Dr. Hossenfelder has a Foil Hat Paper

[Dennis P Brown]

Well, looks like even Foil hats are getting required for main stream physics papers as well, it seems*: oh well, an anti-universe idea was bound to be taken from the 1960's era Star Trek, sooner or later.

See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQKwNzcpb1A


*Ok, guess someone isn't so far out there, after all: cough. Me.

[Rich Gorski]

WOW !

Finally someone wrote a paper to explain gravity that we can all understand. So simple. All it took was an anti-matter universe entangled with our universe and wahla! gravity... and... no need for dark matter, no need for dark energy and a cosmological constant = 0.

Now where did I put my aluminum foil hat...

Rich G.

[Richard Hull]

Curiouser and curiouser replied the rabbit....

The rabbit hole gets bigger and bigger, being able to swallow all manner of things.

Sometimes, too much to, as Bacon notes..."to weigh and consider"

Richard Hull

[Frank Sanns]

People hypothesize alternate solutions but until you can predict something yet undiscovered or affect something in a way that has never been observed, it is just rhetoric.

[Dennis P Brown]

And certainly for this paper, its basic premises & writer(s), pure foil hat.

[Paul_Schatzkin]

.
FWIW, I found an excellent 'tin foil hat' on Amazon and wore it throughout 'The Cosmic Summit' last weekend.

This one has far more utility than the actual 'tin foil' versions.

Suffice it to say it was a big hit among those who noticed and got the joke.

--PS

[Dennis P Brown]

Could you post some on both your talk and any talks there you found interesting?

[Paul_Schatzkin]

.
Here ya go:

viewtopic.php?t=15483

--PS

[Dennis P Brown]

First, I have to mention that your published books are an outstanding set of accomplishments in their own right.

Back to your seminar: Your presentation was excellent and your graphics entertaining keeping my interest even as they were highly informative & relative to your points. Not an easy thing to achieve for any speaker much less than for one in a science/history related field.

Overall your talk, as I posted on the site, was entertaining, and I learned a few things. Glad you gave a general overall for the progress of physics at the turn of the 20th century. In may opinion, I think you let physics more off the hook then it deserves. On the topic of gravitation, the sheer level of confusion it has created relative to gravity is inexcusable - I'm including Albert but that is another story.

That issue really bug's me that physicist continue to call gravity a force when they all know that is not a correct thing to say - Unless one rejects General Relativity (GR.) That practice is, in my opinion, very sloppy but I really do feel that they realize any answer to a follow up question then leads to a fundamental problem (as you partly did address in the talk.)

Yes, the equations of GR give accurate answers and the tensors used to describe the behavior of 'space-time' curvature (via the metric) are beyond useful. Yet, besides being powerful mathematical entities in the GR equation, they have no physical explanation what-so-ever. This is, for me, the real issue, not the so-called (and unproven) singularities of Black Holes*. But now I am drifting off into another rabbit hole.

* And there is a famous paper that uses thermodynamics that further undermines the idea that BH's ever form singularities.

[Paul_Schatzkin]

.
Thanks for all the kinds words about the presentation. I know there are holes in it but it was the best I could do to try to tie a lot of disparate things together.

To whit:

That issue really bug's me that physicist continue to call gravity a force when they all know that is not a correct thing to say - Unless one rejects General Relativity (GR.) That practice is, in my opinion, very sloppy but I really do feel that they realize any answer to a follow up question then leads to a fundamental problem (as you partly did address in the talk.)

There was an earlier version of the talk where I addressed that point. Honestly, I'm not sure why gravity doesn't qualify as a 'force,' but that earlier version said something like "yes, there is an argument that gravity is not an actual 'force,' but it sure felt like a force that day last year when I tripped on a rough spot in the pavement, fell on my face, broke my fall with my hands and wound up in physical therapy for six weeks for something I wrenched in my shoulder...."

It got cut for time.

Then, every time I get into a discussion about 'force' I recall a marginal notation that Farnsworth wrote in one of his journals, "we don't understand force." I have no idea the context or what he meant by that (and I don't recall if I ever actually saw the note or just heard about it from Kent), but, given the dispute over whether gravity is or is not, I can sympathize with the sentiment.

Yes, the equations of GR give accurate answers and the tensors used to describe the behavior of 'space-time' curvature (via the metric) are beyond useful. Yet, besides being powerful mathematical entities in the GR equation, they have no physical explanation what-so-ever. This is, for me, the real issue, not the so-called (and unproven) singularities of Black Holes*. But now I am drifting off into another rabbit hole.

