PSI Blog 20240212 Aliens, Faster than Light Travel, and the Mysterious “Zero-point Energy”
A PSI member has some popular questions.
Oumuamua, a 400-m long cosmological object best avoided
during high-speed interstellar flight. Photo credit: NASA.
Thanks to Rick
Doogie for his comment:
“Thanks for your
work. It's always a pleasure to read your articles, especially when you are
interacting with someone new who has questions for you.
Two suggestions;
Here's a popular "science" topic. What do you have to say about
zero-point energy? And how about faster-than-light travel and/or communication?
My conspiracy-minded friends love suggesting that the government has this
technology that it is keeping secret. Of course, they reverse-engineered it
from crashed alien spacecrafts. (I laugh to think that aliens have the tech to
traverse many light-years, but they crash easily once they are in the Earth's
atmosphere.)”
Aliens
Ever since the
first stranger was sighted, humans have been curious and fearful about
strangers: Was that new creature good or evil? Peaceful or warlike? That was
nothing new. You only have to take a walk in the woods to observe animals in
the wild who are always on the lookout for who or what might get them. It is
why we now have door cameras and we look out our windows to see what other
folks are up to. It is why some folks are fearful of anything “alien,” with immigrants
or those who look different being good examples.
The alien hysteria
that received great impetus after World War II seems to have been stimulated by
the great fearfulness that continues today. It is no wonder. That war killed 60
million of us. Cosmological observations and communications have broadened our
horizons. With an estimated 20 trillion galaxies, each containing upward of one
trillion stars, it is a near certainty that there are aliens on other
“Goldilocks” planets. We just won’t be meeting any of them soon.
So far, there is no
concrete evidence that such visits have occurred during the last 3.8 billion
years that the earth has existed. That includes a lot of observations of the
sedimentary rocks all over the globe. Not a single crash site or other evidence
of alien contact has been confirmed. All the UFO[1]
sightings, tall tales, science fiction, “superheroes saving humanity movies,” and
conspiracies are simply products of our usual Dreams and Imaginings™. We have been examining
our sister planets, with no sign of life on any of them so far. SETI has been a
big disappointment—seems no one even wants to talk to us. Still, someday those
efforts might succeed, providing a huge shock to those who still think everything in the
universe was created just for us.
The nearest star,
Alpha Centauri, is over four light years away and we don’t even know if any of
its planets contain life, much less, being capable of sending some of it here. It
would take our fastest, long distance rocket (Voyager) 74,000 years to get
there.
Faster
Than Light Speed
That’s what it
would take to make a trip to the nearest star possible in reasonable time. I
don’t subscribe to Einstein’s “speed limit,” because that is only for wave
motion through the aether medium. We are talking particles here, that is,
rocket ships. I am no rocket scientist, but it seems the main problem is that
traveling at anything near or greater than c would be disastrous
for a rocket that collides with even a small cosmological object. That could be
why we have not been visited yet by an alien ship.
What
the Heck is Zero-Point Energy?
Wikipedia has the
answer here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-point_energy
That’s a pretty
long and sophisticated answer from folks who don’t even know what energy is.
Truth be told, energy simply is a calculation we use to describe the motion of
matter. It neither exists (like matter) nor occurs (like motion). The subject
comes up in theoretical physics most often with regard to quantum mechanics and
Einstein’s assumed perfectly empty space.
It is somewhat
hopeful that the wiki article mentions aether, which has been banned from
theoretical physics ever since Einstein. His treatment of Maxwell’s E=mc2
as the conversion of matter into some kind of ghostly matterless motion
underlies the confusion, as I explained in:
Borchardt,
Glenn, 2009, The physical meaning of E=mc2,
Proceedings of the Natural Philosophy Alliance: Storrs, CN, v. 6, no. 1, p.
27-31 [10.13140/RG.2.1.2387.4643].
In brief, the motion of submicrocosms within a
microcosm (portion of the universe) can be transferred to its surroundings. The
surroundings can be anything, but the aether is especially important, as
indicated by the bi-directional use of the velocity of light in the equation.
