Friday, March 31, 2023

Forbidden Science

 What still belongs to Science and what does not? Who is to decide what is science and what is para-science or pseudo-science? Some kinds of research are welcomed at one university, but not at another. There are respected scientists, some of whom are Nobel Prize winners, who are ostracized, most of the time by gossip, by various covert activities of their colleagues, simply because they dare to ask questions and research phenomena that others consider as “unworthy”. I have already mentioned several such cases, one example being the treatment of the “strange interests” of Alfred Wallace by Encyclopedia Universalis.

Someone - we do not know who it was - decided that a major part of the research of a distinguished scientist should be suppressed – the public should not be told about it, that it is better to tell a lie than to tell an inconvenient truth.

Science in Secret?

A friend of mine, a distinguished French scientist, who is interested in many “esoteric” areas, tells me that one should keep these interests to oneself, otherwise one will be punished; covert actions of others will destroy your scientific career; and that is what he does – he will discuss certain things in private, but will never dare to say them in public. What kind of science forces scientists to work in secret, from fear? What kind of society gives birth to that kind of science?

William Crookes

While reading the remarkable autobiography of Alfred Wallace, Darwin’s colleague, the co-discoverer - if not the original discoverer of the mechanisms of evolution, I found the following interesting paragraph:

During the years 1870-80 I had many opportunities of witnessing interesting phenomena in the houses of various friends, some of which I have not made public. Early in 1874 I was invited by John Morley, then editor of the Fortnightly Review, to write an article on "Spiritualism" for that periodical. Much public interest had been excited by the publication of the Report of the Committee of the Dialectical Society, and especially by Mr. Crookes's experiments with Mr. Home, and the refusal of the Royal Society to see these experiments repeated. (Italics, mine.)

Who is Mr. Crookes? And what were these experiments that the Royal Society did not even want to witness? Remember: curiosity is a condition “sine qua non” of a true scientist! The Royal Society was not curious? Why? Perhaps the experiments of Mr. Crookes were not worthy of the attention of the learned society, because they did not suggest anything new?

To know more about the issues at hand, the first thing to do is to check: who was Mr. Crookes? According to Encyclopedia Universalis Sir William Crookes (1832-1919) was an English chemist, who inherited quite a fortune, so that he could do his research to some extent independently. He discovered thallium, and invented the first radiometer, known today as the “Crookes tube”.

Crookes tube

From Encyclopedia Britannica we learn, additionally, that William Crookes was knighted in 1897. Searching the net we can find, in particular,  an impressive list of awards:

Past President, Chemical Society, Brit. Assoc., Inst. Elect. Eng., Soc. Chem. Industry; Hon. Member, Roy. Phil. Soc. Glasgow, Roy. Soc. NSW, Pharm. Soc., Chem. Metall. and Mining Soc. of South Africa, Amer. Chem. Soc., Amer. Philos. Soc., Roy. Soc. Sci. Upsala, Deutsch. Chem. Gesell. Berlin, Psychol. Soc. Paris, Antonio Alzate Sci. Soc. Mexico, Sci. Soc. Bucharest, Reg. Accad. Zelanti; Foreign Mem. Accad. Lincei, Rome; Corresp. Inst. de France (Acad. Sci.), Corresp. Mem. Bataafsch Genoots., Rotterdam, Soc. Encouragement pour l'Indust. Paris; For. Assoc. National Acad. Sciences, Washington; Foreign Mem., Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. International Exhibition, 1862, medal; Acadèmie des Sciences, 1880, gold medal and prize of 3000 frs; Electrical Exhibitions, Paris, 1881, medal; Society of Arts, 1885, Fergusson Gold Medal; Exposition Universelle, Paris, 1889, medal; Society of Arts, 1899, Albert Gold Medal; Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, 1912, Elliott Cresson Gold Medal; Soc. Chem. Industry, 1912, gold medal. Royal medallist, Davy medallist, Copley medallist, and three times Bakerian Lecturer of the Royal Society.

I feel that I need to explain my reasons for including this long list of Crookes’ awards here. Do awards count? Do titles count? Facts are the only things that count - one may argue. Well, awards are also facts, and, most of the time, awards are given in recognition of someone’s skills and achievements.

