In my understanding there are only three primary spectral colours: Red, Yellow, and Blue. All the other colours seen in the spectrum are formed by combinations (mixtures) of those primary colours. In effect, the green in the spectrum is formed by the mixture of Yellow and Blue; the orange is formed by Red and Yellow; the violet is the result of mixing Blue and Red. It is easy to demonstrate that green and orange are indeed mixtures of my three primary colours, as you will see in a moment. It is harder however to demonstrate that violet is also a mixture of primary colours, and for that reason I will leave that task for another time.
To demonstrate that the spectral green is a mixture I've decided to make use of an excerpt from a still widely cited paper written by Arthur G. Zajonc in 1976 and published in the American Journal of Physics in the same year. I chose this particular excerpt because, one, it is a perfect example of the grossly flawed conventional understanding on the subject at stake, and, two, because it is still as relevant today (in that scope alone, not to be forgotten) as it was thirty-six years ago. Moreover, my choice has also been significantly swayed by the fact that in the subject it deals with, at least, Goethe has suffered a great injustice for two centuries now. Yeah, for he's been right all along.
Let us consider boundary colors more exactly and in a way consistent with Goethe's approach... Figure below left depicts a first experiment. Regions of black and white are arranged as indicated in the figure and then viewed through the top half of a prism, one of whose edges is held against the nose. Certain colors will appear at the black-white interfaces. Important to note is the fact that there are two sets of colors: the "warm" colors, red, orange, and yellow, and the "cool"colors, blue, indigo, and violet. A number of observations may be made at this point. For example, the cool colors appear over the black region while the warm appear over the white. Also the color green is absent altogether although present in the Newtonian spectrum... As noted, the color green is absent from the boundary colors. How then can one produce this color? The following experiments are a vivid and a beautiful demonstration of that process. Place a sheet of white paper beneath two black sheets, as shown in the figure below right. Slowly slide the black sheets together while viewing the narrowing white region through a prism. As will be seen, the yellow of the warm colors will come into contact with the blue of the cool colors to give rise to green. From this experiment Goethe concluded that green is produced by the mixing of yellow and blue as is done in painting. (This is, of course, in error since the green produced here is approximately spectral green, that is, pure green, not a mixture.)
Now, before anything else I should explain why there is an extra picture above, in the middle. That picture is mine, and its role is to show that in the subject of light and spectral colours the contemporary physicists have (foolishly, and stubbornly) remained warped in Newton's time. For me it is, firstly, nothing less than deeply embarrassing to see that in one of the world's most prestigious scientific journals people with great academic credentials and titles (and with even greater egos) are unwittingly displaying at the same time an ignorance, an arrogance, and a foolishness to rival those of the least gifted simpleton out there. Tough words? I don't think so. To see why I believe that have a good look at the picture above left and then take your prism, vertex up, and look through it at the picture in the middle.
Following that look through your prism at the illustration I will drop below in a moment. For this particular experiment hold your prism with the vertex (the refracting angle) pointing to your left. The reason for my changing the position of the observation is purely for convenience and ease, of course.
Look at the two items in the illustration, first from the usual distance away from the monitor as you're normally sitting in your chair, and then gradually pushing your prism further away from your eye and towards the monitor. We have conducted similar experiments in the past, so you shouldn't have too much trouble understanding where I come from, and where I am heading toward. The main thing to keep an eye on is the change in the widths of the spectral colours with the distance from where the observation is conducted. The second thing to keep under observation is the particular colours displayed at every point (paying special attention to the yellow, the blue, and the green). Then, if you have come to any sort of conclusion, read the last two sentences in the excerpt I cited earlier and see what you think about Zajonc's own (stipulated so emphatically in the last sentence of the paragraph).
Finally, for those genuinely interested in the subject, look through your prism at the illustration above from a distance of 3-4 metres and try to figure out why from this distance there appear dark bands between the spectral ones.
Whether there's a need of me to say it or not, I don't know, but the truth is that in everything I have written so far I have taken quite a few 'leaps of faith', and as daunting as that was (which I won't trouble you with) there's no doubt in my mind that I'll have to do it again. One of the most daunting leaps of faith I had to do was in regards to my belief that sound waves undergo a transformative process of qualitative degradation, not just a quantitative one. A quite conspicuous proof of how daunting this leap of faith was lies in the fact that in my past ruminations on that subject I never ventured beyond the relative security of a few, rather poetic, sentences. Nonetheless, this is not to say that in my final decision to take the leap in the matter I was perhaps only driven by idealism and blind faith. Not at all. In fact I was pretty convinced that I had strong enough arguments to ultimately warrant a relatively justified leap of faith in the matter. Hence why I am here, to tell you now what I avoided to discuss yesterday.
