Constancy of C in a Nano-Rumpled SpaceTime

[roSSman]

Reflecting further on Ben's question:

why didn't uncharged objects move also?

I realize I've not answered adequately. Implicit in the question is its opposite: how can charged actors be strongly impelled in the spacetime slopes I've imagined as being involved with electromagnetism, while being scarcely impelled (at least individually) in gravity's slopes?

The answer (as I've imagined it) is more in-depth than is likely sensible to try to explain here. Analysis of how it might work consumes two or three pages (and some helpful diagrams) in that paper I've failed to publish.

Unlike Terry Witt, at least I don't ask for $59 in exchange for exposing my wacky ideas. If there's any interest, I'd be more than happy to post a link to my failed paper.

 

[ben m]

Fantastic! After thinking on this question overnight, it's given me the idea for an experiment I'd not previously thought of. It would work as follows:

Start with two spheres just large enough to accomodate a cesium clock. Rig each so that its inside surface can be strongly charged either positive or negative (if outer surfaces are similarly charged doesn't matter; it's simply the inside surface that counts). Put previously synchronized cesium clocks in each, induce strong opposite charges on their inside surfaces, wait a day, then pull the clocks out and see if they're still synchronized.

I wonder if there have been any setups at least similar to the above? Most obviously, my notion predicts one of the clocks should run fast and the other slow. I'm presently trying to figure if I can rig something at least akin to the setup with my own meager resources.

Yes, an equivalent experiment has been done. The two "clocks" are an absorber and an emitter of Mossbauer photons (gamma rays with extremely well-defined frequencies and narrow resonances.) If there's a time dilation that makes the emitter clock run slower or faster than the absorber, this changes the location of the Mossbauer resonant absorption peak---indeed, that's exactly what the Pound-Rebka experiment saw, that these clocks run at different rates in different gravitational potentials.

Anyway, a standard add-on to the Mossbauer lab at MIT is to put a few-kilovolts charge difference between the absorber and the emitter, and see whether the line moves. (It doesn't.) The standard interpretation of this is that the photon is uncharged---i.e., it doesn't lose or gain energy (and thereby change frequency) when moving through electric fields. But the same null result rules out your time dilation---time runs at the same speed in a 20kV potential well as it does at ground, and it does so to better than 1 part in 10^15.

 

[ben m]

Just to clarify, the published version of the Mossbauer "photon charge" experiment is L. Grodzins, D. Engelberg, and W. Bertozzi, Bull. Am. Phys. Soc. 6. (1961) 63, which doesn't appear to be available online. But it's really quite a simple experiment, and undergraduates routinely get the same answer with similar precision.

 

[roSSman]

Ben, thanks so much. You're terrific. This is likely the killer I've been looking for. I need to analyze closely to make sure it is that indeed. I'll be doing that in the next few days. Again, thank you.

 

[roSSman]

I’ve spent some time on Pound-Rebka (Googling, etc.). I wanted to assemble a strongly coherent mental picture of exactly what was involved. At a couple of points, Ben, I absolutely thought you’d provided a killer. I was glad.

Having read and considered significantly, I find myself preferring an alternative interpretation, for the experiment, as described in Wikipedia. It is that as a photon transits through a gravitational field its frequency changes, resulting in redshift.

In the experiment (and if I understand correctly) we compensate with Doppler shift. By mounting the emitter on a speaker cone, and noting the precise state of forward or back movement it’s in when photons are simultaneously absorbed by the receiver, we can deduce how much Doppler shift was required to cancel redshift, and hence how much redshift occurs as photons transit the 22.5 meters of gravity slope.

In this view, I thought about how my notion conceives electrical charge fields as equivalent to spacetime slopes, and it seems obvious that if emitter and absorber are oppositely charged via the “add-on” you describe, the difference between those opposite slopes should, effectively, add to (or, depending how rigged, subtract from) the 22.5 meter gravity slope already present -– thereby altering the amount of redshift. Since no such change is measured, there’s perfect evidence my thinking was wacky.

At least I thought so, until remembering my notion does not conceive there’s any net change in density. For analogy, picture a sandbox that’s been leveled to a very nice plane on top (the plane may be sloped, if wanted, but the point is it’s flat). Now, as a small boy, you want to make a miniature mountain in the center, but don’t want to disturb the pretty plane more than required. One method would be to poke your finger in the center of where you want your tiny mountain. That would push sand, as displaced by your finger, outward and upward. The result would be a tiny mountain, through with crater at center.

