csmyth3025

I would say that you're taking the "rubber sheet" analogy of gravity a bit too literally. You might want to compare your model to the Big Bang model described in the Wikipedia article here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang This article (and the links it contains) tells me that there is a lot more to the Big Bang Standard Model of Cosmology than you've included in your idea. One thing to consider is that the "very small object" you describe might, in fact, have been an infinitely large object if the universe itself is infinite. Our observable universe is usually described as a sphere surrounding Earth with a current co-moving radius of about 46 billion light years. We don't know how much universe lies outside our observable universe, though. Another thing to consider is that it's generally believed that the expansion of the universe started to accelerate when the universe was about 1/2 it's present size. The "hill in space" you mention seems to be getting higher. This poses a problem for not only your description, but also for the Standard Model. Right now this acceleration is attributed to "dark energy" - which is just a place-holder term for saying "the expansion of the universe seems to be accelerating, but we don't know what's causing it to accelerate". Chris

The Wikipedia link that ajb provided on Cooper pairs explains the basic concepts involved with the BCS Theory - first proposed by Bardeen, Cooper, and Schrieffer (BCS) in 1957. The Wikipedia article on BCS Theory can be found here: http://en.wikipedia....wiki/BCS_theory Chris You're probably thinking of the proton-proton chain reaction thought to occur in stars like our sun: (ref. http://en.wikipedia...._Chain_Reaction ) Chris

You've been provided with links that answers your question by ajb here: http://en.wikipedia....lectron_capture and by Swansont here: http://en.wikipedia....neracy_pressure You might also want to review Wikipedia's more generalized article on degenerate matter here: http://en.wikipedia....generate_matter These articles are usually written for the layman with a high school education, although some can be quite advanced. They provide many links that can elaborate on different points made in the articles. They also provide a list of references if you're serious about researching the subject. Swansont and ajb have repeatedly (and patiently) given you answers to your questions and they've provided links so that you can understand their answers. The problem here is that you're either not reading the links or you don't understand them. If you don't understand a specific part of the articles you've been provided, then say so and someone will attempt to answer your question. The members of this forum are not your tutors. I can assure you that both ajb and Swansont know what they're talking about. Questioning their knowledge because you don't understand the material you've been provided is both impolite and self-defeating. Eventually people will tire of you rhetoric and simply stop replying to your posts. Chris

The old textbooks used to refer to gravitational potential energy as the energy of position. In this case that description is helpful. A photon (or a baseball) that's very far away from the Earth will have a maximum amount of potential gravitational energy due to it's position far away from the Earth. If the baseball has no net velocity relative to Earth when it starts to "fall" from this very large distance, the greatest speed it will attain (ignoring atmospheric drag) is about 11.2 km/s before it hits the ground. (ref. http://en.wikipedia....cape_velocities ) If the baseball is made of titanium metal it would weigh about 1 kg (~2.2 lb). It's kinetic energy would be Ek = 1/2mv2 = 0.5 kg*(1.12*104 m/s)2 = ~62.72 MJ (megajoules) This is the amount of energy produced by the combustion of about half a gallon of gasoline. If you were to shoot this same baseball back up into space, it would take the same amount of energy to get it back to the same point it started. When the baseball is very far away from Earth, its gravitational potential energy relative to the surface of the Earth is 62.72 MJ and its kinetic energy relative to the surface of the Earth is zero. When the ball lands on the ground its gravitational potential energy relative to the surface of the Earth is zero and its kinetic energy is 62.72 MJ. The ball doesn't "take away" any of Earth's gravity. It simply converts one form of the energy it already possesses (its gravitational potential energy relative to the surface of the Earth) to another form of energy (its kinetic energy when it reaches the surface of the Earth). The blue-shifting of the wavelength of a photon that travels directly to Earth from some arbitrarily large distance works in a similar fashion, but involves equations that I can't yet understand or manipulate. Chris PS I think Swansont is very capable of providing you with an even more thorough explanation than I've offered. I think he's just having trouble trying to simplify a general relativistic solution in terms that you'll have some hope of understanding. There is no mystery here.

