Huge Black Holes on Collision Course

[London Geezer]

Whew. Not 2 million but 20 million!
That's a relief.

Tell me about it, i was starting to get worried!

 

[KimB]

It had nothing to do with mars.
This was a news story back in 1999/2000.

That would have had nothing to do with unknown physics, but rather not doing the calculations right.

 

[zidane1strife]

Sure, but all physical laws must be held up to experiment, and as such we're fairly confident about where we are correct about how the universe acts.

It really doesn't matter, we've already seen that even with some of the older laws discovered by man, what mattered was the parameters within which theywere valid, at extreme parameters(fore example: extremes of size, speed, mass, etc.) some of them just weren't that useful if not downright broke down. If we understand the fundamental laws governing all possibility and giving rise to all laws in all possible universes, on which our universe's present laws stand, we should be able to traverse the landscape of possibilities and arrive at our solution.

If you want to argue that there are no Laws governing the Universe, or that they are mutable and can be bent to Man's will, well then that's an interesting philosophical debate.

Otherwise one should take care not to confuse Man's ignorance of the Laws Of Physics with the those same Laws certainty in their own existence.

Man's will? it will be our descendants, if we survive. Far beyond mere men, more like gods, though, they may still be called human in honor of us.

 

[London Geezer]

It really doesn't matter, we've already seen that even with some of the older laws discovered by man, what mattered was the parameters within which theywere valid, at extreme parameters(fore example: extremes of size, speed, mass, etc.) some of them just weren't that useful if not downright broke down. If we understand the fundamental laws governing all possibility and giving rise to all laws in all possible universes, on which our universe's present laws stand, we should be able to traverse the landscape of possibilities and arrive at our solution.

Well that theory to work would need the assumption that one day in the future, what happened centuries ago (or even at the beginning of the last century) when laws of physics had to be rewritten, disproving the old ones, will happen again.
And to be honest, i think that at our level, we will only be able to add to the laws we already have, i don't think we'll disprove the laws we have now. Maybe some will need to be changed, but it's clear that the most major ones are correct, from gravity to relativity...
We WILL add to our knowledge, especially when it comes to quantum physics.

Man's will? it will be our descendants, if we survive. Far beyond mere men, more like gods, though, they may still be called human in honor of us.

You HAVE read too much Iain Banks then!! I KNEW IT!

 

[zidane1strife]

Well that theory to work would need the assumption that one day in the future, what happened centuries ago (or even at the beginning of the last century) when laws of physics had to be rewritten, disproving the old ones, will happen again.
And to be honest, i think that at our level, we will only be able to add to the laws we already have, i don't think we'll disprove the laws we have now. Maybe some will need to be changed, but it's clear that the most major ones are correct, from gravity to relativity...
We WILL add to our knowledge, especially when it comes to quantum physics.

It's not the laws or the parameters of this particular universe that concern us. It's the fundamental laws governing all universes and giving rise to each and everyone of their individual parameters and laws.

You HAVE read too much Iain Banks then!! I KNEW IT!

Here's a relevant google video link
Building Gods

 

[nutball]

It's not that the laws or the parameters of this particular universe that concern us. It's the fundamental laws governing all universes and giving rise to each and everyone of their individual parameters and laws.

Unless of course there is only one Universe...

 

[KimB]

It really doesn't matter, we've already seen that even with some of the older laws discovered by man, what mattered was the parameters within which theywere valid, at extreme parameters(fore example: extremes of size, speed, mass, etc.) some of them just weren't that useful if not downright broke down. If we understand the fundamental laws governing all possibility and giving rise to all laws in all possible universes, on which our universe's present laws stand, we should be able to traverse the landscape of possibilities and arrive at our solution.

Right, and our experiments have been progressively probing wider regions of parameter space in recent years. We strongly believe that our current major theories, General Relativity and the Standard Model (Quantum Mechanics), are entirely valid within their regions of applicability.

Most scientists currently believe that General Relativity has been experimentally shown to be valid from the largest scales down to the event horizon of a large black hole (Of course, we haven't directly "seen" the event horizon of a black hole, but we've been observing black hole behavior for some time). The Standard Model has been shown to be accurate for particle interactions up to a couple hundred times the mass of the proton in energy (Or about a billion times the temperature of the hottest star).

There are many unanswered questions, of course, but we know the basic physics that governs nearly all of the engineering we could ever do. Granted, it's conceivable that there may some some interesting effects that become apparent and allow us to do interesting things once we learn more about particle physics, but it's unlikely that much of this physics advancement will translate into real-world applicability.

The interesting regions of parameter space are short range gravity, and higher-energy interactions. We have been able to probe the strength of gravity down to a few microns, and may just now be finding interesting deviation from General Relativity. With high energy, we're building experiments now to push the envelope even higher in hopes to measure more interesting particles, but astrophysics is also a great method for measuring high energy physics. For example, I mentioned that with terrestrial experiments we've measured particles up to a few hundred times the proton mass in energy. We have detected particles hitting the atmosphere of the Earth with energies about 10^15 times greater.