One of those strong arguments I've relied on for a long time has its roots deeply implanted in personal observation. I've already told you about some of those observations, in which the quality of sound at the point of origin was different to that experienced some distance away. There was no doubt in my mind that a qualitative change in the pitch of the sound with distance was a fact, and neither anybody else doubted that. However, in contrast to my own beliefs on the matter, the apparent experts in the field had a totally different explanation for that transformative process. If a particular sound sounded different from a distance it was due to the fact that the longer wavelengths in any sound travel further than their shorter counterparts, which in effect are rather quickly subject to a process of attenuation into heat, those experts say. That's why the music played some distance away from a listener sounds more 'bassy' in his ears, they continue. That's why the sound of a golf club hitting a ball is so much sharper close to the golfer, and conversely so much duller far away from him, they would no doubt tell me.
That explanation 'sounded' plausible and persuasive enough even in my dissident ears, I must admit, but I still wasn't sufficiently convinced to make me abandon my eventual leap of faith. For a two-fold reason. Namely, because in my mind one particular experience 'sounded' even more plausible and persuasive than the conventional explanation--and especially so since the conventional explanation, unlike mine, seemed to rely solely on theory. Let me explain.
One experience that has never waned in my mind is that of me and a group of boys of about ten years of age wandering without a fear or care on the hills that surrounded our town, howling at the top of our lungs at other kids that were invariably doing the same thing from the tops of other hills, kilometres away from ours. Now this was a pretty regular endeavour in those times, and thus I had ample opportunity to hear and compare many such howlings in the following four or five years of my childhood. One thing was certain, for example. In all the howling exchanges I had witnessed over those years there was always an identical pattern that governed the quality of the travelling sound. Specifically, if there's really any need to explain it further, the pitch of the howls I sent was always much higher than the pitch of those I received. I know that much, and I know it well. Now, if any expert today would attempt to convince me that the reason for that difference in pitch was the one that has conventionally been sold to the world for all these years, I would not offer even a dry smile for it.
The above was part of the experimental evidence that formed the foundations of my belief. In addition to that evidence I also had the back up of a theoretical one, which is depicted below in graphic format. And to my mind (and for my current purpose) it very much suffices--just like the verbal depiction in the previous paragraph.
Years back, when I first got acquainted with the quantum theory, I rather quickly thought of a way that could explain the double-slit experiment in a coherent manner, devoid of any bizarreness. Of course, to be able to explain in such a manner the double-slit experiment amounted pretty much to understanding the nature and principles of the entire quantum theory itself, according to one of its conceptual fathers, named Richard Feynman, and with this particular conclusion of his I totally agreed. Unfortunately, the same man had also advised the world that no one should even try to make any sense of the quantum theory because no one shall ever be able to do that. The theory, the famous creator of the QED declared, is impossible to be genuinely understood by anyone for the simple reason that it just doesn't make any sense. Now with this conclusion of the great man I could never agree.
Like everyone else I began my journey into the quantum world by learning about the experiments that have been mystifying literally all physicists since that fateful year of 1900. From Young's experiment with two slits to Wheeler's delayed choice experiment, to more delayed experiments, to quantum eraser experiments, to delayed choice quantum eraser experiments, etc. Unlike everyone else though, not one of those experiments has ever really troubled my mind. On the contrary, to my mind each and every one of those experiments made perfect sense. (In fairness this truth is spectacularly unremarkable, for as you well know I have always counterpointed with the majority.)
The way in which I could coherently explain the results of the quantum experiments came to me, by and large, as a direct consequence of my firm disbelief in the bombastic conventional conjectures painted on the walls by the ruling establishment. Since the very beginning of my quantum journey I was absolutely convinced that God could under no circumstance be either that mischievous, or whimsical, or indeed malicious. And let me tell you that from that counterpointed perspective to the essence of my quantum understanding there was such a short and comfortable journey that I have never really been able to put a time frame on it.
Now, to those who've been regular visitors to these pages the basic principle of my quantum understanding is already known, to an extent, from some of my early pages. Since then, however, we have discussed many other issues, and because quite a few of them are invariably related and connected to the quantum ones, I will describe my understanding of the results of the quantum experiments from an analogous, yet somewhat different, perspective to the typical one (which I had used in the past).
