Category Archives: General Relativity

The Twins Paradox & The Immaculate Acceleration

Discussions around the twins paradox showcase the way Modern Theoretical Physics discounts actual physics and logical consistency in favor of mathematical convenience. The twins paradox is a thought experiment where one twin remains on Earth while their sibling travels at some significant fraction of the speed of light to a distant star and then returns home at a similar speed. The result is not in dispute, the traveling twin will have aged significantly less than the twin who remained on Earth due to the time dilation effect described by Relativity Theory.

The problem arises when someone attempts to explain the age discrepancy in terms of Special Relativity rather than General Relativity. In SR, which applies only under inertial conditions, that is in the absence of gravity or acceleration, there is an apparent but not physically real time dilation. For example two travelers in interstellar space moving at some constant velocity with respect to each other can each consider themself to be at rest and the other traveler to be in motion and each will observe the others clocks to be running slower than their own. In fact neither clock is running slow and the time dilation is an illusion induced by the relative motion. This apparent time dilation is described by a mathematical equation known as the Lorentz transform.

In cases where gravity or acceleration are involved General Relativity is the only proper framework for understanding the time dilation situation. This is because under GR conditions time dilation is not merely an illusion owing to a constant relative velocity. An observer at the surface of the Earth will see a a clock in orbit running faster than their own while an astronaut in orbit will observe all clocks on Earth to be running slower than their own clock.

Unlike under SR conditions where each observer sees the other’s clock as running slower though neither is actually running slow, in a gravitational field all observers will agree that clocks lower in the field (where gravity is stronger) are running slower than clocks higher up (where gravity is weaker). This is gravitational time dilation. It is an observed effect that is properly accounted for by GR.

There is a similar time dilation effect associated with an accelerated observer that is also described by GR. This is the case of the traveling twin and this is where the “paradox” arises. For some not clearly explicable reason some physicists like to claim that the Lorentz transform is sufficient to analyze the situation and it is not necessary to account for any acceleration (or deceleration).

A reasonable objection to this would be that if the Lorentz transform is relevant then it applies to both the traveler and stay-at-home twin and consequently there should be no age difference when the traveler returns. Each twin should have perceived the other to be aging more slowly but in fact they aged at the same rate throughout the time of the voyage.

The retort to this objection is that the traveler changes reference frames by turning around and that justifies applying the Lorentz transform only to the traveler therefore affecting a net aging differential. It is also claimed that the periods of acceleration are irrelevant to the time dilation effect and can be ignored. The problem with this is that it is an inadequate, you could even say shoddy, analysis of the physics of any such voyage.

The following discussion of a plausible interstellar trip is based on the section of this Wiki account labeled Specific example.

In the specific example considered a 1g acceleration for 9 months is mentioned but quickly dismissed for the sake of mathematical convenience:

“To make the numbers easy…This can also be modelled by assuming that the ship is already in motion at the beginning of the experiment and that the return event is modelled by a Dirac delta distribution acceleration.“

Do not fail to check out the Dirac delta function AKA the Immaculate Acceleration. There is no better illustration of the inanity of the mathematicist approach to doing physics. What you wind up with is an analysis that is completely unrelated to a realistic account of any plausible interstellar voyage. The resulting claim, that the returning twin will have aged only 6 years while their sibling will have aged 10, is simply wrong. The math is just the math but the given result is not possible because the assumptions of mathematical convenience render the analysis physically impossible which means the result is physically meaningless.

To carry out such a trip the traveler must first accelerate away from the Earth with a sufficient period of acceleration so as to achieve a velocity that approaches light speed. A 1g acceleration (equivalent initially to the gravitational effect at the surface of the Earth) would require 9 months to achieve a velocity of 8/10ths the speed of light. An equivalent deceleration would be required to arrive at the destination and another acceleration/deceleration would be required on the return trip. If the distance to the remote star is 4 light years then the overall distance to be travelled is 8 lightyears from the Earth’s reference frame. In 9 months at an average velocity of .4c then the distance covered during acceleration is .4c x .75y = .3ly. There are 4 such acceleration/deceleration events over the entire trip so 1.2 total lightyears are travelled at an average of .4c. That leaves the remaining, 6.8ly, to be travelled at .8c which requires 8.5 years. Again this is the earth bound perspective

So the four acceleration intervals of 9 months sum to 3 years travel time plus 8.5 years for the two .8c intervals yielding a total trip time of 11.5 years from the Earth’s perspective. Using the inverse Lorentz factor .6 for the .8c interval the Earth twin calculates the traveler’s local elapsed time to be 5.1 years for the 8.5 year interval and 2.7 years for the 3 year accelerated interval (using a .9 inverse Lorentz factor for the .4c average velocity during acceleration intervals) The Earth twin then expects their sibling to have aged 5.1 + 2.7 = 7.8 years to their 11.5 years – a differential of 3.7 years. These results are markedly different than those presented in the Wiki example and confirm that it is simply wrong to ignore the acceleration intervals and treat the entire trip as an Immaculate Acceleration event with a constant velocity.

This error stems entirely from the desire “To make the numbers easy“, i.e. the preference for mathematical convenience over physical accuracy. The results speak for themselves. You cannot ignore the intervals of acceleration by pretending they take place instantaneously. It is rather absurd to expect that such an unphysical approach would work. But such is the state of Modern Theoretical Physics.

To this point the conceit that the Lorentz transform is appropriate for calculating the time dilation effect for the travelling twin has been granted. But is it actually appropriate? And if so, can it be deployed in a physically meaningful way? That is a larger topic and will be the subject of the next post.

The ACER, The ERDG And Gravity

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A mathematical similarity between gravity and electromagnetism has long been noted and commented upon. There are also qualitative analogies that are occasionally mentioned but beyond noting the fact that the gravitational effect around a a gravitating body falls off at the same 1/r² rate as the density of the electromagnetic radiation being emitted by the body, little thought is given to this rather striking overall correlation. Coupled with the observation that light moving through a gravitational field behaves as if it were traversing a medium with a density gradient, there would seem to be at least a strong indication of a causal relation between gravitational effects and the electromagnetic field (EMF) especially since a gravitational field is only posited, not observed

It will argued here that all gravitational effects can be attributed to the interaction between matter and electromagnetic fields. First, two definitions:

the ACER (Ambient Cosmic Electromagnetic Radiation} that pervades the Cosmos. This is the cosmological scale field that constitutes The Spectrum of the Universe as described in the document of the same name. This radiation does not have a density gradient but is approximately uniform in distribution around any free-standing body.
the ERDG (Electromagnetic Radiation Density Gradient) which is the aggregate EMF of all the electromagnetic radiation being emitted omnidirectionally by a radiating body. The strength of that field falls off as 1/r² and therefore it has a density gradient

The Deflection of Light in a Gravitational Field

The EMRG comprises the medium through which the ACER (all external radiation)travels in the vicinity of a radiating/gravitating body. The ERDG is a transparent medium with a density gradient. Light passing through a “gravitational” field behaves as if it were passing through a medium with a density gradient. The ERDG fully accounts for the “gravitational” effect of the curvature of incident light — without invoking an otherwise invisible gravitational field. Essentially the ERDG constitutes a particular type of EMF that causes the effect traditionally attributed to an undetected gravitational field.

Gravitational Attraction

Initially let us consider the isolated case of one star, ignoring for the moment any nearby stellar neighbors. The star in this case has surrounding it both the omnidirectionally sourced ACER and its own locally self-produced ERDG. The ACER that falls on the star directly is absorbed and eventually reemitted as part of the ERDG. There is an additional inflow of radiation from the ACER that can be attributed to the ERDG curving the ACER passing closest to the star onto the surface.

All of this radiational inflow is omnidirectional onto the surface of the star. In a sense the inflow attributable to curvature can be thought of as a “pulling on the nearby ACER but as it is a “pulling” in all directions there is no net effect on the star’s motion through the ACER. The ACER is essentially an inertial medium. Since the ACER is being curved by the ERDG of the star it is reasonable to think of the ERDG as the gravitating medium of the star. The curvature of passing radiation in the vicinity of a gravitating medium is an observed fact predicted by General Relativity but it is also predicted and observed behavior for light passing through any transparent medium with a density gradient

Now we introduce a small, but not infinitesimal, nearby test particle, a planetary object the size of the Earth, with some velocity relative to the star that is not significant with respect to Relativity Theory. Let us also assume that the initial trajectory is toward but not directly at the star. This test body will interact with the ACER that surrounds it in exactly the same way that the star does, with the exception being that the planet is only passively reradiating the radiation from the star that falls upon it – it is a passive not active emitter of electromagnetic radiation. Consequently the radiation density at the planet’s surface will be <<< than the radiation density at the surface of the star and the “gravitational effect” of the planet on the star-planet system will be much weaker.

