A Return to Absolute and Realist Physics

a reply to: TheRedneck

I take nothing away from Hawking in terms of being an exquisitely intelligent man, I never would. To do so would be foolish indeed.

Hawking was a legend...but so was Einstein.

I just think Hawking spent too much time trying to define himself by standing out against Einstein, that's all.

And, in his later years I think he interjected too much politics into his physics. To be fair, I fault Einstein for the same thing. In some simple ways, it's like hollywood using their fame to influence opinion in a subject area they have little to no business speaking about.

a reply to: delbertlarson

I will consider it.

I will also add: there is no singularity in nature, except as an abstract. The conditions surrounding the abstract singularity, if one understands the implications of Einstein's Special Relativity (including the Lorentz factor), forbids the physical existence of a singularity. But, one must understand the implications! So many do not, although they do seem to think they do.

TheRedneck

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Physics is full of legendary men... Hawking, Einstein, Tesla, Lorentz, Maxwell, Hertz, and a long list of others. No one is an island; we all stand on the shoulders of giants, who stood on the shoulders of the giants who came before them.

I attribute the move toward politics as a symptom of simply being tired. Einstein had to fight for every ounce of acceptance he ever received until late in life, and Hawking was besieged with his illness. Politics is a playground for the mind which can comprehend the intricacies they could comprehend, and I believe a welcome respite form the intense concentration.

It is also a trap, especially when one has attained fame as a great mind.

TheRedneck

a reply to: TheRedneck

So, we disagree, or agree?

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

LOL!

I think we're agreeing...

TheRedneck

a reply to: delbertlarson

Do the math at 90 degree angle from the observer you get an added red shift in an ether. Because the light out photon will be seen not from the front but the rear. Think of a train at light speed you will see where the caboose was not the engine. In other words we csnt use elastic mass to het the correct answer. This automatically creates a red shift. I can't spell it out for you do the math. Then use that same equation for a photon heading for you and lorentz equations give you a different answer


Your actually being silly the lorentz equatuons are a tool. And this tool can and is used in special relativity. However lorentz equations being a tool doesn't explain a theory any more then a hammer explains how to build a house.

So do the math using lorentz equations in an ether if you have a problem with this locate a physics professor at local university and he can explain how this disproves ether theories.

a reply to: dragonridr

Here are two references containing the math:

Transverse Doppler Effect

Comparing Ether Theories to Relativity Theory

In the above links you will find that the original measurements of the transverse Doppler shift by Ives and Stillwell were shown to be consistent with the Lorentz Aether Theory, not relativity. Now, since the equations are the same, relativity gives the same result, so there is nothing to separate the theories from these tests.

In Doppler tests, both the source and receiver are point-like (atoms) so these tests are accurate tests of time dilation. Time dilation is present both in the Lorentz Aether Theory and in Einstein's relativity. Since the equations are the same, both theories give the same result.

On another thread, there is a running debate about whether a pendulum disproves relativity. Each side is failing to convince the other. Or, more likely in my opinion, the proponent is trolling. I believe you and I may be at a similar impasse (although I don't yet think you are trolling). I continually try to explain that "the equations are the same" but that does not satisfy you that aether theories are possible. Unless there is a different response I plan to stop responding to this line of argument since no headway is being made. However, I want readers to know that my lack of any future response is not indicative of surrender to the point - rather it is my view that any further discussion is not likely to persuade the one person who is continuing this line of argument.

a reply to: delbertlarson

The reason i want you to do the math is in order to get the correct answer lorentz had to make a change to his aether theory. This is where he came up with the idea that mass can stretch. 2 points here one he isnt sure exactly how other then the force which the aether applies to it stretches it. Which would mean we should detect wakes just like a boat traveling across water. And somehow this stretching decreases and adds mass as needed to get the right answer.

SR explains these inconsistencies with one simple statement energy equals mass. So when a traveling photon emits light energy decreases and this causes mass to decrease

Notice on SR no magic rods needed..

So your adding useless steps to come to the same conclusion. And in science if something is irellevant you can say it doesnt exist because even if it does it has no effect

originally posted by: dragonridr
So your adding useless steps to come to the same conclusion.

I couldn't agree with your previous post but I can agree with this statement, which is more or less what I said back on page 1 that the Lorentz aether theory was never "debunked" but it was dropped in favor of relativity from an "occam's razor" type of approach which is what you are getting at with that comment.

This is the preface to a PhD thesis looking at the subject which shares a similar opinion, that Lorentz aether theory is empirically equivalent but relativity is preferable, presumably for similar reasons (I haven't read the paper in full but the theme is the same everywhere, relativity requires fewer assumptions so that's why it's preferred, not because Lorentz aether theory disagrees with experiment).

www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de...

It was also during my years at the University of Amsterdam that my views on special relativity and my understanding of what makes special relativity a better theory than Lorentz’s empirically equivalent ether theory were shaped decisively in a series of long conversations with Jon Dorling, philosopher of science at the University of Amsterdam. I hope to have added a few arguments to his.

Here's a paper which dissects the topic in excruciating detail and debunks many myths but makes a similar statement (p17):

pdfs.semanticscholar.org...

