Ether evidence?

[Strange]

8 hours ago, steveupson said:

objects like volume?

They do, yes. 

Or, volume is not an object. 

[swansont]

13 hours ago, steveupson said:

objects like volume?

Volume is a property objects have. It's not the objects themselves.

[steveupson]

3 hours ago, swansont said:

Volume is a property objects have. It's not the objects themselves.

 

Do you see what you did there?

Since space is volume (the original conclusion that I was responding to in this thread), you're saying that space is a property that objects have. 

I don't think that is the generally accepted view.

20 hours ago, Strange said:

That is not a preferred frame of reference.

How does any other frame work?  We can't just orient time in any direction in any model that I am aware of. Time has a particular orientation in the frame, always.  If we didn't apply this orientation axiomatically then we could end up viewing time as lying along some other axis, coincident with some other parameter,  and we lose the ability to represent motion.

Edited December 23, 2017 by steveupson

[Strange]

9 minutes ago, steveupson said:

How does any other frame work?  We can't just orient time in any direction in any model that I am aware of. For example, if we orient the frame such that we're viewing it along the time axis, we lose the ability to represent motion.

Perhaps you need to go and learn what a frame of reference is. And then what "preferred" means.

[steveupson]

It's very similar to the hairy ball theorem.  Most reference frames are oriented to each other in an organised fashion, like the combed portion of the hairy ball.  The math indicates that there are a class of frames that can be chosen that are not directionally related to the organised ones.  In other words, there actually is a mathematical distinction that can be shown between what we call now and what we call the past or future. 

This is another fundamental part of the theory.  All directions commute mathematically in the now frame and they don't in the past or future frame.  It's more complicated than that because every frame in the past and future does have one instance where a direction does commute, but then all of the rest do not ( at least until we reach the Planck scale.)

on edit>>>

There is some literature on the mathematics involved using a different approach.  It is the same thing that causes the failure of the Whitney trick in dimension 4:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4-manifold#Failure_of_the_Whitney_trick_in_dimension_4

Edited December 23, 2017 by steveupson

[swansont]

53 minutes ago, steveupson said:

 

Do you see what you did there?

Since space is volume (the original conclusion that I was responding to in this thread), you're saying that space is a property that objects have. 

I don't think that is the generally accepted view.

Volume is a property that objects have. Space is also volume. These statements do not contradict each other. They are not exclusive statements.

53 minutes ago, steveupson said:

How does any other frame work?  We can't just orient time in any direction in any model that I am aware of. Time has a particular orientation in the frame, always.  If we didn't apply this orientation axiomatically then we could end up viewing time as lying along some other axis, coincident with some other parameter,  and we lose the ability to represent motion.

Time is not a vector, so it has no orientation in that sense.

It's orthogonal to the spatial dimensions, so it can't lie along some other axis.

[steveupson]

10 minutes ago, swansont said:

Volume is a property that objects have. Space is also volume. These statements do not contradict each other. They are not exclusive statements.

Time is not a vector, so it has no orientation in that sense.

It's orthogonal to the spatial dimensions, so it can't lie along some other axis.

Time is a base quantity.  Orthogonal is an orientation.

[swansont]

13 minutes ago, steveupson said:

Time is a base quantity.  Orthogonal is an orientation.

Legendre polynomials are orthogonal to each other. What is their orientation?

[steveupson]

23 hours ago, swansont said:

Legendre polynomials are orthogonal to each other. What is their orientation?

This is an important point and it isn’t just a semantic argument.  I hope this can be discussed without sounding condescending, which isn’t the intention.  The intent is to try and highlight a potential problem with the jargon that is being used.

Back when our discussions of direction first began, it was asserted that the term direction had a very specific meaning with regards to mathematics.  Direction is something that is expressed by a vector.  No one has any argument with that.

I then suggested that perhaps the term orientation could be used in order to distinguish this component of a vector from all of the other types of direction where a vector isn’t possible.  In other words, we needed a term that could be used to express this property, quantity, attribute, parameter, or whatever (no one seems to know exactly what it is, except that they somehow know or intuit without any published mainstream science that it isn’t a base quantity), in those cases where a vector doesn’t exist.

