Science or Pseudo-science

The study of science has a long history with some triumphs and some quackery, but beginning in the 19^th Century it began to become more respectable with the formulation of the scientific method.  This method can be viewed as 1) Question 2) Hypothesis 3) Experiment 4) Data analysis 5) Conclusion 6) Duplication.   This is empirical science which can be repeated with the same results.  And example would be the demonstration of Einstein’s hypothesis that light has mass.   But somewhere along the way science deviated from this process and became based on faith and the belief that the hypothesis was all that was required even if it couldn’t be demonstrated.  Perhaps this division began with Darwin and his theory of Evolution.  Even though Darwin’s requirement for proof in the form of transitional fossils has never been met, Evolution has become FACT even though all that has ever been demonstrated is environmental adaptation and not speciation.  But this is just an example and once you begin to look more closely at particle physics and cosmology the issue of faith based science becomes more obvious.

The world of physics and cosmology is littered with questions and very few answers.  What passes for answers are really more like possibilities than answers and even those possibilities have built in logical conflicts.  For example science has determined – through observation – that the universe is expanding and that galaxies at the edge of the universe are accelerating and nearing the speed of light.  But if these galaxies are accelerating then logically they must have had staring point and a zero speed.  To answer this question science has postulated the Big Bang.  At some point the entire universe came into being at one gigantic explosion of superheated energy.  The temperature of this energy is believed to have been 10^23 but heat is the result of energized particles which didn’t yet exist.  Ignoring that detail -- how fast was it accelerating?  That probably isn’t as relevant as knowing that it is still accelerating and nearing the speed of light.  It is accepted that the Big Bang (which may or may not have happened) created space and time and energy.  Furthermore in violation of the law of entropy this energy organized itself into particles and ultimately into stars and planets.

But if the Big Bang created space-time then where was this infinitely dense mass of energy?  Furthermore, current thinking is that in this initial burst of energy it was expanding faster than the speed of light in violation of the General Theory of Relativity.  Without getting involved in that contradiction the implication is that if the energy released was moving beyond light speed then it must be concluded that the energy released must have slowed down below the speed of light in order for mass to come into being.  But if the energy was slowing down then what caused it to slow down and then to restart its acceleration?    Exactly what kind of energy was released at the Big Bang since it was moving beyond light speed?  Science now believes that mysterious energy was “dark energy” which remains mysterious and unknown, but scientists believe ultimately it will be identified and explained without resorting to some faith based explanation like intelligent design.

If we accept that the Big Bang was a gigantic release of some mysterious energy moving beyond the speed of light the question then arises is why did it slow? Newton’s Law says that a body in motion tends to remain in motion.  There was nothing to impede its expansion or momentum but something did in fact cause this mysterious energy to decelerate and begin to undergo a transformation from energy to mass.  And that introduces another question and that is “mass” – where did this mass come from?  Did the energy released at the Big Bang have “mass” because if it did that would violate general relativity which states that mass cannot exceed the speed of light.  This means there cannot have been mass at the beginning.  Science also tells us that photons only have mass in motion so this mysterious energy did not emit light and is believed to be “dark energy”.   So some pure energy was released traveling faster than light with an incredible temperature but no mass meaning there were no particles like photons, electrons, protons, neutrons, or anything similar.  Then were did these particles that generated all of that heat come from?  Apparently some mysterious force caused this burst of energy to decelerate and in defiance of the law of entropy – begin to  coalesce into differing forms yielding electrons ( a negatively charged energy field), protons ( a positively charged energy field) and neutrons (mass but no charge).

