Debunking Nimtz
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From: Tom Roberts on 28 Aug 2007 10:10 Robert Clark wrote: > I think what is required is to actually send some information, and >> demonstrate it arrived at the receiver faster than c. > > They might be able to send significant information with a single > pulse. Hmmm. You assume that their pulses actually arrive faster than c. They don't. The unambiguous arrival of a pulse contains information, and that would be sufficient. Note, however, that merely measuring group velocity >c is NOT sufficient' one must measure the "front velocity", which is the velocity of MODULATION -- that is what can carry information, not merely interference effects among established waves like group velocity. That said, Nimtz's article on this is too vague for an accurate and complete analysis. But so far his track record is something like 0 for 3 (3 claims of "faster than c", 0 that survive informed scrutiny). Tom Roberts
From: Pentcho Valev on 28 Aug 2007 12:22 On 28 , 16:10, Tom Roberts <tjroberts...(a)sbcglobal.net> wrote in sci.physics.relativity: > Robert Clark wrote: > > I think what is required is to actually send some information, and > >> demonstrate it arrived at the receiver faster than c. > > > They might be able to send significant information with a single > > pulse. > > Hmmm. You assume that their pulses actually arrive faster than c. They > don't. The unambiguous arrival of a pulse contains information, and that > would be sufficient. Note, however, that merely measuring group velocity > >c is NOT sufficient' one must measure the "front velocity", which is > the velocity of MODULATION -- that is what can carry information, not > merely interference effects among established waves like group velocity. The old song (lie) Roberts Roberts? But you forget your favorite "simple demonstration": http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/APPLETS/20/20.html "However, the total wave (the bottom trace, in white) has its strongest peaks where all the individual frequencies are in phase, and the places where that happens shift with time, at a "speed" that is greater than c." As you can see Roberts Roberts, AFTER the front has reached the final destination, the "strongest peaks" continue to move "at a "speed" that is greater than c". I am sure Roberts Roberts you are able to DETECT the sending of the peak and then DETECT its arrival - otherwise you would not be able to calculate the speed and then claim that the peaks move "at a "speed" that is greater than c". If you were cleverer and more honest Roberts Roberts you would know that these DETECTIONS are tantamount to SENDING AND RECEIVING INFORMATION. Pentcho Valev
From: Robert Clark on 29 Aug 2007 14:17 On Aug 28, 9:53 am, Robert Clark <rgregorycl...(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > On Aug 27, 12:48 pm, Robert Clark <rgregorycl...(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > > > > > On Aug 19, 11:07 pm, Tom Roberts <tjroberts...(a)sbcglobal.net> wrote: > > > > Robert Clark wrote: > > > > Tom, it seems to me to prove information could be sent all the > > > > experimenters would have to is instead of reflecting back the same > > > > pulse, send back something different such as two pulses. > > > > I think what is required is to actually send some information, and > > > demonstrate it arrived at the receiver faster than c. To be convincing, > > > the distance should be varied and the time delay as a function of > > > distance should be plotted, along with a comprehensive error analysis. > > > > > This might be difficult to do over a short distance of 1 meter, > > > > 3 ns is a long time for some current methods of measuring the delay of a > > > light beam. In at least one case, a resolution of a few attoseconds > > > (10^-18 sec) has been achieved (they used this to stabilize the fiber > > > optic links of ALMA, a multi-antenna radio telescope). Stability becomes > > > a big issue, as the light path must remain constant to better than an > > > Angstrom.... > > > > Tom Roberts > > > They might be able to send significant information with a single > > pulse. I'm thinking of using a mask of open and closed squares. Each > > square represents 0 or 1. Then this could be used to send a digital > > message. > > The receiver when it receives the coded message sends back a > > predetermined different coded message. > > This response to send the response message would have to be automated > > of course because of the short times involved. Afterwards, you review > > the data and confirm that the receiver did in fact send the response > > message because it was triggered by reception of the originating > > pulse. This is to prove that the receiving circuit was not just > > triggered by accident or by a spurious signal or because (somehow) > > that circuit was set up to send a signal at some specified time. > > Better would be to have the a wide variety of different coded signals > > being able to be sent and the response signal being determined by what > > signal was sent. > > For instance, you could have it be determined at random that the coded > > signal for some integer be sent initially. And the