Philosophy Now Forum

I know people around these parts don't like watching utube vids, so here's a utube vid:-

The True Nature of Matter and Mass | Space Time | PBS Digital Studios
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSKzgpt4HBU

Mr Leo, any thoughts? I think this chap is pretty good at getting across the fundamental nature of 'the' equation.

I agree that it's a good presentation of current particle theory because it's accessible to an educated layman. However all the theorists in particle physics know perfectly well that the Standard Model is deeply flawed for two reasons, both of which he mentioned early in his presentation. It ignores gravity and and consequently it ignores the even more important point he made. He importantly pointed out that the the speed of light is the speed of causality and this is no trivial oversight because the speed of causality is also determined by gravity. Therefore the speed of light is determined by gravity, a perfectly logical conclusion which is compatible with GR but not with SR, on which the Standard Model is predicated.

However I like the way he defined matter and mass. He showed that we can understand these concepts in our usual commonsense language by saying that matter is real but it is EMERGENTLY real rather than fundamentally real. Also he showed that the mass of a particle is determined by what the energy quanta which encode for it ARE DOING rather than simply by what they are. This gives us a better intuitive guide to the nature of the atom as being a dynamic PROCESS rather than an object.

Makes no sense that speed of light are defined by gravity, out in hyperspace the max speed is still the same. Pure nonsense.

What the fuck is hyperspace?

The speed of light is proportional to the speed of the clock being used to measure it and the speed of the clock being used to measure it is determined by gravity.

The curvature of space-time courtesy of gravity affects the tick.

attofishpi wrote:The curvature of space-time courtesy of gravity affects the tick.

The only problem with this statement is that it is not a physical statement. It is a mathematical metaphor for a physical statement.

"Spacetime should never be regarded as physically real".....Albert Einstein.

Obvious Leo wrote:

attofishpi wrote:The curvature of space-time courtesy of gravity affects the tick.

The only problem with this statement is that it is not a physical statement. It is a mathematical metaphor for a physical statement.

"Spacetime should never be regarded as physically real".....Albert Einstein.

There is very little in the way of physical when it comes to particles.

attofishpi wrote:There is very little in the way of physical when it comes to particles.

In our common understanding of the term this is technically true. Einstein showed us that matter is just an emergent form of energy and energy itself is massless. This is not to say that energy is not physical but it does mean that the mass of the particle cannot be a property of what energy IS but rather a property of what energy DOES. Naturally the same principle must apply to the other two emergent properties of subatomic particles, namely their charge and their spin. This is where philosophy comes into physics (whether the physicists like it or not.) These properties of mass, charge and spin have no intrinsic ontological status because they are solely defined by the observer, which means that there is no reason why subatomic particles should be specified for in this particular way rather than in some other way. For the time being this way of modelling the atom is useful but if some clever bugger dreams up a better way of doing it then all these various particles can simply be dumped into the wastebasket and the entire Standard Model relegated to "it seemed like a good idea at the time". The history of science suggests that this is inevitable.

Obvious Leo wrote:

attofishpi wrote:There is very little in the way of physical when it comes to particles.

In our common understanding of the term this is technically true. Einstein showed us that matter is just an emergent form of energy and energy itself is massless. This is not to say that energy is not physical but it does mean that the mass of the particle cannot be a property of what energy IS but rather a property of what energy DOES. Naturally the same principle must apply to the other two emergent properties of subatomic particles, namely their charge and their spin. This is where philosophy comes into physics (whether the physicists like it or not.) These properties of mass, charge and spin have no intrinsic ontological status because they are solely defined by the observer, which means that there is no reason why subatomic particles should be specified for in this particular way rather than in some other way. For the time being this way of modelling the atom is useful but if some clever bugger dreams up a better way of doing it then all these various particles can simply be dumped into the wastebasket and the entire Standard Model relegated to "it seemed like a good idea at the time". The history of science suggests that this is inevitable.

I find the higgs field interesting in that it gives particles the property of intertia. Does this suggest the field is causing potential energy to exist in the mix, since mass is directly proportional to energy?

You're asking the wrong bloke, atto, because I don't like this notion of fields much at all. Fields are a convenient heuristic to model the behaviour of matter and energy at the subatomic scale but this is a full 20 orders of magnitude bigger than the Planck scale where the real action is occurring. In other words the same behaviour which gives rise to the particles also gives rise to the patterns of behaviour of the particles and it is these patterns of behaviour which are being described in terms of fields, an interpretation which defines the fields as an effect rather than as a cause. In fact the only causal agent needed to determine the behaviour of particles is gravity. We already know that because of gravity the relativistic motion of any physical entity is causally determined by the relativistic motion of every other physical entity so we must therefore conclude that gravity is the fundamental determinant of this behaviour and the various fields and forces invented by physicists are merely descriptors of it.

This is why the Standard Model has outlived its usefulness as a model of the subatomic world. The SM is entirely predicated on SR rather than on GR and SR is a model which ignores the effects of gravity. Einstein spent the last forty years of his life trying to resolve this problem and a few hardy souls have spent the subsequent 60 years on it as well. In an entire century absolutely NO progress has been made towards the unification of these models so we can safely conclude that there's something fundamentally flawed with the spacetime paradigm on which it is based.

This is a very safe conclusion for a philosopher of applied metaphysics to draw because all of these models are riddled with paradoxes, logical fallacies and metaphysical absurdities, bur it is not a conclusion which physicists seem to be very anxious to consider.

Standard theory attributes linear phenomena, such as light and gravity magnetism, to our earth world's quantum-scale forces. But quantum forces are spin-vector systems composed of units of various sizes, such as bosons, atoms, quarks, and so on, which do not lend themselves to a theory for linear transmission phenomena.

The only rational mechanism for linear type forces is with a model of an ether which is composed of elemental vibrating units (see my previous post describing this kind of model.) As linear transmissions occur in the underlying ether matrix, they "up-resonate" to the larger scale quantum systems we are able to observe with our earth world's powers of observation and our quantum technologies.

The only possible mechanism for linear transmissions is with my model of an elemental etheric matrix. There, the matching sizes and intimate proximities of the resonant elemental units are what actually produce the linear resonances (as they vibrate.)

You're quite right. Spacetime physics is an aether theory without a mechanism which is why it defines a universe which makes no sense. 100 years has now passed since this was realised and still no progress has been made whatsoever. The 4D manifold is a dead duck.

Obvious Leo:

Your Post contained a factual error which bears on a key point of my Post. -The standard theory of spacetime physics is NOT an aether theory.

Michael MD wrote:The standard theory of spacetime physics is NOT an aether theory.

Albert Einstein said different and he's the bloke generally credited with the invention of it. He made it perfectly clear that GR was an aether theory but that the physical aether of Newton was being replaced by what he called a "geometric aether". However he did clarify this by saying that spacetime should not be regarded as physically real precisely because of this and because he knew perfectly well that his model offered no mechanism for gravity. In this regard Einstein's physics was no different from Newton's because gravity was still being modelled as an action-at-a-distance "force". This hypothesis has been a complete failure because modelling gravity as a force of any description simply doesn't work. Einstein missed the elephant in the room in his very own theory because gravity is simply an alternative expression of time and modelling time as a force doesn't make any sense either.