Logos: Driven by beauty, led by reason. Thinking Greek

There is no beauty in physicists' picture of reality. There's no coherence in their story. They're lost, and they're too proud to ask for directions. (Back where I come from it is said that a fool is not a complete fool unless he is proud too.) I decided to build my own universe because I didn't like the one I was given. I didn't like it from the first sight. I didn't like its look, and I didn't believe its stories. It was too complicated, too pretentious, too vague, it spoke too much, it said too little... and it was damn ugly too. There have been times, admittedly, when I have either been seduced or bullied into accepting that it had a certain charm, and even some believability. But those moments never lasted very long, for on the things that really mattered it always came across as ugly and as dubious as ever. If it is true that in the case of SR I could never like, or believe, the conventional understanding of what it was supposed to say about the truth, when it came to GR I entertained from time to time the thought of maybe finding common grounds with it—one good day, in the future. But in the end, I saw that that just could not ever happen. Not because the odds of being able to convince those in power that my vision is worthy of replacing theirs were so insignificant that no one would consider, but because I could never trade my model of the Truth for theirs. After all I'd seen quite early that the little they offered I already had, and that their most was irrelevant to the Truth.

A couple of quick and final thoughts about SR.

At the very best a relativist could argue that the picture painted by SR is that reality happens at the interface between one's past and one's future, and that that interface is basically formed by the inter-exchange of light signals between one and the cosmos. But even that argument is weak and undesirable. That's because the ultimate purpose of physics is not to describe reality from the limited perspective of an observer (who is irrevocably handicapped spatio-temporally). The quintessential scope of physics is to describe reality from God's perspective. You know what I mean? Of course, you do.

Objects extend in the direction of their motion, and that is true regardless of the type of motion involved. The most eloquent example of that phenomenon is presented by Newton's bucket experiment. Below on the left there is a graphic depiction of my explanation of that experiment (view from above). Then, in the middle there is an illustration of what would happen in Newton's bucket if the experiment were to be conducted in space, in absence of any gravitational field. Finally on the right there is a graphic depiction of why the effects of the so-called centrifugal force are felt on a rotating platform. These examples alone are sufficient to retire Mach's principle to the trivial pages of history. Good riddance.

The most beautiful manifestation of spatial extension in moving bodies is the gyroscope. The most familiar is the shape of the Earth. Stories for another time.

About waves (in sound, on water, in light--in space, essentially)

Let me tell you a story. As a schoolchild I used to listen with fascination at the industrial siren that marked with a long shrilling whistle the thrice-a-day change of shifts at the town's steel mill. There was nothing remarkable about that unremarkable sound, yet I remember paying full attention to it every time it played. Why? Because, to my mind (or to my ear), the whistle of the siren sounded differently from where I lived, to where I went to school, or to where my cousins lived. Although I was fascinated by my discovery, I was not in the least shocked by it. That sound changed in quality with distance--I could rather easily see its Greek beauty.

A few years later I learned about the so-called Doppler effect, and that marked the beginning of a long and lopsided confrontation with the conventional description of reality. I did not have any problems with the logic behind the Doppler effect, or with its existence as a physical phenomenon. What I had problems with was the conventional assertion that only motion creates Doppler-like effects. According to my experience, and to my understanding, sound was--firstly and foremostly--altered qualitatively by distance alone. Motion, as far as I was concerned was merely incidental to the issue.

For a long while I didn't talk to anyone about the subject. But then one day I began asking people simple questions from every day experience connected to the Doppler effect, and that has remained an exercise I still continue today, from time to time. There was a very good reason for my beginning of that exercise--no one in the world seemed to have noticed the effect I'd had!

Now, since you are reading this, how about doing the exercise in question with you? All you have to do is answer, in the privacy of your own mind, a few very simple questions. For example:

1) Imagine that you are 5m away from a stage on which your favourite band plays your favourite song. Imagine next that you are 500m away from the same stage, on which the same band plays the same song. Finally picture the same scenario with you listening from a distance of 1km away. And now the question: Would the song sound exactly the same to your ear-brain in all three cases? (Pitch wise, of course.)

