Brilliant Disguise: Light, Matter and the Zero-Point Field

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Brilliant Disguise: Light, Matter and the Zero-Point Field

Postby cortez » Fri Dec 30, 2005 4:05 am

<br><br>Is matter an illusion? Is the universe floating on a vast sea of light, whose invisible power provides the resistance that gives to matter its feeling of solidity? Astrophysicist Bernhard Haisch and his colleagues have followed the equations to some compelling — and challenging — conclusions.<br><br>"God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light."<br><br>It is certainly a beautiful poetic statement. But does it contain any science? A few years ago I would have dismissed that possibility. As an astrophysicist, I knew all too well the blatant contradictions between the sequence of events in Genesis and the physics of the Universe. Even after substituting eons for days, the order of events was obviously wrong. It made no sense to have light come first, and then to claim that the Sun, the moon and the stars — the obvious sources of light in the night sky of the ancient world — were created only subsequently, be it days or eons later. One could, of course, generalize light to mean simply energy, and thus claim a reference to the Big Bang, but that would, to me, be more of a stretch than a revelation.<br><br>My first inkling that the deceptively simple "Let there be light" might actually contain a profound cosmological truth came in early July 1992. I was trying to wrap things up in my office in Palo Alto so that I could spend the rest of the summer doing research on the X-ray emission of stars at the Max Planck Institute in Garching, Germany. I came in one morning just before my departure and found a rather peculiar message on my answering machine; it had been left at 3 a.m.by a usually sober-minded colleague, Alfonso Rueda, a professor at California State University in Long Beach. He was so excited by the results of a horrifically-long mathematical analysis he had been grinding through that he just had to tell me about it, knowing full well I was not there to share the thrill.<br><br>What he had succeeded in doing was to derive the equation: F=ma. Details would follow in Germany.<br><br>Most people will take this in stride with a "so what?" or "what does that mean?" After all what are F, m and a, and what is so noteworthy about a scientist deriving a simple equation? Isn't this what scientists do for a living? But a physicist will have an incredulous reaction because you are not supposed to be able to derive the equation F=ma. That equation was postulated by Newton in his Principia, the foundation stone of physics, in 1687. A postulate is a law that you assume to be true, and from which other things follow: such as much of physics, for example, from that particular postulate. You cannot derive postulates. How do you prove that one plus one equals two? The answer is, you don't. You assume that abstract numbers work that way, and then derive other properties of addition from that basic assumption.<br><br>But indeed, as I discovered when I began to write up a research paper based on what Rueda soon sent to Garching, he had indeed derived Newton's fundamental "equation of motion." And the concept underlying this analysis was the existence of a background sea of light known as the electromagnetic zero-point field of the quantum vacuum.<br><br>To understand this zero-point field (for short), consider an old-fashioned grandfather clock with its pendulum swinging back and forth. If you don't wind the clock , friction will sooner or later bring the pendulum to a halt. Now imagine a pendulum that gets smaller and smaller, so small that it ultimately becomes atomic in size and subject to the laws of quantum physics. There is a rule in quantum physics called the Heisenberg uncertainty principle that states (with certainty, as it happens) that no quantum object, such as a microscopic pendulum, can ever be brought completely to rest. Any microscopic object will always possess a residual random jiggle thanks to quantum fluctuations.<br><br>Radio, television and cellular phones all operate by transmitting or receiving electromagnetic waves. Visible light is the same thing; it is just a higher frequency form of electromagnetic waves. At even higher frequencies, beyond the visible spectrum, you find ultraviolet light, X-rays and gamma-rays. All are electromagnetic waves which are really just different frequencies of light.<br><br>It is standard in quantum theory to apply the Heisenberg uncertainty principle to electromagnetic waves, since electric and magnetic fields flowing through space oscillate like a pendulum. At every possible frequency there will always be a tiny bit of electromagnetic jiggling going on. And if you add up all these ceaseless fluctuations, what you get is a background sea of light whose total energy is enormous: the zero-point field. The "zero-point" refers to the fact that even though this energy is huge, it is the lowest possible energy state. All other energy is over and above the zero-point state. Take any volume of space and take away everything else — in other words, create a vacuum — and what you are left with is the zero-point field. We can imagine a true vacuum, devoid of everything, but the real-world quantum vacuum is permeated by the zero-point field with its ceaseless electromagnetic waves.<br><br>The fact that the zero-point field is the lowest energy state makes it unobservable. We see things by way of contrast. The eye works by letting light fall on the otherwise dark retina. But if the eye were filled with light, there would be no darkness to afford a contrast. The zero-point field is such a blinding light. Since it is everywhere, inside and outside of us, permeating every atom in our bodies, we are effectively blind to it. It blinds us to its presence. The world of light that we do see is all the rest of the light that is over and above the zero-point field...<br><br>more here<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.science-spirit.org/article_detail.php?article_id=126">www.science-spirit.org/ar...cle_id=126</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Brilliant Disguise: Light, Matter and the Zero-Point Fie

