I always thought that beauty was in the eye of the beer-holder.

Hi,

Hey i'll have to remember that one.
A universe without beer is a sad universe.
Beer also co-wrote a book on Finite Element Methods
The idea in network theory is that everything connects to everything else by at most seven nodes.

 

I'm in very good company if distaste for string (as a physical) theory is the set. Only time will tell what ultimately will be proved wrong, or what will be viewed as finding the true path. I see no reason for a 'theory of everything' based on emergent phenomena in condensed matter.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/view-glashow.html

Hi,

Well yes, and that puts time ahead of everything else here, and if we actually get the time.
If a tree falls in the woods and everything else on Earth is dead, did it make a sound.

 

EM or light doesn't even have a frequency of the standard definition. The physical/electrical mechanics of emission and propagation are all opposite of and opposed to, oscillation.

Emission.....is the exact opposite of oscillation. It kills oscillation. One thing that makes it hard to realize this.....is......because when absorbing.....the emission is converted back into an oscillation.

An antenna converts round energy into straight energy on emission.....and straight energy into round energy on reception.

An antenna is designed to deceitfully built up a resonant field......then completely cut and expand it.
Throw it out and away. Over and over. And I did say expand it....not collapse it...like an ignition coil. There's a difference.

If or when you put a mic in the air or water........you will get oscillations. You will get frequencies.

There is a real physical frequency of change in the media density(pressure change). Because the media is always there.......the density can cycle.

An EM emission is completely different. And until you understand it.....the terms frequency and phase and how they relate can drive one nuts.

An EM emission has to supply it's own media. There is no media in space. No matter what they say.

When you put a sine into a speaker, the displacement of the surrounding media starts immediately in sync and thru out the whole cycle. If you displace the speaker during the cycle....you will get a Doppler effect. Because of physical displacement during emission period.

When you apply sine to an EM emitter....the first half of the sine is used to build up an EM field around the emitter. There is no emission at this time. So if the emitter is displacing......it doesn't matter.....yet. Upon emission....the spherical field is cut into two hemispheres. When cut, they become repulsive and accelerate away from each other....NOT from the emitter. The emitter is not the reference source.....the other shell IS. This is like the skin of an expanding balloon. An expending shell one way and another shell the other way. The thickness of the shell, equals the R of the emitter field before emission....which happens to be 1/2 WL. Shell chunks. Concentric half shells of R and spaces. Expanding out. It takes less the a fraction of a degree for these shells to emit. The emission time is super small compared to the sine time, which is the duration of R.

Think about that. We would have to have super speed to displace the emitter during the emission(because of the short emission time)........in order to distort the length of R thickness of shell. The R duration is much longer than the emission time. The length or width of R is what sets the period and thus the frequency of received EM. This is why EM seems point like. It's very short. MUCH shorter than duration of received signal.

We have two duty cycles. The first is the emission duty. Almost all of the time is spent building the fields.....and two small squints(of time) to emit. The emission is almost always off.

Then there is the propagation duty cycle. The emitted R is 1/2 WL long and will take 1/2 period to pass you or excite you. (but only a fraction of that time to emit) Then it takes 1/2 period to build up the next field. So during that time we get nota. Nothing....it's dead space. That dead space is 1/2 WL long. Equal to the next build up time. Then we get another R. Then a length or duration of NOT R or nothing. It's intermittent. On and off.

So, what the first thing you would detect the change of, with source receding velocity?

There are a few more effects with source velocity and we still have the absorption or receiver velocity effects....which are different.....more complicated and hard to interpret.

But before we can analyze relative effects...we need to really measure c. The right way.

In line with no change in direction. Or maybe I should describe it as side by side.

We should use a single rf emission and gate one emission at a time.

We can sync counters.....by using the tic for one and the toc to the other.

We should be able to detect a change in c with relative fast receiver movement. And with a real fast clock......even slow speeds.

It's not a physical problem, like we have been taught.......it's an engineering problem and the right setup. Your speed DOES/WILL change the perceived V of c.......we just don't know the proper way to measure it.

