"Spooky action at a distance" What did he mean?

Discussion in 'Pseudoscience' started by Quantum Quack, Apr 20, 2015.

  1. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    I still haven't figured out how you can remove Minkowski space and retain Special relativity.
    The famous light cones diagram often used in explaining SRT require Minkowski space.
    Take out the cones and you take out SRT... as far as I can deduce.
    Perhaps you would care to explain this in more detail?
     
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  3. danshawen Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, I remember you were fond of Minkowski's light cones.

    Even if such cones (discrete points in Minkowski spacetime) are separated from each other by a distance as small as a Planck length, a photon emitted in any direction from one point in Minkowski space, other than one fired directly at the point that is a Planck length away, it will never be observed within the 'light cone' of the nearby point. Of what possible utility is this concept, geometrically or otherwise? If the light cones intersect, it only happens for Newtonian (non-relativistic) projectiles. Once a photon leaves a region of space, it is never seen again other than at a distant location that lies directly in its path. Did we really need Minkowski's light cones to inform us of that?
     
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  5. danshawen Valued Senior Member

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    Gravity and Magnetism?

    As matter moves faster <c near a gravitating object, kinetic energy does indeed add to the rest mass, but this occurs by a means more closely related to a Doppler shift than by any means analogous to electric, magnetic fields.

    The article I linked to calculated the rest lifetime of a photon by means of how much its path was bent by gravity. It isn't that electromagnetism and gravity are unrelated, it's just that the disparity of the two forces is very considerable. If gravity were only one tenth as strong as magnetism, the universe we know could not even exist, other than a single gigantic neutron star, perhaps. Gravity already gets strong enough to induce electron degeneracy at the mass of some white dwarf stars before even more massive objects collapse further into black holes.

    It was about 8 years before Einstein correctly derived General relativity from a consideration of Special Relativity and some very flawed geometry based in part on Minkowski conceptions of spacetime. If the war in the Crimea had not delayed Eddington's observations of the perihelion of mercury, GR as originally proposed by Einstein would have been remembered as a spectacular failure.

    GR also made good use of a remnant of Newton's gravity in the form of the Principle of Equivalence. So when the Higgs mechanism imparts mass both to itself and to key fundamental constituents of matter, AND it does the same thing to the kinetic energy that becomes bound in matter by accelerating it to relativistic speed, are we expected to give up on this equivalence and instead look for an electromagnetic cause for gravity based on Maxwell's conception of vector Euclidean space? Bound electrons may care about solid geometry, but the field you are talking about doesn't.

    Man, do I ever get tired of the influence of ancient Greece on physics. If only Einstein had half the influence on modern physics and popular culture that Aristotle still enjoys, it would be an improvement. When Einstein said: "G-d loves geometry", I don't think he meant that we should all try to be a bunch of ancient Greek worshiping Euclidean blockheads like his former calculus teacher. Thinking any other way takes some considerable effort, of course. Catholicism's Holy Trinity was likewise influenced by Greek polytheism. Portions of the Torah recreated from various sources since Judaism's conquer by Alexander betray similar Greek cultural influence on the ideas it contains. Fast food restaurants sill make a lot of money on gyros. Why should physics or 21st century math be any different?

    OK, I'll come clean. I used to like geometry. I still like Pythagoras, but I never joined a fraternity. Every country in the world seems to be following ancient Greece's lead on gay marriage. Satisfied now? It still doesn't mean that geometry has very much to do with particle physics. Some of the particles are round, and maybe travel in straight lines. So, what?
     
    Last edited: Jun 1, 2015
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  7. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    Ahh.. so that is how you can take Minkowski out of SRT and leave it valid!

    I would have never guessed!

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
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  8. danshawen Valued Senior Member

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    There's really no trick to it. Keep Lorentz and Einstein. Lose the light cones. Lose the 4D rotation of time <-> space, space <-> time, because neither of those actually happen, hyperbolic rotations or otherwise. Ditch the idea of using Pythagoras to fold time into a space dimension, and 4D intervals as hybrid geometrical invariants. Keep invariant c. What could possibly be any simpler than that?

    Relativistic geometry (RG) really works. Euclidean geometry (EG) only works for material solids at rest. EG's no good for describing a vacuum without inertia that can impart inertia to matter. EG's no good for defining "the topological model of the sigma field". I suspect EG's no good for describing magnetic or electric fields unless they are "static", and magnetic fields are NEVER static.
     