Next post: You Shall Know Them by Their Fruits

P.S.1. 01-04-23 A friend, physicist, sent me this morning a link to this video by Rupert Sheldrake: 


Rupert Sheldrake - The Science Delusion BANNED TED TALK

And there, in particular:

00:09:53
But I want to spend a few moments on the constants of nature too. Because these are, again, assumed to be constant. Things like the gravitational constant of the speed of light are called the fundamental constants. Are they really constant? Well, when I got interested in this question, I tried to find out. They're given in physics handbooks. Handbooks of physics list the existing fundamental constants, tell you their value. But I wanted to see if they'd changed, so I got the old volumes of physical handbooks. I went to the patent office library here in London - they're the only place I could find that kept the old volumes. Normally people throw them away when the new values (volumes) come out, they throw away the old ones. When I did this I found that the speed of light dropped between nineteen twenty-eight and nineteen fourty-five by about twenty kilometers per second. It's a huge drop because they're given with errors of any fractions of a second/decimal points of error. And yet, all over the world, it dropped, and they were all getting very similar values to each other with tiny errors. Then in nineteen fourty-eight, it went up again. And then people started getting very similar values again. I was very intrigued by this and I couldn't make sense of it, so I went to see the head of metrology at the National Physical Laboratory in Eddington. Metrology is the science in which people measure constants. And I asked him about this, I said "what do you make of this drop in the speed of light between nineteen twenty-eight and nineteen fourty-five?" And he said "oh dear", he said "you've uncovered the most embarrassing episode in the history of our science."

So I said "well, could the speed of light have actually dropped? And that would have amazing implications if so." He said "no, no, of course it couldn't have actually dropped. It's a constant!" "Oh, well then how do you explain the fact that everyone was finding it going much slower during that period? Is it because they were fudging their results to get what they thought other people should be getting and the whole thing was just produced in the minds of physicists?" "We don't like to use the word 'fudge'."
I said "Well, so what do you prefer?" He said "well, we prefer to call it 'intellectual phase-locking'." So I said "well if it was going on then, how can you be so sure it's not going on today? And the present values produced are by intellectual phase-locking?" And he said "oh we know that's not the case."
And I said "how do we know?" He said "well", he said "we've solved the problem." And I said "well how?"
And he said "well we fixed the speed of light by definition in nineteen seventy-two."
So I said "but it might still change." He said "yes, but we'd never know it, because we've defined the metre in terms of the speed of light, so the units would change with it!"
So he looked very pleased about that, they'd fixed that problem.
But I said "well, then what about big G?" The gravitational constant, known in the trade as "big G", it was written with a capital G. Newton's universal gravitational constant.
"That's varied by more than 1.3% in recent years. And it seems to vary from place to place and from time to time." And he said "oh well, those are just errors. And unfortunately there are quite big errors with big G."
So I said "well, what if it's really changing? I mean, perhaps it is really changing." And then I looked at how they do it, what happens is they measure it in different labs, they get different values on different days, and then they average them. And then other labs around the world do the same, they come out usually with a rather different average. And then the international committee of metrology meets every ten years or so and average the ones from labs all around the world to come up with the value of big G. But what if G were actually fluctuating? What if it changed? There's already evidence actually that it changes throughout the day and throughout the year. What if the earth, as it moves through the galactic environment went through patches of dark matter or other environmental factors that could alter it? Maybe they all change together. What if these errors are going up together and down together? For more than ten years I've been trying to persuade metrologists to look at the raw data. In fact I'm now trying to persuade them to put it up online, on the internet. With the dates, and the actual measurements, and see if they're correlated. To see if they're all up at one time, all down at another. If so, they might be fluctuating together. And what would tell us something very, very interesting. But no-one has done this, they haven't done it because G is a constant. There's no point looking for changes. 

P.S.2.  April 1, 2023 17:22 Quantum Future is getting closer:




45 comments:

  1. Thank you for sharing this most fascinating perspective on science methods and human methods when "researching" and "doing science". Time after time we all need to remind ourselves that no human endeavour is free of stupidity, fear, ignorance and most of all, lazyness and lazy authorities. Our hope is to keep being curious and open to a fresh perspective while keeping our wits in this marvelous universe.

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    1. Thank you for your comment. I can see you wrote it deep from your heart.

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    2. ",,,,Time after time we all need to remind ourselves that no human endeavour is free of stupidity, fear, ignorance and most of all, lazyness and lazy authorities.,,,,".

      E.X.A.C.T.L.Y.

      Yes.

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  2. Interesting. Makes you ask yourself if the constant changes because you have a different perception of light or gravity. In the end it always seems to come down to how the measurement we make alters the system.

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  3. Measurement may be part of the story. But there are probably also "comophysical factors" - see Refs. [1], [2] in the paper by D.P. Rothall and R.T. Cahill dealing with this type of fluctuations:

    "Dynamical 3-Space: Gravitational Wave Detection and the Shnoll Effect"

    https://arxiv.org/pdf/1307.7437.pdf
    In Response to a comment by Unknown

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  4. Since history is my main interest, this caught my eye:
    'I said "what do you make of this drop in the speed of light between nineteen twenty-eight and nineteen fourty-five?" And he said "oh dear", he said "you've uncovered the most embarrassing episode in the history of our science."'

