Gravitational Engineering - A Basic Transceiver

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Samizdat</i>
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<i>Originally posted by tvanflandern</i>
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What does the graviton shadow cone cast by the sun over Earth tell us about the celestial mechanics of PG as opposed to Newtonian or Einsteinian?
What new or better kinds of predictions or measurements concerning the sun/Earth system are possible based on their respective cones?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Because the "shadows" are merely reduced density of a medium, orbiting bodies are immersed in that medium, so the medium must produce drag on orbiting bodies somewhat different from the drag on the source mass. No such drag exists in Newtonian gravity (NG) or in GR.

Because the gravitons have a finite flight path before they run into another graviton and scatter, PG has a finite range, whereas NG and GR have an infinite range.

Because metter density determines the ability of a graviton to penetrate, a maximum gravitational force is set for any body that becomes so dense that gravitons can no longer oenetrate it. NG has no such equivalent, and GR does not recognize any limit to gravitational force so that "black holes" are predicted.

Because gravitons have a strongly FTL speed, they immediately explain the mystery of why gravitational forces exhibit no propagation delay effects. NG uses infinite-speed gravity forces but disclaims "instantaneous action at a distance". GR invented the geometric interpretation to solve this problem, but introduced two new problems -- the lack of a cause for motion and a source for new momentum.

In PG, gravity is a source of energy and heat. This apparently is what powers atoms and produces radioactive decay, and expalins the excess heat flows from large planets. Neither NG nor GR is a source of heat for bodies.

PG predicts a smaller pericenter motion for two large, co-orbiting stars than GR does. NG predicts none.

Otherwise, the predicted orbital behaviors are identical. -|Tom|-

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by tvanflandern</i>
<br />Because the "shadows" are merely reduced density of a medium, orbiting bodies are immersed in that medium, so the medium must produce drag on orbiting bodies somewhat different from the drag on the source mass. No such drag exists in Newtonian gravity (NG) or in GR.
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Interesting. The light speed limit might be interpreted as an effect of the fluid dynamics of the elysium. Yet somehow forces propagate through this medium at FTL. This has been measured. This business of our being able to measure the speed of propagation of gravitational force changes, but being incapable of detecting FTL phenomena has me utterly baffled. What is a force change if not a phenomenon? If the force changes between a pair of stars orbiting each other propagate between them, do they not propagate beyond them? If so, how far beyond and at what threshold of detection?

Why (and I apologize if I've asked and been answered on these several questions before) is the claim made that forces may travel at FTL but information may not?
How can we say that we have sampled a force for its speed, and say also that no information has been carried? This makes no sense. If you, on Earth, cause a force to be sent to me in my spacecraft when I am 3/4 of the way to the moon, and I detect that force 1/10 of a second after you send it, what have I detected, if not a force phenomenon (information) traveling at 10 times the speed of light?
Why are FTL (speaking from the biased perspective of one who hasn't yet given up on the idea that FTL electrodynamic phenomena exist) electrodynamic phenomena automatically presumed to be unscalable to macrocosmic transmission/reception purposes? Is our present limitation necessarily ruled solely by our limited resources, or is it possible that we must reorder our conception of how an FTL particle, as opposed to a SOL particle might be absorbed (detected)?
How do Coulomb Forces figure into this problem?

Btw, I plan to order "Pushing Gravity" tomorrow, so, although you're dealing with a compleat ignoramus, you're not dealing with a completely incorrigible one.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Samizdat</i>
<br />This business of our being able to measure the speed of propagation of gravitational force changes, but being incapable of detecting FTL phenomena has me utterly baffled. What is a force change if not a phenomenon?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

A force is a phenomenon. We now measure the speed of propagation of gravitational force, of gravitational force changes, and of gravitational phenomena. I think you are confusing two theories. (See next point.)

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Why ... is the claim made that forces may travel at FTL but information may not?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

To my knowledge, no one makes that claim. Forces are a form of information. Either forces and information can both propagate FTL, or neither can.

You are probably hearing claims by those who learned special relativity (SR), which requires of nature that no force, no information, no material body, and no communication can ever travel FTL. Until recently, it was widely believed that SR had to be correct because so many experiments verified it. However, in “Experimental Repeal of the Speed Limit for Gravitational, Electrodynamic, and Quantum Field Interactions” by T. Van Flandern and J.P. Vigier in Foundations of Physics 32(#7), 1031-1068 (2002), we showed that Lorentzian relativity (LR) passes all the same experimental tests but has no speed limit. In addition, we showed that gravitational force propagates FTL in forward time, which is impossible in SR. So SR is now a falsified theory replaced by LR, and the universe has no speed limit. -|Tom|-

I may have made one or more edits to my last post while you were in the process of answering it, Tom. Apologies if I caused havoc on your screen.

