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On Sunday, November 23, 2003, at 05:49 PM, Paul Zielinski wrote:
andrew laidlaw wrote:
Dear Paul,
A few months ago, I came across one of Jack Sarfatti's
critiques on Hal Puthoff's PV article. Feeling that
the criticism was less than fair (and given the fairly
close correspondence between Yilmaz and PV), I wrote
to him saying he was missing the point, namely that
(whether PV is true or false) between Yilmaz and PV we
could begin to see gravity as emerging from an
intelligible physical system. That email was quite
widely distributed, and I received a total of seven
replies, including one from a davidg, who strongly
suggested that I should talk to you (I think someone
may even have sent you a copy of the original
correspondence?). He wrote:
Andrew,
You should definitely talk to Paul Zelinsky,
pzielins@ix.netcom.com , he has given alot of thought
to this issue.
I was especially interested in why folk reject Yilmaz
so readily.
I have a theory about this. It's partly socio-psychological, but mainly technically
internal to the subject.
You are talking about the content in Ch 20 of MTW "Flux Integrals for 4-momentum and angular momentum" agreed?
For the record my remarks on "metric engineering" have little to do with that issue. All of my remarks have to do with
bona-fide local tensors within GR in which the local stress-energy density tensor for pure space-time geometry is trivially
Tuv(Geometry) = (String Tension)Guv(Geometry).
In the non-exotic vacuum where /\zpf = 0
Tuv(Geometry) = 0
As I recall the "Freud Identity" has to do with defining the geometrodynamic flux integrals in specifically asymptotically flat space-times only?
MTW make no mention of the "Freud Identity" crisis although Pauli does - but then again he worked with Jung! :-)
You have to understand that when Einstein publicly repudiated almost his entire
heuristic and epistemological position on relativity around 1920-1926, no
one who was anybody in modern physics wanted to hear it.
Einstein, quite understandably, ended up targeting his born-again realist fire on
quantum mechanics and Copenhagenism.
In 1926 Einstein privately told a perplexed Heisenberg that much of what he had
written on the foundations of special relativity was "rubbish". By this time I am told
he was reading Blavatsky on the occult aether.
Can you prove that last sentence? Einstein did write a forward to "Mental Radio" I think by some famous American writer.
Scratch a visionary theoretical physicist and find a Tech Gnostic. ;-)
Reminding JS of the fact that GR fails to
conserve the 4-momentum,
That statement is so vague as to be meaningless.
and why Yilmaz insists on the
Freud identity, I sent him the relevant equations from
Yilmaz's letter to nuovo cimento.
The situation with the vacuum stress-energy density in canonical GR is unbelievably
screwed up. We are not supposed to be able to define a localizable frame-independent
quantity, for reasons that are arguably incoherent with the rest of the canonical theory.
There is in canonical theory no analog of classical field potential energy.
A gravitational pulse has a curvature component that travels at an objective
velocity of propagation, and a linear component whose velocity of propagation
is frame-dependent (as pointed out by Eddington in 1923).
Now that is "incoherent" on more than one level.
No comment until I do some serious homework on that. By "linear" you mean linear in the "connection field"?
He "couldn't read"
them from my emailed script. So I asked for his fax
number - nothing comes back. So I scan and send him
the article. Now he is "overseas". At the end of the
day, what I received back from a dozen emails all
raising actual content was, in effect, a bunch of
marketing content surrounding a muddled and
meaningless "Yilmaz is asking the wrong questions".
This is not just about Jack. This is the "received" view of the matter. Jack is relying on
the authority of the luminaries of the contemporary gravitational physics establishment.
To keep Jack honest, I was dialectically "affirming the weaker case" that that the canonical
MTW gloss is internally incoherent, since it contains a vestigial residue of the original
Einstein theory of strict gravitational-inertial equivalence, which I and many others say is
not tenable.
Again I say this "strict gravitational-inertial equivalence" is a not a real issue since no one professes it,
certainly not MTW in the "strict" sense. Since the 4th rank curvature tensor is a local tensor if it is non-zero
in one frame, it is non-zero in ALL frames. The EEP never asserts that the local curvature can be set to zero.
It only says the connection can be set to zero locally in an LIF which still has local curvature. The tidal
geodesic deviation relative acceleration between 2 neighboring test particles can be made small provided
we are not near a black hole and not down at the Planck scale.