2) Imagine that you are a couple of metres away from a lumberjack, listening with great attention at the sounds made by his big axe as he's cutting a tree. Move your imaginary point of observation next to a distance of a couple of hundred metres away from our lumberjack and listen with the same attention to those sounds. Finally, do exactly the same from a distance of 500m and then answer the now familiar question: Was that wood-cutting sound identical to your ear-brain in every case?

3) Last question. Consider the same scenarios as above by imagining that you are a spectator now at a tennis game, or at a golf tournament, or at a hollering competition, and then answer what should by now be the obvious question.

Now I do not know what your answers to the three questions have been, but I would be extraordinarily surprised if your answers were to be different than those I have invariably heard from people over the years. Anyway, here are those answers. To question number 1 the answer I have always been given was an emphatic "Yes, a song sounds exactly the same, regardless of the distance from which it is listened to". To the questions 2 and 3, however, the answers I've been given (invariably and emphatically, noteworthily) were completely opposite to the first one: "No, the sounds produced in the cases mentioned do not 'sound' the same at different distances--they definitely appear to change their pitch". Not only that, in answering the questions 2 and 3 all those I asked described with confidence how the pitch changed with distance, i.e. from a higher pitch when closer to the source, to a lower one when further away from it.

To my ear-brain there is no doubt that distance alone affects the quality of sound. I remember how on a May night of 1983 as we were coming down a long, lazy hill, leaving behind white crosses spread-out strangely sparingly onto its crest, I was listening captivated to the sounds of a village that lay 2-3 km in a gully ahead of us. There was a wedding taking place, with loud music and a hum of happy voices. The music was well known to me, and I remember listening intently to the ever so slight, but definite, difference between the sound of the music that was vibrating in my ear-brain then and the one I knew so well from the times I had myself been to weddings, christenings, and other celebrations.

Needless to say, to a physicist the answers above would only manage to ignite his ridicule, or his contempt (or, probably most likely, both), even though I have a strong gut-feeling that in his ear-brain the sound of a tennis racket striking a ball does also 'sound' differently with distance. (That is unless he is severely impaired ear-brainy, or if he's never seen a game of tennis. Or one of golf. Or one of hollering.)

I am a Greek, fundamentally. I am driven by beauty and I am led by reason. My only goal is the Truth, and my only desire is to be able to discern It. I'm well aware of the very few things I could say that I know, and I'm even more aware of those so many I know I do not know. I believe that the Truth is, in principle, discernable and comprehensible to any mind, if a number of simple caveats are respected. I believe that any prophet either was, is, or will become a buffoon, at some point. This is the non-negotiable price one must be prepared to pay for his beliefs.

I never liked the conventional wave-belief. I didn't like its sound waves, I didn't like its water waves, and I didn't like its light waves. I didn't like them, primarily, for one and the same reason. According to my reason and experience I believed that any kind of energy propagation was affected both quantitatively and qualitatively by distance. Certainly, from a Greek perspective of what constitutes beauty, such relationship is highly desirable. But, more importantly, my observations revealed quite convincingly that such seemed to be the case indeed. And that, before anything else, forced me to ponder painfully long and hard why physicists couldn't see it.

In a nondispersive wave medium, waves can propagate without deformation. Electromagnetic waves in unbounded free space are nondispersive as well as non-dissipative and thus can propagate over astronomical distances. Sound waves in air are also nearly nondispersive even in the ultrasonic frequency range. If not, that is, if high frequency notes (e.g., piccolo) and low frequency notes (e.g., base) propagate at different velocities, they would reach our ears at different times, and music played by an orchestra would not be harmonious. Most waves in material media are dispersive, however, and wave forms originally set up are bound to change in a manner that the wave energy is more spatially spread out or dispersed.

I found the paragraph above somewhere online, and I liked it so much that I collected it for future use. I want to tell you exactly what I liked about it. Firstly, I liked the third statement in the paragraph, especially for its use of the word "nearly". As soon as I saw that word my mind immediately took me a number of years back to a much similar answer given by a conventional physicist to someone who had asked why the blades of fans, the spokes of wheels, or the propellers of airplanes, appear at times to rotate in the opposite direction to the real one. Listen to the answer: "Usually that seemingly change of rotation is seen in movies..." (And so on and so forth--unimportant, within the context, really.) That "usually" is on a par with our "nearly". Why? Because they both have been used as strategic terms, designed to conceal (or at least obscure), the truth about some undisclosed realities. To my mind the word "usually" was therefore chosen for a two-fold reason. Firstly, in order to provide some sort of justification to the answer given, and secondly, to camouflage the conventional ignorance about the real factors behind the phenomenon in question. The obvious matter of fact (as far as I'm concerned, yeah) is that the benevolent physicist did neither mention that the observation is just as visible on the real landscape to the naked eye, nor did he make any attempt to either answer it, or, otherwise, truthfully confess not knowing it. As for the word "nearly", it is sufficient to read the third and the fourth statements in the paragraph together, to see the contradiction that lies (indecently, insolently) in-between the two.

