Frame Dragging, Frame Dragging

Hi 1physcist and z,

the1physicist Posted on Dec 11 2004, 04:18 AM

Yup.... dead right there. I guess that was too picky. I broke my own rule of being too legalistic.

z Posted on Dec 11 2004, 08:53 PM

Ummm... you lost me there. Cut through the "jargon" what are you really saying? This "chaotic" theory - has this got an analog that we can get a grip on?

1physcist Posted on Dec 11 2004, 04:18 AM

Interesting. I see that you want to subject the system to an immense impulse in a Fourier sense. Infinite magnitude for zero time. Doesn't this occur more or less all the time in particle accelerators when high-energy particles elastically collide. Have we seen this effect there? From what you appear to be saying this should convert ordinary particles to tachyons. It would be possible to detect this. My understanding of the problem is the acceleration is the problem. In General relativity the modification of clocks is due to the Equivalence Principle of the Inertial and Gravitational Forces and this acceleration results in the loss of synchronization between the clocks. What you are appearing to say is "use a bigger hammer". I have problems with this idea, I think (aside from flattening any occupants in the "space ship") you are "booting" them "suddenly" into the undesirable future (in more ways than one).

My view of investigating frame dragging is to provide a means of control over this otherwise uncontrollable forward movement in time of the traveller. An introspective view of the problem rather than an extrospective view those textbooks usually concentrate on. While the view from those left behind has an interpretation as I have put forward in other threads, the most important perspective is seen from the travellers frame. Given that "hot rod" view of the space ship with the "accelerator" and the two dashboard meters of "velocity" and "time penalty" you want to vary the first as much as you want and have the second register no change. This should mean that the traveller could return from a "long" trip at relativistic velocities and note that synchronized clocks left near the earth remain synchronized with your clock. This would be the best outcome. The normal fare is that the travellers clock appears to have run slow for centuries leaving him the "right age" to be for a long trip and all his relatives being "the wrong age". That is too old now or long dead. Seeing that the traveller is unable to influence those who are left behind it is up to him to influence his own ageing process. That is in such a way that on his return he is not a living “fossil”.

As I see it you have three main possibilities.
1. Accept the fact that long trips at near light speed will leave you "young" and everyone else "old" or long dead. You like the bit that you have stayed "young" that mean you did not suffer the endless repeats of the 3 DVD's you took with you for a hundred years and use up all those supplies in air food and water to boot. Grading of 50% on that paper.

2. The other easy alternative to 1 is to age gracefully and maintain the same or similar age as those left behind. Travelling slower can do this. If you travel at say 1/10th the speed of light you will suffer a little bit of time dilation but you will age mostly the same as those left behind. The problem with this method of travel is it will limit how far you can go away from the earth by the simple fact that you will not be able to live long enough to reach any but the closest stars. You could use "suspended animation" to preserve you but this still means that those left behind are "old" or long dead. This also includes "Generation" ships. Grading of 25% because of the tough constraints to suspend life process and revive you after centuries in an ageing and decrepit machine that is long past its warranty date.


3. The "difficult" alternative is to get there "fast" and get back "fast" and return in such a way that the clock in your space ship matches the one left behind in say earth orbit. This way, if you did the trip in one day your time, you then get back one day later their (earth orbit time) time and not break any laws of Physics. Grading this one 100%. No undesirable side effects. Go where you want and return by "tea time". A very satisfactory day at the Office space cadet!

This also gets around another problem with long distance space travel. The MOST important problem. The Political Will. No government will provide funds to build the first two kinds of space ships ever, because all governments want political cuedos for a successful mission. This means at most two terms of Office. Either way the traveller will return (God willing) long after two terms of Office - generations will have passed away even the Political Party may have passed away. While that may be desirable to some remember “no bucks - no Buck Rogers!”

So you are left with "3" and this is going to be harder to do but not impossible. How do you tell when a person has been on a trip? How can you tell which is a traveller and which is an observer in the situation where two guys in orbit agree that one is going on a mission to Alpha Centuari and the other is staying behind? When the two are back together again you simply compare clocks. The one whose clock shows the least elapsed time "went on a trip" and the one left behind shows a lot "more time past" and was a "stay at home". Another possibility is that the one who was supposed to be a "stay at home" actually went on a trip too, and his clock might show the same elapsed time as our traveller when they get together. But there would be problems when they landed back on Earth. The Earth clocks will still be "way" ahead of both of theirs.

