Mike Smith Cosmos

Just landed in Italy , having defied gravity for several hours. Landed in Bologna, hire car now roaring down auto strata toward Ancona. Down the E45 toward Gubbio. Soon be in my swimming pool. Tomorrow the big think. Got some ideas while flying . I am enthused. MIKE

. So at least the first three why's you list , if putting how in front puts them bang smack in current theory . Surely Mike Departure lounge , delay 15 mins . Then if gravity is consistent and reliable , downwards ( not sure How ) towards the centre of the earth . Speed and wing cross section should use Lift to combat gravity. ..........I might just try that dropping a weight from my chin , just as the pilot accelerates . I do not think I am being unreasonable asking questions about gravity . We seem to know precious little about it, yet the universe is full and possibly only functioning by the structure and functioning of/by gravity. It is a worthwhile pursuit if all we can come up with is a " rubber sheet " , for pity sake . And even that model does not fit very well. Mike

Yes but just putting 'why ' in front of a genuine science question , does not abdicate a scientist from exploring answers near, around or far for that matter from core proven supported fact. I have moderated the tone , by placing ' how ' in front of some of these issues . As how certain phenomenon work , are possibly the gateway to new phenomenon and horizons ? Is that not a reasonable thing to do ? Mike

.In this case I would have thought the ' How it works ' in real terms' will lead to the Why it works the way it does ? Like what is pushing what with what , or what is pulling what with what . I know there are supposed gravitons in the ' standard model ' But just how the Earth is pushing up against this medium of gravity field I have proposed , I am not sure . The rubber sheet model is too upside down in its modelling , it invokes more questions than answers . I am trying to think of an alternative to a rubber sheet model ? Like large dense swarm of honey bees surrounding the earth , pressing down on us . ( joke ) Mike

.I am here on the bus, on the way to Bristol airport. Waiting with ' bated breath ' ...he ..ha...he Do come up with the answer , before take off ! I am going to do an experiment with gravity , while flying at 30,000 feet . I intend to jump out of a flight door . My wife is going to observe me to see if I fall in a curve. Not totally sure of my recovery procedure ? In the mean time , I am giving 'thought to , the gravitational field permeating all of space , and how this field is affected by a massive body like the earth. The ambient field is affected, by all the immence amount of mass contained in the sphere of Earth . This in some ways distorts the ' otherwise fairly homogeneous field spanning the rest of space . Quite what interaction is going on , I am not sure ? This interaction may give clues as to the nature of the gravitational field itself ? Mike

.Because 'it or they ' are not 'tangible things ' , they have no substance , they ( the geometry, distance measurement, time measurement , calculated curvature , maths formulae ) can all be written on a piece of paper and put in my back pocket . If you are saying ah but they are recorded figures from a measurement you or somebody else ' took ' from some tangible thing , somewhere out there in outer space , then fine . But I was unaware that anyone had made any such measurements. As far as I can make out , I stand to be corrected, 3 dimensional coordinates have been defined ( X,y,z ) and points specified ( not measured) and various maths calculations , superimposed on the 3D lattice , calculations made and theories , realised with resulting figures . All on paper or in a computer. O.k so maybe the maths , stacks up to suggest curvature , but I am at a loss as to any measurement apart from presumed stars , etc . I cannot see how a theory can be generated without any data , attained from the site , ( space somewhere ) . Even if the somewhere was 10 feet up in the air , just above head height . It's all space , and this bit of space has a few extra bits in it . ( like atmosphere , somebody's head ) etc -------------------------/////---------//---------------/////------////////// Most of the world is doing its best to acquire something . A bit of land , pile of money notes , a bar of gold , a house , a car , an I pad , It is ironic that we are discussing something ' invisible ' that we are arguing , about , whether it ' is there ? Is there a medium for gravity waves to pass through ? I suppose it's better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick ? ------------------------------- Clearly, something did come across all that Space-time , when the LIGO experiment measured it , that blip ? The question here ,is did it come here across " nothing , or some form of medium " , so that the ripple arrived like a wave on the ocean arrives at the sea shore ? _______________________________ So:- I am putting my bet on : The medium of SPACE-TIME , consists, of :- the ABSOLUTE total amount of mass-energy of the 'Universe ' ( Everything , black ,white , green everything) , spread out across ALL of space like some form of very thin " Consommé - Soup " , containing these various lumps , here and there ( stars , planets and galaxies, black holes ,etc ) Link to Consommé soup :- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consommé So. If you want to do any , measuring, geometry, or time keeping , you will have to do it in the 'Soup' . That's where I am ' In the soup ' _______________________________ Mike

