What's the matter with mass?

I need to keep this going, had some interesting thoughts (oh yes!) but forgot to blog about them.

Mass appears to us in three forms.  The first is fixed to matter, giving matter its inertia and its weight in a gravitational field.  The second is dark matter, which is not matter at all because after decades of searching for it there is nothing there but mass, like the grin on a Cheshire cat.  This is Detached Mass (DM, conveniently).  The third is the mass in black holes, where any matter attached to it is unlikely to survice in a form we recognise, although obviously mass is retained when its matter enters a black hole.

I just want cosmologists to let their minds separate matter from mass and to detach the idea that everything has a particle associated.  At some point the null result of the dark matter particle search should be taken as an outcome, and a new approach tried.

Mass distinct from matter, and rotating galaxies rotate . .

Having gained my third degree, BSc Hons 2:1 in Nat Sci (Phys, Astro) am no longer thinking this subject so much.  I have learned something, but as expected the main lesson is how little I know. Main stimulus is New Scientist articles, with ever-more-esoteric explanations and 'discoveries' featuring the sentiment "might". Two things recently occurred to me out of this blue:

1) I have long held that it is not obvious that the content of black holes, matter, has the same form as its familiar form outside the black hole.  It is obvious that its mass is retained otherwise black holes could never happen or be sustained, and anyway, where would the mass go?  But no-one knows what form the matter can take after entering the event horizon, though surely is is very different even from its form in elementary particles, its most dense.

A way to look at it is not that mass is a property of matter, but rather that mass is a fundamental, and it may occupy matter as an essential constituent, but is not exclusive to matter.  By this view matter may be destroyed or completely transformed in a black hole, separated from its mass, while the mass exists in its basic or raw form taking up no space.

The only property of mass is its bending of spacetime to cause the effect of gravity, the intensity of the bending being directly related to the density of mass, and the amount of bend in a region relating to the totality of mass in that region.  (Whether the binding of mass with matter (optional to mass) is a property of mass or matter is moot.)  Mass exists in black holes, it exists in matter to give it inertia/weight, and it can also exist outside either black holes or matter in the form of - dark matter (DM).  Which hereby has a new and apposite name - unattached mass (UM).

2) This turns on its head my scepticism about so-called DM, as I have intuitively favoured MOND/TeVeS approaches, while seeking a way in which this conflict can instead be a duality.  MOND works very well in rotating galaxies but does not extend to larger-scale cosmology.  The increasingly detailed maps of DM as evidenced by gravitational lensing, the prime test for mass, are not helping the case for MOND, and it must be accepted that DM is ubiquitous and not necessarily related to the MOND acceleration a₀.

Yet the success of MOND to explain flat rotation curves without DM begs the question 'what is special about rotating galaxies that lets MOND work?'.  The answer may be that they are rotating.  I have argued at length about the special nature of rotation, causing an acceleration which once at steady rotational speed is constant and indefinite with no further energy requirement, also a description of gravity itself.  Rotation also has the property of existing in just two dimensions in terms of its plane, with the axis orthogonal and hence virtually defining an additional dimension.

So this conjecture is that mass is a fundamental and independent occupier and interactor of spacetime with no properties other than to bend spacetime, and (where required) to stiffen and weight matter.  It appears not to interact with itself, and cannot be expected to interact with matter (except as a constituent) or with the electromagnetic spectrum.  UM can be mapped in the cosmos by its gravitational effects but there are no particles of it.  Stop looking for Dark Matter, it does not exist.  But UM does link closely with rotational cosmology as evidenced in galaxy rotation curves, and points to a relationship between mass and a model for the universe as a whole involving rotational acceleration as an analogue for gravity.

The downgrading of matter from a fundamental to a derivative gives more options for the nature of matter and antimatter, ie less reason why there should be (or have been) the same amount of both.  Assume however that there is no such thing as anti or negative mass, but connect the fact that when antimatter and matter particles collide they disappear and release their mass in the form of energy.

What's the (dark) matter

These posts have been very sparse, as I expected, formal study of the subject stifles free thinking.  I tackled my tutors on my 2015 cosmology module on how a 3-d shape (a sphere) can be used to explain that 2-d space (its surface) can have curvature without invoking the third dimension, is fair to show that 3-d space can still have curvature without a 4th dimension, but hit a brick wall.  Unless time is sufficient alone to be that 4th dimension.

But as time goes on I am more confident to gloat, with gravitational waves now being clearly found in LIGO (Sept 2015), the seekers of dark matter particles must be getting increasingly desperate. With all their candidates, and all the possibilities of sensitive measurements, there must come a point soon where they admit that if dark matter is real, it must have been discovered by now.

