[Farsight]

So? Who says Feynmann Is The Last Word on this subject?

QED is a good theory, Feynman was a good guy. He was "the great explainer". Don't dismiss him so lightly.

Feynman proposed that anti-particles move backward through time, too, as a bookkeeping notion.

He wasn't far off. But the backward motion isn't through time, it's through space. An electron has a spin, and a chirality. The positron has the opposite chirality. 

And a lot of physicists talk about "negative binding energy", another bookkeeping notion ...as if it was quite real. If you are going to say that negative binding energy cannot be real simply because it is an accounting trick, what are you going to put in its place?

Less of the positive energy. There is no such thing as negative distance or negative mass or negative energy.

Your potential-energy-as-mass-of-plate notion does NOT fit the math that describes the behavior of nuclear particles in the Strong-Force field-gradient.

Sure it doesn't. Gravity is different.

I see you have neglected to offer any other reason why the virtual-accounting trick can't be real, besides, duh, "Feynmann said so."  Whoop-te-do.  How does he know???  Not to mention, he died more than 20 years ago, and thus missed a lot of recent theoretical developments.  Maybe he would be now be saying some of the same things I've been saying to you.

No, he'd be saying the things I'm saying to you.

Wrong again.  Educate yourself: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/virtual  --a thing can be called "virtual" if it has some of the virtues of something else.  But obviously it has to exist in some fashion to have any virtues at all!!!  The reality of that existence is all I need.  Also for your edification: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_particle

I have educated myself. And whilst it doesn't square with some heavily-promoted thoeries that offer no predictions, I'm not alone, and I'm not wrong. Those virtual particles are as real as virtual pennies flying into your bank account when your employer credits your salary.

Incomplete. Its initial velocity is reduced by about 11 km/s, before it escapes. The kinetic energy associated with that velocity has become potential energy. We are agreed that it takes the form of mass. Well, if the Earth's gravity field sucked that KE out of the plate, during the escape, why shouldn't the Earth end up with most of that potential-energy-stored-as-mass?

Answer: the Earth's gravitational field is reduced when the plate departs. It has lost energy. When that plate flies through space and finds another Earth, it falls down and reaches 12km/s. And this new Earth gets all the energy that the old Earth lost.

I most certainly do not. In QM terms we would be talking about an attractive force; the Earth pulls the plate toward it, more than the plate pulls the Earth. How many times after you pulled on something, accelerating it, were you able to say that the pulled object was the source of the kinetic energy it acquired?

The earth doesn't pull on the plate. The plate falls down because the matter/energy of the Earth "conditions" the space around it, and this is subject to an inverse square law. That's relativity. This is what Einstein said. It means the local space around the plate is not uniform. There's a gradient in its properties. People call it the gravitational potential. The plate is made up of electrons that spin, plus other things, but electrons will suffice. Put this in inhomogeneous space, and the result is motion. Gravity. It means the whole concept of gravitons is wrong.

The idea that it comes from the earth via virtual gravitons travelling at superluminal velocities is not supported by any scientific evidence.

DO NOT TWIST WHAT I HAVE WRITTEN. Virtual gravitons don't have to be superluminal; they merely need to be "entangled" with their mass-of-origin. If one is absorbed by some other mass, then it is the entanglement that allows the absorbing mass to acquire kinetic energy at the expense of the origin-mass.  The quantity transferred is equal to the energy of the virtual graviton at that point in its lifespan (its Uncertain energy diminishes at a rate ideally describable by the curve of the function 1/x). It is Observed Fact that entanglement-events, when they are triggered, act instantaneously; it is the essence of "spooky action at a distance".

Einstein never liked this magical mysterious spooky action at a distance. It will be my pleasure to finally demonstrate how right he was. And Newton too. Newton didn't know about impedance so the "density" is backwards, but he was amazingly close: 

"Doth not this aethereal medium in passing out of water, glass, crystal, and other compact and dense bodies in empty spaces, grow denser and denser by degrees, and by that means refract the rays of light not in a point, but by bending them gradually in curve lines? ...Is not this medium much rarer within the dense bodies of the Sun, stars, planets and comets, than in the empty celestial space between them? And in passing from them to great distances, doth it not grow denser and denser perpetually, and thereby cause the gravity of those great bodies towards one another, and of their parts towards the bodies; every body endeavouring to go from the denser parts of the medium towards the rarer?"

And yet the whole thing can make better sense if a virtual graviton is perceived as being "semi-real"; if it is absorbed, then the absorbing mass acquires its energy. Simple. And if it is never absorbed, the origin-mass loses nothing; that's the other side of the "semi-real" coin.

It makes no sense, Vernon. A photon travels at the speed of light, and it conveys energy. Energy causes gravity. The notion that a photon is always surrounded by a cloud of gravitons has been going for fifty years. There's still no evidence whatsoever.   

If you want to say virtual particle don't exist, then you need to say much much more than merely, "Neutrons hold protons together."

There's the strong force which holds a proton together, and the residual strong force that holds a nucleus together. You need neutrons for this. Look at the elements and their isotopes. It's a whole new subject, let's talk about it on a different thread.

They were observed parts, in electron-scattering experiments. That was my point. We can say that quarks are real parts of protons because we have observed real parts of protons. Regarding that knot-picture, I distinctly see, per your "Only look at crossings-over" instruction, a left/right crossing-over.  Another worthless argument on your part, therefore, since it was supposely about up/down crossings only.

Look at it again, and search arXiv on trefoil: http://arxiv.org/find/grp_physics/1/ti:+trefoil/0/1/0/all/0/1. This isn't worthless, it's cutting edge.
 

I might need to partly take back some of what I wrote in my last message to you, since it sounds to me, from the description you quoted, that "evanescent" is synonymous with "virtual". (And since QM has the wave-particle duality, "evanescent wave" translates as "virtual particle" quite easily!)

Please do. You get a better conceptual understanding of QED this way. What's there isn't a whole crowd of transient photons flicking in and out of existence. What's there is a standing wave.

Just because you say so, that doesn't mean it's true. Evidence, please?

I'm giving it to you, and I'm offering you more, but you're dimissing it in favour of gravitons and arguing too much. Just look at the size of this post and all your boldings and italics.  

Duh, it is premature to require such evidence, simply because there isn't an accepted Theory yet, that involves virtual gravitons. YET, I said.

After what, fifty years?

On the other hand, gravitation exists, does it not?  Why cannot that count as evidence?

Because it isn't evidence. Gravity is evidence for gravity, not gravitons. 

Why? Because there might be more types of gravity waves out there, than are dreamt of in your philosophy? Tough! A propulsion scheme might be a simple as, "If I build a gravity-wave generator such that it emits waves moving in one direction, then Conservation of Momentum requires the machine to move in the other direction."

Because there's a better way to do it.

[PhysBang]

So? Who says Feynmann Is The Last Word on this subject?

QED is a good theory, Feynman was a good guy. He was "the great explainer". Don't dismiss him so lightly.

QED is based on special relativity and the idea that light always moves at a constant speed. Why do you dismiss him so lightly?