So there's lots of interesting stuff out there, but most are pretty confident about most of the physics that will go into engineering over the next centuries.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Im no expert on the subject but things like dark matter, dark energy, anti-dark matter/energy, vacum energy, the time before the big bang, etc...

Arn't these all still big mysteries to us? And if so, who are we to say that we know there is anothing about them that will change our understanding of the universe/multiverse or the possibilities within it?

Arn't their supposed to be 11 dimensions now? Are we so sure that we know so much about them that no new, as yet undiscovered possibilities exist because of them?

If thats the case then the whole area of study from atoms right up to the universe as a whole is a lot more boring than I thought.

 

[zidane1strife]

I'll give a simple recent article to show what I mean.

Supporters of Heim theory claim that it is a panacea for the troubles in modern physics. They say it unites quantum mechanics and general relativity, can predict the masses of the building blocks of matter from first principles, and can even explain the state of the universe 13.7 billion years ago.

While Heim waited for more money to come in, the company's director, Ludwig Bölkow, encouraged him to develop his theory further. Heim took his advice, and one of the results was a theorem that led to a series of formulae for calculating the masses of the fundamental particles - something conventional theories have conspicuously failed to achieve. He outlined this work in 1977 in the Max Planck Institute's journal Zeitschrift für Naturforschung, his only peer-reviewed paper. In an abstruse way that few physicists even claim to understand, the formulae work out a particle's mass starting from physical characteristics, such as its charge and angular momentum.

Yet the theorem has proved surprisingly powerful. The standard model of physics, which is generally accepted as the best available theory of elementary particles, is incapable of predicting a particle's mass. Even the accepted means of estimating mass theoretically, known as lattice quantum chromodynamics, only gets to between 1 and 10 per cent of the experimental values....

But in 1982, when researchers at the German Electron Synchrotron (DESY) in Hamburg implemented Heim's mass theorem in a computer program, it predicted masses of fundamental particles that matched the measured values to within the accuracy of experimental error. If they are let down by anything, it is the precision to which we know the values of the fundamental constants. Two years after Heim's death in 2001, his long-term collaborator Illobrand von Ludwiger calculated the mass formula using a more accurate gravitational constant. "The masses came out even more precise," he says.

This will require a huge rotating ring placed above a superconducting coil to create an intense magnetic field. With a large enough current in the coil, and a large enough magnetic field, Dröscher claims the electromagnetic force can reduce the gravitational pull on the ring to the point where it floats free. Dröscher and Häuser say that to completely counter Earth's pull on a 150-tonne spacecraft a magnetic field of around 25 tesla would be needed. While that's 500,000 times the strength of Earth's magnetic field, pulsed magnets briefly reach field strengths up to 80 tesla. And Dröscher and Häuser go further. With a faster-spinning ring and an even stronger magnetic field, gravitophotons would interact with conventional gravity to produce a repulsive anti-gravity force, they suggest...

Dröscher is hazy about the details, but he suggests that a spacecraft fitted with a coil and ring could be propelled into a multidimensional hyperspace. Here the constants of nature could be different, and even the speed of light could be several times faster than we experience. If this happens, it would be possible to reach Mars in less than 3 hours and a star 11 light years away in only 80 days, Dröscher and Häuser say.

look beyond

Oh, btw a more recent development has been that ESA(European Space Agency) have seemingly achieved a gravitomagnetic field in an experiment along similar lines, their experimental results showing unexpected deviations from what'd follow from general relativity.

Here are quotes from that more recent development:

...the measured field is a surprising one hundred million trillion times larger than Einstein's General Relativity predicts. Initially, the researchers were reluctant to believe their own results.

"We ran more than 250 experiments, improved the facility over 3 years and discussed the validity of the results for 8 months before making this announcement. Now we are confident about the measurement," says Tajmar, who performed the experiments and hopes that other physicists will conduct their own versions of the experiment in order to verify the findings and rule out a facility induced effect.

Of course I'm skeptical, and this should be taken with some grain of salts while we wait for confirmation.

 

[KimB]

Im no expert on the subject but things like dark matter, dark energy, anti-dark matter/energy, vacum energy, the time before the big bang, etc...

Arn't these all still big mysteries to us? And if so, who are we to say that we know there is anothing about them that will change our understanding of the universe/multiverse or the possibilities within it?

Well, sure, and this is why it's still very interesting to be working in physics today. We're really just starting to be able to probe some of the more interesting questions about the universe and the building blocks of matter. But what I'm saying is that the basic laws that are going to govern engineering for decades or centuries to come are well-known now, and have been for some decades.

Heck, if anything it's more important today than ever before that more people learn about basic physics, just because we're able to apply basic physics to more and more applications. That is, instead of just attempting to find relationships in complex systems empirically, we can actually calculate many of them.

Arn't their supposed to be 11 dimensions now? Are we so sure that we know so much about them that no new, as yet undiscovered possibilities exist because of them?

There is as of yet no evidence of extra dimensions. Some theories predict them (The hereterotic string predicts 26, the superstring predicts 10, M-theory 11), but these theories are very, very far away from experiment right now.

 

[KimB]

I'll give a simple recent article to show what I mean.

