The Dynamic Present
I wrote this when I had decided to go public on a site of my own. It contains most of the ideas I am trying to introduce. It should hopefully give you a good idea of how I think physics might work in our universe.
Posted February 2012.
My obsession with time started back in 1976 when it
dawned on me that time could be discontinuous without us
knowing. At that time I was working on a small tanker and we
were half-ways between Houston Texas and Khark Island in the
Persian Gulf.
My idea was that if time did consist of discontinuous
moments no longer then the duration of Planck Time, which is
only 5.4 x 10ˉ⁴⁴ s, what could cause that? At the same time,
if that was indeed the case, then what would the
consequences for physics be?
Luckily we had a nice ship's library where i found a book
about physics, but reading that book raised even more
questions. I did for instance find out that Simultaneity did not exist thanks to Einstein and Relativity.
This is something I completely had missed in school. Was I
sleeping in class?
Anyway, according to what I was reading, common sense was not to be trusted
anymore.
I did not like that at all so having left the vessel I
started collecting literature about physics.
Reading the books below as well as everything else I came
by about time and space I tried to understand how
discontinuous time might work in order to see if this idea
would help to reinstate common sense.
At the end of the day and very much to my own surprise, I
really think it did.
Physics and man by Tor Ragnar Gerholm
Gravitation by Misner, Thorne & Wheeler
Astronomy and Cosmology – A Modern Course by Fred Hoyle
The Grip of Gravity by Prabhakar Gondhalekar.
E=MC² by David Bodanis
Galaxies and Quasars by William J. Kaufmann, III.
The Elegant Universe & The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian
Greene
Hyperspace by Michio Kaku and Beyond Einstein by Michio Kaku
and Jennifer Thompson Quintessence by Lawrence M. Krauss
History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity by Sir
Edmund Whittaker
The world within the world & The Book of Nothing by John
D Barrow
Speakable and unspeakable in quantum mechanics by J. S. Bell
The fist three minutes & Dreams of a Final Theory by
Steven Weinberg
Wholeness and the Implicate Order by David Bohm
Where does the weirdness go? By David Lindley
Einstein & Cranks, Quarks, and the Cosmos & A Theory
for Everything by Jeremy Bernstein Cosmos by Stephen Hawking
The Emperor’s New Mind by Roger Penrose
Masters of Time by John Boslough
The Nature of Space and Time by Stephen Hawking and Roger
Penrose
The Arrow of Time by Peter Coveny and Roger Highfield
Time’s Arrow and Archimedes’ Point by Huw Price
About Time by Paul Davies
The River of Time by Igor D. Novikov
The End of Time by Julian Barbour
Three Roads to Quantum Gravity by Lee Smolin
Various books and essays by and about Einstein
Scientific American Special Issue Sept 2004 & Special
Edition Vol. 16 Number 1, 2006.
These and other books and scientific journals like for
instance Science and Scientific American has let me see the
shortcomings of the present physics paradigm.
I have no problem to understand the theories of relativity
and, building on the idea of discontinuous time, also
explain how and why they work.
However, that a layman is able to do this in his
spare time using the well known and intuitive physics of elasticity
only confirms that the relativist picture of our universe in
the form of the standard model is rather incomplete.
Some updating is needed.
Physics and man is the book I found in the library on the
tanker Helfrid Billner.
The idea of discontinuous time was mentioned in the book but
was, according to the author, very advanced. It was not
decided if this was a line of reasoning to pursue.
Well, I think it is and that is what I have done ever since
the idea first struck my mind. The other books are not
placed in any special order.
The textbooks are a bit heavy on the mathematical side, but
there's not much need to be an expert of mathematics in
order to understand, for instance, how a car works and,
trust me, time is a lot less complicated then a car once you
see the light.
It is all a matter of elasticity, and I bet you have some
intuitive sense of how balls bounce, swings operate and
vibrations might intensify due to resonance. That
background, some imagination and the text and links on this
site is actually all you need to understand time.
As a bonus you will find out a few other things as well.
If you follow The Big Bang link to its wikipage you will
find that the Big Bang Theory is "the prevailing
cosmological model that explains the early development of
the universe". I certainly agree with this statement but
have a different explanation regarding the initial state and
the mechanism driving the subsequent expansion.
It does however involve reinstating the idea of an aether. If you do not like this idea,
all the more reason for you to keep on reading, perhaps
starting with a visit to the F.A.Q about Aether at the Australian
site mountainman.com.
The initial state was not any singularity. Our universe
already had a definite physical size: the unknown volume of
the aether.
