Have never posted here, but had an idea that I'm quite sure is off but am not sure why.

I've never really liked the notion that there's always been mass. In my view, in the beginning, there was no mass and no time. Stuff that travels at light speed has neither. In a way, there was just light.

And so, what if the universe started with massless, timeless stuff (think of photons). These collided which changed their relative speed, which knocked them into different space time, and gave them what we call mass. It took 2 massless things and gave them a mass which was just their respective deltas from C. There wasn't a Big Bang just a nearly impossibly small one.

Mass, then would merely be a function of a rate of speed less than lightspeed. Something that sits in different space-time.
When this new stuff that had "mass" collided with other stuff with "mass" in the same space-time, the "mass" grew.

Mass is merely a collection "stuff" that is moving at nearly the exact same rate of "less than light-speed" and so sits in nearly the same space time. The nearly is important since there would be bundlings of things in different space times.

One could think of the amount of energy that it would take to restore this stuff to C as to help think about the E. When an item is at C it's M which is it's delta from C would be 0.

Gravity would be a function of time.

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If the ATM community is up to the challenge ;-) I'm happy to try and defend the proposition.

OK, welcome to the board.

The first point that I would take issue with is the following,

"And so, what if the universe started with massless, timeless stuff (think of photons). These collided which changed their relative speed"

The relative speed of photons is always c, so the above is incorrect.

Photons do interact with each other (although it is a second order effect, mediated by other particles), but this interaction dos not slow them down, but rather only changes their direction.

As to the rest, I am afraid that I am not sure what you are trying to say. For example, what do you mean by "Mass, then would merely be a function of a rate of speed less than lightspeed"?

We know that the mass of an object is independent of its speed ("mass" in modern physics refers to rest mass, which is a constant for a given particle), so this would seem to contradict this part of your supposition.

Next, some of your questions are simply ungrammatical, such as "One could think of the amount of energy that it would take to restore this stuff to C as to help think about the E". If you seriously want to discuss your ideas, you may want to take some time to clear up your posts so that they are at least intelligible, and have a meaning in standard English. How can you expect people to argue your ideas if you cannot even express them in an intelligible form?

As a final point, while we can always come up with new explanations that seem satisfying to us, the question that always matters is how we would test for this theory of yours. Does it, for example, give a different distribution for the cosmic microwave background, does it give a measureable change in how light behaves, or how mass behaves? If not, what does your idea actualy mean?

Really appreciate that you've engaged the ideas. Thank you.

Per the grammar, I definitely concede that my post was linguistically challenged insofar as that this discipline has an argot that is necessarily very precise and I certainly took some liberties.

My basic premise requires that photons can collide in such a way that their speed changes and they, definitionally, cease to be photons. The literature seems to indicate that photons can interact but it's not clear to me if this basic premise is possible.

wmfischer,

(bold added)

I think this idea is valid but wish to have you consider the possibilities. In a finite universe that had a beginning, there was no change before the first change, where time would be defined as change of some sort. Maybe a definition like this: Time:
an interval of change in the form or relative position of substance. So according to what you said, there would have been no such thing as time before the beginning which perpetuated change.

Your next statement involves no matter. Matter and Substance are not necessarily the same thing. Photons are not considered to be matter but they could be called substance. In the present Big Bang model (one of its hypothetical beginnings) there was just pure energy in the beginning, an idea I'm not fond of. I prefer a type of substance, other than mass or photons, as the beginning; what do you think?

NorthernBoy has already given you an important answer: Photons do certainly interact, but they remain photons (and thus continue to travel at c -- "it's not just a good idea, it's the law" -- as a very old joke goes). They're not like cars that crash, and then change speed as a result. So sorry, your basic premise about photons is known to be incorrect, and thus your theory is built on a false foundation.

wmfischer,

I cannot conceptually envision how this could be so, in general. Gravity certainly functions within the framework of time but how does the progress of time effect the gravitational influence, for instance, of two objects maintaining a constant distance between them, by some means?

