Cosmology New interpretations on the nature of space and time Reverse Sight Theory
TOSKA
Travel in deep space next to Ben-Hur and Padilha, and understand the details of a new theory that focuses on the mechanisms used by the observer to interact with the Universe around him.
By: J.R. Silva Bittencourt E-mail: jose.roberto.bittencourt@gmail.com
REVERSE SIGHT THEORY Seeking another explanation for the Universe
Episode 1: A very strange journey
By: J.R. SILVA BITTENCOURT (English Version)
PARADOXES RELATED TO THE SPEED OF LIGHT
Time is in the no too distant future. The Moon and planet Mars are in the early stages of colonization, with the exploration of energy sources and the cultivation of plants in giant greenhouses, aiming at generating a breathable atmosphere.
Interplanetary travel, in addition to being more autonomous, has become faster with the advent of plasma.
Space travel has become more accessible, and friends Ben-Hur and Padilha are on their way to the ship that will take them on an unforgettable journey through the solar sistem.
The view up here is fantastic!
Ben-hur: Padilha, your enthusiasm is justified. But I don’t know if it will last long. Soon we’ll enter the space totally cold and dark, where the poetry of colors only exists in our minds...
Ben-hur: Padilha, o teu entusiasmo se justifica. Mas, não sei se durará muito tempo. Logo entraremos no espaço totalmente frio e escuro, onde a poesia das cores somente existe nas nossas mentes...
Padilha: -Well, I heard that Bittencourt is going to put a multicolored space full of stars and galaxies, as a backdrop for our trip, even considering that our eyes are not prepared to see most of the light spectrum.
Ben-Hur: -Actually, it’s all just a joke. The intention of the cartoonist is to talk about his essay, the proposal of a new theory called ‘Reverse Sight’. I’ve been reading something on the subject in the book ‘Imagens do Universo-Coletando Indícios da Bidimensionalidade (‘Images of the UniverseCollecting Clues to Two-dimensionality’), by Ed. Habilis, and written by Bittencourt. Cosmology is a difficult subject, not only for lay people. I think he uses images and diagrams to make the content more acessible. Padilha: -Have I to take it?
Padilha: -What’s the focus of the book? Ben-hur: -Adresses the role of each observer in the way he interacts with the reality around him. It does not question physical reality itself, for it does not seem to depend on the observer’s views.
Padilha: -It smells of quantum mechanics, uncertainty principle, and the like... Ben-hur: -Yes, but with a very particular focus. I think the guy is crazy.
Ben-Hur: -I’ll try to translate some concepts from the book. For example, Einstein created a tremendous headache for modern physicists by postulating that nothing can be faster than light. So far, no one has been able to prove otherwise.
Ben-Hur: -If were not for the light emitted by stars and galaxies, we could not know they exist. That is, we depend on the presence of the light to access the information. This creates the following paradox: a star will be there, ‘if’ the information is already here.
TOSKA
Padilha: -This seems to suggest that our brain creates an alternative reality, or that depends on the input of the information, since the translation delay is inevitable, considering the 300.000 km/s used by the light... Ben-hur: -Of course the stars are still there, regardless of what we think of them. Perhaps it would be more correct to think that our brain has been prepared, in some mysterious way, to ‘transport’ physical reality into the realms of our consciousness, in the form of information decoded late (by our memory).
Ben-Hur: -One might also think that being doubled in two dimensions (untranslated light), reality would ‘unfold’ in three dimensions only for our point of view. This might seem like an instant event, as happens when you lift your head to the sky at night, and immediately see the glow of the stars. However, physical reality would have previously passed through the sieve of our memory.
Padilha: -A snapshot that is not so instantaneous like that... Ben-Hur: -Yes. See the case of light emitted by distant galaxies. If the physical universe were two-dimensional, with space having only width and length, before the light is translated by us on Earth, wich candidate would naturally arise to compose the third dimension of the space called ‘decoded’?
Padilha: -The time(?)... Ben-Hur: -Yes. Probably the same time that would be involved with the retention of light and information and that, because of the delay, seems to be placed in our future. The sensation of the depth of space arises after our ability to measure time, only when we ďŹ nd ourselves looking back to the past. Therefore, the future can’t be remembered.
Ben-Hur: -The time light would need to travel the space that separates us from a distant galaxy could not be directly measured, since we need the physical presence of the information it carries. Even so, the galaxy can be sighted instantly as soon as a telescope is pointed in its direction...
