Even Engineering Science is becoming ‘human-centric’ …

With fervent drive for neuromorphism in computing and generally in science, the whole engineering science seems to follow human-centric views upon many natural phenomena. There is a tremendous shift towards pretending that we should see the world from the so called bio-inspired position. Models are increasingly been selected as to their applicability to explaining experimental evidence on the principles of human-oriented ‘voting mechanism’.

That can only get worse as people are increasingly living in virtual reality.

Decline of thinking habits

With the massive advent of AI and ML we are rapidly moving towards the society where quick pattern recognition (according to the accepted canons, textbooks and all kinds of lookup tables) is trained, tested and rewarded.

Engineers are commonly regarded as good if they can quickly look up the bag of available models and tools and identify the right one to apply.

Any attempt to be doubtful or suspicious, or even discard the canon for a completely new way of expression is penalised by the Pharisees of the society appointed by the society to be its so called “Scientific Advisors”.

Anglo-American culture is particularly characteristic of that – with its love for all kinds of pub quizzes, TV game shows, praising for quickly detecting and nodding to quick recognition of soup opera catch-phrases, quoting Bob Hope or aphorisms and what not. Including of course, pretence to be intellectual by showing off in using Latin or French expressions … As long as nothing is going deep into understanding of the English or let alone any foreign language  grammar (why bother with that if you can simply build your sentences out of phrasal verbs of which English is so rich), or even deeper learning and thinking in different languages.

So, whether the members of this society want to be unique or original when moving into science or other intellectual activity forms, they remain apples that don’t fall far from their trees. 

Static fields are an illusion …

To my previous blog, proving that EM power can only exist in motion with a speed of light, one might react with a question: What about Static EM fields?

(cf. the Static Fields rubric on the wiki page about Poynting Vector: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poynting_vector)

The corollary of the proposition proven earlier is that there is NO static fields per se.

Of course we need to say what we mean by ‘static’ here. Well static means – Not moving! A common online English dictionary defines static (adjective) as follows: lacking in movement, action, or change, especially in an undesirable or uninteresting way.

So, I then have the full right to surmise that Static fields do not move with speed of light according to this definition. So, there is a contradiction with the proof. Therefore, the only way to resolve it is to conclude that Static Fields DO NOT have the right to exist!

Indeed, what is believed to be static is actually a superposition or contrapuntal effect of normally moving fields (Poynting vectors to be precise), where their stepping or pulsing effects are not visible. A normal illusion due to superposition.

One might ask but what about for example a cylindrical capacitor shown on //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poynting_vector ?

The answer is that – just the same thing – the are at least two power flows of ExH form there – like two conveyor belts of sheaths moving against one another, where the H (magnetic components are superposed and show the cumulative effect of H=0). Just short-circuit this cylinder from at least one edge, and you will see the effect of transition (redistribution) of the magnitudes of E and H so that the total amount of power ExH crossing the spatial cross-section will remain the same.

So Static Field (as being static in the sense of the above definition) is an illusion – just another H G Wells’ Invisible Man visiting us!

On the Necessity and Sufficiency of Poynting vector’s motion with speed of light …

On the Necessity and Sufficiency of Poynting vector’s motion with speed of light for the existence of contrapuntal states observed in Wakefield experiments

(see my earlier post: https://blogs.ncl.ac.uk/alexyakovlev/2019/09/14/wakefield-4-experiment-causal-picture-in-energy-current/ and Ivor Catt’s original paper on Wakefield 1: http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x343.pdf)

Alex Yakovlev

13 August 2020

The main hypothesis is:

H: EM energy current in the form of ExH (aka Poynting vector) can only exist in motion with a speed of light.

Experiment:

Consider a Wakefield experiment with a Tx Line that is initially discharged.

At time t=0, the TL is connected at point A (left-hand side) to a source 10V, where it is terminated with an open circuit. Point B is in the middle. Point C is at the right-hand side and is short-circuited.

Wakefield shows that:

At point A we have a square shape oscillation between +10V (half-time) and -10V (half-time).

At point C we see no changes – completely discharged line at 0V.

At point B we have the following cyclically repeated sequence of phases: (a) 0V (quarter time), (b) +10 (quarter time), (c) 0V (quarter time), (d) -10V (quarter time).

A similar analysis can be carried out with an initially charged TL which is short-circuited at point A and is open-circuited at point C.