Significantly, once your finger is withdrawn to leave the crater behind, a survey should reveal that average surface level, for the entire disturbance area, remains equal (or at least virtually so) to the surrounding plane.

My wacky thinking has long incorporated the notion that protons and electrons are rather akin, in spacetime structure, to this sandbox dynamic. So (and as stated), it’s never implied they induce a net change in local density (at least beyond what’s attributed to mass). In fact, it’s always implied the opposite.

Given this, I’m not sure the described experiment provides an indictment. I’m also not sure it doesn’t.

Going back to the experiment I proposed, hollow spheres with charge on the inside surface would be akin, returning to our sandbox, to making a small ring of mountains using, for each, the poke-in-your-finger method. In that scenario, it’s easy to imagine net elevation, for the particular sand surface that lies within the resulting ring, being higher than the undisturbed surrounding plane (assuming a sufficiently small diameter for the ring, even it’s center could be raised). It’s that sort of imagery that made me think a hollow sphere arrangement (in particular, a small sphere) might produce a measurable time dilation result.

It may be that ultimately the same conclusion should hold for the more “open” context involving oppositely charged absorber and emitter in add-on Pound-Rebka. I can’t quite get my mental imagery sharp enough to conclude one way or the other. On the one hand, I think maybe so, but on the other, it’s clear that even under my crazy imagery the local area net density, involving emitter and absorber, woud not be changed at all.

Anyhow, that’s my present state of thinking, and again I thank you for your consideration.

 

[ben m]

At least I thought so, until remembering my notion does not conceive there’s any net change in density. For analogy, picture a sandbox that’s been leveled to a very nice plane on top (the plane may be sloped, if wanted, but the point is it’s flat). Now, as a small boy, you want to make a miniature mountain in the center, but don’t want to disturb the pretty plane more than required. One method would be to poke your finger in the center of where you want your tiny mountain. That would push sand, as displaced by your finger, outward and upward. The result would be a tiny mountain, through with crater at center.

And now you've got a theory in which electromagnetic forces don't vary as 1/r^2. Sorry.

 

[sol invictus]

Just as Ben says, if that's your theory it's ruled out much more easily than with Pound-Rebka. To very high accuracy gravity and electric forces behave in the same way, where gravity acts on mass and electric forces act on charges. There are very, very, very sensitive tests of the 1/r^2 law for electric fields - the experimental limit is that the first significant deviation would occur at a distace of thousands of lightyears.

 

[ben m]

Just as Ben says, if that's your theory it's ruled out much more easily than with Pound-Rebka. To very high accuracy gravity and electric forces behave in the same way, where gravity acts on mass and electric forces act on charges. There are very, very, very sensitive tests of the 1/r^2 law for electric fields - the experimental limit is that the first significant deviation would occur at a distace of thousands of lightyears.

The experimental limit that I remember is the test for zero electric field everywhere inside of a charged conducting sphere. Is that the most sensitive one?

 

[sol invictus]

See here: http://pdg.lbl.gov/2007/listings/contents_listings.html (under gamma).

There are much more sensitive tests of the mass.

 

[roSSman]

Either I'm so stupid as to have totally missed an inherent blunder in my thinking (a large possibility), or I miscommunicated.

Though I didn't say so expressly in my sandbox/mountain analogy, my notion would in fact picture the slopes of those "mountains" precisely following the inviolable inverse square law (e.g., at double the distance from source the slope is 1/4 as great).

At least, that's what I picture for everything outside a very minute-in-diameter inverted core.

Perhaps it's that inversion-of-core concept (i.e., where finger pokes into the sand) that does not seem feasible in regard to 1/r^2.

But if not, please mentally construct a graph of spacetime slopes as involved along a line that projects on any axis through earth's center. Beginning your graph at large distance from earth and approaching its surface, sample points will paint a curved line that arcs upward (in accordance with the inverse law) until reaching a point approximately adjacent to earth's surface. At that point, the line will begin curving back in the opposite direction, until becoming flat at earth's center.

This is obviously not an example of core-density inversion (as is imagined for my proton/electron-as-space-time-disturbance model), but is an example (I believe) where the inverse square law does not continue to apply as you approach ever closer to the center of a subject disturbance. I think this shows that the inverse square law does not necessarily, in itself, disallow minute-in-diameter inverse cores, as I've imagined them.

If you're at all curious, I imagined the inverted cores not only as a means of keeping net density nearly equal to ambient, but (and more directly) to imagine a mechanism via which to account (within a totally spacetime-based construct) for like-to-like repulsion and opposite-to-opposite attraction. Based on the inverted cores, you handily get both, and it's pretty cool how superbly the models work (even if they are nothing but a bunch of silly imagination).

