The Equivalence Principle

This post is

A Response to the Article in New Scientist (2900)

Einstein’s celebrated Equivalence Principle states that the effects of Gravitational fields are indistinguishable from the effects of accelerated motion on affected matter.

But, what if the former and the latter are actually the same thing?

If we accelerate a rocket in Empty Space, the effects upon anything material, within it, will be the same as if they were being affected by gravity.

Thus, the question is posed, “Can we explain gravity in terms of acceleration alone?”

In our rocket we had to have an impelling force, delivered by its rocket engine, so, in a way, it is unsurprising that they should be equivalent. For in gravity we also have a force, which causes acceleration and gives these same effects. Yet, the force on, and within, the rocket is totally explicable in terms of the evident processes within the engine and its conversion of fuel into a force on everything involved. 

But, gravity has a permanent field of force without any evident immediately local cause.

We attribute this distributed potential of causes, over a wide area, to a property of a centrally-situated, though often extremely far distant, amount of Matter. All Matter attracts other Matter, no matter how distantly it is situated away. No fuel is consumed or evident stored energy is involved, as it most certainly was in the rocket.

Clearly, it is the concept of the Gravitational Field that distinguished gravity from the effects of acceleration within the rocket – NO evident field is created as a static extended area. It is just that all things with mass inside will experience forces backwards due to the impelling of the containing rocket forwards.

Now, we seem to be no further along, just replacing each posed question with a series of others. And that is the case until we ask, “Are our bodies like the Earth, actually being accelerated?”

Initially, we answer, “No!”, but that is soon corrected, because the Earth being in an orbit around the Sun, must be being accelerated towards the Sun continually – that is what bends its natural straight line trajectory into a curved and cycling orbit.

And we shouldn’t stop there.

Even non-orbital trajectories across the Solar System, will still be diverted by such accelerations. And the Sun itself is certainly orbiting around in its place in the containing Galaxy, and presumably, the same reasoning can be extended to all possible higher arrangements, if they exist.

What does, also, seem to exist is the expansion of the Universe!

Now, any individual piece of Matter moving away from the Origin point of our Universe in the Big Bang, is also assumed to be decelerating due to the backwards pull of all Matter closer to that centre. But, just as accelerated motion can be associated with a force, so can decelerated motion – it will just be in the opposite direction.

All in all, we seem to have everything in the Universe under some sorts of both acceleration and deceleration - could these be considered like in our rocket, or can all of them, if sufficient was known, be put down to gravity resident in some Matter somewhere?

NOTE: Though not yet addressed at this point, it is still worth comparing this description with Einstein’s warping of Space-Time by the presence of Matter. Instead of a Nothingness being distorted, we are pressed to consider something real permeating the whole of Space, which can be similarly affected.

There is, however, another factor that may turn out to be significant!

Elsewhere, the author of this paper has considered at length the possibility of a “paving” of the entire Empty Space within the Universe, with so-called Empty Photons, which are actually mutually-orbiting pair of particles giving a net zero mass and a net zero charge. So, these would be unaffected by either gravitational, or any electrostatic, fields.

NOTE: Though it might be interesting what the associated magnetic effects of such mutually orbiting pairs might be.

Yet, these particles, as a paving, could propagate electromagnetic radiation throughout that “paved” Universe.

One major problem with these entities was exactly how they supported electric fields in otherwise totally Empty Space. For it is perfectly clear that a charged particle in a given position with respect to another charged particle, would certainly suffer an Inverse Square Law force, depending only on the distance to the other charged particle.

Clearly something must transmit this effect across the space between, and be reduced as the distance is increased.

A simple geometrical idea of concentric spheres made up of these Empty Photons immediately explains the Inverse Square Law [due to the changing surface areas of the spheres at successive distance from the source] So, the idea of these intervening particles in a continuous paving at least fitted that feature.

Of course, it wasn’t enough!

Somehow, something had to be distributed throughout that field, to endow each and every point in it with the wherewithall to exert a force on a particle in that position, and indeed, move it accordingly!

As yet the nature of this field is not evident, so we just use it as it quite evidently exists, even without an explanation.

But, I am sure that the reader can see the possibilities in all of this.

For force is an essential ingredient in accelerations as in Newton’s Law – F = Ma.

