SEPTEMBER 4th 2008
I have to admit I have always considered the CERN Supercollider a colossal waste of time, money, talent and materials, but I am also convinced that there was no way of stopping its happening. It is an amazing achievement, on a par with the NASA Shuttle Programme and the International Space Station. It will almost certainly confirm that our universe is physically multidimensional. While running, it will consume enough power to run a medium sized city. To process the results will need computers all over the world running for months and years. But since the 'standard model' of the physics of our universe does not make sense* it will at least make me feel better about the blazing row I had with my physics tutor, one 'Taxi' Hillard, in about 1956, which caused me to give up the life I was up till then then committed to - that of a scientist. I told him one of us had to be out to lunch and as far as I was concerned it was him. I left school shortly afterwards.
* SEE ENTRY BELOW FOR NOVEMBER 21st 2010
We can note that when Higgs suggested his 'boson' as a particle that interacted with the inertial field or 'frame of reference', he was given short shrift as well. On learning now that many billions of pounds are being spent on the very matter with which I was accused of wasting the class's and my tutor's time over 50 years ago, as it was "a non-existent problem", I cannot really complain about this operation even though I would like to on ecological grounds. So up yours, Mr Hillard. Not that I recognise 'particles' as anything more than an arrangement or appearance of energy in a 3+1D view of a multidimensional reality.
The other concept I found it difficult to explain is that when properly formulated, the cosmological theories of Fred Hoyle and Edwin Hubble (Steady State and Big Bang) are not mutually exclusive. That should be understood fairly soon I hope.
This file starts now and will contain comments on any useful results of the experiment as it proceeds. Those of you watching scientists on the BBC TV Channel 4 will be hearing endlessly that the Universe is made up of little building blocks. If that is the first idea that this experiment disabuses them of it will have served some purpose..The COBE satellite has already confirmed that in the beginning there was a pattern to the initial emergence of energy in space-time - that is to say it was not a bland explosion, but a 'word'. That much was written by a scientist 2000 years ago named John. It was that pattern that decided how the energy as it 'condensed' to matter would form galaxies, stars and planets through a process of physical evolution. It was this 'word' that John tried to explain should replace anthropomorphic ideas of a creator of the universe (a very large man with a beard), with an infinite power that would become all things (including old men with beards of course) but for some reason theologians rarely 'get it', and some scientists don't either, hence the absurd arguments between [some of] them. John said the 'word' was with God, and it was God. Why not agree with St. John and the COBE results? According to both, that is what created the ordered universe we observe and subsequently us in it, through geometric logic, local gravity to counter entropy, and natural selection.
The verbal confusion of physicists of matter with mass persists, as we see when Brian Cox holds up two stones, hits them together and says 'That's what we know as mass'. No, dear boy, that's 'matter'. That's why the rocks do not pass through each other. They can't both be in the same place at the same time. Mass is what makes one rock, when it hits the other, cause it to change its motion or move it was stationary, in the frame of reference.
Why matter has mass (and hence inertia) is the subject of some experiments at the CERN collider. The need to find the Higgs Boson is based on the theory that the inertial frame of reference is a field and, in the standard model, for every field there is a particle that interacts with it. But theories are made to explain reality, they do not cause it. That is what so many scientists never grasp. We may or may not cause nature to appear as a Higgs particle - it is not that important. Same goes for mini black holes.
SEPT 5th 2008
I must add a word on 'String Theory' here. It is a complex bit of maths in its various forms but stems from a very simple idea: if we try to reconcile Relativity (General, including Special) with the subatomic zoo, to devise a 'theory of everything', infinite values arise in caculations. But this is only true if we persist with the silly idea of sub-atomic particles, like miniature 3 dimensional objects, being 'real'. We don't actually have to think in terms of little bits of 'string' either, just not of particles for a start and then move on to the extreme likelyhood of many more than 4 dimensions. M Theory is a better name. You will hear people saying all the other dimensions may be 'small and curled up' within the ones we know of space. Far more likely is that some are beyond the ones we know - and the 4 we are familiar with are within others and curved in them, though on a scale we cannot measure. They should not all be though of as space dimensions. We are thus bracketed as it were dimensionally just as on the scale of what we think of as size we are in the middle of a range bounded by limits of perception, as remote in each direction.
SEPTEMBER 8th 2008
Adam Hart-Davis says in his video about the CERN Big-Bang that there are three questions than most people are interested in: Why are we here? How are we here? Are we alone? He thinks this experiment will possibly reveal the answers. I suggest the answers are evident to anyone who in a life-time does not waste the valuable time spent sitting on the lavatory and uses that to give it some thought. We are here because if there is to be any existence of anything, that entity has to know it exists. That knowledge will be on all levels from the most basic to the most complex that can evolve by the inevitable consequence of geomtery and natural selection. The explanation of the universe and of a conscious human brain are the same. Both require a plurality, a separation in dimensions that include what we call time and place, that is to say space-time. This enables a dynamic dialogue which is eventually what we know as consciouness.
Are we alone? No, by definition we are not alone. Living, corporate things cannot arise in singularity or solitariness. That is impossible. Is there conscious life like us elswhere in the universe? It is extremely unlikely that other planets such as ours do not exist or give rise to similar life forms. That does not remit our planetary loneliness however and we should not expect at this stage of development any visitors or two-way communications with other civilisations even if we receive evidence of their existence. However that does not mean that we are alone in a more transcendental sense. Since the universe is multidimensional and were are part of that multidimensional whole, we may (so to speak) tune in to, or resonate with resources that can sustain us individually. We can also supply experience to the whole. There is a much more advanced level on which to understand, value and appreciate our individual and collective existence. For some reason this seem to elude many of today's citizens, who seek for example to extend the length of individual lives. This is a really profound misconception and misunderstanding of life and its potential. The enterprise is so much greater than what these inndividuals supose.
So while there is absolutely nothing in this experiment to enlighten those who already know the answers to the three questions Adam Hart-Davis poses, it may possibly enlighten others including those who are running the experiment - and that is really all we could possibly ask for, as their ignorance and refusal to think it through instead of spending billions of other people's money is becoming a bore.
