Gravity Explained

[Farsight]

GRAVITY EXPLAINED

 

You probably think of gravity as curved spacetime. Surprisingly Einstein didn’t, not quite. And neither should you. To understand gravity you have to take the ontological view. You have to learn to see what’s there. And to do that, you have to put time to one side, because time isn’t the same kind of dimension as the Dimensions of space. Yes, an object passing a planet traces a curved path, but you don’t stare up at a plane and decide that it’s a silver streak in the sky. You take a mental snapshot, flash, a picture of it in a timeless instant. It’s the same with gravity. Take the time-derivative of that curved spacetime. What you get is a gradient. And it’s a gradient in space, not curved spacetime.

 

 

But let’s tackle it an easier way, via an old favourite. Think about a cannonball sitting on a rubber sheet. The cannonball is heavy, and it makes a depression that will deflect a rolling marble, or even cause the marble to circle like an orbit. It’s a nice analogy, but it’s wrong. It’s wrong because it relies on gravity to pull the cannonball down in the first place. It uses gravity to give you a picture of gravity.

 

 

To get a better handle on it, imagine you’re standing underneath the rubber sheet. Let’s make that a silicone rubber sheet. It’s transparent, like my snorkel and mask. Grab hold of the rubber around the cannonball and pull it down further to give yourself some leeway. Now transfer your grip to the transparent silicone rubber itself. Gather it, pull it down some more. Now tie a knot in it underneath the cannonball, like you’d tie a knot in the neck of a balloon. Now pull it all the way down and let go. Boinggg! The cannonball is gone. Forget it.

 

 

Now, what have we got? We’ve got a flat rubber sheet with a knot in it. The knot will stand in for a region of stress, where the rubber is under pressure. Stress is the same as pressure. It’s force per unit area, and force times distance gives us the units for both work and energy. So energy is stress times volume. The knot represents energy. Or matter if you prefer. OK here’s the deal. Surrounding the small central region of stress is a much larger region of tension extending outwards in all directions. Whenever you have a stress you always have a tension to balance it. It isn’t always obvious, but it’s always there, like reaction balances action, and force balances force. The tension gradually reduces as you move away from the stress. If you could measure it, you would measure a radial gradient. But measuring it is trickier than you think. Because in this analogy we can’t use a marble rolling across a rubber sheet. This rubber sheet represents the world, there’s no stepping outside of it. Our “marble” has to be within the rubber sheet, and a part of it, made out of the same stuff as that knot.

 

We need an extra dimension. So turn your top hat upside down and tap it with your magic wand. Abracadabra! A flash of light and a puff of smoke, and that rubber sheet is now a solid block of clear silicone rubber extending in all directions. And you’re standing inside of it. Let’s make you a ghost so you can glide around unimpeded, for the purposes of gedanken. Our knot is now three-dimensional, like a moebius doughnut, maybe a little silvery like a bubble underwater. It’s not really made out of anything, it hasn’t got a colour, and it hasn’t even got a surface. It’s a soliton, a topological defect, a travelling stress that’s basically a photon, but going nowhere fast because it’s twisted round on itself. So E = hc/λ = pc = mc² means the momentum is now inertia, and we call it an electron.

 

 

Our electron has replaced our cannonball, and now we need a photon to stand in for that rolling marble. Let’s conjure one up, and send it propagating across our rubberworld so that it passes by our electron. We could run after it and take some snapshots with our ontological camera, but let’s save that for another day. For now our photon is just a shear-wave ripple, travelling at a velocity determined by the stiffness and density of the medium. There’s an equation for it in mechanics that goes like this:

 

v = √(G/ρ)

 

The G here isn’t a gravitational constant, but is the shear modulus of elasticity, to do with rigidity. It’s different to the bulk modulus of elasticity, because it’s a lot easier to bend something rather than compress its volume. The ρ is the density. The equation says a shear wave travels faster if the material gets stiffer, and slower if the density increases. In electrodynamics the velocity equation is remarkably similar. You’ve probably seen it before:

 

c = √(1/ε0μ0)

 

Here ε0 is permittivity and μ0 is permeability. The two are related by impedance √(μ0/ε0). High permittivity means a material will take a larger charge for the same voltage, for example Barium Titanate has 1200 times the permittivity of air, so we don’t make capacitors out of air. High permeability means a material exhibits more magnetism when you change the charge. Iron has lots of it, wood doesn’t, so magnets are made of iron. There are some marvellous similarities between mechanics and electrodynamics, though confusions abound too. With the piezoelectric effect you subject a material to mechanical stress and you get an electrical stress, a voltage, but high voltage is called high tension, which is negative stress. And electric current goes from negative to positive, so things are backwards. But let’s come back to that another time, and just say higher impedance means lower velocity.

 

Back in rubberworld, our photon-marble is passing our electron-cannonball. We notice it veers towards it a little. That’s because where the rubberworld tension is slightly greater, the real-world impedance is slightly higher, so the velocity is slightly lower. What we’re seeing is refraction.

 

 

Here’s the crucial point: our real world is like that rubberworld with the knot in it plus an extra dimension, and we’re made out of this stuff, along with our rulers and clocks. So we don’t see the tension. We don’t measure the change in c. But we can infer it. Like in the Pound-Rebka experiment, where a photon is blue-shifted at the bottom of the tower because c there is lower. Or in the Shapiro experiment, where the light takes longer to skim the sun because the c there is lower too.

