Riemann's Problems with curved space

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by jrich</i>
<br />Given that arguing from physical principles seems pointless...<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">I have no experience with arguing without reason. But with reason, the only good choices for starting points are experiments, observations, previous syllogisms, or physical principles (which are themselves products of logic). The remaining choice, pure assumption, invariably leads nowhere useful to physics.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">do you have any insight into how we may determine which view, field or mechanistic, is the correct one?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">That is what the first five chapters of my book, <i>Dark Matter, Missing Planets and New Comets</i>, are all about. Reality doesn't fit into these assigned niches. It combines many diverse elements in interesting ways that we would never guess -- but can reason deductively to. -|Tom|-

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by EBTX</i>
<br /><blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">[tvf]: Surely you are not proposing a violation of the causality principle?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Yes. Absolutely. Anyone who proposes an ex nihilo universe must propose an acausal principle as the beginning of the observed causality. Whether it is all at once as in the big bang or ongoing as I do ... it is still the same thing.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">I agree. In for a penny, in for a pound. Once you accept one physically impossible thing, anything goes.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Your position sidesteps the issue by saying that the problem of why anything exists at all (as opposed to nothing) is irrelevant.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Hardly. MM answers this square on: Whatever is occupied exists. Whatever exists takes up space (occupies). Time isn't some magical flowing thing, but simply a measure of change. If there were no change, there never could be. And conversely -- If there is change, there can never cease to be.

But you really need to see this developed from first principles, and not just examine "sound byte" descriptions of parts of a model way downstream.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">I regard this as "philosophical evasion".<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">I do too, and plead not guilty.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">If you could examine it closely enough you would find nothing there ... same as your idea of MIs.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Again, hardly. My MIs are somebody's home planet and somebody else's entire visible universe.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">If you look closely enough, there is nothing there but a "hall of mirrors" consisting of more smaller units which in turn cannot be apprehended by any means whatsoever.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">MIs are material and tangible, and therefore perfectly "apprehendible". We need to leave <i>something</i> for future engineers and instrument designers to do, don't we? []

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">we perceive it as real ... something like a movie on a reel already made. We are the actors in the movie.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Spooky. I've heard of people whose reality is not that different from a dream world. But not everyone perceives reality in the same way. To my mind, the difference between reality and movies or dreams is like night and day.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">I regard existence as a subset of mathematics ... absolutely NOT ... something separate from it.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">"If your only tool is a hammer, all your problems start to look like nails."

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Our differences here are definitely irreconcilable.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">It appears so, but still makes me sad. There is so much to appreciate about physical reality, and it is nice to share the experience.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">I started out exactly as you did in '62 ... with spheres and so forth ... trying to be completely physical and not abstract. I abandoned that a few years later. You didn't and went on to elaborate in much greater detail.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">I struggled for years to come up with safe assumptions and never found any. Then one day, on a flight, after struggling for insight, I thought "There must be answers to the riddles of origins and existence. I really want to know those answers -- even if I could never share them or get an ounce of credit. More than anything, I wanted to know. Logic was the only reliable tool available, and I could find no safe assumptions. So I dropped all assumptions, emptied the universe, and started out with an absolute void with no implicit structure, size, time, space, or anything. It soon became apparent that, under these conditions, there was no light, no gravity, no inertia, no force, no Mach's principle, no Olber's paradox, no way to measure distance or size or change or direction. Once I had rid this void of all implicit or hidden properties, I then dropped a single unit of undefined substance into it, and realized that it was impossible to tell, and even meaningless to think, what properties this unit might have because all properties are relative to other substances.

Anyway, I started there and built a universe, and mentally stood back and watched in amazement as the answers start to unfold in front of my mind's eye. Most of them were things that had never occurred to me, but were obvious once I began reasoning deductively from first principles. Anyone can follow the same path and reach the same conclusions.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">What is MM's answer to the dimensionality of space? Why three and not two or ten or 27,603 or 9.237118... ?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">That's an excellent question. But sadly, if I give you MM's answer, it won't mean much to you because any place I start other than the beginning looks as though I'm starting from arbitrary assumptions and arriving at arbitrary answers.