Just give me the keys to the goddammed Cosmic Ferrari!

--PS

[Dennis P Brown]

In Field Theory* - which was the last 'great insight/semi-revolution' in physics, a force is defined as an exchange of real and/or virtual photons that cause either attraction/repulsion (charge) or color/flavor change (nuclear only.) It is what we 'feel' as a literal force that pulls or pushes us, through Physicist prefer to say these 'force carriers' mitigate' these interactions. Most of these various types of mitigation photons - their differences depend on spin type, define what happens and then what we experience (or in some nuclear exchanges, these can also be particles.) Besides explaining electro-magnetic 'forces', it explains both the weak and strong (really the nuclear) forces, as well. It predicts masses for many primary particles and explains a lot of interactions and results for nuclear reactions. Overall, the best theory we have (through I'm throwing together both QED and QCD.)

Gravity feels like a 'force' to us but there are no (observed) photons that carry this force (and the Standard Model really doesn't require one.) Of course, if there were such a 'force' via a photon like carrier, then Black Holes could not have gravity - a problem that certainly would require some interesting (i.e. absurd) ideas to work around. Hence, viewing gravity as 'space curvature' alone leads to no fundamental problem for Black Holes. It was good old Albert's math and his interpretation that led to this name for a phenomenal that has no physical explanation outside the equation.

In your talk you mentioned some things in passing that I'd like to explain a bit further: first, Albert's major paper on his so-called 'proof' of atoms. Once again that is an extremely misleading explanation by many historians/physicist. He actually demonstrated, using the rather new branch of Statistical and Kinetic Physics, that small molecular groups were creating "Brownian" motion. Since molecules depend on atoms to exist, expo-facto, he showed conclusive proof that atoms must exist.

Secondly, I should note that the full and really complete idea of FT wasn't completely developed during Farnsworth's time and unless he followed advanced physics, it wasn't really something the average person would have really heard about nor would most physicist mention it, in all likelihood. So, the actual physical interruption of what a classical force was really had no physical explanation w/o FT. That is why Albert tried (and utterly failed as did all others) to convert all forces into some similar idea of space curvature. It was the only theory, at his time, that gave a cause for a force (gravity.) Ironic that gravity now turns out to be not a force in modern physics while all others are forces, Again, physicist don't really give straight answers but often try to make it more accessible - this often leads to incorrect statements like "gravity' is the fourth force.

This leads me to another pet-peeve: Galileo! He never said an object continues in a straight line until some outside force changes it. He actually said that all objects travel in circular paths until an out side forces effects it (hence, planetary orbits are circular.) But his basic idea was right he just got the path direction woefully wrong.

But now I am ranting, so better stop.

I hope this gives you (and others here) a better idea of what this whole matter (pun intended) is and why it is so often made confusing. Maybe I cleared up some aspects or maybe I am opening up too many issues and causing more fog. I hope the former rather then the later.


* Field Theory has some extremely complex but certainly 'beautiful' mathematical formulation of any theory, in my opinion. It has both explained and predicted a massive number of 'problems' in physics that till this idea was developed, were complete mysteries. Its accuracy is as good as any physical theory that has every been developed and tested.

[Rich Gorski]

Paul,

Love the hat. Had to buy one as a gift for a friend.

Tich G.

[Richard Hull]

I gave my thoughts on paul's talk in the admin forum where he requested comments. I also, in my second post where I discussed forces a bit based on known facts. Gravity for me is gravity. For it is that it is. It can't exist without neutral matter, mass. None of the known forces can exist outside of mass as they are all contained within it. Without mass, there are no forces in the universe.

Richard Hull

[Rich Gorski]

Is mass (matter) really nothing more than conglomerations of packets of energy that can interact with the Higgs field and gain the quality we call mass? It can never ever attain the speed of light and has to exist with finite acceleration regardless of the force applied... M = F/a? Take the proton which according to the standard model consists of two up quarks and one down quark. The proton with its three quarks has a rest mass of 1.67 ^-27 kg (938.27 MeV/c^2) However the up quark mass is 3.56^-30 kg (2.4 MeV/c^2) and the down quark 8.9^-30kg (4.8 MeV/c^2) so the sum of two up quarks and one down quark is 1.60^-29 kg. So what gives? The sum of the proton's constituents is only 1% of the total proton mass. Where is the other 99%? According to the standard model the other 99% is not in the quarks but exists in the force exchange particle between quarks, the gluon. But the gluon, as with all force carrying particles has zero rest mass. So it must be the kinetic energy contained in the gluons that make up 99% of the protons mass…and if matter can warp spacetime shouldn’t we really be saying that it is energy that warps spacetime and the stuff we call matter might not be a real thing at all. Matter is just energy interacting with the Higgs field?

