Mathematically defined units - benefits

[FrankM]

 

The physicsworld link was wrong. Here is the correct one (without the stop):

Changes spotted in fundamental constant

 

What does this have to do with a mathematically defined value for the speed of light? Is the mathematical process in my paper wrong?

 

I see nothing wrong with a measured constant changing if the conditions in which it exists are not the same at one measured position in the universe versus another. I also read the first comment below the article, and it cited an NIST source stating, "Thus the famous number 1/137 is not unique or especially fundamental."

 

My post is not about the fine structure constant, so why is it being brought up?

 

I know why other issues are being brought up, readers do not want to believe what the mathematics in my paper demonstrate. There is nothing wrong with the mathematical method, our approach to scientific discovery has been stuck in near medieval concepts for centuries.

 

Max Tegmark gets a tremendous amount of attention by promoting the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis (MUH), so what is wrong with identifying a mathematical process that supports that hypothesis? Someone who has an inside track to Tegmark should pass the methodology on to him and get his comments. An email to him in Swedish might get his attention.

 

http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/personal.html

[Turtle]

What does this have to do with a mathematically defined value for the speed of light? Is the mathematical process in my paper wrong?

 

I see nothing wrong with a measured constant changing if the conditions in which it exists are not the same at one measured position in the universe versus another. I also read the first comment below the article, and it cited an NIST source stating, "Thus the famous number 1/137 is not unique or especially fundamental."

 

My post is not about the fine structure constant, so why is it being brought up?

 

I know why other issues are being brought up, readers do not want to believe what the mathematics in my paper demonstrate. There is nothing wrong with the mathematical method, our approach to scientific discovery has been stuck in near medieval concepts for centuries.

 

Max Tegmark gets a tremendous amount of attention by promoting the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis (MUH), so what is wrong with identifying a mathematical process that supports that hypothesis? Someone who has an inside track to Tegmark should pass the methodology on to him and get his comments. An email to him in Swedish might get his attention.

 

http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/personal.html

 

erhm frank...you might want to curb your enthusiam a smidge. Tormod was not saying the content of the link was wrong, he was saying the link was broken. he then fixed the link for you which you will find if you pass your cursor over the last words in his reply, "

Changes spotted in fundamental constant".

 

i do not pretend to understand your "discovery" and Tormod said as much as well earlier. moreover i think we both have expressed support for your pursuance of getting your work peer reviewed, something i hope wasn't lost on you. anyway, thought i'd just pop in to straighten out your misunderestandimation. ;) carry on. . . .

[FrankM]

erhm frank...you might want to curb your enthusiam a smidge. Tormod was not saying the content of the link was wrong, he was saying the link was broken. he then fixed the link for you which you will find if you pass your cursor over the last words in his reply, "

Changes spotted in fundamental constant".

 

I wasn't criticizing Tormod for posting a correction to the URL, and I accessed the physicsworld article. I wanted to emphasize that bringing up issues that have nothing to do with the mathematics and concept in the paper, such as Farsight did, are off topic. The mathematics in the paper involve the simplest understanding of geometry, multiplication and a well understood physical law. If someone disagrees with the mathematics in the concept just say so.

 

So far, I have received zero responses stating that the mathematics are wrong. I actually have an email response from a UK astronomer, who was provided a copy of the paper as an email attachment, who stated, "I am not so sure though about your claim that the speed of of light can be determined by mathematics alone." I know why he responded with that particular wording, the concept in the paper goes against everything he has been taught and what he has taught. I understood his skepticism, he is not ready to change one of his scientific beliefs.

 

The mathematical process used in the methodology illustrates that the speed of light (electromagnetic waves) can be determined mathematically.

 

I hope those who read this particular post realize that everyone has been taught that we (the scientific community) have to define the basic units of measure in order to identify numerical values for the phenomena that describe characteristics of the physical world. The concept presented in the paper indicates that the basic units of measure can be mutually defined using a basic physical law and simple mathematics, this along with identifying a mathematics based value for the velocity of electromagnetic waves. Are you ready to change one of your scientific beliefs?

 

There are a lot of things I know about the concept that I did not put in the paper, but they were not needed to present the concept. As I stated in a previous post, #16, "I did not state in the paper that the mathematically defined unit of time is a cosmological time unit." I also want to note that I did not state in the paper that the basic unit of length mutually defined by the mathematical process is a cosmological unit of length.

[Turtle]

I wasn't criticizing Tormod for posting a correction to the URL, and I accessed the physicsworld article. I wanted to emphasize that bringing up issues that have nothing to do with the mathematics and concept in the paper, such as Farsight did, are off topic. The mathematics in the paper involve the simplest understanding of geometry, multiplication and a well understood physical law. If someone disagrees with the mathematics in the concept just say so.

