Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology => Topic started by: Nieuwenhove on 07/07/2006 07:52:53
-
I have no question this time, I just want to express my opinion on the present situation in physics. In many respects we are really living in the "dark ages" (or middle ages) of physics.
Some examples :
Dark matter : invented to solve some problems with galaxy rotation curves - never observed - everybody seems to believe in it
Dark energy : invented to solve the apparant expansion of the universe - never understood, never demonstrated
Higgs particle : Supposed to give mass to particles - never observed
gravitons : Particles supposed to mediate the gravitational force - an absurd invention and never observed
sterile neutrons : a newcomer with absurd properties - never observed
string theory : Many dimensions, nothing proven
I could go on for a while here.
Despite that these dubious concepts have no solid basis at all, most scientists seem to follow these ideas as stupid sheep.
So, we are not much better off now then assuming that everything is composed of earth, water, fire, air.
Let us hope things get better.
Rudi Van Nieuwenhove
-
At the limits of understanding there have always been many theories about how things are likely to progress and I assure you real precticing scientists have plenty of discussions about what competing theories may work and do not follow fixed popular ideas like stupid sheep.
If you wish to enter the argument with in any experienced group it is important to show that you first understand the chains of thought and the mathematics that causes the scientists to propose these theories seriously before you start to argue against them.
I suggest you first read Roger Penrose's book "The Road to Reality" that gives a clear exposition of the detailed thinking behind modern mathematical physics without any assumptions of detailed mathematical knowledge beond that of basic arithmetic
The problem nowadays that it currently appears that all the easy experiments have been done and only very extreme and difficult experiments can detect the very subtle dofferences that will select between competing theories.
There are however some areas where conventional physics may be able to give real insight into cosmology and thse are where normal materials have some of the properties that may be expected of space time under extreme conditions by enabling physical models to be built.
Learn, create, test and tell
evolution rules in all things
God says so!
-
waz there ever a light age of physics?
NEVER! underestimate youth
-
Dont post that, we are in the brilliant age, for the first time ever. Scientists know everything, physics is not flawed in any way. All those things you said are false, you are an idiot, you dare disagree with scientists?
-signed everybody-
Move on, Ive allready posted this one, your wrong they are right.
But you know, It's interesting really, most people have some understanding of the history of science, and in particular the history of its failures. Yet in spite of this, they fail to acknowledge the possibility of everything they do now, may be flawed. Everyone from a later age always looks at previous ages in this manner. They always think that they are better than the others. They always think, weve really got it figured out. I guess it is just human nature, they dont understand that realisticly, it's a stretch to think ANY of that unpredicted bull**** you mentioned, is gonna stand up the tests of time.
Some of the enlightened ones however, may put it into perspective, and say that they indeed do understand the nature of science, and how its naive to think of physics, with hardly any validity, given the history of it. However anybody who devotes their life to physics, usually takes what they've been taught, with total, non-critical belief. And they probably say such things, because thats what they've been taught. But they dont connect the dots. Deep down they believe, they are the exception.
If you dont believe me just disagree with any part of physics. They'll go crazy. I guarantee it!
-
Physics can't explain everything, it ain't perfect, but it is really not bad at explaining 99% of things 99% of the time. A lot of people have been trying to find problems with is for a long time (they are called physicists). So finding the holes in it, which undoubtabley exist, is going to at least involve understanding what the present theories are plus a lot of insight, some hard core equipment and or a lot of luck.
We are not saying there are no problems with it, just that most of the things that come up on science forums have already been dealt with.
-
It doesnt explain 99 percent 99 percent of the time. It explains maybe 5 percent, 5 percent of the time. You/we just dont know enough yet. people used to think of aristotle physics, the same as we think of modern physics. Its great, maybe not perfect, but very close. There is no way modern physics is even close. We are no different from our predacessors. What makes us so damn special?
-
You're talking rubbish brain13 please list the 5% of all things that physics explains and a good proportion of the 95% you think that it doesnt! Its far nearer dave's answer anytime.
Learn, create, test and tell
evolution rules in all things
God says so!
-
you think people from the year 2500 will think that.....
-
Things the go bump in the night
give you a terrible fright
It’s the hole in each ear
that lets in the fear
And that and the absents of light. [^]
What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.
-
quote:
Originally posted by thebrain13
It doesnt explain 99 percent 99 percent of the time. It explains maybe 5 percent, 5 percent of the time. You/we just dont know enough yet. people used to think of aristotle physics, the same as we think of modern physics. Its great, maybe not perfect, but very close. There is no way modern physics is even close. We are no different from our predacessors. What makes us so damn special?
Well thankfully for us your statement can’t be true otherwise we wouldn’t be successfully putting men on the moon, sending probes to mars ,controlling probes on mars, putting space stations in space ,building nuclear power stations, building scanning electron microscopes, nuclear weapons , navigation satellite’s(gps) (Galileo) Communication satellites , Weather satellites, , Particle Accelerators (cern), Digital Radios, Microwave ovens, x-rays machines, Ultrasound scanners ,PET/CT scanners, Hubble telescope , ipods, Computers, need I go on.