So, being in a field means an affected object will suffer an acceleration.

Can we take these considerations further and interpret the gravitational effect “at a distance” to a very simple universal paving?

The Meandering Path to Truth

Whatever happened to Theory?

Prediction requires absolutely NO theory, only the extraction of a pattern! So, to make prediction the touchstone for understanding is frankly nonsense. Indeed, what now passes for Theory is without doubt merely Form, and the supposed essences that we delight in, as equations are merely descriptions of recurring formal patterns. To make such equations the foundation of Reality, and of its investigation via Science, is an abandonment of its correct and empowering materialist standpoint.

It is put simply, Idealism!

“Form drives Reality!”, is the credo!

But what determines Form? Without real Theory – explanation in physical terms - we are worshiping totally disembodied Pattern, and The Place where such things can be so ably manipulated is surely in the Human Brain.

So, in looking for a source for these driving essences, we find that we have a “ghost” in the machine (or is it “an elephant in the room”?) - the Thing that thought these Forms? It is either US, in which case the whole standpoint collapses! Or it is GOD, in which case, “Goodbye to Science!”

The apologists for a purely Form-based Physics, struggle to find these ultimate essences, and even occasionally (as with Bohr and Heisenberg) totally reject any attempted physical explanations, and instead prefer to dwell in a World entirely determined by Pure Form alone. Of course, such a World is NOT Reality! It is the well-known World of Pure Form alone, which I insist on calling Ideality, for quite obvious reasons.

And these few words cannot, of course, completely define the philosophical stance of today’s physicists. For buried within their history over many centuries are a series of assumptions and principles, which were dreamt up and adhered to for the facilities and empowerment that they delivered. And they were not only unavoidable, but also necessary. Mankind can only do what is currently possible at their present stage of development.They are not Gods! We cannot look down upon Reality as something other, seeing all in evidently causal detail.

We are part of Reality: a particular type of Ape, that is in the process of evolving into something different, and that as part of this development has invented a series of paths towards understanding Reality – or Truth, as we like to call it.

Now, all of these, in retrospect, can be seen as being inadequate, but also, all of which were, in their time, both invaluable and distinctly progressive. We found ways of extracting fragments (or aspects) of truth from Reality, and employing them effectively to our advantage in many diverse areas.

We have never dealt (nor can we now deal) in Absolute Truth, but only in invaluable Objective Content.

It is stupid to condemn Mankind for supposedly “making mistakes” in the past. That was not what had happened at all! Mankind found ways to extract more and more Objective Content, by simplifying or redefining Reality in various useful ways. And the earliest and most useful of these was undoubtedly in recognising common Forms. It was not by accident the Euclidian Geometry was so early on the scene as an integrated system of dealing with extractable shapes. Yet, there were NO absolutely straight lines, or dots of zero extension, or absolutely flat and infinite planes: all of these didn’t exist anywhere! Yet, within that approach to Form in Reality, there was sufficient Objective Content to make it an extremely valuable tool. Yes, Mathematics IS only the superb Handmaiden, and certainly NOT The Queen!

But, in spite of this view of Mankind’s efforts in dealing with Reality, it is also true that actual major mistakes – real significant errors are made, which cause a major retreat from the usual march of Science, and which has brought Sub Atomic Physics to a significant and seemingly irresolvable crisis that has now persisted for about a century. The Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory was such a major retreat!

But, to merely blame Bohr and colleagues would get us absolutely nowhere. For the seeds of that calamity had been sown millennia earlier, with our most basic (and useful) assumptions and principles. Indeed, the period around 2,500 years ago was crucial: for it was perhaps the most revolutionary epoch in ideas and lead to a truly magnificent period of development in ways of Human thinking.

Two basic standpoints were somehow extracted from Reality-in-General. First, there was Holism by The Buddha, and secondly there was Plurality by the Greeks. Both of these were magnificent inventions that advanced Objective Content, but in very different ways. Yet, though neither was sufficient in itself, they both survive to this day, because of the real gains they delivered.

Yet also at that time in Greece, a lone voice already demurred. It was Zeno of Elea, and his realisation of the invented nature of our most basic premises, meant that all the discussions and arguments taking place at his time in Greece were founded upon two mutually exclusive premises – Both of which could be clearly shown to be inadequate.