In conclusion it seems unreasonable to expect a scientist to follow the scientific method and duplicate the creation of the universe but is it unreasonable to expect that they make logical sense?  In the beginning they postulate that there was a bundle of energy with infinite density.  For anything to have density it must have mass and if it has mass it must have space but there was no space because the Big Bang created space and time.  So this -- their hypothesis is illogical at the outset.  From that illogical start we find general relativity ignored, Thermodynamic Laws ignored, Newton’s Law of Motion ignored, and of course the Law of Entropy ignored.  Where the mysterious energy came from is not addressed but is simply accepted that it spontaneously came into being without any initiating force.    And there you have it! Science has explained how the universe came to be without any proof or logic whatsoever, but expecting you to have faith that they are correct.  An example of faith based science ignoring empirical science and many of its own laws.   Of course there is an alternate hypothesis regarding the origin of the universe and it is widely known and accepted – I think it begins with “in the beginning there was chaos …”

 

 

 

The Question of Photons

I have been intrigued by much of the research into laser weapons, photon weapons, and light in general. Perhaps the most intriguing question I have come across recently was the statement that photons have zero mass – which seems to invalidate the age old equation of F= MA because if M is zero than F is zero but more importantly Einstein’s equations were demonstrated when light was observed to bend in a strong gravitational field – thus photons have mass. But the response to this question was that photons have zero mass at rest but it has mass in motion. This of course means that the photon lies inert in some body but when that body has energy applied the photon escapes as light with mass. So now the question is how do you know that the source has inert photons? Just because they escape when energy is applied is not in and of itself evidence that the photon was in the source object but could just as easily have come from the energy source. But then this opens up another question and that is Newton’s law regarding the conservation of mass and energy. The photon must have existed somewhere prior to being observed but then if it has no mass but gains mass through motion then isn’t that a creation of mass or is it a conversion of energy to mass? If that is true then isn’t E=MC<2 either not true or is there a dimension to this as yet unobserved because that equation describes the force unleashed by this conversion which was the atomic bomb.

But the explanation of this also includes the statement that a photon gains mass through “momentum,” where the momentum is the product of the mass times the linear velocity (m=MV) but momentum has both magnitude and direction so it is a vector which complicates things somewhat but the essential question remains even when V approaches the speed of light although again this tends to complicate matters still further due to the law of conservation of momentum. However, Physicists have declared that while a photon at rest has zero mass it does have a non-zero momentum but this seems like a stretch given that momentum is based on velocity and a photon at rest cannot be in motion and if it is in motion then by definition it must have mass.

This leads me to some other questions for example we are told that when energy is applied to an atom the electrons surrounding become excited and jump to a higher ring but almost immediately they drop back losing energy as light. But if that lost energy shows as light (a photon) and that photon has mass where did that energy come from – the external source? Did the electron gain mass when it jumped from an inner ring to an outer one? If it didn’t and its mass did not change then did the energy absorbed by the electron convert to the photon mass? But how does that fit
with Einstein’s equation?

Although electrons are thought of as “particles” Quantum Theory increasingly leads to the conclusion that an electron is more like a force than a particle which leads to the conclusion that an electron’s mass is a product of its motion – in effect the momentum of the electron determines its mass and the momentum is determined by its velocity. But when you heat an object it may grow hot, distort, or suffer some change but the total mass doesn’t increase, but then mass is not truly weight but includes resistance to motion. Consequently a photon by definition is traveling at the speed of light and thus its mass must be infinite according to Einstein but doesn’t really just prove that a photon and thus our reality cannot go faster than a photon? On the other hand if you did exceed the speed of light doesn’t that just mean it would become invisible?

This brings us to the question of motion. Our entire universe is in motion from the galaxies to the atom. The atom is surrounded by electron rings which are in motion so it would be logical that if a photon resided within the atom it would have mass since it isn’t at rest because the atom and electrons are not at rest. Therefore, the logical conclusion is that the photon emitted by shift in electron energy is the result of the energy applied from some outside source exciting the electrons, but since that energy is converted to mass has the source of the energy been reduced in mass or energy?

If the excited electron never took on mass when moving to the higher state and never lost any mass when returning to its former energy level then where did the photon’s mass come from? It seems to me Physicists are trying to have it both ways. Light can be viewed as either a wave or a particle but if light is a wave it is in motion and thus must have mass. But if light is viewed as a particle it must have mass because it is in motion. In order for a photon to have a zero mass it must be at rest and in that case where does this at rest photon exist?