Physics General Subjects Thread

Cosmology is a quack "science". It never crossed their minds that the Earth could emit microwaves from an apparent 3 Kelvin
temperature source. Clown ignorance and assumptions are not knowledge. Ego tripping clowns who ram their ignorant
BS down everyone's throats are some of the worst human garbage out there.

Recall the overhyped "image" of the M87 "black hole". Well, it turns out to be image processing garbage.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2205.04623.pdf

The above article shows what is involved with image processing of the actual data. The "black hole" ring is
an artifact of sloppy image processing.

Science by press release and media hype is not science. But it is effective at establishing dogma.

nomadski wrote:https://www.futilitycloset.com/2011/08/22/the-arrow-paradox/



This movement can be explained ? By quantum mechanics ? Time divisible to a point , where an object exists in two places at the same time . Here and there . Now and later ? Does this mean , space/ time is particulate , with discrete points of being and not - being , where an object exists at two points , temporarily ? Means , jump from point to point takes no time , movement takes place in the past and future and present .

Aristotle loved to claim that philosophy can "reason out" the universe while the philosopher is sitting on some stone.    This is delusional nonsense.    Reality is
more vast than any brain neuron pattern can generate and cannot be derived from a few postulates.   Even mathematics fails to achieve this simplicity.  

An example of the BS tendency of humans to impose their bias on physics is GR and worldlines.  We are supposed to accept that all entities exist on some
time dimension where all of their past and future instances exist at the same "time".    So time travel is just traipsing back and forth on this fancied time dimension.
This, naturally, is ignorant desire in the guise of deep analysis.   Traipsing on a hypothetical time dimension automatically requires a 5th degree of freedom.   You
started with three spatial dimensions and then because you thought you were real smart, your desire for a 4th dimension which you call time, you ended up with
five dimensions.   Following your own peasant fantasy "logic", you will try to claim that the 5th degree of freedom is a 5th dimension, so then you are implicitly
generating a 6th degree of freedom and so on to absurdity.  

There is no time dimension.   The past and the future do not exist.   The only thing that exists is the "now".   It may be fuzzy in the quantum mechanical sense that
multiple realizations of the "now" are possible with some probability weighting.   But there is no traipsing possible on some ad hoc time "dimension".   It is more
physically justified to assert that motion is a more fundamental property than time.   Time is just a construct which emerges from motion and is nothing more than
a label for it.   This applies to all processes including particle decay.   All physical entities are themselves composed of photons or photon type particles that move
even if they are trapped in a locality.   The most fundamental clock is a photon bouncing between two ideal mirrors.  

Time dilation inside a gravitational well is nothing more than the photon bouncing between the mirrors taking longer to do so.   An absolute universal time is well
defined even if relativist subjectivists don't like it.   A real theory of gravity has to start from understanding of its particle level interactions.   Not from equivalence
principles and other simplistic hypotheses.   GR is just a recast of the Newton's Theory of Gravity since it has nothing to say about the force law.   Even if the force
is transmuted into geometry, it still requires an external formulation which GR does not provide.   The equivalence principle supplies no information of the form:

GMm/r^2

Einstein's GR does not provide us with G.   Is the exponent of the radius, r, 2 or some other number?   MOND says that on large scales it is not exactly 2 and MOND
can resolve the galaxy rotation curve problem without appealing to magical dark matter.   Again, it makes more sense that photons (and thus all matter) interact with
gravitons (something that does not exist in GR and GR cannot be quantized since there is no gravitational field but instead some space-time metric).    Gravity is thus
a fundamentally nonlinear theory since gravitons must interact with themselves.  The MOND power law exponent deviation from 2 is precisely this nonlinearity.  

The gravity tangent may seem a non sequitur from the original point about the existence of time, but it is BS such as worldlines that are spawned by SR and GR that
generates nonsense about time and time travel.   The SR and GR formulations are formalisms and not fundamentals of reality.   You can take any dynamical system
and pretend it has worldlines.   That does not mean that the past and the future coexist with the present.