Newton didn't know about impedance so the "density" is backwards, but he was amazingly close: 

"Doth not this aethereal medium in passing out of water, glass, crystal, and other compact and dense bodies in empty spaces, grow denser and denser by degrees, and by that means refract the rays of light not in a point, but by bending them gradually in curve lines? ...Is not this medium much rarer within the dense bodies of the Sun, stars, planets and comets, than in the empty celestial space between them? And in passing from them to great distances, doth it not grow denser and denser perpetually, and thereby cause the gravity of those great bodies towards one another, and of their parts towards the bodies; every body endeavouring to go from the denser parts of the medium towards the rarer?"

Why are you quoting from an alchemical text of Newton? Do you also believe that one can turn lead into gold? This is another example of dishonest cherry-picking, as you obviously know because you omitted the source of the text.

In order to prove that gravity has anything to do with such a density gradient as Newton describesm we need a mathematical account of it.

Look at it again, and search arXiv on trefoil: http://arxiv.org/find/grp_physics/1/ti:+trefoil/0/1/0/all/0/1. This isn't worthless, it's cutting edge.

Because random articles in the arXiv use the word "trefoil" does not make your use of the word any less useless. You have yet to demonstrate that your inane use of the knot bears any relationship to any of the papers in the arXiv. It is not evidence to simply steal concepts at random from existing papers.

You have done nothing to attempt to show your "better way" but cherry-pick semi-relevant statements and reference papers that you show no sign of understanding. Show us how your mathematical theory predicts things better than any possible quantization of gravity. Indeed, show us how your theory can actually describe the motion of a plate through the air, since so far there is no reason to believe that your theory can even do this.

[lyner]

PhysBAng
I think you can make the same points without being so unpleasant. People tend to stop reading once they get to an insult! That is if you actually want to make a point.

[VernonNemitz]

I don't have time to write a thorough message just now; I'll merely focus on the worst offenses.

QED is a good theory, Feynman was a good guy. He was "the great explainer". Don't dismiss him so lightly.

Were not you the one who said that he preferred to talk about evanescent waves?  Well, then, I'm not dismissing him at all, since evanescent waves and virtual particles are essentially the same thing, per the wave-particle duality and other definitions.

Feynman proposed that anti-particles move backward through time, too, as a bookkeeping notion.

He wasn't far off. But the backward motion isn't through time, it's through space. An electron has a spin, and a chirality. The positron has the opposite chirality. 

Absolutely wrong.  See the last section of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiparticle --and do remember it is only a bookkeeping trick!

There is no such thing as negative distance or negative mass or negative energy.

Tsk, tsk, another worthless bald claim.  Remember Energy-Time Uncertainty and those allowed fluctuations in the vacuum?  Tell, me, please, why those fluctuations must only take place on the positive side of zero?  Do remember that the description of those fluctuations involves Planck's Constant, a positive number, but ONLY a number, not something that Controls Nature.  Thus a negative Planck's Constant could be perfectly suited for describing negative-energy fluctuations in the vacuum, should they exist.  You want to claim they can't possibly exist?  Tell us why!!!

Incomplete. Its initial velocity is reduced by about 11 km/s, before it escapes. The kinetic energy associated with that velocity has become potential energy. We are agreed that it takes the form of mass. Well, if the Earth's gravity field sucked that KE out of the plate, during the escape, why shouldn't the Earth end up with most of that potential-energy-stored-as-mass?

Answer: the Earth's gravitational field is reduced when the plate departs. It has lost energy. When that plate flies through space and finds another Earth, it falls down and reaches 12km/s. And this new Earth gets all the energy that the old Earth lost.

Really bad logic. The plate is considered to be separate from the Earth as soon as you start treating it separate from the Earth.  That means even when falling off a cliff on Earth, it is not part of the Earth; it is part of the Earth/plate SYSTEM.  Therefore the Earth does not lose the mass of the plate when the plate is given an escape velocity; only the Earth/plate system loses it.  And the Earth still sucked about 11kps of velocity and associated kinetic energy from that escaping plate; the plate most certainly does not have it while traversing interplanetary space.  All it has is the potential to fall down a different gravity well, but that well is defined by the planet at its bottom, not by the presence of the plate.  That is, the amount of potential energy that the plate can acquire by falling down that well is defined by the planet at the bottom of the well.  If the planet has the same mass as the Earth, then the potential energy the plate can acquire will be the same as if it could acquire in falling to Earth.

I most certainly do not. In QM terms  ...

The earth doesn't pull on the plate. The plate falls down because ...

I do understand the GR notion, but that is not what I was talking about.  All your GR blather does not change by one whit what I wrote about how QM could describe things.

A photon travels at the speed of light, and it conveys energy. Energy causes gravity. The notion that a photon is always surrounded by a cloud of gravitons has been going for fifty years. There's still no evidence whatsoever.

DUHHHH...that's because gravitation is the weakest force, 30 orders of magnitude weaker than the Weak Nuclear Force.  It's going to take time to develop the technology to detect such feebleness.  You seem to think no one should ever even bother.  And again your mere say-so that gravitons do not exist cannot make them not exist.

Just because you say so, that doesn't mean it's true. Evidence, please?

I'm giving it to you, and I'm offering you more, but you're dimissing it in favour of gravitons and arguing too much. Just look at the size of this post and all your boldings and italics.

  And I'll continue to use boldings and italics and capitalizations to stress the point that so far your evidence has been worthless, so why should I want more of the same?

[Farsight]

QED is based on special relativity and the idea that light always moves at a constant speed. Why do you dismiss him so lightly?

Check your facts, PhysBang. Einstein wrote his quantum mechanics paper Concerning the generation and transformation of light from a heuristic point of view before On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies. The former was in Annalen der Physik issue 17, and it's what he won his Nobel prize for. The latter was in issue 19, and evolved into special relativity, which wasn't accepted by mainstream physicists until the late twenties. See Clifford M Will's "The Confrontation between GR and Experiment" section 2.1.2 for this: http://relativity.livingreviews.org/Articles/lrr-2006-3/

Why are you quoting from an alchemical text of Newton? Do you also believe that one can turn lead into gold? This is another example of dishonest cherry-picking, as you obviously know because you omitted the source of the text.

It isn't from an alchemical text. It's from Opticks, queries 20 and 21. Here it is again:

"Doth not this aethereal medium in passing out of water, glass, crystal, and other compact and dense bodies in empty spaces, grow denser and denser by degrees, and by that means refract the rays of light not in a point, but by bending them gradually in curve lines? ...Is not this medium much rarer within the dense bodies of the Sun, stars, planets and comets, than in the empty celestial space between them? And in passing from them to great distances, doth it not grow denser and denser perpetually, and thereby cause the gravity of those great bodies towards one another, and of their parts towards the bodies; every body endeavouring to go from the denser parts of the medium towards the rarer?"