Using only the radius of a sphere we can know the diameter.  The orientation or direction of the diameter isn’t necessarily known.  At the same time, the idea that it has a direction cannot be ignored.  Its direction lies between two antipodal points.  Its direction is such that it passes through the sphere center.  We know these things are true about the direction of the diameter without being able to specify the direction.  Therefore, it must have a direction, even though it isn’t specifically specified.

Your Legendre polynomials are no different than this example for the diameter of a sphere.  Even though the actual value is unknown, we do know that the direction is axiomatically limited by the definition (words like azimuth and Euclidean length) in the same way as a diameter has a direction that is also limited by the definition.

[SuperPolymath]

@swansont, you will lock this thread on the basis that you locked mine for less.

 

Failure to do so will result in a report against you.

[swansont]

19 hours ago, steveupson said:

This is an important point and it isn’t just a semantic argument.  I hope this can be discussed without sounding condescending, which isn’t the intention.  The intent is to try and highlight a potential problem with the jargon that is being used.

Back when our discussions of direction first began, it was asserted that the term direction had a very specific meaning with regards to mathematics.  Direction is something that is expressed by a vector.  No one has any argument with that.

I then suggested that perhaps the term orientation could be used in order to distinguish this component of a vector from all of the other types of direction where a vector isn’t possible.  In other words, we needed a term that could be used to express this property, quantity, attribute, parameter, or whatever (no one seems to know exactly what it is, except that they somehow know or intuit without any published mainstream science that it isn’t a base quantity), in those cases where a vector doesn’t exist.

That's not really what you did, though. And  I don't know what you mean by "base quantity".

19 hours ago, steveupson said:

Using only the radius of a sphere we can know the diameter.  The orientation or direction of the diameter isn’t necessarily known.  At the same time, the idea that it has a direction cannot be ignored.  Its direction lies between two antipodal points.  Its direction is such that it passes through the sphere center.  We know these things are true about the direction of the diameter without being able to specify the direction.  Therefore, it must have a direction, even though it isn’t specifically specified.

Your Legendre polynomials are no different than this example for the diameter of a sphere.  Even though the actual value is unknown, we do know that the direction is axiomatically limited by the definition (words like azimuth and Euclidean length) in the same way as a diameter has a direction that is also limited by the definition.

You are using a physical, 3D object as an example, so of course you can come up with a statement about direction.

But there is no way to assign a direction to a polynomial function.

And volume still contains nothing about direction. The calculation is a scalar operation.

[steveupson]

3 hours ago, swansont said:

That's not really what you did, though. And  I don't know what you mean by "base quantity".

You are using a physical, 3D object as an example, so of course you can come up with a statement about direction.

But there is no way to assign a direction to a polynomial function.

And volume still contains nothing about direction. The calculation is a scalar operation.

Base quantities are what are used to form other quantities, or derived quantities.  

This is a common mistake, one that I myself have made.  A ball is a 3D object.  A sphere, by definition, is a 2D surface.  It's an abstraction; a mathematical object perhaps - definitely not a physical object.  

[SuperPolymath]

On 12/15/2017 at 3:11 AM, Capiert said:

What sort of evidence wound you need

 to prove the ether?

Please give me some examples

 that are (=would be) acceptable?

 

 

 

Ether theories continue to have significant proponents, people who've even won nobel prizes (which should hold more weight than anyone objecting them here), finding evidence in support of loopholes in the supposed violation in Bell's inequality that would discredit said Ether theories. 

Let's start with the most significant original proponents of aether theories from the wikipedia article cited earlier in this thread:

"We may say that according to the general theory of relativity space is endowed with physical qualities; in this sense, therefore, there exists an Aether. According to the general theory of relativity space without Aether is unthinkable; for in such space there not only would be no propagation of light, but also no possibility of existence for standards of space and time (measuring-rods and clocks), nor therefore any space-time intervals in the physical sense. But this Aether may not be thought of as endowed with the quality characteristic of ponderable media, as consisting of parts which may be tracked through time. The idea of motion may not be applied to it." -Einstein circa 1920

Of course many here would probably quick to point out that Einstein's previous paper "the photoelectric effect" which first introduced SR that predated this 1920 post-GR quote of Einstein's doubted the Ether, GR literally predicted it in distorting light waves around the sun that acted like an ether pushing out the stars around the horizon of the sun generating an optical illusion that warped their positions officially confirmed by astronomers in 1919 & then in gravitational waves with v=c measured twice by LIGO (once in a neutron star collision & once in BH collision where the velocity of gravitation was truly confirmed by the fact that GW waves frame dragging means gravity is not even a field) in 2017.