    1928 was the eve of the 1929 economic crash that led to the Great Depression. 1945 was at the end of WW II which was brought on by the Great Depression. We are on the eve of a similar Great Depression right now, it seems, and also possibly facing a WW III.

    I also wonder if fluctuating gravity waves could also be described as "unstable gravity waves" and is this just simply what gravity does? Also, could fluctuations in the speed of light be somehow correlated to the fluctuations in gravity? And, do both (and other unknown variables) have some profound effect on our reality, either on Earth or in the Cosmos?

    The name of that period - the Great Depression - is interesting. Could it have been a period when gravity was increased, thus "depressing" reality, even to the extent of slowing light? That is, when gravity increases, the speed of light decreases?

    Another speculation: does the mass consciousness of humanity have an effect on the "constants" of gravity and light.

    Too bad no one in a position to gather the relevant data is curious enough to check these things out. It might even prove to be a predictive tool.

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    1. @Laura
      As my freshly posted P.S.2. indicates superluminal communication is becoming a member of "allowed subjects" category in physics. Therefore "predicting" the future is a viable option, although such predictions must be almost always uncertain.

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    2. Laura, Your noticing that there may be a connection between the change in the value of G and the Great Recession and it would imply relation to a change in the state of human consciousness (human consciousness on a planetary scale) - I'am a advocate of this hipothesis. If you additionally take into account the well-known to You (anyhow certainly "somewhere" noted down by You) sentence that "gravity is the reciprocal of consciousness" (I don't remember exact words used), then changes in the value of G seem to be "surprisingly" justified.
      Focusing a significant part of humanity on survival, which was the result of difficulties in providing basic needs at that time, had a negative impact on the maintenance and development of humanity's consciousness (the survival instinct became the leading one - there was a kind of regression of consciousness). One could say that the consciousness of a large number of people decreased, therefore gravity on Earth increased (the value of the constant G measured at that time was higher). Access to the partial results of G measurements from the last few decades and their imposition on the chronology of events significant for humanity, could provide a better basis for making this "crazy" ;) hypothesis.
      I'm in some kind of shock after reading Ark's note and Your comment because hypothesis of the relationship between gravity and consciousness could have tangible evidence (maybe cause I have a tendency to misinterpretation information - wishful thinking disease)

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  5. Who knows what kind of effects increased gravity and slower light might cause. I'll just note here, in addition to what I already commented, 102 years ago from 2020, there was the great flu pandemic... but, of course, it was a REAL pandemic. Wikipedia tells us:

    "The earliest documented case was March 1918 in Kansas, United States, with further cases recorded in France, Germany and the United Kingdom in April. Two years later, nearly a third of the global population, or an estimated 500 million people, had been infected in four successive waves. Estimates of deaths range from 17 million to 50 million, and possibly as high as 100 million, making it one of the deadliest pandemics in history. [...]
    "Most influenza outbreaks disproportionately kill the young and old, with a higher survival rate in-between, but this pandemic had unusually high mortality for young adults. Scientists offer several explanations for the high mortality, including a six-year climate anomaly affecting migration of disease vectors with increased likelihood of spread through bodies of water." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu)

    The mention of the climate anomaly is a curious data point considering the fact that climate is a focus issue nowadays.

    From 2023 back to 1929 is 94 years. The average of the two time spans is 98 years (and I'm just generalizing here off the top of my head about this), so one wonders if there is a cycle of fluctuations in the gravitational and speed-of-light constants?

    Can't make much out of just two data points, but it does make one curious.


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    1. Such type of variations have been (and still are) studied in Novosibirsk. Let me quote here my old comment in my post from December last year

      https://ark-jadczyk.blogspot.com/2022/12/domino-effect.html

      Arkadiusz JadczykDecember 29, 2022 at 10:11 AM
      I have just finished reading TO THE ISSUE OF THE OPEN SYSTEMS EVOLUTION: MASS DYNAMICS by I.A. Eganova and W. Kallies. Open complex systems (mainly minerals in these studies) show unexplained reactions to cosmic phenomena. Their characteristics, such as the gravitational and inertial mass, show hourly and daily variations correlated to astronomical data. It looks as some yet to be explained theoretically a measurable action at a distance takes place. I think that explaining these effects is of utmost importance for humanity.

      "

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    2. And another paper, by the same authors, on a similar subject:

      https://www.researchgate.net/publication/360192567_ASTRONOMICAL_OBSERVATIONS_OF_AN_INNATE_INTERCONNECTION_IN_THE_SPACE-TIME

      Yet still they do not study the possible correlation with historical events.