We do not know the true size of it because the very elastic
fabric it consists of appears to be continuous (as opposed to
particulate) at the best resolution we can manage and for
this reason the volume cannot be measured. (Since there is
no discernible scale to measure it by.)
The incident of the Big Bang however introduced violent
bulk oscillations into the aether. The amplitude
of these oscillations works as a kind of yardstick making relative
measurements possible.
In the beginning the amplitude was large and violent. Now,
13.7 or so billion years later the oscillations has calmed
down so the amplitude is much smaller then it was at the
beginning. This also makes our yardstick smaller. Since we
do not know that the yardstick was bigger in the past we
instead think that the universe has expanded and is larger
today, which is true in a relative way only.
Regarding inflation: The initial, very large amplitude that
was a direct result of the big bang could have shrunk
dramatically in just a few oscillations, making the
yardstick exponentially shorter in the process.
-Or since inflation was invented to explain the "flatness"
and conformity of the universe, it might not even be
required given the continuous fabric of the aether.
Last year a Nobel prize was awarded to the scientists who
discovered that the expansion of our universe has been
accelerating rather then slowing down as was expected.
That is, the rate by which the amplitude get smaller is
increasing as that same amplitude gets smaller.
This might possibly happen when bulk oscillations of an
elastic solid like that of the aether are damped and I would
just love to show you how, but the mechanics of this is
quite beyond my competence to work out.
Mathematics...!
I am just a dreamer anyway... I very much hope that someone
reading this might be able to check it out and provide an
answer.
Perhaps Mr G S Sandhu, who also has ideas about the aether.
As far as I understand it, Mr Sandhu has not followed quite
the same line of reasoning regarding the Big Bang and the
consequences of that event, but he has certainly a better
grip on the mathematical side of things.
I think he is quite right about the significance of the
parameters of permittivity, permeability and intrinsic impedance Z.
If you are mathematically inclined check out his ideas at
ECT, short for Elastic Continuum Theory.
The most intuitive picture of the dynamics of the aether
would be to think of it as a large, standing sound-wave,
bulk oscillating around the volume it would occupy had it
been inert. Some support for the idea of large sound-waves
might be found on this Google search-page for sound oscillations of the sun.
The frequency of the oscillations would of cause be governed
by the elasticity characteristics of the aether fabric,
given by the equations of Mr Sandhu.
So what was it that caused the Big Bang to happen and how
come it produced the result I just described? To be honest,
I have no idea.
I am however certain that it did not involve any "Quantum fluctuation". Why? Because
the hereby demystified "quanta" is actually our yardstick
and when you come to understand the very simple mechanism
responsible for it, you also understand how it works.
The mechanism is this:
The rapid oscillations of the aether about it's inert volume
is a rapid oscillation of the total volume between a smaller
volume, a little less in size then the inert volume, and a
larger volume a little bigger then the inert one.
The quanta is the very dynamic local difference in volume
due to the oscillations.
To imagine how this effect may serve as a relative
yardstick, think of a point in the aether as it oscillates
from the smaller volume to the larger one and then back
again.
That would give you a picture of the immediate surroundings
of the point growing to a sphere and then shrinking back
again towards the point.
The radius of this sphere depend on the amplitude of the
oscillations. Large amplitude, large sphere. Smaller
amplitude, smaller sphere and smaller yardstick..
The volume of the sphere also represent the maximum degree
of freedom a moving object would have access to depending on
its speed.
Here's one example to give you an idea of the dynamics
involved when objects move:
An object moving close to the speed of light would almost
reach the surface of the bubble. An object at half
light-speed would get half-ways. Another, not moving at all,
would stay at the center.
As the phase of the aether oscillation reverse, the objects
will "bounce" back towards the center where they will
"bounce" again in resonance with the ether oscillations.
etc.etc.... Why not call it "the slingshot effect"?
It reminds a little of shooting pellets with a condom.
As the example above indicates, another effect of the
aether oscillations is to drive other, smaller local
oscillations, be they longitudinal or transverse, by
resonance.
That is the reason the oscillations do not fade away and it
is also the mechanism responsible for the transverse
wave-packets, the photons.
If the elastic aether was not providing an oscillating
background for the transverse waves to wave on, keeping them
concentrated in the process, they would be diluted by the
inverse square rule and would not have energy to arrive here
from any distant origins.
The oscillation is also the "tick" of time and, as you
already may guess, each repeated tick is all time there is.
-Which, by the way, also brings back simultaneity into the common sense
notion.
The funny thing is that this was unknowingly(?)
experimentally confirmed by Alain Aspect already back in 1980.
Einsteins "spooky action at a distance" is easier to
understand in the light of simultaneity.
