Re: Lightspeed exceeded

On Oct 5, 10:34 am, John Kennaugh <J...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
PD wrote:
On Oct 4, 3:51 pm, John Kennaugh <J...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
PD wrote:
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.

This is exactly the point I was making. Physics does NOT DECIDE what
is acceptable in this way.
It tries to determine the law that nature operates by, regardless
whether our first instinct is to say such a law violates some "rule of
physics".
The only rules in physics are the methodologies by which those laws
are investigated.

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."

And this is a good example of humans trying to impose a rule on
nature, rather than asking nature herself what should be considered
acceptable.
It is NOT a good practice to do this in science.

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

On the contrary, nature DOES make sense. It just doesn't respect that
rule that you would like to impose on nature. Nature doesn't have to
respect human-generated rules. It already has its own, and it's our
job to determine what they are. It is NOT our job to determine what
they are PROVIDED that they satisfy some criteria of sensibility and
intuition.

A set of rules disciplines the scientist. He cannot invent fairies to
prop up his theory.

On the contrary, he CAN invent fairies to prop up his theory, provided
that he can show clear, calculable consequences of those fairies that
can be tested in experiment.

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.

And this is FLAT wrong. It is NOT necessary that any advances be
consistent with the previous conceptual framework.
This is one of the reasons I brought up Aristotelean motion, which is
in direct opposition to the Galilean/Newtonian framework.
It is NOT reasonable to demand that Newtonian dynamics fits in the
conceptual framework that prevailed up to that point, namely
Aristotelean dynamics, and thank heavens for that.

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.

No, it's not. It simple matters whether useful predictions come from
it and turn out to be right. That's really it in a nutshell.

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.

Those are the ONLY rules of science. The ones you think should also be
in place are explicitly and deliberately NOT in place.

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.

What restrictive rules? You are the one imposing rules that I am
telling you should not be imposed.

If we have it wrong, then there will be another candidate theory that
emerges that does everything a physical theory has to do -- make
testable predictions.

".... 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

Nothing that is exhibited by measurement in experiment in real life
can be considered impossible. NOTHING.

Obviously if you can MEASURE it, it isn't impossible but even if the
theory predicts that measurement it doesn't mean the theory is based
upon sound physical concepts. The geocentric theory for example.

The geocentric theory fails because it is not a theory because it is
not PREDICTIVE. It is an almanac.
It was this fact that signaled that it was based on unsound physical
concepts, because one that IS based on sound physical concepts make
testable predictions.


When a theory makes no sense - involves contradictions such as a clock
which has to at the same time go both faster and slower than an
identical clock - then you have prediction without proper understanding
- as was the case of the geocentric theory.

The clock rate comparison is not a contradiction. It is just a
combination of your misunderstanding what SR actually says, and a
presumption on your part about what is possible and what is not.


"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!

And there is not a darned thing wrong with it. This is precisely how
science works, and should work.

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.

No, no, no. They would have to have OTHER predictions that are
testable in a *separate* and *independent* measurement.

How can you test for "inflation" as per the BB theory?

Fair question! Inflation makes certain *requirements* about what will
be seen (for example, in thermal anisotropies in the CMBR) OTHER THAN
the data that inflation was proposed to explain. Postdictive fitting
is not usable as a test; predictions of measurements OTHER THAN the
fitted data ARE useful.


That's where
you get a *prediction*, not a postdictive fit to data.

OK so if it makes two further predictions - one fits the other doesn't.
So you invent a new fairy to explain the one which doesn't .... and so
on ad infinitum. What is in place to limit that process?

Well, normally what happens is that the confidence in the theory
lowers when it runs into a conflict with data, which can be restored
by the addition of a refinement, provided that this process converges
over time.

In practice, one finds that what happens is that a theory works
*pretty* well over a certain domain of application, then a small patch
or two gets it to work exceedingly well over a certain domain of
application; and then exploring a little past that domain of
application starts to reveal places where either the patches are deep
or there need to be a lot of them, and then at that point it is
usually a flag to start looking for a deeper theory that rethinks the
whole thing.


Let me give you an example of what I mean. You may quibble about the
detail but the gist of it is reasonably accurate though not necessarily
complete.

Having discovered the quantized nature of the photon it was assumed
that all matter must consist of discreet lumps. When it became apparent
that the energy states of electrons orbiting the nucleus were also a
series of fixed values it became an article of faith that energy must be
quantized in the atom. Unfortunately it was found that the energy of
beta particle ejected from radioactive atomic nuclei varied smoothly
over at least a ten-to-one range. The beta radiation is apparently not
quantized when dogma said it should be.

Two comments. The discrete spectrum of the atom has to do with energy
quantization of the *electrons* and has nothing to do with the
nucleus. There was no notion at the time the energy levels of the
nucleus should also be quantized, and there was certainly no discrete
photon emission spectrum from the nucleus to motivate it. Secondly,
the problem with beta radiation was not that it wasn't quantized but
that it appeared to violate energy and momentum conservation. Not all
the energy and momentum was accounted for in the final state.