The thing that the ether theory states, is local realism in deterministic, infinitely reducible beneath the planck length, spacetime:

In the Bohmian view, nonlocality is even more conspicuous. The trajectory of any one particle depends on what all the other particles described by the same wave function are doing. And, critically, the wave function has no geographic limits; it might, in principle, span the entire universe. Which means that the universe is weirdly interdependent, even across vast stretches of space.

This pilot wave could literally be the propagating Euclid-esque spatial-temporal curves (GW waves in microcausal systems) of sub-Planck scale (C covers 1/40 planck lengths in 1/40 planck times & that's a superluminal interaction that doesn't violate the cosmic speed limit) structures that we cannot observe. 

This is supported in this article:

The situation is somewhat different when we consider gravity and promote the Lorentz violating tensors to dynamical objects. For example in an aether theory, where Lorentz violation is described by a timelike four vector, the four vector can twist in such a way that local superluminal propagation can lead to energy-momentum flowing around closed paths [206]. However, even classical general relativity admits solutions with closed time like curves, so it is not clear that the situation is any worse with Lorentz violation. Furthermore, note that in models where Lorentz violation is given by coupling matter fields to a non-zero, timelike gradient of a scalar field, the scalar field also acts as a time function on the spacetime. In such a case, the spacetime must be stably causal (c.f. [272]) and there are no closed timelike curves. This property also holds in Lorentz violating models with vectors if the vector in a particular solution can be written as a non-vanishing gradient of a scalar. Finally, we mention that in fact many approaches to quantum gravity actually predict a failure of causality based on a background metric [121] as in quantum gravity the notion of a spacetime event is not necessarily well-defined [239]. A concrete realization of this possibility is provided in Bose-Einstein condensate analogs of black holes [40]. Here the low energy phonon excitations obey Lorentz invariance and microcausality [270]. However, as one approaches a certain length scale (the healing length of the condensate) the background metric description breaks down and the low energy notion of microcausality no longer holds.

I quote Gerard t'Hooft, another proponent of ether theory:

"Einstein had difficulties with the relativistic invariance of quantum mechanics (“does
the spooky information transmitted by these particles go faster than light?”). These,
however, are now seen as technical difficulties that have been resolved. It may be consid-
ered part of Copenhagen’s Doctrine, that the transmission of information over a distance
can only take place, if we can identify operators A at space-time point x1 and operators
B at space-time point x2 that do not commute: [A, B] 6= 0 . We now understand that, in
elementary particle theory, all space-like separated observables mutually commute, which
precludes any signalling faster than light. It is a built-in feature of the Standard Model,
to which it actually owes much of its success.
So, with the technical difficulties out of the way, we are left with the more essential
Einsteinian objections against the Copenhagen doctrine for quantum mechanics: it is a
probabilistic theory that does not tell us what actually is going on. It is sometimes even
suggested that we have to put our “classical” sense of logic on hold. Others deny that:
“Keep remembering what you should never ask, while reshaping your sense of logic, and
everything will be fine.” According to the present author, the Einstein-Bohr debate is not
over. A theory must be found that does not force us to redefine any aspect of classical,
logical reasoning.
What Einstein and Bohr did seem to agree about is the importance of the role of an
observer. Indeed, this was the important lesson learned in the 20th century: if something
cannot be observed, it may not be a well-defined concept – it may even not exist at all. We
have to limit ourselves to observable features of a theory. It is an important ingredient
of our present work that we propose to part from this doctrine, at least to some extent:
Things that are not directly observable may still exist and as such play a decisive role
in the observable properties of an object. They may also help us to construct realistic
models of the world.
Indeed, there are big problems with the dictum that everything we talk about must be
observable. While observing microscopic objects, an observer may disturb them, even in
a classical theory; moreover, in gravity theories, observers may carry gravitational fields
that disturb the system they are looking at"

More evidence:

The hole is quantum-mechanically unstable: It has no bound states. Wormhole wave functions must eventually leak to large radii. This suggests that stability considerations along these lines may place strong constraints on the nature and even the existence of spacetime foam.