Also see query 30, where Newton said Are not gross bodies and light convertible into one another? He anticipated pair production, so it's no small wonder he was interested in alchemy. A great man was Newton, even greater than most people realise. And besides, what's the problem transmuting lead into gold? See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_transmutation and note where it says:

"Ironically, it transpired that, under true nuclear transmutation, it is far easier to turn gold into lead than the reverse reaction, which was the one the alchemists had ardently pursued. Nuclear experiments have successfully transmuted lead into gold, but the expense far exceeds any gain".

In order to prove that gravity has anything to do with such a density gradient as Newton describes we need a mathematical account of it.

Look no further than The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity. Einstein talks about pressure and density, not curved spacetime. Alternatively cast your net a little wider: http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&rlz=1T4ADBF_en-GBGB240GB240&q=einstein+density+gravity&meta= and see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%E2%80%93Cartan_theory for example. Search on "density". And when it comes to pressure, stress is the same thing as pressure, and we see "stress-energy" tensor everywhere we look.

Because random articles in the arXiv use the word "trefoil" does not make your use of the word any less useless. You have yet to demonstrate that your inane use of the knot bears any relationship to any of the papers in the arXiv. It is not evidence to simply steal concepts at random from existing papers.

I give you ample evidence that the trefoil is of serious interest, and now you accuse me of stealing ideas? See http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/hep-th/pdf/0602/0602098v1.pdf and note that the idea goes all the way back to Kelvin. 

You have done nothing to attempt to show your "better way" but cherry-pick semi-relevant statements and reference papers that you show no sign of understanding. Show us how your mathematical theory predicts things better than any possible quantization of gravity. Indeed, show us how your theory can actually describe the motion of a plate through the air, since so far there is no reason to believe that your theory can even do this.

I reiterate, it isn't "my theory". It's a model, and I give copious acknowledgements to others who have been "studiously ignored". It's an analytical synthesis that joins the dots to point the way to the completion of the standard model. And as I've said to you before, the issue is in the interpretation of existing mathematics, not in the mathematics itself.

[Farsight]

Absolutely wrong.  See the last section of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiparticle --and do remember it is only a bookkeeping trick!

It isn't wrong Vernon. It's unfamiliar to you, but search arXiv on "chiral".

1638232]Tsk, tsk, another worthless bald claim.  Remember Energy-Time Uncertainty and those allowed fluctuations in the vacuum? Tell, me, please, why those fluctuations must only take place on the positive side of zero?  Do remember that the description of those fluctuations involves Planck's Constant, a positive number, but ONLY a number, not something that Controls Nature.  Thus a negative Planck's Constant could be perfectly suited for describing negative-energy fluctuations in the vacuum, should they exist. You want to claim they can't possibly exist?  Tell us why!!!

Show me a negative length. Or a negative mass. Or negative energy. You can't. The vacuum of space has a positive energy, all points within a gravitational field consists of space with positive energy.

1638232]Really bad logic. The plate is considered to be separate from the Earth as soon as you start treating it separate from the Earth.  That means even when falling off a cliff on Earth, it is not part of the Earth; it is part of the Earth/plate SYSTEM. Therefore the Earth does not lose the mass of the plate when the plate is given an escape velocity; only the Earth/plate system loses it.  And the Earth still sucked about 11kps of velocity and associated kinetic energy from that escaping plate; the plate most certainly does not have it while traversing interplanetary space.

Yes it does. Because when it finds another earth and falls down, it gives it all back.

1638232]All it has is the potential to fall down a different gravity well, but that well is defined by the planet at its bottom, not by the presence of the plate.  That is, the amount of potential energy that the plate can acquire by falling down that well is defined by the planet at the bottom of the well. If the planet has the same mass as the Earth, then the potential energy the plate can acquire will be the same as if it could acquire in falling to Earth.

And once it's fallen down and cooled off, it has less energy than it did in space, because the gravitational time dilation means that all the electrons etc in that plate are spinning at a reduced rate.

I do understand the GR notion, but that is not what I was talking about. All your GR blather does not change by one whit what I wrote about how QM could describe things.

I'm afraid it does Vernon. I'm sorry, but a modest reinterpretation of General Relativity that takes a step back to the original ends up demolishing all attempts to quantize gravity.   

DUHHHH...that's because gravitation is the weakest force, 30 orders of magnitude weaker than the Weak Nuclear Force. It's going to take time to develop the technology to detect such feebleness. You seem to think no one should ever even bother. And again your mere say-so that gravitons do not exist cannot make them not exist.

After fifty years without evidence, it's time to kick the graviton into the long grass and pursue more fruitful avenues. But if you don't agree, let's just agree to differ. 

[PhysBang]

Check your facts, PhysBang. Einstein wrote his quantum mechanics paper Concerning the generation and transformation of light from a heuristic point of view before On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies. The former was in Annalen der Physik issue 17, and it's what he won his Nobel prize for. The latter was in issue 19, and evolved into special relativity, which wasn't accepted by mainstream physicists until the late twenties. See Clifford M Will's "The Confrontation between GR and Experiment" section 2.1.2 for this: http://relativity.livingreviews.org/Articles/lrr-2006-3/

What does any of that have to do with QED?

Look no further than The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity. Einstein talks about pressure and density, not curved spacetime.

If you would read far enough to get to the mathematics of the theory, you would discover that the actual pressure and density is assigned to the contents of the spacetime and define the stress-energy tensor. The stress-energy tensor defines the curvature of spacetime, which it the action of gravity. Why do you constantly avoid the actual science?

Alternatively cast your net a little wider: http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&rlz=1T4ADBF_en-GBGB240GB240&q=einstein+density+gravity&meta= and see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%E2%80%93Cartan_theory for example. Search on "density". And when it comes to pressure, stress is the same thing as pressure, and we see "stress-energy" tensor everywhere we look.

Again, you ignore how Einstein actually used the stress-energy tensor. Moving from a metric theory account to an affine theory account does not help your point here, it rather makes it worse. Affine theories rely on a more refined account of geometry in order to deliver the content of the theory, not less.

I give you ample evidence that the trefoil is of serious interest, and now you accuse me of stealing ideas? See http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/hep-th/pdf/0602/0602098v1.pdf and note that the idea goes all the way back to Kelvin. 

The idea of using the word "trefoil" may go back that far, but there is no reason to believe that Kelvin's use of the word has anything at all to do with your use of the word. Indeed, as you seem to be using "trefoil" to refer to something to do with sub-atomic physics, it seems incredibly dubious that you can claim some support for your theorty from Kelvin's use of the word.

I reiterate, it isn't "my theory". It's a model, and I give copious acknowledgements to others who have been "studiously ignored". It's an analytical synthesis that joins the dots to point the way to the completion of the standard model. And as I've said to you before, the issue is in the interpretation of existing mathematics, not in the mathematics itself.

OK, show us how your "model" can be used to calculate the motion of a dinner plate.

[VernonNemitz]

Feynman proposed that anti-particles move backward through time, too, as a bookkeeping notion.

He wasn't far off. But the backward motion isn't through time, it's through space. An electron has a spin, and a chirality. The positron has the opposite chirality.

