Re: Getting out of this world?
- From: Tina_Hall@xxxxxxxxxxx (Tina Hall)
- Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2008 19:21:00 GMT+1
Nuny@xxxxxxx <Alien8752@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Tina_H...@xxxxxxxxxxx (Tina Hall) wrote:
N...@xxxxxxx <Alien8...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
An analogy might be conscious dreams (some people notice when
they're dreaming and can then do stuff). There are no rules to
what you can do in dreams, no order. There's just your mind.
AKA lucid dreaming;
Yep.
I do a lot of that, and yes there are rules in that I can frinst
grow wings if I choose to but they are no use for digging tunnels.
That's rules you or your subconscious make, though; you think
they're no use for digging tunnels.
And focussing on the destination is just digressing.
I think we have another usable option...
Option for what?
What's needed is a possibility (no matter how small) that during
testing something or experimenting (with real physics) something
weird happens that may or may not be anticipated, that has
people leave reality.
From an entirely differnt angle: Leaving reality happens every
day, people die all over the place of various causes. Their
thoughts cease to exist, the body fails. What happens to them is
up to speculation. I say nothing; they are gone as soon as the
brain no longer supports their thoughts.
Entering the Nodeworld is unrelated to dying, only has the
similarity of leaving the real world. But with that thought in
mind you might easier see what I mean.
Except they take their bodies with them.
Yes. They need the brain to keep thinking. :) (And the body to
support the brain.)
It's only a half-way analogy to explain the 'leave here' angle.
This is awkward. Cutting-edge physics suggests that matter
sustains the spacetime it exists in just as much as spacetime
supports the matter it contains.
But said physics don't apply in the Nodeworld. They're fine and
right here.
Then there's a problem with their bodies 'existing' there.
Not a problem for you to wonder about. That's entirely there.
We need to nail down what 'exists' means in that context.
If there's anything weird that transforms them into an equivalent,
I'll find that out while writing. The physics angle only has to do
with the here and now, leaving it. To get who-knows-where.
Then they probably don't properly speaking live in what could
be called a 'universe'.
Exactly! :)'
That's a finer detail I found out while writing (I know I
started with 'other reality/dimension/world in a different
universe', trying to describe what I'm looking for. The 'other
reality' still applies).
That's what got me thinking of this other option and you wrote
some things that triggered, for me, a way to describe it.
Other option?
That's the sort of linkage I'm talking about, not a one-to-one
correspondence between our mundane phsyical constants' values
and any putative ones there. The existence and values taken of
any, all, or none of the physical constants can be willed by
the locals, but the warp and weft of the place itself must be
amenable to being made into a livable environment for humans.
There's nothing that the place itself is. The place itself isn't
really.
That's one thing...
....?
I heard about that, but don't even see the problem.Relativity only works if spacetime is continuous, but quantum
mechanics shows that it is likely itty bitty discrete chunks.
I accept that that's what people who know that stuff works,
while suspecting that they just don't know enough to actually
see what's really going on.
As in you believe that what's 'actually, really' going on is
that spacetime is continuous?
I don't know what's meant by 'continuous' in this context. What I
meant by what I wrote is that I believe that - even though currently
people have itsy bitsy theories, one here, one there, and over
there's another, that they can't get to agree even though they can
each test to be true - they _do_ actually hang together by something
that's not yet known. Like looking at a picture of a landscape,
there's a tree here, a mushroom there, and over there's a house.
People don't understand the canvas yet, nor do they know what the
whole picture shows.
Evidence shows it 'actually, really isn't'.
I guess that evidence may just be the dog on the lawn (in the
metaphorical picture).
This is not just somebody else's opinion, equal to your opinion,
it's the result of very precise experiments.
Based on what's known. That people think there's all there is to
know to be sure is an opinion.
When you actually look at it, instead of operating on what you
want it to be, it's discontinuous.
I don't know what you mean by discontinuous in this context. Last
time someone mentioned it, he was talking about (I think) chaos
theory, and it sounded as if he meant that things happen without a
reason, not based on what happened before. I on the other hand say
that the folks observing that can't predict it accurately because
they don't have all the billions of parameters that play into it,
only perhaps (relative to the billions) twenty. They don't see the
rest, and thus think stuff happens out of nowhere, unpredictable.
