In a book called "Time, the hidden dimension of the missing physics" Frank Atkinson deals a blow to Einstein's theory of relativity - - and thereby goes a lot of the subsequent theories concerning the Universe - straight to the bin.
This is heavy, but hugely interesting, stuff.
I find it quite incomprehensible that the establishment still hangs on to an artificial device such as Dark Matter and that E=mc2 stays unchallenged, considering the main argument that things ARE relative, according to Einstein, and therefore a train, passing you at the speed of light, should make YOU weigh a million tonnes.
How about mass staying constant and the 'speed' of light being variable?
We know that time goes at a different 'speed', depending on the speed of the device in which time is measured and how close or far from a considerable mass the device is.
Our Caesium clocks prove this fact.
Atkinson argues very well for the relative speed of light and it comes across quite elegantly, when he highlights the consequences.
Time, as a driver, is a truly fascinating idea.
It is the ultimate generator of gravity, one of the least understood concepts in physics and the weakest of the basic forces.
Understanding 'time' will generate understanding on both a quantum and a cosmic scale.
As all mass is energy, i.e. atoms tied together by the strongest universal force, in constant 'oscillation', time is an intrinsic part of the atoms' characteristic. There simply is no 'process' without time and we seem to have understood this concept reasonably well.
It is on a cosmic scale we still fumble around in blindness, having gone down a blind alley without seeing the effect on light, as it passes through the universe. Time-dilation even explains the red-shift and the faulty notion of Dark Matter.
Einstein's train.
Watching the celebrity professor Brian Cox on TV is both interesting and sad, as he comes across as stuck in the theories of the 1930s, only slightly modified by Hawking. Quite disappointing, but understandable - it is probably not a good career move to go against Hawking and Einstein. But it doesn't even take a lot of mathematics to prove Einstein wrong - using his own example of a lightning fast train speeding past an observer on the embankment.
To the observer, the train will be a vertical line - front to back compressed - at infinite mass.
To a person on the train everything would seem normal.
But if you shine a laser light at 45 degrees from the front of a train compartment and one from the back of the same compartment, letting the light hit the middle of the compartment at, say, 2m up on a screen - then the consequence would be, close to the speed of light, that the laser beam would hit the screen simultaneously at two different spots.
Clearly not possible.
Let alone that the train would suck you up, if it passed you at the speed of light, as it according to Albert would have an infinite inertial mass.
Not so, I think - Inertial Mass and Gravitational Mass must be separate entities at speeds close to that of light. The difference is explained by time dilation, but that's another chapter.
Dark Matter, Red Shift and Background Radiation from the Big Bang.
The concept of 'time-dilation' and its impact upon light, as it travels through an endless Universe, delivers a very elegant explanation concerning the redshift of light and the supposed background radiation from the Big Bang.
Dark Matter should be dropped as a theory more akin to a religious belief than a fact. It is an artifice, invented as we couldn't explain our observations about a (possibly) expanding Universe and as our equations didn't seem to work. Well, perhaps the equations are wrong. I shall come back to this later - suffice to say, that the invisible Dark Matter, which possesses mass, but emits no energy radiation, according to conventional Newtonian laws would have attracted 'stuff' for billions of years and hence not be Dark Matter any more - like the invisible man, who could only be seen when dressed.
Why is it that the Establishment has such a hard time letting go of clearly dubious theories? Why invent Dark Matter, ostensibly constituting 70% of matter in the universe, to explain an apparent, but probably misunderstood, accelerating expansion of the Universe. Personally I think it would be more credible to believe it is God blowing up a Universal balloon - - -
Time dilation and Redshift (like the Doppler Effect) of light.
The redshift is normally used to explain the expanding Universe - but how about an infinite Universe, where light passes through an endless number of time dilations as it passes millions of galaxies on the way to an Earth-observer? This would surely explain the red shift very easily.
An infinite Universe would also explain the 'Background Radiation' from the so-called 'Big Bang'.
If light has come to Earth from everywhere, for ever, in an infinite Universe, the sky would be brilliant as the Sun, you might say? Not so, I say, as the pulling to and fro of electromagnetic waves caused by the time dilation in the vicinity of huge galactic masses would suck up the energy to such an extent, that we end up with the mere 2.3 degrees Kelvin we can observe.
Redshifted beyond recognition, i.e. way into the invisible spectrum.
