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Title: Physics laws flawed (Dr Michael Murphy is part of a team that has, over recent years, uncovered surprising and controversial evidence suggesting the laws of physics may have been changing through cosmic time. )
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URL Source: http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20071012-16699-2.html
Published: Dec 13, 2007
Author: n
Post Date: 2007-12-13 11:26:08 by gengis gandhi
Keywords: None
Views: 1513
Comments: 89
Physics laws flawed E-mail to a Friend Monday, 10 December 2007 Swinburne University A Swinburne astrophysicist has leapt another hurdle in the path to proving that our fundamental theories of physics are not what they seem. Dr Michael Murphy is part of a team that has, over recent years, uncovered surprising and controversial evidence suggesting the laws of physics may have been changing through cosmic time. In this latest move, Murphy has debunked a study which claimed to disprove his findings. Murphy’s research into the laws of Nature goes back eight years, and concerns our understanding of electromagnetism, the force of nature that determines the sounds we hear, the light we see, and how atoms are held together to form solids. Through the study of electromagnetism in galaxies ten billion light years away, he has challenged the fundamental assumption that the strength of electromagnetism has been constant through time. “Back in 2001 we published evidence showing a small change in the fine structure constant, the number that physicists use to characterise the strength of electromagnetism,” Murphy said. “Even though the change that we think we see in the data is quite small, about five parts in a million, it would be enough to demonstrate that our current understanding must in fact be wrong. It’s an important discovery if correct. It suggests to physicists that there’s an underlying set of theories we’re yet to broach and understand.” Physicists have been chasing results like these for a number of years, but since 1999, Murphy and his co-researchers have been ahead of the pack. They’ve published a series of observations from the Keck Telescope in Hawaii as further evidence of a varying fine structure constant. But, a few years ago, another research team claimed that data from a different telescope contradicted Murphy’s observations. However, he’s been able to prove that the contradictory work itself was flawed. “We’ve shown that the way the data was analysed was faulty,” he said. “Their procedures were faulty so the numbers that came out are meaningless. Our paper points this out. When you replicate their analysis and fix their problems, you get a very very different answer indeed.” Murphy has a ‘comment’ about this latest work in this week's issue of the journal Physical Review Letters. It’s the most difficult journal for physicists to get published in, and is the one they turn to for important results in their field. This latest step is not the end of the road though in convincing scientists across the world that they need to rethink their ideas about electromagnetism. Even though this study also produced results that agree with his initial Keck findings, Murphy said there’s still work to be done. “There are some problems that need addressing,” he said. “It’s quite a surprising result and one that probably many people need a lot more convincing on. It will take some time, but we’re doing that job.”
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#28. To: nobody (#27)
beautiful
Ron Paul for President - Join a Ron Paul Meetup group today!
I've read that book, around 1972. Ever read "... And He Built A Crooked House"? I think it was in "Waldo and Magic, Inc." The guy builds a house that's a hypercube. It was a good read for me at the time, hadn't heard of a tesseract before that.
School always bored me, like I'd get into trouble in trig class for cracking jokes. Liked very few teachers in high school, got a lot of Bs and sometimes worse. Did best in my last two years of college, after changing majors from chem-e and changing schools, taking time off for full-time work, and then finally getting serious about it. Seems like it took me almost forever to graduate.
Yes, it most certainly is. I'm glad you like it. The tiny red galaxy with a little ring, at about 1 o'clock in the dark-ring region of Hoag's galaxy, is apparently manifesting an Einstein ring - you might notice there's a tri-corner pattern spanning and modulating the tiny ring's brightness. Not sure if the region its light passes through is an influence in the formation there, but it seems an unusual coincidence. Clear even-shaped Einstein rings usually have something much closer to them, something that's massive, usually very bright, and slightly off the visual axis. I mean I don't see what could be making the Einstein ring of the tiny galaxy behind Hoag's galaxy, except Hoag's galaxy itself. I believe quantum gravity should be weaker than Newtonian/Einsteinian gravity in the dark region, and that it includes a narrower circular region of gravitational repulsion, a galaxy-generated ring-shaped locus behaving as if it's an anti-gravity source, although more precisely, according to this scenario, it's a zero cross-over point of quantum gravity waves from the massive center. Gravity becomes much more Newtonian/Einsteinian again on each side of that region. At lower resolution, Hoag's galaxy is reminiscent of the Sombrero galaxy in infra-red, turned sideways. The forum software is buggy and inserting paragraph breaks like wild on each edit, BTW.
