Re: Lightspeed exceeded



John Kennaugh wrote:

PD wrote:

On Oct 1, 7:29 am, John Kennaugh <J...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

PD wrote:
>On Sep 30, 3:45 pm, John Kennaugh <J...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>wrote:
>> PD wrote:

[snip] pruning



>> >> It would be hard to imagine a mathematical model predicting a physical
>> >> outcome which was not based upon observation.

>> >> Look at what Einstein considers the "empirically discovered starting
>> >> point".

>> >> If you assume Maxwell's theory is impeccable

>> >Not sure what you mean by impeccable.

>> Why would you ditch 3 long established and apparently sensible axioms of
>> physics if you did not believe the theoretical basis for what you were
>> doing is impeccable.

>Because NO theory has been impeccable in the sense you suggest. Nor is
>it required.
>There is no rule that the incumbent needs to be replaced by
>exceptional force of argument or perfect completeness.
>In science, all sets of axioms are treated more or less on an equal
>playing field. Then their consequences are played out, and the set of
>axioms that yields the largest number of accurate predictions in as
>wide a set of circumstances as possible is the one that wins.
>> >In the context that is important
>> >for the MMX, it means that the equations hold in the frame of the
>> >observer, period. It does NOT mean that it accurately accounts for
>> >quantum phenomena, as you imply below. No theory ever produced is
>> >"impeccable" in the latter sense because, as Gordy Kane notes, every
>> >theory is an "effective" theory that is a limited-scope approximation
>> >to some yet-undiscovered deeper theory. There is no theory known to
>> >date that is free from that.

>> Again I am in agreement with Murray
>> "The great Electromagnetic Theory appears as an analogy of Nature,
>> sometimes as a very useful and accurate analogy, sometimes as a definite
>> failure, but at no time does it seem to afford us a sound conceptual
>> model of the working of the real, physical world"

>Well, I disagree, for one thing. The disagreement may have to do with
>a difference of opinion as to what the necessary features of a "sound
>conceptual model of the working of the real, physical world" are.
>There are some, particularly of the 19th century,

An I assure you some in the 21st century.

>who felt that such a
>sound conceptual model needed to include a material basis for all
>physical entities (including things like fields)

A good example

>and strict
>deterministic, time-ordered causality.

Well put. If something happens it is because something caused it to
happen although the subtleties and complexity may be such that the cause
cannot be identified and the best way of describing it is on the basis
of probability.

>Of course, those are just
>assumptions and are open to question in themselves.

You do need to have some rules as to what is acceptable and what isn't.
If you throw them all away it is no longer a science. At present there
seem to be none.


I disagree. We don't make the rules.


I am referring to the rules which physics sets itself. The standards as to what is and what isn't acceptable.

One set of rules might be:
"There are some, particularly of the 19th century, who felt that such a
sound conceptual model needed to include a material basis for all
physical entities (including things like fields) and strict
deterministic, time-ordered causality."

These are a guess as to what the universe is like. The universe
does not care about our guesses.

That sounds a reasonable starting point. I don't accept that it is nature which has forced physics to drop those standards.

Well, then, you will never be a scientist. You are letting your
philosophical prejudices get in the way of science.

Physics got it
wrong so could not make sense of nature so decided it was natures fault. It decided that Nature is weird, nature doesn't make sense so there is no point in having rules which restrict us to theories which make sense.

This is just your prejudice again. The descriptions work so they are
a good model. You do not like that but that is of no concern to the
universe. That is why being a philosopher is fun and easy -- there
is no requirement for you to be correct.


A set of rules disciplines the scientist. He cannot invent fairies to prop up his theory. If he wants to have "fields" as part of his theory he must decide how they exist within the evolving knowledge of a physical framework. If they used to be considered a property of the aether and he wants to rid theory of the aether then he should either rid theory of the concept of "fields" as well, or decide they consist of something else and find a place for it in the scheme of things. Getting rid of the aether simply because you don't like it while keeping "fields" because you do like them is totally arbitrary and undisciplined.

Again, you are spouting your prejudices. What you have said has nothing
to do with science.

The business of science is to
discover what the rules are, the ones that have been in operation in
nature with us or without us.


Not the rules I am talking about.

You want to make up your own rules but you do not get to do that.

When we start saying to nature, "Well,
that's simply unacceptable for nature to be that way, because
otherwise our principles of science are in jeopardy," then we have
STOPPED the activity of science.