 

well frank, you are the one who keeps bringing up "the science community" and taking pot shots at "them/it" in the doing, and this has nothing to do with the math or physical laws. :shrug: you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink & you can catch more flies with honey that with vinegar. :fly:

[FrankM]

well frank, you are the one who keeps bringing up "the science community" and taking pot shots at "them/it" in the doing, and this has nothing to do with the math or physical laws. :shrug: you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink & you can catch more flies with honey that with vinegar. :fly:

 

The only time I used the term "the science community" in this post topic was in regards to how our system of scientific units came into being. I had stated in my previous post, "I hope those who read this particular post realize that everyone has been taught that we (the scientific community) have to define the basic units of measure in order to identify numerical values for the phenomena that describe characteristics of the physical world." It was "the science community" that adopted metric to standardize those type units for scientific purposes, this to separate scientific units of measure from a variety of measurement terms that have in the past been applied to scientific reports.

 

I am criticizing the science community in my other posting, "What's Wrong With Science And Science Education," but that is another topic.

 

The "authority structure" of the "scientific enterprise" (terms borrowed from Goodstein's book referenced in my other topic) are responsible for the currently accepted mathematical structures and units of measure which are used to extract and describe the numeric values for physical laws.

 

If "the science community" made a mistake in how it selected the basic units of measure, wouldn't it be to everyone's advantage in the science community to know about it?

[FrankM]

So far, I haven't been able to replicate the odd date pairing I managed to get between posts #11 and #12, where there were 13 days actual separation. I was examining a number of ways I might have managed that feat, thus I made this post. It didn't repeat the date feat.

 

Just to make sure this post doesn't waste the topic, I will add my web page to it and provide a quote from it.

 

... identifies a fundamentally different way to apply mathematics to physical law.

 

Methodology

[FrankM]

Some readers have already noticed, but I want to highlight the basic concept in the Methodology .

 

The basic dimensions of each triangle in the triangle pair are representing the inverse proportional relationship between two parameters, wavelength and frequency. These two types of dimensional descriptors are describing the physical characteristics of an electromagnetic emission, which has a different spatial relationship in the physical universe, it diminishes with the square of the distance.

 

There are other phenomena in the physical universe that diminish with the square of the distance. Thus, one should be able to create a triangle pair for the other physical phenomena that diminish by the square of the distance that can be described by two parameters that are inversely proportional. I suspect the basic dimensions for one triangle will be exactly like the wavelength triangle in its basic 45 degree form, the fundamental dimension represents the "size" of the parameter that has a single unit descriptor, and it can be given a value of 1. We probably already know the numeric value for the fundamental dimension that should be applied to the second triangle, and identifying it will create an Eureka moment for the finder. The finder may not recognize the Eureka moment initially because of the strange number that will be displayed by the hypotenuse dimension of the triangle that uses a complex unit descriptor. You should know it is correct when the constant of proportionality is validated.

 

 

In the Methodology, the numeric value of the hypotenuse, [math]2{\pi}{\sqrt2}[/math], did not look like a familiar value for the "speed of light" until it was translated to SI units.

 

You don't have to start with the fundamental 45 degree right triangle pair, you might want to start with a triangle pair described in the Methodology that is dimensioned in SI units. The same principles will apply as noted in the Methodology, the constant of proportionality will be product of the leg of one triangle times the hypotenuse of the other triangle. We may already know the value of the constant of proportionality in SI units. Keep in mind that using SI units will create the same problem noted in the frequency triangle dimensioned using SI units, the actual value of the hypotenuse of the triangle with the complex dimension will not be the numeric value of the constant of proportionality, it will be offset by the artificiality of SI units. However, working in SI units means you should see familiar values describing each of the triangle dimensions. After you have validated the constant of proportionality for the triangle pair in SI units, you can determine what basic dimensions will satisfy the inverse relationships that will describe a fundamental 45 degree right triangle pair. You will have identified the "sizes" of the fundamental units by which that particular phenomena should be described.

[FrankM]

In the Methodology, the numeric value of the hypotenuse, [math]2{\pi}{\sqrt2}[/math], did not look like a familiar value for the "speed of light" until it was translated to SI units.

 

The numeric value represented by [math]2{\pi}[/math] appears frequently in equations dealing with physical law. I sometimes wonder why that particular numeric value is considered unimportant, it certainly cannot be ignored.

 

John Baez The reason is very simple: any calculation that predicts a length using only the constants c, G, and hbar must give the Planck length, possibly multiplied by an unimportant numerical factor like [math]2{\pi}[/math].

 

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/planck/node2.html

 

The concept presented in the Methodology indicates that [math]2{\pi}[/math] represents a numeric value that has great significance in physical law above the Planck scale, which is why I added the last sentence to the first paragraph of the Summary.

 

Perhaps the relationships revealed in this paper will allow physicists and mathematicians to resolve just what purpose π, and its multiples, are serving in physical law equations.