Which is pretty silly.
If that upsets you, you aren't alone.
I don't know what in that should upset me.
Einstein didn't like it and tried desperately to disprove
it for decades, but couldn't.
That just sparks the urge to insert some anecdote about the cat
here, which is called Einstein (not my fault - I'd have called her
Scowl). :)
And this leads to the final, important bit.
Yes?
You know the strings of the net merely represent the general
direction a mass will follow if it's rolling around on the net,
yes?
Which then loses it any connection to what it's supposed to
depict.
Only because you keep looking at the space between the strings
and thinking it's the same as the narrow strips of space occupied
by the strings,
Not really, I think it would be the space between the strips of
space occupied by the strings. Which doesn't match space; it isn't
strings. It's 3D.
which any good Relativist will naturally do.
They would? I don't know enough to say I know about relativity, or
whether I'd understand it.
Unfortunately, the closest thing we have today to a merging of
Relativity and quantum mechanics, called Loop Quantum Gravity,
says that the spaces between the strings and knots simply ain't
there.
I thought the net&ball thing was supposed to explain relativity and
bent space, which means it should agree with that at least, even if
not with quantum mechanics (whatever that may say, about itself and
whatever contradicts relativity).
So that doesn't really make senes.
Btw, my objection to the net&ball thing is that the space between
the strings and knots can't be part of what's really going on; in
other words they ain't there. Thus the model simply doesn't work to
explain anything.
If it were, there'd be more strings and knots,
No, there'd be a 3D 'plane' (in other words: space). If you want to
use anything material (to depict mostly empty space, whyever you'd
want to do that), you'll have to use a giant elastic blob of
plastic. Or the inside (not the surface!) of an air-filled mattress.
but there is a minimum possible length that a bit of string can
have.
The string model doesn't work, so whatever you want to say using it
doesn't arrive. (And I have no idea what you imagine a 'bit of
string' to be for real. Never mind 'what bit'.)
Again, you may not like it because it doesn't fit your intuition,
I don't like it that you keep going on trying to explain something
with a model that makes no sense to me, and thus can't explain
anything, because I have no idea what you're talking about.
Why don't you say plain out what you want to say?
but that's just because your intuition is derived from looking at
the universe at human-sized scale.
As I have no idea what you're talking about, no idea about what you
think doesn't fit my intuition, I have no idea whether that's
correct.
What happens at really small scales doesn't directly influence our
survival so we didn't evolve senses that allow us to see what's
'actually, really' going on.
I am not thinking about small scales, but large. Space, with planets
and stuff.
I can only guess what small scales you are thinking about.
The image actually does faithfully represent what it was
designed to depict.
It makes no sense, and doesn't work to explain something. How about
a different analogy?
But it's no good talking about images that don't work. Can you
explain it another way?
No. I could lie to you and give you a nice, comforting
continuous imagery, but I will not do that.
Well, in that case I have no idea what you're talking about, or what
you want to be (dis)continuous.
Imagine stacking a bunch of those nets vertically, each
separated by the length of string between the knots, and add a
piece of string between each vertical pair of knots. You now
have a three-dimensional lattice of knots held together by the
lengths of string; a 3D netting. Stick a massive object in
there and it effectively pulls all the lengths of string that
point directly at it, toward it;
I still don't like the strings. Why not space? Why something
that's just made up of lines, with lots of room in between where
nothing happens? (Even if you line them up with a millemeter or
less distance, it's still just strings, not the whole space
filled.)
I don't think that what really happens happens along lines, I
think it happens everywhere in the area, without joints or holes
in between, and for that the net example doesn't work.
What you or I or Einstein or anyone 'thinks' does NOT matter.
What matters is what 'actually, really' happens, and it simply is
not continuous.
Since you're not thinking about large scales, planets and stuff, I
don't know where you think what actually really happens is not
continuous. I'm thinking about bent space, why light does funny
things 'going around' stars, as observed from here.
What are you thinking about?
If you want to write a 'travel between worlds' story in which the
'real world' side is set in a continuum universe, it won't be
science fiction, it'll be straight-out fantasy.