 

There’s an equivalence going on here between General Relativity and Special Relativity, but it’s tricky to spot. Imagine that I stay here on earth while you travel to Alpha Centauri in a very fast rocket travelling at .99c. We can use 1/√(1-v²/c²) to work out that you experience a sevenfold time dilation. (Multiply .99 by itself to get .98 and subtract this from one to get a fiftieth, which is roughly a seventh multiplied by a seventh). We normally think of time dilation as being matched by length contraction, but that’s only in the direction of travel. Hold up a metre ruler transverse to the direction of travel and it’s the same old metre. Your metre is the same as my metre, and your time is dilated by a factor of seven, which means it takes a beam of your light seven times longer to traverse your transverse metre. Looking at it another way c = s/t and your t changed, your s didn’t, so your c did. Your c is a seventh of mine. Don’t get confused about this. Don’t tell yourself that your lightbeam is following a diagonal path and has to cover a greater distance. That’s introducing an absolute reference frame, mine. Stay in your own frame. Then when you come back after your year-long round trip, I aged seven years, but you only aged one. You aged less because your c was slower than mine, but you never noticed it at the time. The equivalence comes in because I could have slid you into a black box and subjected you to high gravity instead of sending you to Alpha Centauri. We know that “clocks run slow” in a high gravity situation, just as they do when you’re travelling fast. And it’s for the same simple reason. The c is reduced. But you won’t measure it as reduced, because it’s just a distance/time conversion factor. Just like you when you go to the moon you don’t get three ounces to the pound.

 

 

I know it’s difficult to stop thinking c is a constant. Yes it’s always measured to be the same in all frames. But when you step back to see the big picture that is the whole gallery, when you look at all the frames side by side, you see what distinguishes them is the way c changes. It’s a constant, but it isn’t constant. Once you realise that c changes in a “gravitational field” you can allow yourself the epiphany of understanding gravitational potential energy. We know that E=mc², so a cannonball sitting quietly in space represents maybe 1011 Joules of energy. If the earth now trundles on to the scene, the cannonball will fall towards it, and just before impact will also have kinetic energy of say 109 Joules. Now hold it right there. Freeze frame. Where did that kinetic energy actually come from? Has it been sucked out of the earth? Has it been magically extracted from some zero-point bottomless bucket? Has it come from the “gravitational field”? No. There’s no free lunch from Mister Gravity. The energy came from the cannonball. And it hasn’t come from its mass because mass is “invariant”. Only it isn’t invariant because the rest mass has actually increased, check the Pound-Rebka experiment. So E=mc² and we’ve got a pile of kinetic energy that hasn’t come out of the m. There’s only one place left it can have come from. The c. The c up there is greater than the c down here, and there’s a gradient in between.

 

There’s always a gradient in c when there’s gravity. Even across the width of an electron. Yes, the gradient might be very small. But it isn’t negligible. If you think it is, as per the General Relativity Equivalence Principle, you’ve just thrown the baby out with the bathwater. An accelerating frame with no tidal gradient isn’t the same as a proper gravity situation. There’s always a tidal force. The gradient has to be there. There can be no Uniform Gravitational Field. Because without that gradient, things don’t fall down.

 

Let’s go back to rubberworld. But it’s time we did a Reverse Image and made the rubber the ghost. Now you’re back to normal again take a look at that electron once more. It’s a travelling stress localised because it’s going round in a circle. Stick this ring of light in a real gravity gradient, caused by a zillion other electrons some distance downaways. What’s going to happen? Flash, take a picture. At a given instant we have a quantum of light travelling down like this ↓. There’s a gradient top to bottom, but all it does is gives the photon a fractional blueshift. A little later take another picture. Flash. Now the photon is moving this ← way, and the upper portion of the photon wavefront is subject to a slightly higher c than the lower portion. So it bends, refracts, curves down a little. Later it’s going this ↑ way and gets fractionally redshifted, and later still it’s going this → way and curves down again. These bends translate into a different position for our electron. The bent photon path becomes electron motion. Only half the cycle got bent, so only half the reduced c goes into kinetic energy, relativistic mass. The other half goes into rest mass, but it’s only a scale-change falling out of the clear blue sky:

 

 

So here’s your free lunch:

 

 

Now you can understand why gravity is not some magical, mysterious, action-at-a-distance force. There is no curvature of spacetime, no hidden dimensions, no gravitons sleeting between masses. There’s no energy being delivered, so gravity isn’t even a force. It’s just the tension gradient that balances the stress that is mass/energy. And we’re just rubberworld Fatlanders getting to grips with our wrinkles and bumps.

 

No energy delivered, extra rest mass to use as collateral... that means there’s no energy cost. So if we could somehow contrive a gradient that goes the other way... whoo, it’ll be The Stars My Destination. But first of all we must also understand the thing we call Space. We must learn how light is a ripple of nothing, and how all the somethings are made from it. It’s a tale of something and nothing, and since nothing comes for free, there will be a Charge...

 

 

Acknowledgements: thanks to J.G. Williamson and M.B. van der Mark for Is the electron a photon with toroidal topology? http://members.chello.nl/~n.benschop/electron.pdf, to Peter M Brown for his many papers on his excellent website http://www.geocities.com/physics_world/, to Robert A Close for for Is the Universe a Solid? http://home.att.net/~SolidUniverse/]home , to Reg Norgan for http://www.aethertheory.co.uk/pdfRFN/Aether_Why.pdf, to G S Sandhu for The Elastic Continuum http://www.geocities.com/gssandhu_1943/index.html to all the forum guys with their relevant posts and links, Wikipedia contributors, and to anybody who I’ve forgotten or whose pictures I’ve used. Thanks guys. Oh, and thanks to:

[Farsight]

All: I'll be grateful for any feedback you can give me. Even if somebody delivers a showstopper. Fingers crossed I'll buff it up with the input I get, and do a version 2. Otherwise: enjoy!

[Edtharan]

Back in rubberworld, our photon-marble is passing our electron-cannonball. We notice it veers towards it a little.

I don't know if it is just a problem with your analogies, but the way you described this, any light passing the "Knot" would appear veer away form it.

 

For instance, if we were observing the light from a distant star pass close to the sun (say from our position just to the right of the sun), then because of the way you described the effects of the photon, the light from the distant star would make it appear to the right of its actual position. However, astronomical observations of this situation show that the star would appear to the Left of its actual position.