I've decided it's impossible to add anything more to that post, as the site- server software is apparently automatically multiplying all the paragraph breaks with each edit. Anyway, I might be the first nobody to come up with this oddball quantum gravity interpretation of the galaxy shapes seen here. I am going to name the zero-crossover region "the nobody zone." Can't wait for those internet nobody residuals to start pouring in.
I start with a steady-state universe assumption, because it neatly (and profoundly, I believe) avoids any creation-centered logical contradictions. A steady-state theory also has more freedom besides that it obviously has more time, it can encompass infinite energy, it easily includes multiverse theories, and it can be boundless or bounded. With infinite energy and infinite time a stable global cycle can have infinite absolute period, meaning it can be significantly aperiodic and infinitely non-repetitive while preserving all the benefits of stability and periodicity. Just from a steady-state assumption there is an incentive to question an all-recessionary red-shift assumption, but the steady-state universe assumption still does not preclude it. Most of the quantum gravity aspects I've suggested here do not require a quantum gravity red-shift, nonetheless a divergence between quantum gravity and classical- Einsteinian gravity is apparently the only thing capable of creating a significant distance-dependent red-shift that is nonrecessionary. I suppose galactic-intergalactic distributions have significantly evolved toward maximizing intergalactic quantum gravity zero-crossing zones, giving a red- shifting graviton-coupled quantum ripple to much of intergalactic space. As the local universe (meaning the observable universe) cools from its creationlike phase, the regularity of galactic spacing should increase, along with the intergalactic red-shifting effect. It all continues cooling and organizing into a more massive pattern of multi-cluster quantum gravity-spaced strata until nonlocal universe conditions rush in to re-wind the process. In turn, this universe has a universe re-cycling effect on the nonlocal universe. These different creationary heating phases of the parts are somewhat similar to rain patterns, except that it is not driven extra-globally but is eternal, with no beginning or end, which is the definition of a steady-state universe. Exactly how it all balances is, by this particular approach, at least partly due to a balance between gravity and anti-gravity phases of a quantum gravity wave.
Here's a line-up of some Einstein rings. If the smaller reddish (or much more distant) galaxy showing through Hoag's galaxy has an Einstein ring, it appears to be most similar to the one at the top left corner. I still can't figure out exactly what's going on there at the moment, so Hoag's galaxy may or may not have anything to do with the smaller galaxy ring behind it. The ring does appear to be the inverse of the ring I picked out of the group in a number ways, including brightness distribution and relative light-frequency, meaning it is perhaps redder, not bluer, than the center object the small ring frames (which is the lensing object), and brighter where the selected Einstein ring is darker, both of which makes it seem possibly influenced by anti-gravity instead of gravity. To me at the moment it looks like it could be called an anti- Einstein ring, which is a hilarious idea. Always a bonus. More specifically it seems it could be a lensing that is anti-gravity lensed, a combination of a normal gravity lens (concave?) with an inverse (convex?) gravity lens in front of it. The image of the smaller galaxy almost seems drawn into the ring like the magnetic flux threading through an air-core inductor.
Hoag's galaxy and its more-distant through-threaded neighbor galaxy image again, for comparison with the Einstein rings: It may be the light-source being supposedly lensed there is just below and far behind the small galaxy, and the threading of both sources through Hoag's anti- lens has enhanced the rings.
Thank you for posting those. I don't see how anyone could believe it's all just from chaos.
Ron Paul for President - Join a Ron Paul Meetup group today!
Yes. It's not just from chaos if its matter and energy once went through a cooling phase where quantum gravity re-organized it before it was re-heated.
