Posted on 05/06/2009 10:28:23 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
Gravity: A Theory in Crisis
May 5, 2009 — Note: This is **not** a joke. How could gravity be a theory in crisis? Isn’t gravity one of the best-understood facts of nature? Don’t we all avoid jumping off cliffs because of the law of gravity? Gravity is doing just fine, thank you. It’s our theory of gravity, and the cosmology built on it, that is in crisis – according to a report on PhysOrg today: “Study plunges standard Theory of Cosmology into Crisis.”...
(Excerpt) Read more at creationsafaris.com ...
I love FR. Anyone who says that conservative thinking shows a lack of intelligence is a moron.
I also adore quantum physics. Sadly, I'm not able to do more than barely comprehend it. The math is way beyond me.
Amazing that the secularists can have "faith" in unmeasurable dark matter and call it science, though as soon you suggest that science should account for the omnipresent influence of Yahweh, the Darwinist establishment digs in its heels and brands you a "crackpot".
OK, I have a REALLY stupid question. Please, no eye-rolling.
From what I understand, the components of particles end up being reduced to nothing more than energy. And yet, they have mass. (The whole concept that an electron is both a wave and a particle is beyond me.)
This implies that energy has mass.
Can someone please explain to me how a particle has mass?
Stupid question, I know. But the more I read about particle physics, the less sense “energy (somehow) = mass” makes to me.
Understanding this will go a long way toward helping my understanding of gravity.
Mass is the measure of the matter of an object and matter occupies space and time. Energy is the amount of work required to change the state of a system.
Energy is also used as a substitute term for relativistic mass which is the observed or apparent mass as an object approaches the speed of light and thereby increases mass.
To an observer, the relativistic mass increases as the velocity of the object increases whereas the invariant mass is the rest mass of the object itself. And inertial mass is the resistance of the object to changing its state of motion when force is applied to it.
For massless particles (e.g. photons or light) the energy of the particle is its momentum times the speed of light. Massless particles do not have a rest frame, they are always moving at the speed of light regardless of the frame of reference.
The photon travels a "null path" - for it no time elapses.
Matter constitutes the observed universe (space/time) and matter density (mass relative to volume) in the universe is called the critical density.
Antimatter is matter composed of the antiparticles of the particles that compose matter. The antiquark is the antiparticle of the quark, the positron is the antiparticle of the electron, etc.
When matter and antimatter collide, they are mutually annihilated, and energy is released in a burst of radiation. Matter is also created by energy in pairs as in the case where two or more photons interact to create a new fermion/antifermion pair.
Even so, that 5 percent of the critical density called “ordinary matter” has not yet been created or observed (Higgs field/boson) despite many attempts. The new equipment at CERN may yet observe the Higgs but so far, no cigar.
However, physicists love a good mystery and already have other theories for what we call mass:
It is possible that the particles we see are all actually massless, their apparent masses corresponding to extra-dimensional momentum components we can't as yet detect.
Five Dimensional Relativity and Two Times
It is possible that null paths in 5D appear as the timelike paths of massive particles in 4D, where there is an oscillation in the fifth dimension around the hypersurface we call spacetime. A particle in 5D may be regarded as multiply imaged in 4D, and the 4D weak equivalence principle may be regarded as a symmetry of the 5D metric.
It was Einstein's dream to transmute the base wood of matter to the pure marble of geometry.
I agree with Einstein, the geometry (space/time) is the key. In that regard, you can think of high gravity regions (ordinary matter and dark matter) as space/time indentations and conversely, negative gravity regions (dark energy - space between galaxies) as space/time "outdents."
Likewise, in that respect, I think of particles as placemarkers in the dynamic fabric of space/time.
Then people post who think the entire universe rotates around the Earth, that AIDS/HIV isn’t real or that cancer has only been around for 300 years.
So when an particle and an anti-particle collide, they cease to have mass, are transformed into massless particles and all that you have left is energy?
