Posted on 03/28/2003 5:49:29 PM PST by vannrox
Huntsville - Mar 28, 2003
For the second time in as many months, images gathered by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) are raising questions about the structures of time and gravity, and the fabric of space.Using two HST images, astronomers from Italy and Germany looked for but did not find evidence supporting a prevailing scientific theory that says time, space and gravity are composed of tiny quantum bits.
Using existing theories, the team led by Dr. Roberto Ragazzoni from the Astrophysical Observatory of Arcetri, Italy, and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, calculated that infinitesimally small quantum-scale variations in space time would blur images of galaxies seen from vast distances across the universe.
Instead, when they looked at both diffraction patterns from a supernova and the raw image of a second galaxy more than five billion light years from Earth, they saw images much sharper than should be possible if quantum-scale phenomenon operated as previously supposed. Their research is scheduled to be published in the April 10, 2003, edition of Astrophysical Research - Letters.
"The basic idea is that space time should fluctuate," said Ragazzoni. "If you are looking at light from a huge distance, this light passing through space time would be subject to this fluctuation in space time. They should give a distorted image of the far universe, like a blurring.
"But you don't see a universe that is blurred. If you take any Hubble Space Telescope deep field image you see sharp images, which is enough to tell us that the light has not been distorted or perturbed by fluctuations in space time from the source to the observer. This observation is enough to rule out this effect on the quantum scale.
"You can say," said Ragazzoni, "that this measurement constrains the quantum gravity theory to certain parameters."
This report comes a month after physicists at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) announced their unsuccessful attempt to use an image from an HST interferometer to find evidence of Planck-scale effects. Taken together, the independent research findings might force physicists to reexamine the scientific underpinnings of the quantum theories of gravity, time and space.
To look for the quantum blurring effect the European team used a parameter from optics, the Strehl ratio, to calculate how sharply the telescope should be able to resolve an image of the distant light source and its first Airy ring - a signature of the interference of the rays of light entering a telescope.
If the popular quantum theories were correct, space-time effects should blur light from distant sources beyond the telescope's ability to resolve them.
They didn't.
"Without a theory to describe this, I think it's hard not to agree that it is time to start to consider theories that do not require this Planck scale, at least not like it is now," said Ragazzoni. "From an experimental point of view, there is no establishment. We are proud to have established in as rigorous a manner as possible the parameters of this quantum effect."
The Planck-scale quantum theories of time, space and gravity were derived from attempts to calculate the theoretical limits to electromagnetic energy, according to a UAH physicist, Dr. Richard Lieu.
By inverting Albert Einstein's theory of relativity (E=mc2 becomes m=E/c2), physicists could calculate how much mass should be added to a photon as it gains energy. Using that, they calculated a theoretical limit to how much energy a photon might contain before gaining so much mass it would collapse into a photon-sized black hole.
That theoretical upper limit was then used to set theoretical limits on time. One cycle of a photon carrying that much energy would last 5 x 10-44 seconds, an interval called Planck time. As the shortest potentially-measurable interval of time, theorists speculated that time moves is Planck time-sized quantum bits.
In his theory of general relativity, Einstein theorized that time, space and gravity are different manifestations of the same phenomenon, much as light and thunder are signatures of the electrical discharge in lightning. If time is made up of quantum bits, that would also mean space and gravity should also be composed of quantum units.
Since the expected blurring "signature" of quantum space time isn't seen, however, it might mean that time isn't made of quantum bits, and neither are space or gravity.
Historically every 'theory' in physics, astronomy, biology etc. was replaced by another 'theory', Enstein is no god and his 'theory' will be eventualy replaced with another 'theory'.
A silly idea, but it would also explain why we're not seeing a quantum blurring effect when we look at supposedly distant galaxies. IE, the galaxies aren't distant enough to have a blurring effect!
"We took out a slide from our collection, and held it very close to the telescope. We did not see any 'quantum bits.'"
Careful. Anyone who agrees with me around here is setting himself up for a bit of grief. I'm quite unpopular with the creationist crowd.
I think that's been ruled out. I don't pretend to completely understand this, but Lyman alpha systems give evidence consistent with the size of the universe indicated by stellar redshifts.
You selected the macroscopic example of a ball falling, not me.
--Boris
Careful.
In the first place, one can design a relativistic experiment in which effect 'seems to' preceed cause.
In the next place, if one believes in strict causality, one soon finds himself sliding down the slippery slope of determinism. I know this because I do and am.
Finally, several modern experiments have indicated that our notion of 'causality' is at best a rough-and-ready heuristic. For example, the 'quantum eraser' and similar experiments which apparently show that the past can be edited by events in the present.
--Boris
I don't think there is such an entity as a massless particle.
Nor do I believe that energy can propagate in an empty space.
I see photons as a quantive unit of force rather than an a massless particle. And there is no discrepancy that a unit of force can't propagate as a wave.
And that quantive unit of force may be termed enegy and so being has mass. (the convertability of matter and energy: E=mc²)
So the bending of light is mass/energy acting upon mass/energy.
(BTW how did you type the little 2 in e=mc?)
Seem to. But in the local frame in which the event happens, causality's sequence is never violated.
In the next place, if one believes in strict causality, one soon finds himself sliding down the slippery slope of determinism. I know this because I do and am.
Yes. But I hold out free will as a grand exception. I can't explain it. It just is.
Finally, several modern experiments have indicated that our notion of 'causality' is at best a rough-and-ready heuristic. For example, the 'quantum eraser' and similar experiments which apparently show that the past can be edited by events in the present.
Well, if you're going to mention QM while I'm peacefully thinking of causality and determinism, you're going to ruin my well-ordered day.
E=mc < sup > 2</sup> (omit the spaces). "sup" is for superscript.
Then you need to come up with the equations to replace Einstein and Maxwell's equations. Because those equations declare, unequivocably, that in order for anything, including light, to travel at the speed of light, it must have no mass. Period. End of story. So you've got well over 80 years worth of physics that you need to rewrite in order to make your belief anything approaching a scientific theory. Let's see the numbers (and letters) that make up the predictive side of this light=force hypothesis of yours. How can we test it? What experiments would falsify your idea? Without that, you've got a religion, not a science. Physics is inseperably joined with mathematics, to the point that we can mathematically describe things that we cannot conceptualize or visualize (see four-dimensional space and Quantum Mechanics, for example). So if you can't write it in an equation, then it isn't a physics theory...
Oh, and as for the squared symbol. I used ASCII code. Look up "ASCII Code" on a search engine, and you can find a list of the numerical equavalents of different symbols in HTML. Then you just type in an ampersand, pound, the number, and end with a semi-colon. For example, the squared sign is number 0178. So you type in "²" (without the quotation marks) and you get "²". You can see if it works or not in the preview window before you post.
"Photons don't have mass, but they do have energy--and as Einstein famously proved, mass and energy are really the same thing."
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