Once you understand that there is no time flowing inside an optical clock, then you understand that an optical clock goes slower when it’s lower because light goes slower when it’s lower. Because the speed of light varies in the room you’re in. After that you understand that light waves curve downwards in a gravitational field for the same reason that sonar waves curve downwards in an ocean. Search the ES310 sonar propagation webpage and you find where the US Navy said it: “Recall how differences in the index of refraction (which are a measure of the propagation speed) affected electromagnetic waves”. Search the Einstein digital papers and you can find where Einstein said it: “the curvature of light rays occurs only in spaces where the speed of light is spatially variable”.
Light curves because the speed of light is spatially variable
Einstein said it time and time again, year after year. Yes, he came up with special relativity in 1905 with his two postulates, one of which was “the speed of light is constant”. But only two years later in 1907 he was saying light curves in a gravitational field because the speed of light isn’t constant. He said it again in 1911, 1912, 1913, 1914, 1915, and 1916. You don’t find Einstein saying light curves because spacetime is curved. Instead you find him talking about the energy-density of space varying. You can liken this to the density of air varying. Sound waves in air tend to curve downwards at night because the cooler air near the ground is denser:
Image from Rod Nave’s hyperphysics, see refraction of sound
In similar vein a light wave “veers” downwards rather like a car veers left when it encounters mud at the side of the road. We can do something similar with light with something as simple as a piece of glass. That’s why we have lenses in spectacles. But we can also do it with an energy-density gradient in space. That’s why we have gravitational lensing. See Professor Ned Wright’s Deflection and Delay of Light article for more. He doesn’t say the light is deflected because spacetime is curved. Instead he says this: “In a very real sense, the delay experienced by light passing a massive object is responsible for the deflection of the light. The figure below shows a bundle of rays passing the Sun at various distances”:
Gif from Ned Wright’s Deflection and Delay of Light
Once you know this, you can make sense of the rubber-sheet analogy. It’s sometimes said to be a tautology, in that gravity is used to try to explain gravity. However it can explain gravity rather well provided you know what it’s really depicting.
The rubber sheet analogy
The starting place for that is that the curvature you can see in the images relates to spacetime curvature. That’s associated with a “curved metric”, and a metric is associated with measurement. As for what you’re measuring, imagine you could place a 15 x 15 array of optical clocks throughout a horizontal slice of space around the Earth. Then you plot all the clock rates, such that the lower slower clock rates generate data points lower down in a 3D image, and the higher faster clock rates generate data points higher up in the 3D image. When you join the dots, your plot looks like this:
CCASA image by Johnstone, see Wikipedia
That’s an image from the Wikipedia Riemann curvature tensor page. It’s effectively the rubber-sheet depiction of curved spacetime. And because it’s derived from optical clock rates, it’s also a plot of the speed of light. Some might say that it’s just a plot of the “coordinate” speed of light, but it’s more than that. There is no time flowing inside an optical clock, so the height at some location on the plot depicts the real speed of light at that location. It also depicts the gravitational potential at that location. Meanwhile the slope at some location depicts the first derivative of gravitational potential, and therefore the force of gravity at that location. The curvature at some location depicts the second derivative of gravitational potential, and therefore the tidal force at that location. That’s where the force of gravity changes most. That’s spacetime curvature. If you don’t have any spacetime curvature, your plot can’t get off the flat and level, which is why spacetime curvature is said to be the defining feature of a gravitational field. But note that a marble rolls down where the sheet is sloping rather than curved, and that your plot is what’s curved, not space. Your plot of measurements is curved so your metric is curved, so spacetime is curved, but space is not.
Light does not follow the curvature of spacetime
This is why light does not follow the curvature of spacetime. You can appreciate this if you zoom in on a section of the plot. If we represent a light beam with a yellow line, it curves wherever there’s a gradient in gravitational potential. That’s where the plot has a slope, where the grid lines are tilted as opposed to curved:
The force of gravity and so the curvature of light is greatest where the tilt is greatest. The tilted light-cones in the 2009 Stanford singularities and black holes article by Erik Curiel and Peter Bokulich depict this. Alternatively you can emulate the tilt with a piece of stiff board. Lift one side up, and roll a marble across it. It follows a curved path because the board is tilted, not because the board is curved. It’s similar for the room you’re in. The force of gravity is 9.8 m/s² at the floor and at the ceiling, so there’s no detectable tidal force, and so no detectable spacetime curvature. But your pencil still falls down. That’s detectable. The point to note is that gravity isn’t there because spacetime is curved, it’s there because there’s a gradient in potential, and a gradient in the speed of light.
Gravitational time dilation does not occur because spacetime is curved
Another point to note is that gravitational time dilation does not occur because spacetime is curved. That’s confusing cause and effect. Curved spacetime corresponds to your curved plot of optical clock rates, and optical clocks don’t go slower when they’re lower because your plot of clock rates is curved. They go slower when they’re lower because light goes slower when it’s lower, along with all other electromagnetic phenomena. And light goes slower when it’s lower because space near the Earth is different to the space further away. Because a concentration of energy in the guise of a massive planet “conditions” the surrounding space, this effect diminishing with distance in a non-linear fashion.
Space is a polarizable medium
Einstein talked about it in his 1920 Leyden Address. He said this: “According to this theory the metrical qualities of the continuum of space-time differ in the environment of different points of space-time, and are partly conditioned by the matter existing outside of the territory under consideration. This space-time variability of the reciprocal relations of the standards of space and time, or, perhaps, the recognition of the fact that ’empty space’ in its physical relation is neither homogeneous nor isotropic, compelling us to describe its state by ten functions (the gravitation potentials gμν), has, I think, finally disposed of the view that space is physically empty”. Einstein didn’t talk about spacetime curvature. Instead he talked about space that was neither homogeneous nor isotropic. He finished up saying this: “recapitulating, we may say that according to the general theory of relativity space is endowed with physical qualities; in this sense, therefore, there exists an ether”. He also spoke of “the refraction of light rays by the gravitational field”. So did Newton, see Opticks query 20: “Doth not this aethereal medium in passing out of water, glass, crystal, and other compact and dense bodies in empty spaces, grow denser and denser by degrees, and by that means refract the rays of light not in a point, but by bending them gradually in curve lines?” All this talk of aether might sound archaic, but it isn’t. Julian Schwinger wrote a paper quantum electrodynamics II : vacuum polarization and self-energy. Space is a polarizable medium. You can also find modern authors saying much the same thing. See for example the 2008 paper Inhomogeneous vacuum: an alternative interpretation of curved spacetime.
Space is not some ideal Newtonian emptiness
Also see the Wikipedia aether theories article and note the quote by Robert B Laughlin: “it is ironic that Einstein’s most creative work, the general theory of relativity, should boil down to conceptualizing space as a medium when his original premise [in special relativity] was that no such medium existed”. Laughlin also said space is more like a piece of window glass than ideal Newtonian emptiness. He finished up saying this: “the modern concept of the vacuum of space, confirmed every day by experiment, is a relativistic ether. But we do not call it this because it is taboo”. Einstein is supposed to have done away with the aether in 1905 but in the end, he didn’t. He thought of space as a something rather than a nothing. In his 1929 essay on the history of field theory, Einstein described a field as a state of space. He was talking about gravitational fields and electromagnetic fields, and he said this: “it can, however, scarcely be imagined that empty space has conditions or states of two essentially different kinds”. The point to appreciate is that according to Einstein a field isn’t something that exists in space, it’s a state of space. As to what sort of state, I’d say a gravitational field is a place where space has an energy-density gradient. Or perhaps it’s better to say it’s a pressure-gradient, and that space has an elastic quality.
