A Light Brainstorm

[ynot]

Please remember that this is all just brainstorming. I’ve been trying to imagine how light travels and have come up with this bizarre theory . . .

Imagine that light somehow travels by way of universal carriers. Lets give these carriers a cute name and call them “Blips” Blips exist everywhere in the universe. They are not matter and are not effected by matter. Blips are actually stationary. In other words, each Blip is an actual fixed stationary reference point for the universe. Lets call this “unistatic”. Light travels from Blip to Blip at c until it gets absorbed again by matter. Not sure if light travels by its own momentum, or it gets “passed” from Blip to Blip. Regardless of Blips, It seems to me that light should be unistatic. It doesn’t make sense to me that light should be in uniform motion with the matter the emitted it.

Happy put up new calendars time to all.

 

[Terry]

show us the math and in particular how it is consistent with the same observations that special relativity nicely agrees with.

 

[fuelair]

Why not just check in a decent college Physics textbook?

 

[Roboramma]

"Blips" sounds suspiciously like a synonmy for "ether" to me, though I could be wrong...

 

[PixyMisa]

As Roboramma says, this idea is effectively the same as the "luminiferous ether" hypothesis, which was disproved by Michelson and Morley in 1887.

Any decent high school Physics textbook will cover this in detail; it's a very famous experiment.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

What is it with people making stuff up off the tops of their heads without doing some reading first?

~~ Paul

 

[PixyMisa]

It's so much easier that way!

 

[Dilb]

Imagine that light somehow travels by way of universal carriers. Lets give these carriers a cute name and call them “Blips” Blips exist everywhere in the universe.

What do you mean by everywhere? Are they discrete points with some space between them, or do they fill all space? And what is a carrier exactly? What is it carrying? Is it like a dielectric, so little sub-blips move in response to electric fields?

They are not matter and are not effected by matter. Blips are actually stationary. In other words, each Blip is an actual fixed stationary reference point for the universe.

Do you mean "affected"? It's a common mistake (I always have to sound it out), but there's a chance you actually do mean effected, which significantly changes the meaning. What do you mean by a fixed stationary reference point? Any non-accelerating point is good enough for a reference point, but do you mean it should have "properly zero velocity", which has fairly conclusively been disproven?

Lets call this “unistatic”. Light travels from Blip to Blip at c until it gets absorbed again by matter. Not sure if light travels by its own momentum, or it gets “passed” from Blip to Blip. Regardless of Blips, It seems to me that light should be unistatic. It doesn’t make sense to me that light should be in uniform motion with the matter the emitted it.

Happy put up new calendars time to all.

And I really don't know what you mean by this. Should I imagine light as a wave, or as a particle? 'By it's own momentum'? 'From blip to blip'? What do these mean? And if the blips are unistatic, but light travels from blip to blip, doesn't that mean that light is not unistatic? Or does unistatic mean the exact same thing that was disproven by Michelson-Morley, that there is a preferred reference frame?

Regardless, even though it's possible that relativity is wrong, it's been shown to be accurate for all experiments ever done. I've done some myself, even, it's so simple. Could you explain how your theory is equivalent to relativity in some approximation? I'm guessing you'd have to do something like "in the case of the Lorentz factor is less than 10^20", but surely that should be simple enough.

 

[KingMerv00]

It doesn’t make sense to me that light should be in uniform motion with the matter the emitted it.

Agreed. It certainly does not conform to our everyday experience but that does not mean the current theories are wrong. It stinks but the universe doesn't seem to care what we think is normal.

 

[ynot]

show us the math and in particular how it is consistent with the same observations that special relativity nicely agrees with.

I made it clear both in the title and the first sentence that this is brainstorming, thinking outside the square, run it up the flag pole and see how it flaps, not to be taken seriously. It's not an attack on Relativity.

fuelair: "Why not just check in a decent college Physics textbook?"
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos: "What is it with people making stuff up off the tops of their heads without doing some reading first?"
PixyMisa: "It's so much easier that way!"

I tend to learn in a similar way that I assemble kitsets. Build the thing, then read the instructions to find out why it doesn‘t work (if it doesn’t) and where the bits left over should have gone. By doing it this way I have to think about how things go together rather than just being told. It's not easier, it's slower and harder, and exposes me to the ridicule of being wrong far more often than right. Everything we know started off as an independent idea. Many discoveries have come from mistakes and happenstance. I’m not holding my breath that my ideas will ever be classed as discoveries.

Roboramma: ""Blips" sounds suspiciously like a synonmy for "ether" to me, though I could be wrong..."

I have a workshop full of invention prototypes that I started the patent process for, only to find that someone had already thought of it 100 plus years ago, so this doesn't surprise me.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

RTFM, dude.

~~ Paul

 

[Orangutan]

I have a workshop full of invention prototypes that I started the patent process for, only to find that someone had already thought of it 100 plus years ago, so this doesn't surprise me.

So rather than do some research in an area that interests you and going from there, you waste the talent you have re-creating things that were discovered or invented years ago. To paraphrase Newton, you willfully ignore the Giants on who's shoulders you could stand!
It's people like you that are responsible for me not having the flying car I was promised.

Edit. I like your avatar though.

 

[Mashuna]

It's people like you that are responsible for me not having the flying car I was promised.

