Reality is Reduced to Axioms

Discussion in 'Physics & Math' started by Spellbound, Sep 10, 2014.

  1. Farsight

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    Absolutely wrong. This is a "Humpty Dumpty" definition that is not in accord with the mass of a body is a measure of its energy-content. The body contains energy. Energy is not just an abstract attribute of something, it's a thing in it's own right. And it is the one thing you can neither create nor destroy. Thus it is fundamental.

    No, if anybody tells you that energy is a mere attribute, that's a sure sign they have no clue what they're talking about. It's similar for a field. You read what Einstein said, and you appreciate that a field is "a state of space". But some will tell you it's anything with one or more values at every location, and give wind speed as an example. They repeatedly contradict Einstein because they think they know better when they don't, and they offer nothing to assist the enquiry.
     
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  3. lpetrich Registered Senior Member

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    What counts as "science"?
    What would qualify as a meaningful axiom?

    I was tempted to respond to certain rather off-topic posts here, but I decided against doing so.
     
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  5. wellwisher Banned Banned

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    Reality is not reduced to axioms, but rather our perception of reality can be reduced to axioms. The learning of these axioms, by the next generation, has an impact on future perception of reality, by creating conditioned baseline filters for the mind.

    As an analogous example, at one time, long ago, someone or a group of early pre-scientists looked at the world around them, and inferred that the earth was flat. This idea had to start somewhere, before it was an accepted consensus. An axiom was created based on observational data. Once this axiom was pitched, sold and cast into stone, it was then taught to others, who blindly accepted the axiom, without having independently derived it from scratch like the original.

    Since memorization is not the same as the original derivation from base data, perception will be different because it begins at the demand side of axioms, instead of the supply side of axioms. There will be social subjectivity due to a disconnect from the development process. The original idea may have been motivated by a search for truth, and may have considered many others paths before settling on this. The education process is force fed through exams and test scores; prestige process.

    Before a new product comes out from Apple or Microsoft, the supply side tries to figure out what people will need and want in the future. They go through a careful development program to figure out the future market, reality. The consumer comes in later and sees a finished product and sales pitch. They will often feel the need to buy the product, based on how the consumer herd is moving.

    Although both supply and demand may agree the product (axiom) is good, each do it for different reasons, with the consumer more about following the herd. This herd effects makes it harder to reason since following the herd is as large a part of the dynamics as the actual truth of the product. Once the flat earth was an axiom, reason was thrown out the window, in favor of blind obedience to the axioms; consensus perception capacitance.

    This demand side capacitance is what slows the progress of truth and better axioms. The standard models, have perception filters with a collective subjective element, that makes it taboo to change, since nobody wants to retool. If a new, but similar product appears and your old one is not worn out, what is the sense of buying the new one.

    I remember as student in college, I began by questioning what I as taught. This was time consuming and I wanted a social life and to play sports. So I found it easier to just accept and memorize, so I would score high on tests and save lots of free time. What I lost was an understanding go why X=Y, because that was not needed to ace the test. The convenience created a detachment from the supply side of new knowledge.
     
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  7. Farsight

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    LOL, like I said, they repeatedly contradict Einstein because they think they know better when they don't, and they offer nothing to assist the enquiry.
     
  8. krash661 [MK6] transitioning scifi to reality Valued Senior Member

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  9. RJBeery Natural Philosopher Valued Senior Member

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    I was thinking more along the lines of the mass-energy equivalence, as opposed to the (apparent) nothingness of empty space. If we could define "energy" in some sort of specific but elementary terms then the fact that it is a conserved quantity may trivially follow.
     
  10. przyk squishy Valued Senior Member

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    If you want a systematic way of defining energy and showing that it is conserved, then that's what Noether's theorem does. Noether's theorem establishes a general connection between continuous symmetries and conservation laws in physical theories. (At least for theories that can be defined in something called the "Lagrange formalism", but that's true of virtually all the theories we care about in physics today.) In modern theories, one of these symmetries is symmetry with respect to translation in time, and pretty much the modern definition of energy is the conserved quantity associated with that.

    Basically, make up any random theory you like in the Lagrange formalism and, as long as the theory includes time translation as a symmetry, it will also have an energy conservation law and Noether's theorem will tell you what that conservation law is and for what definition of "energy" it holds.
     
  11. przyk squishy Valued Senior Member

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    It's perfectly in accord with what Einstein said there. The "energy content" in question is associated with physical entities (like light waves) that Einstein was considering in the case example his derivation was based on. You either haven't read or haven't understood your own reference.


