Hijack from Jumping out of the black hole, What about the event horizon? From nowhere to everywhere.

[joigus]

  On 3/13/2023 at 8:35 AM, Eise said:

If I look at the top of a glass from an angle, I see an ellipse, instead of a circle. Must I now look for a 'mechanism', i.e. a dynamical law, that distorts the circle to an ellipse? Or does the geometrical explanation suffice?

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  On 3/14/2023 at 3:08 PM, Eise said:

I notice sometimes people are disappointed when I explain e.g. time dilation: people miss a 'mechanism'. This is the same problem Lorentz and Poincaré had, if I understand history correctly: Lorentz e.g. hypothesised that the ether is expressing a pressure on objects moving in it (that would be a 'dynamical solution', and I suppose what you call  'a real physical effect'); Poincaré never got rid of the idea that there must be a preferred inertial frame, like the ether, but there is no method to find out with any physics experiment. But long since then, the physics community opted for Einsteinian relativity. It explains all relativity effects without reference to an ether. Ockham's razor at work: when the ether does not contribute anything to an explanation, we can drop it.

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The need for a mechanism. Another ship that sailed long ago.

Incidentally,

[...]

and,

Now, who said that?

William of Ockham is the busiest dead philosopher ever! 

[martillo]

  On 3/15/2023 at 7:19 AM, joigus said:

Now, who said that?

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"The Feynman Lectures on Physics": https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_07.html

(just with a google search)

Thanks for the readings. Very helpful. +1

I stay with: "No one has since given any machinery."

I think all those geniuses didn't have the opportunity to know about computers and virtual games...

 

 

 

Edited March 15, 2023 by martillo

[joigus]

  On 3/15/2023 at 9:13 AM, martillo said:

"The Feynman Lectures on Physics": https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_07.html

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Exactly. +1

  On 3/15/2023 at 9:13 AM, martillo said:

I stay with: "No one has since given any machinery."

 

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That's a good one. I think the one to keep in mind is,

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It is characteristic of physical laws that they have this abstract character.

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  On 3/15/2023 at 10:28 AM, MJ kihara said:

It's also clear to me when people don't understand things they infer to angels..

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Not quite the point. You get closer to the heart of it if you keep reading,

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It turns out that in order to keep the planets going around, the invisible angels must fly in a different direction and they have no wings.

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Modern physics has a funny way of self-flagellating itself for so many centuries of missing the point:

Colour, strangeness, flavour, etc. It's not that physicists are thinking about pigments or ice-cream. If the mathematics is the right one --symmetries, conservation laws, boundary conditions, Lagrangian...-- then it's fine, and you can call them angels for all that matters.

[Genady]

Mathematics IS machinery, but a tricky one. It does not show why the things are the way they are. Instead, it shows why they could not be different.

[martillo]

  On 3/15/2023 at 10:56 AM, joigus said:

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It is characteristic of physical laws that they have this abstract character.

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Right, but this does not prevent us to think in how the laws are applied over the particles to make the universe run. As you said in that post:

  On 3/15/2023 at 7:19 AM, joigus said:

The need for a mechanism. Another ship that sailed long ago.

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Still sailing I think.

[joigus]

  On 3/15/2023 at 10:56 AM, joigus said:

Modern physics has a funny way of self-flagellating itself for so many centuries of missing the point:

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Sorry.

Modern physics has a funny way of self-flagellating itself for so many centuries of missing the point.

Or,

Modern physics has a funny way of self-flagellating itself for so many centuries of missing the point.

I'm under a Victorian influence now, owing to a thread by @studiot.

[martillo]

  On 3/15/2023 at 11:51 AM, Genady said:

Mathematics IS machinery

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No, mathematics is not the machinery that runs the universe. Is the "tool" to describe the laws but does not explain how they are implemented.

Edited March 15, 2023 by martillo

[studiot]

  On 3/15/2023 at 12:25 PM, martillo said:

No, mathematics is not the machinery that runs the universe. Is the "tool" to describe the laws but does not explain how they are implemented.

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I agree IMHO the 'machinery' is the interaction of physical properties.

 

It should be pointed out and remembered that there are nearly always alternative methods, often using different physical properties to analyse or solve a particular phenomenon.

It is very comforting when these different methods arrive at the same outcome.

Even more comforting when that common outcome concurs with observation.

[martillo]

  On 3/15/2023 at 12:18 PM, joigus said:

I'm under a Victorian influence now, owing to a thread by @studiot.

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I saw it, "Enough of crackpots...". May be I'm considered as crackpot so I must mention two geniuses:

"Without speculation there is no good and original observation." Charles Darwin.

