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Author Topic:   Speed of Light
Viv Pope
Member (Idle past 4962 days)
Posts: 75
From: Walesw
Joined: 06-29-2008


Message 226 of 268 (541012)
12-30-2009 5:32 PM
Reply to: Message 225 by Viv Pope
12-30-2009 3:13 PM


Re: Welcome Back
Further to my reply to Cavediver’s message 221`(my message 225), here is the appended transcript, as promised, of an interview I had with a freelance TV producer on this question (to appear).
A TELEPHONE LINEMAN’S LINES FROM EINSTEIN
(South Wales Evening Post, 1961.)
Interviewer:
History attests that in Science, as in Government, authority, in itself, has no monopoly on natural truth. Democracy demands, therefore, that criticism should never be stifled; a free press and the media in general should ensure that criticisms, however radical they may seem, should at least have a fair and balanced public hearing.
This presentation is about the work of science-philosopher Viv Pope, whose criticism of current Theoretical Physics and Cosmology has officially been declared a danger to some long-established scientific beliefs. It has also been declared immoral. Let’s hear what he has to say, so that we can judge for ourselves.
Interviewer:
1. In 1954, when you were in your early twenties you had a letter from Einstein. How did that come about?
Interviewee (Pope):
Well, I was intrigued by something I learned in a talk at the local astronomical society. This was that time isn’t, as I’d somehow imagined, the same everywhere. I only had to think about it to realise how ridiculous it was assume that the time by which my age is measured here on earth is the same throughout the universe. When I plagued my father about this, he joked that I should write to Einstein. So I did, not knowing that Einstein seldom answered letters. My father was astounded when I received a reply.
I was then a telephone lineman, you understand, not an academic. What was nice was that in his letter Einstein remarked that my question was well formulated.
2. What was the question?
It was about what Einstein told me was the Clock Paradox. I hadn’t heard about this because at the time it was practically unknown outside academic circles. My question was, in effect, If relative motion stretches time, then if a pair of twins travelled away from each other and then returned, since that relative motion has to be the same for both of them, each one’s time must be stretched to the same extent relatively to the other. So each twin must end up the younger, which seemed absurd. Einstein replied that this same question had been raised by academics. He explained that whichever twin physically reversed his motion would, on his return, end up the younger.
I found this difficult to accept at first, but with deeper study I found it indisputable that there is no paradox. Yet it still confounds some people who can’t let go of their unjustified assumption that there is a ‘God’s Time’, as it were, passing at the same rate everywhere. This makes them incapable of contemplating the relativity of time. This is even though it has been scientifically proved beyond all doubt, that time is not the same everywhere but is different for different observers in different parts of the universe.
My question to Einstein was, of course, about light in his famous Special Theory of Relativity which tells us that there is no universal flow of time in parallel throughout the universe but only different times for relatively moving observers.
3. You say your father was astounded?
Yes. My father was a telephone engineer and a founder member of the local astronomical society. The letter was exhibited in one of the Society’s open days and was reported in the local press as A Telephone Lineman’s lines from Einstein. It has since appeared in the media on several occasions but, unfortunately, all these appearances have concentrated on myself, as the recipient of the letter, while the subject of the letter and its scientific consequences over the following fifty years, have scarcely had a mention.
4. So, what were those consequences?
First, it gave me the confidence which I would need in great measure to pursue my subsequent half-century’s philosophical work. Secondly, it enabled me to discover something strange, which some scientists have since corroborated, that Einstein’s assumption that light travels at a constant speed in space is unnecessary and that his theory is much simpler without it. Besides, the more I thought about it, the more meaningless it seemed to think of light having a speed, constant or otherwise, with reference to a vacuum.
5. What did you do with that discovery?
Well. the first thing was that it made me realise that what we usually call the speed of light, c is not a speed at all, whether of waves or of those particles called photons. It is simply a constant ratio between conventional units of metres and seconds — or miles and seconds — in the observational measuring of space. This means that every 300,000 kilometres of space is equivalent to a second of time. So if c is the speed of anything, it is nothing more nor less than the universal speed of time itself. This can be demonstrated graphically in a way which gets rid of all the usual mind-bending historical rigmarole about ether-wind, chasing light-rays and so on. It also greatly simplifies the mathematics of the theory, as the famous scientist, Sir Herman Bondi confirmed to me, later on.
At the time, thinking that this discovery of a much simpler way of achieving Einstein’s results was important I contacted the local university Physics Department, to inform them of this no-light-speed version of relativity. At first they confirmed that it worked, but, later, they dismissed it as no more than a coincidence that relativity could be presented in this unorthodox, not to say eccentric way. I was treated as some presumptuous, in-off-the-street outsider on an ego trip seeking to become another Einstein.
6. But eventually you, yourself became an academic. How did that happen?
Fortunately, this negative reception was not entirely unanimous. Two lecturers at Swansea told me that I should come in from the cold, and on their advice I applied for a place to study at a Workers’ Educational College in North Wales. With their recommendation I was accepted. While there, I came to realise the power of words to comprehend or confound, and this set me on my future course of Linguistic or Logical Analysis as a tool for correctly interpreting scientific phenomena.
7. What happened after that?
The authorities at the college were impressed with my work on Logic and I was invited, unconditionally, to take a degree course in Logic and Philosophy of Science at the University of Wales, Bangor,. After graduating with Honours, I became a lecturer in Adult Education at a college in the Midlands as well as in Science for the Open University.
After some years, my health began to deteriorate, so at my wife’s instigation I gave up these posts to devote myself full time to researches into my individualistic New Approach to relativistic physics.
8. What was so individualistic about your New Approach?
After I had been well received at Bangor, my developing ideas soon became regarded as heretical, and I had been told that the University wouldn’t support them. So my bid to pursue these ideas as a university research project had been twice rejected. However, I hadn’t been discouraged, since history attests that just about every significant move that was ever made in science was a heresy in its day, and it’s a truism that society doesn’t reward heretics. Many Science innovators in the past had to pursue their work in exile, so it was not surprising that I had to pursue my work extramurally in social and financial limbo.
9. What, exactly, makes you a heretic?