    Wherever you got that idea (Uri Geller? Star Trek?), it wasn't from any modern science and is not backed by any evidence. No-one has ever detected energy as "a thing in its own right" in an experiment and we don't put it in as a separate entity in any of our theories.

    This is hands down one of the biggest misconceptions about physics among non-scientists and a favourite among the sort of people who believe in psychic connections and ghosts and auras. Trust me, you really don't want to be clinging on to this idea.


    Apart from momentum, angular momentum, and a few charges and quantities conserved in particle interactions, many of which, like energy, are defined or derived and not fundamental.

    Being too impressed with energy conservation is also a form of confirmation bias. If what we call "energy" wasn't conserved, we'd just be calling something else "energy" instead. As I pointed out to RJBeery in a post above, an energy conservation law is pretty much an automatic prediction of any physical theory that includes time translation as a symmetry.
     
    Last edited: Sep 18, 2014
  12. lpetrich Registered Senior Member

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    Back to the OP again.

    Quantum field theory is as far as we have been able to go, and anything that goes beyond QFT must contain QFT as a limiting case. That has been the fate of most successful but superseded paradigms like Newtonian mechanics.

    The Standard Model is rather baroque, with a complicated gauge-multiplet and interaction structure with 19 free parameters. From its gauge-multiplet structure, one can infer Grand Unified Theories, which usually have a much simpler gauge symmetry and gauge-multiplet structure. However, it has been hard to find patterns in the elementary-fermion masses and mixings.

    There are several observations of particles/fields and effects outside the Standard Model: gravity, neutrino masses, matter-antimatter asymmetry, cosmic inflation, dark matter, and dark energy. Some of them fit nicely into QFT, like massive neutrinos, while others are much more difficult, like gravity.

    String theory, a proposed super-QFT paradigm, can successfully explain gravity, but it takes a big song-and-dance to get the Standard Model out of it. It's possible to do so, but the Standard Model is far from unique as a low-energy limit of string theory.

    So we are in a quandary.
     
  13. Arlich Vomalites Registered Member

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    Do you think they have quantized the electric field?
     
  14. Farsight

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    Trippy: thank you for addressing the post by krash661 that I reported. But I can still see it. I can't see Manifold's posts, and they aren't ad-hominem obnoxious trolling.


    RJ: This is more Humpty-Dumpty vacuous guff that is totally at odds with Einstein and E=mc² and "the mass of a body is a measure of its energy content". Matter isn't made out of symmetry or Lagrange formalism, it's made out of energy. In Compton scattering some of the E=hf photon wave energy is converted into the kinetic energy of an electron. If you were to do another Compton scatter on the residual photon, and another and another, then in the limit you've taken all the energy out of the wave and so there's no wave left. It has been entirely converted into the kinetic energy of electrons.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!


    See Rod Nave's hyperphysics

    And yet in pair production you could have created an electron (and a positron) out of that photon. So in a sense a photon is kinetic energy, and an electron is made out of the same thing as the kinetic energy of electrons. It’s made out of kinetic energy. That’s what E=mc² is all about. Einstein even refers to an electron on the same line as "body". In a body like the electron you don’t see it, but it’s there all right. If it wasn’t there the body wouldn’t have any mass. And if it wasn’t there, you wouldn’t see it in the guise of photons after electron-positron annihilation.
     
  15. Farsight

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    3,492
    I've read it and understood it. And it would seem that you're saying Einstein was wrong, and that the mass of a body is NOT a measure of its energy-content. You'll be telling me E=mc² is wrong next.

    I got the idea from Einstein. He's the guy who not only said "the mass of a body is a measure of its energy-content", but also said the energy of a gravitational field shall act gravitatively in the same way as any other form of energy"

    You don't want to be dismissing Einstein and trying to defend your position by referring to nonsense like ghosts and auras.

    Because it's energy-momentum. When you've got yourself a cannonball doing 1000m/s, you can't remove its momentum whilst leaving its kinetic enrgy intact.

    It's not confirmation bias. Conservation of energy is a fact of life. What you said to RJ elevated mathematical abstraction above reality and dismissed Einstein. Who has been teaching you this stuff?
     
  16. lpetrich Registered Senior Member

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    Seems like a cargo-cult approach to this issue. The shear stress is of the material content, not of space-time itself. I say space-time because according to relativity, space and time are coequal. Deny that and you deny Einstein, Minkowski, Feynman, and numerous others.

    Except that they are not. It's pretty easy to understand what they are if one can do the math, so one ought not to dismiss math as a distraction from Real Physics or complain about "math dumps".

    A soliton is a solitary wave kept together by nonlinearity, while an electromagnetic wave is linear.