What do you mean by 'continuum universe', and what makes you think I
want to do that? (Really, I have no idea how you got there.)
Now hold onto your hat because we're nearing the good part.
I hope the 'good' in it is that I'll know what you're talking about.
You'd have to get down to atoms/molecules to find room in
between, and when you're there you might as well say what's
really going on.
This is the last important bit. Quantum Loop Gravity
specifically talks about 'atoms of spacetime' analogous to matter
atoms;
Which has nothing to do with the net&ball that's got lots of empty
space between it. The analogy has larger-than-planet sized holes in
it, and that's what doesn't make sense in the model.
discrete chunks of spacetime that connect up in lattices.
You've already got chunks of matter in space. If you want something
analogous to matter atoms, you'll have to kick out the 'space' in
'spacetime'.
Else you'll have 'housepaint' analogous to a 'house', or something.
Not rigid rectangular lattices, but those and triangular and
whatever geometry the actions of the matter and energy in the
space they describe is doing force them to take.
The lattices don't work, thus other shapes won't work either; they
explain nothing at all, because the model doesn't make sense. So I
have no idea what you are trying to say.
The 'atoms of spacetime' can make and break the connecting strings
as needed to support the required sorts of vibration in the
strings.
I have no idea what you're talking about. Strings as analogy doesn't
work. Never mind the vibration.
this deforms the 3D lattice the same way as the net/ball
visualization.
3D space isn't a lattice, so the analogy doesn't touch what
really happens.
Yes it is, and yes it does.
Nope. At least I'm not a cube of net with one foot big holes in it,
never mind larger-than-planet sized holes. And that's what the
net&ball depicts.
If you cannot kick your belief system out of your way we need not
proceed. But maybe you can...
That I don't have foot-sized holes isn't just a belief. Just as that
there isn't a thin string of space every 100000 kilometer between
here and the sun, with Nodeworld-like _nothing_ in between.
Ok, so to use your words, we rotate them along all three axis,Bingo! Where'd it all go? The Other Place, of course.
so that there's nothing left.
:)
But where's the Other Place? Right here...
That actually isn't. Unles by 'here' you mean 'all of this universe
squeezed into something smaller than an atom, then thrown out the
door to look at from the outside'.
A place whre the 3D world doesn't exist is what I have in mind
for their reality/dimension, though. And their made homes being
just illusions out of the complex minds that contain their space
doesn't sound too far off.
That was the final thing that lit the flashbulb above my head.
Suppose the Other Place is _in between the lattice lines_ of our
universe?
There are no lattice lines.
Oh my, you dropped your hat.
No. I'm wondering that if you were talking about empty space inside
atoms, what you're saying would actually make sense[*], but you're
not. You're talking about planet sized square 2D holes in 3D cosmos.
[*] If you kick out the lattice lines and look at just the atoms.
I'm using that space in the ME; that's where they've got their extra
magic bit. Things get weird on sub-atomic levels, so I can just
decide that on that scale, everywhere is the same, thus the ability
to 'reach' across human-scale distances, going through the no-
distance on a sub-atomic scale. (Like reaching in here and coming
out there, if you could.)
But that's another story.
For the Nodeworld, that doesn't work. That isn't just 'here on
subatomic level', it's not here.
The lattice that is our space is described and limited by what
sorts of vibrations the lattice can support and how fast those
vibrations can propagate; that generates what we call 'physics'
including speed of light limits and so on.
As the whole lattice idea makes no sense, that paragraph doesn't
either.
But the space between the strings is not accessible from here
because the vibrations normally won't transfer off the strings;
No, there's no space between strings, because there are no strings.
Else you'd have said planet-sized holes in the sky.
Never mind whatever vibrations.
Besides, it isn't a theory or experiment, but an attempt at an
analogy.
Actual theory; Loop Quantum Gravity (from which by the way is
derived Loop Quantum Cosmology which is about the history of our
universe maybe not requiring a big bang to get started).
I guess it's too complicated to understand what it's talking about.
(The term itself doesn't yield an image.)
So far I've got an image of gravity swapped about by a fairly
large construct. now, what's the physical theory behind that?