Haog's object apparently presents the first identified example of an achromatic-type doublet (1 concave + 1 convex) gravity lensing system. I guess one could say it is an air-spaced doublet, since the two lensing galaxies involved are far apart. Seems I am the first nobody to identify this.
Personally I think we are due for a major breakthrough in physics and cosmology.
I don't know of anyone claiming that quantum gravity has always had a re-organizational effect in a cosmologically-scaled cyclic cooling process. It may be I'm a lonely nobody with this belief.
No, I haven't. Does it mention quantum gravity? I tend to think light and matter are basically eventually decomposable into gravitons, in some sense. How one goes from supposedly spin-2 particles (gravitons) to spin-1 particles (photons) is what I was thinking I should understand. Not sure if gravity can be carried outside of photons if the lowest possible photon energies (frequencies) are considered, but supposedly it can. Could a pair of photons be a graviton? I don't know. A photon (gamma ray) can be transformed into an electron-positron pair, usually quickly self-annihilating. If there are multiples of such electron-positron pairs nearby, a pair may not end up being quickly annihilated inside the bunch. From light thus one gets stable particles, and they have mass, supposedly a source of gravitons. That, I guess, closes the simplest photon-graviton transformation loop. A sufficient amount of separated anti-matter could run for a while in its own loop, the same way as matter does, I suppose. Maybe that is responsible for accumulations of so- called "dark matter." I could envision the supposed re- organizational effect of quantum gravity is to stratify anti-matter and matter on cosmological scales mostly separately but still intermixedly, towards forming a sort of ultra-long standing wave. By my way of looking at it, all this scenario requires a preceding phase of massive non-local (cosmologically- speaking) (re)compression forces if significant amount of matter and anti- matter are to separately (re)accumulate.
I don't think so. Just thought you might be interested. So far you are over my head but I do find it interesting. I'll have to re read your posts. Here is another one I like. I find the concept interesting. I should've written "from outside the observable universe" rather than "non- local" there. I'm trying to keep my comments here close to cosmological ideas and non-locality in quantum physics is mostly a separate subject. I do like to shift my focus around, though, so maybe I can add something on some other thread. The link mentions holographic theories in physics, and there is a holographic theory relating black holes and information in string theory, IIRC. Holographic storage, annealing (with quantum gravity, an annealing process could occur on a cosmic scale) and neural nets are all related topics, perhaps interestingly enough.
One of the scientists I talk to mentions periodically that he believes our notions on how the sun works are wrong. I've tried to get him to elaborate but so far I'm unsuccessful.
The structure, dynamics and evolution of stars is a complex field I know practically nothing about. I may be wrong about the lensing capability of Hoag's galaxy, but I'm relatively sure that it is framing an Einstein ring in the open portion, and I may have the basic quantum gravity aspect of Hoag's galaxy correct.
And you could very well be right. You don't have to worry about grants and your colleagues so you are free to think.
The idea of a quantum gravity redshift is also a bit less sure than the basic idea of quantum gravity undergoing phase-reversals, which I think is being used elsewhere, though I have not seen it applied to explain any galaxy's appearance. Einstein rings are usually bluer than the lensing object, although I have seen some other distant Einstein rings from Hubble that are red. The Einstein ring image held within the opening in Hoag's galaxy appears to be quite large and well defined for as red as it is. That is why I get the impression that Hoag's galaxy is gravity-lensing the Einstein ring system in a unique way.
The idea of dark matter being antimatter is not new, but my admittedly vague way of looking at it from the perspective of a photon-graviton transformation loop involving gamma rays seems to match observations of gamma rays from dark matter. As I noted before, it seems possible that many positron-electron pairs generated from a large number of gamma-ray photons could escape annihilation if the pairs are generated within a large enough group, and I can envisage large masses of both particles separately being created on opposite sides of the group, with opposite trajectories such that they do not recombine appreciably for an appreciable amount of time. The form of quantum gravity mentioned already, with its gravity/anti-gravity phase changes, could maintain the separation. A positron also comes from a proton changing into a neutron. A neutron can decay into a proton plus an electron (and an anti-neutrino). Basically, with sufficient energy, photons can create any matter-antimatter pair of particles. Surviving the process seems to involve even more energetic photons in a larger bunch, or extremely rare chance collision events that might take place over a practically infinitely long amount of time.
