Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion Physics Forum Is the physical world real?

QM wont change things what you describe would rotate indefinitely ... of coarse a little hard to create :-)

Unless the protons decay

Not that I do not understand the present notion, but that I argue the present notion is not correct.

You have stated the three laws of motion. If you take the first law as a physical law, then it implies that a body can remain at rest, and a body can move along a straight line. If we take it as a mathematical law, then it is just a law regarding motion; the body is just an imaginary concept used to explain motion. Then, it does not say anything about a physical body: whether it can remain at rest or whether it can move along a straight line, etc.(I would argue that nothing, not even light, can move along a straight-line path in a three-dimensional space)

Regarding the second law, I have already explained the difference.

If the third law is taken as a physical law, then it is not clear where the action and reaction are. Newton has not stated whether the same body will be subjected to both action and reaction, and whether the action and reaction happens at the same time. Why did he not specify that? I argue that he intended the law to be mathematical. When there is an action there will be reaction; it is the mathematical law of conservation. If you add 'x', then you have to remove 'x' for conservation, and that is what the third law states.

I would ask you the reverse question: Why do you perceive that there should be energy transfer just because a force exists?

Actually, both are equally logical. What happens when gravitational force exists between earth and moon? Either 'there is energy transfer' or 'there is no energy transfer'. If one is correct, the other is automatically wrong. The present view is that 'there is energy transfer'. I suggest that the present view is incorrect, not because it is illogical as such, but because it leads to the concept of 'virtual particles', which I think is metaphysical. The present view is that gravitational force exists by transferring virtual 'gravitons'.

Force is, simply, a name we give to a transfer of energy. Without energy, of some kind, there could be no force.



This is probably the point at which a physicist would say "...but gravity is not a force." I'm not a physicist, so I'm inclined to regard this as a bit of a cop-out.

as far as the graviton is concerned; it is still only hypothetical.

BTW, Finiter, are you a sociologist? They have this habit of answering a question by asking another.

I think you need to say what you mean by a striaght line.

E.g. Would you accept that a geodesic is a straight line?

There is a certain thread of logic here. Newton was talking about the motion of bodies, perhaps he assumed that his readers would make the connection. In any case, an action, without a subject and object (in the grammatical sense) is a non-entity; it would be like talking about a shadow that had no object (in the physical sense) to cast it, and no surface on which to be cast. Would there still be a shadow?

As for the question of “whether the same body will be subjected to both action and reaction”; the action/reaction relationship, in this context is meaningful only if applied to the same body. If the “reaction” is applied directly to another body, it has to be regarded as an “action” in its own right. If you don’t accept this, then you have to consider whether your initial action occurred as a result of something else, and was therefore a “reaction”. This would lead you into an infinite regression situation, which would tend to paralyse scientific thought.

There is where you are wrong Bill S. Gravity is one of the fundamental forces of the universe. Physicists would not say gravity is not a force. As far as what Finiter says, he just does not understand how the universe works. He claims that he has a better idea of how it works than is explained by current theories. However current theories work extremely well in making accurate predictions of what will happen in various circumstances. So he needs to show how his theory will work as well, and more simply, as the current theories, or will work better than current theories. So far he has done nothing but say over and over that we are all wrong. This is one signature of a troll.

Bill Gill

Just by way of one example, David Deutsch says: "Today we understand gravity through Einstein’s theory rather than Newton’s, and we know that no such force exists."

Well, that is the General Relativity (GR) view. This view says that gravity is the result of a distortion in spacetime. The Quantum Mechanical (QM) view is that gravity is the result of the interchange of gravitons. Gravitons of course are the force carrying particles of the gravitational force. This is just a difference in view point which will be resolved when a theory of quantum gravity is eventually developed. In the mean time it is a lot easier to count it as a force unless you need to do GR calculations. In any case I don't think it is anything like Finiter's view.

Bill Gill

Perhaps finding a few gavitons would help.

I suppose gravity could be both a force or a spacetime distortion, depending on what question you ask about it.