Ben-Hur:- This apparent paradox would only ďŹ nd a logical explanation in our total dependence on all forms of electromagnetic radiation, an let us know, for example, that there are other galaxies beyond our own milky way. Padilha: -I had not thought of that...
Ben-Hur: -Before the emergence of intelligent life, the Earth and galaxies occupied the same moment of time (present)...
Ben-Hur: -This time relationship with the Earth-galaxy ensemble remains the same today, but was altered by the presence of the conscious observer. That is, the galaxy ceased to exist even while there, until information (light) could reach the Earth... Invisible galaxy (yet)
Light
Ben-Hur: -If we consider that the observer depends on the light to see the galaxy distant, then he will not know the time necessary for the displacement of that light, if that time really does exist. Do you agree? Padilha: -If you’re speaking in terms of direct measure of time, yes. The time before the arrival of light can be evaluated indirectly, with the aid of light itself...
Padilha: -As the light travels with limited speed, the observer sees the galaxy with the appearance it had in the past... Ben-Hur: -I’d rather think he sees the galaxy’s present time with lag.
Ben-hur: -The time of retention of the light that departs from the galaxies, because it does not allow a direct calibration, would be related to the uncertainty of the position or the speed of the particles... Padilha: -I knew that Heinsenberg’s principle would apply only at very short intervals of time and distance, as is the case with the subatomic level. Ben-hur: -For J.R. Bittencourt, however, it is relatively easy to demonstrate that inďŹ nitudes are the same at all levels of matter. He uses as an argument Bohr’s experience, done in 1928, to demonstrate that it is impossible to determine the instantaneous location of a particle...
Ben-Hur: -On page 141 of Eisberg’s book ‘Fundamentals of Modern Physics’ one can read: - ‘Consider a measurement made to determine the exact location of a particle, using a microscope. To that extent, the particle must be illuminated, for, after all, the observer sees only the quanta of light scattered by the particle’.
Padilha: -I start to understand. We never see the universe directly, either in macro or microstructure, because we need the scattering of light... Ben-Hur: -As Eisberg puts it, ‘the microscopist, in order to carry out the measurement, needs to see a single quantum of scattered light’. Observer Microscope
Quanta of incident light
Particle
Obs:-Graphic extracted from page 140 of Eisberg’s book ‘Fundamentals of Modern Physics’.
Padilha: -This situation is the same that will experienced by an observer behind a telescope because, so that he could see the galaxies, it would be necessary that there was the local scattering of the photons emitted by them. Ben-Hur: -Do not take into account the distances previously traveled by the light...
Padilha: -That could justify why we look at the sky at night, and see the galaxies instantly, though this is not necessarily true... Ben-Hur: -The problem lies in our dependence on the presence of information, and its necessary decoding...
Padilha: -Tell me more about this ‘quantization’ of the light... Ben-Hur: -In order for the particle to be observed, the quantization of electromagnetic radiation requires that at least one unit of light (a quantum) be scattered by the particle, or no light be spreaded...
Ben-Hur:-According to Eisberg ‘The quantum of scattered light provides the interaction that must exist between the measuring instrument and the particle’. Add the observer as an integral part of the process, for through the scattered quantum he will see the image of the particle and not itself. That is, a particle will always be sighted outside its true position...
The uncertainty in position or velocity is generated because the interaction with the quantum disturbs the particle, in an uncontrollable and unpredictable way. Thus, their coordinates and moments can not be known precisely after the measurement.
Electron
Photon
Photon Electron
Before scattering After the spreading Collision between a quantum and a free electron stationary.
Ben-Hur: -We can replace the word ‘quantum’ with ‘energy pack’. According to Einstein a source light like our sun, radiating electromagnetic waves, would shift to a less energetic state by emitting a portion of energy (or multiples thereof) called h.v. (our package)...
-Ben-Hur: -Einstein, in his Theory of Photoeletric Effect (1905), considered that the energy packet emitted by the source was initially located in a small volume of space. He supposed that such a portion remained localized when it was moving away from de source, rather than spreading in the form of moving waves. -Padilha: -Weird. Would not the Sun send energy into space in the form of waves? -Ben-Hur: -You couldn’t have direct access to the vacuum while the package was moving away from the source, which would create uncertainty. Perhaps this had led Einstein to make one of his most controversial statements, that light would use its particle aspect to move in a vacuum, not its aspect of wave...