But for those who have read at least chapter one of my book, my answer there was that the universe consists of five and only five dimensions -- 3 of space plus time plus scale. To elaborate here on why there are exactly three dimensions for space, that answer goes back to the equivalence of existence and occupation. With fewer than three space dimensions, we have problems with different substances occupying the same space at the same time, which would be "double existence", which makes no sense. With more than three space dimensions, we create gaps in the void when things move, which is like creating non-existence and also makes no sense. But with three spatial dimensions plus time and scale, substance can move (producing change) and never be in danger of creating unoccupied voids or of having to co-exist at the same time and place because of the scale dimension, because all forms are porous and at some scale can pass right through one another without touching.

But as I said, this won't mean much unless you have read MM from the beginning. The explanation is offered here for those with the background to follow who, like me, have a driving passion to just know the answers, even if we can't share them with everyone. -|Tom|-

Tom,

I have two questions for you if you dont mind:

Here is what all of rigorous Science uses as a definition of time: "We shall assume without examination the unidirectional, one-valued, one-dimensional character of the time continuum." Reciprocal Systems

If you have taken some "time" to examine time, could you tell us what other word can be used that can replace the word, time. In other words, if one truly understands a very dark and complicated subject as is time, then one should be able to easily explain it to even a child. What scientific word would you use?

And

When you emptied your universe of all matter and phenomena, did you begin with something that looked like this:
These are two similar Anu, or that which space does....in other words, space spirals. If you have two Anu that spin exactly contrary, i.e., God/Satan, the two Anu must be exactly alike. If your universe did not begin with this phenomena, what does your very first phenomena look like?

The Anu building Block
www.rgrace.org/100/134anuqa.html

Meta

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Meta</i>
<br />what other word can be used that can replace the word, time. In other words, if one truly understands a very dark and complicated subject as is time, then one should be able to easily explain it to even a child. What scientific word would you use?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">If it must be one word, that word is "change". If I can use a short sentence, that would be: "Time is a measure of change".

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">When you emptied your universe of all matter and phenomena, did you begin with something that looked like this: ... what does your very first phenomena look like?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">When the universe was empty of everything, it was a true void having no properties whatever, definitely nothing like a vacuum having size, shape, location, permeability, permittivity, and lots of other properties.

The first phenomenon was existence. But one unit of substance in a void cannot have properties other than existence because they must all be relative to something, and there is no other "something". So the one unit of substance simply meant existence there, leaving non-existence elsewhere. -|Tom|-

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>
I have no experience with arguing without reason. But with reason, the only good choices for starting points are experiments, observations, previous syllogisms, or physical principles (which are themselves products of logic). The remaining choice, pure assumption, invariably leads nowhere useful to physics.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
Given that most modern physicists seem quite content to dispense with reason with increasing frequency, I believe that appeals to reason are insufficient to change very many minds on this issue, no matter how correct. EBTX, to his credit, at least agrees that creation ex nihilo destroys cause and effect. Perhaps a different tack for a different audience might be useful.

Just as FTL transmission of information is a definitive and convincing test to distinguish SR and LR, does such a test exist for field and particle theories?



JR

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by jrich</i>
<br />Just as FTL transmission of information is a definitive and convincing test to distinguish SR and LR, does such a test exist for field and particle theories?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">I'm not seeing a hard-and-fast distinction between the two. MM indicates that the gravitational potential field consists of elysons, with the next major medium down being gravitons. So in physics (unlike math), anything capable of exerting a force must be material and tangible, and fields must therefore ultimately consist of waves and/or particles.

Perhaps you are asking for a way to distinguish between field GR and geometric GR? In the former, gravity is a classical force associated with a potential field (that we now call the elysium). In geometric GR, gravity is just geometry, and "spacetime" curvature is responsible for motion. Both interpretations are based on the same math, but the latter interpretation did not really catch on until the 1970s. My recent paper with Vigier in <i>Foundations of Physics</i> explains why geometroc GR is now falsified for violating two physical principles -- causality and no creation ex nihilo. -|Tom|-