Thinking about it, I am uncertain if we do. I'll need to go through a comprehensive set of quantized values to be certain, however.
For photon energy, quantization is just equivalent to the idea that there are a finite number of stable states for matter, and any deviation will cause perturbations until a new stable state is reached somewhere, at which point the perturbations will gradually cancel out.
For electron spin, we are now just describing relative orientation in time-space. We are left with a potential situation in which high gravity and high energy atoms might spontaneously develop a third electron spin state, after the closed time cylinder expands enough for such a configuration, but that might not be relevant. It does cause some issues with what we typically think of as Lorentz invariance, but meh. (Basically, two electrons can occupy the same orbit because they are out of time phase with each other. It is relative rather than absolute orientation that matters, so position isn't quantized either.)
For photon spin, we have four spin states corresponding to two sets of binary propositions. This is harder, since both pairs behave similarly, and since my mental explanations imply that the relative time phase, my first instinct, will vary in relation to distance. We might be able to say that light is a fundamentally heliptical wave, in which case we might be able to use two pairs of time orientation corresponding to forwards or backwards in time, each with respect to either the horizontal or vertical vectors. That could work. Just don't know.
In general it looks like there might be two types of quantization behavior: Binary quanta, corresponding to orientations across a symmetry. Discontinuous scalars, corresponding to the energy differentials between different stable states of matter.
Inwhichcase, quantization is an illusion created by our mischaracterization of microscopic states of matter in terms of macroscopic states of matter - imagining the observed electron "spin" as a literal spin on a tiny sphere. (There are a lot of "spin" entries in physics. I suspect somebody lacked imagination.)
Thursday, December 20, 2018
Wednesday, December 19, 2018
Recovering Uncertainty and Quantization
So after some thought, I think the problem of recovering uncertainty in this new model is surprisingly trivial - we just substitute the fact that mass is a standing wave for the idea that mass is a probability wave. This doesn't get us all the way there, but it is a start - I think the idea that time is a closed cylinder will help, if we can find a geometric reason for this to impose constraints on behaviors. We also need to find a way to explicitly include interactions with the probability dimensional manifold, a subject I may pay some attention to in a later post when I have more concrete thoughts. (Yes, they get vaguer than this. These are thoughts I figured out English language to describe. Most of my thoughts aren't nearly so rigorous.)
Quantization, I suspect, is related to the problem of how momentum is transferred. I can see a Lorentz contraction wave forming from a freefalling gravitational interaction - I have more trouble figuring out how to move this wave to another gravitational field, and I suspect the solution to this problem will be a two-body version of a the n-body problem that is quantization. My intuition is that, if a body is not in freefall, the acceleration wave shape may be a little bit backwards, forming an anti-acceleration wave (or rather an acceleration wave which bends the Lorentz contraction in the opposite direction). This is complicated by the fact that the three dimensional description of the Lorentz wave has no assymmetry in the orientation along it's vector - that is, from a three dimensional perspective, the Lorentz waveform is equally likely to go either backwards or forwards in the direction of propogation. We probablyp need a time element there, and four dimensional waves are just the far side of my ability to intuitively predict the behavior of.
However, setting aside the fact that this problem is beyond my imagination to directly predict, it isn't beyond my ability to anticipate. And one of the behaviors this interaction should have is cancellation - the act of transferring momentum cancels the momentum of the originally moving particle.
This is the two body version. The N body version is going to require that a particle "colliding" with, say, two particles, results in both a preservation of the shape of the Lorentz contraction (albeit with vectors potentially changed), and also the cancellation of those parts of each particle's momentum such that the total end momentum is energetically equivalent. This actually isn't as hard as it initially looks; it is just a perturbation problem involving three sets of particle interactions. And if the two body problem works, each pair of particle interactions are two-body problems which also work.
What does this have to do with quantization?
Nothing, yet. But it gives us a potential geometric description of the principle of least action (whatever reacts first cancels every other potential reaction out - if this works for momentum, it works for everything, since we can just Fourier transform things to demonstrate that the behaviors are equivalent). We probably need our probability manifold to finish grtting quantization out of the system, but this is a start.
