So like Maxwell, I’m now obsessed with the luminferous aether. I was asking questions here about finding it in gravitational waves. A New Aether?
I stumbled across this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kp_kqamkYpw&t=741s (great YouTube channel!) - not understanding a lot, except the idea that lightning can be heard on the other side of the earth because of earth’s magnetic field. He explains how scientists estimated “missing” baryonic matter using Fast radio bursts and the red shift of their host galaxy. I thought about this for a while, and it seemed to me the implication is that the universe has a magnetic field and FRBs track “lightning.”
So can this magnetic field be the aether or evidence of it? Does it interact with the baryonic matter that’s “dark” to us?
I had to look up what Maxwell thought of the aether again after I typed these questions:
“In his 1861 paper On Physical Lines of Force he modelled these magnetic lines of force using a sea of molecular vortices that he considered to be partly made of aether and partly made of ordinary matter. He derived expressions for the dielectric constant and the magnetic permeability in terms of the transverse elasticity and the density of this elastic medium. He then equated the ratio of the dielectric constant to the magnetic permeability with a suitably adapted version of Weber and Kohlrausch’s result of 1856, and he substituted this result into Newton’s equation for the speed of sound. On obtaining a value that was close to the speed of light as measured by Hippolyte Fizeau, Maxwell concluded that light consists in undulations of the same medium that is the cause of electric and magnetic phenomena.”
I have little idea of what that paragraph means, but it seems relevant. And I’m getting very excited over here I hope this discovery comes in my lifetime.
I think you are caught up in two different ways of talking.
When we say that the earth has a magnetic field, we are typically talking of our ability to use a magnetic compass to distinguish between North and South.
But let’s suppose that the were no magnetic poles and compasses did not work on Earth. In a different way of talking, we could still say that the earth had a magnetic field, but with a field strength of zero. We would still be able to have radios using electromagnetic waves, even if there were no magnetic poles.
Of course, the magnetic field strength wouldn’t really be exactly zero. It would fluctuate (with those radio signals) but have an average field strength of zero. (Or we could put on our quantum hats and talk of radio in terms of photons instead of in terms of electromagnetic fields).
I don’t understand what you’re saying but the universal magnetic field having an average of 0 might make sense in my head. In a 5-dimensional universe, I’m using Gunnar Nordstrom’s thought experiment the gravitational field and electromagnetic field were expressed the same way if there were 4 dimensions within a five dimensional universe.
I really don’t know if I’m making any sense. Other than that maybe it makes sense to talk about it both ways? At this point my brain is done and I feel like I’m just spitting out goobledygook.
The Michelson-Morley experiment seems to have disproved the existence of the classic luminiferous aether:
The first hurdle an aether would need to clear is the observation of a constant speed of light in all reference frames. If we are moving with respect to an aether then shouldn’t the speed of light be less in the direction of travel, like a boat moving against the wind?
If i’m understanding my own thinking correctly, haha, we and the aether move together. FRBs are a slight acceleration and gravitational waves show a slight drag until we equalize with the aether. I couldn’t tell you if I’m actually making any sense.
The aether is supposed to be in our 4D space, not outside of it. If we are moving through a luminiferous aether then light in the direction of travel should be moving slower than light moving away from the direction of travel, but it doesn’t. Light has the same speed regardless of which way we are travelling and which direction we measure.
We can take a different view of the M-M experiment.
Together with Maxwell’s equations, the M-M experiment suggests that the aether is the electromagnetic field. And Maxwell’s equations do show that the speed of light should be the same in all reference frames.
This is so fun. So I was learning about the Higgs this weekend - hadn’t gotten into that yet with watching video about physics. And thought…wow, this is giving particles mass, this is like what I speculated God did on Day 1 with light, as I’m assuming matter didn’t have mass until then, for various reasons. So I had to look up Higgs and aether. And even scientist were saying, it’s a sort of aether, just without all the problems. Cool.
So it made me think - maybe Light had mass, until God gave the light to the astronomical bodies and there was “leftover light.”
So it really does make me think - is the “missing” baryonic matter in the universe or dark matter some kind of primordial matter that is not made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons? I guess that would make it dark matter rather than baryonic matter…
Don’t know if it makes any sense with my other contemplations on this thread, but I’d appreciate any input. Either way, fun to think about. Now I’ll be studying up on quantum fields and standard model particles a lot more…they’ve become that much more fascinating.
For dark matter I think rogue planets are an interesting idea to entertain, though baryonic matter as a dark matter candidate is a very controversial subject. I remember seeing another recent report on rogue planets possibly being even in greater number than first thought.
What about one of your hidden dimension ideas? Why couldn’t dark matter be a hidden spatial or temporal fold in spacetime?
So how does this book propose that these planets aren’t visible?
yes, that’s a possibility too. Many fascinating possibilities for sure. I do definitely think part of why it’s harder to detect is extra dimensions.
I’m still learning some basics - my interest is what the “waters” are in Genesis 1 and Psalm 148. And also light/aether is fascinating. My question is now - what are the specifics of how the aether went missing (from our little section of the universe at least)? Or what was it before on Day 1? EM QFT and Higgs all make some sense of it. I was learning about anti-matter today too. Weirdly it’s all making more sense to me that all these things are related, not less. Maybe that’s just because I understand it more…but all the scientific questions humans are answering now seem to be so directly related to the order in which God made things because the other basics are figured out. I do believe gravity is a Day 1 thing, but we’re looking at it as a day 4 thing, and so of course, it will be different at a quantum level.
There’s so many possibilities for dark matter. It’s fun now when articles of new discoveries pop up in my news feeds. I can make sense of them. I have to go back and look at my notes to see where I started.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-hidden-magnetic-universe-begins-to-come-into-view-20200702/ Awesome!
I hope this discovery comes in my lifetime.
