Testing Relativity, Black Holes... In The Lab

[flyingcloud]

Not sure where to post this, so feel free to move or even delete as necessary...
what are they really trying to skirt around

strange attractors?
emphasis by me...

Testing Relativity, Black Holes And Strange Attractors In The Laboratory
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 134239.htm

ScienceDaily (July 22, 2009) — Even Albert Einstein might have been impressed. His theory of general relativity, which describes how the gravity of a massive object, such as a star, can curve space and time, has been successfully used to predict such astronomical observations as the bending of starlight by the sun, small shifts in the orbit of the planet Mercury and the phenomenon known as gravitational lensing. Now, however, it may soon be possible to study the effects of general relativity in bench-top laboratory experiments.
Xiang Zhang, a faculty scientist with the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and professor at the University of California Berkeley, lead a study in which it was determined that the interactions of light and matter with spacetime, as predicted by general relativity, can be studied using the new breed of artificial optical materials that feature extraordinary abilities to bend light and other forms of electromagnetic radiation.

"We propose a link between the newly emerged field of artificial optical materials to that of celestial mechanics, thus opening a new possibility to investigate astronomical phenomena in a table-top laboratory setting," says Zhang. "We have introduced a new class of specially designed optical media that can mimic the periodic, quasi-periodic and chaotic motions observed in celestial objects that have been subjected to complex gravitational fields."

A paper describing this work is now available on-line in the journal Nature Physics. The paper is titled: "Mimicking Celestial Mechanics in Metamaterials." Co-authoring it with Zhang were his post-doctoral students Dentcho Genov and Shuang Zhang.

Zhang, a principal investigator with Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division and director of UC Berkeley's Nano-scale Science and Engineering Center, has been one of the pioneers in the creation of artificial optical materials. Last year, he and his research group made headlines when they fashioned unique metamaterials - composites of metals and dielectrics – that were able to bend light backwards, a property known as a negative refraction that is unprecedented in nature. More recently, he and his group fashioned a "carpet cloak" from nanostructured silicon that concealed the presence of objects placed under it from optical detection. These efforts not only suggested that true invisibility materials are within reach, Zhang said, but also represented a major step towards transformation optics that would "open the door to manipulating light at will."

Now he and his research group have demonstrated that a new class of metamaterials called "continuous-index photon traps" or CIPTs can serve as broadband and radiation-free "perfect" optical cavities. As such, CIPTs can control, slow and trap light in a manner similar to such celestial phenomena as black holes, strange attractors and gravitational lenses. This equivalence between the motion of the stars in curved spacetime and propagation of the light in optical metamaterials engineered in a laboratory is referred to as the "optical-mechanical analogy."

Zhang says that such specially designed metamaterials can be valuable tools for studying the motion of massive celestial bodies in gravitational potentials under a controlled laboratory environment. Observations of such celestial phenomena by astronomers can sometimes take a century of waiting.

"If we twist our optical metamaterial space into new coordinates, the light that travels in straight lines in real space will be curved in the twisted space of our transformational optics," says Zhang. "This is very similar to what happens to starlight when it moves through a gravitational potential and experiences curved spacetime. This analogue between classic electromagnetism and general relativity, may enable us to use optical metamaterials to study relativity phenomena such as gravitational lens."
In their demonstration studies, the team showed a composite of air and the dielectric Gallium Indium Arsenide Phosphide (GaInAsP). This material provided operation at the infrared spectral range and featured a high refractive index with low absorptions.

In their paper, Zhang and his coauthors cite as a particularly intriguing prospect for applying artificial optical materials to the optical-mechanical analogy the study of the phenomenon known as chaos. The onset of chaos in dynamic systems is one of the most fascinating problems in science and is observed in areas as diverse as molecular motion, population dynamics and optics. In particular, a planet around a star can undergo chaotic motion if a perturbation, such as another large planet, is present. However, owing to the large spatial distances between the celestial bodies, and the long periods involved in the study of their dynamics, the direct observation of chaotic planetary motion has been a challenge. The use of the optical-mechanical analogy may enable such studies to be accomplished in a bench-top laboratory setting on demand.

"Unlike astronomers, we will not have to wait 100 years to get experimental results," Zhang says.

This research was supported by the U.S. Army Research Office and by the National Science Foundation which funds the UC Berkeley Nano-scale Science and Engineering Center.

[junglelord]

I would be more impressed if they took a Terrella and put forward a EU theory and threw out the gravity control mechanisms.

[Anaconda]

Hi flyingcloud:

The applied material science, which really is the "meat" of the story, is truly remarkable and should be reported on. These laboratory experimentalists are to be commended for their work.

But regrettably, the scientists that reported this development in applied material science, chose to analogize their work to General Relativity.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

What bends the light in the instant case reported on in ScienceDaily?

A physical substance.

What purportedly bends light in the theoretical framework of General Relativity?

Nothing...

Okay, it's not as simple as all that.

In the theoretical framework of General Relativity, mass supposedly causes a curvature of space (it also supposedly distorts time) which causes gravity, also light follows the curvature of space. So, in essence, the curvature of space bends light. And what is space? It is the absence of material substance.

What is the absense of material substance?

Answer: "Nothing".