The last statement in the paragraph is also quite interesting, for a number of reasons. Water waves, for example, are considered dispersive in the conventional physics, but even in that case the establishmentarian explanation is too rigid and too linear, for my liking, and--as a direct consequence, I contend--it has been for more than 100 years utterly mute, totally idle, and comprehensively sterile. Take that most popular lay-description of water wave dispersion created by the dropping of a rock in a pond. The impact of the rock with the water creates a number of concentric waves that travel outwardly from the point of impact, says that description. As those concentric waves travel further and further away from the point of impact the distance between them systematically increases (the waves become "more spatially spread out, or dispersed", as the last sentence ends the paragraph I cited above). The reason for that dispersive effect, we're told, is that water waves of different wavelengths travel at different speeds. Specifically, the impact of the rock with the water creates a train of undulations (waves) which are progressively longer in wavelength from centre outwards, and whose individual speeds are also progressively faster in the same manner. The longer waves travel faster on water than their shorter counterparts, say those with conventional beliefs, hence the dispersion in question.

Now, the conventional idea of wavelength-speed relationship may be neat--indeed may it even be true, as it is stated--but comprehensive in scope, and simple in implementation, it certainly ain't. And this (to my Greek mind, let me specify), is yet again a matter of concern, and (equitably, wisely) one of suspicion also. In an all too typical display this shows, once again (yeah, to my mind), the propensity of conventionality to cumber even the simplest into the most complicated (or to get tangled, or start tripping, on nothing more than a proverbial pair of shoelaces).

It turns out that the simple idea that water waves with longer lengths travel faster than their shorter counterparts is no longer able, on its own, to account for the propagation of energy in water. There is a need, it seems, in water propagation for two kinds of waves. One kind is formed by those so-called gravity waves; the other kind contains the so-called capillary waves. In the two pictures above both gravity and capillary waves are shown, but I'm not at all disposed to discuss them to any significant degree at this stage. I will only mention in passing that in gravity waves the longer wavelengths travel faster than shorter ones, while in the case of the capillary waves the situation is exactly the opposite! Furthermore, there is another radical difference between the gravity and the capillary waves: in one of them the group velocity is higher (and, conversely, the phase velocity is lower), while in the other the situation is exactly the opposite. And then there is one third contrasting difference between the two kinds of water waves, which is rather more subtle in nature, but which--to my mind--it could be quite safely said that they appear to disperse, again, in opposite directions. These three differences between the so-called gravity and capillary waves I will discuss in detail in due (and in good) time. (A note of special importance. Of all the three peculiar characteristics-differences between the gravity and the capillary waves the third is the most far-reaching in scope and consequence. All in good time, though, as I said.)

Physicists are convinced that they have 'sorted-out' the wave propagation in water. After all, they have been boasting for a while now that they can derive mathematically the exact wavelengths of the capillary waves from the data related to the so-called surface tension of the water-medium. But that achievement falls well short of my minimum personal threshold for impressiveness, and here is why.

According to the conventional wisdom, apart from the dispersive water waves discussed thus far, there is another type of water waves, still. That type is formed by gravity waves of identical wavelength, which are, say the conventional physicists, completely non-dispersive. I dispute that. On two grounds. First, because the idea runs in a direction totally against the reason-logic-beauty-truth I have seen underlying the physical reality. Second, because I have good evidence which proves that that idea is completely flawed.