 

Your speed DOES/WILL change the perceived V of c.......we just don't know the proper way to measure it.

I can't make heads or tails of your rant, but the speed of light isn't what changes when you move relative to it. What changes it the light's frequency, i.e., Doppler shift.

 

I didn't realize I was ranting. I said perceived, which can use more than one characteristic.

If we could move the emitter during emission time(which will be extremely difficult), the V of c might change.

But......it might not. physical perpendicularity.......might limit V of c under any circumstances.

It's too bad that you didn't follow along. Was there anything in particular that you did not beleive or understand....that I might clear up?

Understanding the physical reason or cause for constant c.......is no problem. I can explain it to any person.

The mis-understanding is the measurement of it. It's interpretation is all wrong. So we don't need to have L and T changes, to explain it.

Space curvature does not happen.

 

Space curvature does not happen.

Sure it does:

 

Why do people assume the space is curving? A density gradient can curve light.

And, and.....how many time stamps are on those photons? What you see is not real. I know that's hard to believe. It's a time composite. A past collection. It never really happened.

Nature's photo shop editing with time.

 

Why do people assume the space is curving?

Not an assumption. Speed of light is c. Light propagates in a straight line (i.e. shortest distance between two points). The straight line is bent due to the curvature of space by gravity (there is more space close to the massive object -- thus greater travel distance near it). If not, no "natural photoshopping" could create such an image.

 

A density gradient can bend light with incredible elegance and symmetry. It might be possible to even loop light in a spinning media. But I have not checked for a while.

I don't think mass bends space. I don't even think gravity comes from mass. But the thing it does come from has mass.

I believe it comes from a gradient of some kind. Perhaps a field density gradient.....or maybe a spin gradient. Perhaps a right/left handed momentum gradient.

It will turn out to be something not noticed or thought un-important. The weakest force.

 

If we could move the emitter during emission time(which will be extremely difficult), the V of c might change.

What do you mean by emission time? The charges oscillating in a conductor modulate the EM field at the speed of light. Moving the conductor faster than this would literally mean moving the conductor faster than the speed of light, which is impossible.

It's too bad that you didn't follow along. Was there anything in particular that you did not beleive or understand....that I might clear up?

Most of it. I suppose we can start with: What is "round" and "straight" energy? What exactly do 'R' and 'WL' represent?

 

I am very sorry. I write for people who have previously read me here. And I should not do that.

The R is for radius. The radius of the field built up on the emitter. It's the chunk size or length of emission. Not the time it takes to dis-connect and fly away. The emitted wavefront has a thickness, a physical length, we call it wavelength....WL. Which we measure as a time duration as it is absorbed. And there is a phase shift. Absorption or impulse can not be detected earlier than a 90 degree delay. It's because of the way free charge behaves.

A vibration is like driving the car out of the garage and then back into the garage.. A EM emission is like moving the car out in the driveway first, closing garage door.....then driving away at top speed.

The length(thus duration) is made before emission......and then sprung at c.....like a spring.

Think of a gun. We put a bullet which has length in the gun first. Then propel at high speed. But have to put new bullet in, before firing again. Emission is discreet. But we can vary the discreetness. The Doppler can only occur, during discharge......not during reloading.

Straight means linear and round means angular or rotational or oscillatory or reactive. The round force is expressed in media. Media is made out of round force.

An electric field(linear-one way) shown on a plate, will cause a oscillatory response in the plate media....which is a free charge film. One could mistake the field as oscillatory too. But it's discreet. The media reacts...and resets. When an EM wave goes thru space....there is nothing to reset. No reactance. No resistance.

Does any of that make any sense?

 

The R is for radius. The radius of the field built up on the emitter. It's the chunk size or length of emission. Not the time it takes to dis-connect and fly away. The emitted wavefront has a thickness, a physical length, we call it wavelength....WL. Which we measure as a time duration as it is absorbed. And there is a phase shift. Absorption or impulse can not be detected earlier than a 90 degree delay. It's because of the way free charge behaves.

