The True Nature of Matter and Mass

[Arising_uk]

...
"Space and time are modes in which we think, NOT conditions in which we exist".....Albert Einstein. ...

Except you disagree with him and Kant upon the latter?

[Obvious Leo]

...
"Space and time are modes in which we think, NOT conditions in which we exist".....Albert Einstein. ...

Except you disagree with him and Kant upon the latter?

Not exactly, mate. What I actually do is adopt a more physically meaningful definition of time as being a convenient metric to define the rate of change in a physical system. This definition allows the relationship between gravity and time to be more easily understood, as well as the relationship of both with the speed of light. However in presentism it remains true that only the moment NOW can be said to be physically real, the past being that which no longer exists and the future being that which is yet to exist. Having already existed the nature of the past is immutable but the nature of the future remains an infinite index of possibilities which will be determined by events in their own moment NOW. In other words reality is that which is continuously re-making itself and I still find it utterly astonishing that in the 21st century we could still be using mathematical models which deny that this is so.

As I've said many times before, logic is not a highly valued commodity in physics and the bloody obvious is treated with scorn. This way of thinking the world makes every single paradox and metaphysical absurdity in physics vanish and offers a universe which a child could understand. In fact children intuitively understand the nature of reality perfectly well.

[uwot]

Where were we?

What I actually do is adopt a more physically meaningful definition of time as being a convenient metric to define the rate of change in a physical system.

Oh yeah! Look, I'm with you this far. The way I express it is to point out that there is no way to measure 'time' directly. All clocks are physical systems, and all any clock does is count the number of events (swings of pendulums, vibrations of atoms) within that system.

This definition allows the relationship between gravity and time to be more easily understood...

Not by me. I know all about gravitational time dilation, but you seem to say that gravity is time. It might be obvious to you, but some of us aren't on the same page yet.

[Obvious Leo]

you seem to say that gravity is time.

Yes. That's exactly what I'm saying. Both gravity and time are different metrics for precisely the same phenomenon, namely the rate of change in a physical process. Because they bear a precise inversely logarithmic mathematical relationship to each other if you specify one you automatically specify the other. In a presentist model of reality the reason why you are bound to the surface of the earth is because you are continuously coming into existence in a dynamic process and time elapses more quickly in this process at your head than it does at your feet.

[Obvious Leo]

That's why gravitational lensing is exactly the same phenomenon as the bent stick in the water. The speed of light in a process model is proportional to the speed of the clock which is measuring it.

Therefore time, gravity and the speed of light can all be quantised equivalently.

[uwot]

Both gravity and time are different metrics for precisely the same phenomenon, namely the rate of change in a physical process.

Dunno Leo. You seem to be overlooking time dilation due to velocity, a la special relativity.

[Obvious Leo]

Both gravity and time are different metrics for precisely the same phenomenon, namely the rate of change in a physical process.

Dunno Leo. You seem to be overlooking time dilation due to velocity, a la special relativity.

Of course I am. SR is not a model of a physically real world because it is unambiguously refuted by GR. Because QM is entirely predicated on SR and ignores GR completely this is exactly why QM and GR are mutually exclusive. SR assumes that the speed of light is a constant but GR clearly shows that the speed of light is proportional to clock speed. They can't both be right.

This is not at all difficult to think through as a simple exercise in logic. The speed of light on the moon is the same as the speed of light on earth, AS MEASURED LOCALLY. However the clocks being used to measure these two speeds are ticking at different rates so what this observation shows is that in fact the speed of light is NOT a constant at all. It is a constant only in the referential frame of the observer (or measurer) of it. In a process model it becomes valid to think of the speed at which time passes and we all know that this is entirely determined by gravity. Since light cannot travel faster than time the speed of light and the speed at which time passes then become one and the same thing and thus light from a distant light source in the universe is slowed down by the gravitational "field" of an intervening galaxy. It is this slowing down of light which a distant observer then observes as "bent" light, no different from the simple refraction experiments we all recall from our high school days.

However it is on the subatomic scale that this becomes particularly relevant. The tensor field equations of GR are scale invariant which means that the clock on the electron ticks faster than the clock on the nucleus it orbits. This is an absolute FACT of nature which no physicist can deny and yet it is completely ignored in the Standard Model. This is no trivial oversight because this is quantum gravity.

[Obvious Leo]

Have a good hard think about the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and you'll see that it is nothing more than a statement about the relativistic motion which applies to every entity with mass because of gravity. We cannot determine both the location and momentum of a particle at the same time simple because the relativistic motion of each subatomic particle within the atom is being causally determined by the relativistic motion of every other. Exactly the same principle applies to stars, planets and galaxies. We can't specify both the location and the momentum of these cosmological objects either, and for exactly the same reason. This is simple basic chaotic motion as modelled in Brownian motion and it is completely scale invariant.

