Are numbers material? Are they real? If they are and are immaterial then my God Gonzo could be the sum total of infinite numbers in which infinite structures inherent within  are able to manifest their structure like numbers constraining your puny atheisitic materialistic world. Don't be a big fat ZERO. Come over to the light side today. Pick a number and wait in line.  Hint take a 3 for trinity.  I thought she was cool on the Matrix which is number generated by the way like this place? 

Yea i think part of it is the language with what we conceptualize. Is energy material. We want to speak of a phycical universe but we tend to think of clumps of somethin' like electrons and what have you. But then we think of them as wave like.  Look at how we define energy and mass. Mass is energy but energy is the ability to do work on that mass( energy). Aren't we talking about form or number more than anything else?

 

Ya, I think you're right. I think the problem is the english language is too elastic, in meaning, and has too many nuances. If you look up virtually any word in a thesaurus, you can see all kinds of synonyms that can be substituted, that are insufficient in putting a fine point on a complex idea, or putting it in the proper context, or nuance, etc..

Speaking in context of physics and mechanics, 'energy' and 'force', are not interchangeable terms, like they are in colloquial speak. That's just one example.

We're gratetful that light can be broken down by spectrum. We're grateful of frequencies and wavelengths, and that they can change independently. Imagine if that wasn't the case.?

Imagine if there was no doppler effect?

The 'wake', or trail of breadcrumbs that physics leaves, is like an owner's manual, to the universe.

Fricken' cool.

 

I can't wrap my mind around how Einstein came up with E=mc2.

How would one even conceptualize something like that??

I can't put it into words, but, I think because of that formula, it makes me believe that being able to develop much, much further than that, is entirely within the means of humans.

Despite the 'we will never know' fatalist attitudes of the church, who the sheeple merely parrot.

I'm glad the LHC is in Geneva, far away from fundamentalist theist terrorists.

It the most important thing in the scientific world, as far as finding out about our universe. I'm anxious to see what comes out of the experiments.

 

Einstein's wife may have come up with E=Mc2. Originally it was M=E/c2.  It really became a process whereby to explain that light's speed is constant no matter how you measure it to sorta over come the Michelson-Morley findings. Simply create a formula that keeps light constant.

 

I agree but we tend to think of reality as what we think. The two slit experiments, Schrodinger's Cat all of those point to a mistake in the way we view nature from whatever it really is. It is like mistaking a narrative story for the reality from which it is built. Every time we try to pin it down it slaps us in the face like we pinched its ass or something.

 

Which isn't immaterial by the standard model. It states that forces are made by virtual particles. Particles means matter.

The weird thing is that he should be outside of space. But is it even logically possible for something to be outside of the only thing that permits existence? Is space the only 'place' that permits existence?
If there can be something outside of space, why would we differentiate between space and non-space, if both are the same?
It might be a fun idea to play with, if it was based on something, and not just a cheap argument to explain why God doesn't exist in reality...

 

Not quite.

In Physics,  fundamental particles are specifically classified as 'matter' particles, which are leptons and quarks, and 'force' particles, all those things which are envisioned to carry the fundamental forces: electromagnetic, strong and weak nuclear forces, and gravity. Quarks make up protons and neutrons.

I definitely agree that it is a simple, but totally unjustified dodge to 'explain' why God can 'exist' in some meaningful (non-abstract) sense, yet is not bound by the rules of everything else that exists.

Existence requires both matter and energy/force. Energy is classically defined as the capacity to do 'work', and the unit of energy is defined as a unit of force acting on matter over a unit of distance. There is an attribute of both energy and matter called mass. Einsteins equation defines how much mass is associated with an amount of energy. Under some circumstances, energy can be transformed into particles of matter, and vice-versa.

In fission and fusion reactions, matter is NOT converted to energy, as sometimes asserted. There is no change in the number of quarks or electrons. What happens is that the matter particles involved adopt a new configuration which has a smaller amount of energy associated with it, and this change can be measured by the change in the total mass of the particles in the two configurations. The difference in energy is 'converted' from a stored form to radiated force particles - basically photons of radiation, and kinetic energy of motion of the matter particles.

