Uncommon Sense

January 5, 2026

The Thinking Lag

Filed under: Philosophy,Reality,Reason,Science — Steve Ruis @ 10:26 am
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There seems to be a vast gap between humanities best thinkers and humanities ordinary thinkers. This is understandable because thinking rarely pays the bills and so a great deal of time, often soul sucking time, is spent working jobs. That time doesn’t lend itself to thinking.

I ran across this question (Another damned trigger!) recently:

What can quantum mechanics tell us about the nature of reality?

I hope you are aware that quantum mechanics is famously successful in that its calculations are incredibly accurate. Unfortunately, it also makes no sense and explains almost nothing.

“If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t understand quantum mechanics.” (Widely attributed to Nobel laureate Richard Feynman)

This still seems to be the case, that is, understanding quantum mechanics is still a goal unrealized. So, if we do not understand it, how can we use it to understand “the nature of reality?”

Actually, I want to focus on “reality.” It exists in people’s minds as a rock bottom foundation to all that we observe going on around us.  Most people consider this to exist. It does not.

Reality is like so many other philosophical extremes, that also don’t exist. For example there is “empty space.” Never been found, doesn’t seem to exist. “Perfectly solid objects.” Never been found, don’t seem to exist. All objects, at least that we can interact with, are composed of atoms. Those atoms are composed of smaller parts. Those smaller parts, often enough, consist of even smaller parts. (Oh, the misery; is there no end to it?)

Aristotle stated “Nature abhors a vacuum,” and little did he know, he was right. A better statement would have been “nature abhors absolutes” a vacuum being a space completely empty. Consider “absolute zero,” a temperature you can’t get to from here. It exists as a concept but not in “reality.”

I think the concept of “reality” should be abandoned as it is more of a religious concept than a scientific one. Yes, yes, I know it is also a philosophical concept, but that doesn’t put it into a category labeled “useful.”

Human beings have a craving for certainty, certainty doesn’t exist either. Rather we should be striving for a minimum of uncertainty, or at least as much as can be, and a knowledge of how much actually exists.

December 3, 2025

Convergences

Filed under: History,Philosophy,Reality,Reason,Religion,Science — Steve Ruis @ 10:36 am
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As regular readers of this blog will know, I am curious about a wide range of things; not so wide as to include the Kardashians, but wide. I am deeply interested in the natural world, including the smallest and largest parts. I am curious about free will and how we developed self-awareness about how thoughts form and how we remember things. Many philosophical and religious topics are included in this cesspool of curiosity: the idea of morality being subjective or objective, whether gods exist or not, and so on.

Recently I have run across linkages between many of these topics than makes my thinking about them clearer. For example, you may have heard about brain plasticity, that the physical structure of the brain is changed as we experience things. Well, it has now been shown that one cause of brain plasticity is our thoughts. An argument against free will has been that thoughts aren’t physical causes so they cannot cause other things to happen, so free will is an illusion. But we now know that that is not so, even though we are still more than a little unclear as to what thoughts actually are, thoughts can change the structure of the brain and hence are physical causes, and free will is still on the board of possibilities

Recently cosmological studies have offered the possibility that the expansion of the universe is not only not speeding up as was the current thinking but slowing down. There are several ongoing efforts involved in the science of the very large. One prominent question is: is the universe finite or infinite? Since the definition of the term universe (at least one such) is “all existing matter and space considered as a whole.” It is a bit hard to consider it being finite. If one does, one ends up with the question, ‘Well, then what is outside of it?”

If the universe is infinite, and it seems to me that it is, then it cannot possibly be expanding or contracting, not as a whole, but possibly locally to various locations. Couple this with the relativity concept of “space-time” which is a mathematic concept cobbled together to make certain aspects of relativity theory coherent. But the concept of space-time itself is incoherent, so how does it make anything else more coherent? Time is not a thing and neither is space, so how can either contract or expand? Also, what does it mean to join them together? How is that done? Whenever one gets nonsensical outcomes or incoherent predictions, that usually is the indicator that it is time to go back and re-think things as we have somehow gotten off track.

I suspect that Einstein’s reputation as a titanic genius and the claim that maybe only two or three physicists could actually understand his General Theory of Relativity when it was first published left people sitting in the position from which asking questions or challenging schemes results in “who do you think you are” questions and if the majority of your audience doesn’t understand the theory, how are they going to understand your objections?

Current the LCDM Theory of the Cosmos (Lambda Cold Dark Matter, aka The Big Bang Theory) is considered the best available theory of why things are as they are in the realm of the very vast. I just read an article by a physicist stating why the LCDM theory is the best explanation of current data. But, while not an expert, I know that the LCDM theory includes a number of conjectures that are currently unproven (cosmic inflation, dark matter, dark energy, etc.) and since they were conjectured to explain why the LCDM theory didn’t work in certain cases, I don’t think it appropriate to use those conjectures as the best explanation of some of the facts (or really, any of the facts). Theoretical conjectures are speculative and shouldn’t be part of any proof, until their actual existence has been verified.