Padilha: -Let’s take a break to enjoy the trip as we approach the Moon. But the discussion surrounding the observer’s role is getting interesting. Ben-Hur: -You don’t even dream about what’s coming...
Padilha: -Where is the star-studded sky? Ben-Hur: -The only visible star would be the Sun which, by the way, does not appear in the photo...
Ben-Hur: -I think you realized that the observer does not care what happened to the light of the source (galaxy, for example) before it reached him. In fact, he can’t remember anything that happens to the light in his own future, that is, before the photons scatter in his position.
Ben-Hur: -In this case, the observer’s point of view raises an unsolvable question related to the time when light, in the form of a packet, would have traveled the distance that separates us from the galaxy, counting with the galaxy as an example of emitting source... Padilha: -The problem would have nothing to do with the reality of the Universe...
Ben-Hur: -The problem is related to the observer. As he depends on the physical presence of the energy package (quantum) to see the galaxy, a principle of exclusion is created: the galaxy would cease to exist, even remaining there, if the light sended into space had not yet reached the observer...
Ben-Hur: -To the observer’s point of view (and only) there is a ‘before’ and an ‘after’ of the manifestation of light. In ‘before’, the galaxy does not exist...
?
The galaxy is there, but it can’t be sighted until the light emitted by it reaches the observer.
Ben-Hur: -In the ‘after’, the galaxy is instantly sighted, regardless of the time of light displacement. Also, whenever you point a telescope towards the galaxy, it will be there...
Ben-Hur: -‘Before’ does not exist for us, and ‘after’ is a continuos view of the past. What can you conclude from this? Padilha: -Is the observer a hostage of his own memory? That is, as he does not remember what is in his future, all that exists is what he sees projected on the screen of the past time... Ben-Hur: -You surprise me. Some physicists believe that only exists what can be measured directly. However, all we can measure is measured outside of its own time.
Ben-Hur: - All forms of energy are quantized (or ‘packaged’), as with light. The classical theory of the photoeletric effect presumed that the formation of this package required time. However, Boethe and Geiger (1925) showed that, in the spread of a single quantum by an electron, the scattered quantum and the retreating electron appeared simultaneously...
Ben-Hur: -That means that the packet of information the observer needs to know that the galaxy exists is delivered ready by nature. That is, there would not be a time that could be destined to the formation of this package. There’s no time (that can be measured directly)
Light
BEFORE (FUTURE)
DURING (PRESENT)
Padilha: -Let me get this straight. If the luminous packet did not arrive ready to the observer, would not the galaxy be sighted even while there? Ben-Hur: -Yes. This would force the observer to see the galaxy only after spreading of package since, for him, there’s no ‘before’ it. Thus the arrow of that time, which could not be directly measured earlier, would suffer an apparent reversal in its direction, continually pointing in the direction of the past.
spreading of the light pack
during (present of the observer)
Memory
After (past of the observer)
Padilha: -The only way for RST to support this hypothesis would be to unify the inďŹ nitudes at all levels of matter. That is, what was valid for the subatomic level, would have to be also valid for the macrostructure of the universe. Ben-Hur: -The greatest difďŹ culty lies there, because the two levels do not seem to be understood, as regards the performance of forces...
Ben-Hur: -Bittencourt believes that the solution could be in the observer’s point of view and in the complete dependence on the mechanisms of his own memory. The classic example is the observation of reality being made with the use of light-tracking instruments...
Ben-Hur: -The inexistence of measurable time in the future, or ‘before’ the spreading of the luminous package, raises curious questions. For example, would the quantum have formed near the galaxy, midway between it and the observer, or in the position of the proper observer?
Padilha: -The absence of measurable time refers us to the question of the existence (or not) of movement, in the space interval that separates us from the distant stars... Ben-Hur: -There’s an information gap in that range. Newton’s laws for motion are not applicable there, because they depend on time. This is the case of speed, acceleration and measuring of the forces in space-time...
Ben-Hur: -Even though we did not realize that, we tend to work ‘projecting’ concepts over the universe as a whole, from what we can measure in the past. Remember that to measure anything, you need of the presence of information. This is what defines our own memory...
