L.I.G.O. recently sensed the undulations of the fabric of the universe caused by the marrying of two black holes in a far away corner of space. It is an important element in the information needed to step toward a more complete understanding of our universe.
As a boy, I wondered. I wondered at the heavens, the stars, and the universe. I saw it as a swirling mass of glistening dust in the vacuum of space. I learned about physics, momentum, and mass.
I learned about Galileo, Einstein, all the great men who, long before us, pontificated the heavens and considered the relationships of the heavenly bodies.
I learned about the experiments. There was the double-slit. The proof of Einstein’s warping of the fabric of space and time observed at eclipse, The floating frog, so many attempts and success and failures. There is a mass of proven hypothesis that cement elemental theory of physics.
Throughout my learning I was always wanting a real understanding of gravity. Each time I asked I was given the parameters of gravity. I was given the mathematical measurements of it. Never was I given a reasonable explanation of it, only it’s effect and its measurement. What is gravity? This drove me to explore all that I could find on the subject of gravity. In my lifetime it is the “missing link” in the understanding of the entire “fabric” of space.
To understand the various experiments, I began to envision space not as a vacuum, but as a three dimensional matrix of particles, a fluid, or a solid. You see, I see no difference between fluid, gas, or solid.
These descriptions are indicative of the frailty of mankind in our observations of the universe. With small variations in temperature, solids become liquids, liquids become gases. X-rays passing through your body show that you are not solid – but a cloud of particles separated by space in a matrix of atomic electromagnetic separation.
Because of what and who we are, tiny creatures on a tiny planet, in an unremarkable solar system, in a tiny universe. Due to an incredible evolution, we were blessed with the ability to sense radiation from far off stars. We have eyes!
These magical orbs emerging from our neural mass allow us to be aware that these points of light exist – that there is something out there far away twinkling in the night. Without eyes, our ability to conceive of the stars and planets and all outside of our reach would be lost to us.
Because of the small space in gravity and temperature and ambient radiation in which we evolved, and in which we find ourselves, we grew to believe that life required those things which our life requires, oxygen, temperature, the shielding of radiation, etc. All of these self-imposed limits are wrong. Life is an ambient reality of the universe. It flows through space and it has as many manifestations as there are places for it to flourish.
But, I digress, every physicist is working toward a single understanding – that elusive “Universal Theory”. Because we are human, we measure and perceive in a framework of our own existence. Like Schrodinger’s cat, existence is dependent on an observer. We are that observer, however, we, too, are limited greatly by our own frailties and limits, both real and perceived.
Because of the limits imposed by our point of observation, we must struggle to find explanation. One of our greatest failures as scientists is the inverse relationship between mathematics and the application of the scientific method.
Great scientists have been steered, of late, away from the development of hypotheses and the subsequent testing of these by experiment into a world of science steered by experiment followed by development of hypotheses. The frailty of this evolution is a loss of the conceptual element of science.
The mathematically driven model has resulted in some incredible science, much of which will be disproven when we finally reach a conclusion on how the transmission of energy (gravity, rays, and radiation) takes place through space.
I am not a mathematician, so I have a liability here, but, too, I have an asset. I am able to stand at a different place to observe the problem.
This is my model of the universe; I believe that the universe is a matrix of particles and energy. The forces, seeking equilibrium, suspend the charged particles in space. We observe stars and planets and meteors and space dust.
All of these are lumps in the soup of space. A ferrous meteor is a gas to another observer and space is, itself, a solid to another. All of it – space and all are a part of this “fabric” and all of the balances and imbalances are seeking equilibrium, exerting pressure outwardly to influence the next particulate balance.
Light, radiation, rays, and electromagnetic radiation are rippling through this fabric as waves of energy. This “energy” is an exchange of particles from one orbit to the next of these elemental orbits of mass. It is much like the transfer of electrons as ionic exchange or the transmission of electricity along a wire. Also it is an exchange of “pressure” of these forces within this fabric. I believe that this is what deflected the suspended mirrors of L.I.G.O.
As if these giants crashing was a set of hands clapping, their violent joining caused an undulation of this fabric as the air in my room is compressed and stretched by a clapped set of hands. L.I.G.O. “heard” this event.
The perceived Graviton, a particle of 10 to the minus 15 grams (0.0000000000000001 gram) is the mathematical apparition of the perceived subject of this exchange. The “weak force” or whatever it shall be called, that holds my matrix in place and the strings of gravity that exist because of this matrix pull our oceans up and cast them onto the shores as our moon falls around the earth and sucks these lines of force along as it passes.
The swelling of our universe shows the whole under a net positive pressure of these forces which push ever outwardly to find balance.
Even time is subject to our prejudice of point of vision. Our day, year, month are arbitrary, set to the timing of our planets, sun, and heartbeat. Perhaps on some lonely planet far away a heart beats every thousand years.
Science is a great manifestation of the wonder of man. Scientists must still wonder. For it is this wondering, this magical dream, that shapes science No mathematical exercise can begin to find the elusive truth that mankind is seeking.
Scott Cahill