"No great discovery was ever made without a bold conjecture." Isaac Newton.

 

[Genady]

  On 3/15/2023 at 12:39 PM, martillo said:

"Without speculation there is no good and original observation."

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It does not follow from this, that "with speculation, there is a good and original observation."

 

  On 3/15/2023 at 12:39 PM, martillo said:

"No great discovery was ever made without a bold conjecture."

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It does not follow from this, that "with a bold conjecture, a great discovery will be made."

[martillo]

  On 3/15/2023 at 12:49 PM, Genady said:

It does not follow from this, that "with speculation, there is a good and original observation."

 

It does not follow from this, that "with a bold conjecture, a great discovery will be made."

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A necessary but not sufficient condition, I agree...

[Lorentz Jr]

  On 3/12/2023 at 9:46 PM, Genady said:

Here is a guru's answer (Thorne, Kip. Black Holes & Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy (pp. 400-401):

What is the real, genuine truth? Is spacetime really flat, as the above paragraphs suggest, or is it really curved? To a physicist like me this is an uninteresting question because it has no physical consequences. Both viewpoints, curved spacetime and flat, give precisely the same predictions for any measurements performed with perfect rulers and clocks, and also (it turns out) the same predictions for any measurements performed with any kind of physical apparatus whatsoever.

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I'm pretty sure the range of physical conditions that have been observed is still fairly limited. There's plenty of room for disagreement between GR, which allows wormholes and time cycles, and gauge theory gravity, which doesn't.

[studiot]

  On 3/15/2023 at 12:39 PM, martillo said:

I saw it, "Enough of crackpots...". May be I'm considered as crackpot so I must mention two geniuses:

1)  "Without speculation there is no good and original observation." Charles Darwin.

2) "No great discovery was ever made without a bold conjecture." Isaac Newton.

 

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You may have crackpot tendencies, we all some in us I suspect, but you do try to reconcile your worries with conventional thinking.
Crackpots tend to want to override everyone else.

I can offer counterexamples for both of these claims.

1.  The Chinese observing and recording the supernova in the Crab Nebula in 1054 were just in the right place at the right time. They were not speculating any observation of the sort.
    
2. The discovery of penecillin was a pure accident, no cnjecture, bold or otherwise was involved.

 

  On 3/15/2023 at 1:25 PM, Lorentz Jr said:

I'm pretty sure the range of physical conditions that have been observed is still fairly limited. There's plenty of room for disagreement between GR, which allows wormholes and time cycles, and gauge theory gravity, which doesn't.

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In relation to your original comment that cause this thread.

Have you ever heard of the equations of constitution and compatibility  ?

This is a very convenient way to divide up the maths. Compatibility is very often represented by some geometrical constraint.

[Genady]

  On 3/15/2023 at 1:25 PM, Lorentz Jr said:

I'm pretty sure the range of physical conditions that have been observed is still fairly limited. There's plenty of room for disagreement between GR, which allows wormholes and time cycles, and gauge theory gravity, which doesn't.

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Yes. Is it true though that all these wormholes and time cycles require sorts of exotic materials about existence of which GR has nothing to say?

[Lorentz Jr]

  On 3/12/2023 at 7:19 PM, swansont said:

I urge you to look at the derivation of time dilation.

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Derivations of the Lorentz transformations define localism in terms of a single speed limit that applies to all phenomena in the entire universe. That definition seems unnecessarily restrictive to me. After all, nobody complains that c is greater than the speed of sound. Light is defined at a lower level of abstraction than sound, so it's acceptable for it to be faster.

Similarly, that also applies to phenomena at a lower level of abstraction than light. If the geometry of space is Newtonian, and matter and radiation are implemented by some mechanism in an ether, there's no reason that mechanism couldn't propagate at (VERY) superluminal speeds and simulate relativistic "geometry" for light. A more general form of localism only requires that the speed is finite. It would explain things like quantum entanglement and wave-function collapse without any tortured reasoning about fate or consciousness or invisible universes, all of which conflict with Occam's razor.

Edited March 15, 2023 by Lorentz Jr

[Genady]

  On 3/15/2023 at 12:54 PM, martillo said:

A necessary but not sufficient condition, I agree...

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As @studiot's counterexamples show, these conditions are neither sufficient, nor necessary.

[Lorentz Jr]

  On 3/15/2023 at 1:32 PM, studiot said:

Have you ever heard of the equations of constitution and compatibility  ?

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No.

