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Hi, Dr Grahame Blackwell here with the latest post on my Substack channel ‘Beyond Spacetime ’. It’s titled ‘Our Pathway to the Stars - hidden in plain sight’ - and I can promise you it’s dynamite! It totally overturns a false belief that’s been dominating science for the past 120 years, opening the way for a whole raft of new discoveries.
First, an Editorial note
The radical paper linked in this post was submitted to 2022 Nobel laureate Dr John Clauser for consideration, via a mutual contact. I’m advised that he considered the paper “excellent”, however he has chosen not to get further involved with this work – presumably since, at age 82, he (rightly) feels he has made his significant contribution to the advancement of science and is now leaving it to others to carry the torch onward from here.
By contrast, this paper was also submitted to the journal ‘Foundations of Physics’ for possible publication. According to the Found. Phys. submission-tracking system, my paper was passed to an editor for consideration on 23rd July. By 9.40 that same morning, a rejection notice had been emailed to me – passed via the Managing Editor and from them to a member of Springer admin (no reason given for rejection). From the timings involved it would appear that the assessing editor had spent maybe 5-10 minutes on the paper before rejecting it.
Overview
Special Relativity (SR) tells us that all non-gravitational states of uniform motion (aka ‘Inertial Reference Frames’) are equivalent – there is no unique reference frame that is objectively absolutely static. In technical terms, it is considered that there is no ‘Preferred Frame’ (PF).
This view is supported by the fact that observed outcomes of any experiment or fundamental measurement are identical no matter which reference frame they’re conducted in – a phenomenon referred to as Lorentz Invariance (LI) (i.e. invariant under the Lorentz Transformation which defines transformation of measurements in one frame to those in another).
It’s generally regarded as axiomatic that “When Lorentz invariance holds there is no preferred frame” (a quote from a review referencing almost 300 research studies, largely focused on confirming LI). However, this assumption takes no account of the possibility that, if such a PF does exist, then measurements and observations in all other frames may be affected by their state of motion so as to give results matching those in that PF. In other words, the perception of LI could be the result of motion-based compensating effects rather than absence of a PF.
In-depth analysis from this perspective, which appears – rather surprisingly – never to have been undertaken elsewhere, shows this to be precisely the case. The light-based structure of material particles, evident from a wide range of research findings, leads to material constructs in all inertial reference frames giving results which appear identical in every respect to those for corresponding situations in the Preferred Frame. (The PF in this context is the one relative to which the speed of light always objectively corresponds to the documented value c; the speed of light relative to any other frame will vary depending on direction, but will always be measured as c due to the motion-based response of the measurement protocol).
This blows a hole in the various assertions of Special Relativity (see quotes from the 2022 Nobel Physics Laureate, below, on the wrongness of SR). In particular, it does away with the assertion that the speed of light is an absolute limit, so declaring faster-than-light travel ‘open for business’ – we now just have to figure out how.
In brief: that Preferred Frame is all around us, hidden in plain sight by those motion-based effects. The detail of this cosmic sleight-of-hand is made clear to all in a paper linked in the following text.
The Relativity Myth
For 120 years it’s been pretty well universally believed that Cosmic Reality has put a veto on us ever – that’s ever – making it out to the stars in any realistic timescale. Special Relativity has placed a fictitious glass ceiling around the Earth which limits our thinking on space travel to planets in our own solar system. The speed of light has been declared an absolute limit, making in-person exploration of exoplanets – planets orbiting other stars – an impossibility (other than by multi-generation ‘space arks’, the stuff of a whole genre of Sci-Fi literature long abandoned in favour of dystopian novels centred on colonization of our near neighbours, notably Mars).
This myth was exploded in 1972 by John Clauser and graduate student Stuart Freedman, though their world-changing achievement wasn’t properly recognised until fifty years later in a Nobel Prize for Clauser (ten years too late for Freedman). Even now, with confirmation at successively higher levels of precision using technology not available in 1972, the significance of that finding is widely ignored.
Einstein’s Theory of Relativity depends crucially on the notion that one event in space and time (‘spacetime’) cannot be influenced by another if the former cannot be reached from the latter by signals travelling no faster than the speed of light. Clauser showed that this was clearly at odds with a finding in Quantum Mechanics (QM), Quantum Entanglement – a proposed phenomenon which specifically required two spatially widely separated particles to have an interdependence operating instantaneously, far faster than the speed of light. Clauser tells us, early in his Nobel lecture, that Einstein was “very disturbed by this phenomenon”. So much so that Einstein proposed the inclusion of hidden variables in the definition of QM, which would give the (false, in his view) appearance of interdependence.
Freedman & Clauser’s landmark 1972 study demonstrated that quantum entanglement is a genuine physical effect, and that Einstein’s proposal of hidden variables was, to quote Clauser, “dead on arrival”. More than that, he tells us that “if you put hidden variables in then you can’t get the predictions of Quantum Mechanics”.
Less than 3 minutes into his lecture Clauser tells us that the experiments undertaken by him and his colleagues show that “Einstein’s whole platform for doing physics” is “wrong”. Later, just over 10 minutes in he again speaks of “Einstein’s whole platform for doing physics”, saying that in their experiments, “effectively, we were putting him out of business”.
Clauser wasn’t speaking at some science fringe meeting. His Nobel lecture was presented at the heart of scientific orthodoxy, to a scientific community who had specifically chosen him to receive this award. You can see his complete presentation at: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2022/clauser/lecture/
Freedman & Clauser’s findings were later confirmed at successively higher levels of certainty, using scientific tools and methods introduced later, by Alain Aspect and Anton Zeilinger who also shared the 2022 Nobel award.