Space is modelled as an elastic solid
This is why if you google on Einstein elastic space, there’s plenty of hits. This is also why general relativity is related to continuum mechanics. This is why we have the stress-energy-momentum tensor, which “describes the density and flux of energy and momentum in spacetime”:
Public domain image by Maschen, based on an image by Bamse see Wikipedia
The shear stress term on the right tells you we’re dealing with something that could be modelled like some kind of elastic solid. The energy-pressure diagonal tells you it’s an elastic solid subject to pressure. For an analogy, imagine you have a block of gin-clear ghostly elastic jelly, with grid lines in it so you can see what’s going on. You slide a hypodermic needle into the centre of the block, and inject more jelly. This represents a concentration of energy bound up as the matter of a massive star. It creates a pressure gradient in the surrounding jelly. Stress is directional pressure, the pressure is outwards, and Einstein’s equation Gμν = 8πTμν is modelling the way gin-clear ghostly elastic space is conditioned by the energy you added. But don’t forget that you added jelly to represent energy, and that the jelly also represents space. Space doesn’t just have some kind of innate intrinsic vacuum energy. At some deep fundamental level, space and energy are the same thing.
Curved spacetime is not curved space and time
Yes, some people talk about elastic spacetime as opposed to space, wherein gravitational waves are elastic ripples that propagate through spacetime. I think that’s the wrong approach myself, because spacetime models space at all times, so there is no motion in spacetime. So it’s space that’s elastic, not spacetime. People also talk about curved spacetime as if it’s curved space and curved time, but I think that’s the wrong approach too. See John Baez and Emory Bunn’s preliminaries article dating from 2006: “Similarly, in general relativity gravity is not really a ‘force’, but just a manifestation of the curvature of spacetime. Note: not the curvature of space, but of spacetime. The distinction is crucial”. Space isn’t curved where a gravitational field is. Instead as Einstein said, space is “neither homogeneous nor isotropic” where a gravitational field is. Because a concentration of energy conditions the surrounding space. Because of this the speed of light is spatially variable, and because of that light curves. When you plot the spatial inhomogeneity using optical clocks at different elevations, your plot is curved because the inhomogeneity decreases with distance. That’s why the force of gravity diminishes with distance in a non-linear fashion, in line with the inverse square rule. Eventually when you’re a long long way from Earth your optical clock readings no longer exhibit any variation with elevation. At such a location space is homogeneous, spacetime is flat, light goes straight, and your pencil doesn’t fall down..
A better analogy
It’s important to appreciate that the curvature in the rubber sheet picture is not the curvature of space in some higher dimension. We have no scientific evidence for any such higher dimension. However we do have evidence that space is three dimensional. That’s why the three-dimensional gin-clear ghostly elastic jelly is a better analogy than the rubber sheet. You can draw it by imagining you’re looking at the Earth in the rubber-sheet lattice from underneath. Think in 3D, and you can get a feel for the way the surrounding jelly is pressed outwards rather than pulled down or inwards. Like this:
Image credit: NASA (I added the lattice lines)
However this depiction can still cause issues because the Earth is spherical. As a result the grid lines are curved, sending the wrong message about curved spacetime. To clear the air on that we need to zoom in to get rid of the curvature of the Earth. Like this:
Image credit: NASA (I removed the moon and added the lattice lines and the light beam)
The height of each rectangle in the lattice relates to the optical clock rate at that location. Because they’re optical clocks, the height of each rectangle also relates to the speed of light at that location. And because the speed of light is spatially variable, a beam of light going across the picture will curve downwards like the sonar wave. Hopefully you can see how this relates to Ricci curvature. Whilst the image above shows rectangles instead of geodesic balls, you can easily imagine that the more flattened the rectangle, the lower the gravitational potential. And usually when gravitational potential is lower, the gradient in gravitational potential is steeper, so light curves downwards all the more.
Why matter falls down
Anyway, once you understand why light curves, it’s easy to understand why matter falls down. All you need to know about is the wave nature of matter, as demonstrated by the Davisson-Germer experiment. And about the Einstein-de Haas effect which “demonstrates that spin angular momentum is indeed of the same nature as the angular momentum of rotating bodies as conceived in classical mechanics”. And about pair production, wherein we can make an electron and a positron out of light. See Hans Ohanian’s 1984 paper what is spin? He said this: “the means for filling the gap have been at hand since 1939, when Belinfante established that the spin could be regarded as due to a circulating flow of energy”. It’s like what Feynman said, if you look at the energy flow, you find that it “just circulates around and around”. So just think of an electron as light going around and around. Then simplify it to light going around a square path. Like this:
Now imagine it’s in a gravitational field. The vertical parts of the path stay vertical, but the horizontal parts bend down a little. So the electron falls down:
In essence the reducing speed of light is transformed into the downward motion of the electron. Internal kinetic energy is converted into external kinetic energy. But only the horizontal component bends down, so the Newtonian deflection of matter is only half the deflection of light. Since you can diffract protons and neutrons and other things too, the same principle applies to matter in general. To things like your pencil. Like Newton said in his 1692 letter to Richard Bentley, there is no magical mysterious action at a distance. There are no gravitons flying back and forth either. That might come as an unpleasant surprise to some. It isn’t the only one.
I should mention that Albrecht Giese gives a somewhat similar explanation at http://ag-physics.org/gravity/. I think it dates from circa 2004. I picked up the gist of why the electron falls down from Reg Norgan in circa 2006, but I don’t know when Reg came up with it. See page 27 of his treatise http://www.aether-theory.co.uk/totalsmallbook.pdf. Both approach the subject from a “without Einstein” angle, presumably because they predate the Einstein digital papers being available online.
I get a little uneasy with a comparison between light and sound transmission, because sound requires atoms and/or molecules to support their propagation.
If Gravity is the competitive tug-of-war pull by objects such as Earth and your body on accumulated external low-level energy (see my article ‘Photons and Electrons’ at https://drive.google.com/open?id=1w2QP5K6D6JgMIA_PTDCu5FHLqi0N6ibj), some of which is provided by the bodies themselves, then it would be expected that photons within light beams would be dragged slightly off course as well, particularly by a large mass body such as our planet. What is amazing is that small deflections from parallel beams of light separated by about one metre (or your separate rooms) can be measured at all.
And I am not sure why you would represent something ‘circulating around and around’ as a square in the first place (instead of a circle), and then to reduce its length on one side only to represent gravitational pull. Wouldn’t it be more realistic to show a circle transforming to an ellipsoid or possibly a distorted vortex?
David: don’t feel uneasy about the comparison between light and sound, because all waves need a medium of some kind to support their propagation. It’s a myth that electromagnetic waves don’t, and instead the magnetic wave generates the orthogonal electric wave and vice versa. Photons are dragged off course, that’s why light beams curve. Yes, it would be more realistic to show a circle. A torus would be even better, see Adrian Rossiter’s torus animations here: http://www.antiprism.com/album/860_tori/index.html . I wanted to keep things as simple as I could, especially in the early articles. See my comment above, which didn’t appear because of some approval issue. Albrecht Giese uses a horizontal circle which is deformed into a helix.
@David “I get a little uneasy with a comparison between light and sound transmission, because sound requires atoms and/or molecules to support their propagation.” – you are quite right to be uneasy. John is incorrect when he states that quantum waves need a medium in which to propagate. That’s not the case at all, because what is propagating is, in effect, a force field.
“because all waves need a medium of some kind to support their propagation” – that is only correct for waves that represent movement within a medium.
As Maxwell showed, you can have waves that travel in a vacuum. These waves propagate a field, so we are seeing the propagation of a field through a vacuum in the form of a wave.
A field is not just “there” – it is caused by the propagation of virtual quantum entities – waves – that need no medium. Quantum entities ARE the medium.