As a photon, or a baseball, falls deeper into the gravitational well of a massive body it will lose (gravitational) potential energy and gain kinetic energy. Yes, I'm saying that energy can distort space-time (it's called the energy-stress-momentum tensor) As to the rest, I apologize if I misunderstood your post. Chris

A photon traveling through space and a ball traveling through space will both gain energy relative to their energy at the point of origin as they move towards a source of gravity. This isn't because the source of gravity is "giving up" its energy, it's because the source of gravity is, by definition in general relativity, the source of curvature of space-time. The photon and the ball are also sources of curvature of space-time, but their effect is immeasurably small. You're right that the Earth can lose angular momentum to the Moon: (ref. http://en.wikipedia....Tidal_evolution ) However, the Earth can't "run out of angular momentum" by transferring it to the Moon: Note that even if the Earth-Moon system remains undisturbed for fifty billion years, the Earth will still retain angular momentum (it will be rotating around its axis once every 47 days). The Earth's angular momentum won't decrease beyond that because the Earth and the Moon will be tidally locked. More to your point, though, is the fact that the Earth will still have just as much gravity fifty billion years from now as it does today. The transfer of rotational energy from the Earth to the Moon doesn't change the gravitational field of the Earth any more than a photon or a ball falling toward the Earth does. The gravitational field of the Earth is dictated by its mass. Things like photons and balls "falling" to Earth can (minutely) increase the Earth's mass and thus (minutely) increase the strength if its gravitational field. They can't "use up" the energy of Earth's gravitational field. Chris

First, matter can absorb light: (ref. http://en.wikipedia....ssion_mechanism ) Second, light moving toward a source of gravity is blue-shifted, not red-shifted. Third, by definition the event horizon of a black hole marks the "point of no return" for anything that crosses inside - this includes light as well as matter. Fourth, since matter and energy are essentially two aspects of the same "thing" (think E=mc2), if you shine gamma rays into a black hole the radius of the event horizon will, indeed, increase (the black hole will gain mass). Physicists are keen to conduct exactly the sort of controlled experiment you propose. Chris

Regarding black hole singularities you're making a statement that's an assumption on your part: "...One can still say that matter therein must be compressed to infinite density.." is an assumption. It would be more proper to say that as the volume of the mass asymptotically approaches zero, the density asymptotically approaches infinity. Simple mathematics will tell you that infinite kg/cm3 times zero cm3 equals zero kg. Black holes that are implied by indirect observation have very real (finite) mass. The "central massive object" in our own Milky Way Galaxy (Sagittarius A) - which is generally accepted to be a black hole - has an estimated mass of ~4 million solar masses: (ref. http://en.wikipedia....tral_black_hole ) One of the reasons the object at the center of this "central massive object" is called a singularity is that we don't know - and don't understand - the physical processes that take place at the extreme densities and pressures thought to exist in this compact region. Moreover, "...What happens inside the event horizon, stays inside the event horizon..." Conjectures about how things work inside the event horizon are just that - conjectures. Unless, of course, you have some experimental evidence you'd like to submit. When you say: "...So, the singular nature of a black hole is not just conjecture. It is fact, by general relativity....", you right. General relativity admits that its equations are not able to describe the physical nature of time, space, matter and energy at the center of a black hole. It's generally believed that a theory of quantum gravity is needed for that - a theory that we haven't yet been able to devise. All this means is that this compact region is outside the domain of applicability of general relativity. This is already known. Chris

Thanks for the article DrR. Although much of General Relativity still eludes me, at least now I have a better understanding of why you say that time is a local concept. Chris

For a more complete (and more accurate) description of the Big Bang than math-helper provided you may want to read the Wikipedia article on it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang Chris

About the only thing known with any confidence about light (or anything else) crossing the event horizon of a black hole is that it will end up in the center where there is a "singularity". This is a point in space where the gravity is so great that we don't have any equations to describe the conditions there. It's not likely that light is converted into matter at this point because matter itself collapses into something we don't know how to describe except to say that it's a singularity. In a way, you're right that when energy is denser, it's called matter. The details aren't so simple, though. You can find a simplified explanation in the Wikipedia article "Matter Creation", here: http://en.wikipedia....Matter_creation Chris

According to the United States National Academy of Sciences: (ref. http://en.wikipedia....ical_definition ) I think under the present circumstances that your theory has to be considered speculation - or, at best, a hypothesis - until such time that you can develop it enough to match the descriptive and predictive power of existing theories. I would urge you to study some of these existing theories to see how they were developed and the exactness with which they're presented. A good place to start would be the Wikipedia article "Introduction to Special Relativity", here: http://en.wikipedia....cial_relativity Chris