I wonder what makes us so special.[:)]
ps Hadrian NICE
Michael
-
You know any other ages that werent the most advanced of all time. Know any others that didn't view their science as awesome? I am merely pointing out that maybe, just maybe, its a little bit naive to think that we are going to be viewed in such high regard come the future.
In my personal opinion, our little era of physics( maybe 1970-2010 give or take a few years) is going to be seen in a completely different light. Its going to be seen as when physics gets out of hand.
In the future, people are going to say, I cant believe anybody thought that.
And another opinion of mine is that physics is about to take a dramatic turn. Its not going to be a crazy reworking of probabilities, addition of particles, more forces, nothing like that. Thats what most people would suspect(which is a pretty good reason in itself, to assume that wont happen). Whats going to be truely absurd about future physics, is how SIMPLE its going to be. Imagine that, physics will get so good, they'll learn that in fact almost all that stuff mentioned above is unnecessary. They'll unify the most complicated of phenomena with the most simple of laws. Wouldnt that be absurd?
-
Coming back of holiday, I've been reading through the various new comments. It is through that our limited knowledge (mainly about electromagnetism and solid state physics) has allowed mankind to create a wealth of technological marvels and this shows indeed that the scientific process as such is bearing fruits. However, my initial comment was motivated by a sadness that so much brainpower is (probably) being wasted on ideas which are doomed to lead to a dead end. Suppose that 50 year from now, it turns out that string theory was hopelessly wrong, that dark matter or dark energy or Higgs particles or sterile neutrinos actually do not exist, ... then people will indeed say : "Physicists have been working so hard on the wrong concepts! All these papers and conferences were in vain, what a pity of all this effort. How different could science and technology have evolved if they only had seen that .... This was really a period of great confusion".
Of course, in retrospect it is always easy to say such things. However we could be more cautious now in following wild suggestions. Things get particularly bad when (new) theories are based on other unproven concepts or theories (such as theories of gravitation which are based on dimensions for which no experimental indications exist, or, theories of dark matter which are based on hypothetical particles, etc.) Then, things get really out of control and again a lot of energy is wasted. While theories like general relativity were based and guided by a few simple principles, such clarity and vision does not seem to exist today. That's why I used the term "dark ages" as the leading light is missing.
-
It's dumb to think what people in the year 2500 will think of us and our theories. We can only do the best with what we know and have learned so far.
Steven
-
It is possible that people in 2500 will think our theories primative, but unless they are living in very different conditions to those we are in now the every day physics they use will have to be very similar to ours.
eg, quantum mechanics and relativity both give approximately the same answers as Newtonian mechanics at ordinary speeds, temperatures and length scales.
This has to be true as they are all explaining the same set of results in this region. In the same way any year 2500 theories may have to explain a load of new phenomena we don't know about, but they will still have to explain all the phenomena we have already noticed so will have to give approximately the same answers as our theories most of the time even if they are based on an entirely different principle.
-
Niewenhove, I like the cut of your jib. Challenge that what doesn't make sense. Why should an unproven theory be correct? There are scientist out there that disagree with the same stuff you do. I believe many don't get published and others won't state there opinion.
The graviton is the one that gets me and please some one correct me if i'm wrong (in a consice manner if possible). For each particle that has mass it must emit a graviton to everyother particle in the universe. But how often? Every millisecond? Continously? And, what if another piece of matter got in the way? Would the particle in the gravitons "shadow" not be influenced by the mass? That is how the idea of a graviton has me baffled. I like the analog idea -- a gravitation field. Gravity wells and the like.
-
quote:
Originally posted by daveshorts
It is possible that people in 2500 will think our theories primative, but unless they are living in very different conditions to those we are in now the every day physics they use will have to be very similar to ours.
eg, quantum mechanics and relativity both give approximately the same answers as Newtonian mechanics at ordinary speeds, temperatures and length scales.
This has to be true as they are all explaining the same set of results in this region. In the same way any year 2500 theories may have to explain a load of new phenomena we don't know about, but they will still have to explain all the phenomena we have already noticed so will have to give approximately the same answers as our theories most of the time even if they are based on an entirely different principle.
Is this rather like we think of phlogiston theory as merely a primitive version of the modern theories of combustion?
The proponents of phlogiston theory were trying to explain observations that we still must explain today, but few of us today would normally regard phlogiston theory as merely a primitive subset of modern combustion theory.
George
-
In my personal opinion, even if I don't agree with such a strong statement as "In many respects we are really living in the "dark ages" (or middle ages) of physics", some physics is, a little, loosing the road of real physics; sometimes because we seem to have already discovered almost everything (but it's not, of course), sometimes because people like to create complicated mathematics or to show their very high level of difficult things knowledge ecc.
This doesn't really worries me; I think we should let our creativity express in any way. What worries me a little is that we, "normal people" risk to lose completely really phisical concepts, contact with reality. Let's remember that the more a new theory can be linked to everyday reality, the more that theory is deep and full of meanings and implications. I found many years ago how much more knoweldge could give me just thinking and analyzing deeper simple and basic things. Just think: what is space? What is time? What is a photon, or an electron? Why do photoelectric effect happen? What actually means the physical action (the one of least action principle)? Where does momentum conservation or energy conservation principles come from?
