Any thoughts on non-locality?

[Aristarchus in Exile]

I figure non-local cellphone calls will be a reality if our present technological civilization lasts another 20 years .. no more towers, just from cellphone to cellphone.

[Schrödinger's hat]

This would be possible with current technology. Wireless devices can act as routers and the signal can hop from device to device.

There are issues though, reliability is one; you there has to be a chain of people with spare bandwidth who are in range. Another is transmitting sensitive information. You'd need at least one known/trusted source to get certificates from.

 

If you're talking about a direct link, there are some physical limits to worry about. There's only so much data you can transfer with a given signal/noise ratio and at a given bandwidth. This results in different transmitters operating on different frequencies.

It's all the type of thing that is much more easily managed by a centralised system.

On top of this. As we make advances people get used to having more and more data throughput. Allowing a centralised system (and doing your long range transfer with fibre, thus allowing you to do spatial multiplexing on your wireless) is always going to be one less constraint on the resources available, so higher bandwidth will be provided by the towers. People will be unwilling to go back to 1990s limits on call quality, or even today's limits on bandwidth if there is the option for having more.

 

And this isn't even taking into account the social issues. We'd have to restructure the way we regulate at least part of the electromagnetic spectrum (maybe the ham bands would be sufficient, but the ham radio folks might not be happy), all the while going against large groups with a lot of lobbying power who have a vested interest in no such system being implemented.

[Aristarchus in Exile]

This would be possible with current technology. Wireless devices can act as routers and the signal can hop from device to device.

There are issues though, reliability is one; you there has to be a chain of people with spare bandwidth who are in range. Another is transmitting sensitive information. You'd need at least one known/trusted source to get certificates from.

 

If you're talking about a direct link, there are some physical limits to worry about. There's only so much data you can transfer with a given signal/noise ratio and at a given bandwidth. This results in different transmitters operating on different frequencies.

It's all the type of thing that is much more easily managed by a centralised system.

On top of this. As we make advances people get used to having more and more data throughput. Allowing a centralised system (and doing your long range transfer with fibre, thus allowing you to do spatial multiplexing on your wireless) is always going to be one less constraint on the resources available, so higher bandwidth will be provided by the towers. People will be unwilling to go back to 1990s limits on call quality, or even today's limits on bandwidth if there is the option for having more.

 

And this isn't even taking into account the social issues. We'd have to restructure the way we regulate at least part of the electromagnetic spectrum (maybe the ham bands would be sufficient, but the ham radio folks might not be happy), all the while going against large groups with a lot of lobbying power who have a vested interest in no such system being implemented.

 

There is no electromagnetic spectrum in non-locality. I phrased my entry poorly. Wikipedia has an entry for nonlocality, which is also understood as action at a distance "action at a distance is the interaction of two objects which are separated in space with no known mediator of the interaction." Non locality says an action here is repeated or has effect instantly as far away as on the other side of the universe.

[Appolinaria]

Isn't nonlocality something we've just observed in SOME particles? We don't understand it yet... so I don't think we can harness it to use with cellphones.

[Aristarchus in Exile]

Isn't nonlocality something we've just observed in SOME particles? We don't understand it yet... so I don't think we can harness it to use with cellphones.

 

Right, we can't harness its use in cellphones right now, but I said I think it will be done in 20 years (if our technological civilization lasts that long.) I've just read a little pamphlet Korea put out about their advances in technology .. the amount of research going on in that one country is simply astounding, and that kind of research is being done by all major nations and corporations.

[owl]

Isn't nonlocality something we've just observed in SOME particles? We don't understand it yet... so I don't think we can harness it to use with cellphones.

Isn't gravity a universal case of non-locality or action at a distance since we don't know how the force of mass attracting mass works?

[IM Egdall]

Isn't gravity a universal case of non-locality or action at a distance since we don't know how the force of mass attracting mass works?

 

I don't think gravity has anything to do with non-locality, per se. This action at a distance of gravity is an issue with Newton's theory of gravity. But Einstein resolved it in his theory of general relativity.

 

The Sun, for example. causes space and time (spacetime) outside the Sun to curve (warp or change). The key is this so-called curvature of spacetime has energy. And this energy in turn curves spacetime a little further out. And so on, so that spacetime curvature spreads out from one local region to another till it reaches the Earth. This now diluted spacetime curvature holds the Earth in its orbit about the Sun.