Sorry dude, I think that was my fault. I was, like, bringing it over to you, but forgot to put the handbrake on. It's in orbit now.

 

[TjW]

I made it clear both in the title and the first sentence that this is brainstorming, thinking outside the square, run it up the flag pole and see how it flaps, not to be taken seriously. It's not an attack on Relativity.
<snippage by TjW>

Well, it helps when thinking outside the box to have some idea of where the box is.

 

[Jarom]

I made it clear both in the title and the first sentence that this is brainstorming, thinking outside the square, run it up the flag pole and see how it flaps, not to be taken seriously.

Understandable. The reason we reject it is because it directly contradicts repeated observations which have already been made.

Specifically, we can test how long it takes for light to get from point A to point B (where both point A and point B are stationary relative to the Earth, and therefore in motion compared with any hypothetical "Blips"), and compare it with how long it takes for light to get from point A to point B when we rotate our equipment so that "point A to point B" is a different direction.

A consequence of your suggestion is that the light would go faster if the apparatus is pointed the opposite direction the blips are traveling (from our point of view). This is because point B would "catch up" to the light as it traveled.

Actual observations, done most famously by Michelson and Morley, show that the light takes the same amount of travel time no matter which way the apparatus is pointed.

To fix your theory, you'll have to add to it some other feature, so that it no longer predicts outcomes which aren't so. Good luck!

 

[Soapy Sam]

What is it with people making stuff up off the tops of their heads without doing some reading first?

~~ Paul

It's so much easier that way!

So rather than do some research in an area that interests you and going from there, you waste the talent you have re-creating things that were discovered or invented years ago. To paraphrase Newton, you willfully ignore the Giants on who's shoulders you could stand!
It's people like you that are responsible for me not having the flying car I was promised.

Edit. I like your avatar though.

Well, it helps when thinking outside the box to have some idea of where the box is.

All the above comments are valid, but there is a case for thinking about things before reading the texts, just as there is a case for visiting a new place before reading the guidebooks. This is the only way to be reasonably sure our thoughts are our own and not those of someone else.

Whether our own thoughts have any value is another matter entirely.
There usually is or has been at least one person a great deal smarter than you or me, whose conclusion is worth a great deal more than yours or mine; or a whole bunch of folk who wrestled with the problem for centuries. That's what's so great about science as opposed to religion- it actually accumulates truth over time.

Given that we accept that caveat , I hope there's still room for uninformed speculation. It only becomes dangerous when, without testing it against reality, we decide to accept our speculation as correct.

I don't think there's much danger of ynot falling into that trap. He seems well aware of reality , but he's having fun speculating. It's the ones who can't tell the difference we need to worry about.

 

[Smike]

I made it clear both in the title and the first sentence that this is brainstorming, thinking outside the square, run it up the flag pole and see how it flaps, not to be taken seriously.

...you're not in management, are you?

 

[Dilb]

Understandable. The reason we reject it is because it directly contradicts repeated observations which have already been made.

I'm questioning it right now because it doesn't imply anything. Saying light travels along unistatic blips doesn't mean anything. A theory needs to have definite consequences, preferably ones that can be expressed mathematically. Thought experiments which are clearly impossible or wrong can still be interesting exercises in physics-inspired mathematics.

For example, as an exercise I was assigned, I had to derive the energy levels of an atom with a Bohr-like model, assuming that the force is quantized into integer levels. Although atoms are not actually like this, it's still possible to get the "correct" result, by doing the math properly. The theory distills to the equation
[latex]F = nk[/latex]
for n is an integer, plus Newtonian mechanics. The fact that this theory is wrong doesn't mean that discussing them isn't interesting, much like people enjoy discussing Plato's theory of forms, even if no one believes it.

On the other hand, saying light travels by blips doesn't mean much. Is this light the classical light as predicted by Maxwell's equations, so that blips are the ethereal dielectric? Are this blips more like the classical "infinite series of masses connected by springs", so that we can use Newtonian mechanics? Are these blips a hypothetical particle that fills all space, somewhat like how Dirac imagined positrons as a hole in an infinite sea of electrons with negative energy? Or better yet, is it actually something new (or at least not something that any physics major learns about), so we'd need to discuss it before being able to say "that's wrong"?

 

[ynot]

Agreed. It certainly does not conform to our everyday experience but that does not mean the current theories are wrong. It stinks but the universe doesn't seem to care what we think is normal.

And they call it “Intelligent Design”

 

[ynot]

All the above comments are valid, but there is a case for thinking about things before reading the texts, just as there is a case for visiting a new place before reading the guidebooks. This is the only way to be reasonably sure our thoughts are our own and not those of someone else.

Whether our own thoughts have any value is another matter entirely.
There usually is or has been at least one person a great deal smarter than you or me, whose conclusion is worth a great deal more than yours or mine; or a whole bunch of folk who wrestled with the problem for centuries. That's what's so great about science as opposed to religion- it actually accumulates truth over time.

Given that we accept that caveat , I hope there's still room for uninformed speculation. It only becomes dangerous when, without testing it against reality, we decide to accept our speculation as correct.

I don't think there's much danger of ynot falling into that trap. He seems well aware of reality , but he's having fun speculating. It's the ones who can't tell the difference we need to worry about.

Thanks - Good to know someone "gets" the concept of brainstroming.