Re: Getting out of this world?

Nuny@xxxxxxx <Alien8752@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Tina_H...@xxxxxxxxxxx (Tina Hall) wrote:
N...@xxxxxxx <Alien8...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

That's rules you or your subconscious make, though; you think
they're no use for digging tunnels.

Those are the rules of the place; that's the only point.

I was just trying to give you an idea. If you insert rules into your
dreams, that's then an oddity you insert, not one that's there by
default.

There's nothing that the place itself is. The place itself
isn't really.

That's one thing...

...?

That the place itself, isn't, really.

Ok.

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 you mean by discontinuous in this context.
Last time someone mentioned it, [...]

No, that's something entirely else.

Ok, what then do you mean by continuous?

Which is pretty silly.

Anyone who tells you chaos theory disconnects cause from effect
doesn't know what they're talking about; what it does do is show
that what we used to call 'completely random' events and
processes, like say Brownian Motion (you want to look that one
up) actually has rules and limitations on _how_ random they can
be.

Hah! :)

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.

That's just the point; space is evidently _not_ entirely 3D.

What is it then?

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.

That's just it; the strings and knots are all that's needed to
explain what we see.

It doesn't work. And repeating isn't going to tell me what on earth
you mean. It doesn't explain anything at all. All it does is make no
sense.

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.

No. You are trying to model empty space with your _continuous_
elastic blob of plastic (or what you imagine to be continuous
air). That model is exactly the opposite of right. How can I
possibly say anything so silly? Because serious scientists no
longer try to use anything like it to model reality in actual
theories.

But your strings don't make sense.

You'd first have to explain what's really there, if not space. And
where that non-space hides in the space.

Because if there were giant holes in it, we wouldn't see the stars
from far away.

The new picture is that space itself is made of little
discrete, non- continuous bits that interact along specified
pathways. That's what spacetime _is_, not a continuous anything.

I still don't know what you mean by (non-)continuous in this
context.

Because what you say sounds like there's no connection between our
solar system and the rest of the universe, or none between Earth and
sun, or none between my left hand and my right hand. Which obviously
isn't true; we see the stars, and we see the sun, and both hands are
attached to me.

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?

I have, repeatedly.

Not once yet. You just keep going on about a model that doesn't
work, so I have no idea what you want to say.

The mesh is a correct model of space and time.

It doesn't work, so I have no idea what you want to say. Please say
outright what you want to say.

Your continuous blob of plastic is exactly not.

So far I haven't seen you say anything that gives me an image of
what else it could be.

You asked about current theories, not about what makes sense to
you.

I remember people wanting to know who it's for, and remember me
saying that it's for me; I have to work with it.

Something that doesn't produce an image that makes sense isn't
anything at all, no theory, no explanation.

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.

Large scales are composed of many many small spaces.

Your mesh is talking about large scale space, though.

If you don't understand how the small ones work

But you're not talking about small scales. You claim space between
planets is just strings, with giant holes in between, because that's
the model you use, which doesn't make sense.

I can only guess what small scales you are thinking about.

Around 10 to the minus 43rd or so meters.

I can only guess what small scales you're thinking about. Not
distances, but what matter.

Your mesh is used for planets or black holes, and how they influence
the light going past it. And that's what doesn't make sense.

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.

Not what _I_ want to be discontinuous, merely what _is_
discontinuous, namely spacetime itself.

I still have no idea what you mean by (dis)continuous in this
context. No idea what you want that to be, either, because your net
doesn't make sense.

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.)

Exactly; the "whole space filled" is an illusion only seen at
large scales. At small scales all there is is the mesh.

You try to sell the large scale mesh, and that doesn't make sense.

And I doubt that all atoms are lined up straight, all electrons
touching, and that you could draw a straight line along the spaces
between the electrons and their atom cores. So not even they make a
mesh.

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?

That how the large space works is intimately dependent on how
the small spaces work.

No need to state the obvious. It would be better to for once state
straight out what you're actually talking about, and not coming on
with planet sized holes in space again.

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.)

Your "continuous blob of plastic" model.

I don't yet see what's wrong with it; you not offered anything to
replace it that makes sense.

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.

No, it doesn't.

Well, finally. That's what I'm saying all along.