Shall we put a bet on it ? Mike

?You must not think I do not appreciate your answers , in fact I look forward to seeing your ' avatar ' alerting me to , " his comments will make interesting and meaningful answers . " The issue about the medium , is purely I am fighting hard against my previous University physics learning and Deep Intuition built up through a lifetime of engineering . I either have my wires crossed and a badly installed intuition . Or , well , I suppose I could have fallen on my head while I was in the pram . But I have had a good life , reasonably successful in what I did , including communications of the concepts of Physics to school children . Children do not accept ' rote ' easily . Why sir , why sir , why ? I have dropped weights from on high, spun masses in giant circles , thrown buckets of water in circles over my head , seen through life what I have seen . Telling me there is Nothing there in space is counter intuitive , not correct if I have read the right articles and a total total surprise to me , if you are right and there is actually zero , nothing there , to help gravity communicate its effect across space . When I found out that electrons move extremely slowly through a conductor , like 4 mph, I was flabaghasted, I thought electrons traveled at near the speed of light through a conducting wire/ cable . No. The EFFECT travels practically the speed of light , as one electron relates to its neighbour , etc , the effect travels fast NOT THE ELECTRON . I suspect that something similar happens with photons ( not sure ) I have never heard anybody say this . But my suspicion is a photon goes nowhere very fast , I bet it is the photon energy or effect that travels at the speed of light . I imagine with Electro Magnetic waves behave the same way , it is the photon effect that travels across the Electro magnetic field at the speed of light . So yes I need a medium for this to happen . Similarly , only because I guess things happen in similar ways , I only 'Guess' gravity waves will do a similar thing if there is a field or medium through which to travel . So yes I would say , it does need a medium of some sort or other . I know this is near ' herracy ' to the establishment , but sometimes you have to follow your learning mixed with your observations mixed with your intuition . Se la vie My first book , I read as a little boy , was " how it works and how it's done . I have been on that quest all my life , and I will not stop until I drop . Perhaps I should write a book though I could not . Maybe a cartoon wallet . WHY THINGS WORK THE WAY THEY DO ,! Seeing as I am so keen to find out ! Mike Mike

. It seems strange to me that some of the most fundamental questions ( like WHY ) are unable to be answered directly by science . It's as if science is limiting its scope deliberately . I understand , it only desires proven , supported ideas. But even some of those are wrong occasionally. So one wonders why one can't just romance a little with a ' not quite so proven idea yet' , that just gives you the encouragement , scope and fortitude to go on ? I am not so sure that science in the early days, was quite so stricktured ? Metaphysics eh ? But woolly answers may lead on to a paradice land of scientific gems, which have been long hid or forgotten . Lurking down some dark corridor of potential discoveries? I realy love this curvature bit , in this whole area of Gravity . In the same way that a circle generates a wave if you extrapolate its displacement from the origin , against time . It's so, so tempting ! Mike Ps ( I really love my wife and daughters , and their daughters, they all keep me sane . I think . Or was it insane ?) I never did find the Key !

. But I am lead to believe , that the prerequisite to undertaking a PhD programme , The big thing to agonise over and get precisely RIGHT , before you start is :- WHAT IS YOUR QUESTION ? That is my question ? As iterated previously . :- .------------------------------- WHY is there not an ' Aether like Medium ' within space-time , for gravity waves to propagate? When nearly every other wave , vibration , and oscillation , in the entire Universe , uses such a type of facility to efficiently propagate its energy or information ? -------------------------------- I am off to Italy for two weeks starting tomorrow , up in among the mountains, away from everything . I will give it some serious thought while away . Either you guys or me may have a metaphysical answer by the time I return , or I may have fallen over a mountainside ! And felt and found the answer to Gravity ! Mike Ps. A friend of mine in Italy said to me a year or two back " Everything in Italy , is either Heavy , up Hill , or Hard

.Yes , I appreciate that Ajb. This was not realy directed at you personally . I just feel that a Middle of the road Philosipher is unlikely to even know where to start . As you say a strait math or physics professor who is already immersed in his/her own research , is unlikely to know , without dedicating his/her time , mental and dexterous thinking processes and possible observations to the subject. With a lot more thinking . It just feels like everybody is just " passing the baby ". When as I say it seems such a fundamental question , surely " the buck stops here !" Or the baby ! Why ........isn't there .......what most other oscillation/waves ..........have in our day to day experience ? ( a medium for waves ) Mike