We are now left with a problem that we need to "drag" the travelling clock in such a way that it remains synchronized with the "stay at home" clock. Why does this work? It is because Einstein said so. This is the way General Relativity works. It is the practical expression of the Principle of Equivalence of Inertial Force and Gravitational Force. That is how General Relativity works and has been thoroughly tested. Now we have tested General Relativistic Frame Dragging and all indications show that this is occurring too. Lucky us! After a round trip at whatever speed the traveller likes, the traveller returns to compare his clock with his "stay at home twin" and they match. Coincidently the twins are still the same age because that is what we mean by being the same age. They are the same age on the same day. The number of days elapsed in their two lives since they were born numerically match.

Most importantly your “favourite” Politician is going to shower you with more than just praise. It will now be a “Coalition of the willing” and the buck no longer stop just on the Politicians desk. Those big arms are out for an embrace and those big juicy lips are heading your way. Hey – you gotta make some sacrifices space cadet!

There are some easy ways to drag frames around the Universe, one is to use mass. This can be difficult. It can be used to prove a point though... and then you see a way to proceed. ...sort of Gravity Probe B+.

Cheers

Hi elf,

It's just a generalized field theory point of view. The existence of the particle convergence points (the point particle) and the necessary field symmetries to describe it and its extensions to local and global fields are what drives the physical unviverse..

Basically the field differences cause the particle motions, which then modify the field both locally and globally. The movement of particles can then be seen as value, structure and symmetry waves in the basic field.

z

What if I as traveler included, as part of my spaceship, a black hole of sufficient size that I could live in the event horizon at a depth selected to adjust the period recorded by my clock to exactly the same period as those I left behind? Of course, ideally, it would then be "nice" to provide a means to extract myself back out of the black hole at will. There, science done, remains only an engineering problem. A rapidly-self-evaporating on trigger black hole which i can hook onto my spaceship and "use up" as fuel.

Never mind, I'll just flame myself.

Ahh, I'm an idiot. Got the clocks going the wrong direction, just exacerbated the problem!

Hi lengould,

Posted on Dec 12 2004, 09:03 PM

I must say that you are being awfully self sacrificing about all this. Lets build one of them and let you take it for a spin around the block.

I suppose I should say you really don’t need to sit in a black hole to test this theory of mine. Even the "non-practical" version of this is not so "destructive". A thought experiment is a solid sphere (a small planet say - that nobody wants - cold lifeless without an atmosphere). The local acceleration on its surface due to gravity is a 'goodly" part of 1G. Now core out of this "cold" chunk of rock... a narrow cylinder that reaches to the very center of the sphere. It is just an oversized "vertical" mineshaft. Now we build an observation sphere which will contain the observer and some instruments such as a telescope and an accurate clock. Somewhere near where the surface opening of this mine shaft is, you attach rocket motors pointed directly upwards. These can supply nearly 1G acceleration to the rocky body "to take it on a trip". The sphere is lowered into the shaft with our intrepid space cadet inside. He is able to look out of the shaft using his really really big telescope with an adjustable magnification thingy (this may be the hardest part of this project other than finding this unused planet laying around somewhere).

Down there he has his "dashboard" and the "velocity meter" and the "time penalty" meter and of course the accelerator to which he is able to place his big toe. This panel controls not only the “big” rocket engines but a couple of small torque producing 'thrusters" to aim this thing.

Big assumption is that Gravitational and Inertial force are equivalent as per Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity (already tested by previous experiments). The sphere now rests motionless freely falling at the centre of the planetoid. Out space cadet is also freely falling as if on the Space Station Freedom in orbit. The acceleration force able to be exerted on this "observation sphere" is the same as if it was hauled up the shaft, is exactly equivalent, by certain geometrical arguments and by application of Gauss’ Divergence Theorem to be the "local" acceleration of a sphere of mass '"inscribed" at the radius of the position of sphere in the planetoid. The effect of the "shell" of matter immediately above the observation spheres position will cancel out globally for the sphere (similar to Faradays Cage experiment for uniformly distributed sources.) Showtime!! Lets test General Relativity Frame Dragging…

The marvellous thing is if we fire the rockets (accelerating the planetoid along the direction of the shaft) because of the equivalence of inertial and gravitational forces the sphere will rise up the shaft in such a manner that the force of the acceleration due to the rockets will exactly match the acceleration due to the gravitational field inside an “equivalent" depth in the shaft. All the while our passenger will be “weightless". We can increase the acceleration thrust on these rockets up to but not exceeding the acceleration due to the gravity on the surface (to exceed that we would leave our observation sphere behind). No - we don't want that so this imposes a maximum acceleration by which you may drag this inertial frame of reference “around the Universe". I.e. The local surface acceleration due to gravity. The inertial frame of reference is dragged by the mass of the planetoid most efficiently in its wake (so to speak). The geometry automatically balances all forces out for us.