Possibly but suppose physics has got it wrong and that is the reason nature doesn't appear to behave in a sensible manner? You can perpetuate the error indefinitely by removing restrictive rules.

No, nature does not behave according to your preconceived notions
but that is your fault, not nature's.


".... mathematics has been transformed from the servant of
experience into its master, and instead of enabling the full implications and potentialities of the facts of experience to be realised and amplified, it has been held necessarily to
symbolise truths which are in fact sheer impossibilities but are presented to the layman as discoveries, which, though they appear to him absurd, are nevertheless true because mathematical inventions, which he cannot understand require them." Dingle

Lots of nonsense there.

"a proposition is scientific if it is sanctioned by the scientific
establishment. (Example: if the scientific establishment decrees that
"fairies exist", then this would be scientific indeed.)" Thomas Kuhn


Kuhn is right, if there is a model of fairies that leads directly to
necessary consequences of that presumption, and those predicted
consequences match experimental observation where no other model does
as well, and where there is no experimental evidence in direct
contradiction to the predicted consequences. If this turns out to be
the case, then yes indeed, you have scientific evidence for fairies.


You heard it hear first folks!


It is completely NONscientific to presume ab initio that certain
concepts (like fairies) are verboten, because they don't reconcile
with our previous conceptual frameset. NO set of axioms is to be
chucked on that basis. If a set of axioms does not allow you to
produce a testable set of predictions,


Arse about face - you would introduce fairies with the necessary properties to explain a current set of failed prediction. You then claim those predictions as testable evidence of the existence of fairies.
Tom Roberts for example stated that SR predicts the null result of the MMX. When I jumped on him he informed me that that is the standard way the word 'predict' is used in physics.

Yes, it certainly is. You do not like science so you want to redefine
words to suit your prejudices. Science will not change to make you
happy.



I don't actually think Kuhn is quite right. They can have fairies, no
one can stop them, but they would have to call them something else -
'virtual photons' or a "Higgs field" say - they can still do whatever
magical thing is required of them. There is certainly no rule which
prohibits them, or insists that you explain what they are or how they
fit in with the rest of the physical world.


Here's the difference. Virtual photons and the Higgs field make
DEFINITE predictions. They say you WILL see so-and-so, and you WILL
NOT see this-or-that.


Again arse about face. Having devised the standard model they found that it didn't work. A particle required to have both mass and be massless. So the Higgs field, which converts massless particles into particles with mass was invented. Virtual photons hop in and out of hyperspace so quickly that the laws of physics don't notice so can be ignored - they can act instantaneously over any distance. J.K. Rowling couldn't do any better.

Wow, you really have no idea how science works. You really should
actually study something other than your comic books.

And this is what makes those ideas testable.
There is no theory of fairies I know of that makes definite
predictions about what does and does not happen because of them.


>> Not something which warrants ditching 3 long established and apparently
>> sensible axioms of physics.

>As I said, no set of axioms needs to carry special weight over any
>other set. In any event, they are just a set of guesses made by
>humans, based on the information they have about nature at the time.
>The historical precedence of one set of axioms speaks much more about
>humans and their path of investigation than it does to to their
>relevance to nature.

Surely an axiom which has served well for a long period of time needs a
sound reason why it should be overthrown - e.g. that it had failed. In
what way had those axioms (length, time and mass) failed?


As I said, I disagree.


Then we will have to agree to disagree.

And science will just ignore you.


There is no intrinsic value to the incumbent.
If that were the case, then the Aristotelean notion that things stop
moving of their own accord unless provoked by a continuing force would
have not been displaced so easily -- after all, it had served well for
2000 years, far longer than the 225 years that Newtonian axioms had
been in force before Einstein proposed other ones.


If you have to go back to pre-experimental science to make a point then it fails.

Surely it is reasonable to suggest that one should not replace a simple
axiom with one which increases complexity unless it has been shown to be
necessary? To replace 3 in one go surely requires as impetus a total
absence of alternatives.


First of all, relativity doesn't increase complexity. It SIMPLIFIES.
This is easy to point out.


No. The alternatives available to Einstein were to either assume EM theory was impeccable and ditch three axioms of mechanics or assume mechanics was impeccable and modify EM theory. As the problem had occurred in EM theory and as EM theory was put in doubt by the discovery that light is particulate not the continuous fields which is the basis of Maxwell/Lorentz electrodynamics it would seem sensible to modify EM theory - if not abandon it altogether. The two modifications needed to EM theory were that the speed of light is source dependent and that Coulombs law is velocity dependent.