In standard physics, the radius of the EM field is infinite -- it is literally everywhere. There is no physical distinction between an "emission" of EM energy and the EM field itself. Even if we look at it from the classical perspective of an accelerating charge, the resulting EM field moves along with the charge. If the charge oscillates periodically, the EM field oscillates with it -- whence our notions of frequency and wavelength. But how do we get a charge to oscillate in the first place? We have to apply an oscillating EM field! It doesn't make sense to talk about a "chunk" of EM emission.

A vibration is like driving the car out of the garage and then back into the garage.. A EM emission is like moving the car out in the driveway first, closing garage door.....then driving away at top speed.

Every vibration of a charge radiates EM. The reason that antennas do it efficiently is because of their geometry -- they are designed such that their lengths are a small multiple of the oscillation's wavelength. To borrow your analogy, a charge's vibration is like driving the car out of the driveway into a lake. Connecting that charge to a tuned antenna is like paving over the lake.

Think of a gun. We put a bullet which has length in the gun first. Then propel at high speed. But have to put new bullet in, before firing again. Emission is discreet. But we can vary the discreetness. The Doppler can only occur, during discharge......not during reloading.

The modern consensus is that, though the energy in the field can change only in discrete steps, the EM field itself is continuous in time and space. So EM energy propagates as a continuous function; no reloading necessary.

Straight means linear and round means angular or rotational or oscillatory or reactive. The round force is expressed in media. Media is made out of round force.

An electric field(linear-one way) shown on a plate, will cause a oscillatory response in the plate media....which is a free charge film. One could mistake the field as oscillatory too. But it's discreet. The media reacts...and resets. When an EM wave goes thru space....there is nothing to reset. No reactance. No resistance.

Does any of that make any sense?

None of that last part makes sense to me.

 

Please tell me what powers an infinite EM field. What process is generating it? Do you believe that the field around an atom......is the same as the wave emitted from that atom?

Maxwell tried to do this. Many since then have. Field is angular, wave is straight. We can convert them back and forth. A field and a wave have a different physical structure and momentum. Momentum and structure have direction and orientation.

An antenna is a linear to angular and angular to linear, field/wave and wave/field transducer.

I too, interchange the term when I shouldn't, in my explanations.

I think the Parson's Magneton(1917-I think) model is much closer to reality. It has been updated and I think this model can just about answer most physics questions.

Such as physical cause and structure for all properties and events.

But that is just me. Most think I'm a crackpot.

 

Please tell me what powers an infinite EM field. What process is generating it?

In the classical view, charge generates a physical EM field. Coulomb showed that the electric force felt by a charge follows an inverse square law and so is zero only at infinity. Therefore, let's travel (an infinite distance) to the furthest region of space where the magnitude of the EM field is zero and "drop" a charge there; we'll find that we get a local EM field. You could say that the energy in the field came from the work we did to "carry" the charge that far, but that's the old fashioned view.

In the modern view, no process powers or generates the EM field; like gravity (another infinite field), it just is. What we call electric charge is the property that determines how an object will interact with the EM field, just like mass (inertial charge) is the property that determines how an object will interact with the gravitational field.

Do you believe that the field around an atom......is the same as the wave emitted from that atom?

There's a physical distinction between bound charges (like orbital electrons) and unbound charges (like free electrons), with the main difference being that bound electrons do not radiate like free electrons do. If they did, they'd quickly crash into the nucleus rendering all of chemistry and everything else we know impossible. Instead, atomically bound electrons only emit or absorb EM radiation when they change energy levels, which can only happen at certain discrete energy values.

So in the modern view, every atom is surrounded by the EM field because everything is surrounded by the EM field. In fact, the atom itself is nothing more than a bundle of field excitations interacting in particular ways at the subnuclear level. The EM field is just one of the many fundamental fields that comprise what we'd normally call "space".

Maxwell tried to do this. Many since then have. Field is angular, wave is straight. We can convert them back and forth. A field and a wave have a different physical structure and momentum. Momentum and structure have direction and orientation.

