Space is something, not nothing

I saw a great video that argues the point that empty space is a something. Here is the link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD5tBIqJU4U

So all you pee brains who thought it was nothingness: WRONG!!!!

 

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From Optics and Gravity thread:

whoops.

Will comment on the video after I watch it. But for the moment: I agree that space is not "nothing."

 

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Yep, space is something, not nothing.

 

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It is that. Einstein said as such in his 1920 Leyden Address, but a lot of people don't know about it:

"According to this theory the metrical qualities of the continuum of space-time differ in the environment of different points of space-time, and are partly conditioned by the matter existing outside of the territory under consideration. This space-time variability of the reciprocal relations of the standards of space and time, or, perhaps, the recognition of the fact that “empty space” in its physical relation is neither homogeneous nor isotropic, compelling us to describe its state by ten functions (the gravitation potentials gμν), has, I think, finally disposed of the view that space is physically empty".

It isn't a "substance" in the usual sense, but waves run through it, and it ripples. Have a look at LIGO, which hopes to use length-change to detect gravitational waves.

 

I know LIGO has been looking for gravity waves. To the best of my knowledge, they haven't been lucky enough to actually confirm the existence of them. Perhaps some day they will.

I agree it's not a typical substance. I have tried to argue that the composition of space-time would be that of the wave-function, if the wave-function was elevated to the status of a physical phenomenon. Of course, the wave function is just a mathematical description of a quantum system, a solution to the Schrodinger equation. If you've ever studied the infinite potential square well, there are only certain waves that can fit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particle_in_a_box
One of the solutions to the particle in a box looks like: \(\psi_N (x,t) = Asin(k_n x)e^{i\omega_n t}\).

A physicist will look at this and just see a math equation. I look at this and I see a phenomenon of nature. I see an ontological object, a physical field of some kind. To me, it looks like a fiber in the weave of space-time. The only thing I would add to this ontological object is that the characteristic of the speed of light (permittivity and permeability) are built into it.

Look at the Casimir effect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_effect
As you bring two plates closer and closer to each other, fewer waves can fit between them. In my view, those waves are a phenomenon of nature and are the building blocks of space-time, they are the building blocks of the vacuum.

 

It has been. It was one of the IOP physicsworld breakthroughs of 2011, see http://physicsworld.com/cws/article...rld-reveals-its-top-10-breakthroughs-for-2011 along with Jeff Lundeen's website http://www.photonicquantum.info/ . Then look as his semi-technical explanation:

"So what does this mean? We hope that the scientific community can now improve upon the Copenhagen Interpretation, and redefine the wavefunction so that it is no longer just a mathematical tool, but rather something that can be directly measured in the laboratory."

Wavefunction is real.

I was talking about this last night as it happens. We can make an electron (and a positron) in pair production, and we can diffract an electron. And when you look at the wikipedia Atomic orbitals you see this: "1.The electrons do not orbit the nucleus in the sense of a planet orbiting the sun, but instead exist as standing waves." You bet they do. Even when they aren't in an orbital.

Damn right. Take a "field variation" going by at c, make it go round and round just right, and it isn't a field variation any more, it's a standing field.

I don't see it as a fibre or a weave, I see 4-potential, displacement, curvature, geometry. Electromagnetism is associated with spatial curvature, see The role of potentials in electromagnetism by Percy Hammond. Look at the bit near the end note which says this: "We conclude that the field describes the curvature which characterizes the electromagnetic interaction". Also look at the Aharonov-Bohm effect on wikipedia. That's where when you switch on a solenoid, and it causes a phase shift for passing electrons, even though there's no electric field and no magnetic field outside the solenoid. See this bit of the Global action vs local forces section:

"In fact Richard Feynman complained [citation needed] that he had been taught electromagnetism from the perspective of E and B, and he wished later in life he had been taught to think in terms of the A field instead, as this would be more fundamental."

There's another bit higher up under Significance that says:

"...all physical effects were describable in terms of the fields which were the derivatives of the potentials..."

