Posts Tagged ‘magic in physics’

Gravitational “constant” is not constant but varies periodically

February 1, 2016

Newton’s gravitational constant, G, is surprisingly variable and varies periodically. The period is 5.899 +/- 0.062 years which is the same period by which the length of day varies and is also about half the 11 year solar cycle.

The reasons for this are unknown and speculations about currents in the earth’s core and magnetic effects abound.

The simplest explanation is that it is the same magic which causes gravity (and calling it space-time does not reduce its magical qualities) which also causes the solar cycle and is also the same magic which governs the movement of the earth around the sun and the corresponding length of day.

John D. Anderson, Gerald Schubert, Virginia Trimble, Michael R. Feldman, Measurements of Newton’s gravitational constant and the length of day, EPL 110 (2015) 10002, doi:10.1209/0295-5075/110/10002

Abstract:About a dozen measurements of Newton’s gravitational constant, G, since 1962 have yielded values that differ by far more than their reported random plus systematic errors. We find that these values for G are oscillatory in nature, with a period of P = 5.899 +/- 0.062 yr, an amplitude of (1.619 +/- 0.103) x 10^{-14} m^3 kg^{-1} s^{-2}, and mean-value crossings in 1994 and 1997. However, we do not suggest that G is actually varying by this much, this quickly, but instead that something in the measurement process varies. Of other recently reported results, to the best of our knowledge, the only measurement with the same period and phase is the Length of Day (LOD – defined as a frequency measurement such that a positive increase in LOD values means slower Earth rotation rates and therefore longer days). The aforementioned period is also about half of a solar activity cycle, but the correlation is far less convincing. The 5.9 year periodic signal in LOD has previously been interpreted as due to fluid core motions and inner-core coupling. We report the G/LOD correlation, whose statistical significance is 0.99764 assuming no difference in phase, without claiming to have any satisfactory explanation for it. Least unlikely, perhaps, are currents in the Earth’s fluid core that change both its moment of inertia (affecting LOD) and the circumstances in which the Earth-based experiments measure G. In this case, there might be correlations with terrestrial magnetic field measurements.

A set of 13 measurements of G exhibit a 5.9-year periodic oscillation (solid curve) that closely matches the 5.9-year oscillation in LOD measurements (dashed curve). The two outliers are a 2014 quantum measurement and a 1996 measurement known to suffer from drift. The green dot is an estimate of the mean value of G after the 5.9-year periodicity is removed. Credit: J. D. Anderson, et al. ©2015 EPLA

A set of 13 measurements of G exhibit a 5.9-year periodic oscillation (solid curve) that closely matches the 5.9-year oscillation in LOD measurements (dashed curve). The two outliers are a 2014 quantum measurement and a 1996 measurement known to suffer from drift. The green dot is an estimate of the mean value of G after the 5.9-year periodicity is removed. Credit: J. D. Anderson, et al. ©2015 EPLA

Physics is impossible without final recourse to various magics; Big Bang Magic, gravitational magic, weak force magic, strong force magic and electromagical magnetics. There is something very inelegant – bordering on ugly – when modern physics needs over 50 different “fundamental” particles and unknown, unseen, undetectable forms of dark matter and dark energy to make their models feasible.

If there is a fundamental particle then there can be only one and it is called the Ultimion.


Physics invokes magical “stealthy dark matter”

September 25, 2015

Physics is just a branch of the ultimate science – that of “Magic”. All the fundamental unknowns of physics are given special names (in lieu of explanation) and are assumed to have just those properties (often fantastical) which allow theoretical models of cosmology to maintain some credibility and come close to matching observations.

“Spacetime”, “gravitation”, “dark matter”, “dark energy” and even “phantom dark matter” can all just be termed “the mellifluous aether”, “magical attraction”, “magic matter”, “magic energy”, and “even more magic energy” without any loss of whatever rigour exists in Physics.

The methodology is quite simple.

