Physical Axioms and Attractive Forces

*****nonscientist*******

Hey nonneta:

Just read a book, IN THE GRIP OF THE DISTANT UNIVERSE. Both of the authors are physics professors.

When discussing the Ampere force law, they produce this statement about the speed of EM radiation:

"Even though the mutual forces are instantaneous, the delays appear due to the angular inertia of each element . . ." (p.216)

I admit that they arrived at that conclusion through computer modeling, which I do not like (but which modern physics seems to love, right?).

I'm not saying they have proved their point, or that I even understand it. You'll have to read the book yourself if you want to see if there is any bite to their argument. As a follower of Einstein (correct?), you know that sometimes science can miss something important.

What you call a contradiction, what all of physics today calls a contradiction, may just be a case of not fully understanding the issue. Sometimes you just need to change how you look at something by just a few degrees . . . . you know, the way Einstein did.

This universe is so weird, I would not be surprised if it turns out that our EXPERIMENTS produce "results" that show EM speed of c, but the actual speed of some aspect of EM phenomena (fields, forces, whatever) could very well be much faster.

Really important scientific progress is often the result of "bucking the system," even in the face of "contradictions."

Don't bother replying to this post. I admit I cannot argue with you (or anyone else, for that matter).

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by nonneta</i>
<br />Are you claiming that a charged particle subjected to an electric force does not accelerate?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">No.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Are you claiming that particle accelerators do not apply an electric force to accelerate particles?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Yes. (See discussion below.)

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Are you claiming that the existence of a stationary electric potential in a region of space does not correspond to the existence of an electric force on a charged test particle located in that region?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">No.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Are you now claiming that there are THREE kinds of forces, one of which is electric force, the second of which is radiation/EM waves, and then the third being some previously unknown magical quasi-force that is exerted by particle accelerators and that doesn't behave like either a wave or a force?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">This question is ambigious.

Electric and gravitational <i>forces</i> propagate FTL.

Changes in electric and gravitational potentials propagate at c.

But potential changes are often (sloppily) called "electric" or "gravitational" when they have nothing to do with Coulomb force or gravitational force.

What kind of force accelerates particles in a cyclotron or accelerator? That's not my field, but I quote from Wikipedia: "A cyclotron is a type of particle accelerator. Cyclotrons accelerate charged particles using a high-frequency, alternating voltage (potential difference). A perpendicular magnetic field causes the particles to go almost in a circle so that they re-encounter the accelerating voltage many times." That seems fairly unambiguous that it is the potential changes, not a Coulomb force, doing the accelerating. And that makes perfect sense. To use a Coulomb force, one would first have to accelerate a charge to near lightspeed so it could then be used to accelerate another charge to near lightspeed -- which is obviously nonsense. But the potential field, made of elysium, can be used to create pushes that have a natural limiting medium speed of c.

Analogy: Some speak loosely of light-bending being caused by gravitational force. But that is not the case. The force exerted by a given mass at a given distance is insufficient (by a factor of two) to bend the light beam by the observed amount. In geometric GR, we say the bending is caused by "curved spacetime". In field GR, we say it is bent by refraction in elysium. If you want to call that a new kind of force, be my guest. But it is well-known physics (discussed by Eddington and Einstein), and there is nothing "magical" about it.

Does that get us past your obstacle so you can finally read up on the larger discussion of these and many related matters in the cited references? -|Tom|-

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">[tvf]: Lorentz himself did not use either arcsin or arctan because he did not discuss aberration.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">As usual, Tom is spreading misinformation. Lorentz has a whole chapter on aberration in his book "The Theory of the Electron". He also wrote papers on the subject, famously pointing out the flaw in Stoke's attempted explanation (for example).<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Lorentz was a prodigious author and wrote lots more papers than I have read, especially since most of them have not been translated yet. I was speaking specifically to the 1904 Lorentz Ether Theory paper.

And I note that you glaringly did not quote what Lorentz had to say about aberration either. Did the arcsin/arctan issue even come up? If so, was it in an SR or LET context, and how did he justify his choice? And if not, why did you bring it up as an apparent rebuttal to my message?

