this is my pseudo-scientific hypothesis regarding etherized space-time: Space-time could possibly posses fluid-like characteristics, thereby allowing for a medium of electromagnetic wave propagation - but such a universal fluid property of space-time could not be interpreted as a fixed frame of reference. A useful analogy would be how motion on the ocean cannot be seen as motion with respect to the water itself but only with respect to other floating objects in the sea or other benchmarks like small islands. Ether could also be theorized as the origin of inertia and gravity, where accelerated motion causes wave interference and resistance to change in motion while non-accelerated motion could be seen as an object floating at rest on a calm sea of space-time. Gravity can be simply described as compression and "curvature" of such etherized space-time. :itold:
Relative non-accelerated motion of objects cannot be ascertained to be with respect to fluidlike [etherized] space-time, thus your link is not relevant as a valid counterargument. :itold: There might be a way to test for the fluidic-spacetime-ether with accelerating particles...not sure :shrug: Einstein's ether: http://www.tu-harburg.de/rzt/rzt/it/Ether.html
It's easy to say wordy explanations which sound superficially viable. For example, inertia is the interaction between objects and the viscous forces in the aether. Or particles are vortices in the aether, thus explaining why they have spin. Bound starts are vortices trapped in other vortices. See, easy, if you don't do any calculations or experiments then saying "Light is an oscillation in a medium, just like water waves in water" sounds intuitively appealing. It's only when you start trying to construct predictive models do you find problems in reconciling the concept with experiments, hence the Michelson Morley issue with traditional aether concepts.
Since light moves at constant unaccelerated velocity through my hypothesized fluid of space-time, it probably would not cause an aether drag as indicated by the many Michelson Morley experiments for light. Frame dragging appears to be an indication of possible vorticelike motion of space-time though. Ronald Mallett proposed this laser set up as a way to build a time machine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Mallett#Time_machine_project If spinning masses and lasers can cause frame dragging it appears that space and time must have some type of tangible or etherlike properties. Accelerating light would be a better way to test for the ether ...if that is possible Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Dark matter and dark energy might be two possible aspects of one "dark fluid". http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0506732 I imagine the challenge is trying to figure out the higher dimensional properties of this fluid in that an object moving at relativistic speeds would become a four dimensional ellipsoid with dilated time and contracted length. The same type of compression would occur in a strong gravity field AKA spacetime curvature. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I am not so sure about that yet... :shrug: Strangely enough, the fluidic properties of space may tie into the holographic principle also... http://arxiv.org/abs/0806.3165
I did not read the whole paper, at least yet, but your quote is from the abstract and at least from the intrduction they are exploring the dynamics of a black hole... There may ay be more to it than that, but I thought before spending too much time I would mention, within the context of GR black holes, and stars have been modeled as perfect fluid states for quite some time, nothing new in that. There is virtually no way to model the gravitational field of a complex gravitational mass like a star, otherwise. There are too many changing variables. There have also been papers published attempting to model space as a perfect fluid like ether both in the Newtonian and GR case, none that I have seen have been successful and they usually mention the limitations in the paper itself. These are generally tests of concept rather than serious attempts to replace GR, as far as they read to me. I will pull a copy of the paper off line and if it is not too long and does not get too deeply into quantum gravity, I'll see what it looks like. P.S. 24 pages - don't hold your breath.
This might be an extremely daunting task to figure out Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I am assuming that space-time behaves like a compressible fluid flow. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluid_dynamics#Compressible_vs_incompressible_flow Non-linear partial differential equations ...more fun Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nonlinear_partial_differential_equations
There have been models of this kind of thinking already, as I said each falls short of duplicating the success of GR in some way. I will see if I can dig up a couple later. Most of the current stuff, is along the lines of the paper you linked earlier and gets into or heads toward quantum gravity.., I still have not read it, so that is a guess. Those papers are out of my comfort zone and I generally wind up trying to digest them a page to paragraph at a time, so discussion in that area would be extremely superficial for my part and that is likely being generous to myself.
Here are a couple of papers that look at what I think you are getting at, somehow I think I ran into another but must not have marked for an easy search or may not have kept a copy. General Relativity As an Aether Theory Einstein-aether gravity: a status report It has been a while since I looked either of these over but as I remember neither suggests they have found "the answer".
I guess I was commenting on this: Are you wondering why EM waves propagate in space? Obviously we can detect wave propagation in solids or gasses, but we usually can see them in (that is, on the surface of) liquids. So are you looking for some connection between a visual representation of wave propagation, in connection to the phenomenon that we think of -- as far as wave propagation in space is concerned?