What terms (and perhaps formulas, just to see what they look
like - spelled out rather than as just characters) does the
scientist have in mind?
It might be better for you to shut down your newsreader and
open your web browser, and go to Wikipedia for instance:
I'd prefer a source that's reliable, not something anyone can edit.
Without knowing about the subject, I have no way to check whether
what it says is true. Thus I'm not going to that website for
anything.
If I tried to write them here you likely won't be able to read
them properly what with all the subscripts, superscripts, and
Greek characters. ;>)
That's why I said 'spelled out rather than just as characters'; the
characters in a formula don't tell me anything, so no need to look
at (or type) them.
The terms our scientist would be thinking in would include the
Ricci curvature tensor, scalar curvature, metric tensor,
cosmological constant, gravitational constant, speed of light,
and stress-energy tensor.
Allright. I don't know what he would mean by 'tensor', or what that
'Ricci' is.
That's the terminology of the Einstein field equations, the
solutions to which describe the metric (form of the structure) of
spacetime including the inertial motions of masses in it; for Loop
Quantum Gravity:
Sounds interesting.
you can add renormalization, Planck length ( also Planck scale,
mass, time, energy),
Unfortunately, I don't know anything about Planck.
diffeomorphism, quantum field theory, spinfoam, gauge groups and
quantum groups, torsion (of spacetime, meaning empty space with a
built-in twist), and so on.
Sounds interseting (no idea what diffeomorphism is, though, and can
only guess at the rest).
(BTW I just noticed that Wikipedia automatically gives me the
English language pages indicated by the "en", but it comes in
Deutsch as well if that's your first language.)
I prefer English. (My stories aren in English, too.)
(That's the really important bit of this post; the following is
another digression into details that may or may not influence
your understanding of what I've written)
I might have understood it if you had left out the solar system
sized nets.
What do you think magic is?
Something that's outside physical laws.No, that's what gods do.
Or magic. To me it doesn't matter much whether it's god-gifts or
magic, the only difference is that a god would be a character
(for which I need, for example, source and motivation, both not
comparable to human), and that magic is just something extra
without a person attached.
Not 'god-gifts', I mean literally what they do, as in
'miracles' being unphysical events in the sense that physics does
not apply.
For me that's the same as magic, only it has a deity doing it (among
other things handing out gifts, thus 'god-gifts'), which puts it in
a different mental category. The working is the same, only it
doesn't need a deity as source. Instead it's part of the world some
way. An extra doesnt't-adhere-to-phyiscs bit.
The Xtian example of Jesus multiplying fishes and loaves of bread
for instance violates the conservation of mass and energy; where'd
the extra mass of the fish and bread come from?
For me, the thing that violates physics would be (with an example of
turning a pebble into a strawberry) that someone does that with just
their thoughts. He picks apart the atoms and puts them back together
in an order that is eatable, with vitamins and everything, turning
excess matter into air (oxygen, nitrogen, carbondioxide, whatever
else in the correct percentages), or taking missing matter from the
air or something else in the surroundings. It's manipulating matter
in a way that you can't really manipulate it. Starting with thoughts
influencing a pebble a foot away from the brain having said
thoughts.
The character could have it look like multiplying strawberries, too,
and you wouldn't know where the mass came from, that it's actually
taken out of nearby ground. (At one point in the ME, a character
moves a small rock into his trouser pocket and changes it into a
precious ring - just for a cover story explaining their presense; in
the country they're in magic isn't well known, and he claims they've
been robbed and left with nothing but what they have in their
pockets, using the ring to properly get the local currency. He could
make that himself, too, just as almost anything else, but as
mentioned they need a cover story.)
...My whole point is that... a magical interaction [is]That's what gods do.
something you wouldn't get with physics.
And magic.
See, what you're calling 'magic' isn't what most others call
'magic' because magic has its own rules that usually involve some
sort of 'payment' for the obtained effect.
No, that it _doesn't_ have to is what makes it magic. The 'payment'
is derived from physical laws.
The 'payment' doesn't usually have anything to do with the mundane
type, but it's there- cf Faustus or even Rapunzel.
And in the ME, doing things with magic is easier than doing them the
mundane way. Plus there's no metaphorical cost (soul or something).
