Astronomers Deal Blow To Quantum Theories Of Time, Space, Gravity

Space Daily ^ | Huntsville - Mar 28, 2003 | Editorial Staff

[Anticommie]

Astronomers Deal Blow To Quantum Theories Of Time, Space, Gravity

Historically every 'theory' in physics, astronomy, biology etc. was replaced by another 'theory', Enstein is no god and his 'theory' will be eventualy replaced with another 'theory'.

[JoeSchem]

Einstein's cosmological constant also doesn't work for the observed universe. Einstein felt that there was a built-in red shift with distance -- no doppler effect required. However, the effect turned out to be too small to be observed. I've often wondered if the Red Shift we do observe is Einstein's cosmological constant in action. But that would imply that the universe is much, much smaller than we perceive. Spiral galaxies became dusty star clusters, quasars become normal stars red-shifted by the cosmological constant.

A silly idea, but it would also explain why we're not seeing a quantum blurring effect when we look at supposedly distant galaxies. IE, the galaxies aren't distant enough to have a blurring effect!

[xm177e2]

Using two HST images, astronomers from Italy and Germany looked for but did not find evidence supporting a prevailing scientific theory that says time, space and gravity are composed of tiny quantum bits.

"We took out a slide from our collection, and held it very close to the telescope. We did not see any 'quantum bits.'"

[P.O.E.]

With apologies to Niven & Pournelle:

Physicists were so busy trying to behold the mote in God's eye, without considering the Planck in their own.

[AmericanPhoenix911]

Guess the blurriness of my brain obscures all hope of clearly understanding any of these concepts. But I very much appreciate your attempts to answer my question. Thanks.

[PatrickHenry]

Yes, I think you have it. But then who am I?

Careful. Anyone who agrees with me around here is setting himself up for a bit of grief. I'm quite unpopular with the creationist crowd.

[PatrickHenry]

... the galaxies aren't distant enough to have a blurring effect!

I think that's been ruled out. I don't pretend to completely understand this, but Lyman alpha systems give evidence consistent with the size of the universe indicated by stellar redshifts.

[Arthur McGowan]

I am blissful in my ignorance.

[boris]

I believe you are incorrect. The laws of macrophysics (mechanics) are time-symmetric."

You selected the macroscopic example of a ball falling, not me.

--Boris

[boris]

"Yes. But causality is always a one-way street, flowing from cause to consequence. I have no support on this in any of the physics literature, nor do any of the truly knowledgeable people on this board agree with me, but I regard causality as the principle "arrow" of time, and the only one which gives time what we perceive as its direction -- from past to future."

Careful.

In the first place, one can design a relativistic experiment in which effect 'seems to' preceed cause.

In the next place, if one believes in strict causality, one soon finds himself sliding down the slippery slope of determinism. I know this because I do and am.

Finally, several modern experiments have indicated that our notion of 'causality' is at best a rough-and-ready heuristic. For example, the 'quantum eraser' and similar experiments which apparently show that the past can be edited by events in the present.

--Boris

[freedom9]

"As for "energy attracting energy," this is demonstrably not the case. Massless particles (photons, probably neutrinos, etc.) do have energy, but not mass. This is why cosmologists have been fighting over whether neutrinos do have mass, because it would explain part of the composition and gravitational effects we see in galaxies, despite the fact that we don't see the mass to cause them. So energy does attract other energy, but only when both energies are in the state that we call "matter" and have mass (remember that Einstein's famous equation establishes the convertability of matter and energy: E=mc²)..."

I don't think there is such an entity as a massless particle.
Nor do I believe that energy can propagate in an empty space.
I see photons as a quantive unit of force rather than an a massless particle. And there is no discrepancy that a unit of force can't propagate as a wave.
And that quantive unit of force may be termed enegy and so being has mass. (the convertability of matter and energy: E=mc²)
So the bending of light is mass/energy acting upon mass/energy.

(BTW how did you type the little 2 in e=mc?)

[PatrickHenry]

Careful. In the first place, one can design a relativistic experiment in which effect 'seems to' preceed cause.

Seem to. But in the local frame in which the event happens, causality's sequence is never violated.

In the next place, if one believes in strict causality, one soon finds himself sliding down the slippery slope of determinism. I know this because I do and am.

Yes. But I hold out free will as a grand exception. I can't explain it. It just is.

Finally, several modern experiments have indicated that our notion of 'causality' is at best a rough-and-ready heuristic. For example, the 'quantum eraser' and similar experiments which apparently show that the past can be edited by events in the present.

Well, if you're going to mention QM while I'm peacefully thinking of causality and determinism, you're going to ruin my well-ordered day.

[Charles H. (The_r0nin)]

To show the movement of time is observable (the discussion was about flow, not symmetry). Flow is about movement, and not about reversability...

[PatrickHenry]

BTW how did you type the little 2 in e=mc?

E=mc < sup > 2</sup> (omit the spaces). "sup" is for superscript.

[Charles H. (The_r0nin)]

I don't think there is such an entity as a massless particle.

Then you need to come up with the equations to replace Einstein and Maxwell's equations. Because those equations declare, unequivocably, that in order for anything, including light, to travel at the speed of light, it must have no mass. Period. End of story. So you've got well over 80 years worth of physics that you need to rewrite in order to make your belief anything approaching a scientific theory. Let's see the numbers (and letters) that make up the predictive side of this light=force hypothesis of yours. How can we test it? What experiments would falsify your idea? Without that, you've got a religion, not a science. Physics is inseperably joined with mathematics, to the point that we can mathematically describe things that we cannot conceptualize or visualize (see four-dimensional space and Quantum Mechanics, for example). So if you can't write it in an equation, then it isn't a physics theory...

Oh, and as for the squared symbol. I used ASCII code. Look up "ASCII Code" on a search engine, and you can find a list of the numerical equavalents of different symbols in HTML. Then you just type in an ampersand, pound, the number, and end with a semi-colon. For example, the squared sign is number 0178. So you type in "&#0178;" (without the quotation marks) and you get "²". You can see if it works or not in the preview window before you post.

[GregoryFul]

Actually, the temporal order of events is subject to the observer's position in space. Er, well, one could adjust for distance and assume that A occured before B -- but then, a real event does not happen without an observer -- so... I'm so confused!

[freedom9]

This quote is from an article on Bohrs wave theory

"Photons don't have mass, but they do have energy--and as Einstein famously proved, mass and energy are really the same thing."

[Doctor Stochastic]

The problem (philosophical, not physical) is that in a bank queue, the statistics arises from the dispersion of a group of individuals. The photons seem to carry their dispersion along with themselves.

[Doctor Stochastic]

That would be true for Aristotle's Efficient Cause, but not necessarily for the Material Cause. The Efficient Cause can be described as a linking of events whereas the Material Cause can be described as having events flowing from states.

Material Causes may not be deterministic as in the following. An object passes from state A to either of states B or C with a 50% probability. One may ask why the object is now in state B and the answer is because it started in state A. Similarly for state C. Of course (quantum mechanically speaking) the question why is the object in state B rather than in state C may not be allowable.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Some events are temporally ordered absolutely. Things outside the light cone of an event (forward branch) must come after. There is no Lorenz transformation that can make these events simultaneous.

Events inside the light cone may be simulaneous in some reference frame.