I began my whole perverse line of thinking by wondering how, if one wanted to, he might picture supposed variations, in spacetime alone, in a manner that might seemingly account for major phenomena (i.e., without positing any separate fields or forces). I found that, based on very few base assumptions (such as what I described in Post 20, supposing that a corpuscle of spacetime vacuity should be impelled in a larger spacetime slope in the vector favoring decreased density), a lot of stuff seemed to model very well (at least, and of course, for my level of analysis).

It's because so much seemed to model so well that I've been unhappily captivated -- unhappily, because (again based on that general odds thing) I know it's so likely nonsense, and yet on direct analysis it simultaneously seems (to me) so compelling. Dang, I hate it. But you guys have been very patient with me, and (as always) I really appreciate that.

P.S. Besides perfect constancy for C, another matter (out of many) that's seemed to model well is duality. As I view its history, physics pretty much abandoned the effort to maintain coherently consistent mental imagery of underlying mechanics when (among other matters) it was found that in some situations particle imagery worked well (but not waves) and in others vice versa. I'm not one who's bothered by that (if that's how nature is, fine). But on basis of the thesis I've pursued, I've discovered a seemingly coherent basis to unite both sides (as alluded to in Post 8). If it wasn't nonsense, it would be mighty cool.

In that context, I guess I've found it amazing how a line of thinking can have so many elements that seem so very compelling, and yet still be a bunch of baloney. But I shouldn't be surprised. It doesn't take much canvassing of what's out there to find I'm only one among many crackpots -- each of whom, most obviously, find their own lines of thinking compelling, too.

 

[ben m]

Though I didn't say so expressly in my sandbox/mountain analogy, my notion would in fact picture the slopes of those "mountains" precisely following the inviolable inverse square law (e.g., at double the distance from source the slope is 1/4 as great).

At least, that's what I picture for everything outside a very minute-in-diameter inverted core.

Remember, in (e.g.) the Grodzins experiment, the region of space that the Mossbauer photon is traversing---some cm or mm from the bulk of the excess charges that make the 20kV potential---is the exact same region and length scale in which you want electrons to feel a 1/r^2 force. You can't invent something to "cancel out" the photon-related effects without also cancel out the force on the electron.

(And I don't want to suggest that this is the only problem with your theory---it's just the one that's easiest to analyze given your explanations so far.)

In that context, I guess I've found it amazing how a line of thinking can have so many elements that seem so very compelling, and yet still be a bunch of baloney. But I shouldn't be surprised. It doesn't take much canvassing of what's out there to find I'm only one among many crackpots -- each of whom, most obviously, find their own lines of thinking compelling, too.

Yep. In a case like yours, I suspect it's a simple matter of confirmation bias. You've got a big mix of mental pictures of physics "working" through your model; some of them are exact, some are vague, some look good and some look contradictory. It's very easy to accept the (apparently) "exact and good" cases at face value, perhaps even without thinking them through carefully. It's also easy to muddle up the (apparently) "exact contradiction" cases by trying to think them through carefully, getting confused, and therefore bumping them into the "vague" column. And everything in the "vague" column can at least be hoped to be confirmatory ... and wishful thinking turns those hopes into near-certainties.

 

[sol invictus]

In that context, I guess I've found it amazing how a line of thinking can have so many elements that seem so very compelling, and yet still be a bunch of baloney. But I shouldn't be surprised. It doesn't take much canvassing of what's out there to find I'm only one among many crackpots -- each of whom, most obviously, find their own lines of thinking compelling, too.

You should also remember that physics is a quantitative, mathematical science. A vague idea is fine, but real theories in physics are based on equations - that's what makes them useful, and what allows us to build televisions and airplanes and computers. No one will take any alternative seriously until it can make successful quantitative predictions. So I advise you to try that, if you haven't already, and see how far you get.

You might start by computing the force two moving charged particles exert on each other.

 

[roSSman]

Yep. In a case like yours, I suspect it's a simple matter of confirmation bias. You've got a big mix of mental pictures of physics "working" through your model; some of them are exact, some are vague, some look good and some look contradictory. It's very easy to accept the (apparently) "exact and good" cases at face value, perhaps even without thinking them through carefully.

I’m afraid that's likely a more accurate analysis of my situation than I wish was true. To be candid, I don’t care so much about the “idea” being garbage; I mostly hate being subject to those kinds of mental pitfalls.