Having discovered a conceptual redundancy in Einstein’s theory, I discovered similar redundancies in other theories. Seeking out and removing these redundancies led to the synthesis of philosophy and science now known as POAMS.
10. What is POAMS?
POAMS stands for the Pope Osborne Angular Momentum Synthesis. This was developed as a research project in collaboration with Doctor Anthony Osborne of the Maths department, Keele University. An offer by the head of that department for me to pursue my work with Osborne as a doctorate was not supported by the Philosophy Department. They said that they could find no-one who, in their words, was competent to take oversight of the cross-disciplinary nature of the work. It had apparently overstepped the Educational voodoo line between Arts and Science.
So, to the embarrassment of the University Administration, I remained what was provisionally called a Research Associate. This raised all sorts of difficulties for funding, publishing, attending conferences and so on, most of which I had to do at my own expense.
11. Nevertheless, you did get papers and books published under the auspices of POAMS. Can you tell us a bit more about POAMS?
As I said, POAMS stands for The Pope-Osborne Angular Momentum Synthesis. This acronym was unfortunate because so many users of the Internet assume that POAMS is about poetry when, actually it’s about physics!
12. What is angular momentum?
It’s the sort of motion you see with the planets of the solar system. When Aristotle observed this motion, more than two thousand years ago, he concluded that all force-free motion is naturally cyclic or orbital. So why, despite this plain evidence to the contrary did Newton teach that all freely moving bodies travel in straight lines? POAMS simply points out that nowhere do free-moving bodies travel in that way, that natural force-free motion is basically cyclic, or orbital, as Aristotle observed, so that you don’t need Newton’s invisible equal and opposite centrifugal and gravitational forces to keep the body in orbit. Angular momentum defines its own orbital parameters without those fictitious forces. So, accepting this essentially orbital nature of force-free motion, as Aristotle did, disposes of any need for gravitation as Newton’s invisible force acting in the void to pull bodies off their alleged straight lines into orbits like those of the planets.
13. Are you saying, then. that there’s no such thing as gravity?
I am, indeed.
14. So, what makes bodies weigh what they do? What made Newton’s apple fall if there’s no such thing as gravity?
Like all bodies on the earth’s surface the apple doesn’t have enough angular momentum to orbit freely where it is. So, without that orbital angular momentum it should rest at the earth’s centre. But since the twig prevents it from doing so, the apple pulls on the twig with that real reactionary force we call its weight. When the twig breaks, that force converts to a downwards acceleration of 9.8 metres-per-second-squared until, once again it is prevented from falling further by the ground, or by Newton’s head, as the case may be. All this is calculated, of course. So there’s no such thing as the force of gravity. It can be shown to be all angular momentum, of orbit, spin or whatever.
15. I see what you mean by heresy because Newton and ‘gravity’ have always been regarded as sacrosanct. What advantage would you say is offered by your heretical way of thinking?
Dispensing with gravity would save all those billions and billions of pounds that are wasted on vain attempts to detect gravity waves, gravitons, dark matter and so on. The fact is that in spite of all the hype and hugely expensive funding, there’s never been a smidgen of evidence for these things. Those billions of pounds might just as well have been spent on a search for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow!
16. You mentioned dark matter. What do you think about that?
That idea stems from the failure of Newtonian gravitational theory to explain two alleged anomalies. One is the missing mass anomaly, which is that the total mass of all the planets, stars, galaxies and so on is much larger than can be accounted for by Newtonian gravitation. The other is the Pioneer anomaly, which is that NASA’s space-probes don’t follow precisely the orbital trajectories they should follow according to that gravitational theory. It’s the same anomaly in both cases.
17. What’s your answer to that anomaly?
All these bodies spin, but Newtonian gravitation takes no account of spin. If these massive amounts of spin angular momentum, of planets, stars, spiral galaxies and so on, are left out of the equation, then there are bound to be anomalies. Once you replace gravity with angular momentum, then by the law of conservation of angular momentum those spins have to be included in the equation and the anomalies vanish.
18. What do you think of the Big Bang theory of the expanding universe?
It’s demonstrably based on a meaningless concept. The universe means everything there is, all space, all time, all matter, with nothing outside it, not even empty space. So if the universe is expanding, then what can it be expanding into? For another thing, to say that the universe started from a tiny dot is also meaningless, because since the universe includes everything there is, then with reference to what can it be said to be either tiny or large? That question is completely unanswerable, so the idea of an expanding universe is literally meaningless on both counts.
Besides, it is said that the Big Bang took place 13.7 billion years ago. What clock measures that? According to Relativity, all bodies moving relatively to one another age at different rates. Over that alleged 13.7 billion years the accumulated differences between the times measured by all those different clocks would be immense. So, since no clocks record any absolute, or universal time, what sense can be made of the age of the universe when there is no universal age? Since that age is completely indeterminate, what sense are we to make of that 13.7 billion years?
19. Is there any more directly physical reason why you reject the idea of an expanding universe?
Yes. That idea of universal expansion originates with the discovery, by Vesto Slipher and Edwin Hubble, that the spectra of galaxies are redshifted in proportion to their distance from the observer, and this fact is taken without question as meaning that those galaxies are receding. But let me ask you: Would you agree that all TV interviewers are people?
Of course.
And if I said: So it follows that all people are TV interviewers, would you accept that?
Well, of course not, obviously!
So, why should we accept the assertion that because all receding light-sources are redshifted, seeing a light-source redshifted is the same as seeing that source receding? That’s the same logical fallacy.
20. But are there any interpretations of the Hubble redshift other than that of galactic recession?
Certainly. Those galaxies are much too far away for us to see them actually moving. The mainstay of their supposed recession is the redshift, and as I said, to interpret that as necessarily a recessional motion is a fallacy. Put that fallacy together with the fact that the idea of an expanding universe is literally meaningless and what remains of that Big Bang cosmology? To speak plainly, I regard that as just about the silliest idea that was ever conceived!
21. So, what alternative explanation of the Hubble redshift does POAMS offer?
