Critique of TSW Part 19c Light

Blog 20140917 

As an aether denier, Bill has problems with the wave theory of light despite the contradictions posed by the wave-particle duality of regressive physics.

I am ever so grateful to Bill Westmiller, whose comments are marked "BW: ". The quotes marked TSW are from "The Scientific Worldview" and my comments are marked "[GB: ".

The Univironmental Theory of Light (Part 3 of 3)

TSW:  "Eddington’s celebrated 'observation' that the path of light from a distant star is curved by its passage near the sun."

BW: The path IS curved by gravity (which you seem to endorse), but Eddington's data certainly didn't prove it. Even if it had, it would simply confirm Newton's gravitational theory, asserting that the sun would affect massive light corpuscles.

[GB: Sorry, but the path is not curved by gravity. It is simple refraction in the Sun’s atmosphere per Dowdy’s recent work showing that light from stars outside the atmosphere is unaffected, proving that light is not a particle.]

TSW:  Eber: "... the Universe had no beginning, and is consequently infinite in spacetime."

BW: You're jumping back to your prior arguments about an infinite universe, which isn't really relevant to gravitational theory or the nature of light. However, a few comments:

TSW:  "Astronomers have discovered that galaxies decelerate as they diverge from one another."

BW: Actually, the exact opposite is suggested by current redshift evidence: the most remote galaxies are *accelerating* away at a greater speed:
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2008/jan/30/galaxy-distortions-shed-light-on-cosmic-acceleration

... which kind of messes up Hubble's Constant.

[GB: Good catch. That reference was from 1977—way before the expansion of the universe was presumed to be accelerating. Incidentally, more than Hubble was messed up. The alleged acceleration was no more nutty than the whole idea of the universe expanding from nothing. In the mind of the indeterminist, there is nothing like the acceleration of a collidee without the collider. They even had to invent “dark energy” to account for it. Of course, there is no such thing as dark energy, just as there is no such thing as energy, which simply is a calculation concerning the behavior of matter in motion. Glad to see that your “*accelerating*” seems to indicate that you are dubious also.]

BW: It is true that the aether theory requires deceleration, but an infinite universe theory requires persistent equilibrium. The two aren't consupponible:
http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/05/15/rspa.2010.0044.full

[GB: I get this a lot. Indeterminists tend to think of equilibrium as some kind of stasis. A universe described by the Fourth Assumption of Science, inseparability (Just as there is no motion without matter, so there is no matter without motion) and the Sixth Assumption of Science, complementarity (All things are subject to divergence and convergence from other things) is definitely not static. Steve and I used those assumptions in “Universal Cycle Theory” to good effect.]

TSW:  "... because mass is a reflection of these internal motions, the mass of a galaxy decreases as it radiates."

BW: A strange endorsement of the idea that mass is *caused by* motion, which is postulated in Einstein's SR. It's also a contradiction of your earlier assertion that motion is "what matter does", rather than motion being an object that can cause effects.

[GB: I have explained this in a recent Blog on January 22, 2014. The upshot: The neomechanical absorption of motion internally causes submicrocosms to accelerate. The resulting increase in momentum appears as an increase in the resistance of the microcosm to acceleration (definition of mass). The reverse happens when some of the internal motion of matter is transmitted to the macrocosm via emission to the aether. None of this objectifies motion, although it would not work without an aether. Aether deniers are forced to estrange motion from matter, thinking of the radiated energy as a kind of matterless motion. That is why indeterminists use “dark matter” and “dark energy” in the same sentence, implying that they are two different dark “things.”]

TSW:  "Like all other microcosms, [protons and electrons] too are subject to the gravitational bombardment that tends to push them together."

BW: Strangely out of sync with your proposition that gravity is the *absence* of material aether, which can't produce "bombardment".

[GB: In 2007, when "The Scientific Worldview" was published, I realized that gravitation had to be a push per Newton’s Second Law of Motion. The Le Sage theory appeared to be the best push theory at the time. In that theory the aether deficient areas were produced by shadowing between bodies impacted by gravitons from all directions of outer space. The uneven bombardment would produce a sort vacuum, causing the bodies to be pushed together. This would work for atoms as well, so your point is not well taken.

Of course, by 2012, Steve and I developed our own Neomechanical Gravitation Theory, which we belatedly found to have been suggested by Newton. The gravitational bombardment still occurs, but it is produced by slight differences in aether pressure in the same way that slight differences in air pressure cause helium balloons to rise. The direction of motion is reversed because aether pressure increases with distance from baryonic matter.]  

TSW:  "The Theory of the Infinite Universe sketched above is in some ways similar to the 'steady-state theory' ..."

BW: Inconsistent with your prior statement that galaxies are decelerating, which suggests a collapsing universe.

[GB: I suspect that once astronomers finally figure it out, galaxies in general will be found to be neither accelerating nor decelerating. Even if that were not the case, it would have little to do with the infinite universe as a whole. All microcosms are either expanding or contracting at any particular moment per complementarity.]

TSW:  "The relative increase in internal motion of already existing submicrocosms is measured as a relative increase in mass."

BW: You haven't explicitly defended the proposition that the motion of matter causes mass, which strikes me as a circular, self-contradictory idea: mass has to exist before it can move. IF it were true that relative motion causes mass, then every material object in the universe would be eternally expanding. Back to a solid "Block Universe".

[GB: Your idea that “mass has to exist before it can move” certainly is consistent with your microcosmic finity assumption and your frequent opposition to inseparability. See above for the explanation of how internal motion produces an increase in mass. Per the Fifth Assumption of Science, conservation (Matter and the motion of matter can be neither created nor destroyed), the total amount of matter and motion in the universe is constant. Go back to our fundamental definitions:

1. Matter is any xyz portion of the universe that contains other matter, ad infinitum.
2. Mass is the resistance of a microcosm to acceleration.

Thus mass can increase (due to an increase in submicrocosmic motion), even though the amount of matter does not change. Remember that this increase in mass is due to an increase in the velocity of submicrocosms. It has nothing to do with the velocity of the microcosm per se, which was erroneously proposed by Einstein. Thus, we seem to agree that velocity cannot magically increase the mass of a microcosm in the absence of a macrocosm. On the other hand, any acceleration produces impacts that increase mass. Thus, the mass of the space shuttle increases at it collides with the atmosphere, heating up in the process. The mass decreases as it cools. That is why a hot coffee cup has more mass than a cool one, although it has the same amount of matter in each case.]

BW: BTW: You mention Steven Bryant in your article on gravity. I'd read everything on his website and sent him a few questions about his MMX analysis. That prompted a flurry of emails and his subsequent agreement with my article on the experiment, demonstrating that MMX *could not have shown* any aether effects. Let me know if you'd like a copy of that article (incorporating some revisions suggested by Steven).

[GB: Sure would like a copy. The Michelson and Morley (1887) data had a slight effect greater than experimental error. I certainly would like to see how you made that go away.]

Next: The Origin of Life

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