It all started out as a light-hearted exercise in post-modernistic deconstruction, but I ended up
taking it quite seriously.
If this is right, it still doesn't necessarily mean that Yilmaz's theory is correct, or preferable
to GR; it just removes a fundamental objection to a Yilmaz-type theory.
Which is? I see no need for a "bimetric theory" apart from standard GR where the LIF local metric is approximately flat and the LNIF metric at the same event P is not. The physical difference is the weightless free float of the LIF observer and the onerous weight felt by the LNIF observer.
If my arguments are right, in the absence of additional fundamental objections,
the question of which alternative theory is preferable then largely reduces to an empirical
question.
Let Yilmaz explain the pulsar gravity waves to the great accuracy that Penrose showed in I think it's "Shadows of the Mind" for which a Nobel Prize was awarded. Let Yilmaz duplicate all the checks that Cliff Will writes about.
At that time, I wasn't taking PV all that seriously
and even agreed with some of JS technical criticisms
(that HP was playing fast and loose with Lorentz
factors in a dielectric).
Yes, those ill-posed "Tables I & II."
Again my interest is not in Yilmaz only in the claims by Puthoff et-al that PV is a
"metric engineering" model of significance being the Right Stuff to Make Star Trek Real.
For example:
Engineering the Zero Point Field and Polarizable Vacuum
for Interstellar Flight - KeelyNet 04/06/02
Introduction
A paper that I presented at the First International Workshop on Field Propulsion in the UK a little over a year ago has now been published (after peer review and changes) in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society (JBIS), copy enclosed. We are very pleased with this publication, as it presents a very balanced view.
First, we cover the potential promise of manipulating vacuum energy for spaceflight energy/propulsion, while also presenting a very sober analysis of the daunting problems involved.
Second, we take a look at the so-called “EXH electromagnetic field propulsion” of interest to many, only to find (unfortunately) that it is flawed at its roots because of rather arcane reasons. Hopefully this latter finding will encourage other researchers to redirect their efforts along more fruitful lines.
Finally, in Table 2 we present the basics of truly exotic propulsion based on a “metric engineering” approach to general relativity that hopefully some day will result in engineering embodiments.
Best regards,
wrote Hal Puthoff in http://www.keelynet.com/energy/engzpf.htm
BTW Hal is essentially correct on the “EXH electromagnetic field propulsion”, which has nothing to do with PV, but with Jim Corum's work at SARA and ISR into which we at ISSO pumped about a million dollars into SARA only to conclude that Hal was correct on that one.
Perfectly legitimate criticisms of HP's particular version of PV.
Since then I've looked into
the references in Hal's article and concluded that,
inter alia, his usage of the Lorentz factors is fine.
Maybe, maybe not. But either way it is a legitimate criticism IMO.
It is quite obvious IMHO that Laidlaw is not qualifed to make that remark about the Lorentz factors.
It also turns out that the physical analogy I'm
investigating is, for better or worse, much closer to
PV than I'd understood.
That's basically background. Just this morning I've
been looking at a bunch more correspondence between JS
and HP, and also between JS and you. No wonder I
couldn't get any sense out of the man! In effect, his
discussion of why Yilmaz is so wrong can be thought of
in two parts: first it is wrong because it does not
conform to certain implications of the original GT,
If "GT" (I call it GR) is "true", then such an inconsistency would mean that Yilmaz
is wrong.
But it would IMO be hopelessly naive to suppose that canonical GR is "true".
Even Einstein didn't think that.
I don't know what "true" means here. No physics theory is "true" only "falsifiable" in
Popper's sense - you agree? All good physics theories are eventually falsified outside
their proper domains of validity.
The undeniable empirical accuracy of formal-empirical GR does not and cannot
in itself decide the issue, obviously -- since Yilmaz is at this stage is in practice
empirically indistinguishable from GR -- although in principle distinguishable
I am not sure if that is true. In that case, GR wins by Occam's Razor, more with less.
Yilmaz introduces an obscure interpretation that is not needed as far as I was able to tell.
and second it is wrong because (list of names
including MTW) agree with the "battle tested" status
quo.
Well, that is a pragmatic argument -- stick with the devil you know. I think that
is a legitimate position to take, since Yilmaz's theory is still at this point a can
of worms.
But I have found that, from the standpoint of objective criticism, canonically
interpreted GR is *also* a can of worms.