response signal has > > to be some number dependent on that number, such as the next integer. > > This though would require some processing time for the receiver to > > decode the signal and to calculate the correct response to be sent. > > There are commercially available processors at the 5 Ghz range now, > > and I read of an experimental processor by IBM operating at 500 Ghz. > > Also, there are photodetectors available now able to operate at GHz > > speeds. > > But you also have to figure in the time for reading in data to and > > from memory, which typically is much less than the processor speed. > > There may also have to be several clock cycles to complete all the > > calculations required, which will make it even harder to beat a 3 ns > > speed or 6 ns round trip speed for a normal light signal. > > They might be able to create a specially designed circuit that is > > stripped down to the very minimum that can perform all the > > calculations and I/O operations at the Ghz speed. > > Achieving this of course becomes much easier if they can extend their > > distances to 100 meters or longer. > ... You could get a longer length say 100 meters or 1,000 meters without having the lab to be that large, by putting several copies of their set up side by side and having the pulse being directed down each segment by mirrors. You would have the initiating pulse only given at the starting segment and the response pulse and processing equipment only at the end of the last segment. Instead of this, it might be easier to have just one set up and have the pulse reflected back and forth several times to make up a total of these longer lengths. You would have the processing and initiation of the response pulse only occur after the photodetectors have been triggered several times. However, the disadvantage of this is that an objection could be made that, somehow, the response pulse got started sometime before the full number of round trips got completed, thus giving a shortened response time. With several different set ups this objection wouldn't occur since the response pulse's generating and processing equipment would only exist at the very end leg of the trip. Bob Clark
From: Tom Roberts on 29 Aug 2007 15:38 Tom Van Flandern wrote: > Tom Roberts writes: >> [Roberts]: It is not at all obvious that Lorentzian relativity has no >> speed limit. Certainly Lorentz himself did not think so (c.f. the >> title of his 1904 paper that is the cornerstone of this theory). > > Lorentzian relativity (LR) is the modern updating of the Lorentz > Ether Theory (LET) [...] > Specifically, with "elysium" defined as [...] This quite clearly is completely unrelated to anything Lorentz wrote. You should not associate his name with it. > [... lots of stuff] In short, you claim that the "geometric interpretation" of GR is "refuted" by 6 experiments, in favor of a "field interpretation" in which gravitational force propagates much faster than c in a Euclidean space. What you describe IS NOT GR. It is merely an APPROXIMATION TO GR. A Euclidean manifold cannot possibly model all of the manifolds of GR, it can only model a SUBSET of them (a rather small subset, for they must be topologically consistent with a flat 3-metric). Locally, of course, that approximation is exceedingly good (which explains why you can think this); it is still unknown whether or not it applies to the universe as a whole. [But whether or not this is important in the world we inhabit is irrelevant -- I am discussing your claims about GR.] What you claim is also not what science is -- one tests THEORIES, not interpretations. Interpretations of a theory are merely words describing what the quantities in the equations "mean"; they cannot possibly be tested by any experiment. GR is a theory, and it agrees with those experiments -- that is ALL one can say in this regard. It seems to me that you are trying to claim the mantle of GR, and use it to deflect criticism, while simultaneously claiming phenomena that are in direct conflict with GR. If "gravitational force" does indeed "propagate much faster than c", it must do so without transferring any energy, momentum, or information [#], and that simply does not make sense. [#] There are theorems of GR that prohibit the transfer of any of these outside the future lightcone of their source (i.e. faster than c). Note that such theorems do not depend on any interpretations of the theory. To me it appears that you are trying to reify a particular foliation of spacetime into Euclidean space and time (AFAICT this is consistent with all your claims) -- that simply does not make sense in a background-independent theory like GR. Yes, this agrees with the experiments and with the techniques of celestial mechanics, but no, this is not GR. Tom Roberts
From: Tom Van Flandern on 31 Aug 2007 18:20