And so this brings us to photons interactring with a gravitational field. Unlike photons, which have spin zero, gravitons have spin 2. But they are both waves. And it is the interaction of these waves, arguably the absorption and re-emmission of the photons by the gravitational field, that “slows” down the light rays. That process – absorbtion and re-emission, is what slows down the light ray. The photons themselves always move at light speed. Always. With no exceptions (give or take effects in the undiscovered theory of quantum-gravity of course).
You’re in for some surprises. See what Maxwell said when he was talking about displacement current. He said “light consists of transverse undulations in the same medium that is the cause of electric and magnetic phenomena”. And whilst those photons always move at the speed of light, the speed of light varies in the room you’re in. An optical clock is not some cosmic gas meter with time flowing through it. An optical clock goes slower when it’s lower because light goes slower when its lower. Not for any other reason. Einstein said this year after year, but people just can’t believe it. PS: there are no rainbows in gravitational lensing.
“light consists of transverse undulations in the same medium that is the cause of electric and magnetic phenomena” – If Maxwell said that, then he was incorrect. But then again he did not know quantum mechanics. The light literally IS the cause of electric and magnetic phenomena. Be wary of believing everything you read by old masters.
The “optical clock” goes slower when lower because the caesium or whatever quantum beast is “ticking” is interacting with virtual “gravitons”, or whatever the quantum gravitational field comprises – that affect its wave function. Photons themselves are not moving slower.
On the topic of the ether – physicists know that there is an ether. It’s the foam of virtual subatomic particles created by the uncertainty principle, that gives rise to the non-zero energy of the vacuum. That this energy is so low relative to what quantum mechanics predictss is perhaps the greatest mystery of physics. It’s the greatest gap between prediction and experiment ever measured. Prediction says that this energy should be truly enormous, so much so the Universe would simply explode.
BUT, such an ether is not required for field waves, such as photons, to propagate. It is just background noise, which does interact very weakly with photons, causing tiny delays when the photons get absorbed and re-emmited.
I’ll talk about photons at a later date. Meanwhile think of space as something like the sea. Vacuum fluctuations are something like tiny ripples on the surface of the sea. They aren’t the same thing as the sea.
You are making a mistake when you use classical waves as an analogue for quantum waves. Many the errors you are making stem, I believe, from that mistake.
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Why do people keep claiming that light slows down or speeds up when there is absolutely not one experiment in the real world that demonstrates that? Then they quote Einstein to confirm this. Funny Einstein said light speed is constant not variable. If gravity bent light then why when a laser is shot to moon and back from a mirror on the surface a straight line? The photons are not bent by the gravitational field of the earth or the moon and had to go through both so called fields twice. The photons do spread out as the sides of a cone but still in a straight line back. Everywhere on the earth they get the same distance reading so where is it bent to change the reading of distance?
The evidence is that optical clocks go slower when they’re lower. I would urge you to read the nature of time followed by the speed of light is not constant. There is no time flowing through an optical clock. When that clock goes slower, it’s because the optics go slower.
The 1918 solar eclipse provided Sir Arthur Eddington with the opportunity to observe the apparent location of a star shining at us from beyond a position just above the limb of the sun. It was not where it should have been, the light rays having been bent by the sun’s gravity on its way to his telescope. This was the first confirmation of General Relativity.
Earth’s gravity is much weaker and of course when they shine that laser at the moon it is more or less parallel with both the earth’s and the moon’s gravitational fields. So there will be some slowing, but not much bending.
All points noted Ralph.
The metaphor of injecting gel is backwards. Space contracts near high energy density. So spatial coordinates are compressed together near a mass/high energy density.
As for no time flowing, you can read compressed space as more space compared to an undisturbed spacesheet. But it is still constant. It just has more space to move through.
However, since the effective space distance between two interacting particles of an optical clock near the Earth is larger, the mechanisms of the clock are also slowed down. So is your heartbeat since that involves movement caused by electromagnetism between your atoms which is slowed down because there’s more space between your atoms.
The speed of light through disturbed space is constant, there’s just more space, per undisturbed unit of space (this gives me a headache).
When you inject the gel the surrounding space is pushed outward, so spatial coordinates are compressed together, in line with radial length contraction. Note though that I don’t read compressed space as more space, instead I read it as “denser” space where light etc move slower. See the previous article https://physicsdetective.com/the-speed-of-light/ where I talk about shear waves speed c = √(G/ρ), where G is the shear modulus and ρ is the density, and compare it with c = 1/√(ε₀μ₀).
As a biologist I have to state that this discussion, though most interesting, is completely above my understanding. I do gather, however, that space itself, is not just a constant dimension, but is much more than that. Please refer me to documentation that allows me to come to grips with concepts about space.
Adriaan: the most important document is perhaps Einstein’s 1920 Leyden Address. This is where he spoke of space as a medium, the aether of general relativity. Also see Wikipedia which says QFT also treats space as a medium, and this where Einstein described a field as a state of space. Space is like some gin-clear ghostly elastic thing. When it’s inhomogeneous, that’s a gravitational field. When it’s got a chiral twist, that’s an electromagnetic field.
Hi John,
I’m someone who got a degree in physics and then left it behind me until recently starting to tutor it and read about it with renewed interest. In picking up where I left off, I recently started thinking along these lines too, that everything is made out of light, and if light is a wave in spacetime then everything is equivalently made out of spacetime. So I’ve been really glad to find your blog, enjoying many of your posts. I’ve already learned a lot from reading it, and I appreciate the approach of piecing together the history of theoretical development, because the concepts simply can’t be understood otherwise. I’m especially intrigued by how people like Clifford, and of course Einstein, embraced this viewpoint but it never became a mainstream line of inquiry.
I’ll tell you what I’ve been thinking about so far, and forgive me if I’m repeating things you touched on in posts that I haven’t read quite yet.
You’ve mentioned the Dirac equation and the attempts to interpret it by people like Hestenes. I found this paper helpful: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1312.3824.pdf. It explains what a spinor is and how a spinor corresponds mathematically to a null vector in special relativity, which represents the motion of a ray of light – only the spinor has an additional number which seems to me to roughly represent the self-rotation of that ray of light (about its axis of travel) – though maybe you could interpret it however you want. The Dirac bispinor wave function would then contain two rays of light passing through each point in space and time: two “light fields”, if you will. Furthermore, the first spinor in the bispinor is the “electron” part of the wave function, and the second is the “positron” part. I don’t know if it’s related, but there’s also this hypothesis of “zitterbewegung”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zitterbewegung, put forward by Schrodinger and Dirac themselves, that says a free electron oscillates about its average position at the speed of light while it moves.
So one challenge is: if we take the two-interacting-light-fields picture of the electron, can we state what the equation says about the behavior of those two light fields, in understandable language?
But maybe not, because maybe that’s really just the first half. Because as you say, in relativistic language, the reason the electron’s light *appears* to be taking a curved path in flat spacetime is that it’s actually taking a straight path in curved spacetime – and that can’t be described by Dirac which assumes flat spacetime.
What I’m hazy on is how our picture connects to the experimental results of quantum mechanics, ie. quantization and probability. For example, as I understand, they did electron diffraction experiments where they could actually see single electrons hit the detector screen. If the electron is a wave in a continuum, how exactly does it coalesce back into an electron? You’ve mentioned gamma-gamma pair production, but I guess this is more a case of one “vortex” spawning another – that is, an atom of the detector sort of attracting the dispersed electron light back into knotted form? And why can light only boost energy by quanta of hf? And how do we see the probabilistic nature of it? I imagine it’s kind of an instability in this delicate wave, where a region of slightly increased “vorticity” rapidly draws the surrounding part of the wave into it, until it stabilizes. Of course that’s just for position, then there’s the related probabilities of other observables.