I fully realize here these are big time formidable engineering problems dragging real observation spheres around. There are other more elegant solutions (see later) but this shows that there is a real mechanical system (technically testable) that can produce these phenomena. Any mass sphere can be used to drag a small test body around (eg Eotvos Experiment). The effect occurs at any acceleration (of course it will be very small if the acceleration is very small). This should be measurable using similar modified apparatus to that used in gravity Probe B.

Even so, 1G is a quite respectable acceleration and will get you "near" to the speed of light over about one year of continuous acceleration. De-acceleration will be provided by "switching off the main rocket" settle into the center of the sphere and use the manoeuvring thrusters to rotate it in the opposite direction and then you can de-accelerate at about 1G too. Eventually the space cadet does a round trip and comes home and compares clocks. The clocks will remain "synchronized" with "stay at home” clocks (see the previous post). An equivalent spaceship of the conventional kind will not return till a “lot later” because of special relativity and his clock is running real slow, perhaps centuries slow. The “significant” gravitational field has provided a short cut through space-time to return the traveller sooner than expected than if he were a conventional rocket.

There are some extra bonuses here. The "velocity meter" in the observation sphere and on the space rocket are both calibrated 0 to infinity and while the standard rocket has some awful problems with that "time penalty" meter clocking up a lot of years, the same instrument on the observation sphere, inside the planetoid, will remain nicely "inoperative", but still allow the traveller to "lead-foot" the accelerator inside the planetoid to “any" speed he wants, for a round trip in "real" time relative to people on earth. Please note…. No upper limit in speed and a half a degree of time travel. He will obviously still have some penalty in time because of limitations in the maximum acceleration he is able to produce without escaping the gravitational field of the small planet. There will be a need to accelerate up and de-accelerate down at some distant star system. The same will be needed on the return trip. This is not entirely “practical” but it is almost “do-able” with some “advanced” engineering. No black holes, exotic matter wormholes of doubtful constructability and a very comfortable ride inside a really good radiation shield.

An idealized form of this experiment could be made with some type of gravitational field cancelling thingy. If the mass of the spaceship was close to zero you can provide massive accelerations without this time penalty through this frame dragging effect. It would also save 'a lot" of fuel too. Note this… I know this is not possible at this point and it remains to be seen if the future provides us with such a mass cancellation system. I would point out that it would not break any existing law in Physics that is proven. In such a case the acceleration could be provided with a conventional rocket engine of firecracker size if the total mass was made small enough. It is possible to conceive of a gravitational simulator field that substitute’s electromagnetism for gravity and this is the classic ‘field” drive etc. All physically unrealizable at this point in time. This system here is testable. That is its real virtue.

Cheers

Elf, I never actually thought about inducing acceleration via smashing particles together. However, I suspect any particle interactions will make it extremely difficult to measure any effects. More importantly, smashing particles together will actually cause deceleration. The dfference is that acceleration causes a compression wave, whereas deceleration causes rerefaction. This is actually important because in a compression wave, you can force the particles to move faster than they want to. However, the nature of rarefaction waves is that the particles will never move faster than they want to, simply because they are the ones supplying the force.

13/12/2004
Hi the1physicist,

Not necessarily. Consider two particles with trajectories at right angles to each other or possibly the proton - proton heavy ion colliding ring experiments. The intersection of "beams" would be a zone of mostly elastic scattering of the particles. Occasionally one may hope that one particle will get the lion's share of the kinetic energy of a two particle collision. This may happen with one particle stopping dead in its tracks for instance while the other particle picks up all the kinetic energy.

If a General Relativistic "bow wave" from these locally massive particles impacting (due to relativistic effects) could non-linearly produce this "jerk" or impulse you speak of and "kick" one of the two particle over the light barrier owing to the frame dragging of the particle this would occasionally produce a tachyon. This is what you are wanting I think.