Show me your calculations that describe the effects that "bigger", "smaller", "faster" and "slower" have on clocks in GPS satellites and clocks on Earth. Then we can talk about specific flaws in your theory. Your theory has to make predictions that are testable. In this case we already have the test data. Now we need your theory and its predictions. Chris

Nobody knows enough about dark energy to give any sort of reasonable answer as to why it's still accelerating the expansion of the universe - that's why it's called "dark". The name is just a place-holder term that's used to describe something about which we know almost nothing. The only things that we know about this "stuff" is its effects: it seems to be causing the accelerated expansion of the universe and it can't be detected directly by any instrumentation we have. There is nothing else to "misinterpret" about dark energy except these two observations. If you would like to learn more about why we think dark energy exists, and some of the possible interpretations that have been proposed for it, a good place to start would be the Wikipedia article on Dark Energy here: http://en.wikipedia....iki/Dark_energy Chris

As an object gravitationally contracts, the internal pressure of the object increases. Is this the mechanism by which "...Gravity also plays a role through the nonlinearities in the field equations..."? Chris

What I'm asking is that you show the quantitative calculations by which your theory arrives at the same time dilation (38 microseconds per day) that calculations based on Special and General relativity predict for clocks on our GPS satellites. Your theory predicts that things that move "faster" (through space) will travel through time faster. Special relativity predicts that an outside observer will see a moving clock run slow by a very specific amount as determined by the relative velocity between the observer and the moving clock: Your theory predicts that things that are "bigger" will move through time faster. General relativity predicts that a clock on a massive planet will run "slow" by a very specific amount as determined by the amount of of mass contained in the planet ("bigger" = slower): In order for your hypotheses - and your theory - to have any credibility you will have to show your calculations that predict the observations that our GPS gives us every day. One of the many reasons that the Special and General relativity theories are widely accepted is that calculations (as noted above) - which are based on those theories - do predict our GPS observations with a very high degree of accuracy. In your post #1 you said: So far your theory includes absolutely no quantitative analysis (mathematical formulae), it says that "bigger" things move though time faster in spite of clear evidence that time on a "bigger" things is slower, and it says that moving faster (through space) means that one also moves faster through time in spite of clear evidence that moving clocks run slower. These things do not "completely agree with this theory". Even if we accept your claim that "...I just did my description backward is all...", how would your re-written theory explain the much slower clocks on the surface of a neutron star (radius = ~12 km) compared to those on the surface of the much bigger Earth (radius = ~6,300 km). No matter how you reverse the wording of your theory it will conflict with existing experiments and observations. How many flaws in your theory do you want us to list before you decide to study existing relativity theory in order to understand what these theories actually say and the tremendous amount of experimental and observational evidence that makes them so widely accepted? Chris

The big bang standard cosmological model says nothing about the state of the universe prior to about 10-36 seconds after the big bang itself.. Are you claiming to have evidence that supports the idea that the big bang came from an atom (or a molecule)? Chris

I'm afraid you've got your "faster and "slower" turned upside down. The reasons you think these effects occur are just plain wrong. The numbers you cite are off by a factor of 150,000: (ref. http://en.wikipedia....eral_relativity ) Note that "speed" results in orbiting clocks ticking slower than stationary clocks. The stronger gravity at the stationary clock's location on Earth ("more massive") causes the clocks on Earth to run even slower (not faster) than the clocks on the satellite. In three weeks (21 days) this would result in a net discrepancy of 798 microseconds (about 0.8 milliseconds). This is the amount of time that an orbiting GPS clock would "gain' on a stationary clock on Earth in three weeks. The two minutes you cite is about 150,000 times larger than 0.8 milliseconds. BTW, these GPS satellites have an orbital velocity of 8,639 mph (about 3.86 km/s) at an altitude of 12,600 miles. The 17,000 mph figure you cite is the orbital velocity usually given for the Space Shuttle at a nominal orbital altitude of about 320 miles. (ref. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_orbiter#Shuttle_Orbiter_Specifications ) You're going to have to come up with calculations that show how your theory predicts the results observed in the operation of our GPS navigational system if you expect it to have any credibility. You might want to study existing (relativity) theory to see how these effects are explained. Chris Edited to add reference for Space Shuttle velocity.