Let us consider Young's two-slit experiment, although from a slightly different perspective, as I mentioned. In effect, what I'll ask you to picture in your mind is a wall with two apertures in it standing between you and a generator of a 'mono' wavelength noise. (Needless to say this thought-experiment comes with certain idealizations I don't want to mention, for they do not affect its overall validity.) Scene number one. The source starts emitting its one-frequency noise while both apertures are open. Now, much like in Young's experiment with light, in this case your brain (which is the equivalent of the projecting screen in the traditional double-slit experiment) registers a pattern of (sound) waves interference. Scene number two. With fast shutting devices working alternatingly behind the two apertures your brain registers the diffraction pattern that is characteristic to particle emissions. (To those who cannot resist the temptations of pedantry I have no desire to offer anything more than what I already have.)
If you have been able to separate the differences between the double-slit sound experiment and the traditional one conducted with light, and more importantly, if you have managed to leave them aside for the time being (perhaps cautiously, yet decidedly, nevertheless) the quintessential idea behind the quantum phenomena will pretty soon delight you. Until then you'll have to trust me on this, though. What is most important at this point is to see why the principle of the thought-experiment above is the same as that responsible for the results of the conventional quantum experiments.
The only possible way to explain the results of the quantum experiments, and to remain sane at the same time, was to conclude that light-energy-matter travels from one place to another in the same way the other known forms of energy do. On this basis alone it should become immediately obvious that such conclusion is not revolutionary at all! On the contrary, it is one mundanely normal, totally prosaic. But the most important thing is the fact that such an unremarkable idea is so spectacularly able to bring sense (common sense, no less) to the quantum world.
The first things in which my proposal will begin to prove its worthiness are those for which SR has been so extensively tested, and so successful in predicting. For example, one such prediction was the apparent increase in mass of objects in uniform motion. This prediction was arrived at by virtue of the Lorentzian contraction suffered by objects in motion, and it has apparently been proven correct countless times. Now, one obvious consequence of my own extensional proposal is the same increase in mass of objects in uniform motion, and I won't say anything more than that for there's no really need to. Then there is that phenomenon of "the long-living muons", which I've already talked about some time ago. What else is there? Ah, the time dilation of clocks in motion. Now that prediction is much better explained by my own proposal than Einstein's. In fact, whatever in SR has been confirmed by experiment is at least just as easily predicted by a theoretical framework where instead of contraction there is an extension effect that affects objects in uniform motion. But my extensional proposal goes much further than that.
Take that beautiful bucket experiment, of Newton. I have discussed the bucket experiment but I didn't say anything at all about how I would explain the concavity of the water in the rotating bucket. In view of what I've discussed in the last few pages my explanation for the bucket experiment should be rather conspicuous now. As the body of water in Newton's rotating bucket begins to rotate itself, it extends (expands) in the direction of its motion (and contracts at right angles to it). If you imagine yourself as watching from above the surface of the water in the bucket you should easily realise that although the body of water is rotating inside the bucket the expansion of the body of water, at every point, is happening in a straight line. This expansion causes the water to raise against the walls of the bucket, creating in the process the concavity of the water surface. This is the process responsible for the observations in the bucket experiment, not that so-called principle of Mach. In fact, if the bucket experiment could be carried out in a gravity free laboratory, the concave shape of the top surface of the water will also be seen to occur at the bottom surface of the body of water. (See figures below for a graphic depiction of this paragraph.)
And my extensional proposal can also explain (coherently, and convincingly) all those so-called fictitious forces. Imagine a merry-go-round, for example, on which one is invariably pushed by one such fictitious force off the rotating platform. This force is the so-called centrifugal force, which is a force we know quite well from experience, even though we can't claim that we understand where this force has its origins. Conventional physicists still believe that Mach was right when he claimed that Newton's ideas about absolute space and absolute motion were wrong, and that all those "fictitious" forces have their origins in a cosmological interaction between all universal matter, but the truth is much simpler, and considerably more beautiful than Mach's pompous and loud rational lameness. The centrifugal force one feels when on a merry-go-round is a direct consequence of the material stress (or spatio-temporal distortion) an object in any kind of motion is subject to. A centrifugal force is not experienced by an object that travels uniformly in a straight line, but the same extensional process that such objects experience is also wholly responsible for the centrifugal force that objects who travel at a uniform velocity, but not in a straight line, are subjected to. An observer on a rotating platform, thus, is subject to the spatio-temporal extensional process that governs uniform motion in a straight line, and it is simply due to this fact that the observer is pushed off a merry-go-round, for instance. This is the beautifully simple explanation for the existence of the so-called centrifugal force, and I dare any conventional physicist to show that Mach's gravitational gibberish is a better, more plausible explanation for it. Below there is a graphic illustration of my explanation for the centrifugal force.