In invariant set theory, the form of the Bell Inequality whose violation would be inconsistent with realism and local causality is undefined, and the form of the inequality that it violated experimentally is not even gp-approximately close to the form needed to rule out local realism (54) [21]. A key element in demonstrating this result derives from the fact that experimenters cannot in principle shield their apparatuses from the uncontrollable ubiquitous gravitational waves that fill space-time.

----

A finite non-classical framework for physical theory is described which challenges the conclusion that the Bell Inequality has been shown to have been violated experimentally, even approximately. This framework postulates the universe as a deterministic locally causal system evolving on a measure-zero fractal-like geometry IU in cosmological state space. Consistent with the assumed primacy of IU , and p-adic number theory, a non-Euclidean (and hence non-classical) metric gp is defined on cosmological state space, where p is a large but finite Pythagorean prime. Using numbertheoretic properties of spherical triangles, the inequalities violated experimentally are shown to be gp-distant from the CHSH inequality, whose violation would rule out local realism. This result fails in the singular limit p = ∞, at which gp is Euclidean. Broader implications are discussed.

In invariant set theory, the form of the Bell Inequality whose violation would be inconsistent with realism and local causality is undefined, and the form of the inequality that it violated experimentally is not even gp-approximately close to the form needed to rule out local realism (54) [21]. A key element in demonstrating this result derives from the fact that experimenters cannot in principle shield their apparatuses from the uncontrollable ubiquitous gravitational waves that fill space-time.

----

A finite non-classical framework for physical theory is described which challenges the conclusion that the Bell Inequality has been shown to have been violated experimentally, even approximately. This framework postulates the universe as a deterministic locally causal system evolving on a measure-zero fractal-like geometry IU in cosmological state space. Consistent with the assumed primacy of IU , and p-adic number theory, a non-Euclidean (and hence non-classical) metric gp is defined on cosmological state space, where p is a large but finite Pythagorean prime. Using numbertheoretic properties of spherical triangles, the inequalities violated experimentally are shown to be gp-distant from the CHSH inequality, whose violation would rule out local realism. This result fails in the singular limit p = ∞, at which gp is Euclidean. Broader implications are discussed..

A particle of energy is just like an infinite universe of matter with a relatively infinite amount of mass. Everything works the same. Fall anywhere in space, no matter how seemingly void, & you're gonna land on matter if you're small enough. There isn't an empty place anywhere. 

The idea behind any attempt to build an ether theory is just that empty space ought not be really empty. We have two good reasons to think so: first, electromagnetic signals behave undoubtedly as waves; since they propagate even through intergalactic space, there must be some thing there (everywhere), in which they do wave. Second, quantum theory predicts that vacuum has physical effects, such as the Casimir effect, which is now experimentally confirmed [1].

Edited December 25, 2017 by SuperPolymath

[Strange]

16 minutes ago, SuperPolymath said:

Let's start with the most significant original proponents of aether theories from the wikipedia article cited earlier in this thread:

Einstein is talking about space-time, not the luminiferous ether.

17 minutes ago, SuperPolymath said:

Of course many here would probably quick to point out that Einstein's previous paper "the photoelectric effect" which first introduced SR

That paper is about the photoelectric effect, not relativity. (The clue is in the title.) The first paper on special relativity was "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies."

I gave up reading at that point.

[swansont]

Also, Bell tests are QM experiments, not relativity experiments.

Not going to wade through this, either.

[SuperPolymath]

10 minutes ago, Strange said:

Einstein is talking about space-time, not the luminiferous ether.

Never once do I mention Isaac Newton. His idea of the ether is far too outdated. Einstein's is based on matter telling spacetime how to reshape & spacetime telling matter how to move.

My bad, yes I meant "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies."

7 minutes ago, swansont said:

Also, Bell tests are QM experiments, not relativity experiments.

They're neither, they're based on Bell's inequality (math). They may be used to test any theory in physics. 

Edited December 25, 2017 by SuperPolymath

[Strange]

12 minutes ago, SuperPolymath said:

Never once do I mention Isaac Newton.

Neither did I. So it is a bit surreal to bring him in now.

12 minutes ago, SuperPolymath said:

Einstein's is based on matter telling spacetime how to reshape & spacetime telling matter how to move.

Still nothing to do with the luminiferous aether.

If you want call space-time "ether" you are of course free to do that. It doesn't change anything. But it will probably confuse people.