Now let me say beforehand that physicists have never written textbooks after my liking, or in my language. That's why the "gravity waves of identical wavelength are non-dispersive" statement is as vague as it is authoritarian, as far as I'm concerned. Why are gravity waves of the same wavelength non-dispersive? What real physics--beside the conventional wavelength-velocity invocation--is allowing that type of water waves to preserve their physical attributes, and for how long can that state of affairs be maintained? How many such waves are--if they are--necessary to insure non-dispersiveness? This is just a sample of the questions I have never found clear and direct answers to from those following the reigning establishmentarianism. In spite of that, nevertheless, there always has been one main thing I knew with certainty--that the mainstream establishment of physicists was absolutely adamant that the gravity water waves of the same wavelength are decidedly non-dispersive, and in the end that was enough to help me in deriving a conclusive picture of why I'm not a follower of the reigning establishmentarianism.

If the conventional belief is that water waves of the same wavelength are non-dispersive a graphic illustration of that must necessarily look just like the picture I will draw below.

But to my Greek mind the above is not an image typical for a phenomenon of the living Universe--it is rather an image of a netherworld. It is most depressing to see that the physicists of our era, who are the inheritors and beneficiaries of all human knowledge and wisdom from the beginning to this point in time, and who therefore should be thinkers of hitherto unparalleled potential, are not able to see--for one reason, or for another--why no transmission or propagation of energy could take place in the manner of the above illustration.

There are two physical mechanisms that control and maintain wave motion. For most waves, gravity is the restoring force that causes any displacements of the surface to be accelerated back toward the mean surface level. The kinetic energy gained by the fluid returning to its rest position causes it to overshoot, resulting in the oscillating wave motion. In the case of very short wavelength disturbances of the surface, i.e., ripples, the restoring force is surface tension, wherein the surface acts like a stretched membrane. If the wavelength is less than a few millimetres, surface tension dominates the motion, which is described as a capillary wave. Surface gravity waves in which gravity is the dominant force have wavelengths greater than approximately 10 cm (4 in.).

The paragraph above is from the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and it describes the conventional understanding of the "two physical mechanisms that control and maintain wave motion". There are two things of interest here. The first one is concerned with the description of how a disturbance in the body of water is understood to create the two types of waves routinely observed. I find it most interesting that although the two types of waves (gravity and capillary) are considered, and treated, by physicists as different and independent entities, in fact there is one and the same mechanism responsible for both types. Now, in order to dispel any possibility for confusion about what I've just said read with attention the second, the third, and the fourth sentences in the paragraph, and then think: the process described in the second and the third sentences (concerning the creation of the so-called gravity waves) is very much the same as the one covered in the fourth sentence (describing the generation of the so-called capillary waves). Indeed, the only difference between the two seems to be one of magnitude. But in fact, even that cannot withstand close observational scrutiny.

Is Einstein's special relativity a masterpiece of genius, or one of infantilism?

The Michelson-Morley experiment

Or how the current dark ages in physics have been drawn by the flawed conventional analysis of that infamous experiment

The Michelson-Morley experiment was conducted in 1887 with the definitive scope of detecting the (rather ill-thought) concept of ether wind. But the experiment was more apt at establishing if there are such things as absolute motion and absolute space, in fact. For those with a limited knowledge of the main aspects related to the experiment the paragraphs below may be helpful.

Physics theories of the late 19th century postulated that, just as water waves must have a medium to move across (water), and audible sound waves require a medium to move through (such as air or water), so also light waves require a medium, the "luminiferous aether". Because light can travel through a vacuum, it was assumed that the vacuum must contain the medium of light. Because the speed of light is so great, designing an experiment to detect the presence and properties of this aether took considerable ingenuity.

Earth travels a tremendous distance in its orbit around the sun, at a speed of around 30 km/s or over 108,000 km per hour. The sun itself is travelling about the Galactic Center at even greater speeds, and there are other motions at higher levels of the structure of the universe. Since the Earth is in motion, it was expected that the flow of aether across the Earth should produce a detectable "aether wind". Although it would be possible, in theory, for the Earth's motion to match that of the aether at one moment in time, it was not possible for the Earth to remain at rest with respect to the aether at all times, because of the variation in both the direction and the speed of the motion.

At any given point on the Earth's surface, the magnitude and direction of the wind would vary with time of day and season. By analysing the return speed of light in different directions at various different times, it was thought to be possible to measure the motion of the Earth relative to the aether.

