I like the analogy... of trying to get the debt back.

My personal interest is in Muons of course!

Prrrrrrrrrrrr

Hallo, Jorrie... Very interesting idea... The vacuum should be very "happy" if it succeed to take its loan back... But what if the Universe continues to expand for ever (and not to collapse into one ore more singularities or into countless black holes)?????.....It could be an unpaid loan, isn't it???... The vacuum is full of virtual subatomic particles that appear and render from "nowwhere" to "nowhere"... But their existence must be very short and not capable to disturb anything else... And that's a loan... But speaking about the whole universe that's another thing... The idea that the whole universe is such a random, but extremely huge, fluctuation of the vacuum is fascinating but was there any vacuum before the creation of the universe (no, as there was no space or time either)... It's such a bizarre idea anyway... Of course we speak about the creation itself...

We are familiarized with the disappearance of the mass or energy inside a black hole but not with the actual creation of mass or energy from nowhere (e.g. a "white hole" that theoreticaly may exist but noone has ever observed one, while we have dicovered numerus black holes... But if "white holes" really exist maybe the universe is a kind of a huge "white hole"...Another universe collapses "somewhere else" and another universe is explosively created "somewhere else"... "somewhere else" has a rather metaphysical meaning here...???...)

And a rather irrelevant question that came in my mind: When a black hole ends up his life via a "final explotion" (due to Stephen Hawkins well known procedure) it releases all the mass and energy that has absorbed during its entire existense or a part of it (and the rest of it has been lost for ever)?????... Please give me an answer to this...

Hi George, you asked: "When a black hole ends up his life via a "final explosion" (due to Stephen Hawkins well known procedure) it releases all the mass and energy that has absorbed during its entire existence or a part of it (and the rest of it has been lost for ever)?"

Remember that only 'mini-black holes' could have radiated enough and 'exploded' in the present age of the universe. Big black holes will take gazillions of times longer than the present age of the universe to 'evaporate'.

All that is only so if Hawking Radiation is in fact real. This paper discusses some objections against it...

Jorrie

Hi Jorrie, I like very much your idea.

Sometimes I also see gravity as some kind of pressure that actually pushes two massive objects against each other from behind, not as a force between them. What if that pressure is the same with what makes universe to expand? If it comes from all directions, than locally - let's say at galaxy scale - you perceive it as I said. It's intensity may be given by the exposed area, i.e. more volume (over a critical density), more push.

Could you comment?

Thanks

Michael

Hi Michael, you wrote: "Sometimes I also see gravity as some kind of pressure that actually pushes two massive objects against each other from behind, not as a force between them."

Einstein would have argued that gravity is neither a force, nor a pressure, but just objects following the shortest path possible through space-time (a space-time geodesic).

Just like the way a cannon ball that is being shot away from Earth will follow a geodesic that takes it away from Earth (at least initially), the expansion of the Universe can be thought to happen without a continuous push.

However, the accelerating expansion rate is a bit of a problem. Something is pushing - apparently the culprit is Dark energy...

Jorrie

Well put, Jorrie.

I always had a fascination for Archimedes's law that is a consequence of gravity. An air bubble in water is spherically shaped (like celestial objects) by the pressure coming from all directions. What happen to two air bubbles "kept" at the same depth? Do they collide/ merge after being pushed against one another horizontally by hydrostatic pressure? I didn't try but if they do, it seems to me very similar to gravity forces. If gravity (Dark energy as you say) is propagating in straight line, than I see two cones generated by tangents to both spheres, their tips touching in that no-attraction point (for small probe-bodies) on the line of centers. So space pressure could be shaded by massive bodies and forces generated geometrically (by Euclid) as pressure X surface. A real problem arises when trying to transpose the model to outer space because it implies that surrounding vacuum has a non-zero (actually very high) density. Here I'm stuck !

I would appreciate any comment to this stupid model.

Michael

Hi Michael, just a couple of points:

Gravity and Dark Energy (DE) are not the same things. Gravity just 'sucks', while DE can 'push' and 'suck'.

Gravity can't be 'shaded' by massive bodies; there is no difference in the Sun's gravity here on Earth when the moon is between us and the Sun (total solar eclipse). I know such claims have been made, but it was apparently due to ignorance of the tidal gravity effects of the moon on Earth.