So there is 'matter', which is the most clearly, and by definition, 'material'.

Then there is energy, which can be considered manifest in evanescent 'force' particles which mediate the interactions between matter particles.

Then we have patterns and structure, which distinguish different aggregations of matter particles, such as atoms, molecules, etc. They are not 'material', they are attributes of particular collections of material particles.

If there is a clear structure along the time dimension, we call it a 'process'.

Simple attributes of particles, even particles of matter, such as mass, size, velocity, etc are 'immaterial' in themselves.

Mass is NOT matter, it is an attribute of both matter and energy.

Similarly, pattern and process are not material things in themselves, they are attributes of collections of matter particles interacting in particular ways.

If a God has any complexity of structure and process, which seems unavoidable in something that has a 'mind' which can make decisions, he must have some equivalent of both matter and energy.

Of course, we get Theists claiming he is 'formless', a pure essence of 'will', which is totally unjustified crap, but is another version of the old thinking which imagined that every identifiable 'entity' had some 'essence' which defined it, and this essence was neither material nor purely abstract.

Whereas we see that what distinguishes different objects is their form and structure, which determine any higher-level attributes, such as life, rather than a 'life-force', awareness, rather than a 'soul', and so on.

The early ideas of the four 'elements' are a simpler example of this old backward thinking. What distinguishes different substances is not the different amounts of the 'essences' of 'earth', 'air', 'fire', and 'water' that they are composed of, but  different arrangements of the same few types of fundamental matter particles and the energy states of those particles, which in turn determine whether they manifest any of those old 'elemental' attributes.

Ideas, concepts, exist as patterns in the minds of thinking beings, as descriptions of real or imagined 'things' or processes, or arrangements of 'things'.

They cannot 'act', any more than can God, which is just a concept, except as they inspire a living, material being.

information theory and physics:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_information

In physics, physical information refers generally to the information that is contained in a physical system. Its usage in quantum mechanics (ie. quantum information) is important, for example in the concept of quantum entanglement to describe effectively direct or causal relationships between apparently distinct or spatially separated particles.

Information itself may be loosely defined as "that which can distinguish one thing from another"^{[citation needed]}. The information embodied by a thing can thus be said to be the identity of the particular thing itself, that is, all of its properties, all that makes it distinct from other (real or potential) things. It is a complete description of the thing, but in a sense that is divorced from any particular language. We might even consider the sum total of the information in a thing to be the ideal essence of the thing itself, i.e. its form in the sense of Plato's eidos (The Forms).

There is an idea that there is a dual aspect to information: the structure of the physical component and then 2) the structure of the meaning or idea that is informed. It can be that this is not a true dualism but an emergent property that is inherent and fundamental part of the universe. We mistake this process called experience as something transcendent or distinct from matter rather than anon-reducible property like gravity. The experimentation at Cern to verify or falsify the holographic principle will either see a fuzziness at a very low level timespace which would indicate what we are studying is the information rather than the physical or it will be nice and crisp and will indicate the actual physical structure of timespace.  At least that is best I could understand it from a documentary I saw.

Something like 'particle' is still essential to capture the essential observation of quantum theory, as embodied in the word 'quantum' itself, that matter and energy come in discrete chunks, neither being infinitely divisible.

Matter and energy can be interconverted, NOT mass. Both energy and matter particles have mass. The idea of part of the mass of a particle being converted to energy is NOT consistent with quantum mechanics. Part of the mass of a particle is due to that associated with its energy state.

The energy released in fusion/fission is NOT mass being 'converted' to energy, that is a common misconception.

In fission, it is some of the energy in the forces holding the nucleus together being released.

In fusion, it can be considered as the release of energy from the strong force as it pulls the particles together once they are forced close enough to overcome the electrostatic repulsion.

For large nucleii, it requires more energy to hold them together than for smaller nucleii, because the strong force which holds the nucleons together is less effective for nucleons further apart, and once some collision separates parts of the nucleus enough for electrostatic repulsion to take over, they fly apart at great velocity.

