| View previous topic :: View next topic |
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
 |
|
Perusing The SS Brotherhood of the Bell (for my mum's reading group) I came across something interesting. To give you some context this is a typical hard-line self-published work-of-wackiness:
sample the real reason Rommel and the Afrika Korps were in the Libyan desert in 1942 was to test a neutron bomb
sample von Braun, creator of the V2 rocket and the American space programme, was in New Mexico before the war testing out one of Tesla's theories
but which, like all conspiracy books, is written by a perfectly rational person who has made it his life's work to explore stuff which won't come to light any other way. Take this, describing some experiments taking (Lord) Kelvin's work further in the years 1877 to 1910
| Bjerknes showed that when two spheres immersed in a non-compressible fluid were pulsated, they exerted a mutual attraction which obeyed Newton's inverse square law if the pulsations were in phase, while if the phases differed by a half wave, the spheres repelled. At one quarter wave difference, there was no action. Where pulses were non-instantaneous at distances greater than one quarter wave length, attractions and repulsions were reversed. |
Now this is mostly gobbledegook to me but it sounds incredibly important. So I need to know from those of you au fait with all this how significant it actually is.
I am working from the assumption that the general field of electricity faced its Big Decision back in the mid-nineteenth century as to whether electricity was everywhere and was concentrated by electric motors et al or that electricity is nowhere until it is created by electric motors et al. And went for the latter.
This is very similar to the Big Evolution Argument at the same time as to whether speciation arises accidentally by mutation or via acquired characteristics. This is a key Applied Epistemological matter because the following happens:
1. Whichever decision is taken, enormous strides in the subject ensue simply because an actual phenomenon (electricity, speciation change) is being explored for the first time in a big way
2. But all the advances made rebound to the credit of the decision made even if the decision happened to be wrong.
4. In which case the correct decision -- and the consequences flowing from it -- are left to the crazies, the conspiracists and the unrecognised geniuses.
5. Meanwhile all difficulties arising because the wrong decision was made is wished away by the usual operating procedures with which all here are so familiar.
This is why Tesla continues to be a Major Figure to the fringe. To orthodoxy he is just the geezer who came up with Direct and Alternating Current, to the weird fraternity he is the bloke with the Keys to the Kingdom. I suppose it is our duty to adjudicate.
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Brian Ambrose
|
|
|
|
Interesting, never heard of it before but I've just looked it up, and the Bjerknes effect is real. Briefly quoted from somewhere else:
"Two pulsating bubbles in a fluid attract each other as 1/r2. A bubble immersed into a turbulent fluid models a particle of matter."
And I'd say it is significant, since at the very least it models how gravity might work by wave action in an aether-based universe.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
Here's a good AE candidate for when it all went wrong.
| According to Beardon it began its first massive wrong turn after Maxwell. Maxwell first formulated his equations in a mathematical language all but extinct today, a mathematical language called quaternion geometry. This mathematical language differs from the standard "linear algebra", "tensor calculus" and "vector analysis" in which the standard electro-magnetic theory is usually couched in textbooks and physics lectures. In short the equations one learns in physics textbooks and physics courses today as "Maxwell equations" are not Maxwell's original equations! They are edited equations. |
Two familiar AE principles arise here:
1. the idea that entire generations of students are given a particular 'model' and that within a very few years no other version is even known about much less taught as a possible alternative
2. the whole thing operates on the boundary between various 'subjects' -- not just between physics and maths but apparently shifting between geometry and algebra.
This becomes hugely significant since in one version (algebra) the equations when totalled come to zero and therefore get cancelled out, but in the other version (geometry) the equations represent a spread of values (which only happen to add up to zero). It is true I cannot understand any of this personally but the wider point is that the phenomenon itself cannot be understood unless people are prepared to learn Maxwell's quarternion geometry (cf Newton having to invent differential calculus in order to demonstrate gravity).
Once it is widely agreed that you can understand everything 'in translation' nobody (and certainly nobody repsonsible for teaching students) is going to press for 'learning the original language'. Very soon there is nobody in the world (except maybe a few crazies) who are even prepared to speculate about what may have been lost in translation.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
|
|
|
|
| at the very least it models how gravity might work by wave action in an aether-based universe. |
Gravity as a kind of inward pressure...?
|
|
| |
|
|
|
DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
|
|
|
|
| ...the Bjerknes effect... |
It's not just that advanced fluid dynamics is perplexing. Look here:
Bjerknes forces between two bubbles. Part 2. Response to an oscillatory pressure field
Abstract: The motion of two gas bubbles in response to an oscillatory disturbance in the ambient pressure is studied... It is shown that the relative motion of bubbles of unequal size depends on the frequency of the disturbance.