If Lorentz’s theory is not ad hoc and empirically equivalent to special relativity, can we still say that Einstein’s theory is superior to the part of Lorentz’s theory it replaced and that it was rational on the part of scientists in the first decades of this century to prefer Einstein’s theory over Lorentz’s? Like Zahar—and Gru¨nbaum, for that matter—I want to answer these questions affirmatively.

a reply to: dragonridr

a reply to: Arbitrageur

OK, now we are getting somewhere. I agree with the point that the Lorentz Aether Theory was more cumbersome than special relativity to get to the same answers. And if that was all there was to the story, I'd side with Einstein. But there is more to the story.

The issue is that relativity is incompatible with quantum mechanics if we assume realism. Einstein, along with Podolski and Rosen were the first to make that point. Bell refined the arguments of EPR and Aspect, Dalibard and Roger showed quantum mechanics correct in Bell's theorem tests. Bell made remarks approaching what I propose, although I don't think he was as blunt. The blunt point, to me, is EPR proposed a test of relativity vs QM and QM was shown experimentally correct so we should set relativity aside. While it appears more cumbersome, we have an alternative ready to go that involves all the same equations - the Lorentz Aether theory.

So that's why we should consider moving past relativity. The reason is experimental - the Aspect et al. tests - provided we keep realism.

Einstein was a realist. It would have been great to learn what his opinion would have been had he been alive when Aspect et al. did the tests. But he died decades before that time.

a reply to: delbertlarson

Well the reason QM and relativity will someday agree when we discover the right theory. Right now we know Relativity explains things accurately on large scale of planets amd and galaxy's.

While quantum mechanics fails on the large scale it works when dealing with particles. Realism has nothing to do with this both are simply tools to explain observation aka reality. Your argument is we need to return to bnb reality when rule one is if observation shows its wrong then its wrong. How much more real can you get want to disprove relativity show some where that reality doesn't agree with relativity.

a reply to: dragonridr

Two models. Each of which quite effectively describes the phenomena which it addresses.

Perhaps they will be reconciled. Perhaps not. The phenomena will continue, either way. Because the phenomena are the reality. The models are not.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

In addition to EPR, another important issue is conceptualization. With Lorentz space and time are different THINGS. It is easy to understand how a box with height z, width x and length y can be rotated so that x becomes y, and y becomes -x. Or, we can understand other rotations that mix all three directions into one another. Each spatial axis is readily conceptually the same. But time, at least to me, is entirely different. I know well that the math can be treated similarly, if we absorb the square root of minus one and c into a t-prime in a four dimensional space. But what I have never understood is how you could possibly take a length, and just because you run past it, that length becomes both a shorter length AND a time difference. Conceptually this has a problem, and I don't believe anyone has really ever understood it. Even Einstein admitted as much. Yes, we can do the math. Yes the math is then elegant. But on a physical conceptual basis it defies reason. You can't "rotate" an orange into an apple. They are different THINGS.

This is what it means when we say something has primacy. Which THINGS do we start with in our axioms? It is better, I believe, to derive Maxwell's equations from space, time and an aether than it is to derive space and time relations by assuming Maxwell's equations have primacy.

Also relevant is the problem with points, and as mentioned above, relativity demands point-like events, and those point-like events are what lead to all the infinity problems we have in physics today. Relativity leads to the need for renormalization and running coupling constants. Relativity leads to the problem of the cosmological constant. (I have proposed a new Absolute Quantum Mechanics that avoids all of these issues, it is simple to understand, and only possible if we set relativity aside.)

So while I agree with Einstein in EPR, there is more than just EPR that argues against relativity.

a reply to: delbertlarson

A while ago, I was involved in an email discussion group with several scientists. That email discussion began with one of those scientists posting this link from wired magazine .

One of the scientists made a point that nature at different scales may behave differently than what we humans readily understand from our normal day to day experience. He also made the point that mathematical models can be very useful, as they can allow predictions for things of value. I responded with RESPONSE A below. He then responded in support of the multiple universe model, to which I responded with RESPONSE B below. Since all of this is relevant to the OP, I thought I would share my responses here:

RESPONSE A - A Response to anonymous on the relevance of nature at different scales to realism and to the value of mathematical models

The central point is whether or not we accept an axiom of one underlying physical reality. If so, relativity must go. That's what the results from Bell's theorem tests tell us. If we allow for multiple underlying physical realities (multiple universe theory), we can keep relativity, but that's quite a reach, when we can instead just adopt the simpler absolute paradigm and set relativity aside.

Certainly nature at different scales may behave differently, but that doesn't mean that one underlying physical reality no longer exists, it just means that its laws at small and large scales differ from those of "normal" human experience. A high velocity quantum mechanics postulating an underlying physical wave that collapses instantaneously is certainly different from "normal" experience, but it still incorporates an underlying physical model (it incorporates that physical wave).

In an attempt to clarify, an underlying physical model is different from a purely mathematical one in that the physical model is constrained to include the presumption of real, existing entities. As an example we can think of the moon in Feynman's video clip. It is not just a series of events of light reaching our eyes that we can mathematically predict will occur at some time in the future. There is an entity that exists that is causing that light (via reflection from another entity, the sun), and we can assign properties to that entity. In the case of the moon we could even land on it and take portions of it back home. It is a PHYSICAL THING.