Except that relativity fits the experiments. What you want to do
is just to suit your prejudices. That is not going to happen.
And, since science has moved on, no one will look back to
fit your philosophies.

What it does is fly in the face of common sense.


It does that too. I would go further with Dingle:

"....it has been held necessarily to symbolise truths which are in fact sheer impossibilities but are presented to the layman as discoveries"

More complete nonsense.

But then again, the
Aristotelean notion of motion was common sense, and the Galilean idea
that objects continued to move of their own accord in the *absence* of
a force on them was completely counter to common sense.


Aristotle lived in the Mediterranean region. I somehow doubt that people living in northern regions where people slid on ice would see it as common sense. As I say an argument predating experimental science fails.

As do yours.

But it did
make life simpler.


OK so what was the justification for Einstein to ditch them?
Do you feel that it was reasonable justification at the time and why?


Basically, Einstein thought that the principle of relativity, which
certainly seemed to hold for all the laws of mechanics, should not be
an arbitrary principle that applies to some laws and not others.


Galileo had the copyright on that idea. and it was restated by Newton 200 years before Albert.

So, why would this be important?

But
electrodynamics apparently did not,


Get it right PLEASE.

He did.

Because Maxwell had given real credibility to the
aether concept the idea that light was waves in the aether dominated thinking in physics. BECAUSE of that it was assumed that while the PoR held for laws of mechanics it would not hold for EM theory BECAUSE every FoR was ASSUMED to have a unique speed relative to the aether. Several experiments - the MMX being the most well known - should have demonstrated the failure of the PoR and didn't. Hence the PoR did appear to hold for electrodynamincs.

if one held to the Newtonian
axioms of time,
space, and mass.


NO if one held on to the concept of the aether

There is no reason to hold on to a useless concept.

Einstein thought that requiring the
principle of relativity to all physical laws was more fundamental and
more important and a SIMPLER axiom than the Newtonian axioms.


Bull***.

Wrong again. You do not like relativity but that is not an
argument against it.

As he himself stated the second postulate is apparently
irreconcilable with PoR. He ditched 3 axioms of mechanics in order to reconcile the second postulate with the PoR. The second postulate simply describes what an observer stationary with the aether would experience, consistent with the contemporary accepted interpretation of the MMX that it showed that one was always stationary w.r.t the aether (always had zero relative velocity). IF he had simply accepted that there is NO AETHER then there is no need to explain the MMX. One can hardly measure your speed relative to a non existent aether. There would be no justification for an assumption of source independence. IF there is no aether then the obvious question becomes "If the speed of light is not constant w.r.t the aether what is it constant w.r.t" and the obvious answer to that is the source and if the speed of light is constant w.r.t the source the PoR holds for light as it does for mechanics.

Well, no, this has been shown to be experimentally wrong.


Suggesting that the ditching of three axioms of physics had anything at all to do with the PoR is total spin. The PoR is far more at home with no aether/source dependence than it ever was with the second postulate.
The idea of the aether was contrary to the PoR. Without the aether there is no problem but what Einstein wanted was to retain most of Maxwell's wave in aether theory while accepting the PoR as absolute. What he wanted was an aether concept which did not imply a unique FoR. An aether which not only provided symmetry at the experimental level (LET) but at the level of the theoretical structure. (He objected to the asymmetry in the theoretical structure of LET). He TOTALLY FAILED to come up with an alternative theoretical structure to Lorentz's. What he required was an aether which had the same relationship with all observers in order to give symmetry. In other words an aether which every observer would naturally find himself stationary w.r.t so that "Any ray of light moves in the observers FoR with the determined velocity c, whether the ray be emitted by a stationary or by a moving body". Lorentz's maths is passed off as Einstein's theory and Einstein hailed as a genius for his non-existent theory.

You really need to learn what science is about. Your hatred and jealousy
of Einstein is really sad.




But that was just a hunch, a motivator.


The old "Einstein was a genius - he had wonderful instincts" - crap.

You jealousy is not important.

Your belief system is based on spin. Get real.

Your stupidity is really amazing.