It seems that there must be some type of conductive medium, or mechanism, for transference of information[photons] between different points in the universe. I recall reading some speculative idea that our universe could be inside a black hole. Other theories also propose that universes can be born inside a black hole, become pinched off from the parent universe and expand into a region of hyperspace away from the parent universe. I am going to assume that singularity pinch points cannot actually exist. Instead, black holes can have universes inside them but they are not expanding universes; these universes are being computed - as in - they are being computed by a quantum computer. Hypothetically speaking, black holes are natural quantum computers. These universes inside black holes would be continually shrinking ...but to the occupants inside them, it looks like their universe is expanding. Arthur Eddington wrote this tongue in cheek idea in his book "The Expanding Universe": http://books.google.com/books?id=KH...BAw&sqi=2&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false ...
Thanks for the links. Frank Tipler has some interesting ideas, yes Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
The universe could be a quantum computer... Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_the_Universe
It seems to me that there are two layers of thought concerning propagation in a medium. At the outer layer is what we observe—some type of wave—such as a wave rolling in at the beach. Or I could plot a sound wave (or any other kind of invisible wave) and visualize it as a function of time (or space). From this perspective I can go deeper into analyzing the wave properties by looking into its frequency and amplitude components—its spectrum. If the wave traverses water (such as the ocean wave) or air (such as sound) it gives me a sense of confirmation because it's plausible how this works, since I only have to imagine particles colliding with each other—albeit on a massive scale under a complex distribution of forces imparted by the source. Nevertheless this comports with common experience, whether I relate this to the way billiard balls collide and bounce apart or the way a row of standing dominoes will topple into each other sequentially. This perspective—in which I can visualize the (usually) invisible particle-particle interaction that's embedded inside the group behavior and over huge numbers of particles all forcing collisions in one direction, then another—is what I mean by the inner layer of perception. Here, I'm open to the idea that the particles cross empty space to collide with one another because it comports with common experience. I don't need a medium to send a particle. So even when I'm at ease with the idea of wave propagation in a medium, I have implicitly allowed for particle propagation to occur across some (usually small) span of the vacuum of space. My take on your position is that this is probably acceptable to you, but that you find it harder to allow for the wave itself to traverse empty space, because that's not how it works in common experience. Intuition reduces this to the particle collision explanation, which seems plausible. So I'm wondering if your pursuit for an ether of some sort is a reflection on another kind of problem, namely, that in physics particles have a dual nature in which they also exhibit wave properties, such as frequency, and, contrary to common experience, the waves propagate in three dimensions even though the particle travels in only one dimension (the Euclidean distance, or the projection of 3-space onto 1-space). So I offer this as something to consider, that perhaps it's not so weird that waves propagate without a medium, but rather, that 3D waves "emanate" from the 1D space traversed by particles. That discussion can lead to some observations about wave-particle duality by revisiting the matter-energy and matter-frequency equivalences of Einstein and Planck: \( E\quad =\quad m{ c }^{ 2\quad },\quad E\quad =\quad h\nu \quad \quad \Rightarrow \quad \quad m{ c }^{ 2 }\quad =\quad h\nu \quad \quad \Rightarrow \quad \quad m\quad =\quad \nu h{ c }^{ -2 }\quad \quad \Rightarrow \quad \quad m\quad \propto \quad \nu \quad \quad \Rightarrow \quad \quad m\quad \propto \quad { \lambda }^{ -1 }\quad \) Which gives a rationale for wave-particle duality: mass is proportional to frequency, or inversely proportional to wavelength. Considering what frequency and wavelength mean, we can also determine that mass is inversely proportional to an amount of time or space, depending on which formulation we pick. I say this because we commonly think of a particle in terms of an infinitesimal mass. To some extent this is an arbitrary selection we make based on perception; we could just as easily think of the particle as an infinitesimal wave of a particular frequency. As a corollary, we can describe its mass (in magnitude) in terms of an amount of time (to complete one cycle), or an amount of space (to hold one wavelength)—as an inverse relationship, that is. My purpose in saying this is to note that I can readily accept that particle collisions produce the propagation of sound waves in air, and that I can readily accept the way the collisions must occur between air molecules in the interstitial vacuum of space within the air. Once I accept the above formulation, then I can begin to visualize the propagation of a wave in the vacuum of free space, merely from the viewpoint that this must be what is happening even if it doesn't seem as intuitively obvious. Suppose I accept that the universe springs from a Big Bang event billions of years ago. And suppose I further accept that space and time are created in the Big Bang. I don't find it too hard to believe that time and space are created. For one thing, it helps me get around the possibility that time extends infinitely into the past, which is itself a puzzle...namely: how does the clock ever get to the present if it has to work its way out of an infinite past? I can set that problem aside when I go with the idea that time and space are created. In a sense it seems more plausible. Now another problem crops up. This implies a prerequisite: a timeless, spaceless origin, a point of convergence looking back into the cone as I imagine I must do in contemplating it. I am now required to accept that there is a domain (the origin) in which neither time nor space exist. If so, then this domain must exist for all time—that is, it must be eternal. I infer this from the fact