Now according to you if nature doesn't behave the way I expect it to I
have to abandon my expectations and my reason and accept what 'nature'
is telling me. That applies to me because I am criticising modern
physics. It does not apply from within physics.

Not at all! At this point with beta radiation there were two clear
options:
1. That energy and momentum are not conserved in general, after all,
and that they can no longer be trusted as universal laws.
2. That energy and momentum are conserved, but there is something
unobserved that accounted for the missing momentum and energy. In this
event, it is NOT sufficient to leave the accounting for missing energy
and momentum as evidence. There needs to be an ADDITIONAL prediction
of a measurable quantity that would be the signature of that
unobserved object.

Both possibilities are open. Note that the second one allows for test
to see if it's right.


Pauli refused to accept what nature was telling him and postulating the
existence of a neutrino or "small neutral particle" which had about the
same mass as an electron but no electric charge. Such a particle, he
suggested, would not show up in any ordinary particle counter or
photograph. So: if one neutrino were to be emitted along with every
radioactive beta electron, nobody would ever be able to detect the fact;

and your last statement ("nobody would ever...") is the one that's
wrong.

but the invisible neutrino would carry away energy too, so that it and
the beta electron, between them, could possess the quantized line
spectrum of energy that faith demanded. Occam's razor is never sharp
enough to cut through prejudice .

When first suggested by Pauli they had about the same mass as an
electron (so as to share the missing energy equitably, on average); then
suddenly it was proved that they could have no rest mass.

No, not proven. But in fitting the data of the missing energy, it was
certainly incompatible with an object with mass comparable to the
electron. That idea was just wrong and quickly ruled out.


This particular fairy was put on a diet and came back as some kind of
non-radiant, undetectable photon. However, to make up for that they must
be spinning - "but not mechanically, of course, since there is no
structure there to spin".

All was well because the theory was un-testable.

Not true!

They were just too
difficult to detect so no one had to try. That did not prevent them
becoming part of accepted theory.

Also not true, not unless there was an independent way to test for
them.

Then one day the astrophysicists
discovered that, according to that same accepted theory, the Sun should
be pouring out neutrinos at a calculable, fabulous - and therefore
detectable - rate;

A neutrino detector was built which worked on the principle that what is
detected must be a neutrino because "it can't be anything else" while
there are many things it could be. Even so the number of 'detections'
was about 1/10th those predicted. Even when the astrophysicists were
made to redo their sums still only 1/4 of the number which should be
detected are.

Yes, indeed, and this caused ANOTHER fork, because the theory that
predicted the number of neutrinos produced (and therefore detectable)
was our model of stellar nuclear fusion. So again, this created a
choice:
1. Our understanding of stellar nuclear fusion is all wrong.
2. Our understanding of stellar nuclear fusion is right, but there is
another reason why neutrinos are not observed at the rate they are
being produced. If this hypothesis is true (with the reason
identified), then again there must be some other way to test whether
this reason is sound.


The fairy metamorphosed - neutrinos must be able to transmute into one
of at least 4 different sorts of neutrino, only one of which shows up in
the detector. (I'm not sure why" That poses a problem in that if they
are massless and travel at c as previously thought then according to
relativity their clock is stopped in our FoR and there is no way they
can at some 'time' change from one manifestation to another.

Ah, but remember there was no proof that they were massless. They were
just known from data to be very light, much lighter than an electron.


So now the transmutable fairies needed to put on some weight to slow
them down. It is now assumed that they do have a tiny mass and travel at
just less than c - so that their clock can run and at some time they can
- for no apparent reason - change into a different sort of neutrino.

Yes, indeed. And in fact this kind of mixing occurs with all the other
fermions (quarks) and so it would have been an artificial distinction
to say that neutrinos do not.


"... even in science, what at its beginnings is recognised as a
speculation, with greater or less plausibility, develops with time into
a compulsory dogma, which whosoever disbelieves thereby brands himself
as an ignorant fool." Dingle

Now the neutrino may or may not exist but lets just suppose for the sake
of argument that it doesn't.

OK, then energy and momentum conservation are no longer good
conservation laws.


"Does the neutrino actually exist" is a question unlikely to be asked.
Too much has been built assuming that it does that new fairies will be
invented to keep the ball rolling no matter what.

Oh, but we KNOW they exist, because we have detected them in detectors
built to detect them. So their existence is not in question.
Does the fact that the rate of their detection from the sun being too
low then suggest that they haven't been detected AT ALL?

If a theory fails to make a correct prediction it need not be abandoned.
It need only be abandoned if you cannot invent a fairy to 'correct' it
and there is no limitations placed on what a fairy is allowed to do.

I ask again what is in place to limit that process?

If physics is wrong and neutrinos do not in fact exist how would it ever
discover its mistake?