Didn't mean to make you frown.
There is also man-made anti-gravity, apparently. A gravitomagnetic field is supposedly induced with a superconducting ring: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/03/060325232140.htm It's a completely different effect from the alleged effect of quantum gravity undergoing a phase reversal after traveling galactic distances. My impression is that if one was moving from the center of Hoag's galaxy, the positive-phased (attracting) quantum gravity of the center would combine with a weaker negative- phased (repelling) quantum gravity from the ring such that both would work together against outward progress. Past the cross-over point, the effect is reversed, meaning the center then repels and the ring attracts. The phase crossover point is devoid of matter due to a sweepout effect that forces matter to the ring or to the center. One could imagine such a cross-over may also have a divergent effect on light passing though perpendicularly, along the line of sight in the photo. Many people say anti-matter has anti-gravity, and one possibility I haven't mentioned is that one of the center or ring of Hoag's galaxy could be antimatter, but I doubt that is really the case. Hoag's galaxy wouldn't gravity- lens the way it seems to be doing if one part of it is anti-matter and if anti- matter has anti-gravity. I don't think anti-matter has anti-gravity, anyway, meaning I think it would gravity-lens the smaller galaxy behind it in the same way regardless.
www.physorg.com/news98450367.htm l "It's like looking at the pebbles on the bottom of a pond with ripples on the surface. The pebbles' shapes appear to change as the ripples pass over them. So, too, the background galaxies behind the ring show coherent changes in their shapes due to the presence of the dense ring." Another ring that apparently lenses, but different and differently, it seems. Dark matter is supposed to be involved. People say most of the universe is dark matter, but I don't think that is necessarily the case.
Interesting note on wikipedia about "Hoag's Object" (Hoag's Galaxy): "In the initial announcement of his discovery, Art Hoag proposed the hypothesis that the visible ring was a product of gravitational lensing. This idea was later discarded because the nucleus and the ring have the same redshift, and because more advanced telescopes revealed the knotty structure of the ring, something that would not be visible if the ring were the product of gravitational lensing." Wikipedia also calls the smaller galaxy a ring galaxy, rather than a galaxy with an Einstein ring. Maybe wikipedia missed out on identifying the Einstein ring, and Hoag was right about lensing if the "visible ring" mentioned above refers to the Einstein ring (or "ring galaxy" if Wikipedia's term is preferred) seen through Hoag's ring. I see Hoag's Galaxy as a gravity lens operating much like a glass toroid (donut- shaped piece of glass) optical lens where the galaxy is dark, possibly a concave version of a toroid (grooved donut shape). I guessed earlier it was concave, so I guess I'll stick to that for now. Makes sense as it is so distant and the eye focuses directly on the front of it. Reminds me of a concave-eye- side long eye-relief eyepiece lens. The typical Einstein ring is supposed to be formed by converging divergent light, which makes it like a typical (convex) toroid optical lens, or just a convex lens with the middle cored out, it seems.
The quantum gravity phases of Hoag's ring apparently reinforce those of Hoag's center by the distance between the two, seems to me. I can imagine glusters and intercluster space evolving to be filled with similar ripples despite no mass around to experience them. Yet if it's possible to build a Cherenkov microwave amplifier, then it seems it's possible to oscillate light using gravity, splitting it up into microwaves and thus reddening the light in the process.
I wish I understood that ;)
Ron Paul for President - Join a Ron Paul Meetup group today! I don't think he expects anyone here to understand it. If you throw in enough scientific mumbo-jumbo into each sentence one has to conclude that one is either far above everyone else in intellect and knowledge, or else is a very adept bs artist (much like the typical politician that answers questions with a series of half-sentences and non-sequitors, so as to make the mind glaze over in a stupor, having forgotten the original question). Guess which of the two possibilities here I'm concluding is most likely?