You may be thinking of the usual presentation that has bowling
-ball-sized spheres rolling around on tennis-net sized mesh.

That's what I'm talking about. That's what you've been talking
about, because you went off from what I said _doesn't work_,
ignoring that it doesn't work and claiming that that's what's really
going on: The bowling ball sized spheres rolling around on tennis
net sized mesh. You took _that_ analogy and went with it.

That's irrelevant. The actual mesh is exquisitely finer than that.

So do we now get to what you're actually talking about? Because so
far we went nowhere.

I hope you didn't think I was trying to tell you that the space
you can see is made up of mesh with oh, ten-centimeter holes!

Actually, that's what you said. (You _used_ the net&ball analogy
that I said doesn't work. And I kept telling you it doesn't work.)

No, the actual mesh I'm talking about has holes in the
neighborhood of 10 to the minus 43rd meter or so.

I don't know what is so small. What matter are you talking about?
Atoms? Smaller than atoms?

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'.

Atoms of matter exist in time too, you know. That existence has
a "length" usually called "duration".

Interesting.

But then we're not talking about an analogy, but the real thing.

But that's not relevant, and it isn't what _I_ want, it's what
the theory you asked for says; that spacetime itself comprises
teeny chunks, not a continuous blob.

What are those chunks? Becaus anything larger than parts of an atom
gets you back to what doesn't make sense. Down there, there might be
truly empty 'space'. (Nothing the electron rubs around on, on its
way/position around the core.)

Further up, atoms link up to molecules, or float around together, or
hang still, all of it making matter (including air).

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'.

Nope, just in between the lattice lines.

I still don't see your lattice. I wonder what on earth you could
mean by it.

Suppose the Other Place is _in between the lattice lines_ of
our universe?

There are no lattice lines.

But there are.

Nope.

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.

No, the "empty space inside atoms" is covered by ordinary
physics, until you get to trying to measure forces like
electromagnetism or gravity over really small distances, and
that's where spacetime starts getting "not smooth".

So what are you looking at? How small does it get, in something you
can name (not just distances; I have no idea of the sizes of
things)?

No, I'm not talking about planet-sized holes.

You were. You used the analogy that I said doesn't work.

I am talking about 'holes' much, much smaller than pretty much
anything (except possibly so-called 'point particles' like
electrons, but that remains to be seen).

And where are they?

[*] 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.

It's also not something that can happen in this universe; the
rules of such spaces are as I said covered by ordinary physics.

That's why it's Magic Earth.

For the Nodeworld, that doesn't work. That isn't just 'here on
subatomic level', it's not here.

Exactly; the spaces between the strings

There are no strings.

_is not accessible_ by any phenomenon that has to do with the
strings (like particles or forces), therefore it's not "here".

That doesn't make sense even ignoring the strings. Not accessible
doesn't mean not here, just not accessible. I'm talking about 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.

You mean "the whole lattice idea makes no sense" to your
intuition? Tell your intuition this isn't the 18th century.

Why, you even finally agreed that it doesn't make sense. Right up
there.

Allright. I don't know what he would mean by 'tensor', or what
that 'Ricci' is.

Um, search engines...

Awkward, costy, and for me generally utterly useless.

If you're losing interest, just say so.

you can add renormalization, Planck length ( also Planck
scale, mass, time, energy),

Unfortunately, I don't know anything about Planck.

Max Planck. German physicist. 1858-1947. Considered the 'father
of quantum theory' in that he provided the first solid break from
so- called 'classical theory' (which includes among other things
the continuum assumption). He showed the correlation between the
energy states of an oscillator (say an electron in an atom) and
the wavelengths it can emit is quantized, proportional to an
irreducible minimum unit of angular momentum (AKA spin).

Sounds interesting. (No idea what angular momentum is, though.)

He himself at first just thought of it as a 'mathematical
formality' but eventually came to grasp its deeper significance.
Nonetheless he proceeded to take the idea to its (to him) logical
conclusion and proposed a set of units based on the measured
values of many physical constants, the Planck length, the Planck
time, and so on.

Ah. Thanks. (Now, if I knew what they refered to... Which is what I
originally meant, though this is interesting.)

The idea is that physical systems cannot have those quantities
in smaller amounts than those units; if you had a ruler marked in
Planck lengths there would be no physical object or phenomenon
that could fit between the marks.