It doesn't have to make sense in a physical world, that's what makes
it magic. All it has to do (my requirement) is be consistent within
itself, just like a story world should be consistent within itself.
[S&E magic]
I can see potential for all sorts of correspondences and
proportionalities in what you wrote.
Correspondences and proportionalities to what?
Not to ordinary physics; I mean the parts of the magical system
have correspondences to other parts of the same system that make
internal sense, not sense-according-to-mundane-physics.
They make sense in that system, everything has to or else it's just
contrived junk, not a worthy story. That's a writing-requirement,
not a physics-requirement.
Dryness and coldness are properties that submit to manipulation
according to predictable rules, that is, predictable to those
that can use the whatever-it-is that allows them to do it which
you insist is 'magic' but not 'physics'.
That's the laws of the setting. That it does things you can't do
with physics, not that way (you can boil water, but not heat it the
way, say, a Fire Priest would), is what makes it magic.
That it all makes sense in itself is what my backbrain takes care
of. It has to, too (else I wouldn't find peace, a quirk).
To them though it's merely what action is taken (draw out the
cold) in order to get a given effect (keep something warm). The
idea of cause-and-effect I suppose is key here; they would not try
to use an irrelevant cause (draw out the dryness) to get that same
effect because they know that it cannot work.
I don't think the guys who can draw dryness out can keep cold out,
and the other way round; they've got different magic. Dryness is a
Summer thing (dry and hot, but they can't heat/unheat things
directly), cold is a Winter thing, and they can't dry/undry stuff.
(Now you got me wondering about wet snow. At least I know that the
Summer tribe can at best 'heat' females, so the 'hot' angle is taken
care of that way.)
Another way to compare them is by similarities executed differently;
both can keep food fresh: the Winter tribe simply freezes stuff, the
Summer tribe can make dried meat (and probably other dried stuff).
That's the kind of balance I find while writing. They've got things
in common even though they're opposites. (I very much like balance
and symmetry, and particularly in the S&E stuff like that is all
over the place.)
That's also 'physics', just not part of the 'physics' known in
_this_ world.
That's not physics, that's magic. You're not going to find any
physical laws that allow for the same to be done without magic.
I wouldn't call it 'just' another one though.
Anything explainable by physical laws is just another physicalAllow me to quote Arthur C. Clarke: "Any sufficiently
aspect, nothing magical.
advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".
Which I think is nonsense. It talks about viewpoint, while I
talk about absolutes.
You can _talk_ about them, but there aren't any.
That's misunderstanding what I said.
A hypothetical all-understanding being would be able to tell the
difference, and that's all that matters, not the potentially
primitive viewpoint who looks at it.
Not sure what a load is.The generator generates power. The load dissipates it (some
as radiated electromagnetic waves, some as heat).
But what is it?
In ordinary electrical stuff it's usually a resistor. A
'resistor' is something that (linearly) resists the flow of
electrons and usually gets hot doing it.
I remember them.
The tribes of the S&E are even based on resistor colours. <g> (Gave
each colour a term, then went with the associations.)
In waveguides and such it's any deviation from perfect smoothness
and consistency in the dimensions of the waveguide; think of it
along the lines of 'speedbumps' for the guided waves.
This is a good example for why it's better to talk about the real
thing than analogies: I'm much better imagining that than first
drawing up the image of the analogy, then trying to find out what
that's supposed to be analogous to, while never getting an actual
picture of the real thing, and thus never getting any idea of what's
meant. I'd never have thought about an opening in the waveguide if
you didn't mention it, and would have been stuck on the 'speedbump'
just as I do on 'lattices'. (There are no literal street speedbumps
on the metal of the construction, just space isn't a fishernet.)
Any such thing will reflect some of the incident energy at that
point, and inevitably convert some to heat.
Ok.
This is a "resonator". If you build it just right then cut it
in half, you get a structure that can actually radiate the
power into empty space; this is an "antenna" and is obviously
a resonant structure as well.
I'm lost here. Cut in half? Empty space (what space?)?Yep, cut it in half.
That's where I'm lost.
Lost where?
Where I said: Cut in half? Empty space (what space?)?
I don't understand those bits.