I do take issue with at least one post, where I believe you said there can’t be negative energy or particles traveling backward in time. Well, if we ultimately model the universe as a single geometric 4-dimensional “surface” where variously curved regions are perceived as the various forms of matter, then mass-energy is nothing but the convergence of geodesics along a chosen direction of that surface: if you follow two geodesics and find they converge, there is mass between them. Well, there’s no reason geodesics couldn’t diverge as well. Or that they couldn’t converge in the negative time direction. Or hell, even in the spatial directions – “faster that light” travel. I don’t know if Einstein already answered that, but until I find out I’d consider it an open question.
In fact, I read that when Newton first thought about gravity, he felt that space itself was flowing into massive bodies, and carrying other objects with it. That didn’t work mathematically for Newtonian theory, but I’ve also read that you can accurately treat general relativity as “spacetime flowing into massive bodies”. Which suggests that our spacetime surface is just that: the surface of a deeper ocean, with spacetime flowing down into it at some places, and if it flows in, why could it not flow out as well, equating to negative mass-energy.
So it’s great to find this blog and I look forward to reading more and hope you will continue to post.
Hi Adam. Thanks for the compliment. Yes, it’s intriguing how mainstream physics is not in line with Einstein. Even about gravity. It would seem Peter Bergmann had something to do with that. Plus other “Golden Age” physicists who were appealing to Einstein’s authority whilst flatly contradicting him.
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I think the two rays of light passing through each other are two loops of one 511keV photon. Have you read John Williamson and Martin van der Mark’s Is the electron a photon with toroidal topology? I’m confident the answer is yes. Also see Qiu-Hong Hu’s paper The nature of the electron. I would say the distinction between the electron and the positron is the chirality, not what comes first or second. But yes, I think we can state what the equation says about the behavior of those two light fields in understandable language. See my later articles starting with https://physicsdetective.com/the-photon/. I’d say the crux of it is this: the photon is a wave in space. Where space waves, it’s curved. IMHO it’s important to make the distinction between curved spacetime and curved space.
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I’d say the electron is a wave but detection involves an interaction that is something like the optical Fourier transform. Hence you see a dot on the screen. And if you detect it at one slit, you convert it into something pointlike that goes through one slit only.
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I consider myself a relativist, but I don’t see the universe as a single geometric 4-dimensional thing. Spacetime models space at all times, so there’s no motion in spacetime. Meanwhile we live in a world of space and motion. Geodesics are abstract things that don’t exist, whilst photons and electrons and inhomogeneous space do.
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In similar vein spacetime doesn’t flow into massive bodies. See the next essay for more about that. Sorry about the Chicken-Little thing. But when I saw Max Tegmark waxing lyrical about the waterfall analogy on Horizon, I was throwing cushions at the TV. Ah, look at the time, I have to go. Nice talking to you Adam.
Greetings John: Good description of gravity in terms of time dilation – I actually published a similar idea in one of the E books I wrote “Secrets of the Tell Tale Universe” I think it’s a $2 read on Kindle – page 59.
My thinking has driven me to many of the same conclusion – as far as the space as a medium, there is an almost magical may to arrive the characteristic propagation velocity of a transverse wave in space in the null universe. – take a look at page 31. When the energy density rho x c^2 = -3P in Friedmann’s 2nd equation, the null universe expands exponentially Now substitute this condition into the standard equation for the propagation velocity of a transverse wave in a medium
v^2 =[3P/p] where little p is rho (the density) is the density and big P is pressure
Hence
v =[-3P/-3P/c^2] ^1/2 = ic
Thanks Bruce. I’ll check out your Secrets of Tell Tale Universe. Two bucks won’t break the bank!
You can use mathjax in comments here. Just use dollar characters around the expression and voila:
$v^2 = 3P / \rho $
This is v^2 = 3P / \rho inside dollar characters. Note though that if you edit it, you have to press F5 to refresh.
How does gravity communicate? Obviously around a black hole is much amplified force of gravity. How does gravity know to accumulate and become stronger?
I’m enjoying these articles. I had an epiphany recently about the nature of gravity, and your interpretation supports the model I imagine. The first discrepancy is the idea that a light wave “falls” across the timespace “grid” as shown in the NASA graphic with added grid lines. When light bends due to gravity, it is traveling a perfectly straight timeline, as far as it can tell. It does not deviate from the grid lines we imagine.
So, we have this clear jelly with a mass injected into the middle. The jelly is then compressed and the grid lines all bow around the mass. This is the Earth and the compressed spacetime it has displaced. Now, take the path of any photon from the sun, and align your grid with that path. As it approaches the Earth, it will follow the curved line and not deviate from the grid. Light waves do not turn or bend, only the medium that carries them does. Waves do not “fall” or bend towards a mass. They travel in straight lines through space, at the speed of time. They seem to go slower in the presence of a mass’s gravity because they traverse a compressed unit of spacetime in the same amount of “time” as an uncompressed unit of spacetime, so they see appear to make slower progress as the compression increases.
The description you give is the usual description, James. But I’m afraid it isn’t right. Light doesn’t follow the curvature of spacetime. It curves because space is “neither homogeneous nor isotropic”. Light curves where the speed of light is “spatially variable”, where there’s a gradient in gravitational potential. To appreciate this take a stiff board, lift one side up, and roll a marble across it. The marble follows a curved path because the board is tilted, not because the board is curved:
I’m not sure James’ is even the usual description because there can be no motion in spacetime. I think it is very important to understand well that spacetime is a geometry. It is not reality. It does not explain anything, it is only used to describle, to measure. Space is what is real, space is what the light moves in, space is the very real thing that has the properties allowing light to propagate. The variable properties allowing light to propagate variably.
I utterly agree Karl. There is no motion in spacetime. It’s an abstract thing that models space at all times, and we live in a world of space and motion. The map is not the territory.
Hi John, very interesting post. In your explanation about why matter
falls down, I don’t think you need to invoke spin. Matter falls down
for the same reason that light does – because of time dilation.
Everything is moving through spacetime at the speed of light, i.e.:
$v_t^2 + v_s^2 = c^2$
$v_t$ = velocity through time
$v_s$ = velocity through space
$c$ = speed of light
In a gravitational field, time dilation causes $v_t$ to decrease, so to
compensate, $v_s$ increases and objects fall.
Sorry Andrew, this comment was in the bin for some reason.
Hi John, very interesting post. In your explanation about why matter
falls down, I don’t think you need to invoke spin. Matter falls down
for the same reason that light does – because of time dilation.
Everything is moving through spacetime at the speed of light, i.e.:
$v_t^2 + v_s^2 = c^2$
$v_t$ = velocity through time
$v_s$ = velocity through space
$c$ = speed of light
In a gravitational field, time dilation causes $v_t$ to decrease, so to
compensate, $v_s$ increases and objects fall.
I’m sorry Andrew, but spacetime is an abstract thing that models space at all times. There’s no motion in it, or through it. It isn’t just me who says this, see what Ben Crowell says here: https://physics.stackexchange.com/a/133821/76162. Also see what Einstein said in 1920: “Second, this consequence shows that the law of the constancy of the speed of light no longer holds, according to the general theory of relativity, in spaces that have gravitational fields. As a simple geometric consideration shows, the curvature of light rays occurs only in spaces where the speed of light is spatially variable”. I give more quotes like this in the speed of light is not constant.
Hi John, I have been enjoying reading your blog so far. Thanks! I´ve got a question on your example of why an electron falls down: would an electron with spin perpendicular to the earth surface not experience gravitation then?