As the planet draws closer to the star two simultaneously acting effects are taking place. Along the line that joins their centers of mass over an area that is defined by the projection of the planet’s shadow, the star will be curving the nearby passing ACER but no direct inflow will be taking place in that shadow region only a “pulling in” of the passing ACER that lies between the two bodies. A similar but smaller inflow is taking place over the surface of the planet facing the star.

At the same time the planet is passing through the star’s ERDG, with the surface of the planet closest to the star experiencing a stronger “gravitational effect”. That effect is directly attributable to the ERDG – the radiation density from the star is higher on the closer side of the planet. The primary higher density effect is that physical processes slow down in the denser radiation.

The result of the higher density will be the same as it is in any medium with a density gradient – among other things it will slow the passage of the nearer surface through the ERDG medium producing a curvature of the planet’s path while also inducing a rotation. The curved path of the planet is analogous to the curved path of light being caused by a slowing of light in the denser portion closer to the surface of the star. This behavior is typical in mediums with a density gradient. Gravitational attraction then is entirely explicable as an interaction effect between matter and an EMF with a density gradient (ERDG).

Galaxy Clusters

Gravitational lensing around a galaxy cluster requires considerable amounts of undetectable Dark Matter to “fit” the observations (of gravitational lensing) to the standard model. The excess observed curvature implied relative to calculations based on the mass distribution can be attributed to the fact that the x-ray hot plasma that constitutes up to 90% of a cluster’s mass has a higher radiation output than an equivalent stellar mass would produce. That excess high energy radiation will produce a stronger “gravitational” effect than the observed mass alone would predict using the standard gravitational models that correlate gravitational effects with mass density rather than radiation density.

This higher radiational output is due to the diffuse nature of of the cluster gas which is radiating outward from within its entire volume whereas a star is only radiating from its surface area; effectively the x-ray hot gas has a much lower Mass/EMR ratio than a star or galaxy.

This x-ray hot gas constitutes 90% of the cluster’s mass and produces a large excess of high density, high frequency radiation. And that radiation tracks the “gravitational” effects. That’s what’s there. What’s not there is Dark Matter. If gravitational effects are attributable to the density of the cluster’s EMF rather than the unobserved mass-dependent “gravitational” field, the mass discrepancy problem evaporates and with it the need for Dark Matter. Mercifully.

The Cosmological Redshift

It is a demonstrable fact that the General Relativity based math (Schwarzschild solution) that describes gravitational redshift can also be used to calculate the cosmological redshift for an Expanding Spherical Wavefront (ESW) of electromagnetic radiation. The resulting redshift resembles the cosmological redshift of the standard model which uses a different GR solution (FLRW) describing an Expanding Universe. See: Gravitational Redshift & Expanding Spherical Wavefronts

The mathematics involved here is not satisfactory because the Schwarzschild solution does not take into account the variation of light speed in a gravitational field. However, the qualitative picture presented, of an ESW losing energy as it is gradually absorbed by its encounters with galaxies and other intervening matter, demonstrates once again that an effect that can be described with standard gravitational math can be understood as arising from the direct interaction of Matter and electromagnetic fields.

The ACER is the aggregate of all the ESWs streaming through the Cosmos. A galaxy’s ERDG becomes a continuous outflow of ESWs on cosmological scales as the density gradient becomes negligible.

Coda

It is certainly fair to say that none of the foregoing constitutes “proof” that Matter-EMF interactions are responsible for all the various observed effects attributed to gravity. However science does not deal in “proofs” – those lie in the realm of mathematics and mathematics is not science. Science and physics deal in empirical evidence and the facts as presented here constitute, at minimum, strong evidence that the observed gravitational effects are correlated with observed Matter-EMF interactions.

As mentioned these correlations are not unknown and have been remarked upon elsewhere (excluding the ESW section) but that is all that has transpired. No serious research, either empirical or theoretical, has been conducted to determine if that correlation indicates a causal relation. Yet, MTP offers no explanation for the physical cause of gravity at all. Why then, this peculiar incuriosity? It seems attributable to the scientific academy having some legacy math that has been handed down for a century or more (if you count Newtonian gravity) and though neither the Newtonian nor Einsteinian gravitational models work on the scale of galaxies and galaxy clusters there exists a dogmatic belief, despite this obvious evidence to the contrary, that those models constitute Universal Laws.

The irrational result is that modern theoretical physicists appear to believe they know everything there is to know about gravity because they have some math (that doesn’t work well) and therefore there is no reason to do any research into what they do not know (the cause of gravity) because if it was important someone would have taught them about it in graduate school. Something like that. There really is no sensible explanation for the situation.

When Are Physicists Not Physicists?

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The answer to that question is straightforward: When they are babbling about mathematical models that have nothing to do with physics. When they are bloviating on the nature of physically meaningless concepts like Singularities. Here is a textbook example from that Journal of Mathematicism, Quanta Magazine.

In the fashion of modern theoretical physics the existence of singularities is first attributed disingenuously to Einstein: “Singularities are predictions of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity.“

That statement is simply false. The Singularities characteristic of Black Holes are predictions of the Schwarzschild solution to the GR field equations, while the Singularity of the Expanding Universe model (Big Bang) is a prediction of the FLRW solution to the GR field equations. It should be noted that both Black Holes and the Expanding Universe are also predictions of the respective mathematical solutions.

In order to arrive at their results it was necessary for both Schwarzschild and FLRW to make a number of simplifying assumptions. Schwarzschild left out a critical prediction of GR, that the speed of light varies with position in a gravitational gradient; FLRW decided that it was reasonable rather than self-contradictory to solve GR for a non-relativistic universal framework. Both “solutions” produce Singularities that are a consequence of their simplifying assumptions. Singularities are mathematical artifacts that have no physical significance.

The article acknowledges that some physicists understand that Singularities are not physically meaningful: “… singularities are widely seen as “mathematical artifacts,” as Hong Liu, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, put it, not objects that “occur in any physical universe.”

But what fun is that? The article quickly pivots to a discussion of some additional arcane mathematical models in which the Singularities are also present and “are proving hard to erase“:

The British mathematical physicist Roger Penrose won the Nobel Prize in Physics for proving in the 1960s that singularities would inevitably occur in an empty universe made up entirely of space-time. More recent research has extended this insight into more realistic circumstances. One paper established that a universe with quantum particles would also feature singularities, although it only considered the case where the particles don’t bend the space-time fabric at all. Then, earlier this year, a physicist proved that these blemishes exist even in theoretical universes where quantum particles do slightly nudge space-time itself — that is, universes quite a bit like our own.

Note that all of these models treat space-time as a substantival entity despite the fact that there is no scientific evidence to support the common mathematicist belief that space-time is a physical, causally-interacting substance. This lack of evidence for an essential component of the models means that none of them have anything of scientific value to say about the nature of the Cosmos we actually observe.

It should also be noted that the inability of the modelers to “erase” the Singularities in their models is a mathematical problem that has nothing to do with physical reality which does not contain Singularities. It’s just some math, not physics and the people purveying these models as if they had some physical significance are not physicists – they are just mathematicists.

A Relativistic Cosmos vs. The Unitary Universe

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The limitation of light speed to a finite maximum means that we do not have and most importantly, cannot have any knowledge of the current state of Andromeda (the nearest galaxy) which lies 2.5 million lightyears distant. It follows that we cannot have any knowledge regarding the “current state” of any of the galaxies that lie beyond Andromeda. This situation extends all the way out to our current observational range-limit which is now in excess of 10 billion lightyears.

There are two reasonable conclusions that can be drawn in light of this factual state of affairs.

We do not and cannot have any knowledge of a “current state of the Universe.”
The Universe of the standard model of cosmology does not exist in physical reality. This conclusion is consistent with the observed disconnect between the SMC and empirical reality – none of the defining elements of the SMC are observed in the Cosmos

It has always been this foundational assumption of a Unitary (simultaneously interconnected) Universe that undermines the SMC’s ability to render a coherent description of the Cosmos we actually observe. The idea that the Cosmos constitutes a simultaneously interconnected entity, such that we can speak scientifically of its “current state” or its origin, is belied by standard physics. Put simply there ain’t no such animal as the Unitary Universe of the standard model.

The belief that the Cosmos is a Unitary Universe and the older belief that the Earth is at the center of the Cosmos, are both wrong; they are simply wrong – about the nature of physical reality. As with geocentrism, no further progress in our understanding of the Cosmos will be made until the Unitary Universe is retired to the dustbin of history.