I need to come up with an elegant formula on the quantum red-shift part or give it up, I suppose. I am going to stick with the quantum gravity wave idea though. I know I'm not the first to come up with a push-pull quantum gravity, but nobody else has applied such an idea to explain Hoag's galaxy and the arms of spiral galaxies, as far as I know.
Just curious, you see any of that in what I've written? Which sentence is the worst?
Classical solar pressure, neutrinos etc. from the center cannot possibly be responsible for the way the matter of Hoag's ring avoids being drawn into the center, by my reckoning. In fact, looking at the ring closely, it appears the stars that make up much of the ring must be cycling around very evenly within its limits, looping around the ring while oscillating from the outside diameter of the ring, around to the inside diameter and around back again, spending about the same amount of time in any two halves of the ring.
The way I figure it, if light and gravity particles are interrelatable, and knowing the brightness of an object has practically no effect on its mass, if light is to carry gravity, it would have to do it using an an extremely low frequency of light, meaning the effect would have an extremely long wavelength. If that wavelength is added once each cycle (once per period) of the effect on a light wave, it does not appear to explain the red-shift, to my disappointment. I haven't completely thown out the accelerating expansionary universe that the velocity-assumption red-shift indicates, or the supposed changes in electromagnetism over time, or the changes in time itself, that it seems to demand, though.
When I say I believe quantum gravity oscillates, I do not mean the force of gravity from a mass would have to oscillate if one stands still next to the mass or moves short distances around the mass. Instead, the supposed effect apparently only comes into play on a scale that is about half the distance between the middle of Hoag's ring and the center of Hoag's galaxy. That is a scale of kiloparsecs. I hedge everything with disclaimers because it's science, not politics.
Note: Where I say light I mean electromagnetic energy particles.
To put it very simply, if the graviton exists and has an extremely miniscule mass, then its de Broglie wavelength is extremely long. Also, if quantum gravity is to be combined with Einstein's cosmological constant, a reversed gravity phase must exist. Maybe the weak force's confining effect could have a similar quantum explanation operating at the de Broglie wavelength of nucleons.
this is in reply to post#59 I did not have a chance to read the posts below that Half-sentences and non-sequitors are the perview of politicians. I apologize for implying that that is your writing style. But I do have a problem with excessive terminology being used in vertually every sentence, the net effect is the same. I get a headache trying to make sense of it as I read it. And some of it DOES make sense, but it becomes too laborious to read. Here are some examples where you lose me. The middle portion of post #8, pretty much the entirety of post #20. This sentence from post #33 probably gets my vote for most brain-glazing: Now, I've been interested in science for a long time, so I'm really quite familiar with most of these terms when presented clearly. I've heard of string theory and membrane theory. But some terms like "Spin-1" and "Spin-2" (or "zero-crossing zones") are unfamiliar to me, and likely to anyone else here. So we have to take your word for it that you're talking about something real. In all fairness, I've seen real bs-ing in science forums where the so-called theoretician was throwing terms right out of science-fiction movies. And what you posted is not like that. But my initial impression was that your mo was similar -- "baffle them with (at least some) bull if you can't dazzle them with brilliance". So, if you are a real student of physics (and having to re-read at least some of your posts at least makes me willing to give you more benefit of the doubt), then I implore upon you to work on communicating your ideas more clearly, using scientific terminology in moderation. I'm just an amateur, and I imagine most of the folks here are too -- though my specialty is astronomy.
I will insist the zero-crossing concept came from my imagination. It cannot be tested experimentally. Whether it's real or not is important to me, but I wouldn't be saying it's speculating if I knew. It is quite reminiscent of the borders of magnetic domains under a magnetic field in an optically active material when viewed through polarizing microscope, as I visualize it.