The justification for the CERN experiment lies elswhere: in the formidable and extensive international cooperation, the extraordianry engineering feats, and the developments that come ot of this. The same is true of the International Space Station and was true before that of Concorde. If the result of the experiment is to prove that natue can be forced to take the apperance of a Higgs Boson to satisfy the 'Standard Model' then as an experiment it will be pretty useless, as we know the standard model is flawed. If it reveals other dimension and some added knowledge of these it will make sense.
But the only fundamenta philosophical question it will have answered is the one posed by the puzzled Anne Robinson: "What are the Welsh for?" Clearly the answer is for perfoming extraordinary engineering tasks deep underground but, as with the other questions, those who have been observant and thoughtful know that anyway.
The mathematical answer to the riddle of Life, the Universe and Everything is also already known. For it all to be here, with us to appreciate it, there has to be light, water and a certain geometry of spacetime. These have to be such that, as a coincidental result of the properties of water, visible light, space-time and geometrical logic, the angle of the rainbow is always 42 degrees. If the answer was not 42, we could not be here to see it anyway. So Douglas Adams got it right already. See http://www.eo.ucar.edu/rainbows/
We have already covered the religious answer to the riddle of the universal origin in the entry of SEPT 24 above. The instructions on what to do next are contained in the same documentation: "Seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened". Knocking this hard, with enough energy to break the door down, is perhaps a little unnecessary when many have already turned the handle and entered quietly - but it is probably good exercise.
So here is the wonderful paradox: while the scientists claim that it is pure scientific curiosity that has driven them on tho find the answers to the questions posed above by Hart-Davis: Why are we here? How are we here? Are we alone, it will answer absolutely none of those. Instead its worth is totally practical with excellent consequences for international relations and engineering which will no doubt save us from destruction. Perhaps those involved can now turn their talents to our schools which are desperately short of science and engineering teachers.
SEPTEMBER 19th 2008 - BIG BANG DAY
Congratulations. So far so good - that is quite remarkable coordination. I suspect the delays caused by the problems with the magnets was well used by all the other elements and teams. A year late is actually an extraordinary achievement. I reckoned it would be 5 years. Whether or not it gives rise to a new understanding of reality is another question. Our 3+1 demensional world is but the surface of one of more dimensions which is the most likely reason why we do not observe 95% of the mass, just as flat-earthers could not observe and therefore could not imagine most of our own planet, even though scientists and astronomers had detected thousands of years ago that it was there, through its shadow on the moon and other astronomical observations. In the 'standard model' the dark matter is all here in our 3+1 universe, just not radiant or interactive. That is not a reasonable interpretation, since it leaves important matters unexplained and quantum physics not just separate from but incompatible with relativity. An entangled web usually indicates self-deception.
This evening two young physicists being interviewed on BBC Radio 4 were thrown a question from a listener. "If the two particle beams are driven in opposite directions at the speed of light (give or take 0.000001 percent), does that mean they are approaching each other at twice the speed of light?"
I waited with amusement to hear the answer (which I knew to be no) to see how these two would explain it. They did not! With some embarrassment they said that this was impossible under the laws of Special Relativity and there was a compensatory formula to correct for it . The formula was just a fudge of course of extreme simplicity which ended up reducing the closing speed to the speed of light. This explained absolutely nothing and the interview moved swiftly on, leaving listeners wondering why, if that was the case, there was any point in spending so much money to achieve a speed in two directions that could have been arrived at by colliding a single beam of particles with a stationary target. The answer is that the kinetic energy is not lost but transferred to the particles, by virtue of their proximity in the inertial frame of reference to the reverse stream, in the form of increased mass. I say that with blinding nerve having never read a word on the subject, but it was a conclusion I came to back in the 1950s and have not checked up on with anyone since. The reader will appreciate on reading this why the experiment can only be conducted with an extremely small mass, or the bang would be so big as to cause a truly shattering event. However, what inrigued me was the way this question was answered by the young physicists. They trotted out the orthodox answer just like a couple of Roman Catholic cardinals pronouncng a dogma. The message was: You don't have to understand it! That's a rule of Special Relativity! In fact Special Relativity can't exist on its own. It has to be part of General Relativity and that in turn has to be part of a coherent whole.
Furthermore, quoting a formula is not an explanation. E=MC2 is rarely explained, or how it connects with E=1/2MV2. Oh, Dirac! Oh Einstein! We miss you.
SEPTEMBER 22nd 2008
A touch of realism sets in....
AUGUST 4th 2009
See http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/04/science/space/04collide.html?_r=1&hpw
See also my opening paragraph.
NOVEMBER 21st 2009
The 'super-collider' is back in business again and working well. As is usually the case in such exercises of massive technological advance the problems that brought the first collider to a grinding halt will have given the creators time and money to nake some serious improvements that either the original budget did not allow or of which the lack was not seen as catastrophic (though it proved to be). Looked at that way we should be grateful that what went wrong happened as quickly as it did. It could not have happened sooner of course.
Now there is a much better cance that they can procede in a surer and swifter manner to the low level tests now and high-energy experiments next year. However, I do not belive that any of the knowledge gained will be of the slightest use in dealing with the terrible problems that now beset us on a global or national scale. It may be that some technologies developed in the course of construction can, on the other hand, be applied to useful technologies. So although it is still a complete waste of time and energy it may just possibly pay for some of that waste. In future I would like to see a far better cost-benefit ratio!!
MARCH 30th 2010
The first collisions of particles have just taken place,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8593780.stm
Within a few months we shall know of there is an elephant in the room. If not, it will be many months before we identify anything for certain. It may be possible to establish if there is a particular (in both senses of that word) bundle of energy that reacts with a specific field and in so doing provides the attributes of mass to matter. Personally I doubt it. There has been a big misundertstanding about the nature of space ever since the Micahelson-Morely experiment was wrongly interpreted linguistically and conceptually. In my view the inertial mass of those nodes of energy that we like to call particles is due to the multi-dimensional relationships involved in their formation. Where this is absent, as in basic, fundamental modulation of the 'fabric' in less than three dimensions, there is no mass, just energy. What we call particles with mass have all a deeper dimensional relationship with what we could call the inertial frame of reference, and one which transcends what we measure as passing time. We could discover a conventional super-symmetry and attribute dark energy and missing mass to more 'particles', but I think this whole particle zoo is making fireworks out of energy that has a fundamental disposition of a different sort. Producing them will not get us closer to an understanding of the source, or the beginning, or the substance of reality.