 

So Einstein's general relativity says gravity is spacetime curvature and is not action at a distance. (REF: John Archibald Wheeler, A Journey into Gravity and Spacetime, p. 12)

[Aristarchus in Exile]

Owl .. on another science forum a somewhat educated particpant stated gravity is infinite in its effect, resulting in gravity from one 'side' of the universe affecting matter on the other 'side' of the universe. I can't see how his idea is fact if gravity is curvature of space unless the curvatures are like waves which blow across the ocean, and of course gravitational waves are said to exist. Waves in oceans can cancel each other out or build each other higher, the same, I understand, in accoustics and possibly light. I don't believe in spacetime, believing space and time to be seperate although woven together, allowing for 'tears' or gaps in either space or time.

 

 

 

Edited October 18, 2011 by Aristarchus in Exile

[owl]

IM Egdall:

 

The Sun, for example. causes space and time (spacetime) outside the Sun to curve (warp or change).

 

Ontologically the question remains, "What curves?" Giving some mystery medium a name and attributing malleability to "it" does not make it an existing entity or anything more than a concept upon which a non-Euclidean coordinate system is built. Neither does it explain how mass attracts mass "at a distance."

 

There is a lot of controversy over the ontology of spacetime, including two volumes of it edited by Deiks from years of papers presented at conventions of the International Society for the Advanced Study of Spacetime .

 

Aristarchus in Exile:

...if gravity is curvature of space...

"If"...

If space is simply the volume in which all things exist, then what kind of entity is it supposed to be that it has become a malleable medium?

If gravity has been constant among all masses through all time, then it simply becomes weaker with more distance between masses, as per the old "universal law of gravitation."

 

From my last post in my "Spacetime Ontology" thread in the Philosophy section... very relevant here:

 

...Here is a riddle based on GR's claim that gravity curves "spacetime." (Background: based on non-Euclidean geometry/cosmology and Minkowski's and Einstein's formulation of 4-D "spacetime.)

 

Do the planets have circular-ish/elliptical orbits around the Sun or do they travel in straight lines through curved "spacetime?" If the latter, describe the posited curved medium, spacetime and explain why the orbits of the planets themselves appear to be curved.

[swansont]

IM Egdall:

 

 

 

Ontologically the question remains, "What curves?" Giving some mystery medium a name and attributing malleability to "it" does not make it an existing entity or anything more than a concept upon which a non-Euclidean coordinate system is built. Neither does it explain how mass attracts mass "at a distance."

 

There is a lot of controversy over the ontology of spacetime, including two volumes of it edited by Deiks from years of papers presented at conventions of the International Society for the Advanced Study of Spacetime .

 

Aristarchus in Exile:

 

"If"...

If space is simply the volume in which all things exist, then what kind of entity is it supposed to be that it has become a malleable medium?

If gravity has been constant among all masses through all time, then it simply becomes weaker with more distance between masses, as per the old "universal law of gravitation."

 

From my last post in my "Spacetime Ontology" thread in the Philosophy section... very relevant here:

 

!

Moderator Note

This is not the place to discuss your objections to/misunderstanding of relativity. You have an existing thread or two for that.

[IM Egdall]

To OWL: You ask what curves in spacetime curvature. The word curvature is a mathematical term. I believe in this context it means warp or change. Per general relativity, time and space are warped or changed in the presence of mass/energy.

 

For example, a clock runs slower the closer it is to an object. (Here on Earth, a clock at lower altitude runs a tiny bit slower than a clock at higher altitude.) This is time warp.

 

And the distance between two points is stetched in the presence of an object. (Imagine two points separated in space, one above the other. Now place the Earth just below these two points. The distance between the points as seen from far away are now a tiny bit longer.) This is space warp.

 

This time and space warp has been verified in a number of solar eclipse experiments, where starlight grazing the Sun is bent by the Sun's mass/energy. General relativty predicts 0.875 acrseconds of bending due to time warp and another 0.875 arcseconds due to space warp -- for a total bending of 1.75 arcseconds. In 1975, physicists got a value of 1.75+- 0.019 arc seconds. (REF: K. R. Lang, Astrophysical Formulae, Vol. 1, p. 159.)

 

So spacetime curvature is not a philisophical term, it the real warping or changing of space and time in the presence of mass/energy.