You could regard the mass equivalent of the energy in the strong force associated with each particle as part of the mass of the particle, but I think it is a misunderstanding to think of mass being 'converted' to energy. That energy still has mass, just as the effective mass of the energy of a photon allows it to interact with a gravitational field. So the mass is still there, it has not been 'converted' into something else.

I think of it more as energy being converted between different forms, all with an associated mass, as per E = mc².

 

OK, as Bob points out, what we call particles are the indivisible chunks of stuff from which the universe is made. However, on the level of quantum physics, it is probably best not to think of particles as tiny little balls.

 

Everything that can be described needs to have a name. So particle is what is used as a convention but really, that is only a label that we use to get to a common understanding. Really, you could use some other word as a label and the science would still work out, provided that you got everyone else to understand what you are doing. If it amused you, you could refer to the same thing as being different species of critter and everything would be fine. Just don't expect that an electron will wag it's tail (well, unless you choose to call some property of an electron a tail and measure it in the unit of wags).

 

When you get into this world, you are going to find a great deal of such labels. For the most part, they are a convenience for reaching a common understanding. Quarks have colors but one should not expect that with a sufficiently powerful microscope, you would ever be able to see the property of red. For that matter, what would you expect anti-red to look like?

 

Thinking further, I personally do not care for the language in the Copenhagen school of thought that holds that the act of measurement collapses the waveform. As I said above, it is a convenience to make a point of discussion but it is one that leads to a misunderstanding for beginners.

 

If you think about this a bit more, how could that even work? You would need observers to have been present at the beginning of the universe constantly checking the status of every single quanta or else there would not even be a system worth discussing.

 

Really, we can get at this another way just as easily. Nobody has ever seen an electron and never will. So in what sense can we even say that we have measured it? When a scientist looks at his computer screen, he may see a graphic representation of an assembly of particles but the image on the screen is only a representation of what is going on inside his particle detector. The particles of interest are interacting with particles in the detector, which in turn are causing electrons to flow through the wires of machines and so on through brazillions of intermediate steps to end up building an image on the scientist's monitor.

 

Every single interaction along the way can be thought of as a measurement of the interaction between two particles and those result in a cascade that runs down the system to an end where someone is looking at a monitor. However, all of that can take place without the scientist being there to see what is happening.

 

Actually, that happens all the time in accelerator labs. The events are recorded for later analysis and not looked at by a human until long after the actual event. With that in mind, how would it be accurate to say that the human scientist played a role in an interaction that was over and done the day before he watched the recorded event?

Well I am certainly uncomfortable with the Copenhagen school and Non Neuman who apparently goes further. But it appears the decoherence approach has not been widely accepted or received.  And I understand the idea of observers at the beginning of the universe being a problem and Wheelers formulation that all was in a probability state into conscious creatures evolved (another absurdity but accepted by some nontheless).  My concern as well as all of this is that if you treat a photon, electron, etc.; as particles you get particles if you treat them  waves you get waves does that not reflect a concern about the representation rather than the reality of it. I am also aware of a cascade that runs down the system but then the argument goes to work out the numbers the wave function collapses once the scientist or tech observes the results ( Schrodinger's Cat) and ongoing experiments by D. Bierman. The other problem I do not understand apart from the observers effect is the Quantum Zeno effect which states that the decay of a particle is delayed by the observation of the particle. I think that the Copenhagen Shool for the most part does not care about the theory that observation effects the result and stick to the mathematics which is fine by me. And perhaps that IS as you say the dilemma of reflecting it prose but the prose is in turn effecting al lot of other science such as wacky presentations of consciousness by Penrose/Hameroff, Von Neuman's ideas applied to multi-world theories, computer science, AI, etc.;

Wiki by the way:

The photon is massless, has no electric charge, and does not decay spontaneously in empty space. A photon has two possible polarization states and is described by exactly three continuous parameters: the components of its wave vector, which determine its wavelength λ and its direction of propagation. The photon is the gauge boson for electromagnetism,[11] and therefore all other quantum numbers of the photon (such as lepton number, baryon number, and flavour quantum numbers) are zero.[

Photons are emitted in many natural processes. For example, when a charge is accelerated it emits synchrotron radiation. During a molecular, atomic or nuclear transition to a lower energy level, photons of various energy will be emitted, from infrared light to gamma rays. A photon can also be emitted when a particle and its corresponding antiparticle are annihilated (for example, electron-positron annihilation).