Is that right?
White holes..... Don't bet any real money on that one, that's basically a quasi-Christian vision of the same sort of junk physics which is ruining academia at present. In real life, gravity turns out to be an electrostatic dipole effect of some sort, the universe turns out to be eternal like God, and the creation stories we read in antique literature turn out to be describing the creation of our own living world and local environment, and not the creation of the universe.
The main thing that keeps me from being a YEC is Venus. We DO have the one planet in our system which is actually ballpark for a 6000 - 10,000 year age estimate and we can see what that sort of a planet looks like: 900F surface temperatures, massive thermal imbalance, massive upwards IR flux, statistically random cratering, total lack of any sort of a regolith, 90-bar CO2 atmosphere in which a 3 mph wind would bowl you over, etc, etc, etc.
Earth and Mars do not resemble that in any way, shape, or fashion, and so you have to assume they are older than that.
But it does raise another interesting question about the beginnings of this universe that has caused some collective head-scratching: where did all the anti-matter go?
I must head out now, but I'll check back later this evening to see where the conversation is headed.
Did you post an article back in 2005/2006 timeframe about how gravity is misunderstood? I have tried several times to find the link to it. If you are the writer, I would love to read the article. Thanks in advance.
I’m a writer too, with a couple of novels. The excerpts are posted at writing.com.
http://www.writing.com/authors/vdavisson
You might try posting your novel there, I have received tremendous feedback!
If I recall correctly, what I learned in school is that the particle and anti-particle annihilation results in the release of a photon (a massless particle) with energy equal to the sum of the energies of the two colliding particles.
This is where E=mc2 comes in. The energy of the particle is equal to it's energy of motion (kinetic energy), plus the energy of it's mass.
E = 0.5mv2 + mc2
So, annihilation is really the conversion of matter to energy.
The color of the light emitted is also dependent on the energy of the particles.
Frequency (color) = E/h, where h is Planck's constant.
Typically, these are x-rays or gamma rays.
Maybe I took “physics” to be too strictly defined, since you mentioned “physics” and “astronomy” I thought you were talking specifics, like there was something special about those two. Geology was a different class for me than physics, and nothing I learned in any of my physics courses dealt with fossils, geology, or radioactive decay.
Physics was about observed measurements. Gravity, momentum, inertia, light waves/particles, stuff like that. I don’t remember a single time in all my my physics courses EVER thinking about evolution or “old earth”, and I was keenly aware whenever those topics came up.
That was not at all a stupid question! Kudos for having the courage to ask.
What I was referring to was (1) the direct observation that the universe is much older than 6,000 years, and (2) radioisotope dating of rocks and such demonstrating an age older than 6,000 years.
I have no doubt that I don’t know what gravity is. :’) I feel I’m in good company with that. ;’)
Anyway, just to drop another pebble to see if gravity makes it hit the waters and cause ripples...
http://www.metaresearch.org/cosmology/gravity/gravity.asp
Thanks for the link. I had lost Tom’s website addy a while back.
I heard a very clever theory of gravity once, probably here on FR, and I have not forgotten it. It is that what appears to us as gravity is actually just the result of all things getting BIGGER. The resulting displacements are observed as gravity. Sounds crazy but the logic holds (at least some) water.
For instance, if you were standing on the surface of a planet that is rapidly growing, its growth would cause it to apply an outward force on you that would accelerate you away from its center and would feel just like gravity. Of course, you wouldn’t perceive the planet as growing because you would be growing too. You would be no way to distinguish the effect of things getting bigger from the effect of gravity.
Pretty wild, huh?
My pleasure. I was a little surprised a few months back to learn that he’d passed away.
Chapters 1 through 7 all link to each other, but part 2 and part 3 (both of which are roughly the same length as 1-7) do not. You can get them at the above link.
The soliloquies about gravity can be found primarily in chapters 4 and 16, though other parts reference the theory often.
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