It can be seen with the planets, comets and so on of our solar system, that their orbital speeds increase as they get nearer to the sun, also that the orbital speeds of stars are larger as they are nearer to the centres of galaxies. This reveals a characteristic of angular momentum, that the nearer a body is to the centre of mass of the system the faster it goes. In a normal distribution of galaxies-upon-galaxies, the greatest accumulation of mass is always at the greatest distance from any point of observation, hence, logically, the further the galaxies are from that point of observation, the nearer they are to the greatest accumulation of mass, hence the faster they go — not in any radial, or recessional direction but more or less at random. At very great distances, those speeds become relativistic, or time-dilated in proportion to the distance, hence the redshift phenomenon. This effect which POAMS calculates is precisely what Hubble discovered, but without any nonsensical Expanding Universe, and associated Big Bang implications. In any case, a spectral redshift due to time-dilation of omni-directional motion is indistinguishable from that due to recessional motion, so in that particular respect the POAMS and the Big Bang explanations are impossible to differentiate other than by the criterion of literal meaning, in which respect POAMS wins hands down.
22. But what about other evidences that supporters claim for the Big Bang?
You can’t have evidence either for or against something that’s completely meaningless! Evidences for the Big Bang, such as the three-degree-K background radiation, the scarcity of certain isotopes and so on are far from being incontestable. Whatever they are claimed to be evidences of, cannot be the nonsensical Big Bang.
23. But the Large Hadron Collider, or LHD at CERN is intended to prove that there was a Big Bang.
You mean the search for the God particle or the Higgs boson? What a fiasco that’s been! It will surely prove to be the biggest non-event in scientific history. It’s cost 2.6 billion pounds to produce nothing but a dot on a TV screen and the only sign of the possible black hole is the sink-hole into which so much good money has drained that could have been spent on more sane and sensible social projects.
24. But what about the spin-offs of that research which are anticipated by particle physicists even if that experiment fails?
That entire atom-smashing approach to physics is misconceived. The idea of smashing atoms to gain an understanding of nature, as in the search at CERN for the ultimate God Particle, is called Reductionism and is well known to be philosophically unsound. As I stated in a visit to CERN in 1975, it’s like smashing up chessmen to understand the rules of chess. (The intake of breath all around the hall was like the sound a football crowd makes when a goal is missed.)
The fact is that in nature, since the whole is always greater than the sum of the parts, so science’s concern should be first and foremost with physical phenomena as wholes and only secondly with the parts into which those wholes may be divided. Those parts take their character from the whole, not the other way around. This entails a holistic, top-down approach to physics, as opposed to the partistic bottom-up, approach of the Atomic Fundamentalists.
25. Nevertheless, the building of the LHD at CERN, for all its faults is an awesome achievement.
Yes, but so was the building of the pyramids. For all their undoubted magnificence, these technological marvels have not advanced our understanding of nature in the way that was intended by science originally. Technology is one thing; philosophical understanding is another. Like those ancient pyramids, temples and sphinxes, our atom-smashing laboratories are great testimonials to human technology but are no less philosophically barren.
26. So you claim that not only are the ideas behind these projects philosophically barren but that so far as their stated intentions are concerned they are huge wastes of public money.
Yes, they are drains for both money and intellectual energy. What’s worse is that in its monopolising of funds and media attention this whole fundamentalist Big Bang rigmarole is a dogma. It appeals to young minds for all the wrong reasons, of politics finance and sheer pictorial gimmickry rather than true science. In having virtually squeezed-out any competing ideas it is an Educational scandal. This is doubtless why, despite all its impressive claims to be advancing physics. Margaret Thatcher, in the nineteen-eighties, slashed the UK’s contribution to the funding of CERN, because as a scientist herself she saw this sort of physics as being of no practical use. Nor, apart from some accidental technological spin-offs, has anything changed since.
27. Many people might agree with that. So, what do you think of black holes?
When a hammer-thrower swings the hammer, he and the hammer rotate around a common centre of balance called the barycentre. When the hammer is swung, neither the hammer nor the thrower occupy that centre. It’s the same with all angular momentum systems, regardless of how many bodies are involved. When that motion is large and the bodies are of similar size — like the water molecules in a whirlpool or the stars in a spiral galaxy — the barycentre is typically empty of matter, which is balanced on opposite sides of that centre. In any picture of a cyclone or hurricane, such a barycentre is plainly visible as the eye of the storm. In all such systems, from cyclones to spiral galaxies, there is always such an eye. These eyes have no physical property in themselves. So in the case of spiral galaxies, those eyes radiate no light, in which sense, they are described as completely dark, or black. As these angular momentum systems lose energy into the environment in one way or another, they contract inwards towards their centres, giving the impression that their matter is sucked in by a vortex. To think, however, of these black holes as things which can exist and move around without the encircling matter is as nonsensical as thinking of the eyes of storms jumping out of the air or out of the stars in a galaxy, and moving around like metaphysical vacuum-cleaners looking for stuff like us to suck in.
28. I quite see, then, why you feel that something has gone wrong with modern physics. Can you expand on what you said about the waste of money?
This waste is prodigious. Trillions of pounds and dollars are continually pumped into scientific projects which Logical Analysis shows to be completely nonsensical. In our present economic situation this nonsense needs to be curtailed. Modern physicists and cosmologists should be called to account for their extravagances in the same way that, in plain commonsense language, our Members of Parliament are now called to account for theirs. In the Middle Ages, the community was split between the serfdom and a priesthood whose language was the Latin of Authoritarian Religion. Today’s division is between the public and a new priesthood whose language is the arcane Mathematics of Theoretical Physics. For the health of our Society, Authoritarianism of any kind cannot go unchallenged, and I’m here, as a truth-chaser — a philosophical whistleblower, if you like — to challenge this 21st century upsurge of twelfth-century Authoritarianism. No-one marks my card, so as a free-range philosopher, I do whatever I can to point out, for Modern Physics and Cosmology, a more normal, more. commonsense course. This is so as not to waste that part of Einstein’s legacy which, bypassing Orthodox Education, was uniquely bequeathed to a young, educationally unfettered telephone lineman in 1954, just one year before the great man’s death.
29. How do you rate your chances of revolutionising science along these more democratic lines?
About as much as the chance of a greenfly derailing a train!
30. Very interesting indeed. Unfortunately we’ll have to leave it there. Thank you, Mr. Pope, and best of Luck in your aim of democratising modern Science.
/ends.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 225 by Viv Pope, posted 12-30-2009 3:13 PM Viv Pope has not replied