[Turtle]

What benefits would accrue to the various scientific disciplines if a set of units, specifically, length, time duration, unit of energy and the speed of light were mathematically defined?

 

I realize this is a hypothetical, but I need some conceptual views on the benefits of such a system of units.

 

do you have a unique temperature scale from this? if so, how do you convert from/to temperature scales currently in use? if not, why not? :confused:

[FrankM]

do you have a unique temperature scale from this? if so, how do you convert from/to temperature scales currently in use? if not, why not? :confused:

I can't do it all.

 

A quote from the second paragraph of the Benefits section in the Methodology is in order.

The Consultative Committee on Units stated in a 2005 report,(5) “the consensus that now exists on the desirability of finding ways of defining all of the base units of the SI in terms of fundamental physical constants so that they are universal, permanent and invariant in time.” Now, a basic set of scientific units of measure can be created that will be truly universal.

Originally, the part that is in quotes was the lead sentence of the Introduction of the previous version of my paper. I expanded upon that opening sentence to explain the nature of the existing system of units, SI. In many science related papers, the Introduction describes a problem that needs to be solved. Describing the problems with SI units and how my mathematical approach could solve the problems did not work in getting my paper accepted by a peer reviewed publication.

 

For those that are not confused about SI units, I would like to further illuminate their understanding of the system. I will start by referencing a URL that illustrates their interconnections.

 

SI Units Diagram

 

Please note how the Kelvin unit is cleverly integrated into the diagram, showings its relationship to the other SI base and derived units.

 

The first column in the SI Units Diagram is labeled as SI Base Units, which are supposed to be fundamental units. The third column contains derived units. In the upper left hand corner of the third column group is the newton, a derived unit. Note there is no link drawn from the newton to the Ampere. The definition for the Ampere uses the newton.

 

SI Definitions

 

I have tried to communicate with NIST and the IUPAP (see Ref 5 of the paper) on that anomaly; no response.

[Qfwfq]

The numeric value represented by [math]2{\pi}[/math] appears frequently in equations dealing with physical law. I sometimes wonder why that particular numeric value is considered unimportant, it certainly cannot be ignored.

The value [math]2{\pi}[/math] has a well known geometrical significance and there is no doubt about this. The reason it appears in many equations of physics is simply where the same geometric fact is relevant or useful. There's no point making a song and dance about it.

 

Suppose a wheel is spinning around an axle at a very steady rate of [math]n[/math] times a second. We commonly call this the frequency, but [math]2\pi n[/math] is called the angular velocity (radians per second instead of cycles per second). Quite analogous steps are taken with periodic things in general, or when they can be so broken down, such as with Fourier analysis, whenever there is a whiff of a period [math]T[/math] or a wavelength [math]\lambda[/math] in the air. In essence it can be put as due to the choice of using trig functions with arguments in radians. Period and wavelength get labelled as being [math]2\pi[/math] radians.

[FrankM]

The value [math]2{\pi}[/math] has a well known geometrical significance and there is no doubt about this. The reason it appears in many equations of physics is simply where the same geometric fact is relevant or useful. There's no point making a song and dance about it. ...

 

Actually, there are multiple reasons to make a song and dance about it.

 

It was unfortunate that I had to use the symbolic representation of 2[math]{\pi}[/math] for the numeric value of 6.2831... in the Methodology, it is an accepted notation. The appearance of the numeric value of 6.2831... in its particular place in the mathematical structure of the Methodology has a more fundamental purpose than is conventionally recognized, and I was given clues to its real meaning in my discovery process. It would not have been fruitful to speculate about what I thought what 6.2831... meant in the paper. I just presented it as a mathematical value and let the readers think about what it is doing in a mathematical structure that allows the speed of light to be mathematically defined.

 

I hadn't visited Bob Palais' web page for a number of months and I just noticed a new paragraph has been added, Tau: [math]{\tau}[/math]

 

Robert Palais wrote a paper for the Mathematical Intelligencer [math]{\pi}[/math] is Wrong! just because of the way 2[math]{\pi}[/math] appears in many equations in physics. Palais' tongue-in-cheek approach to writing his article was quite serious. I cited the Robert Palais article in my paper. Michael Hartl has definitely picked up the torch where Bob Palais left it, with The Tau Manifesto.

[FrankM]

In section 3, Intrinsic Units, of the Methodology I stated,

 

It was found by deduction that the numeric value that defines frequency had to have a numeric value

that equaled that of an angular frequency where the unit of time (T) equaled one or the frequency (f) equaled

one.

In an earlier version of the paper, I provided additional material why I thought the numeric value represented by 2[math]{\pi}[/math] should be viewed as having a dual nature. A report published in the 30 July Physical Review Letters adds a new spin to the issue.