As I said earlier, you don't judge a theory on the basis of the
intuitive feel of its axioms, or on the simplicity of its axioms, or
on how long those axioms have been successfully used. If the hunch
suggests a set of axioms that sound crazy, then in science anyway, you
assume them ANYWAY and see what consequences pop out, and if they
suggest something different than what the prevailing theory says and
that is testable in experiment, then you let NATURE tell you what's
crazy and what's not. It really doesn't matter how you arrived at the
axioms.


>> >> and if the MMX is soundly
>> >> based then the MMX showed that an observer is always stationary w.r.t
>> >> the aether and therefore "Any ray of light moves in the observers FoR
>> >> with the determined velocity c, whether the ray be emitted by a
>> >> stationary or by a moving body."

>> >> What "security of foundations"? Maxwell's theory is hardly impeccable.
>> >> It failed in the ultraviolet catastrophe and Einstein showed that light
>> >> is not only generated in discreet lumps (Planck's quantization) but
>> >> arrives unchanged in those same quantized lumps. Light is not the
>> >> continuous fields of Maxwell's theory. Having explained the photo
>> >> electric effect Einstein promptly ignored it when formulating SR.

>> >> Apart from which the simplest explanation of the MMX is that >> >>there is no
>> >> aether and the speed of light is source dependent i.e. particles of
>> >> light who's speed it determined by the physical process >> >>generating them.

>> >Or *neither*. And this is the second presumption that you make -- that
>> >the speed of the light must be determined EITHER by the source OR by a
>> >medium of propagation. And this presumption is not necessarily the
>> >case.

>> Well it seems to me that if you ignore magic and the will of God one is
>> limited to the source, the observer and the space in between.

>I disagree. However, it is common (and Henri Wilson is afflicted with
>this as well) for some folks to claim, "Well, if it's not the two
>things that are familiar and make sense to me, then it must be labeled
>magic or an act of Providence." This is precisely how a magician plies
>his trade -- the audience thinks that an event can only happen by one
>of a few mechanisms, and then the magician artfully demonstrates that
>all of those mechanisms are ruled out. The audience chooses to believe
>that it is magic, rather than to try harder to figure out what the
>unconsidered mechanism really is.

I would turn that around and say that physicists are not an audience
being entertained. It is for them to discover the mechanism of nature.


Yes, it is. But that doesn't mean that the mechanism has to be of the
sort that the physicists expect.


So long as physicist retain the concept of the physical reality of the physical world.

You are hung up on your philosophy of what you feel "physical" means.
It is leading you astray.

That is, if the mechanism is not a
material one,


Oh! so they don't. Physics without the physical.

Again, your prejudice is showing.

then it doesn't allow the physicist to dismiss it as an
unacceptable mechanism. It just means that the real mechanism is not
of the sort the physicist expected


The physical world isn't really physical. So what is it physics is studying?

This is very sad on your part.

-- which we already knew. The
magician's trick is no different. If the card really came from the
hat, when the audience expected it to come from the other hand or the
sleeve, it makes no sense for the audience to reject the hat mechanism
because they consider only hand- or forearm-based mechanisms to be
acceptable mechanisms.


No No No - The physics mechanism isn't what you expected it is a different PHYSICAL mechanism. What you are saying is that if the physical mechanism isn't what physics expects it doesn't look for another it accepts that it is a non physical mechanism - magic. Properly analysed any magic trick can be explained - more easily by someone trained in the art of magic but then physicist are supposed to be trained in the physical processes of nature - or is it just maths these days.

It is science. You just do not like it.


At present it is accepted that nature is a magician and we can't hope to
understand - which is a cop out.


I don't know why you think we say we can't hope to understand. We can.
Just not in the framework of a *material*, *strictly time-ordered*,
*deterministic* understanding. If nature simply is not that way, then
it is foolish to say that it is impossible to understand unless it is
that way.

You can believe in *anything* and
simply claim it is due to something beyond comprehension so there is no
point in trying to comprehend. If you apply the 19th century criteria as
to what constitutes good science (still generally accepted in scientific
disciplines other than physics) most of modern physics fails the test.

>> I have
>> considered the source and the space in between and my imagination is too
>> limited to see how its speed can be determined by who may, at some point
>> in the future look at it - from a causality PoV :o)
>It's not determined by the observer, either. OK, so three
>possibilities have been ruled out. Does this mean that there is no
>mechanism left to consider?

You are dodging the issue. I have identified and considered the source,
the observer and the space in between. If you have other possibilities
produce them from your hat.