Finally, on the subject of the origins of the so-called fictitious forces experienced by objects in absolute motion, in my universe (and Newton's) a single object in an empty universe will bulge around its equator if it is rotating. Forget about Mach's declaration that "rotation in an empty universe produces no effects (you couldn't tell that you're spinning in an empty universe), and that the centrifugal forces created in any rotational experiment are, basically, gravitational". Indeed the time has come to see that Newton was correct in his understanding of absolute motion and absolute space.
Of course, with everything I said on this subject it is now obvious that to my mind even earth's own shape is a consequence of the same extensional process I am proposing. In fact I believe that the current morphology of the solar system is a direct consequence of that process. Without going into too much detail, I believe that in the beginning the sun was a gigantic ball of hydrogen which was spinning around its axis much faster than today. As its rate of spin was increasing, the sun grew fatter and fatter around its equator and thinner at the poles, eventually beginning to spit-out into the surrounding space chunks of its own equatorial girth. Those chunks of hydrogen became gravitational attractors of dust and interstellar matter, forming in the end the planets we know. That's why the solar planets are pretty much on the same plane, and that's why they carry most of the angular momentum of the system, in spite of their combined mass being truly insignificant in comparison to that of the sun. But this is a story for another time.
I said before that the most beautiful manifestation of the expanding process at work is the gyroscope. The time has come to tell you why. And what better way is there to see it than when the gyroscope is in the act of performing one of its more impressive acts.
One may easily be convinced that when it comes to the gyroscopic act in the picture the eventual outcome is ultimately determined by the force of gravity. But that's not quite right. What really happens instead is that eventually the gyroscope will develop a precession, after which the force of gravity merely hastens that final outcome. And the fact that the gyroscope develops a precession is most important here--for it has a beautiful reason for existing. Don't you think?
Strolling thoughts of a coffee break
I said somewhere in one of my earlier pages that if I wanted to I could defend SR better than any conventional relativist. What I really meant though was that I have understood very well where the strength of SR lay. But by that I implicitly meant rather than also that I have seen quite well how the luring story of SR has managed to become so effective.
SR's is a story of perspectives. It is a highly democratic story. Your perspective is as good as mine SR have said and you've believed in that. And so have I. But you have also believed that no one could possibly know more than that. Yes you have believed that because you've been lured on that path by the highly suspicious yet nonetheless unanimous belief of your peers in scientific objectivity coupled with a rather dubious general demeanour of humbleness and modesty.
Then of course all perspectives had to be linked by an agent of communication and carrier of information. And light with its unrivalled speed has been thus quite naturally designated to play that most important role. It was a logical choice and it had all that was needed to become a popular one also. It would have been my choice too if you're wondering.
There is matter and there's light Einstein declared. This is the new vision. There's nothing else beside matter and light except our opinions. Matter and light and opinions. In that order if you know what I mean for the present the truth the reality takes place at the gate of time where one being becomes aware of another's by a brief but deeply intimate act when their personal fields of light-energy are overlapping. Thus spake Einstein to himself and to me and to others who have gotten to see into his mind.
But I meaning I have always believed that the story of reality and truth had to be bigger than that painted by the light in my brain or yours. Indeed to me it had never been conceivably acceptable to remain content to what I could learn from observing the physical reality from my own severely limited perspective or even from the expanded perspective I could imagine or indeed get at the interface of matter with light. What I wanted to get a glimpse of was not mine not yours not even light's perspective. What I wanted was God's own perspective. After all this is truly the highest goal of any scientific endeavour and it should be even more so in the science we call physics. Yes what we want from our theories is God's perspective and God's perspective can not be limited to c's velocity. That's because it rings even truer that what we ought to believe is to ultimately be able to understand God's mind. And thoughts.
SR is a prolific generator of paradoxes, and in the course of its centennial reign most of them have been extensively discussed, analysed, and of course 'dispelled' by relativists. I have mentioned and discussed a few of the more notable ones myself a while back, and I have no desire at all to delve into any of them any deeper than I have, mainly because I truly believe that they will eventually be publicly denounced for what they are--sheer nonsense. There is however one paradoxical idea in SR which I want to draw your attention to here, because in spite of having been much less discussed than others it carries a great deal of insight into what's wrong with Einstein's picture of reality, as well as with what needs to be changed in our understanding of relativistic perspectives and observations.