Experimental fact:

W: We observe contrapuntal effects in Wakefield, such as in Point B we have phases (a) and (c) where the cumulative effect of ExH field waves makes them look observationally equivalent – at 0V, yet leading to different subsequent behaviour, i.e. from (a) it goes to (b), and from (c) it goes to (d).

The proposition:

P: The contrapuntal effects that we observe in Wakefield hold if and only if ExH can only exist in motion with a speed of light.

In other words, we state that W is true if and only if H holds, i.e. H is a necessary and sufficient condition for W.

Proof:

Sufficiency (H->W):

Suppose H is true. We can then easily deduce that at every point in space A, B and C, the the observed waveform will be as demonstrated by Wakefield.

(Ivor’s website contains my prediction for Wakefield 3 with contrapuntal behaviour – the analysis was based on Ivor’s theory – i.e. hypothesis H, and it was correctly confirmed by the experiment. For details see: http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x91cw34.htm and http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x842short.pdf)

Necessity (W->H, which is equivalent to not H -> not W):

Suppose H does not hold, i.e. at some point in space and/or in time, ExH is stationary or does not travel with speed of light. Let’s first look, say at point C. We see a “discharged state” – it corresponds to what we may call stationary state electric field, i.e. E=0 – a discharged piece of TL. Here we can possibly say that the voltage across it is constantly equal to 0 because at C it is short-circuited.

Next, we look at point B at the time when the voltage level is equal to 0V, say in phase (c). We think it is a static E=0. Using the same argument as we did for point C. One might argue that the point B is not short-circuited, but this does not matter from the point of view of our observation – it’s just 0V.

How can we predict that after a specific and well-defined time interval, voltage at B will go down to -10V and not up to +10V as it would have gone had we been in phase (a)? In other words, how can we distinguish the states in those two phases using classical theory, where phase (a) is observationally equivalent to phase (c).

The only way we could predict the real behaviour in W with classical theory if we had some ADDITIONAL memory that would store information, in another object, that although we were stationary here in that place and time interval, we were actually being in transit between phases (b) and (d) rather than being in transit between (d) and (b).

The fact that we need ADDITIONAL memory (another TL) is something that is outside the scope of our original model, because we did not have it organised in the first place. So, there is no knowledge in the original model that will make us certain that from phase (c) we will eventually and deterministically go to phase (d).

Q.E.D.

Note: The above fact of having phases (a), (b), (c) and (d) is the result of the contrapuntal effect of the superposition of the partial actions performed by the steps moving in the right and left directions. And unless that motion was always (in time and in space) with a well-defined speed (speed of light), we would not be able to predict that from phase (c) we will definitely and only transition to phase (d) and not to phase (b) and how quickly that transition will happen. The case of a fully charged or fully discharged capacitor, with seemingly stationary E field, that is a contrapuntal effect of superposed motion of ExH in all directions, is just a special case of the TL.

Remark from David Walton:

The only way we could predict the real behaviour in W with classical theory if we had some ADDITIONAL memory that would store information, in another object, that although we were stationary here in that place and time interval, we were actually being in transit between phases (b) and (d) rather than being in transit between (d) and (b).

is the key point.  

Another way to state the same thing in  different context and less formally (I think) is to point out that when two pulses travelling in opposite directions pass through each other either the B or E fields will cancel, hence demonstrating that the field cannot be the cause of the onward propagation of the em pulse.

My response:

That’s a great point you make. Indeed the absence of either B or E in the contrapuntal state disables us from the ability to talk about further propagation of the pulses.
Yes, the key point is the absence of memory about the dynamical process in the classical field model.

In summary:

Illusions … How many we have every day because we don’t really know they are happening around us (not enough sensors or memory to track things).
The contrapuntal effects are those that H G Wells probably had in mind in the shape of the Invisible Man.  They blind us from reality …

The real sense of energy conservation law is in permanent and omnipresent motion of energy

In my email exchange with Ivor Catt, a following idea came to my mind.

The law of energy conservation as it is being presented to students and understood is rather abstract as it begs for many interpretations, because energy exists in its permanent and omnipresent motion. Even if it is trapped in a fragment of space like a capacitor or an elementary particle it is in motion. 


So, what seems to be less convoluted is the law that energy can only exist in motion and it can only move at speed of light. That’s actually what conservation of energy is. This is true by Occam’s razor principle and does not need to be proven. So, it is necessarily so before or after the switch [between voltage source and a capacitor] is closed … and without this law we would not have had those prefect contrapuntal effects, including those that ’cause’ people to think we have stationary conditions in capacitors and transmission lines.