Problem with the two slit experiment, Observing later

Hi Montec, C2, Neil, et al,

I like this simple explanation.

Could we also add:

A photon is the smallest energy measurement that will sustain a specific
frequency, and the energy that is a photon represents the smallest quantifiable
work function at that frequency.
--------


I'll toss this statement out for debate because I am not sure that it is accurate or
even correct, but I want a simpler of explanation of exactly what creates a wave:

Frequency is the spin/rotation of the energy of the photon that creates a single
wave. A wave generates E and M fields. Multiple, coherently spinning photons,
entangled together by the EM fields that they generate, add energy and amplitude
to the wave.

Comments? Alternative explanations?
LL

This post has been edited by Laserlight on Jun 15 2007, 03:25 PM

Hi janrinze, "THEY", Laserlight, Jal, Confused2, Zephir, yquantum, TRoc, Montec, Neil Farbstein, Why Not?, Mate et al,

Interesting discussion on Polarization and Spin Confused2. I agree with that entirely... Maybe it is a little thin on what is the spin...
http://www.mathpages.com/rr/s9-04/9-04.htm?lpos=fromtheweb
If you want an answer to just what a wave is some paradigms must be adopted to enable a common agreed phenomenon to be "negotiated". It is my contention that this has not been entirely decided on due to "preconceptions" of just what an electromagnetic wave really is. So forgive me when I use terms I actually disagree with when I describe this "event"... There really is no other way.

Continuous wave energy is not the most natural of phenomenon. The "primitive" from which all "continuous waves" are built is the individual sync function which is the response to the impulse. Spin is an important component of the wave and it distinguishes fermion particles from boson "waves". I specifically object to the way conventional science makes analogies with particle waves and then insists because electromagnetic waves do not behave in that way therefore subsequently refer to the "quantum effects" as "non-classical". Man does not "dial up a wish list for the way the world works" and then objects to it when it does not conform to his sense of "propriety". It is my contention that we must forget the waves at the seaside and deal with the phenomenon in its own right as a phenomenon that is not "observed" in the wave state and the effects of particle interaction of continuous waves with dipoles is a cumulative effect of individual packeted photons each traveling as a separate entity from source to sink.

Truncation of a continuous wave in the time domain automatically creates the packets complement of higher frequencies and this can be described in several ways... One way is the Fourier Decomposition and another way is the spatial functional variation of the basic packet spatially in time. Though individual photons are not simple variation in amplitude as they appear to be in a wave of a single frequency, individual photons are most certainly not simple variations in amplitude, they are "fuzzballs" of superimposed states at many frequencies. It just so happens that summation of these "fuzzballs" when allowed to coalese in time and spatially sum to that "smooth" undulation and only outside the summation range of the photons where the function "collapses" into a background signal (before the first CM oscillation occurred and after the last CW oscillation passed that we can appreciate the leading and trailing aspects of this "Continuous Wave".

This description can be simultaneously "captured" in the idea of superposition of wavelets at different frequencies. Some statement made on this thread recently seem to indicate that some people believe that different frequencies propagate at different velocities in free space due to interstellar medium of plasmas. This is despite the fact that the color of distant objects are not frequency spread in time as well as space. Unless we are speaking about the most extreme energies the interstellar medium is populated by the rare plasma particle whose dimensions are very very small compared with the volumetric space in which it is found. The other factor is most interstellar particles are in the "dark state". In the interstellar medium the excitation of these atoms over eons has led to the majority of these isolated atoms being in a state that is "blocked" to transitions from regular excitation sources. This can happen rarely and the state becomes metastable sometimes for very extended periods. This renders the atom "invisible" to the photons that would otherwise be absorbed by a "shell". The photon passes over these particles without any absorption process occurring, not even diffraction. Any "charged " species will obviously repel other similarly charged species so these ionized particles do not clump wherein transitions would be more likely. On the contrary they present virtually no cross section to the oncoming photons. So interstellar photons for the most part cannot "see" interstellar ionized atoms.