I'm going to consider your reply further.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Samizdat</i>
Btw, I plan to order "Pushing Gravity" tomorrow, so, although you're dealing with a compleat ignoramus, you're not dealing with a completely incorrigible one.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

<i>Pushing Gravity</i> is a good book. But given your professed level of technical understanding I suggest that you start with Dr. Van Flandern's first book, <i>Dark Matter, Missing Planets and New Comets</i>.

It's not that PG is that much more technical (although some of the articles definitely are), but that DM supplies a lot of very useful background that makes it easier to digest. And if you haven't already read DM, it is a very enjoyable experience. I've been through my copy at least a dozen times. You can learn more Physics from this one book than from several years in college. If you work at it.

Regards,
LB

quote: Enrico

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But I prefer not to go in these issue but just state that testability and falsifiability without confirmation of any ontology used (in this case gravitons) is very weak.

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TVF: Phillosophically weak, perhaps. But highly useful anyway.

Agree. I will slightly modify and say Metaphysically weak, just to specify which particular area of Philosophy we are talking about. In general Philosophy is divided into Experimental and Metaphysical.

TVF: If it merely means the theory is not proved, that always remains true of all physical theories, which can only be falsified but never proved correct.

This is exactly the point and it's a well known story. This is why, people look for contradictions in theories first before they invest in expensive experiments. But theories with minimal or no ontology at all, are very hard to falsify, like GR for instance, which in my view is an example of a mysterious link between mathematics and nature and illustrates that even a complete lack of ontology can result in accurate predictions. This is puzzling to me. On the other hand, theories like your MM, have a strong ontological content and at the same time impossible to falsify also. It seems then, that in order to have accurate predictions, corresponding theories evade falsifiability and this is puzzling to me. That is why only corraboration is possible.

TVF: The graviton medium is all held together by forces operating on scales that we cannot perceive and have no hope of perceiving. And even if we could someday discover these forces and their unit particle or wave, they too would have boundary conditions that we could not perceive, and so on ad infinitum.

This statements accounts for a declaration that the Meta Model is not falsifiable. Therefore, you should have no complains if main stream science does not accept the Meta Model in the Experimental Philosophy level but can only do that in the Metaphysical level. Therefore, as you agreed, the value of the Meta Model can be only corroborated if improved predictions are offered in comparison with other theories.

TVF: Because we can certainly never discover an infinite number of forces and mediums over an infinite range of scale, time, and space, we can never "complete" the Meta Model. However, that does not prevent us from deducing that an infinity of such forces and mediums must exist, by extension of Zeno's paradoxes, for which the only possible resolution consistent with logic is infinite divisibility.

This accounts for circular reasoning. Arguments against Plurality, like Zeno's paradoxes, cannot be used to support Plurality, because it is the Plurality those arguments attack precisely. The mathematical solution of Zeno's paradoxes rests on the assertion that infinite divisibility of a finite quantity results in a convergent series which has a limit equal to that finite quantity. But, infinite divisibility of an infinite quantity results in a series having a limit equal to infinity. The problem now, is whether a limit is part of the quantity considered or not. If such limit is not a part of the quantity considered, then there is no solution to the paradox, even just mathematical. But if the limit is part of the quantity considered, then infinity, in infinite models, must be part of the model. This goes against your assertion that in the MM no infinite entities exist and creates another paradox, called the paradox of infinity.

Modern mathematics in an effort to solve this problem in a mathematical sense only, define the compact field of real number R, which includes infinity in closed intervals and sequences can converge in a closed sense. I don't see how this can be extended to physical models of reality without one being faced with paradoxes.

Infinite divisibility is just the premise in Zeno's arguments against Plurality. Obviously, for the arguments to be sound, such premise must be true. But the premise is not the conclusion. The other premise in Zeno's arguments is that infinite divisibility results in an infinite quantity, that is the argument attempts to demonstrate a contradiction known as the Plurality Paradox in Philosophy. Modern mathematics accept the premise of infinite divisibility but declare the premise that such divisibility produces an infinite quantity by definining the field of real numbers in such a way as to guarantee the convergence of Cauchy sequences in that field, in an equivalence sense, i.e. the field of real numbers is that where Cauchy sequences converge. But even in the case of finite quantities we are still faced with the problem of whether the limit is part of the interval or not. The resulting Supertask Z, as it is known in literature, has been shown to lead to a contradiction when Zeno's argument against plurality is modeled as a recursion problem.

As one may suspect, things are not that trivial and many models include substantial circular context.