"Luminous beings are we" Yoda (Jedi master)

Rich G.

[Dennis P Brown]

The rest of the missing mass has to do with the bonding; but remains particles - during the nuclear force interaction, mesons pairs are created over and over. These create the extra "missing" mass since these do have regular "mass"; unlike the gluons, which are massless. Though, in a quark (this is a pun on quirk; I know, lame) of nature, those mesons get their energy from the gluon field. So, in a way, over 97% of the mass is extracted from the gluon energy field. I am recalling stuff from awhile ago. So, take it with a grain of salt.

[Richard Hull]

All of the above is so much supposition.

No matter in the universe, no energy no gravity, no light. Without matter in the universe, to speak of space-time, is a meaningless construct. The term universe, itself, is by definition inclusive of matter. There is a measurable physical distance between matter generated events which we call space and another made up distance to our perception of the events which we call time.

Matter no matter how fine you divide it up and talk of internal energy distributions is the cause of all gravity, electrical forces and thereby, light and EM radiation. As no neutral matter can exist without electrons, they are the entire part of the EM radiation story until you get to gamma radiation which we assume to be nuclear (matter based) in nature.

Keeping things simple at our physical level of absolute certainty. Space-time does what it does, at its core, because of matter. The term time as we perceive it is the measured distance between to observable events. All events are matter based interactions at any level. Even two gamma ray events are 100% matter based no matter how far back in time or where ever they were created. Otherwise, all light and EM events are electron based interactions between or within matter.

We can yell back and forth among physicists at the core sources of all observed forces, potential or dynamic deep within matter, but that is where they abide by any and all supposed named origins and subdivisions into particulates. 100% of all such femptonic particulate subdivisions do not have any real temporal life-span outside of the particles they are claimed to make up. The universe abhors their existence as entities outside of observable, ponderable matter. Even the neutron can't live for more that 50 minutes (5 half-lives) outside of the atomic nucleus. Its union of these little bitty internals effectively link a proton and electron which ultimately are its decay products in the real world of extended time.

The neutrinos which are absolute matter theory "must haves" are as yet unknowns phantom whispers of ????

Richard Hull

[Dennis P Brown]

While much of particle physics is, for me too, extremely tough to accept - its just explaining scatter angles of particles for certain energies for the few 'real' non-elementary particles that do fly out into detectors. Yes, cloud chambers have paths that define charge and mass for some elementary particles (and these kinda fit reality) but most are suppositions. That is, help make the experimental predictions that seem to work.

That all said, mesons are not elementary particles but real ones - besides mass, they have measurable diameters, and live long enough to be used in other experiments. They are what we really measure as mass (or most of it.)

Now, virtual particles - NOT elementary particles - are very real just as regular matter particles. The electron -positron pairs, for instance created by any electric charge must come into existence (like around electrons) The issue is that for any finite energy field, these particles come into existence but since one is antimatter, their existence is extremely short lived - its tough existing having an anti-matter particle with an attractive force so close together. But their effects are directly measurable so their existence is established.

I am not waxing foil hat for no reason. There is method in this madness - first, most physicist refuse to address the elephant in the room and this really bugs me - gravity is not a force. Second, this leads to the ridiculously stubborn belief in dark matter even as each and every possible particle has been ruled out. Yes, galaxy rotation and planetary rotations do not agree - get over it - lol. Move on to another theory.

So, back to the method: since gravity is not a force - does not use particles - then it does NOT need to follow a one over 'r' squared fall off with distance. This is critical since otherwise, that would be an impossible occurrence w/o using extra dimensions (UGH! That would be too ugly to ever consider. Through string theorist would certainly be happy.) GR requires only three spatial dimensions and no more (yes, time is a dimension with units of space but that is a bit of a cheat. So while one can say there are 4 dimensions, only three are spatial.)

Now that this paper indicates that no particle with mass can meet the requirement w/o violating known overall mass of the Universe, dark matter is really dead. I do want to see what they propose next - angels?