Quantization, I suspect, is related to the problem of how momentum is transferred. I can see a Lorentz contraction wave forming from a freefalling gravitational interaction - I have more trouble figuring out how to move this wave to another gravitational field, and I suspect the solution to this problem will be a two-body version of a the n-body problem that is quantization. My intuition is that, if a body is not in freefall, the acceleration wave shape may be a little bit backwards, forming an anti-acceleration wave (or rather an acceleration wave which bends the Lorentz contraction in the opposite direction). This is complicated by the fact that the three dimensional description of the Lorentz wave has no assymmetry in the orientation along it's vector - that is, from a three dimensional perspective, the Lorentz waveform is equally likely to go either backwards or forwards in the direction of propogation. We probablyp need a time element there, and four dimensional waves are just the far side of my ability to intuitively predict the behavior of.
However, setting aside the fact that this problem is beyond my imagination to directly predict, it isn't beyond my ability to anticipate. And one of the behaviors this interaction should have is cancellation - the act of transferring momentum cancels the momentum of the originally moving particle.
This is the two body version. The N body version is going to require that a particle "colliding" with, say, two particles, results in both a preservation of the shape of the Lorentz contraction (albeit with vectors potentially changed), and also the cancellation of those parts of each particle's momentum such that the total end momentum is energetically equivalent. This actually isn't as hard as it initially looks; it is just a perturbation problem involving three sets of particle interactions. And if the two body problem works, each pair of particle interactions are two-body problems which also work.
What does this have to do with quantization?
Nothing, yet. But it gives us a potential geometric description of the principle of least action (whatever reacts first cancels every other potential reaction out - if this works for momentum, it works for everything, since we can just Fourier transform things to demonstrate that the behaviors are equivalent). We probably need our probability manifold to finish grtting quantization out of the system, but this is a start.
Tuesday, December 18, 2018
Renormalizable Quantum Gravity
Not a physicist, just a crackpot. Take everything with a grain of salt.
Okay, so... one advantage my unified field has is that it is inherently normalized; the sum metric distortion is either 0 or equal to the mass, a question I don't have the mathematical ability to answer. (I suspect mass, though, since the white hole took some metric with it)
This brings me to an interesting puzzle, however. Given that the acceleration wave produced by gravity-gravity field interactions in my model is acting on mass which is, effectively, just a gravitational field itself, and which extends into infinity, this implies some of the interaction is happening really far from the center itself. (This is fine for the model, mind. Imagine our concentric rings of distorted fabric, and "dragging" on one of the outer edges of a distant ring. Without friction, you are dragging the whole mess.)
Interactions far from the center of the mass might imply something surprising: First, the gravitational field as a whole is being affected, rather than just the center. And second, the majority of the active force on the center of mass may not even be at the gravitational phase. The effect of the repulsive cosmological constant phase interactions, much much further away, might have a huge impact on the overall forces.
Assuming these interactions are fundamentally repulsive, this implies that gravity must be much stronger than we would otherwise believe, but that a significant portion of the overall force is being counteracted by distant interactions. Granted these interactions have to propagate at lightspeed across large distances, but the gravitational fields are always interacting and always have been, so the effect is continuous.
This would provoke some
Okay, so... one advantage my unified field has is that it is inherently normalized; the sum metric distortion is either 0 or equal to the mass, a question I don't have the mathematical ability to answer. (I suspect mass, though, since the white hole took some metric with it)
This brings me to an interesting puzzle, however. Given that the acceleration wave produced by gravity-gravity field interactions in my model is acting on mass which is, effectively, just a gravitational field itself, and which extends into infinity, this implies some of the interaction is happening really far from the center itself. (This is fine for the model, mind. Imagine our concentric rings of distorted fabric, and "dragging" on one of the outer edges of a distant ring. Without friction, you are dragging the whole mess.)
Interactions far from the center of the mass might imply something surprising: First, the gravitational field as a whole is being affected, rather than just the center. And second, the majority of the active force on the center of mass may not even be at the gravitational phase. The effect of the repulsive cosmological constant phase interactions, much much further away, might have a huge impact on the overall forces.
Assuming these interactions are fundamentally repulsive, this implies that gravity must be much stronger than we would otherwise believe, but that a significant portion of the overall force is being counteracted by distant interactions. Granted these interactions have to propagate at lightspeed across large distances, but the gravitational fields are always interacting and always have been, so the effect is continuous.