I find it incredible that a phenomenon discovered by measurements of gravitational effects, and with no physical evidence, is taken as something with a physical explanation and not a gravitational one!  Just as Newton's relativity was upgraded by Einstein's, so can Einstein's relativity be upgraded to account for dark matter.  It seems to be apparent independence of DM that is holding us back, especially in cases like the bullet cluster where colliding gas slows down but the non-self-interacting DM does not, and separates out.  Well I would be more inclined to question these measurements or inferences than to search for the elusive lumps of non-interacting stuff.

The rotating analogy

Big gap while studying a serious cosmology module, and still (near the end of it) trying to understand how the surface of a solid object, even a simple one like a sphere, can be described in only two dimensions.  It just means the third dimension is implied in the frame of reference used, and it still (one way or another) needs coordinates in three orthogonal senses to define any point on it.  Tensors are all smoke and mirrors, a bit worrying just a couple of weeks from the exam!

But I come back to the rotation analogy.  The hammer-thrower, once he has got his hammer rotating, exerts an original force on the handle.  It does not come and hit him in the face (as it would if not rotating) because the moving mass has to continue moving.  Its inertia in the tangential direction makes it produce an equal and opposite force along the wire, putting the system in equilibrium.  This is an example (are there any others?) of how a force can be exerted on a free body, causing a constant acceleration, yet with no movement in the rotating frame of reference.

For a ball sitting on the ground there is an original force pushing it upwards, but it does not shoot up into the air, why?  Like the hammer, the ball is in equilibrium, and its inertia in some tangential direction makes it produce an equal and opposite force pushing it downwards.

A similar ball falling to Earth is not being 'pulled by the force of gravity', it is just sitting in spacetime with no forces acting on it, though it is accelerating.  The direction of acceleration is towards the Earth's centre, but this is not the tangential inertial direction as it is local to this system, and opposite to a similar experiment in Australia.

Setting the hammer system rotating gives it potential energy, equivalent to gravitational potential energy.  The difference in the analogies is that the forces on the hammer act in only two dimensions around an axis in the third.  It rotates with a certain period, so time is already involved.  For the ball on Earth neither the centre of rotation nor the axis can be readily identified.  But what other mechanism involves a force and an acceleration with no motion in the system frame of reference, and no energy expended?

How can it be infinite? What nonsense . .

The subject of a flat infinite universe came up again, on the physics forum.  For the first time I expressed my frustration at the claims that the universe might be infinite, and explained that infinity is just a mathematical term that does not have to be realisable.  The discussion highlighted the standard theory that the Big Bang is the point from which everything exists.  The universe does not seem to have been infinite then, so why should it be now?

I made the point that a mass is attributed (around 10^57 kg I believe).  Yes, this is understood to be of the visible universe.  A lot of stuff we can't see due to expansion in the last 13.5Ga, but it all still stems from the Big Bang.  So why do physicists like Brian Cox say, as he did again on TV last night, that the bit we can't see might be infinite?

All it takes is for the boundary to be defined.  The surface of a sphere defines the boundary of the sphere, but the surface itself has no boundary, you could walk round it for ever.  Extend by one dimension, so the volume of the universe has no boundary, but it has to form the boundary of a 4-dimensional entity.  This is the big conundrum, because GR has been defined to work in three spatial dimensions, and a fourth would mean that gravitation would not work as it does.  The inverse square law would be an inverse cube law, and that is not what we see.  Or is it?

There are some problems with GR.  It does not reconcile with quantum, with gravitation being the odd one out in the unification of primary forces.  It should be explaining Dark Matter, instead there are teams of scientists and engineers trying to detect matter that is only detectable through its gravitational effects!  It offers as an option the prospect of the universe being infinite, a nonsense to cover the fact that they don't know the shape of the thing they are talking about.

There is clearly a sense in which GR needs modifying to account for these well-known observations.  Start with an assumption that reality is finite, and that Dark Matter is an artifact of gravitation at the cosmological scale.

Dark Matter soon to be found !

The BBC has just reported that the search for dark matter is reaching a crux http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24733131 as measurements are now sensitive enough to have a high chance of finding it, if it exists.  I don't think it will be found, and now that a result is expected, it should start to change the direction of big physics when it is not.

As the article says "Dark matter is thought to make up 27% of the Universe. But astronomers have only been able to infer its existence through the gravitational effects it has on visible matter in the Universe". Surely it is much more reasonable to look for a gravitational explanation for the phenomenon, than to seek stuff that does not absorb, emit, have temperature or any other detectable characteristics.

We know that gravitational mass and inertial mass are the same thing.  I am also hanging my hat on the assumption that gravity is not a real force, but a fictitious force like centrifugal force.  If so it means that another set of physicists trying to reconcile gravity with the three fundamental forces are sort of wasting their time.  So if we have a system comprising a horizontal perfectly smooth table with a hole in the centre, a string through it holding a mass underneath connecting to a mass on the table, when the upper mass orbits the hole at a speed giving equilibrium, we have tension on the string caused by two fictitious forces balancing each other.  Tension in the upper part is centripetal force causing the upper mass to change its direction twice every revolution.  The equal and opposite lower-string tension is what is traditionally called the reaction force of the Earth opposing gravity's force, but is in fact the string accelerating the lower mass (F = m a) (though it appears stationary) at a rate of 9.81m/s^2 upwards.  Everything sitting on the surface of the Earth is experiencing a push upwards which amounts to the same thing.