  
Viv Pope
Member (Idle past 4962 days)
Posts: 75
From: Walesw
Joined: 06-29-2008


Message 227 of 268 (541065)
12-31-2009 1:22 AM
Reply to: Message 222 by cavediver
12-30-2009 6:58 AM


Re: Welcome Back
To Cavediver
I'm glad we agree that, relativistically speaking, a travelling body has two velocities for the same motion, one tending towards a finite upper limit of c and the other asymptotic to infinity, and that failing to differentiate between these two ‘velocities’ is a common misconception which creates the notorious, so-called EPR conflict over ‘finite speed c’ and quantum ’instantaneity’.
You also say that this is a very common misconception amongst both layman and numerous young students over the years. This implies that all non-laymen and older students all differentiate between those two velocities, hence that for them there is no ‘EPR’ problem. That is not my experience of scientists generally. In discussion you can get people to agree with this, as you have, here, but then the whole thing goes ‘pear-shaped’. They know no more what to do with this conclusion than a cow with a musket! This applies as much to Einstein and Bohr as it does to your ‘layman and numerous young students’.
This is where Normal Realism comes in. From that NR standpoint, what to do with that knowledge is clear. It is to see those two limits, c and instantaneity, as ‘cinematic’ (click. ‘cinematic Model + Pope’ on Google). .As everyone knows, in a movie the action consists of a time-sequence of photographic stills, in every one of which the objects in the photograph occur together with no time interval between them — that is to say, instantaneously, like the quantum (‘photon’) connection between distant bodies. The action of the movie scenario then consists of patterns and sequences of these quantum stills, in which the motions of the objects are limited by the time-rate of the appearances of the stills in the gate of the projector. This is the exact model, in Normal Realism, for combining Einstein’s finite speed c and Bohr’s quantum instantaneity. Certainly, this never occurred to either of those thinkers. If it had, then we would never have had any ‘EPR paradox’ to talk about.
Viv Pope.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 222 by cavediver, posted 12-30-2009 6:58 AM cavediver has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 229 by cavediver, posted 12-31-2009 3:18 AM Viv Pope has replied

  
Viv Pope
Member (Idle past 4962 days)
Posts: 75
From: Walesw
Joined: 06-29-2008


Message 228 of 268 (541067)
12-31-2009 2:00 AM
Reply to: Message 223 by Admin
12-30-2009 7:02 AM


Re: Welcome Back
My dear Percy.
Why are you so keen to get me off this thread? The subject is continually about ‘light-speed’, naturally involving ‘photons’, Relativity (Einstein’s Second Axiom regarding the speed of light in space), the EPR problem of the ‘finite speed of light’ versus instantaneous action-at-a-distance (IAAAD), and so on. To shift all this onto another thread would be to break the logical continuity. The issue of light-velocity’ would have to start all over again. Otherwise, if the argument on this thread were to be continued on a different thread there would be complete confusion among a new bunch of readers and a parting of the ways with readers who, perhaps, have been following the argument on this thread, expecting it to reach a logical conclusion.
Now, surely, Percy, you wouldn’t want that! I’m sure you see that jt would be entirely counter-productive. What I’m saying, in effect, is that for the sake of continuity and consummation of the argument it should be allowed to continue on its natural course, right to the ‘bitter end’, whatever that end migbt be.
Viv Pope (no psuednym)