Absolutely wrong.  See the last section of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiparticle --and do remember it is only a bookkeeping trick!

It isn't wrong Vernon. It's unfamiliar to you, but search arXiv on "chiral".

You are still completely wrong.  Pay attention. I originally wrote: "Feynman proposed that anti-particles move backward through time" --and that is EXACTLY true.  All your blather about the MODERN interpretation of antiparticles does not change the Real Fact that Feynmann did indeed make that proposal, as a bookkeeping trick.  When you stop confusing what I am actually talking about with other stuff, then we will be in a position to communicate better.

1638232] Tsk, tsk, another worthless bald claim.  Remember Energy-Time Uncertainty and those allowed fluctuations in the vacuum? Tell, me, please, why those fluctuations must only take place on the positive side of zero?  Do remember that the description of those fluctuations involves Planck's Constant, a positive number, but ONLY a number, not something that Controls Nature.  Thus a negative Planck's Constant could be perfectly suited for describing negative-energy fluctuations in the vacuum, should they exist. You want to claim they can't possibly exist?  Tell us why!!!

Show me a negative length. Or a negative mass. Or negative energy. You can't. The vacuum of space has a positive energy, all points within a gravitational field consists of space with positive energy.

More worthless/bad logic.  By that logic:  Before the invention of the microscope: "Bacteria can't exist, because you can't show me any."  Before the construction of really large telescopes: "Planets can't exist around other stars, because you can't show me any."  Have you ever thought about what Space might be like OUTSIDE the influence of a gravitational field?  Have you even paid attention to Basic Geometry???  Here's your Lesson For The Day:  If you draw a flexible line on a plane, you can flex the line in two directions upon the plane.  If you construct a flexible plane in Space, you can flex that plane in either of two directions in Space.  And if you can Curve 3D Space in a 4th geometric dimension, then you can curve it in either of two directions in that 4th dimension.  Guess what?  Only one of those two directions is associated with ordinary mass and ordinary gravitation in GR!  The other direction is perfectly available for negative mass-energy.

Try Googling for this: [Feynmann "anything not forbidden is mandatory"] (the brackets delimit the query; don't include them).  You can take that as my primary rationale for saying such things as, "You would be foolish to claim something cannot exist if you cannot prove it is forbidden."  Can you prove negative mass/energy and gravitons are forbidden?  HAH!  I don't go so far as to say they must therefore exist; I merely say it is idiotic to deny the possibilities, so let's consider some details about those possibilities (which I've mostly done elsewhere).

1638232] Really bad logic. The plate is considered to be separate from the Earth as soon as you start treating it separate from the Earth.  That means even when falling off a cliff on Earth, it is not part of the Earth; it is part of the Earth/plate SYSTEM. Therefore the Earth does not lose the mass of the plate when the plate is given an escape velocity; only the Earth/plate system loses it.  And the Earth still sucked about 11kps of velocity and associated kinetic energy from that escaping plate; the plate most certainly does not have it while traversing interplanetary space.

Yes it does.

Your mere say-so is still utterly worthless.  The Earth-plate system loses the plate, not the Earth.  And the plate will be traversing interplanetary space at about 1kps (not the 12kps specified in an earlier message).  What math do you have to say that the plate will possess 11kps worth of kinetic energy?  Certainly not this utter balderdash:

Because when it finds another earth and falls down, it gives it all back.

The preceding is nonsense because when the plate finds another Earth, at that point we describe a new planet/plate system.  The plate doesn't "give" anything special to that system since by-description it is already part of that system!  And while certainly in this new system the plate will have considerable potential energy, the mass of the planet is absolutely required as part of the computation of how much potential energy has the plate; the mass of the planet affects the rate at which the plate can accelerate in its gravity field, after all.

And once it's fallen down and cooled off, it has less energy than it did in space ...

It is certainly true that the planet/plate system has less energy than before, and therefore less mass than before.  It most certainly does not mean all the kinetic energy that appeared did so at the expense of some of the mass of the plate only.  It doesn't even mean most of the KE that appeared was derived from the plate's mass.  It only means that mass from the system became KE.

I do understand the GR notion, but that is not what I was talking about. All your GR blather does not change by one whit what I wrote about how QM could describe things.

... a modest reinterpretation of General Relativity that takes a step back to the original ends up demolishing all attempts to quantize gravity.

 Whoop-te-do.  What rationale is there, for taking such a backward reinterpretation?  I don't recall you ever offering one (not to mention that your conclusion could very well be utterly wrong, but I won't know until I see the rationale and have a chance to dissect the argument).  And, did you ever think about how much you will break GR in the process?  It has its current formulation for the very good reason that that is what most accurately matches the measurements we've made!

DUHHHH...that's because gravitation is the weakest force, 30 orders of magnitude weaker than the Weak Nuclear Force. It's going to take time to develop the technology to detect such feebleness. You seem to think no one should ever even bother. And again your mere say-so that gravitons do not exist cannot make them not exist.

After fifty years without evidence, it's time to kick the graviton into the long grass and pursue more fruitful avenues.

That's the attitude of a quitter.  Perhaps you don't understand what "30 orders of magnitude more difficult"  means.  This article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weak_interaction indicates that the Weak Force theory was developed about 1968, and the relevant particles were detected in 1983, a 15-year gap.  Well, you should start with the time that we have a QM theory for gravitation, and allow 15,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years for detection of gravitons, before deciding to give up.

[Farsight]

If you would read far enough to get to the mathematics of the theory, you would discover that the actual pressure and density is assigned to the contents of the spacetime and define the stress-energy tensor. The stress-energy tensor defines the curvature of spacetime, which it the action of gravity. Why do you constantly avoid the actual science?

I'm not avoiding it, you are. Read the original. Einstein talks about curvilinear motion, not curved spacetime. And as per pmb's "Einstein's gravitational field", curved spacetime is not something Einstein agreed with. It's crystal clear that the modern interpretation of General relativity is different to Einstein's. You wouldn't read Pmb's paper remember, and dismissed it as the work of a crank. I'm sorry Physbang, but you're avoiding the actual science.

Again, you ignore how Einstein actually used the stress-energy tensor. Moving from a metric theory account to an affine theory account does not help your point here, it rather makes it worse. Affine theories rely on a more refined account of geometry in order to deliver the content of the theory, not less.

Come off it. I dealt with your issue perfectly adequately. Besides, you should recall from our previous conversations that the electric field is curved space, and that "refining the geometry" was always Einstein's aim.

The idea of using the word "trefoil" may go back that far, but there is no reason to believe that Kelvin's use of the word has anything at all to do with your use of the word. Indeed, as you seem to be using "trefoil" to refer to something to do with sub-atomic physics, it seems incredibly dubious that you can claim some support for your theory from Kelvin's use of the word.

I've responded to your issue, I've given you ample evidence, now accede the point.

OK, show us how your "model" can be used to calculate the motion of a dinner plate.