DE on the other hand, can be modeled as a sort of global pressure that expands space on the large scale. Pressure is potential energy and hence has 'weight', i.e., it adds to the 'contractive' side of the cosmic expansion equation.^[1] At the same time it can push outward - hard to wrap one's head around, but valid.

Jorrie

[1] Cosmology Equations

Jorrie and G.K.: I'm very far behind you in cosmology and I hope I didn't kill anyone with my post . I'm just good at asking questions...

If I well understood, gravity and DE are like (another analogy...) the electric field and the magnetic field, respectively. Hard to unify...

I am still confused if gravity is a property of "empty" space/time or of matter itself. I think we don't have an explanation for mass, after all. I'd like to know what to do to lose some weight, for instance .

Very troubling subject.

Thank you both.

Michael

Hi Micheal.

You wrote: "I am still confused if gravity is a property of "empty" space/time or of matter itself."

The standard wisdom is that gravity is an effect caused by concentrated energy. Due to the proven fact that E = mc², it does not matter if it's matter (m) or another form of energy, because c is a constant that simply converts one unit of energy into another unit of energy).

'Empty space' is not thought to be without energy, although all indications are that the energy per square meter is extremely small. It is only when there are vast amounts of empty space that 'vacuum energy' starts to play a significant role. Tough on the people who strive to extract free energy out of the vacuum!

On cosmological scales it seems that vacuum energy plays a very important role. On local scales, matter in the immediate vicinity is the thought to be the source of virtually all gravity - after all, matter is a very, very concentrated form of energy.

Hope it helps...

Regards

It definitely helps!

What do you think about gravitational waves? If detected, what would reveal?

Michael

Hi Michael.

You asked "What do you think about gravitational waves? If detected, what would reveal?"

I think it is just a matter of time before gravitational waves are detected. Initially, I think what would be deduced are just confirmations of black holes absorbing each other in our (reasonably) local cosmic vicinity and perhaps a supernova or two.

On the long run, the most promising aspect if gravitational waves are that, using gravitational waves, we will be able to 'see' through all obstruction in all directions. We may even be able to observationally probe back to before the cosmos became transparent to photons (i.e., before the time at which we detect the cosmic microwave background). Gravitons would not be constrained by the 'fog' of earlier times.

Jorrie

That's really cool! But if the presumptive gravitons are going through everything, than what material is suitable to build a graviton-receiver or detector or trap, or whatever could be?

Sorry to bother you, Jorrie, but gravity is such a heavy subject for me...

Thanks.

Michael

Hi again Michael.

"Gravitons going through everything" does not mean that some are nor absorbed, just like some photons going through transparent glass are absorbed.

Another view of gravitational waves is 'ripples in space-time' that carry energy and can impart some of that energy onto masses that they pass through. The principle is pretty simple, but extremely difficult to implement due to the smallness of the effect.

Read more in a free pdf download from a Relativity 4 Engineers web page by clicking here => Gravitational Waves.

Regards, Jorrie

If we could construct neutrino telescopes, we'd (theoretically) be able to see back to about the First Second - a heck of an improvement over depending on the CMB to divine what happened before.

Gravity waves: even though these have not been detected directly (insofar as I know), there are manifestations of gravitational radiation; two neutron stars spiraling in toward each other and losing energy to the Great Void, etc. What other mechanism(s) might radiate this energy away other than ripples in spacetime? Aren't these and "gravity waves" synonymous? Or might some other, heretofore unforeseen, mechanism be at work?

Here's and interesting piece.

GP-B is a masterpiece of engineering. "Nuff said.

Hi europium.

Interesting idea, the neutrino telescope.

I think gravitational waves and ripples in spacetime are the same things. Don't know about other plausible causes for the observed orbital decay and hence energy being radiated away.

Jorrie

Hallo, Hottech... This is an heretical, although interesting, point of view... I've seen this once again in another CR4 discussion... This seems to be logical if you assume that the more massive a body is, the more "shades" another nearby body (and the more massive a body is, the more "senses" that "background pressure")... And, also, the further the two bodies (e.g. spheres) are, the less is the "shadowed" area on the surphase on the bodies (according to your assumptions)... Hence, this is in accordance to the Newton's law of gravity... At least in "quality"... But what about the "quantity"???... Is there any mathematical analysis that proves that this "theory" gives the same results as the Newton's law (or, even more, the Einstein's general relativity)???...