It's also easy to muddle up the (apparently) "exact contradiction" cases by trying to think them through carefully, getting confused, and therefore bumping them into the "vague" column. And everything in the "vague" column can at least be hoped to be confirmatory

A reasonably close description of my reaction to this issue:

Remember, in (e.g.) the Grodzins experiment, the region of space that the Mossbauer photon is traversing---some cm or mm from the bulk of the excess charges that make the 20kV potential---is the exact same region and length scale in which you want electrons to feel a 1/r^2 force. You can't invent something to "cancel out" the photon-related effects without also cancel out the force on the electron.

However, and notwithstanding superb understanding in your statements, it’s also true bias cuts in multiple ways. I’m guessing, Ben and Sol, if an idea were presented that invoked surface objections not necessarily more severe than mine, but in a different, much more respected context, instead of giving full and immediate weight to apparent objections, you'd guess there were likely answers not immediately apparent, and be open, even expectant, in terms of hoping to learn what such answers were.

The standard crackpot line is there’s a conspiracy against them. That’s obviously boneheaded, though there’s at least a kernel of truth in terms of the bias just described –- an absolutely sensible bias, that you’d be a fool to not maintain. There’s too much clutter to sift through; we humans have to form biases to move forward. But it also makes it much more likely we’ll miss that one in a million good idea that comes from an unexpected source.

In regard to “the exact same region and length scale in which you want electrons to feel a 1/r^2 force” issue, I’ve worked hard on the matter, and believe I have much clearer image, now, of how it impacts my notion, particularly as compared to when I said “I’m not sure the described experiment provides an indictment. I’m also not sure it doesn’t.”

Specifically, since long ago my models have provided a mechanism (as based on an internally coherent set of suppositions, which I grant may otherwise be nonsense) via which physical force levels, as encountered in electromagnetic fields, manage to be significant at multi-cm distances even when the assumed spacetime slopes remain moderate in comparison to local gravity’s. That’s a good trick, considering gravity is many magnitudes weaker than electrical field force, but it’s an inherent consequence of structure that’s pre-built into the models (i.e., it wasn’t placed there to solve this problem, but arose spontaneously as the result of very simple base-level assumptions). It may also seem inconsistent with the fact I’ve supposed a photon may careen left and right while navigating a rumpled spacetime within the solid of a prism; however, in that case we’re not picturing multi-cm distances; we’re picturing sub-nm.

In sum, my modeling has never conceptualized spacetime/charge slopes as being steep enough to significantly affect photon navigation, except at distances very near charged structures -– near enough that, qualitatively, it seems conceivable there’d not be sufficient distance to affect add-on Pound-Rebka even given its high level of precision. Given this, I think to evaluate whether that experiment genuinely indicts will require application of appropriate math (a nod here to Sol's argument). That’s something I presently have little idea how to do. However (and since at present this is the strongest candidate for indictment of my thesis I’m aware of), I intend to learn. I presently have a book I believe will teach me, and intend to embark on the effort soon.

In the meantime, it's a dumb position to “claim” my model does this or that without exposing it to full scrutiny. Whether any are (or should be) interested, is another matter. Regardless, it's fully eplained at http://rossware.net/NewMetaphor.pdf.

I can’t thank the two of you enough, Ben and Sol, for your kindness and attention.

 

[roSSman]

In regard to Sol's statement:

You should also remember that physics is a quantitative, mathematical science.

I certainly respect what you’re saying. At the same time, though, I wonder if quantification is not excessively emphasized in today's physics. As a counter-example, it’s reported that Neils Bohr did not have a single calculation in his research notebooks. Instead, they consisted of all verbal arguments and pictures (if you want a reference, I can provide it).

I also wonder if quantification has not grown to claim such exclusivity because, in the quantum era, conceptualization has been so riddled with difficulty. Another way of saying this is, perhaps physicists have essentially said “we can't coherently conceptualize this stuff, so let’s just focus on the math.”

But what if a coherent basis of conceptualization had simply been missed? It could be argued that’s a fair candidate for explaining why physics has gone for almost 30 years (since roughly 1980, when the Standard Model was pretty much complete) since its last revolutionary advance. String theory has consumed pretty much a generation of physicists, that exceed in number all those who preceded, and while there’s great math to show for it, there has as yet not been a single proven physical discovery.

In short, I think the potential to possibly better conceive matters (particularly in areas that are already well-mapped quantitatively) should not be given excessive short shrift.