No, I won't because your only purpose is to waste my time. I'd start with simple Newtonian expressions and you'd carp and demand more, then I'd switch to General relativity, and you'll still carp, and all the while you're employing spoiler tactics whilst deliberately ducking the issue: the difference in the interpretation, not in the mathematics. 

Now where's your apology for your "alchemy" insult to Isaac Newton? If you cannot accede even one single point I'm afraid it does you no favours.   



VernonNimitz: what I talk about doesn't break GR, it unleashes it. And it's all in line with Feynman, Dirac, Schroedinger, Maxwell, Faraday, and even Newton. Plus others. But we aren't getting anywhere with our conversation, so let's just agree to differ.
  

[lightarrow]

Then, space and velocity (for example) are the same thing? They "only" differ because one is the derivative of the other...

That particular derivation requires including an additional thing, time.  Why aren't both a field gradient and a gradient-of-potential as static as Space?  A typical recreation-park slide (for children) has a gradient and by itself is typically considered to be quite static.  I suppose I'm missing something....

What you are missing is that you seems to pretend to be right for something that is blatantly wrong. I am not putting in discussion your knowledge of physics in general, everyone can make mistakes, but as soon as one discovers one, it's meaningless to try to "go round" the reasonings in order not to admit the mistake. A field is a field and a gradient is a gradient, that's all.

[VernonNemitz]

what I talk about doesn't break GR, it unleashes it. And it's all in line with Feynman, Dirac, Schroedinger, Maxwell, Faraday, and even Newton. Plus others.

  Obviously you are wrong, since you disagree with Feynmann's assertion that anything not forbidden is mandatory.  Otherwise you would not be so adamant claiming that gravitons and negative mass-energy and virtual particles cannot exist; you have in no way shown why they should be forbidden to exist.

[VernonNemitz]

Then, space and velocity (for example) are the same thing? They "only" differ because one is the derivative of the other...

That particular derivation requires including an additional thing, time.  Why aren't both a field gradient and a gradient-of-potential as static as Space?  A typical recreation-park slide (for children) has a gradient and by itself is typically considered to be quite static.  I suppose I'm missing something....

What you are missing is that you seems to pretend to be right for something that is blatantly wrong. I am not putting in discussion your knowledge of physics in general, everyone can make mistakes, but as soon as one discovers one, it's meaningless to try to "go round" the reasonings in order not to admit the mistake. A field is a field and a gradient is a gradient, that's all.

And so far as I know, a full description of a field must always include a description of how its intensity changes with distance from the field-source, which is one type of gradient.  That's why I don't make a lot of distinction between the two.  Likewise, the full description of a slide should include mentioning its gradient, too.  In casual conversation (call it gossip if you like) between Persons A and B, about Person C's latest gaffe, it usually isn't necessary to specify that Person C is alive.  Well, while the conversations around here are usually somewhat more technical than casual, there are still assumptions that one can usually expect another to be familiar with (such as the slide having a gradient), lest we spend all our time on minutia (describing the slide's gradient) instead of the main topic.

[PhysBang]

]I'm not avoiding it, you are. Read the original. Einstein talks about curvilinear motion, not curved spacetime.

You just avoided the actual science. Whatever Einstein writes about, he also wrote a scientific theory called the General Theory of Relativity that describes physical laws through generally covariant equations in a pseudo-Riemannian manifold, i.e., in curved spacetime. Nothing you do will change that the actual content of Einstein's work is wedded to the way that the presence of matter and energy changes the geometry of space and time. To deny this is simply to point out one's own folly.

And as per pmb's "Einstein's gravitational field", curved spacetime is not something Einstein agreed with.

If he didn't agree with it, then he shouldn't have made it the sum total of his theory. Can you show anything, any single thing in GR that doesn't make use of curved spacetime?

Again, you ignore how Einstein actually used the stress-energy tensor. Moving from a metric theory account to an affine theory account does not help your point here, it rather makes it worse. Affine theories rely on a more refined account of geometry in order to deliver the content of the theory, not less.

Come off it. I dealt with your issue perfectly adequately. Besides, you should recall from our previous conversations that the electric field is curved space, and that "refining the geometry" was always Einstein's aim.

Please explain how the stress-energy tensor is used to create "curvilinear motion".

The idea of using the word "trefoil" may go back that far, but there is no reason to believe that Kelvin's use of the word has anything at all to do with your use of the word. Indeed, as you seem to be using "trefoil" to refer to something to do with sub-atomic physics, it seems incredibly dubious that you can claim some support for your theory from Kelvin's use of the word.

I've responded to your issue, I've given you ample evidence, now accede the point.

Accede what point? How does Kelvin's work support your claims about subatomic physics?

OK, show us how your "model" can be used to calculate the motion of a dinner plate.

No, I won't because your only purpose is to waste my time. I'd start with simple Newtonian expressions and you'd carp and demand more, then I'd switch to General relativity, and you'll still carp, and all the while you're employing spoiler tactics whilst deliberately ducking the issue: the difference in the interpretation, not in the mathematics. 

I don't actually believe that you can work with either Newtonian mechanics or General Relativity, but what I want to see is how anything that you have in your "model" comes into play in the motion of the plate. If your "model" has no bearing on the motion of the plate, then your plate example is moot.

Now where's your apology for your "alchemy" insult to Isaac Newton? If you cannot accede even one single point I'm afraid it does you no favours.   

Newton did pursue alchemy. And he did pursue this is the queries appended to the Optics.

VernonNimitz: what I talk about doesn't break GR, it unleashes it. And it's all in line with Feynman, Dirac, Schroedinger, Maxwell, Faraday, and even Newton. Plus others. But we aren't getting anywhere with our conversation, so let's just agree to differ.

The reason that nobody gets anywhere in discussion with you, anywhere in the internet, it that there is nowhere to go. As soon as someone starts asking questions, you merely start throwing around arguments from authority. Then someone points out that the argument from authority makes no sense and you stonewall in some other way. If you could just do a simple calculation, this might produce progress.

[VernonNemitz]

Farsight, I wish to expand upon this that I wrote earlier:

It is certainly true that the planet/plate system has less energy than before, and therefore less mass than before.  It most certainly does not mean all the kinetic energy that appeared did so at the expense of some of the mass of the plate only.  It doesn't even mean most of the KE that appeared was derived from the plate's mass.  It only means that mass from the system became KE.

(I'm mostly going to not bother talking about the conversion of potential energy into kinetic energy, and then the conversion of that into radiant energy that leaves the system --or the importation of energy into the system to raise the plate to a high altitude.  Just assume this happens in the background as we consider the plate as being stationary at different heights.)

In General Relativity it is a key fact that certain aspects of the behavior of the system must be unchanged when various transformations are done (such as a change to a different frame-of-reference).  So, if I want to compute the strength of the gravitational force between plate and planet when they are X kilometers apart, I need to use the same mass when they are 100 times as far apart, or when they are 1/100 as far apart.  But both of us are describing a change in potential-energy-stored-as-mass (and therefore a change in mass) when different distances are involved, how do we reconcile this?  The simplest way is to ignore that change; it is a extraordinarily small quantity of mass, after all, that we are talking about.