The LCDM theory was proposed way back in the 1930’s to explain data acquired by Edwin Hubble. These involved red-shifted lights put out by stars and galaxies. Since hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, the light emitted by hot hydrogen has a well known fingerprint and some of those fingerprints were out of place, being farther toward the red end of the visible spectrum as when seen in lab experiments. Here is a truncated history of redshifts:

Vesto Slipher was the first to discover that most spiral galaxies have redshifts, while Edwin Hubble later discovered the relationship between redshift and distance, which led to Hubble’s Law. The concept of redshift was first explained in 1848 by Hippolyte Fizeau, who observed the Doppler effect for light waves.

In 1848, he observed the shift in spectral lines of stars, explaining it as the Doppler effect for light, sometimes called the “Doppler–Fizeau effect”. In 1912, he discovered that most spiral “nebulae” (now known to be galaxies) had a redshift, indicating they were moving away from us. Following up on Slipher’s work, Hubble found a linear relationship between a galaxy’s redshift and its distance from Earth. He correctly interpreted this relationship as evidence that the universe is expanding. 

The Doppler Effect is dependent upon waves traveling through a medium and light is said to be moving through a vacuum between galaxies, so it isn’t that prominent of an explanation. And as to the universe is expanding being a conclusion of Hubble’s work, Hubble himself rejected that interpretation of his data in his lifetime, yet it is still bandied about that “He (Hubble) correctly interpreted this relationship as evidence that the universe is expanding (my emphasis)” which seems somewhat of a slander at this point.

So, now we are arguing about whether something that cannot be shown to be able to expand or contract is expanding slower or faster than before. (Egad!)

And then I read this:

“An analogy is a comparison that emphasizes similarity over dissimilarity. All analogies stand or fall on the appropriateness of the selection of the characteristics that are deemed to be similar.

…

“… analogy is crucial to the whole process of knowing. It is impossible for us to consider the unfamiliar without reference to the familiar.

…

“An analogy, like an assumption, must lead to understanding and accurate prediction or it will be discarded as useless. Thus, it is common for people to discard analogies that run counter to ‘common sense,’ or that predict an outcome with which they do not agree. Consequently, a particular analogy often finds acceptance only after the necessity of it becomes clear in the broad social context. Humans, for example, were not considered similar to other animals until the scientific and commercial advantages of the analogy outweighed the religious objections.”

(Source: The Scientific Worldview, Second Edition, by Glenn Borchardt, p. 141-142

Most people think of science as being hard and fast but it is, in my experience and vast readings, a quite pragmatic effort. No one seeks “truth” or “proofs;” we are just looking for a way forward, trying things to see if they work. Often as not when we find something that works we take a whack at why it seems to work We are nowhere near as successful at that than most people seem to think.

Evolution haters keep trying to undermine that theory without producing any new data or producing a new interpretation of the existing data that better explains it. They never get very far because the amount of data explainable by the theory of evolution is mountainous. Are there still weakness in the theory or parts that don’t work as well as we would like? I would assume yes, because this is a major and very large theory, and all theories have weak points, etc. The opponents of this theory just can’t muster the effort to delve into the weak points and find something valid. This is because they are only looking for conjectures and analogies that pass the “common sense test” to undermine people’s understanding of the theory itself. One of my favorites is “I ain’t evolved from no monkey.” This appeals to folks who don’t want to have monkeys sitting around the Thanksgiving table and is odd enough that mating with monkeys comes to mind. The only problem is that no one claims humans evolved from monkeys. Humans are Great Apes (gorillas, orangutans, chimpanzees, bonobos, and humans) and we evolved alongside all of the other Great Apes because we shared ecological niches with them. While monkeys are on the family tree, all animals are on the family tree because we all evolved from single cell organisms over billions of years. But monkeys are not close to us at all. This argument appeals to those who can’t distinguish between a monkey and an ape, of course. Religion has always had emotional appeals and rejected intellectual appeals, except in academic circles. (The Catholic Church rejected Aristotle until Thomas Aquinas “adjusted” Aristotle’s ideas so that they dovetailed with those of the Church. Aristotle himself wouldn’t recognize those points as coming from himself, they are so far removed from his thoughts, often 180 degrees opposite to them. For example, Aristotle thought the universe was infinite and eternal. When Aquinas was done, Aristotle’s ideas supported the created, young universe of the church.)