Classical physicists, such as Maxwell, tried to characterize physics in terms of physical fields and physical waves. The problem with that approach is that any such theory is doomed to be inconsistent, because fundamentally the universe does not behave classically (Bell's theorem). So when we get to the level of detail necessary to understand electrons and such, we have to jettison all the classical notions. In quantum physics, a field is nothing more than a function that maps a value to every point in an abstract space, and a wave is just a function that describes the dynamics of some quantity of interest. In other words, the fields and waves are mathematical, not physical.

Some people protest that physics has gotten too abstract, that there's a physical reality "out there" that the math is missing. But those people never offer an alternative that can compete with the predictive power and scope of modern physics.

 

Most believe just as you do. I need something a little more reasonable to consider. And I just can not believe nature is so complicated as modern theory insists.

It just seems to me that with the history of the same reactions for eons of locations......something is very sure and fundamental.

Is it really that hard to understand what a small atom is? And with all the constant atomic potentials and all the constant reactions............wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that the electrons have definite positions and the atom, a definite structure?

Some think a physical structure can not be considered with such things. So all the firm structures we have.......can not be modeled from a fundamental structure? They say yes.....that's the way it is.....and call it science.

I think every property comes from structure. Structure is what keeps things the way they are.

That's just the way I look at it. I might not be right, but I do believe that I am closer than the standard model.

 

Most believe just as you do. I need something a little more reasonable to consider. And I just can not believe nature is so complicated as modern theory insists.

It just seems to me that with the history of the same reactions for eons of locations......something is very sure and fundamental.

Is it really that hard to understand what a small atom is? And with all the constant atomic potentials and all the constant reactions............wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that the electrons have definite positions and the atom, a definite structure?

Some think a physical structure can not be considered with such things. So all the firm structures we have.......can not be modeled from a fundamental structure? They say yes.....that's the way it is.....and call it science.

I think every property comes from structure. Structure is what keeps things the way they are.

That's just the way I look at it. I might not be right, but I do believe that I am closer than the standard model.

Hello there,

If you want to come up with alternate theories that's fine, but from what you are saying it sounds like yours must be more intuitive and simpler. That means that the math behind them must be simpler than the math we are seeing today. That means you should be able to prove them easily.

Logic is there for proving or disproving things that we think might be true, and math is the logic used in science for many problems like this so you need to prove your new theory using math. No reason to frown on that though, because yours should be much simpler than the current.
Once you come up with the math then you need to test it against at least a handful of experimental data collected from relevant experiments.

 

Most believe just as you do. I need something a little more reasonable to consider. And I just can not believe nature is so complicated as modern theory insists.

Some minimum level of complexity seems to be necessary for "interesting things" to happen. An empty universe is very simple but also very uninteresting. Add a million hydrogen atoms, scattered about, and it becomes more complex but still nothing much happens. Now pack the universe with so much hydrogen that an atom cannot wiggle without crashing into its neighbor. From this blindingly hot plasma, lots of interesting things start happening.

As far as we can tell, the most complex process of all is life. Perhaps it's not coincidental that it is also the most interesting.

Is it really that hard to understand what a small atom is? And with all the constant atomic potentials and all the constant reactions............wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that the electrons have definite positions and the atom, a definite structure?

It took humanity a long time to figure out that everything we see and experience is really made of invisibly tiny stuff, that rocks and fire and people are just different arrangements of the same fundamental components. Naturally, we first assumed that the building blocks were like ordinary stuff, just much smaller: atoms were tiny Lego pieces that connected together with even tinier pieces, electrons. This viewpoint stuck around for a while, because you can actually do a tremendous amount of useful stuff thinking this way. So scientists were happy: we had a simple and very useful Lego-style model of a universe made from protons and electrons.

But there were holes in the theory -- why doesn't an orbiting electron fall into the nucleus? what makes an atom radioactive? -- and the more we probed and experimented, the more it became clear that protons and electrons weren't enough. In 1932 the neutron was discovered and suddenly physicists had to add a new piece to their Lego sets. The resulting model was far more complex, having to account for several new degrees of nuclear freedom, but the loss of simplicity was more than made up for with the gain in predictive and explanatory power. Atoms are unstable when they have excess neutrons, but a neutron can turn into a proton if the atom emits an electron. They called this process beta decay, and though it answers a bunch of questions, it opens up a world of new ones.