Yes it would. The electron’s spin isn’t as simple as a ring of light. It has a double spin. It’s a “bispinor”. See my article on the electron for details. You inflate the ring into a torus, such that there’s a rotation around the major axis and around the minor axis. Then you inflate the torus into a spindle-sphere torus. And then you have to remember that the wave has no outer surface, so the spindle-sphere torus is something like “the eye of the storm”.
Hi John, according to your model would a particle with zero spin not fall down in a gravitational field?
It isn’t really my model Andrew. Reg Norgan told me about it in 2006, and Albrecht Giese gave a similar explanation in http://ag-physics.org/gravity/ which I think dates from 2004. But anyhow, yes a particle with zero spin would not fall down in a gravitational field. However there are no such particles. The Higgs boson is said to have been discovered at CERN, but I’m afraid I’m rather sceptical of the Higgs mechanism. Even if I wasn’t, the lifetime of the Higgs boson is said to be very short, so it’s academic.
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What isn’t, is that this model says a black hole won’t fall down in a gravitational field. A gravitational field is a place where there’s a gradient in the speed of light, so a photon “refracts” and curves downward. A black hole is a place where the speed of light is zero, and it can’t go lower than that. So the mechanism for gravity just isn’t there.
Reading through the article and comments I was hoping you would come to some epiphany and agree with 100 years of theoretical and experimental physics…but no, looks you are back just before the Michelson Morley experiment which failed to find the ‘ether’. Atomic clocks can measure height due to time dilation – GPS? You know, the orbiting satellites with clocks that run slower due to relativistic effects?..they are corrected in order to keep the accuracy on the ground…(btw I am not a physicist this is all readily available state of the art info)
Chris: I’m back with Einstein, circa 1920. You should read the previous article and note the Einstein quotes:
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https://physicsdetective.com/the-speed-of-light/
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The epiphany is that atomic clocks go slower when they’re lower because they employ microwaves, which are light in the wider sense, and because light goes slower when it’s lower. Then light curves because the speed of light is spatially variable. Not because light follows the curvature of spacetime. The GR that’s taught today contradicts not just Einstein, but the hard scientific evidence too. It says clocks go slower when they’re lower because time goes slower, even though there’s no actual thing called time flowing through those clocks. Which makes me think you ought to start with the article prior to the speed of light:
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https://physicsdetective.com/the-nature-of-time/
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Merry Christmas by the way!
Hmmm the speed of light is constant. It is not arbitrarily defined. BTW the two mirror explanation for time dilation is exactly correct, but after that things go awry. There is a nice graph of speed through time versus speed through space. We travel through ‘time’ at the speed of light, but through space at comparatively much lower speeds. A ‘photon’ (whatever that actually is) travels though space at the speed of light (the maximum) and through ‘time’ at zero ie: a photon exists in an eternal present. Also see muon decay – when hitting the earths atmosphere, their existence is extended by an amount which accords with travel at the speed of light reducing due to atmospheric slowing. Otherwise I’m tapping out of this conversation until I see your Nobel prize for a new understanding of light speed. (Merry Xmas also!)
The speed of light isn’t constant, Chris. It varies in the room you’re in. That’s why your pencil falls down. And we don’t travel through time at all. As for me and Nobel prizes, I’m not telling you anything new. Just follow the links and you’ll know that. See for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_speed_of_light#Einstein's_early_proposal_(1911) and https://arxiv.org/abs/0705.4507 along with https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Shapiro_time_delay. But if I don’t hear from you on account of that tapping out, Happy New Year! Happy New Year to one and all.
I understand light speed is measured to be constant because the measuring stick varies in length ie space is distorted by gravity. This is demonstrated by LIGO detecting gravitational waves. Entering a black hole spaghetti-fication is a term banded about to describe lengths being distorted.
My question is > as lengths get longer inside a black hole, and time stops, (normal space time pictures become meaningless) does the space inside a black hole get bigger ? and is there a reachable centre, or do you wind up with the inside of a blackhole, via infinte spagettification, connected to the rest of space and time outside the black hole via some form of membrane, a bit like a EPR bridge, except connected to everywhere.
Andy: I don’t think the space inside a black hole gets bigger. Or the space outside a black hole. Spaghettification is nothing to do with distorted space, it’s just when the force of gravity at your feet is stronger than the force of gravity at head height. I don’t think there’s a reachable centre to the black hole because I think the “frozen star” description is correct. I also think that when you fall into a black hole, you don’t even reach the event horizon. I think you disintegrate on the way in, and turn into a gamma ray burst. Have a read of https://physicsdetective.com/black-holes/ and https://physicsdetective.com/firewall/.
It seems you are repeating much the same message I’ve been teaching for the past 15 years in every conceivable format and platform from online to in person lectures. (check out some of my old videos along with he new ones on this channel) http://youtube.com/steampunkphysics
Unfortunately you’re behind a little on one of the most important changes/discoveries though. I think I mention it in my talk with Jess Brewer on that same channel. It’s been published in this journal https://www.cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/view/861/1455
It comes from the fact that Fresnel made a mistake because the universe is inside out from what we expect. That’s really the only piece you’re currently missing that really pulls it all together.
Hi Shiva. I took a look at your paper. I think we’re barking up the same tree. Whilst we won’t agree on everything, I wish there were more “neoclassical” people like us. Or should I say even more, because there are more people like us, every day.
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I noticed you said this on page 448: “The apparent equivalence of gravity and acceleration is yet to be explored”. Perhaps you’ve explored it since, but if you haven’t: keep things simple by focusing on a single electron, and think of that as a wave in a closed path. To move it, you have to deform that path so that one imaginary point going round the path ends up in a different place to where it started. See this: https://physicsdetective.com/what-charge-is/. Look at the last section called unit charge. IMHO Compton scattering is like carving a slice off the incident photon and slapping it onto the electron so that it’s no longer symmetrical. Hence it moves. Gravity achieves something similar via a refraction.
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See what you make of this: https://physicsdetective.com/black-holes/.
I have predicted the precise physical cause of quantum antigravity in the future CERN experiments:
https://quantumantigravity.wordpress.com/
Continued from the “The Speed of Light” comments.
Let’s clarify, and broaden, our assumption and say that “Matter is made out of refractive thingies in bounded orbits.” I’d also like to add that your use of a square for the path is an approximation as though Gravity is a conservative vector field for ordinary masses, it is not for light, so any line intergral is not path independent, but for argument’s sake, let’s say close enough.
In the other comments you agreed that light will speed up moving away and slow down moving towards, that is, it is experiencing acceleration in the opposite direction of gravity in each direction. In this analysis, you count that as zero. Nobody answered my question on the magnitude, but my calculations show it to be twice as well. Thus the four sides in your square add up to zero, not one half of deflection which matches gravity.
Now lay your square on its side. Every side will then experience the full deflection and the result is the net acceleration is twice gravity. Standing up, zero, laying down, two. So your “half” argument doesn’t hold with me. You have to show it is the average of all possible orbits.
Cedron, the square is just a simplification. Don’t sweat it. Check out https://physicsdetective.com/the-electron/ . As far as I can tell the light path is akin to the spindle-sphere torus. It has a toroidal topology and a spherical geometry. For a sphere, you have a 50:50 horizontal/vertical component.
I see it as an oversimplification. Rather than reply here, I posted in the forum: https://physicsdiscussionforum.org/summing-refraction-accelerations-to-get-a-gravity–t2525.html
OK noted. I’ll get back to you there. Note though that I have a lot of things to do, so it might not be straight away.
Amazingly, if I copy and paste a couple of your articles into chatgpt 4.0, and tell it “Let’s assume the author is correct. Go back to the original works of Einstein and his talks, then interpret this author’s articles through that lens.” And then “I do not care about the current mainstream theories. Also you are claiming “However, it’s important to note that Einstein’s views on general relativity evolved over time, and the final formulation of the theory, as accepted by the mainstream scientific community, includes the curvature of spacetime as a key concept.”, which I am not confident in” – it seems to agree with you!