First, invent a theory to explain what we don’t know. Then do some fancy maths to back up the theory. Whenever the theory fails, define a magic particle or event or property which brings credibility back to the theory. Spend vast amounts of money on Big Science experiments to find the magic particle or event or property. Find something other than the magic particle or property or event that was predicted. Claim that what was found was a special case of the magic “thing” that was predicted and due to some new magic particle or event or property. Demand more money to do more and bigger Big Science experiments. Magic demands more magic. And so an ad infinitum.

But magic demands more magic – deeper and more profound.

And so we have a new theory of stealthy dark matter to explain why it is undetectable.

Thomas Appelquist et al, Direct Detection of Stealth Dark Matter through Electromagnetic Polarizability. Physical Review Letters, 2015

Press Release: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists have come up with a new theory that may identify why dark matter has evaded direct detection in Earth-based experiments.

A group of national particle physicists known as the Lattice Strong Dynamics Collaboration, led by a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory team, has combined theoretical and computational physics techniques and used the Laboratory’s massively parallel 2-petaflop Vulcan supercomputer to devise a new model of dark matter. It identifies it as naturally “stealthy” ( like its namesake aircraft, difficult to detect) today, but would have been easy to see via interactions with ordinary matter in the extremely high-temperature plasma conditions that pervaded the early universe. ……. 

Dark matter makes up 83 percent of all matter in the universe and does not interact directly with electromagnetic or strong and weak nuclear forces. Light does not bounce off of it, and ordinary matter goes through it with only the feeblest of interactions. Essentially invisible, it has been termed dark matter, yet its interactions with gravity produce striking effects on the movement of galaxies and galactic clusters, leaving little doubt of its existence. …….. 

The key to stealth dark matter’s split personality is its compositeness and the miracle of confinement. Like quarks in a neutron, at high temperatures these electrically charged constituents interact with nearly everything. But at lower temperatures they bind together to form an electrically neutral composite particle. Unlike a neutron, which is bound by the ordinary strong interaction of quantum chromodynamics (QCD), the stealthy neutron would have to be bound by a new and yet-unobserved strong interaction, a dark form of QCD. …..

But there is something more than a little circular in the argument that “its interactions with gravity produce striking effects on the movement of galaxies and galactic clusters, leaving little doubt of its existence”.

This is just magical mumbo jumbo. (Not that there is anything wrong with the magical incantations of physicists which are just as valid as any magical incantation by a shaman or a High Priest).

Universetoday.com: Various universe evolution scenarios. A universe with too much density collapses in on itself, a critical density universe stays static, while a universe with not enough density keeps expanding at a steady (coasting) rate. However, today’s cosmology puts emphasis upon the cosmological constant, which gives an accelerating expansion. Does this mean that density is irrelevant? Credit: NASA.

The universe is accelerating instead of slowing down therefore “dark energy must exist”. Because objects moving very fast in some clusters of galaxies do not escape the clusters, it becomes necessary to invent magical “dark matter” exercising gravitational effects. The gravitation/speed anomaly is used to postulate that dark matter exists, but actually all it says is that gravitation theory alone is insufficient to explain the observations. We cannot detect dark matter so we generate theories for why it must be “phantom” or “stealthy” now. We infer it and its properties because the magic invoked to explain gravitation (relativity and spacetime) is not upto the task.

Note (diagram above) that all theories about the shape of the Universe have it surrounded by an infinite, unbounded, unknown, unknowable space of Deep, Dark Something. Let’s call it Magic.

Physics appears to come first in the hierarchy of Science. But Magic probably comes before Physics. Perhaps the most fundamental law of the Universe is actually the Conservation of Magic (and energy and mass and the curvature of spacetime are merely facets of Magic). Before the Big Bang there was first a critical accumulation of Magic which caused the Big Bang. And the quantity of magic gives the cosmological constant because of the Deep, Dark Magic underlying simple Magic …….

