2008-12-17

Cosmology


Miscellaneous reflections on what little I know about physics
Physics today is weird. There are major chasms between quantum physics, which deals mostly with small stuff, and general relativity, which deals with the largest scales.
It seems like many of the scientists support a view of the universe that is essentially mathematical in content. But there is a difference between mathematics and physics.
Many cosmologists - and just about all scientific journalists - talk about space as if it’s an empty vacuum, yet light cannot be described without referring to waves traveling through this empty set, the medium of space. As if there is something out there that is only mathematics, and has nothing within itself. It is curved, and its curvature is reflected in the equation: curvature of space-time = (density of mass-energy) *8*pi*G/c^4, where G is the Newtonian gravitational constant for the particular location. But what is it that is curved? Space is not just mathematics. Space is not empty.
Instances of waves in physics generally involve waves, or energy, that travel through a medium. Sound through air. Earthquakes through water. But light is said not to require a medium. Well, I don’t believe it. Herbert Eugene Ives didn’t believe it either. He wrote a version of general relativity that included an “ether” medium. It was not proved wrong, but only, as Albert Einstein himself said, superfluous. Maybe I’m not up to date, but even now we have hypothesized concepts from quantum mechanics that include various types of "ether" media by different names, like dark energy, the quintessence, and such.  The point is simply that there is an unknown medium that pervades what some call "the vacuum" or "empty space".  
I believe it may still be possible to maintain the "ether" and be consistent with the currently accepted facts of cosmology. Okay, so it doesn’t pass Occam’s Razor. So what? We seem to need more.
Gravitational fields do not exist in reality as simply mathematics, hanging out there by itself, defining “space” as a geometry, and nothing more. Within what does this geometry exist? Within what lies its reality? Where are the physics of this math?