  9. danshawen Valued Senior Member

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    When matter is accelerated to a relativistic inertial reference frame, it will appear to an observer at rest that its mass + kinetic energy has increased. It will also appear that it has Lorentz contracted in the direction of its motion. The observer traveling with the projectile sees nothing of the sort happening. They will be unaware of any increase in kinetic energy, and to them it will appear that the rest of the universe, including an observer that previously was at rest, is what has accelerated.

    But in actual fact, this situation is anything but symmetric. While it is true that the galaxy from which the relativistic projectile originated is also accelerating with respect to other galaxies at cosmological distances, the PROBABILITY of any projectile traversing such distances is extremely remote. So remote, in fact, that for all intents an purposes, any projectile originating from a host galaxy never attains speeds that are very different from the rest state for the center of that galaxy. Look again at the symmetry of the two observers. One is still at rest with respect to the center of whatever galaxy. One is moving at relativistic speed with respect to the center of that galaxy, BUT LESS THAN c. This means, that if both observers were situated so that they fall into a gravitating body that is itself at rest with respect to their host galaxy, ONE OF THEM will impact with more or less energy than one that started at rest with respect to the gravitating body.

    Why is this an important idea? Because now we have something to actually nail relative motion to. Now we have a means of arbitrating whether an object has been accelerated relative to another or not. The speed of light is one local limit. At rest relative to the center of a galaxy from which something originated is the other. Every inertial or non-inertial reference frame falls into one of these two categories locally. Mach's principle doesn't quite capture this idea, but it was close.

    Next stop: how Lorentz contraction consists of reducing the space between atoms in the direction of motion, and time dilation consists of a Doppler shift of bound energy in particles. Minkowski rotations of pseudoEG, 4D intervals, and light cones are not welcome.

    You will also notice, NONE of these ideas was pondered by anyone ever associated with the science of philosophy of ancient Greece. Euclidean geometry is not welcome here. Relativistic geometry is the lingua franca and the coin of this realm of physics.
     
    Last edited: Jun 2, 2015
  10. danshawen Valued Senior Member

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    The main problem with Minkowski space is related to your "spooky action at a distance". Evidently, Minkowski didn't buy into quantum entanglement either (and his student was having difficulties with it also). That is why it was Minkowski who probably related that "we are living in a world of events".

    It is true that we are living in a world of events. Some of those events are simultaneous, relative to a frame that is at rest, but by and large, simultaneity would make little difference to objects and events surrounding us. We don't care because even if simultaneity changes when things start to move, they don't change very much at the rate most motion on this planet proceeds. The trains will still run on time no matter how fast we drive or walk to the train station. Except for those pesky Euclidean solids that are material objects (like trains). These were near and dear to Minkowski. In fact, all of his quasi-Euclidean geometry was based on them. Why is this a problem for relativity?

    Because Minkowski thought that there is no equivalent to the speed of light in a solid. Solids were treated as though infinitely rigid; as though when you push on the front part of a block of iron, or pull on the back part of it, the whole block moves SIMUTANEOUSLY. He didn't really believe that E=mc^2, I suppose.

    Think of an infinitely rigid solid bar of iron or better yet, a braided iron rope (something you can tug on) that is sufficiently long for relativity to play a part in what the whole object does when you tug on the front or the back of it, say a light hour in length, or about three times the distance from the Earth to the Sun; 270 million miles. And you have a laser you can turn on right next to it that you can use to signal someone on the other end that you have just tugged on it. Which gets to the other end faster, the beam of light, or the pull on the braided iron rope? If relativity is to be believed (and it is more solid than Euclidean geometry ever was), the signal from the laser gets to the far end of the rope a considerable amount of time before the tug on the rope is felt. This would probably be true because the speed of sound in an iron rope is about 5130 meters per second, a far cry from 186,000 meters per second which is the speed of light.

