Merged Relativity+ / Farsight

[edd]

I've spoken before about Einstein proposing a hypersphere universe, and how IMHO his intuition somehow failed him when it came to cosmology. As if he didn't believe in his own theory. I've said things like "Oh Albert, lose the dust". Then he would have been left with just space, which he knew was something rather than nothing. The energy-pressure diagonal in the stress-energy-momentum tensor should have told him space has an innate pressure and just has to expand. The shear stress term is a reminder that it's elastic, like the stress ball. Maybe part of it is that he didn't do much in the way of memorable physics after 1920.

Good job the model in discussion dates from 1917 then.

 

[ben m]

The funny thing, Farsight actually could have cited research claiming that correctly-worked-out GR solves the dark matter problem. There was certainly a paper (or preprint?) in 2003-2004ish claiming exactly that*. That's the sort of thing that you'd come up with in the course of actually asking the scientific question of whether GR had been correctly applied to galaxies.

Of course, was there any chance that Farsight treated galactic GR as a scientific question to be studied? Doesn't hurt to give him a shot. Answer "no" as usual though. Farsight treats galactic GR the same way he treats everything else: it's something that he's formed a mental picture of. He's capable of describing the mental picture, he's capable of reporting which Einstein quote he was reading when he formed it, but it's not science.

* If I recall correctly, the authors had wanted to write a metric in which the only source was a flat disk of matter. They chose coordinates in which there was (so they thought) a coordinate singularity in the plane of the disk, but it turns out they'd written a metric with a physical singularity that was responsible for dark-matter-like gravitation. A few minutes' searching does not turn up the original paper.

 

[Vorpal]

Are you perhaps thinking of Cooperstock and Tieu [arXiv:astro-ph/0507619]?

 

[Roboramma]

Yes I do. Let's set aside the expansion of the universe for a moment, because it muddies the waters. We have space that is homogeneous on the large scale. Shine a light beam through it, and this light beam goes straight. There is nothing to make the light beam deviate from straight. To the left and to the right, above and below, everything is the same. The light beam goes straight as an arrow. And there is no evidence of any "intrinsic" curvature or any mechanism that can make that light beam loop back round on itself. People like ctamblyn will refer to a sphere and say it's homogeneous in that it has a constant curvature, but there is no evidence of any higher dimensions.

And yet a sphere has intrinsic curvature, so there's no need for any higher dimensions.

Yes, you're not going to measure that intrinsic curvature by looking at a single light beam travelling on a geodesic, but so what? There are other experimental tests. How do those experiments looking for intrinsic curvature come out in a homogenous universe? Are you arguing that they necessarily show no curvature? If so please walk me through it.

 

[ben m]

Are you perhaps thinking of Cooperstock and Tieu [arXiv:astro-ph/0507619]?

That looks like the one.

 

[Kwalish Kid]

Not so. I have a well-documented history of offering substantive responses while receiving a continual tirade of insults from dogmatic posters who seek to spoil discussions.

That seems to be a straightforward statement that you know is false told in order to avoid addressing details.

You have now admitted that you have no evidence (as you defined it) for your claim that dark matter can be accounted for entirely with GR. So you hold your position merely through dogma despite the evidence.

Nope.

I've responded to edd. It's useless trying to respond to ben m.

You have never responded to my request that you show us the numbers on galaxy rotation curves. You have now admitted that you cannot do this and that such numbers do not exist and your claims are based merely on your own personal dogma.

I've spoken before about Einstein proposing a hypersphere universe, and how IMHO his intuition somehow failed him when it came to cosmology. As if he didn't believe in his own theory. I've said things like "Oh Albert, lose the dust". Then he would have been left with just space, which he knew was something rather than nothing. The energy-pressure diagonal in the stress-energy-momentum tensor should have told him space has an innate pressure and just has to expand. The shear stress term is a reminder that it's elastic, like the stress ball. Maybe part of it is that he didn't do much in the way of memorable physics after 1920.

Can you demonstrate the innate pressure in space that is in the tensor or is this also something you merely dogmatically assume?

 

[Farsight]

You have now admitted that you have no evidence...

No I haven't. I'm just not wasting my time talking to people who are abusive and insincere.

If you "lose the dust" and really are left with "just space", you're talking about solving the vacuum field equations, surely? In that case, the diagonal elements in the energy-momentum tensor (in fact, all the elements in the energy-momentum tensor) are zero.

