Webo-Centric Light

[Goldminer]

Why not? You have put your entire kit and kaboodle on tiny little invisible and immeasurable objects that defy observation or experimentation. You think of this as "science" or a "theory" because you think it's so "logical." In reality, as you occasionally admit, you really don't know. But you believe VERRRRRY strongly in these imaginary quantums anyway. That seems like a lot of faith if you ask me. Can't I exercise a bit myself? A deep premise of mine is that all scientists [eg. yourself or I] operate from a fundamental set of presuppositions I normally refer to as their "faith base". You can deny this is true, but that doesn't change it. A better question for us to ask ourselves is, how can my theory be used to make further predictions and possibly benefit the human race? This seems to also be irrelevant to you. Well then maybe we can assume for a moment that we both are looking at the same universe, yet from different perspectives, and may have something to offer one another?

I am not "Michael V," (Is he also the infamous MJV?) so I don't ascribe to the concept of "photons." I do ascribe to the harmonic wave nature of both matter and energy. I agree that Philosophy is the basis of any conversation about Nature (Physics). Yes, you and Michael V are free to express your opinions, as am I. I do not believe we can just gloss over illogical statements, change the subject and act as if the question has been answered.

Your "instantaneous" objection is ill-founded and not logical.

Actually my friend, it is you who have dodged the issue. I have shown that there is a latency between the initiation and the reception of a light pulse. You came up with the idea that there was indeed a latency but it was caused by "relay delays" as if that answered the question. The delays are proportional to the distance between source and receptor. Your "explanation" is a failure.

Not only is it precisely what we observe [when light happens to us, it is "already here"... it can't be "seen" otherwise], but it does answer a lot of questions.

Yes, the wave fronts are already here at your eyes; you don't see the particular wave front until it reaches you. You see them in succession. If they didn't arrive one after the other, you wouldn't see an organized scene. Your statement does not explain anything, to be blunt. If you don't look, you wouldn't see anything either. It is the proportion of the tiny size of your retina which determines the diameter of the ray you see, to the surface area of the expanding sphere (which cannot be seen in totality) that determines the size of objects you see in the scene you observe.

You started out your objection by using the term "light-years" --- well, of course "instantaneous" is a contradiction to "light-years" You also assume light "comes from the the light source" but I see light as happening right here at my eye, with a vector directed toward the source as a "sink", under universal pressure [analogous to gravitation]. Until you allow your mind to break free of your "emission" paradigm, you will not be able to understand this. I'm not saying you have to agree, just free your mind! Einstein's train gedanken and twin's paradox were equally illogical and contradictory. He assumed light had a finite speed [c], then assumed again it was that same limiting speed to all frames... people have flocked to his nonsensical theory for almost a century. Now there's "spirituality" for you!

What Einstein said was that the speed of light emitted in one frame had to be received at the same speed as light is found to travel within said frame. He had no basis for this speculation, and determining this speed has not been done until recently. The recent experiments have proven Einstein wrong. They do not prove that light is instantaneous.

Einstein's Train Gedankin and Twin's Paradox are wrong not because of the finite speed of light, but because he was illogical and contradictory. I have explained the contradictions and poor logic in the Silly Einstein thread.

I invite any and all to start anywhere in that thread and either ask for clarification or state some aspect of the posts there that are illogical.

I do not not assume anything about the age of the universe. It appears to be in a wondrous state of dynamic equilibrium. Has it always been this way? Was there no cause? And if you answer this with "yes", does this not fly in the face of the whole definition of "causality"? Defining "causality" as not having a "fundamental cause" is a philosophical faith leap, just as belief in a "fundamental cause" is considered to be a faith leap. And how is saying "Cause is irrelevant." any more scientific than saying "There was a cause for which the present universe is the effect."

Yes, the Universe seems to be of infinite age, thanks to Halton Arp's discoveries. The objects we see in the distant cosmos do have persistence and harmonic resonance. Inertia seems to be a state of equilibrium, but most motion is initiated by disequilibrium, so indeed there is a cause, however well hidden in time and noise.

[Michael V]

webolife,

I do not not assume anything about the age of the universe. It appears to be in a wondrous state of dynamic equilibrium. Has it always been this way? Was there no cause? And if you answer this with "yes", does this not fly in the face of the whole definition of "causality"? Defining "causality" as not having a "fundamental cause" is a philosophical faith leap, just as belief in a "fundamental cause" is considered to be a faith leap. And how is saying "Cause is irrelevant." any more scientific than saying "There was a cause for which the present universe is the effect."