    Understanding the math makes it easier for me than trying to parse such descriptions. So learn the math. Or at least try to do so. What I don't want to see is claiming that such a verbal approach is superior to using math. Denying math is denying Newton, it is denying Maxwell, it is denying Einstein, it is denying Minkowski, it is denying Faraday, ...
    So what about that?

    It is not. It's something that has a value over some region of space-time or all of space-time. That's why hydrodynamicists sometimes talk about velocity fields.

    I know what "guv" is, because I've studied general relativity. Farsight, I have some VERY simple exercises for you about guv.

    Write it down for two-dimensional rectangular coordinates x and y. Work from this distance function for the distance between points 1 and 2: (s[sub]12[/sub])[sup]2[/sup] = (x[sub]2[/sub] - x[sub]1[/sub])[sup]2[/sup] + (y[sub]2[/sub] - y[sub]1[/sub])[sup]2[/sup]

    Once you do that, go into polar coordinates: x = r*cos(a), y = r*sin(a). What does guv look like for that coordinate system? See if you can derive it from the rectangular-coordinate guv, but you can also try a triangle.


    (przyk on energy as a "function of state"...)
    That's just plain wrong, and an overinterpretation of Einstein's statements that would make a theologian proud. Yes, I'm making that comparison because what I'm so often seeing from you, Farsight, is argumentation much more typical of theology than of mainstream science. Argumentation like deduction from sacred books. Like this sort of argument:
    That's pretty much mainstream in hydrodynamics.

    Still more theologian-like arguments.
     
  17. lpetrich Registered Senior Member

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    Not in isolation, of course, but as part of the electromagnetic field.

    Quantization of the electromagnetic field is somewhat tricky because of its geometric structure and its gauge invariance, but it was solved in 1927 by Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac, of the Dirac theory of the electron.
     
  18. lpetrich Registered Senior Member

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    As if energy is some sort of stuff. That's a very woo-woo conception of energy, and that's not what it is. Energy and related quantities are related to continuous symmetries of space-time:
    • Time translation -- energy
    • Space translation -- momentum
    • Rotation -- angular momentum
    • Boosts -- center-of-mass position at some time
    According to Emmy Noether's famous theorem, a continuous symmetry of a system is related to a conserved current -- one can construct that current with the help of that symmetry and the system's Lagrangian.

    In fact, the 4-momentum, (energy, 3-momentum), exactly parallels space-time coordinates (time, space). So Noether's theorem does not deny Einstein. Even if it did, then so what? Einstein was not the Pope of physics.

    No, it's some de-excitation of the electromagnetic field coupled with excitation of the electron field.

    That's what I mean by arguing like a theologian -- thumping the Einsteinian Scriptures.
     
  19. Farsight

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    Space and time are NOT co-equal. That's a myth. There's a minus sign on the time term in the Lorentz interval \(\displaystyle s^2 = - c^2(\Delta t)^2 + (\Delta x)^2 + (\Delta y)^2 + (\Delta z)^2\ \). And the shear stress need not be just of the material content. Think gravitomagnetism. As for the distinction between space and spacetime, remember this: there is no motion in spacetime. It's static.

    Oh yes? So what is a photon then? How about you start a thread and tell us?

    I've learned enough. And you know full well that the math doesn't tell you what a photon is, or what an electron is, or what a gravitational field is.

    Nobody is denying the math. But I am denying that the math tells you what a photon is, or what energy is. If you want to prove me wrong, start the threads. I'm all ears.

    It's a math dump when rpenner tries to use it as a smokescreen and pull the wool over people's eyes because he's been whupped in a physics discussion.

    You might want to have a little google on that. And then you can explain what stops a photon from dispersing then. Magic? Or would that be the multiverse?

    A field is a state of space. That's what Einstein said, don't dismiss it in favour of hydrodynamicists talking about "velocity fields". There aren't any velocity fields in the Standard Model.

    And there you go dismissing Einstein again, and trying to justify it by throwing out words like theologian. You're the theologian here Loren. I'm just the heretic.

    * * * * * *

    Einstein described it as a thing, not an attribute. Matter contains energy. So does a gravitational field.

    lpetrich, where are you getting this stuff from? Spacetime is a mathematical abstraction in which there is no motion whatsoever. A symmetry of spacetime is similarly abstract, kinetic energy isn't, energy isn't, and matter is made of it.

    We know about Noether's thereom. It doesn't make energy any less real. And note this quote from the Wikipedia article:

    "The physical system itself need not be symmetric; a jagged asteroid tumbling in space conserves angular momentum despite its asymmetry — it is the laws of its motion that are symmetric."