For him to get up and merely pronounce that would certainly NOT do the trick, so he devised a series of Paradoxes, which demonstrated hoe each of these alternatives led to inevitable contradictions.

They were the conceptions of Continuity and Descreteness.

But even deeper in their thinking was the universally accepted Principle of Plurality, which saw everything as analysable into its component Parts, and that these would be entirely separable: that is independent of their existing contexts entirely.

The holistic alternative of The Buddha took the exact opposite view, and saw everything as intimately linked and determined by everything else. You could NOT extract separable things out of integrated Reality, without transforming them.

Now, this being the case, such premises did, and still do, determine the trajectory of our conceptions, and as with Zeno lead inexorably to contradiction and inevitable impasse.

But pragmatic and intelligent as Mankind certainly was, ways were found to get around such barriers, NOT, it must be emphasized by transcending them, so such a tortuous path would certainly leave many things unresolved.

A New Special Series on Marxism

The major difficulty in defining an agenda for the essential work of Marxists today is just that the necessary range is so vast, and yet any selectively biased content will undoubtedly have the same damaging effect as has been shown to be the case in the concentrations followed in the last period.

The work must be carried forward on all fronts. But, in merely saying that, such cannot, of itself, reconstruct the ground on which current Marxism is pursued: that could indeed remain exactly the same, but applied to a wider variety of areas. There is clearly more to it than mere range.

Indeed, there can be little doubt that the standpoint of Marx and Engels has been abandoned by current Marxist, even though they continue to strongly acclaim the virtues of those giants. Frankly current Marxists have abandoned Marxism, because they are simply not up to the task.

But, if so, how can such a Series re-establish the sound philosophical standpoint of the founders of Marxism. It clearly cannot be achieved by merely quoting selectively from those masters. The current practitioners have to do what Marx and Engels did, only more so, and in a much wider and more demanding set of areas.

For, as these philosophers showed, there is absolutely NO specialist area of human investigation that cannot profoundly benefit from the supreme holistic, philosophical standpoint of Marxism.

But how on earth can we redefine that, and ensure that it is indeed used as the point from which to view Reality in every possible respect? It is clear to this author, after a lifetime of participation in many different Sciences, and a worthwhile contribution in many of them, that the touchstone area to ensure that the correct approach is followed has to be Science, before almost anything else.

Now, this general area was widely ignored after the early Marxists, and indeed, in spite of the quite evident major crisis in Sub Atomic Physics that has now lasted for around a century, no one Marxist has been able to address this impasse, and currently many of the same ilk are queuing up to actually conform to the retreat that goes under the title of The Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, and its consequent and wholly idealist developments.

The test piece for this required rejuvenation of Marxism has to be the Defeat of Copenhagen – totally and unrecoverably!

Now it wont be easy, for this “section” of Physics has turned away from explaining Reality to exploring a much more amenable World – that of Pure Form alone, the domain of the Mathematicians, which I insist on clearly identifying as Ideality!
Yet it is hard to depart from a definition of Science as The Study and Explanation of Reality in all its aspects, and hence it is not only inseparable from Philosophy, but would seem, at its best, to stand upon identical ground to Marxism as a philosophical standpoint. And though, in small areas, a new approach to Science, which is entirely holistic rather than pluralistic has begun to appear in a number of specialisms, they are totally uncoordinated.

No comprehensive methodology for a Holist Science has been developed or even admitted to be necessary.

The total abandonment of the holist idea behind Miller’s Experiment concerned with an investigation into the Origin of Life on Earth, shows just how indissolubly wedded to Plurality is the Science of Today. All the consequences of a pluralist standpoint dominate current Science, from Analysis based upon the separability of all contributing factors in any situation, right down to a causing hierarchy to the simplest of fundamental, immutable bases – Reductionism.

Indeed, the true Nature of Reality is denounced, to be replaced by the much more easily used pluralist and domain-based construction.

Yet, as this author has demonstrated, a modern version of Miller’s Experiment is entirely possible, using techniques already available, from pluralist science, but used to contribute to an entirely holistic core experiment.

Now the overall task outlined here is clearly much too big for a single Special Issue of SHAPE Journal, or even of an ambitious book. And it is certainly too big for a single individual to tackle either effectively or comprehensively.