Despite clear evidence of Relativity Theory’s incompatibility with the true nature of Cosmic Reality, mainstream science has carried on with ‘business as usual’, continuing to discount those who’d suggest that “Houston, we have a problem [with Relativity]”. Quantum entanglement is rationalised as not being an issue since it doesn’t permit transmission of human-discernible information at faster-than-light speed. But this is wholly missing the point: as Einstein himself clearly realised, any interaction functioning at superluminal speeds undermines Einstein’s premise of light speed as a universal absolute; and that premise is a cornerstone of Relativity Theory. Without it, “Einstein’s whole platform for doing physics [is put] out of business”, to quote John Clauser.
Of course, this leaves that mainstream science with a different problem: how to explain all the very real evidence that seems to support Relativity Theory. To deal with this we have to squarely address the fact that mainstream science has been conflating two totally different issues, treating them as if they’re one and the same thing.
Those two issues are known technically as (a) Lorentz Invariance, and (b) Preferred Frame (or to be precise, lack of one). The first of these refers to the fact that fundamental interactions – fundamental physical laws – are observed and measured as yielding identical outcomes in all gravity-free uniform states of motion (inertial reference frames): an experiment carried out in a non-accelerating space station in deep space will give identical results to that same experiment conducted in a spacecraft travelling at a million miles per hour relative to that space station. The second issue is the notion that there is no ‘preferred’ (unique) state of motion that may be considered to be a universal state of absolute rest: every inertial reference frame may equally be considered to be a state of rest, relative to which every other inertial reference frame is in motion. Hence the notion of Relativity as a fundamental property of the cosmos.
The conventional argument goes: “Well, if the same experiment yields identical results in two or more different labs, where those labs are moving at significant velocities relative to each other, then of course it follows that no one of those labs can be the base-state, so to speak, with all the other labs moving in relation to that one unique base-state”. As one overview of this subject declares, referencing over 280 papers: “When Lorentz invariance holds there is no preferred frame”. A statement of fact, stating the obvious.
But this position makes one sweeping assumption: that things are exactly as they appear. The reality of Lorentz Invariance is the reality of measurements, perceptions, appearances. It is a subjective reality, a reality of perceived or experienced outcomes. It is thus an interpretation of the deeper objective reality, which may or may not correspond identically with what is perceived. To propose that this is the only possible interpretation of perceived phenomena is not only simplistic, it’s unscientific.
In contrast, the fact of a Preferred Frame, or nonexistence of one, is an aspect – a key aspect – of objective reality. It is not dependent on measurement or experience; like the tree that falls in the forest when there is nobody there to hear it, whose falling (or not falling) does not depend on it being heard – and indeed, someone swearing that they heard a tree falling doesn’t mean that it unquestionably happened. Evidence does not equate to fact.
So how do we reconcile a subjective reality in which the outcome of an experiment appears identical in every inertial state of motion with an objective reality in which there is one unique state of absolute rest? For this we need to consider how being in a state of motion may affect observations, measurements and outcomes so as to give this impression of total uniformity.
This isn’t as difficult as it may seem. In fact it’s more difficult to comprehend why the issue of a particle’s or object’s state of motion possibly affecting outcomes for that particle/object has not been seriously considered some time ago, bearing in mind the strong relationship between light and matter and the absence of any clearly-defined causal mechanism for effects attributed to Relativity. [Note that “We live in a relativistic universe” cannot be considered a causal mechanism any more than “God” can be considered a causal mechanism for the diversity of living organisms – it simply dodges the question rather than addressing it.]
A wide variety of research evidence points strongly to the likelihood that elementary material particles are localised closed-loop patterns of electromagnetic energy moving at speed c – ‘cyclic photons’. Indeed, at least two high-profile research studies have actually shown formation of particle-antiparticle pairs directly from high-frequency photons. If this concept is followed to its logical conclusion, it can be shown that, indeed, a true reality founded on an objectively static frame of reference – a ‘preferred frame’ – gives rise to an apparent reality (of our experience) in which no such unique frame exists and in which it appears that outcomes in all inertial states of motion are identical.
This reality of a subjective symmetry – Lorentz Invariance - being created in the setting of an objective asymmetry – a Preferred-Frame cosmos – is laid out in detail in the paper referred to earlier:
‘Full Lorentz Invariance in a Preferred-Frame Reality? Quite Possibly.’
This paper shows exactly how the preferred-frame environment gives rise to that subjective symmetry, drawing on over 50 references and providing a full robust rationale as to how apparently invariant results come about in a non-symmetric reality. Several illustrative examples are given of how Lorentz-invariant outcomes (measurements or events) arise in different states of uniform motion: light speed; particle ‘rest mass’; transverse Doppler effect (Hasselkamp’s experiment); light speed in a moving fluid (Fizeau’s experiment, cited by Einstein as “conclusive” evidence in support of SR); Maxwell’s equations.
This paper can be viewed in full as a PDF download at:
https://r.ihs.ac/li-in-a-pf-reality.pdf
If you recognise the significance of this ‘cracking open’ of a myth that has held back science for over a century, and you’d like to see physics move forward at last, please share the link to this Substack post and/or the link to the paper with anyone you feel may be interested.
Thanks.
Footnote
Clauser and his colleagues coined the term Local Realism to describe Einstein’s take on the physical realm. They showed that this was incompatible with the actual behaviour of physical reality. In the next post we’ll look at Nonlocal Realism, see where that takes us. Spoiler alert: the answer is everywhere.
In the meantime, be sure to check out www.transfinitemind.com, for a variety of technical and non-technical books - including the first ever picture poetry book on quantum physics - and a wealth of other free resources.