The Cosmos we observe is relativistic in nature – we are at the center of our observable Cosmos. Other observers in other galaxies would be at the center of their observable Cosmos which would at best only partially overlap with our own. There is no universal frame in the Relativistic Cosmos, there are only local frames. That statement is consistent with Relativity Theory. The UU is not consistent with Relativity Theory.

The relativistic nature of the Cosmos is widely acknowledged but not well understood and it is not incorporated into the SMC, as can be seen in this common depiction of a light cone:

This image is graphically correct but the labeling is incoherent, beginning with the apex being labeled Observer. It should instead be given the spatio-temporal designation Here And Now. The Future Light Cone should be labeled Emitted LC while the Past Light Cone should be labeled Received LC. The Hypersphere Of The Present should be labeled the Imaginary Hypersphere Of The Present to make it clear that for any observer at any specific Here and Now that imaginary hypersphere has no physical meaning – it does not exist in any local observer’s Cosmos.

The UU of the SMC is a model of the Imaginary Hypersphere Of The Present that is completely inaccessible to direct observation, measurement or detection. It is not part of our physical reality. Since science is restricted to the study of physical reality it follows that the SMC is not a scientific model; it is only a mathematical model of an imaginary, metaphysical conceit.

Although the SMC is based on a solution to the field equations of General Relativity, that solution assumes the existence of a universal frame, but that assumption is inconsistent with GR which does not have a universal frame. As a consequence, the resulting solution, the FLRW equations that are the basis of the SMC, is not a relativistic model and that means it is also not a realistic scientific model. The SMC is just some simplistic math based on a set of ill-formed ideas about the nature of physical reality concocted 100 years ago when scientists were still arguing whether the galaxies were part of or separate from the Milky Way.

The Relativistic Cosmos, in contrast, is entirely consistent with the light cone depiction. Any Here And Now in Relativistic Cosmology is unique and is not simultaneously connected to other Here And Nows on cosmological scales. That we cannot know the “current state of the Cosmos” is entirely consistent with RC. In a sense this is because RC is consistent with General Relativity which does not have a universal frame. Relativistic Cosmology is congruent with both theory and observation, the Unitary Universe is not. The Cosmos we observe is fundamentally relativistic in nature.

It is not polite to discuss DWRT

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I recently commented on an astrophysicist’s blog regarding a claim I consider ahistorical and inaccurate. The comment was deleted. I don’t have a problem with that – a blog is a personal space. However, I was responding to a specific claim about the origin of General Relativity that is both common and false. What follows is the one paragraph remark I was commenting on and my now-deleted response which admittedly ranges a bit further than simply refuting the quote requires:

The equivalence of inertial mass with gravitational charge is a foundational principle of general relativity. There are flavors of GR in which it falls out explicitly, e.g., Yilmaz’s gravity. But it is basically an assumption.

The equivalence of inertial and gravitational mass was an observed and measured fact known to Galileo and Newton. It was not an assumption of GR. The mid-20th century extensions of what is now called the Weak Equivalence Principle were little more than conjectures of mathematical convenience “suggested” by Robert H. Dicke. They had nothing to do with the development of GR.

Along with John A. Wheeler’s aphoristic, empirically baseless, invocation of a causally interacting spacetime, Dicke’s two extensions of the WEP were surreptitiously hung on Einstein’s General Relativity producing a grotesque variant that by rights should be known as Dicke-Wheeler Relativity Theory. It is DWRT that has been the officially taught version for the better part of 50 years although the D-W distortions are almost always attributed to Einstein. He would have puked.

It is DWRT that prompts otherwise rational people to insist that, despite theoretical and empirical evidence to the contrary, the speed of light is some sort of universal constant. It is DWRT that promotes the false claim that Einstein explained gravity as being caused by the curvature of space.

As far as space itself goes, it is a relational concept exactly like distance. That is all the evidence supports. In fact, space is best understood as the aggregate of all distances that separate you from all the other things in the Cosmos that aren’t you. Substantival space is a mathematicist fiction that has no scientific basis.

Throughout the Cosmos, everywhere within our observational range where there is no matter there is only electromagnetic radiation. That is an empirical fact. Everywhere people imagine they see space there is electromagnetic radiation. At any given 3D location that radiation is flowing omnidirectionally from all the omnidirectional emitters (stars and galaxies) within range. That is what we observe and that is how we observe.

As Mach surmised we are connected to the rest of the Cosmos or at least to those objects within range. That non-simultaneous connection is via electromagnetic radiation – that is what’s there. Until recently no one had bothered to do a full survey of what might be called the Ambient Cosmic Electromagnetic Radiation. The authors of this interesting paper seem to think they are the first. Everybody else was too busy looking for some dark stuff apparently.

Modern theoretical physics is all theory and no physics; it consists of nothing but the unrelenting and fruitless effort to prop up two inert century old models whose assumptions of mathematical convenience were lapped by physical reality decades ago. Tinkering with obsolete mathematical models does not constitute a scientific endeavor even if that is all that has been taught for the last 40 years.

Inertia, Gravity, & Electromagnetic Radiation

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This very interesting paper originally caught my attention because it demonstrates that Einstein rejected what the paper calls the “geometrization” of gravity and did so throughout his career not just at the end of his life. On a recent rereading I was struck by something else which is easy to forget – the subtly of Einstein’s thought.

The geometrization of gravity is an awkward term because it elides the central problem which is the reification of spacetime. It is well known that Einstein’s Relativity Theory employs the geometric math of Gauss-Riemann. What is at issue is whether that geometric math refers to a physical spacetime that causally interacts with matter and energy (electromagnetic radiation). Many argued that it did while Einstein rejected that interpretation as unphysical and uninformative.

Beyond the issue of what Einstein did not believe, the paper illuminates a seldom discussed subject – what Einstein did believe Relativity Theory accomplished, the unification of gravity and inertia. This unification is not found in the famous gravitational equation of General Relativity but in the lesser known geodesic equation. From the paper:

“We found that (i) Einstein thought of the geodesic equation in GR
as a generalisation of the law of inertia; (ii) in which inertia and gravity
were unified so that (iii) the very labeling of terms as ‘inertial’ and
‘gravitational’ respectively, becomes in principle “unnecessary”, even if
useful when comparing GR to Newtonian theory.“

While it is well understood that the Equivalence Principle* played a role in Einstein’s thought process while developing GR the importance of the geodesic equation as a formal realization of the EP is certainly not widely acknowledged as far as I am aware. The implications of that unification are profound.

One of the peculiarities of the modern theoretical physics community is their apparent disinterest in determining the physical cause of the gravitational effect. The reason for this disinterest is a philosophical attitude known as instrumentalism – if some math describes an observed outcome adequately then a causal explanation is superfluous. Instrumentalism is a variant of the scientifically baseless philosophical belief called mathematicism.

The purpose of science is to investigate the nature of physical reality, not to sit around fiddling with poorly constructed mathematical models of physical reality that do not remotely make sense when you inquire of the model, What does the math mean with regard to the physical system being modeled? The answer that typically comes back is a peculiar kind of bullshit that can be thought of as Big Science Babble.

Superposition Of States is Exhibit A of BSB on the quantum scale. Almost all quantum scale babble winds up at SOS or at Wave-Particle Duality. SOS tells us that an electron is never at a particular position until it is observed.

When an electron is detected it is always, not surprisingly, at a particular location but according to the mathematicists at all other times when not being observed the electron is in a SOS – it is spread out over all of its possible locations as described by some math (the wavefunction). How do they know this? Because the math doesn’t know where the electron is, so it can’t be anywhere in particular. Sure, of course.

BSB is rife on the cosmological scale. According to the standard model of cosmology the Cosmos is 95% made up of some invisible stuff while the stuff we actually observe provides the remaining 5%. How do scientists know this invisible stuff is there? Because it has to be there to make the Big Bang model work and everybody knows the BB model is correct because they said so in graduate school, so the invisible stuff has to be there, like it or not. Sure, of course.

At the root of all BSB, of course, is mathematicism. A mathematical model dictates an absurd story about physical reality which we are then supposed to believe without evidence because math determines the nature of physical reality. If mathematicists with pieces of paper saying they are scientists believe in BSB, shouldn’t you? No, you should not.

Physical reality is an afterthought to mathematicists for whom only math is of interest. That’s why no effort is being expended in the scientific academy to understand the physical cause of gravity; research funding is controlled by mathematicists. And since they already have some math that kind of works (as long as reality contains things it does not appear to contain), well that’s good enough – for mathematicists.