But, to establish this vital area will require specialists: scientists who are dissatisfied with the universally dominant pluralistic approach.

The author of this paper has been involved in Marxist politics all his adult life, but there were never enough scientists there. In spite of being a mathematician, a physicist and a biologist himself, his clear commitment to these disciplines was invariably dismissed as a deflection from the real issues. My political colleagues were mistaken! It is the responsibility of Marxists to include Science as the only other discipline possible to reveal vast tracts of Reality. To ignore Science, or even worse to merely follow its pluralist bias is unforgiveable.
A start must be made!

This new Series of Special Issues of the SHAPE Journal, will be totally dedicated to Marxism in Science.

The purpose will be to encourage many more to join in the effort and submit their own contributions.

The intention is to cover the following areas at a rate of 6 volumes of SHAPE per annum:

1. A Revised Version of Miller’s Experiment
2. The Theory of Emergences
3. An Alternative Marxist Cosmology
4. The Alternative to Copenhagen
5. A Holist Science
6. The Origin of Life on Earth
7. Not Absolute Truth, but Objective Content
8. Truly Natural Selection
9. Order and Chaos
10. What is Mathematics?
11. Form and Content
12. Stability & Revolution

These are intended to be interleaved with other Issues of the SHAPE Journal, appearing about every two months or so, and should therefore take two years for the complete cycle to be completed.

Read MARXISM I here 

The True Meaning of Scale Invariance

What actually is Scale Invariance?

It was lauded as a significant finding in Fractals, which seemed to indicate that the very same patterns could recur at all scales, for the very same equations drifting into “chaos”.

But, what is really being revealed?

For, let us be absolutely clear, Fractals and “chaos”, as were the ground for this discovery, are certainly features of Form alone: indeed, I insist on clearly labeling such areas of study as Mathematical or Formal Chaos.

For, before we trundle off into what is a very straightforward account of Scale Invariance, I must first differentiate between this purely formal area and Turbulence in the real, physical World – for it really does exist and is, in the usually inverted way, also put down to a merely physical embodiment of Formal Chaos,

It isn’t, of course!

If anything, it has to be the exact opposite way round with Turbulence! For Pure Form does not and cannot drive concrete Reality. It is a definitely physical Reality that delivers Form! Yet, perhaps surprisingly, Pure Form does have its own laws, which, as distinct from those associated with phenomena in the physical World, can be seen as Absolute Truths. Yet though these laws only relate disembodied Forms – formal abstractions, they can always cause misconceptions when they are carried over in concrete Reality.

NOTE: Now, such issues are complex and interesting, and have been investigated elsewhere by this author, but the full arguments cannot all be included here, though anyone interested in a Philosophical approach to Mathematics will find a large amount of detailed reasoning on the author’s SHAPE Journal Site on the Internet.

And I suggest a look at these, if this paper alone seems insufficient, for I am likely to leave out many a point, because it has been adequately dealt with elsewhere.

Now, returning to our stated area, I must clarify why it is important to bury the misconceptions around Scale Invariance.

The mathematicians, after an initial panic at the discovery, soon became delighted that in purely formal experiments on computers, driven there, it is true, by entirely formal relations, they were able to generate some of the “break up” of form without ever leaving their “sacred” formulae. And this seemed to indicate, once and for all, that everything of significance did indeed reside in the equations alone. “As we always knew”, they would exclaim, “It is Form that delivers all of physical Reality. Once we have the formulae, we have everything we need to “explain” the world (my quotes)”.

And such is, of course, no longer only the stance of the mathematicians, for since the victory of the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory in the 1920s, it has also been the position of the sub atomic physicists too.

Yet it is, in that area (the study of Physical Reality), an abandonment of materialism for idealism, though in a shamefaced, positivist way! For disembodied and indeed purely formal relations cannot drive concrete Reality. It has to be the other way round!

So, the discoveries of Mathematical Chaos were considered proof that this philosophical stance (if you can call such an amalgam that) was right! But if you insist upon the exact opposite, and have all Forms as determined by physical Reality, then Scale Invariance in certain “chaotic”-type formulae, become merely a special case of the universal nature of all Form.