 

What your description would lead to is a gravitational repulsion as the light is apparently bent away form the gravitating object.

 

So under your model, it would be better to have gravity as a "pushing out" of the rubber sheet rather than as a gathering of it.

 

See with the cannon ball sitting on the rubber sheet, it is stretching the rubber, giving more surface area. If you gather it into a knot, then you are reducing the surface area. As this is the opposite of the stretching, you get an opposite effect.

 

This is why the rubber sheet analogy is just an analogy not a model. By taking the analogy too far you have created a confusion.

[swansont]

There’s an equivalence going on here between General Relativity and Special Relativity, but it’s tricky to spot. Imagine that I stay here on earth while you travel to Alpha Centauri in a very fast rocket travelling at .99c. We can use 1/?(1-v²/c²) to work out that you experience a sevenfold time dilation. (Multiply .99 by itself to get .98 and subtract this from one to get a fiftieth, which is roughly a seventh multiplied by a seventh). We normally think of time dilation as being matched by length contraction, but that’s only in the direction of travel. Hold up a metre ruler transverse to the direction of travel and it’s the same old metre. Your metre is the same as my metre, and your time is dilated by a factor of seven, which means it takes a beam of your light seven times longer to traverse your transverse metre. Looking at it another way c = s/t and your t changed, your s didn’t, so your c did. Your c is a seventh of mine.

 

This was wrong before, and repeating it doesn't make it right.

[Farsight]

I don't know if it is just a problem with your analogies, but the way you described this, any light passing the "Knot" would appear veer away form it...

 

Yes, this rubber analogy is the reverse of electrodynamics in this respect. I struggled with that for a while, wondering whether to move to another analogy, but thought I'd cover the "reverse image" in a later essay covering space and charge. Maybe I need to clarify this or even change tack. Hmmn. Thanks for the input.

 

Swansont: give it a chance, c depends on impedance √(μ0/ε0) and IMHO it's unreasonable to insist that impedance can never change. Whilst we always measure c to be the same it's like trying to measure your shadow, but the only thing you can measure it with is the shadow of your ruler.

[swansont]

Swansont: give it a chance, c depends on impedance ?(?0/?0) and IMHO it's unreasonable to insist that impedance can never change. Whilst we always measure c to be the same it's like trying to measure your shadow, but the only thing you can measure it with is the shadow of your ruler.

 

That issue was decided over a hundred years ago.

[fredrik]

All: I'll be grateful for any feedback you can give me. Even if somebody delivers a showstopper. Fingers crossed I'll buff it up with the input I get, and do a version 2. Otherwise: enjoy!

 

A general non technical comment.

 

I consider myself quite philosophical and I can accept transient fuzz no problem, but I find this beeing too much analogies that really doesn't give me a sensation of gravity explained.

 

Analogies can be nice to induce a intuitive feeling for something that is otherwise too abstract. But in my terminology that is not an explanation. For me, more often than not, "explanations" tend to incorporate deeper abstractions, going back to first principles in order to explain previously ill defined terms and show that previously considered empirical facts can be deduced in an expanded fundamental setting, and thus replace assumptions or postulates with further abstractions and a lesser number of more fundamental postulates, rather than to try to argue for something only in therms of common sense coming from analogies that IMO tend to encourage circular reasoning.

 

The first question I ask myself as a reader when I start reading this is what kind of explanation this is intended to be? Explain gravity - in terms of what? And is there supposed to (in the end) to come out a mathematical formalism out of this? Or is it supposed to stay a verbal elaboration of gravity?

 

This was just meant to be a sincere reflective "critics" based on the questions that pop into my head what I read this.

 

/Fredirk

[Farsight]

fredrik: I've intended to give a verbal and pictorial explanation that delivers grasp, so that the reader can actually understand gravity. I want the reader to know what it really is, in terms of mass and energy, and how it is not in truth a force. The deeper abstractions hopefully are in other essays, namely TIME EXPLAINED, ENERGY EXPLAINED, and MASS EXPLAINED. I haven't attempted to include any mathematical formulism because I am in essence explaining axiomatic terms used within mathematics. Terms like t c E m and G. As to whether my aims are correct and whether I succeed in them, that remains to be seen. If I do succeed, mathematical formulism will follow. Mathematical formulism is not my end goal. And nor is mere understanding. But first things first. First I need feedback, and some serious considered challenge to the picture I present.

[Edtharan]

Here’s the crucial point: our real world is like that rubberworld with the knot in it plus an extra dimension,

Although not directly aimed at this essay, but because you indicated in other posts that this essay would answer questions raised in them:

 

In Time explained, you stated that there were no other dimensions than the 3 we experience. In fact a lot of your arguments against my posts were that for your explanation of time there could be no extra dimensions.

 

If your including them here as part of this new physics, but denying them else where, you are contradicting yourself.

 

I wouldn't have brought this up, but you have said that these series of essays are linked and it is this link that I am questioning.

 

I've intended to give a verbal and pictorial explanation that delivers grasp, so that the reader can actually understand gravity.

I could make an explanation of "élan vital", but this has been shown be false. It is not real. For you to have an explanation, you must first show that you are actually explaining reality.

 

So, you must first show that your new interpretation of what gravity is, is the correct interpretation. This means the mathematical formulas and peer reviewed article.

 

Otherwise you end up with: This explanation is correct, if the previous essay is correct, if the previous essay is corrects if the...

 

You have not established the correctness of you initial essays, so any essay that relies on these previous essays being correct can not be seen as reliable.

 

You have offered no testing of the principles of assumptions (from previous essays) that you use in this essay. So you are on very shaky ground to start with.

 

Another inconsistency between your essays is that in previous essays you treated gravity as the same as acceleration, but here you are treating it differently. If these essays are supposed to form a new physics, then they will need to be consistent.

