What exactly is all this Dark matter anyway?
Discussion
Gene Vincent said:
mattnunn said:
This is metaphysics.
How often am I told philosophy has no place in this forum?
And yet this is a metaphysical discussion.
Gene, and his ilk, are trying to reinvent academia in there own image.
They are the Stones to Plato's Chuck Berry.
No, not at all.How often am I told philosophy has no place in this forum?
And yet this is a metaphysical discussion.
Gene, and his ilk, are trying to reinvent academia in there own image.
They are the Stones to Plato's Chuck Berry.
This is not fanciful or mystical, matter exists due to interaction of the numerous fields, but when we look we add fields through observation and matter appears to just 'happen', that is due to Human interaction, the maths tells us differently to what we observe and that is part (but by no means all) of why we have a problem with this transition from the Micro to the Macro.
You'd have to be purposefully ignorant not to appreciate this fact and instead attribute a metaphysical or mystical meaning to it.
It is, in reality, the very antithesis of such.
You believe, have faith, that mathematics is discovered? You have chosen a side in this argument, Pythagoras did not describe the triangle, he discovered it - it has universal truth besides human measurement and interpretion - you have demostrated this is your point of view, you repeat "the maths tells us" - so why the inconsistency here?
If you're sure by observation we change reality then you're accepting an opposing point of view that inherent universal truth is not available to us, matter is perception, energy or fields are the language used. If a triangle not seen is not a if the process of measuring a triangle is what makes it so, Pythagoras didn't discover the triangle - he invented it and, helpfully, showed us how to invent them too.
If your way is true once we have discovered all we can we are still left with questions, how did the triangle get there, it could only be The One.
If my way is true then we can invent what we like, the limitations are only our imaginations, whatever we can conceive we can observe and then explain.
mattnunn said:
The fact you tie metaphysical to mystical is a pretty clear indication of your disjunct from your roots, if you wish to know where you're headed, best know where you've been?
You believe, have faith, that mathematics is discovered? You have chosen a side in this argument, Pythagoras did not describe the triangle, he discovered it - it has universal truth besides human measurement and interpretion - you have demostrated this is your point of view, you repeat "the maths tells us" - so why the inconsistency here?
If you're sure by observation we change reality then you're accepting an opposing point of view that inherent universal truth is not available to us, matter is perception, energy or fields are the language used. If a triangle not seen is not a if the process of measuring a triangle is what makes it so, Pythagoras didn't discover the triangle - he invented it and, helpfully, showed us how to invent them too.
If your way is true once we have discovered all we can we are still left with questions, how did the triangle get there, it could only be The One.
If my way is true then we can invent what we like, the limitations are only our imaginations, whatever we can conceive we can observe and then explain.
The trouble with modern metaphysics is that has been replaced and like all vagrant thought it lacks firmity, as a result the once noble metaphysics has become the domain of the vagrant mind, refusing to accept the foundation of physics that it once did, their fanciful ideas of the past were numerous and over time some proved to be a good lead, but that was a smuch to do with the number and frequency of the crackpot ideas that surfaced, we don't need metaphysics any more, it would for me be like choosing a broken down donkey to ride about on instead of the Ferrari F12 sitting on the driveway.You believe, have faith, that mathematics is discovered? You have chosen a side in this argument, Pythagoras did not describe the triangle, he discovered it - it has universal truth besides human measurement and interpretion - you have demostrated this is your point of view, you repeat "the maths tells us" - so why the inconsistency here?
If you're sure by observation we change reality then you're accepting an opposing point of view that inherent universal truth is not available to us, matter is perception, energy or fields are the language used. If a triangle not seen is not a if the process of measuring a triangle is what makes it so, Pythagoras didn't discover the triangle - he invented it and, helpfully, showed us how to invent them too.
If your way is true once we have discovered all we can we are still left with questions, how did the triangle get there, it could only be The One.
If my way is true then we can invent what we like, the limitations are only our imaginations, whatever we can conceive we can observe and then explain.
The donkey is amusing, you can feed the dumb thing the odd strawberry and boot it up the arse to hear it bray, but the F12... the real deal if I want to go anywhere.
mattnunn said:
You believe, have faith, that mathematics is discovered? You have chosen a side in this argument, Pythagoras did not describe the triangle, he discovered it - it has universal truth besides human measurement and interpretion - you have demostrated this is your point of view, you repeat "the maths tells us" - so why the inconsistency here?
Yet more utter piffle.Belief and Faith are two separate concepts. I believe that the sun will rise tomorrow, I do not have Faith in it. 1 + 1 = 10 does not require faith, just an understanding of the base things are termed in.
Pythagoras didn't discover or invent triangles but he did discover the mathematical rules governing them. Rules intrinsically part of our experience of the universe.