SR is a theory where the former absolute dimensions of space and time have been deposed of their sovereignty, and forced in the process to become unconditional subjects of the new absolute ruler in the relativistic universe: light, or more exactly the speed of light. Before this revolutionary act space, and time, had co-enjoyed a long reign of equal and absolute power. What does that mean exactly? Well, space reigned over the entire Universal 'land', while time reigned over all the Universal events and activities. To give you a more specific example, here in the solar system space was the administrator of the 93,000,000 miles of 'land' between the earth and the sun, while time monitored the 8.3 sec flight of the photons over that distance.
Now, when space and time were the equal and absolute rulers of the Universe things were easily understood, and respected, by everyone. For example, if someone wanted to fly from the earth to the sun (for some strange reason) he knew exactly at what speed he must fly if he wanted to get there in three days. Moreover, if he had plans to return home in time to watch on TV the final of the football World Cup--which was scheduled in exactly seven days form his date of departure from earth--he knew that he could only spend one day hiking on the sun. Can there be anything simpler, or easier to understand? In fact he could even choose to have a return trip to the sun during the 15 min half-time break of the final itself, if he didn't mind missing 1.6 min of the game. All he had to do to achieve that was to find a spacecraft that could travel at the speed of light. Simple. Straightforward. Easily understood.
But things changed quite dramatically after the 1905 revolution. All of a sudden everything got so complicated that everyone had to appeal to people with a totally new occupation, called relativists, if they wanted to go on any galactic trip or vacation. Even the old habit of flying no further than our sun had suddenly become a too complex problem for most humans but a few. "How far from home to the sun these days?" "Oh, it varies greatly... anywhere between zero and 93,000,000 miles". "What?! How long would it take me to get to the sun then?" "Oh, that varies even more... from no time at all to a couple of years... or longer". "Wow! What about from home to Alpha Centauri? How long would that trip take?" "Hmm... Anywhere from a few millennia to no time at all". "Why should I go to the sun then, if it takes me the same to see Alpha Centauri? Thanks for your help".
I couldn't help it. And, after all, nothing I said is too far from what Einstein and his followers have been telling the world for more than a century now. From the earth to the sun there is no distance at all--if you travel at light's speed. And the same 'no distance at all' is from here to Alpha Centauri, at light's speed. In fact SR assures us that the same 'no distance at all' is from here to the end of the Universe, if we manage to travel at c. C has become the ultimate, the absolute, the infinite, physical state! And, lo and behold, people--the new infinite is finite!
All aside, that's what relativists have been preaching to the world with the candid belief of a child and the zealotry of a brainless automaton. If you think that my words are appalling, unjust, untrue, inconsiderate, or whatever, let me tell (or remind) you about a relativistic false claim that is still pushed with an incredibly arrogant callousness into peoples' ears and brains as a prophesied truth.
One hundred years ago Einstein declared that nothing will ever travel faster than light. No object, no message, no information, not even a signal of whatever kind. About a quarter of a century ago though someone managed to send an electromagnetic pulse from one place to another at a velocity greater than c. That was an undeniable fact, and in short time others did it as well. One would have thought that the evidence was quite clear that Einstein's prediction had been proven false. But that did not happen. In a great display of staunch unity and faith the conventional establishment declared that what had been done did not invalidate in the least Einstein's prediction. That's because of that, and of that, and of that... and so on, and so forth.
Then a few short years later other people succeeded in sending an electromagnetic wave from one place to another at a speed greater than c. Not only that, those people did all that by avoiding that thing, and the other, and the so on... you know, those things that were previously used by the establishment to dismiss the claim that Einstein's prediction was wrong. The evidence was clear for all but the same die-hard group of conventional relativists. Einstein's prediction was still true, they declared, because the energy wave used was of a single wavelength-frequency, which meant that no real signal, no information, no massage was transmissible.
Anyway, some fifteen years back a smart experimentalist with a vision managed to encode no less than some famous Mozart piece of work into an energy wave that travelled at speeds much greater than c. Whoops! What now? See now on what I was going to argue earlier on? On exactly this. Because it is a very imaginable possibility.
So what now is the conventional answer to that? I don't know. But I know that relativists are at least as many today as there were 15 years ago.
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