 

Even if these essays are not supposed to be a new physics (but as you are proposing radical changes to existing physics that would entail changes across all science, you are in fact proposing a new physics), your explanations should be consistent. If your explanation for energy violates your explanation for gravity, then one (or both) must be an incorrect explanation and therefore can not be used to aid understanding.

 

Now, why the rubber sheet analogy is a good one for the traditional explanation of gravity is that it is mostly correct. Through experiments it has been shown that light curves a certain way in a gravitational filed.

 

On the only assumption that light must travel in a straight line, we can use geometry to aid us in understanding what occurs.

 

What we can use is called a Geodesic (wikipedia). In a flat world a Geodesic is in fact a straight line. In a curved world it can appear to be bent from certain points of view).

 

If we work backwards from how we see light behave in a gravitational field, the only curve that fits the light geodesic is one that curves into a higher dimension. Not one that is just stretched in the known dimensions.

 

So, according to geometry, space really does bend a bit like what the cannon ball would do. In 3 Spatial Dimensions it is harder for us to envision than the 2D rubber sheet analogy.

 

This curvature should have some real effects. And looking at them we seem to get a dilation of time and space. Or looking at it from yet a higher dimension: Space and time seems to rotate into one another.

 

Looking at the 2D rubber sheet analogy, the Space (the flat sheet) rotates into the vertical direction. So in the analogy, the Vertical dimension would be Time and the Horizontal dimensions would be Space.

 

The reason it must be time is that the effects on what we observe. We must look for what is being changed, and since we have determined that (due to the geodesic) that space is being changed, the effect that we observe is that Time too is being changed. So as both space and Time are being changed and the changes in each account fore the changes in the others, therefore we can tell that Time must be the 4th dimension and has a physical existence equal to that of space.

 

Because light travels in straight lines, this gives us a foundation to be able to work out what the "shape" that a piece of space is like. If we draw the geodesics for each light ray that passes through a region of space (and from different directions), then the paths these geodesics make is the shape of that region of space.

 

For example, if we shine a beam of light and it comes back to us, but from the opposite direction, we can determine that the space there is curved all the way back around on it's self. If we can do this in all directions, then the only shape that the region of space can be is spherical (or spheroid anyway - if we time the beams of light we can more precisely determine the divergence from an ideal sphere the region is).

 

The geodesic can even be used to determine the number of dimensions the region is curved in. 2 dimensions will give a different result than a 3 dimensional curve and be different from a 4th dimensional curve. Looking at the light from stars as the pass near the sun (during an eclipse) the geodesic shows that space is curved in 4 dimensions. 3 of space and a 4th non spatial dimensions (which with other experiments has been shown to be Time).

 

What has been show is that it can not be a "pinch" in the way you described it in your essay. This kind of curvature would give a completely different geodesic than would the space curved into the non spatial dimension (like the cannon ball example).

[foodchain]

Although not directly aimed at this essay, but

For example, if we shine a beam of light and it comes back to us, but from the opposite direction, we can determine that the space there is curved all the way back around on it's self. If we can do this in all directions, then the only shape that the region of space can be is spherical (or spheroid anyway - if we time the beams of light we can more precisely determine the divergence from an ideal sphere the region is).

 

yes but why would the light return in the first place, and would it return the exact point of origin. Also, would the time this takes give us insight into the path of travel, being the distance to point A from B should be shorter if on a straight line, so mounting a line from say point A in space to millions of light years away point B, if you could keep it in a line should take light X in time to travel, if the light will return to you, but based on geometry of space such as curvature, this length of time should be different then without the means to control its path and leaving such open to space curvature? It should increase the amount of space in which light has to travel is what I am thinking.

[Farsight]

Although not directly aimed at this essay, but because you indicated in other posts that this essay would answer questions raised in them:

 

In Time explained, you stated that there were no other dimensions than the 3 we experience. In fact a lot of your arguments against my posts were that for your explanation of time there could be no extra dimensions.

 

If your including them here as part of this new physics, but denying them else where, you are contradicting yourself.

 

I haven't introduced any new dimensions.

 

So, you must first show that your new interpretation of what gravity is, is the correct interpretation. This means the mathematical formulas and peer reviewed article...

 

Is that Catch 22 or Chicken and Egg? I have to start somewhere, and I'm starting here.

 

You have not established the correctness of you initial essays, so any essay that relies on these previous essays being correct can not be seen as reliable.

So you say, incorrectly, and you're really clutching at straws. Whatever happened to the open mind?

 

You have offered no testing of the principles of assumptions (from previous essays) that you use in this essay. So you are on very shaky ground to start with.

 

It's an essay. On a second rate chitchat forum. In Speculations. Jesus H Christ!

 

Another inconsistency between your essays is that in previous essays you treated gravity as the same as acceleration, but here you are treating it differently. If these essays are supposed to form a new physics, then they will need to be consistent.

LOL, not so. I've just searched my previous essay. You're making this up as you go along. You're being dishonest.

 

Even if these essays are not supposed to be a new physics (but as you are proposing radical changes to existing physics that would entail changes across all science, you are in fact proposing a new physics), your explanations should be consistent. If your explanation for energy violates your explanation for gravity, then one (or both) must be an incorrect explanation and therefore can not be used to aid understanding.

 

They're just new interpretations. The working name is Relativity++. And my explanations do not violate one another. Really Edtharan this is getting ridiculous.

 

Now, why the rubber sheet analogy is a good one for the traditional explanation of gravity is that it is mostly correct...

Oh FFS this is absurd. It uses gravity to explain gravity.

 

Through experiments it has been shown that light curves a certain way in a gravitational field...

Of course it travels in a curve. Apply a constant sideways force to a boat and you'll get a curve. I'm sorry Edtharan, but that's quite enough. You don't understand, you don't want to understand, and you never ever will. I'll make sure I give you a mention at some future date.

[Edtharan]

yes but why would the light return in the first place, and would it return the exact point of origin.

If the "world" (universe really) is a perfect sphere, then any light beam will follow a Great Circle which will bring it right back to it's starting point.