Edited October 21, 2011 by IM Egdall

[Aristarchus in Exile]

To OWL: You ask what curves in spacetime curvature. The word curvature is a mathematical term. I believe in this context it means warp or change. Per general relativity, time and space are warped or changed in the presence of mass/energy.

 

For example, a clock runs slower the closer it is to an object. (Here on Earth, a clock at lower altitude runs a tiny bit slower than a clock at higher altitude.) This is time warp.

 

And the distance between two points is stetched in the presence of an object. (Imagine two points separated in space, one above the other. Now place the Earth just below these two points. The distance between the points as seen from far away are now a tiny bit longer.) This is space warp.

 

This time and space warp has been verified in a number of solar eclipse experiments, where starlight grazing the Sun is bent by the Sun's mass/energy. General relativty predicts 0.875 acrseconds of bending due to time warp and another 0.875 arcseconds due to space warp -- for a total bending of 1.75 arcseconds. In 1975, physicists got a value of 1.75+- 0.019 arc seconds. (REF: K. R. Lang, Astrophysical Formulae, Vol. 1, p. 159.)

 

So spacetime curvature is not a philisophical term, it the real warping or changing of space and time in the presence of mass/energy.

 

If time can be warped, time travel seems even more possible. I used to think maybe time was actually created by the spinning mass of galaxies. It still seems possible, even more so if time is actually plank length bits as loop quantum gravity predicts.

Edited October 21, 2011 by Aristarchus in Exile

[owl]

To OWL: You ask what curves in spacetime curvature. The word curvature is a mathematical term. I believe in this context it means warp or change. Per general relativity, time and space are warped or changed in the presence of mass/energy.

 

I’d better answer you in my “Ontology of Spacetime” thread in the Philosophy section. I don’t mean to “hijack” this thread to promote my criticism of the use of “spacetime” in relativity.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

There is no electromagnetic spectrum in non-locality. I phrased my entry poorly. Wikipedia has an entry for nonlocality, which is also understood as action at a distance "action at a distance is the interaction of two objects which are separated in space with no known mediator of the interaction." Non locality says an action here is repeated or has effect instantly as far away as on the other side of the universe.

I'm a little late to the party, but it's worth noting: nonlocality does not work "instantly" across the entire universe. Forces previously believed to be instantaneously nonlocal, like gravity and electromagnetism, have been shown to propagate at the speed of light. There is currently no evidence to suggest it's possible to transmit information across the universe faster than light.

[Aristarchus in Exile]

I'm a little late to the party, but it's worth noting: nonlocality does not work "instantly" across the entire universe. Forces previously believed to be instantaneously nonlocal, like gravity and electromagnetism, have been shown to propagate at the speed of light. There is currently no evidence to suggest it's possible to transmit information across the universe faster than light.

 

Yes there is evidence .. a European experiment seperated by tens of miles two cloned particles and stimulated one which instantly stimulated the other identically.

 

I don't remember having read in literature published in the past century or this that gravity and electromagnetism were thought to be non-local instantaneous actions.

 

It is refreshing, Refsmmat, that you say "There is currently no evidence to suggest it's possible to transmit information across the universe faster than light." Your statement allows for evidence to be gathered in the future, which is a change from normal dogmatic postings on normal science forums, those normal postings saying "It is impossible for information to travel faster than light."

[DrRocket]

I'm a little late to the party, but it's worth noting: nonlocality does not work "instantly" across the entire universe. Forces previously believed to be instantaneously nonlocal, like gravity and electromagnetism, have been shown to propagate at the speed of light. There is currently no evidence to suggest it's possible to transmit information across the universe faster than light.

 

There are apparently non-local phenomena in quantum mechanics that result in "instantaneous" effects -- this is the issue of entanglement.

 

However, these effects do not permit the instantaneous transmission of an information-bearing signal. To do so would create issues of causality violation within the context of special relativity.

 

IF the current issue with superluminal neutrinos happens to be resolved in favor of superluminal speed for such particles, then the very logical foundations of relativity will have been violated, the basis for superluminal signal transmission violating causality is invalidated, and all bets are off.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Yes there is evidence .. a European experiment seperated by tens of miles two cloned particles and stimulated one which instantly stimulated the other identically.

Are you referring to quantum entanglement experiments? Entanglement involves measuring the properties of two particles. One cannot manipulate one particle and see the changes reflected in the other particle, and so instantaneous transmission of information is impossible.