July 30, 2025

But, But, But …

Filed under: language,Reality,Reason,Science,writing — Steve Ruis @ 10:35 am
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The current theoretical darlings of cosmologists are dark matter and dark energy, even though there are no identifiable causes for their existence or mechanisms for their effects. Dark matter was conjectured because of phenomena observed that could only be explained by either the law of gravity varying from place to place or some new mysterious source of gravitational force existing, one that we cannot see. Well, everyone knew that gravity, or the law describing its effects, must be the same everywhere, so they settled for the mysterious source of gravitational force.

The same goes for dark energy. Since they believe space is expanding (specifically space-time, but only between galaxies, not within them) they were perplexed when their measurements showed the rate of expansion was increasing. Now, with no mechanism or description of how a non-material thing like “space” could expand, they came up with another mysterious force: dark energy, again something that we cannot observe, but is causing the expansion of space-time to accelerate.

But now, as the blog EarthSkyNews reports: “A new analysis of nearly 2,100 supernovas hints that dark energy – the mysterious influence driving the expansion of the universe – might change strength over time. If so, it would point to surprising new physics that could affect the fate of the universe.”

What the fuck, Cosmo-nerds? Gravity cannot vary from place to place but dark energy can? Apparently they haven’t noticed that if one peruses the problems by speculating that gravity can vary, most everything falls into place and no weird conjectures need be made. I guess they really like the rabbit hole they have plunged into. Now where did that damned White Rabbit go?

Postscript Would it break their spirits to say “the hypothetical mysterious influence driving the expansion of the universe” or the mysterious influence conjectured to be driving the expansion of the universe”? Scientists do tend to talk about hypotheticals as if they were real because everyone in their audience knew what was what. (“Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, know what I mean?”) but this is wildly inappropriate for things written for lay audience. What were their editors thinking?

January 4, 2025

Finally, A Reexamination of Dark Energy and Cosmic Expansion

Filed under: Philosophy,Reality,Science — Steve Ruis @ 8:47 am
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When something sounds too audacious or too stupid to be true, it is always worthwhile to re-examine the possibilities. I have been saying for quite some time that cosmology is very ripe for re-examinations of things like an expanding universe, cosmic inflation, dark energy, and dark matter. Well, there is some light at the end of the tunnel.

This is from the Universe Today Blog (1-12025)

New Study of Supernovae Data Suggests That Dark Energy is an Illusion

Dark energy is central to our modern understanding of cosmology. In the standard model, dark energy is what drives the expansion of the Universe. In general relativity, it’s described by a cosmological constant, making dark energy part of the structure of space and time. But as we’ve gathered more observational evidence, there are a few problems with our model. For one, the rate of cosmic expansion we observe depends on the observational method we use, known as the Hubble tension problem. For another, while we assume dark energy is uniform throughout the cosmos, there are some hints suggesting that might not be true. Now a new study argues we’ve got the whole thing wrong. Dark energy, the authors argue, doesn’t exist.

Let’s start with what we know. When we look out across the billions of light-years of cosmic space, we see that matter is clumped into galaxies, and those galaxies are groups into clusters so that the Universe has clumps of matter separated by great voids. On a small scale, this means that the distribution of matter is uneven. But as we go to larger scales, say a billion light-years or so, the average distribution of matter evens out. On a large scale, the cosmos is homogeneous and not biased in a particular direction. This means we can broadly describe the Universe as the same everywhere. This is known as the principle of homogeneity. By applying this principle to cosmic expansion, we can model the Universe by the Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker (FLRW) metric, where dark energy is a cosmological constant.

Opponents of the standard model argue that the principle can’t be applied to cosmic expansion. Some even argue that the basic principles of general relativity can’t be applied on cosmic scales. In one such model, known as the Timescape model, it’s argued that dark energy would violate the principle of equivalence. Since the principle equates inertial energy and gravitational energy, there is no way to distinguish cosmic expansion as a real effect. Furthermore, since we know that gravitational fields affect the rate of time, the Timescape model argues that the Universe can’t be homogeneous in time. Basically, the model argues that within the gravitational well of a galactic cluster, clocks would run more slowly than they would within the vast empty cosmic voids. Over the billions of years of cosmic history, this difference would build up, creating a variance of time throughout the Universe. It is this time divergence that would give the appearance of cosmic expansion.

I have no idea whether this interpretation will hold up but at least people are trying to eliminate incoherent concepts, such as dark energy and dark matter.

December 21, 2024

Making Space-Time Work

Filed under: Reason,Science — Steve Ruis @ 10:38 am
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It is claimed that Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity replaced Newton’s gravitational theory. Newton’s theory described the force of gravity, while Einstein said “Force, what force, space-time is distorted by embedded masses and so moving objects instead of moving in straight lines, move along the curved lines of space-time.

A common example used to distinguish these two ideas is an orbiting satellite, like the moon or the ISS. In Newtonian physics, the satellite moves in a straight line unless acted upon by a force. The force involved was gravity, which was a pull on the satellite causing its path to change. In effect the satellite is pulled “down” toward the Earth but it keeps missing it because of its “sideways” movement.

