Wave Functions

[pood]

An interesting essay on singularities and block holes at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Those who disdain philosophy, or think philosophy has nothing to do with science, can skip it, of course.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It sounds to me like the question might be whether you can have a photon with a wavelength less thank the Plank length.

You can. Every photon has a wavelength less than the Planck length in some inertial reference frame moving in the opposite direction at so close to c that the photon is blue-shifted down to below the Planck length.

Both Special and General Relativity break down at such speeds and do not apply.

At such speeds relative to what frame of reference?

Relative to CMB.

I.e., you're claiming Einstein's Principle of Relativity is just wrong, the laws of physics are not the same in all inertial frames of reference, and the CMB is a preferred reference frame. Do you have observational evidence for this contention?

(Note that quantum mechanics was made Lorentz-invariant with the emergence of Quantum Field Theory, which means you're not just claiming relativity is wrong, but quantum mechanics as well.)

Is Newton's law of gravity wrong?

Where have you been since 1905?

Yes, Newton's law of gravity is wrong.

Not very wrong. But wrong nonetheless.

You missed his point.

Newton is "wrong" when pushed to sufficient extremes--but for almost all purposes we use it anyway.

He's saying that, likewise, Einstein is "wrong" when pushed to sufficient extremes.

Not my realm, I'm not remotely competent to address whether he is correct.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

(*Technically, black holes weren't observed; the accretion disks and gravitational lensing and gravity waves they cause were observed. But then, Pluto wasn't observed; the photons it reflects were observed, so let's not split too many hairs.)

Black holes have not been observed. We have observed that there are objects with a huge amount of mass in a very small space, but "black hole" is a diagnosis of exclusion--we do not see any force that can keep such a mass from becoming a black hole. We see neutron stars only by their magnetic fields, if there's another degenerate state beyond a neutron star that doesn't support magnetism we wouldn't see anything different.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Show your work.

I have not published any work to show, I merely tell you how things are.

Sorry, "Show your work." is an idiomatic expression in American English -- it means "Explain how you reached the conclusion you asserted." Why do you believe SR/GR assume absolute space and time? They are quite famous precisely for not assuming them. The failures of space and time to be absolute -- length contraction and time dilation -- are the most well-known predictions relativity makes. Absolute space means the distance between two events is objective: the same for all observers. Absolute time means the delay between two events is objective: the same for all observers. Relativity asserts that these quantities are not objective but are observer-relative; dependent on the velocity of the observer and therefore varying from one observer to another. This is the phenomenon the theory was named "relativity" because of. So the claim that SR/GR assume absolute space and time is an extraordinary claim, requiring extraordinary evidence.

Here I will object. SR & GR explicitly do not require absolute reference frames, but they do not prohibit there from being other factors in play that do have absolute reference frames.

 

[barbos]

Relativity predicted black holes.

I said they can't deal with it.

And contrary to what you stated, SR/GR does ot “assume” absolute space and time.

I did not say that. I said it "assumes" "absolute" space-time.

 

[steve_bank]

Details of cosmology and relativity are beyond me.

What would constute an absolute inertial frame?

Unless it is an arbitrary definition.

An inertial frame being a moving x,y,z coordinate system,

 

[Bomb#20]

And contrary to what you stated, SR/GR does ot “assume” absolute space and time.

I did not say that. I said it "assumes" "absolute" space-time.

No, that's not what you said. If that's what you meant, then it looks like what we have here is a failure to communicate. Here's exactly what you said:

Yes, of course it is. It assumes absolute space and time,

Then SR/GR are wrong too, since they assume the same.

That's you saying SR/GR assume the same as Newton's Law of Gravity, which, as I said, assumes absolute space and time. So if you thought you were saying SR/GR assume absolute space-time, you must have thought I was saying Newton's Law of Gravity assumes absolute space-time. I was not. What I said, and meant, is that Newton's law of gravity assumes absolute space and time.

"Space-time" is different from "space and time". Space-time is one single unified 4-D manifold with Minkowski geometry; space and time are two distinct 3-D and 1-D manifolds with independent Euclidean geometry. What it means for a manifold to be "absolute" in this context is that the separation between two points ("events") in the manifold is the same for all observers. Let the separations along each axis between two points be called X, Y, Z and T. Then "absolute space and time" means "X^2 + Y^2 + Z^2 is the same for all observers, and T^2 is the same for all observers". In contrast, "absolute space-time" means "X^2 + Y^2 + Z^2 - T^2 is the same for all observers." I was saying Newton's Law of Gravity is wrong because it assumes the former, whereas the latter is how the universe appears to actually work. SR/GR assume the latter.

In this sense we could describe Newton's laws as relative as well -- they're merely observer-orientation-relative rather than observer-velocity-relative. One could imagine an alternate world where X^2 is the same for all observers and Y^2 is the same for all observers and Z^2 is the same for all observers. That would be a world of absolute width, length and height, as opposed to our world where the same object that's two meters wide and one meter long for one observer is simultaneously two meters long and one meter wide for an observer looking at it from a 90-degree different direction. Measurements being observer-relative means the different coordinates change into one another as you change the observer. Relativity showed that time-dilation and length-contraction are a funny sort of non-Euclidean rotation in which part of T is interchanged with part of X, Y and Z, analogous to the more familiar Euclidean rotations in which parts of X, Y and Z interchange with one another. So another way to phrase my original statement would be "Newton's law of gravity is wrong because it assumes time and space do not rotate into each other."