[martillo]

  On 3/15/2023 at 1:37 PM, Genady said:

As @studiot's counterexamples show, these conditions are neither sufficient, nor necessary.

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The exceptions make the rules. 😄

(all math...)

Edited March 15, 2023 by martillo

[Lorentz Jr]

  On 3/15/2023 at 11:51 AM, Genady said:

Mathematics IS machinery, but a tricky one. It does not show why the things are the way they are.

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Then it's not machinery.

  On 3/15/2023 at 11:51 AM, Genady said:

Instead, it shows why they could not be different.

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  On 3/15/2023 at 12:25 PM, martillo said:

No, mathematics is not the machinery that runs the universe. Is the "tool" to describe the laws but does not explain how they are implemented.

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Thank you, martillo.

When you're observing a turtle and trying to figure out how it behaves, mathematics can describe the behavior for you. To explain the behavior, i.e. to understand the machinery that makes the turtle behave the way it does, you need to examine and describe the next turtle down, the one that supports the turtle you're studying.

An explanation for the behavior of one turtle requires a description of the next lower turtle.

[martillo]

  On 3/15/2023 at 1:32 PM, studiot said:

I can offer counterexamples for both of these claims.

1.  The Chinese observing and recording the supernova in the Crab Nebula in 1054 were just in the right place at the right time. They were not speculating any observation of the sort.
    
2. The discovery of penecillin was a pure accident, no cnjecture, bold or otherwise was involved.

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Said to Genady:

The exceptions make the rules. 😄

(all math...)

 

 

Edited March 15, 2023 by martillo

[Genady]

  On 3/15/2023 at 1:45 PM, martillo said:

The exceptions make the rules. 😄

(all math...)

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Past Performance Is Not Indicative Of Future Results (forbes.com)

  On 3/15/2023 at 1:51 PM, Lorentz Jr said:

When you're observing a turtle and trying to figure out how it behaves, mathematics can describe the behavior for you. To explain the behavior, i.e. to understand the machinery that makes the turtle behave the way it does, you need to examine and describe the next turtle down, the one that supports the turtle you're studying.

An explanation for the behavior of one turtle requires a description of the next lower turtle.

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Mathematics explains perfectly, to my taste, why there are infinitely many prime numbers. Explains, not just describes. It gives me the machinery that makes this set infinite.

There are different 'why's. In animal behavior specifically, there are at least these standard four: Tinbergen's four questions - Wikipedia

Edited March 15, 2023 by Genady
fixed the link, I hope

[martillo]

  On 3/15/2023 at 1:51 PM, Lorentz Jr said:

  On 3/15/2023 at 12:25 PM, martillo said:

No, mathematics is not the machinery that runs the universe. Is the "tool" to describe the laws but does not explain how they are implemented.

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Thank you, martillo.

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We agree in some things while disagreeing in the end: I don't believe any possible ether solves the things, I think in a complete new theory or model on an empty space. I think the current theories are true only in part and wrong in other parts. The big challenge is to build the puzzle with all the right parts only. The try on "welding" them is a dead end row for me.

Edited March 15, 2023 by martillo

[Lorentz Jr]

  On 3/15/2023 at 1:57 PM, Genady said:

Mathematics explains perfectly, to my taste, why there are infinitely many prime numbers. Explains, not just describes. It gives me the machinery that makes this set infinite.

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That's math. I was talking about physics.

Edited March 15, 2023 by Lorentz Jr

[martillo]

  On 3/15/2023 at 1:57 PM, Genady said:

Past Performance Is Not Indicative Of Future Results (forbes.com)

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This only enforce my thinking in that a complete new theory is needed.

[Lorentz Jr]

  On 3/14/2023 at 1:14 PM, Lorentz Jr said:

You said something about "causal efficacy", but things can't cause themselves, so that was nonsense. Your earlier point about detecting the ether's motion is also nonsense, because that's not the same thing as having an effect.

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  On 3/15/2023 at 6:06 AM, Markus Hanke said:

I wish you would refrain from misrepresenting what I actually said, in the context of when I said it. So far as I am concerned, you have, over the time you have been here, made very valuable contributions to the forum across many different threads and discussions - but this here, I’m sorry to say, is really beneath you. Disappointing 😕

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The feeling is mutual, Markus. Spacetime doesn't explain time dilation, it simply builds it into the abstract formalism, misleadingly calls the formalism "geometry", and declares that no mechanistic explanation for TD is necessary because it's already built into the "geometry". That's circular reasoning, and I've finally lost patience with the excuses that people keep making for it.

Edited March 15, 2023 by Lorentz Jr