Now we have discoveries of new rules that, unfortunately, are impossible to visualise and require specialised (mathematical) tools to work with. Thus we use language that represents things poorly and causes confusion for some - seeming to them to be magical and mystical.
IainT said:
Pythagoras didn't discover or invent triangles but he did discover the mathematical rules governing them. Rules intrinsically part of our experience of the universe.
Okay, so the maths which describe the triangle (I refer to this as the triangle, some how you detatch the triangle from it's maths) are either given as a propoerty of the universe or not. You're saying they're given intrinsically as part of our "experience" of the universe. Surely pure logic and truth is outside of our experience, this is what I'm told it's what "the maths tells us".Was this an error, slip of the tongue, or is this what you believe? I've cut and pasted this from wikipedia, as it's amusing, but you must read more on the phillosophy of maths...
"These earlier Greek ideas of numbers were later upended by the discovery of the irrationality of the square root of two. Hippasus, a disciple of Pythagoras, showed that the diagonal of a unit square was incommensurable with its (unit-length) edge: in other words he proved there was no existing (rational) number that accurately depicts the proportion of the diagonal of the unit square to its edge. This caused a significant re-evaluation of Greek philosophy of mathematics. According to legend, fellow Pythagoreans were so traumatised by this discovery that they murdered Hippasus to stop him from spreading his heretical idea."
Bedazzled said:
It is metaphysics, in that it takes underlying QFT, which has been around for 80 years, and embellishes it with one person's contemporary interpretation of "what is there, and what is it like?". But it's interesting all the same, and if it makes people stop and think and challenge some of the daft 'sci-fi' ideas that get bandied about, then GV is probably achieving what he set out to do.
Personally I find QFT helps me get my head around wave/particle duality and elementary particle interactions, but I'm not ready to make the mental leap that physical reality may itself exist only as a set of fields, because of the obvious questions it raises about the nature of the fields themselves, and because QFT doesn't account for the nature of gravity.
On the "observation changes reality" point, as I understand it quantum theory only describes the end result, it says nothing about the state of particles when they are not being observed or how they got there, or whether it's even the same particle from one observation to the next. The cat in the box, the EPR puzzle, Feynman's sum of histories, Wheeler's delayed choice experiment are all good examples. I don't see it as mystical, but it is mysterious!
All imho, as a layman!
Not metaphysics at all, I describe what is known and what is very likely only (unless I put in a proviso to the contrary) all that I say has both foundation and superstructure, bits fall off the superstructure regularly as it is replaced with stronger members, but the shape of it remains.Personally I find QFT helps me get my head around wave/particle duality and elementary particle interactions, but I'm not ready to make the mental leap that physical reality may itself exist only as a set of fields, because of the obvious questions it raises about the nature of the fields themselves, and because QFT doesn't account for the nature of gravity.
On the "observation changes reality" point, as I understand it quantum theory only describes the end result, it says nothing about the state of particles when they are not being observed or how they got there, or whether it's even the same particle from one observation to the next. The cat in the box, the EPR puzzle, Feynman's sum of histories, Wheeler's delayed choice experiment are all good examples. I don't see it as mystical, but it is mysterious!
All imho, as a layman!
You are right in that I am trying to kill the 'sci-fi', 'wooo' and 'ethereal' nature of what is none of those excuses for intellectual failure.
Field Theory is how this Cosmos works, it makes quantum theory work, it can incorporate Gravity, in fact it is the only way known that can, Einsteins answer works, but it was always incomplete, hugely so.
BTW, we know the nature of Gravity, that is what Einstein gave us, but we haven't until recently had a clue as to how it comes into being in nature, what part of Cosmological action/interaction generates its presence, that is not the case any longer.
For a long time now we have seen gravity as an attribute of other phenomena, soon, this will be spectacularly over-turned, it's not an attribute at all, it is not the result of anything, it is to a large extent the complete opposite. Einstein was wrong when he considered Gravity an attribute of the warping of spacetime, very wrong.
Quantum Theory can't do what you say because QT is resultant of a prior state, that prior state is the presence of Fields.
Bedazzled said:
Gene Vincent said:
For a long time now we have seen gravity as an attribute of other phenomena, soon, this will be spectacularly over-turned, it's not an attribute at all, it is not the result of anything, it is to a large extent the complete opposite. Einstein was wrong when he considered Gravity an attribute of the warping of spacetime, very wrong.
That bit sounds interesting, looking forward to reading about it in New Scientist etc when it filters down to the layman/luddite. 
Try this...
Part of Einsteins GT covered gravity and a fundamental part is that there must be Gravity waves... now as you know waves don't grab you and pull you, they just cause you to bob up and down, waves don't work... unless something holds you onto a leading edge and then you no longer bob up and down, you surf!
So there are two alternatives...