So this is all about A and B both reacting to C in a regular way. But the waters are muddied immediately by talking as though A and B are interacting directly with one another:
If this frequency is between the two natural frequencies for volume oscillations of the individual bubbles, the two bubbles are seen to move away from each other {OK so far}; otherwise attractive forces prevail {uh-oh}. Bubbles of equal size can only attract each other, irrespective of the oscillation frequency. {BAM! Right in the kisser.}
'Course, it's still an open question whether gravity is A <--> B (direct) or A <-- C --> B (indirect), but we can give a nod to Bill Gaede here: there is supposed to be a difference between doing maths and doing physics. This dithering makes it look like they are doing neither.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Brian Ambrose
|
|
|
|
|
I think it is clear that it is A-B-C (since without the 'oscillatory pressure field' nothing will happen). What he's saying is that when two bubbles are of the same size, the net effect is attractive from the bubbles' perspective; at other frequencies the net effect varies. If he is intending to subsequently use these effects as a model for gravity, then his subjective wording is understandable.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
|
|
|
|
| If he is intending to subsequently use these effects as a model for gravity... |
I thought that was your idea. But working ideas into models isn't going to be easy if the professionals can't keep their story straight. (And if they can't tell it straight, can they be thinking it straight?)
|
|
| |
|
|
|
DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
|
|
|
|
Some musings...
Remembering that passing sound waves though water means jiggling their molecules about and that bubbles are places where the water isn't...
Suppose you stand a deck of cards on a table, then move the back card to the front, and again, and again, and again... the deck moves forward, but not at all in the same way that it does if you just push it.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
|
|
|
|
Newton's gravitational force and Coulomb's electrostatic force (both inverse-squares) assume the masses or charges to be points, which is never literally true (though at large enough distances, seems to be good enough). But acoustic waves emanating from spheres (if that's what one of those descriptions of the Bjerknes effect was implying) could really behave as if coming from a point because the surface of the sphere is just a place the waves would have reached on their way out from the centre point.
This Bjerknes effect might not work as the inverse-square for cuboids... but it reminds me of a wave-particle duality we should keep in mind. Remember, light has some wave-like behaviour and some particle-like behaviour... and there are problems with thinking of charged particles as particles... so we really don't know what atoms and light and stuff are like... The thing to keep behind your ear is
The Huygens-Fresnel principle... that each point of an advancing wave front is... the source of a new train of waves Waves behave as if they are generated by themselves, from every point they've already covered.
For example, if two rooms are connected by an open doorway and a sound is produced in a remote corner of one of them, a person in the other room will hear the sound as if it originated at the doorway. As far as the second room is concerned, the vibrating air in the doorway is the source of the sound.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
|
|
|
|
|
While we're at it, this is surely why all measurements support the notion that the speed of light is a universal constant, regardless of the state of motion of the source and the observer: because light, in any apparatus where we can find the speed by knowing the distance and measuring the time, will behave as if it comes from inside the apparatus, the source being stationary with respect to the observer. Something like that.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
|
|
|
|
|
And another thing: Huygens-Fresnel says there is an exact equivalence between a wave starting from here and a bunch of waves starting from there. In a similar way, vectors and matrices are exactly equivalent to quaternions, so there is not necessarily any reason for unease about Maxwell being re-cast in different terms. (Then again, some subtlety might be lost in translation, it's hard to say: this is advanced stuff... I mean... weird shit. In fact, the guy who came up with quaternions was trying to do 3 dimensional stuff and found it better to use 4 and ignore one of them.)
|
|
| |
|
|
|
DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
|
|
|
|
And another nother thing: when it comes to understanding what we do know about the nature of matter: the electron was identified as a subatomic particle before Planck came up with the idea of quanta, and the idea that atoms are composed of particles has persisted pretty well ever since.
But all we know from identifying free electrons as particles of a certain sort is that negative charges are quantised. They do not necessarily exist in the structure of atoms.
With light, it seems to go like this: where it does and doesn't go is all about waves, but when it actually does something, its energy comes only in discrete packets (photons). With electrons, it may be similar: when we actually "see them working on their own", they always have discrete amounts of charge and mass, but as constituents of atoms, charge and mass might not form into electrons at all.
Let's say it's like blood being dry, brown and lumpy when found outside the body, but not when it's living and working inside. Or energy being manifest as heat and light when running a torch bulb, but not when it's stored inside the battery.
The energy of a photon is proportional to frequency: by analogy, electron charge would be "proportional" to something that doesn't vary.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Brian Ambrose
|
|
|
|
Dan said
| For example, if two rooms are connected by an open doorway and a sound is produced in a remote corner of one of them, a person in the other room will hear the sound as if it originated at the doorway. As far as the second room is concerned, the vibrating air in the doorway is the source of the sound. |
Or a pinhole camera. The whole picture is generated from a tiny light-dot in the box.
| because light, in any apparatus where we can find the speed by knowing the distance and measuring the time, will behave as if it comes from inside the apparatus |
The information behaves that way, but the speed of transfer ought to be the same as its arrival speed at the hole. Oughtn't it?
