Even eminent physicists admit the there is something fundamentally wrong with the scientific discipline of physics, as with Lee Smolin in his book with the above title. He says a possible solution is ‘freezing time‘ – now what he means by this and how it could be achieved I have no idea.
Most academic physicists would assert that the basis of physics today are quantum and relativity theories, but these two are acknowledged to be incompatible. And, in 80 odd years of intense endeavour in attempting to combine these into a ‘theory of everything’ (with a certain Nobel as the prize), the most brilliant mathematical physicists have completely failed.
Buckminster Fuller wrote (in ‘Utopia or Oblivion’) that from the 1930’s physicists ‘were going to work entirely in the terms of abstract, “empty set”, mathematical expressions‘ and that ‘all physical conceptual models (were) suspect‘.
And today, as a consequence, all eminent physicists are better described as mathematicians, but this purely mathematical approach has failed to advance our knowledge of the ultimate structure of matter and its interactions at macroscopic level, the most important being the transmission of the force of gravitation, and an explanation of its cause.
The focus of experimental effort in physics in the last 80 odd years has been on the sub-atomic, as it has been assumed that this would lead to explanations of all the, so far unexplained, phenomena that we are affected by, and directly or indirectly experience in the macroscopic dimension, but this has not happened.
So, if this intense, concerted and extensive mathematical approach has failed totally to bridge this gap, then the only conclusion that can logically be drawn is that some of the conceptual assumptions (with respect to the ultimate properties of the material world of our experience and of the wider universe) on which the mathematics are based, are questionable.
Accordingly, for a cause of this impasse, we need to review these assumptions and check on their validity in the light of technological advances today.
As said relativity and quantum are considered by physicists to be the base theories, but these theories were in turn developed from the assumptions on which the kinetic atomic theory of gases was founded. This therefore is the theory on which physics, and effectively all of science, is based.
The main assumptions of this atomic theory of matter are that atoms are in eternal, kinetic motion in an ’empty space’ (which ‘space’ cannot inhibit such motion in any way), that inter-atomic gravitation ‘can be ignored’ and that the force of pressure in gases is caused by the high velocity collisions of atoms.
The assumption of an ’empty space’ has altered over millenia, from the vacuum (when I use the word vacuum, I mean a perfect vacuum, the state of non-existence of matter) of Greek philosophers to the various, speculative descriptions of so called ’empty space’ today, but it, of hypothetical necessity, retains its quality of zero-inertia, of non-interaction with matter.
So here we have the fundamentals on which physics today is based, the assumption that the universe consists of two separate and distinct, volumetric entities, matter, based naturally upon the atom, and a non-material space.
Applied scientists and technicians acnowledge that the vacuum state cannot be created, as it is not technically possible to extract every trace of matter from any container or compartment, or in other words to separate matter from ‘space’, or vice versa. But, apparently, the vacuum still exists, as with Frank Close (an eminent UK physicist) in his recent book ‘The Void’, who states that ‘the atom consists of one part in a trillion of matter, the rest is a perfect vacuum‘.
While the creation of ‘high vacuums’, or very low pressures, is regularly achieved in laboratories and research facilities around the world, it requires the expenditure of a large amount of energy, and such low pressures cannot be maintained for long. The main reason for this is that the materials of the apparati in contact with the low pressure gases tend to deteriorate, through such things as sublimation and out-gassing, which can contaminate the sample. So it is accordingly not possible to gain a sample and subject this hypothetical ’empty space’ to empirical tests, but of course even if it were, it would not react to any stimuli that we could conceivably devise.
But this clear resistance, by matter alone, to non-existence, it can be said, is an empirical confirmation of Aristotle’s statement that ‘Nature abhors a vacuum‘.
So the two fundamental premises of physics are – matter, the existence of which is self-evident and unequivocal, and ‘space’, the existence of which is hypothetical, cannot be proven and which cannot be subjected to any experimental test of its supposed qualities.
Yet it seems that all scientists believe totally in the existence of the latter, to the point where it would be unthinkable to question its existence. And, it is currently and generally accepted that, it occupies a volume of the universe that would relegate the total material volume to an almost infinitely small proportion.
The problem for the science of physics with this ingrained belief is that this hypothetical volume, which is said to separate atoms, cannot, with its necessary quality of zero-inertia, transmit a force of any kind between two such atoms, and thus between any two macroscopic masses, as clearly in such circumstances the necessary actions and reactions cannot occur, and yet of course forces are observed to be transmitted in such circumstances, and universally.
As Newton wrote over three hundred years ago:-
“That one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum, without the mediation of anything else, by which their action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity, that I believe no man, who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it.”
What Newton means is that it is both mathematically and conceptually impossible to describe transmission through such a medium.
In recent decades the technology of electron microscsopy has created thousands of images of atoms in solid matter that show no sign of any separation, or of the oscillatory motion as predicted by kinetic atomic theory. As acceptance of this result is clearly difficult, various, rather weak, excuses are put forward in attempts to explain this ‘apparent continuousness‘, as Hans Christian von Baeyer puts it in his book ‘Taming the Atom’.
In an ultimate sense, we have no idea what matter is, for example there is no evidence that any quality of (what we experience as) solidity exists at the atomic and sub-atomic level, in other words there is no conclusive evidence of the existence of ‘particles’, as the word is generally understood to mean.
And if we cannot ultimately define what matter ‘is’, how can it be asserted that ultimately it is contained within specific, and minuscule, sub-atomic boundaries? I suggest that we simply cannot state with any certainty where it is, and where it isn’t, or what its extent at atomic level is.