Padilha: -The information may be present before the packet spreads, but it becomes inaccessible. Without information, time can not be measured. Padilha: -And without time, there would be no measurable movement...
Problem created by the absence or presence of information The galaxy is there but it is invisible before
after (the spread of packet)
The galaxy is sighted with the appearance it had in the past.
Padilha: -To Bittencourt, then, would the universe be virtually static out of time? Ben-Hur: -And that’s not all. The uncertainty of the position (or speed) of the galaxy suggest that space would have no power to communicate, directly to the observer, the events it houses... A- Only space...
B- The space added to the time...
Space would use light as the messenger of the galaxy.
Ben-Hur: -It’s as if space acts as a backdrop for the events. It would create favorable conditions for condensation and the subsequent manifestation of light with the observer, as well as the information it carries. Padilha: -Again, the problem of our interaction with the universe. One gets the impression that our memory and that of the universe are confused in one...
Padilha: -Looks like there was a problem. A clandestine passenger was found in the cargo area of the ship... Ben-Hur: -I heard that the crew takes radical measures in these cases.
Padilha: -The problem has already been overcome by the decompression of the cargo area...
Go ďŹ nd your class!
Hey! See if you can’t forget your luggage!
Ben-Hur: -We have seen that the observer (not the universe) depends on the scattering of light to see the star that would have emmited it. The absence of measurable time, before that, is no longer part of our reality, because we come to depend on our memory: the future can’t be remembered...
Ben-Hur: -To act continuously, our perception depends on the presence of the information. Therefore, for our point of view only, the scattering of the light of a star will become continuous, by the exclusion of direct access to that which occurs before this scattering. This point has generated enormous confusion in our way of looking at reality...
Ben-Hur: -The diagram below shows how we ‘imagine’ that the galaxy would emit waves toward the Earth, in the form of eletric and magnetic fields, perpendicular to each other. Traveling at the speed of light, they would spend a lot of time to reach the destination. Why does this practice become acceptable?
Padilha: -Good question... Ben-Hur: -The answer is that we only become aware of the existence of the waves, after the spreads of the light package (quantum). This was incorporated into classical physics through the concept of continuous waves. Despite the immense distance in which the galaxy lies, it is instantly sighted, but with the appearance it had in the past. It should be noted that there has been an apparent reversal towards the propagation of electromagnetic waves...
Ben-Hur: -We know that everything in the universe is in the same moment of time (present). However, our dependence on the presence of information inuences our concept of time. For us, the future is the result of an abstraction or extrapolation of concepts, always elaborated outside the real time of events...
Ben-Hur: -Bittencourt draws a parallel between the behavior of the radiation emitted by the stars (if it were continuous), and the wool ball used by Theseus in the greek legend, so as not to get lost in the labyrinth. Whether you were entering or leaving that place, the path to the minotaur would already have been demarcated by Theseus...
Ben-Hur: -By using Doppler to assess the position of the galaxy, relying on the continuous ow of time and with theoretically continuous waves, we take the risks of anyone who has found the thread of the skein at the entrance of the maze, and ventures through it in the hope of ďŹ nding reality at the other end. Tracking the light will not lead us to the real-time events...
Padilha: -If the light emmited by the galaxy were continuous, upon reaching the Earth it could be followed in the opposite direction, such as someone using the wool ball to reach the center of the labyrinth and so to leave it. Ben-Hur: -The ideas of Planck and Einstein, however, disprove this pratice...
mirror Future
Past
before
after
extrapolation
real space
imaginary space
Ben-Hur: -A distant star behaves similarly to an electromagnetic oscillator. This is because, according to Planck, each of its atoms has a characteristic frequency of oscillation. Oscillators do not radiate their energy continuously, only by means of pulses or quanta that, for better understanding, we usually call ‘energy packets’...
Ben-Hur: -An oscillator does not radiate (it doesn’t emit or absorb energy) while it remains in one of its quantized states, hence called ‘stationary’. Padilha: -Do you mean that on the way to Earth there would be no direct irradiation, not even measurable movement into the light? Galaxy acting as an electromagnetic oscillator, emitting light discontinuously
‘
stationary state
Photons (quanta or light packets)
Ben-Hur: -When we say that light travels through the vacuum that separates us from the galaxy, from there to here, at the speed of 300.000 Km/s, we are making an assumption based on strong circumstantial evidence, but never backed by direct measurements... Padilha: -As well?