This would provoke some
More on White Holes
Not a physicist, blah blah.
Okay, white holes. They are my fundamental particle. In the course of trying to integrate how Lorentz contraction, as a waveform (and potential quantization of momentum - not sure of the relationship with the "dilaton" of Kaluza-Klein theory, but judging by the name, it may either refer to the acceleration operator (gravity field-gravity field interaction), or the momentum quanta itself, which is kind of promising), I tried to figure out why momentum and position resist simultaneous measurement.
And... white holes don't have a position. I tried sketching out what it would look like - remembering that gravity wells are bigger on the outside, a gravity well looks like a balloon. While you are in the black hole phase of matter, the connection between matter and the universe grows, albeit not as quickly as the interior space. As matter approaches the white hole point, space is getting thinner, not thicker - and the white hole singularity is the point at which the balloon no longer connects to the rest of the universe at all.
But it has taken a chunk of space-time with it, leaving an irregular chunk of spacetime. Using a fabric analogy, it is like cutting a circle out of fabric, and then sewing the circle-hole back together into a single point. You are left with concentric rings of ripples. These concentric rings of ripples -are- our unified field theory, basically. And they have a center, maybe - the area of spacetime "scar tissue" where the white hole detached - but they do not have a single point where anything can be found.
Thus, position isn't quite meaningful.
Since our mass is basically a standing wave, and since momentum is a different shape of standing wave (more likely a wrinkle - that is, possessing orientation), position and momentum aren't meaningfully distinct.
That doesn't quite get us to a good conceptual understanding of uncertainty, but it is much closer than the original formulation of "Position is information which can't escape a singularity", a description which was rather unsatisfactory.
It also doesn't get us to a true concept of quantization. For all this to work in our universe, we need a conceptual description of quantization which behaves correctly with respect to a universe with scalar symmetry - that is, which arises naturally from a continuous universe.
Still working on that. This gets the framework a little closer, though.
Okay, white holes. They are my fundamental particle. In the course of trying to integrate how Lorentz contraction, as a waveform (and potential quantization of momentum - not sure of the relationship with the "dilaton" of Kaluza-Klein theory, but judging by the name, it may either refer to the acceleration operator (gravity field-gravity field interaction), or the momentum quanta itself, which is kind of promising), I tried to figure out why momentum and position resist simultaneous measurement.
And... white holes don't have a position. I tried sketching out what it would look like - remembering that gravity wells are bigger on the outside, a gravity well looks like a balloon. While you are in the black hole phase of matter, the connection between matter and the universe grows, albeit not as quickly as the interior space. As matter approaches the white hole point, space is getting thinner, not thicker - and the white hole singularity is the point at which the balloon no longer connects to the rest of the universe at all.
But it has taken a chunk of space-time with it, leaving an irregular chunk of spacetime. Using a fabric analogy, it is like cutting a circle out of fabric, and then sewing the circle-hole back together into a single point. You are left with concentric rings of ripples. These concentric rings of ripples -are- our unified field theory, basically. And they have a center, maybe - the area of spacetime "scar tissue" where the white hole detached - but they do not have a single point where anything can be found.
Thus, position isn't quite meaningful.
Since our mass is basically a standing wave, and since momentum is a different shape of standing wave (more likely a wrinkle - that is, possessing orientation), position and momentum aren't meaningfully distinct.
That doesn't quite get us to a good conceptual understanding of uncertainty, but it is much closer than the original formulation of "Position is information which can't escape a singularity", a description which was rather unsatisfactory.
It also doesn't get us to a true concept of quantization. For all this to work in our universe, we need a conceptual description of quantization which behaves correctly with respect to a universe with scalar symmetry - that is, which arises naturally from a continuous universe.
Still working on that. This gets the framework a little closer, though.
Sunday, December 16, 2018
Misc Thoughts
Usual caveat, not a physicist, trust nothing I say, blah blah.