I wish you'd fire up your browser and look at:
For that I'd have to quit the software I'm using now, wind down the
computer, turn it off, plug in the windoze drive, turn it on, tell
it to boot that drive, wait endlessly for windoze to boot, start the
dialler and browser and stuff, choose a provider (internet-by-call),
establish a connection, and then go there.
I'll put the links in a file to look at later, but that's it.
Those links are to the simple, direct manuals the US military
used to use to teach transmission line and microwave fundamentals
to technicians who would have to work on them. Lots of pictures.
They're available in either plain text or PDF.
Sounds interesting.
Meanwhile think of the waveguide as a piece of metal pipe with
electromagnetic waves AKA microwave photons trapped inside,
flowing along. Ordinarily they fly through empty space (frinst as
used in RADAR systems) at the speed of light but in the pipe they
have to travel slower. Anyway take a large food can and cut a
pipe-sized hole in one end of it; then solder the pipe to it (if
you place the hole just right there's almost no "load"-ish
lossiness). The waves will flow into the can and slosh back and
forth, being reflected by the walls. The energy the waves carry
in will thus build up. If you cut away the end of the can
opposite where the pipe comes in, the waves can escape to the
outside (what I called 'empty space' before).
That's what I imagined.
This is, technically, an 'antenna' though it's pretty crappy as
such things go because it reflects much of the energy back into
the can; the waves don't like to make the velocity transition so
abruptly. Flaring the cutoff end to the proper degree makes it
easier for the waves to 'slide out' so to speak.
Thus sattelite antennas looking like a chunk cut out of a ball, I
guess.
I kind of lost the connection to how these bubbles transportTo get them out of this spacetime, rip out the piece of it
anyone anywhere.
containing them, wad it up, then throw it in a direction we
can't see. Eventually it whacks into the Other Place and
unwraps itself spilling the people out.
Ah. that's something I can imagine.
Good. Your inspiration of the 'between the strings' idea
simplifies things enormously.
Not really, because the strings don't make sense.
What we call 'matter' is, in the Loop Quantum Gravity view, merely
coherent patterns of vibration of the strings in the 3D mesh.
No mesh, no vibration.
What do they really talk about, when you cut out the not working
analogy? (The analogy is only used to describe something, after all,
build an image for people. But as mentioned, said image doesn't work
for me, doesn't show me what they actually try to say.)
As example, there's the old model of 'atoms like a solar system',
which isn't correct either. And for me it's much better to imagine a
shell where the dot of the electron is everywhere at once (thus
shell, even while it's a dot). Improving that closer to what's
really going on would be even better; my imagination isn't limited,
the analogies are (in leaving out what's really going on).
Just as the usual depictions of magnetic fields have space in
between the lines that don't make sense (it should be a coherent
field), your empty space between the lines don't make sense. An
amorphous or squeezed 3D field, fine, just lines, no. Because it
doesn't depict real space.
Gravitational radiation is also coherent patterns of vibration,
I've got a problem with 'gravitaiontal radiation'. For me radiation
means something going out, rather than attracting something. But
gravity 'keeps' things, it doesn't spout bits around like a
fountain.
(Note that this is entirely unconnected to the vibration you mention
above, because I can't place that anywhere, it just drops out of
what you continue with.)
<snip what I can't follow due it being based on something that
doesn't work as analogy>
the empty space the mesh is embedded in
Eh, the bits in the mesh are holes in space where there is no space,
as I see the analogy. It's what you try to depict 'empty space'
_with_.
The Others see them drifting free and decide to rescue/play with
them.
Not really. They just arrive there unexpected.
Here's another option- alternatively we can talk about the
vibrations obtaining some sort of existence separate from the
supporting mesh (they sort of 'slide off' the spacetime mesh when
the scientist vibrates it out from under the travelers) but
that'll be harder to justify. Well, maybe not; sound is
vibration, and vibrations can 'slide off' say violin strings and
travel through 'stringless' empty space (as long as there's air
to support the vibrations, which is the catch to this; there's no
equivalent of 'air' in the Other Place).
It doesn't work because with the analogy of the mesh, you've got one
line every some kilometers for the sound to move along, with
absolutely nothing in between (the holes in the net), no cities, no
air, nothing at all. Which simply isn't true.