In Einstein’s physics, there is no force, the satellite is travelling along a “straight” line of curved space-time, giving the appearance of a force acting when there is really no force. (Think of a NASCAR race on a steeply banked track. When the cars enter the banked parts of the track, they don’t have to turn their steering wheels much or at all because the slant of the track imparts the turn needed.)

Okay, here is my problem with Einstein’s conception of “gravity.” Starting with a board at a slant (see illustration below). We all know if the ball is in such a position, if it is free to move, it will roll down the plane. But in the absence of gravity, what happens to the ball? <Jeopardy theme music playing>

In the absence of gravity or any other force the ball doesn’t move. It stays where it is (according to the Law of Inertia, or Newton’s First Law: an object will remain at rest or continue moving in a straight line at a constant speed unless acted upon by an external force.

Okay, now consider a larger experiment. The Earth orbits the Sun because of space-time being curved by the Sun, right? If we had access to a Star Trek like matter transporter and we “beamed” a round ball into a position stationary with regard to the Sun, what would happen to it? According to Einstein, it would not move because there would be no force acting upon it. Available paths, aka distorted space-time surfaces, to that ball may be myriad, but since it is not moving, it would take none of those.

According to Newton, it would move in a straight line directly into the Sun. According to Einstein, it would not move. Now, I ask you: would the ball move?

Postscript In a comment to a comment where I share this thought experiment, the commenter on my comment went on and on about how thee Sun was moving, along with the Milky Way Galaxy, rotating around the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, moving as part of a supercluster, etc. Apparently the phrase “with regard to the Sun” was insufficient, so may I clarify that it was stationary relative to the Sun or that it moved along with the Sun, not just relative to it? Sheesh.

November 13, 2024

WTF? The Mysterious Force We Call Dark Energy Makes Up More Than Two Thirds of the Universe

Filed under: Reason,Science — Steve Ruis @ 10:10 am
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The sentence in the title above came from the EarthSkyNews blog/newsletter. I expect better from sources purporting to explain scientific concepts.

“The mysterious force we call dark energy makes up more than two thirds of the universe.”
(www.earthsky.org, 11-13-2024)

First “Dark Energy” is indeed mysterious as it is entirely hypothetical, the concept being created to explain the hypothetical acceleration of the hypothetical expansion of space, or space-time if you prefer, in the universe. No one has yet found evidence to support its existence (the original issue leading to it being hypothesized does not count as evidence).

Using the label “energy” for a “force” is quite odd as these two are not the same.

Force is an external factor which can change the state of rest or state of uniform motion of an object. (Newton’s first law)

Energy is defined as the “ability to do work, which is the ability to exert a force causing displacement of an object.”

So an object able to exert a force possesses energy to do so, and so energy is the source of the ability to exert a force or forces.

Dark energy is not a force, it is an energy which is the source of the force causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate, or so it is proposed.

Moving on to “dark energy makes up more than two thirds of the universe.” This should be better stated as “dark energy, if it is real, would make up more than two thirds of the universe” or “the theory hypothesizing the existence of dark energy also claims that it would make up more than two thirds of the universe.”

Under no circumstances should a mysterious energy, lacking any proof of its existence, be referred to as if it were a fact, certainly not in the same sentence!

October 26, 2024

Do We Really Understand?

Filed under: Reason,Science — Steve Ruis @ 11:47 am
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A recent blog post by a popular astrophysicist stated the following:

We understand that:

•  our Universe is expanding,
•  that it can trace its history back to a hotter, denser, more uniform past,
•  with the earliest phases describable by a hot Big Bang,
•  which itself was preceded by a phase of cosmic inflation,
•  and that all that we see and experience today — stars, galaxies, planets, moons, the cosmic web, and even life itself — having arisen in the aftermath of these impressive events in our shared history.

I would have stated this differently. I would have started that: “According to our best current theory, (the Lambda cold dark matter, or the ΛCDM, model) . . . which states:. . . .”

If we really understand the topic, we should be able to explain all parts of this theory/model: namely “a phase of cosmic inflation,” dark matter, dark energy, expanding space-time, etc. which are all on the list of things we do not understand.

Even the commonly accepted concept such as space-time is iffy at best. Space is not a thing, so how can it expand? One excusigist explained that space-time could expand because it is a field. Okay, add another thing to the list of things not explained in this theory: a field.

The standard definition, which I first learned, is this: “In physics, a field is a region of space where every point is associated with a specific physical quantity, like a value or a vector.” In my day a field was a region in space in which something could be measured. As a consequence completely empty space is disqualified, except in the notion that there must be some mass nearby and the force of attraction to that mass must be able to be felt in that region of empty space, so in effect, all of space is a field of some sort, which gets us nowhere. A region in space in which an effect can be felt describes all space, so saying “space is a field” is nonsense, as the concept of space is needed to define a field. (A running joke in science is that “cows are out standing in their field” usually used to prick the balloon of another scientist who was described as being outstanding in his field.)