MAY 18th 2010
I am inserting here the review I have just written of THE FABRIC OF THE COSMOS by Brian Greene. This was first published in 2004 but muggins here, who rarely reads books of any sort, has only just discovered it.
When I reviewed 'The Elegant Universe' (not for Amazon) I gave it the highest marks ever for its genre. There was hardly any error of fact, there was little speculation and the few flaws in reasoning and explanation which surprised me in the text were corrected or allowed for in the notes. It was my recommended reading for anyone who wanted to see where we had got to and try to move on, particularly in a fuller understanding of what I have always referred to as "The Fabric of the Cosmos"
I read very few books of any sort, so I did not even realise that in 2004, now 6 years ago, Professor Greene had decided to put some ideas on this into print. It was with great excitement I acquired the book and started in. I realise the thought that has gone into it, but I cannot give it the same rating as his earlier work.
Throughout the book he struggles with the facts we already know in an attempt to fit them together. He makes some wonderful leaps of imagination which I applaud - some of his most outrageous speculations are, I happen to think, not without an element of truth. But he has actually missed the elephant in the room, the very elephant he is actually looking for. Nor will he, in his search, have increased the understanding of many readers.
Let me take an example: Time Travel. He is very good on this, exposing the reasons why practical time travel for e.g. a human today, into the past, is effectively impossible. He then tells us that he is "often struck by how few people realize that the theoretical underpinnings for one kind of time travel - to the future - have been in place since the beginnings of the last century". He goes on to explain using the 'undisputed theory of Special Relativity' how we could see what earth would be like in 1000 years' time, if we could build a space craft that would reach a speed near that of light and head off into deep space for just one day, and returning home.
Now pay attention reader and I will tell you something. Assuming we could build such a machine, what happens depends on more than Special Relativity, a theory which is not only inapplicable but unreal except as part of General Relativity, regardless of any ideas to the contrary Greene may harbour. The result of your trip into deep space would be to slow down 'time' of one sort for you, but in a similar way to if you had been safely frozen (equally unlikely) and stayed where you were. The only advantage would be that it might be safer to be well out of the way of the next 1,000 years of change on earth where you are just now, rather than remaining there and trusting generations of people to look after your frozen body for 1,000 years. The amount of energy and expense involved might be remarkably similar in both cases, so I also invite you to consider that.
There would be no difference between the so-called time travel effects. You would in effect have slept through 1,000 years due to the slowing of time in your body produced, caused not by the mathematics of special relativity (which are just formulae to explain away a paradox or calculate the theoretical non-acceleration based time dilation values) but by the full effects of your energetic relations with what Brian correctly names, but does NOT understand: The Fabric of The Cosmos. SR in GR is the reality. As far as people on earth are concerned, you would have been away for 1,000 years, and they would be right - R.I.G.H.T. ! And you could never go back one second.
Now to the elephant. Greene, bless him, is right on the button here. He talks about Mach and the difficulty of seeing where Einstein and Mach agreed (had they been in the room together), disagreed, thought they disagreed, and what Michelson-Morely results really mean to each of them. The fact is they are both near but no cigar, oscillating into each others' camps and out. None of them, regardless of how they posit the relationship of matter to space, matter to matter, mass to matter, energy to space, they end up missing the prize.
It will be only when they understand that time travel is not possible because it is not necessary and that the same thing applies to teleportation, that the apparent paradoxes of both of these and of quantum mechanics will become clear. Here is the clue: the mystery of inertia (remember gravitational attraction is only a gradient in the effective inertial frame of reference) and the secret of teleportation are one and the same. The account Greene gives us of successful teleportation of an electron is in fact nothing of any significance. This is because all movement of matter already is teleportation and that is what causes inertia. I invite the reader to look at this sentence again once a year if it is not understandable now.
The error all physicists are making is to think that teleportation should take place at the speed of light, or that it would involve the wireless transmission of data to reconstitute at a distance an object, at that sort of speed. It could, if that amount of energy and computing and assembly power could be localized and applied. That it cannot is the exact reason why we can do all that we can! To teleport a cricket-ball to the boundary at 150mph requires just what we measure it to be. To teleport it faster requires more. Once the bat imparts the energy, which is retransmitted to every quark in the ball, the teleportation commences at the resultant velocity. Ignore air resistance and terrestrial gravity for the moment, and no further energy is required for the ball to continue through space at that velocity.
Are you asking why I call it teleportation? That is because it is. The 'fabric of the cosmos' which is the ball is not the same fabric that formed it where it hit the bat. This is what our men and women of science do not understand. When they do, it will explain everything for them. Well, no, just a lot they are puzzling about just now and spending billions on. They still think in terms of building block and the particle zoo. This is OK. Indeed we have to work with limited concepts and they are there to be worked with. But as that ball streaks toward the boundary it is like a wave that rushes on toward the beach. It is NOT THE SAME WATER. To get those waves going is what we call inertia. The so-called Higgs Field is the basic space-time background.
I am not going to go into the other dimensions here other than to say that the mistake Greene makes is in wanting to label them as dimensions of 'space'. Just dimensions, please, at this stage. That is an important step in understanding.
Of course waves of matter cannot pass through waves of matter, so teleporting a cricket ball through a brick wall will not work. There are only certain wavelengths that can pass through certain 'solid' barriers, a most interesting field of study in its own right.
Anyway, I write this review to help readers. You can still give Brian Greene a lot of love, he is doing his best and is getting there in his own time. A lot of stuff worth reading amongst the confusion.
AUGUST 4th 2010
More desperate talk by the Hadron Colliders. What a lot of particles... they have to work out what to tell the world when they think they know what they will have found, and what it has cost.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-10833812
Anti-matter will be captured no doubt. If we put a huge amount of energy into reversing the charge of a few protons and electrons, energy is released when, in contact with ordinarily charged matter, all the mass is converted into radiation. So what.