Standard theory predicts free-flying gravitational quanta
called 'gravitons',
Why do they always want something flying around? :) (Somehow,
something flying around doesn't match my idea of gravity.)
Gravity reaches out through visibly empty space, so something
must be mediating the reaching. Things in motion interact
differently than do things that aren't, which is taken care of by
'flying gravitons'.
That makes sens up to 'flying gravitons', where it stops.
I can't really describe it much more clearly. As Uncle Al of
sci.physics says, I can _explain_ it for you but I can't
_understand_ it for you.
An explanation is fine. To understand I just need the right images.
And 'flying gravitons' look like dots whizzing around. Which doesn't
match the image of 'gravity', thus there it stops making sense.
What would make sense would be going down to atoms, or somewhere,
explaining why one bit of matter attracts another. I already know
about the electronic side, but that's not it, after all. So I
imagine some very weak but very large field around something (atom,
or subatomic particles, I have no idea), that does the attracting
part. And the more you get together, the more fields (all 3D, mind)
overlap, strengthening the effect. Up to the point of holding a
person on the globe, or cancelling each other at the Earth's core
(or perhaps addinig up to squeezing point, that's stuff I don't
know, but I can imagine either).
Now I wonder whether that would also explain why making things move
faster requires such energy; I could imagine that the fields like
things being static, or at least moving steadily against it ('with
it' does speed you up to a point; all things fall to the ground, at
the same rate, within the gravity strength), and the more you try to
go against that, the more it tries to hold you back (a bit like
being stuck in rubber). But that's just a fancy idea that came to me
just now. No idea whether gravity has anything to do with trying to
speed up spaceships in theoretically empty space.
They're just the free-flying form of ordinarily static gravity
fields,
Ok. Flying fields sound much better than something that sounds
like 'gravity particles'.
Um, yeah. No, they're not considered to be 'particles' any more.
But something that's called 'flying gravitons', or just gravitons,
sounds (and looks) to me like particles. It's small dots, not an
effect.
the same way that light photons are the free-flying forms of
ordinary static electric and magnetic fields.
In the way that they wobbling about in waves? (Can't insert the
'static', though.)
Yes. You're trying to do the inserting backwards- just think
about an unmoving electron; it has a static electric field
filling space around it that you can easily measure as a simple
directional force on another charged particle placed nearby
(known as a 'test particle').
Right.
Electrons have something called spin, meaning they sort of act as
if they are tiny current-carrying loops, creating a circular
component to their static field.
Like rings? Or like a shell? (Don't know where to place the loops,
or the spin.)
This does non-linear things to the force felt by test charges
moving nearby depending on how the spin of one is oriented
relative to the other. Now set the first electron wobbling back
and forth. If you do it fast enough some of the energy you put
into waving it around will 'peel off' in the form of self
-contained electric field loops, also known as photons.
I can imagine that.
If that didn't penetrate, read the stuff I gave you links to
above.
The word 'loop' still interferes with the image, but that's it.
Spin, I think (due to an earlier attempt from someone to explain
something), might be the sideways and up-down direction the photon
waves about in while going straight ahead.
(Though the idea that gravity has waves doesn't ring anyGravity waves aren't directly involved in ordinary
better than it having stuff flying around. Basically, it goes
in the wrong direction; it leaves the source rather than
attracting something.)
gravitational attraction
Then I have no idea what they are.
Traveling self-contained deformations of spacetime.
That produces a nice image.
Now, just to get this right; they're at best hypothetical, right?
(Or the tiny-mini-things that one scientist you mentioned managed to
produce - have to keep track of what's tied to what in this
conversation.)
any more than light photons are involved in the electrostatic
attraction between electrons and photons
Protons, right? (I don't know what to do with the 'electrostatic'
in that sentence, though.)
Whoops, I seldom use a spellchecquer. Electrons have a
'negative' charge, protons a 'positive' charge.
Yep. That's why I asked. Afaik photons is the light thing wave
particles. :)
That produces a particular kind of deformation in the spacetime
between them that manifests as an attractive force; they tend to
'fall' together.