So the dominating effect is therefore the frequency independence of the internal superpositions of the components of the packet. Each frequency in the vacuum propagates at the one speed in the vacuum. This means that all internal superpositions of the photon state for all component frequencies are "stationary"... This can be expressed in terms of the Principle of Relativity as well as saying that the internal state of the photon is frozen in time as it "corkscrews" its way to the sink. This "corkscrew" is not "waving" at us but presenting us with an undulation as it passes in the same way a dromedary presents its humps to us as it walks bye. The humps are not moving, it is the dromedary that is moving and as it passes we see "frequency". This happens for all internal superimposed frequencies. There are no relative internal phase velocities for the internal frequencies. Until it is inside a diffractive medium the relative phases are maintained without any change other than "spreading" which is a function of the geometry of the universe. For light, once again it is only on boundaries of the change in refractive index that this influence of differential "phasing" of the packet occurs. This has implications for those regions in space where spatial vortices can form.

E = hf expresses the energy content of all photon wave packets regardless of base frequency. What it is stipulating is for a particular packet, the area under the curve can be related to some conjugate measurable.



As we all already know there is nothing unknown regards the nature of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and its direct relationship to the Fourier Transform..

This immediately shows us all that Heisenberg's Uncertainty Relationship has nothing "intrinsically" to do with quantum physics but is a general principle related to the simple fact that any Fourier Transform Dual functions can be chosen to arrive at this same relationship. It is not a quantum postulate and quantum physics 'claiming' this Principle as 'one of its own' is "revisionist" to say the least. There is another important factor as well regards Energy... It has no true "zero point" since energy is simply expressed as a difference between levels. There are only two forms of energy...

1) Potential Energy
2) kinetic Energy

There are no other forms and each of these "do work". If it can't "do work" it is not energy. Each of these are expressed as differences... differences in height or position or state being proportional to energy and difference in velocity or angular velocity being proportional to energy. While these differences are vectors the actual energy itself is a simple scalar. This usually shows as an integration constant... this is often "forgotten" since this would be the "zero" of a system. A Zero Point Constant that may have no meaning except in energy exchanges between systems. I suggest that Einstein Theory of Special Relativity is at odds with a concept of a Zero Point Energy. If it was not so Relativity would fail owing to an asymmetry with velocity ... the faster things went the more "absolute energy" they would have and the more "massive" they would become. This was not an opinion Einstein held and it is an error held by many senior scientists today without the slightest shred of experimental evidence.

In a 1948 letter to Lincoln Barnett Einstein wrote...

The viewpoint above, emphasizing the distinction between mass, momentum, and energy, is certainly the "modern" view. Fifty years later, can relativistic mass be laid to rest? So the idea of a direct relationship of mass to energy is "dumb" since all energy must be related to systems to to "isolated or absolute" energy. You must find another reason to "count mass".

So aside from any other factors other than Relativistic Doppler Shift due to relative motion the frequency of the photon should be a constant depending on the relationships between the Potential and Kinetic Energy of the two measuring systems. Photons "launched" from sources expand on the surface of a sphere centered on their original source position relative to all other observers in relative motion. That is all Relativity is other than the de Broglie relationship as stated previously, the low velocity consequence of Special Relativity.

Cheers

PS: Did everyone catch this article in PhysOrg about "tailoring" quanta to order"... There is a lot to be learned here regarding what quanta really are.
Scientists tailor light waves to desired frequencies
... Familiar story eh?

This post has been edited by Good Elf on Jun 15 2007, 05:02 PM

Hi GE, Montec, C2, TRoc, JanRinze, Wulf, and All,

Again I find myself in some theoretical disagreement from a conceptual
perspective.

Perhaps it is only a matter of "observational perspective" and thought process.
It may be that there is no real difference except in the wording.

I have always found that simplicity trumps graniloquence, but then I am not
a scientist born of academia.

