Spyman

So obviously your setup with the Y-formation will not double the amplitude at the center point. To superimpose two waves on each other you will need to use 4 times the power of one wave.

CPL.Luke, maybe this analogy with electrical waves can help: Two identical power generators are identical geared to a wheel so for every turn on the wheel you get an electric wave out from each generator. There is a connection box for the generators with an output wire to a load, lets say a resistor heater. The power used for turning the wheel will match the heat output from the heater and each of the generators will supply half of the power. 1) Connect the generators in parallel and measure the power for one turn. 2) Connect the generators in serial and measure the power for one turn. Will the power used differ between the two setups and how much ? (Hint: P=U*I and U=R*I -> P=U²/R)

Will the new wave be doubled in size ?

Farsight, Here are two threads of similar topic which I think basically agree with you: http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=8289 http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=8762 A thread about Hawking radiation including the evaporation rate: http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=9500 A thread about Loop quantum gravity which may remove the singularity: http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=21469 There are problably several others too, but I'm to lazy to search them all... (You may hunt them down yourself if you feel the need for more.)

Most naturally occurring earthquakes are related to the tectonic nature of the Earth. Such earthquakes are called tectonic earthquakes. The Earth's lithosphere is a patchwork of plates in slow but constant motion caused by the heat in the Earth's mantle and core. Plate boundaries grind past each other, creating frictional stress. When the frictional stress exceeds a critical value, called local strength, a sudden failure occurs. The boundary of tectonic plates along which failure occurs is called the fault plane. When the failure at the fault plane results in a violent displacement of the Earth's crust, the elastic strain energy is released and seismic waves are radiated, thus causing an earthquake. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake

Well, that's your opinion.

I interpret your 'speculation' as: Yes, the force should increase but very tiny. Tiny as it is, (between the surface of Earth and the spacestation), it will have big influence where the gravity is very strong, for instance on the Hawking radiation at the event horizon of a black hole. Or say that a scientist on a spacecraft, far away in a big 'empty' void between galaxies, would perform a Casimir experiment and in the middle the pilot would push the engines to the maximum, causing an enormous acceleration, would the plates crumble and break from the 'warping' of space ? For an experimental test of the Unruh effect it is planned to use accelerations up to 10^26 m/s², which would give a temperature of about 400,000 K. Would the spacecraft be heated by friction against space and keep the thermal energy when the engines goes off ? My 'intuition' tells me that there should be some other effect exact equaling, that extra force. Take both the distance and the zero-point field between the plates for instance, they would also be affected. But relativity plays a large role here and I lack enough knowledge to evaluate the effects...

So does your post contain science or your opinions ?

In this view, a collapsing black hole causes the emergence of a new universe on the "other side", whose fundamental constant parameters (speed of light, Planck length and so forth) may differ slightly from those of the universe where the black hole collapsed. Each universe therefore gives rise to as many new universes as it has black holes. So where does the energy for every sub-universe come from in this theory ? Will these baby universes contain less and less energy since the black holes will become smaller and smaller or is there an outside universal energy source ?

Yes, I gave Ragib the by mainstream science accepted answer in BBT. (Doesn't necessarily reflect my personal opinion thereof.) Actually recession speed can be several times faster than the speed of light, it has no speed limit, and I don't think the expansion speed is determing the actual size/shape of Universe, (in theory).

I think a point on the wave, (like the peak), is only a potential, (current force), and the total power of the wave is dependent of the time the force is in action, (the wavelength). If you have two waves with identical amplitude but different wavelength, which one carries the most power ? (Also, if I remember correct, the area of a wave represents the power.)

Hi solo and Welcome to SFN ! Now about your answer, can you extend it a little ? Would the force between the Casimir plates change ?

I have a few questions concerning the relation between gravity and the zero-point field but to avoid ending up with a complicated thread and depending of the answers I will ask them one and one. 1) Is the strength of the zero-point field inside a volume of space related to the gravitational potential inside the same volume ? Would for instance the force between the plates in a Casimir experiment get stronger or weaker if the experiment where done in the spacestation instead of on the surface of Earth ? The reason for asking is the Unruh effect which seems to indicate at least a possibility thereof. Unruh demonstrated that the very notion of vacuum depends on the path of the observer through spacetime. From the viewpoint of the accelerating observer, the vacuum of the inertial observer will look like a state containing many particles in thermal equilibrium — a warm gas. So the temperature of vacuum, seen by a particle accelerated by the Earth's gravitational acceleration of g = 9.81 m/s², is only 4×10-20 K. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unruh_effect