The photon is currently believed to be strictly massless, but this is an experimental question. If the photon is not a strictly massless particle, it would not move at the exact speed of light in vacuum, c. Its speed would be lower and depend on its frequency. Relativity would be unaffected by this; the so-called speed of light, c, would then not be the actual speed at which light moves, but a constant of nature which is the maximum speed that any object could theoretically attain in space-time.[19] Thus, it would still be the speed of space-time ripples (gravitational waves and gravitons), but it would not be the speed of photons.

A massive photon would have other effects as well. Coulomb's law would be modified and the electromagnetic field would have an extra physical degree of freedom. These effects yield more sensitive experimental probes of the photon mass than the frequency dependence of the speed of light. If Coulomb's law is not exactly valid, then that would cause the presence of an electric field inside a hollow conductor when it is subjected to an external electric field. This thus allows one to test Coulomb's law to very high precision.[20] A null result of such an experiment has set a limit of m ≲ 10−14 eV/c2.

Sharper upper limits have been obtained in experiments designed to detect effects caused by the Galactic vector potential. Although the galactic vector potential is very large because the galactic magnetic field exists on very long length scales, only the magnetic field is observable if the photon is massless. In case of a massive photon, the mass term \scriptstyle\frac{1}{2} m^2 A_{\mu}A^{\mu} would affect the galactic plasma. The fact that no such effects are seen implies an upper bound on the photon mass of m < 3×10−27
 eV/c2.[22] The galactic vector potential can also be probed directly by measuring the torque exerted on a magnetized ring. Such methods were used to obtain the sharper upper limit of 10−18eV/c2 given by the Particle Data Group.

These sharp limits from the non-observation of the effects caused by the galactic vector potential have been shown to be model dependent. If the photon mass is generated via the Higgs mechanism then the upper limit of m≲10−14 eV/c2 from the test of Coulomb's law is valid.

Photons inside superconductors do develop a nonzero effective rest mass; as a result, electromagnetic forces become short-range inside superconductors.

I appreciate the time and effort. This was certainly not my area of studies but it does trickle over into philosophy with obvious detrimental effects...therefore all the questions.

 

So does that make a photon pure infinite momentum? My understanding is that if you try to accelerate something with mass it takes more and more energy to the point of an infinite sum???? Also the idea of locality seems to give me some of those concerns that are the phenomenological problem with Zeno thus the Copenhagen stuff. Would a photon at rest be simply a geometric point? Is there any particle actually at rest? I understand the inability to measure location and momentum at the same time.

 

To me the problem with Zeno stuff is applying an extensionless point to a process and getting counter-intuitive results much like the wave particle duality and the idea that observation effects the outcome.

A few really heavy duty engineers I know (one in particular) how have tried to explain heavy duty things to me, say the same thing.

I primarily use 'spatial reasoning'. As in, 'Euclidian Geometry' spatial reasoning. It's my 'nature'.

They all say the same thing, that, at a certain point, mathematics becomes the 'way to see' the mechanics at work.

And this is where I get 'left behind', so to speak...

 

In some ways, I'm really glad. I never liked math. But, I always liked geometry, and loved physics (because I could 'visualize' the mechanics).

I have a question, that is possibly a question that is a not a 'correct' question, or improperly 'framed'.

Is it possible that there are 'shock waves' that travel along a medium, faster than the 'velocity' of the particles/property of particles (and/or/ including radiations in spherical ripple effects), that impacts a greater (or secondary) 'force/effect' than that of the actual medium that is propagating in a certain vector (thus 'something' travelling faster than the fixed speed of light).

 

I guess I'm visualizing a sort of 'boundary layer'.

Or, a shock wave effect, kind of in the same way a nuclear bomb's 'effect' is greater, when it (it=it's center of origin) is detonated prior to (it's center of origin) arriving to it's intended 'ground zero', due to the outer shock wave propagation (which I believe, the effect of which, was first observed after the Halifax Explosion).