Back in grad school I developed a math trick that was very useful - I'm likely not the first or only one to do it, but I did so independently. I would look at some data and think what curve fit it somewhat closely, maybe a sine wave, or an exponential, or a cubic function, or whatever. I would then superimpose that curve on the data and play with the parameters to get a fit. Then I'd subtract that curve from all the data points and get new data and repeat the process. After several iterations, and twiddling with all the parameters from the fitting curves, I could fit the data extremely well - to any level of accuracy, just by repeating the process. Often only a few functions were needed and the solution hence looked "elegant". That is a purely mathematical model. It doesn't give us any insights as to why certain parameters come about, but it does allow for predictions. Now if we postulate objective PHYSICAL THINGS that cause those parameters, that would return us to a physical model, and that could likely give us considerably more insight than the math alone, provided there really is a physical reality and we are getting close to physically modeling it.

And also, a paragraph about a problem. The view of PHYSICAL THINGS predates modern physics, and it is a view that common man typically has before being educated out of it. Proponents of the Hume-Mach-Einstein view typically feel they have an advanced notion of things, and that notion leads to a feeling of superiority. The Hume-Mach-Einstein view is not as easy to grasp as the PHYSICAL THINGS view, so one can understand how there is that feeling of superiority. The theories of our time embrace the Hume-Mach-Einstein view, and hence to advance in theoretical physics these days one must master that, and this then leads to a rather daunting selection bias as to which ideas even get to be considered. When one presents theories with a view of PHYSICAL THINGS, expert reviewers, who have been selected as a result of the bias, dismiss such works as those of a novice. Media go to the same expert reviewers, and theories with a view of PHYSICAL THINGS die without being heard. Wikipedia deletes such articles. The censorship is quite thorough and effective.

There has been a view expressed in modern physics that nature may be too deep for human understanding and so we should free ourselves from physical models. That view is that maybe we are just incapable of figuring things out, or maybe nature is so wonderful that PHYSICAL THINGS don't exist in a way humans can understand them at some point. But the mathematical modeling is also done by human brains. We may be deceiving ourselves in thinking that the freedom from physical models is allowing us to advance faster. If indeed there is an underlying, physical, objective reality of PHYSICAL THINGS, then rather than freedom it is simply folly to pursue models that don't tie back to those PHYSICAL THINGS, since they are what we should be seeking the knowledge of. Because once we achieve that knowledge it will be more powerful - since it would then be knowledge of how things really are, rather than just formulaic happenstance that works for a while.

a reply to: delbertlarson

RESPONSE B - A response to anonymous on the merits of multiple universe theory

I will agree that, philosophically, there is nothing definitively wrong with multiple universes. Nor is there anything definitively wrong with the bible, philosophically. The world could have been created 8000 years ago with dinosaur bones embedded in it and everything looking AS IF the earth was formed 4 billion years ago. Nor is there anything definitively wrong with a philosophy that there has been a trillion years between the last time we exchanged an email, and that everything just froze in place and resumed. Nor is there anything definitively wrong with a philosophy that only you and God exist and that all other things are just an illusion in your own mind, sent by God as a test of your one true soul. Des Cartes had a most excellent analysis of such matters, reducing the uncertainty to the one certainty the he did at the very least exist. After Des Cartes, things just got rather goofy in my opinion.

It is my belief that none of the above philosophies are as good as a single objective physical universe wherein randomness is allowed. Without playing dice, how could we ever have free will? Or perhaps you don't believe in free will? The existence of free will can of course also be an open question.

And while not definitively wrong, it is also relevant to point out that the number of universes required in the multiple universe philosophy is extremely large. Every time two particles scatter off of each other there is some quantum uncertainty in the result. Every time! And really, there are an infinite number of outcomes of each individual scatter. It arises when we let dtheta tend toward zero, where dtheta is the angular difference between two outcomes that we consider to be a sufficiently "different" to require a new universe. And that was just considering a single two particle interaction. And not only does each such interaction spawn a new universe, but once that scatter is done, each newly created universe will now have another, additional, infinity of new universes spawned on the next interaction of each of those originally interacting particles. And this is repeated for every two-particle interaction within all of existence. To me, such a philosophy is untenable. Now it's not definitively wrong, it's just one I choose to think of as rather absurd.

And this is how far we have gone just to save relativity.

If instead, we set relativity aside and return to the absolute philosophy, and include a randomness in quantum interactions, we return to a single universe, and one in which we can again propose simple physical models for nature. And we allow for free will.

It's been quite a lonely position to hold, and while we don't yet agree, I really do appreciate your reasoned comments and I hope you can at least see that my position has some merit.

a reply to: delbertlarson

I forgot to mention in the two replies above that one of the participants in the discussion had posted the following video:

I refer to the above video in RESPONSE A above as "Feynman's video clip". That same video was also mentioned independently in Arbigrageur's AMA thread fairly recently.

Lol