Naked Science Forum
On the Lighter Side => New Theories => Topic started by: Nick Fritz on 19/01/2011 04:07:40
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It appears to me that there are a few anomalies and mysteries in modern astronomy and physics that could be explained more logically and simply. Under the current theory sub-atomic particles seem to possess characteristics of both particles and waves. In the macro world this is counter-intuitive; something cannot be both a wave and a particle. Then of course we must ask, "A wave of what?" Modern physics seems to have replaced the Ether of the 19th century with a new conceptual-less word, the electro-magnetic field. What a field is exactly is very undefined. The vibration of that field is equally mysterious. Then of course there are the questions surrounding gravity: what is it, how does it operate, and where is the tremendous amount of apparent but undetected mass and energy that would be needed to account for all of the excess gravity detected in the universe? I believe that I have come up with a simple explanation that shows that all of these problems are in fact answered by a hitherto unrecognized attribute of space.
I was struck by Einstein's old question, "What is a quanta of light?" Why should light travel in packets (quanta) of energy, but more interestingly, I thought, how is a mass-less quanta of energy transmitted across billions of light years to arrive here on Earth? So I asked myself a handful of rather arbitrary questions with the hope of answering the questions from a different angle. Imagine a zone in space that is in between two galaxies. This zone will be a cube a million light years, by a million light years, by a million light years. There is absolutely nothing in this zone. It is truly a space vacuum. My first thought while contemplating this zone was that it should not have an electromagnetic field, therefore no EM waves should be able to zip through it. If the EM field uniformly covers the universe (in theory) it is no better than an ether. Without an EM field or EM waves we should have no access or recognition of distant galaxies. But this is clearly not the case. So what could an EM field be, I wondered?
While contemplating the vast emptiness of space I turned my thoughts to gravity. The distance between the average two stars is measured in light years. The radius of the average galaxy is 50 million light years. Our known understanding of mass's relation to gravity just cannot account for this. Two stars are not massive enough to feel their respective gravitational effects across light years. Furthermore, the amount of mass that would have to be at the center of a galaxy to prevent it from flying apart in all directions would be so large it seems to be unrealistic. If there were that much mass in every galaxy and billions of galaxies were crammed into a singularity, it would seem that no force would be great enough to cause the big bang. The big bang is the theory that is used to describe the apparent expansion of the universe due to the uniform red shift that is seen in all directions. Why would the universe be expanding in all directions if there were no initial big bang? What force would cause such a thing, I wondered. In my mind if the concept of a black hole is true (i.e. an object so massive that nearly nothing can escape it), then a singularity that contained all of the matter of the universe would never be able to explode. So some aspect of all of this rationale must be wrong: the universe was never contained in a singularity, there is another more logical explanation for the expansion of the universe, or the red shift can be accounted for in a more practical, logical way.
With this rumbling under the surface in my mind, I turned once again to my enormous empty void. How could two objects on either side of this void communicate. Energy (EM waves and gravity) are clearly transmitted through this zone, so does the zone have potential energy if it is a vacuum? The answer would appear that it has to be yes (i.e. the void has the ability to transmit EM waves and gravitational forces). So how can you have latent energy without any mass present? I wondered, what is energy? Einstein said energy was mass in another form (E=mc2). If I follow that equation to its logical conclusion, and empty space has latent, potential energy, then empty space should show properties of mass. It occurred to me that empty space is just another form of mass and energy. If you subdivide our zone of emptiness into trillions of trillion of smaller cubes, each only 1/100,000,000 of an angstrom across and we called this cube of space an S unit, we would then have uniform empty space with trillions of S zones. If we further assign an arbitrary potential energy value of 1 to each zone we could then proceed to mathematize our understanding of how space/energy/mass operates. We then must imagine that each zone is flexible and compressible. The flexibility of the zones would allow for vibrations through space, but they clearly must have a certain amount of turgidity that would pull them back into a "normal" position (i.e. they have the ability to transmit waves). A wave through these zones would be what we understand as electro-magnetic waves. A subtle wave would be an AM wave, while more vigorous waves would be gamma rays.