No. Because space has its vacuum energy, and "the contrast between space and matter shall fade away". Note that the cosmological constant Λ is "the value of the energy density of the vacuum of space" and it's shown separately to the energy-momentum tensor here:

Einstein added it to stop his dusty universe from collapsing. Even though a gravitational field alters the motion of light and matter through space, but doesn't suck space in. A field is a state of space. A gravitational field is inhomogeneous space. The energy of the gravitational field shall act gravitatively in the same way as any other kind of energy. If the state of space is homogeneous there is no field. If only Einstein had focused on the space instead of letting all that dust cloud his vision. He would have soon clocked that energy-pressure, that the energy density of space can't stay constant over time, that the cosmological constant isn't constant, and that the energy density of space isn't constant where a gravitational field is.

Also, it looks to me like you're mixing up the meaning of the left and right hand sides of the equation G_ab = 8πT_ab

No. On the right we have the energy-pressure etc, on the left we have what we measure, typically with light moving through space, maybe between mirrors. Again setting aside the expansion due to the pressure, when the energy density is uniform, light goes straight. Our parallel-mirror light clocks stay synchronised. The universe is flat.

And yet a sphere has intrinsic curvature, so there's no need for any higher dimensions.

Mathematically speaking, a sphere is the surface of a what you or I might call a ball. Only the universe isn't just a surface. It's more like a ball. Think in terms of a stress-ball.

Yes, you're not going to measure that intrinsic curvature by looking at a single light beam travelling on a geodesic, but so what?

What intrinsic curvature? Intrinsic curvature in a higher dimension? What higher dimension?

There are other experimental tests. How do those experiments looking for intrinsic curvature come out in a homogenous universe? Are you arguing that they necessarily show no curvature? If so please walk me through it.

No. Go and do your own research. Go and find articles like this.

"Recent measurements (c. 2001) by a number of ground-based and balloon-based experiments, including MAT/TOCO, Boomerang, Maxima, and DASI, have shown that the brightest spots are about 1 degree across. Thus the universe was known to be flat to within about 15% accuracy prior to the WMAP results. WMAP has confirmed this result with very high accuracy and precision. We now know (as of 2013) that the universe is flat with only a 0.4% margin of error..."

But note the next sentence:

"This suggests that the Universe is infinite in extent; however, since the Universe has a finite age, we can only observe a finite volume of the Universe. All we can truly conclude is that the Universe is much larger than the volume we can directly observe.

That's wrong. That's a non-sequitur. A failure of imagination. You know in the old days people used to imagine the Earth had an edge? They could not conceive of an Earth that was round. Nowadays, people imagine the Universe is round. Or infinite. Even though it's been expanding for only 13.8 billion years. They cannot conceive of a universe with an edge.

 

[Roboramma]

What intrinsic curvature? Intrinsic curvature in a higher dimension? What higher dimension?

No higher dimension involved. That's why we're talking about intrinsic curvature.

You said a homogenous universe can't have curvature, someone else pointed out that a sphere is homogenous and curved. I pointed out that a sphere has intrinsic curvature, but that doesn't mean that we have to talk about something that's curved in higher dimensions: we can have an object that has the same (mathematically definable) intrinsic curvature as a sphere, but which doesn't have that higher dimensionality. It will also still be homogenous.

No. Go and do your own research. Go and find articles like this.

I was trying to politely ask you to support your viewpoint by explaining how it applies to an actual physical situation. You don't want to, okay.

 

[Farsight]

No higher dimension involved. That's why we're talking about intrinsic curvature.

The 2D surface is curved "in a higher dimension", and then we have a sphere. Only the universe isn't a 2D surface. It's a 3D bulk. There is no evidential support for any "higher dimension" in which it can be curved.

You said a homogenous universe can't have curvature, someone else pointed out that a sphere is homogenous and curved.

Yes, it was ctamblyn. It has uniform curvature. But in homogeneous space, light goes straight. It doesn't curve in some uniform fashion.

I pointed out that a sphere has intrinsic curvature, but that doesn't mean that we have to talk about something that's curved in higher dimensions: we can have an object that has the same (mathematically definable) intrinsic curvature as a sphere, but which doesn't have that higher dimensionality. It will also still be homogenous.

If light goes straight, light goes straight. Your abstract object with its mathematically definable intrinsic curvature doesn't make a blind bit of difference.

I was trying to politely ask you to support your viewpoint by explaining how it applies to an actual physical situation. You don't want to, okay.