Again, let's pin this down. Do you mean Ch 20 in MTW? What else?
To the point that I am now arguing that "general relativity" as originally
conceived by Einstein was in fact abandoned by 1920 at the latest.
Perhaps you are correct, I have not done the historical research. But let's be clear what you are saying here.
The formal structure did not change, what shifted was the interpretive informal language explaining the meaning
of the theory mainly to students and laymen. Agreed? Most theorists only care about the math and connecting the
math to data. We see that especially in quantum physics. Hawking proudly says he is a positivist. He is quite candid
about that.
The term is still used, but it now has a fundamentally different meaning and, literally
construed, is not "general relativity" at all.
Again this is invalid from a Wittgensteinian view. The meaning is in the use. Mainstream consensus, like democracy, is an
essential core of science although it can be corrupted as it was under Hitler and Stalin and now, some say
under Ginsparg who controls the e-print archive. ;-)
Therefore, "GR" mean the set of rules formal and informal that top physicists like MTW use. That these rules may have shifted between 1920 and 2003 is normal progress! The problem is that ignorant crackpots run wild in the cyber-streets like the Red Brigades pointing to over-stated remarks like you make.
PZ wrote:
From my POV GR is merely a formally covariant metric-tensor theory of the gravitational field that entails a *limited structural analogy* between inertial and gravitational effects, based on a partial mathematical analogy (derived from an abstract model of a deformable pseudo-Riemannian manifold) that is open to *multiple physical interpretations*.
Yes, that's my position all along.
But there is IMO now little question that the physical ("permanent") gravity field is
in its entirety *absolute* (as opposed to frame-dependent).
Yes, all that means "4th rank curvature tensor" =/= 0.
(Jack -- this is not "absolute" in the sense that the metric structure of the vacuum
does not depend on the distribution of matter, but in the sense of "frame-independent").
Local tensors all the way.
Sum of all stress-energy density tensor fields at a point P add to zero.
That's the meaning of Einstein's field equation in ALL local frames.
The word "all" includes pure geometry and the rate of exchange between geometry and stress-energy density is "string tension" which is for fields what c^2 is for real particles in the mass shell constraint E = Mc^2, where m is the rest mass, M = (Lorentz Factor)m when m =/= 0
i.e. E^2 = (pc)^2 + (mc^2)^2
when m =/= 0
E = +-[(pc)^2 + (mc^2)^2]^1/2 = [1 + (pc/mc^2)^2]^1/2mc^2
p = [1 - (v/c)^2]^-1/2mv
1 + [1 - (v/c)^2]^-1(v/c)^2 = [1 - (v/c)^2]^-1
Therefore,
E = +- [1 - (v/c)^2]^-1/2mc^2
for a REAL on-mass-shell particle when m =/ = 0, otherwise E = pc when m = 0.
All this breaks down for off-mass-shell VIRTUAL particles that are either inside the vacuum, or in the case of near EM fields are trapped energy in MACRO-QUANTUM induction fields like in electric motors and magnetic materials.
This is all for particles, i.e. poles of single-particle Feynman propagators in the complex energy plane for Fourier transforms of space-time field correlation functions.
Now in the case of the analogy to the geometrodynamic field, "E" is replaced by the local stress-energy density tensor Tuv. c^2 is replaced by "string tension" and m is replaced by 2nd rank tensor curvature Guv = Ruv - (1/2)Rguv.
E = mc^2 for REAL particles
Tuv(Geometry) = Guv(Geometry)(string tension) for the pure "marble" geometrodynamic LOCAL field
Where the 1915 field equation is
Tuv(Marble) + Tuv(Wood) = 0
After all, the Einstein-Hilbert field equations were arrived at in a hypothetico-deductive
trial-and-error process that relied largely on purely formal considerations, including
mathematical elegance and simplicity, together with fundamental requirements based on
correspondence considerations with respect to Newtonian physics and SR.
They were not carried down chiseled in stone by Moses from Mt. Sinai.
Oh yeah? Wanna bet? :-)
Einstein wanted to know "God's thoughts" and made a bargain that left us with nuclear fission and fusion WMD. ;-)
Is The Lord subtle and not malicious?
Even Einstein talked of "one wing of marble, and one of wood". One side is
still up for grabs even in canonical GR, and the validity of a particular set of field
equations is ultimately an empirical matter as long as they are internally consistent
and we get a satisfactory empirical correspondence with Newtonian gravity and SR.