Space is something like one big A field. If it's all at the same potential you don't notice it, there's no "slope" anywhere, so the derivatives are zero and there's no discernible electromagnetic field-variation or field. But if a bulge propagates through it, you see an electromagnetic wave. Imagine an ocean, you're in a boat, and a wave comes at you. As your boat tilts, the angle denotes the electric field strength, and the tilt rate denotes the magnetic field strength. There's no trough to this wave by the way, the analogy isn't perfect. But what is nice is that the wave motion does extend down into the water giving you an idea of the non-local aspect, see Science of waves. Space doesn't have a surface of course, but it's the same kind of idea. Pair production splits a wave to form two standing waves each going round and round through itself. Think in terms of a wave in a box of its own making. The wave displaces its own path into a closed path.

Try four pi divided by c to the power one point five. And c to the power half divided by three pi. The h drops out because it's the circular action associated with a sine wave, like you can see on wiki. Don't bother with dimensionality or the g-factor, just look at the numbers.

Imagine that ocean again. Look closely and you can see that its surface is covered with tiny ripplets. The ocean isn't made out of tiny ripplets. In similar vein space isn't made out of particles, particles are made out of it.

Nice talking to you Mazulu.

NB: The Aharonov-Bohm effect was actually predicted by Ehrenberg and Siday in their 1949 classical paper The Refractive Index in Electron Optics and the Principles of Dynamics. See http://iopscience.iop.org/0370-1301/62/1/303 for the abstract.

 

This is just hilarious. You're still peddling this garbage?

 

Hi Farsight,
I've been so caught up in another thread. But I wanted to express appreciation that you also see that space is a something, not a nothing. So sorry that moderator Prometheus has now attacked you for agreeing with me.

Prometheus,
Do you believe/think that space is a "nothing" or a "something"? Do you understand the question? In other words, if it's a "something" then it has built in characteristics that could explain how time evolves, how distance between two points is maintained by nature. As a "something", it should explain why we observe quantum mechanics and the Casimir effect. it may also give us a better of understanding of what is "curving" in the gravitational process known as curved space-time.

 

I find it funny that you'll ignore what people tell you until someone says something you agree with at which point you start repeating it. Simply ignoring when people demonstrate you are patently mistaken doesn't make you right.

As for space-time it obviously has properties and if you go from a quantum gravity point of view it is a macroscopic effect formed by a seething mass of gravitons.

It's funny that Farsight hasn't complained about you saying such a thing. I guess since you're both hacks he's willing to ignore such things. Previously he's made the complaint that supposedly the mainstream community views the metric, the mathematical object used to describe the properties of space-time, as a real thing. Yet he remains silent when you claim the wavefunction, the mathematical object used to describe quantum phenomena, as a real thing.

You haven't ever studied that, so please don't talk about it as if you have. You've previously shown you cannot do the most trivial of relevant mathematics pertaining to this, so clearly you have no idea how to do about solving the Schrodinger equation.

Once again you simply assume you know what physicists see/think, despite the fact you don't know any physics, you aren't a physicist, you obviously don't ask us what we think and you never listen when we correct you.

Don't mistake an object for the mathematical description of it. Or vice versa. Funny how you complained people like myself supposedly do that.

What you mean was you were arm waving about an area of physics you have no working understanding of and which you're incapable of doing because you lack any of the relevant mathematical knowledge.

And what a coincidence, I was talking about wavefunctions and the Schrodinger equation this week too. Except I did it with a multi-billion dollar technology developer and I got paid for what I said.

Tell me, can you actually show the Schrodinger equation leads to such orbitals? No, of course not because you cannot do any of the mathematics. You rely on others to do the details then you just make up arm waving.

All of which you've shown you have a flawed qualitative understanding of and zero quantitative understanding of.

I've been through this with you before. Either you didn't understand or you didn't listen, probably both, and since you lack the mathematical capability to go find this out for yourself you haven't been able to advance your understanding yourself. The electromagnetic field, F, is indeed a curvature but it is a curvature of a gauge bundle, not space-time. Curvature, in the space-time Riemannian sense, is to do with the tangent bundle, the bundle where space-time is the base and its tangent spaces the fibres (these are all technical words, do not interpret them as you would in layperson discussions using them, though you probably will). EM curvature has space-time as the base and the gauge potential as the fibre.