NOTE: Also, as has been shown by this author, it is imperative not to confuse the Real world (Reality), with that alluring world in which only Pure Forms exist (Ideality). For though there is a sort of mapping between them, it is only causal in the Reality-to-Ideality direction. It is never true in the opposite direction. And if you ever use Form as a cause, it simply means that you DO NOT know what physical things caused it to be so in Reality.

All equations are descriptions and NOT explanations.

For, the very same general Forms, with the same equations (apart from the differing values of the constants involved) appear throughout Reality, and at widely different Levels of Organisation. But, of course, no scientist (worth the name) would say that they were all caused by the very same driving essence. Indeed, such a position smacks of some entirely non-physical, driving “principles” causing absolutely everything. Where would these come from?

Would there still have been such driving essences prior to the Big Bang – or in totally Empty Space?

Are there eternal and non-physical drivers of all that happens that were always true from the Origin of the Universe to its final demise? For if so we are talking of eternal laws! But, as soon as we allow the development and creation of the entirely new in that sphere, the whole standpoint falls to the ground, because without the permanent “Hand of God” in such a process, it means that Reality is “self-developing”!

Frankly, that idealist position constantly smacks of a designing and maintaining God, and is totally reprehensible to a real scientist, who actually knows otherwise, due to his experience and discoveries. (If you could, you should have asked Darwin!)

For as he or she delves ever deeper into their chosen area of study, they not only find physical causes for things, but also see every single “essence” totally collapse at the crossing of the boundaries of each and every Domain of Applicability – absolutely everywhere they look!

The idealist position is unsustainable for real researching and committed searchers for the “truths” of the World – and they always know that every single extraction that they make will definitely need to be changed to make it better many times in the future. [Only mathematicians deal in Absolute Truth, and that is NOT of this World!]

I always like to characterise Fractals and Scale Invariance NOT as the fundamental truths of Reality, but as essential constructive “frigs” of animation! “You want a real-looking coastline?”, the mathematician asks, “I can give you several. Look at these and with a few changes of constant, I can tailor your choice to fit your needs!”

Now, in case anyone is thinking of dismissing this contribution as that of a non-mathematician, may I correct you? I have been doing serious Mathematics since I was 12, and am a qualified and practising mathematician since University almost half a century ago. Indeed, Mathematics is the essential Handmaiden to my main professional specialism, for I am also a qualified physicist. Finally, I also rose in yet another specialism to be a Director of Information Technology in a College of London University. So, I am also an expert in computing having been in 4 posts in Higher Education in Hong Kong, Glasgow and London.

Hence, these criticisms are not uninformed prejudices from without, but highly informed and valid criticisms from within!

Indeed, many years ago, working with Jagan Gomatam, we investigated Van Der Pol’s famous equation, applied instead to modelling the workings of a living Heart (purely formally of course), and via forced mathematical Chaos, using iterative formulae, managed to create formal breakdowns, which mapped onto real world Fibrillations and even Heart Attacks.

Jagan, who was the best Mathematician I ever worked with, did the Mathematics, and I implemented them on the University’s computers Jagan also did internationally renowned work on Chemical Reaction Fronts in Liquids using the same oscillating reactions as were used by Winfree in the USA.

He was a master of his craft!

Yet at no point was Mathematical Chaos the cause of what happens in the failing living heart. That is NOT due to its equation moving into Chaos, but to real physical causes that undermined its previous Stability – a state in which a seemingly permanent stability of a System – the heart in a living body, began to be significantly undermined to at first oscillate, though still functioning, before biting the dust as a functioning system.

NOTE: It is interesting that once the conditions for a “Fibrillation” had been established they would continue exactly the same forever in these simulations. That is never what happens in the real world! The purely formal treatment could not handle the real dynamics involved.

Instead of studying Mathematical Chaos to “find the reasons” the scientific way would have to be to study real, physical Stabilities, both in their initial establishment, their continuing maintenance, and then their final demise.

Once again the writer of this paper can claim to have published The Theory of Emergences, which detailed the trajectories of all such transitions happening at all Levels of Reality, and the objective of such researches was never to end up with a formula.

WHY?

Because such a transition moves through a multiplicity of Phases in quick succession, and crucially each new phase cannot be predicted from the formulae of its immediately prior Phase. Indeed, the final result of a successful Emergence – the establishment of an entirely New Level, never before in existence, is also totally unpredictable from anything in the prior Stability! In the processes of the establishment of the new Level the entirely New is created! Do you want an example? It is Life!

