Mel Tisdale
Thanks for such an informative item. It is easy to see why Einstein spent 30 years investigating the topic!
EH
The theories coming from the particle and string theorists are just a collection of ad-hoc hacks and free parameters that really explain nothing. If their theories were true they would be simple, without the need for dozens of precise unexplained numbers required to make them work.
The curved space-time of general relativity has a fundamental mathematical problem of requiring a fifth dimension in which to curve. There is a formulation of general relativity called "Gauge Theory Gravity" by Doran, Lasenby et. al. at Cambridge that agrees with all predictions and is compatible with quantum mechanics, yet uses FLAT space time and a "gauge field" for translation and another for rotation, which is much easier for calculations and can easily handle black holes. The main, translational gauge field essentially specifies the refractive index of space around a mass, saying that light moves more slowly in a gravitational potential, just as it moves more slowly in a transparent medium than in vacuum. This is easier to visualize than warped space-time while also directly modeling gravitational lensing.
fb36
Since many decades of trying to join Quantum and Relativity did not work, I would think it is impossible. My thinking is Universe is a kind of very advanced Cellular Automata operating at Planck Scale. If true, it would mean Quantum and Relativity are just emergent properties, not fundamental laws of Physics.
Dendric
Meanwhile, outside the mainstream science box, an international peer-reviewed UFT has been developed. See Nassim Haramein's work at The Resonance Project. For this and other emergent developments in science and technology, see ufsolution.wix.com/unifiedfieldsolution . David Bohm, contemporary with Einstein suggested the new approach involving fractal/holographic math/geometry, but Einstein did not take it up. Schwartzchild did, however, and more recently, Haramein, so now a whole new approach is bearing fruit. At some point this will become quite apparent to the scientific community as a whole, but old habits are hard to change (endless convoluted approaches based on abstract mathematic proofs rather than mathematics supporting more sensible theory supported by careful observations and correlations). Relativity has some inconsistencies, which the afore mentioned site documents. Mavericks on other fronts, such as Eric P. Dollard's work with electrical/magnetic theory, are incorporating phenomena that N. Tesla was working with. All of this is indicating some highly important breakthroughs in understanding of natural forces.
Gene Preston
There are a couple of things researchers should take a look at concerning GR. First, GR does not conserve wavefronts. When you take this into account you learn some important things. First, the speed of light is only a measured constant not an absolute constant. This means that EM waves do not change frequency when traveling against a gravity field when viewed by a stationary observer. Modifying the GR to allow the speed of light to be variable shows that the gravity potential metric is also equivalent to a change in the speed of light and objects in four dimensions change in proportion to the gravity potential, i.e. time slows down for lower gravity potential. If there is a variable speed of light you begin asking what causes it. Looking at the rotation of galaxies you realize there is more to GR than Newton's equation at great distances. This suggests Gravity may have longer range and shorter range effects than just treating it like we do now in GR. Higher powers at short ranges and even a log term for great distances for the speed of light has the potential for explaining a lot of things. For example an interaction with the electric field and speed of light gradient can explain a lot of the forces we see at the electron and atomic level. It can have both a repulsion and attractive short range force. Higher order exponential terms with alternating signs of even and odd powers seem to match what we observe. I am now looking for a specific nonlinear equation that explains the electron and muon existence. This has led to a new idea for what the magnetic field is. Inside the electron there is an attractive force balancing the electric field bursting force. When you move an electron it is this attractive force that manifests itself, not the electric field, which we can easily shield. This attractive force cannot be easily shielded. There can be a lot of energy in this attractive field, making up the mass of the muon. When this energy blows off its a radiated wave of energy that is not electric or magnetic, i.e. the neutrino. And it blows off half and then the other half as the muon decays. So the trick is to find a model for the electron/muon, and then show that that nonlinear field is the gravity field and when applied at distances like 10,000 ly the field force drops from 1/r^2 to a 1/r term and that will explain the galaxy rotation. Furthermore expect this nonlinear field to have an energy and resonant frequency relationship giving Plancks equation. That is the goal and this is the path to unification.
Mythbuster
How the truth got scrambled… Einstein was not against quantum physics! He was only against a big mistake, which has been made by others. This mistake lives on till today and Einstein is blamed!? This is going too far and I have to straiten this out. It was said radioactive decay will happen by “chance” instead of “we don’t know yet”. With this statement causality in nature is thrown away. If we allow “chances” to govern nature, there is no understanding, no prediction, no law – and no physics. But nature is not able to make a free decision by change. Nature needs a reason that something will happen, even if it is only a missing information, as a direction in space… This explains the existing of metastabile states, which is fundamental to understand nature – and Einstein. In the meantime there is a new theory, which may explain also a single radioactive decay: http://wolfhartindustries.com/metast.htm
By the way, what “space – time - continuum” really is, is staring us in the face – and nobody can see it?
ringo the Baptist
"Quantum and Relativity are just emergent properties, not fundamental laws of Physics."
Amen!
