:

Well the short answer is yes and no.

I assume you are asking about quantum wave functions and not particles?  ?

Like all wave functions they have variable physical units depending upon whether we are considering one two or three dimensions.

In which cases the 'dimensions' are

1L   ;     1L2   ;  1L3

respectively.

These can be related to a dimension called V alone, but conventionally we use length as shown.

Correct.  Quantum waves have volumes.  I've already defined gravitons as the objects that have quantum states built into them; that is to say, gravitons are wave functions.  Therefore, when gravitons expand from a point, they collide with particles and become part of the quantum system.  So, an expanding graviton is a wave function; it belongs in the standard model, even if it doesn't remain a point particle.

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