So, explaining that space-time could expand because it is a field is sheer nonsense, like cosmic inflation. Cosmic inflation, a period of rapid expansion of the universe . . . before the Big Bang, which is described as a rapid expansion of the universe (WTF?) is caused how? What triggered it? How does it work? For the ΛCDM model to be declared the “standard model” of the universe, you’d think such answers would be available. They are not. Oh, and the expansion occurred at speeds above the speed of light, something we think impossible now.

Physics, specifically astrophysics above, but also particle physics, high energy physics, etc. seem to have gone down rabbit holes. Einstein is partly to blame for this as he insisted that mathematics should be the leader in such endeavors, but mathematics has no bounds. In prior scientific endeavors, conceptualizations using imagination and logic, formed one branch and experimentation formed the other.

So experiments created data that required organization and conceptualizations. The conceptualizing, that is theorizing, created arrangements and structures that made sense of the data. The theories made predictions that lead to experiments being done, and experiments done created data that required theories to explain.

It seems as if physicists spend the vast majority of their time theorizing, usually mathematically, and almost no time in comparing theory and data. That is they have lost contact with reality.

Take the new tool, expected to create oodles of new data, the James Webb Space Telescope. By placing this telescope farther out than Earth orbit, in a Lagrange point, and then shielding it from any radiative heat source, allowed it to take infrared images deeper into space and therefore time than ever before. Note that is not “space-time” it is space and time because the light traveling from far away objects is limited to the speed of light, so the farther away a luminous object is, the longer the light has to travel and the longer it takes to get here and when it does, it was emitted long, long ago so wea re effectively seeing the past.

Since the time period the JWST was supposed to read was close to the time of the BB, the ΛCDM theorists predicted that galaxies would be very small, not evolved, Black holes would be few and far between, and star creation would be at a minimum. So, the JWST looked and saw large, evolved galaxies with Black holes at their centers, some being very, very massive black holes, and therefore “old,” and places in which star creation seemed to be moving at a high clip.

So, if the “current standard model” got things so very, very wrong, some doubt would be cast upon it, especially because of the long list if unexplained ad hoc patches already in place, no?

Well, of course, a small army of excusigists immediately lines up to explained that’s what they expected all along and that claims that the BBT has holes in it are vastly overstated. You see, if you only knew what they knew you would understand. These people seem to have morphed from honest scientists into Priests of the Standard Model.

But what do I know, that’s just what I can see from the cheap seats?

Addendum Regarding “. . . completely empty space is disqualified, except in the notion that there must be some mass nearby and the force of attraction to that mass must be able to be felt in that region of empty space . . .” Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity eliminates the concept of “the force of gravity” substituting curved space-time which means space theoretically could be completely empty and therefore not a field at all, at least with regard to gravity. Of course, there are huge magnetic fields all over the known universe, so maybe they can play the role of turning “empty space” into a “field.”

July 16, 2023

The Theory of Everything Nonsense

Filed under: Reason,Science — Steve Ruis @ 11:06 am
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Ever since the theories of electricity and magnetism were unified (in the nineteenth century, btw), many physicists have dreamed of unifying all of the forces of nature. This theory has been called the Theory of Everything, the Unified Field Theory, Grand Unification Theory (GUT), Grand Unified Theory, Unification Theory, Super Unified Field Theory, and the Unitary Field Theory. I am sure there are more names but I couldn’t be bothered to go find them.

I find this perplexing because this thrust is not generated by findings or data, just a desire, a quest as it were, for such a mythical beast.

I think the quest is a waste of time and resources for a number of reasons. A century of “no progress” is one of those reasons, but other quests have gone on as long.

The basic quest is to fold gravity in with electromagnetism, and the so-called weak and strong nuclear forces. At the outset, gravity is far, far weaker a force than those others, but at the scale of the cosmos, gravity is a dominant force. Another vast difference is in magnetism, there are no “monopoles,” being a single magnetic pole, either “N” or “S.” Magnetic poles always come in pairs. In electricity there are monopoles, + and –, which gives us attractions and repulsions between electrically charged objects. But in gravity, unlike the other two, there are monopoles, but only one type. There are no repulsions in gravity, only attractions. So, why would we expect one set of rules to apply to all?

Einstein’s conception of gravity consists of four-dimensional “space-time” which is distorted by the presence of massive bodies to produce space that curves the paths of attracting bodies. If one wants a “unified field theory” then one has to show that space-time is the gravitational field. Has anyone done that yet (I am asking)?