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    3. This subject raises great questions and has fascinated me for decades: it seems that with the introduction of the TOR, one has, more or less consciously, locked the curiosity, which must be what feeds any scientific research, and what is faulty (the disturbing facts and observations because they question what has just been announced as a theory). We seem to forget or pretend to forget that we are always talking about a theory which has its limits based on hypotheses and on a limited framework of observations. Observations are always made in a certain context and as long as we have not found the structure of the Unified Field, it will be so. I am not even talking about a theory of the Unified Field, which would still be a theory...

      What is most lacking is the connection to reality : indeed, everything we describe in physics is based on an external observation of phenomena. We are inscribed in 3D and we propose what our 3D perception lets us see. We do not participate directly in the phenomena except at a certain level of reality and this is where it starts to be interesting because the observer realizes that he is disturbing what he observes and measures. The problem is that we do not know precisely what is the basic reality of the consciousness. Also it is hard to specify how it can interact or disturb what it perceives and measures. It is the same for perception : how it is concretely translated into physical reality. These are major questions, on the one hand, because they call upon the nature of light which has its role in the perception of the observer (even in the case of optical measuring devices if one wishes to have the most objective approach possible) and the nature of consciousness which, even if it resembles more and more what could be a unified field, cannot be reached for lack of understanding of its deep reality. And it is not a simple definition of consciousness, based on preconceived ideas or on observations in a restricted framework that will change things. On the other hand, these major questions all point to one and the same observation : what is the role of the observer in all these observations ?

      Classical physics does not take it into account for the purpose of scientific objectivity, which, in any case, could not be the case since it only studied 3D mechanics, a purely external observation based on real numbers. We had to wait for Maxwell's colossal work to unify, in the same framework, electrical and magnetic phenomena, so that the subject would start to become clearer, so that we would start to use only real numbers, so that we would discover the reality of magnetism intruding in space, that we begin to speak of a 4th dimension of space and that would lead to quantum physics revealing the effects of the presence of the observer on the measurements and observations of phenomena on an infinitely small scale.

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    4. @ErixLux
      You are perfectly right. We are bound to 3D reality and our observations provide us with data colored by our perception and uncertain, because of the observer effect. Quantum theory somehow manages to provide a machinery for dealing with this situation, but it does not explain anything.
      Yet we have our "intuitions", and we can use them to dream out models going beyond what quantum theory can master.

      There is one problem here: with our overuse of drugs in our contemporary culture our minds can get screwed up, and our intuitions may weaken or lead us in the wrong direction.

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    5. I completely agree with what you say: the ideal would be to "find" a structure from which we would obtain, at least, the version of quantum mechanics that we currently know and that would allow us to "understand" why quantum mechanics works like this. On the other hand, I am not certain, as Einstein was, that this unified structure, this unified dimensionality, is of a deterministic nature, because I remain convinced that we will get our hands on Consciousness, which has nothing deterministic about it. We would navigate between causality and finality....

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    6. Fascinating speculations, Laura. That fits approximately with the "Fourth Turning" and Cliodynamic models, if I remember correctly, and would put the previous cycle between 1831-1835. According to ChatGPT, these are the main economic events of the 1830s:

      "Panic of 1837: In 1837, the United States experienced a severe financial crisis, known as the Panic of 1837. The crisis was triggered by a series of events, including a speculative bubble in the real estate market, the withdrawal of funds from banks by the federal government, and a decline in the price of cotton. The Panic of 1837 led to a period of economic depression in the US, which lasted for several years.

      British financial crisis: In 1832, the United Kingdom experienced a financial crisis, triggered by a downturn in the cotton market and a decline in exports to the United States. The crisis led to a period of economic depression in the UK, which lasted for several years.

      European agricultural crisis: Between 1830 and 1836, Europe experienced an agricultural crisis, caused by a series of poor harvests and crop failures. The crisis led to a rise in food prices and a decline in economic activity in many parts of Europe."

      Also during 1831-1835, there was a worldwide cholera pandemic, and this was just a few years prior to the first Opium War between Britain and China in 1839. In the US, the Black Hawk War between the US govt and Native Americans occurred during 1832-1833, and the Texas Revolution also ran from 1835-1836.

      There were also three major volcanic eruptions during this time: Mount Galunggung Indonesia (1832), Mount Etna in Italy (1832), and the Coseguina volcano in Nicaragua (1835). There was also a massive earthquake near Sumatra, Indonesia (1833), with an estimated magnitude of 8.8-9.2 that generated a tsunami which killed over 5,000 people.

      Biela's comet was seen in 1832, and both Comet Encke and Halley's comet were seen in 1835, too.

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  6. The other offspring of Maxwell's equations is the famous theory of relativity with linear time as the 4th dimension of space. However, in his theory of special relativity, everything rests on his basic assumption: the speed of light is constant. Even more, it is constant in a change of Galilean reference frame, thus for any observer inscribed in this dynamic. The fact is that behind all these choices lies the extension of an approach specific to mechanics into the field of optics. Nothing assures us that optics follows the same laws as mechanics and that it fits into the same framework. Doesn't Einstein's hypothesis, based on observations made in a precise framework and extended in a change of Galilean reference frame, unconsciously lock our perception of reality and in a certain way reality ?