In real science, physical events and behaviors occur as a consequence of physical interactions. Those interactions can be matter/matter (collision), matter/radiation (emission, absorption, reflection), or radiation/radiation (interference) in nature. There is a good argument to be made that all observed gravitational and inertial effects arise as a consequence of matter/radiation interactions:

By observation, everywhere in the Cosmos that there is no matter, there is electromagnetic radiation.
Light traversing a gravitational field behaves as it does in a transparent medium with a density gradient. All approximately spherical gravitating bodies emit electromagnetic radiation omnidirectionally with a density gradient that falls off as 1/r².
The gravitational effect surrounding a spherical gravitating body falls off as 1/r².
The gravitational field then is just the Ambient Local Electromagnetic Radiation field surrounding a gravitating body.
In the intergalactic regions, far from any significant gravitating bodies there is only the ubiquitous Ambient Cosmic Electromagnetic Radiation.
The ACER is, to a good approximation, isotropic and this cosmically sourced electromagnetic field does not have a density gradient. It can be thought of as the inertial field.
This unified physical account of gravity and inertia is consistent with Einstein’s mathematical description of a unified gravity and inertia in the geodesic equation.**

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

*The Equivalence Principle Einstein employed is now known, since the mid 20th century, as the Weak Equivalence Principle to distinguish it from later, dubious extensions, added with little scientific justification after Einstein’s death in 1955.

**The forgoing does not constitute conclusive evidence that gravity is an effect of matter/electromagnetic-energy interactions – but it is evidence based on empirical observations. In contrast, there is no empirical evidence for the concept of gravity as a fundamental force.

Forces are themselves not things, they are effects. Of the four fundamental forces claimed by science to exist, only the electromagnetic force has any empirical basis. In fact though electromagnetic radiation is no more a “force” than a golf club is a “force”.

A golf club exerts a force on a golf ball by striking it, resulting in an acceleration of the ball. That applied force can be quantified using known mechanical laws. The term force describes that interaction but force is just a descriptive term for the interaction between the golf club and golf ball, it is not the golf club nor is it a separate thing in itself. The same analysis applies to EMR; it is not a force but it can exert a force when it strikes a physical object.

Mathematicist Follies & the DWRT

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Here are some choice tidbits from a recent Tim Anderson article titled Zero-point energy may not exist. I’m always supportive of any effort to drag theoretical physics back into contact with empirical reality so the suggestion that ZPE may not exist is at least promising. It even suggests the possibility that modern theoretical physics might emerge from its self-imposed exile in Plato’s cave, the cave-of-choice in this case being mathematicism.

In reading the article any hope of a scientific restoration is dashed, as one is quickly immersed in sea of mathematicist illogic. Here for instance is the “reasoning” that underlies the ZPE concept:

…it means that nothing has non-zero energy and because there is an infinite amount of nothing there must be an infinite amount of energy.

While it is clear that the author is distancing himself from the ZPE concept, that account of the underlying “reasoning” gives rise to the simple question, how did such flamboyantly illogical nonsense gain any traction in the scientific community? The answer of course is mathematicism which is itself a flagrantly illogical proposition, just not recognized as such by the denizens of the mathematicist cave. Then there is this little gem (emphasis added):

Quantum field theory, which is the best theory of how matter works in the universe that we have, suggests that all matter particles are excitations of fields. The fields permeate the universe and matter interacts with those fields in various ways. That is all well and good of course. We are not questioning that these fields exist. The question is whether a field in a ground state has any measureable effect on matter.

So in their “best theory” the universe is permeated by many fields and matter is an excitation of those fields. Physical reality however only contains one observed field and that is the electromagnetic field which is the aggregate of all the electromagnetic radiation that permeates the Cosmos. That radiation is constantly being emitted by all the luminous matter that also permeate the Cosmos. There are no additional observed fields as described by QFT.

Despite the fact that the QFT fields are not observed the author does not wish to question their existence. Why? Mathematicism, of course. If a math model says something is there and physical reality declines to offer any evidence in support of such a conjecture, the mathematicist position is that the math is correct and reality is perversely withholding the evidence.

Imagine we have a sensitive Hawking radiation detector orbiting a black hole. The detector is in a state of free fall, meaning that it experiences no gravitational forces on it.

This last bit invokes a wholly imaginary thought experiment involving imaginary radiation emitted by an imaginary black hole. Without any empirical basis or logical connection to known physics, it has no scientific significance even if the “experiment” somehow reflects badly on the ZPE concept. In that, it only amounts to an illogical argument refuting an illogical concept.

The second sentence also presents a widely promulgated claim that has no basis in physics. The idea that an observer or detector in free fall experiences no gravitational forces on it is purely unphysical nonsense. An observer or detector can only be in a state of free fall if they are experiencing a gravitational force. The typical basis for this claim is that the observer is prohibited from making observations that would clearly show the presence of a gravitating body and thus demonstrate the presence of a gravitational field.

Einstein is usually credited with this view but in fact his conception of the equivalence principle was highly constrained and did not extend to fundamentally illogical claims like the one made above. The version of the equivalence principle Einstein employed is now called the Weak Equivalence Principle.

The two extensions of the equivalence principle contrived and adopted after Einstein’s death, the disingenuously named Einstein EP (he had nothing to do with it) and the Strong EP have no logical, scientific or theoretical justification. They were merely conjectures of mathematical convenience proposed by the physicist Robert H. Dicke, who along with his colleague John A. Wheeler, concocted a distorted variant of Einstein’s Relativity Theory. That variant is presented today as Einstein’s RT but it is a separate theory and should have it’s own name — Dicke-Wheeler Relativity Theory.

It is in DWRT that you will find the EEP and SEP as well as a reified version of spacetime which is said to causally interact with matter and energy causing the gravitational effect and facilitating the Expansion of the Universe. There is no empirical evidence supporting those ad hoc additions to ERT. They are simply mathematicist conjectures that have no scientific basis or logical connection to physical reality. In modern theoretical physics though, they are treated as axioms — true by definition.

Mathematicism is the principle driver of the Crisis in Physics. The reason for this is simple: math is not physics. The controlling paradigm in modern theoretical physics, however, is that math is the basis of physics and mathematical models determine the nature of physical reality. That paradigm is a philosophical belief that has no scientific basis.

As a consequence of mathematicism theoretical physicists espouse two standard models that describe a physical reality containing a large number of entities and events that are not part of the physical reality we actually observe. Modern theoretical physics does not constitute a science so much as a cult of belief.

You have to believe in the expanding universe, in dark matter and dark energy, in quarks and gluons. You have to believe that the speed of light in a vacuum is a universal constant even though it cannot be measured as such and is not constant in General Relativity — at least according to Einstein.* You have to believe in these things because they are not demonstrably part of physical reality. Scientists don’t traffic in beliefs but mathematicists do and so there is a Crisis in Physics

* The speed of light is a universal constant according to Dicke-Wheeler Relativity Theory.

Simultaneously published at Medium.

Denial Of The Deluded

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The New York Times has a recent guest article entitled The Story of Our Universe May Be Starting to Unravel. It is in some ways good to see doubts about the Standard Model of Cosmology surfacing in the mainstream press. What the authors, an astrophysicist and a theoretical physicist, have on offer though is some weak tea and a healthy dose of the usual exculpatory circular reasoning.

The authors do point out some of the gaping holes in the SMoC’s account of the Cosmos:

“normal” matter — the stuff that makes up people and planets and everything else we can see — constitutes only about 4 percent of the universe. The rest is invisible stuff called dark matter and dark energy (roughly 27 percent and 68 percent).
Cosmic inflation is an example of yet another exotic adjustment made to the standard model. Devised in 1981 to resolve paradoxes arising from an older version of the Big Bang, the theory holds that the early universe expanded exponentially fast for a fraction of a second after the Big Bang.

That’s a start I guess but then we get this absurd rationalization for simply accepting the invisible and entirely ad hoc components of the SMoC:

There is nothing inherently fishy about these features of the standard model. Scientists often discover good indirect evidence for things that we cannot see, such as the hyperdense singularities inside a black hole.

Let’s be clear here about this so-called “indirect evidence“; all of it essentially boils down to model dependent inference. Which is to say, you cannot see any evidence for these invisible and/or impossible (singularities) things unless you peer through the distorting lenses of the simplistic mathematical models beloved of modern theoretical physicists. People who believe that mathematical models determine the nature of physical reality are not scientists, they are mathematicists and they are deluded – they believe in things that, all the evidence says, are not there.

Not only are mathematicists not scientists, they are not good mathematicians either. If they were good at math and found that one of their models was discordant with physical observations they would correct the math to reflect observations. What mathematicists do is correct reality to fit their math. That is where the dark sector (dark matter & dark energy) come from – they added invisible stuff to reality to make it fit their broken model.

