Re: Question about Vacuum Gravity

From: vernonner3voltazim (vnemitz_at_pinn.net)
Date: 07/09/04 

Date: 9 Jul 2004 06:27:12 -0700

"N:dlzc D:aol T:com \(dlzc\)" <N: dlzc1 D:cox T:net@nospam.com> wrote:
> "vernonner3voltazim" <vnemitz@pinn.net> wrote:
>
> For any new reader of this Thread,
> who sees this first, the Question is: If the vacuum self-
> energy, expressed as virtual particles, is a non-zero amount,
> on the average, then since EVERY FORM of Energy exhibits
> Gravitation, THEN, is the gravitation of those virtual
> particles repulsive or attractive? For years I thought it
> was attractive, but recently encountered an article in which
> it was stated to be repulsive. If true, I want to know why!
> Thanks!
>
> (below, discussion diverged widely from still-unanswered Question)
> >
> > <snip>
> > > > While I know you said that lots of
> > > > different elements can provide the special conditions needed
> > > > to let a gamma convert to a particle pair, I have my doubts
> > > > about how easily hydrogen and helium (99% of the non-vacuum
> > > > stuff between stars/galaxies) can offer that opportunity.
>
> > > > > A single electron can be made to do this. But this is
> > > > > real matter, and this is what (in my opinion) is required
> > > > > in addition to the gamma photon to evoke a pair.
> > > >
> > > > Could you find a link for that electron statement? I am
> > > > seriously under the impression that it takes a considerable
> > > > concntrated electric field to give a gamma a good chance to
> > > > do pair-production. I freely admit that I don't know how
> > > > low you can go, but I am reasonably sure that there is
> > > > going to be a significant probability factor. That is,
> > > > a gamma passing a lead nucleus might have a trillion times
> > > > greater chance to convert to a particle pair, than if the
> > > > gamma passes an electron instead. For example. Because
> > > > if so, then despite all those hydrogens and heliums and
> > > > electrons in way-outer space, the gammas get through because
> > > > the probabilities allow it (small interaction cross section).
> > >
> > > > > You are talking about simple probablities. All the
> > > > > photon-photon interactions I had been discussing with
> > > > > Mr. Mingst involved photon and electron streams, and
> > > > > there were many of both.
> > > >
> > > > Well, I do know that low-energy photons have a nice high
> > > > interaction cross-section with electrons, but I also know
> > > > that high-energy photons don't. That's why we use
> > > > "grazing incidence mirrors" to reflect Xrays.
> > > >
> > > > > So let us see how many electrons there are in lead,
> > > > > and in water, in an equivalent shielding layer for 1 MeV
> > > > > gamma photons... OK? I'll assume the gamma is collimated,
> > > > > which is likely not the case...
> > > >
> > > > Nice data below, but I'm not sure of the relevance of
> > > > gamma-STOPPING data to pair-production data. Gammas
> > > > mostly ignore electrons and interact with protons.
> > >
> > > Depends on the energy.
> >
> > ??? You are saying that the interaction probability between
> > electron and gamma goes up again, just as soon as the energy
> > of a gamma exeeds the pair production threshhold? Please
> > find me a link to a graph showing that!
>
> Are you confusing *ionization* with photon-electron interaction?
> I am talking about interactions between photons and a stream of
> free electrons.

I was thinking about interactions between gammas and electrons
associated with atoms. If I recall right, beryllium is
transparent to X-rays, but of course metallically reflects
low-energy photons.
 
> Is the graph on page 2 germaine?
> URL:http://www.physics.umanitoba.ca/~gwinner/16.107-winter2004/107-25-mar08-1.pdf
> am I imagining the pink curve to be a horizontal, straight line?

Thanks! I certainly did not know that about free electrons.
I see that they DO interact less easily as the photon energy
goes up, but rather more slowly than seemed reasonable,
based on atomic-electron interactions that I knew about.
Also, that pink line is about mostly elastic collisions, and
not pair-production. Can you find a pair-production graph?
Still...please note that in those vast reaches of space
between galaxies and clusters, the matter that is present
is mostly ATOMS, and not free ions and electrons. COLD,
those regions are...and so we can see decent numbers of
gammas from far away. (recall this section started about
seeing gammas from matter/anti-matter annihilations).

> > <snip>
> > > > Now,
> > > > if we had some figures for gamma absorbtion in liquid
> > > > hydrogen, we could use those calcs to get ITS relative
> > > > interaction cross section, and extrapolate to Space.
> > > > I do expect you'll be surprised; remember water has
> > > > that oxygen in it, and 8 protons per nucleus is a
> > > > rather more intense interaction field than anything
> > > > that a lone hydrogen can offer.
> > >
> > > There are no surprises. There are similar shielding values
> > > for other materials, and they lie between water and lead.
> > > 1MeV gamma photons largely don't care for nucleii, since
> > > the photons are insufficient to excite a decay. Some
> > > nucleii can be activated at 5 MeV.
> >
> > Oh, then where do all those lesser gammas come from? :)
> > There is a thing called the "shell model" of the nucleus,
> > which is reasonably good at explaining nuclear events,
> > among which are gamma emissions much like photon emissions
> > from electron shells. All sorts of gamma energy levels
> > exist. The shell model doesn't apply to the lone proton
> > of an ordinary hydrogen nucleus, which is why I would
> > expect it to have a pretty low interaction cross section
> > with a gamma, for anything other than pair-production --
> > and possibly including pair-production. I'd really like
> > to see your source data on this subject.
>
> Well, I may simply have piles of crow to eat... ;>)

I'm sure you can find plenty of info about the shell
model on the Web (if you haven't already).
 
