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1kCan we see the invisible? Of course not because if we could it would not be invisible.
However, one of the primary goals of science is to extend our knowledge of nature’s processes by “seeing” the invisible.
For example, Isaac Newton showed the position of a planet could be predicted if one assumed that mass generated an attractive gravitational force on all other objects that was directly proportional to their combined masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.
However, no one can “see” a gravitational force. How then can scientists be sure that the “thing” called a “gravitational force” really exists?
The answer is they cannot. They can only assume it does based on the fact that using it they can make accurate predictions of a planets position.
Yet history has shown, assuming the existence of something based only on its predicted powers and not on observations of the environment is fraught with danger
For example in the Ptolemaic or geocentric system of astronomy, many thought the existence of epicycles were required to explain the retrograde motion of the Moon, Sun, and planets.
It was not until scientific investigations were stimulated by Copernicus’s publication of his heliocentric theory did may scientists considered the fact that epicycles did not exist.
This is true even though many Greek, Indian, and Muslim savants had published heliocentric hypotheses centuries before Copernicus.
However, why did it take almost two thousand years for science to realize that their ideas were correct?
One reason may have been that the existence of epicycles was based solely on their predictive powers and not on observations of the environment. If the scientists who assumed the existence of epicycles had taken the time to see or observe how objects moved on earth, they would have realized there was a problem with it because, at least on earth, objects “naturally” follow a curve path not one composed of epicycles.
However, because the scientific community was still able to make accurate predictions of a planet’s position based on the existence of epicycles they were able to ignore these observations and suppressed the correct Greek and Muslim ideas for almost 2000 years. This happened even though it was a more logical and accurate predicative methodology.
Yet they could not ignore the direct observational evidence provided by Galileo Galilei in 1610.when he observed the phase of Venus that epicycles were just an illusion created by the circular obits of the planets. This caused a paradigm shift in our understanding of the universe.
Nevertheless, as mentioned earlier those who believe in epicycles would have realized by observing rotating bodies on the earth that they are indicative of the motion of all rotation bodies when viewed from another one.
In other words the heliocentric concept of our solar system could have become the dominate paradigm long before 1610 if scientists had not ignored what their observable environment was telling them.
For the past 100 years scientist have used two theories to define the universe.
Einstein theories use the unobservable concept of a space-time manifold to mathematically predict the macroscopic universe while Quantum Theories use probability functions to predict particle interactions.Â
However, similar to the geocentric model of the solar system the acceptance of these theories is primarily based on their predictive abilities and not observations because no one has ever observed a probability function or a space-time dimension.
Yet as mentioned earlier history has shown, assuming the existence of something based only on its predicted powers is fraught with danger.
It has and will been shown in this blog if one assume the existence of fourth *spatial* dimension one can, by extrapolating the observable properties of our three-dimensional environment to it prediction identical to those of quantum mechanics and both Einstein’s general and special theories of relativity.
For example, the article “Why is energy/mass quantized?” Oct, 4, 2007 showed that one can predict and explain the quantum mechanical properties of energy/mass by extrapolating the observations of a resonant system in a three-dimensional environment to a matter wave on a “surface” of a three-dimensional space manifold with respect to a fourth *spatial* dimension.
This has advantages over the approach used by quantum mechanics because it allows for verification of the invisible in terms of the visible because it projects the properties of what we can see to define what we cannot whereas quantum mechanics defines what cannot be seen in terms of something that cannot be seen.
We as scientists we should remember that we can never see the invisible but we can give credibility to it by projecting what we can see to it.
Later JeffÂ
Copyright 2009 Jeffrey O’Callaghan
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You’re my role models. Thank you for that post
Very nice blog and very interesting information. I’ll definitely favorite it.