Few thoughts arising from consideration of yesterday. First, if time is a closed infinitesimal curve, we can neatly resolve a lot of different issues that will arise later when we try to formalize all of this, not least among them getting electricity to work properly. (Somebody already did the math for that, which I may get into in a later post.) It also resolves a looming problem, which is that the model might predict time runs backwards under some conditions; if time is a closed curve (which means it connects with itself), and what we think of as history is really evolution on the probability axis (which I may also get into later, but my thoughts on this need a lot of updating), we get an interesting result, in that it doesn't matter whether we go forward or backwards, since we arrive at the same place regardless. (It ties up a lot of stuff we may run into at the subatomic scale, such as particles that apparently go backwards in time). There is just a whole host of stuff this will help. It is also sort of implied by my previous description of Lorentz Contraction, although it is hard to explain why. For scalar symmetry reasons, the closed curve either has to be infinitisemal, which results in a form of quantization (as I don't think you can have meaningful angular momentum in an infinititesmal curve), which might account for charge polarity, or the closed curve is "per particle", and the size of the closed curve space is tied to the mass of the particle-singularity. I prefer the infinitisemal solution for later simplicity.
Also, the conservation of metric probably needs a better explanation than I have so far given. The short version is that space is, on average, flat. I think this is what Einstein was edging towards with the cosmological constant, but I think he had a different way of conceptualizing it.
We are also edging closer to a constant-free "theory". No fine tuning at all; the universe this begins to describe can have any value for, for example, the speed of light, and the universe will look exactly the same as ours.
I am currently caught up in considering whether light is Lorentz contracted. This would net another angle for photons, and provides another quantization mechanism, but it clashes with some of my intuitions, as well as the description of velocity as a scrap of bent metric or metric-derivative, since light doesn't have momentum. Also, Lorentz contraction of light doesn't make sense from a wave perspective, since contracting a continuous wave in this manner would result, I think, in a constant increase in frequency (and thus energy) over time. So probably not. But the description of momentum as a scrap of metric-derivative does help us avoid this, since light wouldn't have this behavior in the first place, lacking this sort of momentum (even if it possesses velocity of a sort). I may return to this later.
I've started thinking about quantum field theory a bit, and how my crackpot nonsense interacts with that. The short summary is that I think everything will remain basically the same, except possibly electrical charge; for any given field / gauge theory, the relative forces will remain the same. Since, as I understand it, a gauge theory is effectively a scale-specific description of events - omitting at the subatomic scale gravity, for example, whose contributions are effectively negligible - this basically works; the fact that the attractive phase of the force we call gravity stops "existing" at a lower scale is effectively mathematically isomorphic to treating the phases as negligible. Most of quantum field theory revolves around operators, which are (currently digesting math, so this is my current and possibly incorrect understanding) Fourier-transformed wave forms representing probability wave forms, which themselves represent the valid quantized energy states of the particles in question. I don't have a conceptual analogue for this - I have a conceptual description of quantization, but it isn't currently in-depth enough to prescribe a mathematical description for what is going on. So I can say it -may- be mathematically isomorphic - that is, the mathematical description is identical - with current quantization theory.
Electrical charge, then, is the big unknown. This is where "time is a closed curve" may come in handy; somebody has already been there. There is a mathematical description of electrical charge as a small dimension which, apparently, works. I may discuss this in depth later; the theory, for those who are interested, is the Kaluza-Klein theory. I suspect, regardless of whether "time is a closed curve" ends up being valid, this theory will end up being extremely important.
Note: "time is a closed dimension" will probably, if I grasp the conceptual underpinnings of the mathematics correctly, imply that all matter has an effectively positive electrical charge, and all antimatter has an effectively negative electrical charge, because matter and antimatter can be viewed as traveling in opposing directions in time itself. If time is a closed curve, this has no practical ramifications on the observation of history - history is "stored" in something we might describe as a timelike dimension of probability - but it does have some ramifications of the behavior of matter and antimatter, namely that they will behave, per Kaluza-Klein, as if they have opposing electrical charges.
Why, exactly, do I think time is a closed curve, and what the fuck does that mean? First, what it means: It means time is basically a circle; if you start going forward in time, you arrive in short order back where you started. I suspect the dimension in question is infinitesimal, which means there is only one "coordinate", one "time"; you move forward, and you keep moving forward over the same point. You move backwards, you keep moving backwards over the same point. If it isn't infinitesimal, it must be proportional to the size of a given point mass / singularity, per my insistence that there is a symmetry of scale. Hard to conceptualize, easy to describe mathematically.
And why do I think time is a closed curve, a circle?