Do you think it's a red Einstein ring on that smaller object inside Hoag's ring? In that ring I see at least three brightness maxima, two in a pair near the bottom of the ring and one faint one near the top. There's even a fourth spot right between the pair. Almost like an oval red target pattern is phase- interfering with the straight lines in a red peace sign. Classic Einstein ring pattern, like a bent cross or the corners of a tetrahedron, but very red and very wide from the supposed lensing object at its center, it looks red-shifted and/or magnified, to me, maybe flattened or rotated a bit too. It's fuzzy, I know. I'm thinking of all sorts of paintings I could make based on multiplying this idea. The symbolism is fantastic. Practically can't believe the PTB haven't known about it for a while.
I couldn't say. It looks like it could also be another ring galaxy like Hoag's. Galactic densities (and the chances of a head-on collision between galaxies) would be much higher at the greater distances, so it wouldn't be an impossible coincidence. A detailed set of spectrograms of the galaxy in question might resolve the question. If I understand correctly, if this is just a ring galaxy, the core and the ring should have similar redshifts. If it is an Einstein ring, I would guess that the core and ring would have very different redshifts, since they were coming from different sources. Or so that would be my understanding. Maybe you could request time on the Hubble to do spectrums of the galaxy and the ring.
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#29. To: ghostdogtxn (#23)
"The Amazing Waldo"
#30. To: ghostdogtxn (#22)
#31. To: robin (#28)
(Edited)
#32. To: robin (#28)
(Edited)
#33. To: ghostdogtxn (#6)
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#34. To: robin (#28)
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#35. To: All (#34)
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#36. To: nobody (#32)
#37. To: robin (#36)
I don't see how anyone could believe it's all just from chaos.
#38. To: robin (#36)
(Edited)
#39. To: RickyJ (#2)
I don't doubt that we have very much to discover about physical laws. Very much indeed.
My spelling is Wobbly. It's good spelling but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places. -- Winnie the Pooh
#40. To: farmfriend (#39)
(Edited)
#41. To: nobody (#40)
My spelling is Wobbly. It's good spelling but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places. -- Winnie the Pooh
#42. To: farmfriend (#41)
(Edited)
#43. To: nobody (#42)
Does it mention quantum gravity?
My spelling is Wobbly. It's good spelling but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places. -- Winnie the Pooh
#44. To: farmfriend (#43)
#45. To: nobody (#44)
My spelling is Wobbly. It's good spelling but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places. -- Winnie the Pooh
#46. To: farmfriend (#45)
#47. To: nobody (#46)
My spelling is Wobbly. It's good spelling but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places. -- Winnie the Pooh
#48. To: farmfriend (#47)
(Edited)
#49. To: farmfriend (#47)
(Edited)
#50. To: nobody (#49)
My spelling is Wobbly. It's good spelling but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places. -- Winnie the Pooh
#51. To: farmfriend (#50)
#52. To: ghostdogtxn (#26)
(Edited)
#53. To: robin (#36)
#54. To: robin (#36)
(Edited)
#55. To: robin (#36)
#56. To: nobody (#55)
The Revolution will not be televised!
#57. To: robin (#56)
(Edited)
From Two Party System... ...to Two Family System.
#58. To: robin (#56)
(Edited)
#59. To: PnbC (#57)
a series of half-sentences and non-sequitors
#60. To: robin (#56)
(Edited)
#61. To: PnbC (#57)
#62. To: PnbC (#57)
#63. To: PnbC (#57)
#64. To: PnbC (#57)
(Edited)
#65. To: nobody, robin (#59)
(Edited)
ust curious, you see any of that in what I've written? Which sentence is the worst?
I suppose galactic-intergalactic distributions have significantly evolved toward maximizing intergalactic quantum gravity zero-crossing zones, giving a red- shifting graviton-coupled quantum ripple to much of intergalactic space.
From Two Party System... ...to Two Family System.
#66. To: PnbC (#65)
(Edited)
So we have to take your word for it that you're talking about something real.
#67. To: PnbC (#65)
(Edited)
my specialty is astronomy
#68. To: nobody (#67)
From Two Party System... ...to Two Family System.
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