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One is left to wonder, if so many celebrated physicists can be so wrong about their understanding of time and motion, what else have they gotten wrong? This is the page where I comment on more nasty little truths about physics. Over the coming weeks or months I will add new items, time permitting. 

Nasty Little Truth About Exclusive Relativity

Nasty Little Truth About Space

Nasty Little Truth About Size

Nasty Little Truth About Motion

Coming Soon:

Nasty Little Truth About Continuity

An Ontology of Substance: Everything From Nothing

Nasty Little Truth About The Aether

We have all been taught that there is no such thing as absolute motion or position or that every motion and position in the universe is relative. This unsubstantiated belief, which I have named exclusive relativity, has been around for centuries, even before the advent of Albert Einstein and the theory of relativity. It was not until early in the twentieth century, however, that exclusive relativity became in vogue. Nowadays most physicists consider the concept of absolute motion to be no more credible than the flat earth.

If all positions are relative, then we have a self-referential system in which every position is ultimately relative to itself. For example, suppose we have a two-body universe. Body A's position is relative to body B's position and vice versa. Since both positions are relative to the other and there are no other bodies, each body's position is ultimately relative to itself. Of course, it does not matter whether there are only two bodies or a billion.

Exclusive relativity amounts to saying things like, "you are as tall as you are" or "this sound is as loud as itself" or "pick yourself up by your own bootstraps." Of course this is silly but this is the sort of silliness we have to believe in if we accept exclusive relativity.

Suppose there is a force acting on a particle so as to accelerate it. The particle has as many relative velocities as there are possible frames of reference, an infinite number in fact. Which of the myriads of relative velocities does the force change? How does the accelerating agent know about them so as to change them all? Answer, it does not. Only one velocity is changed by the force because it has no access to the others. The others are abstract, i.e., non-physical.

Let's consider the motion of a particle. How does a particle "know" about its motion or rest relative to extrinsic frames of references so as to move or be at rest relative to them? Are particles psychic? I think not. No particle in the universe can make use of the relative because it has no access to it. It follows that the universe does not use the relative. The only properties that it can use are absolute ones.

The nasty little truth turns out to be the exact opposite of what we have been taught to believe. The only type of motion or position in the universe is absolute. The relative is abstract and dependent on the absolute. Exclusive relativity is part of what I have been calling chicken feather voodoo physics, because if we subscribe to it, we have to believe that things happen as if by magic.

Exclusive relativists will immediately retort that if it cannot be measured or observed, it does not exist. Never mind for now that physics is bloated with concepts and models (time dimension, spacetime, curled up dimensions, etc...) that are impossible to test empirically. 

First of all, it is a misconception that we measure the relative directly. We perceive only absolute sensations (such as photons impinging on the light detectors in the retina) and we interpret them as meaning that object A is moving relative to body B. Sure, it's a logical and sensible interpretation but it is an indirect one nonetheless. It must be inferred.

Second, a truth that can be deduced logically is just as valid as a truth that can be experienced first hand. Is it not more beneficial to know the fundamental truth of absolute motion than it is to bury one's head in the sand and act as if it does not exist? Which is better, ignorance or knowledge? And who knows what new insight may come out of it?

Does this mean that one should believe in an absolute space à la Newton? Absolutely not. In nature there exist only particles, their properties and their interactions. Since all properties are intrinsic to particles, they are therefore absolute (independent) by virtue of being intrinsic. I'll have more to say about this when I discuss the next nasty little truth about physics. Besides, the absolute does not need a reference frame to be relative to. That is the definition of the relative. Absolute means independent.

Physical space is given as a collection of positions. The idea is that, in order for any physical entity or property to exist, it must exist at a specific position in space. But if a position is a physical entity that exists, it too, must exist at a specific position. In other words, if space exists, where is it? As with time, one can posit a meta-space but this quickly turns into an infinite regress. The nasty little truth is that there is no such thing as space.

In the early eighties physicist Alain Aspect and colleagues performed an experiment that confirmed the so-called Bell's Inequality Principle. Without going into the details of the experiment, I'll just say that it proved a major prediction of quantum theory, one that Einstein objected to in a famous paper describing a thought experiment that became known as the EPR (Einstein, Podolsky, Rosen) paradox. Two entangled photons can be millions of miles apart and yet, if the polarity of one photon flips, the other will flip simultaneously. To a lot of classical physicists such as Einstein, the existence of nonlocal phenomena would mean that the two photons are communicating at superluminal speeds which is a no-no. Einstein called it "spooky action at a distance." Many have refused to accept the completeness and even the correctness of QM for this reason. But the superluminal objection is flawed in my opinion, because it assumes the physical existence of space.

By far the most exciting consequence of nonspatiality is that it should be possible for a particle to move almost instantly from one position to any other without going through the intervening positions. Normally a particle moves by making a quantum jump, i.e., its intrinsic positional property changes from one discrete value to another. The fundamental discrete distance is on the order of the Planck Length (about 10^-35 meters), a very minute distance. However, there is no reason to suppose that the positional property of a particle cannot change by amounts larger than the fundamental value. Note that this is not the same as moving faster than light. Superluminal motion only means that a quantum jump happens at a speed faster than c. This is not the case with long distance jumps.

I received several emails from people who agree with most of my arguments but consider my ideas on nonspatiality to be as wild and far fetched as wormholes and time travel. Let me point out that I argue against time travel and the like, not because they look or sound far fetched, but because they are illogical. I find the existence of space as illogical as the existence of a time dimension. 

If a particle has size, what is it composed of? And if the components have size, what are they composed of? and so on, ad infinitum. The infinite regress forces us to accept the counter-intuitive notion that particles have no size and that size is a macroscopic illusion that arises from the way groups of particles interact. If we stop to think about it, is there a law in nature that requires entities to have a size in other to exist? Such a law would be illogical because it introduces the infinite regress problem as seen above.

It is important to think of motion as a series of quantum jumps whereby the position of a particle continually changes from one discrete value to another. If the particle is set in motion from a rest position, it must make the first jump. Suppose the cause of the initial jump is immediately removed. What causes the particle to take the next jump and the ones after that? My rationale is that every jump is an effect and every effect must have a cause. This is required by the law of causality, the most corroborated law in the history of science.

The consequences of causal motion are enormous for the future of physics. Since nothing can change without being caused to change, the motion of any particle can only be sustained by a series of discrete interactions. The interactions cause the particle to jump from one discrete position to an "adjacent" position. It follows that all matter must be moving in an immense sea of wall-to-wall particles! One day soon, we will learn how to navigate and manipulate this sea of energy but first, we must deduce its composition, the properties of its constituents and the manner in which they interact with normal matter.

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