Well, Wikipedia has a fairly nice description of Heim theory:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heim_theory

It looks like the primary problem with the theory is that it depends upon the existence of multiple dimensions of time. The existence of multiple time dimensions leads to very strange effects which are usually considered to be non-physical. I think I'll look at this a little bit more, but I suspect there's a very simple reason why most physicists haven't paid any attention to it.

 

[zidane1strife]

Unless of course there is only one Universe...

Preposterous. The fundamental nature of the universe is information, to say there can only be one is to say that all possible information is finite and the infinite does not , cannot, exist even theoretically(which again is simply ridiculous).

Well, Wikipedia has a fairly nice description of Heim theory:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heim_theory

It looks like the primary problem with the theory is that it depends upon the existence of multiple dimensions of time. The existence of multiple time dimensions leads to very strange effects which are usually considered to be non-physical. I think I'll look at this a little bit more, but I suspect there's a very simple reason why most physicists haven't paid any attention to it.

I've not read Heim theory, will check the wiki(though wiki's can sometimes err.), but it was just to give an example of a theory that seems to be a little closer to the final unified one. Of course, it's approach is not necessarily the best(adding all those dimensions.). The true final theory, structurally, seems to be more akin to what Hilbert once sought, from what I've seen...

 

[KimB]

I don't think Heim theory should be characterized as "not the best," but rather I'm fairly sure it's completely and utterly wrong.

 

[zidane1strife]

I don't think Heim theory should be characterized as "not the best," but rather I'm fairly sure it's completely and utterly wrong.

Predicted neutron mass ten years prior to it being found(according to the wiki), suggestive evidence for the existence gravitophotons has recently been seen.

Seems like it got some things right... Though it is true, that you actually need far far less dimensions to convey the essence of the true final theory

 

[KimB]

Er, neutron mass has been known for a very long time. Neutrino mass, maybe. But we don't yet know if the prediction was correct (probably wasn't).

Anyway, a theory is worthless if it doesn't explain all experiment that came before, and I'm willing to bet that this one breaks down somewhere simple. Anyway, I'd have to do a bit more looking, but the usage of more than one time dimension is a huge red flag.

 

[KimB]

Btw, I did a little bit more analysis of that Wikipedia article, and it is inconsistent. The article claims that particle masses were calculated to within experimental error. According to the table describing the calculated masses vs. the experimental masses, the calculated masses are consistently off by roughly 30 times the experimental error.

This doesn't necessarily state that Heim theory is wrong, but rather that the calculations performed were wrong (for one reason or another).

 

[nutball]

Preposterous. The fundamental nature of the universe is information, to say there can only be one is to say that all possible information is finite and the infinite does not , cannot, exist even theoretically(which again is simply ridiculous).

Do you have any evidence to back that up?

As far as I'm aware there is no experimental evidence to support the multiverse hypothesis, and moreover such experiemental tests as have been suggested are basically impossible to perform. So in my view belief in parallel Universes is at this time essentially a religious belief, not a scientific one.

 

[zidane1strife]

Do you have any evidence to back that up?

As far as I'm aware there is no experimental evidence to support the multiverse hypothesis, and moreover such experiemental tests as have been suggested are basically impossible to perform. So in my view belief in parallel Universes is at this time essentially a religious belief, not a scientific one.

Religious? are logical truths and mathematical truths physical or independent of this universe? Are they finite or infinite? They are information, and if such information is infinite and independent of this universe, the logic and the logical steps taken by any physical simulator are actually perpetually existing in an abstract pure information/concept/possibility way. Even an abstract simulation embodies the information associations and manipulations required to bring about said simulation, thus it is the perpetually existent conceptual embodiment of said simulation.

 

[nutball]

Religious?

Yes, religious. It's not really possible to have a scientific debate about one v. many Universes, because it's not a testable hypothesis, and testability of theories is the root of all scientific endeavour.

You seem to have chosen to believe in parallel Universes without a shred of evidence, without any chance of ever obtaining such evidence, stating merely that it must be so and rejecting any simpler (valid) explanations.

You are making an untestable assertion about the existence of additional complexity which is not necessary to explain the Universe as we observe it. This is tantamount to asserting the existence of God.

 

[zidane1strife]

Yes, religious. It's not really possible to have a scientific debate about one v. many Universes, because it's not a testable hypothesis, and testability of theories is the root of all scientific endeavour.

You seem to have chosen to believe in parallel Universes without a shred of evidence, without any chance of ever obtaining such evidence, stating merely that it must be so and rejecting any simpler (valid) explanations.

You are making an untestable assertion about the existence of additional complexity which is not necessary to explain the Universe as we observe it. This is tantamount to asserting the existence of God.

I state that potential possibilities actually exist as such, and can actually be seen in our world, as that which is possible becomes manifest. For what is the future but the possibilities that may develop? it predicts the existence of a subsequent state, as evidence by the phenomena observed in this world. It also predicts the existence of infinities at the least in an abstract sense. To deny the multiverse you have to deny that it can exist even abstractly/conceptually.

Edit: BTW it actually is quite simple can be stated even in two words... ALL is.