It's easy to see from the structure of spacetime
WITHOUT a medium,
and
the fact that the laws of electrodynamics apply regardless of inertial
reference frame. There is no MATERIAL-based accounting that is
required.


Spacetime is a mathematical construct, a medium if it existed would be a physical entity. Light is a physical entity.
The spacetime mathematics may describe what happens. A Medium could be involved in the physical process the maths is describing. What are the physical processes if there isn't a medium involved. Nature works with or without mans mathematical constructs.


Otherwise you are simply saying "we can
still believe in these things because there is an unidentified
'something' causing them". At what point would you consider the lack of
a possible explanation as indicative that physics is wrong? What you are
saying is:

"Physics is right. You have ruled out the only known mechanisms so there
MUST be another one, and physics doesn't have to say what it is."


Yes, physics DOES say what it is. It just isn't of the MATERIAL-based
category you're looking for, and so you dismiss it.


Yes I insist on the physical reality of the physical world and I am looking for a physical process not a mathematical description.



Which works whether physics is right or wrong.

>> Remember that source independence comes not from Maxwell's equations but
>> from the assumption that Maxwell's equations describe the aether and
>> that the speed of light is controlled by the aether and not the source.

>No, that was an extraneous assumption by Maxwell, which he later
>realized was extraneous and abandoned.
>This is not unusual. Someone who notices the same person riding in a
>train every single day might reasonably conclude that the person was
>important to the operation of the train. And you could even come up
>with a successful model for how the train operates by considering that
>person important. But once you find out that the model doesn't
>actually *require* the presence of that person, and once you learn by
>direct test that the person was just a very regular passenger and that
>the train still operates just fine when the passenger is not present,
>then you can safely say that the model is still correct even though
>you no longer think the person is essential to the train's operation.

Why don't you stick to the subject. There is nothing in Maxwell's
equations which imply source independence. The MMX wasn't testing
Maxwell's equations it was measuring the earth's speed w.r.t the aether.


Yes, that's right. And relativity's acceptance does not hinge on the
MMX, because the MMX could not distinguish between two competing
theories.


What two competing theories? The Lorentz/Einstein and the Ritz theories perhaps.

Fortunately, there have been a slew of experiments since
then that DO distinguish between relativity and competing models, and
one by one the competing models have been ruled out.


Since physics has disowned the aether concept it was in danger of
destroying its own foundations. To compensate it has tried to elevate
the status of Maxwell's equations far beyond what is warranted and to
imply that these are a worthy foundation on which to build a century of
physics.


I disagree. Maxwell's equations have been very well tested, and the
principle of relativity applied to them has also been tested. That is
sufficient.


Maxwell's equations are simply a re-arrangement of relationships worked
out by Faraday in respect of charge and only verified at low speed.


Only verified at low speed AT THE TIME. But they also predicted
testable behaviors at high speed, which have since been tested.

Maxwell discovered that the relationships could be arranged in a form
which mirrored the mathematical description of a fluid. Now waves can
propagate in a fluid and when Maxwell calculated, from Faraday's
constants at what speed "EM waves" might be expected to travel he found
that it was at the speed of light and concluded that light waves were EM
waves.

Note that although the equations are described as "wave equations" they
do not have a solution which gives undulations.


What??? Of COURSE they do. It is easy to show that the equations can
be rearranged algebraically to take the form of a differential
equation known in general as the wave equation.


I agree they are *known* as wave equations

And it is known that
whenever you have a set of physical laws that can be so arranged,


Then the circumstances for the propagation of waves exist at least mathematically. i.e. it is a mathematical description normally associated with a propagation medium. Which is what I said.

See, this is where you make your unsupported assertion. The wave
equations describe a propagating wave. You are trying to use
TV commercial logic.

then
you will get a physical manifestation the full solution set, which of
course includes waves.


If you impose waves as a stimulus they will propagate.


This is important because this applies whether you have a medium
present or not.


Oh dear! If I am on a battlefield the mathematics will show that if a gun is pointed in a certain direction with a certain elevation a shell will come close enough to me to kill me. The maths works whether there is a gun or not. I don't get killed whether there is a gun or not, only if there is. The question therefore is what physically is Maxwell's equations describing? Waves in nothing cannot transfer energy.

Stand in the sun and feel the energy.

If you have ANY system that is governed by ANY laws,
based on material quantities or not, that take the mathematical form
of a wave equation, then wave solutions will manifest themselves
physically in the system.


only if there is a physical system the maths is describing. No one got sunburnt by looking at an equation.