    But breaking the sound barrier in air is a trick that is done by military fighter jets all the time. In 1920s era physics, before the sound barrier in air at high altitude was actually broken, this was believed to be impossible, USING THE SAME SORT OF REASONING THAT MINKOWSKI USED TO COME UP WITH HIS IDEA OF 4D INTERVALS. It is in part because of the spectacular failure of the calculations that prohibited the sound barrier from being broken that some people believe that relativity physics is in error when it predicts that neither matter nor energy can exceed the speed of light, or the "light barrier". These people are wrong. The speed of light is a much harder limit than anything like a sound barrier. There will never be warp engine powered starships like Enterprise that will be able to break that barrier. The transporter (matter teleportation by means of quantum entanglement) may be a different matter, but it is a fact that the Enterprise, in the process of beaming someone to a planet's surface, would be blown halfway across the galaxy if the process did not cause the energy of each atom transported to stop and instead of continuing to bombarding a planet as a beam of a 200 kg chunk of matter converted completely to energy (widest possible dispersion). I suppose they could solve the problem by beaming an equal mass into empty space in the opposite direction, but Newton's third law evidently still works for the Enterprise, or else it wouldn't be able to actually go anywhere, other than somewhere else no man has seen before, and come back to tell anyone about it. Star Trek physics is a pinch of science along with a planet sized mass of fantasy, as one might expect.

    Nevertheless, there is something definitely wrong with Minkowski's conception of solid objects as having dimensions that are the same as "events", but it's difficult to figure out exactly what that is until you add the element of entanglement. The energy in the vacuum is entangled everywhere.

    A block of iron is a sculpture that is comprised of iron atoms. Each one of those atoms is a combination of electric, electroweak, and strong nuclear fields, and they form a lattice that is bound by entangled electrons. Yes, ENTANGLED electrons are a part of the mix of what we consider to be solid matter. The electrons, quarks, W and Z bosons, and their antiparticles (about 2% of the total mass of each atom, in actual fact) all derive their inertial mass from the Higgs mechanism, something that derives from the energy of the vacuum. The part of atomic mass that is NOT serviced by the inertia imparting Higgs mechanism consists of gluon-quark color charge energy exchanges. Also, if one is to believe QCD, getting most of that other 90% of the energy imparted to atomic mass from the vacuum.

    It is certainly true that pulling on one end of a 270 million mile braided iron rope is nothing like exploiting the entanglement of the electron gas within the rope to communicate, there is nothing wrong with the idea of breaking the iron braid into two separate conductors and using it to create the first 270 million mile old style telegraph. And the telegraph signal would arrive at the other end at about the same time as the laser.

    One would be very surprised, to say the least, if when moving your average chunk of iron, the electrons that move so easily in metallic solids to communicate over long distances just decided that they would remain in the space the iron previously occupied. So part of what it means for something to be solid means that it also contains energy, and not all of that energy is mechanical in nature, nor does it behave as though it were. No matter how quickly you tug on that long braided iron cable, the electrons contained within it are not likely to vacate either end.

    There is more to solids than Minkowki's rigid Euclidean mechanical conception. Solids are dynamic structures. That includes many events going on inside of them that are entangled, and they also impart a property to solid objects that is in many respects faster than if that solid object were to break the equivalent of the speed of sound inside of itself. A solid traveling at relativistic speed relative to something else already breaks that particular barrier, and it does not need to deform mechanically in order to do so. But it does appear to contract in the direction it is traveling relative to an observer at rest, along with all of the entangled events it carries along with it.
     
    Last edited: Jun 3, 2015
  11. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    if the iron bar was infinitely rigid the energy transfer would be instantaneous or very close to it. Certainly faster than light.
     
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  12. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    Unfortunately you appear to have limited empathy for your audience.
    It's like you are writing notes for yourself...only
    I gave up reading your posts ages ago when you refused to reveal how you can take Minkowski out of SRT and leave it still valid, and now you appear to be also claiming SRT is ridiculous yet simultaneous saying that it is sound...
    You need to make up your mind... which is it ?
     
  13. danshawen Valued Senior Member

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    No such animal.
     
  14. danshawen Valued Senior Member

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    I am not claiming that SRT is ridiculous. Only Minkowski.
     
  15. danshawen Valued Senior Member

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    Pay attention, because I'm going to actually say it.

    We are living in a universe of events, NO TWO OF WHICH are EVER SIMULTANEOUS unless they are the same event or are entangled.

    This is the fundamental principle Minkowski missed.
     
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  16. danshawen Valued Senior Member

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    And Little Bang's contribution is exactly the idea that is the proof.
     
  17. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    Do you understand why the above may come across as utter nonsense to others?
     
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  18. danshawen Valued Senior Member

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    Yes. That's why I don't bandy it about, even though I came to this conclusion some time ago.

    Little Bang helped much more than he realizes.

    Now you understand, it isn't that Minkowski was wrong about simultaneity, only that he didn't understand the concept that not only is time not a Euclidean space, it is literally what gives what we call space the illusion that space is Euclidean. In order to do that, time itself must be infinitely divisible, and it is.