 

I haven't introduced any new dimensions.

yes you have:

Here’s the crucial point: our real world is like that rubberworld with the knot in it [b']plus an extra dimension[/b]

(emphasis mine)

 

So could you clear this up for me then:

What is the minimum number of dimensions involved here for this to apply to our universe?

 

The current definition of Time is an additional Dimension not of the 3 Spatial dimensions that we can compare the movement in the 3 spatial dimensions to and that, under gravity or acceleration the spatial dimensions can be rotated into (in fact all 4 must be able to be rotated into one another).

 

As in you Time Explained threads, you deny this definition of Time and say that Time as is covered by this definition does not exist, then how can you then conclude in this Essay (which you say relates to your previous time explained threads) that there is a 4th dimension, which fits the above definition?

 

The two are mutually contradictory. Sorry, but they are.

 

Is that Catch 22 or Chicken and Egg? I have to start somewhere, and I'm starting here.

It is fine to start some where. But, if when you come back around you end up with something different than what you started with, then there must be something wrong.

 

It would be like me solving a mathematical equation and needing X to be both 1 and 2.

 

So you say, incorrectly, and you're really clutching at straws. Whatever happened to the open mind?

No, your previous essays have never been shown to be correct. What you have done is ignored or denied (without proof) any counter arguments against your essays.

 

That kind of behaviour does is not proof of your essay's correctness.

 

It's an essay. On a second rate chitchat forum. In Speculations. Jesus H Christ!

True.

 

But you did ask for criticisms and for use to examine it, and that is all we are doing.

 

LOL, not so. I've just searched my previous essay. You're making this up as you go along. You're being dishonest.

In discussions about how acceleration effects Time, you switched between explanations using gravity and acceleration to cover the same points. SO yes, although you didn't state explicitly that Gravity=Acceleration, you did treat them like this. Also Relativity does state that Gravity and Acceleration are the same and you have stated that you agree with relativity.

 

They're just new interpretations. The working name is Relativity++. And my explanations do not violate one another. Really Edtharan this is getting ridiculous.

If your explanations in one essay state that X can't occur and in another Essay they state that X does occur, they are in violation of each other.

 

Maybe you do have an understanding of why they might appear to be in violation of each other, but you have not shared that with us so we can only conclude that they are in violation of each other. You have even made such inconsistencies within you explanations about an essay.

 

Oh FFS this is absurd. It uses gravity to explain gravity.

No the rolling down is just an analogy, it is not designed as an explanation.

 

However, the analogy, with a bit more understanding of what the analogy is supposed to represent, does still hold.

 

With the rubber sheet analogy, it is not the fact that the gravity of the real world is pulling smaller balls towards the larger cannon ball, but the fact that the geodesic describes a curve.

 

Because the geodesic represents the way light moves in that region of space, and because nothing can travel faster than light, it means that any force must, at the maximum follow that same geodesic. It can be less than the geodesic, but it can not be more than the geodesic. If you look at the way this then influences the way an object moves, you will find that it becomes drawn towards the centre.

 

The reason the analogy uses gravity is that it allows us to create a physical shape that is analogous to the curve that creates a similar geodesic.

 

Because you have taken the Analogy and the Model, you then use other aspects that relate to the analogy (and not the model) to disprove the current model (or create your own model).

 

To put is simply: This is a gigantic Strawman Fallacy.

 

You have presented arguments against the analogies, not the models (in all your essays, not just this one). When I have tried to use the models to demonstrate the reasons that your arguments are not aimed at them, you call me names and insult me (another logical fallacy called Ad Hominin).

 

Of course it travels in a curve. Apply a constant sideways force to a boat and you'll get a curve.

How does a boat relate to what I said. I said that light does not travel in curves, it only appears to travel in curves if space time is curved in 4D and we can only directly observe 3 dimensions.

 

If we look at the path that light takes in a gravitational field, and then attempt to make it so that light travels in a straight line, then the only surface that it can possibly make a straight line on, is a 4D curve that resembles the 3D curve of a cannon ball on a sheet of rubber.

 

Either light doesn't travel in straight lines, or it does. If light travels in straight lines then gravity cases Space-Time to curve. If Space-Time exists and can curve, your essays are wrong.

 

Does light travel in straight lines?

 

You don't understand, you don't want to understand, and you never ever will.

Again you resort to insults to attempt to make your points. Ad Hominin.

 

What if I was to say this about your understanding of how gravity really is and the reason that you have come up with the explanation that you have is because you don't understand gravity, and the reason that, despite all the postings on these topics, you can't grasp what we are trying to explain to you is that you never will understand it.

 

You see, it doesn't feel good when someone else parrots your words back at you does it.

 

Whatever happened to the open mind?

What if I am right and you are wrong? What if you are right and I am wrong?

 

So far, you have only responded as if You were right and I was wrong. I have attempted to examine both sides, which is more open minded?

 

Here is a challenge: Try to disprove your own essays.

[Royston]

If the "world" (universe really) is a perfect sphere, then any light beam will follow a Great Circle which will bring it right back to it's starting point.

 

As a side thought, that would be very unusual if the universe really 'was' like that. Thankfully expansion, and the (AFAIK) irregular topology would prevent this from ever happening.

 

Sorry for going off topic.

[YT2095]

light cannot escape the universe. by default if light goes that far then it`s position is still part of the universe.

 

no mater where you go, There you are.

 

same applies to Light

 

it just means that the Outer parts of the universe is Photons only, since they travel the fastest and matter cannot reach it`s speed.

[Farsight]

...yes you have:

Here’s the crucial point: our real world is like that rubberworld with the knot in it plus an extra dimension...[/i][/quote'] (emphasis mine)

 

That's the flat rubber sheet plus an extra dimension.

 

So could you clear this up for me then: What is the minimum number of dimensions involved here for this to apply to our universe?