Missing pieces in my mind are how massive bodies interact with space-time (Dear God, please show me a mechanism.), why were just the three spatial dimensions and “time” chosen to make the four dimensional matrix. Why weren’t temperature or density chosen for the fourth dimension or as fifth or sixth dimensions? There are plausible arguments currently that show that time does not exist or that “time is motion,” which makes “space-time” even iffier.

And I would like to hear from those more knowledgeable as to the motivation for this search. I know that electric and magnetic fields interact, even join to make electromagnetic radiation. And we now know that the massive gravities of stars bends the transit paths of electromagnetic radiation, but is that gravity interacting or is it just the bending of space-time creating non-straight paths for the EMR. Is there any inkling of gravity interacting with the other forces of nature?

The title of this post may seem a little harsh, but I am only referring to my thinking that such a theory makes no sense. If it did, I would be glad to study it.

November 26, 2022

Has Modern Physics Lost Its Way?

Filed under: Science — Steve Ruis @ 1:31 pm
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The title of this piece has been a common topic for physicists to comment upon for the past few decades. I am not a physicist, but during my training to be a chemist I took a great many physics courses and have continued to be interested in developments in physics over the past 50 years or so.

Here is a list of the things I find, well, questionable.

Space-Time This invention by Albert Einstein is passing strange. On one hand, time is claimed to be an illusion or to not exist and on the other time is not only real it can be blended with spatial dimensions to make something more than real.

Cosmic Inflation and the Expansion of Space-Time Erwin Hubble discovered a key relationship regarding the spacing of celestial objects in the universe and their redshifts. All stars produce light and that light has built in patterns. When those specific patterns are shifted towards the red end of the electromagnetic spectrum, they are said to be redshifted. When shifted the other way, they are said to be blue-shifted. For example, the galaxy of Andromeda is blue-shifted, but most are redshifted. The original interpretation of these shifts were likened to the Doppler Effect, you know, the cause of train whistles sounding different when the train is moving toward you from when it is moving away. From this we jumped to the idea that the universe is expanding, an idea Einstein originally rejected. But this is not the only explanation of those shifts. In fact, Hubble recanted that analysis.

(If the redshifts are a Doppler shift) … the observations as they stand lead to the anomaly of a closed universe, curiously small and dense, and, it may be added, suspiciously young. On the other hand, if redshifts are not Doppler effects, these anomalies disappear and the region observed appears as a small, homogeneous, but insignificant portion of a universe extended indefinitely both in space and time. (E. Hubble, Roy. Astron. Soc. M. N., 17, 506, 1937)

It should be pointed out that Hubble himself was not convinced that redshift was exclusively due to Doppler effect. Up to the time of his death he maintained that velocities inferred from red shift measurements should be referred to as “apparent velocities.”
(Mitchell, 1997)

There are, in fact, quite a number of other interpretations of the data that are in play. For example, currently the shifts are assumed to be happening to the light traveling through empty space. We now know that “empty space” is an extreme condition, almost impossible to find in nature. So, what would be the effect of light traveling through space that had some dust in it? An example, would be the typically red colors of sunset. Traveling through the atmosphere at an angle, rather straight(ish) down, causes the light to be read in color. Now this strictly is not directly applicable to the galactic light, but it is analogous. There is a distance-redshift relationship because the farther light travels through space, the more distortion happens via the mechanism causing the redshifting. If the red shifting were entirely due to the Doppler Effect, the greater the effect, the faster the speed, no? So, why should galaxies be moving faster, the farther away from us they are? If all such matter originated from one point, the faster galaxies should be farther away in space and time and not farther back toward their origins. The Webb telescope is showing us light emitted by the very earliest stars/galaxies and they are heavily redshifted, more so than much closer objects. That would indicate that those galaxies were moving faster then than the galaxies are moving now, which means things are slowing down. But we are told the nonsensical thing that the “expansion of space-time is speeding up.”

To explain these things we are told that in the beginning, there was even more rapid expansion of space-time, called “Cosmic Inflation.” So, the expansion of space-time sped up to be really, really fast and then slowed down. Right.

I was taught that the more nonsense that was postulated to make a theory work, the greater likelihood that theory was on its last legs.

There is a coherent explanation for everything, if we assume the universe was infinite and not expanding. In Hubble’s words “a universe extended indefinitely both in space and time.” Have you heard much about that “other” possible interpretation of the data? No? Neither have I.

Dark Energy and Dark Matter WTF? The bulk of the matter in the universe is invisible and we never new it was there. Okay, uh. . . . And Dark Energy is a form of energy we never knew existed. It is making the universe expand faster and faster. Okay . . . WTF? How does this energy affect pace-time? Has there been a form of energy that has been determined to affect space-time? These are cockamamie concepts that were cooked up to explain new observations. Note that the old concepts were insufficient to explain the new observations, so we don’t question the old concepts or our interpretations, we just pile new whatchamacallits on top of those. Sheesh.