Time does not have to be fundamental. Motion automatically sets up a sequence and progression of "events". Movement of particles
from one position in space to another implies a progression since we are not talking about teleportation. The treatment of "time" as
a spatial-type coordinate is formalism and not substance. It all boils down to the nature of existence. Every particle exists as a
single entity and not some continuum (or discretization of such). There are no versions of you as a baby and as a geriatric
simultaneously occupying some "space-time" as your present instance. The only reality is the present. Records of the past and
guesses about the future are not equivalent to realizations. People in history books are not alive.

When it comes to space (forget about the Minkowskian construct called space-time), we have a real problem of accepting or understanding
what it is. Physics treats it as merely a coordinate system abstraction. But it must be a material entity. It has volume and if we exist,
then how can we exist in something that is an abstraction. So just as there are particles, there is a space in which they exist and that
coexists with them. All indications are that particles emerge from the material entity that is space. Quantum mechanics strongly implies
that the microscopic existence is discrete and noisy. The idea of a quantum foam "permeating all of space" is not so absurd. Given the
discrete nature of the "foam", it is likely that coherent and persistent structures emerge from it. It may be noisy, but the noise is not
from our realm of experience. What is the scale of these "solitons" emerging from the quantum foam and what is their physics is unknown.
How particles emerge is unknown as well. What is an electron and what is a quark? They may be fundamental in some Standard Model,
but it appears that everything in reality is "caused". Probably even the quantum foam originates from something. We are likely to never
know.

Photons seem like quantized sound waves in material media called phonons. So it makes sense to treat space as the EM medium on which
quantized EM-waves propagate. Maxwell's equations point to space being an EM medium. Unfortunately, the subjectivist disease of the late
1800s has corrupted physics with BS relativism. People looked for some ether fluid and since they could not prove its existence we had the
triumph of inane relativism. Both are BS. Space does have to have properties of a fluid and there does not have to be some "ether flow"
for space to be a material entity (that supports EM fields). We tend to project our experience onto things which do not have to conform to
it. Space as a medium does not have to be just like solids and fluids in our everyday experience. That does not imply that there is no absolute
space and that is all subjectively anchored on relative observers and is some sort of coordinate system abstraction.

The relativists have not debunked the absolute interpretation of the Lorentz transform. They engage in a bait and switch by implicitly
renormalizing the coordinates and then applying the same forward transformation when they should not. Moving "frames" (i.e. objects)
are indeed distorted even if observers attached to them do not perceive the distortion. There is one absolute and undistorted frame and
that is where all the photons live. The "space-time" distortion embodied by the Lorentz transform is all about the fact that photons are
trapped in one absolute frame. So as you try to move to the speed of light, you cannot maintain your rest form. The photons that constitute
the EM field that defines you and your atoms know only the absolute frame. They are not going to move relative to your moving frame. This
is connected to the fact that photons are indeed quantized waves of an absolute material "medium". A flashlight moving at speed v does not emit
photons moving at speed v+c. Photons are anchored on the one space that exists and that is why the speed of light is absolute. In fact, that
there is a finite speed of light originates from the essence of photons as quantized waves on a material medium. Why the particular speed that
we measure (or infer) and not another?

Allowing the speed of light to evolve together with space helps to resolve the nonsense called hyperinflation in cosmology. It makes more sense
to tie the physical properties of photons to space than to treat them as invariant abstractions. If you are going to accept that the universe
can change geometry (Big Bang, etc.) then you have to accept that space is a material entity. In this regard GR is good since it advances the
idea that space can deform. GR is not a relational theory like SR. It is supposed to be locally SR, but globally it is not relative. Einstein tried
to compensate for this by asserting that no coordinate system is special, hence giving the Principle of General Covariance. But this has been
abused and various clowns use transformations that do not conserve information to contrive all sorts of BS. No coordinate system may be special,
but coordinate transforms must be diffeomorphisms and conserve information.

Prime evidence why Wikipedia is total revisionist garbage.

An example of how modern physics twists people's thinking into a tangle of nonsense.

