studiot

Both posts, Good discussion in answer. +1

They are? What atoms comprise an ion?

Like your other thread, this one is a curious mixture of fact and fiction. You are clearly able to appreciate facts, both simple and complex and as the above extract shows able to develop good chains of reasoning. But it also shows that you tailor facts to suit your thesis, without consideration for any alternative explanation or reasoning. So in the above paragraph in a discussion of life you observe that other earth like planets are being identified, but omit to note that it is not only the type of planet but its position that permits life to develop. A further unconsidered alternative may be that solar systems develop in the way they do with some terrestrial (=rocky) planets close to the star and other types further out for a good cosmological reason. But back to the atom and space. There is no hard boundary to an atom. Its influence extends indefinitely, albeit more and more diluted by the space and other atoms around it a greater and greater distances. In a crystal the tail off of these influences are called Madelung constants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madelung_constant Two kinds of space? An interesting proposition but contrary to current underlying theory that requires homogenity and isotropy, and seems to produce excellent agreement with observation. So it would take some extreme observations to support it. Can I offer one further comment. All our theories and principles are just models, designed to match particular aspects of and observations on reality. As such generally they work well and are subject to review and modification when better obervations arise. No model, however sophisticated, is identical in every way to the real thing - the subject of that model.

I see you Whilst at the same time they usually seem to want to make things needlessly complicated, rather than check their ideas on simple completely known examples first. +1 icarus2 Why do you not want to show how you can compare gravity (positive or negative) with electrostatic effects? If you work it out you can see the differences as well as the similarities. But let us go back to your claim about negative mass. There are two distinct and separate effects of mass in Physics that can be modelled by force. Inertia and gravity. Now the forces are different. Inertia produces a directed line vector - the classic push or pull with a specific point of application and line of action. Gravity produces a distributed force a so called 'body force' So it is easy to see what happens when a body force is applied to a mass with a negative sign. Repulsion. But what happens to a classic line vector force for instance a poke with a stick, which is a contact force? A mass with a positive sign moves in the direction of the poke in response, as it is pushed by the stick But Which way do you think the mass with a negative sign moves in response to such a poke?

Thank you for that link to an interesting photograph. I am not sure exactly what it represents since my onscreen micrometer makes the gap 8mm and the dot 0.75mm The article states a gap of 2mm so that makes the dot about 0.2mm or 2x10-4 m in diameter. A strontium atom is 2.55 x 10-10 m Comments are welcome.

Get a proper medical assessment and particularly get the substance confirmed. Were the fumes from dilute or glacial acid? Note acetic acid is an irritant but not directly poisonous. https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-glacial-acetic-acid-4049300

If you haven't come across stomatolites look here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stromatolite

1 and 2) Yes we would be more interested if you were prepared to use conventional terminology and not offer in your 'model' assertions of Physics which are demonstrated, at high school level, to be wrong. 3) My heart bleeds! Anyone would think you are the only businessman on the Planet. FYI StudioT is also a business. So What? 4) Typical management-mind speak IOW - It's some on else's fault if it doesn't work, by my glory if someone else makes it work" 5, 6 and 7) I doubt you would be prepared to listen to even a (recent) Nobel Physicist, but here is the index from a book by one such which contains all the equations and references you need. As a matter of interest Frank Wilczek was 'brought up Roman Catholic' and describes in his book his journey to rejection of that Church.

The concept of electrostatic self-energy is the total of electrostatic potential energy possessed by a certain charge Q itself. Since Some charge Q is a set of infinitesimal charges dQ, it involves the existence of electrostatic or electric potential energy among these dQs and is the value of adding up these. The concept of electrostatic self - energy is the same as the concept of gravitational self - energy. Instead of charge, a mass enters, and electrostatic potential energy enters instead of gravitational potential energy. This is complete and utter nonsense. But since you chose to sneer at the rest of my input, even though I was the only one who has not flatly rejected your propositions, I will leave you to work out for yourself the plainly obvious reasons why you can't compare an assemblage of charges to and assemblage of masses.

No problem. The with mass ensures that the second frame is an inertial frame and not, for instance the frame of another photon.