The Failure to Find a Unifying Theory of both Gravity and Quantum Mechanics Physicists, for the last 100 years or so, have been trying to create a theory that incorporates all of the major forces of nature. The history of physics sort of leads to this conclusion, as when forces were identified (basically the creators of new motion in matter) we were just trying to catalog them. But there turned out to be just a few of them were fundamental, those explaining all of the others. Then electric forces (attractions and repulsions) were unified with magnetic forces (attractions and repulsions). Then nuclear forces were discovered and we had a list of just four fundamental forces in nature, which explained all of the others: the weak nuclear force, the strong nuclear force, electromagnetic forces, and gravity.

But gravity wasn’t playing well. As quantum mechanics was developed, using quantum field theory, everything seems compatible, except gravity. So, the search for a theory of gravity compatible with quantum mechanics, quantum gravity if you will, went  on . . . and on . . . and on.

My question centers on the fact that gravity is the force that dominates in the cosmos. Yet, for us puny humans here on earth, chemistry and physics seem to be dominated by electromagnetism and nuclear forces. And if we peered down, down, down into matter, we encountered the strange behavior of quantum-level objects. Gravity plays almost no role in biology and chemistry and quantum phenomena and only a small one in earthly physics. Quantum effects exist where we live, but they are few and far between compared with what is going on in the realm of fundamental particle interactions, which don’t show any role for gravity at that level at all.

So, what is the basis for the expectations that a theory (which is just an explanatory description of some set of physical behaviors) would apply to encompass both of these realms—the very, very, very large and the very, very, very small. The only driving force for this search is “well, it worked in the past.” Maybe, just maybe, they are separate, only slightly overlapping realms of behavior and a single theory just cannot be stretched to cover both.

String Theory An ugly baby only a mother could love is the only analogy for string theory. Maybe we need a theory for why physicists would be attracted to an untestable conjecture. (Can’t really call it a theory when it cannot be tested. Theories have passed tests, many of them.) I suspect those who dove into this quagmire early on are now thinking “Have I wasted my career studying something of no merit whatsoever?”

My background, as I have said, is in chemistry. In that subject, there seems to be a life-cycle of theories which also is apparent in early physics. When a new theory is created, there is much enthusiasm, hope and excitement. The theory is built up, tested and becomes stronger. Then flaws appear. In some theories these flaws are tiny or irrelevant and don’t undermine the use of the theory in many, many situations. Other times the flaws widen and threaten the confidence people have in that theory. At that point proponents apply patches. These tend to be context specific and apply to just those instances in which the flaw makes serious problems. But over time, such theories can accumulate a great many patches and at that time, others create new theories that require no such patches. And theories do “fade away” and cease to be used. Some get resurrected in that they produce short-lived progress in new situations, but usually that zombie-like theory will also soon fade away.

Too many of these Big Bang patches seem to deny common sense and seem to be patches to make the damned thing work like we want it to. Dark energy, dark matter, cosmic inflation, the expansion of space-time, the existence of space-time, all seem to be unsupportable reaches. Time will tell.

August 21, 2020

Is the Strong Nuclear Force Label Akin to the Names Given to Dark Energy and Dark Matter?

Filed under: Science — Steve Ruis @ 9:48 pm
Tags: , , ,

In physics it is standard operating procedure to give things a name before they are characterized, discovered, or found. So, when it was discovered that the expansion of the universe seems to be accelerating, the cause for this acceleration was given the name “Dark Energy.” Dark” because we cannot see it and “Energy” because it requires energy to accelerate bodies away from one another that attract one another (due to gravity). So, what is this dark energy? We don’t know. How does it work? We don’t know. How can we find it? We don’t know. The label “dark energy” is a placeholder. Whether this becomes the name of what is finally discovered remains to be seen.

In 1919 when Rutherford “discovered” the proton, something seemed amiss because the masses of the atoms were too high to consist of just protons and electrons. Something else needed to be there and in 1932, Chadwick, in Rutherford’s research group, discovered the neutron and all of the mass problems were solved. This was a monumental set of discoveries that made sense of all of chemistry and the periodic table, along with myriad other things.

The remaining fundamental question was what held these neutrons and protons together in an atomic nucleus (Rutherford had shown that almost all of the mass of an atom was concentrated in a tiny central location he called a “nucleus.”). The problem was that the protons were positively charged and at the distances apart they were, should have flown apart at high velocity. And they do, except when they get as close as they do when “fused” together to make atomic nuclei. So what caused this massive repulsion to become a massive attraction at very, very short distances. Well, the physicists did what they always did, they invented a new force called the “Strong Nuclear Force.” “Strong” because it overcame a massive electric repulsion, “Nuclear” because it only occurred in nuclei (apparently), and “Force” because it had to be an attractive force to overcome the repulsive force.