This message is a reply to:
 Message 223 by Admin, posted 12-30-2009 7:02 AM Admin has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 230 by Admin, posted 12-31-2009 8:20 AM Viv Pope has not replied

  
cavediver
Member (Idle past 3643 days)
Posts: 4129
From: UK
Joined: 06-16-2005


Message 229 of 268 (541072)
12-31-2009 3:18 AM
Reply to: Message 227 by Viv Pope
12-31-2009 1:22 AM


Re: Welcome Back
I'm glad we agree that...
You misunderstand.
a travelling body has two velocities for the same motion, one tending towards a finite upper limit of c and the other asymptotic to infinity
True - although the unbounded "velocity" is unobservable and simply the result of calculation that can only be made with advance knowledge of the parameters of the journey. You will NEVER measure a velocity of greater than c. It is simply a result of time-dilation: you travel to Alpha Centauri (4.3 lyrs) at speed of light, and so time dilate your journey time down to say three weeks. Your effective velocity is then 4.3*52/3 times the speed of light. But length contraction ensures that the distance you perceive to Alpha Centauri as you travel there is much much less than 4.3 lyrs, and your apparent velocity is always below c.
and that failing to differentiate between these two ‘velocities’ is a common misconception which creates the notorious, so-called EPR conflict over ‘finite speed c’ and quantum ’instantaneity’.
Completely and utterly wrong.
The EPR "paradox" has NOTHING to do with these two velocities.
This instantaneous velocity as you call it is the "experienced" velocity. A traveller at c ages zero time from Earth to Alpha Centauri, and so has effective infinite velocity, but he still leaves in 2010 and arrives in 2014.
How does this help the results of the EPR experiement set up with the receivers at Earth and at Alpha Centauri, both taking results in 2010?????
I repeat, the EPR paradox is resolved, not by communication at the speed of light (your suggestion which obviously does not solve the issue), nor by communication FTL (the standard non-local answer which causes far more problems than it solves), but by simple use of quantum variables that automatically have the observed statistics without any need to assume some FTL transmission of information.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 227 by Viv Pope, posted 12-31-2009 1:22 AM Viv Pope has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 233 by Viv Pope, posted 12-31-2009 1:58 PM cavediver has not replied

  
Admin
Director
Posts: 12998
From: EvC Forum
Joined: 06-14-2002
Member Rating: 2.2


Message 230 of 268 (541078)
12-31-2009 8:20 AM
Reply to: Message 228 by Viv Pope
12-31-2009 2:00 AM


Re: Welcome Back
Hi Viv,
You are not being asked to leave this thread. You are being asked to confine your discussion to the topic.
You are not restricted to participation in a single thread. You can participate in as many threads simultaneously as you wish. You can discuss as many different topics at the same time as you like, but in each thread in which you choose to participate you will be requested to direct the majority of your attention to the topic of that thread.
When discussing issues related to the speed of light, this is the correct thread for that topic.
Other issues, such as how opinions and attitudes are influenced by senior or authority figures, or such as some of the issues you tried to bring up previously, such as that your ideas are rejected out of fear or lack of imagination, should be taken to threads where they would be on topic. If you cannot find a thread for topics you want to discuss, then propose a new topic over at Proposed New Topics.
The Forum Guidelines at EvC Forum have been in place for many years. These are the first two rules, and the last one:
  1. Follow all moderator requests.
  2. Please stay on topic for a thread. Open a new thread for new topics.
  3. Always treat other members with respect. Argue the position, not the person. Avoid abusive, harassing and invasive behavior. Avoid needling, hectoring and goading tactics.
I cannot pretend that I have not had to repeat the request to stay on topic to you many times. Simple rules like these should be no problem for someone who understands quantum physics and cosmology, and so your apparent ongoing inability to understand and conform yourself to these rules can only be considered willful and purposeful. For me to simply continue repeating these rules to you would be to fail to recognize that something other than a lack of comprehension is behind your behavior, that you're doing it on purpose, and that you're apparently not going to stop.
The bottom line is that you can either focus your attention in this thread on the topic, or you can be suspended every time you fail to do so.
Any members who think they can make all this clear to Viv are invited to try to help me out by posting advice to him over at the Report discussion problems here: No.2 thread, but please keep it positive and impersonal.
Please, no replies to this message in this thread.

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

This message is a reply to:
 Message 228 by Viv Pope, posted 12-31-2009 2:00 AM Viv Pope has not replied

  
Viv Pope
Member (Idle past 4962 days)
Posts: 75
From: Walesw
Joined: 06-29-2008


Message 231 of 268 (541079)
12-31-2009 8:27 AM
Reply to: Message 224 by Iblis
12-30-2009 3:10 PM