First, because there's a shitload of mathematics in quantum field theory in which particles move backwards in time. It happens more or less constantly. Often, these particles moving backwards in time are posited to move backwards in time only to make energy balances work out; these are referred to as virtual particles. If my model can handle stuff moving backwards and forwards in time without prejudice for the direction, things will end up looking a little bit cleaner. Second, I have serious issues with trying to integrate two reference frames which have experienced different subjective time, if time isn't a closed curve, because it implies discontinuities, even if very small ones, where, in the fabric of spacetime, some of the time is disconnected from other time. When the reference frames are brought together, the space and time coordinates should be identical; I can achieve this in my model if we're talking about the same closed set of coordinates, I cannot if we treat time coordinates as more continuous. (Probability coordinates, meanwhile, may be explicitly discontinuous. I'll discuss this later.) And third, if the reason we move forward in time is the dominance of the cosmological constant phase of the universal field at our scales, then at other scales, time would otherwise have to go backwards. If forwards and backwards are only meaningful from a relative perspective - if time is a closed dimension - this is fine. It just implies that the phases of matter we think of as "matter" and "antimatter" correlate with the scale being considered, and the scale-locally dominant phase of our universal field. Time goes forward for matter at our scales; at scales at which antimatter dominate, time goes backwards, so antimatter behaves like matter. This has a symmetry to it I appreciate. (Yes, I realize how little sense this entire section probably makes to anyone who isn't me. I think by the end of this I'm going to need to invent a whole lot of jargon to convey these ideas; standard English words just don't cut it.)
Few thoughts arising from consideration of yesterday. First, if time is a closed infinitesimal curve, we can neatly resolve a lot of different issues that will arise later when we try to formalize all of this, not least among them getting electricity to work properly. (Somebody already did the math for that, which I may get into in a later post.) It also resolves a looming problem, which is that the model might predict time runs backwards under some conditions; if time is a closed curve (which means it connects with itself), and what we think of as history is really evolution on the probability axis (which I may also get into later, but my thoughts on this need a lot of updating), we get an interesting result, in that it doesn't matter whether we go forward or backwards, since we arrive at the same place regardless. (It ties up a lot of stuff we may run into at the subatomic scale, such as particles that apparently go backwards in time). There is just a whole host of stuff this will help. It is also sort of implied by my previous description of Lorentz Contraction, although it is hard to explain why. For scalar symmetry reasons, the closed curve either has to be infinitisemal, which results in a form of quantization (as I don't think you can have meaningful angular momentum in an infinititesmal curve), which might account for charge polarity, or the closed curve is "per particle", and the size of the closed curve space is tied to the mass of the particle-singularity. I prefer the infinitisemal solution for later simplicity.
Also, the conservation of metric probably needs a better explanation than I have so far given. The short version is that space is, on average, flat. I think this is what Einstein was edging towards with the cosmological constant, but I think he had a different way of conceptualizing it.
We are also edging closer to a constant-free "theory". No fine tuning at all; the universe this begins to describe can have any value for, for example, the speed of light, and the universe will look exactly the same as ours.
I am currently caught up in considering whether light is Lorentz contracted. This would net another angle for photons, and provides another quantization mechanism, but it clashes with some of my intuitions, as well as the description of velocity as a scrap of bent metric or metric-derivative, since light doesn't have momentum. Also, Lorentz contraction of light doesn't make sense from a wave perspective, since contracting a continuous wave in this manner would result, I think, in a constant increase in frequency (and thus energy) over time. So probably not. But the description of momentum as a scrap of metric-derivative does help us avoid this, since light wouldn't have this behavior in the first place, lacking this sort of momentum (even if it possesses velocity of a sort). I may return to this later.
I've started thinking about quantum field theory a bit, and how my crackpot nonsense interacts with that. The short summary is that I think everything will remain basically the same, except possibly electrical charge; for any given field / gauge theory, the relative forces will remain the same. Since, as I understand it, a gauge theory is effectively a scale-specific description of events - omitting at the subatomic scale gravity, for example, whose contributions are effectively negligible - this basically works; the fact that the attractive phase of the force we call gravity stops "existing" at a lower scale is effectively mathematically isomorphic to treating the phases as negligible. Most of quantum field theory revolves around operators, which are (currently digesting math, so this is my current and possibly incorrect understanding) Fourier-transformed wave forms representing probability wave forms, which themselves represent the valid quantized energy states of the particles in question. I don't have a conceptual analogue for this - I have a conceptual description of quantization, but it isn't currently in-depth enough to prescribe a mathematical description for what is going on. So I can say it -may- be mathematically isomorphic - that is, the mathematical description is identical - with current quantization theory.