If photons do not move, then it is totally meaningless to talk about them being emitted and
received after any amount of time.   Special Relativity reference frames cannot delete this
universal fact.   It does not matter what some hypothetical (and fictional) observer riding
a photon perceives.   What the rest of the universe perceives matters more.   In fact,
they are not mutually exclusive.   The photon rider has his physical time (not absolute
time) stopped since no process in his/hers/its/unicornkins/dragonkins structure can progress.
The photons know all about absolute space, which has to exist for physical sanity.   Relative
space is absurd since it means that any difference in vector of motion and speed between
objects (observers) puts them in different realities.   Sorry, SR zealots, there is one fabric
of space (there is no time dimension) and GR gives up the relative space concept and replaces
it with non-uniqueness of coordinate systems.   GR is not a relational theory, it solves for a
global space(-time).  But I don't need GR to point out that SR is logically contradictory and
its lunatic aspects are subjectivist interpretations and not objectively established facts.  
The Lorentz transform is perfectly consistent with the reality of an absolute space.   Do not
let groupthink lemmings tell you otherwise.   Poincare and others had the right interpretation
around 1905, but Einstein's loopy, subjectivist BS was pimped to the public.  

There appears to have been a lot of sensationalist mass media hysteria around the turn of the
last century.   We had science by media such as the "proof" of GR based on some BS eclipse
measurements that were nowhere accurate enough back the claims.   There is nothing special
about GR that it alone explains curvature of photon paths around massive objects and the precession
of the perihelion of mercury.   A infinite number of other theories could have the same predictions.
At the end of the day, the cult nature of physics and the dogmatic treatment of what are just
theories is the main problem.   We are not at the level of flat-Earth discussions.   The physics
of gravity is not explained by GR.   GR is just a geometrical formalism that rests on Newton's theory
of gravity.   A metric still requires a physical process (e.g. field).   Just because you have some
equations for a metric does not mean you have closed the field for further research.   This is why
no quantization of GR exists (disregard attempts such as loop-quantum gravity since they are nowhere
near achieving success).   GR has has nothing to say about particle level gravitational processes,
for example about the coupling of photons and gravitons and the coupling of gravitons with each other.
There are no gravitons in GR.   There is only a metric.  

GR is rather absurd.   The stress-energy tensor that is the effective forcing term on the right hand side
is matched to a geometric framework (operator on a metric) on the left hand side.    So a token constant
is used to change from units of length to units of energy.   Sorry, but length =/= energy.   But you would
never know from the cultists both in academia and mass media that there is anything incomplete about
this "revealed truth".   This is not science.

Another issue is revealed in the narration in the video. The supposed point nature of electrons and quarks.
This is yet more BS that is treated as self-evident fact. All particles with mass have a deBroglie wavelength
and the existence of such a wavelength is actually supported by laboratory measurements unlike speculation
such as SR and GR. How can a point mass have a wavelength? In fact, a point particle violates the
Heisenberg uncertainty principle which is nothing more than a statement that wave function solutions of
the Schroedinger equation will always have a spatial extent or non-locality. What is being confused here
is the collision cross section with actual spatial extent. So electrons behave as if they have no cross section.
This does not imply that they have none. At the scale of electrons, the experience from our macro scale is
irrelevant. Protons and neutrons are field extents maintained by quark "point particles" and thus exhibit a
collision cross section. In some sense these nucleons are more like our macro scale structures which are based
on atoms which are similar in being field extents. Nothing requires quarks and electrons to have finite collision
cross sections. They are not analogues of structures such as atoms and collections of atoms. It rather implies
that electrons and quarks are not composites of yet smaller particles.

So 99% of the mass of a proton/neutron is from the binding energy in the gluons. The Higgs boson is a total side show.

I think there is sufficient evidence that mass is a derivative feature and not fundamental. This is indirectly supported
by the mind boggling weakness of gravity. The electric force between two electrons is 2.4 x 10^43 stronger than
the "force" of gravity. The strong force becomes "unbounded" when quarks and gluons try to separate too far from
each other so it is definitely not some tiny residual compared to the electromagnetic force between charges.

So the force associated with gravity is a residual of other forces. We do not really have enough knowledge about the
structure of electrons and quarks since particle experiments show a "zero" cross section which means nothing other
than our "smash 'em up" science is failing to probe the fine structure at scales electrons and quarks. That we get
any useful information from colliders can be considered almost an accident of nature.