Has it always been this way?
Of course it hasn't.

Was there no cause?
Of course there was.

The question is not whether the universe has changed over time. Nor is it that change has cause; all effects have cause. The present state of the universe is unquestionably the effect of some event or process.

The question is whether or not there is any hope whatsoever of retrieving any information, or achieving any insight, into what the causal event or process may have been. Surely the answer to that question is no. We cannot possibly know or even reasonably speculate what may have preceded the present epoch of the universe. Even if we remain determined that some knowledge of the universe's past is possible, then the only way to start such an analysis is to develop a plausible model of the universe's present operating mode. I do not see any sense in your suggestion that the only way to develop a plausible model of the universe is to simultaneously model and explain all previous states and modes going back into the infinite past.

I maintain my stance that the events and processes of the dim and distant past have no useful relevance to the job at hand: how does the universe operate now?

Michael

[Goldminer]

webolife,

I do not not assume anything about the age of the universe. It appears to be in a wondrous state of dynamic equilibrium. Has it always been this way? Was there no cause? And if you answer this with "yes", does this not fly in the face of the whole definition of "causality"? Defining "causality" as not having a "fundamental cause" is a philosophical faith leap, just as belief in a "fundamental cause" is considered to be a faith leap. And how is saying "Cause is irrelevant." any more scientific than saying "There was a cause for which the present universe is the effect."

Has it always been this way?
Of course it hasn't.

Was there no cause?
Of course there was.

The question is not whether the universe has changed over time. Nor is it that change has cause; all effects have cause. The present state of the universe is unquestionably the effect of some event or process.

The question is whether or not there is any hope whatsoever of retrieving any information, or achieving any insight, into what the causal event or process may have been. Surely the answer to that question is no. We cannot possibly know or even reasonably speculate what may have preceded the present epoch of the universe. Even if we remain determined that some knowledge of the universe's past is possible, then the only way to start such an analysis is to develop a plausible model of the universe's present operating mode. I do not see any sense in your suggestion that the only way to develop a plausible model of the universe is to simultaneously model and explain all previous states and modes going back into the infinite past.

I maintain my stance that the events and processes of the dim and distant past have no useful relevance to the job at hand: how does the universe operate now?

Michael

I'm obviously not Webo, but in my humble opinion, we do see into the distant past, thanks to the finite speed of light. In the gigantic objects that we observe there, the past seems to operate the same as it does more or less locally and closer to the present. By understanding the nature of electric plasma, which is scalable, we can apply laboratory experiments and their results to similar objects we see in space.

By understanding the logic of how the finite speed of light affects the way distant actions are seen in relation to other actions separated by depth and/or breadth, we can understand how the Universe operates now. The farther we see into space, the farther into the past we see. Cosmology is history in that sense. If physics and therefore history doesn't/didn't operate the way it does locally, one can make up about any story they want, just as Big Bangers and such do.

At this point, astronomers claim to see within 90% of the distance, therefore time, up to the Big Bang, and still things seem to look very similar to the way they look locally. Light is on a one way trip from the source, so outside of reflected light, the source of which there would be none (since matter would not be there to reflect any) said Big Bang light is still on its trip away from the Universe, never to be seen by the Universe it supposedly created. Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation is a myth made up to support the Big Bang.

[Michael V]

Goldminer,

we do see into the distant past

Distant by human standards, not even a fraction of a hair's breadth by the standards of an infinity.

and still things seem to look very similar to the way they look locally

Exactly my point.

Whatever mechanism you may choose as explanation, Olber's Paradox will forever limit the sensory data for our telescopes.

At this point, astronomers claim to see within 90% of the distance

I don't suppose there is any chance that a big bang universe expands spherically. I'm guessing that would be inconvenient, because if it did expand spherically, then Earth is within 5% of the centre, which would also be inconvenient. That said, Earth is at the centre of the theory by definition of creation. As I write I am slipping inexorably into a cynical abyss - a cyngularity of sorts and as real as any other.

Michael

[Michael V]

webolife,

....all objects at all scales in the universe are under this "gravitational" influence

There is at least one and probably three exceptions to this.

...leads to a quest for a universal field theory which must take this into account as a principle agent.

Over recent months I have made significant (unannounced) progress, I am very close to this, but light eludes me.