Or did you have another meaning to your statement?

Geo_Kaplan,
I'm sure you're right, and I understand that photons always travel at c but isn't that a bit tautological?

perhaps another way to frame the basic premise is that "photons must be able to convert to another entity. If they can't then, my universe of photons is destined to be static.

Forrest Noble:
I think we're kinda/sorta on the same page with regards to "Time". I think that it's interesting to just think of it as another dimension (with no special timeness) and that it represents a rate of speed that an object of mass has at less than C. (An example is that two quantities of mass traveling at C-1 could occupy the same "space time".

Per Gravity: I think about it this way. If two objects are spinning around the same point, the item that is further away would have a slightly higher relative speed. This greater relative speed would place the object in a slightly different space-time. As the apple falls , the relative speed differential decreases and it would move with the same relative speed as the crust upon which it rests (although a wee bit higher since it's sitting on-top of the crust). Simplification is obviously troublesome since in an earth example one has lots of moving things, hence, relative speed is operable.

Again, the notion of a "little bang" (two photons colliding) as the origin of the universe is problematic, but if one thinks about the construction of the universe from that event, it's a nice way to think about mass/time/energy as having a common denominator.

No. Not even a bit. Why do you think so?

And perhaps this is where one approaches something resembling a tautology. Given that the experimental evidence for how photons behave is extremely well established, and in conflict with your basic premise, wouldn't that tend to falsify your premise and, therefore, the theory that derives therefrom? If not, please explain.

Our universe began from a point of singularity w/ infinite density, according to Penrose theorem.There is also this consensus that majority of the experts, supported the theory that what occurred was a huge split-second inflation of the universe, followed by gradual expansion that continues this day and now accelerating. But I cannot visualize what entity it is (that is, the idea of a point of singularity) , increadibly small (smaller than a point of a needle?) but w/very enormous density? Seems self-contradicting.

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Why "self-contradicting"? Density and size are two independent parameters. It's like saying that width and length are self-contradicting - you're saying the equivalent of "a skinny thing can't be long."

Just because you can't imagine it doesn't mean it can't be imagined. It's important to keep this straight.

First off "point of singularity" does not make sense to me. A singularity is just a point in equation where there is no answer. What we believe is that our observable universe gets more dense the further we travel back in time. At some point very near the T0 the fundamental forces start unifying and there is not an issue with stuff being to close together.

If the universe is infinite and open then near T0 the "size" of the universe is still infinite. It would just be much more dense. Again our observable universe might have been able to fit in a very small point but at that point there was no Hadron or other fundamental particles that restricted them from occupying the same space and time.

Think of it this way. How many photons can you fit in the same location?

Or even better...don't think of it as just higher density but better said an average area would have a higher "energy density" as you approach T₀.

Geo Kaplan,

Is it really settled that photons cannot be changed into mass-bearing entities. A google search on photon collisions points to many papers that seem to suggest that it might be possible. I just don't know enough to know if these are bunk.

If mass can be derived from photons, walking through the origins of the universe starting with the first collision of photons, yields an interesting perspective on time and the shape of the universe and whether or not it's expanding.

Of course photons can be used to create matter (E=Mc^2 and all that); look up, e.g., "pair creation." But your statement, read in the full context in which it was presented, has photons "changing speed". Do you not understand the difference? A common theme among ATM presenters is use of familiar terms in idiosyncratic ways, and a related demonstration of unfamiliarity with physics. I am naturally suspicious of those making claims about a subject that they clearly have not studied very well.

This is why I suggested not getting hung up on tautologies. Clearly, only photons can travel at C and something traveling at less than C is not a photon. So if a photon is changed to matter, it has slowed down and is not a photon.

That being said, if one thinks of matter as collections of "slow photons" (again, I know that there's no such thing as a "slow photon" and I know that the behavioral difference between an object traveling at C vs. one traveling at C-(∞-1) is vast and that these clusters would exhibit strange quantum behaviors, which I would suggest is because tiny objects that interact have vastly different relative speeds and occupy very different space-time even though they seem to be very close) and thinks about the universe starting as nothing but photons - and builds up a universe from there, it helps to simplify matters greatly.