NOVEMBER 21st 2010
13 THINGS THAT DON'T MAKE SENSE
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/186197647X/ref=pe_5301_22602971_pe_ar_t8#reader_186197647X
Read these extracts from the prologue and epilogue to a new book by Michael Brooks. They cover a lot of important points and reveal that nothing has changed since I wrote THE STATE OF THE ART in 1985-7, other than that my speculation then is now looking more solid now. I must now buy Brooks' book which looks excellent and very well written. I have a few bones to pick with some assumptions made in the extracts. One relates to his bald statement that Quantum theory shows the universe is made up of 'chunks'. For me this is where we misunderstand the fundamentals. In a multidimensional universe the quantum appearance of energy and matter in our 3D observational matrix is due the (effective) quanta of time. There are absolutely NO chunks in the sense that that we use the word when we use the phrase 'is made up of'. Therein lies one of the reasons for our confusion. Einstein did not fully understand Relativity, nor Bohr quantum mechanics. No wonder they had a few arguments. The same applies to the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury and Richard Dawkins, neither of whose followers fully understand the reality behind the New Testament.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/186197647X/ref=pe_5301_22602971_pe_ar_t8#reader_186197647X
When I have read Brooks' book I will come back here with more to say.
Here: things_that_make_sense.html
MAY 8th 2011
AUGUST 27th 2011
Results from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have all but killed the simplest version of an enticing theory of sub-atomic physics.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14680570
We are often told that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence - that it is hard to prove a negative. One of the justifications for the LHC is that by going to as near to the ultimate as we can, to the extremes of dynamics and energy, absence of evidence equates to evidence of absence. Lyall Watson, the author of Supernature, pointed out that if the human brain was so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we would not. However, most thinkers on the so-called models of the physical or 'material' universe have long ago used what brains they have to reach the tentative conclusion that simple super-symmetry, even were its predictions to be confirmed, would not actually explain what its supporters claim in the way of observations made not just in the LHC now but elsewhere in laboratories and in the wider universe. There comes a point, a level in the scale of perceptions, when it is very unlikely that a single experimental procedure will reveal a formula that needs no handle or context. The only experiment that can do that is the universal one we are part of. In other words it is not now with machines and the application of more physical energy in ever smaller 'points' that we will make progress in understanding any current aspect or future possibilities of existence. The proper study of Mankind is Man. http://users.path.ox.ac.uk/~svhunt/PopeVerse.htm
27th SEPTEMBER 2011
A few days ago (23rd Sept) the guys at CERN claimed they could not find a reason to suppose a possible error in measurements they had made that proved neutrinos could and did travel faster than light. The absurdity of the assurance with which they thought their experiment was serious led me to doubt much about any results they might come up with on anything at all. At the time I wrote to a friend:
On 23/09/2011 10:25, James Baring wrote:
The experimenters do not understand their subject. The inertial frame of reference is too complex for them to know how long it should take light to travel that route, unless they have done an equivalent overground test over exactly the same route and straight-line distance, which they have certainly not. Talk about bollocks. They are just desperate for govt cash!
To the BBC I wrote on the 25th
Don't take the guys at CERN who think Einstein might be wrong too seriously. He was no more wrong than Newton was wrong. There is just a bit more too it. Particle Physicists are at a slight disadvantage here as they don't really even understand General Relativity in Einstein's terms, let alone the next stage or context. They don't understand 'particles', come to that, which is too embarrassing for them to admit. But they need the money so the story must be made into a drama, given the current supposed shortage.
Now I have got round to reading Frank Close in the Observer, who raises some good points too . However, readers will note he fails to explain the 'counteriintuitive' truth which he describes by saying "Whether you are travelling towars or away from the source makes no difference, the speed of light is the same" That is because neither Frank Close nor Einstein really understand/stood what this means. The counter-intuitive element can be removed on,y when it is understood that within a given inertial frame of reference, the speed of light, if measured in vaccuo, will correspond to a constant when using local values. Sorry to sound long winded but between you and me the term: "The Speed of Light" does not have in itself much meaning.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/sep/24/einstein-e-equals-mc2
NOVEMBER 2nd 2011
Just to get something clear: while most of the world seems convinced that we have to choose between an error in the measurement, or 'new physics', I am saying they just don't understand the current physics. There will be more physics, into which the current science, properly understood, will fit. A proper understanding of space-time will make all this clearer. We know that a body in a gas can break the sound barrier, but to break the 'light barrier' would produce an effect and a mathematical re-evaluation of space-time between two actual 'points' is more likely than superluminary travel with no observable consequences.
DECEMBER 13th 2011
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16158374
If these experiments give data that enables us, as some say they will, to create new instruments and machines to solve some of our real problems, I shall be impressed. I will also be surprised. I have hardly ever been surprised. I was surprised that practical SAT-NAV with easily viewed and understood graphic display on small portable devices was achieved in my lifetime; I will admit that. I thought the coordination of talent and its application and the integration of the data would prove impossibile. Mind you, my friends say I was was right; but as far as I am concerned it has been achieved.
But the Higgs Boson is NOT what is is being sold as. It is a false fix for a false problem, even if the maths in which it plugs a hole are usable for all sorts of things. There is not ONE 'particle' that gives all others their 'mass'. The whole concept of 'particles' is flawed even if it is usable in the way we manage their mutual manipulation. They each relate in their own way to the fabric of space-time which is now confused with the 'Higgs Field'.
nnnn
I have to admit I have always considered the CERN Supercollider a colossal waste of time, money, talent and materials, but I am also convinced that there was no way of stopping its happening. It is an amazing achievement, on a par with the NASA Shuttle Programme and the International Space Station. It will almost certainly confirm that our universe is physically multidimensional. While running, it will consume enough power to run a medium sized city. To process the results will need computers all over the world running for months and years. But since the 'standard model' of the physics of our universe does not make sense* it will at least make me feel better about the blazing row I had with my physics tutor, one 'Taxi' Hillard, in about 1956, which caused me to give up the life I was up till then then committed to - that of a scientist. I told him one of us had to be out to lunch and as far as I was concerned it was him. I left school shortly afterwards.
* SEE ENTRY BELOW FOR NOVEMBER 21st 2010
We can note that when Higgs suggested his 'boson' as a particle that interacted with the inertial field or 'frame of reference', he was given short shrift as well. On learning now that many billions of pounds are being spent on the very matter with which I was accused of wasting the class's and my tutor's time over 50 years ago, as it was "a non-existent problem", I cannot really complain about this operation even though I would like to on ecological grounds. So up yours, Mr Hillard. Not that I recognise 'particles' as anything more than an arrangement or appearance of energy in a 3+1D view of a multidimensional reality.