Why Socialism XII: Into the Dragons' Den

The Entrepreneurs

The Conservative Party, aided and abetted by their Liberal Democrat partners in the present Coalition Government in the UK, and even echoed by the opposition Labour Party, agree that the motive force of Capitalism resides with the Entrepreneurs, and behind them, the Moneyed Class.

They point to the developments of the last few hundred years as being totally due to these Drivers and Developers of our Society, and without whom, we would still be languishing on the land, scraping out a meager living, and remaining in rural ignorance.

But as with all those at-the-top, they leave out all those who actually do the work, and even the inventors, scientists, technologists and engineers, who made possible the profitable undertakings that made them rich.

And such omissions are not only reprehensible, but mask the real wealth-making in our Society, and get away with their version, because they most certainly are the principal recipients of that wealth.

These same people, if pressed to name the most significant period in History, will almost to a man name Greek Society of over 2000 years ago, and will give you innumerable advances that can be put down to that civilization.

But they fail to mention that it was a Slave-Owning Society, in which captives taken in battle, or merely by force from their homes, became the property of the conquerors, and made to work without pay, possessions or rights to the benefit of their now owners. But this isn’t a modern moral judgement of the past: that was the way of things then. But it does throw a different light on why they were able to achieve what they did.

Such a society would, and indeed did, release the “citizens of the State” from most of the onerous labour, so that they could commit themselves to Mathematics or Philosophy or anything else that they chose to pursue, and still live in the marvellous conditions to which they had become accustomed.

Dawn to Dusk hard labour, and without any money or facilities is not conducive to such studies, so for the slaves such things would never even get on the agenda.

[Where has that occurred since, I wonder?]

And the present day Entrepreneurs are in a similar position, but dedicate themselves to a much lower objective – to get as rich as they possibly can, by the exploitation of other people’s ideas, and the labour of the workers employed to deliver-the-goods.

I, therefore, feel that I have to strongly disagree with these surveyors from on high, and insist that a Society only composed of such predatory parasites as these, would soon either die or retrench back to Kingdom of the strongest over the weakest, and an enforced, if wholly inadequate class of their oft-times colleagues, now reduced to working for their “betters”

NO, these parasites do nor direct progress; they merely misappropriate the invention and work of others. Indeed, in many ways, they are so conservative that they present a very strong barrier against such innovators even getting started.

The famous Dragons’ Den TV programme on BBC in the UK, though a supposed entertainment, does very clearly illustrate what motivates these funders of new enterprise. They certainly consider their wealth will have to be increased by becoming involved, and no other criteria are really considered.

For they can only use how they became top dogs to judge the abilities of newcomers to do likewise, and then only help if it gives themselves even more wealth and status as a consequence.

It is like a History composed entirely of Kings and Queens. You would think that History was made exclusively by these people. But, though they did sit on top and make decisions they did not make the crops grow, or invent new products, develop Mankind’s understanding of Reality, and certainly didn’t make anything. They were the Ruling Class, and they kept their positions by the actions of bodies of armed men – such as the police and the army. They could even win an entire country by invasion, as did William the Conqueror, or even build a worldwide Empire like the British.

NO, that isn’t History as an explanation, but merely as an after-the-event description. The real historians do not merely concentrate upon the top parasitic, coercive class.

Michelet’s History of the French Revolution delivered the impulse of the changing situation via the minutia of everyday happenings in the whirlpool of a Revolution.

V. Gordon Childe delivered History via archaeological findings as he described in What Happened in History and Man Makes Himself.

So. Let us be clear. The Dragons are not the motive forces of Society. They are products of the capitalist appropriation of processes and functions that are forever the actions of a developing populace. Indeed, in many ways the Dragons are the barriers to real Qualitative Changes, and they will have to be totally impoverished, and swept away in a Society, which will prohibit such a powerful and totally self-serving caste.

The Trouble with Reflections?

Can We Be Sure That We Are Interpreting Evidence Correctly?

This short paper considers some of the concerns that have arisen with the idea of Totally Internal Reflection of electromagnetic radiation occurring at the boundaries of the Universe. And the validity of conclusions from this supposition that led to a vastly extended and partially virtual view of that system.

