4 hours ago, dave2013 said:

(a) Now, a good example of what you are talking about is the electric force which causes "action at a distance".  Why do like charges repel and opposite charges attract?  I haven't come across a good explanation of this.

(b) One last point.  We actually already have anti-gravity propulsion.  It is based on Newton's third law of motion - every action produces an equal and opposite reaction.  So if I expel compressed gas with enough force, the container holding the gas will move in the opposite direction.  If I rotate a propeller and push enough air molecules downward, I can cause a craft to hover in the air and literally defy gravity. 

(c) Now, here's the real question - why does a reaction produce an equal and opposite reaction in the first place? 

(a) Technically, because the electric force is proportional to charge. If the charge is negative, the force becomes "negative" (changes direction) as well. I know, it's not very satisfying, but the best explanation I can give.

(b) There's your perfect anti-gravity device: an airplane 😄

(c) see my answer (2) below.

4 hours ago, martin-w said:

(1) I mean its not as simple as Einstein's famous rubber sheet analogy, where a weight is placed in the middle to represent a planetary body (or any mass) and the rubber sheet represents spacetime. If it were that simple you wouldn't get attractive gravity.

(2) [ why does a reaction produce an equal and opposite reaction in the first place?]

I think that's a question for the quantum mechanics experts. 

(1) Actually, that analogy is almost spot-on, one of my favorites. Yes, it is just a 2D surface in a 3D space, but all you need to do is to think of the vertical direction as time and to disregard any motion in the third spatial dimension. So, think of the rubber sheet as 2D space embedded in a 2+1 dimensional space-time, then you have it. Confused? Not as much as I was when I first learned about gravity 🙂

(2) Newton's third law (equal but opposite reaction) is actually not a fundamental law. The reason is a bit technical, but basically it holds for forces that only depend on the distance between the two objects that interact. It does not hold for magnetic forces, for instance ( https://helives.blogspot.com/2008/03/lets-break-law-newtons-that-is.html ), which also depend on the velocity of the two objects.

2 hours ago, sightseer said:

 [1]  Atoms are not solid - most of their occupied 'space' is 'free space' (nothing? something? energy waiting to be something?). 

[2] a question:  At what percent of the speed of light does radioactivity cease? I think it must.  If atomic clocks which are based on the half life of a Cesium atom run differently when in different situations, half life must change.  

[3] I'd still love to hear a science/physics based explanation for ghosts and esp or premonitions.

[1] It is actually way worse. In some sense, the atoms aren't even there unless you observe them. But that really gets us deep into quantum physics. 

[2] Radioactivity persists in the reference frame of the decaying nucleus. From its own perspective, it decays as usual. If the nucleus is moving fast and is observed in a lab, it can live much longer. It sounds like a contradiction, but it is all perfectly consistent if you take into account length contraction as well.

[3] Good question. As Martin said, virtually no scientist sees any evidence for it. Having said that, you can actually quote a physics Nobel Prize winner ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Josephson ) to gather support for it. But that's the beauty of science: it doesn't matter who you are -- a first-year student, like Heisenberg [also Nobel Prize winner, but later in his life] when he developed his theory of spin, or a Noble Prize winner like Brian Josephson -- at the end, what matters is the quality of your argument. The Josephson effect is still huge and really important for modern science, but I don't know anyone who followed Josephson on his path towards parapsychology.

6 hours ago, qqwertzde said:

at the end, what matters is the quality of your argument.

I don't make an argument.  I tell of an event that happened to me.

  As a teenager my friends and I spent a lot of time outside at night.  We were always trying to find new places where cops wouldn't run us out or arrest us.  There were rumours of an old haunted church and we wanted to see for ourselves and so we started going there on a semi regular basis.  We had been there many times with absolutely nothing happening.

  But one night we were all walking from the edge of the woods up through the cemetery towards the back corner of the old stone church.  I noticed something odd --  a purplish black fuzzy mist 'unraveled' from behind the tombstone closest to the back edge of the church.  It took on the form of a hooded figure and it looked just like a shadow cast by a full moon.  It had that same translucence.  But it was standing in three dimensional space.