Cool.

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).

It's extremely interesting to a certain kind of mind, and even
those of us who can't manage the complex math can be fascinated
by the concepts it exposes.

I wouldn't mind the maths if I understood what it's going on about
(and had learned complex math). It just doesn't help at all to
understand. I first need to know that, in simple, what Tom is and
what Jerry is, to then get interested in how much bigger Tom is.
Similar for (continuing the analogy) knowing what a cat is (to
understand what the funny picture is trying to depict), and for
'higher physics'; internal proportions of cats, the organs, and
stuff.

If you said T=10*J, I haven't got the slightest clue what either
letter is, and what it's supposed to mean. No cats in sight, no
mice, and certainly no cartoon. That's why formulas don't work to
explain something. I'd need the (in this case cartoon) image first,
to then place the numbers. And before the cartoon, I need the real
thing, or we're going to fall flat very soon somewhere (because a
cartoon doesn't depict the real thing accurately).

To grab that analogy, you keep pointing at the cartoon image, and I
have no idea what animal it is supposed to show me, because I have
never encountered one like it. I first need to know the animal
before you can work with cartoon analogies.

(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.

SMALLER, DAMMIT!

Sorry.

Now you now how I felt with you insisting that it's correct. IT
DOESN'T MAKE SENSE, DAMMIT!

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 - [...]

Well, that's just "plain vanilla" telekinesis

No, for me that's magic, because it ignores physics. (Telekinesis
doesn't enter anywhere, either. That's explainable by physics.
Besides, telekinesis is concerned with pushing objects about, 'move'
here means that its location changes instantly, due to moving it
with magic.)

(which as was mentioned elsethread, hasn't been demonstrated).

?

It doesn't violate physics,

I believe that if you can do it for real. No devices, mind, just you
using magic, through the sub-atomic link.

and could be shown not to do so if the telekinetic were limited to
the mass available in a locked room (though imagining locks that a
telekinetic couldn't bypass is a bit tricky).

A locked room _is_ mass.

What you need is a bubble-like containment done with magic.

And just because I decided that you need matter to work with matter
doesn't mean it's not magic. (Actually, the problem with getting to
the moon is crossing the space where matter is negligibly thin; no
matter, no magic to use. But if you get a magically marked object
there - there are ways to place marks in objects, to watch through,
to trace, and to communicate through - and there's magic on the
moon, or rather in its matter, you can access the object. And can,
for example, have a look at what's around said object, the 'view'
entirely internal, just like with the folks that can watch our
world.)

Though to contain someone in a room you just need someone with more
skill. There's no way for someone with, say (that's backround files
numbers, for me to keep track of) skill:5 to get through any magic
worked with skill:6. Depending on how it's worked, he might not even
see it. On the other hand, someone with skill:6 can unravel almost
anything someone with skill:5 did. (There are some things that are
so complicated - requiring higher skill anyway - that more skill
doesn't add anything to ability.)

The total mass inside the room wouldn't change, it'd just
rearrange according to the telekinetic's projected will.

There's no telekinesis. Telekinesis is pushing objects about without
touching them. In the Magic Earth magic, it's touching the objects
through the sub-atomic link and manipulating them that way, whether
pushing them about, or grabbing them and letting go elsewhere.

I haven't yet heard about any telekinetic character who could,
instantly displace, say, New York, to the Antarctica or whereever.
(Size and distance depends on skill alone. The evil overlords do
have sufficient skill for that.)

What physics can't explain is the channel by which information is
allegedly transferred from his/her mind to the matter that gets
rearranged,

Transfering information only applies if you see it like my hand
touching the keyboard as transfering information.

but if a telekinetic ever presents themselves for testing I'll bet
it could be figured out.

Ah, but our world doesn't have magic. Certainly not the ME magic. :)

Being able to figure out how doesn't invalidate it being magic. Not
being conform with physics makes it magic. Like being able to
construct real 3D things of the Escher paintings.

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).

Well, you probably won't be surprised to find that it grates on
me as 'unrealistic'. Odd thing to say about magic, I know, but
still.

What grates on me is claiming that magic has to have costs, or
adhere to any physical laws.

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.)