The major problem with the suggestion that Totally Internal Reflection takes place at the boundaries of our Universe is that they must certainly give the movements of real sources an opposite direction when seen via reflection.

Now, the conclusion unavoidable from this suggestion is that such a dramatic reverse in that component of direction perpendicular to the area of the boundary where reflection occurred, and this would be discerned, and it would be demolish the principle of all distant sources moving away.

And, of course, conversely, if such “approaching” sources were not in evidence, it would demolish this possibility outright.

Now, certainly this latter seems to be the case, for no such approaching distant sources have been observed. So, such evidence seems to have totally scuppered the suggestion of Totally Internal Reflections, and the whole idea should be dropped immediately.

But, there are other possibilities.

Are we being too simple in our methods of judging these distant moving entities? Clearly, we can only really use ourselves as a certain point of reference. They all seem to be moving away from us, and we are certainly NOT a reflection.

This clearly implies either an expanding Universe, or the expansion of Space itself. A reflecting final boundary of the Universe seems to be untenable.

Also recent mathematical research into multiple reflections from both the leading and trailing edges of an expanding shell universe make the consequences even more incompatible with observations. For these investigations seem to indicate that such reflections will tend to bring these multiple reflections into roughly radial directions with respect to the centre of that Universe. And this is the case, whether these are outwards or those apparently inwards due to the final reflection. And, again, the evidence from observations does not support this either.

Yet, before abandoning this idea altogether, perhaps we should see if, once again, we are stretching a formalism too far, and by this, extrapolating it to absurdity once more.

For, as with everything else, you cannot use a particular simplification forever, as it will certainly run out of applicability and fail in the limit.

And in Reality Phases naturally occur.

Let us consider the differences between a very, very early Universe, and an old one like ours is now!

The early Universe will be (in comparison) very small, and hence, if reflections do take place, they will be frequent – and even traversing right around the Universe in a series of cycles that will then be possible. The results will be as we have assumed in this suggestion. But in an old Universe, the sizes will have become much too big, indeed actually so colossal, that it has become impossible to discern a current boundary that is real. Indeed, this research has proved that because of the finite velocity of light. An observer will never see such a boundary-as-is, because every seen part of it will be from different times in the past, and hence from their positions then.

This will make a spherical boundary appear egg-shaped. [The calculations for this have been published. See SHAPE Journal’s Special Issue - Can We See The Edge?]

Indeed, to make our calculations and placing ourselves as the observer in the best place for making the necessary calculations proved impossible. We had to position ourselves at some point that made the calculations easiest.

Also, our usual means of measuring speeds of sources in Cosmology is almost never direct for very distant objects. It usually depends upon the famed Doppler Effect, which implies that a Red Shift in received light means that its source must be moving away, and the amount of that shift gives a measure of how fast that is happening.

And Hubble’s extraction of a relation between distance and speed, then allowed Red Shift to also be used to give distance too.

Anyway, let us not get deflected from the main problem.

The evidence does NOT support Totally Internal Reflection at a boundary, because we don’t detect any light coming towards us from a seemingly approaching source.

But, if we are using colour (Red Shift) to determine direction and speed of a source, we will certainly fail with reflected light.

For the observed Red Shift will still be the same, won’t it? Seeing something red in a mirror will still be red won’t it, and it will have identical shift characteristics. So, depending upon the shift to give distance will certainly fail? And maybe we have a problem with the assumption of Red Shift itself? For doesn’t it assume that a wavelength is stretched by the receding source? Leaving behind on a stationary Space a wider trace that would have been laid by a stationary source?

But, have we actually got “waves” in Empty Space, or only quanta-carrying receptacles of such energy?

How then do they get stretched? Surely, such “contained” quanta of energy, probably held in internal orbiting sub-particles, will be inviolate? Whatever wavelength was stored as such a quantum, would be totally unaffected by the speed of the original source, and would be isolated from an expanding Space too.
 

The usual supposition is that the trace is spread out over time, and hence covering more space and hence having a longer wavelength a red shift.

How could this work when the quantum is being carried inside a receptacle as an internal orbit?

WOW!

Clearly, though the obvious conclusion is that the basic assumption of a reflecting boundary is mistaken, there are other questions that are not yet clarified.