And another problem: You say that this "presure", maybe, is the "vacuum pressure" itself (which is, also, responsible for the expansion of the universe... thus the same explanation for the gravity and expansion problems... very convenient...) But what about the accelerating expansion???... This "pressure" seems to become bigger and bigger... This should affect the gravity (makes it more intense) as the time pass by... Is this change (in the gravity intensity) large enough to be measurable???... Anyway, no such changes have been observed...

Maybe the pressure is constant (don't ask me about it's value) but the Universe is still accelerating in its expansion as it didn't reach a speed limit yet after starting from zero velocity and having a huge inertia...

As a second thought, pressure might not be constant. Think about what happens when sinking a heavy object in water: water level raises, being displaced by the object's volume and consequently the hydrostatic pressure on the bottom is raising too. Of course, this implies a confinement of water - but who knows if our Universe is not confined?

Michael

Perhaps gravity is a force generated by the bending of guantum flux lines, much as electricity is generated by bending of magnetic force lines.I have read of a supposed gravity insulator that used a spinning disk-shaped superconductor placed in a strong magnetic field.This was discovered by a Russian scientist and repeated by researchers at an American university.It has been several years and I do not recall the details, but I wll try to fill in the blanks when I retrieve the info.

It is a type of sauce made with the meat juices resulting from cooking the addition of wine, fried onion and mushrooms makes it particularly tasty...

http://www.realgravy.co.uk/more_info.asp?current_id=53

Known, is that gravity not finally decided in common agreement, as to it's nature, constituent and origin, I would personally tend to think, that it's a fundamental factor in the constitution of 'matter', as we know it.

Gravity appears in the physical world, as the main consequence of mass. Then, it would be fair to ask, in the same manner, "what is mass?"

This may intuitively lead to conclude, that both mass and gravity combined in timespace, are 'matter'.

Of course, there are numerous types or hierarchies of matter: sub atomic, atomic, molecular, but all-in-all this is about the best I can do to visualise the entity we may call 'Gravity'

This above mentioned visualisation, first helped me to grasp the concept of 'space bent by gravity', in front of which, at first, I was totally bewildered.

Does it make any sense at all?

Hi Yuval

You wrote: "Gravity appears in the physical world, as the main consequence of mass."

You should enlarge the term mass to energy. All forms of energy gravitates, so one may perhaps paraphrase your

"This may intuitively lead to conclude, that both mass and gravity combined in timespace, are 'matter'" to

"This may intuitively lead to conclude, that both energy and gravity combined in space-time, are 'matter'".

However, although even a gravitational field gravitates (i.e. it enhances the gravitational effect of a mass), I would be hesitant to call all that 'matter'; 'energy' would be better, I guess.

Regards

Yes, of course. I took it for granted.

For me, nothing at all, would come into existence unless it's an expression of potential energy, energy channeled to form it in the first place, and once the object or form destroyed, it's potential energy released.

Well, yes, I should 'combine' it this way, only I tried to concentrate myself on the concept of mass and gravity being facets of the same

Besides, how can we neatly fit 'inertia' into this discussion as a fundamental, 'primordial' concept, if you will.

In order to visualise one in fundamental terms, we have to visualise the other. Not in mathematical or relational terms, but rather in conceptual, visual terms, if this at all possible.

It's been three centuries since Newton and Leibniz, and the subject did not get any or much clearer...

I was going to discuss inertia .. but I couldn't be bothered....

The whole thing of gravity always had me baffled. As if no-one ever seem to grasp it totally.

It's evidently there, and you can measure it, only no-one knows what it is.

I suspect that's why Jorrie decided to bring it up.

It surely is a conundrum wrapped as an enigma

Hi again Yuval.

About visualizing inertia, I tend to think of it in terms of conservation of momentum. In this view there is a difference between Newton's inertia and Einstein's inertia.

I use this picture to visualize the difference:

Fig. 2.8^[1]

It's clearly an energy diagram, but divide by c all round and the horizontal component of the vector becomes the relativistic momentum and Newton's momentum is the sub-component mvc/c=mv along the horizontal axis.