    To discover this, one must remain curious, as any physicist must, and ask oneself about the true nature of the 4th dimension of space which appears to be the key to be able to observe a variability of the speed of light : the linear time used is that of mechanics, the reference frame linked to the observer is that of mechanics, the notion of speed of light is that borrowed from mechanics... what assures us that optics meets these same requirements? Wouldn't what we call the speed of light be what we perceive in 3D of a larger 4D phenomenon and which, taken as a whole, would reveal a variable speed of light thanks to the true nature of the 4th dimension of space? Wouldn't optics be able to reveal this discovery ? Wouldn't there be a deep spatial change between mechanics and optics that would have been masked by the relativistic hypothesis retained and that would explain why Einstein's theory of relativity is only valid spatially? Wouldn't the retained level of the terrestrial speed of light be linked to the value of the terrestrial gravitational field? Finally, isn't what we think we observe in the universe, from our telescopes and devices of terrestrial nature, filtered by the terrestrial level of the speed of light ?

    Do we not have to come back to Maxwell's equations that we may have interpreted, by haste, by inertia, for lack of any other basic reference, via the 3D filter of mechanics? By unlocking our look at Maxwell's equations, perhaps we can obtain a new approach to the reality behind the theory of relativity and that of quantum mechanics. Wouldn't what we are looking for as a unified field, which therefore requires finding a common source, be obtained by identifying it with Maxwell's equations?

    Very early on, interesting work was carried out by high level physicists such as Miller and Allais (http://www.fondationmauriceallais.org/the-physicist/the-re-examination-of-millers-interferometric-observations-and-of-esclangons-observations/?lang=en) to realize that the subject was more complex than what the theory of relativity built on its constant speed of light suggested. And that the key lay in the temporal notion : Miller made observations over very long periods of time showing cycles and Allais, on his side, observed such cyclic correlations over long periods of time and correlations between gravity and magnetism. All this seems to attest that the dynamics of the Earth and its attributes (speed of light, gravity constant...) is inextricably linked to its evolution within the universe. In other words, we are inscribed in a given terrestrial dimensional bubble which is however relative to the universal whole of which it represents a part. And we project our terrestrial perception to the whole universe without being aware that what we observe in our terrestrial bubble can be the fact of an infinity of other consciousnesses, elsewhere, at their level, in their bubbles with their constants. With Einstein's theory, we are locked in our earthly reality bubble.

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    1. @EricLux
      Once we accept Maxwell equations, we can use mathematics to develop the theory. Question is: should we accept Maxwell equations in their textbook form? Or should they be modified, and if so, how?

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    2. We are stuck with deterministic/random alternative. While I am in general rather skeptical about Chris Langan ideas, here I am inclined to agree with him that it is not a bad idea to look for a third option, which would require a major change of the paradigm.

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    3. My intuition tells me that we have to accept Maxwell's equations as we have received them (we still have to know if it is better to use their expression via quaternions or those truncated by Heaviside to ignore - as I said on the forum - the potential vector in order to facilitate the calculations and the work of his fellow engineers.

      As far as the action to be taken is concerned, I am going more in the direction of a reinterpretation of Maxwell's equations than to a modification or correction of the latter. Something tells me that we tend to complicate our lives because we do not realize how limited our basic concepts are or how limited our perception of reality is. You will agree with me that it is difficult, at least in 3D, to have a global perception. For this, we need to resort to 4D and thus find the nature of the 4th dimension of space which is not what we perceive in 3D, as a projection, the linear time as Einstein assumed. I am therefore not very attracted to modifying or adding terms to the equations (although this is a path like any other and all will lead to the unified field. The question is, aren't some paths more feasible and less perilous than others? :) )

      I am therefore (perhaps due to my preparation for the agrégation de Math) rather inclined to reinterpret the concepts used and study how they were obtained. So I plan to review the genesis of these equations, to see what we can reinterpret and what this teaches us about the dynamics of the structure of space which could enlighten us in what way we made a mistake in the change of reference frame at the basis of relativity and why it would seem more judicious to go back to Galileo's transformations rather than Lorentz's.

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    4. Using quaternions does not change Maxwell equations - they are getting only more obscure. On the other hand there are several reason for considering changing Maxwell equations - for instance in the direction of a nonlinear theory, or in the direction of including magnetic monopoles, or in order to better understand relation between EM field and gravity (so called pre-metric electrodynamics).