 

With the disclaimer DrRocket makes: if it turns out that the OPERA experiment does indeed violate relativity, then superluminal information transfer may be possible.

 

I don't remember having read in literature published in the past century or this that gravity and electromagnetism were thought to be non-local instantaneous actions.

The original Newtonian version of gravity was instantaneous, and the early forms of electromagnetism were as well. You're right that most "modern" physics is not instantaneous, however.

[Aristarchus in Exile]

One cannot manipulate one particle and see the changes reflected in the other particle, and so instantaneous transmission of information is impossible.

 

 

 

I don't want to put words in your mouth, but a better phrasing of your sentence would be "... and so instantaneous transmission of information SEEMS impossible." I've admitted in this forum and in others that I'm short on what is considered concrete knowledge, but I have managed to hang onto my certainty that all things are possible in the realm of physics.

[katesisco]

I am thinking this non locality is going to be accessible for viewing now. This 'now' is due to the compression we here on Earth are currently (and very temporarily) experiencing. The heliosphere has been 'compressed' due to the neutrino bombardment heating body cores and gases, and since we are enwrapped by Fluff, Fluff also is creating its own energy squeeze which is compacting the heliosphere down to perhaps Earth or Venus. This compression of heliosphereic gases in the condensed version is responsible for the vast number of 'unexplained' experimental outcomes in research.

I now state that non locality is going to be seen in real time. I suspect that the center of the Milky Way and other galaxies are focusing energy and this energy will be transmitted through the shape of Tinjing, not the Mobius strip shape proposed for the supercooled ribbon at the center of the MW. The key is the off center enrgy eye. Astronomers are aware of this potential and are viewing active gamma ray sites and indeed are finding the expected energy eye forming and again it is off centered. The Terzan 5 gamma ray source is an excellent canidate as it is a globular cluster in the MW galaxy and never before exhibited the unusual gamma ray.

 

As soon as the MW capacitor overloads with the neutrino energy stored in heated gases and body cores, the decompression event we will experience in real time here on Earth will mark the non locality event. Much info is to be gained but preferably in the description of plasma and not the false trail of relativity/gravity. Science is aware of these eye potentials regardless of what and how they are disemminated as in the pr releases.

[Aristarchus in Exile]

I'd better answer you in my "Ontology of Spacetime" thread in the Philosophy section. I don't mean to "hijack" this thread to promote my criticism of the use of "spacetime" in relativity.

 

I think the moderator's objection was misplaced and heavy handed, especialkly as this is the ||Speculation form .. must be the iron he's packing.

 

I am thinking this non locality is going to be accessible for viewing now. This 'now' is due to the compression we here on Earth are currently (and very temporarily) experiencing. The heliosphere has been 'compressed' due to the neutrino bombardment heating body cores and gases, and since we are enwrapped by Fluff, Fluff also is creating its own energy squeeze which is compacting the heliosphere down to perhaps Earth or Venus. This compression of heliosphereic gases in the condensed version is responsible for the vast number of 'unexplained' experimental outcomes in research.

I now state that non locality is going to be seen in real time. I suspect that the center of the Milky Way and other galaxies are focusing energy and this energy will be transmitted through the shape of Tinjing, not the Mobius strip shape proposed for the supercooled ribbon at the center of the MW. The key is the off center enrgy eye. Astronomers are aware of this potential and are viewing active gamma ray sites and indeed are finding the expected energy eye forming and again it is off centered. The Terzan 5 gamma ray source is an excellent canidate as it is a globular cluster in the MW galaxy and never before exhibited the unusual gamma ray.

 

As soon as the MW capacitor overloads with the neutrino energy stored in heated gases and body cores, the decompression event we will experience in real time here on Earth will mark the non locality event. Much info is to be gained but preferably in the description of plasma and not the false trail of relativity/gravity. Science is aware of these eye potentials regardless of what and how they are disemminated as in the pr releases.

 

Could you provide some urls to help us understand what you're talking about?

Edited October 23, 2011 by Aristarchus in Exile

[owl]

Can we not say that, until there is an explanation for how the force of gravity works, it is an example of "action at a distance?"

 

Whether or not it is universal, all masses mutually attracting all masses ( with force directly with massiveness and inversely with the square of distance between masses) and at what speed of propagation (lightspeed, it appears) are questions secondary to the thread topic question.