I suppose one might then call mc the 'rest momentum', p the 'moving momentum' and the vector ε/c the 'total momentum'. Or, can it be viewed as the 'rest inertia', 'moving inertia' and 'total inertia' relative to some inertial frame?

I know this does not explain inertia, but it helps to prevent at least some headaches...

Jorrie

[1] From Relativity 4 Engineers

Looking at this, it really sums up energy as the agent to tie it all

Sir:

I have a question about this Gravity effect. I have studied that the Tai Quan Do masters and a few other Martial Arts disciplines can remove the mass from their bodies by using their thought to place the mass in another place.

If this is indeed true where does Gravity affect them by using this process? When in this state are they freed from gravity's effects?

I don't believe anyone can actually shift their mass to another place...

However, visualising your mass to be elsewhere can be very powerful in terms of focusing your energy...

e.g. transferring your weight in a Punch.

This sort of technique is usefull in many sports.

There is a Newtonian phenomenon we can all recognise:

You can jump up straight, swivel in mid air, and lend up facing another direction, than the one you faced when you took off.

This is not unlike the cat released with it's back to the ground, to flip in mid air and fall on it's feet.

This is done by angular-shifting your center of mass, while in the upward motion, which eventually will affect your trajectory.

It's known and exploited in martial arts in jabs, jumps, swivels and airborne kicks, for centuries.

This is not unlike the cat released with it's back to the ground, to flip in mid air and fall on it's feet.

(do not try this at home)

If anyone tries this on me , I just land on my back with a dull thud...it hurts like hell but it really pisses them off!

Me ouch

You know I love and raise cats at home, and was not encouraging anyone to do this, in any way shape or manner.

I was only trying to point Newtonians here.

The natural source of energy is to pit one force of nature against another, and thereby produce useful energy in the process;To Wit:My Cattoast generator.

We all know that if you drop a cat, he always (with a few exceptions) lands on it's feet.We also know that if you drop a piece of jellied toast, it will land jelly side down.By attaching a jelly-layered piece of toast to a cat's back, and dropping the cat from a certain height,the cat and toast will rotate, at a constant speed directly related to the cost of the carpet below. I decided to implement this idea, but encountered problems when I attempted to extract torque from the roataing cat.The stretch of the skin allowed the toast to eventually migrate to the belly of the cat and all motion ceased.Stymied, but not beaten, I encased the cat in a plaster cast, except for the head or course. Result? : Nothing. I started removing the cast from the cat a little at the time, to discover the true energy source.It appears to be somewhere within the claw retracting mechanism, for as soon as the feet were exposed, the rotation began again.I found that adding peanut butter to the jelly increased the torque available, but at the sacrifice of speed.Then the toast started slipping again towards the belly of the cat.I finally figured out how to mount the toast in a stable position(proprietary info), and then started experimenting with various carpets.True to the initial theory, the most expensive carpet produced the most total power.Multi-layers of carpet made no difference , so it must be a skin effect.

Research is continuing to examine more variables, including using a larger species of cat, and multiple cats in parallel and series. .The Cheeta is excluded, because it's claws do not retract.It remains to be seen if the power produced exceeds the cost of the parts and maintenance.

NASA has contacted me in regards to a possible homing device for space craft, but more testing remains to be done to determine if the device only points to the center of the Earth, or if any large mass has the same effect.Imagine the implications if it is only Earth-sensing!

I will keep you posted of further developments. Excuse me..the phone is ringing...It's NASA again...see ya later.

HTRN

Hi HTRN,

Did you try a cat dissection or MRI (to comply with animal lovers)? You'll see a state-of-the-art combination of accelerometers and gyroscopes.

Anyway, nor NASA neither a multi-billion research project will solve the gravity mystery. I think only a Zweistein (or a second Einstein) with a free and audacious mind will show us the way to understand gravity. It's embedded in us as long as gravity deprivation (zero gravity in orbit) screws up all our biological systems. So introspection (like Yoga?) could be the way out.

Good luck with your experiments. Try to make a cat to speak or wright to you some equations... Just a suggestion...

Michael

I did not do a MRI, but I did perform a CAT SCAN, and LAB work (performed by my very on labrador retriever).Nothing shows up as unusual in any tests.

Testing continues....

How could I forget of CAT SCAN? Of course, for cats is the best.