This would be something you'd know if you were the world leading electromagnetics expert you claim to be. Hell, you'd know that if you could do any differential geometry. But why let little things like details or accuracy bog you down when you can just arm wave and proclaim you're deserving of 4 Nobel Prizes, right? Managed to come up with any working model of any real phenomenon yet?

You're conflating a fibre for a base! Looks like you need to go brush up on your fibre bundle knowledge.

Wow.... just wow. Despite you having your one attempt at putting numbers to your work being laughed out by many people due to it being terrible numerology you're still peddling it? This just shows you not only don't know the mathematics pertaining to electromagnetism, curvature, gauge fields etc but you don't even know secondary school stuff!

Let's go through what you just said.

4pi = 12.566...
c = 3.54..E12
c^(1.5) = 6.663E18
So 4pi/c^1.5 = 1.886E-18
c^(1/2) = 1881716
c^(1/2)/(3pi) = 1970528

Oh hang on, did you mean that I should work in SI units and not use the speed of light in feet per hour? In that case....

4pi = 12.566...
c = 299792458
c^(1.5) = 5.1907613E12
So 4pi/c^1.5 =2.42E-12
c^(1/2) = 17314
c^(1/2)/(3pi) = 1837

Notice the answers are utterly different! That's because the values of dimensionful quantities are dependent on the units you use. c is a speed so you need to define units for length and time. The meter was originally defined as the distance from the North Pole to the Equator through Paris divided by 10 million. Hardly a fundamental definition, is it? As such the value of quantities which include length in their units are not going to be showing anything fundamental, attempting to make claims about them is pure numerology! Only dimensionless quantities can be looked at in such a way and even then it's highly dubious. You've had this explained to you before. When you attempted to answer my question about providing one, just one, quantitative working model of any phenomenon in the real world which comes from your work you provided numerology someone else did. You called it (if memory serves) incredible, at which point you were roundly laughed at by several people for making such a ridiculous claim and being so utterly ignorant of even high school physics. Come on Farsight, this is stuff your kids should know better than to do! That only serves to illustrate my repeated pointing out that you're functionally innumerate when it comes to maths. Curvature, electromagnetism, gauge fields, units, all of them are written in mathematics you simply don't know.

You and Mazula have delusions of competency, wanting to use technical terms you don't know the meaning of, quoting equations you cannot work with. I repeatedly point this out because maybe one day the glaring truth will register in your brains and you'll find something more constructive to do with your existences. I sigh when I think of all the resources you've wasted peddling your work and how it's all come to naught.

I guess you've found a kindred spirit, something with delusions of grandeur and absolutely nothing to show for his claims.

 

Interesting point of view. So what do you describe seething gravitons with? Wave functions or geodesics?

Here is where you spread lies and rancor. Yes I have taken college classes in quantum mechanics so I know some. But let me quote for your benefit what the other moderator is holding up as proper scholarly behavior.

Another dispariaging lie, more character assassination. You're a physicist. Just tell us what you think and what you know.

Tell us what you think about physics, the afterlife, empty space. Just curb the lies and character assassination.

Nature is very confusing on this point. In my view, wave-functions may be the only mathematics which has a naturally occurring quasi-physical counterpart. In my view, wave-functions really do exist both as a branch of mahematics and as a natural phenomena. Maybe you might see a better choice of dual
(mathematics & phenomenology).

 

Mazulu, no matter how many times you're told, (and it's been more than I can count) you pay no attention at all.

 

I agree with that. It seemingly can support and possess properties, geometrical and whatever.

Saying that might not be quite the same thing as taking a position in the long-time absolute/relational controversy about space. Space has properties, so it isn't simply non-existence. But the properties that space has seem to be dependent, in some cases at least, on the masses, motions, charges and whatnot of the material objects located in space. So it isn't clear to me what space would be like if it was totally devoid of matter. (I'm not even sure, given pair-production and so on, whether it makes sense to talk about space entirely devoid of matter.)

I'm inclined to think that a completely empty space still wouldn't be total flat-out non-being. The various qualities of space, and their interrelations, would still seem to exist in potentia.

 

In my opinion, slave and spacetime are made out of wavefunction like phenomena which act like precursors to electromagnetic fields. Without these precursors, which I call aether, en fields could not form.