Continuous waves are the essence of energy. You can't get any more
natural than that. Without continuous wave energy there is no universe as it
is the fundamental process for all forms of energy and "existence".

All bosons exhibit 1/2 spin. The specific energy associated with each type
of boson, of specific frequency, has a different time function for the rotation/spin
according to the distance measured for it to cycle/rotate fully between two points.
This is measured as frequency which is a complete rotational cycle from a
reference "ground" point to a high energy point, and back to the "ground" point in
a fixed amount of time. This represents the time and distance it takes to transition
across a difference of potential between energy shells/levels.

The sync function has a start time and an end time. It is a "gate", a time interval
in which a rotation or voltage transition between energy shells has been fully
completed. The start and stop time of the energy impulse. It is a digital time
representation of an analog event, and thus has "tails".

Perhaps it is better to think of these "fuzzballs" as the sum of all possible analog voltage gradient levels
that exist above the reference ground level shell, all the way to the peak voltage
of the next higher energy "plateau" and back to the ground reference level.

In other words, it is all possible voltage levels that can occur in a full 360 dgree
cycle.

Each of these analog gradient voltage levels represent a fractional time
dispacement that directly corresponds to the angular rotational displacement of
the electron as it simultaneously moves laterally and vertically, in a changing
angular direction relative to the perpendicular y axis, horizontal x axis, and
lateral z axis.

If the interstellar gases are mostly single atomic or diatomic hydrogen and
helium, do they have electron dipoles that will resonate with photons that are
propagating with an energy level that has a lower frequency than would be
necessary to stimulate the atomic dipoles, which are in close energy shells to the
nucleus? If not, there will be no resonance and no energy exchange.

Hmmm, there must be a relative internal change of potential over time to provide a
relative point of reference. However, internal time is relative to the energy
package only.

Zero point energy is unity, ONE, at a fixed location, at a fixed point in time.
It is a "ground" level, relative only to itself. It cannot be measured because
measurement requires a comparison between two locations that exhibit a
difference between them.

Potential energy is an energy state that exists when there is a difference of
energy level, between two relative points, that constantly maintain a fixed distance
and constant time relationship between them.

Kinetic energy is an energy state where the relative distance and time are changing
between two different energy points, which provides the concepts of momentum
and acceleration.

Momentum and acceleration can be defined as the change of distance and
time between points at different energy levels, one of which is a rate of change
that occurs at a constant rate, and the other which is changing at an exponential
rate. (basic stuff simplified)

When the two energy points are superposed they have zero point energy, because
there is no relative difference between them. They exist at the same "ground"
level.

Relativistic mass represents the kinetic energy component that is released when
two intrinsic masses, that each possess some maximum level of potential energy,
are forcibly combined to try to share the same point and time in space by collision.
The energy released will be a mechanical work function and electromagnetic in
nature.

I will leave this definition open for discussion purposes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativistic_mass

Comments? Disagreements? Other interpretations?

This post has been edited by Laserlight on Jun 15 2007, 07:19 PM

Hi all,

OK, this is as good of a place to start as any. The word "pulse" may imply different thing (especially in different branches of Physics), but let me clearly state what I think to be the "fundamental" case: ALL EMISSIONS HAPPEN OVER A PERIOD OF TIME. During this period, the OSCILLATOR is NOT still, it is moving through space, roughly limited to a Pi based perimeter.

The frequency of the emission will be modulated by this period. We will NOT get a monochromatic, pure sine wave. We will get a complex waveform, that has an "envelope", with an instantaneous frequency. It is this "group" of waves that QM uses to attempt to construct logic in their explanation.

Literally, they are telling us, "just IGNORE the wavelets inside the envelope, and our theory works: the packet is a SINGLE "photon"". To that, I say "NO, I will not ignore ANYTHING when searching for a complete explanation for fundamental phenomenon. We CAN"T do that.