  I watched as the figure floated without a sound out into the open and then started to move toward the one large tree at the top of the hill.  Derick was on the far right and said " Did you see that?"   Eddie, between me and Derick said " You mean a shadow that floated up from there moving to there" pointing toward the open space and Derick said "yeah, and then headed toward that tree?".  I never said a word during all this as they described what I had seen.

  Derick starting running quickly and Eddie followed.  I moved less quickly but it was as if the 'ghost' was surprised that it could be seen.  It seemed afraid almost.  It went to hide in a place where an outhouse had been standing for much of the time we had been going there but now was torn down.  As it moved form near the tree to where the outhouse was, Derrick and Eddie changed their trajectory.  The 'ghost' noticed this and headed off towards the corner of the church and by the the time we all got there, there was no sign of it.

  I really have no idea what it was but I can't deny what I saw and I'm sure it was actually there because two of my friends were able to finish each others sentences in describing the thing.

So I know this is about anti gravity and I basically asked "what do we actually know about gravity?" and I introduce this story here because science simply doesnt know everything and there are some things that its not even willing to look at.  I can understand why but science will NEVER find the truth by denying parts of it.

Can you explain this event?

1 hour ago, sightseer said:

 I introduce this story here because science simply doesnt know everything and there are some things that its not even willing to look at.  I can understand why but science will NEVER find the truth by denying parts of it.

Can you explain this event?

Cool story. I had some unexplainable experiences myself. For instance, a close relative took an overdose and hid somewhere outside in a suicide attempt. I just knew where he was and was able to rescue him. It was a spot where I never was before, it still puzzles me how I just felt that he was there.

But back to your question. Science is a method of acquiring knowledge. The most important part of it is that it deals with repeatable experiments: you observe something, form a hypothesis, and try to explain what you found. Others will try to repeat your experiments. If many people are able to verify your findings, a consensus will form that your hypothesis is correct. If not, it will not become part of scientific knowledge. The more extraordinary the hypothesis is, the more experimental evidence has to be found to support it. There are many examples where hypotheses formed by well-known researchers have been refuted by the community. Famous examples are cold nuclear fusion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion) and faster-than-light neutrinos (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light_neutrino_anomaly).

Can science explain your, or my own, experience? No. By their very nature, one-time events are outside the scope of what science can address. That does not mean they didn't happen, but there is no systematic way in which we could study it.

However, it is not true that scientists simply deny paranormal phenomena. In fact, there is quite a bit of work on the topic. So far, claims made by the paranormal community have not passed tests that were performed with scientific rigor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parapsychology#Scientific_reception). Scientists are not simply denying things like telekinesis, they just hold them up to the same standards as their own hypotheses.

6 hours ago, sightseer said:

I really have no idea what it was but I can't deny what I saw and I'm sure it was actually there because two of my friends were able to finish each others sentences in describing the thing.

 

Fascinating story. And as you are a person that I trust to be telling the truth, even more fascinating. 

The only potentially paranormal experience I've had was when I was about 19. I was sitting on the floor in my parent lounge, watching World of Sport presented by Dickie Davis. Those my age who reside in the UK will remember the Saturday morning sports show well.

As I sat there on the floor watching the TV, an image appeared in my mind of an old school friend who I hadn't seen for a couple of years. I recall he had only been to my house once before a long time ago. In my imagination I pictured him walking up my drive with his swimming trunks wrapped in a towel. 

It was an old Victorian terraced house with a high bay window. About 30 seconds later I saw him pass by the window. I opened the front door and sure enough under his arm he had his swimming trunks wrapped in a towel. He was calling on me to ask if I'd like to go to the swimming baths with him.

Now of course, the most likely explanation is that it was simply pure coincidence but the chances of that must be astronomically small I would have thought. I hadn't seen him for a very long time and hadn't contemplated such a scenario before. 

Precognition? Coincidence? I'll never know. But it is a reminder to keep an open mind. 

 

 

Edited February 5, 20224 yr by martin-w

10 hours ago, qqwertzde said:

Scientists are not simply denying things like telekinesis, they just hold them up to the same standards as their own hypotheses.

One of the wikipedia pages I read when looking up Josephson mentioned a girl who claimed she could see inside peoples bodies to identify medical conditions they had and when they tested her she 'only' got four out of five correct.