Michelson had a solution to the problem of how to construct a device sufficiently accurate to detect aether flow. The device he designed, later known as an interferometer, sent a single source of white light through a half-silvered mirror that was used to split it into two beams travelling at right angles to one another. After leaving the splitter, the beams travelled out to the ends of long arms where they were reflected back into the middle on small mirrors. They then recombined on the far side of the splitter in an eyepiece, producing a pattern of constructive and destructive interference based on the spent time to transit the arms. If the Earth is traveling through an ether medium, a beam reflecting back and forth parallel to the flow of ether would take longer than a beam reflecting perpendicular to the ether because the time gained from traveling downwind is less than that lost traveling upwind. The result would be a delay in one of the light beams that could be detected when the beams were recombined through interference. Any slight change in the spent time would then be observed as a shift in the positions of the interference fringes.

The paragraphs above are from Wikipedia, where you can also find a detailed conventional analysis of the experiment. In what follows I will also use a conventional analysis of the Michelson-Morley experiment, written by Isaac Asimov. The reason I'm using that particular description is two-fold: Firstly, because Asimov's description is better suited to my purpose (which is looking for absolute space and motion); secondly, because in Asimov's description I found a beautiful “slip of tongue” about how common sense has been stripped of its sense by a silly assumption, a dogmatic view, and a terrible mathematical translation. Before getting to that, however, I want to show you below an animation with a basic image of the interferometer used in the experiment. (My interferometer may look different than Michelson's, but it nevertheless contains all the relevant features of the original interferometer. In the animation below S is the source of light, the two M are the two mirrors, and the two d represent the lengths of the interferometer's arms. The rest of the animation is pretty much self explanatory, so I'll say no more about that.)

In analysing the experiment we shall assess individually the two paths travelled by the beams of light. Thus, in the case where light is sent out in the direction of earth's motion, from the source S to the mirror M over the distance d, the light travels at its velocity c + the velocity of the earth v. This is the first leg of the journey, and mathematically this is expressed thus: d / (c + v). The second leg of this (parallel) journey takes place from the mirror M back to the source S, over the distance d. In this case, however, the light travels at its velocity c minus earth's velocity v. Mathematically this second leg of the journey is expressed thus: d / (c – v). In Asimov's words, from this point on:

The total time for the round trip is:

Combining the terms algebraically, we get:

Now suppose that the light-beam is sent out to a mirror at the same distance in a direction at right angles to the earth's motion through the ether. The beam of light is aimed from S (the source) to M (the mirror) over the distance d. However, during the time it takes the light to reach the mirror, the earth's motion has carried the mirror from M to M ', so that the actual path travelled by the light beam is from S to M '.

This distance we call x, and the distance from M to M ' we call y (see diagram above). While the light is moving the distance x at its velocity c, the mirror is moving the distance y at the velocity of the earth's motion v. Since both the light and the mirror arrive at M ' simultaneously, the distances travelled must be exactly proportional to the respective velocities. Therefore:

Now we can solve for the value of x by use of the Pythagorean theorem... In the right triangle S M M ' then, substituting vx/c for y:

The light is reflected from the mirror at M ' to the source, which meanwhile has travelled on to S '. Since the distance S ' S '' is equal to S S ', the distance M ' S '' is equal to x. The total path travelled by the light beam is therefore:

The time taken by the light beam to cover this distance at its velocity c is:

How does this compare with the time that light takes for the round trip in the direction of the earth's motion? Let us divide the time in the parallel case by the time in the perpendicular case...:

Now any number divided by its square root gives the same square root as a quotient... So the last equation simplifies to:

This expression can be further simplified if we multiply both the numerator and the denominator [like below]:

And there you are. That is the ratio of the time that light should take to travel in the direction of the earth's motion as compared with the time it should take in the direction perpendicular to the earth's motion. For any value of v greater than zero, the [last] expression above is greater than 1. Therefore, if the earth is moving through a motionless ether, it should take longer for light to travel in the direction of the earth's motion than in the perpendicular direction. (In fact, the parallel motion should take the maximum time and the perpendicular motion the minimum time.) Michelson and Morley set up their experiment to try to detect the directional difference in the travel time of light. By trying their beam of light in all directions, and measuring the time of return by their incredibly delicate interferometer, they felt they ought to get differences in apparent velocity...