[Rich Gorski]

Happy Independence day !

Thought I would delve deeper into the strong nuclear force and the roll of mesons and gluons in nuclear interactions. Based on current QCD and the standard model, mesons are the mediator of the strong force between nucleons (between protons and neutrons within an atomic nucleus) while gluons are the mediator of the strong force between the quarks inside of a nucleon. The strong force between nucleons inside a nucleus is often called the "residual" strong force as if its a spill over of what's going on inside each nucleon. Since most of the matter in the universe is protons and neutrons (99% ??) ... this thing we call mass is due to the quark/gluon interaction going on inside nucleons. Mesons too gain their mass from the quark/gluon interaction since they are made up of quarks and anti-quarks. Note that gluons are massless and quarks only amount to 1% of the mass in a nucleon so my thinking is that 99% of all mass in the universe is due to the energy contained in the quark/gluon interaction and how that energy interacts with the Higgs field. I don't know how else to consider it. Is this string theory?

Its also interesting to note that the quarks are the only subatomic particle that experiences the 4 known interactions of nature, Strong nuclear, weak nuclear, electromagnetic and gravity (Dennis, note that I didn't call gravity a force ). The electromagnetic comes in 2 flavors Pos and Neg, while the strong comes in 3 flavors called colour charge, red, green and blue. I have an intuitive feeling for 2 flavors resulting in either repulsion or attraction but what about 3 flavors, repulsion, attraction and ???. Crazy !!

Richard, I would look at it they other way around. No energy in the universe, no matter, no gravity - no nothing ! Which came into existence first? Matter or energy ?? If you believe in the big bang theory there was a time before the period of inflation when only energy existed in the form of massless particles (photons??). No matter particles. Then out of these photons (energy without mass) matter was created or maybe a better term would be condensed out of this energy field based on M = E/c^2. In my limited mind I find it easier to accept that energy came into existence first before matter... and the big question...where did this energy come from?? Maybe that's why I like the idea of dark energy...negative energy... in an amount equal to the positive energy in the universe...which means a total energy in the universe of ZERO... nothing... and then no need to explain where nothing came from.

Ahhh, what do I know talking about this stuff? I'm just another guy with a tin foil hat .

Rich G.

[Richard Hull]

I guess it is a matter of where you hang your at at the instant of creation. If there was energy at the instant of creation, it had a different imperative and that was to go against all we observe today. (today we never see energy turned into mass beyond fusion in stars where tremendous energies applied to already extant mass force the little sub internals to bind together. The binding energy in higher Z matter after fusion, (due solely to the creation of neutrons), is measured as mass.

Neutrons create the glue that hold atoms together. As there is no extant, fused, pure protonic matter, the strong force and the weak force are not present in the proton. If the proton contained these forces, we would have purely protium based helium, argon and uranium. No, the neutron is what makes bulk matter as higher and higher Z atoms absolutely have to have far more neutrons than protons to stay together. The strong force comes into being due to neutrons created in fusion and only the weak force comes into being with creation of neutrons which are totally unstable and radioactive outside of the nucleus. Even in the nucleus under the right conditions, (unstable nucleus), neutron decay can take place with the exact same decay when they are outside the nucleus. This results in a proton and an electron. Due to the strong force between protons and neutrons within a nucleus, the neutron is intrinsically stable until the entire nucleus as an entity is unstable.

There are very rare instances where in isotopes where a proton is ejected. In super high Z elements, an entire helium nucleus is emitted due to an over abundance of neutrons (probably shielding the positive protonic charge to the point of losing orbital electrons.)

Richard Hull

[Dennis P Brown]

Not sure if the foil hat is required for these later discussions . So, I'll get back to dealing with the so-called 'simplest', most well understood property in our little section of the Universe - and that is gravity. So, putting on that hat again, here I go.

For me, the critical point as I mentioned previously, is whether the inverse square law holds for gravity: if gravity is simply a force (i.e. some type of force carrier photon), then it absolutely must hold to an inverse square law. This is likely the reason most physicist hold onto the antiquated idea of a force despite that theories obvious failure and being superseded by GR. Now, since gravity is space-time curvature (what-ever that is), then it need not hold as an inverse square law (and yes, current understanding still doesn't fit MOND.) So, as long as gravity does not obey the inverse square law, then this would, of course, get rid of the Dark Matter hypothesis. Through, the 'cause' for gravity (besides words) would still remained undefined, for now.