This is an illustration of what an atom looks like. You can see that at this level of magnification, the nucleus is still too small to see and, well, the electrons are even smaller.

So, what is this strong nuclear force? We don’t know. How does it work? We don’t know. How can we find it? We don’t know, except that it only operates in atomic nuclei or similar situations. We call it a “fundamental” force of nature because we cannot figure out what it is in terms of other things already understood. (There are quite a few things like this. For example, what is electric charge?)

If there is such a thing as a strong nuclear force, I should suspect that we should find small numbers of neutrons linked together like the protons and neutrons in atomic nuclei are. In fact, it should be easier to make clumps of neutrons because there is no positive-positive charge repulsion to deal with as there is in ordinary atomic nuclei.

So, I went looking for such things and found this reference on Wikipedia. (I know it is not necessarily the best source, but it is better than nothing.)

Here are the references to small numbers of neutrons being bonded like atomic nuclei:

  • Mononeutron: An isolated neutron undergoes beta decay with a mean lifetime of approximately 15 minutes (half-life of approximately 10 minutes), becoming a proton (the nucleus of hydrogen), an electron and an antineutrino.
  • Dineutron: The dineutron, containing two neutrons, was unambiguously observed in 2012 in the decay of beryllium-16. It is not a bound particle, but had been proposed as an extremely short-lived resonance state produced by nuclear reactions involving tritium. It has been suggested to have a transitory existence in nuclear reactions produced by helions (helium-3 nuclei, completely ionized) that result in the formation of a proton and a nucleus having the same atomic number as the target nucleus but a mass number two units greater. The dineutron hypothesis had been used in nuclear reactions with exotic nuclei for a long time. Several applications of the dineutron in nuclear reactions can be found in review papers. Its existence has been proven to be relevant for nuclear structure of exotic nuclei. A system made up of only two neutrons is not bound, though the attraction between them is very nearly enough to make them so. This has some consequences on nucleosynthesis and the abundance of the chemical elements.
  • Trineutron: A trineutron state consisting of three bound neutrons has not been detected, and is not expected to exist[citation needed] even for a short time.
  • Tetraneutron: A tetraneutron is a hypothetical particle consisting of four bound neutrons. Reports of its existence have not been replicated.

So what can we learn from this? Well neutrons are not like protons as neutrons are unstable when isolated whereas protons are very stable when isolated. And while neutrons and protons can be fused together in great profusion, neutrons and neutrons cannot be so fused. So, why does the “strong nuclear force” work in ordinary nuclei but not when just neutrons are involved, which should be easier to bond together?

I am not well educated in this area, but I am suspicious of the strong nuclear force. It sounds like a placeholder concept, to be used until we figure out what is going on.

I favor, right now—as I said I am not very knowledgeable in this field—this view: we do not know why the energies of electrons are quantized in atoms. We know that they are, but not why or how. I think that atomic nuclei are held together by another quantum effect. Simply, when they are fused together, some of the mass of the particles is converted into energy and radiated away (fusion energy). Without that mass, there is not enough mass for the nucleus to exist as separate particles anymore and so there is a quantum restriction on those particles existing. If they don’t exist, where are they? Well, that nucleus is a new single particle made from neutrons and protons, not of neutrons and protons.

I have asked a number of times, if some “mass” is turned into energy when nuclei are fused together, where does this mass come from? Are there lighter neutrons in the nuclei? Lighter protons? Are their other exotic subatomic particles that are involved and they are converted into energy entire? No answer has been forthcoming.

Recently I read that researchers have finally figured out what the constituent substances in a proton are. There are three quarks, but they make up less than 10% of the mass of the proton. The largest fraction of the stuff of protons is “mass energy.” What confines it from getting away I do not know. But think about this. If the protons and neutrons are fused together, maybe they make up a new single particle, containing all of the quarks and other denizens in various energy levels, but some of the mass energy leaves to make the “fusion energy.” There is no mysterious short-range force holding the neutrons and protons together because there are no neutrons or protons there. Just as a proton doesn’t fly apart because of its charge, this single particle doesn’t fly apart because of its charge. There is only one particle, so there is nothing to fly apart.

When energy is added to some nuclei, there is enough mass to make other stable sets of particles, allowing pieces to fly apart (nuclear fission). This additional mass that is added is often in the form of neutrons or even electrons.

Now I am not saying that this is all there is to it. There are many, many details. But quantum restrictions keep electrons from flying apart in atoms and even restricts their energies inside of the atom. (These restrictions are not totally fixed. Under extreme conditions, the energies are different, but they are still restrictions and of the same type.)

This model doesn’t require an amazing force that only operates under very, very short distances and is very, very strong. If there were such a thing, every time two neutrons bumped together, they should stick together until there were whole planets of neutronium, and it is fairly clear that they do not do this.

Yeah, I am probably wrong, but it sure is fun speculating.

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