The other concept I found it difficult to explain is that when properly formulated, the cosmological theories of Fred Hoyle and Edwin Hubble (Steady State and Big Bang) are not mutually exclusive. That should be understood fairly soon I hope.
This file starts now and will contain comments on any useful results of the experiment as it proceeds. Those of you watching scientists on the BBC TV Channel 4 will be hearing endlessly that the Universe is made up of little building blocks. If that is the first idea that this experiment disabuses them of it will have served some purpose..The COBE satellite has already confirmed that in the beginning there was a pattern to the initial emergence of energy in space-time - that is to say it was not a bland explosion, but a 'word'. That much was written by a scientist 2000 years ago named John. It was that pattern that decided how the energy as it 'condensed' to matter would form galaxies, stars and planets through a process of physical evolution. It was this 'word' that John tried to explain should replace anthropomorphic ideas of a creator of the universe (a very large man with a beard), with an infinite power that would become all things (including old men with beards of course) but for some reason theologians rarely 'get it', and some scientists don't either, hence the absurd arguments between [some of] them. John said the 'word' was with God, and it was God. Why not agree with St. John and the COBE results? According to both, that is what created the ordered universe we observe and subsequently us in it, through geometric logic, local gravity to counter entropy, and natural selection.
The verbal confusion of physicists of matter with mass persists, as we see when Brian Cox holds up two stones, hits them together and says 'That's what we know as mass'. No, dear boy, that's 'matter'. That's why the rocks do not pass through each other. They can't both be in the same place at the same time. Mass is what makes one rock, when it hits the other, cause it to change its motion or move it was stationary, in the frame of reference.
Why matter has mass (and hence inertia) is the subject of some experiments at the CERN collider. The need to find the Higgs Boson is based on the theory that the inertial frame of reference is a field and, in the standard model, for every field there is a particle that interacts with it. But theories are made to explain reality, they do not cause it. That is what so many scientists never grasp. We may or may not cause nature to appear as a Higgs particle - it is not that important. Same goes for mini black holes.
SEPT 5th 2008
I must add a word on 'String Theory' here. It is a complex bit of maths in its various forms but stems from a very simple idea: if we try to reconcile Relativity (General, including Special) with the subatomic zoo, to devise a 'theory of everything', infinite values arise in caculations. But this is only true if we persist with the silly idea of sub-atomic particles, like miniature 3 dimensional objects, being 'real'. We don't actually have to think in terms of little bits of 'string' either, just not of particles for a start and then move on to the extreme likelyhood of many more than 4 dimensions. M Theory is a better name. You will hear people saying all the other dimensions may be 'small and curled up' within the ones we know of space. Far more likely is that some are beyond the ones we know - and the 4 we are familiar with are within others and curved in them, though on a scale we cannot measure. They should not all be though of as space dimensions. We are thus bracketed as it were dimensionally just as on the scale of what we think of as size we are in the middle of a range bounded by limits of perception, as remote in each direction.
SEPTEMBER 8th 2008
Adam Hart-Davis says in his video about the CERN Big-Bang that there are three questions than most people are interested in: Why are we here? How are we here? Are we alone? He thinks this experiment will possibly reveal the answers. I suggest the answers are evident to anyone who in a life-time does not waste the valuable time spent sitting on the lavatory and uses that to give it some thought. We are here because if there is to be any existence of anything, that entity has to know it exists. That knowledge will be on all levels from the most basic to the most complex that can evolve by the inevitable consequence of geomtery and natural selection. The explanation of the universe and of a conscious human brain are the same. Both require a plurality, a separation in dimensions that include what we call time and place, that is to say space-time. This enables a dynamic dialogue which is eventually what we know as consciouness.
Are we alone? No, by definition we are not alone. Living, corporate things cannot arise in singularity or solitariness. That is impossible. Is there conscious life like us elswhere in the universe? It is extremely unlikely that other planets such as ours do not exist or give rise to similar life forms. That does not remit our planetary loneliness however and we should not expect at this stage of development any visitors or two-way communications with other civilisations even if we receive evidence of their existence. However that does not mean that we are alone in a more transcendental sense. Since the universe is multidimensional and were are part of that multidimensional whole, we may (so to speak) tune in to, or resonate with resources that can sustain us individually. We can also supply experience to the whole. There is a much more advanced level on which to understand, value and appreciate our individual and collective existence. For some reason this seem to elude many of today's citizens, who seek for example to extend the length of individual lives. This is a really profound misconception and misunderstanding of life and its potential. The enterprise is so much greater than what these inndividuals supose.
So while there is absolutely nothing in this experiment to enlighten those who already know the answers to the three questions Adam Hart-Davis poses, it may possibly enlighten others including those who are running the experiment - and that is really all we could possibly ask for, as their ignorance and refusal to think it through instead of spending billions of other people's money is becoming a bore.
The justification for the CERN experiment lies elswhere: in the formidable and extensive international cooperation, the extraordianry engineering feats, and the developments that come ot of this. The same is true of the International Space Station and was true before that of Concorde. If the result of the experiment is to prove that natue can be forced to take the apperance of a Higgs Boson to satisfy the 'Standard Model' then as an experiment it will be pretty useless, as we know the standard model is flawed. If it reveals other dimension and some added knowledge of these it will make sense.
But the only fundamenta philosophical question it will have answered is the one posed by the puzzled Anne Robinson: "What are the Welsh for?" Clearly the answer is for perfoming extraordinary engineering tasks deep underground but, as with the other questions, those who have been observant and thoughtful know that anyway.
The mathematical answer to the riddle of Life, the Universe and Everything is also already known. For it all to be here, with us to appreciate it, there has to be light, water and a certain geometry of spacetime. These have to be such that, as a coincidental result of the properties of water, visible light, space-time and geometrical logic, the angle of the rainbow is always 42 degrees. If the answer was not 42, we could not be here to see it anyway. So Douglas Adams got it right already. See http://www.eo.ucar.edu/rainbows/
We have already covered the religious answer to the riddle of the universal origin in the entry of SEPT 24 above. The instructions on what to do next are contained in the same documentation: "Seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened". Knocking this hard, with enough energy to break the door down, is perhaps a little unnecessary when many have already turned the handle and entered quietly - but it is probably good exercise.