And so it goes, simple theories becoming more complex the more we explore. After centuries of following the clues, we've arrived at the point where the only useful analogies are mathematical. The fundamental Lego pieces cannot be like tiny bricks or anything else we might recognize, so we associate them with mathematical objects that have vaguely familiar names, like field, wave, and group. In one sense, it is profoundly disappointing that fundamental physical reality seems to be so far removed from regular experience. But in another sense we should count ourselves incredibly fortunate that we have any language whatsoever that is capable of adequately describing the universe.

I think every property comes from structure. Structure is what keeps things the way they are.

A modern physicist would 100% agree with you, but they would say that the structure is mathematical.

 

I look at this stuff in an entirely different context. This is why I think science died 100 years ago.

The very purpose of science for centuries....was to eliminate probability and various explanations through understanding the real event. During that time we made some progress and had new meaningful discoveries and more real fundamental knowledge. When Faraday finally understood induction.......he made the worse mistake in science history.....he asked a mathematician to describe it mathematically. Real true science died that very day.

When asked to prove a math structure, such as curved space or dark matter.......they say an eclipse and a galaxy rotation prove it. A real physical structure.

I get confused. Does a math structure prove the physical structure or does the physical structure prove the math structure. Which one has the power and cause? And some will answer back and say they prove each other. And that, that result.......proves reality, whether we like it or not.

Let's just stop right there. Whatever reality turns out to be.......I will like it. That's why I'm looking for it. I am talking about physical reality. No life is allowed. Life is supernatural. The only singularity ever detected. I am talking atomic reality only. Cosmic dirt. Stuff.

Look back at the history of observation, measurement, theories, math equations for the force vectors to obtain an elliptical orbit of a planet. This reality was proved, verified and taught over and over. And when everyone was agreed....nature cracked her veil with a distant moon in a dust field. Surprise. What is the theory for those force vectors? We need a reality adjustment. Not one headline. Back in the olden days.....one could not criticize the church. Discoveries were covered up. Today, science is the church and un-discoveries are covered up.

Let's return to serious thought. The electron and proton have an electric charge potential of e.
If I paint a stripe on the side of the particle......every rotation will give me a displacement of one e.
That's about 20 amps for an electron and 30,000 amps for the proton. Think about that. With current comes B flux. Think about that.

Most people have not done this(they play with same size M)......but get a large bar M and a small bar M. Is there any question....as to where that small magnet is going to end up? It will line up on one particular end, not just any end, of the large magnet. Throw in another small M....where will it go?

Magnetic flux holds an atom together. No math needed.

The math is available for those who require it. I can not give you a link(do to forum rules).....but google Parson's Magneton.......go down the results and look for the words common sense. One can learn much more with their explanations of the math. Might surprise some. Lot's of old knowledge. Great history information.

I do not agree with their complete model and theory. I believe they are blind to the obvious explanation of anti-matter and also the physical location of neutron, and why it is, where it is....it has an important purpose or function as they say.

However....this model has proved to more accurately describe and verify the periodic table than the standard model. It predicted new isotopes and spectral families that have been verified. Does that count?

And it shows the physical cause for all properties. A self powered dynamic structure. A multi-generator OF properties.

All done with a repulsive electrical rotation within a compressive magnetic rotation. This model makes sense.

It's got nuts and bolts....if you get my meaning.

 

I look at this stuff in an entirely different context. This is why I think science died 100 years ago.

The very purpose of science for centuries....was to eliminate probability and various explanations through understanding the real event. During that time we made some progress and had new meaningful discoveries and more real fundamental knowledge. When Faraday finally understood induction.......he made the worse mistake in science history.....he asked a mathematician to describe it mathematically. Real true science died that very day.

But without the math, how was Faraday or anyone else supposed to make predictions? It's not enough to say that an electric current generates a magnetic field -- we need to know how much current and how much flux, under what conditions, etc. The essence of science is not to find data, but to find physical laws from the data.

Faraday knew that experimental results, no matter how brilliantly derived, are impotent without a mathematical framework.