My theory says that "self phase modulation", and "cross phase-modulation" are both special cases of "phase modulation", which is the general rule. Every wave is made up of phase pairs that constitute a cycle. Superposition can bring about new "pairing" of these dualities, brought on by the geometry of the phases. When "unraveled", these geometrically forced phase pairs will separate into their original set. This is why in the "interaction zone", we can get interference that creates a new "signal" (frequency) that only exist in this zone. After exiting this zone, all original parameters (except the Berry phase) go back to "normal". By carefully examining these "phase accumulations", we can see what happened to our energy "on the way" to collapse. Again, this is strong evidence for "on the way interactions" being responsible for changes measure AT the detector/collapse, and also for the reason why it is easy to think that there is "no interaction" taking place, since we get our original "unchanged" frequency at the detector. The Berry phase proves that this is "illusion/perception". Arriving the same means arriving the same , it does NOT mean (absolutely) that NOTHING happened on the way. It just means that everything is balanced, and symmetrical; just what conservation of energy would have us expect.

Of the envelope.. no. Of each cycle.. yes.

Some links on OAM related papers:

Fourier relationship between angular position and optical orbital angular momentum

Quantized Rotation of Atoms From Photons with Orbital Angular Momentum

Optical parametric oscillation under injection of orbital angular momentum

Geometric Phase in Optics and Angular Momentum of Light

Then, finally, this all ties into C2's statement about our linear Physics.

Two other situations that call for the non-linear approach: the very short pulse that is caused by trying to create closer to monochromatic light, and dividing the wave into 2 equal parts (whether from a beta barium borate crystal, a DSE, or any "beam splitter").

The very short pulse concentrates the same energy into a much smaller time span. This density increase can "simulate" a higher energy interaction. We have talked about the optical Kerr effect many times on this thread.

This phenomenon is RESPONSIBLE for the laser beam having a finite length, and "spot" already. Forget about the different kinds of lasers; in general this is HOW they all operate.

COHERENT light DOES NOT SPREAD.

This is where the question (mainly directed to GE) about WHY does light spread comes in. He gave several ways in which this is measured (how), but not WHY.

Follow the Logic:

Free space is NOT a vacuum.
The Refractive Index of free space is IDEALIZED as ONE, but in reality, it only approaches 1.

This means, as RI is wavelength dependent, EVERY different frequency in a wave-packet is "traveling" at a different velocity, and SPREADING at different angles.

When you take a handful of different frequencies (including negative, "counter propagating") through this process, you get our expanding sphere. Velocity based dispersion is the answer.

When you take a handful of coherent frequencies, you can form a non-spreading packet. With quasi-monochromatic light, the beats between the "average" frequencies are ALWAYS LESS than the constituent oscillators. This has a "loss" effect, where these beats are absorbed by the background field. In the laser, this is called SELF-FOCUSING.

Self-focusing increases the energy density, until finally, SOMETHING gives. What is it? Matter. We have to change resonant levels, from "transparent" visible light to higher energy absorption, and then finally, to ionization, where we begin to deal with the plasma state. This is the "switch" that turns off the self-focusing of a semi-coherent beam.

Then the process changes to diffraction, and the beam can spread back towards its' original state. It gets a little more complex than I am describing, but the principle is there. Again, during diffraction, the higher frequencies are spread the furthest; this then causes the process to repeat again. Ionization starts at these "hot spots", and then the plasma, etc.

The real beauty in this symmetrical "dance" is that the filaments, which is now generally what the "energy quanta" are being called between these different states, conserve the "fundamental axis" that I've mentioned in the DSE. Because the filaments are "white light supercontiuum", they can take on a full octave (& 1/2 ?) bandwidth. Since it takes "more energy" to continue "off axis" spread than to maintain the straight path, the outermost filaments "give up". (there is also less impedance in the axis, due to the ionization path, and tunneling)

The effect is, that if something "blocks" a filament (pilot wave like), it will abandon that path in preference to the "clear path". This has obvious ramifications in the DSE. It is the filaments that create the paths through the slits; it is the filaments that take on frequencies that are not part of the original wave-packet, so that they may return to the fundamental path/axis.