When I studied physics at university, many years ago, I had the lucky to study Landau's "Mechanics" and there, for the first time,I discovered that, actually, momentum conservation is "the homogeneity of space" and energy conservation is "the homogeneity of time". What really deep insight of nature!
Physics nowadays probably lacks something like that.
-
I think Nexus puts forward a sound argument for the non existence of gravitons but I believe there is adequate evidence for the existence of dark matter from light lensing observations as well as galatic rotation
syhprum
-
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by syhprum</i>
I think Nexus puts forward a sound argument for the non existence of gravitons but I believe there is adequate evidence for the existence of dark matter from light lensing observations as well as galatic rotation
syhprum
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
I do not believe in dark matter at all. Galactic rotation curves can also be explained without dark matter
If 50-60 year of searching for dark matter has not resulted in finding it, it is really time to admit that it simply does not exist.
-
Fortunatley for dark matter to exist it doesn't require anyones belief.
-
quote:
Originally posted by Mjhavok
Fortunatley for dark matter to exist it doesn't require anyones belief.
Do you mean that you have objective proofs of its existence? We are very interested in!
-
why is the existance of gravitons absurd?
i think string theory is very beautiful, even though i have a handful of issues with some of the details. any experiment to directly observe string theory would require too much energy, but there ought to be clever ways of indirrect observations. unfortunately, i feel skeptics will deny any evidence without coming up with any conter-theories.
-
quote:
Originally posted by bostjan
why is the existance of gravitons absurd?
i think string theory is very beautiful, even though i have a handful of issues with some of the details. any experiment to directly observe string theory would require too much energy, but there ought to be clever ways of indirrect observations. unfortunately, i feel skeptics will deny any evidence without coming up with any conter-theories.
Let us assume (for a short moment) that gravitons exist and consider the attraction between an apple and the earth .. So, one has gravitons moving in between these two to mediate the gravitational force. However, these gravitons should also feel the gravitational force BECAUSE the Einstein field equations are nonlinear (curvature as a source of curvature). This means then that there should be graviton - interactions inbetween the gravitons. But these gravitons interacting between gravitons should also be subject to gravitation and hence even more gravitons are needed. Easy to see that this leads to an infinity of gravitons (for an arbitrary small volume of space). This looks an absurd situation (to me) and hence one is led to conclude that gravitons do not exist.
As regard to string theory : There are many signs now that string theory is loosing ground (mainly because it does not seem to predict anything useful) and that other theories like loop quantum gravity are looking more promising.
-
why not have interactions between gravitons? this doesn't mean that two gravitons form a third graviton in the interaction. anyway, who says they interact directly?
string theory was one way to have gravitons without infinities, but loop quantum gravity seems promising as it doesn't depend on the existance of gravitons. the dimentionality of four and use of the same metric at all scales and energies could be great, but are just as bold of assumptions as most of the assumptions string theory makes, so i don't see it as a significant breakthrough just yet. it is a very interesting move, though, and may well be the kind of progress we need to keep things fresh.
-
You are not thinking through the situation properly. In most physical situations it is important to think about the true scale of things.
Let us start by thinking about how electrons and electromagnetic radiation works. When an electron changes its orbit in the outer layers of a atom a photon is either emitted or absorbed the interaction produces visible light light with wavelengths of less than one micron and frequencies of hundreds of terahertz. The frequency of the radiation is a measure of both the energy change and the time the interaction takes. Large lumps of material like the surface of the earth have a temperature and emit infra red radiation as heat at room temperature as a result of the molecules jostling together. One of the coldest natural things we are aware of is the cosmic microwave background which peaks at a two and a bit degrees kelvin. This radiation is still in the gigahertz region of freqiencies. in other words the interactions take less than a thousanth of a millionth of a second.
Remember also that the energy of the photon is Plancks constant times the frequency so the lower the frequequency the lower the energy in the individual photon (or graviton).
Now consider gravitiational interactions in the same context and the frequency of the gravitational radiation involved in the interaction. Planets take years to go round their stars do their gravitational radiation is measured in fractions of cycles per year If I drop something, it falls through the air under gravity in seconds and stops in milliseconds. The fastest large scale gravitational interactions are expected to be two orbiting stellar mass black holes merging and this produces frequencies in the low to mid audio band of around 1kHz All these are at least a million times slower than even the coldest photons descrobed in the first section of this note.
This means that the gravitons are incredibly low frequency and low energy things and that there are a very great number of them involved in producing the attraction.
Gravitationl interactions producing gravitons with energies in the region of even the lowest energy microwave photons were only happening way back in the first tiny fraction of a microsecond after the big bang long before there were any atoms. Is it surprising that we haven't detected them!
Learn, create, test and tell
evolution rules in all things
God says so!