that its clock never advances, therefore it's always "there" no matter where we mark time on the world line. Furthermore, if I note that the oldest epochs are the ones coming at me from all directions, as in the most distant of light sources, or the cosmic microwave background itself, then another problem comes up. Now I must convince myself that no matter where I look, in any angles of azimuth and elevation, I am staring into that cone that converges to the eternal spaceless point. I am left to visualize the universe as a gigantic sphere having an inner surface that contains the largest possible area that can fit within the bounds of space. If I infer that this sphere is inflating like a balloon at the speed of light, then this "inner surface" is what is expanding. I can further equate this imagined "surface" as the boundary condition that existed at the birth of spacetime. Thus, if I could "cross over" that boundary, at any point on this imagined surface, I would "enter" that origin, namely, that original domain which is timeless and spaceless. By this reasoning, I am required to imagine that the universe is imploding inside this dimensionless point. In other words, the reasoning I have followed seems to require that we are stuffed inside the Big Bang singularity itself. Furthermore, the dimensionless point which forms the "shell" of the universe, since it is timeless, is a vantage point from which an observer would look out onto all that ever was and ever will be—supposing, of course, that anything could be seen across the event horizon. Furthermore, suppose I were to connect the idea that wherever there exists a singularity, there must be a cone that looks back to the origin. This would imply that anywhere that I could traverse an event horizon, I would simply end up at the same common point, the origin, looking back at the universe, that is, all that ever was and ever will be. Finally, if I incorporate the idea from string theory that all matter is composed of quantum singularities, then I would conclude that crossing a quantum event horizon leads to its singularity which is identical to that same timeless spaceless origin, peering out over the entire universe in its entire continuum, that is, all that ever was and ever will be. In this case I arrive "outside" the "shell" of the universe by something akin to a wormhole which is tied to the most infinitesimal object of all, a string. That is, this wormhole joins the largest and smallest possible realms by delivering each string to the outermost shell of the universe. I would liken this to the way the limit, as x→∞ ,of f(x)=x, and the limit, as x→0, of g(x)=1/x, would both converge at infinity. This leaves me to consider the universe as a complex of involuted "surfaces" that bend the outermost, largest surface conceivable, inside-out, into a zillion quantum singularities that "boil up" inside the sphere. Since the "inner surface" is ever-expanding, then there would seem to be some kind of correspondence to the generation of strings directly from the outer expansion. By involution, I mean something like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_w4HYXuo9M I have no idea whether the solution given in the video is legitimate, or even if that quick knot-tying at the end might suggest a something as improbable as a Calabi-Yau manifold, but there seems to be some kind of inference like this which must be required upon accepting the idea that time and space are created in the Big Bang.
My idea of etherized space-time is related to this definition of perfect fluid, with slight differences that I am still trying to figure out. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_fluid The energy momentum tensor of Einstein's field equations also includes pressure terms. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solutions_of_the_Einstein_field_equations#Solving_the_equations The outer surface shell of a universe inside a black hole would be the holographic two dimensional surface encoding information and the inward projection of the collapsing surface as the black hole undergoes accelerated evaporation towards the end of its life time would become an accelerated computation, whereby the universe within would evolve and "compute". The collapsing surface would add a third dimension, a depth perception of a three dimensional world for the occupants within. The speed of light in vacuum as seen by the inner observers, would be the rate of computation of the inner black hole universe. The curled up dimensions and something called T-duality might be an interesting avenue of approach, not sure :shrug: I am trying to figure out Eddington's ideas for the -incredible shrinking atom universe - that he mentioned and I quoted a couple of posts ago. It would be an inverse of what we think of as an expanding space-time where matter is held constant. It would be a type of shrinking universe where gravity is attractive at close distances and repulsive at when galaxies are far apart.
Welcome to the real world of physics, things aren't nice. So have you got any actual quantitative ideas or are you just throwing around buzzwords?
With your patience and kind permission I may be stuck in the pseudoscientific buzzword mode for awhile, here, in the pseudoscience forum. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Given the diameter of any circle, pi is a constant ratio of circumference/diameter. Big circles and small circles all have this constant ratio. For a shrinking universe, the occupants within would see the universe as expanding but it would actually be shrinking. General Relativity predicts singularities. Maybe GR is still an incomplete theory, not sure :shrug: A dark fluid would make matter attractive at close distances and repulsive at far distances. Dark matter and dark energy could be two aspects of this one etherized fluid. Pressure would continually increase but the ratio remains constant. The pressure might be expressed as the cosmological constant. Black holes could be quantum computers and they could be computing entire universes - within them. The two dimensional surface of the black hole would be holographically encoded in some form. The Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker metric can be used to describe a contracting universe but I am not sure how to derive a shrinking universe with shrinking matter that looks like an expanding universe from inside and it probably needs quantum theory also. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker_metric ...