Wet and dry snow is exactly what I had in mind; wet snow can't
be colder than (or even as cold as) dry snow because it has to
contain unfrozen water in order to _be_ wet.

Well, that's something the Winter tribe doesn't have to worry about.
:) They could make wet snow colder than dry snow. (Which is a fine
example of 'doesn't adhere to physical laws; by phyics that's not
possible.)

Frinst I wondered: if a Summer guy had to take a long trip through
snow country and got too cold, could he draw the dry out of some
snow and thus warm it indirectly?

I don't think it works that way. Really, without testing (as in
writing about it), I would guess that he just gets dryer snow of the
same temperature.

But I doubt he'd go through a trip through snow country in the first
place. They don't like it cold, or snowy. <g>

Hot and cold females, well, that's your story characters'
problem. ;>)

Yep. (And what a problem that is. <g>)

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.

Again, I say "physics" and you automatically read "not magic".

Of course. That's the definition. They do exclude one another.

Your magic has stuff (and "stuff" doesn't necessarily mean atoms
etc.) interacting according to consistent rules. That's
practically the very definition (except for the word "magic") of
"physics".

Physics is what we have here.

Allow me to quote Arthur C. Clarke: "Any sufficiently
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.

Now we've wandered into philosophy. What does "all-understanding"
mean,

Not relevant, as it's hypothetical. All it matters is that it
understands the tech, no mysteries. Not whether there can be any
such being.

and in what context does it do its understanding in? If you're
going to say that it would understand in a way we couldn't, that's
cheating.

No, claiming we should be able to understand it is trying to warp
things. We're not the angle all revolves around. We're just one
possible viewpoint (one who might be too daft to understand),
irrelevant when looking at absolutes.

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.)

Well, actually there can be literal speedbumps.

Like they are on the street, for cars, made of mortart and bricks,
same size? Because that's what I mean.

The metal had better be very smooth at certain places (where the
electric field is large, also known as "anti-nodes" along the
guide). If it isn't, if there are lumps, the electric field will
concentrate at those places (exactly the way Saint Elmo's fire
concentrates on sharp-pointed objects during thunderstorms) and
the microwave energy will reflect back the way it came (just as a
slow-moving car will bounce back from a real speedbump) or, if the
field strength rises far enough, be dissipated as an electric arc
within the waveguide.

The analogy makes sense (again) because I know what you mean.
Without that, just 'speedbump', would, as said, not work.

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.

What software do you use to read usenet groups?

XP.

I'm sure there's a good browser for it that wouldn't require you
to go through all that.

Not one with a dialler that has a list for all the frequently
changing rates of the Internet-by-Call providers. (Frequently, as in
every few hours, like provider A costs 0.43 cent per minute from
09:00 to 12:00 and 2.99 cent per minute the rest of the time, and
Provider B costs 0.42 cent per minute from 11:00 to 13:00,... As
random examples, not exact numbers - I don't have to remember them.
On top of that they change the hours and costs, too, whenever it
suits them. The dialler I've got - for windoze only - updates that
automatically.)

I use the WIndoze version of Firefox, but there's also Unix
versions.

I only boot windoze when I have to, which is for internet. I use
Firefox as browser, but that's got nothing to do with usenet
newsgroups.

Right now I'm running XP in a DOS window in OS/2. (I use OS/2
because it lets me do different DOS things simultaneously.) Have
used that since I first came into contact with Fidonet (back then in
DOS), early nineties.

No browser, no internet. Only a direct call to the node (Fidonet;
I'm getting Usenet through a gateway) to send stuff off and download
new stuff.

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.

The big dish is just a reflector to focus the microwaves; the
actual antenna is in the center of the dish.

So what you described has a different angle of 'flared out'?

What we call 'matter' is, in the Loop Quantum Gravity view,
merely coherent patterns of vibration of the strings in the 3D
mesh.

What do they really talk about? (The analogy is only used to
describe something, after all, build an image for people.

That spacetime (space in all four directions; left-right,
up-down, back-front, and past-future) has texture like a knotwork
fabric with extremely small mesh. It is not smoothly continuous.

You keep saying that, but not what you actually mean. So it still
makes no sense.

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).