    Matter is not made out of the laws of motion, or symmetry, it's made out of energy.

    Watch my lips. In pair production we can create an electron and a positron out of a photon. That's the reality. You know lpetrich, you have a bad habit of dismissing reality in favour of abstraction. That's something you need to work on.

    You have a bad habit of dismissing Einstein too.
     
  20. PhysBang Valued Senior Member

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    This seems to be spamming here: you are simply repeating your standard line from your book. When asked, you have refused to provide an alternative to spacetime that we can use to do physics. So more spamming sans physics.
    That is a dodge to the challenge raised. You claim that, 'Electromagnetic waves are essentially "soliton pressure pulses".' You haven't shown us any evidence to support this claim. Let us see the mathematical equivalence between an electromagnetic wave and a soliton pressure pulse. If you can't provide this, then your claim is not supported and we all have to wonder why you would make such a claim in the first place.
    You are denying that there is serious work in physics. You insult those physicists that do the work while you feel free to make ludicrous statements that you feel you can support by insulting other posters. Your claim about soliton pressure pulses seems a perfect example. Let's see your work.
    That is something that has never happened. Similarly, when you have claimed that physicists have made math mistakes, you have never pointed to a clear example. Nor have you backed up your own claims with the supposed math that you have learned.
    Now you insult physicists by refusing to adopt the terms that they use in every physics textbook and claiming that they are wrong for defining terms for centuries.
    Einstein made mistakes: it is by looking to the evidence that we see whether or not Einstein was correct. You seem merely to say that something is correct because Einstein said it once.

    I suppose that you endorse psychics because Einstein endorsed one. http://www.newrepublic.com/article/...ns-endorsement-psychic-upton-sinclair-defends

    Will you deny Einstein?
    Please show us how Einstein did this in his physics, not merely in his words.
     
  21. przyk squishy Valued Senior Member

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    I sincerely doubt that.


    Nope. I already said what I had to say in plain English: you are wrong and your reference to Einstein does not support the conclusion you are trying to draw from it.

    I also find that statement almost uselessly vague in isolation and your obsession with quoting Einstein misguided and pointless. Good science is not about who has the most Einstein quotes.


    So you got the idea from a few quotes that are so vague they could mean just about anything, took it as a matter of faith that you understood them and their implications correctly, and then took it on faith that the idea is actually properly supported... somewhere. As opposed to something that might actually convince a scientist like, say, a precise explanation and evidence.


    Sure you can. Put it at rest in an oven and cook it.


    So are taxes and bills.


    No I didn't. And the way you keep throwing that dismissal around makes me doubt you even know what a mathematical abstraction is.
     
  22. RJBeery Natural Philosopher Valued Senior Member

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    Right, but the definition I'm referring to would have to be a lot more productive than simply being a conserved quantity; I'm saying that the TOE would be able to not only describe mass-energy but PREDICT it in other, as-yet unobserved forms. And I mean all matter and all forms of energy. I'm talking about a literal, minimal set of building blocks from which the incarnation of the universe would necessarily be predicted. Rather than telling Farsight why you disagree with him why don't you share what you believe would need to be included in this list? Personally, I think all matter is composed of various "knots" of nonlinear EM waves (solitons). Yes it's speculative, but what part of TOE isn't?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topological_quantum_field_theory
     
  23. lpetrich Registered Senior Member

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    That's from the difference between spacelike, null, and timelike directions. The coordinates x, y, z, and t in the above expression are all in orthogonal directions, x, y, z, are in spacelike directions, and t is in a timelike direction. But coordinates are essentially arbitrary, and one can choose Rindler coordinates or light-cone coordinates or whatever other coordinates might be convenient for whatever one is trying to do.
    It must be noted that general relativity does not have a well-defined energy-momentum tensor. It is possible to define an energy-momentum pseudotensor for it, however, and I've seen 2 definitions. It's a pseudotensor, and while it's globally a tensor, it's not generally covariant. Thus making it like the connection coefficients.
    That's what it might seem like for space-time from the outside. But we are on the inside of it, and we continually travel forward in time.
    A quantized mode of the electromagnetic field. I don't want to have to post a whole introduction to quantum field theory.
    A search-engine result page. An absolutely dumb bibliographic practice.
    One can easily find out how photons disperse from their wave properties.
    Pure book thumping. Einstein was describing his proposed unified field theory, a theoretical approach that has turned out to be a dead end.
    Beside the point.
    Seems like an overinterpretation of his words, combined with treating him as an inspired prophet of revealed truth.
     

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