Explanation of Paradox

tvanflandern
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19 years 4 months ago #12447 by tvanflandern

Replied by tvanflandern on topic Reply from Tom Van Flandern

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Originally posted by DaveL
 <blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">[tvf]: Don't confuse mathematical explanations for phenomena (which may aid predicting, but not understanding) with physical explanations."<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">I, and many others, view the apparent absence of influence of the future on the past as an observation to be explained rather than a fundamental principle. The problem here is that essentially all of physics outside of thermodynamics and cosmology is time-symmetric. Postulating delayed action only is of course the usual approach to allow work to proceed but there is no understanding in it.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">We must have different definitions of “understanding”. Here’s the one I used: “the ability to perceive and explain the meaning or the nature of something”. In ordinary parlance, “nature” means its physical nature, not its mathematical nature. So signals from the future may aid predicting, but cannot possibly assist in understanding, as I said above with my definitions in mind.

And in my experience, that time-symmetry you reference is illusory. Both the entropy of electrodynamic systems and the stability of gravitational systems are unidirectional in time.

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">the idea survives today because it allows a quantum mechanical interpretation that is fully local and resolves the EPR paradox and other difficulties with traditional interpretations such as the Born (a.k.a. the "Copenhagen") interpretation.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">Now that we know that nothing in physics constrains phenomena to lightspeed, there is no longer any need to jump through these estranged logical hoops. Non-locality is simply FTL action in forward time.

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Your view … that mathematics may not in principle be able to describe nature seems to accede to belief in magic since it accepts that some phenomena may always be beyond explanation. There is no rational basis for such a view as the inability to explain phenomena to date does not imply an impossibility of doing so in the future.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">My view was not understood. It is true that some phenomena may always be beyond explanation. That is necessarily true in an infinite universe, especially one infinite in scale. However, while continuing to maintain that position, I also agree with your statement that purports to argue against it: “The inability to explain phenomena to date does not imply an impossibility of doing so in the future.” In an infinite universe, there will be an unlimited supply of examples of both things that will be explained in the future and things that never will.

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">This experiment you cite is described only in an internal report which I am not inclined to hunt down. Carlip calls it unpublished and unreproduced.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">It was published as a university work product, as was the habit for university funded work in those days. It is not independently replicated, not because of any failure to replicate, but only because no agency has been willing to put up the funds to make the attempt. In case you had not noticed, virtually nothing that contradicts a mainstream paradigm can get funded through official channels these days.

But the experiment was simple in concept and sound in execution. In brief, charges accelerated jointly in the same direction respond to each other’s instantaneous positions, and not to the “left-behind potential hill” following acceleration from zero speed. The paper describing the experiment is: [“Electromagnetic mass and the inertial properties of nuclei”, C.W. Sherwin and R.D. Rawcliffe, Report I-92 of March 14, 1960 of the Consolidated Science Laboratory, Univ. of Illinois, Urbana; obtainable from U.S. Department of Commerce’s Clearinghouse for Scientific and Technical Information, document AD 625706. See description in Heretical Verities, T.E. Phipps, Jr., Classic Non-fiction Library, Urbana, pp. 273-282 (1986).]

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Carlip's critique of your original position was published in Phys Rev letters, in reply to their publication of your paper, was it not?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">No, it was in Physics Letters A, a different journal than Phys. Rev. Letters, but the same journal in which I published two of my papers.

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Seems to me, Carlip is under no obligation to reply to your paper in prepublication. Has it been accepted for publication in Phys Rev Letters?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">It was joined by J.P. Vigier as co-author and published in 2002. It was too long for any of the Letters journals, so we instead published it as: [“Experimental Repeal of the Speed Limit for Gravitational, Electrodynamic, and Quantum Field Interactions”, T. Van Flandern and J.P. Vigier, Found.Phys. 32(#7), 1031-1068 (2002).]

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">If not, even if it is published elsewhere, I would fail to see any obligation on his part to respond, if he doesn't see fit.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">Of course there is no obligation. If he has no answer, the proper response is to say nothing. If he has an answer but is disinterested in publishing it, we and others are free to continue to assume, logically enough, that he has no answer. Even Carlip could not be sure that any answer he might think up could stand up under peer review unless he tries to publish it.