If you could see atoms directly (I'm sure you've heard this bit
before) you'd see the nucleus as say a soccerball-sized sphere
surrounded by intersecting, layered cathedral-sized clouds of
electron orbitals.

That's fine.

But at that scale you _still_ couldn't see the spacetime "mesh-
ness".

Could you stop mentioning any meshes?

If you zoomed in on the nucleus, then in on one of the protons,
then in on one of the quarks in that proton, you would start to
notice the mesh-ness.

Since the quarks of neighbouring atoms (or whatever smaller bit you
mean) aren't touching, there can't be a mesh. A string is
continuous, it goes from one place to the next, and all bits
touching.

You don't have that even when just looking at atoms. They hang
together, but they don't touch; no continuous string of something.

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.

Yes, it does.

Nope. No fishing rods swapping around space. (And nothing else do
the lines depict; two dimensional literal fishing rods.)

Tell your intuition I'm sorry, but it does.

I'm not going to start talking to some non-person part of my
thinking.

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.

You are now trying to make physics fit your "rules of magic".

Nope. Nothing magical about that.

That isn't what gravity does at all; gravity bends spacetime
around masses so that masses move together.

It has to do that somehow. You haven't yet offered a better image.

If two masses move near each other, but don't touch, then move
apart, and do so at the right speeds, then the bent spacetime
between them can indeed spout out a coherent ripple that
propagates (radiates) away.

No problem with that. But it isn't little bits springing around that
hold the actual masses together.

Eh, the bits in the mesh are holes in space where there is no
space,

EXACTLY!

You already agreed that it's nonsense.

Except you're using the same word (space) to describe two very
different things; the domain of the strings, and the domain in
between all of them.

Space, alone, is what planets and stuff move around in.

Space between things, you have to define or at least name the
_things_ it's between. Else it's suns and planets and stuff.

as I see the analogy. It's what you try to depict 'empty space'
_with_.

The mesh domain is what _we_ call "space", the domain in
between is what The Others call "home".

No, they're not here, they're somewhere else.

Ordinarily they can't see us

They might be able to from their 'higher' (not spacial higher)
position. I'll see when I write more.

(or more likely have decided not to pay any attention to since
we're no fun due to the fact we can't see them at all).

I don't know why that should be a reason for them.

Where they are, there is neither space with planets, nor the space
between anything. Probably not time either. All there is is what the
locals made. That's added to, within the nothing-at-all.

The Others see them drifting free and decide to rescue/play
with them.

Not really. They just arrive there unexpected.

Huh. So, they can't see our world at all.

Haven't decided yet. They might not, or it might look different to
them, or the viewpoints I've go so far just weren't among those that
happened to look right then, or something else.

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.

Replace "kilometer" with "10 to the minus 43rd or so meter" and
try again.

You were using the net&ball analogy that I said doesn't work. Don't
complain now that it's not the size you like.

And there's no mesh of fishing rods connecting subatomic bits
either; for that they'd have to touch at least those of their
neighbouring atoms.

You keep saying it's not continuous, but as I see continuous, a net
is lots of continous strings.

Your idea of gravity is your problem, especially if it doesn't
match the real thing, and it does not.

You haven't yet offered an alternative image.

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.

Not 'dots', ripples in spacetime.

Ripples make sense. Gravitons don't. (Just using the word without
explaining what you mean, don't be surprised if it sparks an image
of dots. You're free to explain what it is instead.)

Do you have trouble seeing waves traveling on water?

I have trouble seeing the water when you draw just a few wavy lines
on a piece of paper, with no actual connection to real water; that
there's currents and stuff beneath the surface that move things.
Water isn't just lines, either. It has volume.

Do you have trouble understanding that there are waves traveling
_in_ the water, under the surface, that you cannot see?

Analogous, I keep asking about them, but you just claim there's a
few scraggly lines on paper, which doesn't match what's really
there, and doesn't explain it either.

Gravitational waves are waves traveling as ripples in spacetime
that you cannot see.

Only they don't have a water-like surface. A water surface is just
2D again, not 3D.

Thus the air-filled mattress. What happens has volume (is inside),
is not just plastic sheets (the container) flapping about.

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).

All matter attracts other matter; the bit about bending space
was Einstein's brilliant interpretation, and experiments like the
observation of the precession of the orbit of the planet Mercury
proved him right. Gravity bends spacetime, period, (okay, comma)

Don't know how that connects to what I wrote. What in the above
image is wrong or right?