-
A recent article in 'Nature' discussed possible techniques for detecting gravitons and compared them to the means for detecting neutrinos which is difficult enough.
It suggested that the interactions with matter was weaker by a factor of 10^11 than that of neutrinos and although four separate means of detection were discussed none were remotely possible.This is seperate question from detecting gravitational waves for which technology is under development but the detection of actual graviton particles seems quite impossible.
syhprum
-
There is no such thing as gravitons. Just throwin out there.
-
Theres no such thing a quarks, quote an experiment where an isolated one has been detected or describe a hypothetical experiment how it could be done.
syhprum
-
finding a distinct particle of gravitation is not the same as finding a gravitational wave. i agree that there should have been an observation by now, but i wouldn't call the graviton hypothesis in the standard model absurd.
as for quarks, i didn't think there was any argument as to their existance at this point. the reason they don't last very long outside of the nucleus is due to very high binding energies, as well as confinement. the energy it takes to snap a quark out of the nucleus is enough to form two new quarks- one to pair with the old one, and one to take it's place.
-
quote:
Originally posted by Mjhavok
Fortunatley for dark matter to exist it doesn't require anyones belief.
Do you mean that you have objective proofs of its existence? We are very interested in!
-
why is the existance of gravitons absurd?
i think string theory is very beautiful, even though i have a handful of issues with some of the details. any experiment to directly observe string theory would require too much energy, but there ought to be clever ways of indirrect observations. unfortunately, i feel skeptics will deny any evidence without coming up with any conter-theories.
-
quote:
Originally posted by bostjan
why is the existance of gravitons absurd?
i think string theory is very beautiful, even though i have a handful of issues with some of the details. any experiment to directly observe string theory would require too much energy, but there ought to be clever ways of indirrect observations. unfortunately, i feel skeptics will deny any evidence without coming up with any conter-theories.
Let us assume (for a short moment) that gravitons exist and consider the attraction between an apple and the earth .. So, one has gravitons moving in between these two to mediate the gravitational force. However, these gravitons should also feel the gravitational force BECAUSE the Einstein field equations are nonlinear (curvature as a source of curvature). This means then that there should be graviton - interactions inbetween the gravitons. But these gravitons interacting between gravitons should also be subject to gravitation and hence even more gravitons are needed. Easy to see that this leads to an infinity of gravitons (for an arbitrary small volume of space). This looks an absurd situation (to me) and hence one is led to conclude that gravitons do not exist.
As regard to string theory : There are many signs now that string theory is loosing ground (mainly because it does not seem to predict anything useful) and that other theories like loop quantum gravity are looking more promising.
-
why not have interactions between gravitons? this doesn't mean that two gravitons form a third graviton in the interaction. anyway, who says they interact directly?
string theory was one way to have gravitons without infinities, but loop quantum gravity seems promising as it doesn't depend on the existance of gravitons. the dimentionality of four and use of the same metric at all scales and energies could be great, but are just as bold of assumptions as most of the assumptions string theory makes, so i don't see it as a significant breakthrough just yet. it is a very interesting move, though, and may well be the kind of progress we need to keep things fresh.
-
You are not thinking through the situation properly. In most physical situations it is important to think about the true scale of things.
Let us start by thinking about how electrons and electromagnetic radiation works. When an electron changes its orbit in the outer layers of a atom a photon is either emitted or absorbed the interaction produces visible light light with wavelengths of less than one micron and frequencies of hundreds of terahertz. The frequency of the radiation is a measure of both the energy change and the time the interaction takes. Large lumps of material like the surface of the earth have a temperature and emit infra red radiation as heat at room temperature as a result of the molecules jostling together. One of the coldest natural things we are aware of is the cosmic microwave background which peaks at a two and a bit degrees kelvin. This radiation is still in the gigahertz region of freqiencies. in other words the interactions take less than a thousanth of a millionth of a second.
Remember also that the energy of the photon is Plancks constant times the frequency so the lower the frequequency the lower the energy in the individual photon (or graviton).
Now consider gravitiational interactions in the same context and the frequency of the gravitational radiation involved in the interaction. Planets take years to go round their stars do their gravitational radiation is measured in fractions of cycles per year If I drop something, it falls through the air under gravity in seconds and stops in milliseconds. The fastest large scale gravitational interactions are expected to be two orbiting stellar mass black holes merging and this produces frequencies in the low to mid audio band of around 1kHz All these are at least a million times slower than even the coldest photons descrobed in the first section of this note.
This means that the gravitons are incredibly low frequency and low energy things and that there are a very great number of them involved in producing the attraction.
Gravitationl interactions producing gravitons with energies in the region of even the lowest energy microwave photons were only happening way back in the first tiny fraction of a microsecond after the big bang long before there were any atoms. Is it surprising that we haven't detected them!
Learn, create, test and tell
evolution rules in all things
God says so!
-
A recent article in 'Nature' discussed possible techniques for detecting gravitons and compared them to the means for detecting neutrinos which is difficult enough.