Perseverance is the secret of success... Please don't talk too much with NASA . You know how government people are treating talented guys like us...

Hahahahahhahahahahaha.......Took me along time to stop rolling on the floor!

Good one HTRN

Mr. Del the Cat:

There you have stated the version of the $64 dollar question posed from this side thread. Belief from our teachers and their teacher's help to form the structural portion of so many of our assumptions on what we can do or can be trained to do.

I think there is another path. For instance take a perfectly UN-used mind ( I can use mine as a good example ) then if you place through choice a belief pattern on it. Say that if you decide that something is a real capability, and or you see that there is no real reason why it cannot be real, and just go on working it as if it was real.

At what point in the mix does it fail to be real or becomes real in its entire function or reason to exist?

At what point do you take what some famous dude in the book says, that this is where you draw the line on either perception or ability? Just remember it was not that long ago when some other famous dude published that going over 20 miles per hour could kill you.

I do like to RAZ on the belief guys once in a while, but from what I have experienced in life, belief is the one most powerful tool that we have that can make things possible. Maybe just maybe they will be coming up with a real J.C. Superstar that can save the planet from destruction and our most evil over lords who are spending up all of our money and poisoning up the place where we live

I take what you say..but only to a point.

The human body and mind doubtless has a lot more potential than we routinely utilize.

We do have hidden reserves...but as 'Scottie' would say...

'Och, ya' cannae change the laws of physics'.

I keep coming across the word faith (as in blind faith...as oppsed to say, faith in some proven concept...) I don't think this is really valid in a sceintific/engineering dicussion.

OK for religious/philosphical discussion....

Sounds like a case of subjective reality vs objective reality.

A person high on drugs really believes he can fly, and when he leaps from the top of the building, he really is flying---until subjective reality and objective reality meet at the ground. Objective reality always wins.

Greetings:

It seems that you are describing the Cartoon flying effect. in that you are flying until that exact moment when you realize that Gravity has taken hold.

When younger I executed on of those UKMI rolls where you use the mass in your body to roll then use the energy in your legs like a spring. The stored energy is released and you generally go floating through the air like flying.

Dunknow how to do that any more, but at that age there were a few times that Gravity seemed to have little effect.

Not the cartoon effect.It makes no difference whether the jumper realizes it in the last instant or not, objective reality prevails in the end.Unlike the cartoon, the downward motion begins instantly, but the jumper may perceive the free fall as flying.

8 Seconds on a bucking bull's back is a long time if you are the rider, but it is stilll only 8 seconds by the clock.

Of course, in one sense, all "reality" is subjective, and may be a fantastic illusion. Only God, or the supreme creator can be truly objecive.We see and experience so little of this life.

Our senses limit as well as enable our perceptions.We can only hear in a narrow spectrum,see in a narrow spectrum,smell,taste,and likewise our sense of touch is also limited:above or below a certain temperature touch fails.

Sure, we have instruments that can convert infrared,and x-ray etc to a visible form, but it still has to be brought into our visible range.I imagine x-ray as a color more purple than purple, and infrared as a color redder than red.

Imagine what the universe would look like if we could see in all wavelengths, the night sky, the sunrise and sunset.

We have no idea of the true reality of the universe in which we live.

On the scale of the universe, we are smaller than an atom appears to us.How can we hope to perceive something so large and fantastic with our relatively sub atomic intelligence?

We are as the blind men examininng the elephant. Let us hope we do not get trampled underfoot.

Hi dbdwoods.

You wrote: "If this is indeed true where does Gravity affect them by using this process? When in this state are they freed from gravity's effects?"

I do not believe anyone or anything is ever truly free from gravity's effects. The closest one can come to be 'free' is in a free-fall. This is in fact the natural space-time movement of all objects.

In this view, if you jump off a building, you are instantaneously free from gravity effects, but the building and the surface below are not free, so they interfere with the nasty effects that we all know (the objective reality that HiTekRedNek mentioned).

I think the Tai Quan Do masters utilize this 'freedom' to their advantage in a controlled way, as pointed out by Yuval.

Jorrie

Hi Jorrie,

Do you believe in fakirs' levitation? How would you explain it?

Regards

Michael

P.S.: congratulation for your website. Very easy to digest relativity after a glass of Scotch...