Ben-Hur: -Because we can only measure the speed of light emitted by the galaxy, when it has passed through us. From there, we usually extrapolate this velocity in the opposite direction (of the future). For us, it is as if the future were an image of the past, reected in a mirror... The nothing
The nothing light
The future
The past light
light
The past
The past
extrapolation
Padilha: -There’s Mars, the red planet. This trip is getting very strange... Ben-Hur: -The cartoonist is curled up, as usual. Well, despite having quantized the energy of the oscillators, Planck still continued to treat the radiation, inside the cavity, as if it were an electromagnetic wave...
Ben-Hur: -In his theory of the photoelectric effect (1905), Einstein tell us that the energy of the light beam travels the space concentrated in ‘packets’, called photons. Unlike Planck, Einstein believed that when light cross the space it behaves as a particle, not as a wave...
Ben-Hur: -Another notable issue is the one related to the time that would be expected for the formation of the package. The classical theory predicted that if the light incident on a metal plate was not very intense, there should be a measurable time lag between the instant the light struck the surface and the ejection of the free electron. However, to this day no lapse of time has ever been measured...
Ben-Hur: -The reasoning is simple: if it were not for the presence of the scattered quantum (light packet), the observer couldn’t know of the existence of the galaxy. As quantization would be delivered to him ready by nature (it wouldn’t involve time), there remains only the sensation of the observer, that he observes everything instantly. The concept of continuous waves is born. However, he intuits that due to its limited speed, the light would have needed time to reach Earth.
Framework before scattering of photons source
packet
Earth
quantization
invisible illuminated space in the future: no time (directly measurable) (yet)
Padilha: -You talk as if time were some kind of ‘sensory experience’ of the observer... Ben-Hur: -We could not come to the conclusion that the light of the galaxy would have taken time to reach us before the packet of information spreads, because we needed that packet to trace the source. Time, therefore, would only be ‘a thing of the past’...
Ben-Hur: -As we only have the concept of time after it has become measurable in the past, we have the assumption that the behavior of light would be exactly the same, before or after the package (quantum) spreads on Earth... There’s no time, there’s no measurable movement
source
light
(A)
Nebulous of the crab
Source in the past (image) light projection
(B)
luz
Nebulous of the crab
Obs.-Situation (B) involves only the observer.
Padilha: -Without knowing, by direct measurement, the time of displacement of the light of the source, wouldn’t the reference of the beginning of counting time migrate to the Earth? Ben-Hur: -It is. Concepts such as gravity, Doppler, and speed of light would arise afterwards, as if they were part of the packet of information that would have been previously packed...
Before the observer received the packet of information, the light could have been in all other places of space.
Source of light still invisible
light (quanta of energy)
Padilha: -We are again confronted with the necessary participation of the isolated observer in the translation of light code, formulating concepts and establishing his points of view, for which the universe does not seem to give much importance. What’s the pratical result of this way of looking at the reality of the universe outside of its own time?
Ben-Hur: -See well. Gravity is the only known force capable of acting on an astronomical scale. By this form of interpretation, which is dependent on the observer, the measurable forces would always be secondary in nature. That is, gravity would not exist out of time, because, as predicted by Einstein, gravity an acceleration would be equivalent in space-time...
Effects of force of gravity
Padilha: -And there is no acceleration without it being possible to measure the positions of the same particle, in more than one time... Ben-Hur: -It is the same reasoning that justiďŹ es us because we consider antigravity to be a ďŹ ctitious force...
Universe in expansion
The world in time 2 The world in time 1
Ben-Hur: -For the current view of cosmology, the universe is in full expansion, with antigravity predominating over gravity. Even so, there is no way to measure antigravity. Padilha: -Perhaps it exists on the ‘other’ side of this pseudoduality, created by the lack of direct access to time in the future. That is, antigravity does not exist, in space-time, because we do not remember it...
Ben-Hur: -These ideas will be deepened in the next episode. Now let’s get some sleep on Mars Station 2, after a good shower and a wine-tasting dinner... Padilha: -Seems fair.
End of the first episode Obs: -You can find a more in-depth study of the subject in ‘Images of the Universe-Collecting Clues of Bidimensionality’, by J.R. Silva Bittencourt (in portuguese). Publication of Habilis Ed: www.habiliseditora.com.br