One could invoke the "negative binding energy" concept (bookkeeping trick), and this will certainly allow the two masses to be the same in regardless of the altitude of the plate, but then we would be getting away from the other basic idea, that potential energy is stored as mass.  Obviously, then, GR would take a small "hit" from its current standard formulations to accommodate this tiny tiny change (as described in prior paragraph).  My Question to you is, what "hit" would have the LEAST effect upon GR???

The "hit" I'm promoting is for the ratio of the two masses to not change.  The system stays comparable to the original/standard unchanging-mass scenario.  So, if the planet has a zillion times as much mass as the plate, and the plate loses a zillionth of a gram, as we reposition it from Distance 100X km to Distance (1/100)X km from the planet, that means the planet loses a zillion times as much, which is just one gram.  (It would have to be an impressively massive plate, for its potential energy at 100X km to be describable as equivalent to 1-and-1-zillionth grams of mass!)  At any height we reposition the plate, the planet is always a zillion times more massive.

The "hit" you are promoting is much more serious, literally unbalancing General Relativity, compared to what I'm promoting. I don't need to describe it since you have already done so in several messages here.  Instead I'm going to change the subject for a bit.

Here's an experiment you can try.  First, if you can find one, get a bicycle light-and-generator set.  The small generator mounts next to the rear wheel, and friction causes it to turn.  It powers the light bulb, of course.  After setting things up for proper operation, turn the bicycle upside-down so you can crank the pedal by hand.  The experiment begins by removing the light bulb.  Note how much effort it takes to crank the pedal.  Then put the light bulb back in, and note how much more effort it takes to crank the pedal at the same rate.  It is a peculiarity of electric-power-generation that the LOAD operates against the force turning the generator.  It is a sensible thing overall, since we know the load is using the result of the effort that goes into turning the generator, but have you ever wondered about just how the system "knows" the load is there?  "It's all connected by wires," you say?  Okay....  Now read this:

http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=9291

The scenario described there, in the initial message, is something that can actually be done, whether or not it actually has been done.  And yes, the power company will know if you attach a load to an appropriate inductive power-collector.  But my prior question still applies:  How does the system know the load is there?  No connection wires this time!

Part of the answer is "virtual photons" --identical to evanescent waves.  However, we both know they are only virtual and are not carrying real energy (else all power would radiate from power lines, and nobody would be getting anything out of the far end of the wires).  So, the rest of the answer requires involving the instantaneous operation of the entanglement phenomenon.  Only when a virtual photon encounters an appropriate absorbing wire, that's when power gets transferred and we can say that "induction" has happened.

I can imagine an experiment, possible only in the future, that could verify that instant transfer of power, where we can isolate this experiment from all Earthly influences.  We have to build a high-voltage AC power line in Outer Space, away from all gravity fields (say, the Oort Cloud).  The line itself doesn't need to be very long, say one kilometer, and it has a ordinary generator at one end and an ordinary load at the other (with appropriate transformers also in the system).  In the middle of this power line we create a box that the wires pass through.  Everthing is thoroughly insulated from electric discharge (necessary in vacuum of space, lest electrons exit the wires instead of travelling through them!!! --air acts as a fairly good transmission-line-insulator on Earth).  One side of the box is attached to a kind of conduit.  The box is made of metal and the conduit is a wave-guide.  We want this conduit to be quite long, say a thousand kilometers.  The purpose of the wave-guide is to fight the Inverse Square Law.  At the end of the wave-guide we put our power-sucking induction circuit, with an on/off switch.  We can now do some precision time-measurements.  We know a fraction of a second must pass for photons, whether real or virtual, to traverse the wave-guide.  We certainly have to wait at least that much, after power starts to flow in the power line, for any virtual photons to reach the inductor-circuit.  However, if afterward we now throw a switch to turn on the induction-circuit, do we instantly have power flowing or do we have to wait another fraction of a second?  Do we have to wait for some sort of 'signal' to get back to the power line, that we are drawing from it inductively?  I'm saying that we don't have to wait; we will instantly have power in the induction circuit when the switch is thrown, because we will be invoking the entanglement-effect; the virtual photons absorbed into the inductor are spookily entangled with the power line a thousand km away.  So, measurements made at the power line, of all power drawn from it, should immediately indicate that the distant switch was thrown.

Now back to gravitation, and some of the things I've described in other messages here.  If what I've described above can work for virtual photons (and to the best of my knowledge it does work that way), then it can also work for virtual gravitons being absorbed; the mass that radiated the virtual gravitons becomes diminished when the virtual gravitons are absorbed by another mass, and the absorbing mass acquires kinetic energy.  This will maintain the ratio of the two masses, no matter how much potential-energy-stored-as-mass gets converted into other forms.

[Farsight]

Farsight, I wish to expand upon this that I wrote earlier:

It is certainly true that the planet/plate system has less energy than before, and therefore less mass than before.  It most certainly does not mean all the kinetic energy that appeared did so at the expense of some of the mass of the plate only.  It doesn't even mean most of the KE that appeared was derived from the plate's mass.  It only means that mass from the system became KE.

(I'm mostly going to not bother talking about the conversion of potential energy into kinetic energy, and then the conversion of that into radiant energy that leaves the system --or the importation of energy into the system to raise the plate to a high altitude.  Just assume this happens in the background as we consider the plate as being stationary at different heights.)

OK, I'm listening.

In General Relativity it is a key fact that certain aspects of the behavior of the system must be unchanged when various transformations are done (such as a change to a different frame-of-reference). So, if I want to compute the strength of the gravitational force between plate and planet when they are X kilometers apart, I need to use the same mass when they are 100 times as far apart, or when they are 1/100 as far apart.

Hmmn. It's not a fact, Vernon, it's an assumption, and an approximation. Besides you shouldn't be computing the strength of gravitational force, you should be measuring it. But nevermind, let's see where this takes us.   

But both of us are describing a change in potential-energy-stored-as-mass (and therefore a change in mass) when different distances are involved, how do we reconcile this? The simplest way is to ignore that change; it is a extraordinarily small quantity of mass, after all, that we are talking about.

It's relatively small, but only because there's a heck of a lot of energy tied up as matter. The energy we're talking about is responsible for that 11 km/s velocity of a plate falling from free space to the surface of our airless planet. It's too big to ignore.

One could invoke the "negative binding energy" concept (bookkeeping trick), and this will certainly allow the two masses to be the same in regardless of the altitude of the plate, but then we would be getting away from the other basic idea, that potential energy is stored as mass. Obviously, then, GR would take a small "hit" from its current standard formulations to accommodate this tiny tiny change (as described in prior paragraph). My Question to you is, what "hit" would have the LEAST effect upon GR???

I'm not sure Vernon, it's a complicated subject, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_in_general_relativity:

"If two objects have the same mass, and we heat one of them up from an external source, does the heated object gain mass? If we put both objects on a sensitive enough balance, would the heated object weigh more than the unheated object? Would the heated object have a stronger gravitational field than the unheated object?