They found no differences at all in the velocity of light with changing direction! To put it another way, the velocity of light was always equal to c, regardless of the motion of the source—a clear contradiction of the Newtonian laws of motion. In attempting to measure the absolute motion of the earth, Michelson and Morley had thus managed to cast doubt not only on the existence of the ether, but on the whole concept of absolute rest and absolute motion, and upon the very basis of the Newtonian system of the universe. (I. Asimov—Asimov's new guide to science, pp. 811-814)

The results of the experiment generated a subsequent linear reasoning and theoretical development which eventually reached a climax with Einstein's creation of the relativistic philosophy. Thus, following the path opened by the Michelson-Morley experiment, in 1893...

...the Irish physicist George Francis FitzGerald came up with a novel explanation to account for the negative results of the M-M experiment. He suggested that all matter contracts in the direction of its motion and that the amount of contraction increases with the rate of motion. According to this interpretation, the interferometer is always shortened in the direction of the earth's “true” motion by an amount that exactly compensates for the difference in distance that the light beam has to travel. Moreover, all possible measuring devices, including human sense organs, would be “foreshortened” in just the same way, so that the foreshortening could, in no possible way, be measured.

Then:

The Dutch physicist Hendrik Antoon Lorentz soon carried FitzGerald's idea one step further. Thinkink about cathode rays, on which Lorentz was working at the time, he reasoned that if the charge of a charged particle were compressed into a smaller volume, the mass of the particle should increase. Therefore, a flying particle foreshortened in the direction of its travel by the FitzGerald contraction would have to increase in mass.

Until, finally:

Einstein introduced a second important idea in his special theory of relativity: that the speed of light in a vacuum never varies, regardless of the motion of its source. In Newton's view of the universe, a light beam from a source moving toward an observer should seem to travel more quickly than one from a source moving in any other direction. In Einstein's view, this would not seem to happen, and from that assumption he was able to derive the Lorentz-FitzGerald equations. He showed that the increase of mass with velocity, which Lorentz had applied only to charged particles, can be applied to all objects of any sort. Einstein reasoned further that increases in velocity would not only foreshorten length and increase mass but also slow the pace of time; in other words, clocks would slow down along with the shortening of the yardsticks. (I. Asimov—Asimov's new guide to science, pp. 352-357)

And there it is—the theoretical development following the Michelson-Morley experiment. According to the conventional establishment, the road from the Michelson-Morley experiment to the creation of relativity was a natural and sensible progression that culminated with Einstein's vision. The special theory of relativity became one of the most precious jewels in the crown of physics, and as such it has been reigning absolutely now for just over a century. Most conventional physicists, who are die-hard relativists, no longer question the special theory of relativity—in spite of its many apparent vagaries. But, in the last four or five years, a small number of conventional physicists have found the need (and courage) to question the absolute validity of Einstein's first theory of relativity. One of them, Lee Smolin, believes for instance that the special theory of relativity needs to be changed, somehow, (although he doesn't seem to know how exactly that could be done, or what exactly needs to be changed). However, the cold fact is that physicists like Lee Smolin are so very few at this point in time that the special theory of relativity should still enjoy its absolute status for quite a while yet.

The special theory of relativity has been—nevertheless—opposed by many people since its inception, and that reality is still manifest today. The conventional physicists may scream all they want about the “irrefutable” validity of the theory; the fact is that more and more people are no longer fascinated by the bombastic picture painted by relativists. Instead, they are increasingly asking: “What on earth are you saying, Messrs. Physicists?” To which, of course, the relativists of today can only reply with the same arguments and the same mental pictures used by the relativists at the very beginning of the twentieth century. Not much has changed in the relativity saga, with the exception of some new “patching up” being required. For instance, Einstein assumed that the known velocity of light could never be superseded. That assumption had to hold, for otherwise things could be sent backwards in time. But the fact of the matter is that the speed of light has been superseded (and in the worst of all possible scenarios, in the form of an undeniable signal)! So, our relativists had no choice but to “patch up” the theory, somehow. In the end no one is quite sure if that particular hole in the special theory of relativity has been “patched-up”, although you can bet your last dollar that no relativist would accept that the “hole” is still there for all to see! In fact, no one is quite sure how relativists could claim that other “holes” in the special theory of relativity (in the form of the twin and the clock paradoxes) do not exist. I will come back to these issues a little later. Next, however, we'll reassess the Michelson-Morley experiment from the “common sense” perspective.