[swansont]

16 minutes ago, SuperPolymath said:

 They're neither, they're based on Bell's inequality (math). They may be used to test any theory in physics. 

Go ahead and make a valid spin-state prediction based on anything but QM. 

[SuperPolymath]

5 minutes ago, Strange said:

Neither did I. So it is a bit surreal to bring him in now.

Still nothing to do with the luminiferous aether.

The luminiferous Ether was Newton's vision of the ether, not Einstein's

5 minutes ago, swansont said:

Go ahead and make a valid spin-state prediction based on anything but QM. 

"Detector a reads 1 when a particle has horizontal polarity. Dectector B reads 1 when a particle has vertical polarity. If the particles are entangled previously this will affect the statistical average. Superposition is a mixture of the two. Statistically it can only be one or the other. However you don't know which photon has which. "

You wanna know why? Because QM uses probability statistics & makes no attempt to understand the underlying nature of it all. The science of it, which could be expressed classically i.e. with nothing but local information exchange, can't be perfectly understood with QM & therefore the predictions are actually less accurate than otherwise possible. That's just what you get with an indeterminate methodology. 

[swansont]

2 minutes ago, SuperPolymath said:

The luminiferous Ether was Newton's vision of the ether, not Einstein's

Newton was a proponent of light being a particle. His aether was for transmission of something other than light.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminiferous_aether

6 minutes ago, SuperPolymath said:

"Detector a reads 1 when a particle has horizontal polarity. Dectector B reads 1 when a particle has vertical polarity. If the particles are entangled previously this will affect the statistical average. Superposition is a mixture of the two. Statistically it can only be one or the other. However you don't know which photon has which. "

You wanna know why? Because QM uses probability statistics & makes no attempt to understand the underlying nature of it all. The science of it, which could be expressed classically i.e. with nothing but local information exchange, can't be perfectly understood with QM & therefore the predictions are actually less accurate than otherwise possible. That's just what you get with an indeterminate methodology. 

Feel free to open a thread where you predict the observed results with classical physics.

Start with explaining spin classically. 

[Phi for All]

!

Moderator Note

Many off-topic posts split to Trash. The whole thread is on shaky ground. Something more than guesswork is needed, quickly. 

 

[Phi for All]

!

Moderator Note

Another pet theory hijack split off to the Trash. 

 

[steveupson]

What is the definition of ether?  Which one are we using in this discussion? The most childish definition is "a proposed medium for the transmission of light."   Are we forced to converse like children and use this definition?

Of course not.  How about something along the lines of Mach's Principle or "In later years there have been a few individuals who advocated a neo-Lorentzian approach to physics, which is Lorentzian in the sense of positing an absolute true state of rest that is undetectable and which plays no role in the predictions of the theory. (No violations of Lorentz covariance have ever been detected, despite strenuous efforts.) Hence these theories resemble the 19th century aether theories in name only. For example, the founder of quantum field theory, Paul Dirac, stated in 1951 in an article in Nature, titled "Is there an Aether?" that "we are rather forced to have an aether".^{[10][A 20]}However, Dirac never formulated a complete theory, and so his speculations found no acceptance by the scientific community."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminiferous_aether#Other_models

Gee, what could satisfy these requirements?  I wonder..

[Strange]

8 hours ago, steveupson said:

What is the definition of ether?  Which one are we using in this discussion? 

Indeed. That is what I asked in my first post in the thread. Only the OP can explain what he had in mind. The most obvious answer would be the classical luminiferous aether. It is hard to imagine what evidence there could be for that, which didn't violate Lorentz invariance.

The word ether could be, and has been, used for many other things. You could consider the medium of light to be the electromagnetic field, in which case there is copious evidence for it.

Or it could be Einstein's ether, i.e. space-time. In which case there is, again, copious, evidence for it.

Most other uses of the word I have seen apply it to things that we know exist (and hence we have evidence for). The only usage I am aware of for an aether that lacks evidence (which could therefore prompt the original question) is the classical luminiferous aether. 

But if it is applied to other things for which there is no evidence, then we need a model in order to define the evidence that would be required.

[interested]

Question, Einstein believed in the aether for a time, could time dilation be regarded as a kind of proof of an aether, if you move through it time slows, if you are stationery it speeds up, gravity slows time etc.