Because we would build a detector that says, we should definitely see
them under these circumstances, and then they don't show up.


If neutrinos do not in fact exist and they continue to be an accepted
part of physics do you think that actually matters? Nothing in your
philosophy seems to imply that you think it does. You would perhaps say
condescendingly "if someone would like to produce a complete theory
which does as well as the existing one ....." Never you. Never any of
your fellow physicists.

But that's not true. Fellow physicists generate alternative theories
all the time, and they are published! Have you not searched the
literature?


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.

Well, to be honest, I disagree with him on that, considering that the
MMX preceded the theory. However, there certainly have been true tests
of things that relativity DID predict well later.

The BB theory 'predicts' the existence of dark energy and dark matter.

No, it doesn't.
Here's what it says. It says there is a certain relationship between
the mass and the curvature.
This is very much like Newton's 2nd law.
Now, if you have a set-up where you have an inventory of forces and an
observed acceleration, and it so happens that the sum of the forces
doesn't account for the observed acceleration, then you have two
choices:
1. You've found a place where Newton's 2nd law doesn't work.
2. You've not accounted for all the forces.
Let's suppose that it turns out you didn't include a source of
friction, after all. In this case, it's not proper to say that
Newton's 2nd law *predicted* that friction force. It just means that
you encountered a problem when you applied the law with incomplete
information.

BB theory predicts that time did not exist before the BB.

And this is a problem why? Space didn't exist either, if time didn't.
We don't know anything about what happened on the other side of the
Big Bang. What assumption are YOU making?




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.

No, that's not quite right. Before the Higgs, they KNEW that the
theory at the time didn't represent real particles, because none of
the particles in the theory had mass where real particles do.
It wasn't the Standard Model until the Higgs mechanism was included in
the theory so that it could be a theory describing real particles.

A particle required to have both mass and be massless.
So the Higgs field, which converts massless particles into particles
with mass was invented.

And the Higgs boson generates INDEPENDENT predictions, other than this
mass-generating feature, and it is THOSE predictions that are being
put to test at FNAL and LHC. That's how you tell whether the Higgs
field idea really makes sense -- via this INDEPENDENT test.

They are looking for the Higgs boson - the "God particle" - and the cost
probably exceeds the GNP of some smaller countries.

Yes. So now it seems your complaint is not about whether it's good
science but whether it costs too much to do fundamental (not applied)
research. If the issue is money, then by all means write to your
congressman and tell him we need more D and less R.

Some years back I
saw a TV documentary from CERN where they were looking for some particle
or other. The triumphant conclusion after about a week was "6 definites
and 1 probable". Millions of interactions discarded and 7 which seemed
to fit hailed as a triumph. The one which interests me is the "probable"
- something which nearly fits whatever criteria they had set as limits
to acceptability. The theory of science is that one's aim is to try and
*disprove* theory rather than prove it. Who was trying to disprove what?

What we know is that if the Higgs is there, it should DEFINITELY been
seen at CERN. If it does show up, then that theory has passed a
crucial test, and life is good. If it DOESN'T show up, then we know
that theory is pretty close to dead if not completely dead, and we've
got a lot of work to do to figure what's really going on, and life is
even better.

I do not have enough knowledge but I have the suspicion that if you do
enough interactions something will eventually end up in whatever sort of
detector you have devised. Thus there is always the suspicion that
although you have detected something it may not be what you claim/think
it is. The way to test the standard model is to use it to predict an
interaction which cannot possibly occur then try very hard show that it
does.

No, sorry, that's not at all how it works, your suspicions
notwithstanding.




Virtual photons hop in and out of hyperspace so
quickly that the laws of physics don't notice so can be ignored

Nonsense.

They work instantaneously over any distance (contrary to normal laws of
physics), and break the first law of thermodynamics, because
Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is conveniently interpreted to allows
"something" to arise from "nothing" if the "something" returns to the
"nothing" in a time interval too short to be observed.

No, sorry, no. This is a comic-book view of the uncertainty principle.
It might do better to read something a little more in-depth.




[Rest snipped for now, to be addressed in a separate post.]

"There would seem to be little doubt that progress in fundamental
physics, as opposed to technology, has not kept pace with contemporary
progress in other branches of science during the past fifty years or so.
It should have done, in view of the number of physicists at work all
over the world, but it hasn't. Every now and then, it is true, some new
hypothesis seems locally promising and is hailed as a triumph; but when
one seeks to apply it elsewhere it does not fit, and it leads one sooner
or later to a logical impasse. Nowadays we no longer reject a failed
hypothesis as we should, but instead we tend to retain it on the
pragmatic basis that it may prove more useful to have wrong concepts
than no concepts at all." Dr Scott Murray 1982

And I disagree with him at all, and do not find that representative of
what's going on. Since you are outside the field without a clear view
in, I find it amazing that you would not try to find a better bull***
meter.


--
John Kennaugh



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