Does gravity somehow attach matter to a wave it itself generated or is there something else that can make you surf toward the shore?
I am working on the latter.
Gene Vincent said:
mattnunn said:
This is metaphysics.
How often am I told philosophy has no place in this forum?
And yet this is a metaphysical discussion.
Gene, and his ilk, are trying to reinvent academia in there own image.
They are the Stones to Plato's Chuck Berry.
No, not at all.How often am I told philosophy has no place in this forum?
And yet this is a metaphysical discussion.
Gene, and his ilk, are trying to reinvent academia in there own image.
They are the Stones to Plato's Chuck Berry.
This is not fanciful or mystical, matter exists due to interaction of the numerous fields, but when we look we add fields through observation and matter appears to just 'happen', that is due to Human interaction, the maths tells us differently to what we observe and that is part (but by no means all) of why we have a problem with this transition from the Micro to the Macro.
You'd have to be purposefully ignorant not to appreciate this fact and instead attribute a metaphysical or mystical meaning to it.
It is, in reality, the very antithesis of such.
Regarding Metaphysics - it's one of my pet hobbies... I think Metaphysics, if we can agree on what we mean bytheterm has a huge part to play in the scheme of science and discovery.
Now I'm not normally one to go reaching for Wiki definitions but this one on Metaphysics
Wiki said:
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world,[1] although the term is not easily defined.[2] Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:
"What is there?"
"What is it like?"
Sums it up quite neatly for me. Though there are massive gaps in that article in terms of other metaphysics ideas."What is there?"
"What is it like?"
I have a huge problem with our fundamental subject-object 'world view' - I simply do not believe that it is correct. It is massively flawed in certain areas, there's too much it can not adequatley explain. I'm much more aligned to the Metaphysics Of Quality as outlined by Robert Pirsig, which incidently parallels quite a lot of Buddhist philosophy on the nature of mind, matter and 'reality'.
I firmly believe that metaphysics is the bed rock of scientific investigation, it provides the ground rules for thinking (for the majority anyway - I'd be very interested in learning more about the thought processes and language(s) that Gene uses to describe 'reality').
Now addressing Gene's comments, as theoretical mathematician working in the field of particle physics, I find it hard to conceive that you would term metaphysics fanciful or mystical.
It is neither. It is a branch of thought and investigation that utilises a 'language' in an effort to understand 'What is there?', 'What is it like?' and 'How do we perceive it?'.
I'd love to have a thread running here discussing metaphysics, in fact one of my very first posts on PH was about this very topic. Of course it was lost in the noise of ignorant keyboard warriors posting the usual bulls
t quick quib posts.I might go back and see if I can find the original posts.
ok... I found the original post... it was relating to [url]The fabric of society|http://pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&f=23&t=79920&nmt=on+the+fabric+of+society&mid=25411[url].
However back then in 2004 I was addressing some very different issues, I still feel that a similar frame work can be applied to some of the discussions here on the nature of 'reality', be it at a social, intellectual, bilogical or physical level.
(Reading back it is nice to see some of the posters in that thread still amongst us, and for those that would take the time to read that thread there are some interesting ideas)
However back then in 2004 I was addressing some very different issues, I still feel that a similar frame work can be applied to some of the discussions here on the nature of 'reality', be it at a social, intellectual, bilogical or physical level.
(Reading back it is nice to see some of the posters in that thread still amongst us, and for those that would take the time to read that thread there are some interesting ideas)
Domxe, interesting post and welcome back from the silence! Please continue to contribute, steel sharpens steel, and a good mind is never not worth the hearing.
My position is quite simple, in the past metaphysics was the realm (mostly) of persons well versed in the maths foundation or the physics foundation and they postulated on what was and what could be,
This honourable way to think is consigned to history, the questions have been asked, the answers sought, the subsequent questions that a long past Metaphysician would ask really can't be asked by one, the intricacy and complexity means that you have to be in the mix, you have to be a Mathematician.
I ask myself lots of questions and many would be seen as a metaphysical detour...
Metaphysicians could not have (and did not) come up with the Quantum Physics World, Dirac Anti-Matter, Yang-Mills NA Gauge Theory, QED, QCD... all could never be postulated by them, you had to be in there to even believe your own calcs!
I am trying to connect gravity to mass that fits with what we have observed, what Einstein got right and that conforms to the underlying QFT parameters and how far we can stretch them, additionally I have to gain a foothold on the underlying mechanism that allows what is simply a series of probability formulae to form a gradient so that gravity has a visible effect at the macro scale as to the micro... I'd have to have the patience of a Saint to not wish serious harm to someone who asked me... "yeah, but what's it like?"
But discourse, so long as it isn't too fanciful can help and even more helpful is to re-trace your steps and try to lay a path for others to ground you, that cannot be overvalued.
Some on here have made me stop short and think hard about the road map.