See, you still have not learned anything.


This is the fundamental connection between physics and mathematics.
Mathematics gives you great analytical power in the sense that if you
have a system whose behavior is governed by a certain class of
mathematical equation, then you KNOW that the physical system will
manifest the solutions of that equation. This doesn't mean that it is
a mathematical theory. What it means is that you know what the
physical laws in that system ARE, and you USE the analytical power of
mathematics to tell you what the mathematical solutions are, and then
you KNOW that the system will exhibit states that manifest those
solutions.

What they describe is
that the circumstances exist where waves might exist. In other words
they describe not waves but a mathematical description of a 'medium' in
which waves might propagate. The impact and status of Maxwell is based
on the perception that Maxwell had put the aether on a sound
mathematical footing. Having disowned the aether that century of physics
is supported by the myth that Maxwell's equations have some mystical
significance transcending both their humble origins (Faraday) and their
previously assumed physical interpretation (the aether).

You seem to have bought into that myth

http://www.ivorcatt.com/2804.htm

>> If you don't believe in the aether why do you think it was reasonable
>> for Einstein to continue to make the source independence assumption?
>> Perhaps you think physic "got lucky" and ended up with the right theory
>> for all the wrong reasons.

>Sometimes that happens, yes! There are oodles of cases of that.

It doesn't matter to me whether physics is screwed up or not.


But that's not screwed up. That's just how inspiration works.
Sometimes you guess right while carrying along unnecessary baggage,
and you strip out the baggage only after the fact. That's not screwed
up. It's just getting the right answer DESPITE human fallibilities
that need to be corrected later.

I am a
retired electronics engineer, with a passion for motorbikes and a
passing interest in physics.
If it would matter to you then I think you should review your belief
system very carefully. It is very easy to retain belief in something if
you function in a society who all believe the same thing. It is
exceedingly difficult to look critically at it. Your thinking will
always steer you to where you know you want to end up - the beliefs you
started with.
I am an outsider. I believe a reasonably intelligent one. To me it is so
obviously screwed up as to have lost all credibility.


I don't know what you think is screwed up. What I do believe is that
you have a certain set of core beliefs that you think nature MUST hew
to, even in the face of a model that works (as endorsed by nature)
that doesn't hold those core beliefs. My response to you is, given the
success of such models, on what basis do you insist that nature MUST
respect those core beliefs?


>> >> The starting point is therefore not empirical but a specific aether
>> >> based interpretation of an experimental result with no experimental
>> >> evidence to rule out the much simpler interpretation of the empirical
>> >> result.

>> >> >> Einstein states
>> >> >> elsewhere that "Relativity puts forward no specific hypothesis".

>> >> >> >The problem is, you have a particular notion of what a "physical
>> >> >> >explanation" has to include, and the physical explanation about the
>> >> >> >structure of space and time does not meet your inclusion standards,
>> >> >> >and so you reject it as a viable physical explanation.

>> >> >> You have been at it for so long that you are starting to >> >> >>think of the
>> >> >> mathematical world you inhabit as having a physical
>> >> >>manifestation. Space
>> >> >> does not have a 'structure' unless you believe in the >> >> >>aether. It is the
>> >> >> absence of structure.

>> >> >And that's ridiculous. It is your contention that only *material*
>> >> >stuff can have physical properties or structure.

>> >> That would be my definition of material stuff - something which has
>> >> physical properties and structure. What is your definition of "material
>> >> stuff"

>Not according to physicists.

Why doesn't that surprise me :o)


Nor should it be.


> There are lots of things that carry
>physical properties and have identifiable structure that are NOT
>material stuff.

Are there?

>Normally, material stuff means stuff that has (rest) mass and occupies
>volume. At least to a physicist.

I would describe light as "stuff" - but then I think it has mass :^).


And that's a PRESUMPTION on your part that EVERYTHING is material
stuff. Which is an unwarranted presumption.


Define material
Define stuff



>And then you can partition physical entities into stuff that is
>material and not material -- without ASSUMING that it's all material
>somehow.

Very flexible. Are fairies material stuff or non material stuff?


I can make predictions with the nonmaterial stuff, but can't with
fairies. If I could make good predictions with fairies, then they'd be
included in the nonmaterial physical entities.

You see?