It suggested that the interactions with matter was weaker by a factor of 10^11 than that of neutrinos and although four separate means of detection were discussed none were remotely possible.This is seperate question from detecting gravitational waves for which technology is under development but the detection of actual graviton particles seems quite impossible.
syhprum
-
There is no such thing as gravitons. Just throwin out there.
-
Theres no such thing a quarks, quote an experiment where an isolated one has been detected or describe a hypothetical experiment how it could be done.
syhprum
-
finding a distinct particle of gravitation is not the same as finding a gravitational wave. i agree that there should have been an observation by now, but i wouldn't call the graviton hypothesis in the standard model absurd.
as for quarks, i didn't think there was any argument as to their existance at this point. the reason they don't last very long outside of the nucleus is due to very high binding energies, as well as confinement. the energy it takes to snap a quark out of the nucleus is enough to form two new quarks- one to pair with the old one, and one to take it's place.
-
Gravitions like photons are energy and there are some strong suggestions that "dark energy" could well be the dominant enrgy in the universe with dark matter the second most common thing.
As I mentioned before quantum gravitiational events of significant magnitue could only have occurred way back int the first zillionth of a second of the big bang and would have been expanded just like the cosmic migrowave background radiation which was originally light.
Learn, create, test and tell
evolution rules in all things
God says so!
-
In the latest issue of New Scientist, I found another example of our "dark age of physics". In the article "Dark matter gets a chance to shine", it is suggested that the hypothetical dark matter (never observed) is able to shine thanks to neutralinos (hypothetical weakly interacting particle (WIMP) ; of course also never observed) which concentrate in the core of stars and, despite the fact that the particle is completely hypothetical, the authors seem to know that these particles will annihilate in a flash of gamma rays. This is really not science, these are fairy tales.
-
You seem to have a totally negative attitude Nieuwenove all the theories you mention have been proposed to deal with anomalies in observations and our models of the universe. To return to your original premise that scientists are following them like sheep. If you read the litereaure you will understand that they most definitely do not do this because there are almost as many theories as there are people working on them so unless you can offer something more positive I suggest that you go away and occupy your mind with a subject more to your tase towards which you may be able to propose positive contributions.
Learn, create, test and tell
evolution rules in all things
God says so!
-
Most Scientists probably are trying to find the answers, the problem is they just dont have the ability, not their fault, few do.
I really believe, most physics is completely on the wrong track. I believe if you took the two greatest scientists of all time, Einstein and Isaac Newton, they would agree. And you know how I know?
Because the greats look for balance and simplicity. While the averages, look for chaos and complications.
-
In the latest issue of New Scientist, I found another example of our "dark age of physics". In the article "Dark matter gets a chance to shine", it is suggested that the hypothetical dark matter (never observed) is able to shine thanks to neutralinos (hypothetical weakly interacting particle (WIMP) ; of course also never observed) which concentrate in the core of stars and, despite the fact that the particle is completely hypothetical, the authors seem to know that these particles will annihilate in a flash of gamma rays. This is really not science, these are fairy tales.
-
You seem to have a totally negative attitude Nieuwenove all the theories you mention have been proposed to deal with anomalies in observations and our models of the universe. To return to your original premise that scientists are following them like sheep. If you read the litereaure you will understand that they most definitely do not do this because there are almost as many theories as there are people working on them so unless you can offer something more positive I suggest that you go away and occupy your mind with a subject more to your tase towards which you may be able to propose positive contributions.
Learn, create, test and tell
evolution rules in all things
God says so!
-
Most Scientists probably are trying to find the answers, the problem is they just dont have the ability, not their fault, few do.
I really believe, most physics is completely on the wrong track. I believe if you took the two greatest scientists of all time, Einstein and Isaac Newton, they would agree. And you know how I know?
Because the greats look for balance and simplicity. While the averages, look for chaos and complications.
-
quote:
Originally posted by Soul Surfer
You seem to have a totally negative attitude Nieuwenove all the theories you mention have been proposed to deal with anomalies in observations and our models of the universe. To return to your original premise that scientists are following them like sheep. If you read the litereaure you will understand that they most definitely do not do this because there are almost as many theories as there are people working on them so unless you can offer something more positive I suggest that you go away and occupy your mind with a subject more to your tase towards which you may be able to propose positive contributions.
You should understand that I really care about physics and that I devoted a great deal of effort to it. I wish nothing more than that physics advances as fast as possible. My positive contribution I hoped to achieve(through my negative remarks) is that maybe some physicists don't lose their energy on the wrong tracks. I'll hereby end this topic.
-
OK then I will pose a final question, if you think that they are totally on the wrong track would you be prepared to suggest what might be the right track.
I myself consider that some of the suggestions are inelegant and probably wrong but I do believe that there is an honest effort to design experiments to validate all the significant theories. For example, the August issue of Astronomy and Geophysics has a long and thorough review of experimental techniques to provide independant verification and measurement of the effects of dark energy by several independant methods.
Learn, create, test and tell
evolution rules in all things
God says so!
-
Ok, here is my question:
A graviton is low energy, so you say there must be tons of them if they exist, yet you base this on Plank's constant for a photon, or am I misunderstanding you? I do not follow this argument to well.