With light, it seems to go like this: where it does and doesn't go is all about waves, but when it actually does something, its energy comes only in discrete packets (photons).
|
I've always wondered if this is actually only an illusion induced by the sensing device (ie its atoms have a hysterisis). How can they tell the difference?
The energy of a photon is proportional to frequency: by analogy, electron charge would be "proportional" to something that doesn't vary.
|
So, an electron is a wave-something with a fixed frequency.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Komorikid
In: Gold Coast, Australia
|
|
|
|
Dan wrote: Let's say we can evacuate a 1 litre vessel down to one particle per cubic centimetre: a thousand particles. Are there not then something like a thousand three-dimensional areas between the particles, one cc each, with no particles whatsoever in them?
Or should we say each particle counts as 1 cc in volume, so there are no gaps?
Do the particles move randomly? Isn't a given cubic millimetre empty most of the time, with a particle/ion/atom shooting through every now and then?
Does the electric/magnetic field only cross that cubic millimetre when one of the particles passes though it? |
Particles in an evacuated chamber are just particles in an evacuated chamber. They are effectively quasi-neutral plasma. This is represented by a vacuum tube. The plasma only becomes active when current flows -- when the switch is thrown the anode glows as the plasma become active (negative particles flow from the cathode through the plasma to the anode).
This is the effect we see in our solar system with the Sun. The anode is the Sun and the cathode is a virtual cathode the heloisphere. I'll come back to this in a minute.
Plasmas are not all the same. There is a common misconception that all plasma has frozen in charge and is therefore neutral in interstellar space. This is why orthodox cosmology always refers to ionised gas. There is no such thing as an ionised gas -- if it's ionised it ain't gas it plasma. The reason this term is used is because cosmology has no way of explaining its properties outside gravitation equations and standard gas laws.
Another false assumption is that there is no charge separation is space. This mantra has been clung to like a drowning man holding onto a deflating life preserver for a century now even though charge separation has be verified time and again by space probes and has been physically measured.
The solar wind is plasma -- positive ions separated from their atoms in the photosphere of the Sun, that's why they are called 'proton storms'. If space was really neutral then as soon as the positive ions were accelerated from the surface of the Sun negative electron they encounter should instantly combine with the ion and neutralise them. This clearly does not happen as the aurora and charge interaction with the Earths ionosphere are the result of 'Solar Wind'.
The fact that they are accelerated from the surface and continue to accelerate at up to 25% of little c (light speed) is a dead giveaway that gravity and shock waves are not the reasons.
The term plasma was coined by Irving Longmuir who discovered that all plasmas of different charge densities isolates themselves with a 'bubble-like' structure or sheaths know as the Langmuir Sheaths or Double Layers. Langmuir borrowed the name for the medical term for blood plasma because plasma formed cell-like structures. He discovered that any object place into an active plasma was instantly isolated from the plasma by this double layer and that even plasmas with different densities would form isolating cells.
This is what our Solar System comprises of -- planets surrounded by cellular structures embedded in the larger cellular structure of the Sun's Heliosphere. These cellular structures are misinterpreted as magnetospheres -- there is no single coherent explanation of how planets and the Sun can have magnetospheres without an iron core sloshing about in a liquid medium -- the Sun and all the gas giants have no iron. This has led to individual unsupportable ad hoc theories to explain why the Sun and Jupiter et al have massive magnetospheres.
The fact the there is electricity flowing in space is undisputed -- the fact of the auroras and the recent discovery of electric currents flowing into Io, Titan and even the Earth confirm this.
Now getting back to our vacuum tube and the Sun.
The Sun's helioshpere is the virtual cathode in a vacuum tube that stretches from the heliopause to the anode Sun. This outer bubble is the Langmuir Sheath that separates the charge density of the Solar System from the different charge density of interstellar space. There is a slow drift current across the radial electric field within the Solar System from the cathode heliopause towards the anode Sun. Negative electrons migrate towards the Sun as positive ions are accelerated towards the heliopause. The drift current of electrons is infinitesimal at the extremities of the Solar System and for most of their travel towards the Sun -- this is know as the positive column of the vacuum tube and charge density is virtually zero. But as the sum of all these negative electrons reaches the vicinity of the Sun the charge density multiplies dramatically.
Think of an explosion -- the density of the debris field decreases with distance from the epicentre of the explosion. This is what happens to the positive ions of 'solar wind' as they accelerate away toward the heliopause. The exact reverse is what happens to the negative electrons they increase in density toward the epicentre and culminate in the solar corona where their density becomes so intense that they cause the anode to glow. This is the reason the Sun works in the exact reverse to Eddington's nuclear sun because his standard gas laws and gravity cannot produce a corona that is hotter than the photosphere (by millions of degrees). In fact it cannot produce a corona at all.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
|
|
|
|
|
Well, KomoriMate, I've been looking forward to your response and now... I still am.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
The Library Index 
FAQ 
Search
Register
Profile 
Log in to check your private messages 
Log in 