Tom Roberts writes: >> [tvf]: Lorentzian relativity (LR) is the modern updating of the Lorentz >> Ether Theory (LET) [...] Specifically, with "elysium" defined as [...] > This quite clearly is completely unrelated to anything Lorentz wrote. You > should not associate his name with it. Lorentz's theory (LET) was relativity for a single preferred frame then called "the aether". LR, by contrast, specifies that the preferred frame is specifically the local gravitational potential field, which represents entrained aether. To stress this difference and jettison the baggage associated with the universal aether concept (which does not apply to a type of aether that can be entrained by masses everywhere), we have renamed this medium "elysium", which represents both the locally entrained aether and its equivalence to the local gravitational potential field. True, this is the result of a slow evolution of Lorentz's original paper, which is why the name was changed from LET to LR. This parallels the slow evolution of SR. DeSitter showed that aberration was independent of the relative speed between source and observer, showing that the speed of light had to be independent of the speed of the source (something Einstein's 1905 paper did not anticipate). Sagnac showed that fringe shifts did show up on a rotating platform, showing that rotational motion was different from translational motion - also not contemplated by Einstein in 1905. Other changes occurred along the way. Most recently, in the 1980s, the previous notion that speed increased mass was "reinterpreted" to mean that speed increased momentum, but something called "rest mass" was unchanged. Etc. So by your reasoning, SR today is "completely unrelated to anything Einstein wrote, and you should not associate his name with it". Personally, I think that would be borrowing ideas without crediting their source whenever the idea is improved upon. But when I decline to do that in the case of Lorentz, you see it as an appeal to the source's "authority" for something he might never have accepted. For my part, it appears your inconsistent stance simply reflects you disdain for certain schools of modern thinking, and that you would quickly change your mind about where the proper credit was due if LR displaced SR in the relativity community tomorrow. Besides, the logical extension of your complaint would be to name the latest variant "Lorentz-Einstein-Tangherlini-Beckmann-Hatch-Selleri-Phipps-Van Flandern relativity of motion", which credits everyone along the way who contributed to the evolution of our present-day school of thought about this. I guess that's what we can expect to happen someday if science ever merges with the legal profession. :-) >> [tvf]: [... lots of stuff omitted] > [Roberts]: In short, you claim that the "geometric interpretation" of GR > is "refuted" by 6 experiments, in favor of a "field interpretation" in > which gravitational force propagates much faster than c in a Euclidean > space. First, I did not invent that terminology, much less the physical concepts behind them. You seem to have been taught only the geometric interpretation; and to you, THAT is GR. However, the field interpretation came first, and both interpretations use the same math and make the same classical predictions. They differ mainly over the way the speed-of-gravity issue id dealt with. Vigier and I argued in "Foundations of Physics" that the geometric interpretation is falsified by: ** (1) the absence of a cause to initiate 3-space motion for a body at rest in a gravitational potential field; ** (2) the absence of a physical source for the new 3-space momentum continually acquired by an orbiting body; and ** (3) its failure to pass any observational tests except those done to test the field interpretation using astronomical data collected in Euclidean space. This "failure" involves the 6 experiments you mention showing that the speed of gravity is strongly FTL. The geometric interpretation cannot explain them except by inventing a "deus ex machine" such as Carlip's "velocity-dependent cancelling force" to make aberration magically disappear; or by ignoring the logically essential connection between the source mass and the target body, especially in cases (such as binary pulsars) where both have appreciable acceleration during the light-time between them. One of those experiments is specific to falsifying the geometric interpretation per se: the neutron interferometer experiments cited by D. M. Greenberger and A. W. Overhauser, Rev.Mod.Phys. 51:43 (1979). Here is one relevant paragraph from that work: "[The experiment] demonstrated convincingly that the Schr�dinger equation works in the presence of gravitational fields. Since the phase shift depends on mass even in the case of a gravitational field, it seems in retrospect almost accidental that the mass drops out of the classical gravitational equations. Weinberg has emphasized that most of the features of the gravitational field can be derived from its mathematical symmetry properties, as is true for any other field in quantum theory. This interpretation tends to bother theorists who prefer to think of gravity as being intrinsically related to geometry. Nevertheless, since the Colella-Overhauser-Werner (1975) experiment confirms the applicability of quantum mechanics even in the presence of gravity, including the non-geometrical mass dependence, the experiment seems to be a step in the undermining of the purely geometrical point of view." In a meaningful sense, the geometric interpretation is closely allied with SR, and its