One of the problems with JREF is that people who don't know much physics reject everything I say and dismiss all the references and evidence I provide. It's a bit like trying to talk to creationists. I need to make you do your own research and think for yourself, otherwise I'll never get through to you. Experiments have found that the universe looks flat. As in not curved. Like I said, do your own research.

 

[ctamblyn]

If you "lose the dust" and really are left with "just space", you're talking about solving the vacuum field equations, surely? In that case, the diagonal elements in the energy-momentum tensor (in fact, all the elements in the energy-momentum tensor) are zero.

No. Because space has its vacuum energy, and "the contrast between space and matter shall fade away". Note that the cosmological constant Λ is "the value of the energy density of the vacuum of space" and it's shown separately to the energy-momentum tensor here:

If you want to treat lambda as a "vacuum energy" source term (as is often done), then I would not say that merely setting T_ab to zero leaves you with "just space". I am not going to argue over semantics, though, if you want to equivocate on the interpretation of lambda.

Again setting aside the expansion due to the pressure, when the energy density is uniform, light goes straight. Our parallel-mirror light clocks stay synchronised. The universe is flat.

These are falsehoods and non-sequiturs, for reasons we've gone over ad nauseum. If you seriously think you are describing GR, then your intuition has rather misled you (something which happens to most people), and this is a good illustration of why it is so important to understand the mathematical aspects of the theory.

 

[Kwalish Kid]

No I haven't. I'm just not wasting my time talking to people who are abusive and insincere.

That's hard to believe; you are claiming that anyone who asks you for a clear relationship between your claims and empirical evidence is "abusive and insincere. I think that the proper inference that someone should make is that you are now realizing that your failure to do any relevant study over the last decade has caught up to you and definitely revealed you as a fraud.

That's wrong. That's a non-sequitur. A failure of imagination. You know in the old days people used to imagine the Earth had an edge? They could not conceive of an Earth that was round. Nowadays, people imagine the Universe is round. Or infinite. Even though it's been expanding for only 13.8 billion years. They cannot conceive of a universe with an edge.

Can you please show us a finite flat universe model that matches your peculiar ideas of relativity theory and the evidence?

Or are you simply insulting the work of real scientists and spouting your dogma?

One of the problems with JREF is that people who don't know much physics reject everything I say and dismiss all the references and evidence I provide. It's a bit like trying to talk to creationists. I need to make you do your own research and think for yourself, otherwise I'll never get through to you. Experiments have found that the universe looks flat. As in not curved. Like I said, do your own research.

This is a great example of a passage that cannot be interpreted as anything other than a self-serving and insulting claim that the writer knows to be false. Farsight, you wrote that "Evidence consists of experimental results and observations," and when anyone asks for this kind of evidence, you claim that they are "abusive and insincere."

If you are making claims about the mistakes that all physicist are making and you haven't got specific evidence, then you are being abusive. If you are saying that you know something special about relativity theory and dark matter, but you can't specifically demonstrate this, then you are being insincere.

 

[ctamblyn]

From the "why is there so much crackpot physics" thread:

That's isn't an accurate summary at all. You were actually careful to distinguish your mental image of photons as containing partial positrons and electrons from the statement made by the other crackpot physics proponent who edited the two-photon physics article on Wikipedia...

...
I'm on the right side of the Einstein fence. The crackpots are the guys who say Einstein was wrong or try to get people like Perpetual Student to ignore what Einstein said on specious grounds such as "cherry picking" or "sacred texts".

(If you follow the link back, you'll see that we were actually talking about Farsight's "polarised photon" model, not Einstein.)

1. Since you brought up Einstein, where exactly did he support your recent claim that the photon looks like a little partial positron being chased by a little partial electron?

2. To repeat a question someone asked earlier: why is your photon never the other way round (a partial electron followed by a partial positron)?

ETA:

Forgot the link: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?p=10147114#post10147114

 

[edd]

I also note upthread Farsight basically said Einstein was wrong when I quoted him... Apparently Einstein was right, except when he wasn't.

Of course I agree with that but I'd suggest it isn't the foundation of a good argument.

 

[Farsight]

If you want to treat lambda as a "vacuum energy" source term (as is often done), then I would not say that merely setting T_ab to zero leaves you with "just space". I am not going to argue over semantics, though

Semantics mean meaning. And if you don't know the meaning of something, you don't understand it.

These are falsehoods and non-sequiturs, for reasons we've gone over ad nauseum...

No they aren't and no we haven't.

If you seriously think you are describing GR, then your intuition has rather misled you (something which happens to most people), and this is a good illustration of why it is so important to understand the mathematical aspects of the theory.