 

Even if the universe was totally empty (if that's possible), it still seems to make sense to speak of the laws of physics "existing" somehow, in potentia. These would describe how things would behave in that universe, if the things existed.

It's interesting to speculate whether our own universe currently possesses unmanifested laws of physics, that describe how things would behave in physical conditions that have never actually existed and might not ever exist in this universe.

 

Personally, I think that matter and space-time are both made of aether. In effect, matter is just a clump of or a kink of space (with some energy content).

 

What you think with zero support is as compelling as a 5 year old saying Santa Claus exists.

 

Depends on the scales involves and the model used. And even in those cases where a wavefunction can be used that doesn't mean they are wave functions. I can describe the motion of a planet using differential equations, doesn't mean the planet is a differential equation. You're mistaking the map for the place.

I simply don't believe you. You have shown you don't know how to work with a wavefunction. For example you don't understand there's more to them than just \(e^{ikx}\). You lack any kind of basic familiarity with the necesary mathematics, the models involves or even the conceptual scientific methods employed in ... well, science!

Well considering you obviously don't have any familiarity with the scientific method and you make statements like "Science is running out of things to explore. We should halve the national research budget!" it's plain that my assessment you're extremely ignorant of science is quite justified.

1. You haven't listened when I've corrected you on things, such as to do with quantum mechanics so don't pretend you want to hear 'what I think and what I know'.
2. The totality of what I think and what I know, just pertaining to quantum mechanics or relativity, is too long to go in this post or 50 posts.
3. Even if I did I am certain you wouldn't understand. You've shown you didn't understand what minimal pieces of information Google has found for you.
4. Even if I had the time and the patience to type lots of science I prefer to do it with people who'll benefit from it. You've shown you either cannot or will not listen.

See, you cannot even formulate a targeted question. What I think about physics? I think a lot about physics, care to be a bit more precise? Afterlife? Until such time as sufficient evidence is presented (there is presently absolutely zero evidence) the claims of an afterlife, like claims of gods, are not believable. Empty space? Depends whose definition you work with. For example, something tells me you're unfamiliar with there even being a difference between a quantum mechanical vacuum and a quantum field theoretic vacuum.

Tell you what, you stop speaking for physicists, lying about what we supposedly do or don't think, say or do, and I'll stop calling you a dishonest liar. See how it works? Stop lying and I stop calling you a liar. Rocket science this is not.

And yet you believe you have all the answers and just know how things work?

Considering you obviously don't know any physics, you do not know any mathematics (including not understanding how to use wavefunctions in quantum mechanics) and that you've already shown you will believe inconsistent things as well as things for which you have absolutely no basis for I don't see why I or anyone else should care what your view is. If I wanted to listen to the views of someone who makes claims about god and aliens and understanding the universe I could visit a psychiatric hospital. Until such time as you can demonstrate a sound, evidence based, rationale for your claims, any of your claims, that's how I view your claims.

You don't know the mathematics, you don't know the physics and you clearly have a terrible grasp of logic and reason. Why are your views worth anything?

 

Begging everyones' pardon . . . . but . . . is this NOT a "pseudoscience" forum? Why the insults for free-thinking???

 

Yes indeed space is something! Mostly Energy. All Matter from the hole Universe can be packet together in ''a little marble''.

 

Personally, I think Alphanumeric has a screw loose. He will type page after page of insults, call people liars, denigrate other people's math/science skills and tell everyone he's a string theorist, but I've never seen him display his knowledge. In contrast, I've seen Rpenner write page after page of general relativity; I've seen Rpenner try to teach people relativity. I know people who are in awe of Rpenner's knowledge. But AlphaNumeric? I can't remember a time when he has demonstrated his knowledge. All I remember from AN is page after page after page of beratement, castigation and endless character attacks. Alphanumeric is suffering and needs help; therapy, emotional healing, maybe even a relationship with Jesus.

My view is that physicists have it backwards. Physicists use wave-functions to describe quantum systems. I believe that wave-functions are describing a a natural phenomena that allows/permits energy to express itself as light and matter. I think space-time is an ocean of wave-functions which allows energy to appear as virtual particles, real particles and electromagnetic radiation.