Category: Physics

The Fabric of Space and the National Science Foundation’s L.I.G.O.

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

Albert’s Lonely Life

My sister was a brilliant lady. She was an explorer, author, and medical doctor. She supposed that every mind had near-equal capacity, and the differences were a result of the development of the pathways within our magnificent grey matter.

My brother is a highly intelligent man. He spends his life in computer code and in the intricacies of aircraft systems. He has many patents (I don’t keep up – probably close to thirty U.S. – over fifty international) He is not inventing light bulbs. He is inventing the components of the future of flight. We often talk. He is “different”. I believe, he longs to be understood.

My brother (right) with me at my mother’s home

I have a cousin who is autistic. He remembers what shirt I wore to Thanksgiving in 1986. He remembers what car I drove and what I said about it. I have difficulty remembering my address.

He is different as I am different. His memory is a large part of his conscience, as analysis is of mine. Are not either of these abilities significant and useful? Is one better than another? My sister would argue that the whole was comparable and that it was simply an issue of balance of application of the mind that sets one apart from another.

I published my first poem at eleven. I was an odd boy, reading the Iliad, and the Rubaiyat, studying chemistry and physics.

What I remember about youth was a feeling of isolation. I was happy in my basement with my experimentation. (I once received a kind rejection from a chemical supply company when I inquired to obtain a radioactive isotope for a basement experiment.)

If only they knew!  That basement was blown up a few times before my interests broadened to more benign pursuits.

I recently read, again the first english translation of Einstein’s theory of relativity. It was written as he worked at the patent office. In it I see a glimpse of the man and his conscience.

I wonder about Albert. I imagine that his was a lonely existence. When you are considering the Universal Theory, there are few engaging conversations at parties. He had so little in common with the rest.

When no one understands you, is it a painful isolation. I wonder if we could have been friends, or if he would think me odd, too. I wondered if he longed for someone like him, one who could critique and question.

His contributions live on and his mathematics and his brilliant realizations will shape the thinking of man for hundreds of years. I hope that he was not too lonely.

Scott Cahill

When will we know the outcome of today’s election?

I am meeting a friend to drink beer and watch the election results come in. We are meeting at 8:00 PM

Here are the times the polls will be closing according to the Wall Street Journal. Since I have predicted the outcome (always a bad thing to do), I expect to have a great feel for who will be picking up the check by 9:00. Ohio and North Carolina close at 7:30. They are very important states to show how the wind blows and to confirm or annihilate my projections.

Virginia will close at 7:00. I believe that if trump takes Virginia, I am safe to drink as much as I like without a chance of getting the bill. Tim Kaine is loved in Virginia, and if Hillary can’t pull that off, with such a solid running mate, the others will fall like dominos.

Pennsylvania is another very important state as is Colorado and – especially Florida, which closes at 7:00.

See my projections at:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/early-election-results-scott-cahill?trk=prof-post

If you are lucky enough to be in or near Salem, Ohio – come by “Coaches” in the Courtyard Square and enjoy (hopefully) the results with us. One of us will be happy and one of us will be sad – such is the arena of politics

Scott Cahill

Nichola Tesla, The Loneliest Man Who Ever Lived

Nichola Tesla was a lonely man. He was a brilliant man. He lived once, long ago, in a time that has passed. He understood the intricacies of electricity and harmonics, gravity and light, and the ether of space. More than that, he understood that they were all the same thing.

Today these many years later, mankind is yet to catch up to his brilliance. We have become sidetracked in a mathematical swamp, which pulls us into calculations, and away from free thought.

Tesla was a very odd man. I know much of him because, time after time, I find myself siding with him on a number of understandings within the realm of physics. Physics is my hobby. If I had another lifetime, I would spend it as a physicist. I, too, am an odd man. I see the “flashes” that Tesla saw and I believe that space is an ether, as Tesla did. Like Tesla, I am more at ease contemplating the spin of photons, and Bell’s inequality than I am at a cocktail party, discussing the markets or golf.

He was a lonely man. He preferred solitude. He never married. He had, perhaps, his closest relationship with a pigeon, who he loved. There was no woman or man who was his equal because he had no equal. He had no one to talk to. Einstein, one of only a few men who could grasp his understandings, was a mathematician, this resulted in a disparity of understanding of the material constituency of the universe. Though their methodologies, and their theory differed, they had deep respect for each other. (Tesla, by the way, was right).

Tesla felt best alone. I imagine, from my experiences, that he tried to understand human interaction and, eventually, simply gave up, deciding that the harmonics of the universe were more important to understand than why someone didn’t like the dress that he bought her for Christmas.