If it doesn't bend it the way I imagine, I still need an image.

and that knowledge led directly to the balls-on-the-rubber-sheet
imagery.

Which makes no sense.

You mentioned some knowledge of electronics; I'll mention two
scientists whose names are forever linked so: "Kaluza-Klein".
They tried to link gravitation and electromagnetism by adding two
more dimensions to spacetime. The general idea was to show that
gravitation and electromagnetism are simply two slightly
different ways to bend spacetime, one of which only acts on
matter that carries an electric charge while the other acts on
all matter whether it has a charge or not. This goes back to
1921.

Since then, other scientists trying to figure out if they were
right generated whole other theories including loop quantum
gravity.

Sounds interesting, but don't really know what it says, with you
throwing terms around without explaining them and using them in
apparently some other meaning than the image they spark.

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.

It does, yes. There's this effect called Unruh Radiation;

So my image is right?

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 "-on" ending does not necessarily indicate a dot-like
matter particle, any more than you ought to expect "photon" to be
a dot-like particle.

I do. It just moves around in 'waves' (not water waves, but more
like two sine wave signals going forwards, alternating, at right
angles, with the dot at the center 'producing' the 'waves', a bit
like expanding and shrinking).

That's my image anyway.

Gravity I imagine to be an effect across a large volume, not tiny
bits, even if they're waving.

But as mentioned, if you want to use a term and don't like me
attaching a random image to it, you need to provide an image to
attach to it.

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.)

See, this is where it gets awkward; as far as experiment can
tell, electrons are _point_ particles. They have no physical
extension within which their charge might be carried in a circle
by their spin,

As mentioned, I don't know where to place the spin, so that doesn't
tell me anything. (Using words that I asked to explain isn't doing
any good in explaining said words.)

yet they sure seem to act as if they do just that.

Do what?

Mind you the current best observational evidence only puts their
lower size limit at around 10 to the minus 22 meters which in
quantum mechanical terms is enormous. In a universe described by
LQG there's plenty of room in that 10^-22 m for the charge of a
single electron to form a loop with a radius measured in Planck
lengths.

I have no idea what you're talking about.

Don't know what you mean by loops, or spin.

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.

Something like that. Photons have alternating electric and
magnetic fields; those can take the form of strainght lines or
loops, depending on how they were generated.

Don't know where to place the lines or loops. (I really have no idea
what you mean by the terms in this context.)

Gravity waves aren't directly involved in ordinary
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?

Yes, they are considered 'very solidly' hypothetical, so much
so that most scientists assume they are real.

Ok. Thanks.

(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.)

That's a real head-scratcher. Einsteinian gravitons, if real,
will, according to the math that describes them, be so feeble
that we may never detect them directly. Yet somehow Forward
managed to get his devices to work.

Ah. Ok. Thanks.

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.

Electrons 'want' to fall into the nuclei of atoms just like
apples 'want' to fall to Earth. Apples are too large to form
quantized orbitals though.

Which has me think of solar systems again, so I don't thing it's a
good idea to compare that. Electrons don't want to fall to the
nuclei because of gravity, or do they? I thought it was charges (now
I wonder what keeps them on their shell).

A scientist named Millikan used a static electric field to
suspend drops of oil that contained extra electrons against the
pull of Earth's gravity; that experiment proved that electric
charge was quantized.

They needed that experiment to prove that?

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).

I'm not visualizing the depiction you're objecting to here.

Then offer an alternative.

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.)

Hrm. And you were objecting to some of my analogies,

They have to work, else talking about them is not going anywhere.

and wanted to know about 'the thing in itself'.

Still do.

Familiar with the old 'lines of force' imagery?

Not really. (Never understood what the teachers were going on about
with their funny formulas not saying anything comprehensible.)

The (brilliant) lecturer in the job re-training explained that once
in proper words (he was great at finding explanations for me), but I
forgot most of it.

Those are nothing to do with the previous 'mesh' imagery, lines of
force merely indicate the direction of the force a test charge
(remember that concept?)