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    5. Thank you for these enlightenments Ark. The question I was asking myself is whether we have lost information between the less readable expression via quaternions and that of Maxwell-Heaviside because we do not necessarily need to modify them to reinterpret them? I understand that there are certain realities to be taken into account, which seem, in the present state, inaccessible via the modern expression of the Maxwell-Heaviside equations.

      It is obvious that in order to go beyond what Einstein's theory of relativity proposes, it is necessary to leave the linearity of our 3D space to enter a non-linear 4D reality where the speed of light is no longer necessary but can be perceived as variable from a 3D space-time point of view (magnetic monopoles) and to make obvious to us the relation between EM and G which is, although effective.

      All the reasons you have just mentioned to me make me say that what you are looking for, through them, is hidden, or obscured, by our interpretation of time as 3D linear time, even if relativistic. It is the fact of having extended this temporal interpretation specific to mechanics within the framework of optics, which leads to the transformations of Lorentz, which seems to deprive us of perceiving beyond 3D. In other words, what we seek to highlight in order to integrate the reality of monopolies, marry an intricate or non-linear reality and make the identification between EM and G evident passes through the apprehension of 4D reality which requires grasping what This is the true nature of the 4th "dimension" of space. To be clearer, there is something we have missed that underlies, or at least contributes to, space and its substantial structure that is not obvious in 3D (of where our turpitudes and interrogations) and which is immediate once we are in 4D. Nevertheless, we need this awareness (4th dimensional reality) to consciously enter 4D as scientists.

      Hence my question about the use or inspiration of quaternions: what is the difference between the 4D space of quaternions and the one we need to find? Maxwell knew more than we think he knew from his equations: quaternions are one of them, but there are other things to find.

      I have a question, Ark: what is the name of the young physicist, from the beginning of the last century, who saw the magnetic monopoles?

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    6. Longitudinal and timelike waves could certainly be beyond linear time and are something Maxwell's transverse waves are missing and like Ark said, it overal seems like an EM field to gravity relationship thing since gravity gets you to the conformal group in spite of the mainstream consensus trying to limit things to the Lorentz group.

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    7. Thanks John :)

      Are these longitudinal and temporal waves of the type of those of Tesla? Longitudinal looks good because looks like waves that are consubstantial with space itself and not transverse waves. The fact that they are of a temporal nature is also a good point because it is of course on the temporal aspect that we must work to go beyond Einstein's approach. Why don't they appear in Maxwell's EM?

      It looks like a relationship between static and dynamic, between 3D and 4D, between the electromagnetic field and gravity. The fact that the conformal group is beyond the Lorentz group is also a hint that this is going in the right direction. Is the conformal group very different from the Galilean group?

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    8. @EricLux
      As far as I know it was Pierre Curie who first wrote “ On the Possibility of the Existence of Magnetic Conductibility and of Free Magnetism ” - suggesting the possible existence of magnetic monopoles.

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    9. I was thinking about a german physicist, in the 20’s, claiming he could see magnetic monopoles. He had a lot of experiments and theories and Cs confirmed he saw magnetic monopoles.

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    10. As for Laura's speculations, concerning the links between consciousness, light and gravity, it seems to me quite immediate that the way to unification passes through this issue : what we perceive of the terrestrial light is inherent to the terrestrial gravity which itself is in resonance with the terrestrial dynamics within the universe and with the collective state of terrestrial consciousness.

      The lower the state of collective consciousness, the more the 3D terrestrial bubble remains closed, hermetic to the universe. This could explain a lot of things and facts. The non-observation of the variation of the speed of light on Earth, apart from the observations of Miller and Allais, had pushed me to wonder about the reasons of this non-observation on the Cs forum :

      - Why is there no observation of the variation of the speed of light, according to Einstein's theory, even with frequency ? Because he locked the evidence of such a variation by his assumptions at the base of his theories? Because we are not aware that this variation is linked to the nature of time ? Because the collective planetary consciousness is not ready for such an observation ?​
      - The link between the 3D and the 4th "dimension" is mathematically translated by the fact that, in the 3D, the 4th "dimension" is hidden. Would this explain why the speed of light is perceived as constant because we don’t yet know its true nature ignoring the true 4th "dimension" ? ​
      - Is the 4th dimension of space holographic ?​
      - Do we need to revisit our definition of Space ? Yes, we have to do it with the 4th dimension of space, the new spatial reference.​
      - Is the principle of covariance adopted since Galileo a dead end ? Should we not rather opt for the principle of invariance ? In this respect, the Lorentz group is there to ensure the covariance of 4 Maxwell-Heaviside's equations, should not we look for their invariance even if the Galilean group does not insure this invariance ?​
      - Speed of light varies with frequency. Is this frequency a new type of frequency characterizing the 4th "dimension" of space ? What is the nature of the 4th "dimension" of space ? A Tesla wave (0), the frequency of the observer's consciousness (1), the 3D speed of light which is thus revealed as the frequency of light when we are in 4D (2), the Ether as a new spatial reference (3) or a mix of all these ideas (4) ?​
      - If the emitter and the observer (receiver) travel towards each other with relative speed v, is the speed of light as measured by the observer c'= c+v? Is speed of light affected by the motion of the source of light ? Is speed of light invariant relative to a moving observer ?​
      - What’s wrong with the Michelson-Morley experiment in order to account for the complete inability to detect absolute motion, ether wind? Does that mean the believed propagation of light was incorrect ?​
      - What are the flaws in Theory Of Relativity (TOR) ?​
      - My feelings to unify physics, we can do it without going into General relativity and even the TOR. For that, we must be clear about EM and a true apprehension of 3D space and its dynamic. In other words, a truly comprehension of electromagnetism and space must be the key. ​
      Is the relativity 3D postulate « the laws of physics are the same in every inertial reference frames » accurate ?​