 

Three. That's three Dimensions. Note that permittivity can be measured and so considered a "dimension". Just like temperature and other things. But these should not be confused with Dimensions. Mathematical space is not space. It is artificial, imaginary, an artifice for calculation.

 

..As in your Time Explained threads, you deny this definition of Time and say that Time as is covered by this definition does not exist, then how can you then conclude in this Essay (which you say relates to your previous time explained threads) that there is a 4th dimension, which fits the above definition? The two are mutually contradictory. Sorry, but they are.

 

See above. You're too busy playing debating societies to actually read what I'm saying. Any normal person would ask a simple brief question to clarify a point, but you build a whole sandcastle on your error.

 

No, your previous essays have never been shown to be correct. What you have done is ignored or denied (without proof) any counter arguments against your essays.

 

Not true. All you've ever said is Farsight you're wrong because time is a dimension, a circular argument that uses the axiom itself to defend what you infer from it.

 

In discussions about how acceleration effects Time, you switched between explanations using gravity and acceleration to cover the same points. SO yes, although you didn't state explicitly that Gravity=Acceleration, you did treat them like this. Also Relativity does state that Gravity and Acceleration are the same and you have stated that you agree with relativity.

 

Ah, see previous posts. In discussions, but not in essays. So I was right. You were wrong. And yet here you are clutching at "didn't state explicitly" straws.

 

If your explanations in one essay state that X can't occur and in another Essay they state that X does occur, they are in violation of each other.

 

Here we go again. You're just making it up as you go along.

 

Because you have taken the Analogy and the Model, you then use other aspects that relate to the analogy (and not the model) to disprove the current model (or create your own model). To put it simply: This is a gigantic Strawman Fallacy.

 

Stop kidding yourself. You're the one here with the straw man arguments. And if you want to see ad hominem read what some of the other posters have said. About me.

 

How does a boat relate to what I said. I said that light does not travel in curves, it only appears to travel in curves if space time is curved in 4D and we can only directly observe 3 dimensions...

 

Take a toy motor boat. Put it in the boating lake ready to go. Then get a tanker full of molasses and tip them all down one side of the boating lake. Wait a while. Now start your motor boat. What path does it take?

 

Does light travel in straight lines?

No. Gravity changes its velocity.

 

...You have only responded as if you were right and I was wrong. I have attempted to examine both sides, which is more open minded?

Not so, I've had useful input from other sources where I've thanked people for their feedback and resolved to make some change. And come off it, Edtharan, you have not made an ounce of effort to examine both sides here.

 

Here is a challenge: Try to disprove your own essays.

 

No. You play your mind games. I'll do the physics.

[insane_alien]

That's the flat rubber sheet plus an extra dimension.

 

 

 

Three. That's three Dimensions. Note that permittivity can be measured and so considered a "dimension". Just like temperature and other things. But these should not be confused with Dimensions. Mathematical space is not space. It is artificial, imaginary, an artifice for calculation.

 

 

so when you scale up the analogy so it includes the three dimensional space instead of a two dimensional space, how many dimensions do you have? (hint: 3+1)

 

Here we go again. You're just making it up as you go along.

no, he's not. i've looked at the threads and edtharan is kicking your ass with logic. something you don't seem to follow 90% of the time.

 

Take a toy motor boat. Put it in the boating lake ready to go. Then get a tanker full of molasses and tip them all down one side of the boating lake. Wait a while. Now start your motor boat. What path does it take?

 

how exactly does a motor boat going through molases compare to light travelling through space? i mean, ok it might apply if you are discussing refraction but that requires a change in medium not a change in gravity.

 

No. Gravity changes its velocity.

yes, it changes the direction through the warping of spacetime. warping of spacetime does occur, gravity probe B proved this (well, one aspect of warping anyway which reqires there to be a spacetime to warp in the first place)

 

No. You play your mind games. I'll do the physics.

 

please don't. i actually want to see a time where humanity will be able to travel to other star systems.

[Farsight]

So when you scale up the analogy so it includes the three dimensional space instead of a two dimensional space, how many dimensions do you have? (hint: 3+1)

 

No, when you scale up the analogy you have three dimensions. See TIME EXPLAINED for why that +1 isn't a dimension. Instead it's a measure of motion through the three dimensions that are actually there.

 

No, he's not. i've looked at the threads and Edtharan is kicking your ass with logic. Something you don't seem to follow 90% of the time.

 

LOL, no chance. Edtharan's logic is circular, and uses the axioms to defend the inferences drawn from them.

 

How exactly does a motor boat going through molasses compare to light travelling through space? I mean, OK it might apply if you are discussing refraction but that requires a change in medium not a change in gravity.

Yes, a change in vacuum permittivity. And you obviously haven't even read GRAVITY EXPLAINED. Very logical. Very rational. Very scientific.

 

Yes, it changes the direction through the warping of spacetime. warping of spacetime does occur, gravity probe B proved this (well, one aspect of warping anyway which reqires there to be a spacetime to warp in the first place)

 

Wrong. It's space, not spacetime. That's the key. And gravity probe B hasn't "proved" it.

 

Please don't. I actually want to see a time where humanity will be able to travel to other star systems.

 

Are you sure about that? Because you aren't interested in it enough to actually read GRAVITY EXPLAINED. You're siding with Edtharan without due cause, and he holds dogmatic axiomatic concepts that are taking him nowhere, but he just won't examine them. Instead he exhibits hostility towards this attempt to move forward. There's a psychology at work here, and people just can't see it, like the A and B squares that are the same colour. Realise this: if anybody is going to get us to be the stars, it won't be the likes of Edtharan. It'll be the likes of me.

 

PS: I'm developing a model here. It's something of a toy, but it flies, and nobody can shoot it down. I'm calling it RELATIVITY++. Make a note of that.

[YT2095]

Realise this: if anybody is going to get us to be the stars, it won't be the likes of Edtharan. It'll be the likes of me.