A completely different image than I used to have, but it's
interesting.
Without the 'gravity waves' not connecting to anything, I can't
place or imagine something that involves them, though.
But they do 'connect to anything',
I don't mean _them_ connecting to something physically, but the
_term_ connecting to an image I have or can make. Mentally.
they are generated when _any_matter is waved around just as
photons are created when electric charges are waved around.
Ok, I can follow that. I just don't like the 'waves' bit (as they're
just depicted as lines, again). I like coherent fields, of any form
(or de-form).
Like, take a tank with water, and a container that can leak blue
liquid. In a perfect, theoretical environment (I guess a real water
tank would have side-effects and interferences just like real space
would have), you swing the container back and forth, and whenever
it's at either of the furthest points, it blobs out a bubble of blue
that travels on. It doesn't leak circular strings of blue.
Alternately they come out all the time, but at the furthest points
currently makes most sens to my ignorant self.
That's a bit like what I imagine happens by what you describe.
(Please confirm or correct.)
They're very feeble though, because as I said the gravitational
coupling constant is so much smaller than the electromagnetic
equivalent.
'Coupling constant' doesn't really mean anything to me. At best I
can guess that it's a number that's slapped onto the field I
mentioned further above, where gravity is most happy at (attracting
and overlapping), keeping stuff where it is (and why things don't
speed up further, when falling to the ground). But that's a wild
guess.
Also, they affect the motion of _any_ matter they strike during
their flight, somewhat like what happens to charges that intercept
photons.
Makes sense.
Mind you this works because the waves are bending spacetime
itself.
I guess it wouldn't be a good idea to ask 'how'. (But I don't
have an image of that, because I don't know why they should.)
Asking 'how' isn't relevant,
It's what matters. The finer the details, the better the image, the
more I can do with it (and extrapolate).
it's just what they are, like traveling self-sustaining
deformations of the arrangement of water molecules are called
'water waves'. It's pointless to ask how water waves rearrange
water molecules, it's what they are.
Quite the opposite.
I might be able to use plain water waves, but as soon as I need them
to hit something, I need to know how that works. And with physics, I
have no way to just try and observe. Imagine I had never heard of
cliffs, and never taken a bath, and never seen a duck on the
river,... _all_ I know is just 'water waves', unconnected to
anything else. There's really nothing at all I could do with that.
But if someone told me how they work, I can then use that do do all
sorts of interesting things.
Usually you aren't allowed to get close enough to examine them,
but they're really sculpted in reverse relief;
My point was that your travelers may perceive exactly what the
Others are doing, but since their inborn and
life-experience-generated idea of 'real' and 'normal' don't apply,
how they interpret what they see will not necessarily be what's
there. That can be more than merely creepy, even fatal.
I understand what you mean.
and the bit about tossing them out of this spacetime into a
'sister' universe that is nothing like this one is not
completely implausible according to current scientific
speculation /hypotheses, if not actual theory- you can toss in
murky references to 'quantum loop gravity' and 'topological
geometrodynamics'
I'd have to understand the terms to use them.
I gave you a link to a (fairly technical, I'm afraid)
explanation of loop quantum gravity. Geometrodynamics is the
underlying idea that empty space is not a passive thing that just
sets the background for physics but is an active participant. The
geometry of space has a dynamic effect on what happens within it.
To my ignorant self, that seems kind of 'of course'. Probably
because I have no idea what you really mean. :)
The power levels involved will be humongous but the array _is_
a storage structure, so maybe a private (military) nuclear
power plant can feed it for a week before each incident.
Or some nut cult (with lots of funds from the gullible it drew)
can afford it. Or it's a science experiment like the
supercollider (that cost a ton, too, though I forgot the actual
amount which I think was mentioned on the news).
Yep, whatever it takes. I suggest you don't quote specific
numbers other than to mention that the technique is all about a
way to exceed previous maximum power _density_, not just power
levels. The power density is what ovrwhelms the local spacetime
texture so to speak.
Makes sense.
Thanks again!
--
Tina
WISuspension: Seasons & Elements trilogy | Magic Earth series
Excerpts at: <http://home.htp-tel.de/fkoerper/ath/athintro.htm>
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