Postby marykmusic » Fri Dec 30, 2005 1:47 pm

It's a hologram.<br><br>Books and movies are available on the subject; "What the Bleep" was just a scratch on the surface. It whetted the public's appetite, which is a good thing.<br><br>The most recent movie we've bought is "Non-Locality and the Observer-- a New Model for Your World." This fascinating lecture talks about how the observer not only affects the observed (this has been known for several decades in particle physics) but it has also been proven that PEOPLE are affected by the brains of others. Here's an experiment described: <br><br>Folks in pairs were gathered together and it was shown that their hooked-up brains resonded to strong stimuli (bright lights, sudden loud sounds, etc.) in the same manner. Then these pairs of people were separated.<br><br>One of each pair was subjected to these same sudden stimuli, and of course their brain waves still reacted with strong peaks on the chart. BUT the other person of the pair, in a quiet, soothing environment, STILL showed exactly the same brain stimulation as the other, when their charts were compared!<br><br>The book "The Holographic Universe" by Michael Talbot is the cutting edge of physics today. However, Science advances one funeral at a time... --MaryK <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Brilliant Disguise: Light, Matter and the Zero-Point Fie

Postby Dreams End » Fri Dec 30, 2005 5:48 pm

Quantum physics gets so misrepresented and misused in all kinds of ways to justify various "mystical" philosophies. But this article and research remind us that quantum reality really is very different from our everyday perceptions of reality. Thanks for posting this. And if these guys were able to do this, I suppose it is possible that more secret research has learned to extract energy from zero-point "vacuum" by now, as some have suggested. <br><br>Oh, "What the bleep" was rather full of followers of Ramtha and not so rigorous in its science. One scientist very much resented how his interview was used. Personally, I haven't seen it, but I see thinks like that all the time. Again, doesn't downplay the truly mindboggling phenomena of quantum physics. I love the fact that every bit of our "commonsense" metaphysics is quite wrong. The question is, does the fact that this "commonsense" breaks down at the subatomic level have any bearing on our macroscopic reality? <br><br>Roger Penrose has speculated that quantum events are what can explain "free will" in the brain...how it can seem so clear that our thoughts have influence on our brains...that decisions we make are not simply the inevitable results of a chain of electrochemical reactions in response to an external stimulus. Who knows..<br><br>Good stuff. <p></p><i></i>
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Holographic univers

Postby slimmouse » Sat Dec 31, 2005 12:01 am

<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>The book "The Holographic Universe" by Michael Talbot is the cutting edge of physics today. However, Science advances one funeral at a time<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br> A perfect way of summing it up Mary.<br><br> Free energy.<br><br> 'Gods' gift to the universe and mankind if you will.<br><br> Hidden from humanities sight by those who see the big picture, but thru their greed, arrogance, and complete and utter fucking ignorance, wish that those people ( who are ultimately part of themselves) are those who suffer most.<br><br> Small wonder that 'God' puts us all on trial first ?<br><br> Gives us all free will ?<br><br> Insists that in order to be us, we need to forget who we actually are ?<br><br> Can we even begin to imagine how fucked up creation would have been left to the devices of folks like us ?<br><br> But I guess thats too "newage - Ickism" for some. <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=slimmouse@rigorousintuition>slimmouse</A> at: 12/30/05 9:34 pm<br></i>
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