My position is quite simple, in the past metaphysics was the realm (mostly) of persons well versed in the maths foundation or the physics foundation and they postulated on what was and what could be,
This honourable way to think is consigned to history, the questions have been asked, the answers sought, the subsequent questions that a long past Metaphysician would ask really can't be asked by one, the intricacy and complexity means that you have to be in the mix, you have to be a Mathematician.
I ask myself lots of questions and many would be seen as a metaphysical detour...
Metaphysicians could not have (and did not) come up with the Quantum Physics World, Dirac Anti-Matter, Yang-Mills NA Gauge Theory, QED, QCD... all could never be postulated by them, you had to be in there to even believe your own calcs!
I am trying to connect gravity to mass that fits with what we have observed, what Einstein got right and that conforms to the underlying QFT parameters and how far we can stretch them, additionally I have to gain a foothold on the underlying mechanism that allows what is simply a series of probability formulae to form a gradient so that gravity has a visible effect at the macro scale as to the micro... I'd have to have the patience of a Saint to not wish serious harm to someone who asked me... "yeah, but what's it like?"
But discourse, so long as it isn't too fanciful can help and even more helpful is to re-trace your steps and try to lay a path for others to ground you, that cannot be overvalued.
Some on here have made me stop short and think hard about the road map.
mattnunn said:
IainT said:
Pythagoras didn't discover or invent triangles but he did discover the mathematical rules governing them. Rules intrinsically part of our experience of the universe.
Okay, so the maths which describe the triangle (I refer to this as the triangle, some how you detatch the triangle from it's maths) are either given as a propoerty of the universe or not. You're saying they're given intrinsically as part of our "experience" of the universe. Surely pure logic and truth is outside of our experience, this is what I'm told it's what "the maths tells us".Was this an error, slip of the tongue, or is this what you believe? I've cut and pasted this from wikipedia, as it's amusing, but you must read more on the phillosophy of maths...
"These earlier Greek ideas of numbers were later upended by the discovery of the irrationality of the square root of two. Hippasus, a disciple of Pythagoras, showed that the diagonal of a unit square was incommensurable with its (unit-length) edge: in other words he proved there was no existing (rational) number that accurately depicts the proportion of the diagonal of the unit square to its edge. This caused a significant re-evaluation of Greek philosophy of mathematics. According to legend, fellow Pythagoreans were so traumatised by this discovery that they murdered Hippasus to stop him from spreading his heretical idea."
I find it interesting that you think I separate the Maths from the Triangle when I was clearly (and again we see your wilful ignorance) referring to the discovery of the rules and not the existence of said rules.
How can the rules that govern stuff (be it triangles, pi, etc.) be outside our experience? That's like saying the fish doesn't experience the water it swims in.
Your lack of comprehension doesn't alter reality.
Gene Vincent said:
You'll have noticed the way God's beard moves in an opposing direction to the "blast".mattnunn said:
Gene Vincent said:
You'll have noticed the way God's beard moves in an opposing direction to the "blast".proverbially so
The Black Flash said:
Are they curved and distorted like magnetic fields...
No, they are at Planck length magnitude and perhaps the best way to see them 'in your minds eye' is like a uniform gas cloud.The Black Flash said:
...and indeed like space-time is supposedly curved by gravity?
Space and time and all the interactions we call spacetime are an attribute of the uniform fields. Although garivity may be an attribute of a probability slope of all the fields interaction.The Black Flash said:
Although I guess that magnetic field lines are really just different strengths at different points in the field.
Yes and the inherent effect of a radiating energy from a single focal point.The Black Flash said:
Are the other fields similar?
All the Fields in this discussion are coterminous.
Gene Vincent said:
The Black Flash said:
Are they curved and distorted like magnetic fields...
No, they are at Planck length magnitude and perhaps the best way to see them 'in your minds eye' is like a uniform gas cloud.The Black Flash said:
Gene Vincent said:
The Black Flash said:
Are they curved and distorted like magnetic fields...
No, they are at Planck length magnitude and perhaps the best way to see them 'in your minds eye' is like a uniform gas cloud.The fields are all uniform in placement, so from the centre of the sun to where you sit reading this, the fields are uniform in existence, any fluctuations are only that of probability, this probability is at root the fluctuation you are perhaps thinking of.
All the Fields themselves 'see' no differentiation in and of themselves, but in the first 380,000 years of the Cosmos, the conditions of heat and pressure caused interactions and formed what we call 'things' to appear.
Think of it as an infinitely long and wide piece of tarmac, the lumps on the surface are vehicles milling about (bits of mass, photons etc) and they have the potential to go anywhere on the tarmac but have to obey rules of movement (laws of physics) but the tarmac itself (the fields) just allows this to happen.
The Fields are of equal potential probability everywhere in the Cosmos.
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