Not sure If I explained myself adequately...

The other 'effect' I'm wondering about, is if there is any analogy of 'sympathetic' vibrations (sic) or effects similar to the example of striking a tuning fork, which will animate another tuning fork (of the same frequency) via a 'medium' that interconnects the two.

I'm not sure if this is the basis for supersymmetry, or string theory, or is somehow included in either/both theories.

Of course then, there are other questions, that could be the natural result of that, which would be nodes, harmonics, overtones, intermodulation, harmonic non linearities, hysteresis, feedback and regeneration/echo systems, etc, etc...

 

Here's another more general question.

I've never resonated (no pun intended) with the naked assertion that 'causal loops' cannot exist. I think it's actually a very 'weak' and overly elastic theory, to even make the (very powerful) suggestion that causal loop systems are impossible (kind of like insinuating that a fully balanced, fully closed system (self regenerating) must be impossible).

Which of course, logically extends to 'visualization' of infinite regress seeming 'intuitively impossible' (when perhaps the 'idea' of infinite regress might simply be an improper/insufficient priori/pre priori manner in observing/not being able to locate causal loops, as a conglomerate/amalgam/subset of complex interdimensional interactions and chains).

 

Ya!!!!!  Try and say all that 3 times fast!!!

 

No matter how the universe, or metaverse, whatever...actually works, I can't think of a more intellectually lazy way to try and 'robustly' attempt to explain the mechanics of 'reality', than to simple 'fabricate', or 'emerge into existence', or 'interject' a mythical godlike figment of imagination.

I think it's like opening your mouth, and removing all doubt, that you are wholly inadequate to even contemplate the 'base' understanding of the mechanics that are easily observed, understood, and completely sufficient and compatible with reality, and that you should automatically be awarded a tin foil dunce cap, and be made to stand in the corner......of another room......where you're not going to disrupt deep thought.

 

 

1. Photons

The idea of a photon having zero rest mass is what allows it to travel at the speed of light, since it has no mass of its own. The mass it appears to have is purely due to the energy it has. A photon only has meaning as a way to encapsulate the idea that light, as with any other energy, appears to come in minimum sized (in terms of energy) discrete 'chunks'.

I was interested to read of attempts to measure the mass of a photon, to see if it really did accord with the current theory.

A 'photon' is not necessarily anything tiny in physical extent. I often used to torture my imaginination trying to imagine one photon of electromagnetic radiation at AM broadcast frequencies and below, where the wavelength is approaching the kilometer scale.

2. Causal loops:

redneF, without doing any specific research, I would think that 'causal loops' most certainly not only exist but are a fundamental aspect of complex systems. They were an important part of my engineering studies, where they were known as feed-back loops. We spent a lot of time on the criteria for stability of such loops, which are part of every servo-system, every electronic amplifier, and are responsible for 'homeostasis' in living things.

All of which makes any idea of 'cause' necessarily being 'greater' than its effect even more out of touch with reality.

3. Shock waves.

Maybe not quite what you were thinking of, but look up Cerenkov radiation, if you weren't already aware of it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation

On top of us clearly demonstrating that the concept of an Ambrahamic god (or any god) is completely illogical;  from their base premise, we can also clearly demonstrate the reasons why theism should never, ever be taught in schools, as a science.

Check out this thread, and some of the mentally retarded displays that have emerged.

 

http://www.rationalresponders.com/forum/28962

 

We can honestly, correctly, and unequivocally claim, that there are people of average, and above average intelligence, that can still possess severe cognitive dysfunctions and handicaps, that are more alarming because they are self inflicted, and based on delusion.

Those who suffer from this, are a detriment and handicap to themselves, and go about, undiagnosed

Theism is a self inflicted cognitive dysfuntion.

We have 100% proof positive.

 

Please see a mental professional.

Many books are also available, to help you yourself clearly understand your dysfunction.

 

Technically, anti-red is Cyan (blue-green), AKA as its complementary colour, what you get when you subtract Red from White light, or invert its spectral distribution.

Next time, I'll be sure to insert a notice that my post content may or may not be tongue-in-cheek.