Good question, +1 Personally I don't care whether there is a TOE, any more than I care what clothes you are wearing or if there is a God. I can see the past justification for compact notation and formulae, when paper was scarce and it took significant effort to put writing and images onto it. But, as any Engineer knows, if you have a compact notation for 9 equations and you want to calculate the size and other properties of something, Sure you can write down a compact equation containing it all, but as soon as you want actual numbers to work with you have to write down and work out all 9 equations. There is no short cut.

The point is that clockwise v widdershins is part of a larger fact of life in the Physical universe. You are right about the mirror. Here is an interesting experiment with one. Take a reasonable diameter bolt with a wing nut on it. (I just tried this with an aerial clamp) Hold it out level in front of you. Now take the wing that is on the right and move it over to the left. You should notice that this instruction is incompelte. There are two ways to move it over. After several rotations you should notice that one way makes the wingnut proceed forwards along the bolt. The other way makes it move backwards. That is why we we need our mathematics to distinguish the two directions of rotation, anddirection of travel of the screw forms the definition and distinction of clockwise and widdershins. The choice is purely arbitrary. However I mentioned this is part of a larger class of such phenomena, which are hugely important in Mathematical Physics. Another simple example is that of the area of something. An large number of physical phenomena a related to the line at right angles to the surface. We choose the 'outward pointing normal' by convention as ther is another, equally valid one pointing inwards. Or if you like, pointing outwards on the other side of the surface.

Moving in whose frame of reference? Time 'stands still' for an object moving at lightspeed. That is from the point of view of its own frame of reference This means it takes zero time to get from A to B or that the object is at every point along its track at once. It is only moving relative to another object with mass That is in the frame of reference of the particle with mass.

This is the killer step in the theoretical Physics answer to the original question, to come in the next post in my development. The obvious Physics version of the question is "Why do we want it to be Minkowskian ?" That was Einstein's breakthrough, which preceded Minkowski. Einstein was a theoretical physicist. Minkowski was a mathematician. I realise that the OP is wandering between SR, GR, cosmology and even quantum developments, but the basics should come first and the chain of physical reasoning that leads to modern relativity should lead the mathematics, not the other way round.

You have allowed your speculation to run away with you by this stage of your presentation. Are you referring to this? Richard C Tolman : Relativity, Thermodynamics and Cosmology.

Here is some useful information on these formulae. https://www.ptb.de/cms/en/ptb/fachabteilungen/abt2/fb-26/ag-262/the-quantum-hall-resistance.html

I too welcome Markus back and his first post shows he was thinking somewhat along the same lines as myself. However the world has moved on since Einstein and much of Markus’ material is post Einstein and I have promised the basic breakthrough in thinking which was due to the great man himself. So to start with a quote from what he actually said (the 1905 SR paper) I will try to explain just how well thought out and put together these few words are and that they really do justify the claim in the final line that these two postulates are in effect all you need to know. 1) First note that Einstein acknowledges preceding work and that a weaker Principle of Relativity (for mechanical systems) was already known. His first Postulate extends this to non-mechanical ones. 2) He recognises that further postulates must perforce be compatible with the first. Since there are only two postulates this means that they must be compatible with each other. 3) He then posits his second postulate which introduces the speed of light as c but note that he does not say this is constant, just definite. Note also that he does not say explicitly that c is the same for all observers. These are the three key steps that must be taken as a whole to understanding SR. The rest of the paper is devoted to the consequences of these three steps taken together. It is here he develops the ad hoc Lorenz equations, the equality of the c for all observers and other important things, which includes the constancy of c as a necessity built into the mathematical model developed. The constancy of c is the subject of this thread and swansont has already observed that the mathematics of Physics would be (very) different if this were not so. I propose to examine more closely how this arises in my next post.

But it wasn't the second postulate itself and is not a good way to present it. I have been responding to other speculations ( negative mass and earth science) this morning as they are easier than preparing a sensible guide to the chain of reasoning that leads to special relativity. I will take the time today, so look again later on - it is a fascinating story that leads eventually to the maths stated. But, as Einstein said, the Physics must come first.