This tachyon would "lose energy" by accelerating off to finally infinite speed. This is because the "light barrier" is now below its speed and the direction of "low" energy would logically be to higher velocities. Also tachyons may also exhibit spontaneous time reversal compared to our passage of time since the factor 1 - V^2/C^2 is now negative. This assumes that contrary to my theory the "Light Barrier" is a velocity barrier rather than the more complex case I have previously spoken of. Of course all those calculations assume that measurements from the reference frame of the laboratory are more correct than I would give credit for. The Lab sees the speed of light as a barrier for good reason.

The view I would hold is that measurements from the reference frame of the particle or "spaceship" whatever, are of higher significance than the measurements made from the non-inertial frame of the laboratory. My thinking is that the laboratory frame that is measuring apparent increases in mass, bizarre optical effects and failure to get "bang for a buck" out of the accelerator in speeding up the particle near the speed of light are just more special relativity effects. I think we know how to calculate those but is this all?

More significantly is that the particles have "internal" sources of continuous acceleration, something which no Laboratory Accelerator can provide (all external electromagnetic sources relativistically coupled to the target particle). The tracking of these particles in space-time is also not possible (yes space-time not space and time). Notwithstanding everything we can see must occur inside the accelerators target otherwise we entirely miss out on what is going on. No high-speed video to see what is going on here.

A lot of money has been spent on these "toys" and much has been learned, but a lot has been missed. Take entanglement for instance, which relies on the subtlety of phase. This cannot be measured using these colliders. The thinking in the past and inferentially into the future is a bigger hammer will unveil more - and so it will, but it may not be capable of providing insight. I can't help but draw the analogy that "agencies" that are funding these machines are "power" crazy and think that politics also rule the relmn of Relativity and the Atom. Wrest the secrets of nature from Her by brute force alone.

Call me irresponsible but I think it is the wrong strategy. Flame me if you will, but to convince me you need to address the points I have made in the other posts.

Sorry the1physicist but I really do not see it working quite in the way you have proposed. What you need is a mechanism that harnesses the "bow wave". I think these high-energy experiments would have produced a reproducible tachyon by now. I really don't know of any provable tachyons. Also if brute force was the answer to the "Light Barrier" the Universe has supplied the biggest accelerators of all and they have launched cosmic rays at the earth that can be tested for tachyons. I am pretty sure none have been proven to exist there either.

I propose an alternative for interstellar travel in the previous two posts with the subtle approach. Not a truly practical system but would be provable by direct experiment. Once acknowledged other more elegant solutions may give all the space cadets out there what they really want.

Have a read above.... Read the last two posts I have provided....the story is worth the long wordiness. I could not put it shorter without having it pass right by without anyone noticing. I did try that approach with my first (Good Elf) post in this thread. That’s why I added more lines. Sorry.

Look...this is Special and General Theory (100% “predictive” track record till now including frame dragging) vs the Particle Theories. My “classic” experiment is straight "Einstein". Here where all those who "know" Einstein "just gotta be wrong" to knock it down and supplant it with the "Standard Model" and the “String Theories” and such. Lock away for all time all that talk of interstellar travel onto the pages of comic books and the movie reels. But it requires an experiment. The prize is "practical" interstellar travel. It can't get bigger than that. If it fails we will finally know why Einstein was wrong and where.

Cheers

Hi z,

What is this "holistic chaos" stuff? And then you bring in "fractals". Do you actually mean Mandelbrot set or what? I hope you are not just trying to snow us and waste time?

Are there many field structures and what kind of fields do you mean? Are you saying that space-time is not the simplest structure and that underlying space-time there is a complex of other entities which are based on chaos and/or fractals? Is this "holistic" stuff something to do with a "holographic Universe thingy"? Is this at the planck's length sort of stuff. Is this possibly a string theory? (I am not keen on string theories - untestable you see) Is the structure related to de Broglie waves? Does the fractal/chaotic structure form some sort of "aether"?

Gimme a model I can think in terms of or some basic math construct that is fundamental to it. That way I can start to understand where you hail from z.

Cheers

Hi Elf,

I am not trying to snow you. I have the concept/visualiztion firmly in my brain, but it is sometimes difficult to externalize.

The basic filed is a potentiall energy/momentum field/vector spin field that gives rise to the forces we all know and love.