In short, I'd brand JS's entire error ridden
position as disingenous tosh.
But then you would have to say the same of Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler.
This is not just about Jack.
I can't see any problem
with Yilmaz's derivation of the equivalence principle
What is "wrong" with it is that it reverts to the pre-relativistic concept of *inertial
compensation*, which conflicts with the vestigial Trinitarian dogma of Einstein
equivalence (strict gravitational-inertial equivalence) which is the original heuristic
basis for the unified gravitational-inertial metric.
OK what I think those words mean is simply.
connection field = tensor part + non-tensor part
tensor part = real gravity
non-tensor part = phony "inertial force" gravity.
In a small enough region of space-time, even with non-vanishing curvature tensor
we can find LIFs on timelike geodesics such that in those LIFS
connection field = 0
Therefore,
phony inertial gravity g-force field ~ - real curvature gravity g-force field
total g-force in LIF ~ 0
as any astronaut who has been out in space will tell you and as the films of them in free float tell you.
This is the EEP CRYSTAL CLEAR and we do not need any "Less with more" Yilmaz "two metrics" or
Puthoff's "Tables I & II" which are" elliptical billiard balls" spoiling a very pretty game.
Yilmaz & PV together remind me of Professor Irwin Corey doing a shtick at Enrico
Banducci's table for Marshall Naify as we ate Angel Wings and Enrico played the violin
while Lucky threw a drunk out on the street. :-)
That is a dagger at the heart of the entire curved-air technotheocracy.
I do not think so.
I am reminded of the unfortunate Pythagorean who proved the existence of irrational
numbers.
I just gave my counter example above. What could be simpler and clearer?
They had to kill him.
However, if you read the fine print disclaimers, you discover that in the opinion of
none other than MTW co-author Kip Thorne, the question as to whether spacetime is
actually "curved" is *scientifically meaningless* (Black Holes and Time Warps).
Correct. Therefore, for Hal to argue that it is not really curved IS scientifically meaningless - exactly my point.
nor with his argument that it is actually impossible
to demonstrate the full principle from within the GT.
The problems he raises about the GT failure to reduce
to ST, about its overdetermination and so on are deep
and unequivocal. It is quite clear from our
correspondence that JS has never actually read the
Yilmaz source material.
I gave it to him.
I tried to read it. It looked like bad physics. In any case
I gave up trying to wade through the overly obscure presentation.
I don't want to be so
impolite, but so many impolite JS allegations (you
guys don't understand the physics, are arguing
nonmathematically and are indeed crackpots)
Well, most people to try to attack canonical relativity from outside
the institutional matrix are generally pretty crankish.
The problem is this same brush is used to tar *anyone* outside the establishment
who attempts to advance fundamental objections to or criticisms of the canonical
theory, no matter how rational and articulate
It's a standard ideological response.
A good example of this attitude is an article written for Salon.com by the aggressively
clueless science-groupie, John Farrell:
http://dir.salon.com/people/feature/2000/07/06/einstein/index.html
(in his defense, I would point out that in my experience Farrell is just a "useful
idiot" who actually believes his own junk propaganda).
render him
fair game in my book. He should reserve such language
for people like me. (I'm copying this to JS, by the
way.)
When I came to gravity (just a couple of years ago) I
had not thought to look beyond the GT, and would
definitely have considered myself very much
pro-einstein,
Whatever *that* means.
Will the real Albert Einstein please stand up?
but just looking for a different, more
physical method to complement the status quo rather
than to replace it. It rapidly become clear that there
are no physical systems corresponding to the GT,
Post-1916 Einstein thought otherwise. If you haven't yet, you might want to look
at his 1920 talk given at the University of Leyden, which is available online.
Let me grant you this for the moment. So what's the big deal? This is the way
the understanding of all theories progresses.
whilst there is a host of technical problems no one
talks about outside the field. Although I can no
longer accept the GT, this in no way diminishes
Einstein's seminal contribution to the subject.
Again, *Einstein himself* repudiated the iconic Einstein of special relativity
fame, so beloved of noisy idiot-groupies like Farrell.
A lot of people -- including some physicists -- don't seem to understand that
canonical GR supersedes canonical SR and is fundamentally inconsistent with it.
Not when you properly interpret it like I just did above.