So here is the wonderful paradox: while the scientists claim that it is pure scientific curiosity that has driven them on tho find the answers to the questions posed above by Hart-Davis: Why are we here? How are we here? Are we alone, it will answer absolutely none of those. Instead its worth is totally practical with excellent consequences for international relations and engineering which will no doubt save us from destruction. Perhaps those involved can now turn their talents to our schools which are desperately short of science and engineering teachers.
SEPTEMBER 19th 2008 - BIG BANG DAY
Congratulations. So far so good - that is quite remarkable coordination. I suspect the delays caused by the problems with the magnets was well used by all the other elements and teams. A year late is actually an extraordinary achievement. I reckoned it would be 5 years. Whether or not it gives rise to a new understanding of reality is another question. Our 3+1 demensional world is but the surface of one of more dimensions which is the most likely reason why we do not observe 95% of the mass, just as flat-earthers could not observe and therefore could not imagine most of our own planet, even though scientists and astronomers had detected thousands of years ago that it was there, through its shadow on the moon and other astronomical observations. In the 'standard model' the dark matter is all here in our 3+1 universe, just not radiant or interactive. That is not a reasonable interpretation, since it leaves important matters unexplained and quantum physics not just separate from but incompatible with relativity. An entangled web usually indicates self-deception.
This evening two young physicists being interviewed on BBC Radio 4 were thrown a question from a listener. "If the two particle beams are driven in opposite directions at the speed of light (give or take 0.000001 percent), does that mean they are approaching each other at twice the speed of light?"
I waited with amusement to hear the answer (which I knew to be no) to see how these two would explain it. They did not! With some embarrassment they said that this was impossible under the laws of Special Relativity and there was a compensatory formula to correct for it . The formula was just a fudge of course of extreme simplicity which ended up reducing the closing speed to the speed of light. This explained absolutely nothing and the interview moved swiftly on, leaving listeners wondering why, if that was the case, there was any point in spending so much money to achieve a speed in two directions that could have been arrived at by colliding a single beam of particles with a stationary target. The answer is that the kinetic energy is not lost but transferred to the particles, by virtue of their proximity in the inertial frame of reference to the reverse stream, in the form of increased mass. I say that with blinding nerve having never read a word on the subject, but it was a conclusion I came to back in the 1950s and have not checked up on with anyone since. The reader will appreciate on reading this why the experiment can only be conducted with an extremely small mass, or the bang would be so big as to cause a truly shattering event. However, what inrigued me was the way this question was answered by the young physicists. They trotted out the orthodox answer just like a couple of Roman Catholic cardinals pronouncng a dogma. The message was: You don't have to understand it! That's a rule of Special Relativity! In fact Special Relativity can't exist on its own. It has to be part of General Relativity and that in turn has to be part of a coherent whole.
Furthermore, quoting a formula is not an explanation. E=MC2 is rarely explained, or how it connects with E=1/2MV2. Oh, Dirac! Oh Einstein! We miss you.
SEPTEMBER 22nd 2008
A touch of realism sets in....
New particle collider to be shut down for repairs
Sunday, September 21,
2008
The Large Hadron Collider, the world's biggest and most expensive scientific experiment, will be shut down for at least two months, say scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, in Geneva.
The shutdown casts into doubt the hopes of CERN physicists to achieve high-energy collisions of protons in the machine before the end of the year.
"It's too early to say whether we'll still be having collisions this year," James Gillies, chief of communications for CERN, said Saturday in an e-mail message.
The laboratory shuts down to save money on electricity during the winter. A gala inauguration party scheduled for Oct. 21 will still take place, Gillies said.
The collider is designed to accelerate the subatomic particles known as protons to energies of seven trillion electron volts, far surpassing any other accelerator on Earth, and bang them together in search of new particles and forces.
After the initial success of threading protons through the machine on Sept. 10, physicists had hoped they could move ahead quickly to low-energy collisions at 450 billion electron volts and then five-trillion-electron volt collisions as early as mid-October.
Several mishaps, including the failure of a 30-ton electrical transformer, have slowed progress since then. In the worst case, on Friday, one of the giant superconducting magnets that guide the protons failed during a test. A large amount of helium, which is used to cool the magnets and keep them near absolute zero, leaked into the collider tunnel.
In a terse statement, the laboratory said that an electrical connection between the magnets had melted because of the high current.
To fix it, engineers will have to warm that section of the tunnel and then cool it down again.
Physicists said such setbacks were an inevitable part of starting up such a large and complicated machine, which has cost $8 billion and taken 14 years to build.
"This is just an unfortunate fact of life when starting up a machine like the LHC," Gillies said.
AUGUST 4th 2009
Giant Particle Collider Struggles
The biggest, most expensive physics machine in the world is riddled with thousands of bad electrical connections.See http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/04/science/space/04collide.html?_r=1&hpw
See also my opening paragraph.
NOVEMBER 21st 2009
The 'super-collider' is back in business again and working well. As is usually the case in such exercises of massive technological advance the problems that brought the first collider to a grinding halt will have given the creators time and money to nake some serious improvements that either the original budget did not allow or of which the lack was not seen as catastrophic (though it proved to be). Looked at that way we should be grateful that what went wrong happened as quickly as it did. It could not have happened sooner of course.
Now there is a much better cance that they can procede in a surer and swifter manner to the low level tests now and high-energy experiments next year. However, I do not belive that any of the knowledge gained will be of the slightest use in dealing with the terrible problems that now beset us on a global or national scale. It may be that some technologies developed in the course of construction can, on the other hand, be applied to useful technologies. So although it is still a complete waste of time and energy it may just possibly pay for some of that waste. In future I would like to see a far better cost-benefit ratio!!