When asked to prove a math structure, such as curved space or dark matter.......they say an eclipse and a galaxy rotation prove it. A real physical structure.

I get confused. Does a math structure prove the physical structure or does the physical structure prove the math structure. Which one has the power and cause? And some will answer back and say they prove each other. And that, that result.......proves reality, whether we like it or not.

I think this gets to the heart of the disconnect. It's commonly thought that the purpose of physics is to describe the reality that is "out there", the sky and the stars and the rocks as they exist independently from us humans. But this is entirely mistaken; the purpose of physics is to model the universe as we humans experience it, because that is our only possible choice. We have no way of knowing what is really "out there"; we can only know what our senses tell us. Even when we build machines that transcend our senses, we can only interface with and interpret the machines through our senses.

Literally everything that we experience has been heavily filtered and processed by our brains, a fact which we constantly take for granted. When we describe some phenomenon as happening over time in 3 spatial dimensions, what's left unsaid is that we experience it as happening over what we call time, in what we call 3 spatial dimensions. Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing what is really happening "out there".

Consider the electron. Too small to see, but easy enough to detect. The question of whether electrons "really exist" or not is irrelevant; something in our experience jibes with the collection of properties that we describe as an electron. So what is the electron, if not that particular collection of properties? We give these properties familiar names -- mass, charge, spin -- but they are mathematical abstractions. When I pick up a rock I don't experience mass; I experience weight: if I take the rock to deep space, my experience of the rock changes not because its mass has changed (it hasn't), but because its weight has. Mass, like charge and the rest, is an abstraction, a number we can use in calculations. We call these abstractions properties when they don't change under certain mathematical transformations. We casually say "This object has that property" and we say it enough to believe it. But what we actually mean is "Our mathematical model of this experiential phenomenon has this invariant under that transformation."

It's a bit disorienting to think about, but electrons and protons and such are nothing more than particular collections of mathematical properties. They are mathematical concepts, willed into existence by our imaginations. That they correspond with certain aspects of our experience is nothing special -- that's why we bothered to identify them in the first place. And so it goes with everything. Of course, we have all kinds of models for the things of everyday experience. The Sun is a very different thing to a farmer, to a butcher, and to an astrophysicist. Each has their model, and none has anything to do with what is really happening "out there".

So, when a physicists says that spacetime is curved, what they're really saying is that the geometry of our mathematical model of spacetime is curved. Likewise, when they point to the eclipse as evidence, they're really pointing to our mathematical model of celestial objects. No one can point to the reality "out there" and say this is what it actually is.

The electron and proton have an electric charge potential of e.
If I paint a stripe on the side of the particle......every rotation will give me a displacement of one e.
That's about 20 amps for an electron and 30,000 amps for the proton. Think about that. With current comes B flux. Think about that.

Can you explain how you calculated those numbers? What's the rotation rate? Current needs a conductor, so how does a rotating proton generate a current? Electrons are out of the question as they can't be rotated (they don't have spatial extent).

Magnetic flux holds an atom together. No math needed.

Then how do you explain magnetism itself? With math you can see that the electric and magnetic fields are Lorentz duals of each other, depending on your choice of rest frame. With math you can see that there's no such thing as the electric field or the magnetic field, they're both just convenient ways to describe the EM field.

However....this model has proved to more accurately describe and verify the periodic table than the standard model. It predicted new isotopes and spectral families that have been verified. Does that count?

Sure, it counts in chemistry for a lot! Every field and subfield of science will have its own focus and its own models. The models that are important to an astrophysicist won't be too useful for the condensed matter guys, and vice-versa. What does a marine biologist care of the standard model?

The point is that regardless of the details, every model is nonetheless a model and, as such, an abstraction. In particular, all models come equipped with certain "axioms", things that are assumed to exist without explanation. The marine biologist's models take cells and life as given; the molecular biologist's models do not, and so must explain such phenomena in the models.