Hi Hottech, no I don't believe in 'fakir levitation' any more than what I believe that a magician's trick are real.

Why do you think the fakirs put a tent around themselves while they do the actual 'levitation' (the part that requires energy and work)?

To keep something 'levitated' needs no energy; just put up some 'invisible' support structures...

Regards

Isn't the tent there, is to hide their secret anti-gravity device ?

Don't be silly..the tent is just a diversion..

The secret anti-gravity device is in his turban!

I guess you're right. I'm not really the expert I pretend to be

Maybe the tent is for keeping them warm - you know how they are "dressed" - as they should spend around 250 Joules of energy .

I'd like to bring to your attention some interesting facts related to natural variations of g on Earth.

It happened to me to commute on a 150 miles distance everyday, for two years. During that period, three times I noticed tens of vehicles pulled on the right with flat tires on one particular segment of the road 1-2 miles long. Approximately at the middle of that segment is a monument reminding the deadly crash of a pioneer of aviation who managed to fly over the mountains but failed to land smoothly on that plain. My explanation is that some days (always in the morning), the gravitational force is significantly higher than usual and makes everything to weigh more.

Another phenomenon is reported in relation with a particular place in Italy where there is a hill and a road. What is strange is that when driving uphill you have to brake or motor-brake like when descending the hill and vice-versa. This phenomenon seems to be continuous, not random like the first one.

The geological structure underneath may play a role in both cases but there is no official explanation.

Maybe someone here has more knowledge on these or experienced similar anomalies.

Michael

I have heard of a gravity anomaly in Canada, and scientists say it is caused by the earth still rebounding form the glaciers of the ice age.

As for the hill anomally, I once parked my truck at the bottom of a hill on my property, and as I got out, it started to roll uphill for a few feet.

Careful study revealed that my rear wheels had rolled up onto a bump, and although the overall angle of the truck was downhill, the bump provided enough impetus to push the truck back up the hill for a short distance (several feet).It was a heck of an illusion at first.Thought I had discovered a gravity anomaly on earth.

There are many such anomalies on the moon, and make sustaining a steady orbit very difficult, even with fully automatic guidance systems.

I nearly crashed last time I was there.Fortunately I was able to land in a place called Sinas, in the Mare of Tranquilitatus.Not much of a place really, but many caves to explore and old artifacts to analyse.

Gotta go now.My quantum-entaglement message machine(QEMM) is receiving a message from my home.

Later.

HTRN

http://www.usatoday.com/travel/news/2007-02-05-wonder-spot_x.htm

http://www.science-frontiers.com/online/search.cgi?zoom_query=roll&zoom_per_page=50&zoom_and=1&zoom_sort=0

Are places where Gravity just is not what it should be. Instead of delving into the ground and getting to the bottom of it they are paving the places over.

As the old saying goes "There's Gotta be a reason" and no one seems to be digging the thing up.

It stands to reason that since these effects are duly recorded and measured that a solution might be in order?

Just because one says "I believe that this thing is not or it true" does not verify or dispute the question. Belief does come in handy when exploring the subject with all of the wits one has and then getting your hands and mind dirty with trying to prove it out.

For years on end now our greater energies of belief have been harnessed and taken from us by this overall "Creator / Man" relationship / belief thing that I think was drummed up to distract us from the real stuff we can and should be doing with that great tool between "Your Harry Ears" I pluck mine thank you : - )

Belief properly used should be in trying to get all of the horsepower out of that great tool and then seeing how the Earth is really put together. I mean classrooms where one learns the process of thought and how to control the functions that the thing is capable of. We have thousands of years of history where mankind has gone beyond the norm using this tool. That should be taught instead of Political Science and the like.

You gust might be surprised on how the world viewpoint might change if that were so

Hi dbd,

"I mean classrooms where one learns the process of thought and how to control the functions that the thing is capable of."

I agree, however, government (public) schools are a lot less likely to impart such knowledge. For the sake of the budding Einsteins, parents should be required to attend PTA meetings and get involved in their child's education or face substantial penalties. It would be a start anyway.

-John

Interesting POV and links. I agree we still have a lot to do in understanding our Earth which is more handy than deep space.

Hi dbdwoods,

I quote from one of the web sites that you supplied links to.