A mathematician did come up with a correction to Newtonian dynamics that had been inaccurately predicting the rotation curves of disk galaxies. Mordehai Milgrom developed MOND (Modified Newtonian Dynamics) in the 1980s and it was quite successful in predicting galactic disk dynamics.

Unfortunately the mathematicists had already off-loaded their problem onto reality by positing the existence of some unseen dark matter. All you have to know about the state of modern theoretical physics is that after 40 years of relentless searching and failure to discover any empirical evidence there remains a well-funded Dark Matter cottage industry, hard at work seeking evidence for the non-existent. This continuing search for that which is not there represents a betrayal of science.

It might appear that the authors here are not mathematicists given that they seem to be suggesting that the SMoC is not sacrosanct and needs to be reconsidered in its entirety:

We may be at a point where we need a radical departure from the standard model, one that may even require us to change how we think of the elemental components of the universe, possibly even the nature of space and time.

Sounds promising but alas, the reconsideration is not to be of the foundational assumptions of the model itself but only certain peripheral aspects that rest on those assumptions such as “…the assumption that scientific laws don’t change over time.” Or they suggest giving consideration to to this loopy conjecture: “…every act of observation influences the future and even the past history of the universe.“

What the authors clearly do not wish to reconsider is the model’s underlying concept of an Expanding Universe. That assumption – and it is only an assumption of the model – was adopted 100 years ago at a time when it was still being debated whether the galaxies we observed were a part of, or separate from, the Milky Way. It was, in other words, an assumption made in ignorance of the nature and extent of the Cosmos as we now observe it. The authors treat the Expanding Universe concept as though it had been handed down on stone tablets by some God of Mathematicism:

A potent mix of hard-won data and rarefied abstract mathematical physics, the standard model of cosmology is rightfully understood as a triumph of human ingenuity. It has its origins in Edwin Hubble’s discovery in the 1920s that the universe was expanding — the first piece of evidence for the Big Bang. Then, in 1964, radio astronomers discovered the so-called Cosmic Microwave Background, the “fossil” radiation reaching us from shortly after the universe began expanding.

For the record, Edwin Hubble discovered a correlation between the redshift of light from a galaxy and its distance. That is all he discovered. It is an assumption of the model that the redshift is caused by some form of recessional velocity. It is also an assumption of the abstract mathematical physics known as the FLRW equations that the Cosmos is a unified, coherent, and simultaneously existing entity that has a homogenous and isotropic matter-energy distribution. Both of those assumptions have been falsified by observations and by known physics.

Also for the record it should be noted that prior to the discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation predictions by Big Bang cosmologists ranged over an order of magnitude that did not encompass the observed 2.7K value. At the same time scientists using thermodynamic considerations made more accurate predictions.

The belief in an Expanding Universe has no scientific basis. It is a mathematicist fantasy, and until that belief is set aside, the Standard Model of Cosmology will remain a crappy, deluded fairy tale that does not in any objective way resemble the magnificent Cosmos we observe.

The Radiation Density Gradient

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A thought experiment: Imagine a spherical blackbody the size and density of the sun. Now place that body deep in the InterGalactic Medium. In such a location a blackbody will be absorbing all of the Ambient Cosmic Electromagnetic Radiation that flows continuously through any location in the IGM. Eventually we should expect the sphere to settle into a state of equilibrium with the ACER, continuously absorbing and reemitting all the energy it receives.

This means that there must exist a Radiation Density Gradient surrounding the blackbody consisting of all the inbound and outbound radiation. By normal geometric considerations we should expect the gradient to drop off as 1/R², R being the radius.

The question is, just how much energy is that? The answer depends on the surface area of the sphere, which is easy to calculate, and the energy density of the ACER which doesn’t seem to be cleanly known, Various frequency bands have been observed to varying degrees. This recent survey of the Cosmic spectrum as a whole suggests that the aggregate nature, behavior and effect of the ACER has not been properly and fully assessed.

Given some reasonable value for the ACER density it would be possible to estimate the RDG of the sphere. With a reasonable value for the RDG a calculation could then be made, using optical considerations, of the curvature to be expected for the path of a light ray passing through the RDG, feeding that curved light back into the RDG calculation. The result could then be compared to the standard curvature predicted by General Relativity but first the additional energy directly radiated by the sun would have to be factored in. Something to think about. Somebody else will have to do the math though. That’s not my gig.

The Mathematicist’s Tale

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19Jun22 The following was posted as a comment to this Medium post by Eric Siegel. It has been slightly edited.

This is a good overview of the illogical mathematicism at the root of the inane Big Bang model. The Friedmann equation is indeed the headwaters of all the nonsense that currently engulfs and overwhelms any possibility of a meaningful scientific account of the Cosmos.

The Friedmann equation rests not only on the two simplifying assumptions of mathematical convenience, isotropy and homogeneity, the author cites. There was also an unstated but implicit assumption that the Cosmos could be treated as a unified, coherent, simultaneous entity, a Universe.

Further it was assumed that the field equations of General Relativity, derived in the context of the solar system, could be stretched to encompass this imaginary Universe. The results speak for themselves.

The standard model of cosmology is an incoherent, unscientific mess. It claims that once upon a time 13.8 billion years ago the entirety of the Cosmos was compressed into a volume smaller than a gnat’s ass that began expanding for an inexplicable reason, then accelerated greatly due to the fortuitous intervention of an invisible inflaton field, which set invisible spacetime expanding at just the right rate to arrive at the current state of the Universe, which we are told is 95% composed of some invisible matter and energy that has no other purpose than to make the model agree with observations; the remaining 5% of this Universe is the stuff we actually observe.

To be clear, all of the entities and events the standard model describes are not part of the Cosmos we actually observe except for that rather trivial 5% of the BB Universe. That 5% of the model is the Cosmos we observe.

Science is the study of those things that can be observed and measured. At some point in the mid 20th century theoretical physicists adopted the conceit that science was the study of mathematical models. This categorical error was compounded by treating scientific hypotheses such as “universal expansion” as axioms (true by definition). In science, all truths are provisional; nothing can be held true by definition.

Axioms belong to the mathematical domain. Math is not science and the mathematicist belief that math underlies and determines the nature of physical reality has no scientific basis. That the Cosmos is a unified, coherent and simultaneously existing entity can only be true if the Cosmos had a miraculous simultaneous origin – the Big Bang,

The problem with miracles is that they are not scientific in nature; they cannot be studied only believed in. Believing in the Big Bang and weaving a fantastical account of an imaginary Universe is a mathematical/metaphysical endeavor that has nothing to do with science or physical reality.

Imaginary Universe? That’s right, the Universe of the Big Bang has no basis in any known physics. In the physics we know, there is a finite, maximum limit to the speed of electromagnetic radiation – 3×10^8 meters per second (186,000 miles per hour). It is via electromagnetic radiation that we observe the Cosmos.

The galaxy nearest to our own is Andromeda; it is detectable by the unaided eye as a fuzzy patch in the night sky. Andromeda is @ 2.5 million light years from Earth. Everything we know about Andromeda is 2.5 million years out of date, of its current state we do not have and cannot have any direct knowledge.

At the far extent of our observational range we observe galaxies that are @10 billion light years away. We do not have and cannot have any knowledge of the current state of any of those galaxies. The same argument holds for all the other galaxies we observe.

Galaxies are the primary constituents of the Cosmos we observe. It follows, therefore, that we do not and cannot have knowledge of the Cosmos’ current state. The very idea of the Cosmos having a current state is scientifically meaningless. Mathematicists believe otherwise:

“If you want to understand the Universe, cosmologically, you just can’t do it without the Friedmann equation. With it, the cosmos is yours.“

See that’s all you need, a simple mathematical model derived 100 years ago by “solving” the field equations of General Relativity (which does not have a universal frame) for a simplistic toy model of the Cosmos (that does have a universal frame). Suddenly you can know everything about everything, even things you can’t possibly observe or measure. That’s mathematicism hard at work creating an imaginary Universe for mathematicists to believe in. The standard model of cosmology has no scientific basis; it is a nerd fantasy and it is scientifically useless.

Why The Cosmos Is Not A Universe

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One of the fundamental assumptions underlying the standard model of cosmology, commonly known as the Big Bang, is that the Cosmos comprises a unified, coherent and simultaneous entity – a Universe. It is further assumed that this “Universe” can be mathematically approximated under that unitary assumption using a gravitational model, General Relativity, that was devised in the context of our solar system. At the time that assumption was first adopted the known scale of the Cosmos was that of the Milky Way, our home galaxy, which is orders of magnitude larger and more complex than the solar system.