Rutherford showed, nearly one hundred years ago, that most of the sub-atomic ‘particles’ fired at a very fine film of solid matter pass straight through, while one in 20,000 may be deviated through a large angle or even bounce back at the source. This led him to the concept of the atom as being mostly an ’empty space’ with a solid nucleus of an unimaginable density, and that this ’empty space’ or vacuum component allowed sub-atomic ‘particles’ to pass through it unaffected.
But this could be viewed in a different way, in that yes, the atom has a nucleus, or core, the density of which is very high, but that the nominally spherical, field of local influence projected by an atom is not a vacuum, nor is it any other hypothetical non-material medium, but consists of a matter field that progressively decreases in density with altitude from the centre.
If this were that case, ‘particles’ entering the atoms field at high altitudes above the core, and at high velocities would be passing through areas of low to very low density and thus not be diverted significantly from their course.
So the composition of an atom may not be only ‘one part in a trillion matter’, but may be totally matter, but in the sense that it does not react to human experimental probing, it is invisible matter.
This leads to the relatively recent discovery that there is a huge proportion of matter in the universe, the so called ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’, which, apart from its apparent gravitational effects, does not provide us with any indication of its existence.
So currently physicists believe that the atom is essentially ’empty space’, and that so is the wider universe, and at the same time it is acknowledged that the vast majority, said to be 97%, of the matter of the universe is ‘invisible’, in that it does not provide us with any perceivable indication of its existence.
Just a co-incidence????
So if a large proportion of the volume of an atom does not react to stimuli, and is thus undetectable with current technology, while at the other end of the scale, a large proportion of inter-stellar or inter-galactic ‘space’ is discovered to contain a large quantity of invisible matter, which again, it is possible that these are two symptoms of the same thing
It is a fact that the transmission of forces, energy, EMR and particularly the mysterious gravitation, can only be logically described by assuming that matter is continuous and occupies the whole of the volume of the universe, and that, as Aristotle asserted ‘Nature abhors a vacuum’ and that accordingly the ultimate resistance to the creation of this state is, as is observed empirically, infinite.
It is a fact that no-one can prove that this hypothetical non-material entity exists, and some of you will reply that nor can anyone disprove its existence – to which I would respond that
-
It is observed that forces are transmitted throughout the wider universe.
-
It is observed that for a force to be transmitted the process of action and reaction has to occur.
-
The hypothetical, non-material component of the universe, by definition has the quality of zero-inertia.
-
A zero-inertia, non-material media cannot transmit the process of action and reaction between two masses.
-
It is neither mathematically nor conceptually possible to describe transmission in such circumstances.
-
Ergo, there is no such thing as a non-material space.
The macroscopic dimension, due to the focus on the sub-atomic and the cosmic, has been ignored, and there are numerous natural phenomena of immmnse importnace that cannot be described by the application of currently accepted atomic theory of the composition of macroscopic matter
The focus in the last 100 years has been on the sub-atomic and the cosmic dimensions, and it has been assumed that the sub-atomic will reveal the unexplained phenomena that are observed in the macroscopic dimension in which we exist, but this has not occurred
However this theory cannot be applied quantatively to the liquid and solid states, its predictions are inaccurate and are limited to a narrow range of pressures, it cannot describe the atomic interactions that result in numerous commonly experienced natural phenomena, such as convection.
Another example is that since Einstein’s ‘photon’ paper a great number of experiments have been, and still are being, carried out, that are in essence attempts to eliminate the wave function in double slit type apparatus. The unspoken motivation is that if the existence of particulate light were proven, a Nobel would be a certainty, and the mainstream physics community would breath a huge and collective sigh of relief. But the fact is that for all of this, successively more technically advanced, effort it has not been possible to eliminate constructive and destructive interference, and it can be stated that rather than demonstrate the particulate nature of light it has unequivocally confirmed that Thomas Young’s proof is cast iron and that light is transmitted in any circumstance as a wave.
But let us consider another example of failure.
Wave/Particle duality was introduced one hundred years ago. 100 years earlier Thomas Young and others demolished Newton’s particulate theory of light, and Einstein resurrected it with the paradoxical assumption that light could be both a wave and a particle. Why? Because he and everyone else believed that the ‘space’ beyond our atmosphere was essentially a vacuum, occupied by occasional, randomly distributed solid particles of dust dimensions and upwards. And as a wave cannot propagate through a vacuum, light needed to be ‘particulate’ in ‘space’ for the purposes of relativity theory.
Since this time innumerable experiments have been carried out, with progressively more sophisticated apparatus, that, in essence, were attempts to eliminate the wave function and thereby to prove the ‘particulate’ theory (again with a Nobel as the prize, and the eternal gratitude of the worldwide, mainstream physics community).
But to this date none of these has succeeded in this goal, interference stubbornly refuses to dissappear, even when the operators are quite certain that they are sending single photons through the apertures.
So it can be stated that, rather than prove the particulate nature of light, it has unequivocally confirmed that Thomas Young’s proof is cast iron and that light is transmitted in any circumstance as a wave. Note pulse.
So, it could be said that this belief is just a mental barrier to a description, either mathematical or conceptual, of the transmission of a force.
The only way that a force can be possibly described as being transmitted is between bodies of matter that are in contact, i.e. through and between matter that is continuous.
However this, of course, is a completely unthinkable suggestion for the current, worldwide, physics establishment, as accepting of this empirical evidence would collapse the whole facade and destroy reputations overnight, and ‘require the re-writing of physics and chemistry‘ (as Madelein Ennis commented when she found that water infused with hystamine and so diluted that, in terms of current theory, it could not contain any molecules of it, still reacted to it ).