> > > > <snip>
> > > > Now your hypothesis really has a problem! Far enough in the
> > > > future, and this Universe has evaporated! No source for FTL
> > > > QPBs! --Yes, I know you are thinking of that long long time
> > > > BEFORE evaporation occurs, as plenty of opportunity for
> > > > sourcing QBPs. But the problem really is, for a gamma that
> > > > converts to a particle pair, those two particles are usually
> > > > NOT HARDLY "cold"! Your explanation, please?
> > > >
> > > Keep in mind that in order for the distant future particles
> > > to exit the horizon, they had to... cross all the nows
> > > between the internal time = infinity and the internal
> > > time=zero! And you didn't see that coming did you!
> > >
> > > > So, why did the Universe bother to exist through all that
> > > > "now", when those T=0 particles could just QBP out of
> > > > the Universe's event horizon AT T=0? Instant maximum
> > > > entropy, see?
> > >
> > > Expansion to the final state does seem to follow rules.
> > > The radius of the event horizon is of finite length, so
> > > time must play itself out.
> >
> > No, I think you are missing the point. According to Hawking,
> > the smaller a BH, the more easily it emits. Well, if the
> > Universe is a BH that started as a point, then it should
> > have emitted big-time! Now I admit that "smaller" is not
> > just a size issue, but also a mass issue. Perhaps the
> > Universe had all of its mass at T=0 of the Big Bang. But
> > you have to be consistent; if you regard a still-spewing
> > naked singularity as existing now at the site of the BB,
> > then at T=0, the universe could NOT have had all of its
> > present mass. So, with a tiny univers both size-wise and
> > mass-wise at T=0, and IF that universe is embedded inside
> > some other, then at T=0 there should have been instant
> > evaporation, and not a BB.
>
> You are mixing coordinates. Outside (the container Universe)
> the Black Hole that contains the Unvierse is a size related
> to the mass the Hole contains. Inside (our Universe) I'm
> not sure that we had to start from a point, but r_U_initial
> would also likely be a function of the mass/energy of the
> Universe too.

No, I think I was describing a real issue. *IF* there is a
container universe that sees our universe as just a black
hole, well, according to the observed history of our universe,
this was a hole that grew from a pinpoint. So, if the outer
universe had a pinpoint-sized hole, it should have evaporated
instead of grown.

Now I have encountered before, the notion of black holes
being doorways to other universes, but the way I interpreted
what I read was that when you fall into a hole HERE, you
first simply fall and get squished by tidal effects, as you
approach the singularity inside the hole. That space inside
a hole HERE is NOT the space of that connected universe; you
don't reach the other universe until you hit the singularity.
This is not healthy; you become a batch of exploding particles,
in that other universe, at the site of that other universe's
ongoing Big Bang (a white-hole/naked-singularity, that is).
I admit that this doesn't well-explain fact that the hole
HERE grows as more mass falls into it, if all that mass is
ending up in another universe. So perhaps there is no such
connection...or it is more subtle than I understand now.

<snip>
> > > > > > One of the things that came out of Heinlein's
> > > > > > later works was the statement "All 'nows' are equal",
> > > > > > which is a reference to the fact that if you have time
> > > > > > travel ability, then "over then" is just as accessible
> > > > > > as "over there".
> > > > >
> > > > > Which is, of course. only science fiction...
> > > >
> > > > It is also valid logic.
> > >
> > > Ignoring conservation of mass/energy. Ignoring Pauli
> > > exclusion. "Logic" is the least of a time machine's
> > > problems.
> >
> > You are hardly in a position to claim that time travel is
> > science fiction, if you want your QBPs to come from the
> > future. :) What I meant was, given the assumption of
> > time travel, then "all nows are equal" is a valid logical
> > consequence.

<the preceding can be snipped>
 
> Which is not statistically possible, given the rules of
> this Universe. Which is what my "argument" is based on.
> Infinitely diffuse matter, that is infintely cold, has
> no position.

Well, let's examing that notion, then. You have heard
about "zero-point motion" haven't you? The Uncertainty
Principle ensures that no particle can ever really be
infinitely cold. It is more of the same effect that
lets particle-pairs appear from nowhere; real particles
can borrow energy, too, for long enough, and often enough,
to thus have enough temperature to avoid the kind of
"spreading out" that might otherwise let them permeate
the Universe (which ironically is another phenomenon of
Uncertainty :).