The answer to all of the above questions is yes. The hot object has more energy, so it weighs more and has a higher mass than the cold object. It will also have a higher gravitational field to go along with its higher mass, by the equivalence principle. (Carlip 1999)"  

The "hit" I'm promoting is for the ratio of the two masses to not change.  The system stays comparable to the original/standard unchanging-mass scenario.  So, if the planet has a zillion times as much mass as the plate, and the plate loses a zillionth of a gram, as we reposition it from Distance 100X km to Distance (1/100)X km from the planet, that means the planet loses a zillion times as much, which is just one gram. (It would have to be an impressively massive plate, for its potential energy at 100X km to be describable as equivalent to 1-and-1-zillionth grams of mass!) At any height we reposition the plate, the planet is always a zillion times more massive.

I know, but this preference is flying in the face of the evidence. Strap your plate to a rocket and light the blue touch paper. You're giving 11km/s worth of energy to the plate, not the earth.

The "hit" you are promoting is much more serious, literally unbalancing General Relativity, compared to what I'm promoting. I don't need to describe it since you have already done so in several messages here. Instead I'm going to change the subject for a bit.

I'm not sure it does, and besides, even if it does, I don't take the view that some imperfection means it's all wrong. But anyhow, OK, changing the subject for a while. 

Here's an experiment you can try.  First, if you can find one, get a bicycle light-and-generator set. The small generator mounts next to the rear wheel, and friction causes it to turn. It powers the light bulb, of course. After setting things up for proper operation, turn the bicycle upside-down so you can crank the pedal by hand.  The experiment begins by removing the light bulb. Note how much effort it takes to crank the pedal. Then put the light bulb back in, and note how much more effort it takes to crank the pedal at the same rate.

Sadly, I haven't got a bike. But I can imagine that the energy book has to balance, so if more energy is going out because the bulb is shining, more energy has to be going in.

It is a peculiarity of electric-power-generation that the LOAD operates against the force turning the generator. It is a sensible thing overall, since we know the load is using the result of the effort that goes into turning the generator, but have you ever wondered about just how the system "knows" the load is there? "It's all connected by wires," you say? Okay....  Now read this:
http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=9291

Good stuff. Induction, no problem.

The scenario described there, in the initial message, is something that can actually be done, whether or not it actually has been done.  And yes, the power company will know if you attach a load to an appropriate inductive power-collector.  But my prior question still applies:  How does the system know the load is there? No connection wires this time!

Ditto.

Part of the answer is "virtual photons" - identical to evanescent waves. However, we both know they are only virtual and are not carrying real energy (else all power would radiate from power lines, and nobody would be getting anything out of the far end of the wires).

If you don't tap the field you aren't draining it of any energy, but the energy in there is real, Vernon.  

So, the rest of the answer requires involving the instantaneous operation of the entanglement phenomenon. Only when a virtual photon encounters an appropriate absorbing wire, that's when power gets transferred and we can say that "induction" has happened.

If we say a virtual photon is the same animal as an evanescent wave, we can agree about the encounter with the wire. But IMHO saying it's an instaneous operation of the entanglement phenomenon is taking it too far. It's just inductance. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductance. 

I can imagine an experiment, possible only in the future, that could verify that instant transfer of power, where we can isolate this experiment from all Earthly influences.  We have to build a high-voltage AC power line in Outer Space, away from all gravity fields (say, the Oort Cloud).  The line itself doesn't need to be very long, say one kilometer, and it has a ordinary generator at one end and an ordinary load at the other (with appropriate transformers also in the system). In the middle of this power line we create a box that the wires pass through.  Everthing is thoroughly insulated from electric discharge (necessary in vacuum of space, lest electrons exit the wires instead of travelling through them!!! --air acts as a fairly good transmission-line-insulator on Earth). One side of the box is attached to a kind of conduit. The box is made of metal and the conduit is a wave-guide.  We want this conduit to be quite long, say a thousand kilometers. The purpose of the wave-guide is to fight the Inverse Square Law. At the end of the wave-guide we put our power-sucking induction circuit, with an on/off switch. We can now do some precision time-measurements. We know a fraction of a second must pass for photons, whether real or virtual, to traverse the wave-guide. We certainly have to wait at least that much, after power starts to flow in the power line, for any virtual photons to reach the inductor-circuit. However, if afterward we now throw a switch to turn on the induction-circuit, do we instantly have power flowing or do we have to wait another fraction of a second? Do we have to wait for some sort of 'signal' to get back to the power line, that we are drawing from it inductively? I'm saying that we don't have to wait; we will instantly have power in the induction circuit when the switch is thrown, because we will be invoking the entanglement-effect; the virtual photons absorbed into the inductor are spookily entangled with the power line a thousand km away. So, measurements made at the power line, of all power drawn from it, should immediately indicate that the distant switch was thrown.

I'm all for experiment. But I wouldn't be surprised if this hadn't already been done, see http://www.consultrsr.com/resources/eis/induct5.htm re a straight wire.

Now back to gravitation, and some of the things I've described in other messages here. If what I've described above can work for virtual photons (and to the best of my knowledge it does work that way), then it can also work for virtual gravitons being absorbed; the mass that radiated the virtual gravitons becomes diminished when the virtual gravitons are absorbed by another mass, and the absorbing mass acquires kinetic energy. This will maintain the ratio of the two masses, no matter how much potential-energy-stored-as-mass gets converted into other forms.

I'm sorry Vernon, it's stretching things too far. And it all comes back to that photon that causes gravity because energy causes gravity. It's a photon, it's the only thing that's there, and it's travelling at c. A photon is a wave, it conveys energy. The dimensionality of energy is pressure x volume, so think of an ocean wave. It's a pressure pulse. Think of the evanescent wave as a standing wave, like what you see around a bridge pier. It's like half a photon that isn't going anywhere. Photons are real, inductance is real, and the evanescent wave is real. You could say this means virtual photons are real, but it doesn't mean they're transient photons shooting around at hyperlight velocities - you can't shield inductance with a sheet of black paper. And there aren't any gravitons buzzing around these things. And no virtual gravitons either. There's no evidence to support this hypothesis after fifty years. See http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inourtime_20051124.shtml.

I'm sorry vernon, I think we'll just have to agree to differ.

   

[Farsight]

If he didn't agree with it, then he shouldn't have made it the sum total of his theory. Can you show anything, any single thing in GR that doesn't make use of curved spacetime?

Yes, The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity. See the 3.5Mbyte pdf at http://www.alberteinstein.info/gallery/pdf/CP6Doc30_English_pp146-200.pdf. It's the original. And it doesn't even mention curved spacetime. That's because curved spacetime was popularized by Dicke in the sixties, see http://www.emis.de/journals/LRG/Articles/lrr-2006-3/articlesu1.html. And see this abstract: http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0256-307X/25/5/014 for a hint of how important this is. Now do excuse me, you have no sincerity, and no argument whatsoever.