It might be too simple of a story and it might be the wrong story, but it extrapolates out into, I think some interesting notions on the nature of time, gravity, shape of universe, etc. It's kind of the opposite approach from the LHC.

One such thought. If this model is correct, perhaps the universe isn't expanding but the earth is moving away from the edges as the gap between it's relative speed and C grows.

So if your slow photons aren't photons, don't actually exist, and have none of the properties of photons, why insist on this view? You must be aware that a purposeless redefinition of common terms is sort of...odd. The function of such word games is often to obfuscate (certainly that is the effect), triggering questions of why one would want to obfuscate, which then triggers... you get the idea.

Allow me to point out that the full logical power of your description is captured in the following:

If one thinks of matter as collections of "transformed elephants" (again, I know that there's no such thing as a "transformed elephant")...etc.

Can you try again, please, but without the illucidity?

If one is trying to add fractions, it's useful to have common denominators.

I think one of the challenges in this area of physics is an ontological one. In trying to explicate a thought process, I was using the metaphor of a "slow photon" because it hints at common denominator. I would have used "elephants" but I thought it might not be as elucidative.

If one thinks of a universe that starts as photons (having neither mass nor time) and builds to our present day universe as opposed to working backwards, one gets around some of the linguistic constructions that I think are stumbling blocks. Thinking of C as k/s introduces notions of distance and time which can both elucidate as well as confuse.

Here's an example from my conceptualized universe. Normally we think that for two objects to collide they must occupy the same space-time. If you start with building the universe from photons, you could think about the condition needed for a collision as two objects traveling at the same delta from C that occupy the same position. The earth if you add up all of its relative speeds (spins on an axis, spins around the sun which spins around a galaxy which spins around a galactic cluster which spins...) one gets an object that has a speed that one can think about in relation to C. But it's made up of objects that were once at C but are now semi-locked at this new "delta from C" but can only collide at a certain position as a certain "delta from C."

A challenge in thinking about C is that it has both time and distance components (which are linguistic constructs), this framework helps to get around that.

wmfischer,

Can you account for how all the Matter in the Universe came to be in the relatively short amount of time that it came to be and account for why photon collisions are no longer creating matter as you suggest they once did?

Thanks for the questions. My thought is that it may appear that the Universe came to be in a relatively short amount of time because we necessarily look at large objects and that these would appear to have a similar vintage. It's also that the "Big Bang" is also possible even probably under my theory. It's just that it was photon collisions that created the matter which coalesced and exploded. I just find it unlikely that the universe started as a ball of hot, dense primordial stuff. The process of pair-creation by photons doesn't stop. The universe perpetually has components shifting from matter to photon or photo to matter.

Q1: What calculations have led you to conclude that it's unlikely?

Q2: How does your model account for the observed characteristics of the CMB (both its basic isotropy, and its departure from isotropy)?

Q2: Please describe this process of photon-matter interconversion in detail.

Clearly you are mistaken. Photons are not the only things that can travel at c, lower case not upper.

Anything with no rest mass will travel at c. This is not limited to photons.

OK, how do you define your lower case c?

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I don't get your 'point'. Do you mean the word 'point' there is not a geometrical figure but merely an 'expression'?

Particles in one same place at the same time? Isn't violating the Pauli's exclusion law ?

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Thanks, all, for the correction on the little c vs. big C.

Per the notion that it's more likely that the universe evolved from photons to matter and not from the big bang of hot primordial mass, I find it more likely that since objects of mass travel at a multitude of relative speeds all slower than c and that it takes vastly more energy to convert mass to photons than to convert photons to mass, that the more likely scenario is the photons to mass.

