Unread post
by Lloyd » Wed Aug 01, 2012 7:13 pm
BM's Multiple Choice Exam
BM: Let's try this once more! I'll make the question simpler this time, and even multiple choice.
LK: Remember, questions and statements not only need to be easy enough to understand, they also need to be interesting to the readers. Non-responses etc don't necessarily mean inability to reply coherently, they often simply mean disinterest, or lack of time to devote to discussion, or forgetting to check this thread etc.
BM: The choices below are based on responses thus far given to similar inquiries on this thread. (In fairness, not everyone here has been so evasive.)
- According to Mathis' interview, photons at rest get accelerated up to c by collisions with other photons. What is the speed of the faster photons — if it isn't higher than c, then how can the slower photons ever reach c?
LK: Actually, I believe he has said that the fastest photons are or may be a bit faster than c.
BM: Choices:
1. You are a pompous clown; I'm not answering you
2. You're just here to defend the official story and stifle free thought, so I'm not answering
3. What original ideas have you ever had? p.s. I'm not answering
4. Trust me, it makes sense...and I'm not answering
5. I e-mailed Miles, and he said answering this isn't worth his time
6. Read these 15 articles of his (with links) — the answer is in there
7. Mathis seems like an expert, and says he's an expert, so let's not think too hard about what he says
8. Who are you people? Just go away and let us believe whatever we want
9. I don't know, let's talk instead about actual scientists and how stupid they are
10. Hmm. That doesn't make any sense. Maybe Mathis isn't the accomplished revolutionary that he and his followers claim
LK: Probably most of us are somewhat in category 1, pompous clowns, including me. It seems there's a chance that you're not #2, here to defend the establishment, but I can't tell for sure yet. I don't disrespect any of you Mathis disapprovers' intelligence, so I wouldn't choose #3, that you have no original ideas, even if it were true, which I wouldn't know. I doubt if any of us Mathis approvers or tolerators would choose #4, which is to take our word for it. Even Mathis says don't take his word for anything. Mathis himself chose #5, that it's not worth his time and that likely applies to some others here. It's probably not worth much of my time either, but maybe some of my time, apparently. Skipping ahead to #10, that Mathis doesn't make any sense, it seems that you Mathis disapprovers tend to see things as black or white, with no shades in between. Most of Mathis' ideas make quite a bit of sense to me, but there are seldom cases anywhere that seem to make complete sense. Almost any idea or claim seems to have contradictions, ranging from very minor to very major. So it's always a matter of estimating the probability of each one. There are very few things that to me seem 0% or 100% certain. And I think anyone who thinks that way is either naive or fairly omniscient.
BM: So then, non-answer #9, with a dash of #8 thrown in at the end. Thanks for playing.
LK: I wouldn't say the "go away" part of #8. I'd just say, if you want to discuss with me, discuss something I'm interested in. The speed of light is a little interesting to me, so here I am.
BM: For those who actually want to discuss this issue, I suspect that in Mathis' world, the force that maintains the speed of constantly colliding photons at (or near) c is the same unexplained force that powers a particle's supposed stacked spins. Funny, even Lloyd in his interview was flummoxed by that — "I don't understand how something physical can spin about a point on its surface, but...." (page 1 of this thread). Too bad he didn't see the need to follow up on that question.
LK: Mathis indicated that he can't yet explain stacked spins any better than he has and he couldn't readily think of a better alternative, so he'll work on other things until better ideas come to him. That's the way it was with his expanding universe idea. He eventually found a better idea last January, i.e. a spinning universe, so he switched to the better idea at that time, but likely didn't have time to change all the papers where he mentioned the expanding universe idea. I remain highly skeptical of stacked spins, but I don't know of a better alternative yet either, so I figure the truth may be something "similar to" stacked spins. I actually wasn't much interested in Mathis' ideas until he discarded his expanding universe idea. When he did that, his other ideas became much more plausible to me.
Now to try to answer your light speed question, it seems reasonable to me that photon collisions would be non-elastic. Pool balls are a little elastic, so, even without the friction of the pool table and the air, they would eventually come to rest. But there shouldn't be any friction to slow down photons. So, in this thought experiment, we can put a bunch of photons on our photon table, or in our photon box, let's say 15 of them. We throw in one cue photon at high speed. Then what happens? On a pool table, if the balls are grouped together, the cue ball can cause all of them to move. And, if there were no friction, they would keep moving and bouncing around forever, if we don't provide pockets for them to fall into. If they're not grouped together, it just takes a bit longer for all of the balls to be put in motion. On pool tables collisions can cause a moving ball to stop moving. Maybe that could happen with perfectly elastic photons in a frictionless environment too, if they hit just right, maybe when spin is involved. But after a very brief time another moving photon hits it and it's moving again.
I agree with you that some photons will be slowed down by some collisions, but I imagine they would soon be hit again and get accelerated again. I imagine the speeds of the 15 pool photons and the cue photon will be somewhat less than that of the initial cue photon. But after a short time, all of them should have the same speed. In the universe, photons are not confined like that, except where there are large bodies of matter. I believe a computer simulation would be pretty easy to make that would clarify this thought experiment. Does anyone volunteer to make such a simulation program for us?