The Funny Thing About Gravity... (Astrophysics)

[Brian Ambrose]

[admin]

Gentlemen! Remember abstruse philosophical ramblings are not permitted on this site. Get down to cases!

[Brian Ambrose]

Pah! In what way is a call for a model that explains why two particles in an otherwise (apparently) empty universe will start moving towards each other an abtruse philosophical ramble?

[Mick Harper]

Yes, shut up, Admin!

[Hatty]

The philosophers are the physicists themselves. Faced with the impossibility of measuring position and momentum simultaneously (is this why light is both a wave and a particle?) they've come up with the term "non-measurement" (they say if the particle detector doesn't detect a particle it means it's 'gone the other way'').

There's another Alice In Wonderlandish theory of 'many worlds', if you can't see the particle in this world you can no doubt see it in someone else's world (sounds a bit like Schrodinger's cat, alive and dead at the same time). I am completely non-plussed.

[Mick Harper]

No, dear, you are both plussed and non-plussed at the same moment in space-time. Jeez, do you have to have everything spelled out for you?

[DPCrisp]

[Brian Ambrose]

[DPCrisp]

No model, then. Just faith.

I'm interested in how the intermediary (particle, presumably) helps.

Or why a field can't be an intermediary.

But then, I have read Zen in the Art of Archery.

[Brian Ambrose]

Of course a field can be an intermediary. But only if you can explain (or at least model) what a field is. Same goes for particles (if you must, even though that seems to be a dead-end), if you can model how our original two particles move towards each other by throwing smaller particles at each other.

I don't think faith comes into it. I am equally willing to accept spooky-action-at-a-distance if you can model the process.

[Mick Harper]

This action-at-a-distance thing is surely just matter of being prisoners of our conceptions. Since the Universe is a thing, as far as we know, then everything in it is literally no-distance-apart, since they are merely aspects of the thing. Looked at this way, there can literally be no such thing as action-at-a-distance (in the sense it is usually meant, ie too far to effect one another). The March of Science can simply be seen as a matter of being able to identify more and more connections of which we were previously unaware.

The reason I 'know' this, as an Applied Epistemologist, is because Life-on-Earth suffers the from the same problem. There too God had to be initially introduced to overcome the action-at-a-distance question. But now we're hung up because we refuse to believe (for instance) that genes can communicate with each other through the ether (as the action-at-a-distance concept is called in our smallish confines down here.)

The Electic Universe and Sheldrake's Morphic Resonance are examples of trying to bust out of our present conceptual straightjackets. Though I expect progress will come when somebody unites the two concepts.

[Brian Ambrose]

You were doing quite well there until you said 'through the ether'. Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of the ether and think it's the best bet for a decent model of things, but as soon as you introduce it you are providing a mechanism for, as you say, communication, and dispensing with your original idea that there is no such thing as distance. Still, you might be able to reconcile the two by proposing distance with instantaneous communication, so that everything is connected as if there was no distance.

Ok, if we have a model of a universe with a substrate supporting instantaneous communication (ie ether fills the universe), what is it about this substance that requires two particles placed within it to (appear to) move closer together? Obviously, pressure difference is the likely candidate, but how?

[DPCrisp]

[Grant]

[Chad]