Well ! , for something so , overarching , important , necessary and interesting , we jolly well should try and find out , if we are scientists, this is our subject ( nobody else's ) ? Who else is there that could approach such a ' Question ' ? If we were in the same boat with another discipline , like medical , and we had an outbreak of Bubonic Plague . A practitioner would not just say " Not my Remit " . It is ALL relevant ' hands to the mill ' is it not . Not " Bubonic Plague" no , don't know why we should have one in 21 st Centuary , Not a relevant question. We would have to all have a go at using whatever mental dexterity we have available to help with answering ( WHY, have we got a Bubonic Plague in the 21 st Century ? ) Mike

.------------------------------- WHY is there not an ' Aether like Medium ' within space-time , for gravity waves to propagate? When nearly every other wave , vibration , and oscillation , in the entire Universe , uses such a type of facility to efficiently propagate its energy or information ? -------------------------------- . Mike

WOE , A moderator might well say " what has this got to do with "gravity waves and the aether " . But in a way it has everything to do with ( Gravity Waves and the Aether ) . Because , both space-time , gravity waves, and Aether, . Every one of those three are in the WHY area of unknown , rather than the HOW area of the Unknown . Basically because this area of endeavour is so UNKNOWN . So my case rests for , certainly in this instance , we need a lot more WHY , areas explored. Do we not ? Mike

.Yes but that , is off the cuff , dismissing. There is probably more difficulty in ( working out ), if that is not a mathmatical hijack , WHY something works , than the HOW. Most women drive cars very well and thoughtfully , but most of them do not know the engineering mechanism , and often put oil in the radiator . Men on the other hand usually know HOW everything roughly works, but are often more inconsiderate , and down right dangerous on the road . Just a minute did I hear " sniper fire " . Mike keep your head down again ! Not again ! Mike

. Yes we do ? I spent a week working it out the other day , in another thread ! LOL, Mike

. I think a lot of this " science does the how " and not the ," Why ", stems from the " shut up , and calculate " idea that came out of the Copenhagen agreement , ( 1920's/ 1930's I think ) , when there was so much new science to cope with , leading to ( radio activity, relativity, quantum physics , astronomy, rocketry ) to name a few . An explosion of science , there was more than enough to calculate about . But , I am suggesting , ( prepare to be shot down , keep you head down Mike ) , now we need to look to our future and perhaps ask more WHY type questions . To make sure we do not become blinkered.? Mike

. Yes , but that is non-sensible . And crazy . The WHY bit , was what a lot of the founding FATHERS and MOTHERS , of human knowledge and science for that matter , accomplished up through the early centuries since the DARK AGES until now . If we don't ask a lot of WHY's now , we will bankrupt our Scientific future ! Surely ? And we will go into a FUTURE DARK AGES . -2- (the movie ) Where a lot of computers will be buzzing away doing copious calculations . While society stagnates . Mike

.. So who does the "WHY " bit ? Mike

. " Methinks you are taking the Michael " Here I am your genuine thinker . May have taken a bit too much of a sharp turn today and a bump on the head , and a restless night trying to get my head around , what is in space that I can , " come to grips with ? " Think it was the sudden breakout of Summer heat in the U.K Mike

I do not Know why , it's not meant as defiance, but on this matter of space -time , particularly space at the moment . I seem to to be on a ' different wavelength, somehow? ' I would like to peruse this either ( more than likely for my benefit ) unless somehow we are missing a trick ( then for others benefit. Because there is a lot of blackness and lack of objects like planets, Suns etc it is very easy to think of space as nearly empty, nothing there , almost nothing at all . I think we all know that modern astronomy and space exploration and atomic science for that matter , has shown that there is in fact quite a lot out there ( even though we can't easily see it. Nonetheless , we have developed ideas , in our minds eye that SPACE is a very lonely empty space , there is no path or road to the moon , or anywhere else. It's space ships or nothing . When we in history first became seafarers ( not sure could have been the Polynesian people ) no matter . Before that, the sea was a place to fear, drown or watch in awe and mystery . Now we surf it sail it , go in it on it , skim across two feet above it , in all manner of ways . I am convinced we will look back at our space travel as 'pea nuts' . Currently we are still in fear and awe at its immensity and dangers. Maybe it's this total emptiness that " shivers our timbers " . But maybe we will find that is far from empty . Even now today , there is talk of sub atomic particles we can't see , neutrinos going right through us in there millions, quantum particles ,atoms electrons , virtual particles, Higgs , charge , gravitons , bosons , leptons , gluons , photons , dark matter and dark energy . I am not sure there is even going to be any room left for us to get in there . If we then add in the established planets Suns stars , asteroids , comments.. ( oops ! Comets ) , molecular dust and gas . Surely . With all this lot inhabiting space , how can we say there is nothing or a near vacuum in space . Surely this lot I have just listed make up some real ingredients. Thus for saying " there is something there , that we need to take account of , and ask is it making up a backdrop to gauge our distances, times and curvature in space against ? If we were to call this backdrop a " name , say as example 'spacial backdrop' I " , not space, as this has this connotation of nothingness . And it could be quite fluid and moving much like the sea and atmosphere proved to be . Then maybe we could use this Spacial Backdrop as a reasonably consistent reference to make measurements , against . , Mike