But the amazing thing is that we are here discussing these things in order to further our understanding..

Despite the majority of my replies being focused on criticism, I value your opinion and insight (and that of the other blauke, but don't tell him).

Michael

[webolife]

Michael V and Goldminer,
I actually in agreement with some [maybe even much] of what both of you say, despite that you disagree with each other and both disagree with me! But I am way more interested and intrigued by the fact that we seem to be seeing the same universe of cause and effects, but from different perspectives. I am pleased that both of you care enough about this to spend time on this thread. I actually share much of each of your observations regarding universal finitude and infinitude, but come to a different conclusion: The universe is finite in both extent and mass [call it volume, mass or density -- all are parameters of the same finite physicality], yet is under a condition of centropic pressure that infers a field, which I would describe as infinite in extent [or at least greater than that of the universe]. I agree with the perception that we see most of the way to the "end" [or beginning -- it doesn't matter to me, because a finite object in an infinite field is a virtual point, not a line or a segment]. I agree with the perception that the distant universe is generally similar to the local. I also believe the CMB of the universe is a good indicator of this. I believe that the "cause" of physicality is not a question of some distant event in the past, but a present pressure field, so ignoring this "cause" is not irrelevant. "Light" has long been the "odd man out" in unified theories --- its instantaneity, ie. that when we see it it is already here, may have been preceded as most people imagine by some sort of expansion of wavefronts or streaming particles traveling at the c-rate... or not, that is all theoretical. I do not say that the delays in light reflection or refraction are proportional to distance, simply that they may infer a distance in very short circuits, where the actual time of alleged "travel" is much to small to be accurately or reasonably accounted, and that inference is subject to placing formulaic parameters on the situation to make the delay[s] and distance work out to the assumed "c". I am of Ralph Sansbury's camp in this respect, seeing the delay of light as on the order of <1 second, regardless of distance. There is no way to clock light signals leaving source A and arriving at receptor B, without invoking the simultaneity dilemma which Einstein also struggled with. I do say that capturing a tiny portion of an ostensibly planar wavefront from some distant star and calling that a ray is a leap in logic I cannot make. It's a ray [therefore not a particle or wavefront] easily depicted in an optical or orbital vector diagram. It applies pressure at a small surface area of the retina or other detector, but also relays specific imaging information about the source/centroid/sink at its other end. How vast distance traversing particles or wavefronts are able to do this beats me.

[seasmith]

It's a ray [[Light ?]] [therefore not a particle or wavefront] easily depicted in an optical or orbital vector diagram. It applies pressure at a small surface area of the retina or other detector, but also relays specific imaging information about the source/centroid/sink at its other end. How vast distance traversing particles or wavefronts are able to do this beats me.
-webolife

Please pardon the intrusion into this profound round philosophical robin (universes?), but this ditty of inanitity just popped into mind upon reading this page:

Light as radiant diffusion of charge,
Matter as coalescence of charge,
Gravity as conversion of charge,
Space as topologies of charge,
Light is as light as aether.

Again, my apologies...
s

[webolife]

Haiku back,

I get quite a charge
from charging you to define
the nature of charge

For me, charge is at its fundamental level the "vector" describing the interaction between two centropic pressure fields, ok call them particles... Two like fields interact with oppositely pointing vectors [ie. each vector toward it's respective centroid] resulting in "repulsion", a field subject to a "greater field" has a net vector [and movement] toward the centroid of the greater field, resulting in "attraction". Elsewhere I refer to the centroid of the greater field as exerting "polity" over its neighborhood of particles/fields.

[Michael V]

webolife,

All motion is curved

OR should it be:

All observed motion is curved

I am extremely interested in your thoughts on this matter.

Help me please.

Michael

[webolife]

Fair question, Michael.
Just as you appropriately assume in your science philosophy that the universe is a real place, not just the figment of one's imagination, I also assume [and I believe it is also appropriate] that the universe does not act according to principles that we do not observe, no matter how "logical" they may seem to us. As far as "logic" goes, that way of thinking is the life-long slave to our presuppositions. Using the same system of logic, and the same supply of evidences, you and I come to widely different conclusions based on the "faith base" from which we begin our journey. So I understand your caveat, but it makes no real difference to me. When I "observe" light's pressure, I ask "why?", just as you do, but I find that I am closer to understanding what I see by calling it pressure, instead of unobservable particles or waves.