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">[tvf]: Special relativity ... requires an arcsin to represent reality. Lorentzian relativity ...uses plain old arctan...<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Again, Tom is mis-informed (and sharing his mis-information with others).<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote"> I caution you again: Stick to science. If you feel compelled to mention me, address your remark to me. Grandstanding is out here. Our rules are different from most MBs, so please adjust. Your scientific points are appreciated by all because intelligent people can soon see who has the better argument – including me on occasions when I am in the wrong. Your personal remarks are offensive and disrespectful of the teaching/learning environment we are trying to foster. And your avoidance of reading the citations provided shows precious little interest in learning at all, and in learning about viable alternative physical interpretations of relativity in particular -- even those that leave the math intact.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">The angle of aberration is not a matter of interpretation, it can be measured and observed. Any theory that is empirically equivalent to special relativity (including Lorentzian relativity) MUST use arcsin(v/c) for perpendicular aberration. This differs DRASTICALLY from arctan(v/c) for values of v approaching c.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Unfortunately, the difference between the two is third order in (v/c), which is too small for existing instrumentation to detect. So despite that DRASTIC difference, we have no way to do an observational test for anything that tiny, and are limited to discussing theory for now.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">[tvf]: Vigier and I have argued unchallenged in print that SR is now falsified.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Again, Tom is mistaken. It is his own views that stand falsified. Every fallacious argument against Lorentzian and Einsteinian relativity (including the old chestnuts that Tom traffics in) has been thoroughly rebutted in print. See any physics text book.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">This is especially bad form. There is no information content whatever in this paragraph, just posturing and unfounded claims. If you think something is wrong, specify exactly what, and cite the observation, experiment, reference, or argument that shows it.

Stick to science or get cut off. If the latter, it will because you could not stick to science – a well known diversionary tactic of those on the losing end of an argument.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">And remember, Tom is the one who says it takes no energy to accelerate a body.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">I said it is momentum, not energy, that does the accelerating. If you think there is something wrong with that idea, then come back with observation, experiment, citation, or argument (such as a counter-example). Don’t just keep repeating a personal opinion with no attempt to justify it. -|Tom|-

Thanks Tom, I'd spent a few hours trying to think of an experiment that could show which of the two, arctan or arcsin it was. I also had the problem of the mindset of Lorenz, if he in fact argued for arcsin. Does it depend on an assumed spacetime curvature? Which of course he wouldn't have had. I gave up on trying to think of an experiment, just have to wait for a passing ufo doing near c [8D]

You know, I'm surprised that no one has commented on the "slow light" experiaments with condensates. What I expect as an explanation of the faster than light results, will be a rerun of the famous tortoise race. Two tortoises run a race, one has to go through a quantum barrier. The noses of the tortoises cross the finish line at the same time, c. However the tortoise that went through the barrier has become several tortoises, nose to tail. If fifty little tortoises cross the line before the big tortoise's tail has thene this is what's called ftl. []

Now let's bite the bullet and say, yep it's ftl that we are seeing.The light speed barrier is being shifted towards ftl gravity speed. My question is, can we see the light that travels faster than light?

I think that it was Wheeler who pointed out that in order for the information from a star billions of light years away to "know enough" to show by its spectrum the same atomic properties as in the here and now. It would have to have had a separation, at some time, of the order of the Compton wavelength. His answer, a pregeometry. I suppose it's a bit like getting a phone call from Shakespeare, in which he uses modern idioms. Each booster amplifier changing his words to their local times, untill it reaches ones ear as modern english. In ftl graviton "time " though, 10 billion light years is only a few months.

There are many different kinds of particle accelerators, but the design uses a linear array of electrically charged plates. As the particles approach a plate they are accelerated towards it by an opposite polarity charge of the plate. As they pass through a hole in the plate, the polarity of the charge is switched so that the plate now repels them and they are now accelerated by it towards the next plate. Thus the accelerating force applied by the accelerator to the particle is an electric force, which according to your ideas propagates superluminally. If you prefer to avoid the complication of switching the polarity in the plates, you can consider “tandem electrostatic accelerators”, in which a negatively charged ion is accelerated by attraction to a highly positive charge at the center of a pressure vessel. When it arrives at the central region, some electrons are s*****ed from the ion, which then becomes positive, so it is accelerated away by the same high positive charge. Thus the accelerator has just two stages of acceleration, first pulling and then pushing the charged particles by an electrostatic field. An example of a tandem accelerator is ANTARES (Australian National Tandem Accelerator for Applied Research).

There is no way to misconstrue these facts. Particle accelerators work by subjecting charged particles to electric fields, not by bombarding them from behind with something that propagates at the speed of light. You explicitly claim that electric force propagates at extreme superluminal speed. The problem is that your “propellor” explanation for the relativistic effects observed in particle accelerators relies on the premise that the particles are accelerated by a force that propagates at the speed of light, not superluminally. So your ideas are self-contradictory and logically inconsistent. You must either accept the fact that lack of aberration does not imply superluminal speed, or else accept the fact that your ideas are inconsistent with the relativistic phenomena demonstrated in particle accelerators. Either of these alternatives leads to the conclusion that your theoretical ideas are not viable.