You mentioned it somewhere.

would feel at a particular place within the volume the lines
occupy. The lines are not intended to mean that the force only
occurs where the lines are drawn; you are supposed to understand
that you can interpolate between them to get the force where no
line is drawn.

Ok.

There are _always_ electric 'lines of force' connecting any
positive and any negative electrically charged object, like say
an electron and a proton. For that matter, if you take an
electron out of its nice comfy orbital and carry it far, far away
from any atom, it is fair to say that it will still be surrounded
by lines of force all pointing away from it with spherical
symmetry like the head of a dandelion

Except the dandelion is just a circle again, and thus 2D.

(the force gets weaker with distance but extends literally to
infinity, of course it's undetectably weak by then).

That's fine.

Those lines indicate the direction it would 'fall' toward a proton
placed anywhere near it; IOW straight toward the proton.

Right.

Those lines of force are specifically lines of electrostatic
force, and they form a 'field' around the electron. Protons have
the same kind of field around them (except it points the opposite
way). The space between any electron and any proton therefore is
the same kind of 'electric field',

'Same kind of electric field' has me think of two fields, that
overlap when they come together. Which I guess is not what happens.
(Unless the overlapping is what makes gravity. ;) )

and that's all an electric field is; a volume of space labeled
with a bunch of indicated directions of the force a charge will
feel when placed in that volume.

So well so far. I wonder why you bring force and lines into it,
though.

Spin a charge and you add a sort of 'twist' to the electric field,
a twist that slews the force sorta sideways. That's what we call a
'magnetic field'.

How do you spin a charge?

The image I had of electric/magnetic field just ran off when I was
trying to follow that, so now I'm a bit more clueless than before.
(I wondered how that matches what I know, but right now can't
remember what I know.)

Look at the isolated electron again with its dandelion-field.

Sphere, right? (I doubt it's 2D.)

Imagine it moving a bit to the left. The extended field has to
change to reflect the different directions it's going to be
pointing in afterward

What extended field?

and that change can't be instantaneous; it propagates outward away
from the charge as a sort of ripple at the speed of light.

That bit I understand.

That expanding spherical ripple is composed of photons even though
overall they don't look like the typical sinewave illustration- if
you zoom in real close to the ripple

Not just the typical sinewave, because they're more than one, at
least in my image.

while it's moving you get the familiar sinewave image.

In 3D. (Else it makes no sense and we're back to fishing rods
wobbling about.)

So there you are; moving a charge simply produces expanding
ripples in its inherent, infinite electric field.. Two charges
have a mutual field, and moving them in concert also produces
expanding ripples, but because they don't have the spherical
dandelion symmetry an isolated charge does, the ripples will have
a different symmetry to them.

Right. Why didn't you say my image was ok, only that it's not
bubbles but expanding spheres?

(I still don't know what to do with the spin.)

Gravitational fields similarly surround masses; move a mass and
its field ripples, and the ripples (gravitons) expand away also
at the speed of light.

I wonder about strength of the ripples and direction. If I have a
ball on a chain, and swing it left, how's the proportion of the (I
know, tiny) strength in the ripples in all six directions?
(Shouldn't there be a time direction, too, what with you talking
about spacetime.)

Not dots at all, more like complicated self-contained directional
induced motion fields that travel at the speed of light.

Now that's finally something I can imagine. :) (And that makes
sense.)

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.

Think of charges as digging their fingers into the warp and
weft of spacetime

?

Never mind that charges don't have fingers.

and _pulling_, deforming it to produce that electric field of
force.

Nope, no image.

Their mass also digs different fingers into other threads in the
weave of spacetime and _pulls_ to produce the gravitational field,
but much, much less strongly.

No image.

It would help if you said what's wrong with my images.

It's like gravity can't get anywhere near the 'traction' that
electrical charge can. Nobody knows why. Yet.

I don't see why it should.

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.

Then you're out of luck because at this time nobody knows 'how'
gravitational waves work.

An image of the effect will help, like the one above that you
apparrently don't like but don't want to correct.

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!

You're welcome; I hope some of this sticks so that you can use
it.

Well, I've got an image of the scientist and his construction, and
my own suggested images. :)

--
Tina
WISuspension: Seasons & Elements trilogy | Magic Earth series
Excerpts at: <http://home.htp-tel.de/fkoerper/ath/athintro.htm>

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