I am not as intelligent as Tesla was. He was more than a genius. What he was, they never made a word for, he was “Tesla”. Mankind has a way to go, then one day in the deep future, when, finally we glimpse the outer bounds of our being, we shall see Nichola looking back at us.

Many of us have helped others. It is a thankless endeavor. You find yourself squatting to push out the “golden egg”. One day the egg is not big enough, it may have some old feathers or fecal matter on it. “we could really use a couple more golden eggs this week.” Eventually you end up with a sore butt, and a renewed conviction to never help again. Such was the lot of Nichola Tesla.

He cranked out one miracle after another, until, giving the great man nothing for his effort, we demanded more – “what great understanding do you have for us this week?” He was ultimately frustrated when he declared his “death ray”, a harmonic EMF curtain that could destroy and kill at the turn of a dial, creating a harmonic attenuation that blew apart the structure of matter. One day we will find that he did, indeed, make such a thing. One day we will find that he hid it from us, because he saw us for what we truly are, inherently flawed beings.

The failure to “produce” was crippling on Tesla. Like Einstein, who took shortcuts to effect closure, creating theoretical errors, Tesla needed the appreciation of his fellow men. Tesla was surrounded by vultures who were pecking through his understanding to find a way to make a dollar, singularly small men, who could never understand Tesla. He hid the concept of the ray, as he should have, and he fell into obscurity, dyeing alone in a hotel room. Such is the blight of the super-intelligent.

They combed through his writings after his death, looking for a better way to kill, but, hopefully, Nikola, anticipated this. I would like to think that he sent them on a wild goose chase.

A man came to live among us for a while. He gave to us a glimpse of the secrets of the universe. He came from a place far away, deep into the future of humanity, or the past. He held the ultimate truths, but, he saw us for what we are, and without judging, he died, knowing that our time had not yet come.

 

Perhaps, somehow, he will come again, when we are ready, when we are kind to animals, when we no longer kill, or hate, when we are able, at last, to understand.

Scott Cahill

Pardon my intellect

I am sometimes told that I am intelligent. It was especially so when I was young. I suppose that is a good thing.

I have a wonderful friend. Bill is autistic. He, like me, has difficulties with the understanding of “feelings”. He might say something that is hurtful, or inappropriate. If he does, it is only because of the difference of the way that he thinks. You see, Bill is a really good man. He is kind and he is caring.

He remembers what shirt I wore to Thanksgiving in 1987. He remembers my Road Runner, its red stripes, and the size of its engine. Were it not for Bill, I might have forgotten that I ever had it. I enjoy the times that we spend together – especially when we are completely alone. I suppose in some ways, Bill is less intelligent than me. I suppose, too that in some ways I am less intelligent than Bill. We are all different. We are each unique. Thank God that it is so.

My siblings are intelligent. My beloved sister was well known, a great writer, speaker, and medical doctor. My brother is a “rocket scientist” who works on the outer-edges of aerospace engineering. He has a pocket protector and glasses. He holds sixty some patents of complex components and methodologies. He is, probably, a genius.

My sister came to believe, as she wintered over at the South Pole station in Antartica, that society requires each of us to exist. She noticed that a group of similar people, vetted for psychological stability, morphed into differing societal types, once the doors closed on the rest of the world.

Like my mother, a great poet, I write. I always have. In my writing, I often select science on the edge of understanding, or a piece of understanding where I believe the truth to be other than the generally accepted. It is the things that are missing that engage me. Those are the most important.

It is ok for Bill to be autistic. I suppose that he might have it otherwise, I would not. It is ok for some to be like my brother. If we were all the same, what a terrible world that would produce. My sister would say “we each are needed by society equally”. I agree.

If I was a window washer, as I was yesterday, I would be a horrible window washer, running inside and outside as I noted a smudge always on the other side into near infinity.

A mind like mine, must move. It must devour and churn away. It keeps my body up at night, calculating the exterior surface of cones three different ways, for no reason at all – just because it is bored. I would be ineffective as a window washer, like Einstein in the patent office.

All of us are equal. It is such a seemingly simple statement made by an imperfect man at a spindly oak desk at Monticello.

Society is a jigsaw puzzle. The whole is lacking if any piece is missing. It is ok for some to be “wired” differently. To the world, to society, all men are, indeed, equal.

I have apologized for the things that interest me, and the kind of mind that I have, for not caring about football or wrestling, or NASCAR, for the books I carry. I have pretended, even, to be something I am not, to placate, to fit in.