Farsight, you might want to read the article "Space-Time" by Albert Einstein 1926. (In the Thirteenth Edition of Encyclopedia Britannica.) Final conclusion by Einstein himself with his own words: space and time are welded together into a uniform four-dimensional continuum http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9117889/space-time

I thought I covered the spacetime part with moder nature, either spacetime can be created by nature or is a property of it, if created then there is a process for it, some mechanics with rules, which can be explored by science, if a property then science can only explain how spacetime works. Sorry, if it sounds like I am playing with words here, I am not arguing with you, but there is a slight difference and I think the difference also somewhat determines the border between faith and science. Extrapolated into the past, these observations show that the universe has expanded from a state in which all the matter and energy in the universe was at an immense temperature and density. Physicists do not widely agree on what happened before this, although general relativity predicts a gravitational singularity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang Somehow I have the opposite impression that most scientists don't believe spacetime was created with the start of BB. A important thing to remember here is that BB is an old theory which has changed since the start, my old physic book for instance says "Big Bang was an explosion in space", and as a result we have lots of simplified articles for the general public which not necessarily reflects what scientists think today. OK, I don't know any scientists which works in these areas and as such my impression could be wrong, it's only from reading between the lines and comments such as the bolded part from Wikipedia above. No disagreement here either, the varity and quantity of theories indicates that we don't know and are trying to find out. The only thing pointing towards a creation of spacetime in the beginning of BB is the extrapolation backwards in time with GR where the result is a singularity. And I have been told in this forum that "in physics the singularity is an indication of an incomplete understanding". Evidence we have is in favor of a infinite spacetime, we are not able to penetrate far enough back in time to say spacetime disappears at time X, we have spacetime now and most likely spacetime will not disappear at time Y in the future. So I think it's safe to assume there was spacetime before BB, until proven otherwise.

How the Universe was like at time zero and if it had a triggering cause is not yet known. If the spark created nature then it's a question of faith but if nature created the spark then it's a question of science and so far it seems like science is closing in on time zero and has not ruled out the possibility to explain the mechanics behind what started Big Bang. I don't think the laws that govern moder nature, (our physics), has changed or may change, it's only our understanding that is incomplete and not yet able to explain the "spark" or what was before. But our knowledge is growing and our understanding is getting better, whilst we may never know everything, we will eventually have enough knowledge to provide answers about the cause or ignition of Big Bang.

The universe is at least 156 billion light-years wide. The universe is about 13.7 billion years old. Light reaching us from the earliest known galaxies has been travelling, therefore, for more than 13 billion years. So one might assume that the radius of the universe is 13.7 billion light-years and that the whole shebang is double that, or 27.4 billion light-years wide. But the universe has been expanding ever since the beginning of time. All the distance covered by the light in the early universe gets increased by the expansion of the universe. http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mystery_monday_040524.html

Nominated for the post of the week.

New week - New Nominations ? Result of vote ? My nomination this week:

OK, Thanks for a good discussion ! Well, I never intended to defend Choix nor his "theory", I only wanted to discuss/argue your claim, which got my attention. Aside Note: Like I said before: I know very little about QM and HUP. (You can always ask the experts in the QM subforum.) Anyway here is my thoughts: The electrons carries with them their own uncertaintys which would not be affected by the plates. But if the setup was tuned before the plates was placed then yes, less tunneling with the plates in place, more without the plates.