Subsequently as the observed Cosmos extended out to the current 13 billion light year range, it has become clear that the Cosmos is orders of magnitude larger and more complex than our galaxy. The resulting Big Bang model has become, as a consequence, absurd in its depiction of a cosmogenesis and ludicrous in its depiction of the “current state of the “Universe“, as the model attempts to reconcile itself with the observed facts of existence.

It will be argued here that the unitary conception of the Cosmos was at its inception and is now, as illogical as it is incorrect.

I Relativity Theory

The unitary assumption was first adopted by the mathematician Alexander Friedmann a century ago as a simplification employed to solve the field equations of General Relativity. It imposed a “universal” metric or frame on the Cosmos. This was an illogical or oxymoronic exercise because a universal frame does not exist in the context of Relativity Theory. GR is a relativistic theory because it does not have a universal frame.

There is, of course, an official justification for invoking a universal frame in a relativistic context. Here it is from a recent Sabine Hossenfelder video:

In general relativity, matter, or all kinds of energy really, affect the geometry of space and time. And so, in the presence of matter the universe indeed gets a preferred direction of expansion. And you can be in rest with the universe. This state of rest is usually called the “co-moving frame”, so that’s the reference frame that moves with the universe. This doesn’t disagree with Einstein at all.

The logic here is strained to the point of meaninglessness; it is another example of the tendency of mathematicists to engage in circular reasoning. First we assume a Universe then we assert that the universal frame which follows of necessity must exist and therefore the unitary assumption is correct!

This universal frame of the BB is said to be co-moving and therefore everything is supposedly OK with Einstein (meaning General Relativity, I guess) too, despite the fact that Einstein would not have agreed with Hossenfelder’s first sentence; he did not believe that General Relativity geometrized gravity, nor did he believe in a causally interacting spacetime. The universal frame of the BB model is indeed co-moving in the sense that it is expanding universally (in the model). That doesn’t make it a non-universal frame, just an expanding one. GR does not have a universal frame, co-moving or not.

Slapping a non-relativistic frame on GR was fundamentally illogical, akin to shoving a square peg into a round hole and insisting the fit is perfect. The result though speaks for itself. The Big Bang model is ludicrous and absurd because the unitary assumption is wrong.

II The Speed of Light

The speed of light in the Cosmos has a theoretical maximum limit of approximately 3×10⁸ meters per second in inertial and near-initial conditions. The nearest star to our own is approximately 4 light years away, the nearest galaxy is 2.5 million LY away. The furthest observed galaxy is 13.4 billion LY.* This means that our current information about Proxima Centauri is 4 years out of date, for Andromeda it is 2.5 million years out of date, and for the most distant galaxy 13.4 billion years out of date.

Despite this hard limit to our information about the Cosmos, the BB model leads cosmologists to perceive themselves capable of making grandiose claims, unverifiable of course, about the current state of the Cosmos they like to call a Universe. In the BB model’s Universe it is easy to speak of the model Universe’s current state but this is just another example of the way the BB model does not accurately depict the Cosmos we observe.

In reality we cannot have and therefore, do not have, information about a wholly imaginary global condition of the Cosmos. Indeed, the Cosmos cannot contain such knowledge.

Modern cosmologists are given to believing they can have knowledge of things that have no physical meaning because they believe their mathematical model is capable of knowing unknowable things. That belief is characteristic of the deluded pseudo-philosophy known as mathematicism; it is a fundamentally unscientific conceit.

III The Cosmological Redshift

The second foundational assumption of the BB model, is that the observed redshift-distance relationship found (or at least confirmed) by the astronomer Edwin Hubble in the late 1920s was caused by some form of recessional velocity. Indeed, it is commonly stated that Hubble discovered that the Universe is expanding. It is a matter of historical record, however, that Hubble himself did not ever completely agree with that view:

To the very end of his writings he maintained this position, favouring (or at the very least keeping open) the model where no true expansion exists, and therefore that the redshift “represents a hitherto unrecognized principle of nature”.

Allan Sandage

However, for the purposes of this discussion, the specific cause of the cosmological redshift does not matter. The redshift-distance relation implies that if the Cosmos is of sufficient size there will always be galaxies sufficiently distant that they will lie beyond the observational range of any local observer. Light from those most distant sources will be extinguished by the redshift before reaching any observer beyond the redshift limited range of the source. Even in the context of the BB, it is generally acknowledged that the field of galaxies extends beyond the potentially observable range.

The extent of the Cosmos, therefore, is currently unknown and, to three dimensionally localized observers such as ourselves, inherently unknowable. A model, such as the BB, that purports to encompass the unknowable is fundamentally unscientific; it is, by its very nature, only a metaphysical construct unrelated to empirical reality.

IV The Cosmos – A Relativistic POV

Given the foregoing considerations it would seem reasonable to dismiss the unitary conception of the Cosmos underlying the Big Bang model. The question then arises, how should we think of the Cosmos?

Unlike scientists of 100 years ago when it was an open debate whether or not the nearby galaxies were a part of our galaxy, modern cosmologists have a wealth of data stretching out now to 13 billion light years. The quality and depth of that data falls off the farther out we observe however.

The Cosmos looks more or less the same in all directions, but it appears to be neither homogenous nor isotropic nor of a determinable, finite size. That is our view of the Cosmos from here on Earth; it is our point of view.

This geocentric POV is uniquely our own and determines our unique view of the Cosmos; it is a view that belongs solely to us. Observers similarly located in a galaxy 5 billion light years distant from us would see a similar but different Cosmos. Assuming similar technology, looking in a direction opposite the Milky Way the distant observers would find in their cosmological POV a vast number of galaxies that lie outside our own POV. In looking back in our direction, the distant observer would not see many of the galaxies that lie within our cosmological POV.

It is only in this sense of our geocentric POV that we can speak of our universe. The contents of our universe do not comprise a physically unified, coherent and simultaneously existing physical entity. The contents of our universe in their entirety are unified only by our locally-based observations of those contents.

The individual galactic components of our universe each lie at the center of their own local POV universe. Nearby galaxies would have POV universes that have a large overlap with our own. The universes of the most distant observable galaxies would overlap less than half of our universe. Those observers most distant and in opposite directions in our universe would not exist in each others POV.

So what then can we say of the Cosmos? Essentially it is a human conceptual aggregation of all the non-simultaneously reviewable matter-energy systems we call galaxies. The field of galaxies extends omni-directionally beyond the range of observation for any given three dimensionally localized observer and the Cosmos is therefore neither simultaneously accessible nor knowable. The Cosmos does not have a universal frame or a universal clock ticking. As for all 3D observers, the Cosmos tails away from us into a fog of mystery, uncontained by space, time, or the human imagination. We are of the Cosmos but can not know it in totality because it does not exist on those terms.

To those who might find this cosmological POV existentially unsettling it can only be said that human philosophical musings are irrelevant to physical reality; the Cosmos contains us, we do not contain the Cosmos. This is what the Cosmos looks like when the theoretical blinders of the Big Bang model are removed and we adopt the scientific method of studying the things observed in the context of the knowledge of empirical reality that has already been painstakingly bootstrapped over the centuries by following just that method.

___________________________________________________

* In the funhouse mirror of the Big Bang belief system, this 13.4 GLY distance isn’t really a distance, it’s the time/distance the light traveled to reach us. At the time it was emitted according to the BB model the galaxy was only 2.6 GLY distant but is “now” 32 GLY away. This “now“, of course, implies a “universal simultaneity” which Relativity Theory prohibits. In the non-expanding Cosmos we actually inhabit, the 13.4 GLY is where GN-z11 was when the light was emitted (if our understanding of the redshift-distance relation holds at that scale.) Where it is “now” is not a scientifically meaningful question because it is not an observable and there is. in the context of GR, no scientific meaning to the concept of a “now” that encompasses ourselves and such a widely separated object.

Two Big Lies

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This fundamental idea — that matter and energy tells spacetime how to curve, and that curved spacetime, in turn, tells matter and energy how to move — represented a revolutionary new view of the universe. Put forth in 1915 by Einstein and validated four years later during a total solar eclipse — when the bending of starlight coming from light sources behind the sun agreed with Einstein’s predictions and not Newton’s — general relativity has passed every observational and experimental test we have ever concocted.
How to understand Einstein’s equation for General Relativity

Sooner or later it seems Ethan Siegel will trot out every disingenuous argument employed by the Big Bang cult in support of its peculiarly unscientific belief system. Two big lies about General Relativity popular among the faithful are succinctly presented in the above quote. The first is that Einstein “put forth” the idea of that GR reduced gravity to the geometrization of a substantival spacetime.