You don't understand the mathematical aspects of the theory, you don't understand general relativity, and you don't understand gravity. That's why you've just cut and run on this cosmology discussion. And why you're trying a derail...

1. Since you brought up Einstein, where exactly did he support your recent claim that the photon looks like a little partial positron being chased by a little partial electron?

2. To repeat a question someone asked earlier: why is your photon never the other way round (a partial electron followed by a partial positron)?

Straw man. I gave a passing comment in response to a Wikipedia article that claimed the photon was positive then negative charge. I've claimed that the electron is a 511keV photon in a Dirac's belt configuration, and the positron is the same but with the opposite chirality. But I've never claimed the photon is some kind of electron-positron combination.

Apparently Einstein was right, except when he wasn't.

Einstein's greatest blunder concerned cosmology.

 

[ctamblyn]

Semantics mean meaning. And if you don't know the meaning of something, you don't understand it.

And if you change the meaning of something in the middle of an argument, that is a fallacy. Either the lambda term is a source term, or it isn't. If you want to call it a source term, then having "just space" means setting lambda to zero as well as T_ab, and then all the diagonal terms of the source (energy density, pressure) will vanish. If you don't want to call it a source term, then having "just space" means setting just T_ab to zero, and again all the diagonal terms of the source (energy density, pressure) will vanish. What you did was start with the second option (in which lambda is not part of the source) so that you could call the sitation with T_ab = 0 "just space", but then change your mind and treat the term with lambda as representing energy density and pressure.

No they aren't and no we haven't.

You don't understand the mathematical aspects of the theory, you don't understand general relativity, and you don't understand gravity. That's why you've just cut and run on this cosmology discussion. And why you're trying a derail...

Your argument here, if you can call it that, is mere gainsaying and ad hominem. On the other hand, we've provided actual evidence that gravitational effects can exist in homogeneous space, and evidence that homogeneity does not imply flatness (see: anisotropic homogeneous cosmologies, and the non-flat FLRW models).

Straw man. I gave a passing comment in response to a Wikipedia article that claimed the photon was positive then negative charge. I've claimed that the electron is a 511keV photon in a Dirac's belt configuration, and the positron is the same but with the opposite chirality. But I've never claimed the photon is some kind of electron-positron combination.

Once again, here is the very post where you did exactly that, being careful to distinguish your claim from that of the Wikipedia contributor (my highlighting and bolding, your italics):

See two-photon physics and note that it does say this: but half wavelength is a positive charge and the next half wavelength is a negative charge. That's wrong, and I said the front portion of a photon is a little like a partial positron, the back is a little like a partial electron. Draw a positive field variation followed by a negative field variation.

Continuing the topic of people not being able to get their story straight, let's address this:

Einstein's greatest blunder concerned cosmology.

Now let's see what Farsight says about people who claim that Einstein was wrong:

The crackpots are the guys who say Einstein was wrong.

Not that I personally place any weight on your various appeals to misinterpreted authorities, Farsight, but it seems that you are hoist by your own petard.

 

[ctamblyn]

Now, Farsight, how about you answer my questions? Here they are again:

1. Since you brought up Einstein, where exactly did he support your recent claim that the photon looks like a little partial positron being chased by a little partial electron?

2. To repeat a question someone asked earlier: why is your photon never the other way round (a partial electron followed by a partial positron)?

 

[Farsight]

And if you change the meaning of something in the middle of an argument, that is a fallacy.

Only I didn't.

Either the lambda term is a source term, or it isn't. If you want to call it a source term, then having "just space" means setting lambda to zero as well as T_ab, and then all the diagonal terms of the source (energy density, pressure) will vanish.

No, because space has its vacuum energy, and this energy has a mass equivalence. The energy of the gravitational field acts gravitatively in the same way as any other kind of energy. It's spatial energy. There's no particles there. The energy density isn't zero.

Now do excuse me, it's time for tea.

 

[ctamblyn]

To keep sight of the larger picture, here is a partial list of the problems with John Duffield / Farsight's Relativity+ that we know of so far.