Re: c & t
To Iblis,
You ask why does this happen? Or doesn't it?
Well, Iblis, it doesn’t. In my last post to Cavediver, I described what I have called the Cinematic Model as a logical solution of the ‘two velocities’ problem in relativity, on the existence of which — the two velocities — he and I concur. (see his Message
222. My reply has been sent but hasn’t appeared yet.)
So, let’s ‘chalk this up’ as a positive move forward. Now you say you want to know the ‘substance’ of the argument. Well, okay, here goes.
Your knowledge of the existence of the sun begins with a pattern of quantum light pixels in your eye — or, more safely, in something like a camera or a projected image. Now it has to be faced that in no way whatsoever can you see those light quanta starting out from the sun and travelling for eight minutes in space before entering your eye — or the camera.
Now hold that thought. Then think: From where did I get the idea that those ‘photons’ which enter my eye have ‘travelled for eight minutes’? Certainly it was not from observing those ‘photons’ travelling in that way. So that notion of the ‘space- travelling photons’ is a theory, no less.
And what about the distance of the sun? How do you know that? The simple answer is, of course, that you were told it or that you read it somewhere. Again, in no way can you actually see that distance stretching from you to the sun. So, from where do we get the knowledge that the distance from here to the sun is 93 million miles? Did someone tape-measure it or determine it in some other ‘hands-on’ way ? Well, of course not! So, again where did that knowledge come from?
You wanted the ‘substance’, well, now you’ve got it. What is not substantial, indeed is completely insubstantial, is the idea of light travelling in the form of ‘photons’ from the sun to you. As you have already realised, the set of quantum pixels that occur in your eye are the same events, identically, as those in certain atoms on the sun. As we discussed earlier, this is exactly the same as saying that the sun and its distance from you are projections out of statistical numbers of these single, discrete events common to both you and the sun. In my previous posting you seemed not to have been able to complete that conceptual flipover from the insubstantial ‘light in space’ to the substantial ‘space in light’ which is the point of departure for a whole New Physics, based on the ideas of Einstein’s relativistic mentor, Mach, instead of those of his pupil, Einstein, which he, Mach repudiated. Forgive me for saying this, Iblis, but that bit of logical ratiocination seems to have gone right over your head — as, indeed. it does with most people confronted with that logical argument, steeped as they are in the now failing extant physics which regards light in space as substantial.
Let’s face it, then, the substance of this issue is that our knowledge of the sun’s distance comes from nowhere but the patterns of quantum pixels in our eye or some other optical instrument — or, of course, in the eyes or instruments of other observers, some of whom are the expert observers whose observations and measurements are the basis of our textbook knowledge of physics and astronomy.
Characteristic of these informational patterns of quantum pixels are, of course, the phenomena of parallax and perspective, from which the positions and distances of external objects are automatically deduced. As I described it to Cavediver, these patterns are analogous to the still photographs, or ‘stills’ in a cinematographic projector, and the ‘action’ of the film, as the director views it, consists of sequences of these patterns of quantum stills in the time of the observer of that action. The objects are instantaneously connected in the stills themselves while they move with finite speed relatively to one another in the running of the film. (Compare this with what I discussed with Cavediver.) In this Normal Realist Cinematic Model of quantum connection, there is no conflict whatsoever between instantaneous and delayed distant interaction.
So there is no relationship between the two places which, as you say ‘exists and then collapses’. Nor is there any ‘duration element’ which, from the viewpoint of the observer ‘seems to take no time at all’. And, certainly, there is no ‘proper time and relative duration reversal’. For anyone who can shake his mind free of conventional precepts, no such puzzles arise.
Viv Pope (no pseudonym).

This message is a reply to:
 Message 224 by Iblis, posted 12-30-2009 3:10 PM Iblis has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 241 by Alfred Maddenstein, posted 05-14-2011 11:17 AM Viv Pope has not replied

  
hooah212002
Member (Idle past 801 days)
Posts: 3193
Joined: 08-12-2009


Message 232 of 268 (541080)
12-31-2009 8:38 AM


I must say viv, this sounds like some really good stuff. Why have you never published any of it in a scientific journal? You've been at it for, what, 50 years now? Plenty of time, right?

Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people
-Carl Sagan
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
-Carl Sagan

Replies to this message:
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Viv Pope
Member (Idle past 4962 days)
Posts: 75
From: Walesw
Joined: 06-29-2008


Message 233 of 268 (541109)
12-31-2009 1:58 PM
Reply to: Message 229 by cavediver
12-31-2009 3:18 AM


Re: Welcome Back
Dear Cavediver.
This is very disappointing. You asked me to give examples of how the predictive power of Normal Realism compares with that of extant Physics. This I did, showing you just how much more predictively powerful Normal Realism is, and you made no response to it whatsoever. Instead, you come back at me by telling me things that I already know and then say I am utterly wrong. This is very strange! I simply don’t understand it.
I wonder how you can think like that. My analysis is that apart from your evident inability to contest those examples I gave, you are making a very common mistake, in respect of Relativity. This is the fallacy of metaphysically presuming to be both observers in the same instance, the one being the observer of the motion in the terrestrial observatory and the other on the travelling body. This is counterfactual, since there is no way whatsoever in which it is possible to adopt those two positions at the same time.
The same goes for your EPR experimental setup with the receivers, the one on Earth and the other on Alpha Centauri. You can’t presume even to imagine putting yourself in both those places at once. This is the design flaw of the Extant Physics you defend, which presumes an underlying ubiquitous (and impossible) God’s-Eye-view of everything everywhere all at once.
This is where the relativity of Normal Realism differs from that of Standard Orthodox Relativity. The ‘realistic’ bit in NR is always to keep in mind the unquestionable fact that one is always the one single observer who cannot swan around metaphysically being in two or more places simultaneously. For instance, in your case of the voyage to Proxima Centauri, if you are the terrestrial observer of that motion, then you have to stick with that viewpoint throughout. You can’t presume be some deity or demon capable of being, simultaneously, in both the terrestrial observatory and on the moving body at the same time. As contrasted to that metaphysical scenario, the truly realistic one is that, as the one observer in the one place throughout, you see, in your telescope (or spectroscope), say, both the time recorded by the moving body over the observational distance and (with your other eye, as it were) the time measured over that same observational distance as recorded by your observatory clock. As I have demonstrated, this produces relativity at a stroke without involving any of the traditional ‘light-speed’ or any of its ancillary conceptions. If this is not an example of conceptual economy Ockham’s-Razor-wise, then I can’t think what is!
You say that Normal Realism doesn’t solve the EPR paradox. That is correct. It doesn’t solve the paradox in the way your theory claims to do. It’s just that in Normal Realism the question of the ‘EPR paradox’ simply doesn’t arise.
Viv Pope.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 229 by cavediver, posted 12-31-2009 3:18 AM cavediver has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 237 by Viv Pope, posted 01-02-2010 3:43 PM Viv Pope has not replied