Yes, there is a *correspondence relationship* that accounts for the limited prior
empirical success of SR -- but that's all.
That's more than enough!
I'm a long way from saying here that either Yilmaz or
PV is the final word for even a classical theory of
gravity, and at present I'm trying to understand an
area where these two otherwise similar structures
diverge i.e. N-body metrics.
I would sharply distinguish between the interpretive question of inertial compensation
that is raised by Yilmaz, and the question of which theory is empirically correct.
I just showed you above how to think about that. It's simple. No big deal really.
The mass transformation
in a gravitational field seems to make the source
terms in yilmaz's exponential metric, sum(m_i/r_i),
non-superposable in the PV context. HP (and Dicke and
others working in related veins) talks about his ideas
extending to symmetries other than the spherical, but
seems to concede in saying that that there is no
general N-body metric for PV.
At one point Yilmaz claimed that there are no true n-body solutions in GR -- although
I think this claim has been refuted.
I'd like to understand better why, even given that his
masses don't transform, Yilmaz is able to superpose
the various m_i/r_i terms in spite of the metric
changes along radii in the N-body context. Has he
discussed this point in any published article, or
perhaps would you be able to explain it?
As I recall, he says that this is because his n-body field equations are linear
and the solutions are consequently superposable.
It's much more like a classical field theory.
If you look at the standard Yilmaz references I think it's in there.
Then I'd like to ask a question: After coming to the
exponential metric, why did Dicke and Puthoff each do
the parameter fitting so as to put the mass into the
constant in the exponent? It seems to me that these
theories necessitate a distinction between the two
concepts, mass and energy, that we use in physics to
put "stuff" into equations.
"Mass" being a quantitative measure of inertia and also of gravitational
influence, which are now thought to be characteristics of both "matter"
and "energy".
For these theories M and
E are not simply connected by c^2, a constant, but
rather the relationship depends on the space within
which a system is instantiated.
Right.
Right? Why right? Justify that with an example. What does
"M and E are not simply connected by c^2, a constant, but
rather the relationship depends on the space within
which a system is instantiated."
mean to you Paul? It sounds like gibberish to me.
Classical SR is wrong "almost everywhere" (its domain of validity is
a spacetime point, in free-fall).
A point does not fall. You mean an "observer."
In any case, even according to Einstein, there is really no relativistic
mass even in canonical SR. The primary definition of relativistic mass
in SR is not even isotropic -- you have a longitudinal "mass" and a
separate transverse "mass".
Save this one for another day. See my mass shell argument above.
Yet the amount of matter in a speeding particle is a single determinate
quantity.
It's a kinematical illusion.
So we must be careful
to choose the correct variable: is it exp(2GM/rc^2) or
exp(2GE/rc^4), where c goes in as a constant?
Again I say this distinction in the above context is bogus.
I am surprised Paul that you let him get away with that one.
A related question might be, is the Yilmaz field self-gravitating? Does
gravitational energy itself act as a gravitating "mass"?
If Yilmaz can get an accurate theory out of a linear classical-like n-body
field, with no self-gravitation, that would raise some interesting questions in
my mind.
In the
second expression, E and r both transform the same, so
the ratio E/r is at least observer independent, right?
I appreciate, from the correspondence between JS and
HP, that Hal's r is "the value we would get if we
could carry undistorted rulers into the field", and
would like to extend that to say that, for any
observer, r is the value he would get if he could use
his rulers for the measurement. Is that even possibly
reasonable?
Interesting questions. I'd have to spend some time looking into the details
(I'm not really a physicist), so I've copied this reply to HP so that maybe
we can get answers straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak. :-)
IMHO it's all Laputan gibberish with no important operational meaning - no interesting gedankenexperiments.
Apart from those, you do seem to be somewhat open to
Yilmaz gravity without being an advocate.
I like banging theories into each other.
I also think that there is quite a lot of "hocus pocus" and "abracadabra"
surrounding canonical relativity theory that badly needs to see the light of
day.
Perhaps you
would be able to provide some insights into the
original questions I had been addressing to JS? If
you would be prepared to do so, I'll send over some of
the old correspondence.
Send it and, for what it's worth, I'll have a look at it.
Z.
Many thanks in advance.
regards.... andrew.
Back to http://www.keelynet.com/energy/engzpf.htm PV "metric engineering" another day.