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">The L-W potentials are nice in that they are so obviously dependent on only the retarded position and velocity of the source. But out of them one can derive directly all of the forces (except for radiation resistance) and the wave equation as well.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">And right there is a statement of the crux of the matter. It has been wrongly assumed that forces can be derived from static potential gradients for most of the last century. But that is true only for the case of fixed field points. For a charge or mass moving through a field, there is an aberration that can be reduced to zero (as experiments demand) if and only if the force propagates strongly FTL. Once that point is understood, everything else drops into place. -|Tom|-

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DaveL
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19 years 4 months ago #11996 by DaveL

Replied by DaveL on topic Reply from Dave Lush

TVF wrote<hr noshade size="1">
And right there is a statement of the crux of the matter. It has been wrongly assumed that forces can be derived from static potential gradients for most of the last century. But that is true only for the case of fixed field points. For a charge or mass moving through a field, there is an aberration that can be reduced to zero (as experiments demand) if and only if the force propagates strongly FTL. Once that point is understood, everything else drops into place. -|Tom|-<hr noshade size="1">

I'm not sure how literally you mean that first sentence. The L-W potentials are certainly not static, for a moving source, and there is more than just a gradient involved in their application, as a "curl" operation is also required.

It seems to me that you are arguing that Maxwell's electrodynamics is incorrect on its face. Would you agree with this? I don't see how you can have it both ways, that the Coulomb force propagates much FTL while the Faraday and Magnetic forces propagate with c. There is no such freedom to separate these within Maxwell's theory, even I can see in this case. This is not different either if one adopts a "Lorentzian Relativity" point of view, either, I don't believe.

If you can make everything drop into place, then you must a have a quantitative theory or a modified form for Maxwell's equation where there are different propagation rates for these different force components? Please direct me to where this is published so that I might examine it.

Also, I don't see how there is any other way to evaluate the force on a particle with the L-W potential than by determining the field quantities at the location of the particle at the time the particle is at that location. The Lorentz force then accounts for the speed of the particle itself in traversing the field. Or have you an alternative approach here?

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tvanflandern
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19 years 4 months ago #14172 by tvanflandern

Replied by tvanflandern on topic Reply from Tom Van Flandern

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Originally posted by DaveL
 The L-W potentials are certainly not static, for a moving source...<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">The case I commented on was the fixed-source, static-field, moving-target case. That is where a non-zero aberration inevitably occurs; i.e., the force cannot be central. The best we can do is to reduce aberration below the threshold of detection by a fast force propagation speed. (Remember, force is defined as the time rate of change of 3-space momentum.)

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">It seems to me that you are arguing that Maxwell's electrodynamics is incorrect on its face.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">Let's not go there because it sheds no new light on the situation. For both GR and electrodynamics, the situation is similar: Potential fields are either static, or change in waves propagating at speed c. But potential waves have no impact on forces because the potential field does not cause force. (Curvature or gradients cannot initiate motion in the absence of a force.)

Meanwhile, gravitational (and electrodynamic) force propagates at strongly FTL speeds, as is experimentally demonstrated in half-a-dozen experiments. And those forces induce gradients on the potential fields near masses, e.g., as described in Pushing Gravity.

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">If you can make everything drop into place, then you must a have a quantitative theory or a modified form for Maxwell's equation where there are different propagation rates for these different force components? Please direct me to where this is published so that I might examine it.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">There is no modification to the math, but there is a major difference in the physical interpretation, especially in what is cause and what is effect. These ideas are developed in several papers, some of which are in the gravity section on this web site, some in the PG book, and all are on our new "Gravity" CD.

But these are not replacements for GR or Maxwell (although differences do exist beyond the first order in potential). They are mainly an improved physical understanding of the original math.