Electrical charge, then, is the big unknown. This is where "time is a closed curve" may come in handy; somebody has already been there. There is a mathematical description of electrical charge as a small dimension which, apparently, works. I may discuss this in depth later; the theory, for those who are interested, is the Kaluza-Klein theory. I suspect, regardless of whether "time is a closed curve" ends up being valid, this theory will end up being extremely important.
Note: "time is a closed dimension" will probably, if I grasp the conceptual underpinnings of the mathematics correctly, imply that all matter has an effectively positive electrical charge, and all antimatter has an effectively negative electrical charge, because matter and antimatter can be viewed as traveling in opposing directions in time itself. If time is a closed curve, this has no practical ramifications on the observation of history - history is "stored" in something we might describe as a timelike dimension of probability - but it does have some ramifications of the behavior of matter and antimatter, namely that they will behave, per Kaluza-Klein, as if they have opposing electrical charges.
Why, exactly, do I think time is a closed curve, and what the fuck does that mean? First, what it means: It means time is basically a circle; if you start going forward in time, you arrive in short order back where you started. I suspect the dimension in question is infinitesimal, which means there is only one "coordinate", one "time"; you move forward, and you keep moving forward over the same point. You move backwards, you keep moving backwards over the same point. If it isn't infinitesimal, it must be proportional to the size of a given point mass / singularity, per my insistence that there is a symmetry of scale. Hard to conceptualize, easy to describe mathematically.
And why do I think time is a closed curve, a circle?
First, because there's a shitload of mathematics in quantum field theory in which particles move backwards in time. It happens more or less constantly. Often, these particles moving backwards in time are posited to move backwards in time only to make energy balances work out; these are referred to as virtual particles. If my model can handle stuff moving backwards and forwards in time without prejudice for the direction, things will end up looking a little bit cleaner. Second, I have serious issues with trying to integrate two reference frames which have experienced different subjective time, if time isn't a closed curve, because it implies discontinuities, even if very small ones, where, in the fabric of spacetime, some of the time is disconnected from other time. When the reference frames are brought together, the space and time coordinates should be identical; I can achieve this in my model if we're talking about the same closed set of coordinates, I cannot if we treat time coordinates as more continuous. (Probability coordinates, meanwhile, may be explicitly discontinuous. I'll discuss this later.) And third, if the reason we move forward in time is the dominance of the cosmological constant phase of the universal field at our scales, then at other scales, time would otherwise have to go backwards. If forwards and backwards are only meaningful from a relative perspective - if time is a closed dimension - this is fine. It just implies that the phases of matter we think of as "matter" and "antimatter" correlate with the scale being considered, and the scale-locally dominant phase of our universal field. Time goes forward for matter at our scales; at scales at which antimatter dominate, time goes backwards, so antimatter behaves like matter. This has a symmetry to it I appreciate. (Yes, I realize how little sense this entire section probably makes to anyone who isn't me. I think by the end of this I'm going to need to invent a whole lot of jargon to convey these ideas; standard English words just don't cut it.)
Thursday, December 13, 2018
Conservation of Metric
First, a disclaimer: This may sound correct or obvious, but if so, it is because that is the way I write. Nothing should be taken as either factual or as representing the opinions of educated physicists.
The whole of the set of ideas here have started to take a particular shape to me: Metric is conserved. Mostly this just results in "gravity is sinuisodal", as described previously, but a recent discussion has led to an interesting concept.
First, I start with an idea I have been toying around with, that Lorentz Contraction is caused by a spacial "compression wave", although it isn't really a wave and is spherically distributed around moving mass in its own reference frame.
The “compression wave” almost certainly exists, although it, paradoxically to my original expectations, extends both in front of and behind the traveling object. (To see this must be true, the gravitational field must also be Lorentz Contracted, and that from the perspective of the traveling object, its gravitational field must necessarily fill flat space.)