Einstein opposed that view throughout the years subsequent to GR’s introduction, whenever it was proposed. That is a matter of historical record. The formulation that Siegel presents here is a paraphrasing of John A. Wheeler’s well known assertion. That assertion directly contradicts Einstein’s clearly and repeatedly stated position on the matter.

The second big lie is that GR “has passed every observational and experimental test…“. That is true only of tests performed on the scale of the solar system. GR does not pass tests on galactic and cosmological scales without the ad hoc addition of dark matter and dark energy. The existence of neither of those hypothetical entities is supported by direct empirical evidence; the only support they can realistically be said to have is that they reconcile GR with observations. Siegel knows this, he just chooses not to mention it. That is what is known as a lie of omission:

Lying by omission, also known as a continuing misrepresentation or quote mining, occurs when an important fact is left out in order to foster a misconception… An omission is when a person tells most of the truth, but leaves out a few key facts that therefore, completely obscures the truth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie#Types_and_associated_terms

Adventures in Theoretical Physics II – Fun with General Relativity

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Well here’s a cute little video that manages to do a good job of conveying just how daft and detached from reality theoretical physics has gotten over the last century:

The first 11 minutes or so are effectively a sales pitch for one of the structural elements of the Big Bang Model – Spacetime. The deal is, you’re supposed to believe that the force of gravity is not really there – nothing is holding you to the surface of the earth, rather the earth is accelerating upward and pushing against you.

And the reason this is happening is that you are not following a curved path in –Spacetime, because according to the video you are being knocked off of that curved path by the earth that is accelerating upwards and you are in the way and that’s gravity, tada! How do we know this? Well that’s obvious, it’s in the math and the math tells reality what’s going on and if reality doesn’t like it, that’s too bad. So don’t go trusting your lying eyes, alright.

In addition to Spacetime, this fairy tale is predicated on a ridiculous over-extension of the Principle of Equivalence that Einstein used in developing Special Relativity. Einstein was very clear that the POE applied only under the severely constrained circumstances of a thought experiment. His main purpose seems to have been to provide a physical interpretation for the observed equivalency between gravitational and inertial masses. Einstein presented the POE as informing his ideas about gravity.

The video ignores Einstein’s constraints and pretends the POE is fundamental to General Relativity, so it winds up insisting that things that are obviously not true in physical reality, are, nonetheless, true simply because the math can be framed that way – your lying eyes be damned.

We are told that a man falling off a roof is in the exact same situation as an observer in a non-accelerating rocket ship far from any gravitating body. This claim is made even though it is obviously not true; the falling man will be injured, if not killed, when he hits the ground, whereas no such fate will befall the observer in the rocket ship.

So the idea is, until the falling man meets his unfortunate fate, the situation is the same and therefore both situations are the same, the different outcomes not withstanding – because the math is the same. Observers free falling in orbit won’t be able to tell they’re not in an inertial frame – unless they look out the window, so that’s just like being in an inertial frame too. Right, of course.

In a similar vein, the video insists that an observer in a rocket accelerating at 9.8 m/s^2 will not be able to tell the difference between that situation and standing on the surface of the earth. The presenter fails to mention however, that only holds true as long as the observer doesn’t observe out the window, which will alert the observer that the rocket and therefore the observer are not at rest on the surface of a large gravitating body and therefore the situation is not comparable to standing at rest on the surface of the earth. Also, if any observer steps off the rocket, they will be left behind as the rocket accelerates away. But nevertheless, it’s all the same – as long as no one looks out the window, and maybe you remember that the earth is actually accelerating upwards under your feet, like the floor of the rocket. Sure, of course.

For the sake of introducing some sanity in this matter, here is Einstein on the POE. Note that the second paragraph completely contradicts the claims made in the video implying the equivalence of all inertial and non-inertial frames.

We must note carefully that the possibility of this mode of interpretation rests on the
fundamental property of the gravitational field of giving all bodies the same acceleration, or, what comes to the same thing, on the law of the equality of inertial and gravitational mass…
Now we might easily suppose that the existence of a gravitational field is always only an apparent one. We might also think that, regardless of the kind of gravitational field which may be present, we could always choose another reference-body such that no gravitational field exists with reference to it. This is by no means true for all gravitational fields, but only for those of quite special form. It is, for instance, impossible to choose a body of reference such that, as judged from it, the gravitational field of the earth (in its entirety) vanishes.
RELATIVITY THE SPECIAL AND GENERAL THEORIES, ALBERT EINSTEIN, authorized translation by Robert W. Lawson, original version 1916, translated 1920, appendices 3 and 4 added 1920, appendix 5 added to English translation 1954

It is clear from this statement that the POE of Einstein’s thought experiment is the Galilean version, commonly referred to nowadays as the “Weak” POE. The so-called “Einsteinian” and “Strong” POEs of modern cosmology are post-Einstein formulations attributed initially to Robert Dicke, though there were doubtless others who perpetrated and embellished this nonsense. Neither extension of the POE has anything to do with the foundations of Einstein’s Relativity Theory. It is those mid-20th century extensions that are misleadingly presented in the video as fundamental features of General Relativity.

The POE, in its current, extended usage, is mostly just a conjecture of mathematical convenience, allowing theorists to use Special Relativity math instead of the more difficult General Relativity formulations. It also results in a theoretical claim that the speed of light in a vacuum is a universal constant. That claim contradicts both GR which predicts that the speed of light varies with position in a gravitational field and observations which confirm that prediction.

This unwarranted belief that the speed of light is a universal constant has also produced a cottage industry of theorists expounding a theory of undetected structures called Black Holes with the physically absurd properties of an event horizon and a singularity. No such structures exist. The relativistic slowing of light in a gravitational field precludes their existence. It does not preclude the existence of massive high-density objects.

Ok, let’s grant that this video presentation is of dubious scientific quality and does not, perhaps, represent the consensus view of the scientific community, particularly with regard to the so-called Principle of Equivalence, although if not the consensus, the Strong POE certainly commands significant support by a majority of theoretical cosmologists . The usual suspects will whine, of course, that pop-science presentations like this video cannot be trusted.

That complaint is also lodged against anything written for a general audience, even when the author is a fully accredited scientist with a relevant FAS (full alphabet soup) after their name. If it’s written so non-experts can understand it, then it is, on some level, wrong.

The reason for this situation is straightforward: much of what theoretical physicists believe cannot be translated into clear, logical, statements of scientific fact. What you get instead is confident handwaving consisting of metaphysical assertions that have no factual basis in empirical reality and a lot of math. According to theorists this is because theoretical physics can only be properly understood by those steeped in years of study of the underlying mathematical esoterica that informs only the truly knowledgeable. To which the only proper retort is: math is not physics and if your math cannot be translated into empirically verifiable physical terms – then your math is inadequate to the task of being a proper scientific model of physical reality.

The modern POE is just a conjecture of mathematical convenience, nothing more. Nonetheless, this modern POE permeates and perverts the scientific literature. Here is an Encyclopedia of Britannica entry for the POE:

In the Newtonian form it asserts, in effect, that, within a windowless laboratory freely falling in a uniform gravitational field, experimenters would be unaware that the laboratory is in a state of nonuniform motion. All dynamical experiments yield the same results as obtained in an inertial state of uniform motion unaffected by gravity. This was confirmed to a high degree of precision by an experiment conducted by the Hungarian physicist Roland Eötvös. In Einstein’s version, the principle asserts that in free-fall the effect of gravity is totally abolished in all possible experiments and general relativity reduces to special relativity, as in the inertial state.
Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Equivalence principle”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 31 Mar. 2019, https://www.britannica.com/science/equivalence-principle. Accessed 6 June 2021.

It should be noted that, according to the encyclopedia’s referenced article on Roland Eötvös, his experiment “… resulted in proof that inertial mass and gravitational mass are equivalent…“, which is to say, that it demonstrated the Weak POE only. It is also clear, that the authors of this entry are confused about the distinctions between the three POEs. But what of that; it’s only an encyclopedia trying to make sense of the nonsensical world of the modern theoretical physicist and modern theoretical physics is an unscientific mess.

Junk Science in The New Yorker

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So, an interesting and even-handed account of the recent acknowledgement by the US government of ongoing investigations into UFO phenomena contains this whopper:

Interstellar travel by living beings still seems like a wildly remote possibility, but physicists have known since the early nineteen-nineties that faster-than-light travel is possible in theory, and new research has brought this marginally closer to being achievable in practice.

This is not an accurate scientific assessment of the possibility of faster-than-light travel. What it appears to be referring to is the mathematicist fantasy of an Alcubierre warp-drive. You can find a succinct presentation of this “theory” here. It is a short and not technically difficult presentation which seems to reach a straightforward conclusion:

At present, such a thing just doesn’t seem to be entirely within the realm of possibility. And attempts to prove otherwise remain unsuccessful or inconclusive.