 

PS: I'm developing a model here. It's something of a toy, but it flies, and nobody can shoot it down. I'm calling it RELATIVITY++. Make a note of that.

 

Cor Blimey, you don`t half fancy yourself eh!

[Klaynos]

I've been trying to avoid this thread, as I really felt I could not stand it.

 

But I have but one question for you.

 

If you are trying to give a verbal and understanding analysis to gravity here and time etc in other places. There where is your maths? Because you have to show where your verbal understanding comes from in the maths, and you

ve got alot of words for just 2 equations.

[YT2095]

There's a psychology at work here, and people just can't see it,

 

oh we can see it alright!

 

can You Say: "delusions of grandeur"?

[swansont]

I'm developing a model here. It's something of a toy, but it flies, and nobody can shoot it down.

 

A model that makes no testable predictions (of a nontrivial nature) can't be shot down.

 

And you haven't addressed your contention that c slows down for your transverse c measurement. It's wrong (you violate your own admonition to "stay in your own frame" when analyzing the problem), and you've ignored it.

 

Not being shot down and not acknowledging that you've been shot down are not the same thing.

[Farsight]

I've been trying to avoid this thread, as I really felt I could not stand it. But I have but one question for you. If you are trying to give a verbal and understanding analysis to gravity here and time etc in other places. There where is your maths? Because you have to show where your verbal understanding comes from in the maths, and you've got alot of words for just 2 equations.

 

I don't give maths because I'm trying to offer grasp, insight. I can't use mathematics to do this because the axioms used as the foundation stones for mathematics cannot be explained by mathematics. Try explaining t via maths, and you'll understand where I'm coming from.

 

A model that makes no testable predictions (of a nontrivial nature) can't be shot down. And you haven't addressed your contention that c slows down for your transverse c measurement. It's wrong (you violate your own admonition to "stay in your own frame" when analyzing the problem), and you've ignored it. Not being shot down and not acknowledging that you've been shot down are not the same thing.

 

So, it hasn't been shot down. Thank you. All this mud I'm seeing won't bring it down either. I thought I had addressed the transverse c contention. Nevertheless let me reiterate: my tranverse c measurement in my frame will always be 300,000km/s. But if I undergo time dilation, my 300,000km/s is not the same as yours. We know this because on my return we counted and compared traverses. You try to explain the difference by saying my light in my frame travelled a longer path in your "preferred" frame. But you're missing the obvious - my time dilation occured because my c was less than yours, in my frame, and it defines my time so I can't measure a lesser value. Think ontologically. Ask yourself what you'd see if you could view the time-dilated me via some magical instant TV camera.

[Royston]

So, it hasn't been shot down. Thank you.

 

I.E gravity is controlled by an invisible monkey with infinite arms, pulling objects towards other objects...that can't be shot down either, because it's non-falsifiable, so non-testable and therefore makes no predictions. It certainly doesn't mean it's correct, or that I'm 'on to something' with my monkey conjecture...quite the opposite.

[Edtharan]

Three. That's three Dimensions. Note that permittivity can be measured and so considered a "dimension". Just like temperature and other things. But these should not be confused with Dimensions. Mathematical space is not space. It is artificial, imaginary, an artifice for calculation.

The key word that you seem not to be understanding from what I am trying to explain is that of "Rotation"

 

In your analogy of a rubber sheet under tension, that tension actually causes a rotation. In the rubber sheet, that is a 2D rotation. In your 3D Rubber block that rotation is in 3 dimensions.

 

Draw a grid on your rubber sheet like graph paper. Now, whenever you distort that sheet, you distort the grid.

 

If I was to pinch the sheet and tie a knot in it (like you do in your essay), that will create a specific distortion pattern in the grid. It will at first bend towards the knot, then as it passes it, it will bend away.

 

If we label the grid on the sheet X and Y, then on the flat sheet, at all points, the X dimension is perpendicular to the Y dimension.

 

But, near that knot, the X dimension (as it appears to us from a distance) rotates into the Y dimension (may be not all the way, but part of the way certainly).

 

However, locally, the X dimension is always the X dimension and they never see this distortion locally. They do seem to see that the rest of the rubber sheet seems to have been rotated a bit.

 

This is what I mean by Rotation of the Dimensions.

 

Rotation in higher dimensions are handled exactly the same way.

 

Now, her eis an important point. You can not apply this kind of rotation to a dimension that is not part of that initial matrix. You can not use this to rotate the X,Y dimensions of that rubber sheet into Temperature, even if we call it a dimension. It just doesn't work. All the dimensions of that structure (the rubber sheet or block) must have equal reality to each other.

 

Sure we could construct a rubber sheet/block where temperature was actually a dimension of the construct, but then in that case, the temperature dimension would have equal reality to the spatial dimensions.

 

If there was only the 2 spatial dimensions of the rubber sheet, and Temperature was only a mathematical dimension, then no type of rotation would allow us to rotate that mathematical dimension with that of the physical dimensions.

 

When we look at the effects of gravity, (even under your theory) it works out as some form of rotation (in your case it is the "tension" that causes the rotation).

 

So that means that we should look at what properties get distorted by this rotation. We have the 3 spatial dimensions, but these alone can not account for all the rotation. There is a rotation that occurs in a non-spatial dimensions. And the effect of that distortion is a change in Time. The only conclusion is that Time has to be that other dimension and that it has an equal physical reality as the spatial dimensions.

 

playing debating societies

Sorry, I thought this was a debate forum...

 

Also I thought you wanted us to debate your essay, that was what you said you wanted us to do...

 

Yes, a change in vacuum permittivity. And you obviously haven't even read GRAVITY EXPLAINED. Very logical. Very rational. Very scientific.

Logical maybe, but as you don't support your initial assumptions you can still reach incorrect conclusions if they are wrong.

 

As for scientific: Well you don't provide any testable hypothesis and use no real maths (2 equations are not enough), it is not scientific at all.