 

Triangular Hole Reveals Light's Rotation

[FrankM]

I periodically send emails to selected individuals, usually professors or individuals with PhD's in Physics, Engineering or Mathematics, informing them of the forthcoming paper, with a link. I sometimes receive a response that is somewhat odd.

 

A recent email to an individual in the UK with a PhD in Physics, and is employed in a teaching position at a well known academic institution, responded with, "Sounds interesting, and perhaps you are on to something...but I was never very good at maths! ".

 

The only mathematics one needs to know are high school level geometry and multiplication.

 

A response from a recent email to a Professor of Physics in an academic institution in the U.S., stated, "Numerology will always be what it has always been. Nothing more than numerology."

 

I really don't know what either of these professors were thinking when they examined the paper. What I do know, from responses that I can understand, there is a problem accepting the link between numeric values that are generally accepted to be mathematical constants and physical law. This goes against everything that they (and we) have been taught to accept.

 

Download link: Methodology

[Qfwfq]

It seems like the Brits are still, as always, far more tactful than North Americans typically are. What a lame excuse for a physicist not to comment.

 

This goes against everything that they (and we) have been taught to accept.

Mathematics is a pure exercise in logic. You just can't draw physical conclusions without observation.

 

Then again, perhaps the Brit who gave you that reply is one of those lab folk who are somewhat adverse to theorists and even more to mathematicians and hence all the more strongly inclined to dismiss your opinions right from the title of "Mathematically Defined Units" but, aside from this, I really don't see how you can hope to gain any positive response from any serious physicist. Have you ever attempted getting the opinion of anybody at Sèvres? Their current line of approach for redefining the units is aimed at using the fundamental constants of physics as much as possible and the current ones already relate metre and second via [imath]c[/imath] which is most appropriate.

[LaurieAG]

Hi Qfwfq,

 

Their current line of approach for redefining the units is aimed at using the fundamental constants of physics as much as possible and the current ones already relate metre and second via [imath]c[/imath] which is most appropriate.

 

Am I missing something here? Basic calculus proofs from first principles show the mathematical relationships between Newtonian distance, speed and acceleration by the differentiation or integration with respect to time of basic equations in the form of ax^2 + bx + c = 0. Note that c is any constant that translates to zero in the first differential (applying nx^(n-1) to all forms of x^n) and to xc in the first integral.

 

I can understand FrankM's interests in mathematically defined units as I believe the mathematical structure of the units themselves, m/s, m, m/s^2 etc can be used to determine if all combinations of m and s occupy mathematically consistent contexts. This can trap mistakes made where x^0, any constant, is differentiated to x^-1 or integrated to x^1 and not zero. Interestingly enough when i, the imaginary unit, is introduced into the basic equation it changes its format so that i^n = i ^ n mod 4 is its representation in any consecutive series of discrete integral/differential steps.

[FrankM]

Have you ever attempted getting the opinion of anybody at Sèvres? Their current line of approach for redefining the units is aimed at using the fundamental constants of physics as much as possible and the current ones already relate metre and second via [imath]c[/imath] which is most appropriate.

My email experience with BIPM, at Sèvres, has been negative, never a reply. One must get beyond the varnish BIPM has applied to an old product in order to make it look like it is new. We need to go back to when the BIPM (Metre Convention) was established, 1875, and to the definition of the metre. The BIPM adopted the existing duration for the second.

 

In 1799, the length of the metre was decreed to be one ten-millionth of a quadrant of the Earth, actually measured as the distance on the meridian between the Dunkirk and Barcelona. The size of the metre has not changed, it's definition has been re-varnished with a new definition. The Brits could have done just as well with the yard, or the fathom, defining their sizes in how far, in those units, for light to travel in one second. Simply defining a unit's value in relationship to a measured physical law value does not make the unit a fundamental physical constant, it is a relative constant, which can be any size. Please examine what the CCU, a committee of the BIPM, stated concerning the SI base units.

 

The Consultative Committee on Units stated in a 2005 report,(5) “the consensus that now exists on the desirability of finding ways of defining all of the base units of the SI in terms of fundamental physical constants so that they are universal, permanent and invariant in time.” Now, a basic set of scientific units of measure can be created that will be truly universal.

Flash forward to Jan 24-25, 2011 (350th anniversary of the founding of the Royal Society) where there is going to be a Discussion meeting at the Royal Society with the title New SI. The first sentence is quoted below:

From the origins of the metric system, when the metre was a fraction of the arc of the Paris meridian and the kilogram the weight of a cubic decimetre of water, the ultimate goal has been a system of measurement based on invariant quantities of nature.

There is a difference between defining all of the base units of the SI in terms of fundamental physical constants and a system of measurement based on invariant quantities of nature. Invariant quantities of nature can be extracted from many processes, at least as invariant as we can measure them on the earth's surface.

 

The Methodology defines a unit of length and a unit of time without needing to measure anything.