MARCH 30th 2010
The first collisions of particles have just taken place,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8593780.stm
Within a few months we shall know of there is an elephant in the room. If not, it will be many months before we identify anything for certain. It may be possible to establish if there is a particular (in both senses of that word) bundle of energy that reacts with a specific field and in so doing provides the attributes of mass to matter. Personally I doubt it. There has been a big misundertstanding about the nature of space ever since the Micahelson-Morely experiment was wrongly interpreted linguistically and conceptually. In my view the inertial mass of those nodes of energy that we like to call particles is due to the multi-dimensional relationships involved in their formation. Where this is absent, as in basic, fundamental modulation of the 'fabric' in less than three dimensions, there is no mass, just energy. What we call particles with mass have all a deeper dimensional relationship with what we could call the inertial frame of reference, and one which transcends what we measure as passing time. We could discover a conventional super-symmetry and attribute dark energy and missing mass to more 'particles', but I think this whole particle zoo is making fireworks out of energy that has a fundamental disposition of a different sort. Producing them will not get us closer to an understanding of the source, or the beginning, or the substance of reality.
MAY 18th 2010
I am inserting here the review I have just written of THE FABRIC OF THE COSMOS by Brian Greene. This was first published in 2004 but muggins here, who rarely reads books of any sort, has only just discovered it.
When I reviewed 'The Elegant Universe' (not for Amazon) I gave it the highest marks ever for its genre. There was hardly any error of fact, there was little speculation and the few flaws in reasoning and explanation which surprised me in the text were corrected or allowed for in the notes. It was my recommended reading for anyone who wanted to see where we had got to and try to move on, particularly in a fuller understanding of what I have always referred to as "The Fabric of the Cosmos"
I read very few books of any sort, so I did not even realise that in 2004, now 6 years ago, Professor Greene had decided to put some ideas on this into print. It was with great excitement I acquired the book and started in. I realise the thought that has gone into it, but I cannot give it the same rating as his earlier work.
Throughout the book he struggles with the facts we already know in an attempt to fit them together. He makes some wonderful leaps of imagination which I applaud - some of his most outrageous speculations are, I happen to think, not without an element of truth. But he has actually missed the elephant in the room, the very elephant he is actually looking for. Nor will he, in his search, have increased the understanding of many readers.
Let me take an example: Time Travel. He is very good on this, exposing the reasons why practical time travel for e.g. a human today, into the past, is effectively impossible. He then tells us that he is "often struck by how few people realize that the theoretical underpinnings for one kind of time travel - to the future - have been in place since the beginnings of the last century". He goes on to explain using the 'undisputed theory of Special Relativity' how we could see what earth would be like in 1000 years' time, if we could build a space craft that would reach a speed near that of light and head off into deep space for just one day, and returning home.
Now pay attention reader and I will tell you something. Assuming we could build such a machine, what happens depends on more than Special Relativity, a theory which is not only inapplicable but unreal except as part of General Relativity, regardless of any ideas to the contrary Greene may harbour. The result of your trip into deep space would be to slow down 'time' of one sort for you, but in a similar way to if you had been safely frozen (equally unlikely) and stayed where you were. The only advantage would be that it might be safer to be well out of the way of the next 1,000 years of change on earth where you are just now, rather than remaining there and trusting generations of people to look after your frozen body for 1,000 years. The amount of energy and expense involved might be remarkably similar in both cases, so I also invite you to consider that.
There would be no difference between the so-called time travel effects. You would in effect have slept through 1,000 years due to the slowing of time in your body produced, caused not by the mathematics of special relativity (which are just formulae to explain away a paradox or calculate the theoretical non-acceleration based time dilation values) but by the full effects of your energetic relations with what Brian correctly names, but does NOT understand: The Fabric of The Cosmos. SR in GR is the reality. As far as people on earth are concerned, you would have been away for 1,000 years, and they would be right - R.I.G.H.T. ! And you could never go back one second.
Now to the elephant. Greene, bless him, is right on the button here. He talks about Mach and the difficulty of seeing where Einstein and Mach agreed (had they been in the room together), disagreed, thought they disagreed, and what Michelson-Morely results really mean to each of them. The fact is they are both near but no cigar, oscillating into each others' camps and out. None of them, regardless of how they posit the relationship of matter to space, matter to matter, mass to matter, energy to space, they end up missing the prize.
It will be only when they understand that time travel is not possible because it is not necessary and that the same thing applies to teleportation, that the apparent paradoxes of both of these and of quantum mechanics will become clear. Here is the clue: the mystery of inertia (remember gravitational attraction is only a gradient in the effective inertial frame of reference) and the secret of teleportation are one and the same. The account Greene gives us of successful teleportation of an electron is in fact nothing of any significance. This is because all movement of matter already is teleportation and that is what causes inertia. I invite the reader to look at this sentence again once a year if it is not understandable now.
The error all physicists are making is to think that teleportation should take place at the speed of light, or that it would involve the wireless transmission of data to reconstitute at a distance an object, at that sort of speed. It could, if that amount of energy and computing and assembly power could be localized and applied. That it cannot is the exact reason why we can do all that we can! To teleport a cricket-ball to the boundary at 150mph requires just what we measure it to be. To teleport it faster requires more. Once the bat imparts the energy, which is retransmitted to every quark in the ball, the teleportation commences at the resultant velocity. Ignore air resistance and terrestrial gravity for the moment, and no further energy is required for the ball to continue through space at that velocity.
Are you asking why I call it teleportation? That is because it is. The 'fabric of the cosmos' which is the ball is not the same fabric that formed it where it hit the bat. This is what our men and women of science do not understand. When they do, it will explain everything for them. Well, no, just a lot they are puzzling about just now and spending billions on. They still think in terms of building block and the particle zoo. This is OK. Indeed we have to work with limited concepts and they are there to be worked with. But as that ball streaks toward the boundary it is like a wave that rushes on toward the beach. It is NOT THE SAME WATER. To get those waves going is what we call inertia. The so-called Higgs Field is the basic space-time background.
I am not going to go into the other dimensions here other than to say that the mistake Greene makes is in wanting to label them as dimensions of 'space'. Just dimensions, please, at this stage. That is an important step in understanding.
Of course waves of matter cannot pass through waves of matter, so teleporting a cricket ball through a brick wall will not work. There are only certain wavelengths that can pass through certain 'solid' barriers, a most interesting field of study in its own right.
Anyway, I write this review to help readers. You can still give Brian Greene a lot of love, he is doing his best and is getting there in his own time. A lot of stuff worth reading amongst the confusion.