Things would have been fine if they left it at that but the nerd community, having had their minds warped by too many repeated viewings of Star Wars-Trek fantasy-fiction- movies, had to add a more hopeful note:

But as history has taught us, what is considered to be impossible changes over time. Someday, who knows what we might be able to accomplish?

Unfortunately history has also taught us that the human imagination is not a reliable guide to the nature of physical reality. The Alcubierre drive rests on the scientifically baseless presumption that spacetime is a causally interacting element of physical reality. There is no empirical evidence for such a presumption.

There is, however, a significant contingent of Academy Certified Scientists who believe in the existence of a physical spacetime. This belief is entirely based on the assumption, by the mid-20th century neo-Relativists (Misner, Thorne, Wheeler, et al), that such a spacetime exists. However, real science cannot be based on what MTW (or you or I) believe. Real science rests on empirical evidence, not on, in this case, the spurious reification of relational concepts.

Like Star Wars itself, the Alcubierre drive is a pseudo-scientific fantasy that amuses and confuses a certain reality-challenged subset of humanity, many of whom, unfortunately, are puking up this indigestible, hairball of irrationality in the halls of the Scientific Academy. The New Yorker is not to blame for this mess, but thoughtlessly repeating such unscientific nonsense, as if it had a scientific basis, is not helpful.

The Unprincipled Principle & The Persistence of Mistakes

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Over at Triton Station, Stacy McGaugh has a series of posts on the recent, and ongoing, successful predictions of MOND at the galactic scale, beginning with the December 31, 2020 post, 25 Years A Heretic, which provides an excellent historical overview of the situation. It is thankfully, solidly couched in empirical observations.

The last two posts in the Comments section of the linked post are by Apass and Phillip Helbig. I had intended to reply to them in a timely fashion but by the time I got around to it the Comment section was closed. Following are the replies I intended to post:

@Apass,

… through what mechanism would this new disk model give rise to the EFE felt by a satellite galaxy isolated by tens of thousands of light years where you cannot invoke anymore viscosity-like effects?

Given that the mechanism through which gravity causes its effects is generally unknown, that’s an odd question. If a theoretical model of disk dynamics limning the mass distribution replicated MOND’s success in describing the rotational curves, I would be surprised if it didn’t also account for the EFE. After all, satellite galaxies are not, by definition, gravitationally isolated from their host galaxy.

The fact that DM didn’t predict the EFE is probably a function of the fact that DM doesn’t successfully predict anything except itself. It is always deployed, as a patch to a failure of an implementation, on significantly larger scales, of the standard gravitational model of the solar system. If the EFE holds up, which I expect it will, there will likely be a concerted effort to post-dict it with DM. This would present an existential problem to the SMoC proponents however, as the EFE overturns the unprincipled Strong Equivalence Principle.

The SEP is not an expression of empirical fact, the way the weak principle of equivalence is (the equality of inertial and gravitational mass); it is little more than an idle conjecture of mathematical convenience, adopted mid-twentieth century, right at the onset of the post-Einsteinian revision of General Relativity.

The SEP is not foundational to the SMoC, but it is well integrated into the mindset of its practitioners and has consequences for the theoretical “study” of theoretical entities like black holes and multibody systems like galaxy clusters. Dispensing with the SEP would, for one thing, mean that cosmologists could now stop believing, contrary to the empirical evidence and GR prediction, that the speed of light in a vacuum is a universal constant.

@Phillip Helbig

Note that in the standard cosmological model, only 1920s cosmology is used. Despite the huge amount of high-quality data now available, classical cosmology needs nothing beyond what was known about relativistic cosmology in the 1920s.

Well yes, and that’s why we need a 21st century cosmology with, shall we say, more realistic underpinnings. I really don’t understand why anyone would think clinging to the naive and dubious assumptions of 100 years ago is a scientifically sound approach, especially given the manifest failures of the current model. I understand that the SMoC is graded on the curve, with negative empirical results deeply discounted in favor of theoretical requirements – but still, the model’s defining structural elements all lie totally in the realm of the empirically undetected.

The fact that there appears to be absolutely no interest in revisiting the standard model’s foundational assumptions, even as an exercise in intellectual curiosity, says nothing good about the socio-economic incentives of the modern scientific academy. The Big Bang model is the best possible you say? I would agree, but only with the caveat that it is only so in the context of the model’s essentially pre-modern assumptions. As soon as those are jettisoned, the big bang creation myth will almost certainly become nothing more than a historical curiosity.

Nobel Prize in Physics Awarded to 3 Scientists for Work on Fairy Tale

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It’s sadly, depressingly true. Some mathematicist nonsense that attends modern cosmological theory has been awarded science’s grandest prize:

This award has been given to mathematical work on a mathematical theory that has nothing to do with actual physics. Black holes, the ostensible subject matter of the work are fictitious entities that only arise in a mathematical models (such as Schwarzschild solution to the field equations of General Relativity) that ignore one of the fundamental consequences of General Relativity – the speed of light varies with position in a gravitational well.

Specifically, the steeper the gravitational well, the slower the speed of light. It follows directly from this, an observed fact, that gravitational collapse is a self-limiting event. In the Schwarzschild and similar solutions, the speed of light is held constant and results in a theoretical collapsed state (a black hole) that is physically nonsensical, containing as it does a singularity (a mass of zero-volume and therefore infinite density).

Modern theoretical cosmology is a mess, in which Einstein’s General Relativity has been dumbed-down in service of mathematical convenience. The result has been dumb-downed, mathematical models (the Big Bang, black holes), that present physically nonsensical accounts of observed reality. These models do not remotely resemble the physical reality we can actually observe and measure. They are mathematical fairy tales.

The Nobel Prize in Physics was just awarded for work on a dumbed-down mathematical model that has nothing to do with real physics.

The Speed Of Light Is Not A Universal Constant

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One of the great unforced errors of late 20th century theoretical physics was to declare the speed of light in a vacuum, a universal constant. This was done despite the fact that, according to General Relativity, the speed of light varies with position in a gravitational field. This variation in light speed has been observed.

The idea that the speed of light varies with position in a gravitational field is not new. It comes on good authority:

…according to the general theory of relativity, the law of the constancy of the velocity of light in vacuo, which constitutes one of the two fundamental assumptions in the special theory of relativity and to which we have already frequently referred, cannot claim any unlimited validity. A curvature of rays of light can only take place when the velocity of propagation of light varies with position. Now we might think that as a consequence of this, the special theory of relativity and with it the whole theory of relativity would be laid in the dust. But in reality this is not the case. We can only conclude that the special theory of relativity cannot claim an unlimited domain of validity: its results hold only so long as we are able to disregard the influences of gravitational fields on the phenomena (e.g. of light).
Albert Einstein, Relativity The Special And The General Theory, 15th edition

The claim of those who wish to maintain the universal constancy of light speed (c) is that it is justified by the Equivalence Principle. The rather lengthy linked discussion goes into some detail but no mention is made of the constancy of c being consequent on the EP. None of the tests of the principle cited in the article involve measuring the value of c directly.

Einstein invoked the EP in the derivation of General Relativity to provide an interpretation of the observed fact that inertial mass and gravitational mass are equivalent. Given the above quote, he obviously did not find justification therein for asserting the universal constancy of c.

The only reasonable conclusion is that the EP does not justify the claim of a universally constant light speed. The claim appears to be only a lazy mathematicist assumption of mathematical convenience. Theoretical physics is a remarkably irrational, unscientific mess because of this sort of nonsense.

This Island Universe

Physics For The 21st Century

Category Archives: General Relativity

The Twins Paradox & The Immaculate Acceleration

The ACER, The ERDG And Gravity

The Deflection of Light in a Gravitational Field

Gravitational Attraction

Galaxy Clusters

The Cosmological Redshift

Coda

When Are Physicists Not Physicists?

A Relativistic Cosmos vs. The Unitary Universe

It is not polite to discuss DWRT

Inertia, Gravity, & Electromagnetic Radiation

Mathematicist Follies & the DWRT

Denial Of The Deluded

The Radiation Density Gradient

The Mathematicist’s Tale

Why The Cosmos Is Not A Universe

I Relativity Theory

II The Speed of Light

III The Cosmological Redshift

IV The Cosmos – A Relativistic POV

Two Big Lies

Adventures in Theoretical Physics II – Fun with General Relativity

Junk Science in The New Yorker

The Unprincipled Principle & The Persistence of Mistakes

Nobel Prize in Physics Awarded to 3 Scientists for Work on Fairy Tale

The Speed Of Light Is Not A Universal Constant