[PhysBang]

If he didn't agree with it, then he shouldn't have made it the sum total of his theory. Can you show anything, any single thing in GR that doesn't make use of curved spacetime?

Yes, The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity. See the 3.5Mbyte pdf at http://www.alberteinstein.info/gallery/pdf/CP6Doc30_English_pp146-200.pdf. It's the original. And it doesn't even mention curved spacetime.

Again you fail. The entire theory offered there is in terms of curved spacetime. What is the use of Christoffel's equations in the work if not for curved spacetime? [See page 168, 177, 179 in particular.] What does Einstein mean on page 197 when he writes, "Thus Euclidean geometry does not hold even to a first approximation in the gravitational field..."?

That's because curved spacetime was popularized by Dicke in the sixties, see http://www.emis.de/journals/LRG/Articles/lrr-2006-3/articlesu1.html.

That is an article on how the Weak Equivalence Principle was used to go beyond the curved spacetime of GR to produce a broader class of curved spacetime theories of which GR is one member. It does nothing to support any of your points.

And see this abstract: http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0256-307X/25/5/014 for a hint of how important this is.

Yes, it is always possible to cook up a theory. I doubt that author is the first to do what that paper has done and I doubt that the paper will go very far for the same reason that past papers haven't gotten far: they cannot explain the vast array of measurement evidence that is out there.

Now do excuse me, you have no sincerity, and no argument whatsoever.

Of course I have no argument. All I am doing is pointing out how you consistently avoid discussing the mathematics and use references that have nothing to do with your point. Of course, if you can tell us how Kelvin's work supports your theory of subatomic physics, I guess I'll have to take that back.

[VernonNemitz]

In General Relativity it is a key fact that certain aspects of the behavior of the system must be unchanged when various transformations are done (such as a change to a different frame-of-reference). So, if I want to compute the strength of the gravitational force between plate and planet when they are X kilometers apart, I need to use the same mass when they are 100 times as far apart, or when they are 1/100 as far apart.

Hmmn. It's not a fact, Vernon, it's an assumption, and an approximation. Besides you shouldn't be computing the strength of gravitational force, you should be measuring it. But nevermind, let's see where this takes us.

Obviously measuring it could verify or refute the assumption, but at this time our instruments are not up to the task of doing it accurately enough.

The energy we're talking about is responsible for that 11 km/s velocity of a plate falling from free space to the surface of our airless planet. It's too big to ignore.

Wrong.  Even if the plate has a mass of a metric ton, its kinetic energy at 11kps is equivalent to only about 2/3 of one-thousandth of one gram of mass.  Do the math and see for yourself that under most ordinary conditions the change in mass is ignorably tiny --because, like I said, our measuring tools aren't yet able to measure gravitational force when such tiny differences are involved.

"The hot object has more energy, so it weighs more and has a higher mass than the cold object. It will also have a higher gravitational field to go along with its higher mass, by the equivalence principle. (Carlip 1999)"

That's real energy being talked about, not potential energy.  Irrelevant to this discussion, therefore, about potential-energy-stored-as-mass.

... this preference [for maintaining mass ratio] is flying in the face of the evidence. Strap your plate to a rocket and light the blue touch paper. You're giving 11km/s worth of energy to the plate, not the earth.

Wrong again, because that so-called "evidence" has nothing to do with gravitation.  AFTER you have specified giving this velocity and energy to the plate, the earth's gravitation sucks it away, and it is that interaction which, by description, logically means the earth can end up with energy converted to potential-energy-as-mass.  It is also consistent with the other description, of the earth pulling the plate back down; the energy associated with the pulling most logically comes from the earth's potential-energy-as-mass.  --And before you once again start talking about the role of geometry in gravitation, remember that you yourself wrote above that GR is an approximation of reality.  Therefore geometry does not have to have the Last Word on the subject, especially if QM can eventually generate equivalent descriptions of known/observed gravitational effects.

The "hit" you are promoting is much more serious, literally unbalancing General Relativity, compared to what I'm promoting.

I'm not sure it does, and besides, even if it does, I don't take the view that some imperfection means it's all wrong.

Then you haven't studied the Symmetry Principles of Quantum Mechanics well enough.  Physicists prefer theories that have balance, else they wouldn't have become upset when Parity Symmetry was violated, and wouldn't have put effort into talking about such things as "CPT Symmetry".

... it all comes back to that photon that causes gravity because energy causes gravity. It's a photon, it's the only thing that's there, and it's travelling at c. A photon is a wave, it conveys energy. The dimensionality of energy is pressure x volume, so think of an ocean wave. It's a pressure pulse. 

Perhaps this is the fundamental source of your error.  Energy is no more only pressure x volume than it is only force x distance, just like the Uncertainty Principle is no more only about a momentum x position relationship; an energy x time relationship is just as valid.  Therefore the energy of a photon can be described in other terms than the one that limits the conclusion you have reached!

You could say ... virtual photons are real, but it doesn't mean they're transient photons shooting around at hyperlight velocities - you can't shield inductance with a sheet of black paper.

Nobody has ever said that virtual photons move faster than light, including me.  Do not confuse the QM entanglement phenomenon with anything else, please!  Also, FYI, the virtual photons associated with an electromagnetic field are long-wavelength; they can penetrate black paper as easily as radio waves.

And there aren't any gravitons buzzing around these things. And no virtual gravitons either. There's no evidence to support this hypothesis after fifty years.

It is premature to make such a rash statement.  Remember that description of 30-orders-of-magnitude-greater-difficulty in one of my previous posts?  Even taking into account the fact that was a straight-line comparison, instead of comparing the problem's difficulty to our exponential increase in technical abilities, it will still be a while before we can reliably tackle such a task as detecting gravitons.

[yor_on]

Vernon, I hold to that virtual particles 'exist' as you seem to do. Their interactions definitely prove it. That Feynman meant that we couldn't really say what they were, I take to mean that we can't really say what they are . And we can't, but we can count on them and observe their interactions, whatever they might be.

Then I saw you support the Higgs field, sounds okay to me too. When it comes to the Higgs boson? Don't know, maybe the LHC will clear that up?

But now I see that you expect gravitons too? Isn't that contradictorily?
Or do you see string theory as encompassing all those descriptions?

==
Ah, pre/assuming that you lean towards it?

[Geezer]

Reading through this thread, it's not clear we ever answered the original question. Didn't seem like a very complicated question either.

Let's try this (thought!) experiment:

We construct a very large solar powered ion rocket, then send it to the Moon. We attach the rocket to the Moon and fire it up so that its thrust is always directed towards the Earth. Over time, this will increase the distance between the Moon and the Earth and, therefore, increase the potential energy of the Moon/Earth system.

What will happen?

Will this increase the mass of the Moon/Earth system or not? If it does increase the mass, I think we can expect to see a change in the Earth's orbit round the Sun.

We could also try a more extreme variation of the experiment where we slow down the Moon to the point where it crashes into Earth so that the potential energy is eliminated.

Will the mass of the new system be different from the old system, and will the orbit of the new system be different from the old system?

What do you think?