The electron probably has a strong force variation that we do not know about. The asymmetry with the quarks is
just too dramatic. The mass of the electron would be a similar effect of the cloud of "electron-gluons". The symmetry
breaking is in the size scale. It is interesting that a high energy electron-positron collision can spew forth quarks and thus
gluons. Of course it is the "energy" that somehow gives birth to these particles. But that does not answer any physics
questions. Particles are coherent structures and not amorphous clumps of "energy". What is turning "energy" into
particles? No, the Standard Model does not answer this question. It is just an accounting book for the "particle zoo".

Variable G (gravitational "constant") cosmology eliminates the hyperinflation deus ex machina. It appears that both the speed of light and G varied from
the "Big Bang" until today.

I like Unzicker's idea that physical constants are crutches that compensate for lack of understanding.

It is true that that a weak force of gravity allows our modern reality to exist. But that is not the issue, but rather why are there "fundamental" forces and
particles. What is their governing dynamics? I would think the goal of physics is such understanding instead of dogmatic, revealed truth nonsense that
we have today. All mass media coverage of astrophysics, particle physics and cosmology is pure narrative like in geopolitics. It is presented as the
the best and only understanding of physics. No room is provided for genuine skeptics who make observations that cannot be dismissed by any of the
high priests of the modern physics cult. Dissent is not really allowed in the "freedom of thought and freedom of expression" utopia.

BTW, variable G is fully consistent with gravity being nonlinear as contrasted to electro-magnetism but different from the strong force.   It is somewhat
like the strong force in that separation gives a stronger coupling but the strong force is simply off the scale if the separation is beyond the diameter of
a proton or neutron.    Gravity clearly does not explode as two masses are separated farther apart.    But it appears that G is a function of radius of
separation.   So the gravity "field" acting on stars in the core of our galaxy is weaker than that acting on the stars in the galactic outer disk.   This
explains the anomalous galaxy rotation curve and removes the need for a dark matter halo to explain some "missing" mass.  

Since it is likely that gravity is some sort of field and not merely a geometrical feature as claimed by GR, there are such things as gravitons.  The
nonlinearity arises from the gravitons being able to couple with each other.   By contrast, quanta (virtual photons) of the EM field do not couple
with each other.    As one moves into an environment denser in gravitons, the effective force of gravity drops because the force carriers (exchange
quanta) spend more time interacting with each other.   The cost in time is already enough to change G.  

G evolving from the Big Bang going forward would be a predictable outcome of moving from a regime of extremely high graviton density to
the current dispersed regime.    The question that arises is why was there no black hole from Big Bang singularity.   Aside from the fact that
the physics evolved over time, it highlights the fact that black holes are nonsense.   I can invoke the so-called black hole solutions which are
all mathematical BS.    The real singularity is at the event horizon.   There is no point mass singularity at r=0 (r does not even make sense
as a radius since the curved space-time radius is R and is not the same as the reference map r).   What you see from the high priests of
the modern pseudo-science cult is hand-waving BS such as some measure of curvature near r=0.    As if that curvature implies the existence
of a point mass nearby.  

Nope, the only legitimate solution approach is to specify a point mass (or stress-energy tensor) at "r=0" and proceed to solve the Einstein equations.
Instead what you get is flailing around with homogeneous solutions where the boundary conditions are not clearly specified.    This may work for
the linear EM equations (e.g. potential of point charge) but in the nonlinear covariant formalism of GR this flops.   The so-called inner solution
for r < r_horizon does not mean what the black hole cult claims it means.    

1) The inner solution is time reversed.    So geodesics track movement away from r=0.   This is fobbed off by claiming that r -> t and t -> r in the
inner solution (that the space and time coordinates change roles).    This is full on BS.  The trace of a metric is not sacrosanct.   So changing the
sign of the r term and the t term does not imply a change in their physical meaning.    It is merely information about the behaviour of the geodesics.

2)  The horizon is an actual singularity.   This is manifestly so because it is invariant under information-conserving coordinate transforms.    The
only way to "get rid" of this singularity is use unphysical information creating or destroying transforms to move it elsewhere in the domain.   This is
exactly the case with the vaunted Kruskal-Szekeres transform.  

3) (2) is consistent with (1).   If motion on geodesics in the outer solution (r > r_horizon) moves towards the horizon, then motion on geodesics in the
interior solution is towards the horizon as well.   But this is violating the rabid desire for there to be a point mass at r=0 so we have scientific fraud
to obfuscate this fact.  