It then replies thusly:
ChatGPT 4.0:
“Understood. If we focus solely on Einstein’s original works and talks, without considering the subsequent developments and mainstream interpretations, we can indeed find elements that resonate with the author’s perspective:
Variable Speed of Light: In his early work on general relativity, Einstein explored the idea that the speed of light might vary in a gravitational field. This concept is reflected in the author’s writings.
Gravitational Time Dilation: Einstein’s initial formulations of general relativity included discussions of how time dilation is influenced by gravitational fields. The author’s emphasis on time dilation being related to the variation in the speed of light aligns with some of Einstein’s early thoughts.
Curvature of Space: Einstein’s early works focused on the curvature of space as a result of the presence of mass and energy. The author’s interpretation that emphasizes the curvature of space, rather than spacetime, finds some support in Einstein’s original discussions.
Space as a Medium: In his Leyden Address and other writings, Einstein spoke of space as having physical qualities, akin to an ether. This idea is echoed in the author’s perspective on space as a polarizable medium.
While these points align with some of Einstein’s early ideas, it’s important to note that Einstein’s own understanding of general relativity evolved over time. The theory as it stands today, including the concept of spacetime curvature, is the result of this evolution and has been validated by a wide range of experimental and observational evidence. However, exploring alternative interpretations based on earlier works can provide valuable insights and stimulate further research.”
Interesting, Richard. But what a pity ChatGPT 4.0 knows fuck-all physics. It simply rehashes the mainstream line that Einstein toyed with a variable speed of light in the early days. This is why it doesn’t do anything with the variable-speed-of-light Einstein quotes here dated
1911, 1912, 1913, 1914, 1915, 1916 and 1920. Something else that’s also a pity is that it rehashes the common contemporary confusion between curved spacetime with curved space. And the common misunderstanding about space as a medium, see the Robert B Laughlin quote here. ChatGPT 4.0 is not artificial intelligence. It’s just a word mixer. But thanks for making the effort there. One Brownie Point!
Gravity To Be An Inherent Or Integral Component Of Quantum Mechanics
Gravity: Is it quantum?
In physics’ lengthy journey toward a theory of everything, the continuous quest for the graviton-the postulated fundamental particle conveying gravitational force-is an essential step.
Except for gravity, all known fundamental forces in the universe are known to obey the laws of quantum mechanics. Researchers would make a huge step toward a “theory of everything” that might completely describe the functioning of the cosmos from basic principles if they could integrate gravity into quantum mechanics. Finding the graviton, a long-proposed fundamental particle of gravity, is an essential first step in the effort to
determine whether gravity is quantum. Physics researchers are now focusing on studies using minuscule superconductors, free-falling crystals, and the aftermath of the big bang in their quest to discover the graviton.
for more info, go to :
https://quantxcer.com/display-quantum-gravity-news.php?file-name=quantum-gravity/Gravity%20to%20be%20an%20inherent%20or%20integral%20component%20of%20Quantum%20Mechanics
Sorry Pavan, your comment was sitting in my spam folder. I get a lot of spam. And sorry, I don’t think they will ever discover the graviton. I say that because there are no messenger particles. See The peculiar notion of exchange forces part I by Cathryn Carson.
John, I’d like to read an article on precession; de Sitter, geodetic and whatever. Wikipedia has lots of flavors, most refer to the curvature of space. Lots of Christof Symbols and Riemann geometry going around in circles. Thanks in advance.
It sounds like you’re referring to gravitomagnetism. I’ve mentioned it a few times, such as in https://physicsdetective.com/the-screw-nature-of-electromagnetism/ and https://physicsdetective.com/what-charge-is/ but I haven’t covered it in detail. I will take a look.
John,
Thank you for answering the queries I posted under your article on the neutron. I am considering the observations you made before posting further there. In the meantime, here are some questions about space and matter.
(1) Space is a physical substance. This follows directly from General Relativity: matter acts on space, changing the topology of space, and this makes sense only if space is a physical entity.
You have analogized space to a gelatinous solid that exhibits pressure and elasticity, which enables the propagation of electromagnetic solitons, transverse vibratory energy. You have alternately referred at times to space as a continuum and as a lattice. I suspect that you have used the term “lattice” more as a heuristic device rather than as a characterization or model of the reality. But is that the case?
Question 1A: Could a 3D lattice serve as a realistic model of Planck-level space? Taking a cue from loop quantum gravity, I am inclined to think of space as a matrix or network of massless nodes connected to each other via unbreakable links. My rationale starts with the observation that the physical universe consists largely of discrete objects moving, and occasionally interacting with one another, within various spatial-temporal realms to generate different kinds of objects in coarser-scale spatial temporal domains. Reality appears to involve multiple spatial-temporal domains (sub-atomic, nuclear, atomic, molecular, cellular, organismic, neural, and societal) with respective kinds of indigenous objects, all discrete but interactive exemplarily via physical forces. Why wouldn’t space conform to the character of the emergent higher-order realms of being, i.e., manifest as a network of discrete nodes?
If space takes the form of a matrix or network of interconnected nodes (my view), the fundamental physical parameters would include inter-nodal distances (in average correlated with the state of cosmic expansion), the number(s) of neighbor nodes connected to one another, and the elasticity of the network (relevant to wave velocity, i.e., the speed of light), with other basic parameters including spatial pressure and shear stress (per G.R.).
Question 1B: The dark energy of space appears to have a different character than the electromagnetic energy of matter particles. Does the speed of light, c, appear in the equation E=mc^2 because (i) matter particles consists of trapped circulating light solitons, (ii) light travels at speed c, and (iii) the value of kinetic energy of motion entails a square of velocity?
(2) Matter acts on space and (so I have thought but now reconsider as per some of your comments) draws space inwardly to itself, thereby effectuating a gradient in spatial energy density.
Question 2A: You ostensibly believe that gravitational fields arise from two processes: (1) an outward pressure of matter on space, which in a lattice model of space reduces the thickness of lattice cells, increasing spatial density, and (2) the innate and inexorable expansion of the surrounding space, pressing against aggregations of matter (this from your thoughts on the nature of dark matter). So, is it reasonable to say that space cannot expand into regions occupied by matter and presses against the matter-ordered space, thereby increasing energy density to generate gravitational fields about massive objects?
Question 2B: Could one represent that circulating photonic energy imposes order (both electromagnetic and gravitational) on surrounding space and maintains that order in opposition to the diffuse and chaotic energy of space (dark energy)?
Neil
P.S. I am a physics defective. I have lots of company.
Thanks Neil. Ouch, this is a tough one! Your questions are in italics. Re space and the lattice, I view space as a gin-clear ghostly elastic solid. Some of my depictions show lattice lines, but this is only to portray what Einstein described as “the state of space”. He also described a gravitational field as a place where space is “neither homogeneous nor isotropic”. That’s what I’ve tried to show with the picture above featuring the yellow light beam.
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1A: Could a 3D lattice serve as a realistic model of Planck-level space? I don’t think so. I’m not a fan of loop quantum gravity, I think it’s based on a lack of understanding of Einstein’s general relativity, and a lack of understanding of the quantum nature of light. The question you have to ask yourself is this? What are these massless nodes? Then if they’re motionless and they’re comprised of energy, why are they massless? Alternatively if they’re not comprised of energy, do they even exist? Also, what are your unbreakable links made of? IMHO your rationale should start with matter is made of energy, energy is a real thing, so what then is space? You might like to take a look at https://physicsdetective.com/what-energy-is/. I think space and energy are the same thing. Why wouldn’t space conform to the character of the emergent higher-order realms of being? Because space isn’t made of anything else. Everything else is made of it.