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    11. The funny thing is that there actually are superluminal solutions for Maxwell's equations just like there are for Einstein's field equations but they tend to get ignored. There are some superluminal wave-front results that are deemed OK since they can't be used to superluminally send information. The conformal group is the full symmetry of Maxwell's equations including the superluminal part. Tesla was into longitudinal waves. I think the Galilean field theory people have the Galilei group for the empty flat spacetime and are not afraid of conformal structures for EM curving of spacetime.

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    12. It is clear that the modern equations in the books, truncated Maxwell-Heaviside, have two solutions, one of which is never taken into account because of the lack of physical and causal interpretation.

      I have always wondered in equations why the solutions were considered independently (even for differential equations). For example, in Maxwell's equation, only the progressive one is kept and we talk about wave propagation, while the other solution is avoided and if they were to be taken into account simultaneously, it could open an interesting way, towards a reality allowing to apprehend the exterior and the interior, at the same time. It would allow us to get out of the separate view, this wave does this and that wave should do that.

      The conformal group is the complete symmetry of Maxwell's equations, including the superluminal part: you mean that you take into account both solutions of the EM equations at the same time? Why do you say that Galileo's group is only valid for flat and empty space-time without EM curvature?

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    13. "It is clear that the modern equations in the books, truncated Maxwell-Heaviside"

      Modern equations are the same as original Maxwell equations. Nothing is "truncated".

      Where did you get this totally false idea that something has been "truncated"?

      Who personally is guilty of propagating this disinformation?

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    14. Thank you so much Ark ! This is a book that I downloaded to study the origin of the history of vectors with regard to analysis and algebra as part of my preparation :)
      I will study the forum thread you sent me.

      Question: within the framework of the conforming group, do you have a 4th "dimension" as a frequency? Are the longitudinal waves, of which John speaks, which would relate EM and G?

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    15. I am not sure what exactly John G. has in mind when he mentions "longitudinal waves.
      As of conformal group - it deals with almost the same four-dimensional Minkowski space-time - the arena of Einstein's special relativity. Conformal group extends the set of transformations under consideration by adding uniformly accelerated reference frames. But it also treats our 3 space and 1 time (thus 3+1=4) as a special "boundary" of a certain 8-dimensional "timeless universe".

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    16. Longitudinal Waves, Maxwell and conformal group symmetry get used together here:

      https://www.tony5m17h.net/QOphys.html

      Since Maxwell then had both the concept of waves in an elastic medium and the concepts of Grad, Div, Curl, and Laplacian, he had everything you need to write the equations for Longitudinal Waves in an elastic medium as described, for example (as Jack Sarfatti pointed out) on pages 142-144 of Methods of Theoretical Physics by Morse and Feshbach (McGraw-Hill 1953).
      Since (as shown in Morse and Feshbach) the Longitudinal Waves are faster than the Transverse Waves, and the Transverse Waves travel at the Speed of Light, the Longitudinal Waves are Superluminal if the Aether is a general elastic medium (Tohu VaVohu).

      The question of the existence or non-existence of Longitudinal/Scalar Waves is then the question of whether or not the Aether, regarded as an elastic medium, is compressible:

      If not, there are no Longitudinal/Scalar Waves.
      If so, then there are Superluminal Longitudinal/Scalar Waves.
      My personal opinion is that the Aether is compressible, but only at energies around the Vacuum Expectation Value of the Higgs field, around 250 GeV, which corresponds to the Superposition Separation of an entire single Tubulin in the Brain.

      The Dilation of the 15-dim Conformal Group sets the scale of the Higgs VeV at 250 GeV so that general deformations of SpaceTime can take place only above that energy level, while GraviPhoton Special Conformal (Hopf flow) transformations are useful in Conformal deformations of SpaceTime.
      Incompressibility of the Aether below 250 GeV is only with respect to the 6-dim vector space of the Conformal Group Spin(2,4), so that below 250 GeV you can see Conformal phenomena that appear to show compressibility from the point of view of 3-dim space or 4-dim Minkowski spacetime. Such conformal phenomena include the Fock superluminal solutions of Maxwell's equations that are described by R. M. Kiehn.