"If it's an optical illusion at work here, it's an odd one; a reporter applying a carpenter's level at about the hill's halfway point finds a slope up in the direction the cars are rolling."

Since a level uses gravity to indicate what is level then how come the level is not effected by the gravity like the cars and items that are supposedly rolling up hill. If gravity were really acting off the perpendicular then a plumb bob and a carpenters level would also be affected and indicate that there was a slope in the direction the objects were rolling.

It all smells pretty fishy to me.

In the mountains just east of Salt Lake City, Utah, is a canyon road where you can see an optical illusion of this sort. It's eerie, to say the least, but it's strictly an illusion.

I stopped my car in one particular stretch of this canyon and put it in neutral, then released the brakes. The car began rolling uphill - or so it seemed. Turns out there's a constant wind in the canyon and one that is nearly always blowing in the same direction. The wind itself doesn't move the car, as it was relatively calm at the time. Rather, all the pine trees in that stretch of the canyon grow at a slight and nearly identical angle because of the prevailing winds.

You're surrounded by trees on both sides of the road that, under different conditions, would normally grow vertically. But they all depart from vertical at about the same angle, and in the same direction, giving the impression that it is the road itself that has an uphill grade. It's very convincing, but in reality the road has a slight downhill grade in that stretch; hence, cars appear to roll uphill.

"If it's an optical illusion at work here, it's an odd one; a reporter applying a carpenter's level at about the hill's halfway point finds a slope up in the direction the cars are rolling."

Masu replies: "Since a level uses gravity to indicate what is level then how come the level is not effected by the gravity like the cars and items that are supposedly rolling up hill. If gravity were really acting off the perpendicular then a plumb bob and a carpenters level would also be affected and indicate that there was a slope in the direction the objects were rolling."

-----

First of all, it was a reporter performing the test. What does that tell you?

Clearly the reporter was using an aluminum level to investigate a magnetic anomaly.

Yet another journalist that never lets the truth get in the way of a good story.

Enough said.

Im surprised that I havent heard anyone reffer to an energy vortex (a place where gravity is reverse). These are a number of these places in the U.S. Such as Wisconsin Dells, Hayward Wisconsin, Gettyburgh, and Nor. California to name a few. I for one dont really understand the anomolly, but have witnessed water running uphill, cars (not running) being pushed uphill, and even the slight ability to wallk semi-vertically up a wall. Go figure.... ( No,really.Can someone figure that out?)

Yes...

These are optical illusions.

Talk to any golfer...he will know a hole where the ball appears to break 'uphill'

10th on our course..must remember to allow for the uphill borrow.

Gravity is a low pressure (energy) area.

Since everything tends to go to the lowest energy state, any low pressure area will absorb energy from all outside forces.

An analogy in the pool table:

One object hitting one object results in energy transfer close to 100% (Proportional to how square is the collision) Peak energy remains the same if the size is the same.

On object hitting two objects simultaneous results in less then half the the energy being transferred to each of the two objects. resulting in ~ 1/2 peak energy field

After a collision the original object comes to a stop, (having transferred its momentum to the other objects) now you have 3 objects.

The more objects being simultaneous collided with, the more the energy is divided between the objects, resulting in an over-all lower peak energy in the area.

The more objects collide in this lower energy area, the more is collected, and the lower the total energy in the area. (the more it is difficult to move the total mass)

Time eh? without time all that entropy stuff would go belly up and then we'd be over-run with perpetual motion machines...

Now none of us would believe it...

so the accumulated dissbelief would mean it all dissappeared in a puff of green smoke.

Or am I getting confused with pantomime...?

Oh no I'm not!

Oh yes you are ...etc ad infinitum or until the entropy builds up enough to stop me jabbering.

Eu: An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition.

Eu: No it isn't.

Eu: Yes it is! It's not just contradiction.

Eu: Look, if I argue with you, I must take up a contrary position.

Eu: Yes, but that's not just saying 'No it isn't.'

Eu: Yes it is!

Eu: No it isn't!

Eu: Yes it is!

Eu: No it isn't!

Eu: Yes it is!

Eu: No it isn't!

Eu: Yes it is!

Eu: No it isn't!

Eu: Oh, shut up!!!

Monty Python strukes again. Do you remember the quip.