In my opinion getting four out of five is astronomical.  We are talking about the human brain here and there can be lots of 'noise' as it were.  I always question when people say they have control over things like that but that girl sounds like she did.  For me its like the song lyric "I suffer premonitions".  Images fall into your head -- sometimes crash -- and later they show up 'in real life'.  It can be quite confusing to say the least.

P.S.:  I appreciate your story.

6 hours ago, martin-w said:

In my imagination I pictured him walking up my drive with his swimming trunks wrapped in a towel. 

It was an old Victorian terraced house with a high bay window. About 30 seconds later I saw him pass by the window.

I would call that a premonition.  I have had a lot of those.

The trouble with talking about these issues is that people immediately label you as crazy and we never get to the bottom of why these things happen in some people lives.  My theory is that people who have an artistic bent are more likely to encounter ghosts and probably more likely to suffer esp or premonitions.  People who are more artistic have brains that are 'extra sensitive' by default.  I really think the human brain relies on quantum physics to create conciousness and awareness.  I see little difference between quantum entanglement and telekinesis or esp but I don't think I understand quantum entanglement enough to say.

  Theres just so much stuff we don't know and Im not really one to be talking about it I guess.

P.S.: Thank you for your story as well.

2 minutes ago, sightseer said:

I would call that a premonition.

 

I would say maybe.

When we consider this stuff and things like Jung's "synchronicity" where he believed in "meaningful coincidence" I think we should remember that there are a myriad of events that occur every single day in our lives, and amongst those myriad of events there are bound to be startling coincidences, it would be weird if there weren't. 

But yes, who knows. 

8 minutes ago, martin-w said:

maybe.

Oh come on, Martin... you said the guy had only been to your house one time and that was several years ago and then you picture him walking up your driveway and 30 seconds later there he was.  

That is quite an overwhelming coincidence.

I suspect the fact is that he was thinking intently about surprising you and your brain picked up on that without you knowing it on a concious level and, like a dream, you imagined him doing what he knew he was doing.

Edited February 5, 20224 yr by sightseer

20 hours ago, qqwertzde said:

Radioactivity persists in the reference frame of the decaying nucleus. From its own perspective, it decays as usual.

My physics professor in junior college told us of an experiement where two atomic clocks located on the east coast of the US were synchronized and then one was put on a jet and flown to the west coast.  The two clocks then had different times and this was proof of time dilation.

So, you say, and everyone says, that what happens is relative.  The rate of decay remains the same relative its source and it only appears different from a different observer.  So if everything remains the same (theres a song there eh?), how is it that the two clocks had different elapsed times?

1 hour ago, sightseer said:

[1] The trouble with talking about these issues is that people immediately label you as crazy and we never get to the bottom of why these things happen in some people lives. 

[2]  I really think the human brain relies on quantum physics to create conciousness and awareness.  I see little difference between quantum entanglement and telekinesis or esp but I don't think I understand quantum entanglement enough to say.

[1] The reason is probably that there are quite a few fraudulent dudes around who tell complete nonsense but find people who believe them. Dudes like Deepak Chopra ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepak_Chopra ) or Gary Zukav ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Zukav ). There is a simple way to tell them apart from scientists: if they ask you for money, they are not scientists.

[2] Please, PLEASE don't connect quantum physics with consciousness.

If you did, you would be in excellent company: Erwin Schrödinger and Eugene Wigner (both Nobel Prize winners) speculated about such a connection, but that was at a time when quantum mechanics was still young and we understood much less about it than now. It all comes from the fact that many quantum effects require an observation to take place in the first place. Schrödinger and Wigner speculated that the observation can't take place in another object since that follows quantum physics as well. Hence, quantum observations require a conscious being, and that conscious being alters the physics of, say, an electron.

That was state of the art 60-80 years ago. By now, we know that an actual observation is not required, you just have to save the information so that it can be looked at later. But it was exactly those speculations from the early days of quantum theory that led to the frauds I mentioned above.

About entanglement: it is completely different from telekinesis. It is basically another word for "correlations" in quantum physics. Correlations are well known in everyday life: if you send two mittens to two different people, and person A receives the left mitten, you know with certainty that person B will receive the right mitten; the two events are correlated. Entanglement is pretty much the same, except that there is that thing with observations I mentioned above. Since observations (or more precisely, collecting information about an object) alter the state of an object, there are correlations that can happen in quantum physics but are impossible in any possible classical world. And that is precisely what entanglement describes.