This means, as I understand it from L2 Physics, that we are in a rotating (non-inertial) frame of reference (not the Earth rotating, that is irrelevant, I mean the whole of spacetime).  I expect that general relativists know this very well.  The quandary is that our environment is shaped such that the distance between ourselves and any recumbent antipodeans is not changing even though our relative acceleration is -19.62m/s^2.

The reference point is the centre of the Earth, the thing that is bending spacetime locally to result in this behaviour.  So the question is either (a) are three spatial + one time (3S+T) dimensions enough, and time is real enough to enable gravity, or (b) is a fourth spatial dimension (4S+T) required, as I have been arguing for a while now.  My reading of the subject so far tells me (a) that there cannot be a fourth large spatial dimension, or the inverse square law would have to be inverse-cube law, which it isn't, and (b) that physics doesn't need time, except to deal with entropy.  Well I'm sorry but you can't have it both ways.

If GR already explains how masses accelerating away from each other can also not be changing their distance apart, then surely the role of time is fundamental, and surely the shape of the Universe should be something that can be described in some way.  I look forward to seeing it.

Meantime I wait for the news that dark matter is made of cheese . . .

Silver Hammer Man

Inflation is an important topic to address.  Any model needs to include it, as the evidence from the CMB makes the fact of it generally accepted, yet it requires several leaps of faith to do so.  For that very short period of time everything exceeded the speed of light, and then it ceased abruptly.  I’ve not studied it very deeply at all yet but am still intrigued by how such a force or impulse could exist and then cease so momentarily, and even when the force subsided the speed thus imparted to all masses should surely have made the whole lot explode.

The obvious retort is that as everything was so close, gravity was very strong and reined in a runaway expansion.  But this was before the laws had settled down: and anyway I can’t use gravity to explain itself.  Fortunately.

The quick answer is that during inflation the shape of the universe was unfolding.  I would rather call it a deployment, like the unfurling of solar panels, antenna arrays and instruments on a newly-launched spacecraft.  Pre-deployment, it fits into its launch shroud and has been given spin of about 1Hz for stability, and post-deployment is 3-axis stabilised, often around a gyro system using magnetic bearings for contact-free rotation, the flywheels spinning at around 20k rpm I seem to recall.  But for the 4-D toroidal universe the idea of an inflating flotation ring is also apt.

Sam has already dubbed the Big Bang the ‘Big Spin’.  Well first came the release of the enormous bubble of energy in an unstable form, and immediately after, its inflation to a form which gave the universe its shape and stability, which included conversion of most of the energy into rotational potential energy.  This model requires mass to carry moment of inertia, so would have to include that mass condensed by this stage.  So in a flash we have a 4-D flywheel of rotating spacetime with which masses engage to store energy losslessly.  Masses can’t exceed the speed of light, and electromagnetic radiation flies around at the speed of light (or would if the medium wan’t still opaque).  What is the nature of the engagement of spacetime with EM energy and mass?

Maxwell’s equations are cited as the four most significant ever.  He also determined that visible light is EM radiation because his speed calculation matched its measured speed, and thereby predicted other forms of EM energy, verified soon after by Helmholtz and Hertz.  ε₀ and μ₀ define the spacetime engagement relationship of the electric and magnetic components respectively, and in EM radiation these components can’t exist separately.  But how does mass engage with spacetime?  It has to be fundamental, and we can recall Maxwell found that 1/c² = ε₀μ₀.  Sure thing, mass can’t go faster than c.  The harder it is pushed, the more its inertia increases to oppose further acceleration.  Spacetime has a grip on all masses, noticeable only as their speed becomes relativistic.

At first I thought c was a barrier to the rotating universe idea, as a radius would be reached where v = c, and spoil the party. However it is clearly central to it.  This is a big relief, to consider c as a central property of the rotation rather than a barrier to it.  c is central to everything.

There are other fundamental properties of spacetime.  It is elastic, so the elasticity will have a definable value.  Yet it is also apparently unbreakable.  This links to another mystery I need an answer to – how is it that mass, which so readily converts to energy in an ordinary star (OK very slowly) or in the accretion disc around a black hole (up to 10% conversion I believe) becomes so stable once it has entered the event horizon?  The simple answer is that whether it is in mass or energy form it is still equivalent stuff that contributes to the black hole effective mass.  But energy doesn’t show properties of mass elsewhere.  Interesting things, black holes.