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">I don't see how there is any other way to evaluate the force on a particle with the L-W potential than by determining the field quantities at the location of the particle at the time the particle is at that location.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">This presumes that potential gradients are the cause of force. That cannot be true without producing causality violations. Rather, force is the cause of potential gradients. -|Tom|-

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DaveL
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19 years 3 months ago #13539 by DaveL

Replied by DaveL on topic Reply from Dave Lush

TVF wrote:
<hr noshade size="1">The case I commented on was the fixed-source, static-field, moving-target case. That is where a non-zero aberration inevitably occurs; i.e., the force cannot be central. ... <hr noshade size="1">

If the source is fixed then there is clearly no problem with aberration of the force. The sun would be in the same place now as it was 8 minutes ago, so there is no non-central force component. (That's not to say there isn't still aberration of the light.)

So, we don't have an issue unless both the sun and earth are orbiting around their common center of mass.

Yes, I am aware that F = d/dt(3-momentum) but that is not particularly pertinent as its the effect of the force. What is in question here is the origin of the force which is q*(E + v X

, where E and B may be obtained from the L-w (retarded) potential, if you believe Maxwell's electrodynamics. If you want to separate out the coloumb part of the E-field and call that the force component that's not unreasonable but it is also obviously a function only of the past position of the source. If you want to give this force a different speed than the Faraday part of the E-field, that is, the part that comes from the time derivative of the vector potential, you would have to modify the L-W formulas so that the scalar potential part is delayed not by c but by some number much greater than c. Now, I haven't tried this but I am pretty confident it won't lead to a consistent set of equations. If it was that easy I would have done it long ago, if I were you.

So seems to me your position is inconsistent with Maxwell's electrodynamics. I don't think that's a tenable position, given the degree to which this theory has been confirmed. An alternative theory might be possible, but this theory would be very strongly constrained to correspond to Maxwell's theory under so many circumstances, it too could not have a different propagation speed for the different components of its electric field, I would be willing to bet.

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Thomas
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19 years 3 months ago #11311 by Thomas

Replied by Thomas on topic Reply from Thomas Smid

Apart from the excerpt from my site that north posted above, I have shown on my page www.physicsmyths.org.uk/retard.htm that the assumption of a retarded static interaction force is generally inconsistent as the force would be different in reference frames moving uniformly relatively to each other, i.e. the 'speed' of gravity as well as of the electrostatic force must be infinite. This does of course not speak against the speed of light being the propagation speed of electromagnetic waves as the latter are not associated with the static interaction between two particles.

www.physicsmyths.org.uk
www.plasmaphysics.org.uk

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tvanflandern
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19 years 3 months ago #14105 by tvanflandern

Replied by tvanflandern on topic Reply from Tom Van Flandern

<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">Why complicate matters that way? Let's get the basics down first with the much simpler gravitational case, where forces are monopole and unidirectional. Then with aberration firmly established and understood, we can apply it to bidirectional forces such as electricity and/or orthogonal forces such as magnetism. We have to understand the one-mass (monopole) case before we can understand the two-charge (dipole) case.

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">If you want to separate out the coloumb part of the E-field and call that the force component, that's not unreasonable, but it is also obviously a function only of the past position of the source.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">I agree that the force applied to a target is a function of the distance and direction of the source relative to the target at the moment the force propagation commences, and of the propagation speed of that force.

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">If you want to give this force a different speed than the Faraday part of the E-field, that is, the part that comes from the time derivative of the vector potential, you would have to modify the L-W formulas so that the scalar potential part is delayed not by c but by some number much greater than c.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">Your meaning here was lost on me. First, did you mean a lesser delay caused by a greater speed than c? Your words seemed to say the opposite. Second, could you unlink the propagation speeds of forces from the propagation speeds of changes in potentials, which are physically unrelated quantities, and make your statement again? For example, the propagation speeds of gravitational and electrodynamic forces are experimentally constrained to be >> c, whereas the propagation speeds of changes in gravitational potential (gravitational waves) and electromagnetic potential (light) are all undisputedly c. The L-W potentials are all about retarded *potentials*, and say nothing (directly) about forces or their propagation speeds.<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">So seems to me your position is inconsistent with Maxwell's electrodynamics. … An alternative theory might be possible …<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">There is a big difference between having an alternative theory, and having a different physical interpretation of the same equations. I have been discussing the latter. -|Tom|-

[I'm on travel most of June, but will follow up as needed when I can.]

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