As far as I know, gravity is a weak force compared to umm, any other fundamental force. So that suggests a small energy compared to a photon, or say a W-boson.
So how would you go about observing a graviton, if you were to believe they existed? They should be plentiful, because of the abundance of gravitational fields, as far as I understand. They should eventually interact with anything that has mass, right?
I don't say that they must exist, but I don't see how it is that they are forbidden to exist, either.
-
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Soul Surfer</i>
OK then I will pose a final question, if you think that they are totally on the wrong track would you be prepared to suggest what might be the right track.
I myself consider that some of the suggestions are inelegant and probably wrong but I do believe that there is an honest effort to design experiments to validate all the significant theories. For example, the August issue of Astronomy and Geophysics has a long and thorough review of experimental techniques to provide independant verification and measurement of the effects of dark energy by several independant methods.
Learn, create, test and tell
evolution rules in all things
God says so!
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
I have no doubt about the honest effort of scientists to validate their various theories and I'm confident that the "truth" will emerge eventually. My concern is only about the time scale.
So, one your question on what the right track is. I do not claim to be more intelligent than other scientist. On the contrary, I know there are many scientists which are 100 x cleverer than me and who have much better mathematical skills.
Very recently, I submitted two new articles to complement and extend this (in a more rigurous way) and I'm awaiting the reactions of the referees.
Some basic ideas :
1) Physics should be based on the structure and on the properties of the vacuum and not on so-called elementary particles (they are actually some special modifications of the vacuum)
2) One should not think of spacetime in general relativity as something abstract. In mathematics, this is acceptible, but not in physics. Instead, I believe that spacetime has actually a complicated underlying structure (like a network ; see my website) and that the Einstein Field equations should be seen like some kind of macroscopic description of this underlying microscopic structure.
While the concept of the ether has been abandoned by most physicists, I believe it is nevertheless there in some special form.
3) Dark matter does not exist (see website) ; it is an illusion
4) The so-called cosmological term should not be included in the Einstein field equations. It was indeed a very big mistake (the reason why is explained in my recently submitted paper).Cosmological models which are based on this are wrong. If present observations seem to contradict this, then my attitude is that there must be something wrong with the observations or the models. Models with a mix of so many barionic matter, so many (%) dark matter and so many dark energy energy are absolutely wrong. This looks more like medieval alchemy (of course I know that there are some logical reasons to do so).
I have of course no proof for most of these statements. They are based on intuition (or something else) which falls outside of scientific reason. In this sence you can call me unscientific. Nevertheless, I believe that many beautyfull theories were initially guided by some intuition or feeling and that the mathematical formulations came only in second place. What eventually remains in the articles and textbooks looks entirely logical reasoning while the "unscientific" guiding drive remains completely hidden.
-
When I was an electronic technician working in the printing trade I sometimes got to argue with genuine scientist who could dash off general relativity equations on the back of a cigarette package.
They held me in contempt for believing in things like Mr Hoyles continuous creation theory and the æther but I am glad to see that in some form an æther is almost respectable again.
syhprum
-
I have skimmed through your papers and they do have some attractive features to them and I do not think that you are totally alone in your approach. there remains a very critical requirement, are there any observations that could be made to verify this hypotesis ot distinguish it from the currently favoured dark matter dark energy approach to cosmology and a theory of everything?
Learn, create, test and tell
evolution rules in all things
God says so!
-
quote:
Originally posted by Soul Surfer
I have skimmed through your papers and they do have some attractive features to them and I do not think that you are totally alone in your approach. there remains a very critical requirement, are there any observations that could be made to verify this hypotesis ot distinguish it from the currently favoured dark matter dark energy approach to cosmology and a theory of everything?
No, I can not think of such observations. One problem is that it is very difficult to have a unique interpretation of astronomical observations. The "vacuum bubble" which I mentioned would cause a kind a lensing effect (around galaxies) very similar to dark matter.
A second problem is that my main occupation is (unfortunately) not in cosmology but in reactor instrumentation so that I have not so much time to work on these things. So, the main "argument" which I have is that such a theory is more beautifull (in my view).
-
I agree we are going through a rather untidy phase in fundamental physics. Over the years I have experienced several of these. The most notable was the chaos of subatomic particles before the quark theory of baryon and meson structure became established. Everone thought how wonderfully simple, protons, neutrons and electrons made everything until they got down to trying to understand why a lot of positively charged protons and neutral neutrons could stick together to form a nucleus and started to find hundreds of new unstable particles as the accelerators got more powerful. They also found that a lot of precious "conservation" laws were violated. Eventually work started on guage theories symmetry groups and gradually the pattern emerged and we had quarks with fractional charges something that was totally rejected as ridiculous to start with.
Learn, create, test and tell
evolution rules in all things
God says so!
-
I agree with Rudi.