reason-to-exist disappears if SR is replaced by LR. Feynman already told us that geometric GR was not necessary or essential to physics. The field interpretation is already based on LR because it uses a center-of-mass-anchored frame as a preferred frame and a Lorentz-type universal time called "coordinate time". So that is what I showed by reasoning, experiment, and/or unrefuted citation. I did not "claim" anything I have not adequately justified. > [Roberts]: What you describe IS NOT GR. It is merely an APPROXIMATION TO > GR. A Euclidean manifold cannot possibly model all of the manifolds of GR, > it can only model a SUBSET of them (a rather small subset, for they must > be topologically consistent with a flat 3-metric). Locally, of course, > that approximation is exceedingly good (which explains why you can think > this); it is still unknown whether or not it applies to the universe as a > whole. Am I to understand that your position is that I should not have called LR by Lorentz's name, and should not have called the field interpretation of GR as "GR", simply because you never learned the field interpretation? Is your entire argument simply one of nomenclature? > [Roberts]: What you claim is also not what science is -- one tests > THEORIES, not interpretations. Interpretations of a theory are merely > words describing what the quantities in the equations "mean"; they cannot > possibly be tested by any experiment. GR is a theory, and it agrees with > those experiments -- that is ALL one can say in this regard. So the claim that GR has no forces, to take one of many examples, is "merely words ... that cannot be tested"? Then you won't mind calling gravity a classical force ("the time rate of change of 3-space momentum") and discussing the propagation speed of that force, will you? There's no need to use anything but classical physics to describe gravity if it's all "just words". > [Roberts]: It seems to me that you are trying to claim the mantle of GR, > and use it to deflect criticism, while simultaneously claiming phenomena > that are in direct conflict with GR. If "gravitational force" does indeed > "propagate much faster than c", it must do so without transferring any > energy, momentum, or information [#], and that simply does not make sense. The experiments I cited demonstrate that gravitational force propagates strongly FTL *in forward time*, which means that it transfers energy (in the form of heat), momentum (which is what produces orbital motion), and information (can be used for sending FTL messages and for travel at "warp speed"). But your point here again is just a nomenclature one. You don't like the original GR (field interpretation, and the one used in modern celestial mechanics) to be called "GR" because you were taught (incorrectly) only a geometric interpretation of GR. But the interpretation you were taught has been elaborated far beyond anything Einstein could accept or even recognize, by latter-day relativists cloaking themselves in Einstein's mantle. An excellent example is "black holes", introduced by Wheeler in the 1950s. Einstein specifically addressed that issue in his 1939 paper and stated flatly that no singularities exist in nature. [A. Einstein, "Annals of Mathematics", vol. 40, #4, pp. 922-936] Here are his exact words: "This investigation arose out of discussions [with Robertson and Bargmann] on the mathematical and physical significance of the Schwarzschild singularity. The problem quite naturally leads to the question, answered by this paper in the negative, as to whether physical models are capable of exhibiting such a singularity." So objectively, am I the one assuming Einstein's mantle, or am I defending his reputation against being associated with physical nonsense by physicists who have found it easier to get funding and get published by claiming to "prove (or elucidate) Einstein's theory" when they are doing no such thing?! I end again with my ignored conclusion from my previous message: >> [tvf]: For these new ideas to be acceptable, what more would you like to >> see happen that has not already happened? Is the relativity community so >> fossilized that it is incapable of considering new ways of interpreting >> experiments that leave the familiar math intact but open new doors in >> physics and advance our understanding of nature? Must it be ever true, as >> Max Planck opined, that science progresses one funeral at a time? We now have good cause to conclude that the geometric interpretation is wrong. But the field interpretation is in good shape. GR and its math and predictions, as practiced historically everywhere and used currently in celestial mechanics, remain intact, and we have resolved the conflict between gravitation and QM - which certainly had to be resolved by something giving ground. Is there not one relativist left in the world able to ponder the concepts, experiments, and history of the field, then willing (if the conclusion is justified by the facts) to come out and say "the emperor has no clothes"? He'll still be the emperor. He just needs a new outfit. :-) -|Tom|- Tom Van Flandern - Sequim, WA - see our web site on frontier astronomy research at http://metaresearch.org |