>Electromagnetic fields carry momentum, energy, angular momentum and
>other fundamental physical properties, but neither exhibit the
>properties of material stuff nor suggest that they should be ASSUMED
>to.

This is where my "old fashioned thinking" - and study of history - comes
in. Once upon a time there were two theories of light. This can best be
explained if you imagine a large cube of space. If a short bust of light
entered that space and shortly after exited then in the interim that
"space" contained energy. One theory said that that space is empty
before the light entered and again empty after it had exited. Basically
that light (typically particles carrying energy) travelled through it.

The other theory said that space was not empty but had the ability to
store energy in the form of an 'altered state' analogous to 'stress' and
that light energy propagates through space as 'stress' waves. Thus you
have two theories; that light travels or light propagates. Space capable
of storing energy they called the aether.


And here we have to make a careful distinction, and one that Einstein
made too.
There is a load of difference between a MATERIAL aether that stores
energy, and space that stores energy.


None whatever.

The former has constituents
whose motion can in principle be tracked with time,


Why? Lorentz showed without changing Maxwell's aether why the motion could not be tracked with time. That is not to say that Lorentz's aether does not make other testable predictions. One prediction is that the speed of light is not source dependent. The other that while you cannot measure your actual speed w.r.t the aether for the reason he explains you can measure your change in speed w.r.t the aether from the Doppler shift which results. You said that you would believe in fairies if they gave rise to testable predictions so you must believe in Lorentz's aether. Einstein doesn't explain either source independence not Doppler shift.

Come, at least try to make some science argument.

and on the basis
of which we would have some testably distinct reference frame. This is
what is specifically ruled out in experiment.


No Lorentz showed that the MMX was incapable of detecting motion with respect to the aether. You cannot rule something out on the basis of an experiment incapable of detecting what you rule out.

You are just getting worse. Lorzentz was trying to explain the experimental
results.


The latter, a
nonmaterial space


Define "nonmaterial". Explain the difference between a nonmaterial space and space containing nothing.

that can store energy, makes no such necessary
consequence.



Einstein was careful to say that an aether of some loose definition is
not ruled out by relativity, but that any kind of aether, including
any material one, that has constituents which in principle can be
tracked in time, is ruled out.


He failed to understand Lorentz's theory then.

Which would be fine if true since Einstein was correct
and made great contributions to science.



This was given a great deal of
support by the work of Oersted, Ampere, Faraday and finally Maxwell who
unified 3 branches of physics - formally requiring 3 aethers to explain
action at a distance magnetic, action at a distance electrostatic forces
and the luminiferous aether through which light propagated. Charge and
magnetism became different sides to the same coin. A charge causes
'stress' in the aether and the interaction of stress patterns caused
action at a distance force. The stress pattern was described as a
"field".

Q - does physics still believe in the aether.
A - No but it still believes that space has the ability to store energy
and it still believes in independent fields.


Yes.


Q - If Physics no longer thinks of fields as mapping 'stress' in the
aether what does it say fields are made of?


Fields are not "stuff". They are PROPERTIES,


properties of what? properties of stuff?

in the same way that
kinetic energy is a property. Kinetic energy and momentum are not a
"stuff", either.


Kinetic is a property of stuff with mass as is momentum. What stuff is a field a property of?

You have such a prejudices for things bumping each other that you
are unable to look at any real science.


But properties can be governed by physical laws without being "stuff"-
based.

A - You are presupposing that if fields are not "stress" patterns in the
aether then they must consist of physical "stuff".


That's right, and that's a mistake. Angular momentum is not a stuff
either, and yet it obeys very strict laws.




Q - The assumption is not unreasonable Einstein made such an assumption
in his 1920 lecture but if "fields" are not "Stress" patterns in
the aether and are not physical "stuff" i.e. their substance does
not appear in the standard model then what are they?
A - We cannot hope to understand nature we can only make mathematical
models of it and we can model fields mathematically so for physics
they exist and we know their properties. MODERN Physics no longer
requires the level of understanding which you seem to expect. This
is indicative of your own inadequacies not a failing of Physics.


Nah. They are PROPERTIES,


Properties of what?

not stuff. This is much, much different than
saying we cannot hope to understand it.

Q - What is the difference in the aether and space which can store
energy in the form of fields.
A - The aether is a very silly idea, space which can store energy in the
form of fields is not.

Perhaps "fields" are simply distortions in the fabric of spacetime :o)


Yes, just so.


Sheee! that was meant to be a joke!
.

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