4) The general covariant formulation of GR means that there is a type of coordinate map degeneracy.   This is counter-intuitive to most high school
level physics experience since once you choose a coordinate map (e.g. spherical coordinates) then you no longer have to worry about them changing
on you as you solve the governing equations of some system you are analyzing.   But in GR you now have to worry about the meaning of your coordinate
map and its dependence on your boundary conditions.    For example R(r) for any number of functions of r is a valid solution to the "point" mass problem
in GR.    This brings us to what is exactly the inner solution?   It really looks like an inverse of the outer solution.    So r=infinity is mapped to r=0 and
the horizon stays at the same radius.   In other words, the inner solution may be just a coordinate degenerate form of the outer solution.   And there
is no solution for r < r_horizon at all!    The hyped extreme curvature near r=0 is the result of mapping an infinite volume into a small neigbourhood
around a point.    

The problem with GR is that it gives no information about the physics of gravity itself.   Yes, really.   It converts the Newtonian theory of gravity into
a geometric formalism where the solution is not for a gravitational potential or field, but for a metric of the space-time.   There is no elucidation
of quantum scale gravity and how the metric is produced by mass and energy.    The metric satisfies some equations and that is all you have.
Equations are only as good as the physical meaning loaded into them.   But in GR the equations are some sort of revealed truth and don't ask
any serious questions about them.   For example, what happens to gravity itself under extreme density of matter-energy?  GR assumes that
gravity (and G) does not change and we have a burrowing of an extreme curvature hole.    Not only is the existence of such a hole dubious but
we cannot assume that the Newtonian gravity remains valid in the strong field limit.  

I think it is exciting that the universe is still full of mysteries but modern physics is rotten with dogma being passed off as science.

Plasma is just ionized gas. Unless you have some chemistry involved which can release energy, all you have is the thermal
energy that went into making the plasma. In order for a plasma beam to have any chance of retaining coherency, it must be
electrically neutral. Otherwise the dominant charge will very rapidly dissipate. But having a neutral plasma is a challenge
since the positive and negative particles will recombine quickly. This brings us to the problem of pushing some gas, high
energy, ionized or not, through the air. A laser has the advantage that the photons transmit through the molecules of the
air. They do not displace them but a plasma beam will have to displace the air and this will involve mixing and loss of kinetic
energy of the beam constituents. Even if one could hope for the ionized plasma to ionize the air, it would still be an
energy sink and would not remove the fundamental problem of displacement.

I think plasma bolts in sci-fi are cool, but in reality they would have to be high energy laser bursts. The high energy would
ionize some of the air and would produce an emitting beam (instead of bolt) effect.

Really, it makes more sense to have rail gun launched projectiles than plasma beams. Lasers cannot be beat for "instant"
delivery of energy to the target. A plasma beam will not travel anywhere near the speed of light even if you pumped it
out a relativistic velocities. Frankly, the shock front from such a beam discharge would do a lot of damage at the firing
point. Of course, if you are in space then the air resistance problem is not there.

Current laser tech involves a step where the emitted photons are bounced back and forth between two effective mirrors
with an aperture in one of them. This is what collimates a laser beam. What we need is a way to generate the coherent
parallel photon flux and emit it directly at the target. That would be something.

GarryB wrote:If we are talking about scifi weapons I would say a Gamma ray gun would be rather cool... a gamma ray burst from space is extraordinarily powerful and lethal to living things and should penetrate all different types of matter easily enough... just a question of concentrating it in a beam that can be directed at things. It is a wave like a radio wave or light wave...

A ground based weapon could kill the human crew of an aircraft for instance while a space based weapon could be used against people on the ground or in the air or in vehicles and buildings.

Edward Teller proposed a X-ray/gamma ray laser from a single-use nuclear device in orbit. A nuke would be detonated with the right sort of
characteristics to emit in this EM band and beam collimation would occur in a very short period before the device would disintegrate.

Firing beam weapons from space would produce damage at the surface if they are sufficiently powerful. But this is not quite a sci-fi
pew-pew from a "blaster".

Trust authority...