AUGUST 4th 2010
More desperate talk by the Hadron Colliders. What a lot of particles... they have to work out what to tell the world when they think they know what they will have found, and what it has cost.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-10833812
Anti-matter will be captured no doubt. If we put a huge amount of energy into reversing the charge of a few protons and electrons, energy is released when, in contact with ordinarily charged matter, all the mass is converted into radiation. So what.
NOVEMBER 21st 2010
13 THINGS THAT DON'T MAKE SENSE
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/186197647X/ref=pe_5301_22602971_pe_ar_t8#reader_186197647X
Read these extracts from the prologue and epilogue to a new book by Michael Brooks. They cover a lot of important points and reveal that nothing has changed since I wrote THE STATE OF THE ART in 1985-7, other than that my speculation then is now looking more solid now. I must now buy Brooks' book which looks excellent and very well written. I have a few bones to pick with some assumptions made in the extracts. One relates to his bald statement that Quantum theory shows the universe is made up of 'chunks'. For me this is where we misunderstand the fundamentals. In a multidimensional universe the quantum appearance of energy and matter in our 3D observational matrix is due the (effective) quanta of time. There are absolutely NO chunks in the sense that that we use the word when we use the phrase 'is made up of'. Therein lies one of the reasons for our confusion. Einstein did not fully understand Relativity, nor Bohr quantum mechanics. No wonder they had a few arguments. The same applies to the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury and Richard Dawkins, neither of whose followers fully understand the reality behind the New Testament.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/186197647X/ref=pe_5301_22602971_pe_ar_t8#reader_186197647X
When I have read Brooks' book I will come back here with more to say.
Here: things_that_make_sense.html
MAY 8th 2011
Researchers, based at Cern, the European centre for particle physics near Geneva, say early results from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) suggest it could offer the first experimental test for some aspects of string theory.
David Evans, a Birmingham University physicist who works at Cern, said: “The Alice experiment at the LHC may soon be able to make experimental measurements which, for the first time, can be modelled using the techniques of string theory.
“Although the experimental results will not prove string theory to be correct, an accurate prediction would certainly show that the techniques work, could distinguish between different versions of the theory, and perhaps even show whether the theory is going in the right direction.”
See The Times Online for the full article: http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/Science/article621207.eceAUGUST 27th 2011
Results from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have all but killed the simplest version of an enticing theory of sub-atomic physics.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14680570
We are often told that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence - that it is hard to prove a negative. One of the justifications for the LHC is that by going to as near to the ultimate as we can, to the extremes of dynamics and energy, absence of evidence equates to evidence of absence. Lyall Watson, the author of Supernature, pointed out that if the human brain was so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we would not. However, most thinkers on the so-called models of the physical or 'material' universe have long ago used what brains they have to reach the tentative conclusion that simple super-symmetry, even were its predictions to be confirmed, would not actually explain what its supporters claim in the way of observations made not just in the LHC now but elsewhere in laboratories and in the wider universe. There comes a point, a level in the scale of perceptions, when it is very unlikely that a single experimental procedure will reveal a formula that needs no handle or context. The only experiment that can do that is the universal one we are part of. In other words it is not now with machines and the application of more physical energy in ever smaller 'points' that we will make progress in understanding any current aspect or future possibilities of existence. The proper study of Mankind is Man. http://users.path.ox.ac.uk/~svhunt/PopeVerse.htm
27th SEPTEMBER 2011
A few days ago (23rd Sept) the guys at CERN claimed they could not find a reason to suppose a possible error in measurements they had made that proved neutrinos could and did travel faster than light. The absurdity of the assurance with which they thought their experiment was serious led me to doubt much about any results they might come up with on anything at all. At the time I wrote to a friend:
On 23/09/2011 10:25, James Baring wrote:
The experimenters do not understand their subject. The inertial frame of reference is too complex for them to know how long it should take light to travel that route, unless they have done an equivalent overground test over exactly the same route and straight-line distance, which they have certainly not. Talk about bollocks. They are just desperate for govt cash!
To the BBC I wrote on the 25th
Don't take the guys at CERN who think Einstein might be wrong too seriously. He was no more wrong than Newton was wrong. There is just a bit more too it. Particle Physicists are at a slight disadvantage here as they don't really even understand General Relativity in Einstein's terms, let alone the next stage or context. They don't understand 'particles', come to that, which is too embarrassing for them to admit. But they need the money so the story must be made into a drama, given the current supposed shortage.
Now I have got round to reading Frank Close in the Observer, who raises some good points too . However, readers will note he fails to explain the 'counteriintuitive' truth which he describes by saying "Whether you are travelling towars or away from the source makes no difference, the speed of light is the same" That is because neither Frank Close nor Einstein really understand/stood what this means. The counter-intuitive element can be removed on,y when it is understood that within a given inertial frame of reference, the speed of light, if measured in vaccuo, will correspond to a constant when using local values. Sorry to sound long winded but between you and me the term: "The Speed of Light" does not have in itself much meaning.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/sep/24/einstein-e-equals-mc2
NOVEMBER 2nd 2011
Just to get something clear: while most of the world seems convinced that we have to choose between an error in the measurement, or 'new physics', I am saying they just don't understand the current physics. There will be more physics, into which the current science, properly understood, will fit. A proper understanding of space-time will make all this clearer. We know that a body in a gas can break the sound barrier, but to break the 'light barrier' would produce an effect and a mathematical re-evaluation of space-time between two actual 'points' is more likely than superluminary travel with no observable consequences.
DECEMBER 13th 2011
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16158374
If these experiments give data that enables us, as some say they will, to create new instruments and machines to solve some of our real problems, I shall be impressed. I will also be surprised. I have hardly ever been surprised. I was surprised that practical SAT-NAV with easily viewed and understood graphic display on small portable devices was achieved in my lifetime; I will admit that. I thought the coordination of talent and its application and the integration of the data would prove impossibile. Mind you, my friends say I was was right; but as far as I am concerned it has been achieved.
But the Higgs Boson is NOT what is is being sold as. It is a false fix for a false problem, even if the maths in which it plugs a hole are usable for all sorts of things. There is not ONE 'particle' that gives all others their 'mass'. The whole concept of 'particles' is flawed even if it is usable in the way we manage their mutual manipulation. They each relate in their own way to the fabric of space-time which is now confused with the 'Higgs Field'.
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