I imagine that Bill, when not alone in my mom’s study, must do the same, mimicking “normal”, pretending interest. What a shame, that society fails to embrace the magical disparity of interest and intellect, the vast array of wiring of our magical minds.

Scott Cahill

Dreams Keep me from Sleeping

My dreams, they haunt me, deep in the night, alone inside of my cranium. They spark neurons triggering a web of impulse across a great gray field of memory. Awake or asleep, I do not know, hiding behind eye lids in darkness, between the sheets, waiting for the quiet of morning.

On the sea, I find succession of the flashes that so disturbed Nicola, awake alone in his chair, contemplating the harmony of the universe. He would have liked to sail with me out on the open sea – far from land to find our comforting friend, loneliness. There I sleep, on the ocean. They cannot find me there, a dot on a field of nothing. I exist the most there, in the night.

The world is falling – spinning through space, I am frightened, to know too much. I reach for him in a dream, but he has gone before me, gone to the endless harmony beyond the veil. I wait, devoid of comfort, I hold a truth, but feel the pain of impotence to convey. I am lost in an empty place beyond the bounds of humanity. I am lost in a horrid dream.

Nicola, Albert, Newton, and John, we all scream together in silent harmony. Erwin’s cat looks on, through the depth of time. Erwin’s cat looks on, uncaring, as photons spin left and right, but not to the cat, who sits, still, looking. We, those left out, through genius or stupidity, care so deeply for the inequity of spinning photons, arguing their place in a world we cannot see. Perhaps it is our shared insanity. Perhaps it doesn’t matter, our efforts, our experiments, our theory, our lives.

John and Bobby, Martin and Dwight, I hear your screaming, but your screams fall silent, and men move on. Your words are dust, so soon forgotten, or never understood, by those who are simple. Perhaps it doesn’t matter, the equity of man. Perhaps it doesn’t matter.

Will they ever hear, the screams of great men? Will they hear or will we keep on spinning over and over, light and dark, night and day, until it all is lost. And all is silent in the ether of space, perhaps it was always so.

Perhaps it is but a dream.

Scott Cahill

Hawking goes to the aether to play cards, at last, with Einstein and Tesla

 

Stephen Hawking has died at the age of seventy six. He was a great man. He saw things that most failed to see. He studied at Cambridge and fell into interest in physics and mathematics.

He lacked physical abilities, but, perhaps partially because of becoming trapped within a failing body, he concentrated his magnificent mind on the smallest and largest of matter and energy. His life, like those of Einstein and Tesla, changed man’s understanding of our world and brought us steps closer to the Universal Theory.

Recently, the world’s greatest physicists have looked into the crystalline nature of space and find planes of excitement of particles that shift to and from energy and matter. Hawking spent the latter part of his life in space, making computations at the event horizon of black holes. His body held him back, yet he escaped the prison of humanity to play among the stars.

Within that place, in the aether of space, in the deep black and cold, scattered with stars and black holes, three old men play cards today. One with slick black hair, one with disheveled hair, and another, tall and thin, standing, at last, free of the nightmare. This is, perhaps where Stephen belongs, at last, a part of the whole, at last unalienated from a world where he never fit in, at last with those who understood.

Scott Cahill

Parallel Universes crashing through one another unseen and unheard, hidden behind a veil of relative motion

 

Albert Einstein pontificated the relationships of space and time. Within the Theory of Relativity, which he drafted in the Zurich patent office, he defined these relationships and the influence of speed of motion upon time itself. From his math we finally began to accept that, as objects progress toward the speed of light their time slows. Time elsewhere remains constant. He saw that, given this warpage of time, it would be impossible to exceed the speed of light (299,792,458 meters/second). This is a seemingly impossible reality to comprehend.

He further declared that the speed of light was a constant, independent of the position or speed of the observer. Many, including Einstein, thought that there must be an influence to maintain the speed of light in space.

Beyond the speed of light, relative to our position of observation, there may be universes, moving toward, away, and through us completely unnoticed. Perhaps the thing that defines one universe from another, forever dividing the entirety of all of matter and energy is a simple thing, relative motion.

If this is so, there may be many universes, each as real as the others, each occupying the same space and time for a moment, each with the same quirks of distortion within the relative movement of elements within its whole. We would see little or nothing of them but, perhaps the background noise of their interplay that seeps into our realm.

We know that the majority of mass and energy is “black” unseen and unknown to man, still, from gravitational computation, we know that it is there, somewhere. Perhaps that “black matter” is only another universe passing through us while we sleep separated from us only by its relative motion.