While it might seem to violate Conservation Law it's not necessarily so. In quantum mechanics, energy is defined as proportional to the time derivative of the wave function. Lack of commutation of the time derivative operator with the time operator itself mathematically results in an uncertainty principle for time and energy: the longer the period of time, the more precisely energy can be defined (energy and time become a conjugate Fourier pair). However quantum theory in general, and the uncertainty principle specifically, do not violate energy conservation (as laymen or philosophers often imply). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_energy Trying to cast doubt on Energy Conservation Law are we ? In physics, a conservation law states that a particular measurable property of an isolated physical system does not change as the system evolves. Any particular conservation law is a mathematical identity to certain symmetry of a physical system. A partial listing of conservation laws that are said to be exact laws, or more precisely have never been shown to be inexact: No.1 - Conservation of energy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_law Zero-Point Energy is not nothing, Energy Conservation Law is not violated. In physics, the zero-point energy is the lowest possible energy that a quantum mechanical physical system may possess; it is the energy of the ground state of the system. In quantum physics, it is natural to associate the energy with the expectation value of a certain operator, the Hamiltonian of the system. For almost all quantum-mechanical systems, the lowest possible expectation value that this operator can obtain is not zero; this lowest possible value is called the zero-point energy. The origin of a minimal energy that isn't zero can be intuitively understood in terms of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. The simplest experimental evidence for the existence of zero-point energy in quantum field theory is the Casimir effect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-point_energy There is also an uncertainty relation between the field strength and the number of particles which is responsible for the phenomenon of virtual particles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle Formally, a particle is considered to be an eigenstate of the particle number operator where is the particle annihilation operator and the particle creation operator (sometimes collectively called ladder operators). In many cases, the particle number operator does not commute with the Hamiltonian for the system. This implies the number of particles in an area of space is not a well-defined quantity, but like other quantum observables is represented by a probability distribution. Since these particles do not have a permanent existence, they are called virtual particles or vacuum fluctuations of vacuum energy. In a certain sense, they can be understood to be a manifestion of the time-energy uncertainty principle in the vacuum. An important example of the "presence" of virtual particles in the vacuum is the Casimir effect. Here, the explanation of the effect requires that the total energy of all of the virtual particles in the vacuum be added together. Thus, although the virtual particles themselves are not directly observable in the laboratory, they do leave an observable effect: their zero-point energy results in forces acting on suitably arranged metal plates or dielectrics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_particle In physics, the Casimir effect is a physical force exerted between separate objects, which is due to neither charge, gravity, nor the exchange of particles, but instead is due to resonance of all-pervasive energy fields in the intervening space between the objects. This is sometimes described in terms of virtual particles interacting with the objects, due to the mathematical form of one possible way of calculating the strength of the effect. A more practical analogy is to look at two ships in the open ocean, sailing alongside each other. As they come closer together, their hulls shield the space in between from more and more wave energy, both from the sides as well as from front and back, which increasingly cancel out waves of longer wavelengths than the distance between the hulls. This causes the hulls to be increasingly pushed by this difference in wave activity toward each other, as they get closer to each other, such that if both ships do not actively steer away from each other under power, they will eventually collide. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_effect I interpret the analogy as Universe is filled with energy fields which is not zero and due to Uncertainty principle there is fluctuations, "ocean waves", consisting of virtual particles. Even if these "ocean waves" is totally random and unpredictable they are still not from nothing and neither is their observable effect. Energy conservation of the system is not violated since the energy is already there. So where has this interesting discussion taken us ? - You have not been able to prove something from nothing. - It is not a scientific physical fact proven by experiments. - There is no observations of energy being created or destroyed. - Conservation Law is not violated. - Energy Conservation Law has much higher credibility than QM. So far your only prof is theoretical with lower acceptance than Energy Conservation Law. - The all-pervasive energy fields inside Universe has zero-point energy levels above zero. - According to QM and HUP those fields are the source not something from nothing. (HUP = Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle) Now your prof has been reduced to the mechanism and cause of the randomness. Shall we continue with your claim or will you withdraw it ? (Is HUP caused by influense of something from nothing ?)

Yeah, right, "wrong argument", but since you have been very persistent in avoiding the true argument, I had to turn the discussion around somehow... True argument: I agree that any future theory must account for observations that has been made. But it is fully possible that a future understanding may change that QM statement and still account for every observation. Your prof must either contain experimantal prof of energy conversion from/to nothing or include prof that there is none possible future theory which is enable to explain the phenomena without nothingness. There is no observations of energy being created or destroyed. We only have observations of energy that definately have existed for a short period of time, there is no observations of the transference from Universe to nothing or from nothing to Universe, since it's impossible to observe the nothingness. The only support you have showed so far is what QM states but the Conservation law has much more credibility than QM, infact QM yields to it, which you also have admitted. Without the assumption that QM is infallible, you have nothing. And the QM statement doesn't prove anything as long as the Conversation law is not disproved.

So you do belive that QM is the Ethernal Final Theory for humankind for an infinite future time, not only because we will fail to aquire further knowledge, but also because QM is the only true knowledge of nature which perfectly describes everything there is to know ? (In the case of these jostlings from nothing.) The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be. (Issac Asimov) Extraordinary claims requires extraordinary evidence and something from nothing is extraordinary, thus your prof must include prof of a total infallible knowledge and understanding of everything inside Universe. No offence, but you have only proved that some energy definately have existed for a short period of time, (again). You have not accounted for the unknown.

I will interpret that as your feelings didn't appreciate my humble opinion of your "explanation".

How many mouse traps are allowed ? You could have a second one which gets released (trigged) when the car picks up the object. Same setup as with the first one but in reverse direction.