lördag 9 november 2024
CNP talk on 2nd Law
fredag 8 november 2024
Aether Come-Back
Modern physics was initiated in the late 19th century in a search for an immaterial medium as aether/vacuum carrying light as an electromagnetic wave phenomenon described by Maxwell's equations. But no such aether/vacuum could be identified, which opened for Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity simply denying any need of an aether.
But the search of an aether has continued with today the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation CMB emerging as a possible candidate, but without conclusion.
Maxwell's equations are formulated in terms of electric and magnetic fields depending on a spatial coordinate in a Euclidean coordinate system effectively serving as an aether, and a time coordinate.
There are then as many aethers as Euclidean systems, each system being specified by origin and orientation, thus opening to a many-aether theory (suggested by Cunningham in the 1910s) as a possibility when no unique aether can be identified.
This idea is investigated in Many-Many Relativity assuming coordinate systems to be fixed at receivers of light.
This connects to the analysis of radiative transfer of heat from (warm) source to (cold) receiver as a resonance phenomenon with temperature dependent high-frequency cut-off. This is the essence of light communication between source and receiver as analysed in Computational Black Body Radiation.
Note that Maxwell's equations require specification of a Euclidean coordinate system and that the choice captures different physics. The basic idea is to connect coordinate systems to receivers. This is natural in particular when light sources are distant, like collecting the light from a distant star in a telescope.
The essence is resonance between source and receiver carried by standing electromagnetic waves in a vacuum as a coordinate system fixed to the receiver (allowing moving source). In particular, this means that the speed of light is independent (same Maxwell equations) of motion of both source and receiver.
In a system with many sources and receivers possibly moving, there will be no unique coordinate system and thus there will be a need to harmonise different descriptions, see Many-Minds Relativity.
Note that electric and magnetic fields which are immaterial do not ask to be carried by a (material) medium, nor does a gravitational potential as discussed in posts on Neo-Newtonian Cosmology.
The idea of many-aethers as many coordinate systems is compatible with experiments indicating non-existence of a unique aether, and thus resolves a conundrum of modern physics.
torsdag 7 november 2024
Body and Soul Project vs Consciousness
Recent posts on the nature of consciousness lead back to the mathematics education reform project Body and Soul complemented by Leibniz World of Mathematics based on unity of mathematics/soul and computation/body, which connects to trinities of
- Circle enclosing Yin and Yan.
- Sat enclosing Chit and Ananda in Hindu tradition.
- Brahma enclosing Vishnu-Krishna/soul and Shiva/body.
- God enclosing Father-Son/soul and Holy Spirit/body.
- What is subjective experience of e g "redness"?
- Consciousness has more to do with being alive than with being intelligent.
- We are conscious selves precisely because we are beast machines.
- The experiences of being you, or of being me, emerge from the way the brain predicts and controls the internal state of the body.
- The essence of selfhood is neither a rational mind nor an immaterial soul. It is a deeply embodied biological process, a process that underpins the simple feeling of being alive that is the basis for all your experiences of self, indeed for any conscious experience at all.
- Being you is literally about your body.
tisdag 5 november 2024
Self-Consciousness: Body Image from Feelings
Israel Rosenfield presents in his book The Strange, Familiar and Forgotten a view of consciousness emerging from self-awareness as body image:
- My memory emerges from the relation between my body (more specifically my bodily sensations at any given moment) and my brain's "image" of my body (an un conscious activity in which the brain creates a constantly changing generalised idea of the body by relating the changes in bodily sensations from moment to moment). It is this relation that creates a sense of self.
- Our sense of self is sense of experiences affecting the body image, and all experiences involve this sense of self, and hence involve the body image. This is what he calls the "self-reference" of all consciousness. All of our conscious experiences are "self-referential" in the sense that they are related to the experience of the self which is the experience of the body image. The coherence of consciousness through time and space is again related to the experience of the body by way of the body image, and without memory there is no coherent consciousness.
måndag 4 november 2024
Consciousness: Preparation to Action
- The idea that we have disengaged from the facts and confirmed by reasoning is that our body is an instrument of action, and of action only.
- In no degree, in no sense, under no aspect, does it serve to prepare, far less to explain, a representation.
- Consider external perception: there is only a difference of degree, not of kind, between the so-called perceptive faculties of the brain and the reflex functions of the spinal cord.
- While the spinal cord transforms the excitations received into movements which are more or less necessarily executed, the brain puts them into relation with motor mechanisms which are more or less freely chosen; but that which the brain explains in our perception is action begun, prepared or suggested, it is not perception itself.
- Consider memory. The body retains motor habits capable of acting the past over again; it can resume attitudes in which the past will insert itself; or, again, by the repetition of certain cerebral phenomena, which have prolonged former perceptions, it can furnish to remembrance a point of attachment with the actual, a means of recovering its lost influence upon present reality: but in no case can the brain store up recollections or images.
- Thus, neither in perception, nor in memory, nor a fortiori in the higher attainments of mind, does the body contribute directly to representation.
- By developing this hypothesis under its manifold aspects and thus pushing dualism to an extreme, we appeared to divide body and soul by an impassable abyss. In truth, we were indicating the only possible means of bringing them together.
- All the difficulties raised by this problem, either in ordinary dualism, or in materialism and idealism, come from considering, in the phenomena of perception and memory, the physical and the mental as duplicates of one another.
lördag 2 november 2024
Euclide vs Big Bang vs Standard Model
- ESA's Euclid mission is designed to explore the composition and evolution of the dark Universe.
- The space telescope will create a great map of the large-scale structure of the Universe across space and time by observing billions of galaxies out to 10 billion light-years.
- Euclid will explore how the Universe has expanded and how structure has formed over cosmic history, revealing more about the role of gravity and the nature of dark energy and dark matter.
- $\rho (x,t) = \Delta \phi (x,t)$ for all $x$, (G1)
- $\epsilon (x,t) = \Delta\psi (x,t)$ for all $x$, (G1)
- Mass/matter (ordinary and dark) and charge densities of variable sign are created by the Laplacian acting on fluctuations of zero gravitational and electric potentials.
- Attraction/repulsion of mass of same/different sign and charge of different/same sign creates microscale charges of different sign (Hydrogen atoms = proton + electron) and macroscale mass Universa of different sign moving away from each other (dark energy).
- Kinetic energy in each Universe created by gravitational collapse.
- Start from 0 mass. Split into 0 = (+mass) + (-mass). Separate macroscale (+mass) from (-mass).
- Start from 0 charge. Split 0 =(+charge)+(-charge). Combine microscale (+charge) with (-charge).