At any point in the field it has a value. However this value is a sum of different fractal levels of the field. The fractal is veritcal in this sense and can also probably be looked at in a fourier series type of simulation, with each level being a different frequency. However, I like the fractal idea better, although the series idea may be easier to visualize.

The structure and symmetries of the field are horizontal and arise at different levels depending on the field value of that level of the fractal (or other) description.

This is the best I can do at the moment.

z

Yes, that's pretty much it. However, in order for one particle to gain the other's kinetic energy, they would have to be of greatly differing masses. They would also have to be of the same polarity, which leaves us with only a few particels to choose from, all of which have lifetimes so short that we wouldn't be able to accelerate them before they decayed.

There is a basic problem with the ability to move faster than light; it permits explicit causality violations.

Consider the fact that ANY communication of either mass or energy between two points that are spacelike separated implies that there is SOME observer (i.e., some inertial frame) in which the mass or energy arrives at the second point before it left the first. For that particular observer, that particular spacelike move constitutes a causality violation.

Therefore, ANY spacelike move ALWAYS results in a causality violation for AT LEAST ONE possible observer. And it doesn't matter what method you use to move from one point to another point spacelike separated from it; for SOME observer, that move will be a causality-violating one.

Finally, we see that this implies that the postulate of relativity (one of the foundations of the Special Theory of Relativity, and therefore of GRT as well) is incorrect. But there is a much worse problem that you may not have considered.

If we allow energy or mass to transfer to a spacelike point, for the observer or observers for whom this is a causality violation, it is also a violation of mass-energy conservation; the same mass/energy exists at two places at the same time, forming one violation; and then half of the extra disappears, forming a total of two such violations: one appearance and one disappearance. So we are not proposing a violation of just one principle, but two; and the second is violated not once, but twice; and while some folks may be flexible on relativity, I daresay that you are going to find that violations of conservation aren't going to be considered very likely.

To put a capper on it, let us suppose that you can move to a spacelike point; this makes it CERTAIN that there is SOME POINT to which you can make a spacelike move, from which you can make another spacelike move that will place you back at your point of origin PRIOR TO YOUR DEPARTURE, and this is a GLOBALLY explicit violation of both causality and mass/energy conservation; in other words, ALL possible observers would observe this as an explicit violation not only of causality but also of mass/energy conservation. Asserting that there is no such point involves a contradiction of the principle of relativity again, but this time for the FTL frame: there is a special point or set of points that you simply cannot reach. But given that merely making the first move is insufficient to cause the problem, and making the second move is also insufficient, it takes both together, how do you propose that the limiting principle operate so that neither move is forbidden IN AND OF ITSELF, but both are forbidden TOGETHER? Now you are proposing not merely one causality violation, but patching it with two more, since either the past would have to spacelike inform the future by some unknown mechanism, or the future the past, to prevent the illegal move, yet permit the legal one; and a pair of violations of the conservation of mass/energy to boot!

As a result, I don't think that there are any methods of space travel but GoodElf's #1 and #2. Certainly, if FTL is possible, then our theories of physics are not merely a little bit wrong, but massively incorrect, in two completely different and separate ways. Given how accurately we can predict many phenomena, you might talk me into one major broken theory, but TWO? Nawwwwwwww. I just don't buy it. It's Ockham's Razor Squared.

I strongly suspect that any journey to the farther stars will be a one-way trip.

This is my bend on frame dragging.

Frame dragging is the translation of direct gravitational presentation into rotational gravitational presentation. It is generated from the desire of objects to maintain orientation to each other. When orientation changes then the chaser tries to maintain the orientation and so gradually begins to spin.

As a consequence direct attraction decreases due to rotation of the target and is translated into rotational effect.

To explain let's take two perfectly symmetrical dense planets and put an axle through their middles so that they can spin. We will hold them close but back from each other by holding onto the ends of the axles so that they don't converge and crash together.

If you hold them this way and both are motionless then they will remain motionless.

Now instead let's have one of them spinning fast on its axle. What you begin to notice is gradually the second one begins to develop spin as well.

Why is this so? Because the spinning planet keeps changing its orientation relative to the motionless planet. The direct attraction between them decreases - so we will find it easier to hold them apart - as the rotational attraction increases. They feel lighter and at the same time transfer spin.

Could anyone send me plz the list of planets with their exact movement of perihelion.. I mean a table which compares observed values of frame dragging with those of calculated ones. I searched for it, but cudn't find it..
kiranm7@gmail.com