Ultimately, the beam LENGTH is determined by this process. Filaments require having MORE energy being continually replenished by the beam. This means, in the end, the last diffraction cycle is what is absorbed/measured.

In any of the "which slit" postulates, it is the attempt at measuring a filament (that is symmetrically "off-phase" from the other filament path) that throws off the QM explanation. There is no need to answer invalid questions.

White-light filaments induced by diffraction effects

enough for now..


Regards,

T.Roc

Very interesting. I havent had much time to participate in the group discussions but I've been watching them.

I must say, this is without a dim shade of a doubt the finest most stimulating thread our forum has in my short time here spawned ..... ... keep up the momentum!

Hi TRoc,

Hmmmm, I'm having a problem with some of your proposals/theories. I think
that we need to discuss the potential problems after looking at the issues from
a different perspective. It could be that what you meant didn't translate into
how you said it, or how it was understood.

Are you talking about collimated laser light or multiple coherent photons travelling
as a wavefront?

Coherent light spreads, but since the photons in the wave are extremely coherent
and very densely packed, the energy maintains close rotational/spin symmetry
over a longer distance, but eventually it will spread and lose energy down to
individual separated photons that still maintain their relative phasing coherence.

The beam shape will take on a very elongated cone shape over extreme distance.

It is the nature of wave energy to spread as it tries to fill the environment
in which it propagates by equally distributing its energy enroute. As space
"expands" over time and distance, energy expands with it.

As an example, the Voyager spacecraft had transmitters that developed
x watts of power output with a very strong signal, but the farther that they
travel from earth the weaker the signal gets with distance. The signal is very
coherent and directionalized, but there is a signal energy loss over distance.
We were not receiving the full output power that was being transmitted as
they left the solar system. It required very large antenna's to gather in
and focus the signal.

Radar waves are also extremely coherent, but they spread in lobes and there
is an energy drop off over distance. Even laser beams spread over distance,
and you can't get much more coherent than that. Look at the spot size on the
moon from a concentrated laser source, it spreads over a wide distance according
to distance.

The energy of single photons won't spread because they are self contained quanta
that maintain their own internal symmetry and wave dynamics.

The plasma state of matter is the quasi-ionic state where there is excess energy
within an energy "system", and the energy symmetry of the atomic structure
changes according to electron dissociation and recombination between atoms
in close proximity. Basically, it is an electron "charge" transfer mechanism
where there are ions and neutral species in the low density energtic "cloud".

It takes very high and continuous levels of resonant energy transfer, to initiate
and sustain a plasma where electrons are being stripped and hopping from atom
to ion. The ambient energy density and gas density conditions must be just right
to enable and maintain the process.

There is an energy gradient that generates plasma conditions around a star
(powered by the solar wind and the star's electric field) that fades to the "ground"
level of space (zero point energy) at some extreme distance from the star,
depending upon its energy output.

I asked a rhetorical question in an earlier post about the gases that make up
the interstellar "vacuum" which are mainly H, H2, and He but which are widely
distributed. They will only respond to frequencies that match the resonance
of their specific dipole "moment". Those atoms will be tranparent to most visible
photon frequencies that have a lower frequency than the atomic dipoles.

Yes, I realize that there are other elemental gases in the vacuum that may
have some interaction, but as has been pointed out previously, there is no obvious
distortion or secondary photon emission detected enroute, except around nebulas
or galaxies with high gas concentrations and high ambient energy to cause
"localized" ionization to occur.

Comments? Different perspectives?
LL

This post has been edited by Laserlight on Jun 16 2007, 01:36 AM

Hi Confused2, Laserlight, fivedoughnut and anyone else who wants to put 5 cents worth in here,

I see where fivedoughnut is having a wonderful time here... Good to hear.