Elementary particles

• There is no evidence that the front of a photon is like a "partial positron" or the rear like a "partial electron".
• There is no known mechanism allowing photons to enter self-trapped loop states.
• There is no empirical evidence for the electron having substructure of that type.
• Even if photons could enter such a loopy state, there is no theoretical justification for the following assertions:
  • The resulting state would be appear to have a charge of approximately 1.6 × 10^-19 coulomb.
  • The resulting state would obey Fermi-Dirac statistics.
  • The radius of the loop would be constrained in such a way that the resulting state would have an energy of 511 keV rather than, say, 1 eV or 1 TeV.
  • Higher harmonics at 1022 keV and so on would be forbidden.
• The claim that the neutrino "doesn't stop" is inconsistent with special relativity, given that at least two of the three varieties are known to have mass.
• The claim that neutrinos are more like photons than electrons is woolly at best, and doesn't really stand up to scrutiny (photons and neutrinos are both neutral, that's about it).
• The prediction that the LHC would not discover the "fabled Higgs boson" (quoting from John Duffield's book, "Relativity+: The Theory of Everything") has been all but disproven since 2012. The same goes for the more general claim (also in his book) that the LHC would be a "damp squib" and would fail to produce any interesting results.
• The objection that short-lived particles don't really exist, since they are merely "ephemera", is untenable.
• The objection that the Higgs mechanism is somehow incompatible with special relativity has never been backed up, and is manifestly inconsistent with the facts.
• The assertion that "we don't need the Higgs boson, because the photon is boson enough" (again, quoting from his book) is comical at best.

Relativity and cosmology

• The claim that there can be no gravitational force in a homogeneous universe is false (see: anisotropic homogeneous cosmologies).
• The claim that homogeneity implies flatness is false (see: non-flat FLRW models and anisotropic comologiwa).
• The claim that infinite universes cannot expand is false (for the same reasons as the last two points).
• The claim that expansion happens "due to the pressure" is false, perhaps based on a confusion between the meanings of the various terms in the GR field equations.
• The claim that alpha varies across space for gravitational reasons is woolly and imprecise, but seems to contradict the equivalence principle.

Electrodynamics (quantum and classical)

• The claim that Ehrenberg and Siday's prediction of the Aharonov–Bohm effect was made using only classical electrodynamics is contradicted by E+S's essential use of quantum mechanics throughout their paper.
• The claim that helical trajectories for charged particles are not possible in an purely electrostatic field is contradicted by (for one) the example of a particle spiralling around an oppositely-charged, straight wire. The related, additional claim that such a set-up would lead to "doubly-helical trajectories" is also mistaken.
• The claim that the running of the electromagnetic coupling obviates the need for multiverse-based solutions to the fine-tuning problem is rooted in a misunderstanding of what running couplings are and how they work (ETA: or, possibly, in a misunderstanding of the fine-tuning problem).

Miscellaneous numerology

• The geometric-numerological derivation (based on "kissing numbers") of the value of alpha as 1/144 possible is nonsense, and even gets the wrong answer. Defending the wrong answer by saying "but alpha is a running coupling!" does not work, since 1/144 is wrong at all energy scales, and in any case does not address the fact that the method of the derivation is fundamentally silly.
• The claim that Andrew Worsley's formula for electron/proton mass ratio is of any validity fails on dimensional grounds. Simlar remarks apply to Worsley's other numerological derivations.

To the best of my knowledge, Farsight has never satisfactorily addressed any of these issues.

 

[Reality Check]

Farsight: What is the scientific definition of "inhomogeneous space" in physics

Still unanswered, Farsight:
Farsight: (29 July 2014) What is the scientific definition of space?

Farsight: (29 July 2014) What is the scientific definition of a field in physics? And the follow-on: How does this make What a field in physics really is by W.D.Clinger wrong?

New questions since you have been going on about something called "inhomogeneous space".
Farsight: (4 August 2014): What is the scientific definition of "inhomogeneous space" in physics?
There is the homogenous/inhomogeneous distribution of mass in the universe. This causes different curvature of spacetime. But that does not sound like your "inhomogeneous space".

Farsight: (4 August 2014): What does this "inhomogeneous space" have to do with galaxy halos (specifically the Milky Way halo which is a collection of stars and globular clusters)?
Halos are basically as inhomogeneous as any other part of a galaxy.

FYI: Farsight: (1 August 2014) Information about dark matter that you seem to be ignorant about !

 

[Reality Check]

Farsight: Please give the links to your citations for space and field

Reality Check: I've answered your questions.

No you have not, Farsight, unless you count the idiotic statement "space is space" and thus "field is field", "time is time", "electron is electron" and science can stop there !

But I may have missed you citing the scientific definitions of space and field so:
Farsight: (4 August 2014) Please give the links to your citations for the scientific definitions of space and field.