The compression wave probably accounts for the speed of light limitation, in that any acceleration from the traveling object’s perspective must be within the reference frame of the compression wave – that is, it’s observed flat space – and is, from an outside perspective, likewise Lorentz Contracted. (The vector of acceleration is Lorentz Contracted, basically.)
It is not responsible for time dilation, as I initially posited, or at least not directly. There are two “types” of type dilation; synchronized and unsychronized, for lack of better vocabulary to describe them. Synchronized time dilation is when an object is moving fast relative to another object; because both are standing still in their own reference frame, they experience no time dilation, but because the other for each is moving fast, the other experiences observed time dilation. However, when they are brought to the same speed and location, assuming each is accelerated equally (so suppose they originally accelerate apart, then both accelerate back together and stop), observed time compression precisely offsets the time dilation; they have experienced the same subjective time. This is, as far as I can grok, standard physics.
Unsynchronized time dilation happens in a gravitational field, and is correlated with the strength of the gravitational field. Gravity bends time, and motion relative to a gravitational field causes unsynchronized time dilation. This matters when we consider our spaceships outside a gravitational field – as we accelerate a ship, we also accelerate its gravitational field. However, the acceleration of the gravitational field happens at light speed, meaning it isn’t instantaneous – meaning that as we accelerate an object, it experiences motion relative to its own gravitational field, but only so long as it is accelerating. This creates unsychronized time dilation. That is, the accelerating object experienced less subjective time after we bring reference frames together.
The compression bubble might contribute to unsychronized time dilation indirectly, by creating a reference frame in which an internally flat acceleration (from the outside perspective, a given thrust will result in decreasing acceleration, but from the inside perspective, the acceleration for a given thrust remains constant) can provoke the same unsynchronized time dilation – that is, because from your own reference frame your acceleration remains constant, the unsynchronized time dilation you experience likewise remains constant, instead of falling off as your externally observed acceleration decreases as you approach C.
All good so far I think.
But what happens if you reverse causality here? What if we suppose motion is -caused- by Lorentz Contraction?
Let's think about gravity for a moment. Imagine two particles falling into one another. From the perspective of either of the particles, it's own gravitational field remains flat. It will observe the gravitational field of the other distorting, however. To see this, remember that gravity is a distortion of space-time, and that changes in gravity propagate at lightspeed - meaning gravity itself propagates through the medium it is distorting. This means that as our observed particle falls into our reference particle, its gravitational field, which has to pass through denser coordinate space, shrinks somewhat in the direction of the fall. This looks a little bit like a lopsided Lorentz Contraction. The sum gravity of two particles should end up very slightly less than twice the gravity of one, because it drops off with distance and the distance is measured across denser coordinate space.
This lopsided Lorentz Contraction compression bubble persists, moreover - momentum is conserved. In a sense, some of the metric of the observed particle, some of its gravity/space, got converted into the derivative of metric. And internally to its own reference frame, its own metric was completely conserved, and it is the other particle which lost some metric. From an "objective" perspective, some of its metric converted from an external field to an internal field, and its reference frame became slightly more subjective. (Which makes sense, since it interacted with another particle).
Kinetic energy then becomes a scrap of space-time that has been bent in a particular way, and is conserved as part of the general conservation of metric. It is all relative, of course - every particle's own reference frame is flat, it is everything else that is bent. The speed of light ceases to be a constant from within this perspective, and is instead just a description of a scrap of bent spacetime that has been bent completely in half.
Now the question I am left with from this line of inquiry: Why would a scrap of bent metric look like motion? I have an intuition that this might be the result of the interaction of gravity and this bend, and in particular the phase of gravity that we call the cosmological constant, which I suspect dominates our scale of observation, and which I suspect bends time in the direction we think of as forward. This intuition is based on the fact that the attractive phase of gravity we are familiar with bends time in the opposite direction - that is, time passes more slowly in a gravity well.
But that is a thought that needs more thinking. In the meantime, I feel slightly closer to a theory of everything, as things are looking increasingly like everything - including possibly the arrow of time - is just various distortions of space-time itself.
Another thought bearing more thinking: I have tended to think of spacetime as a contiguous fabric with various snarls and bends and tears in it. The Lorentz Contraction compression bubble suggests this view may be wrong, because it is viewing spacetime as if it exists on a privileged reference frame, upon which various weird distortions exist. This is a large chunk of weirdness I will need a long time to process.
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