[uwot]

Of course I am. SR is not a model of a physically real world because it is unambiguously refuted by GR.

Can we do this a bit at a time Leo? What bit of SR is refuted by GR? To my understanding, SR is taken as a single instance of GR in which the velocity of two (or more) inertial frames is constant. GR generalises to include acceleration. True, SR imagines an idealised, unreal situation in which gravity doesn't exist, but the time dilation due to velocity is a component of the overall dilation, that includes gravitational effects, which has been verified by every experiment from Hafele-Keating onwards. It is demonstrably the case that the faster you go, the slower 'time passes'. I don't see how you you can equate gravity with time when there is at least one other factor.

[Michael MD]

A model based on an underlying universal ether matrix upon which forces observable in our earth world's quantum setting could address many phenomena physics is trying to understand via GR, SR, and QM. -The example you cite, that time passes slower when a body is accelerated, could also (besides the "time dilation" effect presently offered as the explanation) be accounted for by a model which attributed the slowing of time, in that case, to an increase in the degree of resonances between the body's etheric constituent units and ambient etheric units in space, caused by the increase in velocity through space (where space contains an ether, rather than being empty, as science now posits.)

This kind of ether model could, if it were being considered by science, also provide alternative sub-models, to account for the bending of starlight by the Sun, the "double slit" observations, the Michelson Morley Experiment, quantum entanglement, and many others.

Physics will inevitably undergo a basic revamping sooner or later.

[Obvious Leo]

SR is taken as a single instance of GR in which the velocity of two (or more) inertial frames is constant.

SR is regarded as a special case of GR in the so-called "flat" space and yet GR unquestionably demonstrates that there's no such thing as a "flat" space in the physical universe. Therefore SR is not a model of a physically real world.

The velocity of the inertial frames in SR experiments are constant only relative to each other and not to any other co-moving inertial frame so in any other such frame the time dilation effects will be seen to be different for each of the clocks in the experiment. One of the central planks of relativity is that there is no such thing as a preferred referential frame so what Hafele-Keating is demonstrating is an observer effect which is applicable only to the specific scenario devised to demonstrate it. It's a simple confirmation bias which can be just as easily explained if the clocks are moving in the time dimension only because the spatial distances being traversed are irrelevant to the outcome. The experiment is merely applying a spatial extension to purely temporal phenomena.

However consider the clock on the photon which strikes the semi-silvered mirror. The clocks on the two daughter photons will remain almost in perfect sync after the quantum instant of the split because photons all travel into the future at the speed of light. It makes no difference what "spatial" extension we apply to these daughter photons because in a benign gravitational environment they will remain very closely located in time for a very long time indeed. Information can therefore pass between them at the speed of light but to an external observer applying a spatial extension to these co-moving photons this information will appear to pass between them at a speed many orders of magnitude greater than the speed of light.

What I'm saying is that ALL motion is in the time dimension only and that the spatial extension which we instinctively apply to such motion is a property of the consciousness of the observer of it and NOT a property of the moving objects themselves. This interpretation is perfectly consistent with Hafele-Keating and any other SR experiment.

It is demonstrably the case that the faster you go, the slower 'time passes'.

This statement is utterly false because you haven't specified relative to WHAT. The SR space is the absolute space of Aristotle and Newton, not the dynamic space of Einstein.

[Obvious Leo]

The SR space is the absolute space of Aristotle and Newton, not the dynamic space of Einstein.

Consider the nature of the background space when you simply gaze from the mountaintop. In a process model of the universe none of what you're looking at actually still exists. The further away you focus your attention the further back into the past you see, so what you're actually doing is spatialising a time interval. Your background space is actually a holographic representation of your own past being projected through time to your senses at the speed of light.

[Obvious Leo]

It is the scale invariance of physics which seems to me to be the biggest impediment to understanding quantum gravity so I'll try a different line of attack by referring back to the titular question posed in the OP.

What is the true nature of matter and mass?

Einstein achieved two remarkable unifications in physics and the first of these was the mass/energy equivalence principle established in SR. At the fundamental scale matter is not composed of little bits of "stuff" but is actually encoded for by discrete packets of energy which Max Planck labelled as the quanta. It is these no-further-divisible quanta of energy which are the basic building blocks of matter but there is a profound truth about the nature of energy which reveals the entire story. Energy can only travel at the speed of light whereas the matter particles which this energy encodes for are always constrained to travel at a speed somewhat less than this. What then does this tell us about the true nature of the subatomic particle? It tells us that its properties of mass, charge and spin are EMERGENT properties which have been conferred on it by the BEHAVIOUR of the quanta of energy which encode for it.

