Big Bang Dogma

Well please pardon me I did not know you were attempting to rid the world of photons. No one really knows much about them anyway so I have no objections to some other term. But, heat is a result of interacting energy(photons or whatever) and mass. It is not electromagnetic waves and the em waves that do interact can be any frequency produce the effect in matter. No matter, no heat. I don't speak for anyone, but, I see some good and some bad in both models being concidered here.

> [Jim]: Well please pardon me I did not know you were attempting to rid the world of photons.

This illustrates the importance of actually paying attention to what your partners in a discussion have said:

> [TVF]: . . . in MM, light is a pure wave, and has no "dual" nature.
> [TVF]: Once we recognize that light has a wave character . . .
> [TVF]: Because light cannot be used in quantities less than a single "photon" (a single wave) . . .

From the cited posts, it should have been clear that Tom is arguing for a change in our conception of the nature of light. Ridding the world of photons, to borrow a phrase.

> [Jim]: No one really knows much about [photons] anyway so I have no objections to some other term.

I don't care what we call them either. Scientific terminology is arbitrary; when we give a name to a phenomenon, we are basically saying, "I will henceforth refer to this complex and not-yet-fully-understood entity as a mome rath." You may choose to call it a slithy tove, but as long as we are all referring to the same concept, the terminology is not of great importance. Names (in science, at least) are abbreviations that are easier to use in discussion than a complete description of the concept in full (similarly, Tolkien's Ents used the common tongue in their war-moot because in their language every noun is a complete description of all the history and nuances of the person, place, or thing referred to). Karl Popper has discussed this at length; if anyone is interested, I'll try to come up with the exact reference.

So I am not quibbling over terminology. I am pointing out that when Tom speaks about "photons", he is using the common verbal abbreviation for a concept that he believes is misunderstood by mainstream cosmologists. "No one really knows much about them anyway . . ." you say, and I suspect he agrees. Experimental results have been misinterpreted as indicating that light has a particulate mode of being.

> [Jim]: But, heat is a result of interacting energy (photons or whatever) and mass . . . . No matter, no heat.

So your theory says, but perhaps the Meta Model offers an alternate explanation. If that is so, then your dogmatic declarations are not relevant. I'm not saying they are wrong; I'm saying they are not germane to the discussion because they ignore the premises underlying the concepts examined. It is as if you are chiding J.R.R Tolkien for giving Middle Earth an unrealistic political environment because he didn't take into account the implications of nuclear arsenals and Mutual Assured Destruction.

The Meta Model does, in fact, propose a different understanding of energy and matter:

> [TVF]: "Energy" can also be thought of as the motion of particles or waves (i.e., matter) on a smaller scale.

I don't see it here, but Tom has discussed in detail elsewhere his contention that space is not empty, that "substance" is everywhere, and that what we call matter is really certain forms of the substance that makes up the universe seen at a certain scale. There is also, he proposes, a Light Carrying Medium in which all the known universe is submerged. Waves in this LCM are what we call light, or electromagnetic radiation. One particular range of wave frequencies happens to be able to transfer its wave-motion (also called energy) to the form of substance we call matter. Excited matter, hot matter, can in turn impart its wave-motion to the LCM. This is how the Meta Model explains infrared radiation, if I have properly understood it.

He doesn't provide details here (though he does in his book, Dark Matter...), but his conception of energy seems to be that it is all comprised of motion and collision. This idea is simple in principle, profound in operation, and very appealing for its understandability. It eliminates the need for for forces that act at a distance, for example. "All elemental force is pushing" is, I believe, the nutshell version.

If I have misunderstood the Meta Model, please advise and correct.

Matthew King
Austin, Texas

My dogma is simple when it comes to describing thermal processes and that may not be relavent to either model being considered as you say. I like some parts of both models and dislike some parts of both. The understanding I have of the MM is it is a work in progress and can be corrected not to suit me, but, to be a reasonable reflection of nature The BB is just a model much like a clock.

> [mking]: I don't see it here, but Tom has discussed in detail elsewhere his contention that space is not empty, that "substance" is everywhere, and that what we call matter is really certain forms of the substance that makes up the universe seen at a certain scale.

That came up for brief discussion in the "Gravity & Relativity" Forum, "Gravitational Attraction" Topic. You seem to have a good grasp of the model, which is heartening to hear. I tried again to bring up the "one-to-one correspondence" as a way of dealing with infinities and the infinitesimal, and therefore of resolving Zeno's Paradoxes. Without a doubt, that has been the single most difficult concept in the Meta Model for most people to grasp. In fact, I've never heard back from anyone who said "I get it!" By chance, do you?

> If I have misunderstood the Meta Model, please advise and correct.

You have understood it very well. I appreciate the chance to step back and see the model described through someone else's eyes. -|Tom|-

I don't even know what the paradox is and only know a little. The division of anything by 2 over and over I think is one. The others are not in my data bank so I don't know or get them. I think "empty" space is where energy is transformed to matter and stars are the opposite of that process so fusion is not what makes stars glow. If the processes that are observed in accelerators transform energy to matter and matter to energy it is logical the same thing occurs in nature.

Hypotheses containing merit only increase in simplicity as empirical data is forthcoming.

Perhaps someone would like to comment on the viability of ideas presented at www.fractalcosmology.com (ie. space as infinite, and also infinitely-divisible; rescpective scales being linked by a universal constant of 10>30, roughly).