Breaking the Speed Limit

I have been monitoring this board for about a year now and this is my first post to this forum. I have enjoyed the discussions and understood most (I think) and may have things to contribute to the discussions of at least some of the topics. I have been a fan of Dr. Tom since about 1996 after listening to him on Art Bell. I was very impressed with his reasoning and sound logical arguments (and continue to be impressed, Tom) and have read with much interest most of his articles on the Meta site. I would appreciate feedback in answer to a hypothetical question on the topic of the speed of gravity. I will cop to having 'hole cards' but my motive is based on my ignorance of things Physic! My background is in the 'soft science' arena and I need to gauge my grasp of the basic concepts being discussed here. The question is:
if I were to demonstrate the existence of a highly robust pattern in the performance data of a particular plant that occurs twice each day within a few seconds of 400 seconds before visible sunrise and sunset would this present a significant challenge to the GR (strange detractor) bunch? Would this qualify as ‘proving’ ftl propagation of at least something if not gravity?

The above should be viewed as have met all reasonable requirements for validity, accuracy and design integrity as well as generalizing well to performance data of several other plants and animals.<i></i><i></i>

Leland

<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=2 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>[Leland]: if I were to demonstrate the existence of a highly robust pattern in the performance data of a particular plant that occurs twice each day within a few seconds of 400 seconds before visible sunrise and sunset would this present a significant challenge to the GR (strange detractor) bunch? Would this qualify as ‘proving’ ftl propagation of at least something if not gravity?<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote>

Welcome to the message board.

The only thing happening near sunrise and sunset that I am aware of of is rapid changes in lighting and air temperature. With respect to gravity, nothing much is happening. And "400 seconds" has no particular significance, so far as I am aware. For example, the light-time from Sun to Earth is 500 seconds.

So if such a phenomenon existed, I would look for an explanation in terms of the known causes, light and warmth. As far as any connection to ftl propagation is concerned, that would not work for a variety of reasons besides the timing being off by 100 seconds:

(a) Because sunrise is governed by Earth's rotation and not some motion of the Sun, in 400 seconds the Earth would have rotated 1.67 degrees or 3.3 solar diameters. Yet the apparent Sun (the source of light) and the true, geometric Sun (the source of gravity) are separated by only 0.006 degrees.

(b) Beacuse Earth's atmosphere has refraction and displaces bodies near the horizon by a little more than a solar diameter, neither the apparent nor the geometric Sun is actually at the horizon at sunrise. Only its light rays are bent into visibility at that moment.

For a plant phenomenon, one could test if artificial light (especially "full spectrum" light, which can be purchased) or a heat source (perhaps even the presence of a human observer) could induce the effect at other times.

I'm sorry if this is disappointing, but I don't think you can force this into the direction you appeared to be heading. -|Tom|-

Thank you! I not disappointed at all and I'll start playing my cards now. I need exactly this kind of information. I would add that the pattern reflects the rotation of the earth by beginning at about 6 min 30sec prior to Navy corrected actual sunset time (top of limb at horizon) and that a pattern of four slow drops in values followed by a sharp rise within about 16 seconds for a total of 64 seconds occurs. Further a highly systematic general pattern of peaks and valleys in the data inverts 180 degrees for the duration of the sundown phase.
All hills become valleys and vise versa. All high positive correlation’s for this pattern from daylight trials become high negative. In addition a pattern of three 16 second saw-tooth waves occurs at moonrise and moonset with the pattern being slow drop sharp rise for moonset and slow rise and sharp drop at moonrise. This would fit well if what this represents is subtractive gravity during the day changing to additive after set for both sun and moon. The offset for moonset from actual visible moonset is indistinguishable from 0 indicating the 6min plus offset of the sun is unique and perhaps a function of distance. Ok so I'm busted on the hypothetical stuff. I’m just too eager to get this out to someone with you considerable talent, skill and knowledge! I will produce real data on demand and an experimental protocol for producing results quick and easy at least for the sun & moon pattern data. I (of course) have conceptually unified all the forces thus allowing me to explain absolutely everything, (did this one morning before breakfast) and I know this to be some much 'mud' and I will be disappointed if at least some of it does not 'stick'. I have the most confidence in the data. This will knot go away and must be explained. I have known for years that you were 'the guy' to examine and bust it or trust it!


Leland

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I would add that the pattern reflects the rotation of the earth by beginning at about 6 min 30sec prior to Navy corrected actual sunset time (top of limb at horizon) and that a pattern of four slow drops in values followed by a sharp rise within about 16 seconds for a total of 64 seconds occurs.
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Leland,

Have you ever stumbled at works of Simon E. Shnoll on the matter of correlations in the fine structure of random processes statistical distributions? Here's an abstract:
<i><b>It is shown that due to fluctuations, a sequence of discrete values is generated by successive measurement events whatever the type of the process measured. The corresponding histograms have much the same shape at any given time and for processes of a different nature and are very likely to change the shape simultaneously for various processes and in widely distant laboratories. For a series of successive histograms, any given one is with high probability similar to its nearest neighbors and occurs repeatedly with a period of 24 hours, 27 days, and about 365 days, thus implying that the phenomenon has a very profound cosmophysical (or cosmogonic) origin. </b></i>
That correlation implies that the space the Earth travels through is structured and non-uniform in some very basic sense. You can read an original article on the matter here [url] ufn.ioc.ac.ru/ufn98/ufn98_10/ufn9810d.pdf [/url] (quite official science, btw). It's hence quite obvious that a system of sufficient complexity can feel the exact time and coordinate on the Earth surface by just looking into itself. No reasonable theory exists to explain those experimental facts.

<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=2 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>I have known for years that you were 'the guy' to examine and bust it or trust it!<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote>

Sorry to disappoint you again, but I think not. For the reasons I mentioned and several more I did not mention here but which may be found in the papers about gravity at this web site (see especially "Possible new properties of gravity"), your phenomena cannot be caused by gravity or any known astronomical phenomenon.

Therefore (comments by AgoraBasta notwithstanding), the cause is most likely some local phenomenon. As an astronomer, I investigate only astronomical phenomena, and have the time and resources to look into only a small percentage of those. -|Tom|-

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...the cause is most likely some local phenomenon.
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While one should look first at the most common, conventional mechanisms, Leland seems desperate to find such a conventional explanation. So I proposed the most esoteric of the reasons I could think of and the one that deserves a separate discussion as a phenomenon.

When looking for some possible simple reason, I'd first check for any correlation with atmospheric pressure variations. The travelling border between light and darkness must induce spreading transients in air pressure which can easily affect machinery and living things as well.