Furthermore, the zones could be compressed enough so that they remained altered to a smaller state. When the space zones are warped in this way we understand it to be "mass". The zones are all connected so if a number of them are shrunk down, they will stretch and contort the neighboring zones the most dramatically, and inversely weaken their contortions with distance. This contortion of space is mass, and its effect on neighboring zones is what we perceive as gravity.
What we understand as mass/ gravity and EM waves are just different ways that contorted space interacts with its neighbors. Therefore all waves through these zones of space should have the appearance of also having mass-like particles associated with them. Because a wave also temporarily contorts each zone, that temporary contortion would mimic the more permanent contortion that we understand to be mass.
This theory would seem to explain a number of things. An EM field is simply the nature of the fabric of space. All zones in space are interconnected, so there is no action at a distance. Furthermore all motion is rather apparent than actual. Compression waves of space are energy and the current EM wave theory is our best understanding of what energy is. Sub-atomic particles seem to reflect this particle/ wave duality. Gravity is already described as the warping of space, so this is only a mere extension on that old saying. I'm just taking that thought to a further conclusion and saying that mass is simply the warping of space, and gravity is how we understand how mass interacts with its neighboring space.
Another interesting by-product of this theory, is, that if correct, and all of space is/ has mass and gravitational effects, then as light travels through space it should always slowly shift toward the red end of the spectrum. The further it travels in space the more it should red-shift. This is in fact exactly what we do see. The big bang, which seems utterly nonsensical, would in fact be a useless theory. The universe isn't expanding uniformly at an accelerated rate with distance, but rather is relatively static. Light waves are slowly flattened out over great distances at a rather uniform pace due to the uniform effects of empty space-gravity. This would further explain the phenomenal amounts of missing mass in galaxies that would give them the proper motion (i.e. the motion that is in fact seen).
While I am utterly deficient in the necessary math to prove this theory, it would seem that it most clearly, easily and logically explains some of the events and phenomena currently witnessed in the universe. Just as water has three distinct forms with various different properties (gas, liquid, solid), analogously so too, it seems, does space: space, energy, mass. If space itself had these three distinct forms it would seem to tie together many loose ends of the current scientific theory.
Please comment and pick this apart
Nick Fritz
nickfritz1978@yahoo.com
Thread was moved to new theories and title was changed to be a question, as per forum policy. -Mod
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Hi Nick,
I agree with you on the impracticality of a single big bang and on your skepticism over the real reason for redshift.
When Albert couldn't get things to go his way he took the liberty to warp space and stretch time; two crimes against man made intellectual properties. If he had accepted that a ray of light can be deflected as well as frequency degraded i.e. red shifted over distance he would have been better off. It seems you want to expand our license to redesign space by giving it a modulus of elasticity.
I am suggesting an alternate approach. Take your cube of "empty" space. It is penetrated by light from all sides going in all directions. Therefore it is not empty. Just place yourself in the middle of it and look around. You should be able to calculate how much EM E is in your cube of space. Since in its popularized form E=mc2 you now have the energy to do things that you couldn't do sitting in a truly empty cube. For example, you may want to capture some of that light energy and start knitting an electron. If you are patient and crafty enough you should be able to build a whole hydrogen atom that way; by siphoning off small amounts of energy from light passing through. Nobody will know, except for the minor redshift that you will cause.
Bengt
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To get taken seriously, any such theory would have to include a mathematical model that can make testable predictions.
You might have discovered a new theory but you have not described it well enough for it to be useful or accepted.
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Also, your descriptions of electromagnetism and gravity aren't accurate. If you want to come up with a unified theory, you need to start with a very good understanding of these parts and where the problems lie and then build your theory up from there. I could go in to details of where you're wrong and what the correct descriptions are, but your best bet is to get some textbooks on basic gravity and electromagnetism and work your way up from there.
Fundamental theoretical physics isn't something you can just dabble in and expect to come up with groundbreaking theories without doing a lot of work and understanding the previous theories. Even Einstein needed to learn a lot of physics and mathematics and work out the details (it took him years!) before he could formulate his theories of relativity properly.