Per Geo_Kaplan, an equation might be something that thinks of mass as "potential energy" and not the natural state of energy in the system which is a "no mass system". This seems more likely to me than thinking of photons as potential energy. With regards to the isotropy and deviation thereof, of CMB, a couple of thoughts. One, is that nothing in my theory precludes a big bang, it's just that I disagree with the notion that the one commonly pointed to is unlikely to have been the first, and unlikely to point to the beginning of the universe. I don't have a better theory for the isotropy of the CMB, other than it points to a Big Bang but if it represents the decoupling of photons from matter, it's not clear that it's inconsistent with my theory. Per the exact process of photons to matter and vice versa, let's look at the sun. The sun, I think started as a ball of collided hydrogen. These gasses compress and fuse into helium and ignites. It then kicks off photons and will eventually end up ball consisting of larger elements like iron. In reverse, photons collide - cease being photons - accrue some mass which offsets the slower speed. These new slowed objects can collide with other slowed objects and can eventually build into objects like hydrogen when they occupy the same spacetime. Is it more likely that Ag emerged from a process that started with Hydrogen, or that they always coexisted?

Per WayneFrancis, thanks for pointing out that there are objects with no rest mass that aren't photons that travel at c, I'm not sure how this distinction bears on the theory but certainly I can see that it bears upon my advocacy of it.

correct, the Early universe didn't have to be, and probably wasn't, contained in a single physical 3D potion
Actually only certain types of particles can't occupy the same place. By the time the universe cooled down enough (ie expanded enough) to have hadrons there was enough space for them.

Think of it this way. Can 2 photons occupy the same space? How about 3? How about 2x10¹⁰⁰

The early universe wasn't the matter you see today. Heck most of the universe today isn't the matter you see today. Even so we know we can pack hadrons pretty close together already. But the real point is as energy density goes up we are not limited to the same properties of something like a neutron star or even a hypothetical quark star because the Energy of the universe is in a form where it does not have the same spatial restrictions that bosons have.

Aren't you contradicting yourself? You believe that the universe didn't have to be in a 'zero' dimension (I believe the more appropriate word) but you do believe also that certain particles can occupy the same place...make it clear...is it at the same place at the same time? Euclidean geometry postulated that no two points can occupy the same location in space at the same time? Please explain.

Is it pure energy?
SORRY I EDITED THIS.. you mean 'cannot' occupy...I misread it 'can'. Any way, I do also believe that "point of singularity", if it is 'interpreted and maybe others may comprehend it as geometrical, does violate that same Euclidean postulate.

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Again, one question, isn't density and size dependent or related ...as far as I remember. in my high school math, Density = Mass/ Volume ...isn't volume = length x width x height? Are you sure volume is not a size?

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It isn't "bunk", it is a proven fact.
The cause for difficulties you have defending your ATM is expressed clearly in your sentence above.


It can't. You need to learn mainstream physics before formulating your own theories.

Correct. For example I think you will agree that we live in a full 3 dimensional space right now.

Now if I had the appropriate hardware there is no limit to the amount of photons I could aim at a single point in our universe. Photons happily will exists in the same point in space as other photons.

We also know that they are not the only particles that have this behaviour. Bosons are able to occupy the same physical space because they can share the same quantum state. The property you are thinking of is a property of fermions. We know as energy levels go up matter as we know it becomes impossible or in a quantum sense just VERY unlikely. So the properties of the fermions do not apply.

no contradiction here. The early universe could still be infinite in size. Now our observable universe might have fit on to the head of a pin, if that pin could take those intense energy levels.

You can think of it that way but it was energy that we don't see in our visible universe right now. The conditions to make this type of energy is very difficult. This is why the LHC is being built and even then it won't get "back to the beginning"

Think of it this way, the early universe was made up of fundamental energy that is different then the energy we see around us.

Lets look as my statement in a bit fuller context
Yes only certain types of particles can't occupy the same place at the same time. These are particles that don't allow others to have the same quantum state as them in the same location. Fermions are an example of this. Bosons on the other hand CAN occupy the same point in space and time.

Finally we only appear to live in a Euclidean universe. It is a good approximation most of the time but to believe that at all scales that the universe is Euclidean is misguided.