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1B: The dark energy of space appears to have a different character than the electromagnetic energy of matter particles. It appears to, but at the fundamental level, I don’t think it is. I think space and energy are the same thing, and that the energy of a gravitational field is just “denser space”, for want of a better phrase. As Einstein said, the energy of the gravitational field will act gravitatively as any other form of energy. So that’s a clear example of dark matter. Or dark energy if you prefer. Dark energy is supposed to be responsible for the increasing expansion of space, but IMHO it’s also responsible for the expansion of space, because space is like a compressed gin-clear ghostly elastic solid.
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Does the speed of light, c, appear in the equation E=mc^2 because (i) matter particles consists of trapped circulating light solitons, (ii) light travels at speed c, and (iii) the value of kinetic energy of motion entails a square of velocity? Yes. See the cannonball in space example in https://physicsdetective.com/the-mystery-of-mass-is-a-myth/.
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(2) Matter acts on space and (so I have thought but now reconsider as per some of your comments) draws space inwardly to itself, thereby effectuating a gradient in spatial energy density. I view a photon as a soliton pulse of spatial density gradient moving through space at a speed dictated by the elastic properties of space. That gradient is part of what it is, regardless of whether it’s moving on a linear path as light, or moving on a closed path as matter.
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Question 2A: You ostensibly believe that gravitational fields arise from two processes: (1) an outward pressure of matter on space. Yes, I think there’s an outward pressure, but that this is an inherent part of a photon. Hence the Earth’s gravitational field is, in a way, part of the matter of the Earth. The electron’s electromagnetic field is part of what it is. Ditto for a proton. When you put the electron and proton together the electromagnetic fields largely cancel, but not totally. The residual field is a gravitational field, and it’s still “part of what it is”.
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which in a lattice model of space reduces the thickness of lattice cells, increasing spatial density I don’t think there is any lattice, or any cells.
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(2) the innate and inexorable expansion of the surrounding space, pressing against aggregations of matter (this from your thoughts on the nature of dark matter). Sorry, perhaps I wasn’t clear on something there. See https://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9610066. That’s Does matter differ from vacuum? by Christoph Schiller. I think the answer is no.
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So, is it reasonable to say that space cannot expand into regions occupied by matter and presses against the matter-ordered space, thereby increasing energy density to generate gravitational fields about massive objects? I don’t think it is. I think a matter particle such as an electron is just a photon in a closed path, and a photon is just a soliton pulse of spatial density gradient moving through space at c.
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2B: Could one represent that circulating photonic energy imposes order (both electromagnetic and gravitational) on surrounding space and maintains that order in opposition to the diffuse and chaotic energy of space (dark energy)? I don’t think so. I don’t think of dark energy as something chaotic. I think of it as something still, not the same thing as the quantum fluctuations of the Casimir effect.,
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I hope that helps!
John,
Thanks much for your reply. I respect your diligence in responding to the queries and comments posted on your website. Thank you for your thorough investigations of historical science documents and your piecing together the nature of physical reality. I would never have arrived on my own at the understanding you have provided. I feel indebted to you.
And now for some repartee. My current comments are in brackets [ ].
You wrote: Could a 3D lattice serve as a realistic model of Planck-level space? I don’t think so. I’m not a fan of loop quantum gravity
[I am certainly no fan myself.]
Your wrote: I think it’s based on a lack of understanding of Einstein’s general relativity, and a lack of understanding of the quantum nature of light.
[The search for quantum gravity is Quixotic at best. I do not believe that conventional or normal-science particle physicists seek to understand. They instead aim at solving particular instrumentation and observation problems within the extant scientific paradigm. This is from Thomas Kuhn’s book.]
Your wrote: The question you have to ask yourself is this? What are these massless nodes?
[I could define nodes as connections between spatial matrix links. And then you would ask, what are these links? I guess that I am only proposing an alternative to the clear gel model that you use. I am looking for a physical characterization that accommodates spatial/cosmic expansion. Solids as we know them do not expand to any significant degree. Neither do liquids. Maybe space is a gaseous solid.]
Your wrote: Then if they’re motionless (spatial nodes) and they’re comprised of energy, why are they massless?
[The energy of space is the entire matrix, including the links between the nodes. Spatial energy precedes mass energy. Mass energy arises from trapping spatial energy. My question goes to the nature of space: what kind of substance is it? Again, I seek to understand the nature of space that expands. Your clear gel is only a model or analogy. Of what would the gel consist? How does a gel expand? The spatial matrix links I’ve mentioned harken back to another dead-end half-century foray of physicists, namely, string theory. What are strings? What are spatial nodes and links? What is space? What is a spatial gel? It looks like we cannot go any farther at this juncture than Einstein’s characterization of space as inhomogeneous and non-isotropic, which are adjectives rather than nouns, and properties rather than structure. What can we say more specifically about the structure of space?]
Your wrote: I think space and energy are the same thing.
[An energy plasma, perhaps? I agree that space and energy are inextricable. But allow me to provisionally opine that all energy arises from, and is grounded in, motion. Mass energy is the motion of space, transverse spatial oscillations (solitons/photons) traveling in twisted-loop paths that distort the topology of space. Thermal energy is the motion of molecules of a solid, liquid or gaseous medium. Radiant energy, kinetic energy, nuclear bonding energy, electromagnetic energy, it all entails motion. E=mc^2 is a mathematical characterization of kinetic energy. But I think that the motion of space must be of something substantial.]
You wrote: … space isn’t made of anything else. Everything else is made of it.
[True. I agree completely. Space is the ultimate foundation of all being, the fundamental substance of all that exists. Perhaps my question as to the physical structure of space is misplaced, premature, or just plain unanswerable. What we can say is that space is a physical medium that has certain properties, including energy, density, pressure, elasticity, and wave-energy transmissivity. That may be all we can (ever) say about it.]
You wrote: I think space and energy are the same thing, and that the energy of a gravitational field is just “denser space”, for want of a better phrase.
[I like that phrase, “denser energy,” with respect to gravity. What is inhomogeneous and non-isotropic about space, if not its energy density? (Perhaps its elasticity, as you have postulated with respect to the acceleration of cosmic expansion.) Concomitantly, in my view, a gravitational field constitutes a gradient in the energy or density of space. However, I propose that there is a difference between (i) spatial energy density that exhibits a gradual gradient over an extended region about a massive body (gravity) and (ii) space that features a localized topological knot wherein a wave or “pressure pulse” travels along a closed twisted path, generating or exhibiting a pressure wave vortex (electromagnetism). The electromagnetic force, with its electrical and magnetic manifestations, arises from an organization of spatial energy that does not exist in intergalactic free space and only exists in a close proximity to matter “particles.”]
NS
John,
Some further comments:
You wrote: Dark energy is supposed to be responsible for the increasing expansion of space, but IMHO it’s also responsible for the expansion of space, because space is like a compressed gin-clear ghostly elastic solid.
[Compressed how? By what? Compression normally occurs from outside, under forces exerted inwardly, in our macroscopic common-sense world.]
[I cannot help but concur with you on the nature of gravity and so-called dark matter and dark energy. But with reference to your analogic description of space as a gin-clear solid I think I have to clarify for myself the definition of a solid as it pertains to space. Let me try this: space constitutes a material substance (a) that has properties of density, pressure, and elasticity, (b) that transmits pressure waves of various geometric characteristics, such as (i) oscillatory motion transverse to a direction propagation, (ii) longitudinal percussive waves, and (iii) torsional and rotational motion, and (c) that has integrity, that is, a topology or 3D geometry that retains a fine-scale structure (the 3D stable cohesiveness of a conventional solid) but (d) which exhibits larger-scale topological or geometric transformations under the action of electromagnetic radiation solitons, whether travelling linearly or trapped in circulating endless paths. I am saying here that space exists at a sub-light level logically prior to radiation and independent of radiation. The energy of space must have pre-existed the appearance of electromagnetic energy, just as light pre-existed matter. Light arose from space, and matter arose from light.]