At the fundamental physics level, precious little is given or assumed; the myriad of physical phenomena must be explained piece by piece. In order to do this systematically and cogently, everything is treated mathematically. So while there may be physical models that are more to your liking -- more nuts & bolts, less abstract math -- it might be useful to think about what kinds of assumptions they come equipped with. As unappealing as the standard model may seem, you really do have to marvel at its scope.

 

But without the math, how was Faraday or anyone else supposed to make predictions? It's not enough to say that an electric current generates a magnetic field -- we need to know how much current and how much flux, under what conditions, etc. The essence of science is not to find data, but to find physical laws from the data.

Faraday knew that experimental results, no matter how brilliantly derived, are impotent without a mathematical framework.


I think this gets to the heart of the disconnect. It's commonly thought that the purpose of physics is to describe the reality that is "out there", the sky and the stars and the rocks as they exist independently from us humans. But this is entirely mistaken; the purpose of physics is to model the universe as we humans experience it, because that is our only possible choice. We have no way of knowing what is really "out there"; we can only know what our senses tell us. Even when we build machines that transcend our senses, we can only interface with and interpret the machines through our senses.

Literally everything that we experience has been heavily filtered and processed by our brains, a fact which we constantly take for granted. When we describe some phenomenon as happening over time in 3 spatial dimensions, what's left unsaid is that we experience it as happening over what we call time, in what we call 3 spatial dimensions. Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing what is really happening "out there".

Consider the electron. Too small to see, but easy enough to detect. The question of whether electrons "really exist" or not is irrelevant; something in our experience jibes with the collection of properties that we describe as an electron. So what is the electron, if not that particular collection of properties? We give these properties familiar names -- mass, charge, spin -- but they are mathematical abstractions. When I pick up a rock I don't experience mass; I experience weight: if I take the rock to deep space, my experience of the rock changes not because its mass has changed (it hasn't), but because its weight has. Mass, like charge and the rest, is an abstraction, a number we can use in calculations. We call these abstractions properties when they don't change under certain mathematical transformations. We casually say "This object has that property" and we say it enough to believe it. But what we actually mean is "Our mathematical model of this experiential phenomenon has this invariant under that transformation."

It's a bit disorienting to think about, but electrons and protons and such are nothing more than particular collections of mathematical properties. They are mathematical concepts, willed into existence by our imaginations. That they correspond with certain aspects of our experience is nothing special -- that's why we bothered to identify them in the first place. And so it goes with everything. Of course, we have all kinds of models for the things of everyday experience. The Sun is a very different thing to a farmer, to a butcher, and to an astrophysicist. Each has their model, and none has anything to do with what is really happening "out there".

So, when a physicists says that spacetime is curved, what they're really saying is that the geometry of our mathematical model of spacetime is curved. Likewise, when they point to the eclipse as evidence, they're really pointing to our mathematical model of celestial objects. No one can point to the reality "out there" and say this is what it actually is.


Can you explain how you calculated those numbers? What's the rotation rate? Current needs a conductor, so how does a rotating proton generate a current? Electrons are out of the question as they can't be rotated (they don't have spatial extent).


Then how do you explain magnetism itself? With math you can see that the electric and magnetic fields are Lorentz duals of each other, depending on your choice of rest frame. With math you can see that there's no such thing as the electric field or the magnetic field, they're both just convenient ways to describe the EM field.


Sure, it counts in chemistry for a lot! Every field and subfield of science will have its own focus and its own models. The models that are important to an astrophysicist won't be too useful for the condensed matter guys, and vice-versa. What does a marine biologist care of the standard model?

The point is that regardless of the details, every model is nonetheless a model and, as such, an abstraction. In particular, all models come equipped with certain "axioms", things that are assumed to exist without explanation. The marine biologist's models take cells and life as given; the molecular biologist's models do not, and so must explain such phenomena in the models.

At the fundamental physics level, precious little is given or assumed; the myriad of physical phenomena must be explained piece by piece. In order to do this systematically and cogently, everything is treated mathematically. So while there may be physical models that are more to your liking -- more nuts & bolts, less abstract math -- it might be useful to think about what kinds of assumptions they come equipped with. As unappealing as the standard model may seem, you really do have to marvel at its scope.

I want to drink beer with you.