      The 4 GraviPhoton Special Conformal transformations of the 15-dim Conformal group are like the Moebius linear fractional transformations, that do deform Minkowski spacetime but take hyperboloids into hyperboloids and are the symmetries of superluminal solutions of the Maxwell equations. They are incompressible/linear from the point of view of a 6-dimensional SpaceTime, with 4 spatial dimensions and 2 time dimensions, because the conformal group over Minkowski spacetime is just SU(2,2) = Spin(2,4), the covering group of SO(2,4), and therefore the Lie algebra generators look like those of rotations in a 6-dim vector space of signature (2,4). This is the 4-dim space with 2-dim time suggested by Robert Neil Boyd, in which things look linear (even though from our conventional 3-dim spatial or 4-dim Minkowski point of view they might appear, due to our limited conventional perspective, to be nonlinear).

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    17. @John G.
      What do you mean by the "Aether"? Do you have a mathematical counterpart for this word? I am confused. For me Aether is indeed quite poetical, but what it has to do with relaity described by Maxwell equations? Where does it appear in the equations? Any help appreciated.

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    18. Maxwell talked about his equations being in an elastic medium and Tony used "compressible aether" interchangeably with "elastic medium" so basically elastic medium/compressible aether for Tony is just the full symmetry of Maxwell's equations aka the conformal group.

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    19. @John G.
      I am confused now. The definition that I know of the conformal group is: it is the symmetry group of Maxwell equations in the empty space-time i.e. flat Minkowski space-time. Thus no detectable "Aether".

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    20. Tony quoting Maxwell: "The kind of motion attributed to the medium when transmitting light is that called transverse vibration. An elastic medium capable of such motions must be also capable of a vast variety of other motions, and its elasticity may be called into play in other ways, some of which may be discoverable by their effects." So even for transverse waves, the term elastic medium was used and Tony used compressible aether for the possibility of longitudinal/scalar waves. Tony also mentions superluminal solutions of Maxwell's equations that seem to show compressibility from a 4-dim spacetime view but do not show compressibility from the conformal group's 6-dim view.

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    21. @John G. Maxwell wrote something, Tony wrote something.... But where is the math? I do like some poetry, but physics is not a poetry!

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    22. Tony linked to this paper with some longitudinal photon math but as you indicated you could still be stuck with no curvature. In order to curve spacetime in a Philadelphia Experiment kind of way, you would have to have your longitudinal photons tilt away from the prevailing Minkowski lightcone. A lot of these esoteric things or even mundane things like the flyby anomaly seem to require consciousness or random mixture of the consciousness around or random fluctuation of some kind which isn't exactly something you can calculate.

      https://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0001/0001063.pdf

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    23. Thanks. And I have found also this:

      https://scholars.direct/Articles/photonics-and-optics/rapo-2-007.php?jid=photonics-and-optics

      by the same author. I will do some reading on this subject.

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  7. I remembered from my college classes that Heaviside had simplified Maxwell's equations to make them more digestible for the electrical engineers of the time and that he had removed the whole part related to potentials (which nobody knew how to interpret physically, just like the superluminal solution of Maxwell's equations nowadays, except for Ark and John :)).

    As a result, the equations were only about 3D EM fields. So we had a parallel between the aether which Einstein said he did not need until 1921 and the potential part which was no longer present in the equations. This is what I remembered.

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    Replies
    1. Let me repeat: nothing has been "truncated" in Maxwell equations. If you think something has been truncated - find it and show it.
      Second: there is no gain whatsoever from using quaternions for Maxwell equations. If you think there is a gain - do the analysis. Go back to original Maxwell, read modern textbooks, learn the math needed in order to compare old and modern versions.

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    2. Merci Ark for your confidence. Quaternions are on the program, I will study them and at the same time follow your kind advice.

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    3. If you would like to have some help with Maxwell and quaternions, you may like to read (using for instance Goggle translate) my two posts on the old Polish blog on the subject:

      https://www.salon24.pl/u/arkadiusz-jadczyk/227760,maxwell-i-kwaterniony-cz-i

      https://www.salon24.pl/u/arkadiusz-jadczyk/228343,maxwell-i-kwaterniony-cz-2

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    4. Thank you so much Arky for your time. I've no problems with reading english texts, just writing fluently :)

      This will allow me to revise part of my program by studying your work. Perhaps it was the December 5, 1998 session that I misinterpreted. The C's confirmed that Maxwell knew more than we think and, not necessarily, that there was something wrong with his equations.

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