  
Viv Pope
Member (Idle past 4962 days)
Posts: 75
From: Walesw
Joined: 06-29-2008


Message 234 of 268 (541324)
01-02-2010 2:45 PM
Reply to: Message 29 by onifre
06-26-2008 9:54 AM


Re: speed of light
What a lovely, intelligent thing to read on a serious Science forium such as this. ! I have been suspended many times simply for properly arguing my case. Where was the Moderator in this this instance?
Viv Pope.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 29 by onifre, posted 06-26-2008 9:54 AM onifre has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 235 by Admin, posted 01-02-2010 3:28 PM Viv Pope has not replied

  
Admin
Director
Posts: 12998
From: EvC Forum
Joined: 06-14-2002
Member Rating: 2.2


Message 235 of 268 (541331)
01-02-2010 3:28 PM
Reply to: Message 234 by Viv Pope
01-02-2010 2:45 PM


Please Focus on the Topic
Hi Viv,
It's still the Christmas/New Year's holiday break, so be patient when you're expecting replies. Don't let boredom prompt you to behavior that will force me to suspend you again.
If you have a problem with Onifre's message from over 6 months ago then the proper place to report this problem is over at (and let me use larger text this time):
But I suspect you're referring not to the content of Onifre's message but to his signature, which has nothing to do with the topic of this discussion. People are given considerable latitude in their signatures, and there's nothing in the Forum Guidelines about language, but if you want to argue that it is too offensive then the place to take that complaint is (once again):
Please, no replies to this message in this thread. If you are having problems with discussion that you need to discuss with a moderator then please take them to (one more time):
In the spirit of the holiday season I'm not suspending you this time.

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

This message is a reply to:
 Message 234 by Viv Pope, posted 01-02-2010 2:45 PM Viv Pope has not replied

  
Viv Pope
Member (Idle past 4962 days)
Posts: 75
From: Walesw
Joined: 06-29-2008


Message 236 of 268 (541334)
01-02-2010 3:41 PM
Reply to: Message 232 by hooah212002
12-31-2009 8:38 AM


Dear Hooah.
It's not for the want of trying. The fact is that no society encourages or rewards heretics. Why should it pay someone to create a social upheaval by having to rearrange all its Educational classifications and divisions and send its professors and lecturers back to school? This makes it perfectly understandable why this seminal idea of re-interpreting the traditional ‘speed of light’ has been judged ‘dangerous’, immoral’, ‘corrupting the populace’, etc., etc. Publishers in general won’t risk their money and their reputations on it.
However, there have been some journals which have taken the risk, such as GED (Galilean Electrodynamics), Physics Essays, the Journal of Theoretics, Hadronic Press, Journal of New Energy, the Proceedings of numerous international conferences, and others listed on the website which I am not allowed to mention on this forum. Also there have been works commissioned by book publishers such as Edwin Mellen Press and Nova Science, in which papers by myself and colleagues appear, as described on the aforementioned website. All these sources are, of necessity, fringe publications, dedicated to breaking the present deadlock held by mainstream publishers on works of any radical nature.
I trust that answers your question.
Viv Pope (no pseudonym)

This message is a reply to:
 Message 232 by hooah212002, posted 12-31-2009 8:38 AM hooah212002 has seen this message but not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 239 by Viv Pope, posted 01-02-2010 6:25 PM Viv Pope has not replied

  
Viv Pope
Member (Idle past 4962 days)
Posts: 75
From: Walesw
Joined: 06-29-2008


Message 237 of 268 (541335)
01-02-2010 3:43 PM
Reply to: Message 233 by Viv Pope
12-31-2009 1:58 PM


Re: Welcome Back
Dear Hooah.
It's not for the want of trying. The fact is that no society encourages or rewards heretics. Why should it pay someone to create a social upheaval by having to rearrange all its Educational classifications and divisions and send its professors and lecturers back to school? This makes it perfectly understandable why this seminal idea of re-interpreting the traditional ‘speed of light’ has been judged ‘dangerous’, immoral’, ‘corrupting the populace’, etc., etc. Publishers in general won’t risk their money and their reputations on it.
However, there have been some journals which have taken the risk, such as GED (Galilean Electrodynamics), Physics Essays, the Journal of Theoretics, Hadronic Press, Journal of New Energy, the Proceedings of numerous international conferences, and others listed on the website which I am not allowed to mention on this forum. Also there have been works commissioned by book publishers such as Edwin Mellen Press and Nova Science, in which papers by myself and colleagues appear, as described on the aforementioned website. All these sources are, of necessity, fringe publications, dedicated to breaking the present deadlock held by mainstream publishers on works of any radical nature.
I trust that answers your question.
Viv Pope (no pseudonym)