Yes, exactly: "Dark Matter".
And perhaps there is a better explanation of Black Holes: Light redshifted into the invisible spectrum by an infinite number of rather awesome events - collapsing electron stars and possibly "local" Big Bangs?
No Dark Matter, No Big Bang, an Infinite Universe, no Black Holes - - - - the mind boggles.
Errare Humanum Est.
Studying the universe today appears to be more of a mathematical exercise (e.g. string theory, Event Horizons) than a search for cosmologically based evidence. But once a theory has become super-glued, it takes a superhuman power to unglue it and it is nigh on impossible to get rid of Einstein's Time-Space curvature and the fallacious arguments in both the General and Special Relativity Theory - e.g. the foreshortening of distance in the direction of travel as speed increases.
Understanding 'Time Dilation' provides a simple and much more credible theory.
As a student of electronics engineering a life time ago, I was once assigned the task to unravel a differential equation that modelled a certain behaviour for automatic control. It was claimed that as a 1st-2nd-3rd differential equation it got closer and closer to modelling the curve observed in reality, yet at the 4th differential it 'flipped'. The effect was described in several books of the day as fact - copying the initial calculation error. I proved that all the books were wrong - higher differentials modelled reality better and better.
Since then I have always asked: " why - or why not" - when new ideas came up or old ideas were challenged.
Authority doesn't always mean 'right'.
There are too many convenient explanations that defy even an irrational mind - e.g. galaxies 40Bill lightyears away in a 14Bill year old universe, and yet they are visible to us??
Apparently someone has recently found the magnetic monopole, extant at very low temperatures. While the concept of an electric monopole (plus or minus charged) is easy to understand, this is almost like saying: this coin only has one side. Was it a South or a North? Consequences?
Our understanding of particle characteristics, size, behaviour and appearance also seems to change, although Higg's Boson remains elusive or even non-extant. If that is the case, then CERN's particle accelerator, built for millions of $$, is looking in vain for physic's version of the “squaring of the circle”.
The size of the Universe is still an unresolved matter - except it now seems clear that at least it is not contracting. Status is a belief in an accelerating expansion, but somehow we shy away from considering infinity!
What if it really
is infinite?
Does it not mean that an event with even a 10-to-the-minus-100,000th of a chance to happen (or any number of additional 0's you'd like to put on), would have happened?
Perhaps it did!!
Physics, Religion and our place in the Universe - a thought.
Our more objective understanding of who we are, i.e. free of endless magic (often called religion), is slowly being unravelled. Controversy started for real with Darwin 150 years ago.
New knowledge appears as we peel off the onion-layers covering the "truth" whatever that might be - and the more we peel, the more it becomes obvious there is no going back to a time of ignorance. That is – unless you use your brain to grow moss, rather than to think, like the Creationists.
Personally I am convinced, that if we ever arrive at the onion's centre, the final question will be: "But hang on - where is God then?"
And the answer will be: "He/She never was".
Things, time, matter - the Universe - just "is".
The fact that we can't comprehend this concept, in particular the concept of infinity, shows how small we are.
As much as I support the idea that we must keep asking "Why" and "What" - who says we are supposed to comprehend anything at such an unfathomable level?
Perhaps it is our implicit understanding, our subconsciously and finally giving up on questions we can't stop asking, that turns us towards rites and mumbo-jumbo like digging up old popes and frantically looking for miracles they have performed.
Perhaps we feel that this is easier to understand than understanding the Universe?
Jane Goodall's discovery that we share not only 99% of our genes with chimpanzees, but also most of our minds, emotions and tribal behaviours, is also easier to understand - and closer to reality and fact. One only needs to compare the Chimps’ cannibalistic traits and aggressive killer instinct with the human behaviour in Kosovo in the 1990s and Sri Lanka in 2008-10 to understand what I mean.
Perhaps we should concentrate our research energies on chimp studies instead of trying to unravel the Universe. Learning from others, who mirror our own behaviour, tend to have an enlightening effect. The retrieved knowledge could help us live better and more meaningful lives, moving even further away from the apes than caused by the split from the common ancestral tree 5 mill years ago.
Ultimately we should accept that in 3 Bill years we will all burn up as the sun dies - if we haven't self destructed much earlier.
An infinite Universe will have lost nothing.
.
