Norman Albers

The virtual organ in Fred's brain!

I appreciate the depth of your math knowledge, ajb. My GR text spends much time developing the differential "transplanting of vectors". Here is another zinger from p.47: "The use of unsymmetric [math]\Gamma^i_{ab}[/math] coefficients has been considered only in later developments of the theory of GR, in the attempt to unite electromagnetic theory and gravitation theory..." QUESTION: What about the metric tensor itself? Could it be useful to consider an antisymmetric part?

Fair question! I play DeBussey on the piano, L'Cathedral Engloutie or however. I also happen to be a pipe organist, so I am sensitive about personal questions on organs.

I see the possibility of electric charge being illusory. To me the metaphor would be more like, the wizard of Oz long ago went South.

Funny you should ask. Just a few days ago I heard that a good study debunked the usefulness of cough syrup. My parents were honest: when I was wracking, they gave me half a shot of whiskey!

This is not a tube, it is a 'V'. Such a design is cool because the first millimeters are "amplified"...what Mr. Skeptic just said is only differentially true.

How do you mark the scale? That's what I was wondering. It is a square-power relationship, yah? Does it involve the width of the opening??? I thought this was a good elementary logic problem.

Good practical answer, MrMongoose. If I was smart I would have seen there is only one relevant parameter without working it out.

Ophiolite, yes that is part of what I feel every solstice, and I find it important to honor such feelings. Especially in recent years I welcome this and try to find ritual expressions, like Paul Winter playing music in Grace Cathedral. He rings in the "turning of the light" with crashing gongs and bluesy saxophone. The entire crowd howls like wolves.

I think the model sucks because it does not acknowledge inhomogeneity sufficiently.

Goddamn betcha. Pangloss, where are you when I need you? Sayonara, dig it, babe!!

Pray, tell! I claim to be a born-again-pagan and am not sure if I need a THEOLOGY.

I feel the solstice, the low sun and gathering cold; I appreciate our lights. Religion must honor the physical or it is perverse.

I mean to say, not moving away at the speed of light. I daresay the basic characterisation is [math] A_\phi[/math].

I have a box of glass plates, thick and maybe 3"x8" or so. I want a rain gauge so I am figuring the relation between rain infall and height at the bottom of a 'V' configuration described by two plates, with two others plating the flat sides. I have to figure how to mark the scale of height coming up from the bottom so it corresponds to rain. If I decide how high it will be, say, six inches, does it matter how wide the opening is?

Is the fermi range lateral separation or longitudinal?

Ii prefer to call it "the search for complete vacuum physics". What exactly do we mean by this term, 'dark matter'? Can I say that we need to account for a gravitational interaction in the large from a field which does not couple to the E&M or mass-fields in the strong force (or weak)? Can I say further that it is characterized by velocities less than c, because it is associated with the large-scale structures of mass? Could it be a nonlinear expression of the gravity fields we deal with?

Are brick walls reinforced with steel rebar?

So simple, as far as physics is differentiable.

The classical view does emerge. Look at fine measurements of the magnetic flux in a superconducting loop. As you go down and down the smooth curve becomes a staircase and we are climbing a staircase to quantum heaven, or perhaps the converse...I'd rather choose a happy solstice meditation. . Seriously, at the bottom end the last steps are, with increasing clarity, quantum steps. MAGNETIC FLUX IS QUANTIZED, at least in such a stable configuration.

I shall attempt to voice an idea: consider a wave packet of strongly localized extent, but still, say, a Gaussian envelope. To understand its momentum you need to sample it at different times to know the net movement of it. The combination of these pieces of information can tell you the "ebb and flow" of the disturbance. On the other hand, to describe position you need a "snapshot" which tells you nothing of motion. <> I'm sort of asking, what are the rules for pin the tail on the wavepacket?

Mass is energy in a quasi-stable localization.

In my electron and photons studies I approach with the sensibility of a plasma physicist seeking to understand quanta. I allow the "vacuum" to respond to E&M disturbance just by stating "there exists a wave packet describable by a local divergence". This is the same game offered by Swanson's evocation of Feynman's picture of "virtual e-p pairs", really. I simply assumed for the sake of modelling simplification that there is a smooth Gaussian falloff of field intensity for the photon. If I deal with a packet of "many wavelenths" extent, this renders a linear mathematics to first order in that parameter, a/k. The results allow a beautiful interpretation clearly like that of a superconducting medium. I have played a related game in supposing an electron near-field. The relations to be seen in these models do not necessarily depend on the smooth exponentials used, so it does not so much matter if these first expositions are exact. I noted that I can use a different, truly Gaussian falloff in my electron field; I chose the first-power exponent as a first guess. The second point to make is one is free to see the inhomogeneous systems I present as the states manifest in the polarizable vacuum medium which I treat in a differential calculus because I can. On scales larger than the Planck length, I am quite comfortable with the QM picture of virtual inhomogeneity; the fundamental background may be, to me, chaotic on Planck scale and indeed I need this to be not stuck in a classical model. . . . .<>These then are the fundamental polar modes of the vacuum field. If you think of a lab plasma, there are gas characteristics like pressure and acoustic waves, and also, polar characteristics like Alfven waves and other instabilities. So I am able to say gravitation is the neutral mode of the same vacuum field. In essence this neutrality is illusory, because neutral matter must have intrinsic characteristics which are of the dipolar vacuum. We experience a dielectric-like metric change of spacetime because we are in and of this soup.

That's the first part but Bell's ineq. is the second.