We know from QM that it makes no sense to think of a subatomic particle as enclosing a volume, so it is completely wrong-headed to think of an electron or a quark as having an "inside". However we know as an absolute fact that these particles cannot possibly be fundamental entities or else no explanation for their diverse physical properties is possible, even in principle. This dilemma is easily resolved in a process model because we simply say that the properties of the particles are not a function of what the quanta of energy ARE, because the only difference between one quantum of energy and another is the amount of energy it contains. Instead we say that the properties of the particles are conferred on them by what these quanta of energy ARE DOING, and whatever the hell it might be that they're doing we know for certain that they're doing it at the speed of light.

This brings us back to presentism and the notion that physical reality can only truly be said to exist in the moment NOW. According to GR each of these quanta of energy exists solely in its own temporal referential frame, as do the emergent particles they encode for, so in exactly the same way that I am continuously becoming a new Leo so too is the electron becoming a new electron at the speed of light. Instead of thinking of a subatomic particle as an object we must think of it as dynamic process which the observer constructs within his consciousness into the form of an object.

What becomes a little more difficult to grasp is that there is no right way or wrong way of doing this and so it makes no sense whatsoever to suggest that these particles have any ontological status at all. They are entirely fictitious entities created in the mind of the observer to explain the nature of his observations and any time he wants to chuck them out and invent new ones he is entirely free to do so. The same goes for any of the waves, forces and fields he invents to describe the behaviour of these particles in their emergent form. At the Planck scale the behaviour of the energy quanta is simply determined by the inversely logarithmic relationship between gravity and time which means they operate in accordance with Boolean law as simple binary logic gates. The behaviour of every single quantum of energy is being causally determined by the behaviour of every other and this exact same law of causality applies to every physical entity in the universe at all emergent scales.

This is how a self-causal universe operates and it is a mechanism which is completely sufficient to explain all of the order and complexity in physical reality, including the existence of life and mind within it. The reason for this is that in all chaotically determined physical systems the total entropy of the system ALWAYS decreases, which is exactly what 13.8 billion years worth of evidence has shown us.

[uwot]

SR is regarded as a special case of GR in the so-called "flat" space and yet GR unquestionably demonstrates that there's no such thing as a "flat" space in the physical universe.

Tell you what Leo, it won't half speed things up if you don't make an issue of things I've already acknowledged:

True, SR imagines an idealised, unreal situation in which gravity doesn't exist.

Therefore SR is not a model of a physically real world.

Yup. Most of physics, most of science even, treats the phenomenon being investigated as if it were the only thing happening in the universe.

The velocity of the inertial frames in SR experiments are constant only relative to each other and not to any other co-moving inertial frame so in any other such frame the time dilation effects will be seen to be different for each of the clocks in the experiment. One of the central planks of relativity is that there is no such thing as a preferred referential frame so what Hafele-Keating is demonstrating is an observer effect which is applicable only to the specific scenario devised to demonstrate it.

It is as much confirmation of the twins paradox. That is only a paradox if you take the view that since there is no preferred referential frame, nobody is in fact moving at a greater velocity, relative to the speed of light say, than anyone else. That is piss poor logic and soundly refuted by the fact that clocks do tick faster or slower depending on how fast they are travelling.
As far as I can tell, we are on the same page with regard to time being a measurement of change in a system. To my mind, change is dependent, ultimately, on the behaviour of bosons, including photons. It happens to be the case that these will travel at 186 000 miles a second in the ideal conditions that neither you or I believe exist anywhere in the universe. (Not least of the reasons for that is that there is nowhere completely free of gravity, hence no flat SR space. Gravity and time are therefore intimately linked, but they are not the same thing.) Since, it seems to me, that photons have to pass from one thing to another in order to affect any change, the faster the target is moving, relative to the photon, the longer the photon will take to reach the target. If the target could travel at the speed of light (anyone who feels the urge to say 'It can't!', please resist-I know.) then the photon would never catch it and the change wouldn't happen. In fact, no change would happen, and time, as a measurement of change, would stand still. Here's a cartoon I originally drew to explain it to my kids:
http://willibouwman.blogspot.co.uk/2014 ... ou-go.html
Here's another that puts Hafele-Keating into that context.
http://willibouwman.blogspot.co.uk/2014 ... plane.html

It's a simple confirmation bias which can be just as easily explained if the clocks are moving in the time dimension only because the spatial distances being traversed are irrelevant to the outcome.

You've lost me. I simply don't understand what "moving in the time dimension only" could possibly mean.

[attofishpi]

Its an interesting quirk that the faster you go, the less events occur to 'you' relative to those remaining stationary. However, each time you check your watch over the years, and look in the mirror, you are still aging at the same rate. Then again..what is 'stationary'?