 

All you've ever said is Farsight you're wrong because time is a dimension, a circular argument that uses the axiom itself to defend what you infer from it.

Yes, I have said that Time is a Dimension as that is the position I am defending. I could just say that all you have done is say that "Time is not a Dimensions" and claim that you are using a circular argument too.

 

Lay off it, these "attack" against me can equally apply to you. You don't actually think that they make your arguments any more better?

 

Ah, see previous posts. In discussions, but not in essays. So I was right. You were wrong. And yet here you are clutching at "didn't state explicitly" straws.

So are you saying that your posts do not attempt to explain what is in your essays and are about a completely different subject? Are your posts not supposed to be arguments to prove your essays? Have we just been arguing against a smoke screen?

 

Stop kidding yourself. You're the one here with the straw man arguments.

I have pointed out in many of my posts how your arguments are not actually against what the accepted theories are. You have used arguments that are clearly in violation of reality (moving object without applying a force to them, etc - and if you want I can quote that, but as it is not in this thread, I have not done so: Forum policy and all that).

 

If you need to construct an argument that can not really be physically possible (in a discussion about what is physics) to support your premise, then that is a strawman argument.

 

And if you want to see ad hominem read what some of the other posters have said. About me.

And do you know what? For those I actually think less of their arguments because of that. I didn't respond to their insults of you because I didn't want to start flame wars (which it devolved into anyway). But for my part, I was in support of you when they did that.

 

Take a toy motor boat. Put it in the boating lake ready to go. Then get a tanker full of molasses and tip them all down one side of the boating lake. Wait a while. Now start your motor boat. What path does it take?

That does not clear it up one bit. Doesn't molasses sink in water? So wouldn't it all just end up on the bottom of the lake? How does this effect the motion of the boat?

 

I think I can sort of guess at what you are trying to say: That a denser medium will make object move slower in them than a less dense medium.

 

No. Gravity changes its velocity.

So have I got this right?

 

Because gravity changes the velocity of light it curves, because light curves in gravity we can conclude that gravity causes light to change in velocity.

 

Not so, I've had useful input from other sources where I've thanked people for their feedback and resolved to make some change. And come off it, Edtharan, you have not made an ounce of effort to examine both sides here.

So, if they agree with you it is feedback. If they disagree with you then they are not being truthful?

 

No. I have provided feedback, but because I have disagreed with you you have insulted me and ignored my feedback.

 

If all you were looking for were Yes-men you should have said. If you were looking for feedback and critical analysis of your proposition, then you should be more interested and thankful of the people that provide the negative arguments (oh and by the way, what you just said is responding as if only you can be right and everyone else is wrong).

 

No. You play your mind games. I'll do the physics.

Umm, do you understand the Scientific method at all?

 

The Scientific method works on disproof. So if you are not interested in attempting to disprove your own theories, then you are absolutely not doing Physics.

 

It is not mind game at all. All I was asking was that you even attempt to show that you have tried to disprove your own theories. You haven't shown any evidence of this, yet keep claiming that you are doing science, I was very interested to see what attempts you have made to do this.

 

There's a psychology at work here, and people just can't see it,

Have you ever heard of a psychological position called "Vested Interest"? I have absolutely no vested interest in whether your essay is right or wrong. You do. Take that into consideration of the psychology involved here.

 

Also, some of your posts include self aggrandizing and statements that belittle others (including my self). This is indicative of a closed mind, one that has already been made up that no matter what we say, you will not accept it as you think that we are inferior to you (and you have actually made comments specifically about me in this way).

 

Yes, there is a definite psychology at work here, but if I was you, I would first look in the mirror as to the source.

 

Wrong. It's space, not spacetime.

So you keep repeating. But you offer no real substantial arguments as to why it can't be spacetime.

 

You have given reasons as to why you think it is just space, but before your argument is complete you have to disprove spacetime.

 

Are you sure about that? Because you aren't interested in it enough

You know, if we weren't interested enough in it, we would never have posted in the threads. The fact that we have posted indicated that we are interested enough.

 

No, when you scale up the analogy you have three dimensions.

Topology of knots (which is what you use) is a very complex thing.

 

Try this experiment:

Take a piece of rope and make it into a loop (splice it or something). Now once you have the loop, without opening the loop, tie a knot in the rope. It is impossible. Any knot you tie is not really a knot, it is a twist.

 

You can twist it so that there appears to be 2 knots, but it is still really just a twist.

 

And by the way, that doughnut shape that you proposed in your essay is a knot and therefore could not actually physically be created within the block (or with space) except by cutting it and joining it back up, so if this is you proposal as to why we can create electrons by smashing gamma-rays together, it can't actually work unless you also claim that it rips a hole in the fabric of space. What you propose could never end up being an electron, but would actually create a singularity. If the hole is supposed to be the electron, then you could never convert an electron (and positron) back into energy.

[Klaynos]

I don't give maths because I'm trying to offer grasp, insight. I can't use mathematics to do this because the axioms used as the foundation stones for mathematics cannot be explained by mathematics. Try explaining t via maths, and you'll understand where I'm coming from.

 

 

 

So, it hasn't been shot down. Thank you. All this mud I'm seeing won't bring it down either. I thought I had addressed the transverse c contention. Nevertheless let me reiterate: my tranverse c measurement in my frame will always be 300,000km/s. But if I undergo time dilation, my 300,000km/s is not the same as yours. We know this because on my return we counted and compared traverses. You try to explain the difference by saying my light in my frame travelled a longer path in your "preferred" frame. But you're missing the obvious - my time dilation occured because my c was less than yours, in my frame, and it defines my time so I can't measure a lesser value. Think ontologically. Ask yourself what you'd see if you could view the time-dilated me via some magical instant TV camera.

 

I would strongly dissagree with this and say that grasp, insight and understanding normally comes from a theoretical (mathematical) understanding.

 

As for being shot down, how can you shoot something with so many holes in it?