Firstly... a purely technical point... Bosons have integer spin not half integer spin. Fermions have 1/2 integer spin. While spin of atomic particles has many attributes of the spin of a child's top it most certainly is not the spin of a child's top. This spin is of a kind that exhibits a left hand and a right hand polarized wave simultaneously. This can be shown very easily with a circular polarizer and a plane polarizer. A plane polarizer will halve the intensity of a beam of monochromatic light and if you follow it with a left or a right circular polarizer this operation will only halve the intensity again. The implication is that plane polarized waves of light contain both left handed circularly polarized waves and right handed circularly polarized waves together, these two superimposed create a plane polarized beam of light. Since the polarizer acts on single photons one at a time each photon have both these directions of spin simultaneously when it is plane polarized.
http://forum.physorg.com/index.php?showtop...50&#entry173065

Consider the spin circularly polarized light (left or right hand polarized it does not matter each photon carrying an integer of spin) approaching a isospin fermion particle from any direction... The integer spin photon will polarize the half integer isospin particle into the opposite direction converting a spin 1/2 particle to a spin -1/2 particle. In the case of "free electrons" with arbitrary isospin confined to a layer all having arbitrary linear velocities and no nett current, this operation will force the electrons (because they are charged) into a polarized electric current. The electric current is now moving in all the same direction because the movement of the electron is linked to isospin as we have previously discussed. . What we now have is the thermal electric current moving in one direction rather than in every direction simply by shining a circularly polarized light on it. The photons have not changed the energy of the system at all by being absorbed (in this case) but the organizing influence of spin has directed the electrons into synchronized motion related to the thermal energy of the original electrons but now all working together... A kind of Maxwell's Daemon.
A New Source of Spin Control
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isospin

The next issue to discuss is the facts concerning Virtual Particles... In the literature you will find as many people saying that virtual particles are a "fiction" created by perturbative analysis and others will say the particles are as real as you and me... I have spoken at length about these entities recently and you already are aware of my belief that they are as ral as any particle can be but there is a dependency on the originating particles for their existence. If you can contrive to arrange things correctly you can "pull" a real particle from the Dirac Sea that was formerly a virtual particle. In physics it is possible to have a reflection in a mirror of a "real butterfly" and you can "pull" this copy into our Universe as another "real butterfly" as long as you never allow the originating butterfly to "touch". You can "keep" the second live butterfly if you exchange an equivalent amount of matter to exactly balance the books regarding the total matter in the system. Iron atom for iron atom, hydrogen atom for hydrogen atom etc... I do not expect you to believe this but I think you can see what I mean here.
Are virtual particles really constantly popping in and out of existence? Or are they merely a mathematical book keeping device for quantum mechanics?
I have already discussed Kondo Phantoms and I am sure you can read up on Faddeev-Popov ghosts which can break all the rules regarding CPT-Lorentz Symmetry.
Spin-statistics theorem
.. This is most interesting ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_particle

Cheers

Hi All,

I screwed up in my prior post...ELECTRON's are spin 1/2, boson's are spin 1....

I was describing the motion of an electron transitioning between shells...and had
boson's on my mind. Sorry for the confusion.

Edit: GE, I just read your post after I submitted this one....thanks for
explaining the details regarding spin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_(physics)


LL

This post has been edited by Laserlight on Jun 16 2007, 05:25 AM

..... Lamb shift / Spin ..... Imagine electron 'orbiting' proton @ near relativistic velocity, half the time it's moving away .... ditto towards a photon detector. Might this explain the spectral difference? .... only a thought.

Hi TRoc (et al)

Looking your 'White lights' link ( http://www.opticsexpress.org/abstract.cfm?...FTOKEN=82019546 ) it seems the effect requires a minimum peak power of about 1GigaWatt delivered into a beam about 1mm across. Because non-linear effects can be shown to occur above a certain (huge) intensity we are invited to agree that the same effect can be caused by light intensities which are lower by (say) 20 orders of magnitude. Have I understood correctly?

Best wishes - C2.