At a lecture at the University of Woolloomooloo:

Professor: American beet is like making love in a canoe

Student : How's that?

Professor: There both f…ing close to water!

Respect. Thermodynamics have no meaning unless on a time axis.

But so is any other law to describe a process.

In my humble opinion, I think this question should be revisited after data is collected by scientists, who have physically studied the Universe from Mars.

Why Mars? Does Mars represent a unique vantage point from which the Universe might otherwise reveal its secrets?

You can supposedly get there with this... Check out the space ship:

http://borisvolfson.com/index.html

Surfing gravity all the way to Mars, for a broader look at the Universe sounds good to me.

Ah.

Forgive me for going back to the original subject of gravity, but what if, instead of matter creating a warp in space time, (which Einstein called gravity), instead matter itself is merely tangled-up spacetime at the very smallest level? Then matter would in effect, be an illusion. Nothing would exist except space-time in various forms.A very simple universe indeed.The various forces we see could be related to exactly how space time is tangled up with itself.A bunch of ribbons tangled in various knots, of different twists and turns producing all the known forces.A cat turned loose in a box of ribbons.

This would jibe with Einstein's saying about reality being a very persistent illusion.

" I don't mind hearing voices,I just wish they would reach a concensus"

HTRN

Hi HTRN.

Your "A bunch of ribbons tangled in various knots, of different twists and turns producing all the known forces. A cat turned loose in a box of ribbons" is not very far from 'string theory', 'loop quantum gravity' etc...

I suggest you keep that cat (it's not Schrödinger's, is it?) in the box and occasionally peep inside to collapse the superposition of states into some illusion of reality amongst the ribbons.

Jorrie

Hi Jorrie,

Thanksfor the reference to Schrödinger's cat.

"In the Copenhagen interpretation, a system stops being a superposition of states and becomes either one or the other when an observation takes place. This experiment makes apparent the fact that the nature of measurement, or observation, is not well defined in this interpretation. Some interpret the experiment to mean that while the box is closed, the system simultaneously exists in a superposition of the states "decayed nucleus/dead cat" and "undecayed nucleus/living cat", and that only when the box is opened and an observation performed does the wave function collapse into one of the two states."

Reminds me of a class I was in back in the early sixties. The instructor made the statement: "things are never the same as they were had you not looked in the first place". The meaning did not sink in until he provided this example: "When you measure voltage with a meter (all meters were analog then) you divert part of the current through the meter thus causing the point where you wanted to measure to be at less voltage than it was before you attached the meter leads". Then I got it.

It also reminds me of this little saying: "This sentence is in Spanish when you are not looking at it".

Thanks Jorrie

(also thanks HTRN. Excellent post)

-John

Does an "observation" have to include an intelligent being? If so, then who collapsed the first superposition into what we now call "reality"?

If an intelligent entity is not required, then the universe collapsed itself, otherwise, the universe itself is an entity, or an entity outside of our universe caused the collapse.

Since we are speaking of Quantum Mechanics, I have a few questions about the double-slit experiment:

Was the experiment carried out in a vacuum, with the environment shielded from all outside influences?If so, then perhaps the photons, electrons, etc. were influenced by the structure of space-time itself.Perhaps there is no straight line thru which to aim the beam, and the angle of entry is constantly changing due to fluctuations in space time.

Has anyone tried this experiment using a fibre-optic cable with a split aperature at the end?

Probably just my own flawed logic showing.

HTRN

Everyone's reality is different.The color I call green may not appear the same to you, yet we agree that grass is usually green, because we are taught to correlate that particular color or family of colors to the name "Green".People that are color blind have an entirely different wavelength of response, and some colors seen easily by us do not exist for them, yet their perception does not affect ours, nor vice versa.

When a person dies, that particular slice of reality is gone.They may pass into another realm of reality, or not, where reality is entirely redifined, depending on your belief in the afterlife.

We are living within an infinite number of realities, and only one is ours, but it is exclusively ours.In that sense, we are all very much alone, even in a crowded room, but so is everyone else, yet we are joined by a common thread at our most basic level of existence.We are in effect, one with everything.

HTRN

Physicist Stephen Hawking once said, "When I hear of Schrödinger's cat, I reach for my gun."

Yes, but according to Heisenberg's memoirs, Hawking was never quite sure where to aim.