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Details of cosmology and relativity are beyond me.

What would constute an absolute inertial frame?

Unless it is an arbitrary definition.

An inertial frame being a moving x,y,z coordinate system,

An absolute reference frame would exist if there was something everyone could measure that would give the same answer for who is moving. The heart of relativity is the realization that the universe behaves as if any frame is the same as any other. You can't decide if you're moving or he is, you can only measure the difference.

But this only means that you do not have a fixed reference frame to explain what is happening in known physics, it doesn't mean there can't be physics that defines a reference frame. It's the same as Newton's equations breaking down when v is some realistic fraction of c--we simply don't know if there's more out there.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

And contrary to what you stated, SR/GR does ot “assume” absolute space and time.

I did not say that. I said it "assumes" "absolute" space-time.

No, that's not what you said. If that's what you meant, then it looks like what we have here is a failure to communicate. Here's exactly what you said:

​

Yes, of course it is. It assumes absolute space and time,

Then SR/GR are wrong too, since they assume the same.​

That's you saying SR/GR assume the same as Newton's Law of Gravity, which, as I said, assumes absolute space and time. So if you thought you were saying SR/GR assume absolute space-time, you must have thought I was saying Newton's Law of Gravity assumes absolute space-time. I was not. What I said, and meant, is that Newton's law of gravity assumes absolute space and time.

Disagree. He's saying there's more beyond SR/GR. To some extent he must be right as QM disagrees with GR--both are "right" yet they can't both be right, thus there must be something more than explains it. Whether he is right in this case I have no idea.

 

[steve_bank]

Details of cosmology and relativity are beyond me.

What would constute an absolute inertial frame?

Unless it is an arbitrary definition.

An inertial frame being a moving x,y,z coordinate system,

An absolute reference frame would exist if there was something everyone could measure that would give the same answer for who is moving. The heart of relativity is the realization that the universe behaves as if any frame is the same as any other. You can't decide if you're moving or he is, you can only measure the difference.

But this only means that you do not have a fixed reference frame to explain what is happening in known physics, it doesn't mean there can't be physics that defines a reference frame. It's the same as Newton's equations breaking down when v is some realistic fraction of c--we simply don't know if there's more out there.

Thanks Loren, I thought somebody said there was an absolute frame. Must havee misread.

 

[steve_bank]

The way I look at at QM, Newtonian mechanics, and relativity is they are neither right nor wrong.

Newtonian gravity and mechanics remain mainstays in technology and everyday science.

QM has wide use in electronics, it is routine.

Maxwell;s equations and Newtonian mechanics cover a larger percentage of technology.

The right tool for the right job so to speak.

 

[barbos]

I feel like I speak to a bunch of lawyers

And contrary to what you stated, SR/GR does ot “assume” absolute space and time.

I did not say that. I said it "assumes" "absolute" space-time.

No, that's not what you said. If that's what you meant, then it looks like what we have here is a failure to communicate. Here's exactly what you said:

​

Yes, of course it is. It assumes absolute space and time,

Then SR/GR are wrong too, since they assume the same.​

That's you saying SR/GR assume the same as Newton's Law of Gravity, which, as I said, assumes absolute space and time. So if you thought you were saying SR/GR assume absolute space-time, you must have thought I was saying Newton's Law of Gravity assumes absolute space-time. I was not. What I said, and meant, is that Newton's law of gravity assumes absolute space and time.

"Space-time" is different from "space and time". Space-time is one single unified 4-D manifold with Minkowski geometry; space and time are two distinct 3-D and 1-D manifolds with independent Euclidean geometry. What it means for a manifold to be "absolute" in this context is that the separation between two points ("events") in the manifold is the same for all observers. Let the separations along each axis between two points be called X, Y, Z and T. Then "absolute space and time" means "X^2 + Y^2 + Z^2 is the same for all observers, and T^2 is the same for all observers". In contrast, "absolute space-time" means "X^2 + Y^2 + Z^2 - T^2 is the same for all observers." I was saying Newton's Law of Gravity is wrong because it assumes the former, whereas the latter is how the universe appears to actually work. SR/GR assume the latter.

In this sense we could describe Newton's laws as relative as well -- they're merely observer-orientation-relative rather than observer-velocity-relative. One could imagine an alternate world where X^2 is the same for all observers and Y^2 is the same for all observers and Z^2 is the same for all observers. That would be a world of absolute width, length and height, as opposed to our world where the same object that's two meters wide and one meter long for one observer is simultaneously two meters long and one meter wide for an observer looking at it from a 90-degree different direction. Measurements being observer-relative means the different coordinates change into one another as you change the observer. Relativity showed that time-dilation and length-contraction are a funny sort of non-Euclidean rotation in which part of T is interchanged with part of X, Y and Z, analogous to the more familiar Euclidean rotations in which parts of X, Y and Z interchange with one another. So another way to phrase my original statement would be "Newton's law of gravity is wrong because it assumes time and space do not rotate into each other."

You are preaching to the choir.