There is nothing magical, mysterious, or difficult to understand about it. It
is simply the transfer of the motion of internal matter to external matter. Without
the aether particles in the aether medium, the equation would not work much of
the time.
Note that the equation works in reverse, such
as when the motion of aether particles in light waves is transferred to the
submicrocosms in a microcosm. That is the approach Maxwell used in developing
the E=mc2 equation in 1862 to understand the absorption of light by
plants and the otherwise unfathomable increase in some of the mass.
Remember Martin Gardner’s wise dictum: “When
the coffee cools, mass is lost.” As with Maxwell, the reverse is true: When the
coffee is heated, mass is gained. Also remember that mass is the resistance to
acceleration by already existing matter. That “already existing matter” is
assumed by the Fifth Assumption of Science, conservation (Matter and
the motion of matter can be neither created nor destroyed), which underlies
Infinite Universe Theory.
Back to
zero-point energy. As in my study and eventual explication of the E=mc2
equation, I suspect most of the mystery surrounding that concept involves the
motions of aether particles. Much of the consternation involves philosophy
because most theoretical physicists are afflicted with aether denial. Theories
breaking away from that are unlikely to be accepted without some surreptitious,
back-door maneuvers never mentioning the word “aether.”
Thus, we have
claims of “energy” coming in and out of existence. We have claims of “virtual”
particles magically appearing and disappearing to produce the universe out of
nothing.[2] Some have thought the imaginary Big Bang
itself was produced by one big quantum fluctuation.
So, what to make
of zero-point energy? Individual aether particles in the aether medium
obviously are in motion—possibly as great as 1.5c. In any case,
Einstein’s imagined perfectly empty space does not exist. If it did, the intergalactic
temperature would have been 0 degrees instead of the 2.7 degrees Kelvin that was actually measured. Temperature, of course, is the motion of matter. Any
fluctuations in temperature are due to those motions. I suspect quantum
fluctuations simply are the result of collisions with unseen matter, with
aether particles being likely at the smallest scale. Like other microcosms,
aether particles accelerate other microcosms, becoming decelerated in the
process, producing fluctuations with each collision. In any case, quantum
fluctuations cannot be the result of matterless motion in perfectly empty
space.
Rick, thanks
again for the interesting questions. I enjoyed your humorous contradiction
involving imagined crash sites of high-tech visitors smart enough and desperate
enough to travel over 4 light years to visit us. Hope your friends stop being
afraid of aliens and don’t interfere with top secret military inventions that
inevitably have a few mishaps during development.
PSI Blog 20240212
Thanks for reading
Infinite Universe Theory! On Medium.com you can subscribe for free to receive
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questions.
[1] I like West’s invention of LIZ (Low Information Zone)
for this. He points out that to be designated “unidentified,” observations of
an object must be at the limit of resolution. Cameras and telescopes have
improved, but, each time, the improved equipment produces photos of UFOs that are
always fuzzy [West, Mick, 2023, Inventing skeptical language: Skeptical
Inquirer, v. 47, no. 4, p. 28-30]. This is predicted from Infinite
Universe Theory, which in particular, is founded on the Third Assumption of
Science, uncertainty (It is impossible to know everything about anything,
but it is often possible to know more about anything). Because the universe is
infinite, there always will be causes for effects we will not be able to
explain. Nonetheless, the whole UFO nonsense was put to bed by the Condon
report over a half century ago [Boffey, P.M., 1969, UFO study: Condon group
finds no evidence of visits from outer space: Science, v. 163, p. 260-262.] The
most recent investigation pushed by the latest gang of conspiracy theorists
came to the same conclusion [Kirkpatrick, Sean, 2024, Here’s What I Learned as
the U.S. Government’s UFO Hunter: A forthcoming investigational report from an
office of the Pentagon has found no evidence of aliens, only allegations
circulated repeatedly by UFO claim advocates, Scientific American, Accessed
20240128 (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/heres-what-i-learned-as-the-u-s-governments-ufo-hunter/).]
[2] Krauss, L.M., 2012, A Universe from Nothing: Why
There is Something Rather Than Nothing: New York, Free Press.
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