The pursuit of the exotic in Physics has reached ridiculous proportions: Dark matter, dark energy, wimps, inflation, separate "force carrying bosons" for every effect, 18 dimensional strings, and so on.
and yet, since energy and mass are apparently interchangeable the idea of the Energy quantum being also the gravitational quantum is apparently inconcievable!
see my post in new theories
Graham
-
quote:
Originally posted by Soul Surfer
You seem to have a totally negative attitude Nieuwenove all the theories you mention have been proposed to deal with anomalies in observations and our models of the universe. To return to your original premise that scientists are following them like sheep. If you read the litereaure you will understand that they most definitely do not do this because there are almost as many theories as there are people working on them so unless you can offer something more positive I suggest that you go away and occupy your mind with a subject more to your tase towards which you may be able to propose positive contributions.
You should understand that I really care about physics and that I devoted a great deal of effort to it. I wish nothing more than that physics advances as fast as possible. My positive contribution I hoped to achieve(through my negative remarks) is that maybe some physicists don't lose their energy on the wrong tracks. I'll hereby end this topic.
-
OK then I will pose a final question, if you think that they are totally on the wrong track would you be prepared to suggest what might be the right track.
I myself consider that some of the suggestions are inelegant and probably wrong but I do believe that there is an honest effort to design experiments to validate all the significant theories. For example, the August issue of Astronomy and Geophysics has a long and thorough review of experimental techniques to provide independant verification and measurement of the effects of dark energy by several independant methods.
Learn, create, test and tell
evolution rules in all things
God says so!
-
Ok, here is my question:
A graviton is low energy, so you say there must be tons of them if they exist, yet you base this on Plank's constant for a photon, or am I misunderstanding you? I do not follow this argument to well.
As far as I know, gravity is a weak force compared to umm, any other fundamental force. So that suggests a small energy compared to a photon, or say a W-boson.
So how would you go about observing a graviton, if you were to believe they existed? They should be plentiful, because of the abundance of gravitational fields, as far as I understand. They should eventually interact with anything that has mass, right?
I don't say that they must exist, but I don't see how it is that they are forbidden to exist, either.
-
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Soul Surfer</i>
OK then I will pose a final question, if you think that they are totally on the wrong track would you be prepared to suggest what might be the right track.
I myself consider that some of the suggestions are inelegant and probably wrong but I do believe that there is an honest effort to design experiments to validate all the significant theories. For example, the August issue of Astronomy and Geophysics has a long and thorough review of experimental techniques to provide independant verification and measurement of the effects of dark energy by several independant methods.
Learn, create, test and tell
evolution rules in all things
God says so!
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
I have no doubt about the honest effort of scientists to validate their various theories and I'm confident that the "truth" will emerge eventually. My concern is only about the time scale.
So, one your question on what the right track is. I do not claim to be more intelligent than other scientist. On the contrary, I know there are many scientists which are 100 x cleverer than me and who have much better mathematical skills.
Very recently, I submitted two new articles to complement and extend this (in a more rigurous way) and I'm awaiting the reactions of the referees.
Some basic ideas :
1) Physics should be based on the structure and on the properties of the vacuum and not on so-called elementary particles (they are actually some special modifications of the vacuum)
2) One should not think of spacetime in general relativity as something abstract. In mathematics, this is acceptible, but not in physics. Instead, I believe that spacetime has actually a complicated underlying structure and that the Einstein Field equations should be seen like some kind of macroscopic description of this underlying microscopic structure.
While the concept of the ether has been abandoned by most physicists, I believe it is nevertheless there in some special form.
3) Dark matter does not exist (see website) ; it is an illusion
4) The so-called cosmological term should not be included in the Einstein field equations. It was indeed a very big mistake (the reason why is explained in my recently submitted paper).Cosmological models which are based on this are wrong. If present observations seem to contradict this, then my attitude is that there must be something wrong with the observations or the models. Models with a mix of so many barionic matter, so many (%) dark matter and so many dark energy energy are absolutely wrong. This looks more like medieval alchemy (of course I know that there are some logical reasons to do so).
I have of course no proof for most of these statements. They are based on intuition (or something else) which falls outside of scientific reason. In this sence you can call me unscientific. Nevertheless, I believe that many beautyfull theories were initially guided by some intuition or feeling and that the mathematical formulations came only in second place. What eventually remains in the articles and textbooks looks entirely logical reasoning while the "unscientific" guiding drive remains completely hidden.
-
When I was an electronic technician working in the printing trade I sometimes got to argue with genuine scientist who could dash off general relativity equations on the back of a cigarette package.
They held me in contempt for believing in things like Mr Hoyles continuous creation theory and the æther but I am glad to see that in some form an æther is almost respectable again.
syhprum
-
I have skimmed through your papers and they do have some attractive features to them and I do not think that you are totally alone in your approach. there remains a very critical requirement, are there any observations that could be made to verify this hypotesis ot distinguish it from the currently favoured dark matter dark energy approach to cosmology and a theory of everything?
Learn, create, test and tell
evolution rules in all things
God says so!
-
quote:
Originally posted by Soul Surfer
I have skimmed through your papers and they do have some attractive features to them and I do not think that you are totally alone in your approach. there remains a very critical requirement, are there any observations that could be made to verify this hypotesis ot distinguish it from the currently favoured dark matter dark energy approach to cosmology and a theory of everything?