At this stage we can already see the need for a few
corrections to the standard-model. Since the duration of the
longest existing time-span, each "tick", is just one Planck time, we do not need the
notion of the Block Time universe anymore.
It should be substituted by the presentist view. Likewise the notion
of four-dimensional space-time may be good for mathematical
calculations but in the light of the above, it does not seem
to have any physical existence.
Regarding extra dimensions all I have to say is this: Any
dimension above the three obvious ones is only a local state
of freedom, by which I mean that the longitudinal
oscillations of an object at the end of its three
dimensional coordinates may be subject to several nested
local oscillations (overtones).
The degree to which this may apply would be given by the
elasticity characteristics of the aether.
Regarding String Theory I am sure the standard
model will be replaced by a theory of this type that has
been adapted to the ideas here presented.
The reason I think so is because it is all about
oscillations, which, as I am trying to explain, is all our
universe contains. Oscillating aether.
The adaption might perhaps be a little awkward for the
proponents of string theory because the strings will not be
strings anymore.
Instead, they are reminiscent of the Big Bang oscillations,
like some sort of three-dimensional longitudinal sound-waves
that resonate with the aether oscillations.
Their "rolled up dimensions" are just some more longitudinal
oscillations on top of the original one.
However, if the string theorists decide to try it out I am
sure they will prosper from the shift. The vibrations of
their strings in the longitudinal sound-wave shape will then
automatically be mapped to a driving source by resonance and
the suspicious (to the layman) and unconfirmed (to everyone)
dimensions would be replaced by quite ordinary elastic
overtones.
So why and how does time "slow down" when you travel fast?
First of all, remember that the present moment is all time
there is. This moment is about 5.4 x 10ˉ⁴⁴ s long and
presumably encompassing all of the universe.
As a result simultaneity is universal rather then
non-existing as we were thinking special relativity
required.
Because of the all encompassing simultaneity every clock in
the universe live through the same number of present
moments.
However, what might differ between the clocks is their
speed.
This is not a big deal you might think, but what if they
have to accelerate from a standstill up to whatever speed
they are doing, directly followed by braking down to a
standstill again, all within the span of a present moment?
As far as I understand, this is what actually happens, and
the faster you travel the more intense the acceleration and
the braking will become.
This has the effect that the part of the cycle of
oscillation available to move the arms of a clock will
become shorter and shorter as you move closer to the speed
of light.
So, the why is:
Because you are constantly accelerating. Also during the
moments when you think you are just coasting along. (This
constant acceleration and braking each oscillation is also
the cause of inertia and relativistic mass.)
And the how is:
Due to this acceleration the part of the moment available to
do effective work is shorter at higher speed then at slower
speed, so more moments are needed to move the hands of the
clock if you travel fast or else is subject to more
acceleration like you for instance would be in a
gravitational pit. (Like on the surface of a planet.)
This also brings about some insights about gravitation:
The general theory of relativity describes gravitation as
the effects of the metrics of a space whose curvature is
dictated and set by the matter it contains.
That is certainly true in some sense which is the reason the
equations work, but the details of the mechanism responsible
for the effects need some explanations:
As a longitudinal matter-wave resonates with the oscillating
background it stretches up the surrounding aether a little
by its own oscillations.
From a maximum at the center of these oscillations the pull
at the aether fabric drops by the inverse square rule with
the distance to the center.
That is, points lined up between the center and the
perimeter will all be displaced each oscillation towards the
center a distance which is larger the closer to the center
the point is.
By picturing a gravity well you'll get a good idea
of what this would look like.
To complete the picture also let the well oscillate with a
period of 5.4 x 10ˉ⁴⁴ s.
Any other oscillation in the aether fabric -longitudinal or
transverse, entering the area being stretched up this way by
the gravity well will be redirected and accelerated little
by little each oscillation towards the center of the well,
and that is about all there is to say about gravitation.
As you can see, the dynamic present and simultaneity still
allow Einstein to be right about relativity, Newton about absolute time and space and Maxwell
about the existence of an aether as the medium for his
electromagnetic waves.
The question then is:
Does this bring back common sense? Well, yes, I think it
does.
In my opinion common sense was abandoned because the lack of
a proper model of the universe dropped the curtains on
reality.
I trust the dynamic present may be the embryo of a model
that will lift those curtains again.
It does quantize space in a rather unsuspected way using
three-dimensional "bits" the size of the universe that has a
cyclic life of about 5.4 x 10ˉ⁴⁴ s which, in reality makes
our universe the ultimate recycle system - reusing both
space and time.
This is the nature of the "fine-grain structure of space" that eventually might be detected by Craig Hogan with his Holometer experiment as long as his laser interferometer has the necessary sensitivity.
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