Hi TRoc, GE, C2, JanRinze, Wulf, Montec, et al,

This is a very interesting read on Zero Point Energy and General Relativity.
It gives some credibility to TRoc's contention of a refractive index change
in the vacuum of space according to its energy density/content. It also leans
toward my proposal for the mechanism that causes gravity.

GENERAL RELATIVITY AND THE ZERO POINT ENERGY
http://www.journaloftheoretics.com/Links/Papers/BS-GR.pdf

Thanks to Wulf! I pulled this from one of your previous posts on another board.

LL

This post has been edited by Laserlight on Jun 16 2007, 02:03 PM

Hi fivedoughnut, Laserlight, TRoc,

A few quick points before I head off to bed...

The actual "speed" of an electron around a nucleus is only about 2/100C. This means that while there are some relativistic effects it is not "pushing up against the wall". This does not mean that the relativistic effects on an electron are insignificant since there are those "de Broglie Waves" at low velocity. Here is the electron "wave" around a nucleus at approximately the Bohr Radius... Color represents phase...

I think that it is possible that we have already seen a step toward understanding "gravity" with control of mass in solitons...
Dispersion Management for Matter Waves
If you control mass you have control of "gravity". "Gravity" is a pseudo-force. The wave packet spreading is the key to mass.

Coherent light will spread, I have seen it on my desk.Coherence has little to do with spreading it is to do with source phase synchronization. The spreading is a function of the transverse propagation modes and the final aperture of the source.
Wikipedia: Transverse mode of a beam of electromagnetic radiation
As I have said ... you are effectively looking into a single photon's internal interference pattern with these figures. One photon does this... all will do this... It can be improved using an appropriate spatial filter in many "poor" cases.

The other factor is the optics involved in converging or diverging the light is also very important...

... Click to enlarge... Hope this helps.
Cheers

This post has been edited by Good Elf on Jun 16 2007, 03:59 PM

I'm really glad you dug that up. I stumbled across that after a long night of researching and ended up falling asleep and forgetting about it before I read much more than the abstract.

It's mind blowing how well that paper describes a lot of my current ideas.

I've been thinking recently about the relation between time and gravity, and it occured to me that we might be looking for the wrong thing. If we switch perspectives and start thinking of time dilation as the cause of gravity rather than the effect we end up with a possible way to bridge the gap from General Relativity to Quantum Mechanics.

The interpretation of time that I am currently toying with is that it represents a rate of flow. Consider the Zero Point Energy field as a kind of quantum pump that acts as a fundamental driving force. Now having more matter in one place would require more of our quantum fuel. This resource starvation would lead to the passage of time slowing relative to less cluttered space. This time dilation would result in a gravitational effect in spacetime.

What I really like about this is that it simplifies thinking about concepts like strings, where thinking in terms of flow is intuitive.

*Note: This is a recent idea and I'm still working out the kinks. The above example was intended to describe the concept. The paper Laserlight linked is a very good read, and very close to this line of thinking.

Hi Wulf and All,

We have similar conceptualizations on this. IF time is due to a change of energy
state, or changing energy density in a closed system, then the displacement of
energy, or energy density thru space/vacuum, certainty fit this description.

The action-reaction paradigm should hold for energy coursing thru and
displacing space as it propagates.

There is always turbulence/drag caused when matter is displaced and it seems
conceivable that energy propagating thru spacetime should have a similar
effect, since EM energy (photons) is changing the local energy density, which
changes its refractive index and displaces relative spacetime as it propagates thru
it.

Light is propagating thru vacuum and changing its relative energy density, and
refractive index, along an energy "gradient" that radiates outward from a source
following the ISL.

Theoretically, it should exhibit a type of "quantum backwash" or "quantum drag"
from the displacement of spacetime as it passes. IMO, this "quantum backwash"
corresponds to a kind of inverse energy reaction, which could account for
gravity.

Another post on the topic.
http://forum.physorg.com/index.php?act=ST&...ndpost&p=211928

LL

This post has been edited by Laserlight on Jun 16 2007, 06:19 PM