Physics/Magic posts:

  1.  The fundamentals of physics are just magic
  2. Magic is to physics as Heineken is to the human body
  3. Physics and cosmology are more magical than alchemy as dark energy goes phantom
  4. Gravitation could just as well be called “magical attraction”
  5. Dark energy and dark matter are just fudge factors for cosmic models that don’t work
  6. Physics came first and then came chemistry and later biology

Gravitation could just as well be called “magical attraction”

October 1, 2014

We don’t know how the four fundamental forces of nature are communicated. We explain the actions at a distance they give rise to by defining new words. We might as well just use the word “magic”.

We may like to think of ourselves as being very modern, very scientific, very rational without having – or needing – any recourse to mystical powers. Yet there is much where we don’t know what we don’t know. We use the forces  of gravitation and magnetism and can even calculate their magnitude but are no closer to knowing why they exist and how they are communicated. We have theories as to why they exist and how they work but these theories require that we define new, abstract/imaginary concepts of space-time and curvature of space. Gravitation fields and electromagnetic fields cause motion at a distance but where we don’t know how the forces bringing about such motion are communicated. We have no idea why gravity fields apparently propagate at (or, some say, greater than) the speed of light. We invent particles with magical properties but without any real understanding why such magical properties may exist. But our invocation of curvature  in space or virtual photons or up-quarks or down-quarks is no different to the ancients invoking magic and communicated through the aether. The rubber sheet analogy for curved spacetime is flawed in that it only works because gravity magic already exists and keeps the bodies attached to the top of the stretched rubber sheet.

Wherever we have forces acting at a distance we can just as well use the word “magic” instead of any of the other words we imagine. Inventing a massless graviton is merely invoking magic. We could just as well refer to gravitation as attraction magic and electromagnetic interaction as electromagic. And all the various magics are just natural.

For example, here is the Wikipedia entry for Gravitation where the words gravitation, gravity and other fundamental forces have been replaced by “magic” or “magical forces”.

Attraction magic is a natural phenomenon by which all physical bodies attract each other. Magical attraction gives weight to physical objects and causes them to fall toward the ground when dropped.

In modern physics, attraction magic is most accurately described by the general theory of relativity (proposed by Einstein) which describes attraction magic as a consequence of the curvature of spacetime. For most situations magical attraction is well approximated by Newton’s law of universal attraction magic, which postulates that the magical attraction force of two bodies of mass is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.

In pursuit of a theory of everything, the merging of general relativity and quantum mechanics (or quantum field theory) into a more general theory of quantum magical attraction has become an area of active research. It is hypothesised that the magical attraction force is mediated by a massless spin-2 particle called the graviton, and that magical attraction would have separated from the electromagic force during the grand unification epoch.

Magical attraction is the weakest of the four fundamental magic forces of nature. The attraction magical force is approximately 10−38  times the strength of the strong magic force (i.e., magical attraction is 38 orders of magnitude weaker), 10−36  times the strength of the electromagical force, and 10−29  times the strength of the weak magic force. As a consequence, magical attraction has a negligible influence on the behavior of sub-atomic particles, and plays no role in determining the internal properties of everyday matter. On the other hand, magical attraction is the dominant force at the macroscopic scale, that is the cause of the formation, shape, and trajectory (orbit) of astronomical bodies, including those of asteroids, comets, planets, stars, and galaxies. It is responsible for causing the Earth and the other planets to orbit the Sun; for causing the Moon to orbit the Earth; for the formation of tides; for natural convection, by which fluid flow occurs under the influence of a density gradient and magical attraction; for heating the interiors of forming stars and planets to very high temperatures; for solar system, galaxy, stellar formation and evolution; and for various other phenomena observed on Earth and throughout the universe. This is the case for several reasons: magical attraction is the only force acting on all particles with mass; it has an infinite range; it is always attractive and never repulsive; and it cannot be absorbed, transformed, or shielded against. Even though electromagic is far stronger than magical attraction, electromagic is not relevant to astronomical objects, since such bodies have an equal number of protons and electrons that cancel out (i.e., a net electromagic charge of zero).

Sounds fine and sufficiently unintelligible/magical to me.

Physics still contains a lot of magic.