As mentioned earlier, the main tenets of the idea of reflected light at the Universe boundary does only seem to fit in a very young Universe. For one thing, multiple reflections of light from a single source and then be received by a single observer, can only take place if there is sufficient time for them all to actually reach that observer.

Two cases stand out!

ONE: More recent production of light a long way from any boundary might not have time to get there and back to a given observer. No reflections would then be seen. And,

TWO: A source near to the boundary would certainly have not such an enormous gap between the direct light and its reflection at the boundary reaching the same observer.

NOTE: Remember, we are talking about continually emitting sources; so different paths could still have the light from both arriving together at the observer. They will just have been emitted at different times in the past.

Yet a recent case of the latter might be so far away from the observer that neither the direct nor the reflected light would yet have reached him.

The point about these considerations is that there will be definite zones, which will be seen differently by an observer. So, somehow, these will have to be thought-through, and described, so that we don’t use the situation in one zone for that in another, OR, even more misleading, use a single interpretation for all of the different situations.

Finally, a reflection is NOT a different source, but merely a different path for the light from a given source to take.

Any emanations from the actual source will have the same properties in any reflection: they cannot be changed. But the light traversing a different path, and the nature of that journey will not necessarily be the same.

The most important difference will be in the reflection itself. We don’t know the nature of the reflecting boundary (if such exists). It maybe far from smooth and even. So the effect of that on the light, plus the difference in time for alternative paths, will deliver the same source but from different times in the past. Each view will be from a different time in the source’s history.

In conclusion, the evidence seems to be against there being Totally Internal Reflection at the boundaries of our Universe, but there are still good reasons for carrying that assumption forward to investigate the above identified, and still to be established, possibilities. Science has always been replete with “obvious assumptions” that have both misled, and ultimately, have been proved to be mistaken.

The original theory of this model of the universe is best described in this video...

New Special Issue: The Expansion of Space Itself

Now, it must be admitted from the outset that to oppose, as I certainly do, this assumption of the Expansion of Space Itself as an alternative to the simpler conception of the Big Bang, then it is clearly a major undertaking. And, if I along with everyone else working in this area, limit myself to investigating the formal questions alone, then I couldn’t possibly succeed.

For, in such an approach, the truth or falsity of any position can only boil down to the obeying of the Rules of Form, and hence ultimately to those of their undoubted basis – Formal Logic.

It is then about mathematical conceptions and formulations as the supposed essences of Reality.

My opponents (who I readily admit, can find appropriate Forms for literally anything) would certainly demand that I should do likewise: it is the only truth that they recognise!

But, I cannot and, indeed, will not, join them in their exploration of the World of Pure Form alone – of Ideality! For I am a scientist and philosopher, and therefore require explanations of everything I study. To give me an equation is to give me a succinct and accurate description only, and then only for a particular contrived and maintained Domain: it contains NO explanations whatsoever (unless you deem, “Obeys this equation!”, as an explanation).

Now, those who take the opposite view would most certainly demur, and insist that Reality is caused by the obeying of these types of formal relationships: obeying a disembodied formal relation delivers such results!

NO it does NOT!
In actual fact, concrete Reality delivers formal patterns and relations, but only in the most carefully constructed and maintained conditions.

So, I will tackle the problem, as the best physicists always have, by attempting to explain why things happen as they do, and NOT merely by how they seem to happen.
Hence this couple of papers can only be a start to this necessary task. Though most scientists can and do, with any evident problems, solve everything piecemeal – and each with its defining equation, that is never what I do.

The first paper addresses the mathematicians’ idea of the Expansion of Space Itself, while the second paper questions the actual contents of what we choose to call Empty Space.

Read the Issue

Why Socialism XI: Socialised Capital II

Diagram of Economic Movements in a Capitalist System

Balances?

Now, to devise an alternative to the way things are done within Capitalism, it is imperative to understand how that regime managed to finance new start-ups and expansions. For those will still be required even in a Socialist State.

Now, when a capitalist firm traded, it had to balance on the one hand its costs, including labour and all its committed to payments for all its used services, with its income. But that alone did not determine the price of what it was that the company produced for the market.

For it was “owned” by a group of investors, who had put up the original capital, and they would expect (and get) an annual dividend – a proportion of what they owned in shares of the company as regular recompense.

To read more about this, and for a KEY to the diagram above click here...

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