Zero-Point Energy

A question from Rick:

“I wondered what you thought of the Zero-Point energy ideas flying around out there.  More of a technical question than philosophical.  I have a hard time believing things that I see on all kinds of UFO and conspiracy websites.  But, the "fringe" isn't necessarily wrong. I almost prefer the fringe to the status quo.”

Good question Rick.  “Zero-Point Energy” refers to the so-called “energy” of the vacuum or “field.”  It involves the mysterious “fluctuations” in quantum mechanics.  But as you know from reading my “E=mc²” and “Einstein’s Most Important Philosophical Error” papers, energy doesn’t exist.  Instead, it is a calculation that describes matter in motion.  The “vacuum” or “field” of positivists such as Einstein is nevertheless assumed to contain no matter in motion.  The proper use of the word “energy” as a description of matter in motion conflicts with this, so its more confusing connotation normally is used in modern physics.  The truth is that there indeed is matter in motion in the “vacuum” or “field.”  For centuries, it has been called the “ether.”  There is plenty of evidence that the phenomena being discussed around the term “Zero-Point Energy” involves the motion of ether particles.  The CBR (cosmic background radiation) is one example in which the “vacuum” of intergalactic space has been found to have a temperature of 2.7K—instead of 0K predicted by Einstein.  Temperature is the vibration (or motion) of matter. Thus intergalactic space contains matter: ether particles in motion.

Thus I agree with you that, in this case, the “fringe” is to be preferred over the conventional wisdom promulgated by modern physicists.  Whether anyone outside the mainstream will ever be able to harness the motion of ether particles to provide “free infinite energy” is questionable.  To transfer vibratory motion from a 2.7K macrocosm, one would have to produce a <2.7K microcosm.  I am sure that cooling a microcosm that low would require much more “energy” than it would produce.  There may be easier ways to harvest that last 2.7K, but I doubt that.  On the other hand, a successful capture of ethereal motion would instantly be the end for positivism.  But don’t hold your breath.

Letter from a Fellow Traveler on the Road to Scientific Philosophy

Dr. Glenn,

I just had to butt into your day and thank you one more time for your great work.  I sure hope all is well with you and yours.

I just got through re-reading "Einstein’s Most Important Philosophical Error" and "The Physical Meaning of E=mc2". 

I re-read those as a prelude to my first reading of Collingwood's Essay on Metaphysics.I'm probably going to crack that book and get into it this afternoon.  Hopefully on the patio if it doesn't rain. (Up next on my reading list is Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions.)

I've been looking through the latest NPA videos on YouTube, and I see you there in the crowd. Did you do any presentations or recorded discussions at that event? I was hoping...

I thank you for putting me on this intellectual, philosophical, scientific journey.

It's frustrating to see the human race go on it's merry indeterminate way (and the attendant bloodshed), but it's reassuring to have a confirmation of what I've felt since my early teens; "the word is not the object, the menu is not the meal, the signpost is not the path."

When I first started to doubt my Catholic upbringing, in my late teens, I noted that the Bible starts with "In the beginning was the Word."  That really clicked with my earlier appreciation that words aren't just concepts floating around in space, as Plato envisioned them. I realized then that religion had its origins in the problem of people confusing human concepts with physical reality.

Your books and papers (and suggested reading) are having that same kind of paradigm-shaking effect that I felt back when my religious faith was demolished. It feels like a "return to innocence", at age 57 and grandfather of 7.

Best wishes and deep appreciation,

Rick Dutkiewicz

Allegan, Michigan

http://www.rickdoogie.com/

Massaging the Gravity Probe B Results to Fit Einstein's General Relativity Theory

Thanks to David de Hilster who sent this "fair and balanced" assessment of the Gravity Probe B fiasco surprisingly offered by the mainstream media:

 

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/05/at-long-last-gravity-probe-b.html

See the paragraphs near the end.  Although the data and conclusions are very suspect, see the highlighted part below:

Quoted from end of article:

Some other scientists aren't sure how much they trust the corrections. Five years ago, Ciufolini notes, Gravity Probe B researchers were reporting uncertainties more than 10 times bigger. Correcting for such large "systematic errors" is tricky business, he says: "I don't know the details, but it seems to me very difficult to get rid of more than 90% of the systematic error."