> > <snip>
> In most cases I would not know how to go
> about *not* arriving at those particular destinations, when those
> particular events are to occur. We can end this section.

OK. Perhaps you have merely been unfortunate enough to only
precog things that have gone too far, to then be changed.
This does not mean that if you had seen it coming sooner,
it could not have been changed. For example, failure to
clamp down on the global birth rate (currently something
like 80megamouths more to feed, each year) will lead to the
end of civilization as we know it. It may already be too
late (the OCEANS cannot produce more fish as fast as we
are presently extracting them!) If it is not, then it is
certain that a lot of hard choices, by millions of people,
must be made. I am sure that they COULD. I am almost as
sure that they will prefer to not be convinced of the
necessity. That is a choice, too....

> > <snip>
> > > > > The 99.9999999% are somewhere else. I'm talking about
> > > > > the equivalent of "curling", there you deflect the path
> > > > > of a large mass simply by sweeping he ice in front of it.
> > > > > A photomultipler equivalently stops the mass "center".
> > > > > But events along the path, any distance out from it, have
> > > > > some decreasing effect on the perceived path.
> > > >
> > > > Sorry, but I think you didn't see the point I was trying
> > > > to make. If real photons don't Burp their way into a
> > > > room where we are prepared to detect them, then we can be
> > > > sure that they don't Burp their way out of a microwave
> > > > oven, or into a Faraday cage, either.
> > >
> > > I wasn't talking about Burping, but propagating.
> >
> > You seem to be saying, then, that everything is
> > transparent? Because that is the only way I see
> > for a propagating photon to get through the walls
> > into a dark room. (Just saw in newspaper today
> > article about concrete blocks with embedded optical
> > fibers -- lets light through; less artificial
> > light needed!)
>
> What I am saying is that distance is an illusion. Position
> is an illusion. Path is more of an illusion.

Well, sort-of. A tunnelling electron makes the barrier
it crosses to be the equivalent of an illusion. BUT
the electron cannot cross that barrier without help
(the externally applied voltage distorts the waveshape
of the electron until its location-probability includes
a place on the far side of the barrier). There is NO
such assistance available for photons -- and certainly
they cannot become infinitely cold!
 
> The bricks would be a good idea if you could
> "turn them off " at night, and if they would be
> arranged other than spectrally. Internal images
> would at least be scrambled.

Well, the newspaper had a picture, and the image that
gets through is kind of shadowy. Worse than translucent,
these blocks are.

> > > > Because the lack
> > > > of detection in a dark room is identical to a lack of
> > > > effect on a Casimir experiment in a Faraday cage. That
> > > > is, we could surround the Casimir test with photo-detectors
> > > > in a darkened Faraday cage, and the experiment will work
> > > > normally, and NO real photons will be detected there,
> > > > when you say they should be there to explain the Casimir
> > > > results.
> > >
> > > And I can create self-interference with "slits" placed
> > > outside the Faraday cage, in photons emitted-propagated-
> > > absorbed inside the cage. Detection of the deflection
> > > might be problematic...
> >
> > Please desribe that more clearly. Even in interference
> > experiments, photons do NOT travel down blocked pathways.
>
> I will refer you to a post by Bilge, to me, 2002Oct18:
> <QUOTE>
> Allow me to spoil that hope. Look up "interaction free measurement".
> In effect, the idea is to place an object in one path of a mach-zender
> interferometer and detect the presence of the object without ever having
> a photon traverse the path blocked by the object.
> <END QUOTE>
>
> Not quite the same, but of similar ilk.

I found this:
http://newton.uor.edu/facultyfolder/deweerd/research/IFM-AJP.pdf
and I think what I wrote above remains true. Photons do not
travel down blocked pathways.

Let me try to explain what's going on in that experiment, in
terms of one photon at a time. The idea is, you have to think
in terms of "total momentum of the photon", and not "presence
or absence of the photon". FIRST, without the blockage, at the
first beam splitter we have a situation where virtual photons
can carry half of the total momentum of the real photon, down
both paths of the interferometer. The halves recombine at
the second splitter (Momentum is conserved); the degree to
which the path lengths are identical is the degree to which
we do NOT see a self-interference pattern of those momentum-
wavicles for the real photon (and also is the degree to which
the second detector sees nothing). (More on this is in my
second T.O.E. essay, mostly about self-interfering electrons.)

SECOND, when an object blocks a pathway, well, no virtual
photon can go that way, so all the momentum can only go
EITHER one way or the other, at the first beam splitter.
If lucky enough to not be absorbed by the object, then
then the momentum CAN divide at the second beam splitter....

(I wonder what Bilge would say about that, heh heh heh
-- "Bilge!" maybe, though I doubt his explanation is any
better.) ANYWAY, I hope you see what I meant, about real
not getting into the darkend Faraday cage, to cause the
results of the Casimir experiment. If blocked so that
real photons can't pass, then virtual photons won't, either.

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