Yes you are correct ... hadn't thought about that good catch :-)

The question the 3rd law poses is why does something stay at rest and it's a serious question.

if if we have a force Fab and its countered by a force -Fba you can write

Fab - Fba = 0 = F the net result is zero

In a world without the law you can end up with

Fab + Fba = F

Something can exert a force back on itself.

You can't reach down grab your ankles and lift you body off the ground ... you are imparting a force into your ankles and pulling them up .... so why don't they move?

Remember you have no forces resisting it in your case Finiter that force should do something.

See it's not an inconsequential law ... it's a deductive law because a force can not exert on itself.

As per Bill's definition a force is the transfer of energy, ergo energy can not create more energy, ergo no perpertual motion.

The 3rd law is a statement of the 1st law of energy in a mechanical/physical system.

This brings us back to Bill's two bodies in a perfect vacuum (minus proton decay). This looks like perpetual motion, but no work could be extracted from it without destroying the perpetual nature of the motion.

I'm going to have to think about this a bit; it could help with my problem accepting that no work is being done by orbiting bodies in non-idealised situations.

The current theories work extremely well except in certain extreme cases. Why such an exception? That means we have not reached a situation to say that 'everything is settled'. There are inherent contradictions; as pointed out by Bill S, gravity is regarded by some as not a 'force in the normal sense'. That means there is justification for alternate views.

What I have put forth is an alternate view. If you measure it based on the present theory, it will always be wrong. Any alternate view is thus something wrong. The only thing that can be verified about such alternate suggestions is whether it is logical or not. To put forth a better theory is not an easy job, especially if you start with a fundamentally different view. However, that does not mean that you should not discuss your alternate views.

Finiter, I agree that it is important to discuss alternative views. If it was automatically assumed that an idea was wrong, simply because it didn't agree with current thinking there would be no scientific progress.

I think it is also important that people who have ideas that are not main stream should persist in arguing their points until, either they change scientific thinking, or are themselves convinced that their ideas are not viable. Of course, in order to bring about change you have to be able to convince the scientific community that your ideas actually displace the current ones.

There are some good examples on this forum of people who seem to think that just repeating assertions will convince others that they are true. That approach is more likely to work in politics than in science.

I am not a sociologist. But asking a counter question has to do more with logic, I think. You say that you are not a physicist (I claim that I am interested in physics, and hence doing some work in theoretical physics), but your questions are logical. I think the whole physics is based on logic. However, the present day physics has changed the meaning of logic (I think to suit the requirements) and says logic is not what you poor fellows think.

Regarding the straight line motion, I mean the actual word meaning of straight-line motion. (It is held that in a curved space-time, the motion of any body will be curved; it is logical provided there is an entity like space-time.) I think that in a three-dimensional space, bodies can move only three-dimensionally; I propose a helical motion for all bodies in the universe. Light is particles of matter moving along a helical path.

The problem is finiter ... it really is that simple ... reach down and pull on your feet why can't you pull them up into the air.

If gravity is just striaght line motion as you suggest I can pull myself up into the air I am exerting a force and I can put spring gauges on to a string tied to my feet and show you I am pulling.

So why don't my feet come up off the ground?

So in your alternative view what is happening here ... explain away.

BTW this is exactly what newton did ... he graded leather tethers as needing a certain force to stretch a known distance. So he could compare the force needed to lift a rock to that of dragging something along or horses pulling etc. It was actually Hook who answered the question why one can not lift oneself into the air because he had been working with stored energy in springs.

Regarding perpetual motion: I think that motion (and hence energy) is the basic quality of matter, and so all bodies remain in motion, ie, in perpetual motion. I would like to define energy as 'the quality by virtue of which matter always remains in motion'.

Aristotle held the view that a force is required to keep bodies in motion. Newton corrected him and said that once the body is set in motion by a force, there is no need of any force to keep it in motion. The actual situation, I think, is that no force is required at any time; bodies move on their own.

The above concept that energy is a fundamental quality of matter, like mass and volume, is the basis of my alternate approach (whether it may ultimately turn out to be wrong or right).