We are becoming so bogged down in incredibly elaborate conjecture, that there is little chance of us establishing anything really solid and fundamental.
Gravity is the result of something simple and fundamental - and this will only be properly understood by abandoning the irrational notion of photons, and the even more desperate notion of "dark matter".
The same thing that causes what we observe as gravity is what is causing the acceleration of the expansion of the universe.
Mass is also an emergent property. Matter possesses only inertia, not mass.
Physics needs a reboot!
eric.verhulst@altreonic.com
Very good article. The question remains if the physicists are not close and to deep in the theory to find the bigger picture. Especially in Quantum Physics, there is a lot that has to be accepted. Granted, the theory works (as a calculation device), but does it also explain? A unified theory should have only one fundamental entity. In this case most likely something like bosons. In other words, everything is then really a "wavelet" in space-time. Let's call this the zero-boson. A fermion can the be seen as a resonating zero-boson (stays in one place, seen from the outside). As mentioned in one of the comments, one just needs a fifth dimension to make that possible. Different "particles" are then just zero-bosons vibrating at different frequencies. This view makes it easy to easy to see why c is a constant (zero-bosons always move at c in a 5 dimensional space-time; we see only a projection of it in 4 dimensions). It also explains why a photon can instantly emerge at c from a particle collision. It also explains teleportation phenomena (non-locality observations) by a change along the 5th dimension. Granted. This has to be worked out in a simple mathematical model that also explains existing models and is then confirmed by experiments (although it looks like the experiments preceed us). Without being deep in physics, I see hints that a unified theory is to be found in that direction. Next question is then, what is this 5th dimension really? What is this zero-boson really?
Theo Prinse
The quantum entanglement between photons and electrons are strings made up of gravitons. The motion of the LIGO photon laser beam caused by a wave of gravitons took 0.8 seconds and was about a femtometer wide. If the electromagnetic force between an electron and a proton (femtometer in diameter) in a hydrogen atom is 1039 times greater than the gravitational force between the same two particles than a graviton is less than a zeptometer perhaps a yoctometer or less. A yoctometer is as small as the nucleus of an electron, photon or a neutrino.
H.E.Islo
Why do we need to assume that space-time and matter are fundamentally different things? Why can’t matter itself be curved or kinked space-time? Assume that there are no marbles in the Jell-O, but instead only Jell-O of different densities. Suppose that space-time is itself quantized and grainy on the scale of a Plank distance. This gives enormous possibilities of creating dynamic mathematical models in which the grains of space-time behave as cellular automata that follow simple rules, for example, exchanging integer values, may be even prime-number values, with one another. It is fairly easy to imagine how fermions and bosons could be the natural result of such a system each being composed of almost countless numbers of grains. All characteristics of material and wave like particles would be embodied in something resembling their geometric shape. All particles that are in motion would propagate through a stationary fabric of grainy space-time. The shape of any particle would even determine its direction and speed of propagation. For example a superimposed wavelike distortion resembling a de Broglie wave would in this system impart a velocity to a fermion. Most interesting is that the bosons at creation have a built-in velocity. All being the result of the simple rules governing the exchanges between the cellular automata of grainy space-time, at least according to this hypostases. Most of the esoteric results of relativity theory find an intuitive explanation just by imposing a simple limit rule on how fast the grains of space-time can change their integer values, where the limit of the time derivative is inversely proportional to the integer value. This gives an intuitive clarification to things like time dilation, the slowing of the pulse of time in gravitational fields, the differences in propagation speed between long and short wave photons as well as the bending of light passing through gravitational fields. Even Lorentz–FitzGerald contraction becomes easy to imagine as well as the transformation and decay of particles if all is made of grainy space-time. In this system gravitation is the result of large scale gradients that particles and larger bodies of matter mutually superimposed on one another resulting in a deformation of their otherwise stable space-time distributions. This imparts a mutual acceleration in the same way as superimposing a de Broglie wave on an independent particle imparts a velocity on it. Again on the most fundamental level it is the postulated simple rules governing the grainy space-time cellular automata that are at work. Likewise dark matter could be in part a kind of background mass resulting from nonzero integer values held in each grain of space-time. This way of viewing the physical universe also allows for the grains of space-time to be multidimensional. It results in a set of dynamic mathematical models that at higher aggregation levels creates an illusion of reality for observers that evolve from within. Parallel models or parallel partial-models are easy to create and could even be a way for nature to resolve impasses in the “main model” if one ventures to draw analogies to conventional modeling and simulation methods. An interesting way of understanding quantum computing is that the architecture of the quantum computer creates impasses that force nature to generate small scale parallel universes in which each one of the parallel computations are carried out simultaneously and that these mini universes subsequently collapse and disappear when the calculation is complete. One way of exploring the rules that govern the postulated cellular automata is through trials with computer models. Experimentation on the level of subatomic particles certainly provides valuable clues, but the aggregation level is still many orders of magnitude larger than the Plank distance. At the same time some of the quantities defining grainy space-time are derivable from known physical constants such as the speed of light.