57 minutes ago, sightseer said:

[3] My physics professor in junior college told us of an experiement where two atomic clocks located on the east coast of the US were synchronized and then one was put on a jet and flown to the west coast.  The two clocks then had different times and this was proof of time dilation.

[4] So, you say, and everyone says, that what happens is relative.  The rate of decay remains the same relative its source and it only appears different from a different observer.  So if everything remains the same (theres a song there eh?), how is it that the two clocks had different elapsed times?

[3] Yes, that experiment was done 50 years ago by Hafele and Keating (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafele–Keating_experiment) and was a break-through. However, we are now so much farther. You may not know it, but you are testing Relativity yourself every time you use GPS, see the video below.

 

[4] Explaining how the clocks can evolve at different rates is a bit tricky. Basically, what really matters for a consistent world view is that one particular event (say, your birth) happens only at one location and one instant in time to each observer. To one observer, it may happen later than to another, but that would be accompanied by a a change in the location. However, both observers would still agree that the event happened at a well defined location and time. It is just that their clocks and rulers show different readings.

16 hours ago, sightseer said:

Oh come on, Martin... you said the guy had only been to your house one time and that was several years ago and then you picture him walking up your driveway and 30 seconds later there he was.  

That is quite an overwhelming coincidence.

 

Yep, absolutely agree with you. And I said it was an amazing coincidence... if that's what it was.

However... I think we have to be unbiased and unemotional when we contemplate these things and consider the non-paranormal, natural explanations first. And when I do that, I accept that such "overwhelming coincidences" do occur.

In fact, if you consider my previous point, namely that our lives are jam packed with an uncountable number of events we experience each day and that sooner or later, with such a myriad of interconnecting events, such coincidences will indeed occur, maybe it becomes less unlikely. I think if we were to consider the laws of statistics, then it would probably be extremely unlikely for a human being to not experience such extreme coincidence at some point in their lives.

I mean this has happened to me ONCE in 64 years and a handful of times in a less extreme form. So maybe that is to be expected in terms of statistical probability. 

I'm not saying my non-paranormal explanation above is the right one, just that perhaps it is. As I say, I keep an open mind and simply don't know if its some kind of paranormal phenomenon or an expected statistical probability. 

Many years ago I kept a dream journal.  I'd record my dreams before I got out of bed in the morning.  No particular reason, just that someone had suggested it and I thought I'd give it a try.

One night I dreamed that my best and oldest friend (I'd known him since the 6th grade) showed up at my door after a few years of not hearing from him.  The next day he showed up in person.  Coincidence?  

That was one of a dozen such dreams in the month I was keeping the journal.  Try it some time and see for yourself.  It's not easy, but it's a worthwhile experience.

Hook

Edited February 6, 20224 yr by LHookins

This kind of coincidences have been reported to me lately from two persons I interact with almost everyday, one 25 yo the other 76. My daughter and a great friend of mine who I never met personally and lives in Canada describe a worth of "coincidence" episodes that happen to both and document it very often.

My daughter is a clinical phsychologist, the friend is an old time simmer friend, a Portuguese who has long moved to Canada, a very practical / pragmatic person, an IT engineer for many years, and surely not the kind of person who has a tendency to find "extranormal" themes interesting...

Recently yet another great friend, meteorologist, yet another very pragmatic person, with an accute scientific way of approaching pretty much every subject  I discuss with him, has showed me the evidence of UFOs as captured by his mobile camera somewhere over Lisbon.

If these 3 persons were not so well known to me I would think they were all "dellusionists".

 

Edited February 6, 20224 yr by jcomm

57 minutes ago, LHookins said:

One night I dreamed that my best and oldest friend (I'd known him since the 6th grade) showed up at my door after a few years of not hearing from him.  The next day he showed up in person.  Coincidence?  

 

Very similar to my experience.

 

41 minutes ago, jcomm said:

showed me the evidence of UFOs as captured by his mobile camera somewhere over Lisbon.

 

What did it look like?