Yes what are the end points ' in ' , they just can not be coordinates written on some piece of paper . The coordinates if they are two distinct points within space time , cannot just be coordinates they must ' be in something , somewhere. what is the something . I can describe a coordinate 2 meters out side my bedroom window 20 feet up. But there is nothing there . Except a bit of air and a long drop . You surely must have something there to act as your start point , similarly to act as the end point . I am asking what ' stuff ' are these two points in ? They cannon just be coordinates ? Surely ? Mike

The distances , true do not need to be 'made of something ' . But the pegs , stuck in the ground , to give you the points to measure . These are made of something . Soil and a couple of sticks . Or if you don't like the sticks . Two stones protruding out of the soil. So as to know what you are measuring . So I am asking what the equivalent of the soil and the marker points. This must be the " stuff "or " substance " of space time . There must be something to measure ? Surely . All surveyors put down markers . Then make a measurement . You can't just put a ruler in the air and say I just measured 10 cm . Of air . You would need to mark a molecule or two either end of the 10 cm . Then measure the two markers a minute later , and see where the markers are now , and make a second measurement . So what is the 'air equivalent ' in space that we are measuring . To see if it is changing length. Mike

.Are you absolutely CERTAIN, immovably CERTAIN , that there is not a lossless medium there called ' lossless distributed matter ' across all of space and time , like the Higgs field or some other distributed gravitational field ( unless these ARE descriptions of a curved manifold - whatever that is exactly in reality -) Mike

.Now that is a sensible , answer . It is some form of test. Like I did a test while zooming down the runway in a plane , before take off and dropped an object that curved into my chest . So maybe it is something like that ? ( the test I mean ) . Now for that to happen there was quite a lot going on ( materially , substance, movement ) . There was the plane, me, the weight, a lot of accelerated movement, of tangible things like dropping mass , my body, an accelerating aircraft . So if we are talking about a spot , halfway to Jupiter , would we have any of these tangible things ? Perhaps no ? So would there be any curvature , possibly no. That curvature would only be a suppose ? Only if we put a photon there , would there be any curvature . Only if I was there in an aircraft and dropped a weight , would there be any curvature . It begs the question ? How is that state of affairs communicated to be there , ready for a passing photon , or man in a space ship/ aircraft . Is it that there is some long distance communication of curving , or is there something actually there in substance , all over space which is intrinsically curved ? It is as if the water in a goldfish bowl is intrinsically curved . So that when it starts to swim what it thinks is straight forward the curved water automatically makes the straight swimming of the fish " go curved " . If this analogy has any merit we are looking for the equivalent of curved inducing water , or curve inducing space. There must be 'something there' or some inducing field permeating all of space like some supermassive mechanical Tesla experiment . Or a distribution of matter ( or the equivalent of matter ) , dark or otherwise , everywhere across space , which gets amplified when concentrated matter is near , ( eg stars and planets ) . So , if this is correct, we are getting a picture here , of NOT an empty void of space ! With isolated stars , galaxies , and planets . With huge space of nothingness in between . But rather one whole sea of ' stuff' in various concentrations . From one side of the universe to the other . The curving in proportion to the concentration of ' stuff' Stars and planets reasonable concentrations , in between fairly thin concentrations . But all concentrations of ' stuff' say 'matter ' . All curved to a greater or lesser extent. All curved " stuff " ? Mike I still wonder if there is not a lot of ' spinning ' , going on here somewhere , somehow ?