So, what you have is a material substance being analogized to "nothing".

This is a completely misleading and false comparison.

When you read the article, what you find is that the scientists compare the bending of light as similar, but upon closer reading, you find the scientists rely on experimentally tested and developed materials as opposed to "space", which is "nothing".

Frankly, what I think is going on with the scientists and the article is an attempt at getting attention and publicity for the discovery.

Some people claim oodles of scientists spend their time trying to falsify General Relativity -- this is just so much hog wash.

In reality, General Relativity is coming under increasing fire and doubt, like never before, since GR started to dominate astrophysics and became unchallengable "gospel". But a lot is riding on the validity of GR (billions of dollars in research funding and the whole "big bang, black hole" paradigm), so while doubt is increasing in the scientific world about the validity of General Relativity, armies of scientists are looking for ways to "prove" General Relativity, not falsify it. (See link below about an antedotal experience suggesting increasing doubt about GR in the scientific community.)

http://hiltonratcliffe.com/blog/2009/02 ... elativity/

General Relativity is coming under increasing fire and doubt because of a "chinese water torture" series of small anomalies and one or two big falsifications. The biggest of which is the inability to detect so-called "gravitational waves" by LIGO. So-called "gravitational waves" are a principle prediction of General Relativity and their non-detection is an outright falsification of the theory. (See, TPOD, The Weakening Gravity-Dominated Cosmos Theory,
July 23, 2009, link below).

http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2009/ ... theory.htm

Sorry about the above tangents, anyhow, the above applied material science breakthrough does nothing for proving General Relativity and certainly doesn't provide an opportunity for "desk top" demonstrations of General Relativity. That is simply hyperbole to provide one more, "didn't I read somewhere that they were proving General Relativity in the laboratory?"

The truth is that light can be manipulated in the laboratory multiple ways these days without any recourse to GR. Light can be slowed down by cold, light can be bent by various ways including through magnetized plasma (that's how light was "bent" going by the Sun, not because space was curved), electromagnetic fields effect atomic radioactive decay rates, and atomic vibration rates (GPS is almost always cited as an example of indisputable demonstration of GR, but it's not, also the fact that GPS is only accurate to 3 meters plays a role).

Simply put, GR has always relied on and claimed small "bendings" of light are the result of GR, but increasingly this presumption is falling by the wayside, as multiple different ways are recognized where light is "bent", "slowed" or what not that clearly don't rely on principles of General Relativity where supposedly space is curved and light appears to "bend" because it's following the "curvature" of space.

So, in reality, this applied material science report actually does more to DISPROVE General Relativity than to demonstrate it. And, perhaps, that is the real reason behind the hype: To head off assertions that this experiment falsifies General Relativity because it demonstrates "one more way" that light can be bent that doesn't rely on supposed principles of General Relativity.

That there is another way to "manipulate light" without recourse to General Relativity is the real story behind this article.

[junglelord]

That was a lot of space to say exactly what I said.

[Anaconda]

Hi junglelord:

Vulcans are much more concise than humans

"Live long and prosper."

[junglelord]

I was just joking. However I agree, which is why I mentioned the Terrella. However to them a terrella does not represent space....so you see what I mean when I talk about dumbing us down. Their whole story is RETARDED. Then we had that post where they marveled at how a terrella made auroras, then turned right around and said it really models no theory of space.....
F them.

[mharratsc]

Wow, that's hilarious. So by that argument then we've had proof of General Relativity all these years- fiberoptics bend light, and we've been delivering cable tv with it for decades!

Lordy lordy lordy... what fools these mortals be >.<

Mike H.

[FS3]

...from a last year's thread here:

Physicists Make Artificial Black Hole Using Optical Fiber

The (real) physical branch of OPTICS doesn't seem to be enough complicated - in the mathematical sense - anymore...



So we are searching for even weirder explanations.

Relativity and Black 'oles will do well together.

Finally, nobody will understand Physics anymore.

FS3

[flyingcloud]

...from a last year's thread here:

Physicists Make Artificial Black Hole Using Optical Fiber

The (real) physical branch of OPTICS doesn't seem to be enough complicated - in the mathematical sense - anymore...



So we are searching for even weirder explanations.

Relativity and Black 'oles will do well together.

Finally, nobody will understand Physics anymore.

FS3

because physics doesn't understand itself

[bdw000]

Last year, he and his research group made headlines when they fashioned unique metamaterials - composites of metals and dielectrics – that were able to bend light backwards, a property known as a negative refraction that is unprecedented in nature.

I am no expert.

But isn't the proper word to use "reflection" ?

Looks like more word games to make them look really cool.

[Drethon]

I may be wrong but I suspect reflection is when something (like a mirror) absorbs light and re-emits it whereas negative refraction would actually be turning the light photon/beam/whatever back the way it came... maybe...

[earls]

Correct, Drethon. I understand what you're saying bdw000, but negative refraction *is* refraction, but in the "opposite" direction. Instead of "bending" right, it bends left.

Illustrated here:

http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~ulf/levpovscenes.jpg

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v4 ... a-i2.0.jpg

Let us consider negative reflection, however. Perhaps mirrors in which words are not reversed. This has actually been accomplished.