In response to my query, Does the speed of light, c, appear in the equation E=mc^2 because (i) matter particles consists of trapped circulating light solitons, (ii) light travels at speed c, and (iii) the value of kinetic energy of motion entails a square of velocity? You wrote: Yes. See the cannonball in space example in https://physicsdetective.com/the-mystery-of-mass-is-a-myth/.
[Okay, thanks. I will take another look-through.]
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You wrote: I view a photon as a soliton pulse of spatial density gradient moving through space at a speed dictated by the elastic properties of space. That gradient is part of what it is, regardless of whether it’s moving on a linear path as light, or moving on a closed path as matter.
[Your descriptions improve with your answers to questions. Discussion provokes clarification and enhanced description.]
I wrote: You ostensibly believe that gravitational fields arise from two processes: (1) an outward pressure of matter on space.
You wrote:Yes, I think there’s an outward pressure, but that this is an inherent part of a photon. Hence the Earth’s gravitational field is, in a way, part of the matter of the Earth.
[I think that the laws of physics are embodied in the physical world. With our abstracting pattern-generating minds, we humans extract and symbolize the laws of physics in the form of linguistic expressions, i.e., the mathematical equations of physics. This seems the same conclusion as your “Earth’s gravitational field is, in a way, part of the matter of the Earth.”]
You wrote: The electron’s electromagnetic field is part of what it is.
[Agreed. The electromagnetic field of the electron defines the electron. The electromagnetic field of the electron is a sine qua non of the electron.]
You wrote: When you put the electron and proton together the electromagnetic fields largely cancel, but not totally. The residual field is a gravitational field, and it’s still “part of what it is”.
[The effect of matter on the density of space does not cancel.]
You wrote: … which in a lattice model of space reduces the thickness of lattice cells, increasing spatial density I don’t think there is any lattice, or any cells.
[I can’t take a firm stand on whether space has a discrete or continuous structure. I lean towards a discrete structure (nodes and links) but there is little reason to assume something where one has no data confirming or denying. It is just a matter of mental organization, rather than truth falsifiably conforming to reality “out there.”]
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You wrote: That’s Does matter differ from vacuum? by Christoph Schiller. I think the answer is no.
[I think the answer is yes. The organization of the space differs. It’s all space, of course, but space inhabited by matter has a different topology from that of vacuum space, e.g., intergalactic, space.]
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You wrote: I think a matter particle such as an electron is just a photon in a closed path, and a photon is just a soliton pulse of spatial density gradient moving through space at c.
[I guess I define space without matter as homogeneous random motional energy, whereas matter “particles” constitute energy with a highly ordered topology. I think that the disorganized energy of vacuum space cannot penetrate or disrupt the organization (spatial topological distortion) that constitutes matter particles. Hence the stability of protons, electrons, bound neutrons, photons, and neutrinos. On the other hand, I think that space on finer spatial-temporal scales (say, of characteristic distances less than 10^-23 cm) comprises random and chaotic motion whose only effect is cosmic expansion. Matter changes that, within the regions where matter exists and reconfigures space.]
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You wrote that you could not hold that circulating photonic energy imposes order (both electromagnetic and gravitational) on surrounding space and maintains that order in opposition to the diffuse and chaotic energy of space (dark energy)? You don’t think of dark energy as something chaotic. You think of it as something still, not the same thing as the quantum fluctuations of the Casimir effect.,
[I have to part ways with you on this, at least pending further discussion. Everything we know, everything we experience, all of matter and macroscopic forms of energy, involves motion and change. Energy is motion. (Contra: potential energy?) There can be no such thing as still energy, unless, maybe, inside the event horizon of a black hole, where space is characterized by an absence of motion, matter, and time. Is that kind of space, space that we do not know, perhaps energy that is still? Frozen, motionless, energy?]
NS
Neil: again, sorry to be slow replying. You are in italics, I’ve omitted the points where I feel I don’t need to respond:
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Compressed how? By what? Compression normally occurs from outside, under forces exerted inwardly, in our macroscopic common-sense world.
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I don’t know. I just have this concept of elastic space that expands because it somehow started off compressed. Hence the universe expands like a stress ball expands when you open your fist.
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…Let me try this: space constitutes a material substance (a) that has properties of density, pressure, and elasticity, (b) that transmits pressure waves of various geometric characteristics, such as (i) oscillatory motion transverse to a direction propagation, (ii) longitudinal percussive waves, and (iii) torsional and rotational motion, and (c) that has integrity, that is, a topology or 3D geometry that retains a fine-scale structure (the 3D stable cohesiveness of a conventional solid) but (d) which exhibits larger-scale topological or geometric transformations under the action of electromagnetic radiation solitons, whether travelling linearly or trapped in circulating endless paths. I am saying here that space exists at a sub-light level logically prior to radiation and independent of radiation. The energy of space must have pre-existed the appearance of electromagnetic energy, just as light pre-existed matter. Light arose from space, and matter arose from light.
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That sounds about right.
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Your descriptions improve with your answers to questions. Discussion provokes clarification and enhanced description.
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Thanks. It’s good to talk.
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I think that the laws of physics are embodied in the physical world. With our abstracting pattern-generating minds, we humans extract and symbolize the laws of physics in the form of linguistic expressions, i.e., the mathematical equations of physics. This seems the same conclusion as your “Earth’s gravitational field is, in a way, part of the matter of the Earth.”
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Sounds good. Einstein said a field is a state of space. Williamson and van der Mark said an electron isn’t a point-particle that has a field, it IS field. Christoph Schiller asked does matter differ from vacuum? and the answer is no.
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I can’t take a firm stand on whether space has a discrete or continuous structure. I lean towards a discrete structure (nodes and links) but there is little reason to assume something where one has no data confirming or denying. It is just a matter of mental organization, rather than truth falsifiably conforming to reality “out there.”
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Agreed.
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You wrote: That’s Does matter differ from vacuum? by Christoph Schiller. I think the answer is no. I think the answer is yes. The organization of the space differs. It’s all space, of course, but space inhabited by matter has a different topology from that of vacuum space, e.g., intergalactic, space.
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That’s fair enough. But you know how they say an atom is 99% empty space? Well, I think that figure is wrong… by 1%.
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I guess I define space without matter as homogeneous random motional energy, whereas matter “particles” constitute energy with a highly ordered topology. I think that the disorganized energy of vacuum space cannot penetrate or disrupt the organization (spatial topological distortion) that constitutes matter particles. Hence the stability of protons, electrons, bound neutrons, photons, and neutrinos. On the other hand, I think that space on finer spatial-temporal scales (say, of characteristic distances less than 10^-23 cm) comprises random and chaotic motion whose only effect is cosmic expansion. Matter changes that, within the regions where matter exists and reconfigures space.
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All point noted. In my concept of space, random chaotic motion isn’t very important. For an analogy, take a look at the ocean. You can see random chaotic motion, but that’s not so important. The water is what’s important.
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I have to part ways with you on this, at least pending further discussion. Everything we know, everything we experience, all of matter and macroscopic forms of energy, involves motion and change. Energy is motion. (Contra: potential energy?) There can be no such thing as still energy, unless, maybe, inside the event horizon of a black hole, where space is characterized by an absence of motion, matter, and time. Is that kind of space, space that we do not know, perhaps energy that is still? Frozen, motionless, energy?
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That’s how I see it. And IMHO, that’s how it was in the early universe.