    This concept has important consequences, and I don't believe I understate that fact.
     
  19. danshawen Valued Senior Member

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    I think this is a great way to cap off your thread, QQ. I'm done blathering. Other folks can work out the rest for themselves.
     
  20. danshawen Valued Senior Member

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    This idea validates QQ's assertion concerning the quantum field associated with entanglement. It may or may not carry an electric charge, but very likely it does, and this satisfies relativity very nicely since electric charge is the field that is static.

    That origin of time we talked about and the origin of entanglement are the same quantum field. Nice.

    Time runs at different rates based on position (time flow in the other field, which is magnetic in origin), and this is why no two oscillators, including atoms, are ever perfectly synchronized, or if they are, they don't stay that way. The arrow of time is a polarity.

    Since gravitation also impacts time dilation, it must be more closely associated with the magnetic quantum field.

    Can"t thank you enough, QQ. It all makes perfect sense now.
     
    Last edited: Jun 4, 2015
  21. Layman Totally Internally Reflected Valued Senior Member

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    Einstein fought against the development of QM, and he didn't accept it as scientific fact. Then QM became an established science despite Einstein not agreeing with it. I think he used the word "spooky", because action at a distance goes against some of the basic principals involved in developing SR. I think he was afraid that the discovery of this effect would disprove the basic principals behind SR. This issue has never been addressed or resolved in science, so now we have two accurately scientific theories that both say something completely different about something. In SR nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, but in QM the spin of a particle can change FTL if the spin of another particle is observed. Then that would bring into question the validity of SR, and it opens up the possibility that the theory he was mostly well known for was wrong in some shape or fashion. Transferring information FTL through action at a distance would be the experiment that could prove it. It may have played a large role into why Einstein didn't accept QM. It could mean that his addition of velocity equation is completely bogus, but then no one has been able to successfully transfer information through entanglement to a degree that would undeniably be considered "useful" information.

    I think a major reason why much attention hasn't been given to this is because no one has been able to unite QM and relativity into one single solid theory. Then if one of them was wrong, no one would be able to unite them into a single theory anyways. I have worked on some ways about thinking about how this could be done, and ironically, I think action at a distance is due to SR. If a particle is traveling the speed of light, then from it's own frame of reference everything would be contracted to zero, while it assumed it was at rest from traveling at a constant speed. If everything from it's own frame of reference is zero along it's world-line, then it would be in direct contact with different places and times along it's world-line. Then from the particles own frame of reference, an action at a distance would not require for there to be any distance involved in that at all. Since it is possible for that to happen in one frame of reference, that has a direct implication on what is observed in each other frame of reference. Then from our frame of reference we observe that as being a spooky action at a distance, because that is what is allowed to happen in another frame of reference traveling close to the speed of light. If that was true, then it could mean the distance a particle could be entangled could be limited for particles traveling slightly less than the speed of light.

    Coincidentally, the movement of galaxies in the universe have shown to not obey the addition of velocity equation either, and it has also brought no attention to the validity of Einsteins addition of velocity equation where relativity is said to be the science to use on that scale.
     
    Last edited: Jun 6, 2015
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  22. Little Bang Registered Member

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    I have mentioned almost exactly the same thing to danshawen.
     
  23. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    I like your line of inquiry!

    I tend to think that Einstein and the scientists that agreed with him felt secure in the belief that time and distance were directly related and that the theories put forward were the effectively near the end of a long road of theoretical development. This is understandable given that GR seemed to fit so well with observation at the time. So well that any refutation would have to deal with the hubris and pride of developing such a successful theory.
    They believed and still do that the universe is essentially distance/time in a fundamental way.

    Then along comes evidence that distance and time are not intrinsic facts of this reality. That vast distances between objects can be related in instantaneous or close to instantaneous moments.
    However because Einstein felt his theories were the final word, anything that suggested FTL and was proven to be real would have to be "spooky" or something outside the realm of science (his science and mainstream by default) as this would deconstruct the nature of space time (distance/time) as he proposed.

    Essentially evidence of Quantum Entanglement directly contradicts the notion of relative time and re-establishes the notion of absolute time and this, in a nut shell, is the key issue between the two theories I believe.

    To me,
    Logically "delta t=0 then distance = 0" shows clearly that time is absolute, and the evidence to support quantum entanglement validates that logic.
     
    Last edited: Jun 7, 2015

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