Please explain what you mean by 'electrostatic self energy'? Edit Please note that I haven't flatly rejected negative mass, though I do take issue with your more outrageous suggestions. You might like to know that negative mass dates back to the early 1500s when Paracelcus proposed it as an explanation for the newly discovered fact that metals gain weight when calcined. This was a suprising fact to the wisdom dating back two thousand years to when it was known that calcining limestone cased the stone to loose weight, and that is indeed where the term calcining originated. The proposal ran that since many substances were observed to give off a gas and loose weight when heated, metals must therefore give off something with negative weight. Of course, we have a better explanation today. Negative mass came to the fore again in the early 20th century when offered as an explanation for the 'anomalous Hall effect' where charge particles appeared to move the opposite way to which they were pushed. Again we have a better explanation (though not yet a full predictive one) today. Engineers and scientists have known for a couple of hundred years, of a proceedure called virtual work. This mathematical sleight of hand can be very useful in substantially shortening calculations, but it remains just that. A mathematical device. So too negative mass may ease som calculation in cosmology, but that does not make it de facto correct.

It is most certainly observed in the lakes around me. You have forgotten evaporation. And there's me thinking that the 'coast' is at sensibly the same level everywhere ie water surface level since it is the interface between water and land. I think you mean something other than the 'depth' of the coast. The north coast of The Netherlands is essentially one long beach stretching for over 100 km from the Hague to Den Helder. It has a tidal range around 2 metres. This is one of the quintessential linear coasts. https://www.tide-forecast.com/locations/Zandvoort/tides/latest Whilst it is good to see some activity in the Earth Science section, why two posts on the same subject? And what exactly is that subject, please?

You have allowed your speculation to run away with you by this stage of your presentation. Talking of speculation, why is this not in speculations, where it belongs?

This is a very bold assertion to drop so casually into the conversation. Please post your detailed explanation and justification for making it. I expect to see substance in your post without having to leave this website to look up references, in accordance with the rules of this forum. Though of course a reference as backup to your own working would be good. Is that really a bold assertion? Which aspect of it by the way please, the Van der Waals force interaction, or the photon interaction? Van der Waals forces I trust are themselves only simple dipole electromagnetic forces. That we see them at the boundary of matter should be nothing unusual. And therefore they're the same basic forces which are responsible for all the other photon interactions as well, including reflection, diffraction, interference patterns, etc. Apologies if that seems surprising for me to suggest, but I genuinely don't believe there is any other logical and physical explanation for these interactions other than electromagnetic interaction. And this explanation is so simple and elegant and seems to check all the boxes that in hind-sight it seems so very obvious to me now. My detailed hypothesis paper in the link contains plenty of additional substance regarding this, but I can't post all 17 pages of it here I presume. P.S. And thank you everyone for keeping this discussion cordial and constructive by the way. I'd been anticipating plenty of insults and condescension so I'm very pleased that on this forum this has not been the case! Well this is a good go at a discussion. But I think we need to clear up some terminology before proceeding. There is no such thing as an 'electromagnetic' dipole. The dipoles, quadrupoles and octupoles involved in VDW forces are coulombic in nature. It is this interaction between molecules that accounts for the VDW forces which have been experimentally verified as conforming to the r-6 potential relationship which also appears in the Lennard Jones equation. The point of that extract was to highlight how small and short range these forces are and how they do not lead to the stable regular arrays which allow the diffraction of EM radiation (since you mention diffraction). The practical result of this is that we have only just begun to look for spectroscopic evidence of interaction so you would need to search doctoral thesis papers for this. For example. http://www.iqst.ca/media/pdf/publications/JalalNoroozOliaee.pdf There is also an effect, called Van Der Waals deshielding which can be observed by NMR spectroscopy, but this is not due to an interaction between photons and the VDW force, but due to interaction of protons with the probing magnetic field.

Asking questions is really good. +1 But what about the first postulate of special relativity? The mathematical expression you quoted is neither the first nor the second postulate. So where do you want to start to understand where it comes from?

Maybe. But it is not magic. And why is it more interesting that to note than say 4 = 2x2 =2+2 or 6 = 2x3 = 22 + 2 = 1+2+3 or that 13 is not (interestingly) related to any other number but 1 and itself. or that Pi = 2 x Wallis product? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallis_product

A hyperbola is the locus of a point that moves (in a plane) such that the ratio of its distance from some fixed point, S, to its (perpendicular) distance from a fixed straight line , ZQ, is a constant, greater than 1. Butch it is up to you to prove that your equation which I take to be y = 1/x2 satisfies this condition. Edit yes your cross posting statement that this is an inverse square relationship is much better.