This message is a reply to:
 Message 233 by Viv Pope, posted 12-31-2009 1:58 PM Viv Pope has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 238 by Admin, posted 01-02-2010 4:03 PM Viv Pope has not replied

  
Admin
Director
Posts: 12998
From: EvC Forum
Joined: 06-14-2002
Member Rating: 2.2


Message 238 of 268 (541339)
01-02-2010 4:03 PM
Reply to: Message 237 by Viv Pope
01-02-2010 3:43 PM


Re: Welcome Back
Hi Viv,
I'm seriously beginning to question your sincerity:
Viv Pope writes:
However, there have been some journals which have taken the risk, such as GED (Galilean Electrodynamics), Physics Essays, the Journal of Theoretics, Hadronic Press, Journal of New Energy, the Proceedings of numerous international conferences, and others listed on the website which I am not allowed to mention on this forum.
Where have I or any other moderator told you that there are some things you're not allowed to mention here at EvC Forum? You have swerved off-topic on many occasions and so have been requested many times to confine your discussion in each thread to the topic of that thread. You have never been told that there are things you can't mention or discuss at EvC Forum.
I now require that you post a response to this message at Report discussion problems here: No.2 within 24 hours or be suspended for a week. In that thread you will post a message indicating precisely the message or messages where you were told which things you can't mention or discuss at EvC Forum, or you will post that you misspoke or were mistaken.
Anything else and I will suspend you for a week.
Please, no replies to this message in this thread.

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

This message is a reply to:
 Message 237 by Viv Pope, posted 01-02-2010 3:43 PM Viv Pope has not replied

  
Viv Pope
Member (Idle past 4962 days)
Posts: 75
From: Walesw
Joined: 06-29-2008


Message 239 of 268 (541353)
01-02-2010 6:25 PM
Reply to: Message 236 by Viv Pope
01-02-2010 3:41 PM


Physics and Philosophy of light, 2010.
Moderator, please note that THIS IS NOT A COMPLAINT ABOUT DISCUSSION PROBLEMS. The only problems I am dealing with are those problems of conceptual interpretation which naturally arise in scientific discourse and which are, traditionally, the life-blood of progressive science.
TO ALL:
I’ve been racking my brains as to why it is that in 2009 a simple, serious and straightforward suggestion of the non-velocity of light evoked so much reflexive hostility. The suggestion was simply that there is another, albeit historically neglected, way of interpreting the experimentally determined constant c other than as the traditional ‘speed of light in vacuo’.
Anyone who knows the basic rules of logic knows that such a suggestion is wide open for exploration. Like mountains, it is simply THERE and to deny its existence is just silly. No less silly is it to attack that suggestion, as some have done, by arguing that c is a velocity by definition and that, in effect, there is no logical room for interpreting it in any other way — as if to deny the existence of a whole solid mountain of logical implications based on that different interpretation of light which is there for the taking.
That ‘mountain’, for anyone who can bear to examine it, is a whole, conceptual paradigm of radically new physics which is there to be climbed for the conceptual panorama to be seen from the top. Now suppose some mountaineer or party of mountaineers were to climb that mountain and take photographs of the view from that height. Why on earth would those on the ground, presented with those photographs, wish to attack those climbers and tear their pictures to pieces?
This is invariably what happens to those who work to obtain a philosophical bird’s eye view of the natural terrain as opposed to the mole’s-eye view of experimental physics. Is there no view of the world above that subterranean level? Scarcely! Why, then, are physicists taught — or, rather, indoctrinated — to believe that no such philosophical bird’s eye view truly exists or is not worth considering; that all researches have to fall under the discipline of a judiciary constructed for the ‘down-to-earth’ experimental researches of moles and worms? Should it all be just underground trains and submarines with no airplanes; all mines and tunnels with no aerial maps? What strange sort of science would that be? Answer: the kind we have now, it seems!
Happy New 2010.
PS,
I repeat that this is NOT a COMPLAINT of any kind. It is simply a plea to some physicists on this forum to open up their minds to the posssibility of a New Physics, which John Anderson of NASA urges may be an opportunity we should not miss "because we had the wrong mindset."
PPS.
None of this is meant to be in any way offensive. Its aim is simply to 'tell it the way it is'.
Viv Pope.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 236 by Viv Pope, posted 01-02-2010 3:41 PM Viv Pope has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 240 by Admin, posted 01-02-2010 9:13 PM Viv Pope has not replied

  
Admin
Director
Posts: 12998
From: EvC Forum
Joined: 06-14-2002
Member Rating: 2.2


Message 240 of 268 (541370)
01-02-2010 9:13 PM
Reply to: Message 239 by Viv Pope
01-02-2010 6:25 PM


Viv Pope Suspended for 1 Week for Persistent Off-topic Discussion
Viv Pope writes:
I've been racking my brains as to why it is that in 2009 a simple, serious and straightforward suggestion of the non-velocity of light evoked so much reflexive hostility.
Viv, I don't know why this is proving so difficult for you to understand. This thread is not about your perceptions of how you're being treated. It's about issues related to the speed of light. If you feel you're being met with undue hostility then the proper thread for even mentioning the possibility is Report discussion problems here: No.2.
See you in a week.
Edited by Admin, : Typo.

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

This message is a reply to:
 Message 239 by Viv Pope, posted 01-02-2010 6:25 PM Viv Pope has not replied

  
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