The previous measurement also puts a damper on the new results. In 2004, Cifuolini and Erricos Pavlis of University of Maryland, Baltimore County, measured frame dragging by tracking the orbits of the LAGEOS and LAGEOS II satellites, simple reflectors launched in 1976 and 1992 and used primarily to monitor the motion of Earth's surface. By very carefully monitoring which way the planes of the satellites' orbits turned or "precessed," they measured the effect to 10% accuracy, largely stealing the thunder of the Gravity Probe B team in some researchers' opinions. "At best they've just confirmed the work Ciufolini did," says Robert O'Connell, a theorist at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. "So I find it a bit too much, all the hoopla" of a NASA press conference, he says.

In the end, Gravity Probe B's full value goes beyond the results of the experiment, Everitt told Science. "Why was it worth it?" he says. "Just the element of challenge in it, the element of invention in it. There was this constant challenge of inventing new technologies." He notes that 100 students earned Ph.D.s working on the experiment. Others offer a less favorable assessment. "This [$760 million] was government money," O'Connell says. "And to my mind it was misspent and poorly managed" by the government agencies involved.

NASA’s Gravity Probe B Proves Einstein Wrong Once Again

Even today, after much head scratching, conventional wisdom still has it that Einstein is always right. After spending $750 million of your tax dollars and massaging the raw data for 5 years, NASA (2011) has finally announced the results of Gravity Probe B (GP-B). They say that the warped “space-time” around Earth caused the axes of their perfect gyroscopes to tilt at a rate predicted by relativity. The key to all of Einstein’s stuff, of course, is that there is no there there. Real causes do not exist in relativity. Einstein’s mathematical abstraction hypothesizes perfectly empty space. GP-B actually serves as a disproof of that notion. For the gyros to be disturbed, they had to be disturbed by something. The experiment provides yet another proof of the existence of the partially entrained ether that surrounds Earth (Borchardt, 2007, p. 202).

Even Francis Everitt, GP-B principal investigator at Stanford, was forced to “get physical” in explaining the experiment: "Imagine the Earth as if it were immersed in honey. As the planet rotates, the honey around it would swirl, and it's the same with space and time” (Space.com Staff, 2011). This “frame dragging” effect supports the view that the macrocosm around Earth contains supermicrocosms small enough to penetrate and interact with any experimental setup one could devise. The outer reaches of vortices (spiral galaxies are good examples) have slower velocities than their cores. The unseen ether apparently detected by GP-B is not space-time, but part of the vortex of which Earth is the core. Expecting the gyros to point toward IM Pegasi forever is like expecting to keep your umbrella upright in a windstorm.

By 1920 Einstein had recanted his earlier denial of the ether: "There is a weighty reason in favour of ether. To deny ether is to ultimately assume that empty space has no physical qualities whatever."  As usual, NASA relativists make no mention of Einstein’s change of heart and the implication that there could be a physical rather than an extra-dimensional mathematical cause for the apparent GP-B result. It is time for physicists to choose between ether, which now appears to be real, and space-time, which is entirely imaginary (Borchardt, 2011).

References:

Borchardt, Glenn, 2007, The Scientific Worldview: Beyond Newton and Einstein: Lincoln, NE, iUniverse, 411 p.

Borchardt, Glenn, 2011, Einstein's most important philosophical error ( http://www.worldsci.org/pdf/abstracts/abstracts_5991.pdf ): Proceedings of the Natural Philosophy Alliance.

Einstein, Albert, 1920, Sidelights on relativity: 1. Ether and relativity. 2. Geometry and experience: London, Methuen, 56 p.

NASA, 2011, http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/04may_epic/

Space.com Staff, 2011, http://www.space.com/11570-nasa-gravity-probe-einstein-theory-relativity.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+spaceheadlines+%28SPACE.com+Headline+Feed%29