No, I can not think of such observations. One problem is that it is very difficult to have a unique interpretation of astronomical observations. The "vacuum bubble" which I mentioned would cause a kind a lensing effect (around galaxies) very similar to dark matter.
A second problem is that my main occupation is (unfortunately) not in cosmology but in reactor instrumentation so that I have not so much time to work on these things. So, the main "argument" which I have is that such a theory is more beautifull (in my view).
-
I agree we are going through a rather untidy phase in fundamental physics. Over the years I have experienced several of these. The most notable was the chaos of subatomic particles before the quark theory of baryon and meson structure became established. Everone thought how wonderfully simple, protons, neutrons and electrons made everything until they got down to trying to understand why a lot of positively charged protons and neutral neutrons could stick together to form a nucleus and started to find hundreds of new unstable particles as the accelerators got more powerful. They also found that a lot of precious "conservation" laws were violated. Eventually work started on guage theories symmetry groups and gradually the pattern emerged and we had quarks with fractional charges something that was totally rejected as ridiculous to start with.
Learn, create, test and tell
evolution rules in all things
God says so!
-
I agree with Rudi.
The pursuit of the exotic in Physics has reached ridiculous proportions: Dark matter, dark energy, wimps, inflation, separate "force carrying bosons" for every effect, 18 dimensional strings, and so on.
and yet, since energy and mass are apparently interchangeable the idea of the Energy quantum being also the gravitational quantum is apparently inconcievable!
see my post in new theories
Graham
-
You know what?.. i dont really understand any of this electrons radiatons or any of that above GCSE level lol. because i didn't really try in school, but science still interests me... But the thing that scientists really do want to explain is how we are here now. What made the bing bang go bang? I watched a programme on this the other day and do you know what they said?
There was one more mattor molicule than there was antimator. thats all it boiled down 2. Scientists make up all sorts of AHEM just to try and explain something that they know they really dont understand anyway in an attempt to sound intelligent.. its bullAHEM..most of them arent true logical scientists there just maths and thats why theorys like that are comin out because its the 'dark age' and people can't think of anything better to come out with.. but on the Gravitations particles or whatever. Gravity is here in a physical form. because we are in the physical world, so gravity is a physical thing, and it does exist. theres no denyin that... There will be little 'particles' in the air holding everything down, its just that we cant see them, but you cant see breath if you blow onto your hand can u lol unless its a cold day.. we just need 2 realise how 2 see gravity like every1 can with their breath b4 they can see it. simple as.
-
I have no question this time, I just want to express my opinion on the present situation in physics. In many respects we are really living in the "dark ages" (or middle ages) of physics.
Some examples :
Dark matter : invented to solve some problems with galaxy rotation curves - never observed - everybody seems to believe in it
Dark energy : invented to solve the apparant expansion of the universe - never understood, never demonstrated
Higgs particle : Supposed to give mass to particles - never observed
gravitons : Particles supposed to mediate the gravitational force - an absurd invention and never observed
sterile neutrons : a newcomer with absurd properties - never observed
string theory : Many dimensions, nothing proven
I could go on for a while here.
Despite that these dubious concepts have no solid basis at all, most scientists seem to follow these ideas as stupid sheep.
So, we are not much better off now then assuming that everything is composed of earth, water, fire, air.
Let us hope things get better.
Rudi Van Nieuwenhove
PS : check also http://home.online.no/~avannieu/darkmatter/
You are absolutely right.
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) controls the budgets of the federal research agencies and has used that control to create "fudge factors" to support the illusion of:
1. A universe filled with Hydrogen from an imaginary Big Bang.
2. A universe filled with balls of Hydrogen (stars).
3. Hydrogen-fusion as the energy source that powers the cosmos.
4. Hydrogen-fusion as the energy source that heats planet Earth and sustains life here.
However, truths are recorded in isotopes of elements in different parts of the solar system and in the rest masses of the 3,000 different types of atoms that comprise the entire visible universe [Physics of Atomic Nuclei 69, number 11, pp. 1847-1856 (Nov 2006); Yadernaya Fizika 69, number 11, (Nov 2006); PAC: 96.20.Dt; DOI: 10.1134/S106377880611007X; http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0609509 ]
1. Neutron-neutron interactions are repulsive.
2. Repulsive neutron-neutron interactions power the Sun and the cosmos.
3. The Sun and other ordinary stars are layers of elements: A Hydrogen veneer, covering an Iron-rich interior, encasing an energetic, neutron-rich core.
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
http://www.omatumr.com
-
I suspect that we are in the dark ages of physics. But it is not because we haven't discovered many great things and produced theories that work to predict the outcome of experiments. It is the philosophical underpinnings that are presently flawed. When we work out the real nature of superposition and such, then we might emerge from the dark.
-
something funny has happened to this topic there is a repeated section dated between 18/09/06 20:22 and 20/09/06 21:38
-
I,m 99% sure your all wrong. Thank God we're all still looking for answers.