I would suggest that you don't have even a basic education in the sciences. I don't say this pejoratively. It's just that you don't have the knowledge to determine what "more reasonable specifications" would be because you haven't studied the historical foundations of the theories that you find "mythological". Make an effort to learn the science behind the theories. The scientific community certainly has its own version of "political correctness" that resists new and radical theories. This is a natural feature of any institution. Scientists are not conspiring to deceive the public into believing "unprovable conclusions with no evidence whatsoever". They're happy to leave that job to the politicians. Chris PS You're right, sometimes forums aren't the best source of information. I would encourage you to broaden your studies to include books and the many excellent on-line resources offered by reputable universities and recognized educators. Just about all the information you need is available on the Internet from reliable sources - at no cost. As I mentioned in my previous post, Wikipedia is a good place to start. Chris

What, exactly, is it impossible to know? Chris

If two people (on the Earth and in a spaceship or in two spaceships) are moving at 99.99% of the speed of light relative to each other they will each see the other's time a being slower than their own. If two people are both moving at 99.99% of the speed of light "right next to each other", that implies that they are moving together in the same direction at 99.99% of the speed of light relative to some third object or observer. In this case the first two people will be in the same inertial frame of reference and their clocks will match. Details explaining this and other consequences of special relativity can be found in the Wikipedia article on this subject. The introductory article can be found here: http://en.wikipedia....cial_relativity This article contains links to many other articles and papers that explain special relativity. Some are very basic and others are more advanced. Chris

Dark matter and dark energy are two separate subjects currently being investigated. Dark matter ("some non-visible form of matter") was proposed originally by Fritz Zwicky in 1934 to explain his observations of the greater than expected velocities of galaxies orbiting each other in the Coma cluster of galaxies. His work was largely ignored. In 1975 Vera Rubin and Kent Ford announced results of their study of galactic rotation curves indicating that there must be a lot of "missing mass" in order for the stars in the galaxies studied to orbit at the velocities they observed. They published a paper based on their work in 1980. It wasn't well recieved by the scientific community at the time. This gradually changed when other researchers confirmed their observations. Since then there has been a considerable amount of evidence compiled based on galactic rotation curves as well as the gravitational lensing effect of this "non-visible" matter. (ref. http://en.wikipedia....rotation_curves ) The notion of dark energy was spawned separately around 1998-1999 when two teams of researchers independently conlcluded that the expansion of the universe has been accelerating since the universe was about half its present size (z=~0.5) based on observations of Type I-A supernovae. Since then similar independent observations and other evidence has confirmed their conclusions. (ref. http://en.wikipedia....n#Corroboration ) In both cases the size of the universe is not relevant to the observations obtained. Chris Edited to correct spelling errors

The expansion of space is a natural consequence of General relativity. The model that is most generally accepted is the FLRW metric: (ref. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLRW ) On the right-hand side of the cited web-page is a menu that can lead you to links that explain much of what is understood about the evolution of the universe - and why we think that our understanding is correct. Generally speaking, the science upon which our understanding of the universe is based rests on the work of many very smart men over the past 400 years. It would be a good idea to know what their thinking is (was) before you try to formulate your own ideas about how the universe works. New ideas are good, and we don't discourage them. Ideas based on "hunches" or "what makes sense" (to you) will have to measure up to the mathematical rigor of existing ideas and the experimental testing that they've successfully withstood. Chris

If I understand your theory correctly, a "bigger" object (more massive, I assume) moves faster through time. A satellite is much smaller than the Earth. How is it that the orbiting clock seemed to have moved faster through time than the Earth? Chris

Thank for the correction. After tinkering with the numbers I came to the same conclusion that you did - Wikipedia is citing the polar surface gravity using the smallest dimension (232 km diameter). Centripetal acceleration would be essentially the same as the "gravity" for an astronaut in a rotating spaceship. To prevent motion sickness in the general population of a space colony (from the coriolis effect) you would want a radius of about 900 m or more with a rotation of about 1 rpm or less if you're shooting for ~1g. Chris Edited to change "diameter" to "radius" and 1 km to 900 m in last paragraph (2*pi*900 m/min*60s/min)=94.248 m/s, and (94.248 m/s)2 /900m=~9.87 m/s2